Viktor Frankl: Why Idealism achieves better Realism

We have to be idealists, in a way, because then we wind up as the true, the real realists. And so you know who has said this? If we take man as he is, we make him worse, but if we take man as he should be, we make him capable of becoming what he can be. This was Goethe. He said this verbally. Now you will understand: this is the most apt maxim and motto for any psychotherapeutic activity. 

So if you don't recognize a young man's will to meaning, man's search for meaning, you make him worse: you make him dull, you make him frustrated. While if you presuppose in this man, there must a spark for meaning. Let's presuppose it and then you will elicit it from him, you will make him capable of becoming what he in principal is capable of becoming.