Fromm vs Frankl

Woah...my mind is all kinds of wired right now. Last night was half and half sleepless. There are a lot of hopes and emotions going into this week. Fear of failure and hopes for connection.

My most recent intellectual endeavor has been the discovery of Fromm, the psychologist and philosopher.

Fromm discusses Freud's failure to articulate the importance of sex in a way that was encompassing of the true nature of the experience. So far, Fromm said that we all quickly realize that death is quickly encroaching and will steal everyone away from us.

The anxiety that we feel in life is not of pain, but of loneliness and separateness. Love is the act of reaching out of yourself to really know another person. Such as a child deconstructs something by breaking it into pieces, so can love be destructive. It is an act of empowering connection because we demonstrate our vitality by love.

Lovemaking is the physical joining of two people in the ultimate attempt to overcome separateness which sometimes brings forth new life.

Charity is not an act of omission, but a demonstration of love. If someone views charity as sacrifice they are not loving and are not getting the fullness of the experience of giving.

"Love is the solution to the problem of human existence" --Fromm

Those are his thoughts.

I also watched a documentary about sexual intelligence and the pitfalls of modern perceptions regarding relationships.
Met a lot of cool people this weekend too. It was really random.

In digesting Fromm I think back toward Frankl, who wrote near the same time and said that the reason for all our motivation and psyche is meaning. This is a tough pair to reconcile. Some seek solitude for extended periods of time to overcome the separateness that they feel: they commune with a perceived "higher power" in an attempt to overcome the loneliness of death.

Frankl said that Freud was wrong because (after Frankl survived the holocost) he noticed a lot of his companions were comitting suicide because they had lost their families, work, and belongings. He attributed this to the fact that the meaning in their lives had been lost. It wasn't the fact that they didn't have anyone to talk to...they made plenty of companions in their hardships. However, the fact that there was no perceived purpose to their lives after they left the death camps caused them to lose their drive to live.

I wish I could post this on an open forum to discuss.

E.M. Forster would agree with Fromm. Dr. Lascar agrees with Frankl. We don't need people to be happy, but without people...things don't seem to have much meaning. At least in my perspective.

If anyone reads this please comment.