2022 Volume 20 Issue 1 Pages 53-67
I will imagine a dialog between Frankl and Fromm. Actually, they never engaged in a dialog: however, both had enough reasons to produce meaningful dialogs. Both were contemporaneous Jews, both fought bravely against the Nazis, and both were thinkers who sought to create a system of existential psychoanalysis from Freud’s psychoanalysis. They both thought that our fundamental desire was not libido but the desire for meaning, individuals wanting to realize meaningfulness in their lives. Frankl said, “We find meaning in life through a sincere effort to answer the questions that life throws at us.” Fromm said “The sense of responsibility is nothing but the voluntary consciousness that we have the ability to respond, so we surely respond that we want to.” Then Fromm pointed out, that a lively and abundant reproduction of response-relationships are just the spiritual task of today.
