Some time ago I stumbled on the book Man’s search for meaning from Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl who survived several concentration camps during World War II. This book was being recommended a lot and I was interested in the topic of life’s meaning so I decided to take a look at it.
After reading it I could only think of one thing:
That book blew my mind.
It explains that the will to meaning goes much, much deeper. It is a deeply ingrained motivation. It is one of the basic human needs.
But apart from analyzing the meaning, I was starting to get interested in the topic of love.
Everybody talks about it, but how much do we actually know when it comes to love. What do we mean by love? Is that just an intensive emotion? Is it something we cannot control and that finds its roots in the deepest part of our unconscious mind? Is it just a sexual urge for mating? Or does the real love start after the intensive, passionate, romantic period? Maybe real love start in marriage? In the end, can love even be explained?
On my search to find an answer somehow I found the book The Art of Loving by German social psychologist Erich Fromm. He discussed, as it is stated in the book title, that love is an art. It has a theoretical and practical part. It is something that we need to exercise, and something that is very hard to do. The main problem that we need to solve is that of loving, instead of being loved.
Again, I was astonished by the information.
And what was also interesting is that I saw similarities between some ideas from Erich Fromm and ideas from Viktor Frankl.
Therefore, I decided to analyze, deconstruct, and connect the similarities between their ideas of love, and see if I can come to some conclusion.
But before I can talk about love, I have to find out what is the source of love and what is the main motivation for love to even exist.
To tackle these problems I first decided to dive into the topic of finding meaning.
Finding Meaning
Erich Fromm states that man has outgrown animal nature and he has extended it with consciousness and awareness. And although the additional features can present themselves as blessing, it can be also our course.
Man is gifted with reason; he is life being aware of itself he has awareness of himself, of his fellow man, of his past, and of the possibilities of his future. This awareness of himself as a separate entity, the awareness of his own short life span, of the fact that without his will he is born and against his will he dies, that he will die before those whom he loves, or they before him, the awareness of his aloneness and separateness, of his helplessness before the forces of nature and of society, all this makes his separate, disunited existence an unbearable prison. He would become insane could he not liberate himself from this prison and reach out, unite himself in some form or other with men, with the world outside.
He continues to describe that the only real and significant way of overcoming our anxiety and separateness is through love.
The awareness of human separation, without reunion by love—is the source of shame. It is at the same time the source of guilt and anxiety. The deepest need of man, then, is the need to overcome his separateness, to leave the prison of his aloneness.
Those ideas were experienced by Frankl first hand. He explains how people with integrated spiritual freedom were more likely to strive and endure the suffering in concentration camps.
Furthermore, he explains how he found meaning and strength in love by thinking about his wife during the times he was in concentration camps which kept him to move on with his life.
A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth—that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.
He also concludes that:
Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance.
From these excerpts I can see that it is unnecessary to have a person directly in front of us to experience love and find meaning. Love goes beyond the realm of reality. It is purely a state of being. It is an inner drive that can help us overcome suffering.
Also, Frankl explains, when we are viewing things without meaning, we are more prone to follow the path of expedient pleasures.
He describes how the existential frustration can lead to short-term pleasures that are not fulfilling:
Moreover, there are various masks and guises under which the existential vacuum appears. Sometimes the frustrated will to meaning is vicariously compensated for by a will to power, the will to money. In other cases, the place of frustrated will to meaning is taken by the will to pleasure. That is why existential frustration often eventuates in sexual compensation. We can observe in such cases that the sexual libido becomes rampant in the existential vacuum.
At this point, I can clearly see the similarity. Both of them saw that the meaning in overcoming anxiety lies in achieving an interpersonal fusion with another person. That is, in love.
But then the question is: what is love actually?
What is Love?
Erich Fromm describes love as an union where both attendees have their individuality preserved.
In contrast to symbiotic union, mature love is union under the condition of preserving one’s integrity, one’s individuality. Love is an active power in man.
Furthermore, he explains love as an act of giving.
Love is an activity, not a passive effect; it is a “standing in”, not a “falling for.” In the most general way, the active character of love can be described by stating that love is primarily giving, not receiving.
He also states:
Love is the active concern for the life and the growth of that which we love.
To summarize it, love for Fromm is an active act. It is the individual expression of his values. It is something that one does with reason and he is not a servant of his feelings. In love a person gives himself. He doesn’t sacrifice anything because only giving is needed to feel joy. Receiving cannot be commanded. Love cannot be commanded. It is the giver that receives and he doesn’t expect anything in return. Being loved is just a consequence of giving. It is not an end goal.
Frankl has similar ideas about love being a motivation that should lift other people.
Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true.
Frankl’s view of seeing a human being matches Fromm’s explanation of respect, one of the basic blocks of love.
Respect is not fear and awe; it denotes, in accordance with the root of the word (respicere = to look at), the ability to see a person as he is, to be aware of his unique individuality
In both cases, the end result of love should be to experience someone in his very uniqueness with all of his flaws. It is to accept the other. If I love the other person I should make him aware of his potential and help him achieve it.
Frankl explained this idea beautifully in this video clip.
For non-german listeners I will explain it shortly.
Frankl describes 4 levels of interacting with other people.
The first and lowest level presents the sexual drive that has a goal to release the sexual tension. For example, at this level, it is enough to release the tension through masturbation. (G level)
At the second level (O level) there is an object. An object that represents a means to the goal for the sexual tension to be released.
Above that level starts, what Frankl calls, the humane domain. The area in which we see a human in the partner and not the object who is good enough just to release our tension. (H level)
The last level is when we see the person in the partner (P level). That is, we see the partner in his uniqueness and individuality and that is where the humane sexuality and love starts.
So then, the question is how can we come to those higher levels of interactions?
I agree with Fromm when he says:
Paradoxically, the ability to be alone is the condition for the ability to love.
The ability to be alone depends entirely on loving ourselves. If we don’t love ourselves there is a dependency by which we attach ourselves to others. In the end, we lose our individuality, we become empty shells, and we hurt other people.
Therefore, one should first transcend his egotistical needs and drives to become capable of loving, and to go to the higher levels which Frankl explained.
Transcending ourselves
Erich Fromm about self-transcendence in the Art of loving:
It is hardly necessary to stress the fact that the ability to love as an act of giving depends on the character development of the person. It presupposes the attainment of a predominantly productive orientation; in this orientation the person has overcome dependency, narcissistic omnipotence, the wish to exploit others, or to hoard, and has acquired faith in his own human powers, courage to rely on his powers in the attainment of his goals. To the that these qualities are lacking, he is afraid of giving himself – hence of loving.
Frankl follows him in a similar manner:
I have termed this constitutive characteristic “the self-transcendence of human existence.” It denotes the fact that being human always points, and is directed, to something, or someone, other than oneself—be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself—by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love—the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself. What is called self-actualization is not an attainable aim at all, for the simple reason that the more one would strive for it, the more he would miss it. In other words, self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence.
When I compare these texts, I can conclude that by the term self-transcendence they are pointing to the ability to know yourself, to be aware of your flaws, your personality, and your values. It is the ability to ingrain reason in every act that you do. It means to forget yourself, to make something else the focus, to forget your needs, while still having integrity.
Conclusion
From all of these materials I can conclude that, if we would like to find meaning in love then, first of all, we have to strive for self-transcendence. I would say that means being aware of our flaws, emotions, personality, jealousy, egotistical drives, clinging, attachment, and it means getting beyond good and evil. It means to be independent, and it means to love ourselves.
Then we can start to give ourselves fully. We can immerse ourselves in the act alone at which point we lose the awareness of space and time (some may call it the flow state). We express our being into life, forget about ourselves, and realize and help other people achieve their potential.
After all, the ultimate goal is the deed and we do not act because we want to get love. We do that because we selfishly love to love.
Both Erich Fromm and Viktor Frankl, challenge the modern meaning of love. What is usually thought by love is notion of the romantic love, the intensive and attaching attraction that is short-termed. They define that love is much more then that.
The love they are talking about is the main uplifting drive and motivation for overcoming anxiety and suffering. Loving for them is one of the basic human needs where meaning can be found.
One could give a contra argument: “That is all pretty and interesting, but it is just an ideal. A perfect ideal that maybe cannot be achieved. And why should we then strive for it? What is then the meaning of following this path?”
Again, Frankl holds the answer in this short video.
I want to repeat the incredible quote from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe that Frankl said in the previous video:
When we treat man as he is we make him worse than he is. When we treat him as if he already was what he potentially could be We make him what he should be.
Therefore, in the manner of this article I would say:
If we strive for the ideal meaning of love, then, and just then we are able to love.