al dichotomy between missing instincts and self-awareness" (Fromm, 1973, p. 226). He states that man's conflict produces certain psychic needs common to all men, for all men are forced to overcome the horror of separateness, powerlessness, and lostness, and to find new ways to relate himself to the world if he is to feel at home. He calls these psychic needs existential because he believes that they are rooted in the very conditions of human existence. All men share these needs and the fulfillment of these needs is as necessary to man's sanity "as the fulfillment of organic drives is necessary for his remaining alive" (Fromm, 1973, p. 226). This paper concludes that Fromm is essentially correct in his assessment of human nature.
The basic contradiction that human beings must address during their lives is the isolation from their environment. Most psychoanalysts agree that this basic contradiction and the failure to address it squarely is responsible for all human neuroses. Fromm argues that man's capacity for self-awareness, reason, and imagination requires a picture of the world and of his place in it that is structured and has internally coherent (1973, p. 230). Man needs a map of his natural and social world, without which he would be confused and unable to act purposefully and consistently. Without such a map he cannot orient himself and find a fixed point that would permit him to organize all the impressions that impinge upon him (Fromm, 1973, p. 230).
Fromm believes that the intensity of the need for such a frame of orientation explains the puzzlement among many students of man with the ease with which people fall under the spell of irrational doctrines, either political or religious or of any other nature, when to the one who is not under their influence it seems obvious that they are worthless constructs (1973, p. 231). He argues that part of the answer lies in the suggestive influence of leaders and the suggest...