Erich Fromm: Humanistic Psychoanalysis

• Fromm believed that humans have been torn away from their prehistoric union with nature and left with no powerful instinct to adapt to a changing world.
• Humans acquired the ability to reason, so they can think about their isolated condition which Fromm called

  Human Dilemma
• Erich Fromm - was born in Frankfurt, Germany in March 23, 1900
• Erich Fromm was the only child of an orthodox Jewish parents
• Fromm was influenced by


  The Bible, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, as well as the socialist ideology
• Hanns Sachs - a student of Freud which analyzed Erich Fromm
• Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute - where he met Karen Horney <3
• March 18, 1980 - date of Fromm's death
• Human Dilemma will not be solved by satisfying the animal needs
• Human Dilemma - can only be addressed by fulfilling our uniquely human needs, an accomplishment that movws us toward the union with the natural world
• Relatedness - the drive for union with another person or other person

  • Submission, Power, and Love
  • Symbiotic Relationship - relationship between submissive and powerful people.
  • Love - the only route by which a person can become united with the world
  • Love - union with somebody under the condition or retaining separateness and integrity of one's own self
• Transcendence - the rise above a passive and accidental existence and into the realm of purposefulness and freedom

  • Humans are aware of themselves as creators
  • Malignant Aggression - to kill for other reasons than survival
• Rootedness - is the need to establish roots and feel at home again in the world
• Fixation - afraid to move beyond the safety and security of our mother or mother figure

  • Frieda Fromm-Reichmann - 10 years older than Fromm
  • Karen Horney - 15 years his senior
• Sense of Identity - awareness of ourselves as a separate person

  • Neurotics - attach themselves to powerful people or to social or political institutions
  • Healthy people - possess an authentic sense of identity.
• Frame of Orientation - a roadmap to help people make their way through the world.

  • Every person has a philosophy; a consistent way of looking at things
  • Final Goal/Object of Devotion - focuses people's energy in a single direction, enables use to transcend our isolated existence, and confers meaning to our lives.
• Fill in the blanks

  A) Relatedness

  B) Desctructiveness

  C) wholeness

  D) Sense of Identity

  E) Irrational

  F) Rational

  
• The Burden of Freedom

  • Reason - is both a curse and a blessing
  • Basic Anxiety - the feeling of being alone in the world.
• Mechanisms of Escape - authoritarianism, destructiveness, and conformity.
• Authoritarianism - the tendency to give up ones independence and to unite with a powerful partner.

  • Masochism - joining the self to a more powerful person or institution
  • Disguised as love and loyalty
  • Sadism - more neurotic and socially harmful
  • need to make others dependent and gain power
  • compulsion to exploit others
  • desire to see others suffer
• Destructiveness - rooted in the feelings of isolation, aloneness, and powerlessness.
• Conformity - surrendering one's individuality in order to meet the wishes of others

  • People can break the cycle of powerlessness and conformity by achieving positive freedom
  • Positive Freedom - the spontaneous activity of the whole integrated personality, and which is achieved when a person becomes reunited with others.
• • Character Orientation - person's relatively permanent way of relating to people and things.
  • Character - relatively permanent systems of all noninstinctual strivings to which man related himself to the human and natural world.
  • Assimilation - acquiring and using things
  • Socialization - relating self to others.
• Nonproductive Orientation -Receptive, Exploitative, Hoarding, and Marketing
• Receptive Character - feel that the source of all good lies outside themselves and that the only way they can relate to the world is to receive things.

  • Negative qualities - passivity, submissiveness, and lack of self confidence
  • Positive Traits - loyalty, acceptance and trust
• Exploitative Character - they aggressively take what they desire rather than passively receive it.

  • Negative - egocentric, conceited, arrogant, seducing
  • Positive - impulsive, proud, charming, self-confident
• Hoarding - seek to save that which they have already obtained. They hold everything inside and do not let go of anything.

  • Negative -rigidity, sterility, obstinacy, compulsivity, lack of creativity
  • Positive - orderliness, cleanliness, punctuality
• Marketing - see themselves as commodities, with their personal value dependent on their exchange value, that is, their ability to sell themselves.

  • I am as you desire me
  • Negative - aimlessness, opportunism, inconsistency, wastefulness
  • Positive - changeability, open-mindedness, adaptability, generosity
• Productive Orientation -most healthy of all character types

  • Working - people value work not as an end in itself, but as a means of creative self expression
  • Loving/ Biophilia - a passionate love of life and all that is alive
  • Reasoning - motivated by concerned interest in another person or object.
• Personality Disorder - psychologically disturbed people are incapable of love and have failed to establish union with others
• Necrophilia - an attraction to death

  • strong advocates of law and order, love to talks about sickness, death, and burials, and are fascinated by dirt, decay, corpses, and feces
  • Hate humanity
  • bullies, racist, and warmongers
• Malignant Narcissism - impedes the perception of reality so that anything belonging to a narcissistic person is highly valued and anything belonging to another is devalued.

  • Hypochondriasis - obsessive attention to one's health
  • Moral Hypochondriasis - preoccupation with guilt of previous transgressions
• Incestuous Symbiosis - the exaggerated form of the more common and more benign mother fixation

  • People living in incestuous symbiotic relationships feel extremely anxious and frightened if that relationship is threatened.
• Assessment Techniques

  Goal - work toward satisfaction of the basic human needs of relatedness, transcendence, rootedness, sense of identity, and a frame of orientation.

  • Accomplish through shared communication in which the therapist is simply a human being rather than a scientist