CHAPTER 8: Humanistic Psychology

• Humanistic Psychoanalysis Fromm’s personality theory that combines basics of both psychoanalysis and humanistic psychology
• Like the views of all personality theorists, Erich Fromm’s view of human nature was shaped by childhood experiences.
• Naphtali Fromm and Rosa Fromm

  • Parents of Erich Fromm
• Fromm’s most basic assumption is that individual personality can be understood only in light of human history
• Fromm (1947) believed that humans, unlike other animals, have been “torn away” from their prehistoric union with nature.
• Human Dilemma

  • The present condition of humans who have the ability to reason but who lack powerful instincts needed to adapt to a changing world. 
• On one hand, it permits people to survive, but on the other, it forces them to attempt to solve basic insoluble dichotomies. Fromm referred to these as “existential dichotomies” because they are rooted in people’s very existence. 
• The first and most fundamental dichotomy is that between life and death. Self-awareness and reason tell us that we will die, but we try to negate this dichotomy by postulating life after death, an attempt that does not alter the fact that our lives end with death. 
• A second existential dichotomy is that humans are capable of conceptualizing the goal of complete self realization, but we also are aware that life is too short to reach that goal. Some people try to solve this dichotomy by assuming that their own historical period is the crowning achievement of humanity, while others postulate a continuation of development after death. 
• The third existential dichotomy is that people are ultimately alone, yet we cannot tolerate isolation. They are aware of themselves as separate individuals, and at the same time, they believe that their happiness depends on uniting with their fellow human beings.
• Only the distinctive human needs can move people toward a reunion with the natural world.
• Existential Needs

  • Peculiarly human needs aimed at moving people toward a reunification with the natural world. Fromm listed relatedness, transcendence, rootedness, a sense of identity, and a frame of orientation as existential, or human, needs. 
• Relatedness

  • The need for union with another person or persons. Expressed through submission, power, or love
• Submission

  • search for a relationship with domineering people, power seekers welcome submissive partners.
• When a submissive person and a domineering person find each other, they frequently establish a symbiotic relationship, one that is satisfying to both partners. 
• People in symbiotic relationships are drawn to one another not by love but by a desperate need for relatedness, a need that can never be completely satisfied by such a partnership.
• Love

  • A union with another person in which a person retains separateness and integrity of self.
• Love also means responsibility, that is, a willingness and ability to respond.
• Transcendence

  • The need for humans to rise above their passive animal existence through either creating or destroying life.
• Malignant Aggression

  • The destruction of life for reasons other than survival.
• Rootedness

  • The human need to establish roots, that is, to find a home again in the world.
• Rootedness, too, can be sought in either productive or nonproductive strategies. 
• Productive Strategy

  • people are weaned from the orbit of their mother and become fully born; that is, they actively and creatively relate to the world and become whole or integrated. 
• Fixation

  • Non productive Strategy ; The nonproductive form of rootedness marked by a reluctance to grow beyond the security provided by one’s mother.
• Sense of Identity

  • The distinctively human need to develop a feeling of “I.”
• Rootedness can also be seen phylogenetically in the evolution of the human species.
• Fromm was influenced by Johann Jakob Bachofen’s (1861/1967) ideas on early matriarchal societies
• Frame of Orientation

  • The need for humans to develop a unifying philosophy or consistent way of looking at things.
• A road map without a goal or destination is worthless.
• To keep from going insane, however, they need a final goal or “object of devotion”
• In addition to physiological or animal needs, people are motivated by five distinctively human needs - relatedness, transcendence, rootedness, a sense of identity, and a frame of orientation.
• Basic Anxiety

  • The feeling of being alone and isolated, separated from the natural world. 
• Fromm (1941) identified three primary mechanisms of escape - authoritarianism, destructiveness, and conformity. 
• Authoritarianism

  • The tendency to give up one’s independence and to unite with another person or persons in order to gain strength. Takes the form of masochism or sadism.
• This need to unite with a powerful partner can take one of two forms - masochism or sadism.
• Masochism results from basic feelings of powerlessness, weakness, and inferiority and is aimed at joining the self to a more powerful person or institution. 
• Sadism is more neurotic and more socially harmful. Like masochism, It is aimed at reducing basic anxiety through achieving unity with another person or persons.
• Three kinds of sadistic tendencies:

  1. The need to make others dependent on oneself and to gain power over those who are weak. 
  2. The compulsion to exploit others, to take advantage of them, and to use them for one’s benefit or pleasure. 
  3. The desire to see others suffer, either physically or psychologically. 
• Destructiveness

  • Method of escaping from freedom by eliminating people or objects, thus restoring feelings of power.
• Conformity

  • Means of escaping from isolation and aloneness by giving up one’s self and becoming whatever others desire.