fromm

• Humanistic psychoanalysis


  Modern-day people have been "torn away" from their prehistoric union with nature and with one another, yet they have the power of reasoning, foresight, and imagination
• Basic anxiety


  Feelings of loneliness and isolation due to humanity's separation from the natural world
• Humanistic psychoanalysis


  • Emphasises the influence of sociobiological factors, history, economics, and class structure
  • Lack of animal instinct + presence of rational thought = "freaks of universe"
• Erich Fromm was born in Germany in March 23, 1900, the only child of orthodox Jewish parents
• Fromm was influenced by the bible, Freud, and Marx, as well as by socialist ideology
• After receiving his PhD, Fromm began studying psychoanalysis and became an analyst by virtue of being analyzed by Hanns Sachs, a student of Freud
• In 1934, Fromm moved to the United States and began a psychoanalytic practice in New York, where he also resumed his friendship with Karen Horney
• Human dilemma


  Have no power instincts to adapt to a changing world; instead they have acquired the facility to reason (both blessing & curse)
• Existential dichotomies


  • Life and Death
  • Capable of thinking the goal of complete self-realization, but we are also aware that life is too short to reach that goal
  • People are ultimately alone, but we can't tolerate isolation
• According to Fromm, our human dilemma cannot be solved by satisfying our animal needs
• Relatedness


  The drive for union with another person or other person
• Three basic ways of relatedness

  • Submission - a person can submit to another, to a group, or to an institution in order to become one with the world
  • Power - domineering person
  • Love - the only route by which a person can become united with the world and, at the same time, achieve individuality and integrity
• Love


  Union with somebody, or something outside oneself under the condition of retaining the separateness and integrity of one's own self
• Elements of love


  • Care
  • Responsibility
  • Respect
  • Knowledge
• Types of love


  • Brotherly love - the most fundamental, the strongest, and the most underlying kind of love. It is a love between equals
  • Motherly love - the love and care for the helpless, the wanting to make them strong and independent
  • Erotic love - usually allied with sexual experience, a "craving for complete function," and is what most consider the only kind of love
  • Self-love - care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge of self
  • Love of God - has the highest value, is the most desirable good, and emphasizes care, respect, responsibility, and especially knowledge
• Transcendence


  Urge to rise above a passive and accidental existence and into the "realm of purposefulness and freedom"
• Malignant aggression


  To kill for reasons other than survival
• Malignant aggression


  • Positive component: Creativity
  • Negative component: Destruction
• Rootedness


  The need to establish roots or to feel at home again in the world
• Rootedness


  • Positive component: Wholeness
  • Negative component: Fixation
• Fromm's Oedipus complex


  Desire to return to the mother's womb or breast
• Sense of identity


  Capacity to be aware of ourselves as a separate entity
• Sense of identity


  • Positive component: Individuality
  • Negative component: Adjustment to a group or Conformity
• Frame of orientation


  Road map or consistent philosophy by which we find our way through the world
• Frame of orientation


  • Positive component: Rational goals
  • Negative component: Irrational goals
• Summary of Fromm's human needs

  • Relatedness: Submission or domination vs Love
  • Transcendence: Destructiveness vs Creativeness
  • Rootedness: Fixation vs Wholeness
  • Sense of identity: Adjustment to a group (conformity) vs Individuality
  • Frame of orientation: Irrational goals vs Rational goals
• Burden of freedom


  Fromm believes that we are free to be and do whatever we please. Yet it is very freedom that creates greatest problem for us.
• Basic anxiety


  Freedom can be frightening
• Two types of responses to the burden of freedom

  • Escape from freedom
  • Positive freedom
• Escape from freedom/Mechanism of escape

  1. Authoritarianism - the tendency to "fuse one's self with somebody or something outside of oneself in order to acquire the strength which the individual self is lacking"

  2. Destructiveness - the individual attempts to overcome life's threatening situations by destroying them

  3. Automaton conformity - the individual simply has a blind acceptance of all of the contradictions of life
• Positive freedom


  Refers to spontaneous and full expression of both the rational and emotional potentialities. They act according to their basic natures and not according to conventional rules.
• Character orientation


  People relate to the world in two ways - by acquiring and using things (assimilation) and by relating to self and others (socialization). In general terms, people can relate to things and to people either productively or non-productively.
• Non-productive orientation


  • Marketing orientation - See themselves as commodities ("I am as you desire me)

  Receptive orientation - Only way to relate to the world is passively receiving things

  Exploitative orientation - Aggressively take what they want
• Productive orientation


  • Productive people work toward positive freedom and a continuing realization of their potential, they are the most healthy of all character types.

  Three dimensions: Work, Love, Reasoning
• Necrophilia


  More generalized sense to denote any attraction to death. Necrophilic personalities hate humanity, they are bullies, they love destruction, terror, and torture.
• Malignant narcissism


  People with this disorder are preoccupied with themselves, but this concern is not limited to admiring themselves in a mirror.
• Hypochondriasis


  Obsessive attention to one's health
• Moral hypochondriasis


  A preoccupation with guilt about previous transgressions
• Incestuous symbiosis


  Extreme dependence on mother or mother surrogate. Exaggerated form of mother fixation.
• Psychotherapy


  Establish a union with patients so that they can become reunited with the world. Fromm believed that patients come to therapy seeking satisfaction of their basic human needs.