ERICH FROMM

• Fromm argues that Freud's theories do not fully explain human motivation or account for the role of society in shaping individual behavior.
• Fromm was a psychoanalyst and essayist
• Fromm's Basic Assumptions


  • Humans are the freaks of nature
  • Modern day humans have been torn away from their prehistoric union with nature and left with no powerful instincts to adapt to a changing world
  • Humans have acquired the ability to reason which means they can think about their isolated condition
• Fromm called this situation

  The human dilemma
• Existential Dichotomies


  • Life & Death
  • Goal of complete self-realization & shortness of life to reach the goal
  • Alone & cannot tolerate isolation
• Human Needs (existential needs)


  • Cannot be solved by satisfying our animal needs, but can only be addressed by satisfying our human needs which would move us toward a modification of our nature
  • Relatedness: Desire for union with another person's
  • Transcendence: Ability to transcend one's passive and accidental existence
  • Rootedness: Establish roots and to feel at home again in the world
  • Sense of Identity: Awareness of ourselves as a separate being
  • Frame of Orientation: A road map which we find our way through the world
• Productive Love


  The ability to unite with another while retaining one's own individuality and integrity
• Nonproductive Orientations


  • Receptive: Only able to receive things, including love, knowledge, and material objects
  • Exploitative: Aggressively take what they want rather than passively receiving it
  • Hoarding: Inability to save what they have already obtained, including their opinions, feelings, and material possessions
  • Marketing: See themselves as commodities and value themselves against the criterion of their ability to sell themselves
• Productive Orientation


  • Work toward positive freedom through productive work, love, and thoughts
  • Productive love necessitates a passionate love of all life and is called biophilia
• Personality Disorders


  Failures to work, think, and especially to love productively
• Necrophilia


  • The love of death and the hatred of all humanity
  • Their destructiveness is a reflection of a basic character
• Malignant Narcissism


  • Convinced that everything belonging to them is of great value and anything belonging to others is worthless
  • Often suffer from moral hypochondrias, or preoccupation with excessive guilt
• Incestuous Symbiosis


  • Extreme dependence on one's mother or mother surrogate to the extent that one's personality is blended with that of the host person
• Hitler possessed at least three of these disorders, a condition Fromm termed the "syndrome of decay"
• Fromm evolved a theory that provides insightful ways of looking at humanity
• Critique of Fromm's Theory

  • Rates high on organizing existing knowledge but low on ability to generate research, falsifiability, usefulness to practitioners, internal consistency, and parsimony
• Fromm's Concept of Humanity

  • Humans have the ability to reason but few strong instincts, making them the "freaks of nature"
  • To achieve self-actualization, they must satisfy their human, or existential, needs through productive love and work
• Fromm's theory is rated average on free choice, optimism, unconscious influences, and uniqueness; low on causality; and very high on social influences
• Fromm's assumptions rate very low on their ability to generate research and to lend themselves to falsification; Fromm rates low on usefulness to the practitioner, internal consistency, and parsimony
• Because it is quite broad in scope, Fromm's theory rates high on organizing existing knowledge
• Fromm's concept of humanity

  Came from a rich variety of sources-history, anthropology, economics, and clinical work
• Humans


  • Have the ability to reason but few strong instincts, they are the freaks of nature
  • To achieve self-actualization, they must satisfy their human, or existential, needs through productive love and work
• Fromm's theory was rated as average on free choice, optimism, unconscious influences, and uniqueness; low on causality; and very high on social influences
• Neurotic people


  Still conflicted about their existence
• Existential Needs


  • Relatedness - desire union with others
  • Transcendence - to live a loving, creative, and productive life
  • Rootedness - to feel at home in the world
  • Identity - capacity for awareness of oneself as a separate individuality
• Existential Dichotomies


  • Separation from nature & human beings produces isolation and a condition called basic anxiety
  • Awareness of this separation leads to the development of religion, art, and thought
• Rootedness - people seek to return to nature to feel at home
• Fixation - reluctance to move beyond the protective barrier of mother
• Frame of Orientation


  • Being torn from nature, humans need a map to guide them through the world
  • Without maps, humans would be uncentered
• Irrational goals don't have clear goods, leading to confusion
• Rational goals provide a valid frame of orientation for a viable direction, conferring meaning to their lives
• Burden of Freedom


  • Freedom is frightening, it places responsibility on you
  • Freedom gives children a chance to express individuality, choose clothes, move around, etc.
  • But it also leads to basic anxiety (being alone in the world)
• Mechanisms of Escape (defense mechanisms from freedom)


  • Authoritarianism - tendency to give up independence and fuse self with a body or something outside oneself
  • Destructiveness - does not depend on a continuous relationship but rather a desire to do away with other people
  • Conformity - giving up individuality and becoming whatever people desire them to be
  • Positive Freedom - being part of the world yet separate from it, independent yet an integral part of mankind
• Character Orientations


  • Relatively permanent patterns of how a person relates to the world in response to existential dilemmas and needs
  • Nonproductive Orientations - ways that fail to move people closer to positive freedom and self-actualization
• Nonproductive Character Orientations


  • Receptive - feel the source of all good is outside themselves, relate to the world through passivity, lack of confidence, submission
  • Exploitative - aggressively take things, believing the source of all good is outside themselves
  • Hoarding - seek to save what they have already obtained, leading to rigidity, sterility, obstinacy
  • Marketing - see themselves as commodities, leading to aimlessness, opportunism, inconsistency
• Fromm believed that individuals have an innate desire to belong to groups and communities, which can be fulfilled through participation in social institutions such as religion, politics, and economics.