chapter 8

• Fromm's Basic Assumptions


  • Individual personality can be understood only in the light of human history
  • Psychology must be based on an anthropologic-philosophical concept of human existence
• Human dilemma


  Humans have been torn away from their prehistoric union with nature, yet they have acquired the facility to reason
• The Burden of Freedom


  The isolation wrought by capitalism has been unbearable, leaving people with two alternatives: (1) to escape from freedom into interpersonal dependencies, or (2) to move to self-realization through productive love and work
• Mechanisms of Escape


  • Authoritarianism
  • Destructiveness
  • Conformity
• Nonproductive Orientations


  • Receptive
  • Exploitative
  • Hoarding
  • Marketing
• Personality Disorders


  • Necrophilia
  • Malignant Narcissism
  • Incestuous Symbiosis
• Fromm's Methods of Investigation


  • Social Character in a Mexican Village
  • A Psychohistorical Study of Hitler
• Related Research


  • Testing the Assumptions of Fromm's Marketing Character
  • Estrangement From Culture and Well-Being
  • Authoritarianism and Fear
• Influences on Fromm's thinking

  • Teachings of the humanistic rabbis
  • Revolutionary spirit of Karl Marx
  • Revolutionary ideas of Sigmund Freud
  • Rationality of Zen Buddhism as espoused by D. T. Suzuki
  • Writings of Johann Jakob Bachofen on matriarchal societies
• Fromm's most basic assumption


  Individual personality can be understood only in the light of human history
• Humans


  • They have been "torn away" from their prehistoric union with nature
  • They have no powerful instincts to adapt to a changing world
  • They have acquired the facility to reason - a condition Fromm called the human dilemma
• Existential dichotomies


  • Life and death
  • Complete self-realization and life being too short
  • Aloneness and need for union
• Human needs


  Physiological needs (hunger, sex, safety)

  Existential needs (relatedness, transcendence, rootedness, sense of identity, frame of orientation)
• Relatedness


  The drive for union with another person or other persons
• Ways of relating to the world

  • Submission
  • Power
  • Love
• Symbiotic relationship


  A relationship where two partners "live on each other and from each other", satisfying their craving for closeness but lacking inner strength and self-reliance
• Love


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

  • Care
  • Responsibility
  • Respect
  • Knowledge
• Transcendence


  The urge to rise above a passive and accidental existence and into "the realm of purposefulness and freedom"
• Ways of seeking transcendence

  • Creating life
  • Destroying life
• Rootedness


  The need to establish roots or to feel at home again in the world
• Strategies for seeking rootedness


  • Productive (becoming fully born, actively relating to the world)
  • Nonproductive (fixation, tenacious reluctance to move beyond the protective security provided by one's mother)
• Sense of identity


  The capacity to be aware of ourselves as a separate entity
• Frame of orientation


  A "road map" that enables people to organize the various stimuli that impinge on them and make sense of events and phenomena
• Every person has a philosophy, a consistent way of looking at things
• Object of devotion

  A final goal that focuses people's energies in a single direction, enables them to transcend their isolated existence, and confers meaning to their lives
• Human needs


  • Relatedness
  • Transcendence
  • Rootedness
  • Sense of identity
  • Frame of orientation
• Fromm, 1976: 'People need a final goal or "object of devotion"'
• Object of devotion


  Focuses people's energies in a single direction, enables us to transcend our isolated existence, and confers meaning to our lives
• Distinctively human needs


  • Relatedness
  • Transcendence
  • Rootedness
  • Sense of identity
  • Frame of orientation
• Lack of satisfaction of any of these needs is unbearable and results in insanity
• Ways relatedness can be satisfied

  • Submission
  • Domination
  • Love
• Love


  Produces authentic fulfillment
• Ways transcendence can be satisfied

  • Destructiveness
  • Creativeness
• Creativeness


  Permits joy
• Ways rootedness can be satisfied


  • Fixation to the mother
  • Moving forward into full birth and wholeness
• Ways sense of identity can be satisfied

  • Adjustment to the group
  • Creative movement toward individuality
• Ways frame of orientation can be satisfied

  • Irrational goals
  • Rational goals
• Rational philosophy


  Can serve as a basis for the growth of total personality
• Humans have been torn from nature, yet they remain part of the natural world, subject to the same physical limitations as other animals