Fromm - Humanistic

• Freaks of Universe - lack of animal instincts and presence o rational thought
• Three Existential Dichotomies

  • Life and Death
  • 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
  • People are ultimately alone, yet we cannot tolerate isolation
• • Relatedness drive for union with another person or other persons
• Symbiotic Relationship - desperate need for relatedness, submission and power
• 3 Basic ways to relate to the world: submission, power, love
• Love is the only route by which a person can become united with the world.In love, two people become one yet remain two
• Transcendence -  the 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
• Rootedness - the need to establish roots or to feel at home again in the world
• Fixation -

  • reluctance to move beyond the protective security provided by mother
• Sense of Identity - the capacity to be aware of ourselves as a separate entity
• Frame of Orientation - being split off from nature, humans need a road map, a goal
• • Authoritarianism "tendency to give up the independence of one's own individual self and to fuse one's self with somebody or something outside oneself
• • Masochism aimed at joining the self to a more powerful person or institution.
• • Sadism Fromm (1941) identified three kinds of sadistic tendencies, all more or less clustered together. (1) to gain power over those who are weak. (2) to exploit, take advantage others (3) desire to see others suffer
• • Destructiveness seeks to do away with other people, destructive people eliminate much of the outside world and thus acquire a type of perverted isolation
• • Conformity giving up their individuality and becoming whatever other people desire them to be
• • Personality the totality of inherited and acquired psychic qualities which are characteristic of one individual and which make the individual unique
• • Character “the relatively permanent system of all noninstinctual strivings through which man relates himself to the human and natural world
• Nonproductive Orientations

  • Receptive — relates to the world by receiving things passively
  • Exploitative relates to the world by taking things through force/aggressively,
  • Hoarding relates to the world by seeking to save things they already obtained
  • Marketing — see themselves as commodities, personal value dependent on their exchange value, that is, their ability to sell themselves.
• Productive Orientation


  Has three dimensions—working, loving, and reasoning (thinking)
• Productive Orientation


  • Works toward positive freedom and a continuing realization of their potential
  • Productive Work - creative self-expression
  • Productive Love - characterized by care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge
  • Biophilia a passionate love of life and all that is alive
  • Love of others and self-love are inseparable but that self- love must come first
  • Productive Thinking - motivated by concerned interest in another person or object
• Healthy People

  • Receive things from other people
  • Take things when appropriate
  • Preserve things
  • Exchange things
  • Work, love, and think productively
• Syndrome of Growth


  Possess biophilia, love of others, positive freedom
• Necrophilia


  Attraction to death, hate humanity; they are racists, warmongers, and bullies; they love bloodshed, destruction, terror, and torture; and they delight in destroying life
• Malignant Narcissism


  In its malignant form, narcissism impedes the perception of reality so that everything belonging to a narcissistic person is highly valued and everything belonging to another is devalued (neurotic claims)
• Hypochondriasis


  Obsessive attention to one's health
• Moral Hypochondriasis


  Preoccupation with guilt about previous transgressions
• Incestuous Symbiosis


  Extreme dependence on the mother or mother surrogate (mother fixation)
• Syndrome of Decay


  Possess 3 personality disorders