T.O.P.

• Basic anxiety


  Feelings of loneliness and isolation
• Assumptions about humanity's separation from the natural world

  • Believed that humans have been "torn away" from their prehistoric union with nature (the environment)
• Human dilemma


  The ability to reason - both a blessing and a curse. Responsible for feelings of isolation and loneliness, but it is also the process that enables humans to become reunited with the world
• Existential dichotomies


  The questions that humans want to justify but do not have answers. Rooted in people's very existence
• Three existential dichotomies


  • Life and death
  • Goal of complete self realization and limited time
  • People are ultimately alone, yet we can not tolerate isolation
• Human needs


  The psychological ways or attempts to bring back the connection with the environment. Can move people toward a reunion with the natural world
• Relatedness


  The drive for union with another person or other persons
• Three forms of relatedness


  • Submission
  • Power
  • Love
• Submission


  Search for a relationship with domineering people. Can submit to another, to a group, or to an institution to become one with the world. Becoming part of somebody or something bigger than himself
• Power


  Welcome submissive partners
• Love

  The only route by which a person can become united with the world and achieve individuality and integrity. The union with somebody or something outside oneself under the condition of retaining the separateness and integrity of one's own self. Four basic elements: care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge
• Transcendence


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


  Destruction; to kill (highest form) for a reason other than survival
• Rootedness


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


  A tenacious reluctance to move beyond the protective security provided by one's mother
• Sense of identity


  The capacity to be aware of ourselves as separate entity - "I am I" or "I am the subject of my actions"
• Frame of orientation


  The road map or consistent philosophy that will help a person to relate, transcend, find his roots, and have a sense of identity
• Summary of Fromm's human needs

  • Negative components
  • Positive components
• Burden of freedom


  Results in basic anxiety - the feeling of being alone in the world
• Mechanisms of escape


  The attempts to flee from freedom. The driving forces in normal people
• Authoritarianism


  The tendency to give up the independence of one's own individual self and to fuse one's self with somebody to acquire the strength which the individual is lacking. The need to unite with a powerful partner
• Destructiveness


  Seeks to do away with other people
• Conformity


  Giving up individuality and becoming whatever other people desire them to be
• Positive freedom


  A person "can be free and not alone, critical and yet not filled with doubts, independent and yet an integral part of mankind". Can be attained by a spontaneous and full expression of both their rational and emotional potentialities. Represents a successful solution to the human dilemma
• Character orientations


  • Receptive
  • Exploitative
  • Hoarding
  • Marketing
  • Biophilia
• Receptive


  Receiving things passively. Feel that the source of all good lies outside themselves and that the only way they can relate to the world is to receive things
• Exploitative


  Exploiting or taking things through force. Aggressively take what they desire rather than passively receive it
• Hoarding


  Seek to save that which they have already obtained. Hold everything inside and do not let go of anything. Similar to Freud's anal characters in that they are excessively orderly, stubborn, and miserly
• Marketing


  An outgrowth of modern commerce in which trade is no longer personal but carried by large, faceless corporations. See themselves as commodities and being in constant demand. Guided by the motto "I am as you desire me"
• Productive orientations


  Has three dimensions - working, loving, and reasoning. The most healthy character type or orientation
• Biophilia


  A passionate love of life and all that is alive
• Personality disorders


  • Necrophilia
  • Malignant narcissism
  • Incestuous symbiosis
• Necrophilia


  Means love of death and usually refers to a sexual perversion in which a person desires sexual contact with a corpse. Any attraction to death. An alternative character orientation to biophilia
• Malignant narcissism


  Takes pleasure in destroying those whom they regard as inferiors. Preoccupied with themselves which often leads to hypochondriasis - an obsessive attention to one's health. Possess what Horney called "neurotic claims"
• Incestuous symbiosis


  An extreme dependence on the mother or mother surrogate. An exaggerated form of mother fixation
• Syndrome of decay


  Individuals that possess all three personality disorders. Opposite of syndrome of growth
• Interpersonal process


  Intimacy and lust toward different persons
• Important learnings


  Balance of lust, intimacy, and security operations
• Marked by the eruption of genital interest and the advent of lustful relationships
• Believed to be the turning point in personality development