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Erich Fromm - summary
Theories of Personality (Ateneo de Manila University)
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Erich Fromm: Humanistic Psychoanalysis
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Analyzed by Hans Sachs, a student of Freud
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Believes that humans have been torn away from their prehistoric union with nature
and left with no powerful instincts to adapt to a changing world
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Human dilemma: Humans can think about their isolated condition because they have
acquired the ability to reason
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Cannot be solved by satisfying our animal needs
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Can only be addressed by fulfilling our uniquely human needs à an
accomplishment that moves us toward a reunion with the natural world
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Can only be solved through positive freedom
5 distinctly human / existential needs
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1. Relatedness
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can take the form of
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a. submission
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b. power
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c. love à the only relatedness need that can solve our basic
human dilemma
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ability to unite with another while retaining one’s own
individual integrity
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2. Transcendence
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Need for humans to rise above their passive and accidental
existence
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Humans have to transcend their nature by destroying or creating people /
things
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Humans can destroy through malignant aggression à killing for
reasons other than survival
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Malignant aggression is unique to the human species
Humans can also create and care about their creations
3. Rootedness
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Need to establish roots and to feel at home again in the world
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Productive strategy à enables us to grow beyond the security of our
mother and establish ties with the outside world
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Nonproductive strategy à we become fixated and afraid to move beyond
the security and safety of our mother / mother substitute
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4. Sense of Identity
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Awareness of ourselves as a separate person / entity
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Productive à individuality
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Nonproductive à conformity to a group
5. Frame of Orientation
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Road map / consistent philosophy by which we find our way through
the world
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Productive à movement toward rational goals
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Nonproductive à striving for irrational goals
The Burden of Freedom
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Humans are the freaks of the universe as the only animal possessing selfawareness.
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More political freedom = more isolation from others & the world; no feeling of
security of a permanent place in the world
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Freedom = burden à people experience basic anxiety
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Basic anxiety: feeling of being alone in the world
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People with basic anxiety:
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1. Suffer from the burden of freedom
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2. Express their anxiety through moving away from people
A. Mechanisms of Escape à used to reduce frightening sense of isolation and
aloneness
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People adopt one of 3 mechanisms of escape
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1. Authoritarianism à tendency to give up one’s independence
and to unite with a powerful partner
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may take 2 forms:
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a) sadism
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b) masochism
2. Destructiveness à aimed at doing away with other people or
things
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3. Conformity à surrendering of one’s individuality in order to
meet the wishes of others
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most common mechanism of escape in American society
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B. Positive Freedom
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Spontaneous activity of the whole, integrated personality / healthy
individual
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Has 2 components
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1. Work
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2. Love
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Achieved when a person becomes reunited with others
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The human dilemma can only be solved through positive freedom
Character Orientations
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People relate to the world through assimilation and socialization
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Assimilation: acquiring and using things
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Socialization: relating to self and others
A. Nonproductive Orientation
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Has both a positive and a negative aspect
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4 Nonproductive Strategies à fail to move people closer to positive
freedom and self-realization
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1. Receptive Orientation:
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believe that the source of all good lies outside themselves
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believe that the only way they can relate to the world is to
receive things (including love, knowledge, & material
objects)
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2. Exploitative Orientation:
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believe that the source of good lies outside themselves
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aggressively take what they want rather than passively
receiving it
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3. Hoarding Characters:
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try to save what they have already obtained (including
opinions, feelings, & material possessions)
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4. Marketing Orientation:
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see themselves as commodities
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value themselves against the criterion of their ability to sell
themselves
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have fewer positive qualities than the first 3 orientations
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Essentially empty
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B. Productive Orientation
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Psychologically healthy people work toward positive freedom through
productive work, love, and reasoning.
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Biophilia: productive love; necessitates a passionate love of all life
Personality Disorders
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Unhealthy people have nonproductive ways of working, reasoning, and
especially loving
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3 major personality disorders
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1. Necrophilia: love of death & hatred of all humanity
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2. Malignant narcissism: belief that everything belonging to one’s self is
of great value and anything belonging to others is worthless
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3. Incestuous symbiosis: extreme dependence on one’s mother or
mother surrogate
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Psychotherapy
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Goal of Fromm’s psychotherapy:
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work toward satisfaction of the 5 basic human needs (relatedness,
transcendence, rootedness, sense of identity, & frame of orientation)
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Therapist tries to accomplish this through shared communication à therapist is
simply a human being rather than a scientist
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Fromm’s Methods of Investigation
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A. Social Character in a Mexican Village
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Isolated farming village in Mexico
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Found evidence of all character orientations except Marketing
B. Psychohistorical Study of Hitler
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Adolf Hitler à regarded by Fromm as the world’s most conspicuous
example of someone with the syndrome of decay
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Syndrome of decay: necrophilia, malignant narcissism, incestuous
symbiosis
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Related Research
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Mark Bernard à found that perceived discrepancies between one’s values &
those of society lead to feelings of estrangement
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Feelings of estrangement then lead to anxiety and depression
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Jack and Jeanne Block (2006)
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Longitudinal study (around 20 years) about political beliefs
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Children described as easily offended, indecisive, fearful, & rigid à more
likely to be politically conservative in their 20s
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Children described as self-reliant, energetic, somewhat dominating, &
relatively under-controlled à politically liberal
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Critique of theory
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Strength à lucid writings on a broad range of human issues
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Very low on ability to generate research & ability to be falsified
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Low on usefulness to practitioner, internal consistency, & parsimony
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High on organizing existing knowledge (due to broad scope)
Concept of Humanity
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Humans are freaks of nature because they lack strong animal instincts while
possessing the ability to reason
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Average on free choice, optimism, unconscious influences, & uniqueness
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Low on causality
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High on social influences
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Emphasized the differences between humans and other animals
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