CHAPTER 7
FROMM: HUMANISTIC PSYCHOANALYSIS
LECTURE
OUTLINE
Erich Fromm’s humanistic
psychoanalysis looks at people from many perspectives, including psychology,
history, and anthropology. Although Fromm was influenced by both Freud and
Horney, his theory is much broader than Horney’s and much more socially
oriented than Freud’s.
II. Biography of Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm was born in
Germany, in 1900, the only child of orthodox Jewish parents. His humanistic
philosophy grew out of an early reading of the biblical prophets and an
association with several Talmudic scholars. A thoughtful young man, Fromm was
also influenced by the writings of Freud and Marx, as well as by socialist
ideology. After receiving his Ph.D., Fromm studied psychoanalysis and was
analyzed by Hanns Sachs, a student of Freud. Fromm’s first wife was Frieda
Fromm-Reichmann, but the marriage eventually ended in divorce. In 1934, Fromm
moved to the United States and began a psychoanalytic practice in New York,
where he also resumed his friendship with Karen Horney, whom he had known in
Germany. Much of his later years were spent in Mexico and Switzerland, where he
continued to write books that gained him a worldwide reputation beyond
psychology and psychoanalysis. He died in Switzerland in 1980.
III. Fromm’s Basic Assumptions
Fromm assumed that human
personality can only be understood in the light of history. He believed that
humans have been torn away from their prehistoric union with nature and left
with no powerful instincts to adapt to a changing world. On the other hand,
they have acquired the ability to reason, which means they can think about
their isolated condition. Fromm called this situation the human dilemma.
IV. Human Needs
According to Fromm, our
human dilemma cannot be solved by satisfying our animal needs. It can only be
addressed by fulfilling our uniquely human needs, which would move us toward a reunification
with the natural world. Fromm also referred to these distinctively human needs
as existential needs.
A. Relatedness
Fromm called our desire for
union with another person relatedness. We can relate to others through (1)
submission, (2) power, and (3) love. However, love, or the ability to unite with another while retaining one’s
own individuality and integrity, is the only relatedness need that can solve
our basic human dilemma.
B. Transcendence
Being thrown into the world
without their consent, humans have the urge to rise above their passive and
accidental existence—to transcend
their nature—by destroying or creating people or things. Humans can destroy
through malignant aggression, or
killing for reasons other than survival, but they can also create and care
about their creations.
C. Rootedness
By rootedness, Fromm meant
the need to establish roots and to feel at home again in the world. Like the
other existential needs, rootedness can take either a productive or a
nonproductive mode. With the productive strategy, we grow beyond the security
of our mother and establish ties with the outside world. With the nonproductive
strategy, we become fixated and afraid to move beyond the security and safety
of our mother or a mother substitute.
D. Sense of Identity
The fourth human need is
for a sense of identity, or our awareness of ourselves as a separate person.
The drive for a sense of identity is expressed nonproductively as conformity to
a group and productively as individuality.
E. Frame of
Orientation
By frame of orientation,
Fromm meant a road map or consistent philosophy by which we find our way
through the world. This need is expressed nonproductively as a striving for
irrational goals and productively as movement toward rational goals.
V. The Burden of Freedom
As the only animal
possessing self-awareness, humans are the freaks of the universe. Historically,
as people gained more political freedom, they began to experience more
isolation from others and from the world and to feel free from the security of
a permanent place in the world. As a result, freedom becomes a burden, and
people experience basic anxiety, or
a feeling of being alone in the world.
A. Mechanisms of
Escape
To reduce the frightening
sense of isolation and aloneness, people may adopt one of three mechanisms of
escape.
1. Authoritarianism
The tendency to give up
one’s independence and to unite with a powerful partner—authoritarianism—can take
the form of either masochism or sadism. Masochism stems from feelings of
powerlessness and can be disguised as love or loyalty. Sadism involves attempts
to achieve unity by exploiting or hurting others.
2. Destructiveness
Feelings of isolation can also
produce destructiveness, an escape mechanism that is aimed at doing away with
other people or things.
3. Conformity
A third mechanism of escape
is conformity, or surrendering of one’s individuality in order to meet the
wishes of others.
B. Positive Freedom
Positive freedom is the
spontaneous activity of the whole, integrated personality, which is achieved
when a person becomes reunified with others and with the world. It is the
successful solution to the human dilemma of being part of the natural world and
yet separate from it.
VI. Character Orientations
People relate to the world
by acquiring and using things (assimilation) and by relating to self and others
(socialization), and they can do so either nonproductively or productively.
A. Nonproductive
Orientations
Strategies that fail to
move people closer to positive freedom and self-realization are nonproductive.
1. Receptive
People who rely on the
receptive orientation believe that the source of all good lies outside
themselves and that the only way they can relate to the world is to receive
things, including love, knowledge, and material objects. Positive qualities
include loyalty and trust; negative ones are passivity and submissiveness.
2. Exploitative
People with an exploitative
orientation also believe that the source of good lies outside themselves, but
they aggressively take what they want rather than passively receiving it.
Positive qualities of exploitative people include pride and self-confidence;
negative ones are arrogance and conceit.
3. Hoarding
Hoarding characters try to save what they have already obtained,
including their opinions, feelings, and material possessions. Positive
qualities include loyalty, negative ones are obsessiveness and possessiveness.
4. Marketing
People with a marketing
orientation see themselves as commodities and value themselves against the
criteria of their ability to sell themselves. They have fewer positive
qualities than other orientations because they are essentially empty. However,
they can be open-minded and adaptable.
B. The Productive
Orientation
Psychologically healthy
people work toward positive freedom through productive work, love, and reasoning. Productive love necessitates
a passionate love of all life and is called biophilia.
VII. Personality Disorders
Unhealthy people are
characterized by their inability to work, think, and, especially, to love
productively. Fromm recognized three major personality disorders: necrophilia,
malignant narcissism, and incestuous symbiosis.
A. Necrophilia
In Fromm’s framework,
necrophilia is the love of death and the hatred of all humanity. Necrophilious
people do not simply behave in a destructive manner; their destructiveness is a
reflection of a basic character.
B. Malignant
Narcissism
Malignant narcissism is so
powerful that it convinces people that everything belonging to them is of great
value and anything belonging to others is worthless. Narcissistic people often
suffer from moral hypochondrias, or
preoccupation with excessive guilt.
C. Incestuous
Symbiosis
Incestuous symbiosis is an
extreme dependence on one’s mother or mother surrogate to the extent that one’s
personality is blended with that of the host person. Fromm believed that a few
people, such as Hitler, possessed all three of these disorders, a condition
called the syndrome of decay.
VIII. Psychotherapy
The goal of Fromm’s
psychotherapy was the satisfaction of the basic human needs of relatedness,
transcendence, rootedness, a sense of identity, and a frame of orientation. The
therapist accomplishes this through shared communication in which the therapist
is simply a human being rather than a scientist.
IX. Fromm’s Methods of Investigation
Fromm’s personality theory
rests on data he gathered from a variety of sources, including psychotherapy,
cultural anthropology, and psychohistory.
A. Social Character
in a Mexican Village
Fromm and his associates
spent several years investigating social character in a isolated farming
village in Mexico and found evidence of all the character orientations except
the marketing one. In general, this anthropological study’s findings were
consistent with Fromm’s theoretical views on social character.
B. A
Psychohistorical Study of Hitler
Fromm applied
psychohistorical techniques to the study of several historical people,
including Adolf Hitler, whom Fromm regarded as the most conspicuous example of
someone with the syndrome of decay. In his account, Fromm describes Hitler’s
necrophilia, malignant narcissism, and incestuous symbiosis.
X. Related Research
Fromm did not express his
ideas for the purpose of generating research, and his theory is among the least
productive in terms of empirical study. However, there has been research
interest in the marketing character. Saunders and Munro (2000) have developed
the Saunders Consumer Orientation Index (SCOI) to assess the marketing
character and have found that college students and other adults who score high
on the SCOI—that is, people with a marketing orientation—tend to be more angry,
depressed, and anxious than people low on the marketing orientation.
XI. Critique of Fromm
Fromm evolved a theory that
provide insightful ways of looking at humanity, and the strength of that theory
is Fromm’s lucid writing on a broad range of human issues. As a scientific
theory, however, the theory receives low ratings. It rates very low on its
ability to generate research and to open itself to falsification; it 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.
XII. Concept of Humanity
Fromm’s concept of humanity
came from a rich variety of sources, including history, anthropology,
economics, and clinical work. Because humans have the ability to reason but
have few strong instincts, they are “freaks of nature.” To achieve
self-actualization, they must satisfy their human, or existential, needs
through productive love and work. In summary, we rated Fromm’s theory as
average on free choice, optimism, unconscious influences, and uniqueness; low
on causality; and very high on social influences.