Erich Fromm's Humanistic Psychoanalysis

Erich Fromm – Humanistic Psychoanalysis

Erich Fromm Biography

• Childhood experiences shaped his life:
  • Jewish family life.
  • Suicide of a young woman.
  • Extreme nationalism of Germany.
• Heavily influenced by Freud, Marx, and the Old Testament.
• His first wife was Freida Reichmann (his analyst), who was 10 years older than him.
• Had a relationship with Karen Horney, who was 15 years older than Fromm.
• Later married Henny Gurland, who was 2 years younger than him; she died in 1952.
• Married Annis Freeman a year after Henny's death.
• Fromm died on March 18, 1980, a few days before his 80th birthday.
• He was an eloquent essayist.

Overview of Humanistic Psychoanalysis

• Erich Fromm's basic thesis: Modern people have been torn away from their prehistoric union with nature and one another, yet possess the power of reasoning, foresight, and imagination.
• Self-awareness contributes to feelings of loneliness, isolation, and homelessness.
• To escape these feelings, people strive to reunite with nature and fellow human beings.
• Humanistic psychoanalysis assumes that humanity’s separation from the natural world has produced feelings of loneliness and isolation, a condition called basic anxiety.
• Isolation wrought by capitalism leaves people with two alternatives:
  • (1) Escape from freedom into interpersonal dependencies.
  • (2) Move to self-realization through productive love and work.

Fromm’s Basic Assumptions

• Human dilemma: Humans, unlike other animals, have been “torn away” from their prehistoric union with nature.
• Culture and Blessing of Reason:
  • Blessing: Increased efficiency in survival.
  • Curse: Forces humans to solve unsolvable dichotomies of life, called Existential Dichotomies.

Existential Dichotomies

• Life and Death: Self-awareness and reason tell us that we will die, but we try to negate this dichotomy by postulating life after death. This attempt does not alter the fact that our lives end with death.
• Humans are capable of conceptualizing complete self-realization, but we are also aware that life is too short to reach that goal.
• The third existential dichotomy is that people are ultimately alone, yet we cannot tolerate isolation.

Human Needs (Existential Needs)

• Existential Needs: As animals, humans are motivated by physiological needs such as hunger, sex, and safety; but they can never resolve their human dilemma by satisfying these animal needs.
• These existential needs have emerged during the evolution of human culture, growing out of our attempts to find an answer to our existence and to avoid becoming insane.
• Healthy people are those who have found meaning in their existence, while neurotic people are still confused about their existence.

Existential Needs

• Healthy individuals are better able to find ways to reunite with the world by productively solving human needs for relatedness, transcendence, rootedness, a sense of identity, and a frame of orientation.

Relatedness

• Relatedness: The drive for union with another person or other persons. Three ways to relate to the world:
  • Submission (negative): A person can submit to another, to a group, or to an institution to become one with the world.
  • Domination (negative): Domineering people, power seekers welcome submissive partners.
  • Symbiotic relationship: When a submissive person and a domineering person find each other, they frequently establish a symbiotic relationship, one that is satisfying to both partners.
    • Although such symbiosis may be gratifying, it blocks growth toward integrity and psychological health.
    • Similar to the concept of codependence.
  • Love (positive): The only route by which a person can become united with the world and, at the same time, achieve individuality and integrity.
    • Defined love as a “union with somebody, or something outside under the condition of retaining the separateness and integrity of one’s own self”.
    • In love, two people become one yet remain two.
    • In The Art of Loving, Fromm (1956) identified care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge as four basic elements common to all forms of genuine love.
      • Care: Being concerned about the person and willing to take care of him or her.
      • Responsibility: Ability to respond to their physical and psychological needs.
      • Respect: Respects them for who they are and avoids the temptation of trying to change them.
      • Knowledge: Understanding the other person.

Transcendence

• Transcendence: Defined as the urge to rise above a passive and accidental existence and into “the realm of purposefulness and freedom” (Fromm, 1981, p.4).
  • Destruction (negative): We can transcend life by destroying it and thus rising above our slain victims.
    • Malignant Aggression: Only humans can kill others for reasons other than survival.
  • Creation (positive): Although other animals can create life through reproduction, only humans are aware of themselves as creators.
    • Also, humans can be creative in other ways. They can create art, religious ideas, laws, material production, and love.

Rootedness

• Rootedness: The need to establish roots or to feel at home again in the world. There are two ways to feel at home again:
  • Independence from Mother (positive): People are weaned from the orbit of their mother and become full born; that is, they actively and creatively relate to the world and become whole or integrated.
  • Fixation (negative): A tenacious reluctance to move beyond the protective security provided by one’s mother. People who strive for rootedness through fixation are “afraid to take the next step of birth, to be weaned from the mother’s breast. [They]… have a deep craving to be mothered, nursed, protected by a motherly figure; they are the externally dependent ones, who are frightened and insecure when motherly protection is withdrawn.”
• Fromm believed incestuous feelings are based in “the deep-seated craving to remain in, or to return to, the all-enveloping womb, or to the all-nourishing breasts.”
• He believed that ancient societies are matriarchal, and thus Fromm's tendency to revere the mother figure is evident in his relationship with women.

Sense of Identity

• Sense of Identity: The capacity to be aware of ourselves as a separate entity. Because we have been torn away from nature, we need to form a concept of our self, to be able to say, “I am I” or “I am the subject of my actions.”
  • Adjustment to a Group (negative): Neurotics try to attach themselves to powerful people or to social or political institutions.
  • Individuality (positive): Healthy people, however, have less need to conform to the herd, less need to give up their sense of self.
    • They do not have to surrender their freedom and individuality in order to fit into society because they possess an authentic sense of identity.

Frame of Orientation

• Frame of Orientation: Being split off from nature, humans need a road map, a frame of orientation, to make their way through the world.
  • Without such a map, humans would be “confused and unable to act purposefully and consistently.” Basically, a philosophy in life.
  • Irrational Goals (negative): Those who lack a reliable frame of orientation will strive to put these events into some sort of framework in order to make sense of them.
    • People will do nearly anything to acquire and retain a frame of orientation, even to the extreme of following irrational or bizarre philosophies such as those espoused by fanatical political and religious leaders.
  • Rational Goals (positive): People who possess a solid frame of orientation can make sense of these events or phenomena.
    • According to Fromm, this goal or object of devotion focuses people’s energies in a single direction, enables us to transcend our isolated existence, and confers meaning to their lives.

Existential Needs (Continued)

• Fromm believed that a lack of satisfaction of any of these needs is unbearable and results in insanity.
• Existential needs are the Basic Hostility of Fromm’s theory.
• Same with Basic Hostility, it also breeds Basic Anxiety.
• Some people solve this Basic Anxiety by subordinating or being subordinated by people of Positive Freedom.

The Burden of Freedom

• Historically, as people gained more and more economic and political freedom, they came to feel increasingly more isolated.
• In the past, the moment you were born, you already have a role of being an artisan, blacksmith, laborer, king, queen, nobleman/noblewoman, warrior, scholar etc. which is more or less forced to you.
• Nowadays, we have so much freedom to choose what we want to become and where we want to be. We become separated from our roots and isolated from one another.
• On a more personal level, as children become more independent of their mothers, they gain more freedom to express their individuality, to move around unsupervised, to choose their friends, clothes, and so on.
• On both a social and an individual level, this burden of freedom results in basic anxiety, the feeling of being alone in the world.
• Freedom is too tiring, exhausting and daunting that is why people unconsciously desire to escape from it.

Mechanisms of Escape

• Mechanisms of Escape: Because basic anxiety produces a frightening sense of isolation and aloneness, people attempt to flee from freedom through a variety of escape mechanisms.
• Fromm’s mechanisms of escape are the driving forces in normal people, both individually and collectively.
• Authoritarianism, Destructiveness, Conformity, Positive Freedom

Authoritarianism

• Authoritarianism: The tendency to give up the independence of one’s own individual self and to fuse one’s self with somebody or something outside oneself in order to acquire the strength which the individual is lacking. Can manifest in two forms.
  • Masochism: Results from basic feelings of powerlessness, weakness, and inferiority and is aimed at joining the self to a more powerful person or institution.
  • Sadism: Is aimed at reducing basic anxiety through achieving unity with another person or persons. Three kinds of sadistic tendencies:
    • The need to make others dependent on oneself and to gain power over those who are weak.
    • The compulsion to exploit others, to take advantage of them, and to use them for one’s benefit or pleasure.
    • The sadistic tendency is the desire to see others suffer, either physically or psychologically.

Destructiveness

• Destructiveness: Unlike sadism and masochism, however, destructiveness does not depend on a continuous relationship with another person; rather, it seeks to do away with other people.
• Both individuals and nations can employ destructiveness as a mechanism of escape (WORLD WARS).
• Destroying on an individual level is more like being aggressive to them (Karens).

Conformity

• Conformity: People who conform try to escape from a sense of aloneness and isolation by giving up their individuality and becoming whatever other people desire them to be.
• We are free to do what we want, but we are also free to do what others want us to do.

Positive Freedom

• 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”, a spontaneous and full expression of both their rational and their emotional potentialities.
• Positive freedom represents a successful solution to the human dilemma of being part of the natural world and yet separate from it.
• Through active love and work, humans unite with one another and with the world without sacrificing their integrity. They affirm their uniqueness as individuals and achieve full realization of their potentialities.

Character Orientations

• Character Orientations: Similar to Horney’s Neurotic Trends, defined as the way a person relates to the world in response to how a person solves his/her existential dilemma and existential needs that come with it.

• Character: Defined as “the relatively permanent system of all non-instinctual striving through which man relates himself to the human and natural world”.

• Characterized into two: Nonproductive and Productive.

Nonproductive Orientations

• Fromm used the term “nonproductive” to suggest strategies that fail to move people closer to positive freedom and self-realization. Personality is always a blend or combination of several orientations, even though one orientation is dominant.

• Receptive Characters

  • Receptive: Receptive characters 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, including love, knowledge, and material possessions.
    • The negative qualities of receptive people include passivity, submissiveness, and lack of self-confidence.
    • Positive trait – loyalty, acceptance, and trust.

• Exploitative characters

  • Exploitative: Exploitative characters believe that the source of all good is outside themselves. Unlike receptive people, however, they aggressively take what they desire rather than passively receive it. They steal people, ideas, and other properties from other people just for the joy of it.
    • Negative traits: Exploitative characters are egocentric, conceited, arrogant, and seducing.
    • Positive traits: Impulsive, proud, charming, and self-confident.

• Hoarding Character

  • Hoarding: Hoarding characters seek to save that which they have already obtained. They hold everything inside and do not let go of anything. They keep money, feelings, and thoughts to themselves. They do not like to change.
    • Almost the same with Anal Personality.
    • Negative Traits: Rigidity, sterility, obstinacy, compulsivity, and lack of creativity.
    • Positive Traits: Orderliness, cleanliness, and punctuality.

• Marketing Character

  • Marketing: Marketing characters see themselves as commodities, with their personal value dependent on their exchange value, that is, their ability to sell themselves. Their personal security rests on shaky ground because they must adjust their personality to that which is currently in fashion.
    • Marketing people are without a past or a future and have no permanent principles or values.
    • Negative traits: Aimless, opportunistic, inconsistent, and wasteful.
    • Positive traits: Changeability, open-mindedness, adaptability, and generosity.

Productive Orientation

• The single productive orientation has three dimensions – working, loving, and reasoning.
• Only through productive activity can people solve the basic human dilemma: that is, to unite with the world and with others while retaining uniqueness and individuality.
• Healthy people value work not as an end in itself but as a means of creative self-expression.
• They do not work to exploit others, to market themselves, to withdraw from others, or to accumulate needless material possessions. They are neither lazy nor compulsive active but use work as a means of producing life’s necessities.
• Productive love is characterized by the four qualities of love discussed earlier—care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge.
• Biophilia: That is, a passionate love of life and all that is alive. Biophilic people desire to further all life—the life of people, animals, plants, ideas, and cultures. They are concerned with the growth and development of themselves as well as others.
• Fromm believed that love of others and self-love are inseparable but that self-love must come first. All people have the capacity for productive love, but most do not achieve it because they cannot first love themselves.
• Productive thinking (reasoning), which cannot be separated from productive work and love, is motivated by a concerned interest in another person or object. Healthy people see others as they are and not as they would wish them to be. Similarly, they know themselves for who they are and have no need for self-delusion.
• Fromm (1947) believed that healthy people rely on some combination of all five character orientations. Their survival as healthy individuals depends on their ability to receive things from other people, to take things when appropriate, to preserve things, to exchange things, and to work, love, and think productively.
• Syndrome of Growth – People with biophilia, love, positive freedom.

Personality Disorder

• If healthy people are able to work, love, and think productively, then unhealthy personalities are marked by problems in these three areas, especially failure to love productively.

Necrophilia

• Necrophilia: the term “necrophilia” means love of death and usually refers to a sexual perversion in which a person desires sexual contact with a corpse. However, Fromm (1964, 1973) used necrophilia in a more generalized sense to denote any attraction to death. Necrophilia is an alternative character orientation to biophilia.
• Necrophilic personalities hate humanity; they are racists, warmongers, and bullies; they love bloodshed, destruction, terror, and torture; and they delight in destroying life.
• They are strong advocates of law and order; love to talk about sickness, death, and burials; and they are fascinated by dirt, decay, corpses, and feces.

Malignant Narcissism

• 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.
• Preoccupation with one’s body often leads to hypochondriasis, or an obsessive attention to one’s health.
• Fromm (1964) also discussed moral hypochondriasis, or a preoccupation with guilt about previous transgressions.
• Narcissistic people possess what Horney called “neurotic claims.”

Incestuous Symbiosis

• Incestuous Symbiosis: Or an extreme dependence on the mother or mother surrogate. People are inseparable from the host person; their personalities are blended with the other person, and their individual identities are lost.
• People living in incestuous symbiotic relationships feel extremely anxious and frightened if that relationship is threatened. They believe that they cannot live without their mother substitute.
• The host need not be another human—it can be a family, a business, a church, or a nation.

Syndrome of decay

• Syndrome of Decay: Some pathologic individuals possess all three personality disorders; that is, they are attracted to death (necrophilia), take pleasure in destroying those whom they regard as inferiors (malignant narcissism), and possess a neurotic symbiotic relationship with their mother or mother substitute (incestuous symbiosis).

Psychotherapy

• Psychotherapy: Compared with Freud, Fromm was much more concerned with the interpersonal aspects of a therapeutic encounter. He believed that the aim of therapy is for patients to come to know themselves. Without knowledge of ourselves, we cannot know any other person or thing.
• Fromm believed that patients come to therapy seeking satisfaction of their basic human needs—relatedness, transcendence, rootedness, a sense of identity, and a frame of orientation. Therefore, therapy should be built on a personal relationship between therapist and patient.