Theories of Personality: Erich Fromm: Humanistic Psychoanalysis

Overview

Emphasizes the influence of sociobiological factors, history, economics, and class structure
Humanity’s separation from the natural world has produced feelings of loneliness and isolation called basic anxiety

“We feel lonely and isolated because we have become separated from nature and from other human beings.”
“If I am what I have and if I lose what I have who then am I?”
Born in Germany in 1900
Strict upbringing, similar to Karen Horney
Eclectic philosophy
Combination of Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx
First infatuation/World War 1
Married 3 times
Went to the US in 1934, affair with Karen Horney
Went to Mexico towards the end of career
Private psychoanalytic practice
Publication of researches and books
Dies in Switzerland in 1980, 5 days before his 80th birthday

Individual personality can be understood in the light of human history
Concept of Human Dilemma
- Reasoning facility
- Awareness as isolated beings
- Permits to survive
- Tendency to solve insoluble dichotomies

Relatedness
- Drive for union with another person or other persons
- Submission
- Power
- Love
Transcendence
- An urge to rise above a passive and accidental existence and into the realm of purposefulness and freedom
- Malignant aggression
Rootedness
- The need to establish roots
- To feel at home with the world
- Influence of mother’s role
Sense of Identity
- The capacity to be aware of ourselves as separate entity
Frame of Orientation
- Philosophy, a consistent way of thinking
- Refers to goals or destinations

As people have achieved more freedom, they have become more lonely, insignificant, and alienated from nature (less freedom = greater connectedness)
3 psychic mechanisms for escaping the negative aspects of freedom

Solution to the human dilemma
Represents overcoming of loneliness, achieving union with the world and maintain individuality

Strategies that fail to more people closer to positive freedom and self-realization
Not entirely negative
Receptive
- The only way they can relate to the world is by receiving things; more concerned with receiving than giving
- (-) passivity, submissiveness, lack of self-confidence
- (+) loyalty, acceptance, trust
Exploitative
- Aggressively take what they desire
- (-) egocentric, conceited, arrogant, seducing
- (+) impulse, proud, charming, self-confident
Hoarding
- Holding everything inside and do not let go of anything
- (-) rigidity, sterility, obstinacy, compulsivity, lack of creativity
- (+) orderliness, cleanliness, punctuality
Marketing
- Dependent on the ability to sell themselves
- Personal security rests on shaky grounds
- Not permanent principles/values
- (-) opportunistic and wasteful
- (+) open-mindedness and adaptability

Productive Orientation

People who are incapable of love and uniting with others
Necrophilia
- Any attraction to death
- Hates humanity
- Destructive behavior is a manifestation of their basic character
Malignant Narcissism
- Impedes the perception of reality that everything belonging to a narcissistic person is valued and everything belonging to another is devalued
Incestuous Symbiosis
- Extreme dependence on the mother/mother surrogate
- It may be another person/object

Comparison

Fromm’s theory is:
- High on organizing knowledge
- Low on guiding action, internal consistency, and parsimony
- Very low on generating research and falsifiability