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Humanistic
Psychoanalysis
Erich
Fromm’s humanistic psychoanalysis looks at people from the perspective of
psychology, history, and anthropology. Influenced by Freud and Horney, Fromm
developed a more culturally oriented theory than Freud and a much broader
theory than Horney.
Erich
Fromm
Erich
Fromm (Born March 23, 1900, Frankfurt am Main, Germany—died March 18,
1980, Muralto, Switzerland) is well known not only as
a psychoanalyst and social psychologist but also as an important representative
of 20th century humanism. He was born in Germany, had to flee the Nazis and
worked in many fields of the humanities.He studied the emotional problems common in free
societies. He also incorporated the effects that economic and social factors
have on human behavior into his concept of Freudian psychoanalysis. Fromm
believed that social and historical forces influence human problems, whereas
Freudians emphasize unconscious drives rather than the effects of social and
economic factors. His writings and his ideas are still keenly received
by readers and scientists around the world.
Fromm’s
Basic Assumptions
"Our
consumer and market economy is based on the idea that you can buy happiness, as
you can buy everything. And
if you have no money to pay for something, then it may one not make you happy.
That happiness but it is quite another, which comes only from our own efforts,
from the inside and no money at all costs, that happiness is the
"cheapest" is what it is in the world, which is not yet risen to the
people. "
Fromm 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. But because humans have
acquired the ability to reason, they can think about their isolated condition—a
situation Fromm called the human dilemma.
Human
Needs
He believed that we have needs that go
far beyond the basic, physiological ones that some people, like Freud and many
behaviorists, think explain all of our behavior. These are human needs, in
contrast to the more basic animal needs. He suggested that the human
needs can be expressed in one simple statement: The human being needs to find an answer to his existence.
The negative way of expressing this need is to say that we need to avoid insanity, and he defines
neurosis as an effort to satisfy the need for answers that doesn't work for us.
The five human needs:
Relatedness
- our need for relatedness, and viewed as love in the broadest sense. The
opposite of relatedness is narcissism -- the love of self.
Creativity
- we want to be creators. Some don't find an avenue for creativity. Instead,
they attempt to transcend their passivity by becoming destroyers.
Rootedness
– the best example is to maintain our ties to our mothers. But for us to
grow up we have to leave our mother’s side. To stay would be what Fromm
calls a kind of psychological incest.
In order to manage in the difficult world of adulthood, we need to find new,
broader roots. Pathological sides: For example, the schizophrenic, the
neurotic, and fanatic.
A
sense of identity - Fromm believes that we need to have
a sense of identity, of individuality,
in order to stay sane. This need is so powerful that we are sometimes driven to
find it, or by trying desperately to conform.
We sometimes will even give up our lives in order to remain a part of our
group.
A
frame of orientation - we need to understand the world and
our place in it. To understand it we first need a frame of orientation; almost
anything (even a bad one) will do. We want to believe, sometimes even
desperately. If we don't have an explanation, we will make one up, via rationalization. Second, we want to
have a good frame of orientation, one that is useful, accurate. A frame of
orientation needs to be rational.
The Burden of Freedom
Erich
Fromm's book "The Fear of Freedom" and its relevance in today's
libertarian point of view. In his 1941 against the backdrop of fascism and
Stalinism published work focuses on the psychologist and social philosopher
Erich Fromm with the psychological aspects of the freedom of modern man. He
believes that the freedom of the modern man, on the one hand, enables
independence and rationality, in psychological terms but also in isolation, on
the other hand, made anxious and powerless. Fromm sees in this situation people
faced with the alternative, either to escape the burden of his liberty, and
again in dependence and subjection to proceed or move forward to the full
realization of that positive freedom, which is based on the uniqueness and
individuality of man.
Mechanisms of Escape – to reduce the frightening sense of
isolation and aloneness, people may adopt one of these three mechanisms of
escape:
Authoritarianism
– the tendency to give up one’s independence and unite with
a powerful partner. Masochistic
tendencies are feelings of inferiority, powerlessness and personal
insignificance. There are people who wallow in self-blame and self-criticism,
as they would raise their own worst enemies against them hardly. Others - such
as some neurotic compulsion - tend to torment with positive rituals and
obsessions.
Destructiveness – an escape mechanism aimed at
the destruction of other people or their properties.
Conformity – is the way of surrendering
of one’s individuality in order to meet others desire. This mechanism is the
solution for most normal people in our society today. An individual ceases to
be himself, he is like to be completely the personality model, which offers him
his culture, and is therefore just like everyone else and the way others expect
it of him.
Positive Freedom - It is the spontaneous
activity of the whole, integrated personality. This positive freedom can only
solve human dilemma when a person be in union with the world and maintain
individuality.
Character
Orientations
Erich Fromm described 6 major personality
orientations: receptive, exploitative, hoarding, marketing, productive and
necrophilous. The first four are pathological and self-destructive, while the
fifth represents a positive and open personality. The last one is the lover of
death, which opposes the rest: while all the others are attempts at defining
and understanding life, necrophilia attempts to destroy life.
Receptive - These are people who
expect to get what they need. If they don't get it immediately, they wait for
it. They believe that all goods and satisfactions come from outside themselves.
Exploitative - The exploitative character manipulates others to get his
way. These people love to lead, and sometimes disdain those that they feel are
below them.
Hoarding - hoarding people expect to
keep. They see the world as possessions and potential possessions. Even loved
ones are things to possess, to keep, or to buy.
Marketing - The marketing orientation
expects to sell. Success is a matter of how well I can sell myself, package
myself, and advertise myself. My family, my schooling, my jobs, my clothes --
all are an advertisement, and must be "right." Even love is thought
of as a transaction.
Productive - This is the person who,
without disavowing his or her biological and social nature, nevertheless does
not shirk away from freedom and responsibility. This person comes out of a
family that loves without overwhelming the individual that prefers reason to
rules, and freedom to conformity.
Personality
Disorders
Necrophilia- a passionate attraction to
all that is dead decayed, putrid, sickly; it is the passion to transform that
which is alive into something not alive; to destroy for the sake of destruction;
the exclusive interest in all that is purely mechanical. It is the passion
"to tear apart living structures."
Malignant narcissistic - An all-pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy
or behavior), need for admiration or adulation and lack of empathy, usually
beginning by early adulthood and present in various contexts.
Incestuous symbiosis - mother-fixation for unconditional
love, security, admiration, protection; toxic attachment to material goods
Psychotherapy
The
goal of Fromm’s psychotherapy was to work toward satisfaction of the basic
human needs of relatedness, transcendence, rootedness, a sense of identity, and
a frame of orientation. The therapist tries to accomplish this through shared
communication in which the therapist is simply a human being rather than a
scientist.
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.
-
Social Character in a Mexican Village
o Fromm
and his associates spent several years investigating social character in an
isolated farming village in Mexico and found evidence of all the character
orientations except the marketing one.
-
A Psychohistorical Study of Hitler
o Fromm
applied the techniques of psychohistory to study several
historical people, including Adolf Hitler—the person Fromm regarded as the
world’s most conspicuous example of someone with the syndrome
of decay, that
is, necrophilia,
malignant narcissism, and incestuous symbiosis.
Critique of
Fromm
The
strength of Fromm’s theory is his lucid writings on a broad range of human
issues. As a scientific theory, however, Fromm’s theory rates very low on its
ability to generate research and to lend 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.
Concept of
Humanity
Fromm
believed that humans are the “freaks of nature,”
because they lack strong animal instincts while possessing the ability to
reason. In brief, his view is rated average on free choice, optimism,
unconscious influences, and uniqueness; low on causality; and high on social
influences.
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