Erich Fromm's Psychoanalytic Theory

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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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