Erich Fromm
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Erich Seligmann Fromm (
Life
Erich Fromm was born on March 23, 1900, at
Fromm at the time became strongly involved in Zionism, under the influence of the religious Zionist rabbi Nehemia Anton Nobel.[6] He was very active in Jewish Studentenverbindungen and other Zionist organisations. But he soon turned away from Zionism, saying that it conflicted with his ideal of a "universalist Messianism and Humanism".[7]
During the mid-1920s, he trained to become a
After the Nazi takeover of power in Germany, Fromm moved first to
When Fromm moved to Mexico City in 1949, he became a professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and established a psychoanalytic section at the medical school there. Meanwhile, he taught as a professor of psychology at Michigan State University from 1957 to 1961 and as an adjunct professor of psychology at the graduate division of Arts and Sciences at New York University after 1962. He taught at UNAM until his retirement, in 1965, and at the Mexican Society of Psychoanalysis (SMP) until 1974. In 1974 he moved from Mexico City to Muralto, Switzerland, and died at his home in 1980, five days before his eightieth birthday. All the while, Fromm maintained his own clinical practice and published a series of books.
Fromm was reportedly an atheist[9][n 2] but described his position as "nontheistic mysticism".[10]
Psychological theory
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Beginning with his first seminal work of 1941, Escape from Freedom (known in Britain as The Fear of Freedom), Fromm's writings were notable as much for their social and political commentary as for their philosophical and psychological underpinnings. Indeed, Escape from Freedom is viewed as one of the founding works of political psychology. His second important work, Man for Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics, first published in 1947, continued and enriched the ideas of Escape from Freedom. Taken together, these books outlined Fromm's theory of human character, which was a natural outgrowth of Fromm's theory of human nature. Fromm's most popular book was The Art of Loving, an international bestseller first published in 1956, which recapitulated and complemented the theoretical principles of human nature found in Escape from Freedom and Man for Himself—principles which were revisited in many of Fromm's other major works.
Central to Fromm's
The cornerstone of Fromm's humanistic philosophy is his interpretation of the biblical story of
Beyond a simple condemnation of authoritarian value systems, Fromm used the story of Adam and Eve as an allegorical explanation for
Fromm considered love an
Fromm believed that freedom was an aspect of human nature that we either embrace or escape. He observed that embracing our freedom of will was healthy, whereas escaping freedom through the use of escape mechanisms was the root of psychological conflicts. Fromm outlined three of the most common escape mechanisms:
- Automaton conformity: changing one's ideal self to conform to a perception of society's preferred type of personality, losing one's true self in the process; Automaton conformity displaces the burden of choice from self to society;
- Authoritarianism: giving control of oneself to another. By submitting one's freedom to someone else, this act removes the freedom of choice almost entirely.
- Destructiveness: any process which attempts to eliminate others or the world as a whole, all to escape freedom. Fromm said that "the destruction of the world is the last, almost desperate attempt to save myself from being crushed by it".[12]
The word
"I believe that the man choosing progress can find a new unity through the development of all his human forces, which are produced in three orientations. These can be presented separately or together: biophilia, love for humanity and nature, and independence and freedom."[13]
Erich Fromm postulated eight basic needs:
Need | Description |
---|---|
Transcendence | Being thrown into the world without their consent, humans have to transcend their nature by destroying or creating people or things.[14] Humans can destroy through malignant aggression, or killing for reasons other than survival, but they can also create and care about their creations.[14] |
Rootedness | Rootedness is the need to establish roots and to feel at home again in the world.[14] Productively, rootedness enables us to grow beyond the security of our mother and establish ties with the outside world.[14] With the nonproductive strategy, we become fixated and afraid to move beyond the security and safety of our mother or a mother substitute.[14] |
Sense of Identity | The drive for a sense of identity is expressed nonproductively as conformity to a group and productively as individuality.[14] |
Frame of orientation | Understanding the world and our place in it. |
Excitation and Stimulation | Actively striving for a goal rather than simply responding. |
Unity | A sense of oneness between one person and the "natural and human world outside." |
Effectiveness | The need to feel accomplished.[15] |
Fromm's thesis of the "escape from freedom" is epitomized in the following passage. The "individualized man" referenced by Fromm is man bereft of the "primary ties" of belonging (such as nature, family, etc.), also expressed as "freedom from":
There is only one possible, productive solution for the relationship of individualized man with the world: his active solidarity with all men and his spontaneous activity, love and work, which unite him again with the world, not by primary ties but as a free and independent individual.... However, if the economic, social and political conditions... do not offer a basis for the realization of individuality in the sense just mentioned, while at the same time people have lost those ties which gave them security, this lag makes freedom an unbearable burden. It then becomes identical with doubt, with a kind of life which lacks meaning and direction. Powerful tendencies arise to escape from this kind of freedom into submission or some kind of relationship to man and the world which promises relief from uncertainty, even if it deprives the individual of his freedom.
— Erich Fromm[16])
Five basic orientations
In his book Man for Himself Fromm spoke of "orientation of character". He differentiates his theory of character from that of Freud by focusing on two ways an individual relates to the world. Freud analyzed character in terms of libido organization, whereas Fromm says that in the process of living, we relate to the world by: 1) acquiring and assimilating things—"Assimilation", and 2) reacting to people—"Socialization". Fromm asserted that these two ways of relating to the world were not instinctive, but an individual's response to the peculiar circumstances of his or her life; he also believed that people are never exclusively one type of orientation. These two ways of relating to life's circumstances lead to basic character-orientations.
Fromm lists four types of nonproductive character orientation, which he called receptive, exploitative, hoarding, and marketing, and one positive character orientation, which he called productive. Receptive and exploitative orientations are basically how an individual may relate to other people and are socialization attributes of character. A hoarding orientation is an acquiring and assimilating materials/valuables character trait. The marketing orientation arises in response to the human situation in the modern era. The current needs of the market determine value. It is a relativistic ethic. In contrast, the productive orientation is an objective ethic. Despite the existential struggles of humanity, each human has the potential for love, reason and productive work in life. Fromm writes, "It is the paradox of human existence that man must simultaneously seek for closeness and for independence; for oneness with others and at the same time for the preservation of his uniqueness and particularity. ...the answer to this paradox – and to the moral problems of man – is productiveness."
Fromm's influence on other notable psychologists
Fromm's four non-productive orientations were subject to validation through a psychometric test, The Person Relatedness Test by Elias H. Porter, PhD in collaboration with Carl Rogers, PhD at the University of Chicago's Counseling Center between 1953 and 1955. Fromm's four non-productive orientations also served as basis for the LIFO test, first published in 1967 by Stuart Atkins, Alan Katcher, PhD, and Elias Porter, PhD and the Strength Deployment Inventory, first published in 1971 by Elias H. Porter, PhD.[17] Fromm also influenced his student Sally L. Smith who went on to become the founder of the Lab School of Washington and the Baltimore Lab School.[18]
Critique of Freud
Fromm examined the life and work of Sigmund Freud at length. Fromm identified a discrepancy between early and later Freudian theory: namely that, prior to World War I, Freud had described human drives as a tension between desire and repression, but after the end of the war, began framing human drives as a struggle between biologically universal Life and Death (Eros and Thanatos) instincts. Fromm charged Freud and his followers with never acknowledging the contradictions between the two theories.
Fromm also criticized Freud's dualistic thinking. According to Fromm, Freudian descriptions of human consciousness as struggles between two poles were narrow and limiting. Fromm also condemned Freud as a
Political ideas and activities
Fromm's best known work, Escape from Freedom, focuses on the human urge to seek a source of authority and control upon reaching a freedom that was thought to be an individual's true desire. Fromm's critique of the modern political order and capitalist system led him to seek insights from medieval feudalism. In Escape from Freedom, he found value in the lack of individual freedom, rigid structure, and obligations required on the members of medieval society:
What characterizes medieval in contrast to modern society is its lack of individual freedom…But altogether a person was not free in the modern sense, neither was he alone and isolated. In having a distinct, unchangeable, and unquestionable place in the social world from the moment of birth, man was rooted in a structuralized whole, and thus life had a meaning which left no place, and no need for doubt…There was comparatively little competition. One was born into a certain economic position which guaranteed a livelihood determined by tradition, just as it carried economic obligations to those higher in the social hierarchy.[20]
The culmination of Fromm's social and political philosophy was his book
In the early 1960s, Fromm published two books dealing with Marxist thought (Marx's Concept of Man and Beyond the Chains of Illusion: My Encounter with Marx and Freud). In 1965, working to stimulate the Western and Eastern cooperation between Marxist humanists, Fromm published a series of articles entitled Socialist Humanism: An International Symposium. In 1966, the American Humanist Association named him Humanist of the Year.
For a period, Fromm was also active in U.S. politics. He joined the
Criticism
In
Works
Early work in German
- Das jüdische Gesetz. Ein Beitrag zur Soziologie des ISBN 3-453-09896-X.
- Über Methode und Aufgaben einer analytischen Sozialpsychologie. Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, Bd. 1, 1932, S. 28–54.
- Die psychoanalytische Charakterologie und ihre Bedeutung für die Sozialpsychologie. Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, Bd. 1, 1932, S. 253–277.
- Sozialpsychologischer Teil. In: Studien über Autorität und Familie. Forschungsberichte aus dem Institut für Sozialforschung. Alcan, Paris 1936, S. 77–135.
- Zweite Abteilung: Erhebungen (Erich Fromm u.a.). In: Studien über Autorität und Familie. Forschungsberichte aus dem Institut für Sozialforschung. Alcan, Paris 1936, S. 229–469.
- Die Furcht vor der Freiheit, 1941 (In English, "Fear/Dread of Freedom"). ISBN 3-423-35024-5
- Psychoanalyse & Ethik, 1946. ISBN 3-423-35011-3
- Psychoanalyse & Religion, 1949. )
Later works in English
- ISBN 978-0-8050-3149-2
- Man for Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics (1947) ISBN 978-0-8050-1403-7
- ISBN 978-0-300-00089-4
- The Forgotten Language: An Introduction to the Understanding of Dreams, Fairy Tales, and Myths (1951) ISBN 978-0-03-018436-9
- The Sane Society (1955) ISBN 978-0-415-60586-1
- ISBN 978-0-06-112973-5
- Sigmund Freud's Mission: An Analysis of his Personality and Influence (1959)
- Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis (1960) ISBN 978-0-285-64747-3
- May Man Prevail? An Inquiry into the Facts and Fictions of Foreign Policy (1961) ISBN 978-0-385-00035-2
- ISBN 978-0-8264-7791-0
- Beyond the Chains of Illusion: My Encounter with Marx and Freud (1962) ISBN 978-0-8264-1897-5
- The Dogma of Christ and Other Essays on Religion, Psychology and Culture (1963) ISBN 978-0-415-28999-3
- The Heart of Man: Its Genius for Good and Evil (1964) ISBN 978-0-06-090795-2
- (editor) Socialist Humanism: An International Symposium, (1965)
- You Shall Be as Gods: A Radical Interpretation of the Old Testament and Its Tradition (1966) ISBN 978-0-8050-1605-5
- The Revolution of Hope: Toward a Humanized Technology (1968) ISBN 978-1-59056-183-6
- The Nature of Man (1968) ISBN 978-0-86562-082-7
- The Crisis of Psychoanalysis: Essays on Freud, Marx and Social Psychology (1970) ISBN 978-0-449-30792-2
- Social Character in a Mexican Village: A Sociopsychoanalytic Study (Fromm & Maccoby) (1970) ISBN 978-1-56000-876-7
- The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1973) ISBN 978-0-8050-1604-8
- ISBN 978-0-8050-1604-8
- Greatness and Limitation of Freud's Thought (1979) ISBN 978-0-06-011389-6
- ISBN 978-0-8164-0500-8
- For the Love of Life (1986) ISBN 0-02-910930-2
- The Art of Being (1993) ISBN 978-0-8264-0673-6
- ISBN 978-0-8264-1132-7
- On Being Human (1997) ISBN 978-0-8264-1005-4
See also
- American philosophy
- Ernst Simmel
- Group narcissism
- List of American philosophers
- Psychoanalytic sociology
- Psychohistory
Explanatory notes
- ^ For a second name he was given that of his grandfather on his father's side—Seligmann Pinchas Fromm, although the registry office in Frankfurt does not record him as Erich Pinchas Fromm, but as Erich Seligmann Fromm. Also his parents addressed his mail to "Erich S. Fromm".[4]
- ^ About the same time he stopped observing Jewish religious rituals and rejected a cause he had once embraced, Zionism. He "just didn't want to participate in any division of the human race, whether religious or political," he explained decades later (Wershba, p. 12), by which time he was a confirmed atheist.[9]
References
- ^ "Erich Fromm and the Revolution of Hope". jacobinmag.com.
- ^ Watson, Ben (2013). "Ben Watson: Truly Liberating / Radical Philosophy". Radical Philosophy (178).
- ISBN 9780415539142.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-8264-1519-6. p. 13.
- ^ "MSU Libraries". lib.msu.edu.
- ^ Klaus Widerström: Einführung in das Leben Erich Fromms. Erich Fromm Dokumentationszentrum, 2013 [1]
- ^ Alfred Lévy: Erich Fromm: Humanist zwischen Tradition und Utopie. Königshausen & Neumann, 2002, ISBN 978-3-8260-2242-5, p. 13.
- ^ Paris, Bernard J. (1998) Horney & Humanistic Psychoanalysis – Personal History Archived May 23, 2011, at the Wayback Machine. International Karen Horney Society.
- ^ a b Keay Davidson: "Fromm, Erich Pinchas", American National Biography Online, Feb. 2000 (accessed April 28, 2008)
- ^ Fromm, E. (1966). You shall be as Gods, A Fawcett Premier Book, p. 18:"Hence, I wish to make my position clear at the outset. If I could define my position approximately, I would call it that of a nontheistic mysticism."
- ^ His 1922 thesis was under the title Das jüdische Gesetz. Ein Beitrag zur Soziologie des Diaspora-Judentums (The Jewish Law: A Contribution to the Sociology of Jewish Diaspora).
- ^ Fromm, Erich (1941). Escape from Freedom. New York: Henry Holt and Company, LLC. p. 177.
- ^ Fromm, Erich (1997). On Being Human. London: The Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd. p. 101.
- ^ a b c d e f "Erich Fromm & Humanistic Psychoanalysis". TheGlaringFacts.com. November 12, 2011. Archived from the original on January 21, 2013.
- ^ Engler, Barbara (2008). Personality Theories. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. p. 137. (based on The Sane Society and The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness)
- ^ Fromm, Erich (1941). Escape from Freedom. New York: Rinehart. pp. 36–37, 31, 256–57.
- ^ "Relationship Awareness Theory Overview". personalstrengths.us. Personal Strengths Publishing. Archived from the original on May 28, 2013. Retrieved January 28, 2013.
- ^ Liberman & Kiriki,1951
- ^ Fromm, Erich. Beyond the Chains of Illusion: My Encounter with Marx & Freud. London: Sphere Books, 1980, p. 11
- ^ Fromm, Erich "Escape from Freedom" New York: Rinehart & Co., 1941, p. 41 – 42
- ^ John Rickert, The Fromm-Marcuse debate revisited, 1986 in "Theory and Society", vol. 15, pp. 351–400. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Dordrecht
- ^ Erich Fromm, [1955] 1990 The Sane Society, New York: Henry Holt
- ^ Erich Fromm, [1973] 1992, The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, New York: Henry Holt.
- ^ Barsky, Robert (1997). Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. p. 134.
Further reading
- De Rodrigo, Enrique, Neoliberalismo y otras patologías de la normalidad. Conversando nuestro tiempo con Erich Fromm. Madrid: PenBooks, 2015. ISBN 978-84-608-1648-5. (Spanish)
- Friedman, Lawrence J., The Lives of Erich Fromm: Love's Prophet. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013. ISBN 978-0231162586.
- Funk, Rainer, Erich Fromm: His Life and Ideas An Illustrated Biography. Continuum: New York, 2000. ISBN 978-0826412249.
- Funk, Rainer, "Life and Work of Erich Fromm" Archived July 30, 2018, at the Wayback Machine, Logos, 6:3, Summer 2007
- Ghislain Deslandes, "Escape from freedom: Revisiting Erich Fromm in the light of Contemporary Authoritarianism", Organization Studies (journal), 2018.
- Jensen, Walter A., Erich Fromm's contributions to sociological theory. Kalamazoo, MI: Printmill, 2017. ISBN 978-0970491947.
External links
- Publications by and about Erich Fromm in the catalogue Helveticat of the Swiss National Library
- Erich Fromm online – Official website about Erich Fromm, his Life and Work: Documents, information about the Institute, Study Center, Foundation, Literary Estate and events.
- erich-fromm.de – Erich Fromm Archives; Literary Estate
- International Erich Fromm Society
- International Foundation Erich Fromm (in Italian)
- 1958 Mike Wallace interview Archived July 25, 2013, at the Wayback Machine, hrc.utexas.edu
- Интервью с Майком Уоллесом: в гостях Эрих Фромм, 1958 Mike Wallace interview (in Russian) Russian translation by Anzhela Cherkashyna
- Fear from Freedom Chapter V "Mechanisms of Escape from Freedom", Erich Fromm (1942)
- FBI file on Erich Fromm
- Erich Fromm at the Encyclopædia Britannica