ERICH FROMM: BRIEF BACKGROUND
called Marxian personality theorist, he prefers to be
- Erich Fromm was born on March 23, 1900 in Frankfurt,
Germany
- His father was a business man and, according to Erich,
rather moody
- His mother was frequently depressed
- He came from a very religious family
- In his autobiography, Beyond the Chains of Illusion, he
talked about two events in his early adolescence that
started him along his path
- He received his PhD from Heidelberg in 1922 and
began a career as a psychotherapist
- He moved to the U.S. in 1934 and settled in New York
City
- Toward the end of his career, he moved to Mexico City
to teach
- He had done considerable research into the
relationship between economic class and personality
types there
- People would describe Fromm in opposing ways. He
would be described by many as authoritarian, gentle,
pretentious, arrogant, pious, autocratic, shy, sincere,
phony, and brilliant
- He died in 1980 in Switzerland.
- From was heavily influenced by the writings of Karl
Marx and Freud. He attempted to note contradictions in
ideas of both people and attempted a synthesis
between the two
- As Freud saw humans as being determined by
biological drives, Marx saw humans as determined by
society and economic systems
- Contrary to the deterministic views of both, Fromm
added an idea of Freedom in his theory. This allowed
people to transcend the determining of biology and
society
- Although some may say that Fromm can be accurately
labeled as a dialectic humanist
FROMM'S BASIC ASSUMPTION AND HIS EXISTENTIAL
DICHOTOMIES
"Human personality can be understood only in the
light of human history"
- Fromm proposes existential dichotomies which are
rooted in everyone's existence and cannot be done
away with
- People can only react to these dichotomies
 Life and Death
-Self-awareness and reason tell us that we are going
to die but we negate this by believing in an after life
 Self-actualization and the Shortness of life
- Some negate this by assuming that their own
historical period was the greatest in humanity while
others believe in development after life
 Being alone and intolerance to isolation
- Aware of themselves as separate individuals but
believe that their happiness comes when uniting
with other human beings
VIEW ON HUMAN NATURE
- To be human is to be isolated and lonely
- Loneliness represents the condition of human
experience that separates humans from animals
- From believed that humans, unlike other animals,
were torn away from their prehistoric union with nature
and are separated from other people
- Because of our facility to reason and our awareness of
being torn away from nature (people as isolated beings)
and from other people, we experience what Fromm
calls the human dilemma
THE BURDEN OF AND THE ESCAPE FROM FREEDOM

- As people gained more and more freedom throughout

the ages, they come to feel increasingly more isolated
(e.g., a serf who eventually secures his freedom only to
find himself adrift in an “alien” world)

- This burden of freedom leads to what Fromm calls

basic anxiety- the feeling of being alone in the world

- He described this phenomena in his book Escape from

Freedom (1941)

- People can attempt to deal with this burden in two

ways:

(1) A healthy strategy of uniting with other

people in the spirit of shared love and work

(2) An unhealthy strategy of attempting to

“escape from freedom”

- People escape from freedom in 3 ways:

1. Authoritarianism

2. Destructiveness

3. Automaton Conformity

MECHANISMS OF ESCAPE:

1. Authoritarianism

- giving up independency to fuse oneself with somebody

either through masochism or sadism

2. Destructiveness

- escape from powerlessness by destroying social agents

and institutions that produce feelings of helplessness
and isolation

3. Automaton Conformity

- adopting a pseudo-self based on others expectations.

Becoming what others want them to be.