HUMANISTIC PSYCHOANALYSIS: ERICH FROMM

OVERVIEW
- Erich Fromm’s basic thesis is that modern-day people have been torn away from their prehistoric union with nature and with one
another, yet they have the power of reasoning, foresight, and imagination. He developed a theory of personality that emphasizes the
influence of sociobiological factors, history, economics, and class structure. His humanistic psychoanalysis assumes that humanity’s
separation from the natural world has produced feelings of loneliness and isolation, a condition called basic anxiety. According to
Fromm, individual personality can be understood only in the light of human history. “The discussion of the human situation must
precede that of personality, psychology must be based on an anthropologic-philosophical concept of human existence”.

BIOGRAPHY
- Erich Fromm was born on March 23, 1900, in Frankfurt, Germany, the only child of middle-class Orthodox Jewish
parents. His father, Naphtali Fromm, was the son of a rabbi and the grandson of two rabbis. His mother, Rosa Krause
Fromm, was the niece of Ludwig Krause, a well-known Talmudic scholar.
- After the war, Fromm became a socialist, although at that time, he refused to join the Socialist Party. Instead, he
concentrated on his studies in psychology, philosophy, and sociology at the University of Heidelberg, where he
received his PhD in sociology at either age 22 or 25.
- Still not confident that his training could answer such troubling questions as the suicide of the young woman or the
insanity of war, Fromm turned to psychoanalysis, believing that it promised answers to questions of human motivation
not offered in other fields. From 1925 until 1930 he studied psychoanalysis, first in Munich, then in Frankfurt, and finally
at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute, where he was analyzed by Hanns Sachs, a student of Freud. Although Fromm
never met Freud, most of his teachers during those years were strict adherents of Freudian theory.
- In 1926, the same year that he repudiated Orthodox Judaism, Fromm married Frieda Reichmann, his analyst, who
was more than 10 years his senior. Reichmann would later obtain an international reputation for her work with
schizophrenic patients. In any event, the marriage of Fromm and Fromm-Reichmann was not a happy one. They
separated in 1930 but were not divorced until much later, after both had immigrated to the United States.
- Fromm renewed his acquaintance with Karen Horney, whom he had known casually at the Berlin Psychoanalytic
Institute. Horney, who was 15 years older than Fromm, eventually became a strong mother figure and mentor to him.
- In 1944, Fromm married Henny Gurland, a woman two years younger than Fromm and whose interest in religion
and mystical thought furthered Fromm’s own inclinations toward Zen Buddhism.
- In 1951, the couple moved to Mexico for a more favorable climate for Gurland, who suffered from rheumatoid arthritis.
Fromm joined the faculty at the National Autonomous University in Mexico City, where he established a psychoanalytic
department at the medical school. After his wife died in 1952, he continued to live in Mexico and commuted between
his home in Cuernavaca and the United States, where he held various academic positions, including professor of
psychology at Michigan State University from 1957 to 1961 and adjunct professor at New York University from 1962 to
1970.
- While in Mexico, he met Annis Freeman, whom he married in 1953. In 1968, Fromm suffered a serious heart attack
and was forced to slow down his busy schedule. In 1974 and still ill, he and his wife moved to Muralto, Switzerland,
where he died March 18, 1980, a few days short of his 80th birthday.

FROMM’S CONTRIBUTION TO PERSONALITY THEORY

I. ESCAPE FROM FREEDOM AND POSITIVE FREEDOM

- Fromm believes that we are free to be and do whatever we please. Yet it is very freedom that creates greatest problem for
us. Once we emerge on our own, we are faced with enormous personal responsibilities, we are isolated, we are alone.
Freedom can be frightening. As Fromm said, we feel an “unbearable state of powerlessness and aloneness.” As we become
aware of our individuality, we become aware of all that we cannot control and come painfully face-to-face with our
insignificance. According to Fromm, we have two types of responses to this situation: escape from freedom or positive
freedom.

MECHANISMS OF ESCAPE FROM FREEDOM

1. AUTHORITARIANISM- the tendency to “fuse one’s self with somebody or something outside of oneself in order to acquire
the strength which the individual self is lacking”. Fromm describes these authoritarian characters as reflecting an ironic
combination of strivings for submission and strivings for domination, or, in Fromm’s terms, masochism and sadism.

2. DESTRUCTIVENESS- the individual attempts to overcome life’s threatening situations by destroying them. For example,
we may say that we are fighting for love of country but in reality we are neurotically striving to overcome the feelings of
powerlessness and isolation that threatens us all.

3. AUTOMATON CONFORMITY- the individual simply has a blind acceptance of all of the contradictions of life. If he can’t
beat them, he must join them. He totally lacks any spontaneity and has no true experience of what is really his own life.

Positive Freedom-it refers to spontaneous and full expression of both the rational and emotional potentialities. Spontaneous
activity is frequently seen in small children and in artists who have little or no tendency to conform to whatever others want
them to be. They act according to their basic natures and not according to conventional rules.

II. CHARACTER ORIENTATIONS

According to Fromm, people relate to the world in two ways- by acquiring and using things (assimilation) and by relating to self and
others (socialization). In general terms, people can relate to things and to people either productively or nonproductively.

a. NONPRODUCTIVE ORIENTATIONS

1. RECEPTIVE CHARACTERS- feel that the source of all good lies outside themselves and that the only way they can relate to the
world is to receive things, including love, knowledge, and material possessions.

2. EXPLOITATIVE CHARACTERS- aggressively take what they desire rather than passively receive it.

3. HOARDING- seeks to save that which they have already obtained. People with this orientation hold everything inside and do not
let go of anything.
4. MARKETING CHARACTER- see themselves as commodities, with their personal value dependent on their exchange value, that
is, their ability to sell themselves.

PRODUCTIVE ORIENTATIONS
The single productive orientation has three dimensions- working, loving, and reasoning. Healthy people value work not as an end in
itself, but as a means of creative self-expression. Productive love is characterized by care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge.
In addition to these four characteristics, healthy people possess biophilia: that is, a passionate love of life and all that is alive.
Finally, productive thinking is motivated by a concerned interest in another person or object.

III. PERSONALITY DISORDERS

Fromm (1981) held that psychologically disturbed people are incapable of love and have failed to establish union with others. He discussed
three severe personality disorders- necrophilia, malignant narcissism, and incestuous symbiosis.

1. NECROPHILIA- more generalized sense to denote any attraction to death. It is an alternative character orientation to biophilia.
Necrophilic personalities hate humanity, they are bullies, they love destruction, terror, and torture.

2. MALIGNANT NARCISSISM- people with this disorder are preoccupied with themselves, but this concern is not limited to
admiring themselves in a mirror. Preoccupation with one’s body often leads to hypochondriasis, or an obsessive attention to one’s
health.

3. INCESTUOUS SYMBIOSIS- refers to an extreme dependence on the mother or mother surrogate.

FROMM’S CONCEPT OF LOVE

- In the final analysis of man’s troubled existence, Fromm fervently feels that the answer to the problem is the capacity of
man to love. According to him, love is an art, it requires the effort and knowledge the other types of art demand. Love is an
active process in which we establish individuality. It is in genuine love, said Fromm, that we find the paradox “two beings
become one yet remain two”. In his popular book entitled “The Art of Loving”, Fromm identified care, responsibility, respect,
and knowledge as four basic elements common to all forms of genuine love. He proposes five types of love.

1. Brotherly love- the most fundamental, the strongest, and the most underlying kind of love. It is a love between equals.

2. Motherly love- the love and care for the helpless, the wanting to make them strong and independent.

3. Erotic love- usually allied with sexual experience, a “craving for complete function,” and is what most consider the only
kind of love. It is exclusive and inclined toward jealousy.

4. Self-love- care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge of self.

5. Love of God- has the highest value, is the most desirable good, and emphasizes care, respect, responsibility, and
specially knowledge.

FROMM’S FIVE EXISTENTIAL/ HUMAN NEEDS

1. TRANSCENDENCE- to go above being just an animal, to improve and learn, to increase in material things.
2. SENSE OF IDENTITY-capacity to be aware of ourselves as a separate entity.
3. ROOTEDNESS-the need to establish roots or to feel at home again in the world.
4. FRAME OF ORIENTATION-the need for road map to make their way through the world.
5. RELATEDNESS- feeling of oneness with fellow men and with self. Fromm postulated three basic ways in which a person may
relate to the world:

a. SUBMISSION- A person can submit to another, to a group, or to an institution in order to become one with the world. “In this way
he transcends the separateness of his individual existence by becoming part of somebody or something bigger than himself and
experiences his identity in connection with the power to which he has submitted”.

b. POWER- Whereas submissive people search for a relationship with domineering people, power seekers welcome submissive
partners. When a submissive person and a domineering person find each other, they frequently establish a symbiotic relationship,
one that is satisfying to both partners. Although such symbiosis may be gratifying, it blocks growth toward integrity and
psychological health. The two partners “live on each other and from each other, satisfying their craving for closeness, yet suffering
from the lack of inner strength and self-reliance which would require freedom and independence”

c. LOVE- Fromm believed that love is the only route by which a person can become united with the world and, at the same time,
achieve individuality and integrity. He defined love as a “union with somebody, or something outside oneself under the condition of
retaining the separateness and integrity of one’s own self”

BURDEN OF FREEDOM
The central thesis of Fromm’s writings is that humans have been torn from nature, yet they remain part of the natural
world, subject to the same physical limitations as other animals. As the only animal possessing self-awareness,
imagination, and reason, humans are “the freak[s] of the universe”. Reason is both a curse and a blessing. It is
responsible for feelings of isolation and loneliness, but it is also the process that enables humans to become reunited
with the world.

PSYCHOTHERAPY
Fromm believed that the aim of therapy is for patients to come to know themselves. Without knowledge of ourselves,
we cannot know any other person or thing. He believed that patients come to therapy seeking satisfaction of their basic
human needs- relatedness, transcendence, rootedness, a sense of identity, and a frame of orientation. He asked the
patients to reveal their dreams, as well as fairy tales and myths. Then, Fromm would ask for the patient’s associations
to the dream material.