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CHAPTER 7
ERICH FROMM’S - HUMANISTIC
PSYCHOANALYSIS THEORY
WHO IS ERICH FROMM?
- a personality theorist, social critic,
psychotherapist, philosopher, biblical
scholar, cultural anthropologist, and
psychobiographer.
OVERVIEW OF HUMANISTIC
PSYCHOANALYSIS THEORY
- emphasizes the influence of
sociobiological factors, history, economics,
and class structure.
- looks at people from a historical and
cultural perspective rather than a strictly
psychological one.
- less concerned with the individual and
more concerned with those characteristics
common to a culture.
BASIC ANXIETY- assumes that
humanity’s separation from the natural
world has produced feelings of loneliness
and isolation
Isolation wrought by capitalism has been
unbearable, leaving people with two
alternatives: (1) to escape from freedom
into interpersonal dependencies, or (2) to
move to self-realization through productive
love and work
Fromm’s Basic Assumptions
- believed that humans, unlike other
animals, have been “torn away” from their
prehistoric union with nature.
HUMAN DILEMMA- no powerful instincts
to adapt to a changing world; instead, they
have acquired the facility to reason.
- people experience this basic dilemma
because they have become separate from
nature and yet have the capacity to be
aware of themselves as isolated beings.
- permits people to survive, but on the
other, it forces them to attempt to solve
basic insoluble dichotomies
EXISTENTIAL DICHOTOMIES- rooted in
people’s very existence.
.3 EXISTENTIAL DICHOTOMIES
1. Life and Death.
2. Humans are capable of
conceptualizing the goal of
complete self-realization
3. People are ultimately alone, yet we
cannot tolerate isolation.
HUMAN NEEDS
- motivated by such physiological needs as
hunger, sex, and safety
- move people toward a reunion with the
natural world.
EXISTENTIAL NEEDS
- emerged during the evolution of human
culture, growing out of their attempts to find
an answer to their existence and to avoid
becoming insane
HUMAN NEEDS
Relatedness, Transcendence, Rootedness,
Sense of identity, and Frame of orientation
1. RELATEDNESS- the drive for union with
another person or other persons.
THREE BASIC WAYS to relate to the world
(1) submission, (2) power, and (3) love
SYMBIOTIC RELATIONSHIP- When a
submissive person and a domineering
person find each other one that is
satisfying to both partners. (this blocks
growth toward integrity and psychological
health)
LOVE- is the only route by which a
person can become united with the world
and, at the same time, achieve individuality
and integrity.
- a “union with somebody, or something
outside oneself under the condition of
retaining the separateness and integrity of
one’s own self”
4 ELEMENTS OF LOVE
1. CARE- must care for that person and
be willing to take care of him or her.
2. RESPONSIBILITY- a willingness and
ability to respond to their physical and
psychological need
3. RESPECTS- respects them for who they
are and avoid the temptation of trying to
change them.
4. KNOWLEDGE- To know others means
to see them from their own point of view
2. TRANSCENDENCE- the urge to rise
above a passive and accidental existence
and into “the realm of purposefulness and
freedom”
- People can transcend their passive
nature by either creating life or destroying
it.
MALIGNANT AGGRESSION- to kill for
reasons other than survival.
3. ROOTEDNESS- need to establish roots
or to feel at home again in the world
WHOLENESS- people are weaned from
the orbit of their mother and become fully
born; that is, they actively and creatively
relate to the world and become whole or
integrated.

FIXATION- tenacious reluctance to move
beyond the protective security provided by
one’s mother
BACHOFEN held that the mother was the
central figure in these ancient social
groups.
Fromm’s conception of the Oedipus
complex as a desire to return to the
mother’s womb or breast or to a person
with a mothering function
4. SENSE OF IDENTITY- the capacity to
be aware of ourselves as a separate entity.
- we need to form a concept of ourselves
since we have been torn away from nature.
- the threat of losing one’s sanity without a
sense of identity provides a powerful
motivation to do almost anything to acquire
one.
- neurotics attach themselves to powerful
people or to social or political institutions
while healthy people have less need to
conform to the herd and less need to give
up their sense of self.
5. FRAME OF ORIENTATION- need a
road map, a frame of orientation, to make
their way through the world.
- Without such a map, humans would be
“confused and unable to act purposefully
and consistently”
- enables people to organize the various
stimuli that impinge on them.
SUMMARY OF HUMAN NEEDS
Relatedness can be satisfied through
submission, domination, or love, but only
love produces authentic fulfillment;
Transcendence can be satisfied by either
destructiveness or creativeness, but only
the latter permits joy; Rootedness can be
satisfied either by fixation to the mother or
by moving forward into full birth and
wholeness; the Sense of Identity can be
based on the adjustment to the group, or it
can be satisfied through creative
movement toward individuality;
A Frame of Orientation may be either
irrational or rational, but only a rational
philosophy can serve as a basis for the
growth of total personality
BURDEN OF FREEDOM
- as people gained more and more
economic and political freedom, they came
to feel increasingly isolated.
- the burden of freedom is being free from
the security that one previously holds.
- On both a social and an individual level,
this burden results in basic anxiety, the
feeling of being alone in the world
MECHANISM OF ESCAPE
- people attempt to flee from freedom
through a variety of escape mechanisms.
- these are driving forces in normal people,
both individually and collectively.
3 PRIMARY MECHANISMS OF ESCAPE
1. Authoritarianism- one’s own individual
self and fusing one’s self with somebody or
something outside oneself in order to
acquire the strength which the individual is
lacking.
MASOCHISM- a form of authoritarianism
that results from basic feelings of
powerlessness, weakness, and inferiority
- aimed at joining the self to a more
powerful person or institution.
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- often disguised as love or loyalty, but they
can never contribute positively to
independence and authenticity.
SADISM- more neurotic and more socially
harmful.
- also aimed at reducing basic feelings of
powerlessness, weakness, and inferiority
and is aimed at joining the self to a more
powerful person.
3 KINDS OF SADISTIC TENDENCIES
1. The need to make others dependent on
oneself and to gain power over those who
are weak.
2. compulsion to take advantage of others
and use them for one’s benefit or pleasure
3. desire to see others suffer, either
physically or psychologically
2. Destructiveness- rooted in the feelings
of aloneness, isolation, and
powerlessness.
- does not depend on a continuous
relationship with another person.
- it seeks to do away with other people
- By destroying people and objects, a
person or a nation attempts to restore lost
feelings of power
3. Conformity - people try to escape from
a sense of aloneness and isolation by
giving up their individuality and becoming
whatever other people desire them to be.
- they seldom express their own opinion,
cling to expected standards of behavior,
and often appear stiff and automated.
POSITIVE FREEDOM
- A person can be free and not alone,

critical and yet not filled with doubts,
independent yet an integral part of
humankind.
- people can attain this through a
spontaneous and full expression of both
their rational and emotional potentialities.
- represents a successful solution to the
human dilemma of being a part of a
natural world yet separate from it.
- through positive freedom and
spontaneous activity, people overcome the
terror of aloneness, achieve union with the
world, and maintain individuality.
- they affirm their uniqueness as individuals
and achieve the full realization of their
potentialities
CHARACTER ORIENTATIONS
- a person’s relatively permanent way of
relating to people and things
- character the most important acquired
qualities of personality. it is defined as the
relatively permanent system of all
non-instinctual strivings through which man
relates himself to the human and natural
world.
- people can relate to the world by
acquiring and
using things or assimilation, and by relating
to self and others or socialization.
NONPRODUCTIVE ORIENTATIONS
- people acquire things through any of the
four nonproductive orientations:
1. receiving things passively;
2. exploiting or taking things by force;
3. hoarding objects;
4. marketing or exchanging things
– Strategies that fail to move people closer
to positive freedom and self-realization.
- not entirely negative
RECEPTIVE
- receptive characters feel that the source
of all good lies outside themselves and that
the only way to relate to the world is to
receive things.
- they are more concerned with receiving
than with giving, and they want others to
shower them with love, ideas, and gifts.
- their negative qualities include passivity,
submissiveness, and lack of
self-confidence.
- positive traits include loyalty, acceptance,
and trust
EXPLOITATIVE
- exploitative characters believe that the
source of all good is outside themselves.
- they aggressively take what they desire
rather than passively receive it.
- they are likely to use cunning or force to
take someone else’s spouse, ideas, or
property.
- on the negative side, they are egocentric,
conceited, arrogant, and seducing. Y on
the positive side, they are impulsive, proud,
charming, and self-confident.
HOARDING
- hoarding characters seek to save that
which they have already obtained.
- they tend to live in the past and are
repelled by anything new.
- negative traits include rigidity, sterility,
obstinacy, compulsivity, and lack of
creativity
- positive characteristics include
orderliness, cleanliness, and punctuality.
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MARKETING
- an outgrowth of modern commerce in
which trade is no longer personal but
carried out by large, faceless corporations.
- their personal security rests on shaky
ground because they must adjust their
personality to that of which is currently in
fashion.
- they are without a past or a future and
have no permanent principles or values. Y
being aimless, opportunistic, inconsistent,
and wasteful are some of their negative
traits.
- positive qualities include changeability,
open-mindedness, adaptability, and
generosity
THE PRODUCTIVE ORIENTATIONS
- Because productive people work toward
positive freedom and continuing realization
of their potential, they are the healthiest of
all character types.
WORK
- healthy people value work as a means of
creative self-expression. they are neither
lazy nor compulsively active but use work
as a means of producing life’s necessities.
LOVE
- healthy love is characterized by care,
responsibility, respect, and knowledge.
BIOPHILIA- a passionate love of life and
all that is alive, possessed by healthy
people. they are concerned with the growth
and development of themselves as well as
others.
- all people have the capacity for
productive love, but most do not achieve it
because they cannot first love themselves.

THINKING
- cannot be separated from love, it is
motivated by a concerned interest in
another person or object
- healthy people see others as they are
and not as they would wish them to be.
- they know themselves for who they are
and have no need for self-delusion
PERSONALITY DISORDERS
- unhealthy people are sometimes marked
by problems in the areas of productive
work, love, and thinking. psychologically
disturbed people are incapable of love and
have failed to establish a union with others.
NECROPHILIA
- love of death
- a sexual perversion in which a person
desires sexual contact with a corpse.
- Fromm used the term in a more
generalized sense to denote any attraction
to death.
- an alternative character orientation to
biophilia.
- necrophiliac personalities hate humanity.
They are racists, warmongers, and bullies.
necrophilous people’s destructive behavior
is a reflection of their basic character.
- their entire lifestyle revolves around
death, destruction, disease, and decay.
MALIGNANT NARCISSISM
- healthy people manifest a benign form of
narcissism, that is, an interest in their own
body.
- in malignant form, it impedes the
perception of reality so that everything
belonging to a narcissistic person is highly
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valued and everything belonging to others - the aim of the therapy is for patients to
is devaluated. know themselves.
- patients come to therapy seeking
Hypochondriasis- is an obsessive satisfaction of their basic human needs.
attention to one’s health. - therapy should be built on a personal
moral hypochondriasis – is referred to as relationship between therapist and patient.
preoccupation with guilt about previous - Fromm believed that therapists should
transgressions not try to be too scientific in understanding
- their sense of worth depends on their a patient. only with the attitude of
narcissistic self-image and not on their relatedness can another person be truly
achievements understood.
- the therapist should view the patient as a
INCESTUOUS SYMBIOSIS person with the same human needs that all
- extreme dependence on the mother or people possess.
mother surrogate.
- an exaggerated form of the more
common and more benign mother fixation.
- with this, people are inseparable from the
host personalities that their personalities
are blended with the other person, and
their individual identities are lost.
- originates in infancy as a natural
attachment to the mothering one
- people living in incestuous symbiotic
relationships feel extremely anxious and
frightened if that relationship a threatened.
- some individuals possess all three
personality disorders.
- Syndrome of Decay. a condition wherein
an individual does possess all the opposite
qualities of biophilia, love, and positive
freedom
PSYCHOTHERAPY
- Fromm was bored with standard analytic
techniques.
- he then evolved humanistic
psychoanalysis.
- interpersonal aspects of the therapeutic
encounter.