ERICH

FROM
M
GROUP 2

BOOK
REVIE
W
 BIOGRAPHY OF ERICH
FROMM
• Born on March 23, 1990
• Frankfurt, Germany
• Only child of middle class orthodox Jewish parents
• Father, Naphtali Fromm was a businessman, moody, neurotic and
temperamental
• Mother, Rosa Krause Fromm was a housewife and is prone to depression
• Studied the Old Testament

• Contributed to the humanistic views of Erich Fromm

• Puzzlement over the suicide of a young artistic woman

• War
• Experiences with Talmudic Scholars
Jens
Martensson
• Graduated in the University of Frankfurt
• Enrolled at University of Heidelberg, where he received his PhD in Sociology
• 1925 until 1930, he studied Psychoanalysis
• Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute
• 1926, Fromm married Freida Richmann
• 1930, Fromm and several others founded the South German Institute for Psychoanalysis in Frankfurt
• He joined the newly founded International Institute of social research in Geneva.
• 1941, joined Horney’s newly formed Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis (AAP)
• 1943 they became rivals
• 1944 Fromm married Henny Gurland
• 1952 his wife died
• 1953 Fromm married Annis freeman
• 1968 Fromm suffered from serious heart attack
• March 18, 1980 Fromm died
Jens
Martensson
 Best Known Books
► Escape From Freedom (1941)
► Man For himself (1947)
► Psychoanalysis and Religion (1950)
► The Sane Society (1995)
► The Art of Loving (1956)
► Marx’s Concept of Man (1961)
► The Heart of Man (1964)
► The Anatomy of Destructiveness (1973)
► To have or Be (1976)
ERICH
ERICH FROMM’S
FROMM’S BOOKS
BOOKS ► For The Love Of Life (1986)

Jens
Martensson
 Overview of Humanistic Psychoanalysis

 Basic Thesis
- Modern day people have been torn away from their prehistoric union
with nature and with one another

 He believed that the combination of lack of animal instincts and humans are the
freaks of the
presence of rational thought makes humans the freaks of the universe. universe

 Humanistic Psychoanalysis
-Assumes that humanity’s separation from the natural world has
produced feelings of loneliness and isolation or Basic Anxiety
- More concerned with those characteristics common to a culture Jens
Martensson
 FROMM’S BASIC ASSUMPTION

 Individual personality can be understood only in the light of human history

 Human Dilemma
- humans have acquired the ability to reason about their isolated
condition

 Existential Dichotomies
• Between life and death
• Human can conceptualize the goal of complete self-realization, but we
also are aware that life is too short to reach that goal
• People are ultimately alone, yet we cannot tolerate isolation

Jens pp 66
Martensson
 HUMAN NEEDS
Relatedness
 Humans are motivated by Hunger, sex The drive for union with another person or
and safety other persons

 Human needs can move people toward a 3 Basic ways

reunion with the natural world • Submission – search for domineering
partner
 Existential needs have emerged for • Power – search for a submissive
attempting to find answer to the existence partner
and to avoid becoming insane • Love – The only route to become
united with the world and help the
 Mentally Healthy people find answers to person achieve individuality and
their existence or to their human needs integrity.
4 Basic elements
• Care
• Responsibility
• Respect
Jens
• knowledge Martensson pp 77
 Transcendance
Urge to rise above a passive and
accidental existence and into the realm
of purposefulness and freedom
 Positive Approach
-Create and to care
 Negative Approach
-Destroy and Rising above the
slain victims
In the Anatomy of Human
Destructiveness, Fromm argued that
humans are the only species to use
Malignant Aggression
- To kill for reasons other than
survival
Rootedness
Need to establish roots or to feel at home again in
the world
 Productive Strategies
-Fully born, actively and creatively relate to the
world and become whole or integrated.
 Nonproductive Strategies of Fixation
- A tenacious reluctance to more beyond the
protective security provided by one’s mother
• Incestuous Desires are universal
• Incestuous Feelings are based in “the deep-
seated craving to remain in or to return to, the
all-nourishing breasts.”
• Fromm’s has a strong preference to the mother-
centered theory of Oedipal situation
Jens pp 88
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SENSE OF IDENTITY
-the capacity to be aware of ourselves as a separate entity

FRAME OF ORIENTATION
-humans need a road map to make their way through the world
-enables people to organize the various stimuli that impinge on them
-Object of Devotion or Goal: focuses people’s energies in a single direction,
enables us to transcend our isolated existence and confers meaning to
our lives

Jens
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Summary of Fromm’s Human Needs
Negative Components Positive Components
Relatedness Submission or domination Love

Transcendence Destructiveness Creativeness

Rootedness Fixation Wholeness

Sense of Identity Adjustment to a group Individuality

Frame of Orientation Irrational goals Rational goals

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 BURDEN OF FREEDOM

 Free from the security of being one with the mother

 Results in Basic Anxiety

Jens pp 11
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 MECHANISMS OF ESCAPE

 AUTHORITARIANISM
-“tendency to give up the independence of one’s own
self and to fuse one’s self with somebody or
something outside oneself, in order to acquire the
strength which the individual is lacking”
-Masochism and Sadism

 DESTRUCTIVENESS
-rooted in the feelings of aloneness, isolation and
powerlessness
-seeks to do away with other people

 CONFORMITY
-giving up individuality and becoming whatever other
people desire them to be
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12
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 POSITIVE FREEDOM

A person can be free and not alone, critical and

yet not filled with doubts, independent and yet an
integral part of mankind

Love and work

Jens pp 13
13
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Personality Disorders

(1) Necrophilia, or the love of death

 refers to a sexual perversion in which a person desires sexual contact with a corpse
 alternative character orientation to biophilia.

(2) Malignant Narcissism, or infatuation with self

 Hypochondrias is an obsessive to one’s health

 Moral hypochondrias is a preoccupation with guilt about previous transgression.
 Result in depression

(3) Incestuous Symbiosis, or an extreme dependence on the mother or mother surrogate

 an exaggerated form of the more benign mother fixation

Note: Psychologically healthy people acquire syndrome of growth, which include (positive
freedom, biophilia, and love). Extremely sick people are motivated by syndrome of decay,
includes (necrophilia, malignant narcissism, and incestuous symbiosis)

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Martensson
Psychotherapy

The goal of Fromm’s psychotherapy is to establish

a union with patients so that they can become
reunited with the world.
 He believed that the aim of therapy is for
patients to come to know themselves.

Jens
Martensson