TOP - Fromm: Humanistic Psychoanalysis by Feist & Feist
Fromm: Humanistic Psychoanalysis
Humanistic psychoanalysis assumes that humanity’s separation from the natural world has produced feelings of loneliness and isolation, a condition called basic anxiety.
Erich Fromm was born on March 23, 1900, in Frankfurt, Germany, the only child of middle-class Orthodox Jewish parents.
Fromm’s Basic Assumptions
Fromm’s most basic assumption is that individual personality can be understood only in the light of human history. “The discussion of the human situation must precede that of personality, [and] psychology must be based on an anthropologic- philosophical concept of human existence”
Human Needs
1. Relatedness - The first human, or existential, need is relatedness, the drive for union with another person or other persons. Fromm postulated three basic ways in which a person may relate to the world: (1) submission, (2) power, and (3) 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 ”
In The Art of Loving, Fromm (1956) identified care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge as four basic elements common to all forms of genuine love. Someone who loves another person must care for that person and be willing to take care of him or her. Love also means responsibility, that is, a willingness and ability to respond.
2. Transcendence - human beings are driven by the need for transcendence, defined as 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 by destroying it. Fromm (1973) argued that humans are the only species to use malignant aggression: that is, to kill for reasons other than survival.
3. Rootedness - A third existential need is for rootedness, or the need to establish roots or to feel at home again in the world.
4. Sense of Identity - The fourth human need is for a sense of identity, or the capacity to be aware of our- selves as a separate entity. Because we have been torn away from nature, we need to form a concept of our self, to be able to say, “I am I,” or “I am the subject of my actions.”
5. Frame of Orientation - A final human need is for a frame of orientation. Being split off from nature, hu- mans 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” (Fromm, 1973, p. 230). A frame of orientation enables people to or- ganize the various stimuli that impinge on them. People who possess a solid frame of orientation can make sense of these events and phenomena, but those who lack a reliable frame of orientation will, nevertheless, strive to put these events into some sort of framework in order to make sense of them.
Summary of Human Needs
In addition to physiological or animal needs, people are motivated by five distinctively human needs—relatedness, transcendence, rootedness, a sense of identity, and a frame of orientation. Fromm believed that lack of satisfaction of any of these needs is unbearable and results in insanity. Thus, people are strongly driven to fulfill them in some way or an- other, either positively or negatively.
The Burden of Freedom
In both a social and an individual level, this burden of freedom results in basic anxiety, the feeling of being alone in the world.
1. Mechanism of Escape - Because basic anxiety produces a frightening sense of isolation and aloneness, people attempt to flee from freedom through a variety of escape mechanisms. In Escape from Freedom, Fromm (1941) identified three primary mechanisms of escape— authoritarianism, destructiveness, and conformity.
a.) Authoritarianism - Fromm (1941) defined authoritarianism as the “tendency to give up the independence of one’s own individual 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 results from basic feelings of powerlessness, weakness, and inferiority and is aimed at joining the self to a more powerful person or institution. Sadism is aimed at reducing basic anxiety through achieving unity with another person or persons. Fromm (1941) identified three kinds of sadistic tendencies, all more or less clustered together. The first is the need to make others dependent on oneself and to gain power over those who are weak. The second is the compulsion to exploit others, to take advantage of them, and to use them for one’s benefit or pleasure. A third sadistic tendency is the desire to see others suffer, either physically or psychologically.
b.) Destructiveness - Like authoritarianism, destructiveness is rooted in the feelings of aloneness, isolation, and powerlessness. Both individuals and nations can employ destructiveness as a mechanism of escape. By destroying people and objects, a person or a nation attempts to restore lost feelings of power.
c.) Conformity - A third means of escape is conformity. People who conform try to escape from a sense of aloneness and isolation by giving up their individuality and becoming what- ever other people desire them to be.
2. 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” (Fromm, 1941, p. 257). People can attain this kind of freedom, called positive freedom, by a spontaneous and full expression of both their rational and their emotional potentialities.
Character Orientations
In Fromm’s theory, personality is reflected in one’s character orientation, that is, a person’s relatively permanent way of relating to people and things. Fromm (1947) defined personality as “the totality of inherited and acquired psychic qualities which are characteristic of one individual and which make the individual unique” (p. 50). The most important of the acquired qualities of personality is character, defined as “the relatively permanent system of all noninstinctual strivings through which man relates himself to the human and natural world”
1. Nonproductive Orientations - People can acquire things through any one of four nonproductive orientations: (1) receiving things passively, (2) exploiting, or taking things through force, (3) hoarding objects, and (4) marketing or exchanging things. Fromm used the term “nonproductive” to suggest strategies that fail to move people closer to positive freedom and self-realization.
a.) Receptive - 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. They are more concerned with receiving than with giving, and they want others to shower them with love, ideas, and gifts.
b.) Exploitative - Like receptive people, exploitative characters believe that the source of all good is outside themselves. Unlike receptive people, however, they aggressively take what they desire rather than passively receive it.
c.) Hoarding - Rather than valuing things outside themselves, hoarding characters seek to save that which they have already obtained. They hold everything inside and do not let go of anything. They keep money, feelings, and thoughts to themselves.
d.) Marketing - The marketing character is an outgrowth of modern commerce in which trade is no longer personal but carried out by large, faceless corporations. Consistent with the demands of modern commerce, marketing characters see themselves as commodities, with their personal value dependent on their exchange value, that is, their ability to sell themselves.
2. The Productive Orientation - 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 the four qualities of love discussed ear- lier—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. Biophilic people desire to further all life—the life of people, animals, plants, ideas, and cultures. Productive thinking, which cannot be separated from productive work and love, 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. Similarly, they know themselves for who they are and have no need for self-delusion.
Personality Disorders
If healthy people are able to work, love, and think productively, then unhealthy per- sonalities are marked by problems in these three areas, especially failure to love pro- ductively. 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. Necrophile - The term “necrophilia” means love of death and usually refers to a sexual perversion in which a person desires sexual contact with a corpse. However, Fromm (1964, 1973) used necrophilia in a more generalized sense to denote any attraction to death. Necrophilic personalities hate humanity; they are racists, warmongers, and bullies; they love bloodshed, destruction, terror, and torture; and they delight in destroying life. They are strong advocates of law and order; love to talk about sickness, death, and burials; and they are fascinated by dirt, decay, corpses, and feces. They prefer night to day and love to operate in darkness and shadow.
2. Malignant Narcissism - Healthy people manifest a benign form of narcissism, that is, an interest in their own body. However, in its malignant form, narcissism impedes the perception of reality so that everything belonging to a narcissistic person is highly valued and everything belonging to another is devalued. Narcissistic individuals 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 - A third pathological orientation is incestuous symbiosis, or an extreme dependence on the mother or mother surrogate. Incestuous symbiosis is an exaggerated form of the more common and more benign mother fixation. Men with a mother fixation need a woman to care for them, dote on them, and admire them; they feel somewhat anxious and depressed when their needs are not fulfilled.
Psychotherapy
Fromm 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. Therefore, therapy should be built on a personal relationship between therapist and patient. Because accurate communication is essential to ther- apeutic growth, the therapist must relate “as one human being to another with utter concentration and utter sincerity” (Fromm, 1963, p. 184). In this spirit of related- ness, the patient will once again feel at one with another person. Although transference and even countertransference may exist within this relationship, the important point is that two real human beings are involved with one another.
To download content, click Download PDF below.
To cite reference:
Feist, Jess & Feist, Gregory J. 2008. Theories of Personality, 7th Edition. The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Publish in the United States of America.
Comments
Post a Comment