Erich Fromm
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Erich Seligmann Fromm was a German-American social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, and democratic socialist. He was a German Jew who fled the Nazi regime and settled in the United States. He was one of the founders of The William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Psychology in New York City and was associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory. |
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| wikipedia:: Erich Fromm |
Fromm believed that freedom was an aspect of human nature that we either embrace or escape. He observed that embracing our freedom of will was healthy, whereas escaping freedom through the use of escape mechanisms was the root of psychological conflicts. Fromm outlined three of the most common escape mechanisms:
- Automaton conformity: changing one's ideal self to conform to a perception of society's preferred type of personality, losing one's true self in the process; Automaton conformity displaces the burden of choice from self to society;
- Authoritarianism: giving control of oneself to another. By submitting one's freedom to someone else, this act removes the freedom of choice almost entirely.
- Destructiveness: any process which attempts to eliminate others or the world as a whole, all to escape freedom. Fromm said that "the destruction of the world is the last, almost desperate attempt to save myself from being crushed by it".
Fromm's Eight Basic Needs
| Need | Description |
|---|---|
| Transcendence | Being thrown into the world without their consent, humans have to transcend their nature by destroying or creating people or things.[14] Humans can destroy through malignant aggression, or killing for reasons other than survival, but they can also create and care about their creations.[14] |
| Rootedness | Rootedness is the need to establish roots and to feel at home again in the world.[14] Productively, rootedness enables us to grow beyond the security of our mother and establish ties with the outside world.[14] With the nonproductive strategy, we become fixated and afraid to move beyond the security and safety of our mother or a mother substitute.[14] |
| Sense of Identity | The drive for a sense of identity is expressed nonproductively as conformity to a group and productively as individuality.[14] |
| Frame of orientation | Understanding the world and our place in it. |
| Excitation and Stimulation | Actively striving for a goal rather than simply responding. |
| Unity | A sense of oneness between one person and the "natural and human world outside." |
| Effectiveness | The need to feel accomplished.[15] |
"Escape From freedom"
Fromm's thesis of the "escape from freedom" is epitomized in the following passage. The "individualized man" referenced by Fromm is man bereft of the "primary ties" of belonging (such as nature, family, etc.), also expressed as "freedom from":
There is only one possible, productive solution for the relationship of individualized man with the world: his active solidarity with all men and his spontaneous activity, love and work, which unite him again with the world, not by primary ties but as a free and independent individual.... However, if the economic, social and political conditions... do not offer a basis for the realization of individuality in the sense just mentioned, while at the same time people have lost those ties which gave them security, this lag makes freedom an unbearable burden. It then becomes identical with doubt, with a kind of life which lacks meaning and direction. Powerful tendencies arise to escape from this kind of freedom into submission or some kind of relationship to man and the world which promises relief from uncertainty, even if it deprives the individual of his freedom.
— Erich Fromm
Solidarity
Companion in misery
Medieval feudal perspective on concept of "escape from freedom"
Fromm's best known work, Escape from Freedom, focuses on the human urge to seek a source of authority and control upon reaching a freedom that was thought to be an individual's true desire. Fromm's critique of the modern political order and capitalist system led him to seek insights from medieval feudalism. In Escape from Freedom, he found value in the lack of individual freedom, rigid structure, and obligations required on the members of medieval society:
What characterizes medieval in contrast to modern society is its lack of individual freedom…But altogether a person was not free in the modern sense, neither was he alone and isolated. In having a distinct, unchangeable, and unquestionable place in the social world from the moment of birth, man was rooted in a structuralized whole, and thus life had a meaning which left no place, and no need for doubt…There was comparatively little competition. One was born into a certain economic position which guaranteed a livelihood determined by tradition, just as it carried economic obligations to those higher in the social hierarchy.[20]
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