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Erich Fromm (1900 - 1980)
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CONTENTS :
Erich Fromm (1900 - 1980)
Erich Fromm was born in 1900 in Frankfurt, Germany. he received his PhD from Heidelberg in 1922
and began a career as a psychotherapist. He moved to the U.S. in 1934 and settled in New York City. Here, he met many other great refugee thinkers, including
Karen Horney, with whom he had an affair. Later in life, he moved to Mexico City, where he did considerable research into the relationship between economic class
and personality types.
Theory
Fromm was an existentialist whose theory includes a peculiar blend of Freud (unconscious, biological
drives, repression) and Marx (people are determined by their socioeconomic class).
He added to this combination of two deterministic systems the notion of freedom, which he defined as a transcendence of the determinations that Freud and Marx described. Fromm would go on to make this freedom the central feature of human nature.
According to Fromm, freedom is difficult to maintain, and many people opt to fall back into a deterministic mode of living. Such deterministic modes of living are encouraged by authoritarianism, destructiveness, and automaton conformity. However, since humanity's "true nature" is freedom, any of these escapes into deterministic modes of living and away from freedom necessarily involves alienation of ourselves (from our true nature).
from freedom alienates us from ourselves. Here's what Fromm had to say:
Man is born as a freak of nature, being within nature and yet transcending
it. He has to find principles of action and decision making which replace
the principles of instincts. he has to have a frame of orientation which
permits him to organize a consistent picture of the world as a condition
for consistent actions. He has to fight not only against the dangers of
dying, starving, and being hurt, but also against another anger which is
specifically human: that of becoming insane. In other words, he has to
protect himself not only against the danger of losing his life but also
against the danger of losing his mind. (Fromm, 1968, p. 61)
| Orientation |
Society |
Family |
Escape from Freedom |
| Receptive |
Peasant society |
Symbiotic (passive) |
Authoritarian (masochistic) |
| Exploitative |
Aristocratic society |
Symbiotic (active) |
Authoritarian (sadistic) |
| Hoarding |
Bourgeois society |
Withdrawing (puritanical) |
Perfectionist to destructive |
| Marketing |
Modern society |
Withdrawing (infantile) |
Automaton conformist |
| Productive |
Humanistic communitarian
socialism |
Loving and reasoning |
Freedom and responsibility acknowledged and accepted |
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