HUMANISTIC

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PSYCHOANALYSIS
Erich Fromm
 BASIC ASSUMPTIONS
❖ Fromm believed that humans, unlike other animals, have
been “torn away” from their prehistoric union with nature
❖ Human Dilemma - people did not have powerful instincts
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unlike other species, but they acquired the ability to reason
❖ We have this because we have become separate from
nature and yet have the capacity to be aware of ourselves
as isolated beings
 BASIC ASSUMPTIONS
❖ This ability to reason is both a blessing and a curse to
humankind because this helps us survive, but it also forces
us to solve insoluble existential dichotomies
C ➢ The first and most fundamental dichotomy is that
between life and death
➢ Second is that humans are capable of self-realization,
but we also are aware that life is too short to reach it
➢ Third is that people are ultimately alone, yet we cannot
tolerate isolation
 HUMAN NEEDS
❖ Satisfying physiological needs does not resolve our human
dilemma
❖ Instead, satisfaction of existential needs is the only way to
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reunite with the nature
❖ These stemmed out of humans’ attempts to find an answer
to their existence and to avoid becoming insane
❖ Fromm believed that being healthy means satisfying these
needs and not meeting them entails neurosis
 RELATEDNESS
❖ Drive for union with another person or people
❖ Fromm contended that there are 3 basic ways to relate with
others
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➢ Submission - becoming part of another, a group, or an
institution
➢ Power - dominating others
➢ Love - uniting with others without losing oneself
 RELATEDNESS
❖ When a submissive person and a dominant individual find
each other, they form symbiotic relationship
❖ This satisfies both people, but it blocks growth toward
C self-identity and psychological health
❖ They are not drawn to each other by love, but by a
desperate need for relatedness
❖ Underlying the union are unconscious feelings of hostility
about blaming the partner for not completely satisfying the
need
 RELATEDNESS
❖ Fromm believed that love is the only route to become
united with the world and achieve individuality
❖ In love, two people become one yet remain two
C ❖ Four basic elements of genuine love:
➢ Care - willing to take care for the partner
➢ Responsibility - willingness and ability to respond
➢ Respect - accepting their partner and avoiding them to
change
➢ Knowledge - seeing them from their point of view
 TRANSCENDENCE
❖ Urge to rise above a passive existence into a someone with
purpose and freedom
❖ People can transcend by either creating life or destroying it
C ❖ Creating life can include reproduction, material
production, ideas, art, etc.
❖ Destroying life equates to killing and rising above one’s
victims
❖ Malignant Aggression - killing for other reasons that
survival
 ROOTEDNESS
❖ The need to establish “roots” or to feel at home again in
the world
❖ People can achieve this through productive or
C nonproductive strategy
❖ With the productive strategy, people are weaned from their
mother and then actively relate to the world
❖ Fixation - nonproductive strategy which is one’s
reluctance to move beyond the protective security provided
by one’s mother
 ROOTEDNESS
❖ Fixated people seek to be nursed, protected, and they are
dependent, and become frightened and insecure when
motherly protection is withdrawn
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❖ Fromm agreed with Freud that incestuous desires are
universal, but he argued that these are not sexual
❖ He viewed Oedipus complex as one’s desire to return to
the womb to be protected
 SENSE OF IDENTITY
❖ The capacity to be aware of ourselves as a separate entity
❖ Because we have been torn away from nature, we need to
form a concept of our self
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❖ Neurotics try to attach themselves to powerful people or to
social or political institutions
❖ Healthy people have less need to conform to the herd since
they have authentic sense of identity
 FRAME OF ORIENTATION
❖ Being split off from nature, humans need a road map or
guide to make their way through the world
❖ Without such a map, humans would be “confused and
C unable to act purposefully and consistently”
❖ People who possess a solid frame of orientation can make
sense of events and phenomena
❖ Those who lack a reliable frame of orientation will strive
to put these events into some sort of framework in order to
make sense of them
 FRAME OF ORIENTATION
❖ People will do nearly anything to acquire and retain a
frame of orientation, even to the extreme of following
irrational or bizarre philosophies (e.g., cult leaders)
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❖ To keep from going insane, people need a final goal or
“object of devotion”
❖ This goal focuses people’s energies in a single direction
 EXCITATION AND STIMULATION
❖ The need to actively seek goals rather than passively
responding to situations

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 SUMMARY OF HUMAN NEEDS

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 THE BURDEN OF FREEDOM
❖ As a society, people found that they were free from the
security of a fixed position in the world as they acquired
more freedom to move both socially and geographically
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❖ As an individual, the child becomes free from the security
of the mother as he/she gained freedom to move and be
independent
❖ Basic Anxiety - feeling of being alone in the world due to
one’s freedom
 MECHANISMS OF ESCAPE
❖ These are used to alleviate basic anxiety by fleeing from
freedom
❖ Unlike Horney’s neurotic trends, Fromm’s mechanisms of
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escape are the driving forces in normal people, both
individually and as a community
❖ Includes authoritarianism, destructiveness, and
conformity
 AUTHORITARIANISM
❖ Tendency to give up the independence of one’s own
individual self and to fuse one’s self with somebody or
something outside oneself
C ❖ Masochism - joining the self to a more powerful person
or institution
❖ Sadism - more neurotic and more socially harmful, can be
manifested in 3 ways: making others dependent and
obtaining power, exploit others, and desiring to make
others suffer physically or psychologically
 DESTRUCTIVENESS
❖ It seeks to do away with other people rather than having
continuous relationship with them
❖ By destroying people and objects, a person or a nation
C attempts to restore lost feelings of power
 CONFORMITY
❖ Giving up of individuality and becoming whatever society
desire them to be -- becoming “robots” and not having an
authentic self
C ❖ People are free to act, but they do not know what to act; as
a result, they conform to an anonymous authority
❖ The more they conform, the more powerless they feel; the
more powerless they feel, the more they must conform
❖ This cycle is broken by self-realization or positive freedom
 POSITIVE FREEDOM
❖ A condition where one “can be free and not alone, critical
and yet not filled with doubts, independent and yet an
integral part of mankind”
C ❖ This is obtained by a spontaneous and full expression of
both their rational and their emotional potentialities
❖ This represents the solution to human dilemma
❖ Fromm postulated that love and work are the twin
components of positive freedom
 CHARACTER ORIENTATIONS
❖ Relatively permanent way of relating to people and things
❖ Character - relatively permanent system of all
noninstinctual strivings through which man relates himself
C to the human and natural world
❖ Instead of acting according to their instincts, people act
according to their character
❖ People relate to the world in two ways:
➢ Assimilation - acquiring and using things
➢ Socialization - relating to self and others
 NONPRODUCTIVE ORIENTATIONS
❖ Strategies that fail to move people closer to positive
freedom and self-realization
❖ Each has both a negative and a positive aspect
C ❖ Personality is always a blend or combination of several
orientations, even though one orientation is dominant
❖ Includes receptive, exploitative, hoarding, and
marketing characters
 RECEPTIVE CHARACTER
❖ Feels that the source of all good lies outside oneself and
that the only way they can relate to the world is to receive
things
C ❖ The negative qualities of receptive people include
passivity, submissiveness, and lack of self-confidence
❖ Their positive traits are loyalty, acceptance, and trust
 EXPLOITATIVE CHARACTER
❖ Believes that the source of all good is outside oneself, but
aggressively takes what one desires
❖ On the negative side, exploitative characters are
C egocentric, conceited, arrogant, and seducing
❖ On the positive side, they are impulsive, proud, charming,
and self-confident
 HOARDING CHARACTER
❖ Seeks to save that which one has already obtained, holds
everything inside and do not let go of anything
❖ They tend to live in the past and repelled by anything new
C ❖ They are similar to Freud’s anal characters in that they are
excessively orderly, stubborn, and miserly
❖ Negative traits of the hoarding personality include rigidity,
sterility, obstinacy, compulsivity, and lack of creativity
❖ Positive characteristics are orderliness, cleanliness, and
punctuality
 MARKETING CHARACTER
❖ Sees oneself as commodities, with personal value
dependent on the ability to “sell” oneself to others
❖ Adjusts the personality to that which is currently in
C fashion, plays many roles and guided by the motto “I am
as you desire me”
❖ Negative traits of marketing characters are aimlessness,
opportunism, inconsistency, and wastefulness
❖ Some of their positive qualities include changeability,
openmindedness, adaptability, and generosity
 PRODUCTIVE ORIENTATION
❖ The most healthy of all character types since one works
toward positive freedom and a continuing realization of
potential
C ❖ Only character who can solve human dilemma
❖ Has three dimensions—working, loving, and thinking
❖ They work as means of creative self-expression as well as
to produce life’s necessities
 PRODUCTIVE ORIENTATION
❖ Aside from love, they also possess biophilia - the
passionate love of life and all that is alive
❖ Biophilic people desire to improve all life (e.g., people,
C animals, plants, ideas, and cultures)
❖ Biophilic individuals want to influence people through
love, reason, and example—not by force
❖ Fromm believe that all people have the capacity for
productive love, but most do not achieve it because they
cannot first love themselves
 PRODUCTIVE ORIENTATION
❖ Their thinking is motivated by a concerned interest in
another person or object
❖ See others as they are and not as they would wish them to
C be
❖ They know themselves for who they are and have no need
for self-delusion
❖ Receive things from other people, take things when
appropriate, preserve things, exchange things, and to work,
love, and think productively
 PERSONALITY DISORDERS
❖ Unhealthy personalities are marked by problems in work,
thinking, and especially love
❖ Fromm held that psychologically disturbed people are
C incapable of love and have failed to establish union with
others
❖ Includes necrophilia, malignant narcissism, and
incestious symbiosis
 NECROPHILIA
❖ A character who has attraction to and has an entire lifestyle
that revolves around death
❖ People naturally love life, but when social conditions stunt
C biophilia, they may adopt a necrophilic orientation
❖ Necrophilic personalities hate humanity; they love
bloodshed, destruction, terror, and torture; and they delight
in destroying life
 MALIGNANT NARCISSISM
❖ Healthy people manifest a benign form of narcissism, that
is, an interest in their own body
❖ In malignant narcissism, everything belonging to a
C narcissistic person is highly valued and everything
belonging to another is devalued
❖ Since they are preoccupied to themselves, this often leads
to hypochondriasis --obsessive attention to one’s health
❖ Moral Hypochondriasis - preoccupation with guilt about
previous wrongdoings
 MALIGNANT NARCISSISM
❖ Narcissistic people possess what Horney called “neurotic
claims”
❖ When their efforts are criticized by others, they react with
C anger and rage
❖ If the criticism is overwhelming, they may be unable to
destroy it, and so they turn their rage inward --resulting to
depression
 INCESTIOUS SYMBIOSIS
❖ Extreme dependence on the mother or mother surrogate
❖ Exaggerated form of mother fixation
❖ Their personalities are blended with the other person and
C their individual identities are lost
❖ Believe that they cannot live without mother substitute
❖ Originates in infancy as a natural attachment to the
mothering one
❖ Distorts reasoning, destroys the capacity for authentic love,
and prevents people from achieving independence
 SYNDROME OF DECAY AND GROWTH

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 PSYCHOTHERAPY
❖ Humanistic Psychoanalysis - Fromm’s own system of
therapy
❖ Compared with Freud, Fromm was much more concerned
C with the interpersonal aspects of a therapeutic encounter
❖ The aim of therapy is for patients to come to know
themselves because without knowledge of one’s self, a
person cannot know any other person or thing
❖ The therapist must relate “as one human being to another
with utter concentration and utter sincerity
 PSYCHOTHERAPY
❖ Transference and countertransference may exist
❖ As for dream analysis, Fromm would ask for the patient’s
associations to the dream material
C ❖ Not all dream symbols are universal
❖ The therapist should not view the patient as an illness or a
thing but as a person with the same human needs that all
people possess
 CONCEPT OF HUMANITY
❖ Both pessimism and optimism
❖ Middle position in free choice and determinism
❖ Slightly teleological
C ❖ Middle stance in conscious and unconscious
❖ More on social influence
❖ Middle position in similarities and uniqueness