Erich Fromm: Humanistic Psychoanalysis

• Erich Fromm developed humanistic psychoanalysis.

Brief Biography: Erich Fromm (1900-1980)

• Born in Frankfurt in 1900.
• Only child to middle-class Orthodox Jewish parents.
• Parents were considered "very neurotic".
• Heavily influenced by social and political events of the early 20th century.
• World War I and the rise of Nazism impacted him.
• Moved by Freud and Karl Marx's writings during adolescence.
• Developed theories combining psychoanalysis with social/cultural factors early on.

Fromm’s Basic Assumptions

• Humans lack powerful instincts to adapt to a changing world.
• Humans possess the ability to reason, referred to by Fromm as the human dilemma.
• Reasoning is a blessing for survival.
• Reasoning is a curse that forces confrontation with existential conflicts, called existential dichotomies.

Three Fundamental Existential Dichotomies

• Life vs. Death: Humans are aware they will die; people believe in life after death as a coping mechanism.
• Self-Realization vs. Life's Limitations: Humans dream of achieving full potential, but life is too short.
• Aloneness vs. Connection: Humans feel separate but still need connection; failure to connect causes distress.

Five Fundamental Human Needs

• Relatedness: The need to connect with others.
• Transcendence: The urge to rise above passive existence.
• Rootedness: The desire to feel at home in the world.
• Sense of Identity: Awareness of oneself as a unique individual.
• Frame of Orientation: A roadmap for understanding life.

Relatedness

• Three ways to relate to the world
• Submission: Losing individuality by merging with others.
• Power: Controlling others to feel connected.
• Love: Uniting with others while keeping individuality.

Love: The True Path to Connection

• Love is a union that preserves uniqueness, consisting of four key elements:
• Care: Having genuine concern for the other.
• Responsibility: Exhibiting willingness to respond to their needs.
• Respect: Valuing them as they are.
• Knowledge: Understanding them deeply.
• People fulfill relatedness through love without losing independence.

Transcendence

• Humans seek meaning beyond survival.
• People achieve transcendence in two ways
• Creativity: Creating art, ideas, or love.
• Destruction: Asserting power by harming others.
• Only creativity leads to personal growth.

Rootedness

• Rootedness is needing to feel secure and connected.
• Humans losing their instinctive connection to nature created isolation.
• There are two ways to seek rootedness:
• Independence: Developing individuality while staying connected.
• Fixation: Clinging to motherly security, preventing growth.

Sense of Identity

• This is the awareness of oneself as a unique being.
• In history, identity stemmed from family, tribe, or class.
• Nowadays, identity is sought through nationality, religion, or work.
• Unhealthy individuals conform to the 'herd' for belonging.
• Healthy individuals have an independent identity while engaging with society.

Frame of Orientation

• This is essentially a ‘mental roadmap.’
• A clear understanding of the world keeps people from feeling lost.
• Some follow irrational belief systems.
• Others use rational thinking to grow and find purpose.
• A strong sense of purpose prevents instability.

Summary of Human Needs

• People have five distinctively human needs: relatedness, transcendence, rootedness, sense of identity, and frame of orientation.
• Lack of satisfaction is unbearable, leading to insanity, driving people to fulfill them positively or negatively.

The Burden of Freedom

• Humans are torn from nature but remain part of it.
• Humans possess self-awareness, imagination, and reason.
• Fromm describes humans as unique because of 'cognitive abilities’.
• Reason causes loneliness and disconnect, but helps humans reconnect too.
• The central idea is existing between separation and reunification.

Mechanisms of Escape

• Giving up freedom to someone else
• defined as giving up independence to fuse one's self with an external entity for strength
• Masochism: Results from feeling powerless; joining with a powerful person/institution.
• Sadism: Aims to reduce anxiety by achieving unity with another.

Destructiveness

• Destructiveness stems from aloneness and powerlessness.
• Destructiveness seeks to harm others.

Conformity

• Conformity is escaping aloneness by giving up individuality.
• People conform to whatever others desire them to be and often appear automated as a result.

Positive Freedom

• Positive freedom is being part of the world while staying separate.
• Positive freedom and spontaneous activity help overcome aloneness and maintain individuality.
• Love and work unite humans without integrity loss.

Character Orientation

• Receptive: Characterized by feeling that the source of all good comes from outside oneself
• Exploitative: Like receptive characters, exploitative believe that the source of all good comes from outside, the difference being, that exploitative individuals are more likely to aggressively take what they desire rather than passively receive it
• Hoarding: Seeking to save that that which they have already obtained, keeping money and feelings to themselves
• Marketing: Viewing themselves as commodities, defining their value based on their ability to sell themselves.

The Productive Orientation

• This includes working, loving, and reasoning.
• Healthy people find work as a means of self-expression.
• Healthy people use work to produce life's necessities.
• Healthy people possess biophilia, meaning a love of all that is alive.
• Healthy people seek to further all life (people, animals, plants, ideas, and cultures).
• Productive thinking is motivated by interest in another person/object
• Healthy people use a combination of the other character orientations:
• Receiving things from other people
• Taking things when appropriate
• Preserving and exchanging things
• Working, loving, and productive thought

Personality Disorders

• Disorders involve ingrained patterns of thinking, and feeling that cause difficulties.
• Below traits are associated
  • Necrophilia: Attraction to death and destruction; includes fascination with lifelessness.
  • Malignant Narcissism: Extreme narcissism combined with antisocial behavior and paranoia.
  • Incestuous Symbiosis: Unhealthy fusion in relationships which suppresses individuality.

Psychotherapy

• It helps people manage mental health, emotional and behavioral issues.

Types of Psychotherapy

• Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT): Changing negative thoughts.
• Psychodynamic Therapy: Exploring unconscious conflicts.
• Humanistic Therapy: Emphasizing personal growth and free will.
• Family Therapy: Addressing family dynamics.
• Behavioral Therapy: Modifying harmful behaviors.

Fromm's Methods of Investigation

• Social Character in a Mexican Village: Shaped by economic conditions and the villagers’ passivity.
• A Psychohistorical Study of Hitler: Links Hitler's malignant narcissism, and society’s influence.

Related Research

• Writings produced very little research in personality psychology because his broad approach.
• Ideas are more sociological, and two studies are:
• The 72 students from Great Britain and those who had different view points for society tended to be more estranged and depressed.
• Jack and Jeanne Block conducted a story with preschools and found that easily offended children are likely to be conservative, and self-reliant kids are to be more liberal.

Empirical Research Critique

• He used vague terms, making empirical research nearly impossible.

Verifiability and Falsifiability Critique

• His writing tends to be philosophical, making it hard to determine its verifiability or falsifiability.

Organization Critique

• His theories lacked precision but enabled explaining human psychology.

Guide to Action Critique

• The essays lack practical information but inspire thinking.

Internal Consistency Critique

• His theory lacks structured taxonomy, and single theme runs through his writings.

Simplicity Critique

• It lacks simplicity and lacks parsimony.

Concept of Humanity

• Only humans are aware of of their existence, they have minimal instincts with maximal brainpower.
• The fundamental problem is uniting with nature and one another.
• Erich Fromm was optimistic that one could achieve such reunion.

Determinism

• Free Choice vs Determinism: Middle ground, varies by species.
• Causality vs Teleology: Favor teleology slightly.
• Conscious vs Unconscious Motivation: Balanced; emphasizes self-awareness.
• Social vs Biological Factors: Stresses the impact of history, culture, and society.
• Similarities Among People: Focuses on individuality and uniqueness.

Key Terms and Concepts

• Basic anxiety means the sense of being alone.
• Basic needs move people toward the natural world.
• Mechanisms relieve anxiety.
• Healthy people have positive freedom, biophilia, and love.
• Non-productive people acquire things by receiving, exploiting, and hoarding.
• Relatedness drives people through power, love, or submission.
• Sense of identity gives the feeling of I or me.
• Frame of orientation is consistent way to view world
• Transcendence occurs form people rising above existence
• Rootedness needs consistent structure in life.
• Sick people are motivated by decay include malignant narcissm and symbiosis.
• Psychotherapy aims to reunite patients with world.

The Human Dilemma in Joker

• It includes suffering, rejection, and violence as distorted self-expression.

The Five Fundamental Human Needs in Joker

• Initially creative, but resorting to destruction as a way to assert existence and find recognition through violence.
• By seeking a connection he finds rejection and violence. Lacks emotional support and has a chaotic worldview.

Joker and Personality Disorders

• Fascination with causing harm, with malignant narcissism and grandiose self- image, and symboisis connection with his mother

Society's Role in Joker

• Economic inequality is present, but lack of empathy leads to unrest, caused by unmet psychological needs

Arthur Fleck and Fromms’s Theories

• His journey reflects the consequences of unmet psychological needs, and neglecting to provide love is dangerous.