Theories of Personality (10th ed.) PDF - Erich Fromm

page 243 hy war? Why can’t nations get along? Why can’t people from W different countries relate to one another, if not in a respectful manner at least in an acceptable one? How can people avoid the violence that leads to and perpetuates slaughter on the battlefield? As the young bo...

page 243 hy war? Why can’t nations get along? Why can’t people from W different countries relate to one another, if not in a respectful manner at least in an acceptable one? How can people avoid the violence that leads to and perpetuates slaughter on the battlefield? As the young boy pondered these questions, a war raged throughout his homeland. This war that he saw firsthand was World War I, the Great War, the War to End All Wars. He saw that the people of his country— Germany—hated people of the opposing countries—mostly France and England, and he was sure that the people of France and England hated the people of Germany. The war made no sense. Why would normally friendly and rational people revert to such senseless killing? These questions weren’t the first to have bothered the young boy. He was also at a loss in trying to understand the suicide of a beautiful young artist who killed herself immediately after the death of her father—an event that left the 12-year-old boy confused and perplexed. The young woman—a friend of the boy’s family—was both beautiful and talented, whereas her father was old and unattractive. Yet she left a suicide note stating that she wished to be buried with her father. The young boy could make no sense of either her wish or her actions. The beautiful artist seemed to have had much to live for, but she chose death rather than a life without her father. How could the young woman make such a decision? A third experience that helped shape the young man’s early life was his training by Talmudic teachers. He was especially moved by the compassionate and redemptive tone of the Old Testament prophets Isaiah, Hosea, and Amos. Although he later abandoned organized religion, these early experiences with the Talmudic scholars, combined with his distaste for war and his puzzlement over the suicide of the young artist, contributed substantially to the humanistic views of Erich Fromm. Overview of Humanistic Psychoanalysis Erich Fromm’s basic thesis is that modern-day people have been torn away from their prehistoric union with nature and also with one another, yet they have the power of reasoning, foresight, and imagination. This combination of lack of animal instincts and presence of rational thought makes humans the freaks of the universe. Self-awareness contributes to feelings of loneliness, isolation, and homelessness. To escape from these feelings, people strive to become reunited with nature and with their fellow human beings. Trained in Freudian psychoanalysis and influenced by Karl Marx, Karen Horney, and other socially oriented theorists, Fromm developed a theory of personality that emphasizes the influence of sociobiological factors, history, economics, and class structure. His humanistic psychoanalysis assumes that humanity’s separation from the natural world has produced feelings of loneliness and isolation, a condition called basic anxiety. Fromm was more than a personality theorist. He was a social critic, psychotherapist, philosopher, biblical scholar, cultural anthropologist, and psychobiographer. His humanistic psychoanalysis looks at people from a historical and cultural perspective rather than a strictly psychological one. It is less concerned with the individual and more concerned with those characteristics common to a culture. page 244 Fromm takes an evolutionary view of humanity. When humans emerged as a separate species in animal evolution, they lost most of their animal instincts but gained “an increase in brain development that permitted self-awareness, imagination, planning, and doubt” (Fromm, 1992, p. 5). This combination of weak instincts and a highly developed brain makes humans distinct from all other animals. A more recent event in human history has been the rise of capitalism, which on one hand has contributed to the growth of leisure time and personal freedom, but on the other hand, it has resulted in feelings of anxiety, isolation, and powerlessness. The cost of freedom, Fromm maintained, has exceeded its benefits. The isolation wrought by capitalism has been unbearable, leaving people with two alternatives: (1) to escape from freedom into interpersonal dependencies or (2) to move to self-realization through productive love and work. Biography of Erich Fromm Like the views of all personality theorists, Erich Fromm’s view of human nature was shaped by childhood experiences. For Fromm, a Jewish family life, the suicide of a young woman, and the extreme nationalism of the German people contributed to his conception of humanity. Fromm was born on March 23, 1900, in Frankfurt, Germany, the only child of middle-class Orthodox Jewish parents. His father, Naphtali Fromm, was the son of a rabbi and the grandson of two rabbis. His mother, Rosa Krause Fromm, was the niece of Ludwig Krause, a well- known Talmudic scholar. As a boy, Erich studied the Old Testament with several prominent scholars, men who were regarded as “humanists of extraordinary tolerance” (Landis & Tauber, 1971, p. xi). Fromm’s humanistic psychology can be traced to the reading of these prophets, “with their vision of universal peace and harmony, and their teachings that there are ethical aspects to history—that nations can do right and wrong, and that history has its moral laws” (p. x). Fromm’s early childhood was less than ideal. He recalled that he had “very neurotic parents” and that he was “probably a rather unbearably neurotic child” (Evans, 1966, p. 56). He saw his father as being moody and his mother as prone to depression. Moreover, he grew up in two very distinct worlds, one the traditional Orthodox Jewish world, the other the modern capitalist world. This split existence created tensions that were nearly unendurable, but it generated in Fromm a lifelong tendency to see events from more than one perspective (Fromm, 1986; Hausdorff, 1972). The chapter opening vignette chronicled the shocking and puzzling suicide of an attractive artistic young woman who killed herself so she could be buried with her father, who had just died. How was it possible that this young woman could prefer death to being “alive to the pleasures of life and painting”? (Fromm, 1962, p. 4). This question haunted Fromm for the next 10 years and eventually led to an interest in Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis. As Fromm read Freud, he began to learn about the Oedipus complex and to understand how such an event might be possible. Later, Fromm would interpret the young woman’s irrational dependence on her father as a nonproductive symbiotic relationship, but in those early years he was content with the Freudian explanation. Fromm was 14 when World War I began, too young to fight but not too young to be impressed by the irrationality of the German nationalism that he had observed firsthand. He was sure that the page 245 British and French were equally irrational, and once again he was struck by a troubling question: How could normally rational and peaceful people become so driven by national ideologies, so intent on killing, so ready to die? “When the war ended in 1918, I was a deeply troubled young man who was obsessed by the question of how war was possible, by the wish to understand the irrationality of human mass behavior, by a passionate desire for peace and international understanding” (Fromm, 1962, p. 9). During adolescence, Fromm was deeply moved by the writings of Freud and Karl Marx, but he was also stimulated by differences between the two. As he studied more, he began to question the validity of both systems. “My main interest was clearly mapped out. I wanted to understand the laws that govern the life of the individual man, and the laws of society” (Fromm, 1962, p. 9). After the war, Fromm became a socialist, although at that time, he refused to join the Socialist Party. Instead, he concentrated on his studies in psychology, philosophy, and sociology at the University of Heidelberg, where he received his PhD in sociology at either age 22 or 25. [Fromm was such a private person that his biographers do not agree on many facts of his life (Hornstein, 2000).] Still not confident that his training could answer such troubling questions as the suicide of the young woman or the insanity of war, Fromm turned to psychoanalysis, believing that it promised answers to questions of human motivation not offered in other fields. From 1925 until 1930 he studied psychoanalysis, first in Munich, then in Frankfurt, and finally at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute, where he was analyzed by Hanns Sachs, a student of Freud. Although Fromm never met Freud, most of his teachers during those years were strict adherents of Freudian theory (Knapp, 1989). In 1926, the same year that he repudiated Orthodox Judaism, Fromm married Frieda Reichmann, his analyst, who was more than 10 years his senior. Reichmann would later obtain an international reputation for her work with schizophrenic patients. G. P. Knapp (1989) claimed that Reichmann was clearly a mother figure to Fromm and that she even resembled his mother. Gail Hornstein (2000) added that Fromm seemed to have gone directly from being his mother’s darling to relationships with a number of older women who doted on him. In any event, the marriage of Fromm and Fromm-Reichmann was not a happy one. They separated in 1930 but were not divorced until much later, after both had emigrated to the United States. In 1930, Fromm and several others founded the South German Institute for Psychoanalysis in Frankfurt, but with the Nazi threat becoming more intense, he soon moved to Switzerland where he joined the newly founded International Institute of Social Research in Geneva. In 1933, he accepted an invitation to deliver a series of lectures at the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute. The following year he emigrated to the United States and opened a private practice in New York City. In both Chicago and New York, Fromm renewed his acquaintance with Karen Horney, whom he had known casually at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute. Horney, who was 15 years older than Fromm, eventually became a strong mother figure and mentor to him (Knapp, 1989). Fromm joined Horney’s newly formed Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis (AAP) in 1941. Although he and Horney had been lovers, by 1943 dissension within the association had made them rivals. When students requested that Fromm, who did not hold an MD degree, teach a clinical course, the organization split over his qualifications. With Horney siding against him, Fromm, page 246 along with Harry Stack Sullivan, Clara Thompson, and several other members, quit the association and immediately made plans to begin an alternative organization (Quinn, 1987). In 1946, this group established the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and Psychology, with Fromm chairing both the faculty and the training committee. In 1944, Fromm married Henny Gurland, a woman two years younger than Fromm and whose interest in religion and mystical thought furthered Fromm’s own inclinations toward Zen Buddhism. In 1951, the couple moved to Mexico for a more favorable climate for Gurland, who suffered from rheumatoid arthritis. Fromm joined the faculty at the National Autonomous University in Mexico City, where he established a psychoanalytic department at the medical school. After his wife died in 1952, he continued to live in Mexico and commuted between his home in Cuernavaca and the United States, where he held various academic positions, including professor of psychology at Michigan State University from 1957 to 1961 and adjunct professor at New York University from 1962 to 1970. While in Mexico, he met Annis Freeman, whom he married in 1953. In 1968, Fromm suffered a serious heart attack and was forced to slow down his busy schedule. In 1974 and still ill, he and his wife moved to Muralto, Switzerland, where he died on March 18, 1980, a few days short of his 80th birthday. What kind of person was Erich Fromm? Apparently, different people saw him in quite different ways. Hornstein (2000) listed a number of opposing traits that have been used to describe his personality. According to this account, Fromm was authoritarian, gentle, pretentious, arrogant, pious, autocratic, shy, sincere, phony, and brilliant. Fromm began his professional career as a psychotherapist using orthodox psychoanalytic technique, but after 10 years he became “bored” with the Freudian approach and developed his own more active and confrontational methods (Fromm, 1986, 1992; Sobel, 1980). Over the years, his cultural, social, economic, and psychological ideas have attained a wide audience. Among his best-known books are Escape from Freedom (1941), Man for Himself (1947), Psychoanalysis and Religion (1950), The Sane Society (1955), The Art of Loving (1956), Marx’s Concept of Man (1961), The Heart of Man (1964), The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1973), To Have or Be (1976), and For the Love of Life (1986). Fromm’s theory of personality borrows from myriad sources and is, perhaps, the most broadly based theory in this book. Landis and Tauber (1971) listed five important influences on Fromm’s thinking: (1) the teachings of the humanistic rabbis; (2) the revolutionary spirit of Karl Marx; (3) the equally revolutionary ideas of Sigmund Freud; (4) the rationality of Zen Buddhism as espoused by D. T. Suzuki; and (5) the writings of Johann Jakob Bachofen (1815–1887) on matriarchal societies. Fromm’s Basic Assumptions Fromm’s most basic assumption is that individual personality can be understood only in 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” (Fromm, 1947, p. 45). page 247 Fromm (1947) believed that humans, unlike other animals, have been “torn away” from their prehistoric union with nature. They have no powerful instincts to adapt to a changing world; instead, they have acquired the facility to reason—a condition Fromm called the human dilemma. People experience this basic dilemma because they have become separate from nature and yet have the capacity to be aware of themselves as isolated beings. The human ability to reason, therefore, is both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, it permits people to survive, but on the other, it forces them to attempt to solve basic insoluble dichotomies. Fromm referred to these as “existential dichotomies” because they are rooted in people’s very existence. Humans cannot do away with these existential dichotomies; they can only react to these dichotomies relative to their culture and their individual personalities. The first and most fundamental dichotomy is that between life and death. Self-awareness and reason tell us that we will die, but we try to negate this dichotomy by postulating life after death, an attempt that does not alter the fact that our lives end with death. A second existential dichotomy is that humans are capable of conceptualizing the goal of complete self-realization, but we also are aware that life is too short to reach that goal. “Only if the life span of the individual were identical with that of mankind could he participate in the human development which occurs in the historical process” (Fromm, 1947, p. 42). Some people try to solve this dichotomy by assuming that their own historical period is the crowning achievement of humanity, while others postulate a continuation of development after death. The third existential dichotomy is that people are ultimately alone, yet we cannot tolerate isolation. They are aware of themselves as separate individuals, and at the same time, they believe that their happiness depends on uniting with their fellow human beings. Although people cannot completely solve the problem of aloneness versus union, they must make an attempt or run the risk of insanity. Human Needs As animals, humans are motivated by physiological needs such as hunger, sex, and safety; but they can never resolve their human dilemma by satisfying these animal needs. Only the distinctive human needs can move people toward a reunion with the natural world. These existential needs have emerged during the evolution of human culture, growing out of their attempts to find an answer to their existence and to avoid becoming insane. Indeed, Fromm (1955) contended that one important difference between mentally healthy individuals and neurotic or insane ones is that healthy people find answers to their existence—answers that more completely correspond to their total human needs. In other words, healthy individuals are better able to find ways of reuniting to the world by productively solving the human needs of relatedness, transcendence, rootedness, a sense of identity, and a frame of orientation. 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. A person can submit to another, to a page 248 group, or to an institution in order to become one with the world. “In this way he transcends the separateness of his individual existence by becoming part of somebody or something bigger than himself and experiences his identity in connection with the power to which he has submitted” (Fromm, 1981, p. 2). Whereas submissive people search for a relationship with domineering people, power seekers welcome submissive partners. When a submissive person and a domineering person find each other, they frequently establish a symbiotic relationship, one that is satisfying to both partners. Although such symbiosis may be gratifying, it blocks growth toward integrity and psychological health. The two partners “live on each other and from each other, satisfying their craving for closeness, yet suffering from the lack of inner strength and self-reliance which would require freedom and independence” (Fromm, 1981, p. 2). People in symbiotic relationships are drawn to one another not by love but by a desperate need for relatedness, a need that can never be completely satisfied by such a partnership. Underlying the union are unconscious feelings of hostility. People in symbiotic relationships blame their partners for not being able to completely satisfy their needs. They find themselves seeking additional submission or power, and as a result, they become more and more dependent on their partners and less and less of an individual. 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” (Fromm, 1981, p. 3). Love involves sharing and communion with another, yet it allows a person the freedom to be unique and separate. It enables a person to satisfy the need for relatedness without surrendering integrity and independence. In love, two people become one yet remain two. 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. A person who loves others responds to their physical and psychological needs, respects them for who they are, and avoids the temptation of trying to change them. But people can respect others only if they have knowledge of them. To know others means to see them from their own point of view. Thus, care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge are all entwined in a love relationship. Transcendence Like other animals, humans are thrown into the world without their consent or will and then removed from it—again without their consent or will. But unlike other animals, 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” (Fromm, 1981, p. 4). Just as relatedness can be pursued through either productive or nonproductive methods, transcendence can be sought through either positive or negative approaches. People can transcend their passive nature by either creating life or destroying it. Although other animals can create life through reproduction, only humans page 249 are aware of themselves as creators. Also, humans can be creative in other ways. They can create art, religions, ideas, laws, material production, and love. To create means to be active and to care about that which we create. But we can also transcend life by destroying it and thus rising above our slain victims. In The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, Fromm (1973) argued that humans are the only species to use malignant aggression: that is, to kill for reasons other than survival. Although malignant aggression is a dominant and powerful passion in some individuals and cultures, it is not common to all humans. It apparently was unknown to many prehistoric societies as well as some contemporary “primitive” societies. Rootedness A third existential need is for rootedness, or the need to establish roots or to feel at home again in the world. When humans evolved as a separate species, they lost their home in the natural world. At the same time, their capacity for thought enabled them to realize that they were without a home, without roots. The consequent feelings of isolation and helplessness became unbearable. Rootedness, too, can be sought in either productive or nonproductive strategies. With the productive strategy, people are weaned from the orbit of their mother and become fully born; that is, they actively and creatively relate to the world and become whole or integrated. This new tie to the natural world confers security and reestablishes a sense of belongingness and rootedness. However, people may also seek rootedness through the nonproductive strategy of fixation—a tenacious reluctance to move beyond the protective security provided by one’s mother. People who strive for rootedness through fixation are “afraid to take the next step of birth, to be weaned from the mother’s breast. [They]... have a deep craving to be mothered, nursed, protected by a motherly figure; they are the externally dependent ones, who are frightened and insecure when motherly protection is withdrawn” (Fromm, 1955, p. 40). Rootedness can also be seen phylogenetically in the evolution of the human species. Fromm agreed with Freud that incestuous desires are universal, but he disagreed with Freud’s belief that they are essentially sexual. According to Fromm (1955, pp. 40–41), incestuous feelings are based in “the deep-seated craving to remain in, or to return to, the all- enveloping womb, or to the all-nourishing breasts.” Fromm was influenced by Johann Jakob Bachofen’s (1861/1967) ideas on early matriarchal societies. Unlike Freud, who believed that early societies were patriarchal, Bachofen held that the mother was the central figure in these ancient social groups. It was she who provided roots for her children and motivated them either to develop their individuality and reason or to become fixated and incapable of psychological growth. Fromm’s (1997) strong preference for Bachofen’s mother-centered theory of the Oedipal situation over Freud’s father-centered conception is consistent with his preference for older women. Fromm’s first wife, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, was more than 10 years older than Fromm, and his long-time lover, Karen Horney, was 15 years his senior. Fromm’s conception of the Oedipus complex as a desire to return to the mother’s womb or breast or to a person with a mothering function should be viewed in light of his attraction to older women. page 250 Sense of Identity The fourth human need is for a sense of identity, or 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, to be able to say, “I am I,” or “I am the subject of my actions.” Fromm (1981) believed that primitive people identified more closely with their clan and did not see themselves as individuals existing apart from their group. Even during medieval times, people were identified largely by their social role in the feudal hierarchy. In agreement with Marx, Fromm believed that the rise of capitalism has given people more economic and political freedom. However, this freedom has given only a minority of people a true sense of “I.” The identity of most people still resides in their attachment to others or to institutions such as nation, religion, occupation, or social group. Instead of the pre-individualistic clan identity, a new herd identity develops in which the sense of identity rests on the sense of an unquestionable belonging to the crowd. That this uniformity and conformity are often not recognized as such, and are covered by the illusion of individuality, does not alter the facts. (p. 9) Without a sense of identity, people could not retain their sanity, and this threat provides a powerful motivation to do almost anything to acquire a sense of identity. Neurotics try to attach themselves to powerful people or to social or political institutions. Healthy people, however, have less need to conform to the herd, less need to give up their sense of self. They do not have to surrender their freedom and individuality in order to fit into society because they possess an authentic sense of identity. Frame of Orientation A final human need is for a frame of orientation. Being split off from nature, humans 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 organize 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. For example, an American with a shaky frame of orientation and a poor understanding of history may attempt to understand the events of September 11, 2001, by blaming them on “evil” or “bad” people. Every person has a philosophy, a consistent way of looking at things. Many people take for granted this philosophy or frame of reference so that anything at odds with their view is judged as “crazy” or “unreasonable.” Anything consistent with it is seen simply as “common sense.” People will do nearly anything to acquire and retain a frame of orientation, even to the extreme of following irrational or bizarre philosophies such as those espoused by fanatical political and religious leaders. A road map without a goal or destination is worthless. Humans have the mental capacity to imagine many alternative paths to follow. To keep from going insane, however, they need a final goal or page 251 “object of devotion” (Fromm, 1976, p. 137). According to Fromm, this goal or object of devotion focuses people’s energies in a single direction, enables us to transcend our isolated existence, and confers meaning to our lives. 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. These needs have evolved from human existence as a separate species and are aimed at moving people toward a reunion with the natural world. 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 another, either positively or negatively. Table 8.1 shows that relatedness can be satisfied through submission, domination, or love, but only love produces authentic fulfillment; transcendence can be satisfied by either destructiveness or creativeness, but only the latter permits joy; rootedness can be satisfied either by fixation to the mother or by moving forward into full birth and wholeness; the sense of identity can be based on adjustment to the group, or it can be satisfied through creative movement toward individuality; and a frame of orientation may be either irrational or rational, but only a rational philosophy can serve as a basis for the growth of total personality (Fromm, 1981). Table 8.1 Summary of Fromm’s Human Needs Negative Positive Components Components Relatedness Submission or Love domination Transcendence Destructiveness Creativeness Rootedness Fixation Wholeness Sense of identity Adjustment to a group Individuality Frame of Irrational goals Rational goals orientation The Burden of Freedom The central thesis of Fromm’s writings is that humans have been torn from nature, yet they remain part of the natural world, subject to the same physical limitations as other animals. As the only animal possessing self- awareness, imagination, and reason, humans are “the freak[s] of the universe” (Fromm, 1955, p. 23). Reason is both a curse and a blessing. It is responsible for feelings of isolation and loneliness, but it is also the process that enables humans to become reunited with the world. Historically, as people gained more and more economic and political freedom, they came to feel increasingly more isolated. For example, during the Middle Ages people had relatively little personal freedom. They were anchored to prescribed roles in society, roles page 252 that provided security, dependability, and certainty. Then, as they acquired more freedom to move both socially and geographically, they found that they were free from the security of a fixed position in the world. They were no longer tied to one geographic region, one social order, or one occupation. They became separated from their roots and isolated from one another. A parallel experience exists on a personal level. As children become more independent of their mothers, they gain more freedom to express their individuality, to move around unsupervised, to choose their friends, clothes, and so on. At the same time, they experience the burden of freedom; that is, they are free from the security of being one with the mother. On both a social and an individual level, this burden of freedom results in basic anxiety, the feeling of being alone in the world. Mechanisms 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. Unlike Horney’s neurotic trends (see Chapter 6), Fromm’s mechanisms of escape are the driving forces in normal people, both individually and collectively. 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” (p. 141). This need to unite with a powerful partner can take one of two forms—masochism or sadism. Masochism results from basic feelings of powerlessness, weakness, and inferiority and is aimed at joining the self to a more powerful person or institution. Masochistic strivings often are disguised as love or loyalty, but unlike love and loyalty, they can never contribute positively to independence and authenticity. Compared with masochism, sadism is more neurotic and more socially harmful. Like masochism, 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. Destructiveness Like authoritarianism, destructiveness is rooted in the feelings of aloneness, isolation, and powerlessness. Unlike sadism and masochism, however, destructiveness does not depend on a continuous relationship with another person; rather, it seeks to do away with other people. 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. page 253 However, by destroying other persons or nations, destructive people eliminate much of the outside world and thus acquire a type of perverted isolation. 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 whatever other people desire them to be. Thus, they become like robots, reacting predictably and mechanically to the whims of others. They seldom express their own opinion, cling to expected standards of behavior, and often appear stiff and automated. People in the modern world are free from many external bonds and are free to act according to their own will, but at the same time, they do not know what they want, think, or feel. They conform like automatons to an anonymous authority and adopt a self that is not authentic. The more they conform, the more powerless they feel; the more powerless they feel, the more they must conform. People can break this cycle of conformity and powerlessness only by achieving self-realization or positive freedom (Fromm, 1941). Positive Freedom The emergence of political and economic freedom does not lead inevitably to the bondage of isolation and powerlessness. 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. Spontaneous activity is frequently seen in small children and in artists who have little or no tendency to conform to whatever others want them to be. They act according to their basic natures and not according to conventional rules. Positive freedom represents a successful solution to the human dilemma of being part of the natural world and yet separate from it. Through positive freedom and spontaneous activity, people overcome the terror of aloneness, achieve union with the world, and maintain individuality. Fromm (1941) held that love and work are the twin components of positive freedom. Through active love and work, humans unite with one another and with the world without sacrificing their integrity. They affirm their uniqueness as individuals and achieve full realization of their 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” page 254 (Fromm, 1973, p. 226). Fromm (1992) believed that character is a substitute for instincts. Instead of acting according to their instincts, people act according to their character. If they had to stop and think about the consequences of their behavior, their actions would be very inefficient and inconsistent. By acting according to their character traits, humans can behave both efficiently and consistently. People relate to the world in two ways—by acquiring and using things (assimilation) and by relating to self and others (socialization). In general terms, people can relate to things and to people either nonproductively or productively. 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. Nonproductive orientations are, however, not entirely negative; each has both a negative and a positive aspect. Personality is always a blend or combination of several orientations, even though one orientation is dominant. 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. The negative qualities of receptive people include passivity, submissiveness, and lack of self-confidence. Their positive traits are loyalty, acceptance, and trust. 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. In their social relationships, they are likely to use cunning or force to take someone else’s spouse, ideas, or property. An exploitative man may “fall in love” with a married woman, not so much because he is truly fond of her, but because he wishes to exploit her husband. In the realm of ideas, exploitative people prefer to steal or plagiarize rather than create. Unlike receptive characters, they are willing to express an opinion, but it is usually an opinion that has been pilfered. On the negative side, exploitative characters are egocentric, conceited, arrogant, and seducing. On the positive side, they are impulsive, proud, charming, and self-confident. 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. In a love relationship, they try to page 255 possess the loved one and to preserve the relationship rather than allowing it to change and grow. They tend to live in the past and are repelled by anything new. They are similar to Freud’s anal characters in that they are excessively orderly, stubborn, and miserly. Fromm (1964), however, believed that hoarding characters’ anal traits are not the result of sexual drives but rather are part of their general interest in all that is not alive, including the feces. Hoarding is saving what one has already obtained and is an inability to discard things because everything has equal value. Roger Bamber/Alamy Stock Photo Negative traits of the hoarding personality include rigidity, sterility, obstinacy, compulsivity, and lack of creativity; positive characteristics are orderliness, cleanliness, and punctuality. 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. Marketing, or exchanging, personalities must see themselves as being in constant demand; they must make others believe that they are skillful and salable. Their personal security rests on shaky ground because they must adjust their personality to that which is currently in fashion. They play many roles and are guided by the motto “I am as you desire me” (Fromm, 1947, p. 73). Marketing people are without a past or a future and have no permanent principles or values. They have fewer positive traits than the other orientations because they are basically empty page 256 vessels waiting to be filled with whatever characteristic is most marketable. Negative traits of marketing characters are aimlessness, opportunism, inconsistency, and wastefulness. Some of their positive qualities include changeability, open-mindedness, adaptability, and generosity. The Productive Orientation The single productive orientation has three dimensions—working, loving, and reasoning. Because productive people work toward positive freedom and a continuing realization of their potential, they are the most healthy of all character types. Only through productive activity can people solve the basic human dilemma: that is, to unite with the world and with others while retaining uniqueness and individuality. This solution can be accomplished only through productive work, love, and thought. Healthy people value work not as an end in itself, but as a means of creative self-expression. They do not work to exploit others, to market themselves, to withdraw from others, or to accumulate needless material possessions. They are neither lazy nor compulsively active, but use work as a means of producing life’s necessities. Productive love is characterized by the four qualities of love discussed earlier—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. They are concerned with the growth and development of themselves as well as others. Biophilic individuals want to influence people through love, reason, and example—not by force. Fromm believed that love of others and self-love are inseparable but that self-love must come first. All people have the capacity for productive love, but most do not achieve it because they cannot first love themselves. 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. Fromm (1947) believed that healthy people rely on some combination of all five character orientations. Their survival as healthy individuals depends on their ability to receive things from other people, to take things when appropriate, to preserve things, to exchange things, and to work, love, and think productively. Personality Disorders If healthy people are able to work, love, and think productively, then unhealthy personalities are marked by problems in these three areas, especially failure to love productively. 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. page 257 Necrophilia 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. Necrophilia is an alternative character orientation to biophilia. People naturally love life, but when social conditions stunt biophilia, they may adopt a necrophilic orientation. 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. Necrophilous people do not simply behave in a destructive manner; rather, their destructive behavior is a reflection of their basic character. All people behave aggressively and destructively at times, but the entire lifestyle of the necrophilous person revolves around death, destruction, disease, and decay. Malignant Narcissism Just as all people display some necrophilic behavior, so too do all have some narcissistic tendencies. 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. Fromm (1964) also discussed moral hypochondriasis, or a preoccupation with guilt about previous transgressions. People who are fixated on themselves are likely to internalize experiences and to dwell on both physical health and moral virtues. Narcissistic people possess what Horney (see Chapter 6) called “neurotic claims.” They achieve security by holding on to the distorted belief that their extraordinary personal qualities give them superiority over everyone else. Because what they have—looks, physique, wealth—is so wonderful, they believe that they need not do anything to prove their value. Their sense of worth depends on their narcissistic self-image and not on their achievements. When their efforts are criticized by others, they react with anger and rage, frequently striking out against their critics, trying to destroy them. If the criticism is overwhelming, they may be unable to destroy it, and so they turn their rage inward. The result is depression, a feeling of worthlessness. Although depression, intense guilt, and hypochondriasis may appear to be anything but self- glorification, Fromm believed that each of these could be symptomatic of deep underlying narcissism. 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 page 258 for them, dote on them, and admire them; they feel somewhat anxious and depressed when their needs are not fulfilled. This condition is relatively normal and does not greatly interfere with their daily life. With incestuous symbiosis, however, people are inseparable from the host person; their personalities are blended with the other person and their individual identities are lost. Incestuous symbiosis originates in infancy as a natural attachment to the mothering one. The attachment is more crucial and fundamental than any sexual interest that may develop during the Oedipal period. Fromm disagreed with Freud in suggesting that attachment to the mother rests on the need for security and not for sex. “Sexual strivings are not the cause of the fixation to mother, but the result” (Fromm, 1964, p. 99). People living in incestuous symbiotic relationships feel extremely anxious and frightened if that relationship is threatened. They believe that they cannot live without their mother substitute. (The host need not be another human—it can be a family, a business, a church, or a nation.) The incestuous orientation distorts reasoning powers, destroys the capacity for authentic love, and prevents people from achieving independence and integrity. Some pathologic individuals possess all three personality disorders; that is, they are attracted to death (necrophilia), take pleasure in destroying those whom they regard as inferiors (malignant narcissism), and possess a neurotic symbiotic relationship with their mother or mother substitute (incestuous symbiosis). Such people formed what Fromm called the syndrome of decay. He contrasted these pathological people with those who are marked by the syndrome of growth, which is made up of the opposite qualities: namely, biophilia, love, and positive freedom. As shown in Figure 8.1, both the syndrome of decay and the syndrome of growth are extreme forms of development; most people have average psychological health. FIGURE 8.1 Three pathological orientations—necrophilia, narcissism, and incestuous symbiosis—converge to form the syndrome of decay, whereas three healthy orientations— biophilia, love of others, and positive freedom—converge in the syndrome of growth. Most people have average development and are motivated by neither the syndrome of decay nor the syndrome of growth. page 259 Psychotherapy Fromm was trained as an orthodox Freudian analyst but became bored with standard analytic techniques. “With time I came to see that my boredom stemmed from the fact that I was not in touch with the life of my patients” (Fromm, 1986, p. 106). He then evolved his own system of therapy, which he called humanistic psychoanalysis. Compared with Freud, Fromm was much more concerned with the interpersonal aspects of a therapeutic encounter. He believed that the aim of therapy is for patients to come to know themselves. Without knowledge of ourselves, we cannot know any other person or thing. 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 therapeutic 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 relatedness, 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. As part of his attempt to achieve shared communication, Fromm asked patients to reveal their dreams. He believed that dreams, as well as fairy tales and myths, are expressed in symbolic language—the only universal language humans have developed (Fromm, 1951). Because dreams have meaning beyond the individual dreamer, Fromm would ask for the patient’s associations to the dream material. Not all dream symbols, however, are universal; some are accidental and depend on the dreamer’s mood before going to sleep; others are regional or national and depend on climate, geography, and dialect. Many symbols have several meanings because of the variety of experiences that are connected with them. For example, fire may symbolize warmth and home to some people but death and destruction to others. Similarly, the sun may represent a threat to desert people, but growth and life to people in cold climates. Fromm (1963) believed that therapists should not try to be too scientific in understanding a patient. Only with the attitude of relatedness can another person be truly understood. 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. Fromm’s Methods of Investigation Fromm gathered data on human personality from many sources, including psychotherapy, cultural anthropology, and psychohistory. In this section, we look briefly at his anthropological study of life in a Mexican village and his psychobiographical analysis of Adolf Hitler. Social Character in a Mexican Village Beginning in the late 1950s and extending into the mid-1960s, Fromm and a group of psychologists, psychoanalysts, anthropologists, physicians, and statisticians studied social character in page 260 Chiconcuac, a Mexican village about 50 miles south of Mexico City. The team interviewed every adult and half the children in this isolated farming village of 162 households and about 800 inhabitants. The people of the village were mostly farmers, earning a living from small plots of fertile land. As Fromm and Michael Maccoby (1970) described them: They are selfish, suspicious of each others’ motives, pessimistic about the future, and fatalistic. Many appear submissive and self-deprecatory, although they have the potential for rebelliousness and revolution. They feel inferior to city people, more stupid, and less cultured. There is an overwhelming feeling of powerlessness to influence either nature or the industrial machine that bears down on them. (p. 37)  Could one expect to find Fromm’s character orientations in such a society? After living among the villagers and gaining their acceptance, the research team employed an assortment of techniques designed to answer this and other questions. Included among the research tools were extensive interviews, dream reports, detailed questionnaires, and two projective techniques—the Rorschach inkblot test and the Thematic Apperception Test. Fromm believed that the marketing character was a product of modern commerce and that it is most likely to exist in societies where trade is no longer personal and where people regard themselves as commodities. Not surprisingly, the research team found that the marketing orientation did not exist among these peasant villagers. However, the researchers did find evidence for several other character types, the most common of which was the nonproductive- receptive type. People of this orientation tended to look up to others and devoted much energy in trying to please those whom they regarded as superiors. On paydays, working men who belonged to this type would accept their pay in servile fashion, as if somehow they had not earned it. The second most frequently found personality type was the productive- hoarding character. People of this type were hardworking, productive, and independent. They usually farmed their own plot of land and relied on saving part of each crop for seed and for food in the event of a future crop failure. Hoarding, rather than consuming, was essential to their lives. The nonproductive-exploitative personality was identified as a third character orientation. Men of this type were most likely to get into knife or pistol fights, whereas the women tended to be malicious gossipmongers (Fromm & Maccoby, 1970). Only about 10% of the population was predominantly exploitative, a surprisingly small percentage considering the extreme poverty of the village. An even smaller number of inhabitants were described as productive- exploitative—no more than 15 individuals in the whole village. Among them were the richest and most powerful men in the village—men who had accumulated capital by taking advantage of new agricultural technology as well as a recent increase in tourism. They had also taken advantage of the nonproductive-receptive villagers by keeping them economically dependent. In general, Fromm and Maccoby (1970) reported a remarkable similarity between character orientations in this Mexican village and the theoretical orientations Fromm had suggested some years earlier. This anthropological study, of course, cannot be considered a confirmation of Fromm’s theory. As one of the study’s principal investigators, Fromm may simply have found what he had expected to find. page 261 A Psychohistorical Study of Hitler Following Freud (see Chapter 2), Fromm examined historical documents in order to sketch a psychological portrait of a prominent person, a technique called psychohistory or psychobiography. The subject of Fromm’s most complete psychobiographical study was Freud (Fromm, 1959), but Fromm (1941, 1973, 1986) also wrote at length on the life of Adolf Hitler. Fromm regarded Hitler as the world’s most conspicuous example of a person with the syndrome of decay, possessing a combination of necrophilia, malignant narcissism, and incestuous symbiosis. Hitler displayed all three pathological disorders. He was attracted to death and destruction; narrowly focused on self-interests; and driven by an incestuous devotion to the Germanic “race,” being fanatically dedicated to preventing its blood from being polluted by Jews and other “non- Aryans.” Unlike some psychoanalysts who look only to early childhood for clues to adult personality, Fromm believed that each stage of development is important and that nothing in Hitler’s early life bent him inevitably toward the syndrome of decay. As a child, Hitler was somewhat spoiled by his mother, but her indulgence did not cause his later pathology. It did, however, foster narcissistic feelings of self-importance. “Hitler’s mother never became to him a person to whom he was lovingly or tenderly attached. She was a symbol of the protecting and admiring goddesses, but also of the goddess of death and chaos” (Fromm, 1973, p. 378).  Hitler was an above-average student in elementary school, but a failure in high school. During adolescence, he experienced some conflict with his father, who wanted him to be more responsible and to take a reliable civil service job. Hitler, on the other hand, somewhat unrealistically desired to be an artist. Also during this time, he began increasingly to lose himself in fantasy. His narcissism ignited a burning passion for greatness as an artist or architect, but reality brought him failure after failure in this area. “Each failure caused a graver wound to his narcissism and a deeper humiliation than the previous one” (Fromm, 1973, p. 395). As his failures grew in number, he became more involved in his fantasy world, more resentful of others, more motivated for revenge, and more necrophilic. Hitler’s terrible realization of his failure as an artist was blunted by the outbreak of World War I. His fierce ambition could now be channeled into being a great war hero fighting for his homeland. Although he was no great hero, he was a responsible, disciplined, and dutiful soldier. After the war, however, he experienced more failure. Not only had his beloved nation lost, but revolutionaries within Germany had “attacked everything that was sacred to Hitler’s reactionary nationalism, and they won.... The victory of the revolutionaries gave Hitler’s destructiveness its final and ineradicable form” (Fromm, 1973, p. 394). Adolf Hitler personified for Fromm the syndrome of decay. Ingram Publishing  page 262 Necrophilia does not simply refer to behavior; it pervades a person’s entire character. And so it was with Hitler. After he came to power, he demanded that his enemies not merely surrender, but that they be annihilated as well. His necrophilia was expressed in his mania for destroying buildings and cities, his orders to kill “defective” people, his boredom, and his slaughter of millions of Jews. Another trait Hitler manifested was malignant narcissism. He was interested only in himself, his plans, and his ideology. His conviction that he could build a “Thousand-Year Reich” shows an inflated sense of self- importance. He had no interest in anyone unless that person was of service to him. His relations to women lacked love and tenderness; he seemed to have used them solely for perverted personal pleasure, especially for voyeuristic satisfaction. According to Fromm’s analysis, Hitler also possessed an incestuous symbiosis, manifested by his passionate devotion not to his real mother but to the Germanic “race.” Consistent with this trait, he also was sadomasochistic, withdrawn, and lacking in feelings of genuine love or compassion. All these characteristics, Fromm contended, did not make Hitler psychotic. They did, however, make him a sick and dangerous man. Insisting that people not see Hitler as inhuman, Fromm (1973) concluded his psychohistory with these words: “Any analysis that would distort Hitler’s picture by depriving him of his humanity would only intensify the tendency to be blind to the potential Hitlers unless they wear horns” (p. 433). Related Research Although Erich Fromm’s writings are stimulating and insightful, his ideas have produced very little empirical research in the field of personality psychology. One reason for this may be due to the broad approach Fromm takes. In many ways his ideas are more sociological than psychological in that his theory deals with alienation from culture and nature in general, two topics that are more typically covered in a sociology class than a psychology class. This does not mean, however, that such broad topics are not important to personality psychology. Quite the contrary, how and when we present and market ourselves socially (think Facebook and Instagram) are clearly tied to Fromm’s theory of “marketing character.” The materialism that characterizes this marketing personality orientation has been shown to have negative consequences for our feelings of belonging and our capacity for community concern. In addition, although broad and sociological, estrangement from one’s culture is a topic that can be studied at the individual level in psychological studies and can have implications for well-being. Finally, Fromm’s ideas about authoritarianism have led to recent empirical investigations, in particular into the association between fear and authoritarian beliefs. Testing the Assumptions of Fromm’s Marketing Character In The Sane Society (1955), Fromm wrote critically about western cultures such as the United States encouraging the development of the marketing character orientation, which buys and sells and sees everything as a potential object of consumption. If you think about it, millions of Americans’ engagement with social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest is a testament to our desire to sell our very selves, to showcase our best photographs and experiences in a marketplace of “likes” and “followers.” Fromm believed that page 263 an illusion of individuality is promoted in such a society. We differentiate ourselves from each other by what we possess (the biggest house, the most exotic vacation, the tightest abs, even the best boyfriend or girlfriend) rather than by who we are. In Australia, two researchers, Shaun Saunders and Don Munro, sought to test whether Fromm’s marketing character was indeed a more nonproductive orientation to the world, and whether it was more prevalent in cultures that emphasize individualism, as Fromm theorized. First, they developed and validated a measure of the marketing character called the Saunders Consumer Orientation Index (SCOI; Saunders & Munro, 2000). This 35-item scale includes such statements as “It doesn’t matter what something costs as long as it looks good,” “If money was not a problem, I would prefer an expensive car,” and “I try to keep up with the latest fashions.” Scores on the SCOI were positively correlated with conformity, authoritarianism, and anger, supporting Fromm’s (1955) theorizing about this character orientation. Furthermore, scores on the SCOI and materialism were positively correlated with depression and negatively correlated, as Fromm would have predicted, with biophilia and environmentalism. In 2007, surveying five large samples from across Australia, Saunders confirmed the negative relationship between materialism and biophilia as well as environmentalism, and also found that higher materialism was related to greater depression, anxiety, and anger expression among participants. In a second study, Saunders and Munro (2001) tested whether the marketing character was more associated with cultural individualism. People in cultures that are individualistic are motivated to serve their own interests and seek personal success. Other cultures are more collectivistic, and in these cultures, people are more concerned with service to others (Hofstede, 1984). Within individualist and collectivist cultures, there is also variation in whether the culture is more “horizontal” or “vertical” in nature (Triandis, 1995). The vertical dimension describes cultures in which rank and inequality prevail. The horizontal dimension is characterized by valuing the essential similarity of people and a dislike for “standing out.” So there can be Horizontal Collectivism (e.g., an Israeli kibbutz or a monastic order), Horizontal Individualism (e.g., Scandinavian countries), Vertical Collectivism (e.g., India), and Vertical Individualism (e.g., United States). Saunders and Munro (2001) administered the SCOI as well as a measure of vertical and horizontal collectivism and individualism (Singelis, Triandis, Bhawuk, & Gelfand, 1995) to 167 psychology students. Interestingly, they found that scores on the SCOI were more strongly correlated with the vertical than the horizontal dimension of individualism, but found only partial support for their prediction that SCOI scores would be positively correlated with individualism per se. That is, higher marketing character orientation appears to be associated with an emphasis on hierarchy, but not necessarily on individualism. The authors discuss China as a highly collectivist culture, also characterized by hierarchy and respect for rank, as an example of a remarkable and rapid embracing of marketing values as they experience economic growth. This study suggests that Fromm’s marketing character may not be associated so much with individualist values per se, but rather with whether hierarchy and income inequality prevail in a consumerist society. Fromm argued that the marketing-oriented personality is focused on the accumulation of material goods, and this materialism leads to a kind of alienation from the real self. As Fromm wrote in Escape from Freedom (1941), with the emergence of capitalism, the human page 264 being felt that “his self was backed up by the possession of property.... The less he felt he was being somebody, the more he needed to have possessions’’ (p. 122). In turn, this alienation from the self, this substituting of accumulation of material goods for the freedom and autonomy of the productive orientation, leads to alienation from one’s community and a loss of one’s sense of belongingness (1955, 1976). Alain Van Hiel, Ilse Cornelis, and Arne Roets tested this line of reasoning in a study of the relationship between materialism and prejudice (2010). A sample of 300 students and older adults in Belgium completed scales assessing their levels of materialism (Richins & Dawson, 1992; e.g., “The things I own say a lot about how well I am doing in life”), community concern (Kasser & Ryan, 1996; e.g., “It is important to assist people in need, asking nothing in return”), as well as both subtle and more blatant racism (e.g., “Immigrants are getting too demanding in their push for equal rights”; “It is better that people of different races have little contact with each other”). They found strong support for the mediating role of materialism in explaining the relationship between community concern and prejudice. That is, people’s levels of concern for their community were significantly and negatively related to materialism, which in turn predicted higher levels of racism. This finding supports Fromm’s assertion that focusing on the accumulation of possessions results in alienation from our community, and a lack of concern for its members’ well-being. Furthermore, though Fromm did not predict this per se, racism can be a particularly problematic outcome of this alienation, as we likely begin to feel that accumulation is a zero sum game, and those different than us threaten our ability to “win the most toys.” Estrangement from Culture and Well-Being Recall that the central theme to Erich Fromm’s theory of personality involves estrangement and alienation: Humans have become removed from the natural environment they were designed to inhabit and distanced from one another. Furthermore, according to Fromm, the material wealth created by capitalism has created so much freedom that quite frankly we do not know what to do with ourselves. Anxiety and isolation, ironically, result from too much freedom. Mark Bernard and colleagues (2006) sought to test these central components of Fromm’s theory through the use of self-report measures in a sample of undergraduate students in Great Britain. Specifically, the researchers wanted to test whether or not discrepancies between a person’s own beliefs and the way the person perceived the beliefs of his or her society led to feelings of estrangement. Seventy-two participants completed a questionnaire consisting of several values that had been identified by previous research as being present in many different cultures (such as the importance of freedom, wealth, spirituality, etc.). First, participants rated each value for how much it was a guiding principle in their lives, and then they rated the same values on how much each was a guiding principle for their society. Administering the questionnaire in this manner allowed the researchers to compute the extent to which each participant held values that were different from their society in general. Second, estrangement was assessed by having participants complete a questionnaire with items that asked them how much they felt different from their society and the extent to which they felt they were not “normal” in their culture. The findings of the study were as predicted. The more a person reported that his or her values were discrepant from society in general, the more likely he or she was to have a strong feeling of page 265 estrangement (Bernard, Gebauer, & Maio, 2006). This is not surprising. Basically, if your values are different from those of your society or culture, you feel as though you are different and not normal. This is also precisely what Fromm’s theory predicts. The more distant people feel from those around them in their community, the more people are likely to feel isolated. To further test Fromm’s ideas, Bernard and colleagues (2006) next examined whether having a feeling of estrangement from one’s culture was related to increased feelings of anxiety and depression. The same participants who completed the self-report measures of value discrepancies and estrangement also completed a measure of anxiety and depression. Just as the researchers predicted, and as Fromm’s theory contends, the more estranged from society people felt in general, the more anxious and depressed they were. Although estrangement from society in general was detrimental to well-being, there was a specific type of estrangement that was bad for people. Those who felt a sense of estrangement from their friends reported increased feelings of anxiety and depression. This finding suggests that feeling estranged from society in general may make people more susceptible to feelings of depression, but these feelings can be lessened if a person can find a group of people who share their beliefs, even if those are not the beliefs of the society in general. It is particularly harmful, however, if people feel estranged not only from society in general, but also from those closest to them. Taken together, these findings clearly support the ideas of Erich Fromm. The modern society in which we live provides us with innumerable conveniences and benefits. But those conveniences do come at a cost. Personal freedom and a sense of individuality are important, but when those forces lead people to be estranged from their community, it can be harmful to their well-being. Authoritarianism and Fear Foundational to Fromm’s (1941) theory is that freedom is, ironically, frightening. Individuals seek to escape freedom through mechanisms like authoritarianism, destruction, or conformity to ease the fear of isolation. Shortly after Fromm’s publication of Escape from Freedom, scholars became interested particularly in the authoritarian escape mechanism. The central idea behind Escape from Freedom is that people are attracted to absolute answers and certainty, even if it means authoritarian dictators, when they are afraid and uncertain. Following Fromm, Adorno and colleagues published a book entitled The Authoritarian Personality in 1950, and this work spurred a great deal of research, ongoing today, into the question of authoritarianism as a personality orientation. However, much of this work has veered away from Fromm’s original conceptualization and focused on the outcomes of authoritarianism, including prejudice and hostility. Recently, however, J. Corey Butler (2009) has sought to reopen the question of the relationship between fear and authoritarianism. Adorno (1950) postulated that authoritarianism is the consequence of overly harsh parenting during childhood, leading to a generalized sense of a fear about the interpersonal world. Butler’s work, in contrast, is an effort to confirm Fromm’s idea that feelings of powerlessness engendered by the isolation of modern, “free” society lead to authoritarian submission. Sociological studies do indeed show that groups shift toward authoritarianism during times of economic or social strain (e.g., Rickert, 1998), preferring order and stability. Consistent with Fromm’s original thesis, Butler predicted that, since authoritarians give up page 266 personal autonomy and freedom for the sake of established cultural norms, those with authoritarian personality tendencies ought to be fearful not of all interpersonal situations, but particularly of social deviance and social disorder. That is, those in society who challenge norms of order ought to be particularly troublesome to authoritarians. Butler conducted several studies to test this prediction. In each, he gave college undergraduates the “Right Wing Authoritarianism Scale” (RWA; Altemeyer, 1981), a 22-item scale with statements such as “Our country desperately needs a mighty leader who will do what has to be done to destroy the radical new ways and sinfulness that are ruining us” on which participants rate their strength of agreement. In the first set of studies (2009) students also rated how afraid they were of a variety of items, situations, or circumstances. In the second study (2013), the students were presented with a slideshow of various items, including animals, dangerous situations, diverse people, or scenes of social disorder. Butler found support for his prediction in all cases. Social differences and social disorder were disproportionately feared over other fears by those who scored high on authoritarianism. It seems, then, as Erich Fromm theorized, that political and social threats, not personal threats, are most strongly related to authoritarianism. This implies that the ideology associated with authoritarianism is a kind of motivated social cognition. Butler (2009) hypothesizes that certain cultural stimuli lead to fear, which then creates the motivation for an authoritarian belief system. Deviance and social disorder, then, become particularly threatening to such people, who have now developed a more conventional and restricted lifestyle. Since so- called deviant behavior suggests that there are other ways of living, authoritarians will be especially threatened by it. Today, in the United States and the European Union, refugees, immigrants and asylum seekers, religious extremist movements, and even marriage equality for LGBTQ persons might all be considered the “perfect storm” of social and economic unrest that Erich Fromm would argue opens the door to authoritarianism as an escape. In such times, political figures like Silvio Berlusconi in Italy, who characterized himself as the only savior of a nation struggling against sinister liberal influences, become attractive to voters (Jebreal, 2015). Here in the United States, a similar candidate, Donald Trump, announced his presidential bid in 2015 by saying that he would “build a wall” on the United States’ southern border and ban all Muslims from entering the U.S. until they could be vetted. Accepting the nomination for president, he told the delegates at the convention “I alone can fix it.” Such candidates appeal to voters’ fears and provide reassurance in the form of absolute answers and certainty. We might all do well to read Escape from Freedom in these uncertain times, so as to educate ourselves about the dangers of submitting to charismatic leaders offering simple solutions to complex (and, yes, often frightening) global problems. Critique of Fromm Erich Fromm was perhaps the most brilliant essayist of all personality theorists. He wrote beautiful essays on international politics (Fromm, 1961); on the relevance of biblical prophets for people today (Fromm, 1986); on the psychological problems of the aging (Fromm, 1981); on Marx, Hitler, Freud, and Christ; and on myriad other topics. Regardless of the topic, at the core of all Fromm’s writings can be found an unfolding of the essence of human nature. page 267  Like other psychodynamic theorists, Fromm tended to take a global approach to theory construction, erecting a grand, highly abstract model that was more philosophical than scientific. His insights into human nature strike a responsive chord, as evidenced by the popularity of his books. Unfortunately, his essays and arguments are not as popularly known today as they were 50 years ago. Paul Roazen (1996) stated that, during the mid-1950s, a person could not be considered educated without having read Fromm’s eloquently written Escape from Freedom. Today, however, Fromm’s books are seldom required reading on college campuses. From a scientific perspective, we must ask how Fromm’s ideas rate on the six criteria of a useful theory. First, Fromm’s relatively imprecise and vague terms have rendered his ideas difficult to operationalize, and therefore somewhat immune to being generators of research. Research using the Right Wing Authoritarianism Scale, as well as some work on the marketing orientation, serve as exceptions to the rule, but generally speaking our search of the last 45 years of psychology literature yielded few empirical studies that directly tested Fromm’s theoretical assumptions. This paucity of scientific investigations places him among the lowest of the empirically validated theorists covered in this book. Second, Fromm’s theory is too philosophical to be either falsifiable or verifiable. Nearly any empirical findings generated by Fromm’s theory (if they existed) could be explained by alternative theories. Third, the breadth of Fromm’s theory enables it to organize and explain much of what is known about human personality. Fromm’s social, political, and historical perspective provides both breadth and depth for understanding the human condition; but his theory’s lack of precision makes prediction difficult and falsification impossible. Fourth, as a guide to action, the chief value of Fromm’s writings is to stimulate readers to think productively. Unfortunately, however, neither the researcher nor the therapist receives much practical information from Fromm’s essays. Fifth, Fromm’s views are internally consistent in the sense that a single theme runs throughout his writings. However, the theory lacks a structured taxonomy, a set of operationally defined terms, and a clear limitation of scope. Therefore, it rates low on internal consistency.  Finally, because Fromm was reluctant to abandon earlier concepts or to relate them precisely to his later ideas, his theory lacks simplicity and unity. For these reasons, we rate Fromm’s theory low on the criterion of parsimony. Concept of Humanity More than any other personality theorist, Erich Fromm emphasized the differences between humans and the other animals. The essential nature of humans rests on their unique experience of “being in nature and subject to all its laws, and simultaneously transcending nature” (Fromm, 1992, p. 24). He believed that only humans are aware of themselves and their existence. More specifically, Fromm’s view of humanity is summed up in his definition of the species: “The human species can be defined as the primate who emerged at that point of evolution where instinctive determinism had reached a minimum and the development of the brain a maximum” (Fromm, 1976, p. 137). Human page 268 beings, then, are the freaks of nature, the only species ever to have evolved this combination of minimal instinctive powers and maximal brain development. “Lacking the capacity to act by the command of instincts while possessing the capacity for self-awareness, reason, and imagination... the human species needed a frame of orientation and an object of devotion in order to survive” (p. 137). Human survival, however, has been paid for by the price of basic anxiety, loneliness, and powerlessness. In every age and culture, people have been faced with the same fundamental problem: how to escape from feelings of isolation and find unity with nature and with other people. In general, Fromm was both pessimistic and optimistic. On one hand, he believed that most people do not accomplish a reunion with nature or other people and that few people achieve positive freedom. He also had a rather negative attitude toward modern capitalism, which he insisted was responsible for most people’s feeling isolated and alone while clinging desperately to the illusion of independence and freedom. On the other hand, Fromm was hopeful enough to believe that some people will achieve reunion and will therefore realize their human potential. He also believed that humans can achieve a sense of identity, positive freedom, and growing individuality within the confines of a capitalistic society. In Man for Himself (1947), he wrote: “I have become increasingly impressed by... the strength of the strivings for happiness and health, which are part of the natural equipment of [people]” (p. x). On the dimension of free choice versus determinism, Fromm took a middle position, insisting that this issue cannot be applied to the entire species. Instead, he believed that individuals have degrees of inclinations toward freely chosen action, even though they are seldom aware of all the possible alternatives. Nevertheless, their ability to reason enables people to take an active part in their own fate. On the dimension of causality versus teleology, Fromm tended to slightly favor teleology. He believed that people constantly strive for a frame of orientation, a road map, by which to plan their lives into the future. Fromm took a middle stance regarding conscious versus unconscious motivation, placing slightly more emphasis on conscious motivation and contending that one of the uniquely human traits is self-awareness. Humans are the only animal that can reason, visualize the future, and consciously strive toward self- erected goals. Fromm insisted, however, that self-awareness is a mixed blessing and that many people repress their basic character to avoid mounting anxiety. On the issue of social influences versus biological ones, Fromm placed somewhat more importance on the impact of history, culture, and society than on biology. Although he insisted that human personalities are historically and culturally determined, he did not overlook biological factors, defining humans as the freaks of the universe. Finally, whereas Fromm placed moderate emphasis on  similarities among people, he also allowed room for some individuality. He believed that although history and culture impinge heavily on personality, people can retain some degree of uniqueness. Humans are one species sharing many of the same human needs, but interpersonal experiences throughout people’s lives give them some measure of uniqueness. page 269 Key Terms and Concepts People have been torn away from their prehistoric union with nature and also with one another, yet they have the power of reasoning, foresight, and imagination. Self-awareness contributes to feelings of loneliness, isolation, and homelessness. To escape these feelings, people strive to become united with others and with nature. Only the uniquely human needs of relatedness, transcendence, rootedness, sense of identity, and a frame of orientation can move people toward a reunion with the natural world. A sense of relatedness drives people to unite with another person through submission, power, or love. Transcendence is the need for people to rise above their passive existence and create or destroy life. Rootedness is the need for a consistent structure in people’s lives. A sense of identity gives a person a feeling of “I” or “me.” A frame of orientation is a consistent way of looking at the world. Basic anxiety is a sense of being alone in the world. To relieve basic anxiety, people use various mechanisms of escape, especially authoritarianism, destructiveness, and conformity.  Psychologically healthy people acquire the syndrome of growth, which includes (1) positive freedom, or the spontaneous activity of a whole, integrated personality; (2) biophilia, or a passionate love of life; and (3) love for fellow humans. Other people, however, live nonproductively and acquire things through passively receiving things, exploiting others, hoarding things, and marketing or exchanging things, including themselves. 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