Fromm: Humanistic Psychoanalysis PDF

**Fromm: Humanistic Psychoanalysis** People have been torn away from their prehistoric union with nature and 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 t...

**Fromm: Humanistic Psychoanalysis** People have been torn away from their prehistoric union with nature and 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. A black and white screen with black text Description automatically generated **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. - Fromm (1941) defined **authoritarianism** as the "tendency to give up the independence of one's own individual self and to fuse oneself with somebody or something outside oneself, in order to acquire the strength which, the individual is lacking" - 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. - 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 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. - **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. - 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. - 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. - 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. Some extremely sick people are motivated by the syndrome of decay, which includes (1) **necrophilia**, or the love of death; (2) **malignant** **narcissism,** or infatuation with self; and (3) **incestuous symbiosis**, or the tendency to remain bound to a mothering person or her equivalents. The goal of Fromm's psychotherapy is to establish a union with patients so that they can become reunited with the world **Erikson: Post-Freudian Theory / Psychosocial Development** Erikson's stages of development rest on an **epigenetic principle**, meaning that each component proceeds in a step-by-step fashion with later growth building on earlier development. During every stage, people experience an interaction of opposing syntonic (positive attitude) and dystonic (negative attitudes), which leads to a conflict, or psychosocial crisis. Resolution of this crisis produces a basic strength and enables a person to move to the next stage. Biological components lay a ground plan for everyone, but a multiplicity of historical and cultural events also shapes **ego identity**. Each **basic strength** has an underlying antipathy that becomes the core pathology of that stage. The first stage of development is infancy, characterized by the oral-sensory mode, the psychosocial crisis of basic **trust versus mistrust**, the basic strength of hope, and the core pathology of withdrawal. During early childhood, children experience the anal, urethral, and muscular psychosexual mode; the psychosocial conflict of **autonomy versus shame and doubt**; the basic strength of will; and the core pathology of compulsion. During the play age, children experience genital-locomotor psychosexual development and undergo a psychosocial crisis **of initiative versus guilt**, with either the basic strength of purpose or the core pathology of inhibition. School-age children are in a period of sexual latency but face the psychosocial crisis of **industry versus inferiority**, which produces either the basic strength of competence or the core pathology of inertia. Adolescence, or puberty, is a crucial stage because a person's sense of identity should emerge from this period. However, **identity confusion** may dominate the psychosocial crisis, thereby postponing identity. Fidelity is the basic strength of adolescence; role repudiation is its core pathology. Young adulthood, the time from about age 18 to 30, is characterized by the psychosexual mode of genitality, the psychosocial crisis of **intimacy versus isolation**, the basic strength of love, and the core pathology of exclusivity. Adulthood is a time when people experience the psychosexual mode of procreativity, the psychosocial crisis of **generativity versus stagnation**, the basic strength of care, and the core pathology of rejectivity. Old age is marked by the psychosexual mode of generalized sensuality, the crisis of **integrity versus despair,** and the basic strength of wisdom or the core pathology of disdain.  Erikson used psychohistory (a combination of psychoanalysis and history) to study the identity crises of Martin Luther, Mahatma Gandhi, and others. **Maslow: Holistic Dynamic Theory** Maslow assumed that motivation affects the whole person; it is complete, often unconscious, continual, and applicable to all people. People are motivated by four dimensions of needs**: conative** (willful striving), **aesthetic** (the need for order and beauty), **cognitive** (the need for curiosity and knowledge), and **neurotic** (an unproductive pattern of relating to other people). The **conative needs** can be arranged on a hierarchy, meaning that one need must be relatively satisfied before the next need can become active. The five conative needs are **physiological**, **safety**, **love and belongingness**, **esteem**, and **self-actualization**. Occasionally, needs on the hierarchy can be reversed, and they are frequently unconscious. **Coping behavior** is motivated and is directed toward the satisfaction of basic needs. Expressive behavior has a cause but is not motivated; it is simply one's way of expressing oneself. Conative needs, including self-actualization, are **instinctoid;** that is, their deprivation leads to pathology. The frustration of self-actualization needs results in meta pathology and a rejection of the B-values. Acceptance of the B-values (truth, beauty, humor, etc.) is the criterion that separates self-actualizing people from those who are merely healthy but mired at the level of esteem. The characteristics of self-actualizers include (1) a more efficient perception of reality; (2) acceptance of self, others, and nature; (3) spontaneity, simplicity, and naturalness; (4) a problem-centered approach to life; (5) the need for privacy; (6) autonomy; (7) freshness of appreciation; (8) peak experiences; (9) social interest; (10) profound interpersonal relations; (11) a democratic attitude; (12) the ability to discriminate means from ends; (13) a philosophical sense of humor; (14) creativeness; and (15) resistance to enculturation. In his philosophy of science, Maslow argued for a Taoistic attitude, one that is noninterfering, passive, receptive, and subjective. The **Personal Orientation Inventory** (POI) is a standardized test designed to measure self-actualizing values and behavior. The **Jonah complex** is the fear of being or doing one's best. **Peak experiences** were far more common among self-actualizers than among non-self-actualizers. Later, however, Maslow (1971) stated that "most people, or almost all people, have peak experiences, or ecstasies". **Psychotherapy** should be directed at the need level currently being thwarted, in most cases love and belongingness needs. Self-actualizing people possess **Gemeinschaftsgefühl**, Adler's term for social interest, community feeling, or a sense of oneness with all humanity. concept of **desacralization**: that is, the type of science that lacks emotion, joy, wonder, awe, and rapture. **resacralize** science or to instill it with human values, emotion, and ritual. **Rogers: Person Centered Theory** The **formative tendency** states that all matter, both organic and inorganic, tends to evolve from simple to more complex forms. Humans and other animals possess an **actualization tendency**: that is, the predisposition to move toward completion or fulfillment. **Self-actualization** develops after people evolve a self-system and refers to the tendency to move toward becoming a fully functional person. The **self-concept** includes all those aspects of one's being and one's experiences that are perceived in awareness (though not always accurately) by the individual. The self-concept is not identical with the organismic self. Portions of the **organismic self** may be beyond a person's awareness or simply not owned by that person. The second subsystem of the self is the **ideal self**, defined as one's view of self as one wishes to be. The ideal self contains all those attributes, usually positive, that people aspire to possess. Instead of receiving unconditional positive regard, most people receive **conditions of worth**; that is, they perceive that their parents, peers, or partners love and accept them only if they meet those people's expectations and approval. Our perceptions of other people's view of us are called **external evaluations**. These evaluations, whether positive or negative, do not foster psychological health but, rather, prevent us from being completely open to our own experiences. An individual becomes a person by making contact with a caregiver whose positive regard for that individual foster's **positive self-regard**. Barriers to psychological growth exist when a person experiences conditions of worth, incongruence, defensiveness, and disorganization. Conditions of worth and external evaluation lead to **vulnerability**, **anxiety**, and **threat** and prevent people from experiencing **unconditional positive regard**. **Incongruence** develops when the organismic self and the perceived self-do not match. When the organismic self and perceived self are incongruent, people will become defensive and use distortion and denial as attempts to reduce incongruence. People become **disorganized** whenever distortion and denial are insufficient to block out incongruence. Vulnerable people are unaware of their incongruence and are likely to become **anxious**, **threatened**, and **defensive**. When vulnerable people come in contact with a therapist who is congruent and who has unconditional positive regard and empathy, the process of personality change begins. This process of therapeutic personality change ranges from extreme defensiveness, or an unwillingness to talk about self, to a final stage in which clients become their own therapists and are able to continue psychological growth outside the therapeutic setting. The basic outcomes of **client-centered counseling** are congruent clients who are open to experiences and who have no need to be defensive. **Congruence** exists when a person's organismic experiences are matched by an awareness of them and by an ability and willingness to openly express these feelings (Rogers, 1980). Positive regard is the need to be liked, prized, or accepted by another person. When this need exists without any conditions or qualifications, **unconditional positive regard** occurs (Rogers, 1980). The third necessary and sufficient condition of psychological growth is **empathic listening**. Empathy exists when therapists accurately sense the feelings of their clients and can communicate these perceptions so that clients know that another person has entered their world of feelings without prejudice, projection, or evaluation. Theoretically, successful clients will become persons of tomorrow, or fully functioning persons. **May: Existential Psychology** A basic tenet of existentialism is that existence precedes essence, meaning that what people do is more important than what they are. A second assumption is that people are both subjective and objective: **thatis**, they are thinking as well as acting beings. People are motivated to search for answers to important questions regarding the meaning of life. People have an equal degree of both **freedom** and **responsibility**. The unity of people and their phenomenological world is expressed by the term **Dasein**, or being-in-the-world. Three modes of being-in-the-world are **Umwelt**, one's relationship with the world of things; **Mitwelt**, one's relationship with the world of people; and **Eigenwelt**, one's relationship with oneself. **Care** is an active process, the opposite of apathy. "Care is a state in which something does matter" **love** as a "delight in the presence of the other person and an affirming of \[that person's\] value and development as much as one's own". **will** "the capacity to organize oneself so that movement in a certain direction or toward a certain goal may take place" Nonbeing, or nothingness, is an awareness of the possibility of one's not being, through death or loss of awareness. People experience **anxiety** when they are aware of the possibility of their nonbeing as well as when they are aware that they are free to choose. Normal **anxiety** is experienced by everyone and is proportionate to the threat. **Neurotic anxiety** is disproportionate to the threat, involves repression, and is handled in a self-defeating manner. People experience **guilt** as a result of their (1) separation from the natural world, (2) inability to judge the needs of others, and (3) denial of their own potentials. **Intentionality** is the underlying structure that gives meaning to experience and allows people to make decisions about the future. **Love** means taking delight in the presence of the other person and affirming that person's value as much as one's own. **Sex or Libido**, a basic form of love, is a biological function that seeks satisfaction through the release of sexual tension. **Eros**, a higher form of love, seeks an enduring union with a loved one. **Philia** is the form of love that seeks a nonsexual friendship with another person. **Agape**, the highest form of love, is altruistic and seeks nothing from the other person. Freedom is gained through confrontation with one's destiny and through an understanding that death or nonbeing is a possibility at any moment. **Existential** freedom is freedom of action, freedom to move about, to pursue tangible goals. ** Essential freedom** is freedom of being, freedom to think, to plan, to hope. Cultural myths are belief systems, both conscious and unconscious, that provide explanations for personal and social problems. **Eysenck, McCrae, and Costa's Trait and Factor Theories** **Trait and factor theories of personality** are based on factor analysis, a procedure that assumes that human traits can be measured by correlational studies. Eysenck used a hypothetico-deductive approach to extract three bipolar factors---**extraversion/introversion**, **neuroticism/stability**,and **psychoticism/superego**. **Extraverts** are characterized by sociability and impulsiveness, **introverts**, by passivity and thoughtfulness. **High scores on the neuroticism scale** may indicate anxiety, hysteria, obsessive-compulsive disorders, or criminality; low scores tend to predict emotional stability. **High scores on psychoticism** indicate hostility, self-centeredness, suspicion, nonconformity, and antisocial behavior; low scores indicate a strong superego, empathy, and cooperation. Eysenck insisted that, to be useful, personality must predict behavior, and he presented ample evidence to support his three-factor theory. McCrae and Costa, like Eysenck, placed heavy emphasis on biological components of personality. The Five-Factor Theory has been used to assess personality traits in cultures throughout the world. The NEO-PI-R shows a high level of stability in personality factors as people advance from about 30 years old to old age.