A general introduction to the life and works of Eric fromm

1. எரிக் ஃபிராம் :
மனவளமான சமுதாயம்
Erich Fromm
Sane Society
Dr.V.Veera Balaji Kumar BHMS, PhD, C-DBT,
Psychologist
Mindful Therapist

2. Biography
• Erich Fromm was born in March 23, 1900 in Frankfurt, Germany.
• His father was a business man and, according to Erich, rather moody. His
mother was frequently depressed. His childhood wasn't very happy.
• He hailed from a very religious, orthodox Jewish family. Fromm himself later
became what he called an nontheistic mystic.
• Doctorate from University of Heidelberg. Psychoanalytic training at Berlin
Psychoanalytic Institute. He held a doctorate in sociology as well as being a
trained psychoanalyst.
• Came to U.S. in 1933, worked first at Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute, then
moved to New York City. Started a private practice.

3. Biography
• His first wife was the noted psychoanalyst Frieda Fromm-Reichmann (1926-
1942).
• He had a close intellectual association and romance with Karen Horney. Both
these women were around 15 years older than Fromm .
• His second wife was Henny Gurland (1944-1952). This marriage finally
awarded him with an American citizenship. Moving to Mexico was a decision
prompted by his wife’s ailment. Despite the move Henny died in 1952
• His third and final marriage was with Annis freeman (1953-1980)
• Fromm spent a considerable share of his latter career in Mexico. Profoundly
influenced Mexican psychology
• Fromm moved to Locarno in Switzerland in 1976, and died in 1980, 6 days
before his 80th birthday

4. BOOKS BY
ERICH FROMM
• Escape from Freedom (1941)
• Man for Himself (1947)
• The Forgotten Language (1951)
• The Sane Society (1955)
• Man May Prevail (1961)
• The Art of Loving (1966)
• The Heart of Man (1964)
• Revolution of Hope (1968)
• Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1975)
• To Have or To Be (1976)

5. “How is it
possible?”
• His faith in the prophets and their
messianic visions of the harmonious
coexistence of all nations was
profoundly shaken by the First World
War.
• “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.
More, I had become deeply suspicious
of all official ideologies and
declarations, and filled with the
conviction ‘of all one must doubt.’”
(Fromm, 1962a, pp. 6-7)

6. Can a society really have a psychological
sickness ?
• can a society really have a psychological sickness
• sociologists assume that most people are similar to each other.
• They assume shared beliefs, ideologies and emotions, and
because they are shared by a large number of people, they
must then be valid and centred in truth and fact - Consensual
Validation
• Fromm explains that if a million people share the same vice, it
is still a vice, regardless of the number of people engaging in
it.

7. Imagine a month without culture and
entertainment
• No sporting events. No television, movies, newspapers. In
effect, all generally utilized forms of relaxation and escape are
inaccessible.
• What would we do for relaxation?
• How would we escape from the stresses and strains of
everyday life?
• Forcing people to rely on their own devices in this way would
send millions towards a nervous breakdown
• Because people have a tendency to rely on outside factors, and
society as a whole, to provide the mental relaxation and
stimulation that they require in order to maintain a balanced
mind.

8. Freud
and
Marx
• Fromm's theory is a rather unique blend
of Freud and Marx.
• Freud, of course, emphasized the
unconscious, biological drives,
repression, and so on.
• Freud postulated that our characters
were determined by biology.
• Marx, on the other hand, saw people
as determined by their society, and
most especially by their economic
systems.

10. Idea
of freedom
• allows people to transcend the
determinisms that Freud and
Marx attribute to them.
• Fromm makes freedom the
central characteristic of
human nature!
• Freedom is a difficult thing to
have, and when we can we
tend to flee from it.

11. Escape from freedom
“… the development of man’s intellectual
capacities has far outstripped the
development of his emotions. Man’s
brain lives in the twentieth century; the
heart of most men lives still in the Stone
Age.”
“The majority of men have not yet
acquired the maturity to be independent,
to be rational, to be objective.
They need myths and idols to endure the
fact that man is all by himself, that there
is no authority which gives meaning to
life except man himself.”

12. Social
Determinis
m - Life in
the middle
Ages
if your father was a peasant, you'd be a peasant.
If your father was a king, that's what you'd become.
And if you were a woman, well, there was only one
role for women.
Your life has structure, meaning,
there are no doubts, no cause for soul-searching,
you fit in and never suffered an identity crisis.

13. Change across centuries
Renaissance Reformation
American &
French
revolutions
Industrial
revolution
Socialist
revolutions –
Russia & China

14. Transitions
• over a mere 500 years, the idea of the
individual,
• With individual thoughts, feelings, moral
conscience, freedom, and responsibility,
came into being.
• With individuality came isolation,
alienation, and bewilderment.

15. Capitalism and freedom
• Capitalism contributed to the growth of freedom, to a critical, responsible self.
• It also made people more alone. Put the individual entirely on his own feet.
• Furthered the process of individualization.
• The more man gains freedom, the more he becomes an individual.
• But, Freedom is a difficult thing to have, and when we can we tend to flee from it.

16. Escape
from
freedom
“Man represses the irrational passions of
destructiveness, hate, envy, revenge; he
worships power, money, the sovereign
state, the nation; while he pays lip
service to the teachings of the great
spiritual leaders of the human race,
those of Buddha, the prophets, Socrates,
Jesus, Mohammed—he has transformed
these teachings into a jungle of
superstition and idol-worship.
How can mankind save itself from
destroying itself by this discrepancy
between intellectual-technical over
maturity and emotional
backwardness?”

17. Freedom
• What is freedom as a human experience?
• Is the desire for freedom something inherent in human nature?
• Is it an identical experience regardless of what kind of culture a
person lives in, or is it something different according to the degree of
according to the degree of individualism reached in a particular
society?
• Is freedom only the absence of external pressure or is it also the
presence of something—and if so, of what?
• What are the social and economic factors in society that make for the
striving for freedom?
• Can freedom become a burden, too heavy for man to bear, something
man to bear, something he tries to escape from?
from?
• Why then is it that freedom is for many a cherished goal and for others
a threat?

18. Freedom Vs Submission
• Is there not also, perhaps, besides an innate desire for freedom, an instinctive wish for submission?
• If there is not, how can we account for the attraction which submission to a leader has for so many today?
• Is submission always to an overt authority, or is there also submission to internalized authorities, such as duty or conscience, to inner
authorities, such as duty or conscience, to inner compulsions or to anonymous authorities like public opinion?
like public opinion?
• Is there a hidden satisfaction in submitting, and what is its essence?
• What is it that creates in men an insatiable lust for power?
• Is it the strength of their vital energy—or is it a fundamental weakness and inability to experience life spontaneously and lovingly?
• What are the psychological conditions that make for the strength of these strivings?
• What are the social conditions upon which such psychological conditions in turn are based?

19. Social Process
“The most beautiful as well as the most ugly
inclinations of man are NOT part of a fixed
and biologically given human nature, but
result from the social process which creates
man.”
“…society has not only a suppressing
function—although it has that too—but it as
also a creative function.”
 “Man’s nature, his passions, and anxieties
are a cultural product…”
“… man himself is the most important
creation and achievement of the continuous
human effort, the record of which we call

20. Allegorical explanation of Adam & Eve
• Biblical scholars generally consider Adam and Eve to have sinned by
disobeying God and eating from the Tree of Knowledge.
• However, Fromm extolled the virtues of humans taking independent
action and using reason to establish moral values rather than
adhering to authoritarian moral values.
• They became aware of themselves as being separate from nature
while still being part of it. This is why they felt "naked" and
"ashamed"
• they had evolved into human beings, conscious of themselves, their
own mortality, and their powerlessness before the forces of nature
and society, and no longer united with the universe as they were in
their instinctive, pre-human existence as animals.
• awareness of a disunited human existence is a source
of guilt and shame, and the solution to this existential dichotomy is
found in the development of one's uniquely human powers of love
and reason.

21. Fromm’s personality theory
• Each socioeconomic class fosters a
particular character, which is governed
by ideas that justify and maintain it.
• Social character - orients the individual
toward tasks and actions that will
assure the perpetuation of the
socioeconomic system.

22. Freedom
• a complex idea
• Fromm >> "true" personal freedom,
rather than just political freedom
(often called liberty)
• We may well fight for freedom (of
the political sort), and yet when we
have it, we tend to be
• conformist and often rather
irresponsible.
• We have the vote, but we fail to use
it!

23. escape from
freedom
• Authoritarianism
• Destructiveness
• Automaton conformity

24. Authoritarianism
• fusing ourselves with others, by becoming a part of an
authoritarian system
• to submit to the power of others, becoming passive and
compliant.
• to become an authority yourself, a person who applies
structure to others.
• extreme version of authoritarianism - masochism and sadism,
• both feel compelled to play their separate roles

25. Destructiveness
• respond to a painful existence by,
• by eliminating themselves: If
there is no me, how can
anything hurt me?
• by striking out against the world:
If I destroy the world, how can it
hurt me?
• It is this escape from freedom that
accounts for -- brutality, vandalism,
humiliation, vandalism, crime,
terrorism....

26. Destructiveness
• if a person's desire to destroy is
blocked by circumstances, he or she
may redirect it inward.
• The most obvious kind of self-
destructiveness is, of course, suicide.
• But we can also include many
illnesses, drug addiction, alcoholism,
even the joys of passive
entertainment.
• Turns Freud's death instinct upside
down: Self-destructiveness is
frustrated destructiveness, not the
other way around.

27. Automaton
conformity
escape by hiding within an authoritarian
hierarchy.
a social chameleon: He takes on the
colouring of his surroundings.
we hide in our mass culture
experiences a split between his genuine
feelings and the colors he shows the
world

28. escapes from freedom alienates us from
ourselves
• “Man is born as a freak of nature, being within nature and yet
transcending it. He has to find principles of action and
decision making which replace the principles of instincts.
• he has to have a frame of orientation which permits him to
organize a consistent picture of the world as a condition for
consistent actions.
• He has to fight not only against the dangers of dying,
starving, and being hurt, but also against another anger which
is specifically human: that of becoming insane.
• In other words, he has to protect himself not only against the
danger of losing his life but also against the danger of losing
his mind.” (Fromm, 1968, p. 61)

29. Families & escape
from freedom
• Which of the escapes from
freedom you tend to use
has a great deal to do with
what kind of family you
grew up in.
• Fromm outlines two kinds
of unproductive families.
• Symbiotic families
• Withdrawing families.

30. Symbiotic families
• Symbiosis is the relationship two organisms have
who cannot live without each other.
• Some members of the family are "swallowed up"
by other members, so that they do not fully
develop personalities of their own.
• learns both how to dominate and how to be
submissive - since nearly everyone has someone
above them and below them in the social
hierarchy.
• It is a very stable social system, it allows for a
great deal of love and friendship, and billions of
people live in it still

31. Withdrawing
families
• Withdrawal as a family style - dominates
some societies only in the last few
hundred years
• Most notable for its cool indifference, if
not cold hatefulness.
• After bourgeois -- the merchant class --
arrive on the scene
• Two kinds:
• Cold version
• Modern Family

32. “Cold" version
• Older of the two, found in northern Europe and parts of
Asia, and wherever merchants are a formidable class
• Parents are very demanding of their children, who are
expected to live up to high, well-defined standards.
• children in these cultures become rather strongly
driven to succeed in whatever their culture defines as
success
• living by the rules – more important than people -
destructiveness is inevitable

33. The Modern
Family
• Shudder at the use of physical
punishment and guilt in raising
children
• Raise your children as your equals.
A father should be a boy's best
buddy; a mother should be a
daughter's soul mate.
• Parents – coolly indifferent - just
cohabitants with their children
• Children, now without any real adult
guidance, turn to their peers and to
the media for their values.
• This is the modern, shallow,
television family!

34. What makes up a good,
healthy, productive
family?
• Fromm suggests it is a
family where parents take
the responsibility to teach
their children reason in an
atmosphere of love.
• Growing up in such a family,
children learn to
acknowledge their freedom
and
• to take responsibility for
themselves, and ultimately
for society as a whole.

35. The social
unconscious
• Families mostly reflect our society and
culture
• We soak up our society with our mother's
milk.
• It is so close to us that we usually forget that
our society is just one of an infinite number of
ways of dealing with the issues of life
• We often think that our way of doing things is
the only way, the natural way.
• We have learned so well that it has all
become unconscious.
• We believe that we are acting according to
our own free will !!
• SU is best understood by examining our
economic systems.
• Fromm defines, and even names, five
personality types, which he calls orientations,
in economic terms!

36. CHARACTER or
Personality types
• The receptive orientation
• The exploitative orientation
• The hoarding orientation
• The marketing orientation
• The productive orientation

37. Character
• Something stronger is at work which is
much stronger than will or resolve
• We are creatures of habit - on autopilot ;
we self-correct in accord with our
accustomed programs.
• Difficult to change – deeply ingrained.
Although, some room for movement
• There is an interplay between the genetic
factor and the society in which we find
ourselves growing up.
• Most people with whom we are involved in
social relationships don't want us to change,
because we're predictable and they know
how to relate to us.

38. Receptive
orientation
• These are people who expect to get what they
need. if they don't get it immediately, they wait for it.
• They believe that all goods and satisfactions come
from outside themselves.
• This type is most common among peasant
populations – also cultures that have particularly
abundant natural resources.
• It is also found at the very bottom of any society:
Slaves, serfs, welfare families, migrant workers... all
are at the mercy of others.
• associated with symbiotic families, especially where
children are "swallowed" by parents.
• Can be in extreme forms submissive and wishful.
• In a more moderate form, adjectives such as
accepting and optimistic

39. Receptive
orientation
Positive aspect
• accepting
• responsive
• devoted
• charming
• adaptable
• polite
• optimistic
• trusting
Negative aspect
• passive
• opinionless
• submissive
• parasitical
• unprincipled
• spineless
• wishful thinking
• gullible

40. Exploitative
orientation
• These people expect to have to take what they
need.
• Wealth is preferably stolen, ideas plagiarized, love
achieved by coercion.
• prevalent among history's aristocracies, and in the
upper classes of colonial empires.
• Their position was based entirely on their power to
take from the indigenous population. E.g. English in
India
• characteristic quality - the ability to be comfortable
ordering others around!
• The exploitative orientation is associated with the
"swallowing" side of the symbiotic family, and with
the masochistic style of authoritarianism.

41. Victor
Daniel’s
vignette case
• “I'm going to go out and get mine despite you. The world
is not a safe place, I want to keep from the wolf from the
door.”
• This person feels they have to steal what they get.
• “One woman was an incest victim. The mother was cold
and frightened. The father turned to his daughter and
had an incestuous sexual relationship for about 8 years,
until at age 16 she found the strength to say, "No more.“
• This experience had a destructive effect on her. The
only way she could have a relationship with another man
was to take him away from another woman. Somehow
she took it on that she had taken her father away from
her mother. The exploiter does not create ideas but
steals, plagiarizes them. Tends to be aggressive,
egocentric, arrogant, seducing, conceited.”

42. Exploitative
orientation
Positive aspect
1.active
2.takes the initiative
3.makes claims (and hears
those of others)
4.proud
5.self-confident
6.impulsive
7.captivating
Negative aspect
1.exploitive
2.aggressive
3.Egocentric
4.Conceited
5.Arrogant
6.rash
7.seducing

43. Hoarding
orientation
• Hoarding people expect to keep.
• They see the world as possessions and
potential possessions.
• Even loved ones are things to possess, to
keep, or to buy.
• The bourgeoisie, the merchant middle class, as
well as richer peasants and crafts people.
• Fromm associates it particularly with the
Protestant work ethic
• Hoarding is associated with the cold form of
withdrawing family, and with destructiveness.
• There is a clear connection with perfectionism
as well.

44. Hoarding
orientation
Positive aspect
1. practical
2. economical
3. careful
4. reserved
5. patient
6. cautious
7. steadfast, tenacious
8. methodical
9. loyal
Negative aspect
1.unimaginative
2.stingy
3.suspicious
4.cold
5.lethargic
6.anxious
7.stubborn
8.obsessional
9.possessive

45. Marketing
orientation
• Marketing orientation expects to sell.
• Success is a matter of how well I can sell myself,
package myself, advertise myself.
• My family, my schooling, my jobs, my clothes -- all are an
advertisement, and must be "right.“
• The surface is everything!
• Even love is thought of as a transaction.
• Only the marketing orientation thinks up the marriage
contract.
• comes out of the cool withdrawing family, and tend to use
automaton conformity as its escape from freedom.
• In extreme, the marketing person is opportunistic,
childish, tactless.
• Less extreme, and he or she is purposeful, youthful,
social.

46. Marketing
orientation
Positive aspect
1. purposeful
2. able to change
3. youthful
4. openminded
5. experimenting
6. efficient
7. curious
8. adaptable
9. tolerant
10.generous
Negative aspect
1.opportunistic
2.inconsistent
3.childish
4.unprincipled
5.aimless
6.overactive
7.tactless
8.undiscriminating
9.indifferent
10.wasteful

47. Productive
Orientation
• Healthy personality - the person without a mask
• "the active and creative relatedness of man to his fellow man, to himself, and
to nature."
• Comes out of a family that loves without overwhelming the individual, that
prefers reason to rules, and freedom to conformity.
• Society that gives rise to the productive type (on more than a chance basis)
doesn't exist yet
• A description > humanistic communitarian socialism
• lives in the being mode.
• What you are is defined by your actions in this world.
• Lives without a mask, experiencing life, relating to people, being yourself

48. Orientations - Overview

49. Having mode
• Most people use the word ‘have’ to describe their
problems
• "Doctor, I have a problem: I have insomnia. Although I
have a beautiful home, wonderful children, and a happy
marriage, I have many worries."
• In a way he/she is looking to the therapist to remove
the bad things, and let him keep the good ones, a little
like asking a surgeon to take out your gall bladder.
• What you should be saying is more like "I am troubled. I
am happily married, yet I cannot sleep....“
• By saying you have a problem, you are avoiding facing
the fact that you are the problem -- i.e. you avoid, once
again, taking responsibility for your life.

50. Being mode
a way of living based on authentic self-awareness that
comes only through honest self-analysis.
Wisely, he warns of the pitfalls of believing that life can
be lived without pain.
is embedded in love and is governed by the spirit of
communal harmony and constructive actions.

51. Human needs
• we have needs that go far beyond the basic, physiological ones (animal needs) that explain
all of our behavior.
• Human being needs to find an answer to his or her existence.
• Helping us to answer this question is perhaps the major purpose of culture.
• In a way all cultures are like religions, trying to explain the meaning of life.
• Some, of course, do so better than others.
• A more negative way of expressing this need is to say that we need to avoid insanity.
• Fromm defines neurosis as an effort to satisfy the need for answers that doesn't work for us.
• He says that every neurosis is a sort of private religion, one we turn to when our culture no
longer satisfies.

52. Five
Human
needs
• Relatedness
• Creativity
• Rootedness
• A sense of identity
• A frame of orientation

53. Relatedness
• As human beings, we are aware of our separateness
from each other, and seek to overcome it.
• Fromm views it as love in the broadest sense.
• Love, he says, "is union with somebody, or something,
outside oneself, under the condition of retaining the
separateness and integrity of one's own self." (p 37 of
The Sane Society).
• It allows us to transcend our separateness without
denying us our uniqueness.
• This need is so powerful that sometimes we seek it in
unhealthy ways. E.g. some seek to eliminate their
isolation by submitting themselves to another person, to a
group, or to their conception of a God.
• Others look to eliminate their isolation by dominating
others.
• Either way, these are not satisfying: Your separateness is
not overcome.
• Another way some attempt to overcome this need is by
denying it.

54. Love
• Love is "an experience of sharing and communion which permits the full unfolding of one's own inner activity. It is the experience of solidarity with our fellow
creatures. What matters is the quality of loving, not the object.”
• The polarity of separateness and union: Out of this polarity, love is born and reborn. In loving I am one with All, and also my unique, separate, limited self.
• If I can love only one person and no one else, if my love for this person alienates and distances me from others, this is not love in its full flowering.
others, this is not love in its full flowering.
• Productive love always includes care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge.
• Care: I am actively concerned with the other's growth and happiness. I am not a spectator.
• Responsibility: I respond to the other's needs, both those he can express and those he cannot or does not.
not.
• Respect: I relate to the other as s/he is, not distorted by my wishes and fears.
• Knowledge: I know this person. I have penetrated through the surface of his being and related from my center.

55. Types of Love
• INFANTILE LOVE: I am loved because I am loved.
• MATURE LOVE: I am loved because I love.
• IMMATURE LOVE: I love you because I need you.
• MATURE LOVE: I need you because I love you.
• FATHERLY LOVE: Conditional. It must be deserved. You must work for it. Fatherly
conscience is built on his capacity to reason.
• MOTHERLY LOVE. Unconditional. Mother conscience is built on her own capacity
to love.

56. Creativity
• We all desire to overcome, to transcend,
another fact of our being: Our sense of being
passive creatures.
• We want to be creators.
• There are many ways to be creative: We give
birth, we plant seeds, we make pots, we paint
pictures, we write books, we love each other.
• Creativity is, in fact, an expression of love
• Unfortunately, some don't find an avenue for
creativity.
• Frustrated, they attempt to transcend their
passivity by becoming destroyers instead.
• Destroying puts me "above" the things -- or
people – I destroy. It makes me feel powerful.
We can hate as well as love.
• But in the end, it fails to bring us that sense of
transcendence we need.

57. Rootedness
• We need to feel at home in the universe, even
though, as human beings, we are somewhat
alienated from the natural world.
• The simplest version is to maintain our ties to our
family. But to grow up means we have to leave the
warmth of our mothers' love. To stay would be a
kind of psychological incest.
• We need to find new, broader roots. We need to
discover our brotherhood (and sisterhood) with
humanity.
• Pathological side: e.g., the schizophrenic tries to
retreat into a womb-like existence, one where, you
might say, the umbilical cord has never been cut.
• There is also the neurotic who is afraid to leave his
home, even to get the groceries.
• And there's the fanatic who sees his tribe, his
country, his church... as the only good one, the only
real one. Everyone else is a dangerous outsider, to
be avoided or even destroyed.

58. A sense of identity
• "Man may be defined as the animal that
can say 'I.'" (p 62 of The Sane Society)
• We need to have a sense of identity, of
individuality, in order to stay sane.
• We are sometimes driven to find it, for
example by doing anything for signs of
status, or by trying desperately to conform.
• We sometimes will even give up our lives in
order to remain a part of our group. But this
is only a pretentious identity, an identity we
take from others, instead of one we
develop ourselves, and it fails to satisfy our
need.

59. A frame of
orientation
• Finally, we need to understand the world and our place in it.
• Our society -- and especially the religious aspects of our
culture -- often attempts to provide us with this understanding.
Things like our myths, our philosophies, and our sciences
provide us with structure.
• Fromm says this is really two needs: First, we need a frame of
orientation -- almost anything will do.
• Even a bad one is better than none! And so people are
generally quite gullible. We want to believe, sometimes even
desperately. If we don't have an explanation handy, we will
make one up, via rationalization.
• The second aspect is that we want to have a good frame of
orientation, one that is useful, accurate.
• A frame of orientation needs to be rational.
• We want a frame of orientation that provides us with meaning.
• We want understanding, but we want a warm, human
understanding

60. DESTRUCTIVENESS
Fromm identified three types of aggression
1.Benign Aggression (of a beneficial nature, promoting well-
being)
2.Defensive Aggression.
 Animals--in here-and-now immediate threat.
 Man can foresee threat and plan for future threats based
on past experience.
 Advantages and disadvantages, as in military threat
build-up.
3.Malignant Aggression. The thought behind the act is
important. An intent to do harm. Like a malignant cancer, it
has a tendency to grow and get out of hand.

61. Pseudo-
aggression
1.Accidental aggression
 Hurting without the intention.
E.g.Controversies in murder cases.
 May be unconscious motives. But we
cannot necessarily assume this.
 May or may not be due to our motives.
2.Playful aggression. Aim is to exercise skill.
Archery, sword-fighting, etc. Aggression may
come out in competitiveness.
3.Self-assertive aggression. moving toward a
goal without undue hesitation, doubt, or fear.
 This type of aggression is necessary for a
hunter to obtain prey.
 A person with an unimpeded sense of
self-assertion is capable in avoiding threat
and confronting it.
 A person lacking in this is likely to be
shy, etc.

62. Narcissm
NARCISSISM: Narcissm involves people's great concern about how they look, etc.
Wounding narcissism--a big source of aggression.
LOVE. Key line: " In the experience of love lies sanity."
In infancy--primary narcissism. The positive situation of warmth and food, etc.
In adulthood--secondary narcissism. Movie stars and politicians depend on public
and the media to give them their sense of power and self-esteem.

63. Humanist
credo
• "I believe that the man choosing
progress can find a new unity through
the development of all his human forces,
which are produced in three orientations.
These can be presented separately or
together: biophilia, love for humanity and
nature, and independence and freedom."

64. Summary
• Fromm, in some ways, is a transition figure.
• Most significantly, he draws together the Freudian
and Neo-Freudian theories (especially Adler's and
Horney's) and the humanistic theories.
• He is, in fact, so close to being an existentialist .
• Another aspect of his theory is fairly unique to him:
his interest in the economic and cultural roots of
personality.
• Fromm says: Your personality is to a considerable
extent a reflection of such issues as social class,
minority status, education, vocation, religious and
philosophical background, and so forth.
• It is a counterbalance to the increasing influence of
biological theories.