The Burden of Freedom -free from security

Basic Anxiety– the feeling of being alone in the world; it is resulted from 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 reasons, 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.

Mechanisms of Escape

The driving forces in normal people, both individually and collectively. Escape from Freedom, Fromm (1941)

Three primary mechanisms of escape

Authoritarianism Destructiveness Conformity

Authoritarianism

“Tendency to give up the independence of one’s own individual self and fuse one’s self with somebody or something outside oneself, in order to acquire the strength which the individual is lacking.”

Two forms:

Masochism- results from the basic feelings of powerlessness, weakness and inferiority and is aimed at joining the self to a more powerful person or institution

Sadism- more neurotic and more socially harmful. Aim is reducing anxiety through achieving unity with another person or persons. Has three tendencies.

Three sadistic tendencies

The need to name others dependent on oneself and to gain power over those who are weak

Compulsion to exploit others, to take advantage of them, and to use them for one’s benefit or pleasure.

Desire to see others suffer either physically or psychologically.

Destructiveness

Rooted in the feelings of aloneness, isolation, and powerlessness.

Does not depend on a continuous relationship with another person rather, It seeks to do away with other people.

Perverted isolation – acquired by eliminating much of the outside world.

Conformity

Giving up their own individuality and becoming whatever other people desire them to be.

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 the 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

Represents a successful solution to the human dilemma of being part of the natural world and yet separate from it.

Twin components of positive freedom are 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.

How can it be attained?

Positive Freedom can be attained by spontaneous and full expression of both their rational and their emotional potentialities.

“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”

Character Orientations

A person’s relatively permanent way of relating to people and things.

Personality according to Fromm the totality inherited and acquired psychic qualities which characteristic of one individual and which make the individual unique.

Character – relatively permanent system of all non-instinctictual strivings through which a man relates himself to the human and the natural world.

-A substitute for lack of instincts

People relate to the world in two ways

By acquiring and using things (assimilation)

By relating to self and others (socialization)

*people relate to things and to people either nonproductively or productively.

Nonproductive orientations

Strategies that fail to move people closer to positive freedom and self-realization. However, not entirely negative; each has positive and negative aspects. Personality is always a blend or combination of several orientation, even though one orientation is dominant

People can acquire things through any one of four nonproductive orientations.

Receptive –receiving things passively Exploitative – taking things through

force Hoarding - seek to save that which

they have already obtained Marketing – exchanging things. “I am

as you desire me”

Receptive Orientation

receiving things passively Feel that 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 possession.

Positive qualities: loyalty, acceptance and trust

Negative qualities: passivity, submissiveness and lack of self confidence

Exploitative Orientation

taking things through force Feel that source of all good lies outside. They

aggressively take what they desire. Prefers to steal, plagiarize rather than create.

Positive qualities: impulsive, proud, charming and self-confident

Negative qualities: egocentric, conceited, arrogant, and seducing.

 

Hoarding Orientation

seek to save that which they have already obtained. They hold everything inside and do not let go of anything. They tend to live in the past and are repelled to anything new.

Positive qualities: orderliness, cleanliness and punctuality.

Negative qualities: rigidity, sterility, obstinacy, compulsivity and lack of creativity.

Marketing Orientation

exchanging things. “I am as you desire me” The outgrowth of modern commerce in which trade

is no longer personal but carried out by large, faceless corporations. People see themselves as commodities with their personal value dependent on their exchange value, that is, their ability to sell themselves.

Positive qualities: changeability, open-mindedness, adaptability and generosity.

Negative qualities: aimless, opportunistic, inconsistent, and wasteful

The Productive Orientation

Productive people work toward positive freedom and continuing realization their potential, they are most healthy among all character types.

Only through productive activity can people solve the basic human dilemma. This solution can be accomplished only to productive work, love and thought.

Three dimensions:

Working Loving Reasoning

Human Dilemma

To unite with the world with others while retaining uniqueness and individuality.

Productive Work

Healthy people value work not as the end in itself, but as a mean of self- expression.

Productive love

characterized by the four qualities of love : Responsibility Respect knowledge.

Healthy people possess

biophilia - is a passionate love of life and all that is alive.

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 to achieve it because they cannot first love themselves.

Productive Thinking

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 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.