Bringing up Fromm takes me back to my younger days when I got quite involved in his ideas. So I just went to the encyclopedia to revisit that, and thought it of some value to post some of his thoughts here:
"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." [4]
Erich Fromm postulated EIGHT basic needs:
Relatedness Relationships with others, care, respect, knowledge. Transcendence Being thrown into the world without their consent, humans have to transcend their nature by destroying or creating people or things. [5] Humans can destroy through malignant aggression, or killing for reasons other than survival, but they can also create and care about their creations. [5] Rootedness Rootedness is the need to establish roots and to feel at home again in the world. [5] Productively, rootedness enables us to grow beyond the security of our mother and establish ties with the outside world. [5] With the nonproductive strategy, we become fixated and afraid to move beyond the security and safety of our mother or a mother substitute. [5] Sense of Identity The drive for a sense of identity is expressed nonproductively as conformity to a group and productively as individuality. [5] Frame of orientation Understanding the world and our place in it. Excitation and Stimulation Actively striving for a goal rather than simply responding. Unity A sense of oneness between one person and the "natural and human world outside." Effectiveness The need to feel accomplished. [6] Fromm's thesis of the "escape from freedom" is epitomized in the following passage. The "individualized man" referenced by Fromm is man bereft of the "primary ties" of belonging (i.e. nature, family, etc.), also expressed as "freedom from":
"There is only one possible, productive solution for the relationship of individualized man with the world: his active solidarity with all men and his spontaneous activity, love and work, which unite him again with the world, not by primary ties but as a free and independent individual.... However, if the economic, social and political conditions... do not offer a basis for the realization of individuality in the sense just mentioned, while at the same time people have lost those ties which gave them security, this lag makes freedom an unbearable burden. It then becomes identical with doubt, with a kind of life which lacks meaning and direction. Powerful tendencies arise to escape from this kind of freedom into submission or some kind of relationship to man and the world which promises relief from uncertainty, even if it deprives the individual of his freedom." (Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom [N.Y.: Rinehart, 1941], pp. 36–7. The point is repeated on pp. 31, 256–7.) |
