Chapter 10: Fromm – Humanistic Psychoanalysis
Part 2: Our Relationship to Society
Fromm was a prolific writer whose interests included psychoanalysis, economics, religion, ethics, culture, and societal systems. He evaluated both Freud the man and Freud’s theories in Sigmund Freud’s Mission (Fromm, 1978) and Greatness and Limitations of Freud’s Thought (Fromm, 1980). His religious works include such provocative titles as The Dogma of Christ (Fromm, 1955b) and You Shall Be as Gods (Fromm, 1966). He addressed the person’s place within society in books such as The Sane Society (1955a) and The Revolution of Hope (1968). And a collection of his works on gender psychology, Love, Sexuality, and Matriarchy, was edited by Rainer Funk (1977). The unifying theme throughout Fromm’s writings is each person’s relationship to society, which he addressed most directly in Escape from Freedom (Fromm, 1941).
Fromm interpreted Freud’s theories on the satisfaction of drives as necessarily involving other people, but for Freud, those relationships are only a means to an end. Although hunger, thirst, and sex may be common needs, Fromm suggested that the needs that lead to differences in people’s character, such as love and hatred, lusting for power or yearning to submit, or the enjoyment of sensuous pleasure as well as the fear of it, are all the result of social processes. One’s very nature is a product of the interaction between the individual and their cultural setting. We are the creation and achievement of human history, and at the same time, we influence the course of that history and culture. In modern times, particularly in the Western world, our pursuit of individuality has alienated us from others, and from the very social structure that is inherent to our nature. Consequently, our freedom has become a psychological problem; it has isolated us from the connections necessary for our survival and development (Fromm, 1941). The danger with this situation, according to Fromm, is that when an entire society is suffering from feelings of isolation and disconnection with the natural order (from nature itself, in Fromm’s view), the members of that society may seek connection with a societal structure that destroys their freedom and, thus, integrates their self into the whole (albeit in a dysfunctional way). The three ways in which individuals escape from freedom are authoritarianism, or giving oneself up to some authority in order to gain the strength that the individual lacks, destructiveness, in which the individual tries to destroy the object causing anxiety (e.g., society), and automaton conformity, in which the person renounces their individual integrity. Fromm believed that these phenomena provided an explanation for the development of dictatorships, such as the rise of Fascism in Europe during the 1920s and 1930s. For the leaders of these societies, these processes are such a deeply ingrained aspect of their character that Fromm actually described Adolf Hitler’