Sigmund Freud's Theory Of Authoritarianism By Erich Fromm

Erich Fromm was highly impressed by the work of Carl Marx and Sigmund Freud; his first step was an attempt to synthesis their ideas. As a result, he began to write his thesis about freedom that itself creates a psychological problem. Fromm believed that when human race distinct themselves from nature and other animals they not only gained so called freedom, but also started to experience the feeling of loneliness and isolation. The feeling of loneliness consequently leads to another problem-facing with death.
In addition to that Fromm proposed two alternatives of dealing with emerged problem of loneliness such as: working with one another in a spirit of love in order to create a society that will help to fulfill their needs or to escape from a problem by creating new dependencies. Fromm spoked more about these three concepts of escape mechanisms and gave a clear definition to each of them. To begin with, authoritarian offers escape from the problem of freedom through submission of others. Such individuals may seek for domination and or control the behavior of others. As a result submissive and submitted people are forming symbiosis. Another concept is destructiveness which helps to escape from the problem of freedom by proposing elimination of others and/or the outside world. According to Fromm destructiveness can be masked as patriotism, love, duty or conscience and it pervasive in the world. The last one is Automaton conformity is adopted by majority of individuals that seek for a solution of the problem of freedom. Such individuals …show more content…
Interestingly that, character orientations has both negative and positive characteristics. Also, first three characteristics was seen by Fromm as unproductive. The following characteristics can be seen in a table