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14 Cards in this Set

  • Front
  • Back
Explain Fromm's concept of existential dichotomies.
Human dilemma - People have no powerful instincts to adapt to a changing world; instead, they have acquired the facility to reason.
People experience this basic dilemma because they have become separate from nature and yet have the capacity to be aware of themselves as isolated beings. Ability to reason is both a blessing and a curse. It permits people to survive but forces them to attempt to solve basic insoluble dichotomies. Called existential dichotomies because they are rooted in people’s very existence.
1, Fundamental dichotomy between life and death. Negate this dichotomy by postulating life after death. Doesn’t alter fact that our lives end with death.
2. 2nd dichotomy. capable of conceptualizing the goal of self-realization, but we are also aware that life is too short to reach this goal. WAYS people solve this: Assume their own historical period is the big achievement for humanity or postulate a continuation of development after death.
3. People are ultimately alone
List and discuss the five human needs as seen by Fromm

a. Relatedness

b. Transcendence

c. Rootedness

d. Sense of Identity

e. Frame of Orientation
Emerged during the evolution of human... attempt to explain our existence and to avoid becoming insane.

a. the drive for union with another person(s).
NEGATIVE - submission or domination.
POSITIVE - Love

b. the need for people to rise above their passive existence and create or destroy life.
NEGATIVE - Destructiveness
POSITIVE - Creativeness

c) the need for a consistent structure in people’s lives.
NEGATIVE - Fixation
POSITIVE - Wholeness

d) gives a person a feeling of “I” or “me”
NEGATIVE - Adjustment to group
POSITIVE - Individuality

e) consistent way of looking at the world.
NEGATIVE - Irrational goals
POSITIVE - Rational goals
What did Fromm mean by "burden of freedom"?
People have been torn from nature, yet they remain part of the natural world, subject to the same physical limitations of other animals. ONly animal possessing, self-awareness, imagination and reason. Freaks of the universe. Reason is both a curse and a blessing. Responsible for feelings of isolation and loneliness. Also process that enables humans to become united with the world.
More political and economic power = increased feeling of isolation. IN general people, have more freedom - to move geographically and social status. They in turn become separated from their roots and isolated from each other.

Personal level - Child gains more independence from mother, they gain more freedom to express their own individuality. Burden of freedom is free from security of being with mother.

Burden of freedom results in basic anxiety, the feeling of being alone in the world.
Discuss Fromm's four nonproductive orientations

1. Receptive
2. Hoarding
3. Exploiting
4, Marketing
1. All good lies outside ourself. Only way to relate to world is to receive things, including love, knowledge, material possessions. Concerned with receiving
Passively receiving.

2. Seek to save that which they have already obtained. Hold everything inside don’t let go of anything, Try to possess lover, preserve relationship rather than allowing

3. Source of all good is outside themselves. They aggressively take what they desire. Likely to use cunning or force to take some else’s spouse ideas, or property. Ex. fall in love with a married woman.

4. Marketing Outgrowth of modern commerce. Trade no longer personal but carried out by large, faceless corporations. See themselves as commodities. See themselves in constant demand. Make others believe they are skilled and salable. Personal security on shaky ground because they must adjust personality to what is currently in fashion. “I am as you desire”
Without a past or a future. Aimless. NO permanent principles or values.
Discuss Fromm's concept of the syndrome of decay
Pathological person that possesses all three of the following personality disorders:

1. Necrophilia or the love of death
2. Malignant narcissism or infatuation with self
3. ubcetuous symbiosis or tendency to remain bound to mother person or her equivalents.
List Fromm's basic assumptions about personality.
Fromm believed that humans have been torn away from their prehistoric union with nature and left with no powerful instincts to adapt to a changing world. But because humans have acquired the ability to reason, they can think about their isolated condition—a situation Fromm called the human dilemma.
Describe the existential (human) needs identified by Fromm.

A. Relatedness

B. Transcendence

C. Rootedness

con't
a. can take the form of submission, power, or love. Love, or the ability to unite with another while retaining one's own individuality and integrity, is the only relatedness need that can solve our basic human dilemma.

b. Being thrown into the world without their consent, humans have to transcend their nature by destroying or creating people or things. Humans can destroy through malignant aggression, or killing for reasons other than survival, but they can also create and care about their creations.

c. is the need to establish roots and to feel at home. Productively, enables us to grow beyond the security of our mother and establish ties with the outside world. With the nonproductive strategy, we become fixated and afraid to move beyond the security and safety of our mother or a mother substitute.
Describe the existential (human) needs identified by Fromm.

D. Sense of Identity

E. Frame of Orientation
con't ...

d. The fourth human need is for a sense of identity, or an awareness of ourselves as a separate person. The drive for a sense of identity is expressed nonproductively as conformity to a group and productively as individuality.

e. By frame of orientation, Fromm meant a road map or consistent philosophy by which we find our way through the world. This need is expressed nonproductively as a striving for irrational goals and productively as movement toward rational goals.
Discuss Fromm's notion of the burden of freedom and how people attempt to struggle with that burden.
As the only animal possessing self-awareness, humans are the freaks of the universe. Historically, as people gained more political freedom, they began to experience more isolation from others and from the world and to feel free from the security of a permanent place in the world. As a result, freedom becomes a burden, and people experience basic anxiety, or a feeling of being alone in the world.
A. Mechanisms of Escape
To reduce the frightening sense of isolation and aloneness, people may adopt one of three mechanisms of escape: (1) authoritarianism, or the tendency to give up one's independence and to unite with a powerful partner; (2) destructiveness, an escape mechanism aimed at doing away with other people or things; and (3) conformity, or surrendering of one's individuality in order to meet the wishes of others.
Explain what Fromm means by positive freedom
The human dilemma can only be solved through positive freedom, which is the spontaneous activity of the whole, integrated personality, and which is achieved when a person becomes reunited with others.
Describe Fromm's nonproductive character orientations.
Fromm identified four nonproductive strategies that fail to move people closer to positive freedom and self-realization. People with a receptive orientation believe that the 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 objects. People with an exploitative orientation also believe that the source of good lies outside themselves, but they aggressively take what they want rather than passively receiving it. Hoarding characters try to save what they have already obtained, including their opinions, feelings, and material possessions. People with a marketing orientation see themselves as commodities and value themselves against the criterion of their ability to sell themselves. They have fewer positive qualities than the other orientations because they are essentially empty.
Discuss Fromm's views on the productive orientation
Psychologically healthy people work toward positive freedom through productive work, love. and reasoning. Productive love necessitates a passionate love of all life and is called biophilia.
List and describe Fromm's three severe personality disorders.

(1) necrophilia

(2) malignant narcissism

(3) incestuous symbiosis
Unhealthy people have nonproductive ways of working, reasoning, and especially loving.

1. or the love of death and the hatred of all humanity;

2. or a belief that everything belonging to one's self is of great value and anything belonging to others is worthless; and

3. or an extreme dependence on one's mother or mother surrogate.
Describe Fromm's research methods.

A. Social Character in a Mexican Village

B. A Psychohistorical Study of Hitler
Fromm's personality theory rests on data he gathered from a variety of sources, including psychotherapy, cultural anthropology, and psychohistory.

a. Fromm and his associates spent several years investigating social character in an isolated farming village in Mexico and found evidence of all the character orientations except the marketing one.

b. Fromm applied the techniques of psychohistory to study several historical people, including Adolf Hitler—the person Fromm regarded as the world's most conspicuous example of someone with the syndrome of decay, that is, necrophilia, malignant narcissism, and incestuous symbiosis.