Theories of Personality
Fromm
Chapter 7
McGraw-Hill
2009 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Outline
Overview of Humanistic Psychoanalysis
Biography of Fromm
Fromms Basic Assumption
Human Needs
The Burden of Freedom
Character Orientations
Personality Disorders
Contd
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Outline
Psychotherapy
Fromms Methods of Investigation
Related Research
Critique of Fromm
Concept of Humanity
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Overview of Humanistic
Psychoanalysis
People Have Lost Their Connection with
Nature and One Another
This Separation from the Natural World Has
Resulted in
Basic anxiety characterized by loneliness and
isolation
The cost of freedom has exceeded its benefits
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Biography of Fromm
Born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1900
Only child of orthodox Jewish parents
Suicide of young woman troubled him in
his youth
Influenced by writings of Freud and Marx
in his adolescence
Received his PhD in sociology in 1920s
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Biography (contd)
Fromm began studying psychoanalysis in 1925
and was eventually analyzed by Hanns Sachs, a
student of Freud
Founded South German Institute for
Psychoanalysis in 1930
In 1934, Fromm moved to the U.S. and began a
psychoanalytic practice in New York
His books gained him a worldwide reputation
beyond psychology and psychoanalysis
Died in Switzerland in 1980
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Fromms Basic Assumption
Personality can only be understood in the light of
history
Humans have been torn away from their
prehistoric union with nature
Human Dilemma humans have acquired the
ability to reason about their isolated conditions
Two fundamental dichotomies
Life and death
Complete Self-realization and the fact that we cannot
reach this goal because life is too short
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Human Needs
Relatedness
Drive for union with another person(s)
Three basic ways to relate to world:
1. Submission
2. Power
3. Love
Transcendence
Urge to rise above a passive and accidental
existence and into the realm of
purposefulness and freedom
Humans also use Malignant Aggression for
reasons other than survival
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Human Needs (contd)
Rootedness
Need to establish roots or to feel at home
again in the world
Can seek through Fixation
Sense of Identity
Capacity for humans to be aware of
themselves as a separate entity
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Human Needs (contd)
Frame of Orientation
Being split off from nature, humans need a road
map to make their way through the world
Summary of Human Needs
These needs have evolved from humans
existence as a separate species
Aimed at moving them toward a reunification
with the natural world
Lack of satisfaction of any of these needs is
unbearable and may result in insanity
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The Burden of Freedom
People Attempt to Escape from Freedom in a
Variety of Ways
Mechanisms of Escape
Authoritarianism
Destructiveness
Conformity
Positive Freedom
Spontaneous and full expression of both rational and
emotional potentialities
Achieved when a person becomes reunified with others
and with the world
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Character Orientations
Relatively Permanent Ways of Relating to the
World
The Nonproductive Orientations
Receptive
Exploitative
Hoarding
Marketing
The Productive Orientations
Three dimensions include working, loving, and
reasoning
Psychologically healthy people work toward positive
freedom
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Personality Disorders
Disturbed Individuals Are Incapable of Love and
Fail to Establish Union with Others
Necrophilia
Focus of attention is death and entails a hatred of humanity
Malignant Narcissism
Belief that everything one owns is of great value while
anything belonging to others is worthless
Incestuous Symbiosis
Extreme dependence on ones mother to the extent that ones
personality is blended with that of the host person.
Exaggerated form of mother fixation
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Psychotherapy
Concerned with interpersonal aspects of
therapeutic encounter
Aim of therapy is self-knowledge for the patient
The therapist tries to help the patient through
shared communication in which the therapist is
simply a human being
Goal of Fromms psychotherapy:
Work toward satisfaction of the basic human needs of
relatedness, transcendence, rootedness, a sense of
identity, and a frame of orientation
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Methods of Investigation
Social Character in a Mexican Village
Study of social character in an isolated farming village
in Mexico
Found evidence of all character orientations except the
marketing one
A Psychohistorical Study of Hitler
Applied the techniques of psychohistory to study
Hitler, the conspicuous example of someone with the
syndrome of decay
Fromm traces and describes Hitlers necrophilia,
malignant narcissism, and incestuous symbiosis
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Related Research
Fromms Ideas have Produced Very Little Research
Estrangement from Culture and Well-being
Bernard et al. (2009)
The more discrepant a persons values are from society, the more
estranged the person feels
Estrangement increases anxiety and depression
The Burden of Freedom and Political Persuasions
Block & Block (2009)
Personality type, even when measured at a very young age, is
powerfully predictive; in this study, it predicted preschoolers adult
political beliefs
Easily offended, indecisive, fearful, and rigid preschoolers were more
likely to be politically conservative in their 20s
Self-reliant, energetic, somewhat dominating, relatively under-controlled
preschoolers were more likely to be politically liberal in their 20s
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Critique of Fromm
Fromms Theory Is:
High on Organizing Knowledge
Low on Guiding Action, Internal
Consistency, and Parsimony
Very Low on Generating Research and
Falsifiability
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Concept of Humanity
Equal Weight Given to Unconscious and
Conscious, Free Choice and Determinism,
and Pessimism and Optimism
Uniqueness Emphasized over Similarities
Teleology over Causality
Social Influences over Biology
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