Great Psychiatrist, Philosopher ERICH FROMM tells us why we settle for abuse & stay helpless, afraid, unloved, poor & exploited by the 1% and how to 'fix' ourselves so we're not exploited sheeple ---with a supressive tyrant in charge.
 
I lived under the Nazis. I know something about a submissive proletariat!
The Reasons that people tolerate abuse from on high are:

1. Authoritarianism. We seek to avoid freedom by fusing ourselves with others, by becoming a part of an authoritarian system like the society of the Middle Ages. There are two ways to approach this. One is to submit to the power of others, becoming passive and compliant. The other is to become an authority yourself, a person who applies structure to others. Either way, you escape your separate identity. In SANE SOCIETY and ESCAPE to FREEDOM (titled ESCAPE FROM FREEDOM in Brit version,) Fromm discusses this.

Fromm referred to the extreme version of authoritarianism as masochism and
sadism, and points out that both feel compelled to play their separate
roles, so that even the sadist, with all his apparent power over the
masochist, is not free to choose his actions. But milder versions of
authoritarianism are everywhere. In many classes, for example, there is an
implicit contract between students and professors: Students demand
structure, and the professor sticks to his notes. It seems innocuous and
even natural, but this way the students avoid taking any responsibility
for their learning, and the professor can avoid taking on the real issues
of his field.

2. Destructiveness. Authoritarians respond to a painful existence by, in a
sense, eliminating themselves: If there is  no me, how can anything hurt
me? But others respond to pain by striking out against the world: If I
destroy the world, how can it hurt me? It is this escape from freedom that
accounts for much of the indiscriminate nastiness of life -- brutality,
vandalism, humiliation, vandalism, crime, terrorism....

Fromm adds that, if a person's desire to destroy is blocked by
circumstances, he or she may redirect it inward. The most obvious kind of
self-destructiveness is, of course, suicide. But we can also include many
illnesses, drug addiction, alcoholism, even the joys of passive
entertainment. He turns Freud's death instinct upside down:
Self-destructiveness is frustrated destructiveness, not the other way
around.

3. Automaton conformity. Authoritarians escape by hiding within an
authoritarian hierarchy. But our society emphasizes equality! There is
less hierarchy to hide in (though plenty remains for anyone who wants it,
and some who don't). When we need to hide, we hide in our mass culture
instead. When I get dressed in the morning, there are so many decisions!
But I only need to look at what you are wearing, and my frustrations
disappear. Or I can look at the television, which, like a horoscope, will
tell me quickly and effectively what to do. If I look like, talk like,
think like, feel like... everyone else in my society, then I disappear
into the crowd, and I don't need to acknowledge my freedom or take
responsibility. It is the horizontal counterpart to authoritarianism.

The person who uses automaton conformity is like a social chameleon: He
takes on the coloring of his surroundings. Since he looks like a million
other people, he no longer feels alone. He isn't alone, perhaps, but he's
not himself either. The automaton conformist experiences a split between
his genuine feelings and the colors he shows the world, very much along
the lines of Horney's theory.

In fact, since humanity's "true nature" is freedom, any of these escapes
from freedom alienates us from ourselves. Here's what Fromm had to say:

Man is born as a freak of nature, being within nature and yet transcending
it. He has to find principles of action and decision making which replace
the principles of instincts. he has to have a frame of orientation which
permits him to organize a consistent picture of the world as a condition
for consistent actions. He has to fight not only against the dangers of
dying, starving, and being hurt, but also against another anger which is
specifically human: that of becoming insane. In other words, he has to
protect himself not only against the danger of losing his life but also
against the danger of losing his mind. (Fromm, 1968, p. 61)
I should add here that freedom is in fact a complex idea, and that Fromm
is talking about "true" personal freedom, rather than just political
freedom (often called liberty): Most of us, whether they are free or not,
tend to like the idea of political freedom, because it means that we can
do what we want. A good example is the sexual sadist (or masochist) who
has a psychological problem that drives his behavior. He is not free in
the personal sense, but he will welcome the politically free society that
says that what consenting adults do among themselves is not the state's
business! Another example involves most of us today: We may well fight
for freedom (of the political sort), and yet when we have it, we tend to
be conformist and often rather irresponsible. We have the vote, but we
fail to use it! Fromm is very much for political freedom -- but he is
especially eager that we make use of that freedom and take the
responsibility that goes with it.

Families

Which of the escapes from freedom you tend to use has a great deal to do
with what kind of family you grew up in. Fromm outlines two kinds of
unproductive families.

1. Symbiotic families. Symbiosis is the relationship two organisms have
who cannot live without each other. In a symbiotic family, some members of
the family are "swallowed up" by other members, so that they do not fully
develop personalities of their own. The more obvious example is the case
where the parent "swallows" the child, so that the child's personality is
merely a reflection of the parent's wishes. In many traditional societies,
this is the case with many children, especially girls.

The other example is the case where the child "swallows" the parent. In
this case, the child dominates or manipulates the parent, who exists
essentially to serve the child. If this sounds odd, let me assure you it
is common, especially in traditional societies, especially in the
relationship between a boy and his mother. Within the context of the
particular culture, it is even necessary: How else does a boy learn the
art of authority he will need to survive as an adult?

In reality, nearly everyone in a traditional society learns both how to
dominate and how to be submissive, since nearly everyone has someone above
them and below them in the social hierarchy. Obviously, the authoritarian
escape from freedom is built-in to such a society. But note that, for all
that it may offend our modern standards of equality, this is the way
people lived for thousands of years. It is a very stable social system, it
allows for a great deal of love and friendship, and billions of people
live in it still.

2. Withdrawing families. In fact, the main alternative is most notable for
its cool indifference, if not cold hatefulness. Although withdrawal as a
family style has always been around, it has come to dominate some
societies only in the last few hundred years, that is, since the
bourgeoisie -- the merchant class -- arrive on the scene in force.

The "cold" version is the older of the two, found in northern Europe and
parts of Asia, and wherever merchants are a formidable class. Parents are
very demanding of their children, who are expected to live up to high,
well-defined standards. Punishment is not a matter of a slap upside the
head in full anger and in the middle of dinner; it is instead a formal
affair, a full-fledged ritual, possibly involving cutting switches and
meeting in the woodshed. Punishment is cold-blooded, done "for your own
good." Alternatively, a culture may use guilt and withdrawal of affection
as punishment. Either way, children in these cultures become rather
strongly driven to succeed in whatever their culture defines as success.

This puritanical style of family encourages the destructive escape from
freedom, which is internalized until circumstances (such as war) allow its
release. I might add that this kind of family more immediately encourages
perfectionism -- living by the rules -- which is also a way of avoiding
freedom that Fromm does not discuss. When the rules are more important
than people, destructiveness is inevitable.

The second withdrawing kind of family is the modern family, found in the
most advanced parts of the world, most notably the USA. Changes in
attitudes about child rearing have lead many people to shudder at the use
of physical punishment and guilt in raising children. The newer idea is to
raise your children as your equals. A father should be a boy's best buddy;
a mother should be a daughter's soul mate. But, in the process of
controlling their emotions, the parents become coolly indifferent. They
are, in fact, no longer really parents, just cohabitants with their
children. The children, now without any real adult guidance, turn to their
peers and to the media for their values. This is the modern, shallow,
television family!

The escape from freedom is particularly obvious here: It is automaton
conformity. Although this is still very much a minority family in the
world (except, of course, on TV!), this is the one Fromm worries about the
most. It seems to portent the future.

What makes up a good, healthy, productive family? Fromm suggests it is a
family where parents take the responsibility to teach their children
reason in an atmosphere of love. Growing up in this sort of family,
children learn to acknowledge their freedom and to take responsibility for
themselves, and ultimately for society as a whole.

The social unconscious

But our families mostly just reflect our society and culture. Fromm
emphasizes that we soak up our society with our mother's milk. It is so
close to us that we usually forget that our society is just one of an
infinite number of ways of dealing with the issues of life. We often think
that our way of doing things is the only way, the natural way. We have
learned so well that it has all become unconscious -- the social
unconscious, to be precise. So, many times we believe that we are acting
according to our own free will, but we are only following orders we are so
used to we no longer notice them.

Fromm believes that our social unconscious is best understood by examining
our economic systems. In fact, he defines, and even names, five
personality types, which he calls orientations, in economic terms! If you
like, you can take a personality test made up of lists of adjectives Fromm
used to describe his orientations. Click here to see it!

1. The receptive orientation. These are people who expect to get what they
need. if they don't get it immediately, they wait for it. They believe
that all goods and satisfactions come from outside themselves. This type
is most common among peasant populations. It is also found in cultures
that have particularly abundant natural resources, so that one need not
work hard for one's sustenance (although nature may also suddenly withdraw
its bounty!). it is also found at the very bottom of any society: Slaves,
serfs, welfare families, migrant workers... all are at the mercy of
others.

This orientation is associated with symbiotic families, especially where
children are "swallowed" by parents, and with the masochistic (passive)
form of authoritarianism. It is similar to Freud's oral passive, Adler's
leaning-getting, and Horney's compliant personality. In its extreme form,
it can be characterized by adjectives such as submissive and wishful. In a
more moderate form, adjectives such as accepting and optimistic are more
descriptive.

2. The exploitative orientation. These people expect to have to take what
they need. In fact, things increase in value to the extent that they are
taken from others: Wealth is preferably stolen, ideas plagiarized, love
achieved by coercion. This type is prevalent among history's
aristocracies, and in the upper classes of colonial empires. Think of the
English in India for example: Their position was based entirely on their
power to take from the indigenous population. Among their characteristic
qualities is the ability to be comfortable ordering others around! We can
also see it in pastoral barbarians and populations who rely on raiding
(such as the Vikings).

The exploitative orientation is associated with the "swallowing" side of
the symbiotic family, and with the masochistic style of authoritarianism.
They are Freud's oral aggressive, Adler's ruling-dominant, and Horney's
aggressive types. In extremes, they are aggressive, conceited, and
seducing. Mixed with healthier qualities, they are assertive, proud,
captivating.

3. The hoarding orientation. hoarding people expect to keep. They see the
world as possessions and potential possessions. Even loved ones are things
to possess, to keep, or to buy. Fromm, drawing on Karl Marx, relates this
type to the bourgeoisie, the merchant middle class, as well as richer
peasants and crafts people. He associates it particularly with the
Protestant work ethic and such groups as our own Puritans.

Hoarding is associated with the cold form of withdrawing family, and with
destructiveness. I might add that there is a clear connection with
perfectionism as well. Freud would call it the anal retentive type, Adler
(to some extent) the avoiding type, and Horney (a little more clearly) the
withdrawing type. In its pure form, it means you are stubborn, stingy, and
unimaginative. If you are a milder version of hoarding, you might be
steadfast, economical, and practical.

4. The marketing orientation. The marketing orientation expects to sell.
Success is a matter of how well I can sell myself, package myself,
advertise myself. My family, my schooling, my jobs, my clothes -- all are
an advertisement, and must be "right." Even love is thought of as a
transaction. Only the marketing orientation thinks up the marriage
contract, wherein we agree that I shall provide such and such, and you in
return shall provide this and that. If one of us fails to hold up our end
of the arrangement, the marriage is null and void -- no hard feelings
(perhaps we can still be best of friends!) This, according to Fromm, is
the orientation of the modern industrial society. This is our orientation!

This modern type comes out of the cool withdrawing family, and tend to use
automaton conformity as its escape from freedom. Adler and Horney don't
have an equivalent, but Freud might: This is at least half of the vague
phallic personality, the type that lives life as flirtation. In extreme,
the marketing person is opportunistic, childish, tactless. Less extreme,
and he or she is purposeful, youthful, social. Notice today's values as
expressed to us by our mass media: Fashion, fitness, eternal youth,
adventure, daring, novelty, sexuality... these are the concerns of the
"yuppie," and his or her less-wealthy admirers. The surface is everything!
Let's go bungee-jumping!

5. The productive orientation. There is a healthy personality as well,
which Fromm occasionally refers to as the person without a mask. This is
the person who, without disavowing his or her biological and social
nature, nevertheless does not shirk away from freedom and responsibility.
This person comes out of a family that loves without overwhelming the
individual, that prefers reason to rules, and freedom to conformity.

The society that gives rise to the productive type (on more than a chance
basis) doesn't exist yet, according to Fromm. He does, of course, have
some ideas about what it will be like. He calls it humanistic
communitarian socialism. That's quite a mouthful, and made up of words
that aren't exactly popular in the USA, but let me explain: Humanistic
means oriented towards human beings, and not towards some higher entity --
not the all-powerful State nor someone's conception of God. Communitarian
means composed of small communities (Gemeinschaften, in German), as
opposed to big government or corporations. Socialism means everyone is
responsible for the welfare of everyone else. Thus understood, it's hard
to argue with Fromm's idealism!

Fromm says that the first four orientations (which others might call
neurotic) are living in the having mode. They focus on consuming,
obtaining, possessing.... They are defined by what they have. Fromm says
that "I have it" tends to become "it has me," and we become driven by our
possessions!

The productive orientation , on the other hand, lives in the being mode.
What you are is defined by your actions in this world. You live without a
mask, experiencing life, relating to people, being yourself.

He says that most people, being so used to the having mode, use the word
have to describe their problems: "Doctor, I have a problem: I have
insomnia. Although I have a beautiful home, wonderful children, and a
happy marriage, I have many worries." He is looking to the therapist to
remove the bad things, and let him keep the good ones, a little like
asking a surgeon to take out your gall bladder. What you should be saying
is more like "I am troubled. I am happily married, yet I cannot sleep...."
By saying you have a problem, you are avoiding facing the fact that you
are the problem -- i.e. you avoid, once again, taking responsibility for
your life.

Orientation Society Family Escape from Freedom

Receptive Peasant society Symbiotic (passive) Authoritarian (masochistic)

Exploitative Aristocratic society Symbiotic (active) Authoritarian
(sadistic)

Hoarding Bourgeois society Withdrawing (puritanical) Perfectionist to
destructive

Marketing Modern society Withdrawing (infantile) Automaton conformist

Productive Humanistic communitarian socialism

Loving and reasoning Freedom and responsibility acknowledged and
accepted

Evil

Fromm was always interested in trying to understand the really evil people
of this world -- not just one's who were confused or mislead or stupid or
sick, but the one's who, with full consciousness of the evil of their
acts, performed them anyway: Hitler, Stalin, Charles Manson, Jim Jones,
and so on, large and small.

All the orientations we've talked about, productive and non-productive, in
the having mode or the being mode, have one thing in common: They are all
efforts at life. Like Horney, Fromm believed that even the most miserable
neurotic is at the least trying to cope with life. They are, to use his
word, biophilous, life-loving.

But there is another type of person he calls necrophilous -- the lovers of
death. They have the passionate attraction to all that is dead, decayed,
putrid, sickly; it is the passion to transform that which is alive into
something unalive; to destroy for the sake of destruction; the exclusive
interest in all that is purely mechanical. It is the passion "to tear
apart living structures."

If you think back to high school, you may remember a few misfits: They
were real horror movie aficionados. They may have made models of torture
devices and guillotines. They loved to play war games. They liked to blow
things up with their chemistry sets. They got a kick out of torturing
small animals. They treasured their guns. They were really into mechanical
devices. The more sophisticated the technology, the happier they were.
Beavis and Butthead are modeled after these kids.

I remember watching an interview on TV once, back during the little war in
Nicaragua. There were plenty of American mercenaries among the Contras,
and one in particular had caught the reporters eye. He was a munitions
expert -- someone who blew up bridges, buildings, and, of course, the
occasional enemy soldier. When asked how he got into this line of work, he
smiled and told the reporter that he might not like the story. You see,
when he was a kid, he liked to put firecrackers up the backside of little
birds he had caught, light the fuses, let them go, and watch them blow up.
This man was a necrophiliac.

Fromm makes a few guesses as to how such a person happens. He suggested
that there may be some genetic flaw that prevents them from feeling or
responding to affection. It may also be a matter of a life so full of
frustration that the person spends the rest of their life in a rage. And
finally, he suggests that it may be a matter of growing up with a
necrophilous mother, so that the child has no one to learn love from. It
is very possible that some combination of these factors is at work. And
yet there is still the idea that these people know what they are doing,
are conscious of their evil, and choose it. It is a subject that would
bear more study!

Ask a simple question, get a complicated answer. This mystic philosopher/writer/publisher editor gal wrote me:
"This is a prison planet. The coverup is that you are not free. If you think you are free, you are productive.
If you don't think you are free, incentive is lost and they cannot use you."

HMMMM, this is a paradox, conundrum & riddle which leaves me scratching my
head. THE MAN wants me to think I AM FREE, so I AM productive for him?
Yeah but I do not work for him.

So why would he let me run around doing or attempting to do damage to
him...Does his propaganda autosuggestion only work on those with jobs?
WORKING FOR HIM? YOU probably HAVE A REAL JOB,
so he tells you that YOU are free, He gets more work out of you?

So the equation really reads, QUIT YOUR JOB, subtract yourself from the Oligarch's
FACTORY and put your energy into MISCHIEF, against the Greedy 1%, their
legislators, bought pols and mendacious press. And the rest of the time, run
your communal, guerilla business.

~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~
Have you read Eric Fromms "Escape from Freedom."
It's FREE ONLINE

 Also read up on "learned helplessness" by GOOGLING THE PHRASE. A LOT out there ON IT!

Erich Seligmann Fromm (March 23, 1900 – March 18, 1980) was a German social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, and democratic socialist. He was associated with what became known as the Frankfurt School of critical theory. Born at Frankfurt am Main, the only child of Orthodox Jewish parents. He started his academic studies in 1918 at the University of Frankfurt am Main with two semesters of jurisprudence. During the summer semester of 1919, Fromm studied at the University of Heidelberg, where he switched from studying jurisprudence to sociology under Alfred Weber (brother of the better known sociologist Max Weber), the psychiatrist-philosopher Karl Jaspers, and Heinrich Rickert. Fromm received his PhD in sociology from Heidelberg in 1922. During the mid 1920s, he was trained to become a psychoanalyst through Frieda Reichmann's psychoanalytic sanatorium in Heidelberg. He began his own clinical practice in 1927. In 1930, he joined the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research and completed his psychoanalytical training.

After the Nazi takeover of power in Germany, Fromm moved to Geneva and then, in 1934, to Columbia University in New York. Karen Horney's long-term relationship with Fromm is the subject of her book Self Analysis. They each had a marked influence on the other's thought, with Horney illuminating some aspects of psychoanalysis for Fromm and the latter elucidating sociology for Horney. Their relationship ended in the late 1930s.[2] After leaving Columbia, Fromm helped form the New York branch of the Washington School of Psychiatry in 1943, and in 1946 co-founded the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and Psychology. He was on the faculty of Bennington College from 1941 to 1949.

When Fromm moved to Mexico City in 1949, he became a professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and established a psychoanalytic section at the medical school there. Meanwhile, he taught as a professor of psychology at Michigan State University from 1957 to 1961 and as an adjunct professor of psychology at the graduate division of Arts and Sciences at New York University after 1962. He taught at UNAM until his retirement, in 1965, and at the Mexican Society of Psychoanalysis (SMP) until 1974. In 1974 he moved from Mexico City to Muralto, Switzerland, and died at his home in 1980, five days before his eightieth birthday. All the while, Fromm maintained his own clinical practice and published a series of books.
[edit] Psychological theory

Beginning with his first seminal work of 1941, Escape from Freedom (known in Britain as Fear of Freedom), Fromm's writings were notable as much for their social and political commentary as for their philosophical and psychological underpinnings. Indeed, Escape from Freedom is viewed as one of the founding works of political psychology. His second important work, Man for Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics, first published in 1947, continued and enriched the ideas of Escape from Freedom. Taken together, these books outlined Fromm's theory of human character, which was a natural outgrowth of Fromm's theory of human nature. Fromm's most popular book was The Art of Loving, an international bestseller first published in 1956, which recapitulated and complemented the theoretical principles of human nature found in Escape from Freedom and Man for Himself—principles which were revisited in many of Fromm's other major works.

Central to Fromm's world view was his interpretation of the Talmud, which he began studying as a young man under Rabbi J. Horowitz and later studied under Rabbi Salman Baruch Rabinkow while working towards his doctorate in sociology at the University of Heidelberg and under Nehemia Nobel and Ludwig Krause while studying in Frankfurt. Fromm's grandfather and two great grandfathers on his father's side were rabbis, and a great uncle on his mother's side was a noted Talmudic scholar. However, Fromm turned away from orthodox Judaism in 1926, towards secular interpretations of scriptural ideals.

The cornerstone of Fromm's humanistic philosophy is his interpretation of the biblical story of Adam and Eve's exile from the Garden of Eden. Drawing on his knowledge of the Talmud, Fromm pointed out that being able to distinguish between good and evil is generally considered to be a virtue, and that biblical scholars generally consider Adam and Eve to have sinned by disobeying God and eating from the Tree of Knowledge. However, departing from traditional religious orthodoxy, Fromm extolled the virtues of humans taking independent action and using reason to establish moral values rather than adhering to authoritarian moral values.

Beyond a simple condemnation of authoritarian value systems, Fromm used the story of Adam and Eve as an allegorical explanation for human biological evolution and existential angst, asserting that when Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge, they became aware of themselves as being separate from nature while still being part of it. This is why they felt "naked" and "ashamed": they had evolved into human beings, conscious of themselves, their own mortality, and their powerlessness before the forces of nature and society, and no longer united with the universe as they were in their instinctive, pre-human existence as animals. According to Fromm, the awareness of a disunited human existence is a source of guilt and shame, and the solution to this existential dichotomy is found in the development of one's uniquely human powers of love and reason. However, Fromm distinguished his concept of love from unreflective popular notions as well as Freudian paradoxical love (see criticism by Marcuse below).

Fromm considered love to be an interpersonal creative capacity rather than an emotion, and he distinguished this creative capacity from what he considered to be various forms of narcissistic neuroses and sado-masochistic tendencies that are commonly held out as proof of "true love." Indeed, Fromm viewed the experience of "falling in love" as evidence of one's failure to understand the true nature of love, which he believed always had the common elements of care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge. Drawing from his knowledge of the Torah, Fromm pointed to the story of Jonah, who did not wish to save the residents of Nineveh from the consequences of their sin, as demonstrative of his belief that the qualities of care and responsibility are generally absent from most human relationships. Fromm also asserted that few people in modern society had respect for the autonomy of their fellow human beings, much less the objective knowledge of what other people truly wanted and needed.

Fromm believed that freedom was an aspect of human nature that we either embrace or escape. He observed that embracing our freedom of will was healthy, whereas escaping freedom through the use of escape mechanisms was the root of psychological conflicts. Fromm outlined three of the most common escape mechanisms: automaton conformity, authoritarianism, and destructiveness. Automaton conformity is changing one's ideal self to conform to a perception of society's preferred type of personality, losing one's true self in the process. Automaton conformity displaces the burden of choice from self to society. Authoritarianism is giving control of oneself to another. By submitting one's freedom to someone else, this act removes the freedom of choice almost entirely. Lastly, destructiveness is any process which attempts to eliminate others or the world as a whole, all to escape freedom. Fromm said that "the destruction of the world is the last, almost desperate attempt to save myself from being crushed by it".[3]

The word biophilia was frequently used by Fromm as a description of a productive psychological orientation and "state of being". For example, in an addendum to his book The Heart of Man: Its Genius For Good and Evil, Fromm wrote as part of his Humanist Credo:

"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.)
[edit] Six orientations

Fromm also spoke of "orientation of character" in his book Man For Himself, which describes the ways an individual relates to the world and constitutes his general character, and develops from two specific kinds of relatedness to the world: acquiring and assimilating things ("assimilation"), and reacting to people ("socialization"). Fromm considers these character systems the human substitute for instincts in animals. These orientations describe how a man has developed in regard to how he responds to conflicts in his or her life; he also said that people were never pure in any such orientation. These two factors form five types of malignant character, which he calls Receptive, Exploitative, Hoarding, Necrophilous and Marketing. He also described a positive character, which he called Productive.
[edit] Fromm's influence on other notable psychologists

Fromm's four non-productive orientations were subject to validation through a psychometric test, The Person Relatedness Test by Elias H. Porter, PhD in collaboration with Carl Rogers, PhD at the University of Chicago's Counseling Center between 1953 and 1955. Fromm's four non-productive orientations also served as basis for the LIFO test, first published in 1967 by Stuart Atkins, Alan Katcher, PhD, and Elias Porter, PhD and the Strength Deployment Inventory, first published in 1971 by Chris H. Porter, PhD,[7][8]
[edit] Critique of Freud

Fromm examined the life and work of Sigmund Freud at length. He identified a discrepancy between early and later Freudian theory: namely that prior to World War I, Freud described human drives as a tension between desire and repression, but after the war's conclusion, he framed human drives as a struggle between biologically-universal Life and Death (Eros and Thanatos) instincts. Fromm charged Freud and his followers with never acknowledging the contradictions between the two theories.

He also criticized Freud's dualistic thinking. According to Fromm, Freudian descriptions of human consciousness as struggles between two poles was narrow and limiting. Fromm also condemned him as a misogynist unable to think outside the patriarchal milieu of early 20th century Vienna. However, Fromm expressed a great respect for Freud and his accomplishments, in spite of these criticisms. Fromm contended that Freud was one of the "architects of the modern age", alongside Albert Einstein and Karl Marx, but emphasized that he considered Marx both far more historically important than Freud and a finer thinker.[9]
[edit] Political ideas and activities

Fromm's best known work, Escape from Freedom, focuses on the human urge to seek a source of authority and control upon reaching a freedom that was thought to be an individual’s true desire. Fromm’s critique of the modern political order and capitalist system led him to seek insights from medieval feudalism. In Escape from Freedom, he found favor with the lack of individual freedom, rigid structure, and obligations required on the members of medieval society:

    What characterizes medieval in contrast to modern society is its lack of individual freedom…But altogether a person was not free in the modern sense, neither was he alone and isolated. In having a distinct, unchangeable, and unquestionable place in the social world from the moment of birth, man was rooted in a structuralized whole, and thus life had a meaning which left no place, and no need for doubt…There was comparatively little competition. One was born into a certain economic position which guaranteed a livelihood determined by tradition, just as it carried economic obligations to those higher in the social hierarchy.

The culmination of Fromm's social and political philosophy was his book The Sane Society, published in 1955, which argued in favor of a humanistic and democratic socialism. Building primarily upon the early works of Karl Marx, Fromm sought to re-emphasise the ideal of freedom, missing from most Soviet Marxism, and more frequently found in the writings of libertarian socialists and liberal theoreticians. Fromm's brand of socialism rejected both Western capitalism and Soviet communism, which he saw as dehumanizing and that resulted in a virtually universal modern phenomenon of alienation. He became one of the founders of socialist humanism, promoting the early writings of Marx and his humanist messages to the US and Western European public.

In the early 1960s, Fromm published two books dealing with Marxist thoughts (Marx's Concept of Man and Beyond the Chains of Illusion: my Encounter with Marx and Freud). In 1965, working to stimulate the Western and Eastern cooperation between Marxist humanists, Fromm published a series of articles entitled Socialist Humanism: An International Symposium. In 1966, the American Humanist Association named him Humanist of the Year.

For a period, Fromm was also active in US politics. He joined the Socialist Party of America in the mid-1950s, and did his best to help them provide an alternative viewpoint to the prevailing McCarthyism of the time. This alternative viewpoint was best expressed in his 1961 paper May Man Prevail? An Inquiry into the Facts and Fictions of Foreign Policy. However, as a co-founder of SANE, Fromm's strongest political activism was in the international peace movement, fighting against the nuclear arms race and US involvement in the Vietnam War. After supporting Senator Eugene McCarthy's losing bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, Fromm more or less retreated from the American political scene, although he did write a paper in 1974 entitled Remarks on the Policy of Détente for a hearing held by the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.
 

Noam Chomsky "liked Fromm's attitudes but thought his work was pretty superficial." In Eros and Civilization Herbert Marcuse condemns Fromm, that in the beginning he was a radical theorist who later turned to conformity. Marcuse also argued that Fromm, as well as his close colleagues Sullivan and Karen Horney, removed Freud's libido theory and other radical concepts, which thus reduced psychoanalysis to a set of idealist ethics, which only embrace the status quo. Fromm's response, in both The Sane Society and in The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, argues that Freud indeed deserves substantial credit for recognizing the central importance of the unconscious, but also that he tended to reify his own concepts that depicted the self as the passive outcome of instinct and social control, with minimal volition or variability. Fromm argues that later scholars such as Marcuse accepted these concepts as dogma, whereas social-psychology requires a more dynamic theoretical and empirical approach. Fromm's works in English

    * Escape from Freedom (US), The Fear of Freedom (UK) (1941) ISBN 978-0-8050-3149-2
    * Man for himself, an inquiry into the psychology of ethics (1947) ISBN 978-0-8050-1403-7
    * Psychoanalysis and Religion (1950) ISBN 978-0-300-00089-4
    * The Forgotten Language; an introduction to the understanding of dreams, fairy tales, and myths (1951) ISBN 978-0-03-018436-9
    * The Sane Society (1955) ISBN 978-0-415-60586-1
    * The Art of Loving (1956) ISBN 978-0-06-112973-5
    * Sigmund Freud's mission; an analysis of his personality and influence (1959)
    * Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis (1960) ISBN 978-0-285-64747-3
    * May Man Prevail? An inquiry into the facts and fictions of foreign policy (1961) ISBN 978-0-385-00035-2
    * Marx's Concept of Man (1961) ISBN 978-0-8264-7791-0
    * Beyond the Chains of Illusion: my encounter with Marx and Freud (1962) ISBN 978-0-8264-1897-5
    * The Dogma of Christ and Other Essays on Religion, Psychology and Culture (1963) ISBN 978-0-415-28999-3
    * The Heart of Man, its genius for good and evil (1964) ISBN 978-0-06-090795-2
    * Socialist Humanism (1965)
    * You Shall Be as Gods: a radical interpretation of the Old Testament and its tradition (1966) ISBN 978-0-8050-1605-5
    * The Revolution of Hope, toward a humanized technology (1968) ISBN 978-1-59056-183-6
    * The Nature of Man (1968) ISBN 978-0-86562-082-7
    * The Crisis of Psychoanalysis (1970) ISBN 978-0-449-30792-2
    * Social character in a Mexican village; a sociopsychoanalytic study (Fromm & Maccoby) (1970) ISBN 978-1-56000-876-7
    * The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1973) ISBN 978-0-8050-1604-8
    * To Have or to Be? (1976) ISBN 978-0-8050-1604-8
    * Greatness and Limitation of Freud's Thought (1979) ISBN 978-0-06-011389-6
    * On Disobedience and other essays (1981) ISBN 978-0-8164-0500-8
    * The Art of Being (1993) ISBN 978-0-8264-0673-6
    * The Art of Listening (1994) ISBN 978-0-8264-1132-7
    * On Being Human (1997) ISBN 978-0-8264-1005-4
 

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