Chapter 8 Fromm: Humanistic Psychoanalysis 237Historically, as people gained more and more economic and political freedom,
they came to feel increasingly more isolated. For example, during the Middle Ages
people had relatively little personal freedom. They were anchored to prescribed roles
in society, roles that provided security, dependability, and certainty. Then, as they
acquired more freedom to move both socially and geographically, they found that
they were free from the security of a fixed position in the world. They were no
longer tied to one geographic region, one social order, or one occupation. They
became separated from their roots and isolated from one another.
A parallel experience exists on a personal level. As children become more
independent of their mothers, they gain more freedom to express their individuality,
to move around unsupervised, to choose their friends, clothes, and so on. At the
same time, they experience the burden of freedom; that is, they are free from the
security of being one with the mother. On both a social and an individual level, this
burden of freedom results in basic anxiety, the feeling of being alone in the world.
Mechanisms of Escape
Because basic anxiety produces a frightening sense of isolation and aloneness,
people attempt to flee from freedom through a variety of escape mechanisms. In
Escape from Freedom, Fromm (1941) identified three primary mechanisms of
escape— authoritarianism, destructiveness, and conformity. Unlike Horney’s neu-
rotic trends (see Chapter 6), Fromm’s mechanisms of escape are the driving forces
in normal people, both individually and collectively.
Authoritarianism
Fromm (1941) defined authoritarianism as the “tendency to give up the indepen-
dence of one’s own individual self and to fuse one’s self with somebody or some-
thing outside oneself, in order to acquire the strength which the individual is
lacking” (p. 141). This need to unite with a powerful partner can take one of two
forms—masochism or sadism. Masochism results from basic feelings of powerless-
ness, weakness, and inferiority and is aimed at joining the self to a more powerful
person or institution. Masochistic strivings often are disguised as love or loyalty,
but unlike love and loyalty, they can never contribute positively to independence
and authenticity.
Compared with masochism, sadism is more neurotic and more socially harmful.
Like masochism, sadism is aimed at reducing basic anxiety through achieving unity
with another person or persons. Fromm (1941) identified three kinds of sadistic ten-
de ncies, all more or less clustered together. The first is the need to make others
dependent on oneself and to gain power over those who are weak. The second is the
compulsion to exploit others, to take advantage of them, and to use them for one’s
benefit or pleasure. A third sadistic tendency is the desire to see others suffer, either
physically or psychologically.
Destructiveness
Like authoritarianism, destructiveness is rooted in the feelings of aloneness, isola-
tion, and powerlessness. Unlike sadism and masochism, however, destructiveness