Chapter 8 Fromm: Humanistic Psychoanalysis 241they are basically empty vessels waiting to be filled with whatever characteristic is
most marketable.
Negative traits of marketing characters are aimlessness, opportunism, inconsis-
tency, and wastefulness. Some of their positive qualities include changeability, open-
mindedness, adaptability, and generosity.
The Productive Orientation
The single productive orientation has three dimensions—working, loving, and rea-
soning. Because productive people work toward positive freedom and a continuing
realization of their potential, they are the most healthy of all character types. Only
through productive activity can people solve the basic human dilemma: that is, to
unite with the world and with others while retaining uniqueness and individuality.
This solution can be accomplished only through productive work, love, and thought.
Healthy people value work not as an end in itself, but as a means of creative
self-expression. They do not work to exploit others, to market themselves, to
withdraw from others, or to accumulate needless material possessions. They are
neither lazy nor compulsively active, but use work as a means of producing
life’s necessities.
Productive love is characterized by the four qualities of love discussed
earlier—care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge. In addition to these four char-
acteristics, healthy people possess biophilia: that is, a passionate love of life and
all that is alive. Biophilic people desire to further all life—the life of people,
animals, plants, ideas, and cultures. They are concerned with the growth and devel-
opment of themselves as well as others. Biophilic individuals want to influence
people through love, reason, and example—not by force.
Fromm believed that love of others and self-love are inseparable but that
self-love must come first. All people have the capacity for productive love, but
most do not achieve it because they cannot first love themselves.
Productive thinking, which cannot be separated from productive work and
love, is motivated by a concerned interest in another person or object. Healthy
people see others as they are and not as they would wish them to be. Similarly,
they know themselves for who they are and have no need for self-delusion.
Fromm (1947) believed that healthy people rely on some combination of all
five character orientations. Their survival as healthy individuals depends on their
ability to receive things from other people, to take things when appropriate, to
preserve things, to exchange things, and to work, love, and think productively.
Personality Disorders
If healthy people are able to work, love, and think productively, then unhealthy
personalities are marked by problems in these three areas, especially failure to love
productively. Fromm (1981) held that psychologically disturbed people are inca-
pable of love and have failed to establish union with others. He discussed three
severe personality disorders—necrophilia, malignant narcissism, and incestuous
symbiosis.