254 Part II Psychodynamic Theories
∙ Transcendence is the need for people to rise above their passive
existence and create or destroy life.
∙ Rootedness is the need for a consistent structure in people’s lives.
∙ A sense of identity gives a person a feeling of “I” or “me.”
∙ A frame of orientation is a consistent way of looking at the world.
∙ Basic anxiety is a sense of being alone in the world.
∙ To relieve basic anxiety, people use various mechanisms of escape,
especially authoritarianism, destructiveness, and conformity.
∙ Psychologically healthy people acquire the syndrome of growth, which
includes (1) positive freedom, or the spontaneous activity of a whole,
integrated personality; (2) biophilia, or a passionate love of life; and
(3) love for fellow humans.
∙ Other people, however, live nonproductively and acquire things through
passively receiving things, exploiting others, hoarding things, and
marketing or exchanging things, including themselves.
∙ Some extremely sick people are motivated by the syndrome of decay,
which includes (1) necrophilia, or the love of death; (2) malignant
narcissism, or infatuation with self; and (3) incestuous symbiosis, or the
tendency to remain bound to a mothering person or her equivalents.
∙ The goal of Fromm’s psychotherapy is to establish a union with patients
so that they can become reunited with the world.