Feist−Feist: Theories of
Personality, Seventh
EditionII. Psychodynamic
Theories- Fromm: Humanistic
Psychoanalysis
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Companies, 2009(p. 141). This need to unite with a powerful partner can take one of two forms—
masochism or sadism. Masochismresults from basic feelings of powerlessness,
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 authen-
ticity.
Compared with masochism, sadismis more neurotic and more socially harm-
ful. Like masochism, sadism is aimed at reducing basic anxiety through achieving
unity with another person or persons. Fromm (1941) identified three kinds of sadis-
tic tendencies, all more or less clustered together. The first is the need to make oth-
ers 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, destructivenessis rooted in the feelings of aloneness, isola-
tion, and powerlessness. Unlike sadism and masochism, however, destructiveness
does not depend on a continuous relationship with another person; rather, it seeks to
do away with other people.
Both individuals and nations can employ destructiveness as a mechanism of
escape. By destroying people and objects, a person or a nation attempts to restore
lost feelings of power. However, by destroying other persons or nations, destructive
people eliminate much of the outside world and thus acquire a type of perverted iso-
lation.
Conformity
A third means of escape is conformity.People who conform try to escape from a
sense of aloneness and isolation by giving up their individuality and becoming what-
ever other people desire them to be. Thus, they become like robots, reacting pre-
dictably and mechanically to the whims of others. They seldom express their own
opinion, cling to expected standards of behavior, and often appear stiff and auto-
mated.
People in the modern world are free from many external bonds and are free to
act according to their own will, but at the same time, they do not know what they
want, think, or feel. They conform like automatons to an anonymous authority and
adopt a self that is not authentic. The more they conform, the more powerless they
feel; the more powerless they feel, the more they must conform. People can break
this cycle of conformity and powerlessness only by achieving self-realization or pos-
itive freedom (Fromm, 1941).
Positive Freedom
The emergence of political and economic freedom does not lead inevitably to the
bondage of isolation and powerlessness. A person “can be free and not alone, criti-
cal and yet not filled with doubts, independent and yet an integral part of mankind”
(Fromm, 1941, p. 257). People can attain this kind of freedom, called positive
Chapter 7 Fromm: Humanistic Psychoanalysis 197