Feist−Feist: Theories of
Personality, Seventh
EditionII. Psychodynamic
Theories- Fromm: Humanistic
Psychoanalysis
(^208) © The McGraw−Hill
Companies, 2009
identities are lost. Incestuous symbiosis originates in infancy as a natural attachment
to the mothering one. The attachment is more crucial and fundamental than any sex-
ual interest that may develop during the Oedipal period. Fromm agreed more with
Harry Stack Sullivan (see Chapter 8) than with Freud in suggesting that attachment
to the mother rests on the need for security and not for sex. “Sexual strivings are not
the cause of the fixation to mother, but the result” (Fromm, 1964, p. 99).
People living in incestuous symbiotic relationships feel extremely anxious and
frightened if that relationship is threatened. They believe that they cannot live with-
out their mother substitute. (The host need not be another human—it can be a fam-
ily, a business, a church, or a nation.) The incestuous orientation distorts reasoning
powers, destroys the capacity for authentic love, and prevents people from achieving
independence and integrity.
Some pathologic individuals possess all three personality disorders; that is,
they are attracted to death (necrophilia), take pleasure in destroying those whom they
regard as inferiors (malignant narcissism), and possess a neurotic symbiotic rela-
tionship with their mother or mother substitute (incestuous symbiosis). Such people
formed what Fromm called the syndrome of decay.He contrasted these pathological
people with those who are marked by the syndrome of growth,which is made up of
the opposite qualities: namely, biophilia, love, and positive freedom. As shown in
Figure 7.1, both the syndrome of decay and the syndrome of growth are extreme
forms of development; most people have average psychological health.
Psychotherapy
Fromm was trained as an orthodox Freudian analyst but became bored with standard
analytic techniques. “With time I came to see that my boredom stemmed from the
fact that I was not in touch with the life of my patients” (Fromm, 1986, p. 106). He
then evolved his own system of therapy, which he called humanistic psychoanalysis.
Compared with Freud, Fromm was much more concerned with the interpersonal as-
pects of a therapeutic encounter. He believed that the aim of therapy is for patients
to come to know themselves. Without knowledge of ourselves, we cannot know any
other person or thing.
Fromm believed that patients come to therapy seeking satisfaction of their
basic human needs—relatedness, transcendence, rootedness, a sense of identity, and
a frame of orientation. Therefore, therapy should be built on a personal relationship
between therapist and patient. Because accurate communication is essential to ther-
apeutic growth, the therapist must relate “as one human being to another with utter
concentration and utter sincerity” (Fromm, 1963, p. 184). In this spirit of related-
ness, the patient will once again feel at one with another person. Although transfer-
enceand even countertransferencemay exist within this relationship, the important
point is that two real human beings are involved with one another.
As part of his attempt to achieve shared communication, Fromm asked patients
to reveal their dreams. He believed that dreams, as well as fairy tales and myths, are
expressed in symbolic language—the only universal language humans have devel-
oped (Fromm, 1951). Because dreams have meaning beyond the individual dreamer,
Fromm would ask for the patient’s associations to the dream material. Not all dream
symbols, however, are universal; some are accidental and depend on the dreamer’s
202 Part II Psychodynamic Theories