Feist−Feist: Theories of
Personality, Seventh
EditionII. Psychodynamic
Theories- Fromm: Humanistic
Psychoanalysis
© The McGraw−Hill^211
Companies, 2009A Psychohistorical Study of Hitler
Following Freud (see Chapter 2), Fromm examined historical documents in order to
sketch a psychological portrait of a prominent person, a technique called psychohis-
toryor psychobiography.The subject of Fromm’s most complete psychobiographical
study was Freud (Fromm, 1959), but Fromm (1941, 1973, 1986) also wrote at length
on the life of Adolf Hitler.
Fromm regarded Hitler as the world’s most conspicuous example of a person
with the syndrome of decay,possessing a combination of necrophilia, malignant nar-
cissism, and incestuous symbiosis. Hitler displayed all three pathological disorders.
He was attracted to death and destruction; narrowly focused on self-interests; and
driven by an incestuous devotion to the Germanic “race,” being fanatically dedicated
to preventing its blood from being polluted by Jews and other “non-Aryans.”
Unlike some psychoanalysts who look only to early childhood for clues to
adult personality, Fromm believed that each stage of development is important and
that nothing in Hitler’s early life bent him inevitably toward the syndrome of decay.
As a child, Hitler was somewhat spoiled by his mother, but her indulgence did
not cause his later pathology. It did, however, foster narcissistic feelings of self-
importance. “Hitler’s mother never became to him a person to whom he was lovingly
or tenderly attached. She was a symbol of the protecting and admiring goddesses, but
also of the goddess of death and chaos” (Fromm, 1973, p. 378).
Hitler was an above-average student in elementary school, but a failure in high
school. During adolescence, he experienced some conflict with his father, who
wanted him to be more responsible and to take a reliable civil service job. Hitler, on
the other hand, somewhat unrealistically desired to be an artist. Also during this time,
he began increasingly to lose himself in fantasy. His narcissism ignited a burning
passion for greatness as an artist or architect, but reality brought him failure after
Chapter 7 Fromm: Humanistic Psychoanalysis 205Adolf Hitler personified for Fromm the syndrome of decay.