Feist−Feist: Theories of
Personality, Seventh
EditionII. Psychodynamic
Theories- Fromm: Humanistic
Psychoanalysis
(^194) © The McGraw−Hill
Companies, 2009
Fromm takes an evolutionary view of humanity. When humans emerged as a
separate species in animal evolution, they lost most of their animal instincts but
gained “an increase in brain development that permitted self-awareness, imagina-
tion, planning, and doubt” (Fromm, 1992, p. 5). This combination of weak instincts
and a highly developed brain makes humans distinct from all other animals.
A more recent event in human history has been the rise of capitalism, which
on one hand has contributed to the growth of leisure time and personal freedom, but
on the other hand, it has resulted in feelings of anxiety, isolation, and powerlessness.
The cost of freedom, Fromm maintained, has exceeded its benefits. The isolation
wrought by capitalism has been unbearable, leaving people with two alternatives:
(1) to escape from freedom into interpersonal dependencies, or (2) to move to
self-realization through productive love and work.
Biography of Erich Fromm
Like the views of all personality theorists, Erich Fromm’s view of human nature was
shaped by childhood experiences. For Fromm, a Jewish family life, the suicide of a
young woman, and the extreme nationalism of the German people contributed to his
conception of humanity.
Fromm was born on March 23, 1900, in Frankfurt, Germany, the only child of
middle-class Orthodox Jewish parents. His father, Naphtali Fromm, was the son of
a rabbi and the grandson of two rabbis. His mother, Rosa Krause Fromm, was the niece
of Ludwig Krause, a well-known Talmudic scholar. As a boy, Erich studied the Old
Testament with several prominent scholars, men who were regarded as “humanists of
extraordinary tolerance” (Landis & Tauber, 1971, p. xi). Fromm’s humanistic psy-
chology can be traced to the reading of these prophets, “with their vision of univer-
sal peace and harmony, and their teachings that there are ethical aspects to history—
that nations can do right and wrong, and that history has its moral laws” (p. x).
Fromm’s early childhood was less than ideal. He recalled that he had “very
neurotic parents” and that he was “probably a rather unbearably neurotic child”
(Evans, 1966, p. 56). He saw his father as being moody and his mother as prone to
depression. Moreover, he grew up in two very distinct worlds, one the traditional Or-
thodox Jewish world, the other the modern capitalist world. This split existence cre-
ated tensions that were nearly unendurable, but it generated in Fromm a lifelong ten-
dency to see events from more than one perspective (Fromm, 1986; Hausdorff,
1972).
The chapter opening vignette chronicled the shocking and puzzling suicide of
an attractive artistic young woman who killed herself so she could be buried with her
father, who had just died. How was it possible that this young woman could prefer
death to being “alive to the pleasures of life and painting”? (Fromm, 1962, p. 4). This
question haunted Fromm for the next 10 years and eventually led to an interest in
Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis. As Fromm read Freud, he began to learn about
the Oedipus complex and to understand how such an event might be possible. Later,
Fromm would interpret the young woman’s irrational dependence on her father as a
nonproductive symbiotic relationship, but in those early years he was content with
the Freudian explanation.
Fromm was 14 when World War I began, too young to fight but not too young
to be impressed by the irrationality of the German nationalism that he had observed
188 Part II Psychodynamic Theories