Feist−Feist: Theories of
Personality, Seventh
EditionII. Psychodynamic
Theories- Fromm: Humanistic
Psychoanalysis
© The McGraw−Hill^199
Companies, 2009freedom to be unique and separate. It enables a person to satisfy the need for relat-
edness without surrendering integrity and independence. In love, two people become
one yet remain two.
In The Art of Loving,Fromm (1956) identified care, responsibility, respect, and
knowledge as four basic elements common to all forms of genuine love. Someone
who loves another person must carefor that person and be willing to take care of him
or her. Love also means responsibility,that is, a willingness and ability to respond.
A person who loves others responds to their physical and psychological needs, re-
spects them for who they are, and avoids the temptation of trying to change them.
But people can respect others only if they have knowledgeof them. To know others
means to see them from their own point of view. Thus, care, responsibility, respect,
and knowledge are all entwined in a love relationship.
Transcendence
Like other animals, humans are thrown into the world without their consent or will
and then removed from it—again without their consent or will. But unlike other
animals, human beings are driven by the need for transcendence,defined as the
urge to rise above a passive and accidental existence and into “the realm of pur-
posefulness and freedom” (Fromm, 1981, p. 4). Just as relatedness can be pursued
through either productive or nonproductive methods, transcendence can be sought
through either positive or negative approaches. People can transcend their passive
nature by either creating life or by destroying it. Although other animals can create
life through reproduction, only humans are aware of themselves as creators. Also,
humans can be creative in other ways. They can create art, religions, ideas, laws, ma-
terial production, and love.
To create means to be active and to care about that which we create. But we
can also transcend life by destroying it and thus rising above our slain victims. In The
Anatomy of Human Destructiveness,Fromm (1973) argued that humans are the only
species to use malignant aggression:that is, to kill for reasons other than survival.
Although malignant aggression is a dominant and powerful passion in some indi-
viduals and cultures, it is not common to all humans. It apparently was unknown to
many prehistoric societies as well as some contemporary “primitive” societies.
Rootedness
A third existential need is for rootedness,or the need to establish roots or to feel at
home again in the world. When humans evolved as a separate species, they lost their
home in the natural world. At the same time, their capacity for thought enabled them
to realize that they were without a home, without roots. The consequent feelings of
isolation and helplessness became unbearable.
Rootedness, too, can be sought in either productive or nonproductive strate-
gies. With the productive strategy, people are weaned from the orbit of their mother
and become fully born; that is, they actively and creatively relate to the world and
become whole or integrated. This new tie to the natural world confers security and
reestablishes a sense of belongingness and rootedness. However, people may also
seek rootedness through the nonproductive strategy of fixation—a tenacious
Chapter 7 Fromm: Humanistic Psychoanalysis 193