Erich fromm escape from freedom pdf

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Erich fromm escape from freedom pdf

At the moment all of our mobile-responsive ePub books are available to download via the app. Most of our PDFs are also available to download and we're working on making the final remaining ones downloadable now. Here is a book that was recommended to me early in my grad school career, and for some reason I have put off reading it until now.

Studying for comps has pushed me to "get my reading on" I read this book in hopes of just reviewing some theory and getting Fromm's perspective. I did not expect to read it and be so engrossed definitely didn't expect to read it in 2. Fromm puts it out there that as humans, our desire for individual freedom is one that at the same time makes us free, also makes us alone.

He states that the desire to be free and an individual thus makes us isolate and alone--which is not really what we want. We must some how reconcile these two forces What I am taking from that portion of the book is that man must decide what is more individually important to him: The ability to say that he is free, and has his own ideas but be alone He goes further to explain the history of personal freedoms, and the influence that religion especially Luther and Calvin has on shaping the modern man.

The last portion of the book describes how the German people could allow themselves to be followers of a party like the Nazi party. And yes, how the United States, even though we have a democracy, might be able to be dominated by a strong force like what national socialism did to Germany. But man is not only made by history-history is made by man.

Dollard and H. Lasswell, of the anthropologists R. Benedict, J. Linton, M. Mead, E. Sapir and A. These theories, though speaking of the psychological factor, at the same time reduce it to a shadow of cultural patterns. By static adaptation we mean such an adaptation to patterns as leaves the whole character structure unchanged and implies only the adoption of a new habit.

An example of this kind of adaptation is the change from the Chinese habit of eating to. While he adapts himself to the necessities of the situation, something happens in "'him. This repressed hostility, however, though not manifest, is a dynamic factor in his character structure. While here, too, as in the first case, an individual adapts himself to certain external circumstances, this kind of adaptation creates something new in him, arouses new ,drives and new anxieties.

Besides the question of what kind of adaptation occurs, other questions need to be answered: What is it that forces man to adapt himself to almost any conceivable condition of life, and what are the limits of his adaptability? But they are flexible in the sense that individuals, particularly in their childhood, develop the one or other need according to the whole mode of life they find themselves in.

In contrast to those needs, there are others which are an ind. This need for self-preservation is that part of human nature which needs satisfaction under all circumstances and therefore forms the primary motive of human behavior. To put this in a simple formula: man must eat, drink, sleep, protect himself against enemies, and so forth.

In order to do all this he must work and produce. Work is always concrete work, that is, a specific kind of work in a specific kind of economic system. A person may work as a slave in a feudal system, as a peasant in an Indian erich fromm escape from freedom pdf, as an independent businessman in capitalistic society, as a salesgirl in a modem department store, as a worker on the endless belt of a big factory.

These different kinds of work require entirely different personality traits and make for different kinds of relatedness to others. When man is born, the stage is set for him. Both factors, his need to live and the social system, in principle are unalterable by him as an individual, and they are the factors which determine the development of those other traits that show greater plasticity.

There is another part just as compelling, one which is not rooted in bodily processes but in the very essence of the human mode and practice of life: the need to be related to the world outside oneself, the need to avoid aloneness. This relatedness to others is not identical with physical contact. The spiritual relatedness to the world can assume many forms; the monk in his cell who believes in God and the political prisoner kept in isolation who feels one with his fellow fighters are not alone morally.

The compelling need to avoid moral isolation has been described most forcefully by Balzac in this passage from The Inventors Suffering: "But learn one thing, impress it upon your mind which is still so malleable: man has a horror for aloneness. And of all kinds of aloneness, moral aloneness is the most terrible. The first hermits lived with God, they inhabited the world which is most populated, the world of the spirits.

The first thought of man, be he a leper or a prisoner' a erich fromm escape from freedom pdf or an invalid, is: to have a companion of his fate. Would Satan have found companions without this overpowering craving? On this theme one could write a whole epic, which would be the prologue to Paradise Lost because Paradise Lost is nothing but the apology of rebelIion.

Eac4 person experiences this need for the help of others very drastically as a child. The possibility of being left alone is necessarily the most serious threat to the child's whole existence. Although the degree of this awareness varies, as will be pointed out in the next chapter, its existence confronts man with a problem which is essentially human: by being aware of himself as distinct from nature and other people, by being aware-even very dimly-of death, sickness, aging, he necessarily feels his insignificance and smallness in comparison with the universe and all others who are not "he.

He would not be able to relate himself to any system which would give meaning and direction to his life, he would be filled with doubt, and this doubt eventually would paralyze his ability to act-that is, to live. The greed that sought after more and more money was considered a sin by the Church, which had considerable influence over government and society.

However, this medieval regime was upset by modernity, beginning with the Renaissance. Capitalist theory and practice resulted in the uprooting of traditional ties and the pursuit of money for its own sake. In the new society, people became individual economic actors, subject to the vagaries of supply and demand. Having obtained freedom from medieval regulation, people had to try to survive, economically, in a very competitive environment.

The loss of traditional community ties led many to attempt to restore some sense of belonging and security by losing themselves in authoritarian political and religious movements. Originally he posed as the Messiah of the old middle class, promised the destruction of department stores, the breaking of the domination of banking capital, and so on.

The record is clear enough. These promises were never fulfilled. However, that did not matter. Nazism never had any genuine political or economic principles. It is essential to understand that the very principle of Nazism is its radical opportunism. What mattered was that hundreds of thousands of petty bourgeois, who in the normal course of development had little chance to gain money or power, as members of the Nazi bureaucracy now got a large slice of the wealth and prestige they forced the upper classes to share with them.

I just finished my second reading of this work. Moreover, this understanding has obvious applications to international populist authoritarian movements in our own time. As Fromm observed, the authoritarian personality has both sadistic and masochistic manifestations. The followers are mostly masochistic, but even they exhibit sadistic tendencies against disfavored and marginalized groups as well as those under them in the fascist hierarchy.

Perhaps present-day psychologists should undertake massive case studies of individuals drawn to authoritarian movements in an attempt to discover the roots of this antisocial attraction and the extent, if any, that they can be attributed to the historical circumstances emphasized by Fromm. Note: This book was written more than thirty years before writers and editors in English became sensitive to the importance of gender-neutral language.

Such a great book! The copy I purchased is now full of annotations. The only other things I would say is that I found it a bit dense so it took a while to read. I also found the first 60 or so pages in which Fromm is laying out his methodology somewhat dry, but important, and there are a couple of minor areas that perhaps did not age well. Otherwise, I highly recommend this book!

Truly eye-opening and enlightening. Fromm introduces a very interesting way to understand modern social problems.