Erich Fromm (1900-1980) was a social psychologist associated with the Frankford School. Their philosophical projects sought to synthesize the relevant work of Freud and Marx as a way to better understand humanity and the short comings and the problems of the three leading political economic theories of the time: Capitalism, Communism, and Fascism as social modes of existence.
It is commonly believed that the freedom of the individual is sufficiently obtained when external domination is eliminated. This kind of freedom is negative freedom or “freedom from…” as opposed to positive freedom which is “freedom to…” After many historical victories in the fight for freedom it was only a short time before the next generation gave up their freedom. Fromm’s 1941 book “Escape From Freedom,” examines the character structure of modern humanity that makes us willing and even desirous to give up our freedom and submit to an authority. It is the first in a five-book set with the goal of describing and explaining “the character structure of modern man and the problems of interaction between psychological and sociological factors”. In this context the first problem, “the meaning of freedom for modern man”, is the topic of “Escape From Freedom”.
The individual is the fundamental unit of psychology and sociology, but no individual is independent and therefore we must consider the culture and group identities that form and mold the individual. “It is the thesis of this book that modern man, freed from the bounds of pre-individualistic society, which simultaneously gave him security and limited him, has not gained freedom in the positive sense of the realization of his individual self; that is, the expression of his intellectual, emotional and sensuous potentialities, freedom, though it has brought him independence and rationality, has made him isolated and, thereby, anxious and powerless. This isolation is unbearable and the alternatives he is confronted with are either to escape from the burden of his freedom into new dependencies and submission, or to advance to the full realization of positive freedom which is based upon the uniqueness and individuality of man.”
Fromm analyzes our new anxieties that have come from the undoing of the medieval world where we had relatively more psychological security. As a result of these new anxieties, we are prone to want to give ourselves over to dictators or to lose ourselves as a tooth in the wheel of a metaphorical machine so long as we are provide with sufficient food, clothing, shelter and security. It seems that as time progresses there are more and more sources of anxiety in the modern world – these sources appear larger than life, menacing and incomprehensible. We have developed more sources of anxiety because our intellect has grown far more powerful than our emotions can valuate. Most people still need myths to cope with the world because they have not accepted the fact that only we are alone and only each of us as individuals can give meaning to our lives.
The solution lies in the creation of a scientific and dynamic social psychology – in this way we can protect ourselves from the bad side effects of increased developments in the hard and/or medical sciences. To this end this book is a first step. Other steps include the authors other books especially: “The Sane Society” (1955), “Man for Himself” (1947), “The Art of Loving” (1956), “The Heart of Man” (1964), and “Beyond the Chains of Illusion” (1962). Interestingly, the author gave this non-chronological order.
In the process of this investigation the author will explain, as he sees it, the relationship between psychology, sociology, economics and ideology in the social process that creates individual humans.
The socially most important problem in psychology is the precise kinds of “relatedness” of a person to his external world. These related relationships are not static but ever changing in an individual and between individuals. Society is not only a suppressor of drives; it also sublimates drives and therefore has a creative function. The author believes that society is the primary molder of our fears, anxieties, passions, desires, history etc. In short, the culture of a society is the creator of each individual. “Man’s nature, his passions, and anxieties are a cultural product…man himself is the most important creation and achievement of the continuous human effort, the record of which we call history.” It is the role of social psychology to explain changes in our abilities, passions, desires, reason, logic, drives etc. the whys and hows of this process of our own self-development in history.
For example social psychology must explain how and why it was that: “...from the renaissance up until our day men have been filled with a burning ambition for fame, while this striving which today seems so natural was little present in man of the medieval society. In the same period men developed a sense for the beauty of nature which they did not possess before. Again, in the Northern European countries, from the sixteenth century on, man developed an obsessional craving to work which had been lacking in a free man before that period.” And then how these changes feed back into and influence the social process. Therefore, it is the basic drives and the psychological forces of the social process itself that influence the social process. The author disagrees with all theories that assume human nature to be static without any dynamism. The body’s physical processes can adapt to changes in the environment and so can the mind’s process adapt to the changes in the social environment. He claims that any part of human nature can and does change (although human nature does have limits to its adaptability) under the sway of the social process. Freudian psychology by comparison is only concerned with ascertaining the limits of human nature’s malleability and its laws and mechanisms which are assumed to be universal. The author disagrees with Freud and claims that psychology is not static; its laws and mechanisms have changed over time as the social process opens and closes many avenues of behaviour.
There are two kinds of adaptation: static and dynamic. By static adaptation the author means the forming of new habits that do not involve any psychological changes for example changing from using chopsticks to forks. A dynamic adaptation does involve psychological changes: new drives and/or anxieties. They are often similar to neurosis and not always beneficial to the healthy development of the individual. For example, “when a boy submits to the commands of his strict and threatening father—being much too afraid of him to do otherwise—and becomes a ‘good’ boy. While he adapts himself to the necessities of the situation, something happens in him. He may develop an intense hostility against his father, which he represses since it would be too dangerous to express it or even be aware of it. This repressed hostility, however, though not manifest, is a dynamic factor in his character structure….[he] adapts himself to certain external circumstances, this kind of adaptation creates something new in him, arouses new drives and new anxieties.” All life's endeavors that are not biological are reactions to life conditions they are dynamic adaptations and once they appear (usually in childhood), they are very hard to change. Everyone needs to work, and all the different kinds of work require certain personality traits to do the work most effectively; these personality traits necessitate different social strategies and techniques of relatedness to others that become more fixed the longer they appear to produce successful results. This happens on an individual and on a group basis.
In addition to the physiological needs people absolutely need to avoid aloneness. A lack of relatedness to values, symbols, patterns of life (which the author called moral aloneness) is a fate worse than death. “man, the more he gains freedom in the sense of emerging from the original oneness with man and nature and the more he becomes an ‘individual,’ has no choice but to unite himself with the world in the spontaneity of love and productive work or else to seek a kind of security by such ties with the world as destroy his freedom and the integrity of his individual self.”