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Chapter 7: Erich Fromm’s Humanistic
Psychoanalysis
OVERVIEW OF THE HUMANISTIC
PSYCHOANALYSIS
• People Have Lost Their Connection with
Nature and One Another
• This Separation from the Natural World Has
Resulted in
⚬ Basic anxiety characterized by
loneliness and isolation
⚬ The cost of freedom has exceeded its
benefits
• Erich Fromm's humanistic psychoanalysis
looks at people from the perspective of
psychology, history, and anthropology.
• Influenced by Freud and Horney, Fromm
developed a more culturally oriented theory than
Freud and a much broader theory than Horney.
Biography
• Born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1900
• Only child of orthodox Jewish parents
• Influenced by writings of Freud and Marx in his
adolescence
• Received his PhD in sociology in 1920s
• Fromm began studying psychoanalysis in 1925
and was eventually analyzed by Hanns Sachs, a
student of Freud
• Founded South German Institute for
Psychoanalysis in 1930
• In 1934, Fromm moved to the U.S. and began
a psychoanalytic practice in New York
• His books gained him a worldwide reputation
beyond psychology and psychoanalysis
• Died in Switzerland in 1980
Erich Fromm’s Basic Assumption
• Personality can only be understood in the light
of history
• Humans have been “torn away” from their
prehistoric union with nature
• “Human Dilemma” – humans have acquired
the ability to reason about their isolated
conditions
• Two fundamental dichotomies
⚬ Life and death
⚬ Complete Self-realization and the fact
that we cannot reach this goal because
“life is too short”
Human or Existential Needs
A. Relatedness: Drive for union with another
person(s)
Three basic ways to relate to world:
• Submission
• Power
• Love
B. Transcendence
• Urge to rise above a passive and accidental
existence and into “the realm of purposefulness
and freedom”
• Humans also use Malignant Aggression for
reasons other than survival
Malignant aggression: or killing for
reasons other than survival, but they can also
create and care about their creations.
C. Rootedness
Productive: grow beyond the security of
our mother
 Non-productive: become fixated and
afraid to move beyond the security & safety of
our mother
D. Sense of Identity
• Capacity for humans to be aware of
themselves as a separate entity.
E. Frame of Orientation
• Being split off from nature, humans need a
road map to make their way through the world.
Summary of Human Needs
• These needs have evolved from
humans’ existence as a separate species
• Aimed at moving them toward a
reunification with the natural world
• Lack of satisfaction of any of these
needs is unbearable and may result in insanity
MECHANISMS OF ESCAPE
Authoritarianism: to give up
independence of one’s own individual self and
to fuse one’s self with somebody.
Destructiveness: rooted in the feelings
of isolation (away with another person).
Automaton Conformity: giving up
individuality and becoming whatever other
people desire them to be.
Character Orientations
Receptive: source of all good lies
outside themselves and that the only way they
can relate to the world is to receive things,
including love, knowledge, materials
Exploitative: they aggressively take
what they want rather than passively receiving
it.
Hoarding: try to save what they have
already obtained, including their opinions,
feelings, material possessions
Marketing: see themselves as
commodities and value themselves against the
criterion of their ability to sell themselves.
Character Orientations
The Productive Orientation
• Psychologically healthy people work
toward positive freedom through productive
work, love. and reasoning.
• Productive love necessitates a
passionate love of all life and is called biophilia.
Personality Disorders
Necrophilia
• Focus of attention is love death and
entails a hatred of humanity
Malignant Narcissism
• Belief that everything one owns is of
great value while anything belonging to others is
worthless\
Incestuous Symbiosis
• Extreme dependence on one’s mother
to the extent that one’s personality is blended
with that of the host person. Exaggerated form
of mother fixation.
CHAPTER 8: HARRY STACK SULLIVAN’S
INTERPESONAL THEORY
OVERVIEW OF THE INTERPERSONAL
THEORY
• Emphasizes Importance of Various
Developmental Stages
• Healthy Human Development Is a Function of
One’s Ability to Establish Intimacy with Another
⚬ Anxiety may interfere with this
BIOGRAPHY
• Born in New York in 1892
• Socially immature and isolated as a child, but
forms one close relationship with a boy 5 years
older
• Received his medical degree in 1917
• Gained a position at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in
Washington, D.C. working with Schizophrenic
Patients
• Ability to work with schizophrenics won him a
reputation as a “therapeutic wizard”
• Moved to New York in 1930 to open private
practice, where he met Horney, Fromm, and
others
• Helped to establish Washington School of
Psychiatry
• Died alone in Paris in 1949 at age 56
Tensions
• It is a potentiality for action that may or
may not be experienced in awareness.
Needs
• Tensions brought on by biological
imbalance between a person and the
environment
• Tenderness is most basic interpersonal
need
• Can relate either to the general
well-being of a person (general needs) or to
specific zones (zonal needs)
• Can be either physiological or
interpersonal.
Anxiety
• Tension that is disjunctive, diffuse, and
vague
• All infants learn to be anxious through
the empathic relationship they have with their
parents
• A complete absence of anxiety and
other tensions is called euphoria.
Energy Transformations
• Tensions transformed into overt or
covert actions.
Dynamisms- Typical behavior patterns that
characterize a person throughout a lifetime.
Malevolence
• A feeling of living among one’s
enemies.
Intimacy
• Need for tenderness; involves a close
personal relationship between two people of
equal status.
Lust
• Isolating tendency, based solely on
sexual gratification and requires no other person
for its satisfaction.
Self-System
• Consistent pattern of behaviors that
protects people against anxiety and maintains
their interpersonal security.
Personifications
The images that people acquire of themselves
and others
• Bad-Mother, Good-Mother
• Me Personifications
⚬ Bad me
⚬ Good me
⚬ Not me
• Eidetic Personifications
⚬ Imaginary traits that people project
onto others.
Levels of Cognition
• Ways of perceiving, imagining, and conceiving.
Prototaxic Level
• Earliest experiences that are
impossible to put into words or to
communicate to others
Parataxic Level
• Experiences that are prelogical
and result when illusory correlation is
assumed
Syntaxic Level
• Experiences that are
consensually validated and can be
accurately communicated to others.
Stages of Development
Infancy (Birth to 2)
• Infant’s primary interpersonal
relationship is with the mother
Childhood (Ages 2 to 6)
• Mother continues as a primary
interpersonal relationship, although children of
this age often have an imaginary friend.
Juvenile Era (Ages 6 to 8 ½)
• Characterized by a need for peers and
playmates, and ends when one finds a chum
• Children should learn the skills at this
stage that will enable them to move through the
later stages of development
Preadolescence (Ages 8 ½ to 13)
• Characterized by intimacy with
one (usually same sex) person
• Genesis of the capacity to love
Early adolescence (Ages 13 to 15)
• Genital interest erupts and
lustful relationships appear • Intimacy
and lust exist as parallel but separate
needs
Late Adolescence (Age 15 and above)
• Intimacy and lust are
experienced in the same person
Adulthood
• Successful completion of late
adolescence culminates in
adulthood
• Marked by a stable love
relationship
Psychological Disorders
- All psychological disorders have an
interpersonal origin and must be
understood with reference to social
environment
- Deficiencies found in psychiatric patients
are found in every person to a lesser
degree
- Psychological difficulties are not unique,
but come from same interpersonal
difficulties we all face
CHAPTER 9: ERIK ERIKSON’S
PSYCHOSOCIAL THEORY
OVERVIEW OF THE PSYCHOSOCIAL
THEORY
• Intended to Extend Freud’s Assumptions
⚬ Including extending infantile
development
⚬ Life-cycle approach to personality
⚬ Emphasis on social and historical
influences
⚬ Stages of development are
characterized by a psychosocial struggle
• Erikson postulated eight stages of
psychosocial development through which
people progress. Although he differed from
Freud in his emphasis on the ego and on social
influences, his theory is an extension, not a
repudiation of Freudian psychoanalysis.
BIOGRAPHY
• Born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1902
• Son of Jewish mother and unknown father
• As a child, does not feel accepted by either
Jewish or Gentile community
• Leaves home at 18 to live as itinerant artist,
wandering Europe for 7 years
• In Vienna, is introduced to psychoanalysis by
Anna Freud, who becomes his analyst
• Graduates from Vienna Psychoanalytic
Institute
• Lacking an academic degree, accepts
research position at Harvard Medical School in
1933
• Publishes Childhood and Society in 1950
• Also taught at Yale, Berkeley, and several
other institutions
• Professor of Human Development at Harvard
in 1960
• Died in Cape Cod in 1994
THE EGO IN POST-FREUDIAN
PSYCHOLOGY
- ONE OF ERIKSON'S CHIEF
CONTRIBUTIONS TO PERSONALITY
THEORY WAS HIS EMPHASIS ON
EGO RATHER THAN ID FUNCTIONS.
ACCORDING TO ERIKSON, THE EGO
IS THE CENTER OF PERSONALITY
AND IS RESPONSIBLE FOR A
UNIFIED SENSE OF SELF. IT
CONSISTS OF THREE
INTERRELATED FACETS: THE BODY
EGO, THE EGO IDEAL, AND EGO
IDENTITY.
DESCRIPTION OF EGO PSYCHOLOGY
THREE INTERRELATED ASPECTS OF
THE EGO:
• BODY EGO: EXPERIENCES WITH
OUR BODY
• EGO IDEAL: IMAGE WE HAVE OF
OURSELVES IN COMPARISON WITH AN
ESTABLISHED IDEAL
• EGO IDENTITY: IMAGE WE HAVE OF
OURSELVES IN A VARIETY OF SOCIAL
ROLES WE PLAY
SOCIETY’S INFLUENCE
• EGO EMERGES FROM AND IS
LARGELY SHAPED BY CULTURE
EPIGENETIC PRINCIPLE
• THE EGO GROWS AS OUR ORGANS DO;
DEVELOPING SEQUENTIALLY, WITH
CERTAIN CHANGES ARISING AT A
PARTICULAR TIME AND WITH MORE
RECENT DEVELOPMENTS BUILT UPON
PREVIOUS STRUCTURES

STAGES OF THE PSYCHOSOCIAL

DEVELOPMENT
BASIC POINTS OF STAGE
APPROACH
• Growth follows epigenetic principle
• Every stage has an interaction of
opposites
• Conflict produces ego strength
• Too little strength at one stage results
in core psychopathology at a later stage
• Stages are also biological in nature
• Earlier stages do not cause later
personality development
• From adolescence on, personality
development involves identity crisis