ERICH FROMM: HUMANISTIC PSYCHOANALYSIS
The individual attempts to overcome life’s
5 EXISTENTIAL / HUMAN NEEDS
Existential needs have emerged during the
evolution of human culture, growing out of their
attempts to find an answer to their existence and to
avoid becoming insane.
Healthy individuals are better able to find ways of
reuniting with the world by productively solving the
human needs of relatedness, transcendence,
rootedness, a sense of identity, and a frame of
orientation.
1. Transcendence - to go above being just an
animal, to improve and learn, to increase in
material things.
2. Sense of Identity - the capacity to be aware of
ourselves as a separate entity.
3. Rootedness - the need to establish roots or to
feel at home again in the world.
4. Frame of orientation - the need for a road map
to make their way through the world.
5. Relatedness - the feeling of oneness with fellow
men and with self. Fromm postulated three basic
ways in which a person may relate to the world:
(1) submission, (2) power, and (3) love
BURDEN OF FREEDOM
ESCAPE FROM FREEDOM & POSITIVE
FREEDOM
Fromm believes that we are free to be and do
whatever we please. Yet it is very freedom that
creates greatest problem for us. As Fromm said,
we feel an “unbearable state of powerlessness and
aloneness.”
As we become aware of our individuality, we
become aware of all that we cannot control and
come painfully face-to-face with our insignificance.
2 Types of Responses to Situations:
● ESCAPE FROM FREEDOM
● POSITIVE FREEDOM
MECHANISMS OF ESCAPING FROM FREEDOM
The following are the three strategies people
employ in an attempt to overcome the feelings of
powerlessness and anxiety that accompany
freedom.
AUTHORITARIANISM
A type of personality whose attitude towards
authority is always important. The authoritarian
individual loves authority and tends to subject
himself to it. At the same time, he wishes himself to
be the authority and to subject others. Extreme
version of this is sadism and masochism.
DESTRUCTIVENESS
threatening situations by destroying them.
AUTOMATON CONFORMITY
The individual simply has a blind acceptance of all
of the contradictions of life. If he can’t beat them, he
must join them. He totally lacks any spontaneity
and has no true experience of what is really his
own life
POSITIVE FREEDOM
People can break this cycle of conformity and
powerlessness only by achieving self-realization or
positive freedom.
The capacity for “spontaneous relationship to man
and nature, a relationship that connects the
individual with the world without eliminating his
individuality”.
FROMM’S CONTRIBUTION TO PERSONALITY
THEORY
CHARACTER ORIENTATIONS
The need of a person to develop and synthesis
their major assumptions and ideas into a coherent
view of the world.
People relate in the world using:
By acquiring and using things (assimilation) and to
relate self & people (socialization). Either
nonproductively or productively.
Assimilation - cognitive process of making new
information fit in with your existing understanding of
the world.
Socialization - the process whereby an individual
learns to adjust to a group (or society) and behave
in a manner approved by the group (or society).
NON- PRODUCTIVE ORIENTATIONS
Receptive characters - feel that the 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, and material
possessions
Exploitative characters - aggressively take what
they desire rather than passively receive it.
Hoarding - seeks to save that which they have
already obtained. People with this orientation hold
everything inside and do not let go of anything.
Marketing character - see themselves as
commodities, with their personal value dependent
on their exchange value, that is, their ability to sell
themselves.
THE PRODUCTIVE ORIENTATIONS
The single productive orientation has three
dimensions: working, loving, and reasoning.
Healthy people value work not as an end in itself,
but as a means of creative self-expression.
Productive love is characterized by care,
responsibility, respect, and knowledge.
Healthy people possess biophilia: that is, a
passionate love of life and all that is alive. Finally,
productive thinking is motivated by a concerned
interest in another person or object.
PERSONALITY DISORDERS
Fromm (1981) held that psychologically disturbed
people are incapable of love and have failed to
establish union with others.
Necrophilia - more generalized sense to denote
any attraction to death. It is an alternative character
orientation to biophilia.
Necrophilic personalities hate humanity, they are
bullies, they love destruction, terror, and torture,
Erotic love - usually allied with sexual experience,
a “craving for complete function,” and is what most
consider the only kind of love. It is exclusive and
inclined toward jealousy.
Self-love - care, responsibility, respect, and
knowledge of self.
Love of God - has the highest value, is the most
desirable good, and emphasizes care, respect,
responsibility, and especially knowledge
PSYCHOTHERAPY
Fromm believed that the aim of therapy is for
patients to come to know themselves. Without
knowledge of ourselves, we cannot know any other
person or thing. He believed that patients come to
therapy seeking satisfaction of their basic human
needs- relatedness, transcendence, rootedness, a
sense of identity, and a frame of orientation. He
asked the patients to reveal their dreams, as well
as fairy tales and myths. Then, Fromm would ask
for the patient’s associations with the dream
material.

Example:
● The Corps e of Anna Fritz movie (2015)
● Ted Bundy is said to be a necrophiliac

Malignant Narcissism - people with this disorder

are preoccupied with themselves, but this concern
is not limited to admiring themselves in a mirror.
Preoccupation with one’s body often leads to
hypochondriasis, or an obsessive attention to one’s
health.

Example: they may be convinced that something as

simple as a sneeze is the sign they have a horrible
disease.

Incestuous Symbiosis - refers to an extreme

dependence on the mother or mother surrogate.

Example: mama’s boy

CONCEPT’S OF LOVE
In the final analysis of man’s troubled existence,
Fromm fervently feels that the answer to the
problem is the capacity of man to love.

LOVE is an art, it requires the effort and knowledge

the other types of art demand. Love is an active
process in which we establish individuality. It is in
genuine love, said Fromm, that we find the paradox
“two beings become one yet remain two”

Brotherly love - the most fundamental, the

strongest, and the most underlying kind of love. It is
a love between equals.

Motherly love - the love and care for the helpless,

the wanting to make them strong and independent.
ABRAHAM MASLOW: HOLISTIC DYNAMIC JONAH COMPLEX
THEORY An obstacle that often blocks people’s growth
toward self-actualization is the Jonah complex, or
HUMANISTIC PSYCHOLOGY the fear of being one’s best.
- Focus on conscious experiences
- Focus on an individual's own ability to Reason of running away from greatness:
change attitudes and behavior (free will) 1. First, the human body is simply not strong
- Focus on personal responsibility and growth enough to endure the ecstasy of fulfillment .
(internal locus of control) 2. Privavate ambitions that is too much in our
- Have an optimistic perspective on human reality.
nature 3. Almost everyone has timidity in seeking
- Thought psychology should focus on human perfection and greatness
strengths and virtues
PSYCHOTHERAPHY
MASLOW’S CONTRIBUTION TO PERSONALITY For Maslow (1970), the aim of therapy would be for
THEORY clients to embrace the Being values, that is, to
Said personality comes from the pursuit of meeting value truth, justice, goodness, simplicity, and so
our Hierarchy of Needs. forth.
- The pyramid of physiological (food/water)
and psychological (love/esteem) needs
- Ultimately our goal is to obtain our full
potential

Self-actualization - the pursuit of realizing one’s

potential that defines personality.

Said most people don’t reach their full potential

because they lose focus of the pursuit because
they strive for materialistic, meaningless goals.
Maslow developed his ideas by studying what he
termed “healthy people”.

HIERACHY OF NEEDS

SELF–ACTUALIZED PEOPLE
The self-actualizing person is someone who is
generally strongly focused on problems outside of
himself. He is concerned with the problems of
others and the problems of society and is willing to
work to try to alleviate those difficulties. The quality
for detachment, the need for privacy.

Gemeinschaftsgefühl
Adler’s term for social interest, community feeling,
or a sense of oneness with all humanity. Related to
Gemeinschaftsgefühl is a special quality of
interpersonal relations that involves deep and
profound feelings for individuals.

SELF – ACTUALIZED PEOPLE: Example

Problem centered rather than self-centered.
Focused their energies on a particular task. Few
deep relationships, rather than many superficial
ones.
CARL ROGERS: CLIENT-CENTERED
PSYCHOLOGY
THE HUMANISTIC APPROACH
To understand Carl Rogers’s ideas and approach to
therapy, it is important to understand what he
valued and believed about human nature. Schunk
asserts that humanistic psychology is constructivist
and based on two assumptions:
- Studying people must be done from a holistic
perspective.
- Human choices, creativity, and self-actualization
are important areas of study
TWO BASIC ASSUMPTION
Actualizing Tendency - to move toward
completion.
Formative Tendency - evolve from simple to
complex form.
TWO BASIC HUMAN NEEDS
Self Actualization - the need to fulfill all of one’s
potential.
From Rogers’s perspective, every person strives to
be a creative, fully functioning being who desires to
reach their potential. This striving is ongoing,
motivational, and innate.
Positive Regard - the need to receive acceptance,
respect, and affection from others
ACTUALIZING TENDENCY
The basic idea of the actualizing tendency is
straightforward. It is a desire present in all living
things that pushes the organism toward growth
A Potato
Rogers offered the analogy of a potato when
explaining this tendency. We can see the desire to
lean toward growth in everyone, and Rogers
believed it true of every organism.
SELF-CONCEPT & INCONGRUENCE
Self-concept is how we see ourselves. When this
differs from our experience in the world, the
resulting feeling is incongruence
Incongruence often relates to conditions of worth.
These are behaviors a person displays because
they are expected by others. For example, if you
are a woman, you may feel you are expected to
smile because it makes you look prettier and more
approachable.
Ideal-self - one’s view of self as one wishes to be.
Awareness - symbolic representation of some
portion of our experiences.
Denied Positive Experiences - difficulty accepting
genuine compliments and positive feedback even
when deserved.
BARRIERS TO PSYCHOLOGICAL HEALTH
Condition of Worth - are the expectations, rules,
and standards we must meet to gain acceptance
and love from others.
Incongruence - Psychological disequilibrium
Defensiveness - Protection of the self-concept
against anxiety by the denial or distortion of the
experiences.
Disorganization - Excessive or sudden and
dramatic incongruence can lead to the breakdown
and disorganization of the self-structure
3 CORE CONDITIONS
Rogers was clear about what he believed made a
therapy session suitable for the client. To him, three
elements must be present. These have come to be
known as the core conditions by therapists using
his approach. They are:
Unconditional Positive Regard
Acceptance and nonjudgmental behavior from the
therapist allows the space the client needs
throughout the exploration process.
Empathy
This outlook is a way of being with the client. The
therapist need not agree with the client
but does need to express
genuine understanding.
Congruence
Authentic interactions between the client and the
therapist are a normal part of the process.
PERSON-CENTRED THERAPY: THE GOAL IS
CONGRUENCE
Incongruence has many harmful effects. One is that
it prevents self-actualization. You have to know who
you are to fulfill your potential
2 PERSON-CENTERED THERAPY: 2 FEATURES
Empathic Understanding - The therapist shows
emotions like the clients.
Unconditional Positive Regard - The therapist
shows respect and acceptance regardless of what
the client says; e.g., nods, says “Mm-hmm, I see”.