Chapter 8 - Fromm - Humanistic Psychoanalysis Flashcards
What is the root of negative feelings in Fromm’s view?
People have lost connection with nature and with other people, and are rational enough to be aware of this.
What does self-awareness lead to?
Self-awareness leads to feelings of loneliness, isolation, and homelessness.
What are the uniquely human needs?
The uniquely human needs are relatedness, transcendence, rootedness, sense of identity, and frame of orientation.
What is meant by the need of relatedness?
Relatedness is the human need for union with other humans. This can take the form of submission, power, or love. The combination of a submissive partner and a power-seeking partner creates a SYMBIOTIC relationship that may be temporarily satisfying but blocks healthy growth. Relationships based on genuine love are healthy.
What is meant by the need of transcendence?
The need for transcendence is the need to find purpose and meaning beyond one’s own life (the timing of which one cannot completely control). This can take the form of creativity or destruction, and example of destruction being the practice of malignant aggression (killing of others for reasons not having to do with survival) seen in some groups of people.
What is meant by the need for rootedness?
The need for rootedness refers to the need to feel secure and at home in the natural world. Like other needs this can be satisfied in productive ways, or unproductively through ‘fixation’ - refusal to move on from the protection of one’s mother because of a need to find security externally.
What is meant by the need for a sense of identity?
This refers to the powerful need to have a sense of “I”. This can lead to an unhealthy conformity to a group of some kind, or can be satisfied by healthy, self-sufficient means.
What is meant by the need for a frame of orientation?
Frame of orientation means a road map for the world - a way of understanding events around oneself, and a goal to strive towards over the course of a lifetime.
What is basic anxiety?
Basic anxiety is a sense of being alone in the world.
What is ‘mechanism of escape’?
Mechanisms of escape are ways for people to avoid basic anxiety, including authoritarianism, destructiveness, and conformity.
What is ‘syndrome of growth’?
Syndrome of growth means a healthy solution to the problem of basic anxiety, shown by a person having ‘positive freedom’ (spontaneous activity of a whole, integrated personality), biophilia (passionate love of all life), and love for other human beings.
In what ways do people live unproductively?
People live unproductively by passively receiving from others, exploiting others, hoarding things, and marketing things (or one’s self).
What is the ‘syndrome of decay’?
Opposite the syndrome of growth, the syndrome of decay is an extremely unhealthy way of living marked by necrophilia (love of death), malignant narcissism, and incestuous symbiosis.
What is the goal of psychotherapy in Fromm’s view?
To provide union with the patient so that they can reestablish connection with the world.
