Erich Fromm

Question 1

According to Fromm, are personalities shaped by biological forces or environmental and cultural factors?

Answer 1

Personality is influenced by the social and cultural forces that affect the individual within a culture and by the universal forces that have influenced humanity throughout history.

Question 2

What is the title of Fromm’s first book which describes his vision of the human condition and discusses how the freer the people are, the more lonely and alienated they feel?

Answer 2

Escape from Freedom

Question 3

What period did Fromm reform to as ‘the last era of stability’?

Answer 3

The Middle Ages (about A.D. 400-1400)

Question 4

What caused people during the Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation to feel alienated, insecure, insignificant and have a lost sense of belonging?

Answer 4

Freedom and choice over their lives which they got at the expense of societal ties.

Question 5

What are the three psychic escape mechanisms (for escaping from negative aspects of freedom) that Fromm proposed?

Answer 5

Authoritarianism, destructiveness, and automaton conformity?

Question 6

In what strivings is authoritarianism manifested?

Answer 6

Masochistic (believe they are inferior and inadequate, very dependent on another person or group. Willingly submit to the control). Sadistic (need power over others, want to achieve control and make others dependent on them, exploitative)

Question 7

What is the aim of the destructive psychic mechanism?

Answer 7

To eliminate an object or a person. ‘I can escape the feeling of my own powerlessness in comparison with the world outside of myself by destroying it.’

Question 8

What are the characteristics of the automaton conformity psychic escape mechanism?

Answer 8

We ease our loneliness by becoming exactly like everyone else and by conforming to the societal rules. People who conform completely have sacrificed their personality.

Question 9

According to Fromm, some children never achieve independence but escape their loneliness and insecurity by becoming part of someone else. What is this dynamic called?

Answer 9

Symbiotic relatedness

Question 10

What are the characteristics of the withdrawal-destructiveness interaction?

Answer 10

A distance and separation from others - passive and active forms of the same type of parent-child relationships

Question 11

What are the six basic human needs according to Fromm? (needs that help cope with the conflict between freedom and the creation of the self)

Answer 11

Relatedness, Transcendence, Rootedness, Identity, Frame of Orientation, Excitation and stimulation
IRREFT (idk that’s how i’ll try to remember it lol)

Question 12

What is The need to feel an attachment or sense of belonging to family, community, and society?

Answer 12

Rootedness

Question 13

What is The need for a consistent, coherent picture of our world within which to understand life
events.

Answer 13

Frame of Orientation

Question 14

What is The need to maintain contact with other people, ideally through productive love?

Answer 14

Relatedness

Question 15

What is The need to achieve an awareness of our unique abilities and characteristics?

Answer 15

Identity

Question 16

What is the need for a stimulating external environment so that the brain can function at a peak level of
activity and alertness?

Answer 16

Excitation and simulation

Question 17

What is The need to rise above our animal nature by becoming either creative or destructive?

Answer 17

Transcendence

Question 18

What are nonproductive orientations according to Fromm?

Answer 18

receptive, exploitative, hoarding, marketing character types

Question 19

What are the four additional character types that Fromm proposed?

Answer 19

Necrophilous, Biophilous, Having, Being

Question 20

Which character type of Fromm is similar to Freud’s oral incorporative personality type and Horney’s compliant personality type

Answer 20

Receptive

Question 21

What character type of Fromm is similar to Freud’s oral aggressive?

Answer 21

Exploitative

Question 22

What character type of Fromm is similar to Freud’s anal retentive personality and Horney’s detached type?

Answer 22

Hoarding type

Question 23

Which character type was most common in Fromm’s society?

Answer 23

Marketing character type

Question 24

What is the ideal character type which represents the goal of human development?

Answer 24

Productive character type

Question 25

What is the necrophilous character type attached to?

Answer 25

Death, corpses, decay, feces, dirt. Happiest when talking about illness and death, they are stuck in the past and then to be cold. Ex: Mother constantly obsessed with child’s failures making gloomy predictions about its future.

Question 26

What is the opposite type of necrophilous and what are its characteristics?

Answer 26

Biophilous - in love with life, attached to growth, creation/ Try to influence by love, reason, example

Question 27

What is the having character type characterized by?

Answer 27

Meaning found in possessions of things, people and ideas. Define value based on how well their possession compare with those of others.

Question 28

What is the being character type characterized by?

Answer 28

Define self in terms of what they are. Self-worth comes from within, not comparison with others. Cooperation, love, productive lives. Can be achieved through analysis and self-analysis