FeistFeist: Theories of Personality, Seventh Edition

II. Psychodynamic Theories

7. Fromm: Humanistic Psychoanalysis

217 The McGrawHill Companies, 2009

and culture impinge heavily on personality, people can retain some degree ofuniqueness. Humans are one species sharing many of the same human needs, butinterpersonal experiences throughout peoples lives give them some measure ofuniqueness.

Chapter 7 Fromm: Humanistic Psychoanalysis 211

Key Terms and Concepts

People have been torn away from their prehistoric union with nature andalso with one another, yet they have the power of reasoning, foresight, andimagination.

Self-awareness contributes to feelings of loneliness, isolation, andhomelessness.

To escape these feelings, people strive to become united with others andwith nature.

Only the uniquely human needs of relatedness, transcendence, rootedness,sense of identity, and a frame of orientation can move people toward areunion with the natural world.

A sense of relatedness drives people to unite with another person throughsubmission, power, or love.

Transcendence is the need for people to rise above their passive existenceand create or destroy life.

Rootedness is the need for a consistent structure in peoples lives. A sense of identity gives a person a feeling of I or me. A frame of orientation is a consistent way of looking at the world. Basic anxiety is a sense of being alone in the world. To relieve basic anxiety, people use various mechanisms of escape,

especially authoritarianism, destructiveness, and conformity. Psychologically healthy people acquire the syndrome of growth, which

includes (1) positive freedom, or the spontaneous activity of a whole,integrated personality; (2) biophilia, or a passionate love of life; and (3) love for fellow humans.

Other people, however, live nonproductively and acquire things throughpassively receiving things, exploiting others, hoarding things, andmarketing or exchanging things, including themselves.

Some extremely sick people are motivated by the syndrome of decay,which includes (1) necrophilia, or the love of death; (2) malignantnarcissism, or infatuation with self; and (3) incestuous symbiosis, or thetendency to remain bound to a mothering person or her equivalents.

The goal of Fromms psychotherapy is to establish a union with patients so that they can become reunited with the world.