Erich Fromm: The Scientist of Love
“As I began to shift my attention more and more to what struck me as truly central in my work, that is, to the relationship of one human being to another and to the specifically human emotions that are rooted not in instinct but rather in man’s existence as a human being, I began to see, then I began truly to understand; and the person I was analyzing could understand what it was I was saying, too. He felt: Aha, so that’s the way it is. (1974b)”
“Love has no purpose, though many people might say: Of course it does! It is love, they say, that enables us to satisfy our sexual needs, marry, have children and live a normal, middle-class life. That is the purpose of love. And that is why love is so rare these days, love without goals, love in which the only thing of importance is the act of loving itself. In this kind of love it is being and not consuming that plays the key role. It is human self-expression, the full play of our human capacities. (1974b „In the Name of Life. A Portrait Through Dialogue“, in: E. Fromm, For the Love of Life, ed. by Hans Jürgen Schultz, New York: The Free Press 1986, pp. 88-116.)”
Fromm and the phenomena of faith in the psychology:
Although the 20th century psychology was dominated by Sigmund Freud and his mainstream followers, there were some, still influential personalities of the Western psychology, who tried to overcome the limitations of a materialistic-mechanistic psychological view of the human existence.
In some of his major works (The Escape from Freedom, [1941]; The Art of Loving, [1956]; The Heart of Man, [1964]; To have or To be? [1976]) Fromm investigates some crucial elements of human existence and development.
Already with the publishing of the Art of Loving (1956) he stated different things than the mainstream psychology, and with that he had already placed himself outside of the academic circle. That meant very simply that his findings and statements were not always seriously discussed and recognized within the academic scene.
At the same time Fromm was one of the few psychologists, who made the need and the importance of psychological insight among a general public an obvious requirement. His books are translated into more than 40 languages, and have since become classics.
Fromm was not simply a psychologist, but created a philosophy of human psychology, about the well-being of humans.
The well-being of humans:
Fromm realized that the Freudian psychological theory had little to say about the healthy state of the human existence. “Even the term “mental health, however, is negative, rather than positive; the absence of sickness, rather than the presence of well-being”. (Values, Psychology and Human Existence)
During his decennia-long productive years Fromm tried to fill this gap; considering not only individual-psychological, but also broader social factors as well.
“…well-being as the ability to be creative, to be aware, and to respond; to be independent and fully active, and by this very fact to be one with the world. To be concerned with being, not with having; to experience joy in the very act of living, and to consider living creatively as the only meaning of life. Well-being is not an assumption in the mind of a person. It is expressed in his whole body, in the way he walks, talks, in the tonus of his muscles. (…) Certainly, anyone who wants to achieve this aim must struggle against many basic trends of modern culture.”
In his writings he not only realizes a truly multidisciplinary approach, but he is also able to synthesise findings of different social sciences, spiritual insights and findings of the individual psychology.
In his efforts to understand human existence and psyche, finding answers for some of the basic problems of the human, he dared to overcome the boundaries of traditional, ego-centred psychology. While the mainstream psychology is a description and an explanation of internal ego-conflicts, conflicts within the ego, and conflicts between two different ego’s; Fromm showed in many ways that the true interests of humans reach much further than the interests of the ego, or the (civilized) functioning of our basic and / or secondary instincts.
During his active years of work he developed the concept of freedom and love as a basic fundament of human existence.
He also analysed the reasons of, and the further consequences of the lack of love, which is one of the major problems in the highly developed Western industrialized societies.
Eastern influences on the intellectual development of Fromm:
The intellectual development of Fromm among the 20th century European intellectuals, is certainly unique, and is certainly not possible to understand solely by knowing the name of his teachers, his reading list and his intellectual friends. It is not our aim here to sketch all the possible influences on him.
Here we only would like to mention the influence on Fromm of the Eastern philosophical thought. This came to him through his interest in research, to find answers for emergent questions, by his readings, and also by personal exchange with people, who had authentic knowledge of Eastern ideas. In that respect Fromm’s knowledge was increased substantially by the mediation of D.T. Suzuki. After his emigration from Europe, Fromm first lived in the United States. First he learned about Zen Buddhism by reading Suzuki’s books, later he attended his public seminars in New York. After Fromm moved to Mexico, he organized a workshop for Suzuki, attended by fifty psychoanalysts. They developed a close working relationship, and this even resulted in 1960 in a common book, titled: The Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis.
Suzuki’s influence did not result in just a “one off” common product, but his was a rather long-lasting one, consistently noticeable in all of Fromm’s major works.
En passant we have to mention here, that Suzuki actually influenced not only Fromm, but also another outstanding psychoanalyst, Carl Gustav Jung as well. In 1948 Jung wrote an introduction to the European edition of “An introduction to Zen Buddhism”, which was forerun by some years of correspondence.
Fromm’s motivation:
Fromm’s motivation throughout his life was one of the healer, whose main concern was to cure human beings of ill conditions, to correct human mistakes. Although he investigated every issue very carefully, he was not interested in “scientific development” only for the sake of science.
The Heart of the Man
Erich Fromm published one of his major works, The Heart of the Man in 1964. This work was pre- published a year before, under the title: War within Man. A Psychological Inquiry into the Roots of Destructiveness. This pre-publication was commented by several outstanding thinkers, among others Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk.
This work is a middle stone between his other major works: The Escape from Freedom (1941), The Art of Loving (1956) and his latter masterpiece, the To Have or To Be? (1976) .
In “The Heart of the Man “ Fromm stated that “There is no more fundamental distinction between man, psychologically and morally, than the one between those who love death and those who love life.
The persons who loved life he called biophilous and those who loved death, he called necrophilous.
“This is not meant to convey that a person is necessarily either entirely necrophilous or entirely biophilous. There are, perhaps, a few who are totally devoted to death and those who are, are insane. There are not so many who are entirely devoted to life, and those who are, strike us as having accomplished the highest aim man is capable of.”
With the description or rather the discovery of the life-loving (biophilous) and death-loving (necrophilous) character Fromm realized two important findings of the 20th century psychology.
Although the Freudian based psychology recognized clearly the “death instinct” and in close connection to that a sexual perversion, called “necrophilia”, it did not recognize “life instinct” and did also not recognize the other manifestations of the necrophilous tendencies.
Fromm stated clearly, that the man is not only driven by the death instinct, as Freud stated, but “that is inherent to living entities, to preserve its existence”. In his argumentation he called Spinoza for help, when he reminded us of Spinoza’s “ Ethics”. Herein Spinoza said, “everything endeavours to persist in its own being” and also : “A free man thinks of death least of all things; and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life.” (Ethics, IV, Prop. XLI)
Here we would like to mention that this quality strongly reminds us of the maintaining quality of the Hindu thought, the quality of Vishnu.
Fromm described the symptomatic essentials of the life-loving (biophilous) character.
According to these the biophilous human being:
- has the tendency to preserve life, fight against death;
- has the tendency to integrate and unite;
- tends to fuse different and opposite entities;
- has a productive orientation;
- is attracted to the process of life;
- approach to life is functional and not mechanical.
In connection with this, Fromm states further, that there exists also a biophilic ethic. This involves a simple statement. The biophilic ethic “has an own principle of good and evil. Good which serves life and evil is what serves death. Joy is virtuous and sadness is sinful.” (The Heart of Man)
Fromm states further, that a death-loving orientation can take over and can dominate when “someone slowly kills the life-loving side in themselves”.
This orientation can be an orientation within a human being, but also in a larger context, in a society. That means, that it is also possible that a society develops itself towards a more death loving (necrophilous) character, which means, more mechanistic, cultivates force, approaches life in an inorganic way. Societies of this kind will, of course reward more the death-loving individual activities, and the development of necrophilous character. Thus we can see that these two tendencies are present not only on an individual, but also on a social level.
How to help develop the life-loving character at individual and social levels:
This was the next, and crucial question of Fromm. In other words, what causes a necrophilous development, how can you encourage – on an individual and on a societal level – the development of biophilous tendencies? Fromm struggled with this question, but he did not find a satisfactory answer. “…which factors make for the development of the necrophilous orientation, in general, and more specifically, for the greater or lesser intensity of the
death loving orientation in a given individual or group? To this most important question I do not have a satisfactory answer…” (The Heart of Man)
The title of the pre-publication, the War within Man stresses more the phenomena of armed war, the non-diplomatic, state-organised conflicts between nations. This resulted in a not favorable commentary by historians and other social scientists who did not seriously consider Fromm’s psychological explanation about the real casual reasons of organized killing, and emphasized again, that for example the reason for one of the many armed conflicts between France and Austria was, that they ‘both wanted the same thing: Italy’ (H.J. Morgenthau, sociologists). Morgenthau’s commentary, which remained in the arena of investigating political history – did not consider discussing ‘the intrinsic plausibility and soundness of Dr. Fromm’s psychological arguments…’. Commentaries from his own field, like R.W. Menninger’s (psychiatrist) accused him of ‘being too close to theological moralisation’. Others, like P.Sorokin (sociologist) in his argumentation demonstrated even a more serious lack of information, when he stated: ‘many saints, like St. Francis of Assisi (…) and almost all Buddhists, beginning with Gautama Buddha (…) have to be put rather into the class of the necrophiliacs…’ and thus called Fromm’s theory ‘inadequate in its scientific validity’. Thomas Merton, another commentator, pointed in his answer, towards the direction of spirituality, where he basically answers Fromm’s most emergent question:
‘As long as man acts only as a member of the human species, within his limits as an individual subservient to the inescapable finalities of his common „nature,“ he is still subject to the deepest and most radical form of spiritual alienation. He is not fully „free“, because he is not able to transcend his specific individuality and function on the level of a spiritual person with all the perfection and autonomy implied by that concept.’ And further: “There is no real love of life unless it is oriented to the discovery of one’s true, spiritual self, beyond and above the level of mere empirical individuality, with its superficial enjoyments and fears.” (Thomas Merton, 1915 – 1968, Trappist monk)
To have or to be?
In the following short reflection on one of Fromm’s major works, we turn our attention only to the main thread of this writing, and we certainly do not try to interpret his society-analysis, which was a strong reflection on the 20th century Western societies.
In “ To have or to be” Fromm continues – from another angle – the description of different characters. Here he uses other vocabulary. He talks here not about biophilous and necrophilous character, but about the being and the having mode, and the connection of these two modes to mental health. He states, that the being mode is mostly characterized by “productive activity” and that “passivity excludes being”. And even clearer: “productiveness is a character-orientation all human beings are capable of, to the extent they are not emotionally crippled” (Chapter V: What is the being mode? p. 95)
Here he also cites Spinoza, when he formulates the opposite of well-being, as being passive, and “to be driven by irrational passions is to be mentally sick”. (p.98) And he further states, that mental illness is “the failure to live according to the requirements of human nature.” And “….passions that do not correspond to the needs of human nature are pathological … and a form of insanity”.
Later, in continuation of the problem of human passivity and activity, productivity and the problem of modern man, he uses the description of Albert Schweitzer. Schweitzer says about modern men, that he is “unfree, incomplete, unconcentrated, pathologically dependent and absolutely passive”.
Even later he states, that one of the serious problems of the modern man, is that there is a distinction created between what a man is, and how he appears. The society relies on how a man appears. This appearance is what society uses as a map for organizing life. This is a kind of a false reality, and as we know from the experience of psychological practice, this set of “motivations, ideas, beliefs, false information, biases, irrational passions, rationalisations and prejudices” are not repressed at all.
As we know, everything which is repressed is unconscious. Fromm gives a short and very clear definition of unconscious.
“Aside from irrational passions, almost the whole knowledge of reality is unconscious”.
Everyone, with experience of insight-based psychotherapy knows that this is true, and we know, that “… a great deal of our energy is used to hide from ourselves from what we know, and the degree of such repressed knowledge can be hardly overestimated.”
Later Fromm connects this statement with the statement that the being mode, is necessary to be healthy. He connects the being mode with being real, and to have knowledge.
“Being refers to the real, in contrast to the falsified, illusionary picture. In this sense, any attempt to increase the sector of being means increased insight into the reality of one’s self, of others, of the world around us. The main ethical goals of Judaism and Christianity – overcoming hate and greed – cannot be realized without another factor that is central in Buddhism (Hinduism, and other mystical traditions – addition by M.K.). The way to being lies in penetrating the surface and grasping reality”.
Fromm explains that the modern popularity of Jesus lies in the present image, that “Jesus does all the loving for them, because people do need love”. And, as we know, Jesus loves without conditions.
It is another teaching of the therapist-room, that the lack of unconditional love is one of the major sources of human misery. To all this we can add, that to be loved is a human being’s great desire and the lack of love is the basic source of all kinds of different diagnoses. Generally there are great efforts put into analysing and curing the consequence of not being loved, both by the therapist, and by the patient.
This process is necessarily focused on the past, because it analyses past (traumatic) events and states.
Still, another question, which seems to us equally important, is less emphasized, less investigated, and stipulated. This question is, whether the patient is capable of loving. This is a more active process, focused on being (and not of having – in the sense of having the love of others), and as an activity it can only happen in the present time, it is more focused on the here and now. It is also focused more on giving (being), and not only receiving (having) love. (Melinda Kassai, August 2007)
6. b. Erich Fromm in conscious or unconscious support of OIDA-therapy “Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence”. (Fromm)
“Faith is not one of the concepts that fits into the intellectual climate of the present day world. It customarily is used only by those whose thinking is oriented in a religious frame of reference. Faith then generally means faith in God or in certain religious doctrines. Religious as well as nonreligious persons think of faith as something in contrast to rational and scientific thinking. To them, faith is a belief in something which cannot be proven and understood rationally. This a-rational quality of faith has led many religious thinkers to divide a realm of facts in which science is the master from a realm of phenomena which transcend facts, where scientific thinking has no place and only faith rules. The non-religious thinker commonly regards this division as untenable. If faith cannot be reconciled with rational thinking, it has to be eliminated as an anachronistic remnant of earlier stages of culture and replaced by science which cares only for results that are intelligible and can be proven. The modern attitude towards faith resulted in the long drawn-out struggle against the authority of the
Church and its claimed control over any kind of thinking. Thus, scepticism towards faith is bound up with the very achievements of modern thinking. This constructive side of modern scepticism is obvious; but there is another side which has been accorded altogether too little recognition. Observing the character structure of modern man and the contemporary social scene one is led to believe that the current widespread lack of faith no longer has the productive aspect it had generations ago when the fight against faith expressed emancipation from spiritual shackles; that today lack of faith is often, if not always, identical with profound although inarticulate despair.
Scepticism and rationalism, once productive forces in the history of thought, have come to be but rationalizations for relativism and uncertainty. The superstition has grown that the gathering of more and more facts will eventually, inevitably result in increased knowledge of the truth. Truth itself has become a metaphysical concept and scientific thinking intentionally confines itself to gathering information. Behind a front of alleged rational certainty, a profound uncertainty prevails which makes people ready to accept or to compromise with any philosophy or value that is impressed upon them. The man attempting to live without faith becomes sterile, and hopeless and afraid to the very core of his being. He must resign himself to clinging desperately to an inner and outer status quo, while finding that he has no defences against even the most completely irrational philosophies and doctrines. Was then the development of modern thinking away from and against faith a fatal error?” (Faith as a character trait,1942)
In reference to the potential of the human being, he wrote:
“I suggest that human character can change, if these conditions exists:
- We are suffering, and we are aware, that we are.
- We recognize the origin of our ill-being.
- We recognize that there is a way of overcoming of our ill-being.
- We accept that in order to overcome our ill-being, we must follow certain norms for living, and change our present practice of life.
These four points correspond to the four noble truths, that form the basis of the Buddha’s teachings, dealing with the general condition of human existence, though not with cases of human ill-being due to specific individual or social circumstances.” (p.165, in To have or to be?)
Erich Fromm was one of those people who possessed great sensitivity. He was inclined to find values and guidelines to the ethical behaviour of humanity. He did not want or could not submit to any particular mystical tradition, but he did present a concept of the behaviour of the “New Man”, which we will present shortly hereafter.
In the Introduction of his book “To Have or To Be?” he recognized clearly, that the
“Unrestricted satisfying of all desires is not conducive to well-being, nor is it a way of happiness or even maximum pleasure.” (p. 12)
Fromm proposes, that “for the development of being mode, instead of cultivating the having mode, one has to practice.
I do not believe that anything lasting can be achieved by persons who suffer from a general ill-being (…) unless they change their practice of life, in accordance with the change in character they want to achive. (…) Insight separated from practice remains ineffective.“
Fromm proposes further a society, the so-called “New Society” which helps to develop the following character-traits:
Below we compare the Fromm proposed human qualities with the practices of mystical traditions in general.
1. Willingness to give up all forms of having, in order to fully be. Like the mystic traditions, Erich Fromm is pointing towards a state of being, which cannot be rationally understood, unless you understand that you are not this material body. As he wrote in another place: “if I am what I have, and if I loose what I have, who then am I?”
2. Security, sense of identity and confidence, based on what one is, (…) instead of on one’s desire to have, to possess, to control the world, and thus become a slave of one’s possession. Here we find his acceptance that the true sense of identity is that we are servants for the benefit of others. According to a world-order, which he himself accepts and he is trying to expose in this list of qualities, and which should be exhibited by the “new man”.
3. Acceptance of the fact that nobody and nothing outside oneself can give meaning to life, but that this radical independence and nothingness can become the condition for the fullest activity devoted to caring and sharing. Here Fromm expresses himself in the peculiar way which springs from his being influenced by Zen Buddhism.
Caring and sharing is the essence of true spirituality, and not to be attached to things, rather to take care with love of all our relationships, will give meaning to life. We have to be independent from the manipulation for profit and thinking that harming the environment of any living being could be of any benefit for us. Real love can only be realized in the heartfelt sacrifice in the spirit of gratefulness for the source of life.
4. Being fully present where one is. It is now, here and always. This is the door to newer dimensions. The mystical traditions teach us to be fully conscious of what we are doing.
5. Joy that comes from giving and sharing, not from hoarding and exploiting.
“Whatever leads one to be giving and sharing can not be all bad.”
6. Love and respect for life in all its manifestations, in the knowledge that not things, power, all that is dead, but life and everything that pertains to its growth are sacred. This is a wonderful point, and is bound to take us to a respectful relationship with the environment, and not to kill and eat animals unnecessarily. The word sacred indicates that he is giving the qualification of a sacred being in a sacred world, which is the same conclusion as of all the mystical traditions.
7. Trying to reduce greed, hate and illusions as much as one is capable. The important question here is: how to do this? That is where the mystical traditions come in, with practical recommendations. How can a person in illusion be freed from illusion, unless they meet someone, or some divine teachings which actually lead them, beyond the illusion. OIDA-therapy can be understood in a rather intellectual way. But there is a need to meet a truly mystical tradition, to have a change of heart and action, to go beyond our general conditioning and illusions.
8. Living without worshipping idols and without illusions, because one has reached a state that does not require illusions. Here Fromm is talking about the television idols, the politician idols, etc. He is not talking about mystical traditions and their claim that you can talk about God, pray to God, meditate about God, write about God, make a centre of worship for God, or worship some visible statue which may remind you of God. Since Fromm is quite keen to talk about reasonable and unreasonable faith, he and we should be generous enough to first see how any mystialc tradition brings about the healing effect in their faithful, which are actually synonymous of Fromm “New Man”- conception. On the other hand, the mundane idols create exactly those influences, which Fromm is trying to counteract.
9. Developing one’s capacity for love, together with one’s capacity for critical, unsentimental thought. What could be better than that? But how can the sentimental stop being sentimental, and how instead of just being critical, which is quite a common quality, can a person become self-critical?
Mystical traditions are supposed to be schools of love, such as for example “Bhaktiyoga”, which means establishing a union with God, by knowing how to love him.
10. Shedding one’s narcissism and accepting the tragic limitations inherent in human existence. What a noble goal. It will require a noble path to walk upon. “The tragic limitations” may be actually the miraculous impulse to search out the right path.
11. Making the full growth of oneself and of one’s fellow beings the supreme goal of living. Mystical schools teach self-development and maximum support to each other. How we arrive is not as important as arriving. Thus OIDA-therapy tries to supply maximum information and motivation for the people who are sick to help them to reach the healing circle and to stay on the noble path.
12. Knowing that to reach this goal discipline and respect for reality are necessary. Principles are taught by mystical traditions, and are easy to accept, when they come from real masters, otherwise even though Fromm recommends discipline it would be difficult to conceive of any group of people following any goal or discipline. This opens the door to a need for guidance that may reach us through some mystical revelation.
13. Developing one’s imaginations, not as an escape from intolerable circumstances but as the anticipation of real possibilities, as a means to do away with intolerable circumstances.
Here Fromm emphasises the importance of faith. The entire presentation is based on faith. We can think so much, but only a certain hope and faith creates the determination in us to make some changes in our life.
14. Not deceiving others, but also not being deceived by others; one may be called innocent, but not naïve. How can you avoid being deceived? Being deceived is the reaction of having deceived others. One of the prime focuses of OIDA- therapy is the acceptance of our responsibility, and that we create our own future, with everything we do.
15. Knowing oneself, not only the self one knows, but also the self one does not know – even though one has a slumbering knowledge of what one does not know. Here Fromm reveals his faith in the spiritual identity, which is essential for the human being, to be capable of embracing a mystical path.
The slumbering knowledge he refers to may be compared to the inner voice which always tells all of us, to go on the path towards light and love, and away from darkness and hatred.
16. Sensing one’s oneness with all life, hence giving up the aim of conquering nature, subduing it, exploiting it, raping it, destroying it, but trying, rather, to understand and co-operate with nature. Here Fromm reveals his ecological visions, and his readiness to discipline his lifestyle which was manifested with his adoption of a vegetarian diet. Mystical traditions could not violate the well-being of other living entities and the planet. Behaviour which is totally overcome by materialistic activities must have deviated from an original mystical essence.
17. Freedom that is not arbitrariness but the possibility to be oneself, not as a bundle of greedy desires, but as a delicately balanced structure that at any moment is confronted with the alternative of growth or decay, life or death.
The wise man does not lament over the living or the dead (from the “Bhagavad-Gita”). This is the quote of BG. The Christian tradition says: “From dust to dust, from ashes to ashes”. The real values are not confined to temporary achievements, and therefore a real philosophy of life must have a positive understanding of death as well.
18. Knowing that evil and destructiveness are necessary consequences of failure to grow. You either go up, or you go down. You can have all the levels you may imagine, but you cannot go down and expect to go up. The healing circle in OIDA-therapy is approached by the remedies provided by true mystical traditions. They have also explained the dangers and the pitfalls, and how we should guard ourselves against them.
19. Knowing that only a few have reached perfection in all these qualities, but being without the ambition to ‘reach the goal’, in the knowledge that such ambition is only another form of greed, of having.
To want to be healed, once you realize the origin of ill-being, is natural and positive. But to think, that you have reached the goal, without having reached it, is truly a waste of time, and produces arrogance, which is in itself a pitfall. Sectarianism reached by those who claim to search for all embracing universal love, is nothing but the greatest contradiction. Therefore even though OIDA-therapy is open to research all mystical traditions for the purpose of healing humanity it shall never subscribe to any arrogance in any faith-system, which creates harm or feels itself, as the absolute only approach towards the creator of all.
20. Happiness in the process of ever-growing aliveness, whatever the furthest point is that fate permits one to reach, for living as fully as one can is so satisfactory that the concern for what one might or might not attain has little chance to develop.
A Chinese proverb says:“If there is no joy along the path, how can you expect to find joy at the end?” OIDA-therapy also stresses the importance of never letting joy be at the cost of others, and that one must develop the humility and patience to go on, even when things get a little bit difficult.
Erich Fromm gives us many valuable hints, which prove the necessity of a system that may enlighten us about the genuine paths for developing our consciousness, whatever this path may be, his profound study of the human nature and psychology leads him to conclude that our society and all individuals need a process of healing. It may be expressed in many different ways, by many different, and honestly aware thinkers, that we need help, and OIDA-therapy tries to be a part of providing that help.