Erich Fromm: Love and freedom, the essence of the human

In the Fromms’ living room only the ticking of the wall clock is heard. The mother is going through one of his regular bouts of depression. For the father, it is not something circumstantial; His character is always taciturn and anguished.

Twelve-year-old Erich can’t wait for visiting time to arrive.: a young painter of about 25 years old, beautiful, magnetic, always accompanies her widowed father; they come every week. But the visitor does not show up, and someone sends them a message: the old man has passed away, and the young painter has taken her own life and left a note expressing her wish to be buried with him.

Looking for answers in psychoanalysis

Five decades later, in his book the chains of illusion (1962), the already renowned psychoanalyst Erich Fromm would record that that event had moved him deeply, to the point of unleashing his interest in psychoanalysis and the fruitful career that he would undertake later:

“How is it possible? How is it possible that a beautiful young woman could love her father so much that she would rather be buried with him than live for the pleasures of life and art? I certainly couldn’t answer, but the how stuck with me. And when I got to know Freudian theories, they seemed to contain the answer to a terrifying and enigmatic experience.

In 1920, at the age of twenty, began the career of Sociology at the University of Heidelberg. A psychoanalytic institute had been founded in the same city, and Fromm came to receive training as a psychoanalyst.

The impact of the war

If the Oedipus complex was behind the event that dictated his interest in the theories of Sigmund Freud, other events pushed him towards two other great influences in his life: the pacifism and the theories of Karl Marx.

Also in the Old Testament, to which he was led early due to his family background, of Orthodox Jews, offered him inspiration; “the vision of universal peace and harmony among all nations I was deeply moved,” Fromm wrote.

But surely none of all this would have crystallized in a work like his if the first World War: “When the war ended in 1918 I was a deeply troubled young man, haunted by the question of how war was possible, by the desire to understand the irrationality of the behavior of the masses human, out of a passionate desire for peace and international understanding. Besides, I had become deeply mistrustful of all ideologies and official statements, and he was imbued with the conviction that one must doubt everything”.

In it Frankfurt Institute for Social Research his theories on the role of the individual in capitalist society were forged. With the rise of Nazism in Germany, everything precipitated: Fromm emigrated first to Switzerland and then to the United States.

When he disembarked, his main interests were already consolidated: the relationship between fascism and freedom, the role of the individual in mass capitalist society, and learning love.

How did Fromm see freedom?

Combining sociological and psychoanalytic observations He came to the conclusion that human beings often feel a deep fear of assuming freedom and we give up our rights over it.

To develop his theory, he started from the Biblical image of the expulsion from paradise: “The act of disobedience, as an act of freedom, is the beginning of reason. The myth refers to other consequences of the first act of freedom. The harmony between man and nature is broken. God proclaims war between man and woman, between nature and man. (…). newly won freedom appears as a curse; she has freed herself from the sweet bonds of Paradise, but she is not free to govern herself.

Faced with this original fear of freedom, Human beings usually cede their responsibility through three mechanisms.

automatic compliance: conforming one’s own personality to what society prefers and expects of it, sacrificing the true self.Authoritarianism: giving up control of oneself to another person (sadomasochistic attitude).destructiveness: destroy others and ultimately the world so that others do not overwhelm you.

That is to say, fertile ground for totalitarianismon the one hand, and escapist consumerismfor the other.

the feelings of guilt and shamewhich are at the origin of the fear of freedom, can only be transcended by developing the best of oneself, what makes us unique, all our human potential: the capacity for reasoning, production and love.

But, Can these potentialities be fully developed in the capitalist world?

He Social context was always important to Fromm and, in fact, marked the point of contention with Freudian theory. If for Freud individual discomfort came from the repression of the individual’s sexual impulses, essential to be able to coexist in society, for Fromm it was the fact that that society did not offer individuals all the means to develop their potential of work and love what It caused frustration and discomfort.

In fear of freedomsays: “There is only one possible creative solution that can found the relationship between individualized man and the world: his active solidarity with all men, and his spontaneous activity, work and love, capable of uniting him again with the world, no longer through primary ties, but saving his character as a free and independent individual.

The modern individual, unlike the feudal, knows that he owns his freedom, and yet he cannot exercise it due to a context that turns his work, his energy and his love, and therefore himself, into merchandise. Whoever does not enter the chain remains on the sidelines.

Consequently, according to Fromm, the price of individual freedom in a capitalist context is feeling alone, isolated, powerless and anguished, deprived of those ties that gave them security. This transforms freedom into an unbearable burden that is identified with a type of life that lacks meaning and direction.

love as art

After three marriagesthe time had come to reflect on one of the central themes in his life: love. The art of Loving (1956) quickly became a worldwide bestseller.

Fromm defends that love is not an emotion but a capacity that can be developed, and that it is intimately linked to responsibility, respect and care for others. That is, with true knowledge of what the other person really needs and wants.

For Fromm, just like freedom, love is an act of the will: the decision to love (caring, taking responsibility, respecting and knowing) a person. It is inseparable from his idea of ​​freedomwhich implies being able to obey reason and knowledge, and not irrational passions.

Love is the key to open the doors to the “growth” of man. It allows to establish a relationship with others, to feel one with others, without reducing the sense of integrity and independence.

For it to be so, love requires caring, responsibility, respect and knowledge of the object of union to be present at the same time. When this is true, for Fromm “the experience of love is the most humane and humanizing act“.