Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
Erich Seligmann Frommwas a German social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, and democratic socialist. He was associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPsychologist
Date of Birth23 March 1900
CountryUnited States of America
religious animal men
Even if man's hunger and thirst and his sexual strivings are completely satisfied, 'he' is not satisfied. In contrast to the animal his most compelling problems are not solved then, they only begin. He strives for power or for love, or for destruction, he risks his life for religious, for political, for humanistic ideals, and these strivings are what constitutes and characterizes the peculiarity of human life.
helping-others men people
Man absolutely cannot live by himself.
equality men history
Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, so the social process requires standardization of man, and this standardization is called equality.
optimism despair pessimism
Optimism is an alienated form of faith, pessimism an alienated form of despair.
able individual ifs
If an individual is able to love productively, he loves himself, too; if he can love only others, he cannot love at all.
simple love-is thinking
People think that to love is simple, but that to find the right object to love - or to be loved by - is difficult.
falling-in-love lying being-in-love
The third error leading to the assumption that there is nothing to be learned about love lies in the confusion between the initial experience of ‘falling’ in love, and the permanent state of being in love, or as we might better say, of ‘standing’ in love.
commitment reflection self
If I love the other person, I feel one with him or her, but with him as he is, not as I need him to be as an object for my use. Respect thus implies the absence of exploitation: it allows the other to be, to change and to develop 'in his own ways.' This requires a commitment to know the other as a separate being, and not merely as a reflection of my own ego. According to Velleman this loving willingness and ability to see the other as they really are is foregrounded in our willingness to risk self-exposure.
creativity acting action
Creativity is the ability to see and to respond.
loneliness boredom greed
Greedhas no satiation point, since its consummation does not fill the inner emptiness, boredom, loneliness, and depression it is meant to overcome.
spheres ifs productive
If one is not productive in other spheres, one is not productive in the love either.
successful political nerd
The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal.
boredom bored paralysis
Boredom is nothing but the experience of a paralysis of our productive powers.
passion thinking two
Reason flows from the blending of rational thought and feeling. If the two functions are torn apart, thinking deteriorates into schizoid intellectual activity and feeling deteriorates into neurotic life-damaging passions.