Fromm example essay topic

Many of these characteristics can be observed within our own society. One important feature is hatred of the weak. Whether we like to admit it or not, ours is a society where it is acceptable to kick lame dogs, jeer at the crippled, and beat up poor pickpockets. As for rich thieves in the world of business, these command our utmost respect, and some are national heroes. The principle of scarcity is another feature: we seem to believe that the total wealth in this country will forever be limited, so we have to grab what we can now. Our collective psychology is unwilling to absorb the opposite idea that unlimited material progress for society, as a whole is a possibility.

Fromm in his book tells us, The essence of the authoritarian character has been described as the simultaneous presence of sadistic and masochistic drives. He describes sadism as unrestricted power over another person, more or less mixed with destructiveness, while masochism aims at dissolving oneself in an overwhelmingly strong power and participating in its strength and glory. Both of these have the same cause: the inability of the isolated individual to stand alone and his need for a symbiotic relationship that overcomes his aloneness. According to Fromm, the most important thing is the reassuring feeling of this simplified world-view. Everything fits neatly in place, and one need not bother to think for oneself or grapple with complex questions. Conversation with the communalized class reveals that it gets some superficial psychological relief by this means, from the unbearable tension (and guilt) caused by the demolition of B abri Masjid.

Instead of facing this tension in a logical way, it is much easier to escape from freedom, blame the helpless and revere the strong. Of course, not all Muslims are helpless, or innocent of blame for various things. However, mainly the helpless ones have been damaged physically and psychologically in a systematic way, in the last few months. The Bombay riots caused serious casualties primarily among slum dwellers. Yet, instead of rising up and expressing its unconditional horror at this event, much of the middle class found refuge in the famous they deserved it.

Interestingly, the same people did not show much effective sympathy for Hindu slum dwellers affected in the riots either. Hatred of the weak is really quite secular in a way. Of Hitlers propaganda, in his book Fromm says, He and the German people are always the ones who are innocent and the enemies are sadistic brutes. A great deal of this propaganda consists of deliberate, conscious lies. Moreover, Hitler accuses his enemies of the very things that he quite frankly admits to be his own aims. We have heard by now that Muslims are cruel people, polygamists, and anti-national elements.

Fascism gains popular support by promising a world in which everyone in society finds their place someone below, to dominate, and someone above, to submit to. This picture is self-fulfilling. If Fascism is perceived to be winning, people whose psychology is already ripe for takeover will flock to it in large numbers. Conversely, if it is seen to be losing, people desert in equally large numbers.

The demolition on December 6 was a signal that the march of Fascism in India has started in earnest and its success is inevitable. That is what acted, as if by remote control, on the minds of the middle class in Bombay, and elsewhere. It remains to ask whether the victory of Indian Fascism is really inevitable. It is anyone's guess what will happen. However, Erich Fromm made a bold prediction about the future of Nazism at a time when it was looking rather successful, and it is only appropriate to conclude by quoting his words: The function of an authoritarian ideology and practice can be compared to the function of neurotic symptoms.

Such symptoms result from unbearable psychological conditions and at the same time offer a solution that makes life possible. Yet they are not a solution that leads to happiness or growth of personality... The history of humankind is the history of growing individuation, but it is also the history of growing freedom... The authoritarian systems cannot do away with the basic conditions that make for the quest for freedom; neither can they exterminate the quest for freedom that springs from these conditions.

Fromm spoke of the centrality of the relationship in the analytic process and of the importance of the complete human context for the meaning of personal development and psychotherapeutic change. Maccoby and Cortina have gathered an impressive and articulate array of articles and scholars who help us to understand Fromm anew, and who give him his rightful place as a forerunner of modern relational theory. Their own chapter integrates this vision and introduces the novice to this important body of work. A Prophetic Analyst is recommended for scholars and questioning clinicians alike. It will help us all to understand the centrality of the relationship in human development and the importance of the social context for everything that we experience. Erich Fromm enormous influence on the development of psychoanalytic theory and practice over the past several decades has operated behind the scenes.

Cortina and Maccoby have collected a wide array of contributions on Fromm the clinician, Fromm the prophet, Fromm the theorist, Fromm the provocateur, and Fromm the teacher that convey the manifold ways in which From instructed, goaded, and inspired so many of the major currents in psychoanalytic thinking in recent decades.