Erich Fromm

Psychology and Religion

in the Search for Personal Wholeness

Johann Maree
Summer School, UCT. Jan. 2012
Biographical sketch
Fromm was born in Germany in 1900,
the only child of Orthodox Jewish
parents. He studied the Old Testament
intensively under Talmudic scholars.
He gave up the practice of Judaism at
the age of around 26 and declared
himself a non-theist.
He became acquainted with Buddhism
at the same time and studied it in
great depth later in his life.
Other Influences on
Fromm
Besides religion there were three
other major influences on Fromms
thinking and life.
The first was Sigmund Freud. Fromm
studied psychology and received
extensive training in Freudian
psychoanalysis after doing his PhD.
He joined the Institute for Social
Development at Frankfurt University
where he taught psychoanalysis.
Other Influences on
Fromm 2
The second impact on Fromms
life was Nazism.
Due to its rise in Germany the
Frankfurt Institute had to
emigrate to the United States of
America in 1934 as did Fromm.
His brush with Nazism led him to
write Fear of Freedom (1942) in
which he argued that sado-
masochistic fear of freedom
Other influences on
Fromm 3
The third major influence on Fromms
thinking was Karl Marx.
In the work of Marx he saw the key to
understanding history and the radical
humanism expressed in the messianic
vision of the Old Testament prophets.
Much of Fromms writing on modern
society drew on Marxism, including the
concept alienation or estrangement.
Fromms works
Fromms writing spans a wide field
covering psychology, religion, politics
and ethics.
We shall look at only two major
themes of his writing: love and
religion.
We shall investigate Fromms insights
on love and religion while keeping in
mind the objective of the course: the
search for personal wholeness.
Love
Fromm starts his exposition on love by
arguing that to be human is to be
aware of oneself as a separate entity,
but this creates a sense of aloneness
and separateness.
The only way to overcome this prison
of aloneness is through love, mature
love.
Mature love is union under the
condition of preserving ones integrity,
ones individuality.
Love is an activity
Fromm goes further by saying
that love is active: Love is an
action, the practice of human
power.
The activity that love engages in
is giving, giving of oneself, of
ones life.
This does not necessarily mean
sacrificing ones life for another
although it could but also giving
Love comes from strength
One of Fromms most important
themes about love is that it can
only come from a productive
person by which he means a
person who has the capacity,
potency and strength to give
unreservedly:
Giving is the highest expression
of potency. In the very act of
giving, I experience my strength,
my wealth, my power.
Five types of love
Fromm distinguishes between
five different types of love:
Brotherly love
Motherly love
Erotic love
Self-love
Love of God
Brotherly and motherly
love
By brotherly love Fromm means
love of neighbour including the
stranger.
He enriches it further by saying
that brotherly love incorporates
the sense of responsibility, care,
respect and knowledge that
furthers the life of another human
being.
Motherly love is unconditional
Erotic love
Erotic love is the craving for
complete fusion, for union with
one other person. It is by its very
nature exclusive and not
universal.
It is not falling in love nor just
sexual desire, but based on a
love that inspires the wish for
sexual union. It is the fruit of
love.
Self-love
Love of oneself, says Fromm, is
rooted in ones capacity to love,
the affirmation of ones own life,
happiness, growth, freedom.
Love for oneself and love for
another are not mutually
exclusive, they are inseparably
connected.
Love of God
Love of God also springs from the
need to overcome the anxiety of
separateness by the experience
of union.
Our love of God is based on our
understanding of the nature and
character of God which has
changed over time. This will be
dealt with in the section on
religion.
The practice of love
Love is an art and has to be
practised like any other art.
The practice of love requires
discipline, concentration,
patience, and a supreme concern
to master the art.
To concentrate with regards to
others means primarily to be able
to listen, to take what the other
person has to say seriously.
Love means overcoming
narcissism
For the narcissistic person there is only one
reality, that of his or her own thought
processes, feelings and needs.
The only reality for the newly born infant is
its own body and needs primary
narcissism as Freud called it.

This state of narcissism is slowly overcome

by a growing awareness of reality outside.
The child can only begin to love when it
feels that the needs of another person
are as important as its own.
To be or to have
Fromm draws an important distinction
between a being mode of existence and
a having mode of existence.
The having orientation has greed for
money, fame, and power as the
dominant theme of life. Happiness lies
in being superior to others.
The being orientation entails aliveness
and authentic relatedness to the world.
Happiness lies in loving, sharing, giving.
Religion
Fromms definition of religion is as
follows: I understand by religion any
system of thought and action shared by a
group which gives the individual a frame
of orientation and an object of
devotion.
It opens the door for a wide interpretation
of what constitutes religion: including
secular ideologies and devotion.
He believed that everybody has a need
for religion.
Authoritarian and humanistic
religions
Fromm makes a fundamental
distinction between authoritarian
and humanistic religions.
The principle of authoritarian
religion is that a person is
controlled by a higher power
outside her- or himself.
It entails surrender to a
transcending power. Its main
virtue is obedience and its
Humanistic religion
Humanistic religion, on the
contrary, is centred around
humanity. Humans must develop
their powers of reason in order to
understand themselves, their
relationship to others, and their
position in the universe. They
must develop their powers of love
for others as well as themselves
and experience the solidarity of
all living beings.
Illustrations of humanistic
religion
Early Buddhism and Christianity, the
teachings of Isaiah, Jesus, Socrates and
Spinoza provide examples of humanistic
religion for Fromm.
The spirit of Jesus teachings is humanistic
as was the early Church.
But once Christianity became the religion of
the rulers of the Roman Empire an
authoritarian trend became dominant.
However, the conflict between the
authoritarian and humanistic principles in
Christianity never ceased.
Fromms evolutionary account of
human beings
The first key stage in the process
of human evolution came when
instinct no longer governed
action and humans became
aware of themselves.
This birth process may have
lasted for hundreds of thousands
years, but what matters is that a
new species was born,
transcending nature, as humans
became aware of themselves as
Consequences of self-
awareness
The emergence of self-awareness was
due to the emergence of reason. It is
reason that overrides instinct.
This self-awareness brought about a
crucial change in the human situation.
Humans were still part of nature,
subject to her physical laws, yet
transcended the rest of nature. This
made humans homeless and
alienated them from nature and from
themselves.
The problem and the
solution
Human beings face a problem that has to
be solved and from which there is no
escape.
Man cannot go back to the pre-human
state of harmony with nature; he must
proceed to develop his reason until he
becomes the master of nature, and of
himself. There is only one way he can take:
to emerge fully from his natural home, to
find a new home one which he creates,
by making the world a human one and
becoming truly human himself.
Human destiny
Human destiny is now to go
through alienation in order to
overcome it.
We must take responsibility for
and work toward the new
harmony between ourselves and
between nature and ourselves.
We are left to ourselves. Nobody
can do for us what we will not do
for ourselves.
Development of religion
Within this evolutionary process
Fromm weaves a development of
the human understanding of religion
and God. His account is based on
anthropology and Judaic religion.
In the first stage of emerging self-
awareness humans find security by
going back to nature. Their
primitive religion is based, for
instance, on animal totems.
Two more stages of development
At a later stage of development, once
humans have developed artisanal and
artistic skills, they transform the
products of their own hands into gods.
This is the stage of idol worship.
At a still later stage humans give their
gods the form of human beings just
think of all the Greek and Roman gods.
Fromm argues there was a matriarchal
phase that preceded a patriarchal one.
From matriarchal to patriarchal
religion
During the matriarchal phase
there is a mother goddess whose
love is unconditional and loves
everyone equally.
In the subsequent patriarchal
phase fatherly love makes
demands and establishes the
principle of conditional love,
depending on obedience and
performance.
Evolution of the Judaic
God
Fromm maintains that the fatherly
aspect of Gods love depends on the
degree of maturity reached by human
understanding.
In the beginning of the Old Testament
we find a despotic, jealous God who
considers the humans he created as his
property and entitled to do with them
what he pleases. So he drives them out
of paradise and destroys them in the
flood.
From despotic God to loving
father and beyond
Simultaneously with the flood a
new phase commences. God
makes a covenant with Noah that
he will not destroy the human
race again.
This, claims Fromm, transforms
God from the figure of a despotic
tribal chief into a loving father
and, beyond that, into a symbol
of his principles, those of justice,
truth and love.
Gods revelation to Moses
For Fromm the most striking incidence
of this transformation lies in the biblical
story of Gods revelation to Moses.
He tells Moses that his name is I am
becoming that which I am becoming.
I-am-becoming is my name. The I-
am-becoming means that God is not
finite, not a person, not a being. The
most adequate translation would be
my name is nameless.
The maturing idea of
monotheism
And so the paradox is reached
that the more I know what God is
not, the more knowledge I have
of God.
This, for Fromm, is the maturing
idea of monotheism. God
becomes the nameless One,
referring to the unity underlying
the phenomenal universe, the
ground of all existence; God
becomes truth, love, justice. God
The truly religious person
The truly religious person, if he
follows the essence of the
monotheistic idea, does not pray for
anything, does not expect anything
from God; he does not love God as a
child loves his father or his mother; he
has acquired the humility of sensing
his limitation, to the degree of knowing
that he knows nothing about God.
Eventually he does not speak about
God.
To love God
To love God, if he were
going to use this word,
would mean, then, to long
for the attainment of the
full capacity to love, for the
realization of that which
God stands for in oneself.
(Fromm)
Evaluation of Fromm
Critical:
Fromms writing can at times be very
loose. He can make sweeping
statements without providing evidence
in support.
Annette Thomson says that Fromms
appeal lies in inspiration rather than in
presenting empirical findings.
Fromm also holds views that contradict
each other and he does not try to
resolve the contradictions.
Evaluation of Fromm 2
Fromm can be quite unfair in the way
he presents other peoples arguments,
particularly those with whom he
disagrees. He tends to oversimplify
and distort, setting up a straw man
that can easily be torn apart.
Fromm tends to be weak on details. He
is great at pointing the way to the
stars, but not so good at illuminating
the obstacles on the way there.
Evaluation of Fromm 3
Appreciative:
What I value most about Fromm is his
religious courage and his faith in
humanity.
His religious courage enabled him not to
shy away from where his logic lead him:
that humanity has reached a stage in
evolution where we have come to realise
that God does not intervene in our
natural and social world, nor in the vast
universe, nor in our private experiences.
Evaluation of Fromm 4
Fromm makes it clear that we are now
responsible for the wellbeing of the world
we live in. We are able to destroy it and
we are capable of saving it for ourselves
and future generations. It is up to us as
humanity to decide which path we
choose. Whereas the first primitive
human beings stood in awe of nature and
worshipped it as a god, humanity now
stands in the relationship of god towards
nature in that its fate is in our hands.