He took part in the birth of neo-Freudianism and Freudomarxism, was the most influential sociologist and psychologist of the twentieth century and devoted his whole life to the study of the human subconscious. “The Art of Loving,” “To Have or To Be?”, “Escape from Freedom” is just a small list of what Erich Fromm wrote. For several decades his work on psychoanalysis has been popular in narrow circles, only Erich Fromm's quotes are not as popular as the aphorisms of writers that were his contemporaries. Why? It's simple: Erich Fromm, without a twinge of conscience, revealed that truth that people did not want to recognize.
Curriculum Vitae
Erich Zeligmann Fromm was born on March 23, 1900 in Frankfurt. Since his parents were Jews, he was able to receive an excellent education for his environment. He studied at the gymnasium, where, along with general subjects, Jewish religious traditions and the theory of religion were taught. After high school, Fromm became one of the founders of the Society for Jewish Public Education.
From 1919 to 1922 studied at the University of Heidelberg, where the main subjects were psychology, philosophy and sociology. After graduation, he received a Ph.D. He was too keen on the ideas of Sigmund Freud, rejected all the values on which his upbringing was based, and began to study psychoanalysis, which he later began to integrate into practical medicine.
For the sake of science, ready for anything
In 1925 he organized a private practice. This gave him the opportunity to constantly monitor people, studying the social and biological components of the human psyche.
Since 1930, begins to teach psychoanalysis at Frankfurt University. Until 1933, he was director of the department of socio-psychological research at the Horkheimer Institute. He later improved his knowledge at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute. At that time, he managed to make some useful acquaintances, thanks to which he was able to get to Chicago. When the Nazis came to power, Erich Fromm emigrated to Switzerland, and a year later - to New York.
Erich Fromm quotes American students begin to speak. In 1940, he receives American citizenship, works as a teacher at Bennington College, and is a member of the American Institute of Psychoanalysis. In 1943 he took part in the creation of the New York branch of the Washington School of Psychiatry. Later it was renamed the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Psychology of W. White, who Fromm headed from 1946 to 1950.
Heritage
In addition to all his achievements, he was an honorary professor at Yale University, and taught in Michigan and New York. In 1960 he became a member of the socialist party. He succeeds in successfully combining political activities, teaching and the creation of scientific treatises. Erich Fromm's quotes are worth its weight in gold, but with such a busy schedule it is difficult to lead a full and healthy life.
Fromm suffered a heart attack in 1969. He began to visit Switzerland more and more often because of tuberculosis, where he finally moved to in 1974. In 1977 and 1978, he again had heart attacks.
He died on March 18, 1980, leaving behind many interesting psychoanalytic and sociological theories. Erich Fromm's quotes and aphorisms are an invaluable legacy that he has passed on to humanity in the hope that they will be understood correctly. However, we will do this.
“Escape from freedom”
Perhaps this is the first work of Erich Fromm, which university students meet at the faculty of sociology. In truth, an untrained person is quite difficult to understand this work. And it’s not at all a complicated terminology or an old-fashioned style of storytelling, I just don’t want to admit that a person is just a “screw of the social system” who constantly plays different roles, selfish because of a lack of love and only rare lucky ones manage to experience real pride in that did not give up on themselves. Erich Fromm’s quotes from “Escape from Freedom” are often not perceived by the modern generation, because, as they say, the truth hurts into the eyes. It is only thanks to them that you can understand the true state of things, and by understanding them you can change your life.
Thoughts and routine
Well, let's get down to Erich Fromm's quotes:
The right to express our thoughts makes sense only if we are able to have our own thoughts.
In this, the psychologist is absolutely right, a person should not talk about what he does not fully understand. People can fill their minds with scraps of other people's phrases and thoughts, but without understanding what is happening, even the most ingenious idea will turn into ordinary rubbish. In one modern novel (“Will you show me Hell?”) There is a phrase: “The finished answer has no chance of creating a thought.” Fromm also speaks of this: to think, to think, to create - that is what man must do.
Knowing our true desires is much more difficult than most of us think; this is one of the most difficult problems of human existence. We are desperately trying to get away from this problem, taking standard goals for our own.
This is another human problem that will always exist. Here we are talking about the very notorious dusty script that everyone follows.
Do people really want to live as usual? Studying, working, family, a stable and unremarkable existence - this is considered a mandatory norm, and those who go contrary will certainly encounter rejection, aggression and misunderstanding. Therefore, it is necessary:
Play a lot of roles and be subjectively certain that each of them is him. In fact, a person plays every role in accordance with his ideas about what others expect from him; and for many people, if not most, the true personality is completely strangled by pseudo-personality.
Way to happiness
When reading “Escape from Freedom”, the question involuntarily arises: “Is there really no way to be happy?” Erich Fromm also mentioned this:
Whether we are aware of it or not, we are not so ashamed of ourselves as giving up on ourselves, and we experience the highest pride, the highest happiness when we think, speak and feel truly independent. ("Escape from freedom")
Everything is simple, but really complicated. Getting under the influence of public opinion, it is difficult for a person to remain true to himself, even if it comes to the simplest things. What to speak of big goals and grandiose plans ?! In order to break this vicious circle, you need to at least once try to protect your interests, complete the work you started and, overcoming adversity, achieve a small plan. That inspiration, relief and joy that comes after will be remembered for a lifetime. And then it remains only to raise the bar.
Selfishness
But not only Fromm wrote about society, he was also interested in interpersonal relations. He decided to take out his thoughts on this in a separate book, The Art of Love. Fromm writes about many aspects of a healthy and strong relationship.
For the first time he mentions love in “Escape from Freedom” when he writes about such a phenomenon as selfishness. Fromm believes that due to a lack of self-love, a person becomes selfish, because he is not confident in his own abilities, does not have internal support and tries to find approval from others, only this way a person can exist.
It is the lack of self-love that gives rise to egoism. He who does not love himself, who does not approve of himself, is in constant alarm for himself. A certain inner confidence that can exist only on the basis of genuine love and self-approval will never arise in him. The egoist is simply forced to deal only with himself, spending his efforts and abilities to get something that others already have. Since he has neither inner satisfaction nor confidence in his soul, he must constantly prove to himself and to those around him that he is no worse than the rest.
Other quotes about Erich Fromm 's love originate from this statement.
The book "The Art of Loving"
This work contains not only thoughts about interpersonal relationships, but also other thoughts about human nature. But let us dwell on the first question.
Immature love says: "I love you because I need you." Mature love says, "I need you because I love you." ("The Art of Loving")
In this quote from Erich Fromm from The Art of Love, the fine line is presented where love begins and ends. Need another person because he is able to make life easier, to help in something and the like - this is not love, but the usual consumer attitude.
Love is an active interest in the life and development of what we love. Where there is no active interest, there is no love.
Loving people know everything about each other. Between them there are no unsaid words, secrets or envy of the successes of another.
From this quote from the book “The Art of Love” by Erich Fromm, the following statement of the author follows:
There is a paradox in love: two beings become one and remain two at the same time.
In the modern world, everything is so mixed up that it costs a person to meet someone who treats him more or less kindly, as he dissolves in it and forgets about his own life and his own goals.
As a result, such behavior spoils life: the one who gives, loses valuable time and, as a result, can remain with nothing but the one who accepts will feel obligated.
Love begins to manifest only when we love those whom we cannot use for our own purposes.
Advice
In the “Art of Love" you can find some more useful recommendations, for example:
How important it is to avoid empty talk, it is equally important to avoid bad society. By "bad society" I understand not only vicious people - their societies should be avoided because their influence is oppressive and destructive. I also mean the zombie society, whose soul is dead, although the body is alive; people with empty thoughts and words, people who do not talk, but talk, do not think, but express common opinions.
The author observes that the environment affects a person in all aspects of life. Man is a social being, therefore he will always reach for the majority. He will change his mind, behavior and even the level of intelligence will increase or decrease depending on who is nearby. It is also worth paying attention to quotes about time and knowledge:
Who, having knowledge, pretends not to know, is the one above all. Who, without knowledge, pretends to know, is sick. ("The Art of Loving")
A modern person thinks that he loses time when he does not act quickly, but he does not know what to do with the time gained, except to kill him.
"To have or to be?". Erich Fromm quotes
The author continued his reflections on human nature in the work “To have or to be?”. We can say that in this work he summarizes everything that was written earlier (or it was from it that everything started). In any case, there are thoughts about freedom, and about love, and about humanity as a whole:
A modern person is a realist who has come up with a separate word for each type of car, but only one word “love” to express the most diverse emotional experiences.
This is not even strange. It seems that in modern society there are only two types of emotions: love and hate. The rest of the spectrum of feelings is ignored, which is why interpersonal relationships become more complicated.
Each new step may end in failure - this is one of the reasons that make people fear freedom.
A man is so afraid of failures that he is ready to live as he does not like and do what has long been hated. He is even ready to be in a relationship where he is used, just to not admit to himself that he lost.
It is a pity, many people do not understand that failure is an integral part of development. The hardest thing is when a person is going to reach a new level. Without failure, it is simply impossible to achieve something. Speaking from the words of Fromm, we can say that a person is afraid of his own happiness, because you cannot get it just like that.
Our society is a society of chronically unhappy people, tormented by loneliness and fears, dependent and humiliated, prone to destruction and experiencing the joy of the fact that they managed to “kill time”, which they are constantly trying to save.
Summing up, we can only say one thing: a person has only one real choice - between a good life and a bad one. Man himself gives meaning to his life and it depends only on him how happily he will live the decades allotted to him. Erich Fromm shared his thoughts, and it only depends on the person whether he will accept them or brush them off like a pesky fly.