Over the past 100 years, a large number of schools and trends have appeared on the field of psychology, studying and trying to explain the existential needs of the individual. An important tool for the socio-psychological analysis of human behavior in society is a comprehensive comparison on the parameter of the subject's relationship to the world and people. Eric Fromm argued that the behavior of a healthy person in society is due to the realization that, due to his natural characteristics, he seeks to establish connections in society, overcome himself, take root, identify himself, and build his own system of moral values.
1. Existential linking needs
Throughout his life, a person consciously or unconsciously seeks to unite with other people. According to Eric Fromm, there are only 3 ways to satisfy this need. You can obey the rules and requirements of a group or another individual, you can rule over someone, you can be connected with people or an individual through love. At the same time, From, from the point of view of his humanistic theory, incline social thought to the fact that it is unjustified to satisfy his existential needs through power or submission. This is only love is a sure way to maintain the integrity of nature, inner strength and self-confidence.
The social connection of people according to the power – submission model is flawed because it cannot fully satisfy the indicated need. Due to the collateral occurrence of gross dependence between themselves, the ruling and subordinate partially lose their "I".
2. Existential needs to overcome oneself
A complex concept is the desire for creation.
The productive path lies through the process of creativity and its manifestation in art, science, religion. Man by nature is trying to show how he, being a primate, differs from representatives of the animal world. Therefore, people create social institutions, material values, moral standards, in one way or another positioning love as the driving force for the development of their biological species.
The irrational way of satisfying a need is through the manifestation of malicious aggression. By killing and turning another into a victim, someone sees his significance in demonstrating the dominant force, subconsciously raising internal conflicts.
3. The existential human needs of rooting
To feel like a full-fledged representative of your species, it is important for a person to be aware of his roots. Therefore, the connection between mother and child is so strong. Agreeing with Freud, Fromm acknowledged the presence of incestuous aspirations in the child's psyche, but argued that their cause was not sexual attraction at all, but a subconscious desire to return to the mother’s womb in order to take root, to achieve a full sense of security.
A productive way of rooting is a natural departure from the mother’s breast, in active interaction with the world, in the development of adaptive abilities and in the achievement of the integrity of the person in conditions of conscious reality.
An unproductive way is to fix your thinking within the limits limited by your mother, without a desire for independence. People who go this way unsure of themselves, overwhelmed by internal fears, are extremely dependent.
4. Existential needs for self-identity
In man, nature has laid down the independent formation of the concept of his own "I", the result of which is the realization of the fact that "I am responsible for myself." It is easier to identify with different institutions: with the state, nation, religion, profession, social group, place of residence. The simplified model of identification poses the threat of global conformism, herd instinct, dependent membership in a crowd, where individuality remains only a word, loses the objective essence of its lexical meaning.
The other extreme is hidden in a situation where a person is deprived of the opportunity to identify with someone or with something. You can lose your mind. People who do not have psychological problems can identify themselves outside the crowd, while their criteria correspond to reality.
5. Existential needs in the value system
A person deprived of moral guidelines moves through life like a blind kitten. He creates a system of values , as the skeleton of his behavior, the rules, based on which life lives productively or destructively from the point of view of Fromm. History knows many personalities who have paid with their lives to preserve their value system.