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The Ideas in Erich Fromm’s Escape from Freedom

Author(s)

Yangyang Wu*

Affiliation(s)

Tongji University, Shanghai, China *Corresponding Author.

Abstract

The main content of this paper is Fromm's Escape, which analyzes the spiritual predicament of modern people after the two World Wars, and points out that the spontaneous process of individuation has to be subject to social conditions, resulting in the gap between positive freedom and negative freedom. In order to escape the burden of this negative freedom, people would rather lose freedom than gain security and survival. In modern society, there is a common psychology of escaping freedom, which presents different forms of expression, and ultimately results in totalitarianism and unsound society. Fromm tries to eliminate the ills of modern society by finding a way to realize positive freedom. Fromm's so-called escape from freedom is a prominent manifestation of modernity. At present, under the background of modernization and globalization, through critical thinking of Fromm's escape from freedom, it is still enlightening and instructive to pursue the development path of Chinese modernization beyond this modernity.

Keywords

Social Psychoanalysis; Individual Autonomy; Freedom

References

[1] E. Fromm, Escape from Freedom, New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1941. [2] E. Fromm, The Sane Society, New York: Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1955. [3] R. Páramo-Ortega, Freud i Mexiko. Zur Geschichte der Psychoanalyse in Mexiko, Berlin: Quintessenz Verlag, 1992. [4] E. Fromm, The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973. [5] E. Fromm, The Heart of Man: Its Genius for Good and Evil, New York: Harper and Row, 1964. [6] R. Funk (ed.), The Clinical Erich Fromm: Personal Accounts and Papers on Therapeutic Technique, Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi Publisher, 2009. [7] E. Fromm and Michael Maccoby, Social Character in a Mexican Village: A Sociopsychoanalytic Study, Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1970. [8] E. G. Schachtel, “Review Escape from Freedom”, Zeitschrift fur Sozialforschung, No.9, 1941, pp. 491-495. [9] M. Mead, “Review Escape from Freedom", New York Herald Tribune, Books Review, Vol.18, 1941, p.18. [10] R. Benedict, “Review E. Fromm Escape from Freedom”, Psychiatry, No.5,1942, pp.111-113. [11] M. F. A. Montagu, “Review E. Fromm Escape from Freedom”, Psychiatry, No.5,1942, pp.122-129. [12] P. Mullahy, “Review E. Fromm Escape from Freedom", Psychiatry, No.5, 1942, pp.118-122.