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Escape from Freedom

Erich Fromm

4.25 · Rating details · 10,724 ratings · 619 reviews

If humanity cannot live with the dangers and responsibilities inherent in freedom, it will probably turn to authoritarianism. This is the central idea of Escape from Freedom, a landmark work by one of the most distinguished thinkers of our time, and a book that is as timely now as when first published in 1941. Few books have thrown such light upon the forces that shape mod ...more

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Paperback, 301 pages

Published September 15th 1994 by Holt McDougal (first published 1941)

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Feb 26, 2009 Ahmad Sharabiani rated it really liked it

Shelves: guide, psychology, political, sociology, philosophy, german, non-fiction, 20th-century, historical

‭Die Furcht vor der Freiheit = The Fear of Freedom, Erich Fromm

First published in the United States in 1941.

In the book, Fromm explores humanity's shifting relationship with freedom, with particular regard to the personal consequences of its absence. His special emphasis is the psychosocial conditions that facilitated the rise of Nazism.

تاریخ نخستین خوانش: ماه می سال 1972میلادی

عنوان: گریز از آزادی؛ نویسنده: اریش فروم؛ مترجم: عزت الله فولادوند؛ تهران، امیرکبیر، فرانکلین، 1348، در 294ص؛ چاپ دوم 1 ‭Die Furcht vor der Freiheit = The Fear of Freedom, Erich Fromm

First published in the United States in 1941.

In the book, Fromm explores humanity's shifting relationship with freedom, with particular regard to the personal consequences of its absence. His special emphasis is the psychosocial conditions that facilitated the rise of Nazism.

تاریخ نخستین خوانش: ماه می سال 1972میلادی

عنوان: گریز از آزادی؛ نویسنده: اریش فروم؛ مترجم: عزت الله فولادوند؛ تهران، امیرکبیر، فرانکلین، 1348، در 294ص؛ چاپ دوم 1351؛ در 294ص؛ چاپ چهارم 1356؛ چاپ پنجم 1366؛ چاپ ششم 1370؛ هفتم 1375؛ چاپ بعدی، 1381؛ در 230ص؛ شابک 9643030490؛ چاپ دیگر تهران، مروارید، چاپ هشتم 1379؛ در 306ص؛ شابک 9646026842؛ چاپ نهم 1381؛ یازدهم 1385؛ سیزدهم 1388؛ شابک 9789646026858؛ چاپ دیگر تهران، کانون فرهنگی آموزش، 1394، در 258ص؛ شابک 9786001216749؛ موضوع آزادی، دموکراسی، توتالیتاریسم، روانشناسی اجتماعی از نویسندگان آلمانی؛ سده 20م

عنوان: گریز از آزادی؛ نویسنده: اریش فروم؛ مترجم: امیر اسماعیلی؛ تهران، توسن، 1362؛ در 109ص؛

فهرست کتاب: فصل اول: آیا آزادی مسئله‌ ای روانی است؟؛ فصل دوم: پیدایش فرد و ابهام مفهوم آزادی؛ فصل سوم: آزادی در دوران رفورم؛ فصل چهارم: انسان نوین و دوراهی آزادی؛ فصل پنجم: مکانیسم‌های گریز؛ فصل ششم: روانشناسی نازیسم؛ فصل هفتم: آزادی و دموکراسی؛ ضمیمه خوی و سیر اجتماع

پروفسور «اریک (اریش) فروم»، استاد بزرگ روانشناسی اجتماعی، به بررسی آزادی میپردازند. نخست آزادی را تعریف میکنند، و تفاوت آنرا با آنچه که در جامعه، آزادی میخوانند، بیان میدارند. «فروم»، سپس نظریه ی خویش را، ارائه میدهند و میگویند: «انسان، ناخودآگاه، هماره در حال گریز، از آزادی خویشتن است، او تلاش میکند، تا نادانسته، آزادی خود را محدود کند». «فروم» سپس مکانیزمهای گریز انسان از آزادی را بیان، و به شرح آنها میپردازند. و ...؛

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 09/09/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی ...more

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Mar 30, 2013 Maggie rated it it was amazing

Existentialism has always fascinated me as the condemnation to freedom of mankind is such hard felt in society I'm living in.

This book is quite an easy read when compared to Sartre's, Beauvoir's or Nietszche's.

The willingness of choice, human act, and thinking has been deem sinful since the dawn of civilisation- Adam and Eva being ousted from Eden in the name of infringement of Gods will - to make the choice of having knowledge and ability to think.

The powerlessness and insecurity of our generat Existentialism has always fascinated me as the condemnation to freedom of mankind is such hard felt in society I'm living in.

This book is quite an easy read when compared to Sartre's, Beauvoir's or Nietszche's.

The willingness of choice, human act, and thinking has been deem sinful since the dawn of civilisation- Adam and Eva being ousted from Eden in the name of infringement of Gods will - to make the choice of having knowledge and ability to think.

The powerlessness and insecurity of our generation is so overwhelming that we turn to common believes and try so hard to fit into the norms that we barely know who we are, why we live and how to live. As the fall of the churchs gives rise to a new authority which exerts nfluences on our wants and acts in a way we hardly aware. Education means to produce cogs for the great machine of capitalism, with the least emphasis of inviduality and thinking.

We think we have freedom but which is so supercially confined to the limited choices we make in our daily lifes, which movie to watch, which job to take. The cheap and shallow excitement comes at the expense of the flattened and insensitive thinking of any individual. We become numb to rules, we take discomforts as a must to the means of survival, and worst of all- that we are so dependent on the given values ( capabitily, money, status) to form our identities.

Powerlessness and insecurity are contagious that we rely so much on the groups we involve ourselves in. Being with parties of equal grounding makes us feel more real and safer at the expense of the chance of one being himself. But these mere social bondings only feed him with temporary and supeficial redemption that he will always feel alone with the minimal chance of being recognised of who he really is. The aloneness will never cease until the one chooses to live a life according to his genuine will.

So pathetic is our generation that we dont think- we take in the dose without knowing whats wrapped inside the sweet-coloured coating. Human- I see as living animal which sustains the growth of intelligence of a mankind that is disruptive and distructive to our humane sense, like technology is isolating people from each other, fabricated machines exile people to wonderland, market creates our needs - the essence of mankind - what makes us human is dwindling and withering.

We spend all our lives to get 'what we want', but without knowing who we are, how dare we are to uphold such a notable notions.

Looking at the way we judge and value things, rationality is now defined as - the insanity seen in the past or hopefully non sense to be judged by the future, if by any chance people will think again.

We crave because we see ourselves lacking.

That is a sickness, anyone sees? ...more

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Oct 07, 2015 Maica rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: philosophy, erich-fromm, psychology, favorites

Fromm approached the theme of freedom on a multi-perspective basis, drawing insights from historical events, religious dogmas, economic movements, socio-biological and anthropological relationships, and psychological phenomena in understanding how in humanity's quest for freedom and individuality, the price paid is the burden of isolation and alienation - if he has no genuine end on what to do with his new-found 'freedom'. Which then results in a back-and-forth process of seeking back the lost s ...more

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Jul 26, 2012 Ryan rated it it was amazing

Certainly of all the nonfiction I've read this year, I would recommend Escape From Freedom above all others. This is my first time reading Fromm and I'm thoroughly impressed.

This work addresses topics which are very important to me: individuality, authoritarianism, freedom and how it all relates to our modern, democratic society. Fromm draws a causal link between the freedom gained for the individual in the transition to modernity, and the reactionary rise of the authoritarian personality. Fromm Certainly of all the nonfiction I've read this year, I would recommend Escape From Freedom above all others. This is my first time reading Fromm and I'm thoroughly impressed.

This work addresses topics which are very important to me: individuality, authoritarianism, freedom and how it all relates to our modern, democratic society. Fromm draws a causal link between the freedom gained for the individual in the transition to modernity, and the reactionary rise of the authoritarian personality. Fromm brings into his analysis many of the social issues addressed in our contemporary media: the coercion to conform, the desire to be a part of "something greater," the loss of authentic thought and action all emerge as consequences of what he calls "the escape from freedom."

The book is roughly divided into three portions: first is a history of the transition from medieval to modern society, then an analysis of the psychological factors at work in contemporary society, and finally a dissection of authoritarian societies with a vision of potential alternatives. Fromm's basic thesis is that in moving from a regimented, organic medieval society to the comparatively open capitalist society, the individual is placed in an uncertain, possibly frightening state of freedom. This freedom creates a basic psychic tension that the individual then seeks to alleviate through various methods which can be commonplace, neurotic, or empowering.

The whole thing is, for Fromm, analogous to the process of individuation as described by Jung. The youth grows and leaves the nest, by necessity during the emergence of an individual self, which exposes him or her to the dangers and responsibilities of self-directed life. This is the tale of the fall from grace, Adam and Eve ejected from Eden. Similarly, the medieval life represented for people a closer integration with nature and society, womb-like; Fromm even argues that death didn't represent the terrible boogeyman as it does today, being as this was before the creation of the individual as such.

Capitalist society, on the other hand, forces the individual to decide upon his or her own life, creates a freedom of motion and fluidity of social stations, and subjects one's livelihood to the whim of the marketplace. The emergence of early capitalist society is then matched by the emergence of Protestantism (Luther and Calvin), created in response to the changing psychological landscape of modernity. These religions, argues Fromm, attempt to reverse or negate the emergence of the individual by offering psychological / spiritual coping strategies. That this directly leads to the so-called protestant work ethic which enabled the further development of capitalism was precisely Weber's much-celebrated thesis. An important distinction by Fromm here is that religions and worldviews aren't reached by sober, rational reasoning (as early modern philosophers would maintain), but instead arise in response to psychological conflicts, created in part by our social modes.

However, it doesn't end with Protestantism. In contemporary times, one may attempt to flee the responsibility of individuality by recourse to authoritarianism, sadism, and/or masochism, which restore concrete social order ("a place for everything, and everything in its place") but which can never fully or satisfactorily resolve the inner conflict, since nothing can reverse the physical or social condition of individuation.

One of the many things I absolutely loved about this book was that Fromm was writing right around the start of WWII, though before there was widespread public knowledge of the holocaust, yet he did not need evidence of war crimes to seriously indict the society of Nazi Germany. Today there is a tendency to retroactively focus on the ghastly results of the Nazi regime (the holocaust, the world war), but to Fromm the evil of the Nazi regime was already obvious. That Nazi society was perverse and authoritarian, with its worship of strength and contempt for the weak, with more sympathy for power than for justice, was sufficient in itself for Fromm to see that no good could come of it.

There is just so much good material in this book, I can't possibly touch on it all. It ties together so many disparate portions of my own thought, and gives voice to so many ideas and feelings that I wasn't sure anyone else had.

Central to this is the notion of the authentic: being true to one's own deeply-held feelings, not hiding them or replacing them with what one "should feel."Actual, original, and true expressions of one's own real, original, human self: that which flows naturally from children, before it's beaten out of them by peers and by school.

The alternative is to police oneself along social lines, replacing self-expression with cold conformity. Every one of these small, daily injustices is an affront to the self, and with sufficient repetition, they kill the heart.

Fromm discusses the interplay of these forces within contemporary society, and their emergence as a consequence of our social organization. He ends on a positive note, explaining how all of these reactionary postures can be avoided by rising to the challenge of individuation, growing as a person, and not surrendering one's self. Fromm suggests that the common picture of good mental health may simply be nothing more than successful adaptation to a sick society; the neurotic, however malajusted, has refused to do so. This anticipates the transition of psychiatry from Freud's position to Marcuse's, and some of Deleuze and Guattari's themes.

Anyway, the whole thing is quite easily readable if a little repetitious at times. The analysis of contemporary society can be a bit dated and obvious to the modern reader. Fromm's psychology carries a bit of Freud with it, which while not fatal to his argument, is perhaps unnecessary. It's a quick read, and I thoroughly recommend it. ...more

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Apr 03, 2008 Huyen rated it really liked it

Shelves: philosophy-psychology

My rating of this book varies from one chapter to another. The first chapters explaining the attempts of Lutherism and Calvinism to fill the void freedom created during the early era of capitalism were good. Basically, when the feudal system was being replaced by capitalism, man was more free, but also more isolated and insecure. The solution offered by Protestanism was total submission to God and work as a means of searching for a sign of salvation. That laid the groundwork for the unhealthy me ...more

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Jan 15, 2018 Mike rated it it was amazing

Shelves: the-40s, favorites, why-trump-won

Erich Fromm's Escape from Freedom, published in 1941, has a good deal in common with Eric Hoffer's postwar The True Believer. Like Hoffer, Fromm was trying to understand the power and appeal of fascism. The main point of agreement between the two authors, I think, is that what appears to be unshakeable conviction is often an act of desperation, or what Fromm calls a "mechanism of escape." To paraphrase David Foster Wallace, who knew something about compulsivity and whom I can't help thinking m
Erich Fromm's Escape from Freedom, published in 1941, has a good deal in common with Eric Hoffer's postwar The True Believer. Like Hoffer, Fromm was trying to understand the power and appeal of fascism. The main point of agreement between the two authors, I think, is that what appears to be unshakeable conviction is often an act of desperation, or what Fromm calls a "mechanism of escape." To paraphrase David Foster Wallace, who knew something about compulsivity and whom I can't help thinking may have read this book, we are all dying to give ourselves away to something, anything, and what that thing turns out to be may be more a matter of accident than is generally assumed. The view on which I think Fromm and Hoffer would basically agree isn't exactly incompatible with those I find most often on my Facebook feed, attributed to followers of a certain modern mass movement- that many (or all, it's sometimes claimed) of them are motivated by sexism, or racism, or this or that easily condemnable factor- but also suggests that a movement inspired by a talented demagogue is capable of accommodating a much wider range of psychological needs, including the need to give away the burden of individuality. Hoffer's book goes on to describe the common features of movements. In Wallace, and in a lot of literature, one may infer the viewpoint that this impulse is metaphysical, spiritual, inherent to and inseparable from human life. Fromm diverges from them in where he locates the sources of this impulse.

For Fromm, human characteristics and impulses are not inherent, but neither are they determined wholly by the environment. Rather, each (the individual and the environment) has its own dynamism, and it's this push-and-pull that influences human personality, which in turn acts on and is acted upon by what I think can broadly be called history. Fromm traces the origin of this urge to give away one's freedom to the Renaissance- the end of feudalism and the beginning of modern individuality:

In having a distinct, unchangeable, and unquestionable place in the social world from the moment of birth, man was rooted...and thus life had a meaning which left no place, and no need, for doubt. A person was identical with his role in society; he was a peasant, an artisan, a knight, and not an individual who happened to have this or that occupation....Man was conscious of himself only as a member of a race, people, party, family, or corporaton- only through some general category.

There is no way to return to this state of being, nor would Fromm suggest that we should try- he just goes on to point out that freedom is a double-edged sword, and that all the good it has done human beings has been accompanied by unprecedented burdens. In the new Europe that gradually came into being, life was uncertain, and you survived, or didn't, on your own. Soon enough, Fromm writes, there were reactions to this new state of being in the forms of movements led by two of the book's main villains, Luther and Calvin. Fromm isn't too pushy about it, but he frequently invites the reader to draw analogies between processes in society and in the individual psyche; the popularity of Luther and Calvin in Fromm's view are probably analogous to neuroses, their movements mechanisms of escape in which people found catharsis in the supposed virtue of tireless work, or in the conviction that it had all been decided before you were born anyway and it was impossible to know or change your fate, or in giving up your autonomy to an all-powerful God who may just as easily have been a Fuhrer. Just as in a neurotic personality, however, the chosen mechanism of escape, while perhaps temporarily ameliorating pain, has its unforeseen side-effects:

One possible way to escape this unbearable state of uncertainty...is the very trait which became so prominent in Calvinism: the development of a frantic activity and a striving to do something. Activity in this sense assumes a compulsory quality...[this] is not the result of inner strength and self-confidence; it is a desperate escape from anxiety.

So it is essentially Fromm's view that a neurosis transformed work from a pragmatic necessity to the essence of human life, and laid fertile ground and psychologically prepared people for modern capitalism; similarly, unquestioning obedience to a deity may prepare people for the same orientation towards other figures of authority.

Fromm explains his ideas in much more clarity and depth, but maybe this can serve as an adumbration of the way he views history. A given set of societal circumstances molds a certain kind of human being; these human beings react against their new circumstances, but often in a way that obscures the problem without resolving it, resulting in unforeseen and accidental consequences which in turn become the new circumstances that will both act on human beings and be reacted against...and the cycle continues. I don't know that this is true, but it seems at least worth thinking about and discussing. There's a pleasing elegance and simplicity to Fromm's view: there is no outside force that needs to be believed in here, no teleology or spirits, no lizard people controlling things, just us, bumbling along and reincarnating ourselves over and over, accident compounding accident. It makes me think of people like Mark Zuckerberg, Robert Mercer, Elon Musk, the physicists who split the atom, whoever decided to start burning fossil fuels, the developers of virtual reality...people who have all in some sense set events into motion, and yet each such event or action plays a partial, not a decisive, role in the world that's coming into being. Furthermore, such people cannot predict (and probably have very little control over) the ways in which what they've done will influence human beings in general, nor how human beings will react to these changes.

The need for relief from the burden of freedom brings us to the authoritarian character, its most relevant variant in Fromm's view defined by its poles of sadism and masochism. This might be where it starts to sound a little weird, but it kind of makes sense to me- both sadism and masochism, in Fromm's view, are compulsive efforts to escape the self. A sadist, after all, is just as dependent on his or her masochistic partner as vice-versa; the relevant feature of such relationships, according to Fromm, as opposed to those which are healthy (let's assume for the sake of argument that such things exist) is symbiosis, dependency. Fromm claims furthermore that not only are masochism and sadism opposite sides of the same coin, but that both characteristics are always present in the same individual, consciously or unconsciously, to a greater or lesser degree. This seemed pretty counter-intuitive to me at first, but consider the crowd at an authoritarian leader's mass rally- the people satisfy their masochistic impulses by in some sense submitting to the leader, losing their individuality in the crowd, being reduced to nothing (and maybe it's not such a different impulse that brings people to concerts and sports events), but the leader also incites their sadistic impulses- towards Mexicans, Jews, Muslims, whomever the enemy happens to be. And the leader is just as dependent on the audience he spends his life playing to. Trump, for example, gives away his psychological need in just about every single thing he says and does, but maybe never more clearly than with the fantasy, expressed on occasion to his crowds, that CNN or some other network, terrified by the rightness of what he's saying, is turning off its cameras in the middle of the broadcast even as he, Trump, speaks...that the red lights, one by one, are going dark. And it's only when that last light goes dark that Trump wakes up in a cold sweat. Hitler, Fromm writes, is sadistic- okay, no surprise there- but also masochistic, in the sense that he also feels himself in thrall to irresistible forces, he too possessed by the wishes to destroy and to be destroyed:

This whole preaching of self-sacrifice has an obvious purpose: the masses have to resign themselves and submit if the wish for power on the side of the leader and the 'elite' is to be realized. But this masochistic longing is also to be found in Hitler himself. For him the superior power to which he submits is God, Fate, Necessity, History, Nature. Actually all these terms have about the same meaning to him, that of symbols of an overwhelmingly strong power...Nature is the great power we have to submit to [Hitler believes], but living beings are the ones we should dominate.

------
One of the most interesting (and kind of disturbing) things about Fromm's analysis is something so clear and obvious that I almost never consciously think about it- that a mechanism of escape can be just about anything. Or rather, that everything has the potential to be a mechanism of escape, as well as the potential to be...something else. To return to Wallace for a second, I'm reminded of the passage from Infinite Jest about what you learn in a halfway house:

That sleeping can be a form of emotional escape and can with sustained effort be abused...That purposeful sleep-deprivation can also be an abusable escape. That gambling can be an abusable escape, too, and work, shopping, and shoplifting, and sex, and abstention, and masturbation, and food, and exercise, and meditation/prayer...

What is that "something else", then? It appears a few times throughout Fromm's book, each time flitting away like a doorway to Hellenic Greece that opens and closes before you have a chance to walk through it. It might be, for example, for a human being to "...relate himself spontaneously to the world in love and work, in the genuine expression of his emotional, sensuous and intellectual capacities." The steps one should take or actual habits to cultivate in order to live in such a way are not clear to me, and would perhaps require years of intensive psychotherapy with Mr. Fromm, which I would gladly try if he were alive and I could afford it. But applied to the discussion of fascism, I think that what I find most relevant about this view, most pragmatic really, is that it refuses to draw a comforting line between "us" and "them", which is important perhaps not because it is a way of being charitable to people who disagree, but because it reminds us of our own susceptibilities.

Fromm published this book in 1941, and it's difficult for me to imagine anyone suggesting that the alienation Fromm is talking about hasn't become much more profound, to the point that it is such an established feature of modern life that it's almost never thought about; when it is thought about, it's as both a kind of a joke, a cliche, and as something metaphysical, a spiritual condition, going by words like "dread" or "ennui." And frankly I think it may as well be, because economic and social conditions over the course of a lifetime become, for all intents and purposes, existential conditions.

Some of Fromm's examples of alienating features of life in 1941 can sound both eerily familiar and laughably benign by modern standards:

Vastness of cities in which the individual is lost, buildings that are as high as mountains, constant acoustic bombardment by the radio, big headlines that change three times a day and leaving one no choice to decide what is important...the beating rhythm of jazz...

...The part about jazz is perhaps reaching. But this seems like a valid excuse for me to insert a personal anecdote here about how I read most of this book while I was in Tbilisi, staying in a hostel with a strange collection of drifters for $3.50 US per night, as 2017 slowly dwindled. Hostels are not known for being conducive to concentration, so I would bring this book with me when I went for walks around the city; I attempted to read part of it, specifically the chapter on the authoritarian character and mechanisms of escape, in a Dunkin' Donuts on Rustaveli Avenue, the main street in Tbilisi. While it was after December 25th, perhaps the 26th or 27th, I hadn't reckoned with the fact that Christmas in Georgia is January 7th. This was therefore high Christmas season, and high time for Dunkin' Donuts to play Christmas music, quite loudly, in English no less, and so as I tried to read about the authoritarian character and take unmediated masochistic pleasure in the most unpleasant aspects of my personality laid out so clearly on the page, I simultaneously found myself fighting a generalized violent and sadistic impulse that welled up from the very core of my being as a part of my brain helplessly followed along to the music ("jingle bells", a voice on the sound system chimed inanely as I tried to understand Fromm's definition of the masochistic personality, "Batman smells, Robin laid an egg...") which only in retrospect seemed a negligible annoyance yet appropriate and relevant to Fromm's theme- we in the cafe were not to be left alone for a second with our coffee and our own thoughts, not allowed to take a deep breath in a quiet place between the past and the future, anything but that- that burden was lifted from us as a matter of course, without our even having had to ask.

Of greater concern, admittedly, is that we seem to be confronted with an unprecedented powerlessness- the destruction of the natural world and therefore civilization as we're familiar with it, perhaps within the next few generations (about 100 years, according to Stephen Hawking), which, as a friend of mine put it recently, is "pretty depressing." I suppose it's also a reminder that life as each of us experiences it is always unprecedented. This is a reality that has only slowly appeared in the background of conversations with friends (not co-workers or employers or acquaintances, however, and I also manage to avoid breaking down in tears and discussing it with the young Russian children I tutor- daily life and work retains for now the same unassailable quality, as if things could never be any other way), but which will certainly become more unavoidable in the years and decades to come. Who can anticipate the mechanisms of escape that may have to be employed to avoid confronting it?

Maybe I should try to end on a positive note, so I'll give the last word to Fromm:

...any attack on Germany as such, any defamatory propaganda concerning 'the Germans', only increases the loyalty of those who are not wholly identified with the Nazi system. This problem, however, cannot be solved basically by skillful propaganda but only by the victory in all countries of one fundamental truth: that ethical principles stand above the existence of the nation and that by adhering to these principles an individual belongs to the community of all those who share, who have shared, and will share this belief.

...more

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Jan 23, 2020 Morgan Blackledge rated it it was amazing

Staggering.

Brilliant start to finish.

Fromm was a genius.

Sadly though...

If you swap concerns regarding the cold war for catastrophic global climate change, then.....

This book could have been written yesterday.

Winston Churchill famously said “those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

I would add (if I may) “and sometimes, so are those who do”.

My point being:

Just because you know history and have learned from it, doesn’t mean your neighbor has.

Just because you know history an ...more

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Oct 19, 2011 Mikael Lind rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sociology, psychology

Yes, this is still a very important book even though it was written in 1942. It is mainly focused on the concept of freedom from the medieval times to the period before WWII. He points to weaknesses both in the (at the time) communist East and capitalist West, but (not surprisingly) his fiercest critique is that of the nazi ideology and the kind of man that Goebbels and Hitler wanted to create (a subordinated, disciplined creature, with a lack of critical thinking, etc.).
One thing in particular ...more

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Feb 24, 2018 عماد العتيلي rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2018-reads, literatrue-criticism, best-of-2018

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“The frightened individual seeks for somebody or something to tie his self to; he cannot bear to be his own individual self any longer, and he tries frantically to get rid of it and to feel security again by the elimination of this burden: the self.”.

Fromm is not an ordinary thinker, and his not an average writer. He is one of the best sociologists and literary critics I’ve ever known.

description

In this book, he masterly discussed the problem of freedom – a problem I tried to understand and fatho ...more

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Jan 15, 2011 Carly rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: People who like to think..

Shelves: grad-school, 2011, counseling

Here is a book that was recommended to me early in my grad school career, and for some reason I have put off reading it until now. (Studying for comps has pushed me to "get my reading on"...) I read this book in hopes of just reviewing some theory and getting Fromm's perspective. I did not expect to read it and be so engrossed (definitely didn't expect to read it in 2.5 days...).

Fromm puts it out there that as humans, our desire for individual freedom is one that at the same time makes us free, ...more

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May 19, 2017 David rated it it was amazing

Shelves: cultural-analysis, psychology

This is a fantastic book written decades ago but still relevant. What do we do with the freedom we have? If we look back a few centuries to the medieval era, we see people living in a structured society. There was little possibility for upward mobility and, for the most part, you had to stay in your station in life. Throughout the Reformation and into the modern age, we shook off these hierarchies and, as individuals and societies, became free.

This freedom certainly has benefits. But Fromm argue This is a fantastic book written decades ago but still relevant. What do we do with the freedom we have? If we look back a few centuries to the medieval era, we see people living in a structured society. There was little possibility for upward mobility and, for the most part, you had to stay in your station in life. Throughout the Reformation and into the modern age, we shook off these hierarchies and, as individuals and societies, became free.

This freedom certainly has benefits. But Fromm argues that as individuals became disconnected from the structures that once gave identity, this freedom also leads to angst and fear. We find ourselves adrift in a world, not sure where there is meaning or what we are to do. From this Fromm argues there is a fertile field for authoritarianism. Writing in the era of Hitler, Fromm spends a lot of time showing how people like Hitler could take advantage of the anxiety lower and middle class people feel to lead them to a purpose, albeit a horrible one.

Much of the book is written to set up the last chapter. I think I ran my pen drying highlighting the last chapter. He talks about how we make choices we think are free but in reality are not as we have learned what we want from the culture around us. In other words, I think I freely choose something but I learned that I wanted that thing (money, power, fame, religion, education, etc.) from the world around me. In this his book dovetails nicely with Jacques Ellul's book Propoganda. His solution is for humans to be spontaneous, to dive into truly free choices.

As a Christian, I most appreciated how this book fits with my Christian faith. One example is when he talks about love. Much that we call love is actually an elimination of separation which leads to submission (you love someone so you let them rule over you). He speaks of love as keeping the individuality while also becoming one in some way. This made me think of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity (three separate persons in one God) which is the root of Christian love (loving the other as an individual while becoming one). Also, when he asked the question how you know what choices are good, or truly free, and which are following culture or becoming subject to authoritarians, he basically said the good is self-evident. In other words, if something is done for true goodness or beauty then it is a work of true freedom. Again, as a Christian, I believe all good points to God as the ultimate good.

This book was not difficult to read though the concepts are certainly challenging. There is so much here and even though it was written decades ago, it remains relevant as authoritarians still seek to gain power and many of us still struggle with how to find meaning in the midst of being free.

Highly recommended.

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Nov 03, 2009 Meg rated it really liked it

A great look at both the economic, political, and social conditions under which freedom flourishes as well as the psychological mechanisms that impede or encourage individuals to either gain and use or to abandon their own autonomy. While he doesn't use this language, I think that he describes well what others refer to as "colonization of the mind."

The solutions offered at the very end of the book for what a society would look like that fully embraced freedom (Fromm suggests a state-based planne ...more

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Jan 05, 2021 Ева Нешкоска rated it really liked it

"The frightened individual seeks for somebody or something to tie his self to; he cannot bear to be his own individual self any longer, and he tries frantically to get rid of it and to feel security again by the elimination of this burden: the self."

Unexpectedly, fascinating book. Even though it was little bit out of my comfort zone. It made me wonder a lot about us humans. Are we really that superior or as Dostoevsky said "Man is stupid, you know, phenomenally stupid." ...more

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Feb 04, 2021 Helana rated it really liked it

A book that everyone should read!
I highly recommend it!

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Jan 06, 2010 Erik Graff rated it liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Fromm fans

Recommended to Erik by: Erik Badger

Shelves: political-social-science

Although I'd read quite a bit of Fromm already and had heard some of his radio lectures, I hadn't yet read his early Escape from Freedom (aka Fear of Freedom). Since it was one of the books on the core list of the "great books" college my youngest stepbrother was attending in Waukegan, Illinois and since I was hoping for a job there, I picked out the old copy on the bookshelf and read it quickly one afternoon at Panini Panini, a cafe on North Sheridan Road here in East Rogers Park, Chicago.

I was ...more

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Jun 29, 2013 Alex rated it it was amazing

This may be the most important book about humanity I've read. It's overwhelmingly insightful and I am awed by Fromm's ability to put into words what I've only felt around the edges in my life. Yes, it's repetitive at times, but that only serves to hammer home the philosophies and ideas that other authors make opaque. A must read. ...more

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Jan 14, 2011 hissi rated it liked it

Shelves: self-help, favorites, my-ebooks

The fear of freedom

- Man was dominated by the rules of nature. Then man ruled it.. as a society.. and with societies rising.. the individual was oppressed. Under the unjust.. He as an individual empowered the group.. after the religion ruled.. it was perished. And man as a unit.. ruled over all..

So the man as a person.. Foolishly gave in for the society.. because he needed the society. For food, for protection and a lot of things he alone cannot master or fathom all at once.. for the fear that i ...more

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Dec 29, 2019 Alan Johnson rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: religion-and-government-theology, philosophers, reason-and-critical-thinking, political-science-and-politics, neuroscience-and-psychology, sociology, ethics

Erich Fromm (1900-80) was a famous psychoanalyst and social psychologist who wrote several important books on history, psychology, ethics, and political philosophy. Although influenced by Freud, he disagreed with his famous predecessor on several important issues.

Escape from Freedom was first published in 1941. At this time Hitler had taken over much of continental Europe with the further objectives of conquering England and the Soviet Union. World War II was raging, but the United States did no Erich Fromm (1900-80) was a famous psychoanalyst and social psychologist who wrote several important books on history, psychology, ethics, and political philosophy. Although influenced by Freud, he disagreed with his famous predecessor on several important issues.

Escape from Freedom was first published in 1941. At this time Hitler had taken over much of continental Europe with the further objectives of conquering England and the Soviet Union. World War II was raging, but the United States did not enter the war until after the December 7, 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Fromm, who was of Jewish descent, fled Germany after Hitler came to power; he moved to the United States in 1934, where he resided at the time he wrote this work.

Fromm’s book contains an interesting discussion of the rise of modernity from the Middle Ages. In the Middle Ages, every individual had an established place, and economic institutions existed for the support of people rather than for profit. The greed that sought after more and more money was considered a sin by the Church, which had considerable influence over government and society. However, this medieval regime was upset by modernity, beginning with the Renaissance. Capitalist theory and practice resulted in the uprooting of traditional ties and the pursuit of money for its own sake. In the new society, people became individual economic actors, subject to the vagaries of supply and demand. Having obtained freedom from medieval regulation, people had to try to survive, economically, in a very competitive environment. The loss of traditional community ties led many to attempt to restore some sense of belonging and security by losing themselves in authoritarian political and religious movements. This “escape from freedom” afflicted all of modernity, culminating in the rise of fascism and Nazism that Fromm witnessed in his own time. He described its particular manifestation in Nazi Germany as follows:

Hitler proved to be such an efficient tool because he combined the characteristics of a resentful, hating, petty bourgeois, with whom the lower middle class could identify themselves emotionally and socially, with those of an opportunist who was ready to serve the interests of the German industrialists and Junkers. Originally he posed as the Messiah of the old middle class, promised the destruction of department stores, the breaking of the domination of banking capital, and so on. The record is clear enough. These promises were never fulfilled. However, that did not matter. Nazism never had any genuine political or economic principles. It is essential to understand that the very principle of Nazism is its radical opportunism. What mattered was that hundreds of thousands of petty bourgeois, who in the normal course of development had little chance to gain money or power, as members of the Nazi bureaucracy now got a large slice of the wealth and prestige they forced the upper classes to share with them. Others who were not members of the Nazi machine were given the jobs taken away from Jews and political enemies; and as for the rest, although they did not get more bread, they got “circuses.” The emotional satisfaction afforded by these sadistic spectacles and by an ideology which gave them a feeling of superiority over the rest of mankind was able to compensate them—for a time at least—for the fact that their lives had been impoverished, economically and culturally. (Escape from Freedom , Kindle edition, 218-19)

I first read Escape from Freedom in the 1960s. I just finished my second reading of this work. Although I don’t necessarily agree with all the details of Fromm’s analysis, I think many of his arguments have merit. Moreover, this understanding has obvious applications to international populist authoritarian movements in our own time. As Fromm observed, the authoritarian personality has both sadistic and masochistic manifestations. The “leader” is mostly sadistic, but even a leader such as Hitler thought he was serving “fate” or some Social Darwinist version of God or the gods (cf. Nietzsche’s Übermensch [“Superman”]). The followers are mostly masochistic, but even they exhibit sadistic tendencies against disfavored and marginalized groups as well as those under them in the fascist hierarchy. My main question about Fromm’s analysis is whether all of this can be traced directly back to the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity, as he argues, or whether it is just a more general feature of human nature as it is manifested in many individuals. Perhaps present-day psychologists should undertake massive case studies of individuals drawn to authoritarian movements in an attempt to discover the roots of this antisocial attraction and the extent, if any, that they can be attributed to the historical circumstances emphasized by Fromm.

Note: This book was written more than thirty years before writers and editors in English became sensitive to the importance of gender-neutral language. Thus, for example, Fromm frequently used the word “man” as a synonym for “human being.” Although grating to twenty-first-century readers (including myself), such was the universal custom among English speakers and writers at that time, and one can just mentally replace such terms with gender-neutral words.

Alan E. Johnson
January 5, 2020 ...more

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May 13, 2019 K.A. Ashcomb rated it really liked it

Erich Fromm is a great thinker and writer. When I read his The Sane Society, my view about human life, the world, and society was transformed. I expected the same from Escape from Freedom, and it didn't disappoint. How could it? The book has been in print and read over and again since 1941 when it first came out. Escape from Freedom is an amazing book meant to make us think over what we consider as freedom and ask if we are as free as we think? And if we are, then why are we so unhappy with our Erich Fromm is a great thinker and writer. When I read his The Sane Society, my view about human life, the world, and society was transformed. I expected the same from Escape from Freedom, and it didn't disappoint. How could it? The book has been in print and read over and again since 1941 when it first came out. Escape from Freedom is an amazing book meant to make us think over what we consider as freedom and ask if we are as free as we think? And if we are, then why are we so unhappy with our lives?

This is not a self-help book, but comparative research into history backed up with sociology, social psychology, and psychology. This said, there were places where the argumentation felt iffy and took huge leaps when stating correlations and truths how the world is. But the historical comparison convinced me. It was the core of the book, showing how concepts like individuality, freedom, duty, and self have changed. And while we think peasants under a feudal rule were less free than us, the truth is more surprising. Erich Fromm argues that the change from the feudal society into capitalism (during Renaissance) has alienated men from each other and from their families, making us, yes, more individualistic, but also more alone and responsible of things we cannot control like chance and bad luck. He argues that the freedoms we think we have gained aren't as free as we like to think. That we are being shaped by commercials, influential people and their opinions, and social pressure (norms). So what we think, what we want, and who we are depend on this faceless others through things like newspapers. He also argues that capitalism has shifted our focus solely on gaining money, making us obsessed, unhappy and alienated.

I could go on and on about the book and argue against it or for it. It is informative, eye-opening, and thought-provoking. The contrast between feudal and modern society makes me think what else I hold true or basic, but haven't really understood where it comes from, what it means, and that it hasn't always been so. I recommend this book despite the reasoning leaps I mentioned. The message of this book will make you think. And it made me appreciate more about the study of history. We need to understand where we come from and where our ideas come from to see the whole picture.

"In capitalism economic activity, success, material gains become ends in themselves. It becomes man's fate to contribute to the growth of the economic system, to amass capital, not for purposes of his own happiness or salvation, but as an end in itself. Man became a cog in the vast economic machine — an important one if he had much capital, and insignificant one if had none—but always a cog to serve a purpose outside of himself." ...more

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Oct 30, 2018 John David rated it really liked it

Shelves: modern-history, politics, sociology, history-of-ideas

When Camus asked one of the more famous questions in twentieth-century existentialism – “Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?” – he was attempting to struggle with maybe one of the most powerful accoutrements of modern society: both our struggle to possess freedom, and then how to handle it once we think we have “achieved” it. But while freedom causes its own peculiar troubles at the level of the individual, whole new dynamics arise at the level of culture and society.

The main thrust When Camus asked one of the more famous questions in twentieth-century existentialism – “Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?” – he was attempting to struggle with maybe one of the most powerful accoutrements of modern society: both our struggle to possess freedom, and then how to handle it once we think we have “achieved” it. But while freedom causes its own peculiar troubles at the level of the individual, whole new dynamics arise at the level of culture and society.

The main thrust of Fromm’s book rests on a psychoanalytic, sociological, and economic framework that begins by tracing the middle ages and looks at the paths that freedom has taken since the rise of modernity (which he roughly co-equates with the birth of capitalism and the rise of the Reformation theology). Most of us share a rather naïve model of how freedom is related to this arc of history: namely, the more economic and political freedom that we have (“freedom from”), the better and more fulfilled we were. However, just as Isaiah Berlin would do later with his “Four Essays on Liberty,” Fromm suggested a dialectical approach to the notion of freedom: not only a “freedom from,” but also a “freedom to.” The naïve model rests almost wholly on the “freedom from.” However, Fromm clearly believes that individuals not only struggle for freedom, but also with freedom. Complete freedom – from webs of meaning, from ties that bind us to each other, to creativity, and supportive communities – is something that actually endangers institutions like the modern liberal state and participatory democracy and causes us to “take flight” into other, more precarious forms of government, as we saw happen all over Europe in the first half of the twentieth century.

Fromm begins his archaeology of the modern spirit with an analysis of how the medieval economic system slowly transformed into what we would recognize today as proto-capitalism. During this transformation, the medieval person was able to pursue their own independent roles (following the breakdown of the apprenticeship system and feudalism more generally), but was simultaneously cut off from other roles. Whereas money was always a necessity, it used to exist for necessities; usury was outlawed, even by (especially by) the Church. In capitalism, money begins to be seen not as a means to fulfill particular physiological and safety needs, but an end in itself. Capitalism meant living in a new aristocracy of money that put people “in a position where they could enjoy the fruits of new freedom and acquire a new feeling of mastery and individual initiative. On the other hand, they had to dominate the masses and to fight against each other, and thus their position, too, was not free from a fundamental insecurity and anxiety.”

The perfect storm of alienation comes when this radical change in economic circumstances is coupled with the rise of Lutheranism and Calvinism. Fromm argues that Protestantism breeds feelings of anger and resentment. It demolished the God of the medievals which mostly believed in a God of unconditional love; it made him a tool instead of an end; it capitulated before secular power and relinquished the principle that secular power is not justified because of its moral principles; and in doing all this it relinquished elements that had been the foundations to Judeo-Christian tradition. “Its doctrines presented a picture of the individual, God, and the world, in which these feelings were justified by the belief that the insignificance and powerlessness which an individual felt came from the qualities of man as such and that he ought to feel as he felt.”

Fromm cites three ways in which people can choose to “escape from freedom.” The first is authoritarianism, wherein they willingly choose to submit control to a governing power structure that makes choices for them, thereby defraying their existential anxiety. Second is automaton imitation where a group of people come together to in the absence of authoritarian means to great groups that impose norms, mores, and other exclusionary standards on others. Third is destruction, where in the absence of either of the above two options, someone can simply choose work at cross purposes with their own thriving and existence. This can come in many forms, from the more moderate lack of self-esteem to engagement in deviant behavior to the commission of suicide. The important commonality to realize here is that all of these choices eliminate the anxiety-inducing feeling that comes with creativity, openness, and rational decision-making.

Of course, none of these three are inevitable. Ideally, someone will engage in the act of self-realization – the humanistic work of challenging one’s self by rising to encounter the spontaneous and creative activity that most parallels your own talents. Fromm knows that life provides no easy answers; he is even more percipient in realizing that the political way of life is yet one more way by which people can engage in violence, symbolic, personal, or otherwise. But his answer is, to co-opt the words said of a Massachusetts senator who refused to behave herself, “nevertheless, persist.” Giving up and conceding existential ground is not violent because the people who take the power almost always end up being totalitarians and despots, though certainly that doesn’t help. The violence rests in the giving up those few parts us that makes ourselves human at all: our creativity, create communities engaged in meaning-making, work in and around what drives us with curiosity and passion, and to give and live life fully and selflessly. Political violence only works if it succeeds in making monsters of us first. And as Goya was all too ready to remind us over a century ago, it is exactly in the sleep of reason, in the concession of our internal, thoughtful lives, where these monsters are produced. ...more

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Mar 20, 2017 Lysergius rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: psychology-and-psychiatry

Fromm's analysis of freedom as experienced by modern man is traced through changes in religious and economic conditions in history. His conclusion that modern man is isolated and alone prone to absorbing autocratic ideas for comfort, or sliding into sado-masochistic relationships is fascinating and appropriate today.

In the course of his exposition Fromm also challenges some of the basic dictates of Freudian theory among which he selects the function of sex as an effect of surfeit as opposed to s ...more

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Nov 08, 2020 akchaism rated it really liked it

An insightful book about the human phycology and it's attitude towards "freedom" and "authority". There were different perspectives and factors explained about this attitude of Western society. Overall a good book, and I definitely should read it again. ...more

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Dec 15, 2020 David Rush rated it really liked it · review of another edition

How could millions of people in a modern country fall in love with an autocratic leader who cared little for political consistency and pleased his adoring fans with blatant lies and hate filled accusations and where cruelty to others seems to be the whole point? Erich Fromm has the why it happened in his day by showing how the Protestant reformation psychologically primed society to be susceptible to the inflammatory rhetoric of Adolf Hitler.

Fromm lays it out in a structured manner that is thoro ...more

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Apr 13, 2020 Abigail Muscat rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

In a single book Fromm manages to:
-identify why people need to be part of something larger than themselves
-identify the social changes that contributed to the rise of liberal capitalism from Medieval times to the Reformation
-identified the character traits that give rise to totalitarianism, Fascism and Nazism
-argues that liberal democracies under capitalism are lacking as much freedom as totalitarian states
-identifies both the socio-economic conditions and personal conditions one needs to flouri ...more

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Jul 04, 2011 Murray Brown rated it really liked it

Erich Fromm offers profound insights into the social character -- a synopsis of the mind of a typical person in society -- and how it has evolved historically, showing that we are a product of the prevailing culture of our times. He places this analysis in the context of the socioeconomic, cultural and spiritual factors influencing society at the time of the Reformation and then contrasts that period with the rise of Fascism in Europe (not long before he wrote the book in 1942). He examines Freu ...more

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Apr 22, 2010 Mochizuki rated it liked it

Shelves: psychology

Escape From Freedom by Eric Fromm is an oldie but a goodie classic philosophical book about modern man freeing himself from the bonds of society--any society. Man, in breaking away from his social structure, encounters isolation, and he is confronted with a decision to either escape from the burden of his freedom into new dependencies and submission, or to advance to the full realization of positive freedom which is based on the uniqueness and individuality of man.

In Chapter 7, Fromm speaks of ...more

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May 26, 2010 Npc Convergence rated it it was amazing

If humanity cannot live with the dangers and responsibilities inherent in freedom, it will probably turn to authoritarianism. This is the central idea of Escape from Freedom, a landmark work by one of the most distinguished thinkers of our time, and a book that is as timely now as when first published in 1941. Few books have thrown such light upon the forces that shape modern society or penetrated so deeply into the causes of authoritarian systems. If the rise of democracy set some people free, ...more

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May 15, 2015 Sarah El Harake rated it really liked it

It is such an enlightening book that everyone should read. It gives new information about many concepts that you thought you knew very well. It could have been perfect and I could have given it five stars instead of four if it dealt more with the idea of secularism and religion in the modern times.

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Dec 04, 2014 E. G. marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Shelves: germany-prussia, non-fiction, philosophy-psychology-sociology, own, north-america, erich-fromm

Foreword

--The Fear of Freedom

Appendix: Character and the Social Process
Index

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Sep 27, 2020 Hunter Dickerson rated it it was amazing

One of the more important books I've ever read I think. It's exactly what I was looking for. Utilizing philosophy and psychology to explain the need for economic justice in the pursuit of individual freedom. Fromm does a really beautiful job explaining how capitalistic individualization has helped man transcend nature and be free from overt authoritarianism, but without the means of realizing this new freedom and the threat of monopolistic industrialization, individuals in society feel powerless One of the more important books I've ever read I think. It's exactly what I was looking for. Utilizing philosophy and psychology to explain the need for economic justice in the pursuit of individual freedom. Fromm does a really beautiful job explaining how capitalistic individualization has helped man transcend nature and be free from overt authoritarianism, but without the means of realizing this new freedom and the threat of monopolistic industrialization, individuals in society feel powerless, alone, and disconnected from the feeling of eternal unity, always located in the present moment, that can be brought about through love and productive work. Seperated from the results of their work, reduced to a cog in a machine they built, and in constant competition with their peers, individualization has been a process of negative freedom, by separating people from their spirit, a bond that connects through spontaneity and love to all nature and life. All of this social dissolution leaves us susceptible to fascist leaders offering some semblance of order and control, so that we, as the masses, can reach the final result of capitalistic individualization, submission.

To quote:
"Modern man is starved for life. But since being [automated], he cannot experience life in the sense of spontaneous activity, he takes as surrogate any kind of excitement and thrill-- the thrill of drinking, of sports, of vicariously living the excitement of fictitious persons on the screen. What then is the meaning of freedom for the modern man? He has become free from the external bonds that would prevent him from doing and thinking as he sees fit. He would be free to act according to his own will if he knew what he wanted thought and felt. But he does not know. He conforms to anonymous authorities and adopts himself to which is not his. The more he does this, the more powerless he feels, the more he is forced to conform. In spite of a veneer of optimism and initiative, modern man is overcome by profound feeling of powerlessness which makes him gaze towards approaching catastrophes as though he was paralyzed... If we look only at the economic needs as far as the "normal person" is concerned, if we do not see the unconscious suffering of the average commodified person, then we fail to see the danger that threatens our culture from its human basis: the readiness to accept any ideology in any leader if only he promises excitement and offers a political structure and symbols which allegedly give meaning and order an individual's life. The despair of human individualization is fertile soil for the political purposes of fascism." ...more

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About Erich Fromm

Erich Fromm

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Erich Fromm, Ph.D. (Sociology, University of Heidelberg, 1922), was a psychoanalyst and social philosopher who explored the interaction between psychology and society, and held various professorships in psychology in the U.S. and Mexico in the mid-20th century.

Fromm's theory is a rather unique blend of Freud and Marx. Freud, of course, emphasized the unconscious, biological drives, repression, and ...more

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“The more the drive toward life is thwarted, the stronger is the drive toward destruction; the more life is realized, the less is the strength of destructiveness. Destructiveness is the outcome of unlived life.” — 99 likes

“We forget that, although freedom of speech constitutes an important victory in the battle against old restraints, modern man is in a position where much of what "he" thinks and says are the things that everybody else thinks and says; that he has not acquired the ability to think originally - that is, for himself - which alone gives meaning to his claim that nobody can interfere with the expression of his thoughts.” — 70 likes

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