A Research On Fromm's Thought Of Freedom

Fromm lives in an era that is full of conflicts and disasters.The outbreak of World War I and World War II,the economic crisis in the capitalist world and the rise of Fascism constituted the historical background of his thought of freedom.After learning from Freud's Subconsciousness theory and character theory and combining Marx's theory of historical materialism with his alienation theory,Fromm formed his unique thought of freedom.Fromm focuses on the irrational emotional power of people rather than economic and social systems.In particular,the human's inner world is the key point of his research.Fromm called the process that people increasingly stand out from original bond to gain strength and independence the “individualization” which,in his opinion,is the beginning of freedom.While the individualization process is proceeding spontaneously,some individuals or social reasons hinder the growth of ego.The huge differences between these two trends make people have an unbearable sense of isolation and powerlessness and generate the emergence of psychological evasion mechanisms.Fromm started from neurosis and health these two concepts,and used psychological analysis methods to study the psychological mechanism of escaping from freedom.Fromm believed that escape from freedom has three psychological mechanisms.The first one is Authoritarianism.It means give up the independence of ego and wants to be integrated with someone or something outside of oneself,so as to gain the strength that you do not have.In other words,it is to find a new bond to replace the lost bond.The second one is Destructiveness.Fromm believes that the strength of destructive desire seems to be proportional to the degree of obstruction to the growth of personal life.It is a way adopted by most people in modern society,that is,mechanical convergence.Under this psychological mechanism,people seem to become a self-free robot that is not different from the millions of robots around him,so that he will never feel lonely and no more anxiety,similar to the animal's color protection.To overcome loneliness and powerlessness,he turned himself into a part of the world,became like the surrounding environment,became no longer an individual,and lost himself from then on.These psychological mechanisms not only did not enable people to get rid of loneliness,but also led people to fall into deeper loneliness and misfortune.As for the reason of escaping from Freedom,Fromm explained that freedom increasingly alienates the human from nature,human and ego,making people lonely individuals and lose the sense of security.Fromm's escape of freedom refers to the state escaping from negative freedom.Fromm believes that man can be free without feeling lonely,maintain an independent ego,establish a good relationship with nature and others,fully realize the potential of human beings,and thus enter this state of positive freedom.Fromm believed that only through spontaneous love and working,can people gain positive freedom.Because negative freedom makes people feel isolated and helpless,he has a distant relationship with the world and thinks that he is weak and insignificant.What's worse,he is afraid of the world.While spontaneous action is a way overcoming loneliness and fear.This kind of action enables a person to establish a good relationship with the world under the premise maintaining a complete ego and connect people with people,nature,and ego.Fromm opened up a new research field for Western Marxism's study on liberalism,and enabled people to have a new understanding and new research direction in the way of realizing of freedom.The research direction has broadened the understanding of freedom issues and innovated methods for problem analysis.However,Fromm's analysis paid more attention to individual psychological factors,which is biased.The economic and political factors of society are the first reason why people escape freedom.It is these social factors that form the mentality of individual loneliness and force people to avoid negative freedom.When Fromm explained how to build an ideal society to people,he proposed to use the "art of love",which made his opinion an unrealistic fantasy.Through the analysis of the psychological mechanism of escaping from freedom,Fromm explained that pursuing freedom to escaping freedom,the reason and the solution of escaping from freedom,his theory has a certain positive significance.But Fromm's escape from freedom is based on the abstract theory of human nature,ignoring the social and objective conditions of the realities freely realized.The realization of freedom does not depend on the will of people,but on the realistic social objective conditions.