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A Research on Fromm’s Thought of Freedom [弗洛姆自由思想述评], Master thesis, Basic Principles of Marxism, Tianjin University of Commerce, Tianjin, China 2018.

  • 弗洛姆生活在一个冲突不断、充满灾难的多事年代。两次世界大战,资本主义世界的经济危机,法西斯主义的得势等,构成了弗洛姆逃避自由思想的历史背景。弗洛姆在对弗洛伊德精神分析学说中的>潜意识理论<与>性格理论<进行借鉴的基础上,结合马克思的历史唯物主义原理及其异化理论,形成了自己独特的自由思想。弗洛姆重点关注经济、社会制度等因素以外的人的非理性的感情力量,尤其是将人的内心世界这一核心要素作为自己的研究重点。他将人们日益从原始纽带中脱颖而出从而获得力量感和独立性的过程称为>个体化<,认为这是人们自由的开端。在个体化进程自发进行的同时,一些个人或者社会的原因妨碍了自我的增长,这两个趋势间的巨大差异使人产生一种无法忍受的孤立与无能为力感,导致了心理逃避机制的产生。弗洛姆从神经症和健康两个概念出发,利用心理分析的方法对逃避自由的心理机制进行研究。弗洛姆认为逃避自由一共有三种心理机制。第一种是权威主义。即放弃自我的独立,想要与自身之外的某人或某物合为一体,以便获得自己所不具备的力量,或者换句话说,是寻找一个新的纽带来代替已经失去的纽带。第二种是破坏欲。弗洛姆认为破坏欲的强弱似乎与个人生命的成长受阻程度大小成比例。第三种是社会意义上的心理机制,它是现代社会里大多数人所采取的一种方式,即机械趋同。在这种心理机制下,人仿佛变成了一个没有自我的机器人,与周围数百万的机器人没有区别,这样他便再不会感到孤独,也不用再焦虑,类似于动物的保护色。为了克服孤独和无力感,他使自己变成这个世界的一部分,变得与周围的环境相像,变得不再是个体,从此失去了自我。这些心理机制不但没有使人摆脱孤独感,反而使人陷入更深的孤独和不幸中。对于为什么要逃避自由,弗洛姆的基本解释是:自由使人与自然、人与人、人与自我之间越来越疏远和对立,使人成了孤独的个体,失去了安全感。弗洛姆相信人可以做到既自由又不孤独,既保持着独立的自我又与自然、与他人建立起良好的关系,充分实现人的潜能,从而进入到积极自由的状态。弗洛姆认为,只有通过自发性的爱和劳动才能获得积极的自由。因为消极的自由使人感到孤立和无助,他与世界的关系很遥远,而且他认为自己很软弱并且微不足道,他对这个世界充满了恐惧。而自发行为是一种可以克服孤独和恐惧的方法,这种自发行为能使人在保持完整自我的前提下与世界建立良好的关系,使人与人、人与自然、人与自我之间连为一体。弗洛姆为西方马克主义对自由思想的研究开拓了一个新的研究领域,使人们在实现自由这条道路上有了新的认识和新的研究方向,拓宽了对自由问题的理解,创新了问题分析的方法。但弗洛姆的分析更多的注重在个人的心理因素上,这不能不说是有失偏颇的。社会的经济因素和政治因素才是使人逃避自由的第一位原因。正是社会的这些因素才形成了个人孤独的心理,才迫使人不得不逃避消极的自由。弗洛姆在向人们阐述如何建立理想社会的时候,主张用>爱的艺术<,这就使他的观点沦为一个不切实际的空想。弗洛姆通过对逃避自由的心理机制的分析,从追求自由到逃避自由,从逃避自由的原因到解决逃避自由的途径,其理论具有一定的积极意义。但是,弗洛姆的逃避自由是建立在抽象的人性论基础之上的,忽视了自由实现的现实的社会客观条件,自由的实现并不取决于人的意志,而是取决于现实的社会客观条件。
  • 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. [Author’s translation]

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Metadaten
Author:Zhiqing Li
Document Type:Dissertations
Language:Chinese
Year of first Publication:2018
Release Date:2019/03/04
Format:no download and copy possible
IdNo:Li_Zhiqing_2018
Writings about Erich Fromm (Secondary Literature):Dissertations / Dissertationen
Erich Fromm's Library and Erich Fromm Archive:Dissertations / Dissertationen
Licence (German):
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