Fear of Freedom: Erich Fromm and Ken Kesey’s >One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest< [application of Fromm's theories to art]

  • The pursuit of freedom has constantly been debilitated due to external shackles embodying themselves mainly with the presence of an authority that anesthetizes individuals into voluntary submission. Erich Fromm (1900-80) is the German psychologist who underscores the significance of individual freedom in his book Escape from Freedom (1941) and maintains that on the path towards freedom, individuals attempt at unshackling themselves from restrictive forces; however, as they release themselves from the restrictions of an authority and refuse to yield to its demands, individuals are left with feelings of insecurity and powerlessness. As a result, they try to compensate for the feeling of insecurity by either submitting themselves to another authority figure or becoming authority figures themselves. Within the paper, Fromm’s concept of freedom is elaborated upon and applied to Ken Kesey’s >One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest< (1962). The paper discusses the two major concepts of >freedom from< and >freedom to< known as >negative freedom< and >positive freedom< and demonstrates the possibility of finding a getaway from a negative sense of freedom by investing mankind with the power of love and communication. Real freedom is not a release from external constraints but mainly a release from internal forces.

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Metadaten
Author:Maryam Soltan Beyad, Mahshid Mirmasoomi
Parent Title (English):Critical Literary Studies (University of Kurdistan), Vol. 3, No. 2, Series 6 (2021), pp. 109-126. [Online ISSN 2716-9928] [cls.uok.ac.ir/article_61844_8a56f9afff1fbcecb5ca017f6fce3eb8.pdf]
Document Type:Articles
Language:English
Year of first Publication:2021
Release Date:2024/11/29
Format:PDF-file to download
IdNo:Beyad_M_S_and_Mirmasoomi_M_2021
Writings about Erich Fromm (Secondary Literature):Articles / Artikel
Erich Fromm's Library and Erich Fromm Archive:Articles / Artikel
Licence (German):free access / direkt zugänglich
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