Erich Fromm

Psychologist

1900-03-23 – 1980-01-01

Erich Fromm was a German-born social psychologist, psychoanalyst, and humanistic philosopher associated with the Frankfurt School. Born in Frankfurt in 1900, he developed influential ideas on freedom, authority, and human needs in modern society. He died in Muralto, Switzerland, on 1980-03-18.

Quotes by Erich Fromm

Only in the love of those who do not serve a purpose, love begins to unfold.
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Unconditional love corresponds to one of the deepest longings, not only of the child, but of every human being; on the other hand, to be loved because of one's merit, because one deserves it, always leaves doubt; maybe I did not please the person whom I want to love me,maybe this, or that— there is always a fear that love could disappear. Furthermore, deserved love easily leaves a bitter feeling that one is not loved for oneself, that one is loved only because one pleases, that one is, in the last analysis, not loved at all but used.
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The polarity between the male and female principles exists also within each man and each woman. Just as physiologically man and woman each have hormones of the opposite sex, they are bisexual also in the psychological sense. They carry in themselves the principle of receiving and of penetrating, of matter and of spirit. Man— and woman— finds union within himself only in the union of his female and his male polarity. This polarity is the basis for all creativity.
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To love somebody is not just a strong feeling— it is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go. How can I judge that it will stay forever, when my act does not involve judgment and decision?
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The child starts out by being attached to his mother as the ground of all being. He feels helpless and needs the all-enveloping love of mother. He then turns to father as the new center of his affections, father being a guiding principle for thought and action; in this stage he is motivated by the need to acquire father's praise, and to avoid his displeasure. In the stage of full maturity he has freed himself from the person of mother and of father as protecting and commanding powers; he has established the motherly and fatherly principles in himself. He has become his own father and mother; he is father and mother. In the history of the human race we see— and can anticipate— the same development: from the beginning of the love for God as the helpless attachment to a mother Goddess, through the obedient attachment to a fatherly God, to a mature stage where God ceases to be an outside power, where man has incorporated the principles of love and justice into himself, where he has become one with God, and eventually, to a point where he speaks of God only in a poetic, symbolic sense.
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This experience of being loved by mother is a passive one. There is nothing I have to do in order to be loved— mother's love is unconditional. All I have to do is to be— to be her child. Mother's love is bliss, is peace, it need not be acquired, it need not be deserved.
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When a person feels that he has not been able to make sense of his own life, he tries to make sense of it in terms of the life of his children. But one is bound to fail within oneself and for the children. The former because the problem of existence can be solved by each one only for himself, and not by proxy; the latter because one lacks in the very qualities which one needs to guide the children in their own search for an answer.
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While we teach knowledge, we are losing that teaching which is the most important one for human development: the teaching which can only be given by the simple presence of a mature, loving person.
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The only way in which the world can be grasped ultimately lies, not in thought, but in the act, in the experience of oneness.Thus paradoxical logic leads to the conclusion that the love of God is neither the knowledge of God in thought, nor the thought of one's love of God, but the act of experiencing the oneness with God.
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To be concentrated means to live fully in the present, in the here and now, and not to think of the next thing to be done, while I am doing something right now.
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Psychology as a science has its limitations, and, as the logical consequence of theology is mysticism, so the ultimate consequence of psychology is love.
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They were more free, but they were more alone.
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In the sphere of human relations, faith is an indispensable quality of any significant friendship or love. Having faith in another person means to be certain of the reliability and unchangeability of his fundamental attitudes, of the core of his personality, of his love. By this I do not mean that a person may not change his opinions, but that his basic motivations remain the same; that, for instance, his respect for life and human dignity is part of himself, not subject to change.
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The problem of knowing man is parallel to the religious problem of knowing God. In conventional Western theology the attempt is made to know God by thought, to make statements about God. It is assumed that I can know God in my thought. In mysticism, which is the consequent outcome of monotheism, the attempt is given up to know God by thought, and it is replaced by the experience of union with God in which there is no more room— and no need— for knowledge about God.
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Erotic love, if it is love, has one premise. That I love from the essence of my being— and experience the other person in the essence of his or her being. In essence, all human beings are identical. We are all part of One; we are One.
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Love is possible only if two persons communicate with each other from the center of their existence, hence if each one of them experiences himself from the center of his existence.Only in this central experience is human reality, only here is aliveness, only here is the basis for love. Love, experienced thus, is a constant challenge; it is not a resting place, but a moving, growing, working together; even whether there is harmony or conflict, joy or sadness, is secondary to the fundamental fact that two people experience themselves from the essence of their existence, that they are one with each other by being one with themselves, rather than by fleeing from themselves. There is only one proof for the presence of love: the depth of the relationship, and the aliveness and strength in each person concerned; this is the fruit by which love is recognized.
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Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person; it is an attitude, an orientation of character which determines the relatedness of a person to the world as a whole, not toward one object of love. If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to the rest of his fellow men, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism.
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To feel completely alone and isolated leads to mental disintegration just as physical starvation leads to death.
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The faculty to think objectively is reason; the emotional attitude behind reason is that of humility. To be objective, to use one's reason, is possible only if one has achieved an attitude of humility, if one has emerged from the dreams of omniscience and omnipotence which one has as a child.
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The sexual act without love never bridges the gap between two human beings, except momentarily..
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