36 pages • 1 hour read
Erich FrommEscape From Freedom
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1941A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaChapter 7-AppendixChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary: “Freedom and Democracy”
In Escape from Freedom’s final chapter, Fromm considers whether freedom manifests in modern democratic countries such as the United States of America. Fromm argues that though such democratic countries seem to espouse ideals of freedom, none of these countries offer a social system where individuals can truly be said to freely follow their own thinking and desires. Instead, individuals in these countries respond to their feelings of isolation by submitting to social expectations and “compulsive[ly] conforming” (266) to outside patterns of thinking that do not authentically come from their own minds.
Fromm argues that individuals are taught from childhood to repress their own “original” (272) forms of thinking and feeling. Education systems focus on teaching children to memorize a multitude of isolated facts, rather than instilling within them the skills of critical thinking. Such critical thinking would allow individuals to independently form their own thoughts and feelings, allowing them to create an authentic understanding of their personality and self. Instead, individuals learn to assume that their own desires and needs are the same as those that society tells them to have: “[M]odern man lives under the illusion that he knows what he wants, while he actually wants what he is supposed to want” (278). In Fromm’s view, such individuals become an “automaton” (281), unable to achieve true happiness as they are unaware of what they truly desire or think. Such a society is always at risk at falling into Fascism and authoritarianism, as citizens accustomed to conformist behavior will display a “readiness to accept any ideology and any leader, if only he […] offers a political structure and symbols which allegedly give meaning and order to an individual’s life” (282).
Fromm closes the chapter by describing some elements of a form of society that he believes will allow individuals to authentically realize their inner beings. Such a society relies on understanding the distinction between “freedom from” and “freedom to” (296). While modern society has offered individuals freedom from outside forms of authority, it has yet to create a system that gives individuals the “positive freedom” to pursue “spontaneous activity of the total, integrated personality” (284). A spontaneous individual would be one who refuses to repress any desires and thoughts, allowing the ability to authentically develop one’s sense of self. Such an individual would then act spontaneously throughout life, without any regard to other people’s opinion or higher authority. Fromm believes that such a society would preserve the fullest range of freedoms for an individual while also “unit[ing] the self with man and nature” (287).
Appendix Summary: “Character and the Social Process”
Escape from Freedom’s Appendix describes some of the “theoretical” (304) assumptions that Fromm makes about human psychology in order to form his argument. A core concept throughout this chapter is the “character structure,” which Fromm argues can be found on the scales of both the individual and society. Fromm defines a character structure as “the dynamic adaptation of human needs to the particular mode of existence of a given society” (305). As individuals develop, they learn a pattern of ways of relating to the exterior world (such as other people or society). This results in an individual’s personality, permeating one’s means of “thinking, feeling, and acting” (305).
Fromm believes that societies also have their own character structures, based upon how the form of a given society impacts the majority of individual’s behavior and personalities. Throughout Escape from Freedom, Fromm has sought to describes a variety of social character structures, from Protestant Europe’s emphasis on the activity of working to Nazi Germany’s focus on the total submission to higher powers. By focusing on the concept of a social character, Fromm aims to show that human behavior is influenced far more by psychological processes than it is by rational thinking. As such, notions of ideals such as love, justice, or courage will change depending upon the character structure of a given society.
Fromm also describes how his form of social psychology differs from some of the key psychological ideas of Freud. In his writings, Freud argues that an individual’s personality is governed by a set of universal instincts or needs that the individual seeks to fulfill. Fromm differs from this view by arguing that human personality is largely impacted by the structure of society. However, Fromm does not believe that human beings are completely products of society, and instead argues that society and human nature are in a reciprocal relationship with each other.
Chapter 7-Appendix Analysis
The majority of Escape from Freedom, up to Chapter 7, has been focused on describing how humankind feels compelled to escape their newfound sense of freedom by submitting themselves to forms of “new bondage” (283). However, Fromm does not believe that the individuation offered by modernity necessarily leads to an authoritarian society. In Escape from Freedom’s final section, Fromm attempts to suggest some ideas of what a society that would allow for humankind’s true freedom might look like. While Fromm writes that a full account of such society “would require another volume,” he attempts to outline some initial ideas of how a society might allow people their full sense of individuality while avoiding freedom’s negative qualities.
For Fromm, the cornerstone of a truly free society would be one which encourages an individual’s “spontaneous activity” (284). Fromm defines spontaneous activity by focusing how it differs from the forms of thinking and doing prevalent in our current conformist societies. In our current society, individuals behave according to “compulsive activity,” acting not out of genuine desire but instead out of a compulsion to forget their “isolation and powerlessness” (284). In a conformist society, individuals automatically adopt the forms of thinking that are characteristic of the majority, leading to the development of a “pseudo self” that has little relation to one’s authentic personality. Fromm believes that a truly free society must instead encourage the “free activity of the self” in which individuals act completely “of one’s free will” (284).
Such spontaneous activity would fundamentally change the way we conceive of notions of love and work. When individuals are encouraged to act spontaneously, love becomes a matter of “affirmation of others” rather than “possession” (287) or domination of another person. Whereas work in capitalist society is typically seen as an end in itself, a society focused on spontaneous activity would encourage individuals to view work as a form of “creation in which man becomes one with nature in the act of creation” (287).
