Understanding Fromm's Mechanisms of Escape

Abstract

To understand Fromm’s mechanisms of escapeвЂ"authoritarianism, destructiveness, and automaton conformityвЂ"one must obtain an understanding of Fromm basic premise for humanity and society which is overall positive. Reviewing the mechanisms of escape can assist one in understanding how an individual can be ruled by another, take one’s own life, or become lost in society. Fromm’s book, Escape from Freedom, can be used to teach individuals and society, as a whole, how to better understand one another and evolve towards a society which exists in harmony.

Understanding Fromm’s Mechanisms of Escape

As Explained in Escape from Freedom and Related Journals and Articles

For one to begin understanding Fromm’s mechanisms of escape as explained in his book, Escape from Freedom, one must first understand Fromm’s outlook on society and the human race as a whole and how he defined his mechanisms of escape in that context. Next, one must understand how Fromm viewed socio-psychological individual behavior. And, finally, how his theory relates to today’s modern society.

According to Maccoby (1982), Fromm’s contribution has been to deepen our understanding of the relationship between society and human motivation, passions, and ideals. Fromm basically expressed a positive outlook for humanity. However, he was concerned by societal influences on individuals and “obsessed by the question of how war was possible, by the wish to understand the irrationality of human mass behavior, by a passionate desire for peace and international understanding. More, I had become deeply suspicious of all official ideologies and declarations, and filled with the conviction вЂ?of all one must doubt” (Smith, 2002).

Fromm’s mechanisms of escape are based on the basic anxiety level one experiences from realizing one is all alone in the world (Feist, 1996, p. 194) and now must make his own way. Fromm “outlined three major escape mechanisms that people might use to alleviate themselves the burden of freedom and choice: authoritarianism, destructiveness, and automaton conformity (Ullman-Margalit, 2007, p. 69). To better understand the mechanisms of escape, one must breakdown each mechanism and relate it to societal norms and relationships.

The first mechanism is Authoritarianism which is described as a “tendency to give up the independence of one’s own individual self and to fuse one’s self with somebody or something outside of oneself in order to acquire the strength which the individual is lacking” (Fromm, 1994, p. 140). Fromm (1994) viewed submission and domination as the two conditions required for authoritarian regimes to exist. History is filled with authoritarian regimes, monarchical, dictatorial, and democratic in nature, that played havoc on both society humanity either within its stated borders, its region, or the world over. One prime example of an authoritarian regime is the falsehood of the National Socialists Working Party under Adolph Hitler. His influence on society and its opportunities for atrocity was so far reaching that Time Magazine named Hitler one of the most influential persons of the 20th century.

After World War I, the German people were morally and financially bankrupted and, worse yet, their way of life under the feudal system was gone. “The modern world had created both new freedoms and increased anxieties, and the stage had been set for Nazism by both the breakdown of the security provided by feudalism and the political crisis of the 1930s” (McLaughlin, 1996, p. 242).

The previous defeat and the ravages of war set the stage for “Hitler’s вЂ?evangelism of self-annihilation’ had shown millions of Germans the way out of cultural and economic collapse. The Nazi party’s racism, nationalism, militarism, and вЂ?spirit of blind obedience to a leader’ were an вЂ?escape from freedom” (242). The German people were in desperate need of a savior. They thought the Nazi party and Hitler, in particular, with his ability to rally and fervor crowds, provided what they required. But, unlike the French Revolution which rose up from the poverty stricken lower classes, the Nazi’s strength stemmed from decentralized rural Protestants who were not organized around a central authority like the German Catholic Church and upper middle class Germans who supported the Nazis to protect their privilege from the left (254).

As the leader of the Nazi party, Hitler made the German people dependent on him and the party by exercising absolute and unrestricted power over them. He used the same premise with the Jewish and political prisoners taken during the war. He demanded strict loyalty of his uniformed officers and soldiers even to the point of taking one’s own life to protect the party and its interests.

Hitler’s neurotic profile, which is well known, plays directly into Fromm’s sado-masochistic profile. As a masochist, Hitler was weak in nature and did not master thingsвЂ"physical deformities, in love with his mother, poor painter, unemployedвЂ"in his life. However, he masked his masochistic tendencies and focused on the sadistic tendencies to:

(1) “make others dependent on oneself and to have absolute and unrestricted power over them, so as to make of them nothing but instruments, вЂ?clay in the potter’s hand;’ (2) impulse to not only rule over others in this absolute fashion, but to exploit them, to use them, to steal from them, to disembowel them, and, so to speak, to incorporate anything eatable in them; and (3) wish to make others suffer or to see them suffer” (Fromm, 143).

The German people were ripe for Hitler and his regime to assume power over them. Many had taken on the masochistic persona which a dominant sadist could easily take advantage of. One only has to review Fromm’s statement here:

“the annihilation of the individual self and the attempt overcome thereby the unbearable feeling of powerlessness are only one side of the masochistic strivings. The other part is the attempt to become a part of a bigger and more powerful whole outside of oneself, to submerge and participate in it. This power can be a person, an institution, God, the nation, conscience, or a psychic compulsion. By becoming part of a power which is felt as unshakably strong, eternal, and glamorous, on participates in