Mechanism of Escape (Fromm)

Psychoanalyst and social theorist Erich Fromm’s 1941 Escape from Freedom (published in the United Kingdom as The Fear of Freedom) is in some ways the fruit of Fromm’s research on the authoritarian personality in Weimar Germany and his “interpretative questionnaire” studying the German working class. According to Escape from Freedom, freedom can be frightening, and people have a tendency to sacrifice their freedom in order to abdicate responsibility for their lives or societies. Although most people today would probably profess to value freedom, freedom is often understood as mere protection of individual rights. However, freedom for Fromm is not only “negative freedom”, i.e., freedom from intrusion by external authorities, but also “positive freedom,” i.e., freedom to actualize one’s potential and to be an agent of change in one’s world a freedom that depends both or one’s own internal capacity to act as well as the opportunities provided by one’s society. Fear of positive freedom may...