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PARTISAN REVIEW
is new in Fromm's system is the nature and function of these drives.
Instead of Eros and Thanatos, Fromm postulates five basic needs : the
need for freedom, the need for rootedness, the need for transcendence,
the need for identity, and the need for a frame of orientation and devo–
tion. Next, the dynamic principles according to which these needs inter–
act with nature ar;d culture are highly simplified as compared with the
complex dynamic processes by which Freud tried to account for the
bewildering vicissitudes of the libido. In fact, instead of dynamic inter–
action, we find a simple, static polarity. Each drive has a dual goal–
sacred and profane. Thus there are five ideal goals: love; freedom;
brotherhood; individuality; and a rational religion. They repre5ent a
way of life through which man realizes himself and finds health and
happiness. Correspondingly, there are five negative goals; they represent
a way of life through which man falls into alienation and neurosis. The
ideal goals, of course, are good; the negative goals, evil. These are the
psychological foundations for what Fromm has called "normative human–
ism."
It is obvious that Fromm does not introduce a new cultural per–
spective; but he does replace Freud's psychological apparatus, its topo–
logical, dynamic, and economic principles, by a different psychological
theory. And he does this for a normative purpose;
i.e.,
to lay down
specific rules for "good" and "bad" solutions of the human situation.
A good solution corresponds to a "sane society." In such a society, the
ideal goals of human needs and the social structure are so adjusted to
each other that they produce mental health.
Per contra,
a society which
thwarts and perverts man's inherent striving for mental health is
"insane," even though its members may not know it. Mental health "is
the
same
for man in
all
ages and
all
cultures" (italics mine).
It
consists
of a remarkable composite of virtues in line with the ideal goals; for it "is
characterized by the ability to love and to create, by a sense of identity
based on one's experience of self as the subject and agent of one's powers,
by the grasp of reality inside and outside of ourselves, that is, by the de–
velopment of objectivity and reason." It is obviously not easy to enjoy
mental health; but citing numerous authorities from Ikhnaton to Jesus,
Fromm believes that his own definition "coincides essentially with the
norms postulated by the great spiritual teachers of the human race"-as
if they had ever been able to agree with each other.
Thus we get a sharp, clear-cut division between light and darkness,
between good and evil, between normalcy and neurosis, between health
and disease, between happiness and misery, between self-realization and
alienation. And we have achieved the objective of eliminating the con-
