Fortitude

Fortitude is the capacity to resist the temptation to compromise hope and faith by transforming them – and thus destroying them – into empty optimism or into irrational faith. Fortitude is the capacity to say “no” when the world wants to hear “yes.”

… The third kind of fearlessness is to be found in the fully developed person, who rests within himself and loves life. The person who has overcome greed does not cling to any idol or any thing and hence has nothing to lose; he is rich because he is empty, he is strong because he is not the slave of his desires. He can let go of idols, irrational desires, and fantasies, because he is in full touch with reality, inside and outside himself. If such a person has reached full “enlightenment,” he is completely fearless. If he has moved toward his goal without having arrived, his fearlessness will also not be complete. But anyone who tries to move toward the state of being fully himself knows that whenever a new step toward fearlessness is made, a sense of strength and joy is awakened that is unmistakable. He feels as if a new phase of life had begun. He can feel the truth of Goethe’s lines: “I have put my house on nothing, that’s why the whole world is mine.” (Ich hab mein Haus auf nichts gestellt, deshalb gehört mir die ganze Welt.)

Hope and faith, being essential qualities of life, are by their very nature moving in the direction of transcending the status quo, individually and socially. It is one of the qualities of all life that it is in a constant process of change and never remains the same at any given moment. Life that stagnates tends to die; if the stagnation is complete, death has occurred. It follows that life in its moving quality tends to break out of and to overcome the status quo. We grow either stronger or weaker, wiser or more foolish, more courageous or more cowardly. Every second is a moment of decision, for the better or the worse. We feed our sloth, greed, or hate, or we starve it. The more we feed it, the stronger it grows; the more we starve it, the weaker it becomes.

What holds true for the individual holds true for a society. It is never static; if it does not grow, it decays; if it does not transcend the status quo for the better; it changes for the worse. Often we, the individual or the people who make up a society, have the illusion we could stand still and not alter the given situation in the one or the other direction. This is one of the most dangerous illusions. The moment we stand still, we begin to decay.

excerpt from: Erich Fromm (1968) The Revolution of Hope.

pdf: Fortitude

Faith

Faith is not a weak form of belief or knowledge; it is not faith in this or that; faith is the conviction about the not yet proven, the knowledge of the real possibility, the awareness of pregnancy. Faith is rational when it refers to the knowledge of the real yet unborn; it is based on the faculty of knowledge and comprehension, which penetrates the surface and sees the kernel. Faith, like hope, is not prediction of the future; it is the vision of the present in a state of pregnancy.

The statement that faith is certainty needs a qualification. It is certainty about the reality of the possibility – but it is not certainty in the sense of unquestionable predictability. The child may be stillborn prematurely; it may die in the act of birth; it may die in the first two weeks of life. That is the paradox of faith: it is the certainty of the uncertain. It is certainty in terms of man’s vision and comprehension; it is not certainty in terms of the final outcome of reality. We need no faith in that which is scientifically predictable, nor can there be faith in that which is impossible. Faith is based on our experience of living, of transforming ourselves. Faith that others can change is the outcome of the experience that I can change.

There is an important distinction between rational and irrational faith. While rational faith is the result of one’s own inner activeness in thought or feeling, irrational faith is submission to something given, which one accepts as true regardless of whether it is or not. The essential element of all irrational faith is its passive character, be its object an idol, a leader, or an ideology. Even the scientist needs to be free from irrational faith in traditional ideas in order to have rational faith in the power of his creative thought. Once his discovery is “proved,” he needs no more faith, except in the next step he is contemplating. In the sphere of human relations, “having faith” in another person means to be certain of his core – that is, of the reliability and unchangeability of his fundamental attitudes. In the same sense we can have faith in ourselves – not in the constancy of our opinions but in our basic orientation to life, the matrix of our character structure. Such faith is conditioned by the experience of self, by our capacity to say “I” legitimately, by the sense of our identity.

Hope is the mood that accompanies faith. Faith could not be sustained without the mood of hope. Hope can have no base except in faith.

excerpt from: Erich Fromm (1968) The Revolution of Hope.

pdf : Faith

Compassion and Empathy

Compassion and empathy are two other feelings clearly related to tenderness but not entirely identical with it. The essence of compassion is that one “suffer with” or, in a broader sense, “feels with” another person. This means that one does not look at the person from the outside – the person being the “object” of my interest or concern – but that one puts himself into the other person. This means I experience within myself what he experiences. This is a relatedness which is not from the “I” to the “thou” but one which is characterized by the phrase: I am thou. Compassion or empathy implies that I experience in myself that which is experienced by the other person and hence that in this experience he and I are one. All knowledge of another person is real knowledge only if it is based on my experiencing in myself that which he experiences. If this is not the case and the person remains an object, I may know a lot about him but I do not know him. Goethe has expressed this kind of knowledge very succinctly: “Man knows himself only within himself, and he is aware of himself within the world. Each new object truly recognized opens up a new organ within ourselves.”

The possibility of this kind of knowledge based on overcoming the split between the observing subject and the observed object requires, of course, the humanistic promise which I mentioned above, namely, that every person carries within himself all of humanity; that within ourselves we are saints and criminals, although in varying degrees, and hence that there is nothing in another person we cannot feel as part of ourselves. This experience requires that we free ourselves from the narrowness of being related only to those familiar to us, either by the fact that they are blood relations or, in a larger sense, that we eat the same food, speak the same language, and have the same “common sense.”

excerpt from: Erich Fromm (1968) The Revolution of Hope.

pdf: Compassion and Empathy

On Self Realization

Why is spontaneous activity the answer to the problem of freedom? We have said that negative freedom by itself makes the individual an isolated being, whose relationship to the world is distant and distrustful and whose self is weak and constantly threatened. Spontaneous activity is the one way in which man can overcome the terror of aloneness without sacrificing the integrity of his self; for in the spontaneous realization of the self man unites himself anew with the world - with man, nature, and himself.

Love is the foremost component of such spontaneity; not love as the dissolution of the self in another person, not love as the possession of another person, but love as spontaneous affirmation of others, as the union of the individual with others on the basis of the preservation of the individual self. The dynamic quality of love lies in this very polarity; that it springs from the need of overcoming separateness, that it leads to oneness - and yet that individuality is not eliminated.

Work is the other component; not work as a compulsive activity in order to escape aloneness, not work as a relationship to nature which is partly one of dominating her, partly one of worship of and enslavement by the very products of man's hands, but work as creation in which man becomes one with nature in the act of creation. What holds true of love and work holds true of all spontaneous action, whether it be the realization of sensuous pleasure or participation in the political life of the community. It affirms the individuality of the self and at the same time it unites the self with man and nature. The basic dichotomy that is inherent in freedom - is dissolved on a higher plane by man's spontaneous action.

In all spontaneous activity the individual embraces the world. Not only does his individual self remain intact; it becomes stronger and more solidified. For the self is as strong as it is active. There is no genuine strength in possession as such, neither of material property nor of mental qualities like emotions or thoughts. There is also no strength in use and manipulation of objects; what we use is not ours simply because we use it. Ours is only that to which we are genuinely related by our creative activity, be it a person or an inanimate object. Only those qualities that result from our spontaneous activity give strength to the self and thereby form the basis of its integrity.

The inability to act spontaneously, to express what one genuinely feels and thinks, and the resulting necessity to present a pseudo self to others and oneself, are the root of the feeling of inferiority and weakness. Whether or not we are awear of it, there is nothing of which we are more ashamed than of not being ourselves, and there is nothing that gives us greater pride and happiness than to think, to feel, and to say what is ours.

excerpt from: Erich Fromm (1941) Escape from Freedom.
more: On Self Realization

Pseudo Self

The substitution of pseudo acts for original acts of thinking, feeling, and willing, leads eventually to the replacement of the original self by a pseudo self. The original self is the self which is the originator of mental activities. The pseudo self is only an agent who actually represents the role a person is supposed to play but who does so under the name of the self.

It is true that a person can play many roles and subjectively be convinced that he is "he" in each role. Actually he is in all these roles what he believes he is expected to be, and for many people, if not most, the original self is completely suffocated by the pseudo self. Sometimes in a dream, in fantasies, or when a perosn is drunk, some of the original self may appear, feelings and thoughts which the person has not experienced for years. Often they are bad ones which he has repressed because he is afraid or ashamed of them. Sometimes, however, they are very best things in him, which he has repressed because of his fear of being ridiculed or attacked for having such feelings.

The loss of the self and its substitution by a pseudo self leave the individual in an intense state of insecurity. He is obsessed by doubt since, being essentially a reflex of other people's expectation of him, he has in a measure lost his identity. In order to overcome the panic resulting from such loss of identity, he is compelled to conform, to seek his identity by continuous approval and recognition by others. Since he does not know who he is, at least the others will know - if he acts according to their expectation; if they know, he will know too, if he only takes their word for it.

The automatization of the individual in modern society has increased the helplessness and insecurity of the average individual. Thus, he is ready to submit to new authorities which offer him security and relief from doubt.

excerpt from: Erich Fromm (1941) Escape from Freedom.

pdf: Pseudo Self

Two Concepts of Health

...there is a discrepancy between the aims of the smooth functioning of society and of the full development of the individual. This fact makes it imperative to differentiate sharply between the two concepts of health. The one is governed by social necessities, the other by values and norms concerning the aim of individual existence.

Unfortunately, this differentiation is often neglected. Most psychiatrists take the structure of their own society so much for granted that to them the person who is not well adapted assumes the stigma of being less valuable. On the other hand, the well-adapted person is supposed to be the more valuable person in terms of a scale of human values.

If we differentiate the two concepts of normal and neurotic, we come to the following conclusion: the person who is normal in terms of being well adapted is often less healthy than the neurotic person in terms of human values. Often he is well adapted only at the expense of having given up his self in order to become more or less the person he believes he is expected to be. All genuine individuality and spontaneity may have been lost. On the other hand, the neurotic person can be characterized as somebody who was not ready to surrender completely in the battle for his self. To be sure, his attempt to save his individual self was not successful, and instead of expressing his self productively he sought salvation through neurotic symptoms and by withdrawing into a fantasy life. Nevertheless, from the standpoint of human values, he is less crippled than the kind of normal person who has lost his individuality altogether. Needless to say there are persons who are not neurotic and yet have not drowned their individuality in the process of adaptation. But the stigma attached to the neurotic person seems to us to be unfounded and justified only if we think of neurotic in terms of social efficiency.

As for a whole society, the term neurotic cannot be applied in this latter sense, since a society could not exist if its member did not function socially. From a standpoint of human values, however, a society could be called neurotic in the sense that its members are crippled in the growth of their personality. Since the term neurotic is so often used to denote lack of social functioning, we would prefer not to speak of a society in terms of its being neurotic, but rather in terms of its being adverse to human happiness and self-realization.

excerpt from: Erich Fromm (1941) Escape from Freedom.

pdf: Two Concepts of Health

Four Aspects of Family Life

In my years as a family therapist, I have found that four aspects of family life keep popping up in the troubled families who come to me for help. They are –

• the feeling and ideas on has about himself, which I call self-worth;
• the ways people work out to make meaning with one another, which I call communication;
• the rules people use for how they should feel and act, which eventually develop into what I call the family system; and
• the way people relate to other people and institutions outside the family, which I call the link to society.

No matter what kind of problem first led a family into my office – whether a nagging wife or an unfaithful husband, a delinquent son or a schizophrenic daughter – I soon found that the prescription was the same. To relieve their family pain, some way had to be found to change those four key factors. In all of these troubled families I noticed that –

• self worth was low;
• communication was indirect, vague, and not really honest;
• rules were rigid, inhuman, nonnegotiable, and everlasting; and
• the linking to society was fearful, placating, and blaming.

Fortunately, I have also had the joy of knowing some untroubled and nurturing families – especially in my more recent workshops to help families develop more fully their potential as human beings. In these vital and nurturing families, I consistently see a different pattern –

• self-worth is high;
• communication is direct, clear, specific, and honest;
• rules are flexible, human, appropriate, and subject to change; and
• the linking to society is open and hopeful.

excerpt from: Virginia Satir (1972) Peoplemaking.

pdf: Four Aspects of Family Life