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vikramx's review against another edition
4.0
I stumbled across this book , after reading Art of Loving by Fromm , both books are exceptional. I was specially impressed how he broke down Freud's psychoanalysis theory but also gave him due credit in opening the world to new way of observation . Not exactly sure why his works are not well known amongst other mainstream philosophers , nevertheless I have learnt a great deal from Fromm.
kostopoulos2000's review against another edition
3.0
tragically unimaginative. Fromm has a lot of really interesting influences and it's cool seeing someone articulate a conception of being influenced strongly (and mostly) by Marx, Freud, Japanese Buddhism, and Spinoza but all that amounted to was super narrow and ontologically constrictive conception of what it means to be as a person-- even if Fromm makes interesting critiques to get there.
helenkat's review against another edition
3.0
A throw back to my days studying psychology. Found the audio version and thought I'd listen. I'm so out touch with academic and psychological jargon.
tabsfchnr's review against another edition
3.0
A good book, succinctly written and referencing some big names like Marx and Freud... but 95% is quite depressing.
Again highlighting how behind every good intention is greed, egoism and fear, I'm starting to think that maybe some philosophers just took themselves a bit too seriously.
The final chapter (3 short pages) was uplifting and much more positive: if you can overcome selfishness and narcissism you can have a genuine interest in art, culture, other people etc. and experience joy.
Again highlighting how behind every good intention is greed, egoism and fear, I'm starting to think that maybe some philosophers just took themselves a bit too seriously.
The final chapter (3 short pages) was uplifting and much more positive: if you can overcome selfishness and narcissism you can have a genuine interest in art, culture, other people etc. and experience joy.
fatemenm's review against another edition
5.0
این کتاب رو هرکسی باید دوبار تو زندگیش بخونه
خیلی مباحث برامون ملموس و بدیهیه اما جا داره که روش بیشتر متمرکز بیشیم و بفهمیمش و این کتاب دقیقا همین کار رو میکنه.
تو این کتاب میفهمیم کجای فردیت خوبه یا بد...کجای غرایز خوبه یا بد و زندگی مدرن چه چیز مخربی به ما عرضه کرده است.
خیلی مباحث برامون ملموس و بدیهیه اما جا داره که روش بیشتر متمرکز بیشیم و بفهمیمش و این کتاب دقیقا همین کار رو میکنه.
تو این کتاب میفهمیم کجای فردیت خوبه یا بد...کجای غرایز خوبه یا بد و زندگی مدرن چه چیز مخربی به ما عرضه کرده است.
djoshuva's review against another edition
5.0
“With changing methods of production, particularly the increasing role of machines, and with the change from the idea of hard work and saving to the ideal of consumption (“happiness”), overt personal obedience to a person was substituted by submission to the organization: the endless belt, the giant enterprises, governments which persuaded the individual that he was free, that everything was done in his interests, that he, the public, was the real boss. Yet precisely because of the gigantic power and size of the bureaucracy of the state, army, industry, the replacement of personal bosses by impersonal bureaucracies, the individual became more powerless than he was, even before—but he is not aware of his powerlessness.”
“If avoidance of pain and maximal comfort are supreme values, then indeed illusions are preferable to the truth. If, on the other hand, we consider that every man, at any time in history, is born with the potential of being a full man and that, furthermore, with his death the one chance given to him is over, then indeed much can be said for the personal value of shedding illusions and thus attaining an optimum of personal fulfillment. In addition, the more seeing individuals will become, the more likely it is that they can produce changes—social and individual ones—at the earliest possible moment, rather than, as is often the case, waiting until the chances for change have disappeared because their mind, their courage, their will have become atrophied.”
“But there is more to it: People are afraid to concentrate because they are afraid of losing themselves if they are too absorbed in another person, in an idea, in an event. The less strong their self, the greater the fear of losing themselves in the act of concentration on the nonself. For the person with a dominant having orientation this fear of losing oneself is one of the main factors that operates against concentration. Finally, to concentrate requires inner activity, not busyness, and this activity is rare today when busyness is the key to success.”
“The difficulty with concentrating is, in the last analysis, the outcome of the whole structure of the contemporary system of production and consumption. The more man’s work is to service a machine or to act as that part of a machine that has not yet been devised in iron or steel, the less has he a chance to concentrate. The process of work is too monotonous to permit genuine concentration. The same holds true for consumption. The market offers as many different bits of amusement as possible, such a variety that it is neither necessary nor possible to concentrate on any one thing. Where would industry be if people began to concentrate on a few things rather than getting tired quickly of something and rushing out to buy new things that are exciting because they are new?”
“It appears that people much more rarely go to a psychoanalyst for help in the conflict between the demands of conscience and those of self-interest than in connection with family and personal conflicts as described in the previous examples. One might suspect that these family and personal conflicts are put in the foreground in order to cover up the much more fundamental, severe, and painful conflicts between conscience, integrity, authenticity, and self-interest. Usually these latter conflicts are not even seen as such but are quickly shoved away as irrational, romantic, “infantile” impulses that need not and should not be pursued any further. Yet they are the crucial conflicts of everyone’s life, much more crucial than divorce or not divorce—which, most of the time, is only the replacement of an older by a newer model.”
“Ask: On whom am I dependent? What are my main fears? Who was I meant to be at birth? What were my goals and how did they change? What were the forks of the road where I took the wrong direction and went the wrong way? What efforts did I make to correct the error and return to the right way? Who am I now, and who would I be if I had always made the right decisions and avoided crucial errors? Whom did I want to be long ago, now, and in the future? What is my image of myself? What is the image I wish others to have of me? Where are the discrepancies between the two images, both between themselves and with what I sense is my real self? Who will I be if I continue to live as I am living now? What are the conditions responsible for the development as it happened? What are the alternatives for further development open to me now? What must I do to realize the possibility I choose?”
“At the moment when one discovers the narcissistic components of one’s friendliness or the sadistic elements of one’s helpfulness, the shock may be so intense that for a moment or a day one feels oneself to be an utterly worthless creature, of whom nothing good could be said. But if one does not permit oneself to be stopped by this shock and goes on analyzing, one may discover that the shock is so intense—because of the narcissistic expectations of oneself—that it will serve as a resistance to further analysis and that the negative strivings one has discovered are, after all, not the only driving forces within oneself. In those instances in which this is true, a person will likely follow his resistance and stop analyzing.”
“The pains of labor are different from the pains of an illness. What matters is the entire context in which the effort is made or the pain is suffered, and which gives it its specific quality. This is a point somewhat difficult to grasp, because in our Western tradition duty and virtue are considered harsh taskmasters; in fact the best proof that one acts rightly is that it is unpleasant, the proof of the opposite that one likes to do it. The Eastern tradition is entirely different, and far superior in this respect.”
“However, stressing the One in man must not in an undialectical fashion lead to the denial of the fact that man is also an individual; that, in fact, each person is a unique individual not identical with anyone ever to be born (perhaps with the exception of identical twins). Only paradoxical thinking, so much a part of Eastern logic, permits expression of the full reality: Man is a unique individual —man’s individuality is sham and unreal. Man is “this and that” and man is “neither this nor that.” The paradoxical fact is that the deeper I experience my own or another’s unique individuality, the clearer I see through myself and him the reality of universal man, freed from all individual qualities, “the Zen Buddhists’ man without rank and without title.” “
“Supporting this illusion of individuality through trivial differences, contemporary psychology has a still more important function; by teaching how people ought to react under the influence of different stimuli, psychologists become an important instrument for the manipulation of others and of oneself. Behaviorism has created a whole science that teaches the art of manipulation. Many business firms make it a condition for employment that their prospective employees submit to personality tests. Many books teach the individual how to behave, in order to impress people of the value of their own personality package or of the value of the commodity they sell. By being useful in all these respects, one branch of contemporary psychology has become an important part of modern society.”
“The average man today thinks very little for himself. He remembers data as presented by the schools and the mass media; he knows practically nothing of what he knows by his own observing or thinking. Nor does his use of things require much thought or skill. One type of gadget requires no skill or effort at all, as for instance the telephone. Another type of gadget, the automobile, requires some initial learning and after a while, when it has become routine, only a very small amount of personal effort or skill is needed. Nor does modern man —including the educated groups—think much about religious, philosophical, or even political problems. He ordinarily adopts one or the other of the many clichés offered him by political or religious books or speakers, but the conclusions are not arrived at as a result of active and penetrating thinking of his own. He chooses the cliché that appeals most to his own character and social class.”
“In summary, modern man has many things and uses many things, but he is very little. His feelings and thinking processes are atrophied like unused muscles. He is afraid of any crucial social change because any disturbance in the social balance to him spells chaos or death—if not physical death, the death of his identity.”
“If avoidance of pain and maximal comfort are supreme values, then indeed illusions are preferable to the truth. If, on the other hand, we consider that every man, at any time in history, is born with the potential of being a full man and that, furthermore, with his death the one chance given to him is over, then indeed much can be said for the personal value of shedding illusions and thus attaining an optimum of personal fulfillment. In addition, the more seeing individuals will become, the more likely it is that they can produce changes—social and individual ones—at the earliest possible moment, rather than, as is often the case, waiting until the chances for change have disappeared because their mind, their courage, their will have become atrophied.”
“But there is more to it: People are afraid to concentrate because they are afraid of losing themselves if they are too absorbed in another person, in an idea, in an event. The less strong their self, the greater the fear of losing themselves in the act of concentration on the nonself. For the person with a dominant having orientation this fear of losing oneself is one of the main factors that operates against concentration. Finally, to concentrate requires inner activity, not busyness, and this activity is rare today when busyness is the key to success.”
“The difficulty with concentrating is, in the last analysis, the outcome of the whole structure of the contemporary system of production and consumption. The more man’s work is to service a machine or to act as that part of a machine that has not yet been devised in iron or steel, the less has he a chance to concentrate. The process of work is too monotonous to permit genuine concentration. The same holds true for consumption. The market offers as many different bits of amusement as possible, such a variety that it is neither necessary nor possible to concentrate on any one thing. Where would industry be if people began to concentrate on a few things rather than getting tired quickly of something and rushing out to buy new things that are exciting because they are new?”
“It appears that people much more rarely go to a psychoanalyst for help in the conflict between the demands of conscience and those of self-interest than in connection with family and personal conflicts as described in the previous examples. One might suspect that these family and personal conflicts are put in the foreground in order to cover up the much more fundamental, severe, and painful conflicts between conscience, integrity, authenticity, and self-interest. Usually these latter conflicts are not even seen as such but are quickly shoved away as irrational, romantic, “infantile” impulses that need not and should not be pursued any further. Yet they are the crucial conflicts of everyone’s life, much more crucial than divorce or not divorce—which, most of the time, is only the replacement of an older by a newer model.”
“Ask: On whom am I dependent? What are my main fears? Who was I meant to be at birth? What were my goals and how did they change? What were the forks of the road where I took the wrong direction and went the wrong way? What efforts did I make to correct the error and return to the right way? Who am I now, and who would I be if I had always made the right decisions and avoided crucial errors? Whom did I want to be long ago, now, and in the future? What is my image of myself? What is the image I wish others to have of me? Where are the discrepancies between the two images, both between themselves and with what I sense is my real self? Who will I be if I continue to live as I am living now? What are the conditions responsible for the development as it happened? What are the alternatives for further development open to me now? What must I do to realize the possibility I choose?”
“At the moment when one discovers the narcissistic components of one’s friendliness or the sadistic elements of one’s helpfulness, the shock may be so intense that for a moment or a day one feels oneself to be an utterly worthless creature, of whom nothing good could be said. But if one does not permit oneself to be stopped by this shock and goes on analyzing, one may discover that the shock is so intense—because of the narcissistic expectations of oneself—that it will serve as a resistance to further analysis and that the negative strivings one has discovered are, after all, not the only driving forces within oneself. In those instances in which this is true, a person will likely follow his resistance and stop analyzing.”
“The pains of labor are different from the pains of an illness. What matters is the entire context in which the effort is made or the pain is suffered, and which gives it its specific quality. This is a point somewhat difficult to grasp, because in our Western tradition duty and virtue are considered harsh taskmasters; in fact the best proof that one acts rightly is that it is unpleasant, the proof of the opposite that one likes to do it. The Eastern tradition is entirely different, and far superior in this respect.”
“However, stressing the One in man must not in an undialectical fashion lead to the denial of the fact that man is also an individual; that, in fact, each person is a unique individual not identical with anyone ever to be born (perhaps with the exception of identical twins). Only paradoxical thinking, so much a part of Eastern logic, permits expression of the full reality: Man is a unique individual —man’s individuality is sham and unreal. Man is “this and that” and man is “neither this nor that.” The paradoxical fact is that the deeper I experience my own or another’s unique individuality, the clearer I see through myself and him the reality of universal man, freed from all individual qualities, “the Zen Buddhists’ man without rank and without title.” “
“Supporting this illusion of individuality through trivial differences, contemporary psychology has a still more important function; by teaching how people ought to react under the influence of different stimuli, psychologists become an important instrument for the manipulation of others and of oneself. Behaviorism has created a whole science that teaches the art of manipulation. Many business firms make it a condition for employment that their prospective employees submit to personality tests. Many books teach the individual how to behave, in order to impress people of the value of their own personality package or of the value of the commodity they sell. By being useful in all these respects, one branch of contemporary psychology has become an important part of modern society.”
“The average man today thinks very little for himself. He remembers data as presented by the schools and the mass media; he knows practically nothing of what he knows by his own observing or thinking. Nor does his use of things require much thought or skill. One type of gadget requires no skill or effort at all, as for instance the telephone. Another type of gadget, the automobile, requires some initial learning and after a while, when it has become routine, only a very small amount of personal effort or skill is needed. Nor does modern man —including the educated groups—think much about religious, philosophical, or even political problems. He ordinarily adopts one or the other of the many clichés offered him by political or religious books or speakers, but the conclusions are not arrived at as a result of active and penetrating thinking of his own. He chooses the cliché that appeals most to his own character and social class.”
“In summary, modern man has many things and uses many things, but he is very little. His feelings and thinking processes are atrophied like unused muscles. He is afraid of any crucial social change because any disturbance in the social balance to him spells chaos or death—if not physical death, the death of his identity.”
veronikav's review
4.0
Čtyři hvězdičky protože u jedné kapitoly jsem se hrozně unudila k smrti. Jinak velmi dobře napsané, laikům srozumitelné, moudré.
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