(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Erich Fromm's classic The escape from freedom was first published in Norwegian in 1965 by Pax Forlag. Arneberg Forlag has republished the book with an updated and educational essay by psychologist Aslak Hjeltnes. A Swedish translation was already available in 1945. And the historian Harald Berntsen informs in The long recess (1998) that Porsgrunn's "1961ers" had at an early stage acquired the Danish edition of Fromm's book from Hans Reitzels Forlag. It was published a couple of years before the Norwegian one. Berntsen, however, quickly became critical and came "in line with Georg Johannesen's front against The escape from freedom and Norway".
The character of modern man
The escape from freedom was published in 1941 and was written before the United States joined the war. Fromm was a Jew, a psychoanalyst, a member of the Frankfurt School [see Adorno article on page 20] and had fled Germany to New York in 1934. Then Escape of Freedom came out, however, Fromm had broken with both Freud and the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt. The following year the book was published in England with the title Fear of Freedom.
The book has both a historical and a theoretical (systematic) perspective. Fromm places the emergence of the authoritarian character in the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance and the Reformation. According to Fromm, the new freedom and the independence of the individual must be paid for with insecurity, isolation and alienation. Man has gained a negative freedom by freeing himself from tradition. If he cannot endure freedom, man seeks surrogate solutions. He calls these escape mechanisms. They prevent man from realizing positive freedom. This model of freedom sounds familiar, and Fromm himself draws the parallel to the model of the Fall: “The biblical myth of man’s expulsion from paradise provides a vivid representation of the fundamental relationship between man and freedom” (p. 78).
He ties escape mechanismto different social systems, either submission to a leader in an authoritarian system, as under Hitler, or submission to the conformism of the consumer society. The new individualism that creates anxiety and alienation is a historical and social phenomenon. Fromm analyzes it social psychologically.
Already here a problem arises, since everyone more or less tends to flee from frihetone. One puts off what needs to be done until tomorrow, starts something else, “goes around” like Peer Gynt, visits friends, eats comfort food or drinks too much. Do such personal problems need to have anything to do with society? However, Fromm emphasizes the escape mechanisms that society creates. It is not a question of individual whims, but of a character structure, what Fromm calls a “social character”.
"The purpose of this book is to analyze the dynamic factors in the character structure of modern man which made him give up freedom in fascist countries and which also apply to millions of our own people" (p. 48). Fromm already found the authoritarian solution in Luther's submission to God. Religion became the solution to the fact that new economic forces weakened the middle class: "A representative of the middle class was as helpless against the new economic forces as, according to Luther, man was against God" (p. 127). The punishing god is a projection of the middle class' own hostility, according to Fromm.
The parts that deal with society in Fromm's time are of most interest. The interpretations of Protestantismn needs to be updated following the extensive debate that has taken place subsequently about the relationship between Protestantism and capitalism, which was launched by the sociologist Max Weber.
Regarding the society of his own time, Fromm now repeats the freedom modelone he had previously developed: The modern social structure “affects man in two ways at the same time: he becomes more independent, self-reliant and critical – and he becomes more isolated, lonely and fearful” (p. 152). This diagnosis has not become less relevant over 80 years later.
Man has overcome nature and gained increasing freedom in relation to the forces outside us. We are nevertheless "blind to the internal ties, obsessions and anxieties that continue to undermine the meaning of freedom's victories over its traditional enemies". The remedy is to develop the freedom "that enables us to realize our own self, to believe in this self and in life" (p. 154).
Self-realization – disease or medicine?
The authority has become more anonymous since the Reformation, but is still present. "It is camouflaged as common sense, science, mental health, the normal or public opinion."
"Authority is camouflaged as common sense, science, mental health, the normal or public opinion."
Fromm states that lust for power is not an expression of strength, but of weakness. He understands power as subjugation. Power as mastery and influence is something else, according to Fromm. The ideal is to unfold one's own abilities on the basis of the freedom and integrity of the self. The cultural and political crisis of our day is not due to the fact that there is too much individualism, but "that what we all perceive as individualism has become an empty shell."
Self-realization is supposed to be the cure for the flight from freedom. But how can this work today, when many perceive self-realization as the problem itself?
Self-realization as an ideology?
Arne Johan vetlesen has in the essay "The free man? A social philosophical look at the pathologies of the option society?" in The transformation of freedom (2009) expressed concern that "our society is about to lose its critical sting, that is to say that freedom has become the preferred rhetoric of power, the ruling ideology that prevents rebellion and independence on the part of the individual".
When we seem to be drowning in freedom, how can we escape from it?
How can the demand for freedom be separated from that of neoliberalism? freedom ideology? When we are seemingly drowning in freedom, how can we escape from it? Are the ideal of freedom and the marketization of society two sides of the same coin? Vetlesen perceives the rhetoric of freedom as a cause of the "pathologies in the option society."
But self-realization does not consist in the freedom to choose between Coca-Cola and Pepsi. The consumer reduces self-realization to consumption. A society in rapid transformation can package tough demands for market adaptation, “change competence,” mobility, the necessity of constantly starting over as more freedom and choice. This creates the rootlessnessone and the uncertainty Fromm talked about.
Why should individual self-realization stand in opposition to solidarity or the desire for justice?
Therefore, it is not certain that we now have "an overproduction of opportunities for self-realisation", as Vetlesen claims. If we don't have more possibilities than those we realize, the world becomes too small. Many possibilities lead not to self-realization. Vetlesen argues that the option generation is sick of having to choose between possibilities, while previous generations were sick of discipline. Choice between possibilities does not mean an almost total freedom to create and re-create oneself. "Adaptation competence" can be precisely the opposite of self-realization: It leads to the rewarding of social chameleons and what sociologist Richard Sennett called "The Corrosion of Character" in a book (1998).
Literature and war
The student politician, later NRK correspondent Day Halvorsen (1934–2007) was assigned the villain role in Harald Berntsen's The long recess: an essay on youth in the 1960s (1998). The reason was his connection to The escape from freedom. The same year that the book came out in Norwegian in 1965, "when a larger group of first-generation student workers were about to discover freedom and develop a new and non-sectarian environment among socialist students, Dag Halvorsen identified them as youth on the run from freedom".
Six years later, I thought Arild Asnes in Solstad's novel from 1971 that he as a writer was the bearer of a freedom that legitimized the existing: "If we could escape from freedom, guess who would take the legs off their necks and run then!" The intellectual functioned as a figurehead for a complacent capitalism that demonstrated 'freedom' based on imperialism, exploitation and oppression.
To some extent, this perspective is still valid. Take "Operation Enduring Freedom" in Afghanistan, which Norway supported from 2001 and which from 2015 was called "Operation Freedom's Sentinel". The regime change war lasted for 20 years with support from Norway and NATO. The attempt to introduce democracy and freedom by force of arms was a failure. Those who benefited from "operation freedom" were American contractors and the arms industry.
Civic ideology and solidarity
Freedom is increasingly associated with market liberalism after the entry of neoliberalism into Western politics in the 1980s. Milton Friedman's bestseller Right to choose (1980) was an important legitimation base for this policy. Capitalism met the electorate with rhetoric of freedom at the same time as it created paralysis of action, since self-realization does not consist in choosing between coffee latte and espresso.
Nevertheless: Without freedom and a liberation perspective, it becomes difficult to justify the left's political projects. Magnus E. Marsdal and Bendik Wold saw this clearly 20 years ago in Third left – for a radical individualism (2004). The situation is now that social differences are increasing at the same time as traditional class consciousness is on the decline. Marxists have often lamented that the working class does not behave in accordance with its 'objective' interests. The classic explanation is then that it is a victim of bourgeois ideology based on the maxim that the thoughts of the ruling class are the ruling thoughts in society. Talk of freedom can then be dismissed as "bourgeois individualism."
Melsom recommends that self-help literature should be corrected by tragedy as a genre.
But why should individual self-realization be opposed to solidarity or desire for justice? On the contrary, one could say, without a difference between people, solidarity and democracy would also shrink. Solidarity presupposes differences. Otherwise, one will only be in solidarity with those who are in the same situation as oneself, and that begins to approach selfishness.
Self-realization and egoism
The connection between self-realization and selfishness is the starting point for Kaja Melsom's book The damned freedom (2017). She has discovered that self-realization is not so simple, and that it is not necessarily connected with happiness. Also, not being unique should be associated with shame. When the demand for self-realization is linked with the ideal of freedom in this way, losers are created. The ideal of freedom's "uncritical tribute to originality, passion and happiness has given rise to a hierarchical status ideal where a very few appear as moral winners", according to Melsom.
This reasoning fights freedom, not escape from it! Melsom recommends that self-help literature should be corrected by tragedy as a genre. It demonstrates that we have limited control over our own destiny. Our time hybris makes us helpless in the face of life's realities, Melsom argues.
She refers to Fromm in one single place: The escape from freedom should explain that "many parents let their children take over the boss role. The child is elevated to an authority who gets to dictate the family down to every last detail" (p. 97). This is a current example of Fromm's problem. His ideal of self-realization is not linked to the unique, an ideal of success and originality that produces losers.
But it's the other way around! Since freedom is connected with ensomhet and fear of Fromm, people flee into fascism or conformism, they long for authority. Fromm's book is therefore a good medicine against the liberal cultivation of Freedom of choice (the title of Mathilde Fasting's book from 2013) in Civita og Høyre.
"The illusory happiness"
But of course Fromm's book also has weaknesses. Positive freedom must involve "the spontaneous unfolding of the total, integrated personality" (p. 21), nothing less. This may seem like an unattainable and abstract ideal, which gives points to Melsom and Vetlesen. But Fromm further claims that one must analyze the character structure of modern man in order to understand the meaning of freedom.
An update is also needed here, and in Andreas Reckwitz' book The end of illusions (2024) there is a chapter entitled "Exhausted self-realisation". Reckwitz particularly links self-realization to the middle-class project of connecting self-realization with social success. This project is internally contradictory, that is to say that the late modern subject has a divided social character, to use Fromm's term. Reckwitz illustrates it like this:
"If the individuals, for example, bet radically on the self-realization card – in the profession, in the family, in education – they are in danger of their social status becoming damaged. In contrast, those who diligently invest in status may at one point or another feel that they have missed out or neglected something, so that their own potential has not been realized at all."
Self-realization is more than a career, and it is not necessarily all aspects of oneself that find a place in professional life.
Those who want to combine self-realization with social status and prestige run a great risk of failure. Self-realization is more than a career, and it is not necessarily all aspects of oneself that find a place in professional life.
Fromm distinguished between the instant gratification through creative expression and the pursuit of "the illusory happiness called success" (p. 315). So his input in today's debate would be to decouple self-realization from society's demands for success.
To achieve this, priorities had to be changed at both the social, cultural, political and economic levels.
Frustrations are dangerous and, as Fromm pointed out, can be channeled into , �reradicalism. How much pathology can we tolerate before something happens?
