Erich Fromm – His Views on the Human Condition and Human Needs: Comparative Analysis with Maslow’s and Maccoby’s Need Schemes

ABSTRACT

Fromm’s concept of the human condition and the existential dichotomies are described first; this is followed by Fromm’s scheme of needs, including positive and negative responses; finally, Fromm need’s scheme is compared with Maslow’s need scheme and Maccoby’s drive-values scheme. In the three cases a critical approach is taken which tries to identify weaknesses, omissions and contradictions in Fromm’s thought.

KEYWORDS:

• Human condition
• existential dichotomies
• needs
• value-drives
• transcendence

The human condition, according to Fromm

Fromm (1955/1990) argues in The Sane Society that “the basic passions of man are not rooted in his instinctive needs, but in the specific conditions of human existence, in the need to find a new relatedness to man and nature after having lost the primary relatedness of the pre-human stage (p. viii).

The human being, “in respect to his body and his physiological functions, belongs to the animal kingdom. The functioning of the animal is determined by instincts, by specific action patterns determined by inherited neurological structures (Fromm, 1955/1990, p. 22). The higher an animal is in the scale of development, the more flexibility of action pattern and the less completeness of structural adjustment do we find at birth. In the higher primates, we even find considerable intelligence; that is use of thought for the accomplishment of desired goals … But … certain basic elements of existence remain the same. The animal “is lived” by natural biological laws of nature … It has no conscience of a moral nature, and no awareness of itself and its existence; it has no reason. [the] ability to penetrate the surface grasped by the senses and understand the essence behind that surface; therefore the animal has no concept of the truth (Fromm, 1955/1990, pp. 22–23). Animal existence is one of harmony with nature … in the sense that the animal is equipped by nature to cope with the very it is to meet.

Erich Fromm continues, “at a certain point in animal evolution, there occurred a unique break, comparable to the first emergence of matter, to the first emergence of life and to the first emergence of animal existence … action ceases to be essentially determined by instinct … when action is no longer fixed by hereditary given mechanisms. When the animal transcends nature, when it transcends the purely passive role of the creature, when it becomes, biologically speaking, the most helpless animal man is born … a new species arose … life became aware of itself (Fromm, 1955/1990, p. 23).

Let me emphasize the closeness of the preceding ideas to both Maslow (1943, 1954/1970/1987), and Marx-Márkus (1978/1988). Although Fromm emphasizes consciousness and not the mediated character of human labor (only indirectly aiming at the satisfaction of a need) as Marx-Márkus, by stating that it is action that ceases to be determined by instinct, he shows a closeness to the concept of Marx-Márkus and is consistent with that of Maslow, for whom the human impulse is still inherited, but the activity and the object must be learned.

Self-awareness, reason, and imagination disrupt the “harmony” of animal existence and make man an anomaly, the freak of the universe. He is part of nature yet he transcends the rest of nature. He has no home but is chained to the home he shares with the other creatures (Fromm, 1955/1990, p. 23). He is never free from the dichotomy of his existence: he cannot get rid of his mind that leads him to realize himself, his own limitations and helplessness, and to visualize his own end: death; nor can he get rid of his body that makes him want to stay alive. Reason, man’s blessing, is also his curse: it forces him to fight forever to try to resolve an insoluble dichotomy. Man is the only animal for whom his very existence constitutes a problem that he has to solve and from which he cannot escape. He cannot return to the pre-human state of harmony with nature; he must continue to develop his reason until he becomes master of nature and of himself (Fromm, 1955/1990, p. 24).

The human being, Fromm continues, is the most helpless of all animals at birth and the one that needs protection for the longest period. Birth is essentially a negative event. Expelled from nature, or from the paradise of unconsciousness as expressed in the biblical myth, man lacks (at first, it should be pointed out) the means to live an existence outside of it, since he does not know the processes of nature, nor does he have instruments to replace the lost instincts. The evolution of man is based on the fact that he has lost his original home, nature, and that he can never return to it, he will never be able to be an animal again. Therefore, he can follow only one path: to leave his natural home completely to find a new home created by him, making the world a human world and making himself truly human. Thus, the problem of human existence is unique in all of nature. Since man has been torn from nature, so to speak, and is still in it; since it is part divine and part animal; infinite part and finite part (Fromm, 1955/1990, p. 25).

The necessity to find ever-new solutions to the contradictions of his existence, to find ever-higher forms of unity with nature, his fellowmen and himself, is the source of all the psychic forces that motivate man, of all his passions, affections and anxieties (Fromm, 1955/1990, p. 25; entire paragraph italicized in original; modified to emphasize what remains in italics).

From this strong thesis Fromm derives his basic position on human needs. Since man is also an animal, he must satisfy his physiological needs – his hunger, his thirst, and his sexual needs – but: “Inasmuch as man is human, the satisfaction of these instinctive needs is not sufficient to make him happy; not even to keep him sane. The archimedic point of the specifically human dynamism lies is in this uniqueness of the human situation; the understanding of man’s psyche must be based on the analysis of man’s needs stemming from the conditions of its existence” (Fromm, 1955/1990, p. 25; in the original highlighted with italics throughout the text cited; I’ve modified them to emphasize what retains the italics).

From here Fromm states that being borne, in an expanded sense of the term, of a metaphorical nature, is the real problem of both the human species and the individual. Being borne is used by Fromm as a process (in some sense synonymous with growth) until the individual becomes fully human. Thus, he says that birth in the conventional sense is nothing more than the beginning of birth in the broader sense, and that this applies to both the individual and the species. That the whole life of the individual is nothing other than the process of giving birth to himself. Something similar happens with the evolution of the species. When man transcended a certain minimum threshold of instinctive adaptation, he ceased to be an animal but was as helpless and unprepared for human existence as the child is at birth. Human history is nothing other than the whole process of this birth (Fromm, 1955/1990, p. 26).

But the process of this birth is not an easy one. Each new step into his new human existence is frightening. It always means to give up a secure state, which was relatively known for one which one has not yet been mastered. We are never free from two conflicting tendencies: one to emerge from the womb, from the animal form of existence to a more human existence, from bondage to freedom; another, to return to the womb, to nature, to certainty and security (Fromm, 1955/1990, pp. 26–27).

This is Fromm’s approach to the human condition in The Sane Society. It should be complemented by a brief account of the more explicit and enumerative approach to the existential dichotomies that Fromm (the author carries out in Man for Himself).

The split in human nature (the unsolvable dichotomy), Fromm points out, leads to the dichotomies I call existential, because they are rooted in the very existence of man. They are contradictions that man cannot annul but to which he can react in various ways. The most fundamental existential dichotomy is that between life and death. The fact that we have to die is unalterable for man, who is aware of it and this very awareness profoundly influences his life. Man has tried to deny this dichotomy through ideologies, for example the Christian concept of immortality, which by postulating an immortal soul, denies the tragic fact that human life ends with death. Human mortality results in another dichotomy: while every human being is the bearer of all human potentialities, the short span of his life does not allow their full realization, even under the most favorable circumstances. Here, too, ideologies tend to reconcile or deny the contradiction, by assuming that the fulfillment of life occurs after death. Finally, although Fromm does not explicitly call it an existential dichotomy, Fromm proposes what we could call the third existential dichotomy, the one that arises between the fact of being alone and being related at the same time. Man is alone inasmuch as he is a unique entity, not identical with anyone else, and aware of his self as a separate entity. He must be alone when he has to judge or decide based solely on the power of his reason. And yet he cannot bear to be alone, to be unrelated with his fellow men (Man for Himself, pp. 41–43).

That said, Fromm argues in this work that the distinction between existential dichotomies and historical contradictions is that the latter, produced by man himself, cannot be annulled. Harmonizing and denying contradictions is the function of rationalizations in individual life, and of ideologies (socially structured rationalizations) in social life. Fromm introduces here two characteristics that he considers typical of the human mind. The first is that when confronted with a contradiction it cannot remain passive, it takes action with the aim of resolving the contradiction. The second is that the human mind is not satisfied only with rational answers, with truth, but accepts as truths the thoughts shared by the majority of the members of its culture or postulated by powerful authorities. The first characteristic explains, according to our author, all human progress. The second explains the efficacy of ideologies, which appease the mind of man even if he is not entirely set at rest. In the face of existential dichotomies, he can appease his mind with reassuring and harmonizing ideologies; he may try to escape his inner restlessness by incessant activity in pleasure or business; he may seek to abrogate his freedom and become an instrument of external powers. But he will remain dissatisfied, anxious, and restless. There is only one solution, Fromm continues, to face the truth, to acknowledge his fundamental aloneness and solitude in a universe indifferent to his fate, to recognize that there is no power transcending him which can solve his problems for him (pp. 43–45). He must accept this responsibility for himself and the fact that only by using his own powers can he give meaning to his life.

If he faces the truth without panic, he will recognize that there is no meaning to life except the meaning man gives his life by the unfolding of his powers, living productively; and that only constant vigilance, activity, and effort can keep us from failing in the one task that matters – the full development of our powers within the limitations set by the laws of our existence. Only if he recognizes the human situation, the dichotomies inherent in his existence and his ability to unfold his powers, will he be able to succeed in his task: to be himself and for himself and to attain happiness by the full realization of those faculties which are peculiarly his – reason, love, and productive work (p. 45, first sentence italicized in original; second phrase italics added).

I will now highlight a methodological thesis of the author. At the beginning of the chapter we have been reviewing, he had argued that the discussion of the human condition must precede that of personality. The more precise meaning of this statement can be made apparent – says Fromm – by stating that psychology must be based on an anthropological–philosophical concept of human existence (p. 45, emphasis added). This thesis by Fromm reinforces my conception, based on Marx-Márkus, that the reflection on human flourishing must be based on a solid conception of the human essence which Márkus (1978/1988) has constructed.

Let us now turn to Fromm’s conception of needs, which he seeks to derive from the conditions of human existence.

Fromm’s conception of human needs

Let’s start by reproducing the following thesis of the great promoter of humanistic psychoanalysis: “Man’s life is determined by the inescapable alternative between regression and progression, between return to animal existence and arrival at human existence … Aside from the physiologically nourished cravings (hunger, thirst, sex), all essential human cravings are determined by this polarity … Even the most complete satisfaction of all his instinctive needs does not solve his human problem; his most intense passions and needs are not those rooted in his body, but those rooted in the very peculiarity of his existence” (The Sane Society, pp. 27–28, italics in original). As can be seen in this quote, unlike Maslow, who considers all basic needs to be instinctoid, Fromm separates human needs into instinctive and non-instinctive ones. Although in this quote Fromm argues that the most intense needs are not the physiological ones, later he seems to accept a hierarchy of prepotency between instinctive and non-instinctive needs: “After he has satisfied his animal needs, he is driven by his human needs.”

To answer the question of what passions and needs emanate from the conditions of human existence, Fromm lists five needs and the response-polarities to them: 1) intimate relationships with other people – sociability (relatedness) vs. narcissism; 2) transcendence – creativity vs. destructiveness; 3) rootedness – brotherhood vs. incest; 4) sense of identity – individuality vs. gregarious conformity; 5) Need for a framework of orientation and devotion – reason vs. irrationality. Let’s look briefly at each of them.¹

Intimate relationships with other people – Sociality vs. narcissism

Torn away from his primary union with nature, man, endowed with reason and imagination, becomes aware of his aloneness and separateness. He could not face this state of being for a second if he could not find new ties with his fellows which replace the old ones, regulated by instincts. “The necessity to unite with other living beings, to be related to them, is an imperative need on the fulfillment of which man’s sanity depends. This necessity is behind all phenomena which constitute the whole gamut of intimate human relations, of all the passions which are called love in the broadest sense of the word” (p. 30).²

Fromm enumerates, and analyzes, the different ways in which this union can be sought and achieved: a) Submission (masochism), in which the individual transcends his separateness, by becoming part of someone or something greater than himself. b) Domination (sadism) that leads to the same. These are two symbiotic ways of relating, they generate hostility and do not lead to satisfaction. While seeking to create a sense of togetherness, they destroy the sense of integrity. c) Love. This is the only passion that satisfies the human need to unite with the world and have, at the same time, a sense of integrity. Love is union with someone, or something, outside oneself, under the condition of retaining the separateness and integrity of one’s self. Fromm analyzes the attitudes that love entails and sees it as one of the expressions of productive people (productive love). He distinguishes brotherly love, maternal love, erotic love. This last involves, says Fromm, another impulse: that of fusion and union with another person. If erotic love lacks brotherly love and is only motivated by the desire for fusion, it is sexual desire without love (Fromm, 1955/1990, pp. 30–34).

One fully understands the human need to be related, Fromm adds, only when one considers the result of failure to achieve any kind of relatedness, if one appreciates the meaning of narcissism. The only reality that the infant can experience is his own body and his own needs, physiological needs and the need for warmth and affection.³ The situation of the infant for whom the world external to itself is only a quantity of food and warmth, was baptized by Freud as primary narcissism, which is usually overcome by age 8 or 9, when the child begins to be able to love, which happens, as formulated by H. S. Sullivan and narrated by Fromm, when the child begins to feel that other people’s needs are as important as his own (pp. 34–35). But narcissism also exists in later stages of life (secondary narcissism, according to Freud) when the growing child fails to develop the capacity to love or loses it later. “Narcissism is the essence of all severe psychic pathology” (Fromm, 1955/1990, p. 35, emphasis added). For the narcissist, Fromm continues, there is only one reality, that of his own thought processes, feelings, and needs. The external world is not experienced or perceived objectively, that is, as existing in its own terms. The most extreme form of narcissism is to be seen in all forms of insanity, where the person has lost contact with the world; has withdrawn into himself. Narcissism is the opposite pole to objectivity, reason, and love (pp. 35–36).

The fact that the total failure to relate oneself is insanity, points to the other fact: that some form of relatedness is the condition for any kind of sane living (Fromm, 1955/1990, p. 36). It is clear that this need is intimately linked to the third existential dichotomy enunciated above: to be alone and related at the same time.

Transcendence – Creativeness vs. destructiveness

Being a creature man needs to transcend the situation of a passive creature, of having been thrown into the world without his knowledge, consent or will and removed from it again under the same conditions. But being endowed with reason and imagination, he cannot be content with the passive role of creature and is driven by the urgency to transcend this role, the accidental character and passivity of his existence; he is driven by the urge to transcend the role of a creature by becoming a “creator”⁴ (Fromm, 1955/1990, p. 36). This creativity can be expressed by creating life, producing material objects, creating art, ideas, loving each other. But Fromm wonders how a person who is unable to create solves his need for transcendence, and answers that those who cannot create life can destroy it, which also transcends it, since in the act of destruction of life man places himself above it, transcends his role as a creature. “Therefore, the final choice for man,^{5 6}insofar as he is driven to transcend himself, is to create or destroy, to love or to hate (Fromm, 1955/1990, p. 37).

Rootedness – Brotherhood vs. incest

The loss of roots that man suffers when leaving nature (severance of his natural ties) would generate unbearable isolation and impotence that could lead man to insanity if the human being could not find new roots, human roots. Only after finding them can he feel at home in the world. Therefore, we should not be surprised by the deep human desire to avoid the break of natural ties, to avoid being torn from nature, mother, blood, and soil. Fromm brilliantly explains the strength of maternal love and care and its unconditional character. Growing up, he says, means leaving mother’s protective orbit. And although the adult is significantly different from the child, every adult needs help, warmth, protection, so it should not be surprising to find in the average adult a deep longing for the security and belonging (roots) that the relationship with his mother once provided. And this longing won’t go away unless one finds other ways to take root. In psychopathology there is ample evidence, continues Fromm, of the refusal to leave the all-enveloping protective orbit of the mother that, in extreme cases, reaches the desire to return to the uterus. These pathological phenomena of individual life have their parallel in the evolution of humanity, which is expressed in the universal taboo of incest. This taboo is a necessary condition for human development. The problem of incest, however, is not reduced to attachment to the mother. Blood ties extend to the family, clan and then to the state, nation, or religious institution, which assume the same role that the mother played for the child. The incestuous individual relies on them, feels rooted in them⁷ (pp. 38 and following).

Sense of identity – Individuality vs. gregarious conformity

Fromm begins this topic with a paragraph that deserves to be quoted at length:

“Man can be defined as an animal that can say ‘I,’ that can be aware of itself as a separate entity. The animal, being within nature, without transcending it, has no awareness of himself, has no need for a sense of identity. Man, being torn away from nature, being endowed with reason and imagination, needs to form a concept of himself, needs to say and to feel: ‘I am I.’ Because he is not lived, but lives, because he has lost the original unity with nature, has to make decisions, is aware of himself and of his neighbor as different persons, he must be able to feel himself as the subject of his actions. As with the need for relatedness, rootedness, and transcendence, this need for a sense of identity is so vital and imperative that man could not remain sane if he did not find a way to satisfy it” (Fromm, 1955/1990, pp. 60–61; emphasis added).

In the development of the human race the degree to which man is aware of himself as a separate self, Fromm continues, depends on the extent to which he has emerged from the clan and the extent to which the process of individuation has developed. The member of a primitive clan might express his sense of identity in the formula “I am we;” he cannot yet conceive of himself as an “individual” existing apart from his group (Fromm, 1955/1990, p. 61).

Descartes’ answer to the question of identity, “I doubt, therefore I think; I think, therefore I am”, emphasizes the activity of thinking, and failed to see that the “I” is also expressed in the process of feeling and creative action. Although the development of Western culture was oriented in the direction of creating the basis for the full experience of individualism, for most individuals it has been nothing more than a façade behind which was hidden the failure to acquire an individual sense of identity, and has been replaced by nation, religion, class, and occupation. Instead of pre-individualistic clan identity, a new herd identity develops, in which the sense of identity rests on the sense of an unquestionable belonging to the crowd (p. 62). Fromm ends this section as follows:

“The need to feel a sense of identity stems from the very condition of human existence and it is the source of the most intense strivings. Since I cannot remain sane without the sense of “I,” I am driven to do almost anything to acquire this sense. Behind the intense passion for “status” and conformity is this very need, and it is sometimes stronger than the need for physical survival (Fromm, 1955/1990, p. 63).⁸

The need for a frame of orientation and devotion – Reason vs. irrationality

The fact that man has reason and imagination leads not only to the necessity for having a sense of his own identity but also for orienting himself in the world intellectually. Man finds himself surrounded by many puzzling phenomena and, having reason, he has to make sense of them, has to put them in some context which he can understand, and which permits him to deal with them in his thoughts. Even if man’s frame of orientation is utterly illusory, Fromm adds, it satisfies his need for some picture which is meaningful to him. Whether he believes in the power of a totem animal or in the superiority and destiny of his race, his need for a frame of orientation is satisfied. This need has two levels. The first and most fundamental is to have some framework of orientation, regardless of whether it is false or true. Unless man has such a subjectively satisfactory frame of orientation, he cannot live sanely. On the second level, the need is to be in touch with reality through reason, to apprehend the world objectively. But the need to develop reason is not as immediate as that of having a framework of orientation, since what is at stake for man in the latter case is happiness and serenity, and not his sanity. If man were a disembodied intellect, his aim would be achieved by a comprehensive thought system. But since he is an entity endowed with a body as well as a mind, he has to react to the dichotomy of his existence not only in thinking but in the total process of living, in his feelings and actions. Hence, any satisfactory system of orientation contains not only intellectual but elements of feeling and sensing which are expressed in the relationship to an object of devotion. As can be seen, there is a mini hierarchy at the two levels of this need (pp. 63–65).

Comparison of Maslow’s, Fromm’s, and Maccoby’s need-schemes

Table 1 presents the need schemes of the three authors in the form of lists, side by side. I have ordered them to bring Fromm’s and Maccoby’s list closer to Maslow’s list.

Table 1. Comparison between Maslow, Fromm, and Maccoby need’s schemes.

Maslow (needs)	Fromm (needs)	Maccoby (drive-values)
1. Physiological needs	A. Instinctive needs	Survival*; ‘Pleasure*
2. Security	Instinctive needs*; belonging*	Survival*
3. Love-affection-belonging	B. Intimate relationships C. Belonging* (human roots)	Sociability
4. Esteem (bases of self-esteem; esteem of others)		Mastery Dignity (F)
5. Self-Actualization	D. Transcendence
6. Cognitive needs (knowing and understanding)	E. Framework of orientation and devotion	Information; meaning
7. Aesthetic Needs		Pleasure*
	F. Sense of identity (3,4)
		Play (7)

Note. Fromm’s and Maccoby’s items have been placed in the line where they are closest to the corresponding Maslow’s item. Those located in lines where there are no items of this author, are more distant, in which case the numbers in parentheses indicate some sort of relation or closeness with the item thus numbered in Maslow. Maccoby’s “pleasure” item has been duplicated doubled in order to achieve a better association. *These items have been repeated because they are associated with more than one of Maslow’s.

Although the theories of needs of these three authors differ in many ways, the three form a set of researchers of the human psyche. Among the important differences, the following stand out:

1. Fromm is the only one of the three who derives his view of human needs from a view of the human essence with a strict procedure, from the existential dichotomies. In an ultra-synthetic way, his global vision can be expressed by saying that, having been expelled from nature, the human being has become homeless and faces a central dichotomy: he wants to live but knows he will die; his only way out, therefore, is to build a new home, a human world that replaces the natural world he has lost. For which he must satisfy not only his physiological needs but also the specifically human ones that derive from the dichotomy. Maslow has a view of human essence, which is expressed in his revision of the theory of instincts, but he does not derive his theory of needs (TN) from it, but rather the theory of instincts is part of his TN. Maccoby (1988), on the other hand, does not formulate a vision of the human essence, nor does he endorse Fromm’s one. His value- drives, which can be reinterpreted as needs (understood as forces that drive us and as the harm we aim to avoid), although ambiguously placed between human life in general and work, are more concentrated in the latter than the schemes of the other two authors. See Table 1.

2. In terms of the structure of the set of needs, Maslow is the one who most explicitly postulates the dynamics between needs through their prepotency hierarchy. With this, Maslow goes beyond the list approach to postulate a true system of needs. For Fromm the five postulated human needs are equally crucial, since in practically all of them total failure means insanity. In this sense, it can be said that the five needs are the necessary conditions of sanity (not of mental health, because one must recall that Fromm postulates in every need both positive and negative solutions). That is, to use a term used by the philosopher Bernard Williams they are correalizable needs, since the cost of total dissatisfaction of anyone is the collapse of the system as a whole. However, the same does not happen with negative responses (narcissism, destructiveness, incest, herd conformity, irrationality), especially when they are not too extremely negative. That is, they do not lead to insanity but to neurosis. In Maccoby’s scheme, on the other hand, the author reluctantly presents a hierarchy between the survival-value-drive and the others, since he accepts that survival can be dominant in many cases. Moreover, he gives a special role to the value-drive “meaning,” which in his opinion shapes all others.⁹ Fromm, for his part, states that sometimes the need for identity is stronger than the need for physical survival. Elsewhere he states that the passions and needs derived from the human existential condition are more intense than the physiological ones. At another point, however, he states, “After he has satisfied his animal needs, he is driven by his human needs,” flatly accepting a hierarchy similar to Maslow’s. It would seem that, in the end, Maslow is supported, at least partially, by both Fromm and Maccoby.

3. The table highlights some consensus among our three authors. First, the obvious of the physiological or physical survival, which Fromm does not deal with any detail (in the works analyzed) and calls them instinctive needs. None of the three authors is as clear as Marx that in human beings animal needs are humanized, with all corresponding consequences. Although neither Fromm nor Maccoby identify security as a need, in Fromm it appears (implicitly) in instinctive needs (the survival instinct that makes us run or fight in the face of danger) and explicitly in the need for belonging; indeed, Fromm points out that we should not be surprised by finding in the average adult a deep longing for the security and belonging (roots) once provided by the mother.¹⁰ Second, there is a concurrence in the needs for relationships with others, a need that we also share with animals, an aspect that the authors do not highlight. Thirdly and finally, I identify a certain consensus in cognitive needs, although formulated in a very different way and with different importance by our three authors. In the case of Maccoby, two impulse-values are located in this line: “information” and “meaning.”

4. There are some items with no consensus, or no apparent consensus at this very aggregate level. I have not been able to find anything in Fromm’s approach that I can strongly associate with the need for esteem, although I have noted that his need for identity has a slight association with esteem (“Behind the intense passion for ‘status’ and conformity, there is this need” for identity). Even stronger is the absence of any reference, outside Maslow, to aesthetic needs. Conversely, there is nothing in Maslow that he could have strongly associated with the need for a sense of identity, although there is a weak association (marked in Table 1) of the needs for esteem and belonging.

5. In Maccoby, we find an almost entirely solitary need, that of play. It seems that neither Maslow nor Fromm attach any importance to the ludic aspect of human beings, at least not as a central need. There is a slight association between play and Maslow’s aesthetic needs, but this is because Maccoby says that, in its highest forms, play merges with beauty and elegance. Although I have associated Maccoby’s pleasure-drive with Maslow’s aesthetic and physiological needs, it is evident that, by separating pleasure as a central need in itself, Maccoby is giving it an importance that it does not have in the other schemes.¹¹

6. Finally, there is a notable absence in Maccoby’s scheme, something that could be associated with Maslow’s need for self-actualization and Fromm’s transcendence. It is not clear whether he wanted to be very realistic or whether a taxonomy problem prevented him from including something of this generality. On the one hand, when discussing why we work, he says “to make our potentialities effective we must approach them in a way that relates us to the human community,” which seems to indicate that the development of our potentialities is a very important value. On the other hand, he finds that the character best adapted to technoservice, which he calls self-developers, so that the actualization of potentialities takes the center stage. In effect, he says that people with this character concentrate on self-development. But it turns out that his description of this self-development sounds like alienation: “Self-developers focus on self-development to maintain a sense of authority, self-esteem, and security by raising the level of their ‘marketing’ skills … ” (Why Work? p. 167). Since Maccoby does not criticize this alienation of self-developers (although he does analyze their weaknesses), it would seem that he does not perceive them. But he also argues that “Self-development is a traditional ‘American’ value, reinterpreted by every generation and social character.” He reviews the meaning of self-development for all characters. He comes back to self-developers, shows its positive side and its negative side, from which I take only one sentence, which shows a dramatic aspect of the alienation of these individuals, which we could call emptiness: “Without a purpose beyond the self, without a broader meaning, self-development becomes an unoriented search for self-realization” (1988, p. 189). In any case, it is clear that self-development is a central value that should be part of its value-drive scheme and Maccoby thought about including it as a value-drive, but at the end he decided not to do it.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Julio Boltvinik

Julio Boltvinik, Ph.D., is a Researcher-Professor at the Center for Sociological Studies at El Colegio de México in Mexico City since 1992. He writes a weekly column, called Moral Economy, in the leftist national newspaper La Jornada since 1995. He was a federal deputy from 2003 to 2006 by the then main leftwing party in Mexico. He was Director of UNDP’s regional (Latin American) project to overcome poverty from 1988 to 1992. He has published 30 individual and collective books, edited 9 thematic journal issues, 82 book chapters and 100 journal articles. His most recent books are, in Spanish, Poverty and Human Flourishing, and in English, in process of production, Integrated Conceptualisation and Measurement of Poverty.

Notes

¹ In The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (Fromm, 1973, pp. 259–284), Fromm presents a different list of needs: 1. A frame of orientation and Devotion; 2. Rootedness; 3. Unity; 4. Effectiveness; 5. Excitation and Stimulation. The comparative analysis of these two schemes is beyond the reach of this paper. I am grateful to Mauricio Cortina for pointing to me this alternative scheme by Fromm.

² It surprised me that Fromm does not say here “with other human beings.”

³ Fromm incurs in an obvious contradiction here. As noted earlier, Fromm classifies human needs into instinctive and non-instinctive. In the enumerations, he makes of the former, he includes only hunger, thirst, and sex. That is why his affirmation that the infant needs affection, which means that he is born with that need, makes it instinctive or, in any case, inherited or congenital. The hard empirical evidence for the need for affection even among animals makes it clear that this is as congenital a need as physiological ones, as Maslow argues.

⁴ The logical derivation of this need from the conditions of human existence (the dichotomies) is not transparent. Fromm does not make it obvious that man needs to create in order to transcend the role of creature. The need for transcendence could be linked also to the consciousness of inevitable death, and transcendence would be linked to immortality rather than to the role of creator. In Marx-Márkus (1978/1988) the need for creative work is linked to the human essence in a positive way: man willingness to participate in the essential feature of the human species, which creates itself transforming the world. Neither Fromm nor Maslow, recognize the central role of human labor in the configuration of the human essence. Max-Neef et al. (1991), on the other hand, exclude the need for transcendence from their scheme of human needs, arguing that it is not yet a universal need of humanity (without further arguments, however).

⁵ Creation of life is mainly expressed in reproduction. This would fulfill not only the need for transcendence but, it seems to me, in some partial (by partial survival of genes) and unsatisfactory way, the dichotomy of wanting to live and knowing that one is going to die. Maccoby acknowledges having left out of his scheme the need for reproduction. This need is omitted in almost all schemes of needs, including Maslow’s.

⁶ If love is creativity, then the need for transcendence dissolves into the need for intimate relationships. This is a way of universalizing the need for transcendence, but it seems forced.

⁷ Fromm deviates from the central theme that occupies him, the discussion of human needs as they emerge from the human condition, to get involved in a fascinating detour in which he explores various phases of the manifestations of the belonging need in the history of humanity. Unfortunately, he left the detour truncated, since although he explored incest, he did not do so with the other pole: brotherhood (pp. 40–60).

⁸ In the last sentence, Fromm implicitly denies Maslow’s hierarchy but contradicts his own claim, quoted above, that needs arising from the conditions of human existence are satisfied after physiological needs.

⁹ In Strategic Intelligence (Maccoby, 2015), Maccoby changes his scheme in two ways: 1) reinforces the special role of meaning by drawing a figure where meaning is in the center; and 2) reduces the number of value-drives from eight in Why Work to seven, by eliminating “pleasure.” I am grateful to Mauricio Cortina for pointing out the presence of Maccoby´s scheme also in his 2015 book.

¹⁰ Maccoby separates food in two needs: one part remains in physiological needs and the other in pleasure. The latter is called tasty food. The same could have been done with sex and distinguish reproductive sex and sex for pleasure.

¹¹ However, Fromm (1947/1990) does pay attention to pleasure and wrote an extraordinary text on pleasure and happiness (pp. 172–197). Here Fromm develops, among other things, the difference between pleasure of abundance and pleasure of scarcity. It is notable that Maccoby, in postulating the impulse-value pleasure, does not rely on this text. However, pleasure is not an existential need in Fromm’s scheme, perhaps because it does not have the centrality of the other five needs. However, he quotes Aristotle for whom “pleasure and life are united together and cannot be separated.” The development of these ideas by Fromm could be important, moreover, for the discussion with utilitarianism.