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Books > Social sciences > Psychology > The self, ego, identity, personality
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The Anatomy Of Human Destructiveness (Paperback, Reissue)
Loot Price: R528
Discovery Miles 5 280
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The Anatomy Of Human Destructiveness (Paperback, Reissue)
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List price R589
Loot Price R528
Discovery Miles 5 280
You Save R61 (10%)
Expected to ship within 9 - 17 working days
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Hailed as an "original and far-reaching contribution" to
psychoanalytic theory and social thought, this is Fromm's ambitious
and rather complicated rebuttal of Lorenz' innate aggressive
instinct, built upon an amended version of the Freudian dichotomy
between Eros and Thanatos. Animals act by instinct but people have
"character-rooted passions," an inner map which mediates and is
largely formed by physiology and the social environment, which can
be either "biophilic" ("life-loving") or necrophilic
("death-loving"); considered as a set they constitute a person's
character. Aggressive acts can also be either life-serving and
hence "benign" or death-serving, hence "malignant"; while benign
aggression is reactive, self-terminating and undertaken in defense
of what is deemed to be a "vital" interest, malignant aggression
aims at controlling others, destruction and cruelty for its own
sake, for the pleasure the aggressor gets. In sane life-loving
societies it would be recognized as the pathology that it is;
malignant character-types like Stalin, Hitler and Himmler - Fromm's
models - would be "harmless" because they wouldn't have a chance to
come to power. But one might ask, is it possible to draw a line
between these categories? Are passions such as unquestioning
patriotism, greed, jealousy and vengeance less destructive to life
because the damage done was not consciously or unconsciously
intended? Don't we also need a set of standards by which we could
decide what "vital interests" to defend? And if the same goals can
be achieved by less aggressive means, how can such choices be
encouraged? Fromm's latest book - eclectic but. labyrinthine - digs
up the roots of man's pathology, but he has no life-promoting
prescriptions beyond those offered in his earlier Escape From
Freedom, The Sane Society and The Revolution of Hope. (Kirkus
Reviews)
In a world in which violence in every form seems to be increasing, Erich Fromm has treated this problem with deep perception in the most original and far-reaching work of his brilliant career.Fromm asks: what is there in the conditions of human existence to lead man to the orgies of destruction and violence in which he has indulged? By drawing on the findings of anthropology, palaeontogy, psychology and history; and including striking character analyses of Stalin, Hitler and Himmler, he shows how the failure to use our capacity for love andreason results in the development of the reverse: we wish to control life absolutely, or to destroy it.
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