Escape from Freedom

By Erich Fromm

Life
Fear

Book overview

Escape from Freedom, known as The Fear of Freedom outside North America, is a book by the Frankfurt-born psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, first published in the United States by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc. in 1941.

In the book, Fromm explores humanity's shifting relationship with freedom, with particular regard to the personal consequences of its absence. His special emphasis is the psychosocial conditions that facilitated the rise of Nazism.

Fromm distinguishes between 'freedom from' (negative freedom) and 'freedom to' (positive freedom).

The former refers to emancipation from restrictions such as social conventions placed on individuals by other people or institutions.

This is the kind of freedom typified by the Existentialism of Sartre, and has often been fought for historically, but according to Fromm, on its own it can be a destructive force unless accompanied by a creative element, 'freedom to' the use of freedom to employ spontaneously the total integrated personality in creative acts.