The Heart of Man: Its Genius for Good and Evil

By Erich Fromm

The acclaimed social psychologist and New York Times–bestselling author of The Art of Loving discusses the nature of evil and humanity’s capacity for it.

Originally published in 1964, The Heart of Man was influenced by turbulent times. Average Americans were suffering from different forms of evil, including a rise in juvenile delinquency. On a grander scale, the threat of nuclear war loomed over the nation, and President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. What could drive humanity to do things such as these?

In The Heart of Man, renowned humanist philosopher and psychoanalyst Erich Fromm investigates man’s capacity to destroy, his narcissism, and his incestuous fixation. He expands upon ideas he presented in Escape from Freedom, Man for Himself, and The Art of Loving, and examines the essence of evil, as well as the choice between good and evil. He also explores man’s ability to destroy and further considers freedom, aggression, destructiveness, and violence.

“The Heart of Man questions human nature itself, from the forms of violence that plague it to individual and social narcissism to how the positive value of “love of life” can potentially outweigh the destructive “syndrome of decay” caused by the love of death and other harmful tendencies of thought.” —Midwest Book Review

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Release date: Feb 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9781504082761

Erich Fromm

Erich Fromm (1900–1980) was a bestselling psychoanalyst and social philosopher whose views about alienation, love, and sanity in society—discussed in his books such as Escape from Freedom, The Art of Loving, The Sane Society, and To Have or To Be?—helped shape the landscape of psychology in the mid-twentieth century. Fromm was born in Frankfurt, Germany, to Jewish parents, and studied at the universities of Frankfurt, Heidelberg (where in 1922 he earned his doctorate in sociology), and Munich. In the 1930s he was one of the most influential figures at the Frankfurt Institute of Social Research. In 1934, as the Nazis rose to power, he moved to the United States. He practiced psychoanalysis in both New York and Mexico City before moving to Switzerland in 1974, where he continued his work until his death.

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The Heart of Man

Its Genius for Good and Evil

Erich Fromm

Contents

Foreword

I. Man—Wolf or Sheep?

II. Different Forms of Violence

III. Love of Death and Love of Life

IV. Individual and Social Narcissism

V. Incestuous Ties

VI. Freedom, Determinism, Alternativism

A Biography of Erich Fromm

Foreword

This book takes up thoughts which were presented in some of my earlier books, and attempts to develop them further. In Escape from Freedom I dealt with the problem of freedom and with sadism, masochism, and destructiveness; in the meantime clinical experience and theoretical speculation have led me to what I think is a deeper understanding of freedom as well as of various kinds of aggression and destructiveness. I have been able to distinguish between various kinds of aggression which directly or indirectly are in the service of life, and that malignant form of destructiveness, necrophilia, which is a true love of death as opposed to biophilia which is the love of life. In Man for Himself I discussed the problem of ethical norms based on our knowledge of the nature of man, and not on revelation and manmade laws and conventions. In this book I pursue the problem further and discuss the nature of evil and of the choice between good and evil. Finally, this book is in some respects a counterpart to The Art of Loving. While the main topic there was man’s capacity to love, the main topic here is his capacity to destroy, his narcissism and his incestuous fixation. Yet while the discussion of non-love fills most pages, the problem of love is also taken up in a new and broader sense, namely, love of life. I try to show that love of life, independence, and the overcoming of narcissism form a syndrome of growth as against the syndrome of decay formed by love of death, incestuous symbiosis, and malignant narcissism.

I have been led to the pursuit of the study of this syndrome of decay not only on the basis of clinical experience but also by the social and political development of the past years. Ever more pressing becomes the question why, in spite of good will and knowledge of the facts about the consequences of nuclear war, the attempts to avoid it are feeble in comparison with the magnitude of the danger and the likelihood of war, given the continuation of the nuclear-arms race and the continuation of the cold war. This concern has led me to study the phenomenon of indifference to life in an ever increasingly mechanized industrialism, in which man is transformed into a thing, and as a result, is filled with anxiety and with indifference to, if not with hate against, life. But aside from that, the present-day mood of violence which is manifested in juvenile delinquency as well as in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, demands explanation and understanding as a first possible step toward change. The question arises whether we are headed for a new barbarism—even without the occurrence of nuclear war—or whether a renaissance of our humanist tradition is possible.

Aside from the problems mentioned thus far it is the aim of this book to clarify the relation of my psychoanalytic concepts to Freud’s theories. I have never been satisfied with being classified as belonging to a new school of psychoanalysis whether it is called the cultural school or Neo-Freudianism. I believe that many of these new schools, while developing valuable insights, have also lost much of the most important discoveries of Freud. I am certainly not an orthodox Freudian. In fact, any theory which does not change within sixty years is, by this very fact, no longer the same as the original theory of the master; it is a fossilized repetition, and by being a repetition it is actually a deformation. Freud’s basic discoveries were conceived in a certain philosophical frame of reference, that of the mechanistic materialism current among most natural scientists at the beginning of this century. I believe that the further development of Freud’s thought requires a different philosophical frame of reference, that of dialectic humanism. I try to show in this book that Freud’s greatest discoveries, that of the Oedipus complex, narcissism, and the death instinct, were hobbled by his philosophical premises and that, freed from them and translated into a new frame of reference, Freud’s findings become ever more potent and meaningful.¹ I believe that it is the frame of reference of humanism, of its paradoxical blend of relentless criticism, uncompromising realism, and rational faith which will permit the fruitful development of the work for which Freud laid the foundations.

One more remark: While the thoughts expressed in this book are all the result of my clinical work as a psychoanalyst (and to some extent as a student of social processes), I have omitted much of the clinical documentation. This documentation I plan to offer in a larger work which will deal with the theory and therapy of humanist psychoanalysis.

Lastly, I want to express my indebtedness to Paul Edwards for his critical suggestions in respect to the chapter on Freedom, Determinism, Alternativism.

Erich Fromm

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1 I want to emphasize that this concept of psychoanalysis does not imply replacing Freud’s theory by what is now known as existentialist analysis. This substitute for Freud’s theory is often shallow, using words taken from Heidegger or Sartre (or Husserl) without connecting them with serious penetration of clinical facts. This holds true for some existentialist psychoanalysts as well as for Sartre’s psychological thinking which though brilliant is nevertheless superficial and without sound clinical basis. Sartre’s, like Heidegger’s, existentialism is not a new beginning, but an end; they are the expression of the despair of Western man after the catastrophe of two world wars, and after Hitler’s and Stalin’s regimes; but they are not only the expression of despair. They are the manifestations of an extreme bourgeois egotism and solipsism. This is easier to understand if we deal with a philosopher like Heidegger who sympathized with Nazism. It is more deceptive in Sartre’s case, who claims to represent Marxist thought and to be the philosopher of the future; he is nevertheless the exponent of the spirit of the society of anomie and selfishness which he criticizes and wants to change. As to the belief that life has no meaning given and guaranteed by God, many systems have held this belief; among the religions, prominently Buddhism. However, in their claim that there are no objective values valid for all men, and in his concept of freedom which amounts to egotistic arbitrariness, Sartre and his followers lose the most important achievement of theistic and nontheistic religion, as well as of the humanist tradition.

I. Man—Wolf or Sheep?

There are many who believe that men are sheep; there are others who believe that men are wolves. Both sides can muster good arguments for their positions. Those who propose that men are sheep have only to point to the fact that men are easily influenced to do what they are told, even if it is harmful to themselves; that they have followed their leaders into wars which brought them nothing but destruction; that they have believed any kind of nonsense if it was only presented with sufficient vigor and supported by power—from the harsh threats of priests and kings to the soft voices of the hidden and not-so-hidden persuaders. It seems that the majority of men are suggestible, half awake children, willing to surrender their will to anyone who speaks with a voice that is threatening or sweet enough to sway them. Indeed, he who has a conviction strong enough to withstand the opposition of the crowd is the exception rather than the rule, an exception often admired centuries later, mostly laughed at by his contemporaries.

It is on this assumption—that men are sheep—that the Great Inquisitors and the dictators have built their systems. More than that, this very belief that men are sheep and hence need leaders to make the decisions for them, has often given the leaders the sincere conviction that they were fulfilling a moral duty—even though a tragic one—if they gave man what he wanted: if they were leaders who took away from him the burden of responsibility and freedom.

But if most men have been sheep, why is it that man’s life is so different from that of sheep? His history has been written in blood; it is a history of continuous violence, in which almost invariably force has been used to bend his will. Did Talaat Pasha alone exterminate millions of Armenians? Did Hitler alone exterminate millions of Jews? Did Stalin alone exterminate millions of political enemies? These men were not alone; they had thousands of men who killed for them, tortured for them, and who did so not only willingly but with pleasure. Do we not see man’s inhumanity to man everywhere—in ruthless warfare, in murder and rape, in the ruthless exploitation of the weaker by the stronger, and in the fact that the sighs of the tortured and suffering creature have so often fallen on deaf ears and hardened hearts? All these facts have led thinkers like Hobbes to the conclusion that homo homini lupus (man is a wolf to his fellow man); they have led many of us today to the assumption that man is vicious and destructive by nature, that he is a killer who can be restrained from his favorite pastime only by fear of more powerful killers.

Yet the arguments of both sides leave us puzzled. It is true that we may personally know some potential or manifest killers and sadists as ruthless as Stalin and Hitler were; yet these are the exceptions rather than the rule. Should we assume that you and I and most average men are wolves in sheep’s clothing, and that our true nature will become apparent once we rid ourselves of those inhibitions which until now have prevented us from acting like beasts? This assumption is hard to disprove, yet it is not entirely convincing. There are numerous opportunities for cruelty and sadism in everyday life in which people could indulge without fear of retaliation; yet many do not do so; in fact, many react with a certain sense of revulsion when they meet cruelty and sadism.

Is there, then, another and perhaps better explanation for the puzzling contradiction we deal with here? Should we assume that the simple answer is that there is a minority of wolves living side by side with a majority of sheep? The wolves want to kill; the sheep want to follow. Hence the wolves get the sheep to kill, to murder, and to strangle, and the sheep comply not because they enjoy it, but because they want to follow; and even then the killers have to invent stories about the nobility of their cause, about defense against the threat to freedom, about revenge for bayoneted children, raped women, and violated honor, to get the majority of the sheep to act like wolves. This answer sounds plausible, but it still leaves many doubts. Does it not imply that there are two human races, as it were—that of wolves and that of sheep? Furthermore, how is it that sheep can be so easily persuaded to act like wolves if it is not in their nature to do so, even providing that violence is presented to them as a sacred duty? Our assumption regarding wolves and sheep may not be tenable; is it perhaps true after all that the wolves represent the essential quality of human nature, only more overtly than the majority show it? Or, after all, maybe the entire alternative is erroneous. Maybe man is both wolf and sheep—or neither wolf nor sheep?

The answer to these questions is of crucial importance today, when nations contemplate the use of the most destructive forces for the extinction of their enemies, and seem not to be deterred even by the possibility that they themselves may be extinguished in the holocaust. If we are convinced that human nature is inherently prone to destroy, that the need to use force and violence is rooted in it, then our resistance to ever increasing brutalization will become weaker and weaker. Why resist the wolves when we are all wolves, although some more so than others?

The question whether man is wolf or sheep is only a special formulation of a question which, in its wider and more general aspects, has been one of the most basic problems of Western theological and philosophical thought: Is man basically evil and corrupt, or is he basically good and perfectable? The Old Testament does not take the position of man’s fundamental corruption. Adam and Eve’s disobedience to God are not called sin; nowhere is there a hint that this disobedience has corrupted man. On the contrary, the disobedience is the condition for man’s self-awareness, for his capacity to choose, and thus in the last analysis this first act of disobedience is man’s first step toward freedom. It seems that their disobedience was even within God’s plan; for, according to prophetic thought, man just because he was expelled from Paradise is able to make his own history, to develop his human powers, and to attain a new harmony with man and nature as a fully developed individual instead of the former harmony in which he was not yet an individual. The Messianic concept of the prophets certainly implies that man is not fundamentally corrupt and that he can be saved without any special act of God’s grace. But it does not imply that this potential for good will necessarily win. If man does evil he becomes more evil. Thus, Pharaoh’s heart hardens because he keeps on doing evil; it hardens to a point where no more change or repentance is possible. The Old Testament offers at least as many examples of evil-doing as of right-doing, and does not exempt even exalted figures like King David from the list of evil doers. The Old Testament view is that man has both capacities—that of good and that of evil—and that man must choose between good and evil, blessing and curse, life and death. Even God does not interfere in his choice; he helps by sending his messengers, the prophets, to teach the norms which lead to the realization of goodness, to identify the evil, and to warn and to protest. But this being done, man is left alone with his two strivings, that for good and that for evil, and the decision is his alone.

The Christian development was different. In the course of the development of the Christian Church, Adam’s disobedience was conceived as sin. In fact, as a sin so severe that it corrupted his nature and with it that of all his descendants, and thus man by his own effort could never rid himself of this corruption. Only God’s own act of grace, the appearance of Christ, who died for man, could extinguish man’s corruption and offer salvation for those who accepted Christ.

But the dogma of original sin was by no means unopposed in the Church. Pelagius assailed it but was defeated. The Renaissance humanists within the Church tended to weaken it, even though they could not directly assail or deny it, while many heretics did just that. Luther had, if anything, an even more radical view of man’s innate evilness and corruption, while thinkers of the Renaissance and later of