Social Characters – Erich Fromm

Erich Fromm was a new Freudian psychoanalyst who advocated a personality theory based on two fundamentals needs. He narrates the social characters based on their personalities.

• The need for liberty
• The need for belongings

He recommended that people cultivate a certain type of personality to overcome the distress caused by feeling of isolation.

Social characters

The social character is the central basic concept of the social psychology of Erich Fromm. Social character refers to the emotional attitude common to individuals in our social society.

The following are the social characters described by Erich Fromm.

1. Receptive Character

People with receptive character consider themselves to be passive and dependent on others. They usually lack confidence.

Example:

In a classroom full of students there is a student who does not have much confidence to ask what he did not understand. So, he waits for others to ask and he will get his answers. He does not have enough courage to give his views on something and feels hesitation in asking for something he needs or wants.

2. Exploitative Character

People with exploitative character can exploit others to fulfill their own needs and they can cross any limit to get what they want.

Example:

We see in many game shows there are a lot of people sitting there and enjoying the show. There are several segments where the host distributes gifts to the audience. Some people in audience run towards the host in order to snatch or get gifts from the host. They do not care that someone might get injured due to this hustle. They cross or jump over others heads to get gifts.

3. Hoarding Character

People with hoarding characters collect a massive amount of possession and take care of little things and never get rid of memories.

Example:

We see in our society that some people do not let go of things easily. They are too attached to the people who were part of their life before but are not present now, they feel that it is possible to get over them. They take care of things and have high sentimental values attached to the particular things.

 4. Marketing Character

The people with marketing character always focus on gaining and marketing or display their things or any achievements.

Example:

In our society, we have a lot of friends. Among those friends there are few who love to display their things and academic grades. Mostly people do this on purpose to gain advantage from marketing their achievements, these people are just like open markets who love to do marketing of everything.

5. Neurophillic Character

These are the characters that are away from life and near death. They indulge in destructive activities and killing someone is not even a big deal for them.

Example:

Thieves and robbers are the perfect example for this orientation as they have no fear of death. They know that they might get caught at any moment and might get killed by someone. Most of them simply do not care and do not hesitate to kill others for the sake of a few penises. They are living life’s miserably and also make others’ lives miserable.

6. Productive Character

The people with productive character use their energy in productive work. They keep themselves busy with constructive activities. They give importance to their relationships.

Example:

In this lockdown many people have started earning online, some have started their own Vlogs, YouTube channels, article writing and websites. They are not wasting their time by sitting still and waiting for this pandemic to end. They do not find excuses but look for chances and different things to work on.

Also read this article: You Should Learn To React To Everything