 |
Through My Eyes... |
Helpful Thinking About Extremists
Sep 14, 2010
By Cornelia Spelman
There is a lot of talk about the anger afoot in our country and the rise of extremist views. I'm reading a very helpful book that, along with my own professional experience as a therapist, and my personal experiences in life, is clarifying for me what is behind much of the extremist attitudes and behavior that I first observed in a town hall meeting about health care last summer, and which I wrote about in a Through My Eyes commentary on this website.
In 1941, Erich Fromm, a German psychoanalyst who had to flee after Hitler's rise to power, wrote Escape From Freedom. It is not a book about his own escape from Nazi Germany TO freedom; rather, as the unusual title indicates, it is about the reasons why people are drawn to escape FROM freedom. Fromm wrote "there is no greater mistake and no graver danger than not to see that in our own society we are faced with the same phenomenon that is fertile soil for the rise of Fascism anywhere: the insignificance and powerlessness of the individual." Though it seems counter-intuitive, some people do not want the freedom to think, to inform themselves, and to try to make difficult decisions about complex issues. They would rather be told what to believe, what to do, and gain a feeling of belonging to a special group, usually headed by an authoritarian figure.
I will continue this discussion in a later commentary.