CrimePsych

Eric Fromm (1900 – 1980) was a well known personality theorist who was initially part of the Freudian school of thought before breaking away. He suggests that people who are psychologically disturbed may also have the inability to love and fail to establish meaningful unions. He focused the bulk of his attention to three main psychological disorders which he used to put forward his ideas known as the ‘syndrome of decay’ and the ‘syndrome of growth’.

Necrophilia
Just about everybody has heard of necrophilia at one stage or another, and most take its meaning as a person who likes to have sexual intercourse with a corpse. In reality though necrophilia is actually defined as ‘a love of death’ – it just happens that usually it refers to a sexual perversion where an individual seeks sexual contact with the deceased. Fromm used the more general definition in his work and as with all his proposals, as you will see in the diagram at the bottom of the page, they were on a sliding or Likert scale. Any attraction to death in Fromm’s eyes was viewed as necrophilia while the alternate character orientation, that is, the opposite end of the scale, is called biophilia. People classed as having biophilia love life completely and utterly but this can be stunted by social conditions they endure, and a subsequent outcome can be adoption of necrophilia. Both ends of the scale are considered to be extremes.

When it comes to necrophilic personality types they hate all of humanity and are commonly racists, warmongers and bullies. They absolutely adore bloodshed as well as destruction and terror – is anybody beginning to see a type of person that is prone to being in this personality type? They also delight in torturing people, both physically and mentally and enjoy destroying life however they are strong law and order advocates. Further to this they love talk of sickness or people that have terminal illnesses as well as death, burials, autopsies and the like. Necrophiles are also completely intrigued and fascinated with dirt, decay, faeces and of course corpses, and for obvious reasons prefer shadows and darkness to the light of day.

People with this disorder don’t simply behave in a destructive manner either, it is so inbred in them that their destructive actions are a reflection of their core character. All of these necrophiles behave aggressively or destructively at times with their entire lives and more disturbingly lifestyle revolving around death, destruction, disease and decay.

Malignant Narcissism
Narcissism is a two edged blade, if an individual has a healthy manifestation it is considered benign with said individual simply having an interest in their own body. The malignant form however has a number of effects on the narcissistic personality by impeding on their perception of reality to the extent that everything becomes extremely valued while everything that is not theirs becomes devalued.

Narcissistic persons are indifferent toward others; they are completely preoccupied with themself and it is not restricted to their physical appearance. However their excessive preoccupation with their own body can lead them to hypochondriasis through obsessive attention to their health and physical wellbeing. This hypochondriasis can also affect their moral and ethical self as their preoccupation with guilt over previous mistakes or transgressions can lead to internal conflict or cognitive dissonance. They fixate on their supposed current and past issues and dwell on their health and moral virtues.

That is not the only issue that malignant narcissists have; they are neurotic and achieve their sense of security and to some extent their sense of self through distorted beliefs. They sincerely believe that they have extraordinary personal qualities which make them bigger and better than every other person. To a narcissist their looks, physique and even their wealth create an aura of dominance to the point they believe they do not actually have to do anything to prove their worth. This is a fragile world in which they live as their sense of worth is directly linked to their narcissistic self image, hence when they are criticised they react with anger and rage striking out against their critics trying to destroy the threat. If the criticism is so extreme and persistent it may become overwhelming and if the individual with the narcissistic personality cannot destroy the initiator they turn the rage inwards on themself. This affects their self esteem sinking them into depression and a feeling of worthlessness as a result with an associated feeling of guilt.

Incestuous Symbiosis
The final disorder that Fromm focused the majority of his attention to is incestuous symbiosis. This is defined as an extreme dependence on the mother however a mother surrogate is the exaggerated form. More commonly though the more benign version of a mother fixation abounds. This is where men need a woman to dote on them while caring for them and admiring them and what they do. If these psychological needs are unable to be fulfilled then anxiety and depression are likely to occur and contrary to popular belief the small end of the scale is a relatively normal condition that does not interfere with the day to day life of the sufferer.

Incestuous symbiosis in its most extreme form on the other hand makes an individual inseparable from the host as their personalities are often blended with that of the other with individual identity becoming less and less clear to the point it can be lost completely. This disorder is known to originate in infancy through natural attachment with Fromm as well as one of his colleagues Harry Stack Sullivan both believing that the actual attachment was the more crucial and fundamental aspect. Sigmund Freud always held that during the Oedipal period of development that an individual’s interest was sexually motivated. This point also helped demonstrate how Fromm was deviating from Freud’s way of thinking and was generating his own explanations – he and Stack Sullivan both agreed the attachment was for security while Freud insisted it was sexual in nature.

Those persons who suffer from this disorder endure extreme amounts of anxiety when away from the host and become fearful easily when they believe their relationship is being threatened as they believe wholeheartedly that there is no way that they can live without their ‘mother’. One uses inverted commas here as the next point will be intriguing; the ‘mother’ or host, need not be human. It can just as easily be an entire family, a business, a church or group, even an entire nation. As with a number of personality disorders the orientation has the ability to distort the individuals reasoning power while also destroying their ability to experience authentic love. It also eliminates any chance of the person achieving independence or integrity of their own

The Outcomes
It is possible to suffer from all three of these disorders and Fromm put forward the idea of the Syndrome of Decay which was contrasted against the Syndrome of Growth which included persons at the other end of the scale, both of which are considered extremes. Healthy people fall somewhere in the middle of the scale, as can be seen in the following diagram.

Click for the full size image

Psychohistorical Study of Hitler
Fromm used to also study historical documents of prominent persons in history in an attempt to reconstruct a psychological portrait of said person. One of the more famous ones he conducted, that he thought demonstrated the epitome of the syndrome of decay was Adolf Hitler who he wrote several papers about. Hitler was, according to Fromm’s analysis, an individual who demonstrated all three pathological disorders to an extreme; he was attracted to both death and destruction, was very much focused on himself and his own interests while his ‘mother’ was that of the Germanic ‘race’, which he wanted to prevent from becoming contaminated by the Jews as well as other non-Aryan individuals.

This shall be continued in one’s next article.