Psychology Today: What Is Psychological Freedom?

" Freedom, as described by the German social psychologist and humanist philosopher Erich Fromm (1941), is the final goal in the process of individuation. It encompasses a capacity to manifest what makes you uniquely yourself without recourse to either self-absorption or self-abnegation.

When an individual lacks autonomous psychological agency, they are likely to feel insecure and insignificant and have doubts about the meaning of life.

When one lacks such freedom, whether to decide and act out of moral duty or to feel authentically one's own unique desires, there is a tendency for self-functioning to be compulsive or reactive rather than self-directed.

The anxiety of freedom

The 19th-century philosopher Soren Kierkegaard described psychological freedom as dizzying anxiety; more precisely, he called anxiety "the dizziness of freedom."

Freedom to choose generates anxiety. Any choice may be rattled by dread. Giving way to unchecked desire or merely acquiescing to imposed expectation steers away from the tensions authenticity requires and, thus, is a path to despair.

Not everyone is willing to endure the possibilities of freedom. Some find themselves on a path involving self-sabotage, perhaps uncertain how to manage dialectical anxieties of a free existence. Fromm proposed three psychic mechanisms that he believed one might utilize for escaping negative aspects of freedom and regaining lost security: authoritarianism, destructiveness, and automaton conformity.

1. Sadism — The authoritarian character

Sadists dominate others as a way of attempting to gain in a surrogate what they lack within themselves and in life: control. And sadists' abuse also arises from an addiction to the psychophysiological experience of relational power.

2. Masochism — The self-destructive character

Masochism, on the other hand, is embodied by a “willingness to accept suffering in order to make a point, to uphold a principle, or to maintain self-respect”. The masochistic impulse occurs when a person grasps for control through harmful forms of self-soothing.

3. Automaton conformity

Hypnotic, self-fulfilling pre-convictions and perseverating interpersonal habits are among the most difficult challenges we face in embodying autonomy.

We live with the constant risk of projecting emotionally loaded, experience-laden anxieties, images, and symbols onto the people and the world around us. To the extent that we act at their whim, we find ourselves automatons performing program-like responses.

Courage

Life is anxiety. It is freedom yet it is responsibility, a series of choices under constraint, one negating another.

Ultimately, Kierkegaard (1844, 1845) advocated a leap, a suprarational recognition that forward movement in life is primarily a function of will and trust. He described a leap in spite of and even propelled by unresolved tension and rising anxiety—taking a risk that, once taken, leads to an unexpected path, healing that reaches beyond ourselves, and greater wholeness, as well as a kind of freedom.

Read the full article here!

Reflection:

How psychologically free do you think you are?

#PsychologicalFreedom #Courage #Anxiety