Escape From Freedom

In Escape from Freedom’s final chapter, Fromm considers whether freedom manifests in modern democratic countries such as the United States of America. Fromm argues that though such democratic countries seem to espouse ideals of freedom, none of these countries offer a social system where individuals can truly be said to freely follow their own thinking and desires. Instead, individuals in these countries respond to their feelings of isolation by submitting to social expectations and “compulsive[ly] conforming” (266) to outside patterns of thinking that do not authentically come from their own minds.

Fromm argues that individuals are taught from childhood to repress their own “original” (272) forms of thinking and feeling. Education systems focus on teaching children to memorize a multitude of isolated facts, rather than instilling within them the skills of critical thinking. Such critical thinking would allow individuals to independently form their own thoughts and feelings, allowing them to create an authentic understanding of their personality and self. Instead, individuals learn to assume that their own desires and needs are the same as those that society tells them to have: “[M]odern man lives under the illusion that he knows what he wants, while he actually wants what he is supposed to want” (278).