Erich Fromm's BEYOND THE CHAINS OF ILLUSION

 "The alienated patient, in search for and in need of an idol, finds the analyst and usually endows him with the qualities of his father and mother as the two powerful persons he knew as a child. Thus the content of transference is usually related to infantile patterns while its intensity is the result of the patient's alienation. Needless to add that the transference phenomenon is not restricted to the analytic situation. It is to be found in all forms of idolization of authority figures, in political, religious, and social life." (53)

"Just as our sense develop and become human senses in the process of their productive relatedness to nature, our relatedness to man, says Marx, becomes human relatedness in the act of loving. "Let us assume man to be man, and his relation to the world to be a human one. Then love can only be exchanged for love, trust for trust, etc. If you wish to enjoy art you must be an artistically inclined person; if you wish to influence other people you must be a person who really has a stimulating and encouraging effect upon others. Every one of your relations to man and to nature must be a specific expression, corresponding to the object of your will, of your real individual life. If you love without evoking love in return, i.e., if you are not able, by the manifestation of yourself as a loving person, to make yourself a beloved person, then your love is impotent and a misfortune." (69; Marx, in Economic and Philosophical manuscripts, p. 168)

"I want to emphasize again that the theory that ideas are determined by the forms of economic and social life does not imply that they have no validity of their own or that they are mere "reflexes" of economic needs. The ideal of freedom, for instance, is deeply rooted in the nature of man, and it is precisely for this reason that it was an ideal for the Hebrews in Egypt, the slaves in Rome, the German peasants in the sixteenth century, the German workers who fought the dictators of East Germany. On the other hand, the idea of authority and order is also deeply implanted in human existence. It is precisely because any given social order can appeal to ideas which transcend the necessities of this order that they can become so potent and so appealing to the human heart. Yet why a certain idea gains ascendancy and popularity is to be understood in historical terms, that is, in terms of the social character produced in a given culture." (86)

"Awareness of the unconscious is an experience which is characterized by its spontaneity and suddenness. One's eyes are suddenly opened; oneself and the world appear in a different light, as seen from a different viewpoint. There is usually a great deal of anxiety aroused while the experience takes place, while afterward a new feeling of strength is present. The process of discovering the unconscious can be described as a series of ever-widening experiences, which are deeply felt and which transcend theoretical, intellectual knowledge." (94)

"Both for Spinoza and for Marx the aim of life is liberation from bondage, and the way to this aim is the overcoming of illusions and the full use of our active powers." (109)

"As to the contents of the unconscious, no generalization is possible. But one statement can be made: it always represents the whole man, with all his potentialities for darkness and light; it always contains the basis for the different answers which man is capable of giving to the question which existence poses. In the extreme case of the most regressive cultures, bent on returning to animal existence, this very wish is predominant and conscious, while all strivings to emerge from this level are repressed. In a culture which has moved from the regressive to the spiritual-progressive goal, the forces representing the dark are unconscious. But man, in any culture, has all the potentialities within himself; he is the archaic man, the beast of prey, the cannibal, the idolator, and he is the being with a capacity for reason, for love, for justice. The content of the unconscious, then, is neither the good nor the evil, the rational nor the irrational: it is both; it is all that is human. The unconscious is the whole man—minus that part of him which corresponds to his society. Consciousness represents social man, the accidental limitations set by the historical situation into which an individual is thrown. Unconsciousness represents universal man, the whole man, rooted in the cosmos; it represents the plant in him, the animal in him, the spirit in him; it represents his past, down to the dawn of human existence, and it represents his future up to the day when man will have become fully human, and when nature will be humanized as man will be "naturalized." (128-129)

"Furthermore, any new discovery is an adventure, and the adventures require not only a certain degree of inner security, but also a validity and joy which can be found only in those for whom living is more than releasing tensions and avoiding pain. In order to reduce the general level of stupidity, we need not more "intellect" but a different kind of character; men who are independent, adventurous, and who are in love with life." (155)