Escape from Freedom (The Fear of Freedom)

A study in social psychology by the German-born psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, written in exile in the United States and published in 1941; in Britain it appeared as The Fear of Freedom. Fromm asks why so many in modern Europe welcomed authoritarian rule. He argues that as individuals were released from the fixed bonds of medieval society they gained 'freedom from', but also isolation and anxiety, without yet achieving 'freedom to', the positive freedom of realising themselves. He traces this through the Reformation, reading Luther and Calvin as voices of a new insecurity. People flee such freedom through three mechanisms: authoritarianism, in which they submit to or dominate others; destructiveness; and automaton conformity, becoming what everyone expects. He applies this to the psychology of Nazism, especially among the lower middle class, and ends with a case for spontaneous love and creative work in a democracy. Critics have found its historical claims broad and speculative.

It offers a clear psychological account of why people may prefer security to freedom, and its analysis of conformity and authoritarian longing remains useful for reading modern politics.