Looking at Fromm’s Human Needs from a biblical viewpoint, these main aspects may be mentioned, relatedness, transcendence, rootedness, sense of identity, and frame of orientation. These human needs are considered by Fromm from the point of view of two sides, positive and negative ones.
Reading the data devoted to these issues, it is possible to compare and contrast these needs and to present the way how people understand the need of their lives. Fromm is sure that people, apart from animals, are able to feel human needs with greater desire.
Relatedness, transcendence, rootedness, sense of identity, and frame of orientation are human needs which are essential for people and they are unable to live without them. The discussion is based on the essential human needs and the way how people consider those pointing to the positive and negative components.
Relatedness is connected with the desire of a person to be related to another person. People need to be close to each other. Family ties are too close. When people grow up, they are looking for those who they will create personal families with. Feelings are important for relatedness. People form their relationships on the basis of attraction to each other.
However, there are cases when people appear to be together not because of attraction or another feeling, they just feel that need to be related to someone. However, Fromm states that the main negative feature of relatedness is the inability for people to be free. They need to be connected and therefore dependant on others.
Transcendence is the next human need which is defined as “the urge to rise above a passive and accidental existence and into the realm of purposefulness and freedom” (Feist, 2009, p. 193). People come to this world without being asked and leave it also without personal desire. Rootedness is the desire to have home. People need to have this feeling as it gives them an opportunity to feel protected.
However, when people have to search for better life in other countries, rootedness makes those feel melancholy. Sense of identity is the next human need considered by Fromm as one of the most important ones. Even though people have the need of rootedness and relatedness, they also have to remain individualities, free and separated from others.
This is an entire need which guarantees a personality to remain an individual among other human beings. The frame of orientation is like a map in the unknown place. Having the guidelines how it is necessary to act, people still have the right to choose which way to go, whether to follow the directions or not.
It should be mentioned that each of these human needs have positive and negative components. Relatedness gives people love, however, it also brings submission and domination. Transcendence provides people with creativeness, however, it also offers people destructiveness. Considering wholeness as a positive component, rootedness brings fixation that negatively impacts human beings.
Individuality is really an important part of sense of identity while adjustment to a group brings negative issues. Finally, positive and negative components of the frame of orientation are as follows, offering people rational goals, this human need sometimes offers irrational needs which make people frustrated. Therefore, all human needs should be balanced between positive and negative components of their needs.
Reference List
Feist, J. F. (2009). Theories of Personality. New York: McGraw-Hill.