Observations on the concept of Frommian necrophilia

Erich Fromm has made a very interesting concept of psychological necrophilia. He defines as necrophile a person who is attracted to things that are ‘dead’. He describes that such kind of people tend to be very possessive and sometimes, dangerous. He takes as an example Adolf Hitler and the Nazi, who had a vision of a ‘dead’ world: a world where everything is ordinated and predictable. He makes some remarks about sexual issues, I personally think that it is very interesting that Adolf Hitler’s kinks do reflect somehow Fromm’s predictions.

I personally like Fromm’s concept of psychological necrophilia and his observations that such instinct is at the basis of totalitarianism. But I think he tends to be judging too harshly and not treating the concept with enough scientific rigor. Nonetheless, it is important to consider that the inspiration for such findings came from his empirical observations among hundreds of patients and people he observed. He could find a pattern that connected some behaviors to others. And he did find out that the link between those behaviors is something that he defined as ‘necrophilia’: ‘the love of death’.

I personally think that the ‘love of death’ is a very imprecise definition. To understand what love of death means one should understand what ‘love’ means in this particular context. Instead of ‘love of death’ it is better to define such tendency as simply ‘the need for security’. It is very simple and straightforward that ‘the need of security’ leads the society into totalitarianism. But why ‘the need for security’ is treated so harshly by Fromm and considered as a ‘love of death’? I think it is just his personal judgement, the judgement of a person that loves life, unpredictability and has experienced the horrors of totalitarianism such as the Nazi persecutions.

The patterns that Fromm found were the compulsive necessity for cleanness and order. Being unable to form relationships with people who don’t offer enough predictability and security. The need to be in control of every surrounding at the point that such need for control generates psychological psychosis. He offers some little details as examples such as: being dressed in a very clean and ordinated manner, having your hair combed in perfect order (like the Nazis style), having a very regular and clean calligraphy, preferring dark clothes and regular geometric shapes, keeping the house maniacally tidy, regular and clean. Fromm notices that there is a pattern that connects all those kinds of behaviors and judges those as ‘a love of death’.

Fromm notices that it is possible to understand how much ‘necrophile’ a society is by looking at the people and territory. He says that such ‘love of death’ is contagious in a society: more and more people can end up becoming ‘necrophile’ by being influenced by their neighbors, as happened during Nazi Germany (but it such fact is common in all the totalitarian countries). He makes some interesting reflections about the fact that the relationships with technology and machines tend to increase such instinct in people because machines are perfectly predictable and they answer to your commands: they are ‘dead’. He makes an observation that such instinct is typical in aging people, therefore an aging society will tend to manifest such patterns more strongly and will be more inclined to totalitarianism, especially because aging people tend to prefer security before anything else.

We can make an hypothesis and consider that the need for security, therefore the ‘love of death’, might cause an ‘energy that turns things into order’. Isn’t the energy to turn things into order an energy of destruction? Because things can be turned into order only if everything that is alive dies. If there are no humans and animals on Earth, we could say that planet Earth ‘has turned into order’: it is perfectly cleaned and predictable. Therefore, the energy that tends to ‘turn things into order’ is in fact a dangerous energy.

I suspect the unconscious mind doesn’t recognize or understand concepts such as ‘life’ and ‘death’, doesn’t make any distinction between what is ‘alive’ and what is ‘dead’. In the same way as a cat doesn’t distinguish things between being alive or dead. For a cat something that moves is something that should be hunted, then find out if eatable or not. Something that is immobile is just immobile. The concepts of ‘plant’, ‘animal’ are just human concepts. Nature is just as it is, it is not made of ‘plants’ or ‘animals’. We decided that something that respects certain characteristics will be called a ‘plant’, and something that respects other characteristics will be called ‘animal’. But nature is just a mass of things, compounding matter and energy. Therefore, an unconscious mind just observes the objects and the territory around themselves and tries to make predictions based on their movements and patterns of change, without giving any judgements as ‘alive’, ‘dead’, ‘animal’, ‘human’, ‘plant’, ‘thing’. If the ‘love of death’ is just ‘the need of security’ then this need will be reflected in preferences that fulfill such need.

For example, an ordered territory, a home that is perfectly in order, favors survival in case an intruder comes in or something unexpectable happens. It is definitely more controllable and manageable. Same thing when considering people: a friend who is predictable is more manageable in case of danger. Therefore, it favors survival.

I believe that at the root of the ‘need for security’ is fear. I think the word ‘fear’ sums up everything one needs to know about Frommian necrophilia. We need security when we are afraid. Without fear there is no need of security.

This is an important aspect to consider: the increase of fear in a society increases the need of security, therefore it increases the probability for that society to become a totalitarian society.