Skip to main content

Transformation

Image from Wikipedia


Character is something deeply ingrained and difficult to change, according to most psychologists including Eric Fromm. Fromm believed that character stems from our genetic inheritance and our learning experiences. Some aspects of our character come from our parents. They are in our genes and we don’t have much choice about them. Other aspects are learnt from home, school and society. There is also a lot of interplay between the two.

It is not easy to change one’s character which is formed in one’s childhood mostly. Certain traumatic experiences bring about major changes in a person’s character. A better way to bring about radical changes is self-awareness.

Fromm divides people into 5 personality types.

1. The Receptive Type

People of this type are passive and almost totally dependent on others. They require constant support from somebody or the other, like the family, friends or some group.  They lack confidence in their own abilities and have difficulty about making their own decisions. Children who grow up in households that are overbearing and excessively controlling tend to develop this type of personality.

2. The Exploitative Type

You must have come across a lot of people who lie, cheat and manipulate others in order to get what they want. They belong to this character type, according to Fromm. Their professions of love are usually false. I have often wondered whether our politicians, quite many of them at least, belong to this type.

3. The Hoarding Type

This type loves to own a lot of things. They collect a massive amount of possessions. Those things are more important to them than people. The more things they own, the more secure they feel about themselves.

4. The Marketing Type

These are traders of relationships. They view relationships as a way of gaining something for themselves. Marriage, for example, is a way of getting a fat dowry or better social status. These people are opportunists; they can change their beliefs and values just for personal benefits. Nowadays we see a lot of our politicians switching parties shamelessly. That shamelessness is in their genes, Fromm would say.

5. The Productive Type

This is the ideal type, according to Fromm. People of this category convert their negative feelings into productive work. They focus on building loving, nurturing and meaningful relationships with other people whether at home or workplace or the society. They are a good spouse, parent, friend, co-worker, and employee. They make you feel at ease with them as well as with yourself. They bring out the best in you or at least try to.

Conclusion

There are no clear-cut boundaries between these types.  Most of us possess a combination of many types but one type tends to dominate. Awareness about our dominating characteristics is the first step towards transformation. We can leave the world a better place if we are willing to make certain changes in ourselves.


Comments

  1. A very informative blog on personality development. Transformation is easier for the weaklings and real thieves, not the politicians!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The very ordinary people who are no achievers in any significant way are way superior to politicians and most religious people (like our sadhus and sadhvis).

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...

India in Modi-Trap

That’s like harnessing a telescope to a Vedic chant and expecting the stars to spin closer. Illustration by Gemini AI A friend forwarded a WhatsApp message written by K Sahadevan, Malayalam writer and social activist. The central theme is a concern for science education and research in India. The writer bemoans the fact that in India science is in a prison conjured up by Narendra Modi. The message shocked me. I hadn’t been aware of many things mentioned therein. Modi is making use of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan’s Centre for Study and Research in Indology for his nefarious purposes projected as efforts to “preserve and promote classical Indian knowledge systems [IKS]” which include Sanskrit, Ayurveda, Jyotisha (astrology), literature, philosophy, and ancient sciences and technology. The objective is to integrate science with spirituality and cultural values. That’s like harnessing a telescope to a Vedic chant and expecting the stars to spin closer. The IKS curricula have made umpteen r...

Two Women and Their Frustrations

Illustration by Gemini AI Nora and Millie are two unforgettable women in literature. Both are frustrated with their married life, though Nora’s frustration is a late experience. How they deal with their personal situations is worth a deep study. One redeems herself while the other destroys herself as well as her husband. Nora is the protagonist of Henrik Ibsen’s play, A Doll’s House , and Millie is her counterpart in Terence Rattigan’s play, The Browning Version . [The links take you to the respective text.] Personal frustration leads one to growth into an enlightened selfhood while it embitters the other. Nora’s story is emancipatory and Millie’s is destructive. Nora questions patriarchal oppression and liberates herself from it with equanimity, while Millie is trapped in a meaningless relationship. Since I have summarised these plays in earlier posts, now I’m moving on to a discussion on the enlightening contrasts between these two characters. If you’re interested in the plot ...

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...