F:\E\ISLAMICUS\2020\no. 2\the perspective of Psychological.pmd Hamdard Islamicus Vol. XLIII, No. 2 67 THE PERSPECTIVE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL FREEDOM AND AVOIDING FREEDOM ACCORDING TO ERICH FROMM BULENT AKOT Faculty of Islamic Sciences, Yildirim Beyazit University, Ankara, Turkey e-mail: bulentakot@hotmail.com Freedom is a matter that people have been thinking about throughout history and have even fought wars for his sake. Without freedom, one cannot truly discover his existence in this world. It is not possible for a person to realize himself or to perform perfect servitude for the transcendent being without freedom. How can one be free? How can freedom be achieved especially psychologically? The questions were also asked a lot. In this context, a psychological definition of freedom and what are the obstacles to freedom are also important. Because the ideas of a psychologist like Erich Fromm on freedom are also important, the work has come to life around her. The study was carried out with the literature review method and was shaped by considering the views of a person about a concept. The issue of what freedom means has been debated for years. Especially in the context of Psychology and Psychology of Religion, it is aimed to conduct a study by Erich Fromm. The main goal in doing this is to satisfy a need in this field at the level of the article as much as possible. This study is composed of introduction and three parts. At the beginning of the article, the philological examination of freedom was started and its definitions were made in various fields. In the first part, it is talked about how to get psychologically free. The second Erich Fromm’s understanding of freedom was tried to be found. In the third part, Erich Fromm’s ways of escaping from freedom are discussed. Key Words: Erich Fromm; Escape; Freedom; Psychology. Summary It is possible to address freedom in terms of psychological, anthropological, moral, religious and sociological aspects. This study psychologically addresses the struggle of man against freedom. First of all, it is necessary to examine the concept of freedom linguistically from 68 The Perspective of Psychological Freedom... past to present. The word must have been used to describe the anti- slavery legal term from an early period. What the Qur’Én envisages regarding the life of man is that he only serves Allah. According to the sufis, the servant is free from servant exhaustion if he completes all servanthood. Freedom in Sufism is hidden in true servitude to Allah. Only Allah is absolutely free. However, servants also have freedom. According to the sufis, liberation from worldly affairs aims to prepare for full acceptance to Allah. This relationship is not intended to achieve individual freedom. The understanding of freedom in Sufism was mostly associated with exquisite finishing by sufis. Philosophically, the issue of freedom has been widely discussed. For example, according to Descartes, man is free. This freedom is thanks to Allah. Spinoza also combines freedom and necessity. The truth is Allah, who is free. Spinoza is a dark determinist. Kant, on the other hand, provides a definition of freedom that entails and obeys the law itself. According to Kant, it is necessary to accept freedom as a postulate in order to explain how man can act morally. In the first part of the study there are things people need to do in order to be free psychologically. One must first realize the need for freedom. It should be able to mentally understand and adopt freedom. So he must be put to work, understanding what is freedom. For man, freedom means intelligence and love. Freedom is non-submission to authority to exploit and extraordinary virtue. The first requirement is not freedom to pursue the purpose of life. Accepting freedom, according to William James, is an imperative consequence of innovation, luck, pluralism and a developing world. In the second part of the study, Erich Fromm says that one’s behavior in society is directly related to his freedom. So in order to understand whether a person is free or not, we need to determine whether he is using his free will when making her decisions. Most of the time, even if we think that the person is free and makes his own decisions, when we think really well, the person is constantly under the control and control of various powers and powers. It is the essence of the subject that we will deal with, capturing real freedom and getting rid of false freedom. According to Fromm, the more free the individual is freed from the symbolic umbilical cord that connects his to the outside world. Or it lacks freedom to the extent that it cannot be saved. As an example of such an understanding in the understanding of Fromm, the teachings of Protestantism from the Christian sects revealed the individual. But it Hamdard Islamicus Vol. XLIII, No. 2 69 made him more desperate and increased freedom. But it has created new kinds of addictions. According to Fromm, the new freedom brought by capitalism to the individual in the last century has increased the influence of the Protestantism on the individual through the religious freedom it has already given to it. The individual has become more abstracted alone. In this way he became an “individual”, but he became an individual who was confused and lacked a sense of security. According to him, the person has never had complete freedom. On the contrary, she is constantly escaping from freedom and using various escape methods while running. In Fromm’s understanding, a person tries to escape from freedom involuntarily. He describes it under a number of mechanisms. According to her, there are three types of freedom escape mechanisms, namely authoritarian, destructiveness and robot compatibility. These mechanisms are escape mechanisms that result from the abandoned individual’s lack of security. There are two ways in front of them, after breaking the basic bonds that give security to the individual. If it goes the first way, the development that we call positive freedom takes place. The individual can establish a spontaneous relationship with the world through love and work, and a sincere expression of her emotional and mental abilities. Thus, without giving up the independence and integrity of his individual self, he once again becomes a whole with man, nature and himself. The second way ahead is to stay behind, sacrifice his freedom and try to overcome loneliness by eliminating the gap between the individual me and the world. Since the phenomenon of separation cannot be reversed, the individual cannot reach the relationship he has established with the world before emerging as an individual if he goes through this second path. In this way, it can never be reunited with the world, this road is escape from an unbearable situation that would make life impossible. As a result, the person who achieves moral perfection is the human liberated. The liberated person is the human who moves away from all ugly behavior. It is not dependent on any ideology. She loves the society she lives in, her land and history. But it doesn’t scream people because it doesn’t want to show off and propaganda. Because they have no ambitions and passions. The free person is a hero who is not after heroism. Introduction It is possible to address freedom in terms of psychological, anthropological, theological and sociological aspects. This study 70 The Perspective of Psychological Freedom... psychologically addresses the struggle of man against freedom. The study was shaped based on a person’s views about a concept. In particular, it was aimed to carry out a study by Erich Fromm. In this section, starting from the word meaning of the concepts of freedom and its synonym, we will try to understand how the Qur’an, Islamic thinkers and some philosophers look at the subject. First of all, it is necessary to examine the concept of freedom linguistically from past to present. If we start by defining the concept of freedom used in the past instead of freedom; The word “free” in Arabic has exactly the same “every” in Syriac, in Hebrew. The last mode is the result of some change under the influence of comparison. The Jewish of Aram used the same mode that exists in Hebrew. The words “harh-rin” and “baht-run” appear in the words of Tedmür and nebaÏi, meaning; “Free man” and “free woman”.1 The word “free” has been used extensively in early Arabic to mean “sheriff (dignified) and hasen (good-beautiful)”. The word must have been used to describe the anti-slavery legal term from an early period. It is a very important situation that Hür has a meaning beyond the meaning of abstract freedom in the history of the meaning. Because, apart from its legal framework, the term free becomes a closed term among many terms of language. So, the following can be said: Arabic has not recognized a term that is used practically to describe the full extent of the concept of freedom. When the western influence emerged at the beginning of the modern ages, the word old freedom was given a new meaning. In Persian, the concept of liberty corresponds with ÉzÉd. The word ÉzÉd means that human freedom is linked to being born in a family belonging to elite social groups. The concepts of freedom found before non-Arab peoples before entering Islam have completely disappeared before this Islamic attitude of freedom, in which Arabic is based on these concepts as the basic form of expression.2 Linguists also state that the word free derives from the opposite of the word cold (berd), har (hot). They define free or free as the opposite of slaves. After all, the free person has the dignity and encouragement morality that leads him to aspire for good natures. The slave is the opposite of this. This is exactly the point in terms of Islam, freedom is handled in two ways; • First, freedom for the person who is not under the yoke of something. This is also called material freedom. The following two verses are Hamdard Islamicus Vol. XLIII, No. 2 71 examples of this use; “Free for free3 “I have made vows to you as a muharrar (dedicated to Allah).”4 Man is either free or slave, depending on whether he can act at his own will. After Islam came, slavery was forbidden. No one can be used as a slave, and cannot be bought and sold. • The second part is the form of freedom, spiritual freedom, and it is called the human who is not dominated by condemned qualities such as greed and greed against worldly passions. It also finds expression in the form of not being a slave to the desires and the world. As a matter of fact,. The Prophet ( ) pointed out this saying: “Shame on the slave of Dinar (money)”5 The Qur’Én guarantees the most basic features of human rights with its freedom of belief, theoretical and practical dimensions.6 What the Qur’Én envisages regarding the life of man is that he only serves Allah. Within the concept of caliph, Islam defines man as being who can use his freedom in his attitudes and behaviors with his personal thoughts, but who is responsible for his choices with his free choice. In Christianity, the key expression that defines man is “being a prisoner of innate original sin and death”. With this approach to define people, Christianity basically differs from the human understanding of Islam. In contrast to my approach that assumes Islam’s innate sinlessness or independence from sin and creation with free will, Christianity advocates human innate temptation.7 The issue of freedom in sufism philosophy has been covered with the concept of nafs in the Islamic literature. According to the sufis, the servant is free from servant exhaustion if he completes all servanthood. It follows the servanthood without any trouble and burden. This is the office of the prophets and awliya. Freedom in Sufism is hidden in true servitude to Allah. Freedom from Allah is neither possible nor reasonable. However, only Allah is absolutely free. However, servants also have freedom. According to the sufis, liberation from worldly affairs aims to prepare for full acceptance to Allah. This relationship is not intended to achieve individual freedom. The understanding of freedom in sufism was mostly associated with exquisite finishing by sufis. They described the free person as being able to resist all kinds of evil desires of his nafs and ultimately win and control him. Sufist feels his absolute addiction deeply, and even for this reason he represents the opponent in himself and gains the concept of freedom in the whole space. As the liberty goes towards the spirit, the perceived liberty turns towards infinity.8 In this sense, 72 The Perspective of Psychological Freedom... according to Fakhr al-DÊn Razi, freedom is the instinctive chastity of the nafs; it is virtue, but it is not something with education and training. In short, his body relationship is weaker, his mental relationship is stronger, and the yummy becomes more free. Otherwise, the opposite is true. EflatËn also pointed out this with the following words. “Vile ego is in the horizon and shadow of nature. Virtuous nafs are at the horizon and shadow of the mind.”9 Philosophically, the issue of freedom has been widely discussed. For example, according to Descartes, man is free. This freedom is thanks to God. His grace is a guidance. Absolute freedom is only for God. God gave man a will equivalent to his own will. This is thanks to this; man is free. Human freedom is not absolute, because the human will has been given to him by God and the power of man to use it is limited. A little differently, Sipinoza also combines liberty and necessity, and the real free is Allah. Spinoza is a dark determinist. It is of the opinion that everything that is going on in nature is determined by Allah and they are compulsory. According to the cyphosis, a free person is a person who lives only according to the orders of the mind. The freedom of the human is possible only with the mind. This is to live in accordance with nature. Because the mind doesn’t want anything contrary to nature. Sartre, one of the philosophers, is trying to deny human freedom and the existence of God. According to him, man has absolute freedom. He argues that freedom is formed and developed outside of man by saying, “Human is doomed to absolute freedom”. In this way, an understanding of freedom without bases is unavoidable, dragging man to nihilism and bodilyness. One cannot be absolutely free.10 Unlike Sartre, Kant provides a definition of freedom that entails a law on itself and compliance with it. According to Kant, it is necessary to accept freedom as a postulate in order to explain how man can act morally. Because freedom must exist in order for a person to say I should do it, to set a task for himself, to set moral laws for himself, so that he can command himself. It is necessary to count as a preliminary acceptance in order for man to be able to command moral actions by himself.11 According to another philosopher Malinoski, freedom is to transform mandatory and sufficient conditions into effective actions with the cultural conditions created and to bring the results of these actions with full pleasure. Therefore, it is necessary to have people who are equipped with cultural motives, means, values and gathered together. This means that freedom can only be defined based on the existence of an economic and political order, in short, a cultural order.12 Hamdard Islamicus Vol. XLIII, No. 2 73 Freeing Psychologically There are a number of actions that one has to do to be free psychologically. One must first realize the need for freedom. It should be able to mentally understand and adopt freedom. So it must be put to work, understanding what freedom is. For man, freedom means intelligence and love. Freedom is not to be exploited, to bow to injustice and to be extraordinary virtue. The first requirement is not freedom to pursue the purpose of life. We cannot find purpose without freedom, we cannot question and discover what is the purpose of life, unless we get rid of our own small and insignificant desires, pursuits, ambitions and inability. All these are obstacles to our freedom. If we want to be free, we have to get rid of them. It is inevitable to have some elements for freedom.  The first necessity or first obstacle for freedom is that fear is not only fear of social pressure, but also fear of psychic insecurity. After all, there is no freedom when there is any internal or external coercion. If there is fear or coercion in the individual or social sphere, there cannot be freedom. How can a mind that pursues permanence, security, consciously or unconsciously, can be free? Freedom comes spontaneously, it doesn’t run after it. Freedom is revealed when there is no fear, when there is love in your heart.  Freedom emerges when the mind is no longer looking for trust in the future or just knowledge. A mind that is loaded only with knowledge or who thinks it can do anything with knowledge is not a free mind. Getting stuck with information restricts freedom, it is one of our barriers to freedom. The mind is free only when it can confront life at any moment, when every event, every thought, every experience can confront the reality. But this emergence is impossible when the mind is crippled by the past.  It is not freedom to escape without blocking, limiting or enforcing. A prisoner thrown in prison wants to escape and be free. He thinks just to escape. If I am angry, I feel that I will be free as soon as I can escape anger. If I’m jealous, getting rid of jealousy is not freedom; Escaping is a way of expressing, not freedom. Escaping, getting rid, suppressing is a way of expressing the same thing in another way.  Freedom is not something freedom; is something in itself. It is freedom to love something because of it. There is freedom in painting, 74 The Perspective of Psychological Freedom... not because it gains fame or location, but because you like painting. It is also very easy to do something, not because of the reward or punishment it brings to you, but simply because it is. Loving something because it is the beginning of freedom.13  Freedom is a mental quality and state. We question this quality. Whatever you want without this quality, develop all the virtues in the world on yourself, you cannot be free. Most of us are not free. We are slaves to this or that society, leaders, political parties, groups. So we have lost our human dignity. When we taste, smell, and know this extraordinary thing called freedom, human dignity can be in question. Human dignity emerges with the establishment of freedom. But if we do not know freedom, we become slaves. Isn’t that what’s happening in the world today? In order to get rid of the urge to commit to something, to be free from the desire to commit, one has to question his own way of thinking and talk to himself, with his own heart and desires. It is very difficult to do this. It requires patience, a sophisticated approach requires constant and persistent research into itself, without judgment or acceptance. But you will find that this is not easy and few of us are willing to take it.  You can only discover if you are free. Only if you are free can there be a productive mind; but when the mind is free, there is endless energy, and this is the energy of reality. The defensive process of thought cannot be psychically free unless fully understood. Only when the mind is completely free can one perceive what the truth is.  Free man is virtuous, but a person who tries to be virtuous by following a society-created structure can never know what freedom is. Therefore, he can never be virtuous. Freedom, anger, authority etc. it is not free from things. Freedom is a state of its own. It can only be experienced for itself, not because you are against something.14  Even in the field of science, the mind must be free to discover something. The mind should not be blocked to learn something new. A mind that will understand the truth must really understand the holistic importance of freedom. In this regard, there are two kinds of freedom. First of all, freedom is something, this is a reaction. The second is not a reaction, it is to be free. Freedom from anything is our response based on our choice, character, creation, and various forms of conditioning. We are talking about non-reactive freedom. A free mind is not a slave of anything, of any condition, of any particular order. Although he specializes in a particular job, he is not a slave to it. A mind that frees everything it accumulates in itself, the daily reactions, is a free mind. Hamdard Islamicus Vol. XLIII, No. 2 75  Freedom is the most important thing. Freedom cannot be understood without intelligence, and intelligence can only be revealed when the cause of the problems is fully understood. The mind must be vigilant, careful, extraordinarily sensitive. Thus, every problem can be solved as soon as it occurs. Otherwise, real freedom cannot be mentioned. There is an incomplete, environmental freedom with no value.  A religious person is a free person, free from greed, jealousy, only free. Man has to go beyond civilization and culture. But such a mental is capable of questioning and discovering truth, no other mind can do it. To question, find and discover, of course, freedom is necessary, not at the end. You cannot look, question, enter the unknown without freedom. Freedom is imperative for a mind that wants to question.  You cannot achieve freedom only with your knowledge, prejudices, anxieties and fears. Because these factors shape your perception, push you in other directions, and therefore the actual questioning ends. To really question it, one must be free from the self-centered activity.  Freedom cannot exist without order. These two are interconnected. If you cannot have order, you cannot be in freedom. The two cannot be separated. Freedom is not to do what we want. Man cannot live on his own. For freedom, to be free, it is necessary to be extremely intelligent, sensitive, understanding. But no matter what culture, every person should be absolutely free. Therefore, freedom cannot exist irregularly. Freedom means love, freedom irresponsibility does not mean to do whatever you want to cause so much confusion in the World.15  One of the biggest obstacles to freedom is tasassup. In the place where there is no tolerance, there is tasassup. In Taassupta, there is aggression as well as attachment to an idea. Tolerance, respect for other beliefs and opinions, is the state of not being disturbed by different expressions. Moral freedom means human desire to be good. Freedom is the service of the human and the self-giving. As long as it serves the good, it has freedom. Freedom also means dominating the ego. The distinction between free and slave is here. Free protects the truth in a fundamental way, which is a love-based protection. The slave, on the other hand, protects the truth in a fear-based manner. If we look at freedom from a negative perspective, it is free from pressure factors and the burdens of daily life. Likewise, it is free from evil and the factors that prevent human from reaching the true goal of humanity. It is real freedom to avoid the evils that human beings usually commit. “According to el- Busti, in reality, the free person is the one who frees his ego from serving 76 The Perspective of Psychological Freedom... his passions and weaknesses. He is the person who wants to be taken from him, tries to increase his good qualities and beautiful verbs. The free person represents all the supreme qualities. Yet the slave represents all the bad and vile things in human nature. Free people are pure friends who are earned sincerely and whose friendship is preserved sincerely. Despicable people are expelled and fired, and free behave very friendly. Every free is generous, not every generous is free.16 Accepting freedom, according to William James, is an imperative consequence of innovation, luck, pluralism and a developing world. Freedom has spread to all human life and the world as a whole. They emerge with new goals, values and actions, and shape our world. Therefore, according to James, human life does not occur by coincidence; on the contrary, human life is basically the result of critical thinking and careful use of freedom. The use of liberties also describes a need to draw a moral perspective in sound decision making. James tells us that freedom will help us fight evil by throwing weights on the scales to uncover the moral nature of the universe.17 When an indifferent freedom is attributed to the individual, it is meant that he has the power to do this or that movement alone and independently of his own will. For this reason, the probability arising from the movements shows that the imagined individual’s choice is completely free. For freedom would have been an imaginary force if the body had determined the order and direction of movements by itself. Because the body’s movements are the result of thought.18 There is a sense of religion in the depths of the human fitra. He feels the existence of Allah in various ways in the depths of his fitra. Often times it is not tied to a correct and firm belief system. It is buried in various superstitions and legends. But he always feels in a strong sense that he must have been a creator of this universe in the depths of his own fitra. Regardless of the level of man, the universe influences his emotions at any moment and inspires different emotions as much as he can grasp and comprehend. Each of them shakes it and penetrates deeply. In this, he begins to look for the creator of the universe, which has extremely wide and dazzling beauties. In his research, he sometimes finds the truth and is sometimes mistaken. However, the religion put by Allah is in full agreement with the human fitra. In other words, there is an inseparable link between the belief system of religion put by Allah and the fitra. The task of faith is to reveal the truth that is located in the depths of the human fit and covered by a number of curtains (anger, Hamdard Islamicus Vol. XLIII, No. 2 77 jealousy, arrogance, selfish desires, fame, love of goods, love of authority, pride, etc.).19 So faith frees the soul from the chain of captivity and liberates it. It frees the person from the links that take him away from Allah. Well, what kind of a situation is human? “What makes people different from other living creatures is that the ashes are servants, not their slaves. “We exist only to live it, that is, the divine. We live with the idea of transcendent being that has been placed in us since creation. It is not possible to have an imperfection in the existence of love and in understanding and understanding people, and in respecting him, in doing so without his slave. Our Lord is not that we are addicted, but by heart. There is no need to shrink a person even to glorify him. Allah created the human being as the being who sees the place, the sky and what is between them. According to this, if we talk about how our belief is and how it should be, it is the formation of faith, that is, the sources of belief in the person, which is much more important than what people believe. The believer must have truly realized what he believes in. An incomprehensible belief is sometimes the path that he fears for his fear and interests, sometimes what is believed to approach the divine, and sometimes to various groups. However, being aware of what you really believe is very different from all this. One must be free until the end so that the source of belief can be taken from one’s being.20 A person who cannot realize himself wants to live by establishing domination by eliminating others and eliminating them. The freedom of others does not concern him, especially since he is after his personal desires. People should be able to understand such behavior and be able to react to it. This is the first step to get rid of it. Once you realize it, resistance must come to question their validity and consistency. Therefore, what the individual should do as a primary job is not to do anything he does not want and to say no. He will be free to the extent he can do this and act in accordance with his own fitra. One of the evils that people do against their own freedom is their inability to take a stand against popular cultural elements. Our age is that the capitalist understanding has become an unnamed slave. A new form of slavery has been created with the clothes it wears, the things they eat, drink, watch, listen, live and feel. All the imitations made without thinking fall into this group. Against this, there is an extreme need for awareness. They should be able to think and realize whether they are doing it on their own or environmentally. In this way a real freedom can be mentioned. True freedom is through being a servant of Allah. A freedom that we can define as Abdullah can 78 The Perspective of Psychological Freedom... only bring two world blisses. The person who is the servant of Allah is free because he is freed from the servitude of the ego, the devil, the authority, the money, the desire for power, the pleasures and the lust. It is happy and peaceful because it is free. The blessings in the world have become a tool for him. Erich Fromm’s Understanding of Freedom Erich Fromm stands out with his studies on freedom in the field of Psychology. While describing the concept of freedom psychologically, he says that one’s behavior in society is directly related to his freedom. In other words, in order to understand whether the person is free or not, it is necessary to determine whether he is using his free will when making his decisions. Most of the time, even if we think that the person is free and makes his own decisions, when we think really well, the person is constantly under the control and control of various powers and powers. It is the essence of the subject that we will deal with, capturing true freedom and getting rid of false freedom. In other words, “The difficulty in understanding the extent to which our requests and our thoughts and feelings do not belong to us and to what extent they have been given to us from outside is very closely related to the problems of freedom and freedom. So what does freedom mean for modern man? Our era has been freed from external ties that will prevent him from doing and thinking about what he sees fit. If he knows what he wants, what he thinks and feels, he will be free to act according to his own wishes. But he doesn’t know. In this case, it follows the wishes of anonymous powers and is adapted to a self that does not have it. The more he does this, the weaker he will feel and the more he will have to adapt. Despite wearing a mask of entrepreneurship and optimism, the contemporary man has a great sense of powerlessness, as if he was paralyzed, leaving him to face upcoming disasters.21 According to Fromm, the extent to which the individual is freed from the symbolic umbilical cord that connects him to the outside world, he is free, or lacks freedom to the extent that he cannot escape. But these ties give him a sense of security, a sense of belonging, his roots somewhere. The intent of the bond is called the bonds that connect the child to his mother, the primitive community member, his clan and the nature or the medieval man to the church and the social caste. The more a child grows, the more severed his first ties are, the more the pursuit Hamdard Islamicus Vol. XLIII, No. 2 79 of freedom and independence develops. Human existence and freedom are two inseparable elements from the beginning. Freedom here is not a positive means of doing something, but not doing something is freedom in the sense that new actions do not occur as a result of instinctive indulgences. In addition, if the economic, social and political conditions on which the entire process of individualization of human beings do not form the basis for the realization of an individuality in the meaning mentioned above, and at the same time, people lose those ties that give them security, this makes freedom an unbearable burden. In this case, freedom is indisputable, life is meaningless and undirected. Strong trends emerge, with a world and people who seek to escape this kind of freedom and to get rid of their sense of uncertainty at the expense of their freedom from uncertainty, and to seek refuge in a way or a relationship or submission. This kind of understanding of freedom came to the fore with the birth of various religious or political thoughts that emerged after the reform movements in times when the understanding of capitalist society began to spread in Europe.22 In Fromm’s understanding, Protestantism teachings, one of the Christian sects that emerged as an example of such an understanding, revealed the individual. But it made him more desperate, increased freedom, but created new kinds of addictions. Here we will focus on the dialectical quality of the process of increasing freedom. In modern history of freedom wars, old powers and restrictions were seen as the main target, and the more it was lifted, the more it was naturally accepted that more freedom would be gained. However, although mankind has liberated itself from old enemies of freedom, we cannot adequately grasp the fact that new enemies of different types, which are basically internal factors that do not create external constraints, but which block the way for the full realization of personality freedom, have emerged. We think that freedom of worship constitutes one of the last utterances of freedom. For example, we cannot see properly that there is an idol acquired in the face of church and state powers that do not allow people to worship according to their own conscience, but that the contemporary individual has lost his ability to believe in anything that cannot be proved by natural science methods. In other words, we admire the increase of our freedom to break away from forces outside ourselves, and we close our eyes to inner constraints, difficulties, fears, and tendencies that tend to push the importance of victories against freedom’s traditional enemies into a decision. Therefore, we should consider the problem of freedom as trying to 80 The Perspective of Psychological Freedom... achieve more than the freedoms we have gained only during the development of contemporary history. We think that all that needs to be done is to defend freedom against forces that deny such freedoms. Although it is inevitable to defend each independence that we have engraved with life, we forget that the problem of freedom is not only a qualitative problem but also a quantitative one. We ignore that we should not be content with the obligation to protect and increase traditional freedom, that we have to acquire a new kind of freedom that will give us the ability to realize our own individual, to believe in living with me.23 According to Fromm, the new freedom brought by capitalism to the individual in the last century has increased the influence of Protestantism on the individual through the religious freedom it has already given to it. The individual has become more abstracted alone. In this way he became an “individual”, but he became an individual who was confused and lacked a sense of security. There were no factors that would help defeat the obvious manifestation of this underlying insecurity. First of all, property supported his self. As a person, “He” and his property could not be separated. Just as the person’s body is part of his self, his clothes or the house were also part of his self. The need to own property increased as the confidence in being a person diminished. If the individual did not own or lost it, it meant that he lacked an important part of his own self, and in a sense, neither he nor the others regarded him as a complete individual. Other factors that support his self are dignity and strength. These are partly the direct result of property ownership and partly the success in the areas of competition. This sense of individual isolation and weakness in many people here is not something that the average normal person is aware of. This feeling has been concealed by the success of his business life, with various distractions, such as “having a good time”, “establishing a relationship”, “going left and right” after the security and distractions he found in his private or social relations under the daily course of his activities. But whistling in the dark does not light up. Loneliness remains where there is fear and fright, people cannot stand it forever. They cannot bear the burden of “negative freedom” constantly, unless they progress from negative freedom to positive freedom, they have to sacrifice what is called freedom and try to escape from it. The main way of social escaping today is to submit to a leader like in fascist countries and to settle for compulsory adaptation as seen in our democracy.24 In short, the person has never had complete freedom. On the contrary, he is constantly escaping from freedom and using various escape methods while running. Hamdard Islamicus Vol. XLIII, No. 2 81 Man’s Escape From Freedom In Fromm’s understanding, a person tries to escape from freedom involuntarily. He says that he did these under a number of mechanisms. According to him, these mechanisms are escape mechanisms that occur as a result of the abandoned individual’s lack of security. Once the basic bonds that give security to the individual are broken and the individual starts to see the world outside himself as a completely separate entity, there are two ways in front of the individual who has to overcome the unbearable weakness and loneliness. If it goes the first way, the development that we call positive freedom takes place. The individual can establish a spontaneous relationship with the world through love and work, and a sincere expression of his emotional and mental abilities. Thus, without giving up the independence and integrity of his individual self, he once again becomes a whole with man, nature and himself. The second way ahead is to stay behind, sacrifice freedom and try to overcome loneliness by eliminating the gap between the individual me and the world. Since the phenomenon of separation cannot be reversed, the individual cannot reach the relationship he has established with the world before emerging as an individual if he goes through this second path. In this way, it can never be reunited with the world, this road escaped from an unbearable situation that would make life impossible. There are three kinds of freedom escape mechanism in this care.25 These mechanisms are authoritarian, destructiveness and robot compatibility. Authoritarian According to Fromm, the first mechanism of escape from freedom is to obtain the power that the individual self lacks. In other words, there will be a tendency to abandon the independence of one’s own individual self and fuse his own self with something other than someone else in order to look for new secondary bonds that will replace the lost basic ties. More prominent forms of this mechanism appear in the desire to bow and dominate, or more precisely, masochistic and sadistic demands that exist in varying degrees in normal and neurotic individuals. The most common forms of masochistic tendencies are feelings of inferiority, weakness and individual insignificance. The analysis of people with these emotions shows that they consciously escaped and want to get rid of them, and that a power unconsciously pushes them to feel insufficient or 82 The Perspective of Psychological Freedom... insignificant. Masochistic demands in various ways have one purpose. Getting rid of individual me and losing yourself. In other words, to get rid of the burden of freedom. This aim is evident in the masochistic demands that an individual sees to be overwhelmingly strong, or to seek submission to power. Masochistic efforts are relatively successful in some circumstances. If the individual can find cultural patterns to satisfy these masochistic desires; it will gain some degree of security by seeing itself merged with millions sharing these feelings. But even in these cases, to what extent the neuroscopic manifestations are a solution, the masochistic “solution” is only a solution. The manifestations with neurosis are similar to out-of-mind behavior in a panic state. As a matter of fact, a man whose house is burned stands in the window of his room and asks for help, completely forgetting that nobody will hear him and that there is the possibility of escaping from the stairs, which will remain in flames after a few minutes. He yells because he wants to be rescued, and at that moment this behavior looks like a step on the road to recovery, whereas it will result in a definitive disaster. In requests with neuroses, the person acts with a difficulty that aims to escape from an unbearable situation that is basically negative. The desire or effort only develops in a way to bring about a false solution. In fact, the person reaches the opposite result of what he wants to provide. The neurotic person is a person who has not stopped fighting entirely against submission, but is also loyal to his magical assistant figure, regardless of what form or form he appears. His neurosis should always be understood as a fundamentally unsuccessful step towards resolving the conflict between basic addiction and the pursuit of freedom.26 Destructiveness According to Fromm, the second escape from freedom mechanism is destructiveness and is caused by individual weakness and intolerance of abstraction. I can escape from the feeling that I am weak compared to the world outside of us, by destroying that world. If I manage to destroy it, I will remain alone and isolated. But mine is a wonderful abstraction that doesn’t allow me to be crushed by the invincible power of objects outside of me. The destruction of the world is the last almost desperate attempt I can make to save myself from being flourish by it. Sadism aims to cooperate with the object itself, to integrate it, and destructiveness aims to destroy the object. Sadism, by keeping an individual Hamdard Islamicus Vol. XLIII, No. 2 83 too small, by dominating others; destructiveness tries to strengthen it by eliminating external threats. Destructiveness is the result of unlived life. The individual and social conditions that prepare the suppression of life produce the destructive passion that creates the warehouse, if the phrase that nourishes certain hostile tendencies of ‘against himself or others.27 Robot Compatibility According to Fromm, the third mechanism of escape from freedom is robot compatibility. It is the solution found by the vast majority of normal individuals in contemporary society. The individual ceases to be himself, fully embraces the personality that cultural patterns offer to him, so that he is just like the others and as he expects them. The inconsistency between me and the world, as well as the sense of conscious loneliness and weakness, disappear with it. This mechanism is comparable to some animals changing colors to protect themselves. They are so similar to their environment that they are almost indistinguishable from their environment. The person who gives up his own individual self and becomes a robot becomes the same as millions of other robots around him and no longer feels lonely or worried. But the price he paid is high, he lost his own self. Replacing original acts of thinking, hearing, and desire, with their artificial or counterfeit causes the original self to be replaced by the artificial self. The original self is the forming self that initiates mental activities. Artificial self is actually an intermediary that represents the role that a person is expected to play. However, this tool performs this role under the name of self. This robotizes the individual. The robotization of the individual in the modern society increased the average individual’s helplessness and insecurity. Therefore, it is ready to bow to new powers that allow it to get rid of security and suspicion.28 According to Fromm, how will the individual using these three escape mechanisms be able to get free and how will they find their own self again? It is possible to say the following in response to the question. Once man has been freed from all the bonds that give meaning and confidence to life, he tries to escape from freedom, namely negative freedom, to live because he is desperate in a modern society, devoid of power and trust. Therefore, man is now dragged into a new commitment. This loyalty is different from the first ties that were not completely disconnected from it, although it was under the control of the authority or the social cluster. The escape does not give him the sense of security 84 The Perspective of Psychological Freedom... he has lost. It only helps him to forget to perceive his self as a separate entity. Man chooses to lose his self because he cannot stand alone. So freedom, that is, negative freedom in the sense of being free of something, leads to a new attachment and a captivity. Therefore, a transition from negative freedom to positive freedom is necessary. Positive freedom is achieved by the spontaneous effectiveness of the total personality that has acquired a holistic character. Spontaneous activity is the free activity of the self. The spirit scientifically contains the meaning of sponte, the Latin origin of the word. Sponte means the free will of the person. Here, when we say activity, we do not want to “do something” but to describe the quality of creative activity that can function in the emotional, mental and emotional experiences of the person and also in their will.29 From, One cannot truly achieve the purpose of being sent to this earth without being liberated. The religious understanding of the liberated person is based on the superior values that make people human, such as love, respect and freedom. In order for a person to truly say I believed, his faith must fill him with a force that shakes the foundation of his being. One should experience this shock with his emotion, thought, love and everything. He must be aware of what he believes in, and must see him either directly or with the signs as the palm of his hand. It is only possible to achieve this by capturing freedom. The person who imitates the beliefs of others is not really a believer. The person who tries to shape his belief with the influence of the religious and social communities (sect, congregation, political party, association, etc.) that his family is under the pressure of his environment cannot be seen as a truly believing and truly liberated person. This is but blindly believing to be a slave or slave of others. It is not to be a faithful and free person. Blindly believers are either deceived or pursued people or ideas, as they see that their conscious or unconscious interest is on this path. If he does not find what he is looking for, this time he is chasing another person or idea so that he becomes neither a believer nor a liberated person. Result Freedom is that people live with a measure of what they do and are not under the yoke of any negative element. The morally liberated person achieves a happy and balanced life. In the first part of the study, ways of liberation in psychological perspective are explained. Accordingly, human cannot achieve freedom without acquiring some qualifications. These can be explained as follows. Hamdard Islamicus Vol. XLIII, No. 2 85 • Freedom is revealed when there is no fear, when there is love in your heart. Since fears will prevent love from settling in one’s heart, one cannot be free. We must overcome fears and make room for love. Freedom emerges when the mind is no longer looking for trust in the future or just knowledge. Man cannot be liberated only through knowledge without experience. Individuals who move away from life think that they can achieve everything through reason. Individuals who have not experienced life are left unfinished. In this case, real freedom does not occur. One cannot find his own truth. • It is not freedom to escape without blocking, limiting or enforcing. It is necessary to struggle to be free, to be able to make peace with itself, to realize its diseases and to face it. Freedom is not something freedom; is something in itself. It is freedom to do something only because it is not for the reward or punishment it will bring to man. The examples of worship not only for heaven and hell but only for Allah are examples. Such a person would be freed from the servitude of heaven and hell. It is only Abdullah. • Freedom is a mental quality and state. Not everyone can be liberated because they are addicted to things and have anticipation. The survivors of the ties of the world are free. • As people become free, they begin to produce and do useful things. In this way he begins to perceive the facts. Otherwise, it cannot discover and produce useful things. • Free people are moral. He has made all his good virtues a habit. He has been liberated because he is away from anger, hatred, hate, arrogance, jealousy and all kinds of evil. • Freedom cannot be understood without intelligence. Intelligence can only be revealed when the cause of the problems is fully understood. • A religious person is a free person. religion liberates man. • Freedom cannot exist without order. If you cannot have order, you cannot be in freedom. The two cannot be separated. • Freedom is not what we want. Man cannot live on his own. Freedom requires a thought, love and respect for other creatures. Erich Fromm, the subject of the second part of the study, comes to the fore with his studies on freedom in the field of Psychology. While describing the concept of freedom psychologically, he says that one’s behavior in society is directly related to his freedom. In other words, in order to understand whether the person is free or not, it is necessary to determine whether he / she is using his free will when making his 86 The Perspective of Psychological Freedom... decisions. According to Fromm, the extent to which the individual is freed from the symbolic umbilical cord that connects him to the outside world, he is free, or lacks freedom to the extent that he cannot escape. According to Fromm, the new freedom brought by capitalism to the individual in the last century has increased the influence of Protestantism on the individual through the religious freedom it has already given to it. The individual has become more abstracted alone. In this way he became an “individual”, but he became an individual who was confused and lacked a sense of security. There were no factors that would help defeat the obvious manifestation of this underlying insecurity. First of all, property supported his self. The person has never had complete freedom. On the contrary, he is constantly escaping from freedom and using various escape methods while running. In Fromm’s understanding, a person tries to escape from freedom involuntarily. He also describes them under the name of a number of mechanisms. According to them, these mechanisms are escape mechanisms that are the result of the abstracted individual’s lack of security. These mechanisms are; authoritarian, destructiveness and robot compatibility. According to him, after trying to get rid of all the ties that give meaning and confidence to life, man tries to escape from negative freedom in an abstracted state in contemporary society. Therefore, man is now dragged into a new commitment. The escape does not give him the sense of security he has lost. It only helps him to forget to perceive his self as a separate entity. Man chooses to lose his self because he cannot stand alone. Therefore, freedom, that is, the negative freedom in the sense of being free of something, has led to a new attachment and a captivity. Therefore, a transition from negative freedom to positive freedom is necessary. Positive freedom is achieved by the spontaneous effectiveness of the total personality that has acquired a holistic character. As can be seen, a person who reaches moral perfection can become free. The liberated person is the human who moves away from all ugly behavior. Liberating loves the society, land and history in which it lives; but it doesn’t scream to people because it doesn’t want to show off and propaganda. Because they have no ambitions and passions. The free person is a hero who is not after heroism. Freedom is a human happiness. Free person lives this happiness freely with his behavior. The human love, equipped with the culture of the ages and its own age, lives with all its might. Because he took shape with these. The enviable actions are his actions. A free person is a person who truly believes and fulfills the Hamdard Islamicus Vol. XLIII, No. 2 87 requirements of his faith. Believing free human belief does not harm neither society nor others. He always tries his best to show the best moral behavior. Being conscious of what he believes in what and what fulfills the requirements of his belief, the morally perfected and wandering at the immense peaks of freedom realizes the purpose of creation. Notes and Refrences 1. Franz Rosenthal, Islâmda Özgürlük Kavrami, çev. Vecdi Akyüz, Istanbul: Ayisigy Yayinlari, 2000: s. 25-26. 2. Rosenthal, Islâmda Özgürlük Kavrami, ss.27-31. 3. Bakara, 2/178. 4. Âl-i Imran, 3/35. 5. Buhârî, Rikâk, 10; Cihad, 70; Ibn Mâce, Zühd, 8. 6. Müfit Selim Saruhan, Özgür Ol, Fecr Yayinlari, Ankara: 2019: s.63. 7. Sinasi Gündüz, “Din ve Bireysel Özgürlük Alani”, Tezkire, 9/25 (2002), s. 57. 8. Abdullah Laroui, Islâm ve Özgürlük, çev., Özkan Gözel, Tezkire, 9/10 (1996), s. 224. 9. Rosenthal, Islâmda Özgürlük KavramI, ss. 43-45. 10. Necati Öner, Ýnsan Hürriyeti, Ankara: Vadi Yayinlari, 1995: ss. 35-45. 11. Osman Bilen, “Özgürlük Krizi Üzerine”, Düþünen Siyaset, Ýstanbul: (2001), s. 32. 12. Bilen, Özgürlük Krizi Üzerine, s. 36. 13. Jiddu Krishnamurti, Özgürlük Üzerine, çev., Nurgül Demirdöven, Istanbul: Ayna Yayinlarý, 2001: ss.2 7-39. 14. Krishnamurti, Özgürlük Üzerine, ss. 39-51. 15. Krishnamurti, Özgürlük Üzerine, ss. 51-64. 16. Rosenthal, Islâmda Özgürlük KavramI, ss. 111-113. 17. Celal Türer, “William James’In Pragmatik Felsefesinde Özgürlük-Ahlak Iliþkisi”, Felsefe Dünyasi, 27 (1998), ss. 8790. 18. Ismail Þimþek, “Nurettin Topçu Felsefesinde Özgürlük Düþüncesi”, Uluslararasi Sosyal Araþtýrmalar Dergisi, 10/52 (2017), s. 1381. 19. Muhammed Kutub, Ýnsan Psikolojisi Üzerine Etütler çev., Bekir Karliga, Ýstanbul: Ýþaret Yayýnlarý, 1995: s.2 95. 20 . Kemal Demirel, Tanrinin Onuru Insan, Istanbul: YapIi Kredi Yayinlari, 1999: ss. 17-18. 21. Erich Fromm, Özgürlükten Kaçis, çev., Semsa Yegin, Istanbul: Payel Yayinlari, 1996: ss. 19-24. 22. Fromm, Özgürlükten Kaçis, ss.25-28. 23. Fromm, Özgürlükten Kaçis, ss.30-37. 24. Fromm, Özgürlükten Kaçis, ss.37-46. 25. Fromm, Özgürlükten Kaçis, ss.117-118. 26. Fromm, Özgürlükten Kaçis, ss.117-130. 27. Fromm, Özgürlükten Kaçis, ss.130-133 88 The Perspective of Psychological Freedom... 28. Fromm, Özgürlükten Kaçis, ss.134-155. 29. Fromm, Özgürlükten Kaçis, ss.155-166 Bibliography Bilen, Osman. “Özgürlük Krizi Üzerine”. Düþünen Siyaset. Istanbul: 2001. Demirel, Kemal. Tanrinin Onuru Insan, Istanbul: Yapi Kredi Yayinlari, 1997. Fromm, Erich. Özgürlükten Kaçiþ. Çev. Þemsa Yegin, Istanbul: Payel Yayinlari, 1996. Gündüz, Sinasi. “Din ve Bireysel Özgürlük Alani”. 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