Freedom and courage are the driving forces and great achievements in the process of individuation.

Freedom, as described by the German social psychologist and humanist philosopher Erich Fromm, is the ultimate goal in the process of individuation. Fromm's concept of freedom is close to David Shapiro's concept of autonomy — to be an independent entity in the world. It includes the ability to manifest what makes you unique, without resorting to either self-centeredness or selflessness. Murray Bowen's concept of differentiation of the Self also implies this idea and the ideal of individuation.

When a person lacks psychological autonomy in the organization of his life, he most likely feels insecure and insignificant and doubts the meaning of life. Autonomy in Kant's ethics requires making decisions and acting in accordance with moral duty, relying not only on desires.

John Stuart Mill opposed the philosophers of the Enlightenment, asserting the individuality of desires as a fundamental factor of autonomy and character: A person whose desires and motives are his own — an expression of his individual nature, as it was developed and changed by his culture — has character. He whose desires and motives are not his own has no character.

When a person lacks such freedom, whether it is lack of independence in decision-making, choice of actions or lack of a genuine sense of their own unique desires, there is a tendency to uncontrolled or reactive, rather than independent functioning.

Freedom Anxiety

The nineteenth-century philosopher Søren Kierkegaard described psychological freedom as dizzying anxiety; more precisely, he called anxiety dizziness from freedom.

In the book The Concept of Fear «1844» Kierkegaard reflects: Anxiety can be compared to dizziness. Anyone whose gaze accidentally falls into a yawning abyss will feel dizzy. What is the reason for this? It is as much embedded in his own gaze as in the abyss itself, because he might not have looked down.

He drew an analogy with a cliff: the horror of the fact that you can fall and fall to your death is combined with the simultaneous thrill of knowing that you can rush — fear and horror, respectively. The worst that can happen is terrifying, and freedom of choice, meanwhile, can be paralyzing in its own way.

Freedom of choice creates anxiety. Any choice can be fraught with horror. Yielding to uncontrolled desire or simply agreeing to imposed expectations leads away from the tension that authenticity requires, and thus is a path to despair.

Kierkegaard was thinking: Freedom collapses in this vertigo. Psychology cannot go further, and does not want to. At the same moment, everything suddenly changes, and when freedom rises again, she sees that she is guilty. Between these two points lies a leap that no science has explained and cannot explain. The one who becomes guilty of fear becomes as ambiguously guilty as possible....

Not everyone is ready to endure the possibilities of freedom. Some find themselves on the path of self-sabotage, perhaps not knowing how to cope with the dialectical anxieties of free existence.

When this happens, as Fromm described, a person tries to escape from freedom. Fromm proposed three mental mechanisms that, in his opinion, a person can use to escape from the negative aspects of freedom and restore lost security: authoritarianism, destructiveness and automatic conformity. These escape mechanisms bring security at a high price.

1. Sadism is an authoritarian character

Sadists dominate others, trying to get in a surrogate what they lack in themselves and in life: control. And the cruelty of sadists also arises from dependence on the psychophysiological experience of power in relationships. Erich Fromm described sadistic behavior as an experience of power that transforms helplessness into an experience of omnipotence. Fromm associated this behavior with what he called an authoritarian character— the embodiment of an individual who... tyrannizes those below him and obeys... influential superiors.

2. Masochism is self — destructive

Masochism, on the other hand, is expressed, according to Shapiro, in a willingness to accept suffering in order to convey one's point of view, support a principle or preserve self-respect. The masochistic impulse arises when a person tries to control himself with the help of harmful forms of complacency. Eating disorders, cuts, and substance abuse are indicative of a masochistic style of coping with stress and solving emerging problems, and often of ingrained emotional dominance or avoidance in the family system.

Both sadism and masochism are varieties of rigid characters. Each of them implies a forced expression of will, driven by selfishness and shame.

3. Automatic conformity

Hypnotic, self-fulfilling biases and incessantly recurring interpersonal habits are among the most difficult problems we face when embodying autonomy. They originate in a dark psychological storeroom or, as Carl Jung called it, in a shadow containing rejected memories and tendencies that retain their strength due to our sublimation of them. Shadow fragments of the I cause vigilant protection, and protection often becomes a projection.

We live with a constant risk of projecting emotionally loaded, anxiety-filled worries, images and symbols on the people around us and the world. To the extent that we act on their whim, we turn out to be automatic mechanisms that perform programmed reactions.

Logotherapist Viktor Frankl said: There is a space between the stimulus and the reaction. In this space lies our power to choose a reaction. In our reaction lies our growth and our freedom.

Courage

Life is anxiety. This is freedom, but at the same time responsibility, a number of decisions under restrictions, one negates the other. The question is not how to get rid of staggering legs on the dance floor. This comes from a false idea of courage, that is, freedom from fear, and not about acting in spite of it.

In the end, Kierkegaard advocated a leap, a superrational recognition that moving forward in life is primarily a function of will and trust. He described a leap in spite of, and even driven by, unsolvable tension and growing anxiety — taking risks that lead to an unexpected path, healing beyond ourselves, and greater wholeness, as well as a kind of freedom.

To summarize

Freedom of choice fills our lives with meaning and increases well-being, but it can also generate anxiety.

Sometimes people react to this in self-caring ways: they try to control others, blindly accept suffering or automatically submit to circumstances.

True freedom requires great courage, a kind of leap of faith.