Summary of Erich Fromm's The Forgotten Language

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 We all dream, and yet we act as if nothing strange goes on in our sleep minds. We dream of events that never happened, and sometimes we are the hero or the villain. We ignore the laws of space and time in our dreams, and we think of events and people we haven’t thought of for years.

#2 The fact that our dreams are similar to myths is not surprising, as we are constantly creating stories while we sleep. The similarities between the products of our creativeness and the myths of ancient cultures is surprising, though, as we are not aware of this ability.

#3 Symbolic language is a language that expresses inner experiences, feelings, and thoughts as if they were sensory experiences, events in the outer world. It is a language that has a different logic from the conventional one we speak in the daytime, and it is the same for all cultures.

#4 The study of myths and dreams is still in its infancy. It suffers from several limitations. One is a certain dogmatism and rigidity that has resulted from the claims of various psychoanalytic schools, each of which insists that it has the only true understanding of symbolic language.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: May 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822519312

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Insights on Erich Fromm's The Forgotten Language

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

We all dream, and yet we act as if nothing strange goes on in our sleep minds. We dream of events that never happened, and sometimes we are the hero or the villain. We ignore the laws of space and time in our dreams, and we think of events and people we haven’t thought of for years.

#2

The fact that our dreams are similar to myths is not surprising, as we are constantly creating stories while we sleep. The similarities between the products of our creativeness and the myths of ancient cultures is surprising, though, as we are not aware of this ability.

#3

Symbolic language is a language that expresses inner experiences, feelings, and thoughts as if they were sensory experiences, events in the outer world. It is a language that has a different logic from the conventional one we speak in the daytime, and it is the same for all cultures.

#4

The study of myths and dreams is still in its infancy. It suffers from several limitations. One is a certain dogmatism and rigidity that has resulted from the claims of various psychoanalytic schools, each of which insists that it has the only true understanding of symbolic language.

Insights from Chapter 2

#1

A symbol is a sensory expression of an inner experience, and it is something outside ourselves that represents something inside ourselves. Symbolic language is language in which we express inner experience as if it were a sensory experience.

#2

The conventional symbol is the best known of the three, as we use it in everyday language. The word table stands for the thing table, and there