In the book To Have or to Be? E. Fromm creates two different states of personality: to have and to be. People belonging to “the have mode” concentrate on material gains and material benefits while “to be mode” people concentrate on creative and meaningful work. The everyday experiences are constructed by culture and community as much as they are by particular styles of parenting. By accepting the idea of a socially constructed reality, one also acknowledges that our culture inhibits and distorts the emotional processing of reality. Essentially, it allows conditions that foster the emotionally invalidating exchange described above to thrive.
he cultural conditions that contribute to our construction of reality are the same conditions that reinforce our sense of alienation and estrangement. As Erik Fromm has emphasized, this process transforms the ethos of the culture, community, and individual from a mode of being to one of having. “The have mode” underlines that a person values power and possession, he/she can be greedy and violent while the “to be” person is loving and sympathetic. The Being makes associations based on what the Having can acquire from such associations. Manipulation of other Selves for purposes of self-profit and gain, whether the gain is emotional (a person needed to be loved), monetary (a person can make a lot of money from this friendship) or personal advancement (career will benefit from this affair) becomes the raison d’être of the survival-oriented situational Self.