--- - |2 Abstract Realist scholars are increasingly turning their attention to Pierre Bourdieu's concept of habitus or dispositions as a way of theorizing thought and behaviour. In this article, the author offers a contribution, based on Erich Fromm's social psychology, to the realist theory of habitus. The author argues that while Bourdieu and Fromm both see the quest for meaning as the source of subjectivity in social life, Fromm goes further than Bourdieu in analysing the psychodynamic consequences of the acquisition of habitus. Fromm provides additional tools to understand the properties of habitus that emerge from its interaction with primary psychological needs. Principally, Fromm's work reveals an undertheorized set of emergent properties of habitus. - Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, EarlyView.