Erich Fromm's Concept of Social Character and Its Relevance for Clinical Practice

  • Rainer Funk offers another perspective on social character and clinical work. His main thesis is that the analysis of social character, understood as the syndrome of common traits shared by a class or group within society, is as important for understanding any given person as is his or her particular history and idiosyncracies. According to Funk, most clinical work starts and often ends with the analysis of what makes a particular individual unique and focuses almost exclusively on a patient's childhood. This approach runs the risk of overlooking assumptions shared by analyst and analysand alike that may be pathogenic or limiting, but are not recognized as such by virtue of their being shared social and cultural premises. Funk goes further by saying that contemporary social character, described by Fromm as the marketing orientation, has a pervasive alienating influence that corrupts efforts to build loving relationships or develop creative talents. This corrosive influence will infect the therapeutic effort unless the analyst is aware of social influences that have molded his or her own character and has a vision of human growth that is not distorted by this influence. Funk distinguishes self-alienation rooted in authoritarian structures or symbiotic dependency from self-alienation of the marketing orientation. Following Fromm's analysis, he believes that the marketing character's pervasiveness is due to its being part of a >socially patterned defect.< Funk puts on center stage the analysis of alienating social character that affects the analyst and patient alike. Any stance that deviates from this position would be suspect if not collusive in Funk's view.

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Metadaten
Author:Rainer Funk
Parent Title (English):M. Cortina and M. Maccoby (Eds.), A Prophetic Analyst. Erich Fromm's Contribution to Psychoanalysis, Nothvale and London (Jason Aronson Inc.) 1996, pp. 341-360. [Cf. Funk, R., 1994c]
Document Type:Articles
Language:English
Year of first Publication:1996
Release Date:2012/12/13
Format:PDF-file upon request / PDF-Datei auf Anfrage
IdNo:Funk_R_1996
Writings about Erich Fromm (Secondary Literature):Articles / Artikel
Erich Fromm's Library and Erich Fromm Archive:Articles / Artikel
Licence (German):
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