Fromm’s concept of the human condition and the existential dichotomies are described first; this is followed by Fromm’s scheme of needs, including positive and negative responses; finally, Fromm need’s scheme is compared with Maslow’s need scheme and Maccoby’s drive-values scheme. In the three cases a critical approach is taken which tries to identify weaknesses, omissions and contradictions in Fromm’s thought.
Each psychoanalytic theory influences the clinician’s focus. This paper examines the impact of Erich Fromm’s writing on the analyst’s attention to the material in sessions. Briefly, Fromm’s work highlights the importance of the analyst’s passion, courage, pursuit of truth, capacity to bear uncertainty and suffering, and dedication to helping people embrace their freedom and realize their full potential. Fromm has inspired generations of clinicians to become politically active citizens, maintain enlivening curiosity, and kindle the life force in themselves and those they treat. What role does theory play in the moment-by-moment behavior of the analyst in a session? I first address the general question of my view of the role of theory in clinical work. Then I turn to the more specific issue of Fromm’s influence.
The very existence of truth, let alone its worth, is currently under attack from many quarters. In the wider culture, disinformation and other forms of misrepresenting the truth spread far and wide, as information conduits proliferate. This paper suggests some reasons for the >anti-truth< trend. Mainstream media have played a role, as have theoreticians from fields as diverse as philosophy, psychoanalysis, science, and literary criticism. >Anti-truth< trends are having a serious impact on psychological treatment, affecting its content and the conception of its goals. This paper suggests some problematic outcomes of this phenomenon for practitioners and patients in various forms of psychotherapy.
In this passionate volume, Sandra Buechler introduces Erich Fromm's groundbreaking contributions to psychoanalysis, sociology, philosophy, political action, and social criticism. Buechler explores how Fromm's thinking and interdisciplinary vision are able to frame discussions of dilemmas in contemporary society. She offers a comprehensive biography of Fromm, before delving into his role as analyst, author, activist, sociologist and philosopher. From her own experience as a psychoanalyst, and from the testimony of Fromm's many ardent followers, Buechler illuminates Fromm's capacity to inspire. She considers how Fromm's writing equips students, beginning clinicians and more experienced professionals to understand what can give meaning to their efforts on behalf of troubled individuals, their riven communities, and the wider world. Assuming no prior knowledge of Fromm's work, this books offers students in clinical and social psychology, sociology, and philosophy a vital insight into his theoretical contributions. It will also be of interest to psychoanalysts, psychologists and social workers.
Erich Fromm is not generally associated with policy positions and politics. Yet, Fromm was an early proponent of guaranteed income as an important practical entitlement necessary if greater human freedoms were to be realized. The article traces the development of the idea of basic (or guaranteed income) in US social movement history going back to the 1960s and including the writings of Erich Fromm on this topic. It argues that the concept of guaranteed income flows easily from, and is consonant with, Fromm’s humanistic philosophy overall. Four reasons are offered, including those that are politically, ethically and pragmatically oriented, as to why providing basic income to all citizens has major advantages over the kind of economic precarity and anxieties that many people currently experience. Lastly, after making a multi-dimensional case for guaranteed income, the article responds to a common objection – namely, if basic income became universally available, people would not wish to work. Quite to the contrary, and as empirical experiments have shown, Fromm’s ideas suggest that guaranteed income would encourage people to work with increased commitment and passion and that more positive than negative consequences would ensue from the concept becoming a widespread and much more generally accepted public policy.
This article reviews Fromm’s view of human nature that is the basis for his existential humanism. Fromm’s core idea was that the combination of minimal instinctual endowment, enormous expansion of our neocortex, and being born in a helpless state created a set of existential contradictions or dichotomies. The main contradiction or dichotomy is being part of nature yet transcending it by being aware of our mortality. Not being able to go back to the previous “harmony” with nature, humans must develop their capacity for reason, symbolic capacities, imagination and human solidarity or regress to symbiotic and incestuous ties. I make two main arguments. I show that instead of losing our instincts, humans retain three social instincts that we share with other social species, namely attachment instincts (and forming attachment bonds), affiliation to groups (group instinct) and sexual instincts. I show how these three instincts have been significantly transformed in relation to our great ape relatives making us a more flexible, adaptive, cooperative and ultrasocial species. Second I describe a new evolutionary paradigm in which genes and culture coevolve and influence each other, also known as the dual inheritance model. The main effect of this dual inheritance is that cultures, like genes, transmit information and knowledge from one generation to the next. The cumulative effect of cultural knowledge transmitted through thousands of generations is that we develop new modes of production, new technologies, art forms, and new cultural rituals and practices. To which we must adapt. This new view of what made us human puts Fromm’s view of human nature and his radical humanism on a stronger sociobiological foundation. I close by making the argument that our group instinct is both our greatest strength and greatest weakness, making us a species with a >genius for good and evil<.
Erich Fromm’s book >The Sane Society< was published in 1955, the second year of President’s Eisenhower’s administration, but had a profound impact on the ideas and agendas of social activists during the 60s and 70s, including this author. Its central theses were that the middle-class prosperity characteristic of that era masked a >pathology of normalcy,< and that capitalism transforms active citizens into passive consumers by compelling people to fill their material needs in ways that are at variance with their existential or human needs. The result is a dramatic diminution of their critical faculties, an atrophy of conscience, and the proliferation of a >marketing character,< a kind of alienated, hedonistic lifestyle whose emptiness is palliated by the consumption of ever larger quantities of consumer goods. Fromm’s analysis still rings true in some respects, but the middle-class prosperity and bland uniformity of opinion he critiqued began to wane in the late 1970s, gradually giving way to sharp extremes of poverty and wealth. The resulting political polarization has now reached a critical point, where the future of American democracy – or what little is left of it – is now in peril. So, as we approach 2025, Fromm’s analysis of America in the mid-20th century must be updated and modified to fit the contours of contemporary social realities. In so doing, however, we discover that American society is even more alienated, more atomized and fragile than it was in Fromm’s day.