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Nach diesem (eklektisch bleibenden) ideengeschichtlichen Überblick widmet sich das folgende Kapitel der Frage, wie ein humanistischer Produktivitätsbegriff aussehen könnte, der das Subjekt und dessen Selbst- und Weltbezug ins Zentrum stellt. Zu diesem Zweck soll in Kapitel drei auf die Theorien Erich Fromms und Hartmut Rosas zurückgegriffen werden, bevor in Kapitel vier Kriterien für einen humanistischen Produktivitätsbegriff definiert werden. Der Auswahl der Autoren liegt die These zugrunde, dass beide die Frage nach produktiver Selbstwerdung neu stellen und diese an der lebensweltlichen Erfahrung spiegeln.
Humanism has been criticized as a philosophical and political stance from different points of view in recent decades. The paper summarizes four common types of criticism, stemming from political, ethical, technological, and ecological concerns. These criticisms relate back to a preoccupation with the respect for otherness or difference, either toward human or non-human beings. The paper tries to demonstrate that these concerns are also to be found as essential elements in the development of humanism itself, not only among its political and theoretical opponents. It does so with reference to Erich Fromm’s works, where a life-oriented ethics is coupled with a demand for sustained political relatedness to difference, without giving up notions of a radical humanism and the anthropology that accompanies it.
Today, a plague of certitude is spreading within American psychoanalysis. This socially constructed virus is increasingly dominating our unmoderated list serves, appearing in our journals, and slowly seeping into our institutes. Having transcended the objectivism of traditional Freudian analysis, we seem to be revivifying its spirit. Rigorous claims to truth, superior knowledge, and contempt for those not in agreement abound. The life and work of psychoanalyst and sociologist Erich Fromm is offered as an antidote and model for resistance to this plague. He consistently objected to all forms of authoritarianism, from the Right and the Left. As a radical humanist he viewed us all as responsible selves, not mere vessels for instinctual drives or victims of unbearable circumstances. As Paul Roazan said about Fromm: >It still seems to me remarkable how he was willing to stand up for what he believed in. He should be a model of independence and autonomy for us all.<
The current political climate is marked by polarization, which presents new difficulties for psychoanalysis. Erich Fromm, as a Freudian theorist and clinician, is uniquely positioned to address these issues. Fromm is a politically radical thinker who can help psychoanalysis think about society and social injustice beyond the clinical context while avoiding the dangers of excessively orthodox left-wing thinking that risks taking the field away from its core mission. Fromm can help psychoanalysis avoid what we are calling the >Peterson problem,< which is partly the result of provocative and extreme ideas in institutions and psychoanalytic publications that create reputational problems for the field. The >Peterson problem< brings new attention to the political bias of left-liberal authoritarians inside the profession, who focus on changing society rather than healing individuals and neglect audiences outside the liberal university and highly educated classes and thus create space for polarizing figures like psychologist Jordan Peterson to fill the gap. Peterson’s fame and influence serves as a lightning rod for the wider critique of left leaning political and cultural currents in psychoanalysis. Fromm can act as a role model as well as provide the intellectual resources for responding to these challenges.
Erich Fromm offered two key psychoanalytic concepts that bridge the psychic and the social: social unconscious and social character. In his view, these concepts are not only critical for understanding socio-historical phenomena but also ought to inform psychoanalytic clinical practice such that it might resist unconsciously encouraging patients to adapt to inequitable social conditions. This essay pays tribute to Fromm’s thinking while elaborating some of the differences between Fromm’s understanding of social unconscious/social character and my own. I argue that >social unconscious< does not quite capture the dynamic and conflictual nature of unconscious process, the ongoing conflict that social demands for conformity create in subject formation. To address that conflict, I propose the bridging concept of normative unconscious processes, processes that are always in conflict with counter-normative resistances. Points of both conflict and dissociation are precisely where analysts can challenge the psychic effects of oppressive social norms. Further, while agreeing with Fromm that analyzing social character ought to be central to clinical work, I argue that various and overlapping systemic oppressions – e.g. racism, heterosexism, classism – create, in any given society, multiple social characters and not just one dominant type. In agreement with Fromm’s argument that analysts themselves need to reckon with their own social character, I stress the importance for all of us to be as aware as possible of our own identity investments and social locations within unequal and overlapping power hierarchies.
Grenzbewusstsein – zwischen Abgrenzung und EntgrenzungDramatische, Lengerich (Pabst) 2024, 182 pp.
(2024)
Dramatische oder schleichende Grenzveränderungen prägen unsere Zeit - als Verletzungen, Risiken, Herausforderungen, Chancen und nicht zuletzt in der Dimension von Spiritualität. Autorinnen und Autoren aus humanwissenschaft-lichen Disziplinen berichten aus sensiblen Grenzregionen Erfahrungen und Re-flexionen: Kirche, Beruf, Jugendhilfe, Pädagogik, Psychotherapie, Sexualität, Sadomasochismus, Macht. Die Essays, empirisch fundiert, folgen der Ambiguität der Themen und verzichten auf kurzschlüssige Konventionen.
>I shall not hate.< This sentence ends the production at the Staatsschauspiel Dresden about Izzeldin Abuelaish’s biography, who lost three of his daughters in the violent conflict between Israel and Palestine. This particular attitude within a crisis situation becomes the starting point and framework of a teaching unit in which the students deal with the following questions: What is hate? Is it possible not to hate? How can hate be classified in the field of tension between the instinctual nature of human beings and a conscious attitude? How are crises and loss of orientation related to hate? Can a society be sick? How are Izzeldin’s attitude and Fromm’s theory of a productive character orientation connected and how is Izzeldin’s or Fromm’s offer of orientation to be judged against the background of crises and conflicts in the students’ lifeworld? Through a visit to a performance as well as theatre pedagogical forms of work, an access to this complex thematic field will be created.
The Psychology of Collective Narcissism is a ground-breaking text that presents a new theory of collective narcissism, a belief that exaggerated greatness of one’s own group should be but is not sufficiently appreciated by others. The book presents this concept against the background of social identity theory and research. It explores antecedent as well as social and political consequences of collective narcissism. The author discusses how this burgeoning theory and research can help to elucidate a wide range of psychological dynamics involved in pressing societal issues, such as the declining appeal of democracy, increasing populism, decreasing social solidarity, increasing societal polarization and prejudice, intergroup hostility and political violence, social inequality, and fake news and belief in conspiracy theories. Also referring to societal problems exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, this highly topical work explores socially shared beliefs as risk factors when predicting responses to crises and highlights conditions in which collective narcissism can be expected. The author also reviews research on interventions reducing the link between collective narcissism, prejudice, and retaliatory intergroup hostility focusing on her recent research on mindfulness. This is a valuable read for academics and students in psychology and the social sciences, those interested in societal processes as well as professionals dealing with the impact of collective narcissism.