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Erich Fromm's scientific contributions were based on his theory of social character and the methods he developed to test it. Social character describes the deep-rooted emotional attitudes shared by people raised in the same culture. Family, schooling, work, and play shape the social character so that people want to do what they need to do to prosper economically and socially in a particular culture. Fromm's first study of German employees and workers before the rise of Hitler showed that despite subscribing to a democratic ideology the majority would support whoever gained power. The second study of Mexican peasant villagers provided statistically significant results demonstrating that social character explained both productivity and psychopathology. These findings were reinforced by subsequent studies. The nucleus of social character is the psychoanalytic character types discovered by Freud and modified by Fromm. This theory makes use of knowledge from economics, sociology, anthropology, and history. Maccoby has continued to show the relevance of the concept of social character in understanding leadership and motivation at work.
The Leaders We Need And What Makes Us Follow, Boston (Harvard Business School Press) 2007, 249 p.
(2007)
To fully develop a science of social character, three aspects of Fromm's social character theory need to be clarified. The first has to do with the difference between individual and social character. Fromm expanded on Freud's description of normal types: erotic (receptive), obsessive (hoarding) and narcissistic (exploitative). Besides the concept of social character, Fromm made three major contributions to the psychoanalytic theory of character: the concept of productiveness, sociopolitical modes of relationship, and the marketing character. Social character is an interac-tion between internalized culture (values) and individual character. This interaction results in variations in social character and helps explain the Secon issue, how so-cial character changes. The concept of social selection explains how narcissistic en-trepreneurs restructure social institutions to shape a new social character. The third issue concerns how social character develops throughout the life cycle. Fromm never offered a developmental theory. Erik Erikson's model of development fit the social character of America at the mid-century. A revision of this model provides a useful construct for understanding changes in the kind of problems being brought to psychoanalysis at the start of the 21st century and also changes in psychoanalytic practice.