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The vacuum of kidnapping
(2019)
All forms of kidnapping are presented in this paper, as is their psychodynamic underpinning affecting human behavior: abduction with or without ransom, political kidnapping, kidnapping by well-organized criminal groups, human trafficking and governmental kidnapping, which all highlight the important crises in the major decline in ethics and values. Apathy, fear, and insecurity lead to an increase in dependencies on substances, psychosomatic problems, and depression, which result from the suffering of this >vacuum of kidnapping.< The author wonders, >Has right to live in peace been kidnapped?<
This article analyzes the issues of alienation in the philosophy of Erich Fromm. The development of capitalism has changed the political, economic, and spiritual relationships in the society, and depression, misery, helplessness and solidarity are increasing in people. The philosopher has shown the causes of separation and alienation from the society and ways to get rid of it.
Fromm was one of the first psychoanalysts to deal with the crisis of civilization. His ideas about human nature, the social character and the social unconscious, the pathology of normalcy and the ideal of productivity are important. Fromm criticizes industrialism for its unrealizable promises of freedom and happiness, which correspond to an ideology of growth and progress. The satisfaction of >false< needs and desires does not lead to human well-being.
Trauma is the subject of increasing attention in contemporary psychoanalysis. Its complexities will be explored in a clinical case, emphasizing traumatic experience and unconscious conflict across developmental phases. The patient, a young adult white man began analysis complaining of anxiety and depression. Born to adolescent parents, he had experienced infantile stress and childhood traumatic illness. Needy, greedy, and dependent, he was gratified by the frequency and intimacy of psychoanalysis. Genetic interpretation and reconstruction were particularly important in the analytic process. Analytic progress with attenuation of unconscious conflict and developmental transformation proved enduring after termination.
Review Jonathan Sklar: Dark times. Psychoanalytic perspectives on politics, history and mourning
(2019)
A client who wants his story to be made into a case history presents for psychoanalysis. An artist all his adult life, he expresses his sexual trauma through his art. His more recent artistic output is in the form of avant-garde video montages. The analysis stalls, becalmed by a failure to understand a circumcision event, a punishment for sexual expression. If Ferenczi and the Budapest school model learning from therapeutic errors, freedom of thought, sincerity, and experimentation, then this case history illustrates those. Real sexual trauma and a real circumcision event are entangled with fantasy and art in attempts to come to terms with them. The circumcision event was better understood with multiple readings of Carlo Bonomi’s work, which became part of the analysis. The wider Ferenczi community also became part of the story of the analysis, and in a kind of mutuality the analysis wants to make a contribution to that body of knowledge.
It can be (and has been) claimed that one of the central thematic concerns in Erich Fromm’s immense body of critical work is the exposition of a new >radical< humanist ethic, based upon the normative foundations of human solidarity/relatedness and love. The role of community in this ethic is vital, as Fromm argues for the existence of an intrinsically human need for belonging and communion. According to Fromm, the breakdown of traditional societies in modernity and the adoption of strong anti-traditionalist paradigms in both liberalism and Marxism has paradoxically led to the desire in the contemporary individual to >escape< this freedom, too often resulting in an uncritical adoption of what Eric Hobsbawm calls >invented traditions< in order to rediscover a shared sense of humankind. This article therefore contends that 1) Fromm advocates a form of >critical communitarianism<; and 2) that critical communitarianism can provide a strong foundation for an ethical confrontation with neoliberal modernity, and thereby a reconsidered form of community through human solidarity.
Relational and field theories have much in common, despite divergent foundations. In this paper, several areas of divergence are selected, including the structure of the field as a relational matrix or as an unconscious joint fantasy of the couple; the fate and form of insight; and the nature of the unconscious as relational or ubiquitous. Differences in cognitive and attentional sets are identified and linked to different modes of insight. Using a clinical vignette, these divergences will be illustrated with an attempt to compare and contrast the two approaches through a discussion of how each lens highlights, expands, or forecloses different features of the analytic process. A mode of conceiving the unconscious as unstructured and multiple in potential is offered to reconcile divergent assumptions in therapeutic action. A consideration of Sandor Ferenczi’s clinical emphasis on relaxed technique, elasticity, and especially mutuality suggests that he would have been a field theorist were he among us today.
[...] On this basis, we determined that 231 human genes under study are subject to natural selection against under expression (significance p < 0.0005), which equally supports the human tendencies in domination and subordination such as the norm of a reaction (plasticity) of the human social hierarchy. These findings explain vertical transmission of domination and subordination traits previously observed in rodent models. Thus, the results of this study equally support both sides of the century-old unsettled scientific debate on whether both aggressiveness and the social hierarchy among humans are inherited (as suggested by Freud and Lorenz) or are due to non-genetic social education, when the children are influenced by older individuals across generations (as proposed by Berkowitz and Fromm).
The work of Erich Fromm is often overlooked in contemporary feminist thought. Yet important areas of relevance—his critiques of symbiotic love and sadomasochism, advocacy of mutual recognition, and objections to patriarchal presumptions in Freud’s work—render Fromm’s thought useful for feminists. Disadvantages adhere in Fromm’s ideas too, including sexist language and biologically-tinged maternalism. However, this paper reinterprets these problems to advocate for rediscovering both Fromm’s feminist and humanist aspirations.
The infant observation presented in this paper was conducted weekly for two years. Through an extensive use of clinical vignettes and personal and theoretical considerations, this article aims to highlight that both harmonies and pauses, as well as interruptions and dissonances, can be present in early interactive exchanges, forming the fabric of a relational piece of music that is not always as harmonious as might be desirable. The role of the father in moderating problematic interactions between the mother and her child is also examined.
The author explores the relationship between Sándor Ferenczi and Sigmund Freud in the light of their correspondence. This allows us to see how Freud was able to offer and create for Ferenczi a >professional and personal home< that enabled the latter to find a much more meaningful and creative contact with himself. According to the author, this experience played an important role in Ferenczi’s later readiness to offer to and create with his patients a similar >psychoanalytic home.< As Freud was not able to share such clinical research work with Ferenczi, a conflict developed between them whose nature has occupied psychoanalysts ever since, and whose seeds can be found in the 1246 letters that they exchanged between January 1908 and May 1933. From this point of view, Ferenczi’s Clinical diary (written in 1932 and published only in 1985) can be seen as the continuation of the dialogue they had entertained for so many years, as well as Ferenczi’s attempt not to give up the “professional and personal home” that they had created together.
The fictional protagonist of the Lionel Shriver novel, >We need to talk about Kevin<, massacred nine classmates, his father and his sister with a bow and arrow. He murdered them just before he turned 16, to avoid being prosecuted as an adult. He spared the life of his mother, a kindred spirit, cold, arrogant, who would recognize the depth of his hatred and nihilism. Kevin's maternal grandfather was born in a concentration camp during the Armenian genocide. His mother, Eva, a tough, independent woman, loathed being pregnant and the process of giving birth. Kevin was a demanding baby and then a cruel child. Eva kept telling her husband that she found Kevin's malignity troubling, but he only wanted to see the charming, vulnerable side of the boy. Was Kevin born a sociopath or did he become one due to his experiences in utero and beyond? In this paper, I elucidate how temperamental features, inadequate parenting, transgenerational trauma, and oppressive gender relations created the perfect storm from which Kevin's personality developed. Finally, I will discuss how Eva and Kevin struggled to repair their relationship after the murders, and consider whether forgiveness and reconciliation are even possible after such a heinous act.
Erich Fromm was central to the Frankfurt Institute of Social Research under the direction of Max Horkheimer, but the works of each author, while handling at times similar issues, took different paths. The article’s aim is to analyze how Horkheimer’s anthropology, which would be of importance in Dialectic of Enlightenment, was built as the author embodied in his essays elements of Fromm’s social psychology, albeit overcoming some of its limitations, as well as suggesting new potentials of critique.
The aim of this paper is to examine post-truth politics using Erich Fromm’s theory of narcissism and showing a route towards a sane society in Fromm’s sense. Post-truth situations are generated by negative synergistic effects between narcissistic psychological tendencies and social media. Both of them have so-called filter bubble effects which segregate people from inner and outer reality. The process of integrating an unknown experience or reality into the self produces a new experience. That is a definition of Fromm’s love and the way to overcome narcissism.
Between Thanatos and Eros: Erich Fromm and the psychoanalysis of social networking technology use
(2019)
Social networking technologies have become a ubiquitous framework for social interaction, serving to organise much of the individual’s social life. Such technological structuring affects not merely the individual’s psyche (as a psycho- technics), it also affects broader aspects of society (as a socio-technics). While social networking technologies may serve to transform society in positive ways, such technologies also have the potential to significantly encroach upon and (re) construct individual and cultural meaning in ways that must be investigated. Erich Fromm, who psychoanalytically describes humans as a product of their society and the economic systems within that society, may provide insight into the influence of social networking technologies in contemporary society. He sees the relationship between the individual and society as being in a constant state of dynamic change. Utilising Fromm’s psycho-societal insight, social networking technologies are shown to conflate and confuse the relation between Thanatos and Eros – the Thanatos of a lifeless and consumerist agenda-filled mechanisation, and the Eros associated with social engagement. Thanatos and Eros are tied together via social networking technologies. This results in, firstly, social networking technologies functioning predominantly to further capitalist agendas through the monetisation of these technologies – particularly in terms of linking commodity fetishism and the foundational social drive of the individual. Secondly, social networking technologies mechanise human action according to predictable behavioural paths through the use of these technologies, especially in terms of how socialisation is possible via these technologies (shaping how platonic and romantic relationships may take place in the contemporary world). Such a mechanisation of interpersonal engagement contrasts with Erich Fromm’s assertion that interpersonal relations (vis-à-vis love) are not “mere emotion”, but rather represent an interpersonal creative capacity and interplay. Fromm’s psycho-societal insights will show how contemporary individuals may take independent and responsible rational action to establish accountable and psychologically beneficial ways of engaging with others through social networking technologies.
In this paper I compare Fromm’s account of social transformation with that of Alain Touraine. I argue that although there are many points of connection between Fromm’s account of >the art of living< and Alain Touraine’s account of the >Politics of the Subject,< Fromm ultimately goes beyond Touraine at many points, offering a more detailed explanatory account of how individual transformation is related to the larger, but related, goal of social transformation. I conclude that Fromm’s often overlooked account of the mechanics of individual change ought to be returned to in the process of reinvigorating social theory and practice.
Fromm's Contribution to the Analysis and Critique of the Ongoing Rise of Right-Wing Movements
(2019)
One of the most important political changes in Europe, the USA and beyond is the growth of nationalistic parties and authoritarian structures within states. This contribution aims to demonstrate how a Frommian perspective on basic psychological needs, asynchronicity and alienation could contribute to a social-psychological understanding of nationalistic trends. At the end of the paper, we present some conclusions drawn from this social-psychological point of view concerning the development of a sane society.
The Many Prisons of Women Predestined to Commit a Crime. Sadomasochism as a Female Survival Strategy
(2019)
This is an approach to Mexican female delinquency from a Frommian sadomasochism and a non-punitive criminal justice perspective, based on autobiographical life stories written by women confined in Mexican prisons. Those women have always lived in a society which assaults them in a thousand ways and treats them with inequity; whatever their crime, they are not judged with a gender perspective. Almost all are poor, many of them are mothers forced to abandon their children to serve their sentence behind bars in despicable conditions, accused of crimes that many times they commit induced by their partners' behavior against them.
Erich Fromm’s life during the 1930s, his confrontation with Nazism and his family’s experience of the Holocaust is explored. The impact of this period on his writing, especially Escape from Freedom is considered. The current political situation, in which anti-Semitism has increased and minorities are persecuted makes the examination of Fromm’s experience of persecution and exile especially relevant. The author uses his own German family history and his discovery of his grandfather’s Nazi past to examine the importance of Fromm’s analysis of authoritarian tendencies in Germany in the early 1930s.
Fromm’s necrophilous character is evident in state and governmentally run psychiatric hospitals in the United States. Rigid over-reliance on behavioral interventions can be seen as defensive posturing against the terror of uncertainty when confronted with psychosis. Clinical vignettes with institutionalized schizophrenic adults are presented. A plea is made for clinicians to work from a position of respect and love to fight the dehumanization that can result when a psychoanalytic mindset is abandoned.
Manabendra Nath Roy (1887-1954) was the founder of the Communist Parties of Mexico and India and a socialist-humanist philosopher. In the Western world, his works are today widely ignored and forgotten. This article introduces some philosophical aspects of Roy’s thought. It engages with foundations of his theory and shows its relevance for the study of communication, culture, technology, the human being, fascism, and nationalism. Frankfurt School thinkers such as Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, and Erich Fromm were interested in similar topics to Roy. This article also compares the approach of Roy and the Frankfurt School. It shows parallels between Roy and the first generation of the Frankfurt School with respect to themes such as the dialectic of technology and society, the dialectic of the Enlightenment, fascism, nationalism, and authoritarianism. In the age of new nationalisms and authoritarian capitalism, global environmental crises, capitalist crisis, and the digital crisis, socialist-humanist theories such as M. N. Roy’s can inspire struggles for a humanist and socialist society as antidotes to the acceleration and deepening of the three crises.
In my overview of the development of Fromm's theories, I show, first of all, how Fromm and his theory of relatedness and social character aimed to understand the individual and society in a different way from what was usual at that time. Secondly, I expound how relevant the often ignored social psychoanalytical approach is for current thinking in terms of relatedness, and how open his approach is to insights stemming from human biology.
Introduction
(2019)
Theodor W. Adorno's mature thought can be characterized by the attempt to articulate what he calls a >new categorical imperative after Auschwitz.< By this, Adorno means that theory and praxis must be organized in such a way that the Holocaust does not repeat itself. This article argues that Sándor Ferenczi’s metapsychology is key to understanding Adorno’s attempt to rethink the nature of precisely such a new categorical imperative. One of the key themes of Adorno’s entire corpus is the problem of the “identification with the aggressor” – an idea that originates with Ferenzci rather than, as is commonly thought, Anna Freud. The Ferenczian dimension of Adorno’s thinking becomes particularly clear in Adorno’s thoughts on the question of freedom. In this context, Adorno engages in a psychoanalytically informed critique of the philosophy of freedom and a speculative philosophical critique of psychoanalysis. The fashioning of a >new categorical imperative< after Auschwitz entails a form of education directed towards a new form of Mündigkeit, one oriented towards contradiction, resistance, and a steadfast refusal to >identify with the aggressor.<
Unresolved loss and unresolved trauma in adult mothers, and the commonly disorganized attachment pattern developed by their infants, have been repeatedly reported in longitudinal research literature as a crucial correlate or precedent of severe pathology. We describe and illustrate how unresolved loss and unresolved trauma are manifested in verbatim-transcribed language and how they are to be detected, so that psychoanalysts and clinicians in general are able to distinguish them and understand how such >states of mind< evidence the process of fragmentation they involve. We follow each example with a resolved transcript so it can be contrasted with a nonresolved case. We then describe excerpts of a taped >disorganized infant< – an example of infants who are usually babies of unresolved mothers, as shown during the Adult Attachment Interview. The analyst’s ability to identify and understand these >states of mind< and the subsequent sensitive reflection on the transcendental role of primary traumatic relations, which are involved in fear and the destructive dynamics of mental fragmentation – as seen in empirical research on attachment – can facilitate a resourceful integrative analytic scrutiny of the processes gone through by patients, and encourage the discovery of alternatives for working through the disturbing experience.
A longitudinal study of early attachment and social character development of 14 Nahuat mother-infant dyads -since the infants were 11 months, having assessed them at 9 years of age and again in their late adolescence- show a significant improvement on the youngsters’ emotional development. The study conducted by the Seminario de Sociopsicoanálisis within a 40-year-long humanizing project in the village, called >Intercultural Participation Project,< suggests the benefit of promoting the rescue of their indigenous Nahuat culture and tradition.
Spanish parliament recently issued a new law offering Spanish nationality to Sephardic Jews who so desired and could demonstrate a basic knowledge of the Spanish language and culture. This law attempted to redress a five-centuries-old injustice and was expected to unleash both criticism and praise. Surprisingly, reactions in the public or the press were minimal or absent. Reasons for this are explored through a qualitative study with focus groups, which showed ideas that can be grouped into four main categories: ignorance, justice, distrust, and fear. It is hypothesized that the predominantly silent response to the new law might be due to the fact that it touches on an extremely sensible issue: the historically fragmented Spanish identity. A position of negation is constructed, to avoid deep anxieties related to the fragile core of a collective identity built from many >others< forced to the refuge of an introspection that protects them from the conviction of not fulfiling the ideal identity status, known by all but reached by none. All those >others< have mixed their bloods with the Old Christians along the centuries, possibly transmitting a profound insecurity about their personal and collective identity that might contribute to understanding current social reactions.
The birth of a child strongly influences the way in which we adults perceive life and, therefore, our inner world. This birth, or rather the expectation of it, initiates in the father a complex process, the paternal function. Despite being a common experience, there are many open questions regarding its development and its impact on the new father. We reflect here on paternal function and explore conscious and unconscious fantasies of the man facing new-found fatherhood. We propose that a kind of pre-Oedipal process has already begun during pregnancy. The new being’s mere existence inside the womb generates an exclusionary force that sets the father’s ambivalent feelings in motion. The overwhelming certainty of motherhood and the generation of the mother–fetus bubble develops in parallel with the uncertainty of the father, immersed in inner conflicts regarding what his relationship with the mother–child couple is and will be. He rapidly experiences how the child’s presence makes him an excluded third party, always longing to fully occupy the place he once enjoyed beside the mother. The baby enters a world where father’s strong ambivalence is already in place, facilitating and setting in motion a full development of the Oedipal process. Finally, some considerations are outlined on the potential influence of this complex ambivalence in large group reactions and the need to be remembered that humans have displayed since ancient historical times.
The purpose of this article was to study the creative heritage of Erich Fromm and the formation of >Humanistic Radicalism<. The study was aimed at defining the historical context for the theoretical formation of >Humanistic Radicalism< within the framework of Fromm's >Social Psychoanalysis< and the practical implementation of this concept in the political activities of this personality. Four periods of the introduction of the ideas of >Humanistic Radicalism< by E. Fromm through his political activities were identified. It was found out that the humanistic orientation requires the continuation both in research activities of a person and in everyday socio-cultural life in general, while maintaining dialogical relations with the world.
In this article, the author considered the concept of >Mass Consciousness< in the philosophy of Erich Fromm. The phenomenon of >Mass Consciousness< was studied from the standpoint of E. Fromm’s «Humanistic Radicalism», and was analyzed in comparison with classical Freudian psychoanalysis and other prominent thinkers of the twentieth century. It was found that according to Erich Fromm's social psychoanalysis, aggression is the result of social exclusion, mass consciousness, and conformism. The prevention of these phenomena can only be realized by a healthy humanistic society, in which faith, hope, love, understanding, sanity, mutual respect, empathy that cannot be explained by human instincts.
Erich Fromm’s analysis of >pathological normalcy< offers promising social-theoretical resources to help transcend the contemporary, >domesticated<, diagnosis of social pathologies. This article commences by briefly tracing the numerous limitations of the current orthodoxy, epitomised by the recognition-cognitive >pathologies of recognition< approach. A sympathetic reconstruction of Erich Fromm’s diagnosis of pathological normalcy is then presented as a promising palliative. The strengths of Fromm’s social-theoretical framework are then outlined: Fromm’s scholarship presents a structure through which objectively inadequate and contradictory social conditions can be diagnosed, while emphasizing their important connections to the social-psychological pathologies which sustain them. The efficacy of Fromm’s approach is then defended against post-modern and social-constructivist critiques. This article thus supports the rehabilitation of Fromm’s work within the sociological mainstream as an important antidote to the ‘domesticated’ framing of social pathology which continues to dominate contemporary scholarship.
The International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies (IFPS) was established in 1962. The first 20 years of the Federation were a time when psychoanalysis was divided into so-called liberal and orthodox factions. The (then orthodox) International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA) did not admit all psychoanalytic societies, and some societies did not want to join it. In the IFPS, non-IPA-psychoanalysts from Europe, the USA, and South and Middle America came together to discuss their new approaches to psychoanalysis and to find ways to better cope with their patients’ problems. At the beginning an informal organization of autonomous societies, the IFPS persisted for 12 years without a charter. The first three secretary generals came from the German Psychoanalytical Society and greatly influenced the first few years of the IFPS. The IFPS held several international conferences, and new psychoanalytic societies became members. In 1977, after the VIth Forum in Berlin, the IFPS fell into an identity crisis. The conflicts centered on the assumption of responsibility, the authority of the members, and how to understand the aim and sense of the organization. This article deals with the theoretical background of the early IFPS and the development of its self-concept.
This paper highlights the relevance of Erich Fromm’s concepts of social character and social change to offer a more nuanced understanding of the neo-liberal inter-generational traumatic legacy of loss of stable work, changing worker gendered identity, disrupted affect, community engagement and historical memory within a global context of insecure labour and emerging neoliberal forms of social character in the aftermath of massive redundancies and unemployment experienced recently in some post-industrial working class communities in the UK.
Triangularity in separation
(2019)
Traditional psychoanalytic literature tends to present issues of separation as a two-person dilemma. Current understanding, however, seems to challenge that view. The recent realization that there is no such thing as a baby, but only a mother-and-baby unit, has opened the way to the further understanding that there is no such thing as a mother-and-baby unit >extra-context<. In other words, there is always a father in the background – be he real or phantasized. Separation, therefore, cannot but be conceptualized as involving a triangle. It should never be forgotten that Oedipus’s own life history starts with a separation initiated by a father and acquiesced with by a mother. The aim of this paper is to present some thoughts on the Oedipal (i.e., triangular) dimension of separation.
Alienation is one of the important concepts of social science which has been most studied in Marxism idealogy. The main purpose of the present paper is to review the opinion of Marxist sociologists on alienation. This paper has been compiled to answer the following question: What is self-alienation and what is the Marxists’ view about this complex concept? Regarding this matter, while reviewing the history of Alienation and its conceptual dimensions, theories of Karl Marx, George Lukács, Antonio Gramsci, Erich Fromm, and Juergen Habermas is examined. The research method used in this research is a descriptive and data collection method is librarian. The findings chart is plotted at the end of the paper.
Purpose: The main purpose of the study was to examine if life orientations of young adults (>being< or >having<) differentiate respondents with respect to the degree of life satisfaction. Material and methods: A total of 187 persons (143 woman and 44 man) aged 18 to 29 years were included in the study. The following methods were used in the study: sociodemographic questionnaire, Satisfaction with Life Scale by E. Diener, R.A. Emmons, R.J. Larson, S. Griffin and the Being and Having Orientations Scale of B. Grulkowski. Results: A life orientation is a kind of behaviour regulator, that set the direction of human activity. There is a distinction between a >being< orientation (which refers to spiritual values) and a >having< orientation (which refers to possessing material things) that are manifested in a variety of experiences, and is related to human thinking, feeling, and acting. Therefore, a life orientation may play a really important role in the satisfaction with life. Most of the respondents were characterised by a mixed orientation (>being-having<) and an average level of satisfaction with life. There is no significant difference in the level of satisfaction with life according to gender and the subject of studies. It was shown that people with the >being< orientation have greater satisfaction with life than people with the >having< orientation. The obtained results, which show no differences in satisfaction with life according to gender, are consistent with the earlier studies. And so is the result that people with the dominant of the >being< orientation have greater satisfaction with life, than those with the >having< orientation. Conclusions: Only few papers about >being< and >having< orientations have been published so far since the method used in the study occurs only in the Polish language and there is no data about its adaptations in different countries. Results of conducted research set the direction of educational impact and give the scientific basis for a well-known saying: money can’t buy happiness.
In the social sciences, there are different point of views on how social change has an impact on good leadership in contemporary societies. As a contribution to this debate, this article builds on basic ideas of the humanistic approach of Erich Fromm and highlights the associated possibilities for an adequate understanding of contemporary leadership demands. Key narratives and open questions related to challenges for leadership in contemporary societies facing digital transformation are evaluated from a Frommian perspective.
With growing inequality, the American dream is becoming less effective as a collective myth. With its focus on material success, competition and self-reliance, the intensified diffusion of neoliberal scripts of the self is leading the uppermiddle class toward a mental health crisis while the working class and lowincome groups do not have the resources needed to live the dream. African Americans, Latinos and undocumented immigrants, who are presumed to lack self-reliance, face more rigid boundaries. One possible way forward is broadening cultural membership by promoting new narratives of hope centered on a plurality of criteria of worth, ‘ordinary universalism’ and destigmatizing stigmatized groups.
Self-Conscious Person Above Social Pressures: Erich Fromm's Guidelines for Individual Liberation
(2019)
Erich Fromm succeeded in embracing with equal depth all the main aspects of human existence: unconscious dynamics, social formative influences and self-determination of the human being as a conscious agent. This last aspect of Fromm’s heritage allows us to speak of him as an existentially minded thinker. His analysis of human situation, theory of existential needs, view on human nature as undefined, theory of freedom and theory of being as opposed to having make a priceless contribution to the existentialist line of thought.
This essay explores the psychoanalytic sanitarium (Therapeutikum) directed by Frieda Fromm-Reichmann and Erich Fromm in Heidelberg from 1924 to 1928. The Therapeutikum aimed to combine adherence to Jewish ritual with psychoanalytic practice and radical politics for a group of GermanJews who were rethinking their Orthodox backgrounds in light of new intellectual and political currents and modern sensibilities. Visitors to the sanitarium included many leading German-Jewish thinkers, and Heidelberg’s proximity to Frankfurt placed the Therapeutikum in the orbit of the Institute for Social Research and near a major hub in the renaissance of Jewish learning then occurring. At the centre of the article is a discussion of essays by Fromm-Reichmann and Fromm that subjected Jewish ritual (kashrut and shabbat) to psychoanalytic investigation. Appearing in Imago in 1927, the articles marked the two writers’ public break with Orthodox Judaism. This essay argues that the Imago articles marked a crucial moment in the political, intellectual, and religious history of German Jewry. Even if the Fromms’ synthesis of Freudianism, radical politics, andJudaism was conceptually shaky, their sanitarium illustrates the centrality of psychoanalysisças a sensibility, a hermeneutic and above all away of creating social and communal bondsçto a generation of GermanJews navigating the challenges of German and Jewish modernity.
The world is regularly confronted by occurrences of mass violence wherein specific groups of a population are brutally killed, raped, and tortured by another group that considers its own behavior morally justifiable. There are social, economic, and political crises that lead to the scapegoating of one group designated as the enemy. It represents a mental instrument that validates dehumanizing the chosen enemy and gives >meaning< to the extermination of dangerous >elements< as part of a battle between good and evil. In the case of suicide bombers and terrorists, sacrifice and devotion to the ideology that promises martyrdom and support for sacred ideals are requirements. Some researchers talk about the personality of the torturer, particularly about how some childrearing practices annihilate children’s sense of self by teaching them to be obedient to authority. Others talk about the role of moral disengagement and the role of specialized military training. Psychoanalytic thinkers emphasize that the key mechanisms at work in these atrocities are splitting, paranoid projections, projective identification, sadomasochistic forces, strong mechanisms of negation and dissociation, and an extremely weak social identity. Those who commit evil acts seldom perceive their actions as evil. This paper focuses on the social influences that lead to dehumanizing and blaming the >other,< and childrearing practices that influence the creation of the genocidal mentality.
Flaubert claimed mastery in matters of style in the French language as well as in the psychological sciences. Mastery in both areas is on clear display in the writing of Madame Bovary. Our heroine presents as a new kind of personality, namely as someone who depends greatly on sensory experience in order to maintain her emotional equilibrium. So, when under stress, she can only find some kind of soothing comfort in her perfumes, silks, and cashmeres. This dynamic pattern leaves her at a disadvantage when tasked with higher level life requirements – such as the payment of bills, the very thing that, in the end, causes her ruin. Dynamically, failures of memory and the resulting fragmentation of experience leave her with a precarious sense of self. For our heroine, there is little ability to link present experience to the past and therefore no possibility of metaphoric or symbolic thinking; in other words, she is condemned to repeat. Flaubert felt that Madame Bovary would only have original value as the sum of his psychological understandings. Further, he hoped his psychological work, often hidden under the form, would be deeply felt by the reader, as it was by him.
Following in Hannah Arendt’s steps, this paper addresses the author’s definition of terrorism mostly from a psychoanalytical point of view and focuses further on the clinical implications related to the different thoughts on terrorism of a number of psychoanalysts. Some clinical vignettes, from individual as well as group psychotherapy, show how deep the reverberation of our way of thinking about terrorism can be in our work as psychoanalysts, particularly in regard to the integration of the destructive aspects of the personality and of the Self, and above all in cases with a history of traumatic attachment. Indeed, the psychoanalyst can actually remain embedded inside the patient's dissociative dynamics, and the treatment can fall into a painful impasse, allowing mutilated, torn, dead, and dissociated aspects to be left outside the conscious and the Self. The result of this kind of situation is a stiffening of the personality and a mortification of the whole Self.
Erich Fromm had developed a dialectical approach on alienation phenomena in work. On the one side he criticizes today’s poor working conditions and on the other side he shows productive orientation in work. In my essay I will discuss empirical and theoretical contributions of social-psychological research in this Frommian perspective.
One of the most controversial members of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society and Freud’s intimate for many years, Reich is known not only for his seminal contributions to therapeutic and social psychoanalysis in his 1933 classic Character analysis, but also for his notoriety as a discoverer of an energy he named orgone. This paper is devoted to Reich the psychoanalytic sociologist and reformer, with special prominence given to his other, now somewhat forgotten, 1933 book >The mass psychology of Fascism<.
Mainstream social science has been blindsided by the rise of Trumpism and broader growth of authoritarian populism. We make the case that Frommian work is desperately needed inside the core of contemporary social science theorizing by examining social character theory up against and alongside the concept of habitus developed by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. Both Fromm and Bourdieu were concerned with the human costs of social change and economic development, Fromm with his writings on advanced capitalism in The Sane Society (1955a) and on Mexican village life in Social Character in a Mexican Village (with Michael Maccoby, 1970b), and Bourdieu with his extended studies of peasants in Algeria during the French colonial war of the 1950s and early 1960s. We will compare and contrast the theory of social character developed in the Mexican study with Bourdieu's concept of habitus, and discuss what Fromm's ideas can add to Bourdieu-influenced critical social science.
In the first part, the article reconstructs, through the idea of >pathology of normalcy,< Fromm's critique of the cultural foundations of contemporary capitalism. In the second part, it is carried forward through the concepts of >social character< and <alienation,< in order to understand how the late twentieth-century capitalism deepens an anti-humanist culture as never before. Finally, in the conclusion, it seeks to demonstrate how Fromm anticipates some essential features of the critique of capitalist culture, later analyzed by critics of the >new< capitalism, such as Axel Honneth, Richard Sennett and Boltanski & Chiapello.
This article intends to propose a basis for a reflection on how separation mechanisms, both intrapsychic and social, may, by a normal identification process, be comparable in traumatic situations to true forms of violence. According to the theories of Benedetti and Peciccia (1996), a symbiotic Self and a separate Self are continuously present, integrated development lines of the Self, even though they are never fully conscious. Conversely, in the structure of the psychotic Self, a deintegration is inferred between the symbiotic and the separate states of the Self, of which the patient is painstakingly conscious. In light of significant psychoanalytic theories relating to the anxiety of separation, we aim to interpret this symbiosis and separation through the history of Michele, a psychotic young man from a Camorrist family, who was currently hospitalized in a psychiatric facility. The article intends to investigate the separation imposed by the clan, and the even deeper one, inferred from the significant separations experienced within the family circle. Furthermore, we will also outline our therapeutic method and the use of progressive mirror drawing, a psychotherapeutic technique which can be used with patients suffering from different pathologies that compromise verbalization, such as psychosis.
Descendants of terror
(2019)
The aim of this paper is to approach transgenerational transmission aspects of the traumatic experience of terror in the large social group. The author makes use of the notion of chosen trauma, coined by Vamik Volkan, which shows how specific mental representations of a traumatizing historical event, shared by the large group, can be transmitted to descendants and eventually used by them as a linking factor of their large group. The above issues, along with the importance of reversal of helplessness and of inability to mourn, are discussed; relevant clinical material focusing on the interplay between large-group and individual transmission is presented.
This thesis is an intellectual history of dialecticism and its use in the works of the Frankfurt School members, Erich Fromm and Herbert Marcuse. Famously, these two men had a ferocious and polemical debate in the pages of Dissent Magazine in 1955-56. The Fromm-Marcuse Debate has since become almost the sole lens in which the intellectual differences and similarities between these men are analyzed. Through a comparative and historical analysis of their individual work, largely removed from the Dissent Debate, I offer a new interpretation of their conflict, their personal relationship, and a new perspective on critical theory and its relationship to political action. I argue that Erich Fromm and Herbert Marcuse's intellectual ideas are better juxtaposed through their interpretation of dialectics, rather than psychoanalysis, and that through this, they present us with starkly different prescriptions for individual and collective political engagement. Thus, both Fromm and Marcuse are outliers within the field of critical theory, and certainly within the Frankfurt School, even as their ideas remain in firm conflict with one another.
This study reports the results of the content analysis on Balada Cinta Majenun Novel by Geidurrahman El-Mishry about the love of the main character using the psychology of literature approach. The purpose of this study was to reveal the meaning of the main character's love based on Erich Fromm's love theory. The data used was the text in the novel. Reading and taking note were used to collect data. The data was classified based on the object of erotic love and divine love. Then, they were analyzed using the psychology of literature and interpreted using contextual meaning. The result showed that there was a love shift from erotic love to God love. It was influenced by the rejection of love and the concept of love that the main character owned as a result of following tharikat that later shaped his way of life into religion-oriented. His religious path, from love to the creatures that led to the path of God, gave rise to the desire to be united with God.
Making films can be a lifeline, an aid to going on living when (we feel) the world around us has disappeared. Looking, showing that there’s a >there there,< recording the present moment and thereby preserving it, can, for a time, make us not feel the nothingness within us. But the rescue that comes from making a film is always provisional. Why? Because every film has an end. Because if there are no more films to make, if there is nothing that deserves to be looked at (the worst case scenario), going on living will have exhausted itself, and taking one’s own life (if indeed there was a life to take) may seem the only option. Chantal Akerman’s >No Home Movie< – a film recording the slow death of her mother in her Brussels apartment – is this worst case scenario. A moving record of the psychic devastation that comes about when we, slowly but surely, lose the one object worth looking at. Panic, depression, hopelessness, and a fierce determination to go where the disappeared object went. To this last home where nothing no longer moves.
The concept of resignation carries widely divergent meanings in the cultural contexts of Western and Eastern experiences. Whereas the Western perspective of resignation implies a negative, impoverished state of self-assertion, the Eastern perspective contains wider and more complex meanings, among which is that resignation is a virtue to be cultivated. Using the writings of the Nobel Prize winner in Literature Yasunari Kawabata, akirame, the Eastern, specifically Japanese, concept of resignation, will be examined for its multilayered psychological and cultural meanings. In addition, from Kawabata’s writing and biographical information, I demonstrate how the Western psychoanalytic concept of Oedipal conflict relates to and manifests in the Eastern psychology of resignation, bridging both Eastern and Western cultures to elucidate underlying, universal human conflicts.
In search of the Human: The trauma of modernity and the >instrumental reason< of the persecutors
(2019)
This article takes the clinical notion of trauma as a historiographic criterion for understanding modernity and its mythologies. If the rewriting of the term trauma – at the intersection of psychoanalysis and neurobiology, cultural anthropology and philosophy of the mind – is the hallmark of contemporaneity, it is quite acceptable to see the Shoah as a radical historical and epistemological watershed. Never before had such a highly productive bureaucratic-industrial system been designed and implemented for the devastation of the very idea of humanity. Auschwitz was, in the most radical ways, the liminal space between Human and Inhuman. It lay right at the cutting edge of the abyss that the executioner shares with his victim – the annihilation of humanity. This essay crosses a question that has always characterized the social construction of subjectivity: the perimeter of the Human, and the interrelationships between identity, alterity, and recognition.
The paper presents a study of the social character of 16 people with an adapted version of the social character questionnaires developed by Erich Fromm and Michael Maccoby (Fromm & Maccoby 1970b) and Rainer Funk and colleagues (Fromm-Gesellschaft 1995). The difficulties during the analysis of the responses are described and the main cultural differences that are responsible for these difficulties are analyzed.
The author attempts to understand the kamikaze attacks during World War II as a phenomenon that crossed a border into the systemic use of suicide attacks. The author first presents two historical precursors before World War II: the Seinan (Southwest) War in 1877; and an event in 1932 known as the Three Suicide-Bombing Heroes. To examine the process leading to kamikaze, the author offers two examples: a scene in which a suicide attack was proposed to pilots; and a story of a general, Oenishi, who has been identified as a person responsible for the campaign. In the discussion, the author employs psychoanalytic arguments on chosen trauma and apocalyptic order to see kamikaze as sharing a common psychology with other warfare. He then focuses on the previous debate over the normality of suicide attackers and argues for the importance of finding a role for positive value in the psychological processes. He concludes that kamikaze was realized through multiple mechanisms and ended up crossing the border to unconventional attack. He closes the paper by suggesting we should make efforts to keep the positive feedback in response to suicide attacks under a certain threshold in order to avoid reinforcing the spiral.
This paper presents a report on our psychoanalytic investigation of cultural folktales, myths, and fables, in which we study, primarily, the extent to which such narratives lurk behind contemporary representations of men and women. Our aim is to identify the multiple narrative structures that form the core plots and storylines of these tales. Following Roland Barthes’ work on mythologies, we want to decode the tales’ ideological components by deciphering the axiomatic assumptions these tales make about the nature of perceived social reality. This represents an attempt to study a mind that is derived from the text. More specifically, we study narratives whose storylines revolve around the struggle between men and women in order to identify the culture’s core concerns about and preoccupations with the relationship between the sexes. We believe that cultural myths or folktales are a royal road to a nation’s collective conscience, and include gendered patterns of defenses, obsessions, fears, and paranoia.
There are different ways of assessing the quality of a good translation. This study tried to approach this task using House's (2015) translation quality assessment (TQA) model and Baker's (2018) marked thematic structure model, each introducing new ideas and novel ways to assess the quality of a translated work. Having reviewed the alternative TQA models, this study aims at a detailed investigation of House’s Model and its potential power to predict the errors in the Persian translation of chosen psychological work for this study. As a kind of complementary assessment for the source text (ST) and its two target texts (TTs), Baker's model was used to compare ST marked thematic structures with their TTs equivalents. Persian translations of Eric Fromm’s >To Have or To Be< on the basis of two chosen models were carried out. First, the errors (overt and covert errors), as well as thematic structures (marked vs. unmarked), were identified and classified, and then the frequency of their occurrences was computed to see whether there is any statistically significant difference. The results indicated that out of 100 selected items of the source text, TT1 and TT2 had 22 and 77 overtly erroneous items, respectively. The most frequent errors especially in TT2 by Mr. Tabrizi were mistranslation, breach of TL system, omission, and addition. The only covert error was a tenor mismatch between the writer of the source text and the translator of the target text. Since in two particular pieces of translation especially TT2, there were a lot of overt errors and according to House’s Model, a good translation has to be translated overtly and any deviation of it will be considered as an error, this translation can be considered as a covert rather than an overt translation. Considering the marked thematic structures, with the percentage of 94.5 and 79 in TT1 and TT2 by Mr. Sabouri and Mr. Tabarizi, it can be claimed that there was a high degree of correspondence between ST and its two TTs for marked structures. The product of this study could be beneficial for translators of psychological works to get familiar with problems in translation of these books as well as strategies used to cope with such problems.
Erich Fromm points to a tendency whereby the numerous freedoms gained by the citizens of modern democracies have been accompanied by widespread feelings of loneliness and disconnection. The loosening of traditional social structures leads some individuals to seek out restrictions, for example in order to counteract the feelings of being alone. This essay uses Fromm’s thesis as a lens through which to examine two of Franz Kafka’s novels in which the protagonists exemplify the >fear of freedom< proposed by Fromm. Society in these novels is perceived as a prison cell in which one must comply with social regulations, but also a fortress to which one can retreat from the chaos of the outside world, albeit at the cost of one’s psychological health.
Jung Chan's >Wild Swans<: Love as a Political Concept [application of Fromm's theories to art]
(2019)
This article explores the different forms of love which appear in a work which is part family memoir, part autobiography, and part literary fiction: Jung Chang’s >Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China< (1991). This exploration is underpinned by theories of love articulated first by Karl Marx and Alexandra Kollontai and later by Erich Fromm and Michael Hardt. In different ways these thinkers all point to the idea that love is not merely a private matter between two individuals but rather a social and political phenomenon. Fromm’s insistence that love changes according to historical and cultural circumstances is shown to be relevant throughout as Chang portrays love adapting to the vast political changes taking place in China from approximately 1924 (when her grandmother became a concubine) until 1976 (the death of Mao). Corresponding to a large extent to the life histories of the >three daughters of China< ─ Chang’s grandmother, Chang’s mother, and Chang herself ─ the article traces a distinctive movement through property love and family love to >winged Eros<-based love, >red love< and finally love as a decision.
The present paper is an expansion of the author’s discussion of Harold Blum’s seminal presentation >Hate and its vicissitudes< in Prague in 2017. It aims at an elaboration of various aspects of hate and hatred as a complex dynamic intrapsychic and relational affective-cognitive state, alloyed, in different ways, with aggression and love. In this context, various theoretical perspectives concerning the multifaceted relation between hate, love, and sexuality, and hate and destructive aggression, and transformations between them, including the first study of neurobiological correlates of hate, will be raised and explored. Implication on destruction as well as psychic structuring, adaptation and creativity are also considered. The clinical vignettes illustrates the relevance of multiple theoretical conceptualizations in contemporary psychoanalytic practice.
Part I of this paper discussed various dynamic aspects of hate in the individual developmental and clinical context. Part II, also an expansion of the author’s discussion of Harold Blum’s presentation on >Hate and its vicissitudes< in Prague in 2017, examines the theme of hate as a multidimensional dynamic group phenomenon. The paper uses various theoretical perspectives to focus on group unconscious processes and the group-specific dynamic of regression leading to an activation of primitive ego operations, unleashing destructive aggression as well as creative mobilization. Also considered are the implications in terms of destruction, adaptation, and creativity, in relation to group unconscious dynamic processes and intergenerationally trasmitted trauma and posttraumatic developments.
The following essay is a modified version of an invited presentation given in Florence, Italy in May 2017. It builds on and extends some of the previous psychoanalytic and multidisciplinary studies of Dante’s >Divine Comedy< as a >psychoanalysis of the Middle Ages< that greatly contributed to the incipient changes of the cultural episteme. The paper will explore and elaborate the continued relevance of Dantian proto-psychoanalytic insight into the complex role of regression, destruction, transgression, and conflict in generating growth, expansion, and creativity, and the ways in which ethics and erotics intertwine in a complex path towards unity, within the context of his multivocal presubjective, intrasubjective, and intersubjective inquiry leading to psychic reorganization. The liminal nature of Dante’s poetry, extending the symbolic and representational range in a way unprecedented in the vernacular literature of his time, vivifying and representing what is traditionally thought of as beyond representation, will also be considered in terms of its relevance to the contemporary psychoanalytic discourse.
Nowadays, violence appears in various forms in Brazil. From an agricultural country, Brazil became rapidly industrialized, which resulted in large rural exodus and explosion of population density in major cities. Brazil faces today a great social and economic disparity, added to endemic corruption of government, nepotism and lack of social planning. The roots of such violence can be found in our archaic heritage that has been forming Brazilian identity since its early days. The interest of former colonizers was to extract wealth, without regarding the establishment of a nation. This exploitation has been always done by force and violence, with the slave labor of native Indians and imported black people. As a state Brazil was exposed to the primal father’s law, and to the absence of a symbolic father, who could have provided his people with a more stable identity, only given by the paternal law. Is it possible to reframe archaic heritage, rebuilding the missing father image without resorting to a false savior of the fatherland? Is it possible to construct a more equitable society that could propitiate true conditions of citizenship in order to make every citizen, to the extent possible, the protagonist of his own history?
In theoretical considerations on democracy freedom is sometimes understood in unconditional and conditional terms. This general distinction underlies I. Berlin's concept of negative and positive freedom, and E. Fromm's concept of >freedom from< and >freedom to<. The authors of this paper introduce the concept of extrinsic and intrinsic sense of freedom which is meant to be psychological representation of the philosophical distinction on unconditional and conditional freedom, respectively. An extrinsic freedom results from a lack of external restrictions/barriers, whereas intrinsic freedom is based on the belief that being free means compatibility between one's own actions and preferred values, life goals or worldview. Based on nationwide survey data, the authors show that both forms of freedom are embedded in entirely different basic human values and moral intuitions. Further, it is shown that intrinsic freedom negatively predicts liberal orientation and clearly favors communitarian orientation, whereas extrinsic freedom clearly favors liberal orientation. The authors argue that both forms of experiencing freedom have different effects on support for the principles of liberal democracy. The positive effect of extrinsic freedom is indirect, i.e., entirely mediated by liberal orientation. On the other hand, the effect of intrinsic freedom can be decomposed into three components: a) as a positive direct effect, b) as a positive indirect effect (by strengthening the communitarian orientation), and c) as a negative indirect effect (by weakening the liberal orientation). In conclusion, the consequences of intrinsic and extrinsic freedom are discussed in the light of their relationships with support for democratic principles.
This paper presents a case of >trauma by omission< as a product of the attachment process. The absence of intimate and specific recognition and response by the caretaker of a child can create, by their omission, a >freeze< version of the fight/flight/freeze trauma response. The frozen moments, then dissociated, can become confusion and paralysis at the cusp of adulthood. This state is illustrated in the case below of a 23-year-old Chinese woman being treated by a 29-year-old Chinese male psychoanalytic fellow. The role of cultural context in >omission< is highlighted regarding development and treatment, which is taking place in a Communist society with a recent violent history of extinguishing individuality, modifying how attachment and individuation are expressed. A relational/interpersonal treatment orientation is applied and advocated at this intersection of individual and social realities. This paper contributes to attachment theory by raising awareness of how its many forms and outcomes may or may not be deemed healthy and functional.
Oedipus goes to the opera: Psychoanalytic inquiry in Enescu’s >Œdipe< and Stravinsky’s >Oedipus Rex<
(2019)
Psychoanalytic inquiry into operas based on the life of Oedipus may provide further knowledge on the Oedipus complex. Therefore, we chose to analyze Enescu’s >Œdipe< and Stravinsky’s >Oedipus Rex<. Two distinct methodologies were used in our study. The first explored the concept of free association through musical themes in the operas. The second involved the comparative study of the Oedipus myth in order to provide a deeper understanding of Oedipus’s character. We observed that Oedipus displayed symptoms of his complex through the traits of aggressiveness and arrogance. Moreover, we noticed that Oedipus was compelled by the necessity of finding out who his real parents were and by unconsciously accomplishing the prophecy. Oedipus assumed the responsibility to free the Thebans from plague. Yet, it was too late, for the feared part of the prophecy was already accomplished. He provided a wrong answer to the Sphinx and then received the most severe punishment, one that would have ostracism as its outcome. It was, however, not too late for Oedipus to finally discover who his real parents were. Nevertheless, afraid of losing his place as King of Thebes, he investigated the plague’s causes. This resulted in his aggression as he resisted discovering >where babies come from.<
The article presents the results of the comparison of the variability of the psychosocial development of the personality in the adolescent, youth and adult age. At the first stage of the empirical study, the types of development in adolescence and youth age. Personality (motivation, value orientations, focus, communicative features), subject (autonomy, self-regulation, locus of control), as well as social and behavioural (distinctive features of social functioning) characteristics were used as typing criteria. The types of the psychosocial development of adolescents and youths are interpreted as constructive, non-constructive and destructive models of coming of age. At the second stage of the study the theoretical generalization of the types of personality existing in psychology and strategies of personality functioning during the period of adult age. The analysis is based on the theories of A. Adler, K. Horney, D. Marsh, E. Desci and R. Rayen, E. Fromm et al. The types of the psychosocial development of adolescents and youths was compared with variants (types, patterns) of the development in adulthood. The dynamics and continuity of the types of the psychosocial development and strategies for functioning adolescents, youths and adults were determined. It was revealed that the main features of continuity can be found along the lines of constructive or non-constructive development, focus on oneself or other people, self-sufficiency or dependence on the milieu and circumstances. The process of typing of the psychosocial development is the result of the integration of traits of the personality and the way it functions (behaves), which is inherent to it. The factors of that process were identified: regulation by the personality of his/her behavior and activities and his/her position in the system of relationships. The type of the psychosocial development is a complex structural and functional unity. The crystallization of that type from the adolescent age to adulthood is a targeted and logical process associated with the emergence of the self-concept, the ability to self-determination and self-regulation mechanisms in the adolescent age. The article emphasizes the importance of prevention and correction of the preconditions of non-constructive development models.
This paper explores Fromm’s dialectic analysis of power relations as it applies to the dynamics of change at the societal and personal levels. First, the paper discusses the use of empirical research—system justification theory—to test the impact of socio-psychological and structural resistances to change. Second, it looks at the concept of The Social Third to illustrate Fromm’s clinical approach around connectedness, subjectivity, narcissism, internalization of normative structures and the centrality of the concept of social character in shaping the dynamics of change.
Terrorism is a worldwide phenomenon, as the >Global terrorism index< reveals. The aim of terrorism is to take command over our feelings and our imagination to compel us to change our ways of life and release a clash between civilizations. In my discussion, I will concentrate on identity, an individual’s feeling of being unique, having a coherent self while at the same time being part of a large group. My intention is to link the concept of identity to affects and thinking and the loss of reality-testing when the group is dominated by schizo-paranoid anxiety. Two lines of thought stand out in my discussion of terrorism – the power of identity and the search for meaning – both of which are affected by globalization, the rise of a network society, and disenchantment with the world.
This paper shows that Fromm's discussion is curiously connected to the tradition of American individualism. In Escape from Freedom, Fromm suggests that authoritarianism derives from aloneness as a result of modern individualism and entrusts his hope in democracy for spontaneous activity and solidarity. But why is spontaneous activity and solidarity hopeful in democracy? The interesting thing is, this conclusion is close to the discussion of Alexis de Tocqueville, who also regarded spontaneous relationships as an important foundation of democracy. Based on Tocqueville's insight, there is a tradition in sociology that argues for the relationship between democracy and individualism, such as David Riesman's The Lonely Crowd and Robert Bellah's Habits of the Heart. This paper attempts to show how Fromm was influenced by the tradition of American individualism and discusses Fromm's impact on later American individualism studies.
In >Sleeping memories< (2017), French writer Patrick Modiano confronts the past and his memories in a different way compared with his previous novels, as he keeps trying to revisit and reprocess them. In this book he adds a new method, the dreaming revision of memories, especially traumatic ones, turning to the work of Marquis d’Hervey de Saint-Denys, >Les rêves et les moyens de les diriger: Observations pratiques.< I would suggest that in this way he dreams undreamt traumas, thereby transforming them. In doing so, Modiano meets Thomas Ogden’s art of psychoanalysis.
Universality is being deconstructed within contemporary social struggles. Focusing on struggles around the discourse on refugees and the nation, and so-called >welcome culture< in the German context in particular, questions arise regarding the emancipatory potential of emerging narratives of a contested common ground (Hark et al. 2015). This article proposes Erich Fromm's understanding of >radical humanism< (1968a) and its line of argumentation towards >global solidarity< (Wilde 2013) instead of national >group narcissism< (Fromm 1964a) as a normative base to evaluate the emancipatory value of emerging narratives.
Our meta-analytic review investigates how employee participation in democratic enterprises is related to psychological outcomes. We gathered 60 studies through a systematic literature search of quantitative field studies (published between January 1970 and May 2017) and extracted 138 effect sizes related to three indicators of organisational democracy (OD) and 15 psychological outcomes. The overall findings suggest that employees’ individually perceived participation in organisational decision making (IPD) had a stronger relation to job satisfaction (ρ = .25), job involvement/work motivation (ρ = .36), prosocial work behaviours (ρ = .24), civic and democratic behaviours (ρ = .21) and perceived supportive climate (ρ = .44) than the other two OD indicators: structurally anchored employee participation (SAEP) and employee participation in collective ownership (EO). This was not the case for valuebased commitment: the relations of SAEP (ρ = .40), EO (ρ = .34), and IPD (ρ = .46) with commitment were nearly equal. Mediation analyses indicated that IPD partially mediated most of the effects of SAEP and EO on the outcomes mentioned. The cross-sectional database and a small number of studies for some of the outcomes are the main limitations of this study.
Concepts from Self-Determination theory are related to Fromm’s conceptualizations of existential human needs and human strengths. Empirical findings seem to support Fromm (1955a) in stating that socio-economic environments which embody particular values will influence psychological well-being, health and social relations of consumers. Further, empirical studies on effects of working in democratic enterprises and experiencing a sociomoral work climate upon employees’ attitudes and behaviors will be presented. All in all, the findings support Fromm’s vision of a humanization and democratization of work.
Short story is a type of popular literature in Indonesia. In short stories, love is one of the most well-known topics for the Indonesian audience. Amongst various types of love, a mother’s love is talked about the most. Thus, I decide to analyze how mothers express their love for their children in a compilation book titled >Rectoverso<. Also, I discover the consequences that the mothers experience due to their choices regarding love. By using the theory of love and the concept of motherly love from the book >The Art of Loving< by Erich Fromm, I find that the mothers have to face several choices that can give impacts toward their children and themselves. Every decision they make is caused by their love toward their children. Furthermore, the mothers prioritize their children instead of themselves. The impacts they experience may be positive or negative, depending on the situation.
The authors note a contradiction between empirical findings and the dismissive conclusion of the German Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth (FMFASWY) that the treatment of children in early day care will not affect their relationship to their mother or entail any serious damage for their future. They use this contradiction as an opportunity to discuss the social function of early childhood socialization in day care. They come to the impression that the FMFASWY, in its assessment of research on day-care centers, was also intuitively guided by sociopolitical interests insofar as the emergence of a social character satisfying current social requirements is favored more by primary socialization in day care than in families.
Erich Fromm was one of the first psychoanalytic thinkers who was genuinely interested in Asian philosophies. In the first part of this article, I will show Fromm’s imago of Buddhism as a radical, nontheistic, and ethical philosophy >without God.< I will argue that Fromm made an important difference between the phenomenal ego and being that proves crucial for his understanding of psychoanalysis and his critique of modern society. I will also explore Fromm’s synthesis of Buddhist philosophy and psychoanalysis, and show the similarities and differences between them.
In this article we will explore three important themes: (1) Fromm's anti-objectivistic perspective which stands for the idea that the other Being should not become an object in analysis; (2) the central idea of the relatedness and the relational dimension in the psychotherapeutic practice; (3) in the last part we will analyze the existential-ontological level which is manifested in analysis. We will focus our attention on the different ways in which Fromm as a psychoanalytic thinker, social critic and humanist can help the therapists to include the existential and social dimension in the psychotherapeutic work.