The distinction between the having mode and the being mode seems to be the basis of E. FROMM's clinical approach, which finds its main application in the center-to-center relatedness between analyst and patient. Analysts can understand a patient because they experience what the patient experiences. The dialog is based on reciprocally communicated emotional and conceptual responses and reactions; both identities come into play. The psychoanalytic session can save itself from the having mode by addressing the patient's living memory, which represents the past relived in the present, according to the being mode. Case material from a psychoanalytic session with a 31-yarr-old woman is included. (German and Spanish abstracts.)
>Umenie verit<
(1996)
A Commentary
(1996)
A Commentary
(1996)
Sandra Buechler's commentary provides an interesting counterpoint to Mar-golies's chapter. She observes that Fromm believed work should be an expres-sion and a vehicle for self-development and that this urge transcends historical circumstance. She questions whether the categories we create hinder or en-hance our understanding. She believes the self-developer category may have blinded the therapist to other aspects of the treatment. Her own reading of the clinical material would have led her to focus on different aspects of the patient, such as his narcissism and his sadistic sexual fantasies. Margolies would argue that these pathological elements were declining as he worked through old com-promise solutions and developed life-affirming passions in work and love-particularly as he strengthened the positive strivings of his social character ori-entation.
A reflective appraisal.
(1996)
Archaic Sadism
(1996)
Mauricio Cortina evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of Fromm's model of human nature and motivation by contrasting Freud's and Fromm's approach to the problem. Fromm provided a nonreductionistic model of motivation by exploring emergent (new) evolutionary properties that characterize the human species. This emphasis on what is evolutionarily new is the greatest strength of the model. However, the strength is associated with a significant weakness. While recognizing specifically new motivational structures, Fromm underestimates the importance of evolutionary and developmental continuity and transformation. The >eviction from paradise< biblical metaphor captures the essence of Fromm's view of the human condition. Fromm thought that a key factor in development was the struggle to overcome a regressive pull to return to the lost security provided by the mother figure or its symbolic equivalents such as blood ties, tribalism, and nationalism. Cortina presents an alternative evolutionary and developmental model that is in keeping with Fromm's emphasis on the importance of evolutionary transformations in humans, but does not accept Fromm's premise that as a species we are uprooted from nature. The evolutionary perspective accounts for the plasticity of human adaptation – that Fromm attributed to a combination of a relatively weak instinctive endowment and the development of the neocortex – as the result of a neotenic process (the retention of juvenile characteristics into adult life). This neotenic interpretation, together with a developmental perspective derived from attachment theory, questions the paradigm of symbiotic unity that informed Fromm's view of development and still remains an influential model of development in many other psychoanalytic schools of thought. Research based on attachment theory shows that under normal conditions security is never >lost< but rather it is found, or more precisely it is constructed (Sroufe 1986). This construction between the infant and its primary caregivers continues over a very protracted period of human development when it gradually becomes internalized, providing a sense of continuity in human development. Under favorable conditions ties with parents are never relinquished but become transformed as new intimate relationships to peers and lovers develop, supplying a new source of emotional security. The chapter concludes with some clinical implications of this >secure base< model of development.
Borderline desire
(1996)
The borderline personality unconsciously seeks emotional turbulence because this complex of affect is the shape of the object of desire. Whether these people were intrinsically disturbed as infants, or, whether the early object world was itself disturbing, they knew the maternal object as disruptive effect. This effect then became the shape of the object, so, in seeking turbulence they are in fact constituting the primary object. As painful and disturbing an event as this is, it is nonetheless desired and finding themselves in states of distress is unconsciously gratifying. This person cultivates >borderline objects< which evoke turbulent frames of mind. Such an object usually has an escalatory potential to it, so that the borderline may turn to ordinary distressing facts of life—environmental pollution, harassment of workers in the work place—and transform these facts into self stimulating objects. They bring about a toxic response which constitutes the object of desire. The borderline personality often seeks moments of misunderstanding with the psychoanalyst paradoxically enough in order to feel closer to the clinician. If he feels that he is bringing about irritation or distress in the analyst, the patient feels that he and the analyst are sharing the primary experience together. By persistently interpreting to the patient the unconscious desire of his character the analyst can effectively deconstruct the analysand's pathological attachment and help the patient to understand a complex dynamic that has always put this person at acute odds with himself, let alone with others.
Children in Violence
(1996)
The importance of nocturnal dreams is discussed along the lines of Lorentzen's arguments. The risk that they are under-evaluated is stressed. Some contradictory aspects of Freud's Interpretation of Dreams are discussed and a tentative attempt is made to integrate them with the thinking of Bion and Meltzer in the sense of creation of meaning. Montague Ullman's technique of working with dreams in groups is also very briefly sketched and discussed in this context. Finally the capacity to dream and dream-space is commented on with the help of Khan and Kant.
Contributions of Erich Fromm
(1996)
Grey makes a claim for countertransference similar to one Millán makes for transference, namely that Fromm's work can be seen as providing a more inclusive view of countertransference. Grey builds his case examining Fromm's views in regard to the unconscious, the motivational structure of character and countertransference. Grey points out that Fromm's view of the unconscious differed in several ways from Freud's. Fromm saw the unconscious as containing primitive and irrational elements, but also as the source of penetrating insights that transcend the strictures of society. Moreover, Grey sees Fromm as a modern thinker. Fromm had little use for Freud's energetic metapsychology. Fromm conceived of the unconscious in terms of processes, avoiding the danger of reification. Grey notes that Fromm explicitly discussed the >filtering< role imposed by language and social norms that limit the range of human experience. Grey notes that Fromm's theoretical views are more consistent with contemporary models of the mind such as that of Lazarus (1991). According to Grey, Lazarus's work (1991) describing the importance of the appraisal function of emotions legitimizes the role of intuition as a valid and important component of the analyst's repertoire in understanding and responding to patients. Grey argues that Fromm's revision of Freud's dualistic drive model also contributed to the analyst's use of self in work with patients by calling attention to the importance of social and constructive motives. Fromm's model of human nature was an important corrective over Freud's view of man as essentially evil. Fromm's motivational theory supports the analyst's intuitive responses as trustworthy guides in the therapeutic process without having to debunk altruistic motives as sublimations or reaction formations. According to Grey, what this all adds up to is that the use of self advocated by Fromm differs markedly from earlier views of countertransference. This is another aspect of Fromm's contribution that has not yet received the recognition it deserves in current efforts to examine the intersubjective nature of the psychoanalytic dialogue (Stolorow et al. 1987) Despite the enormous advantages over the Freudian model, Fromm's ideal of development, the >productive character,< is in Grey's estimate, misleading. Actual studies of productive personalities show, according to Grey, that >the very circumstances that favor one particular productive attribute tend to discourage another.<
Das Leben meistern
(1996)
Denken altert nicht
(1996)
Der Durchbruch vom Haben zum Sein. Erich Fromms Gesellschaftskritik und die Mystik Meister Eckharts
(1996)
Der Mensch ist kein Ding!
(1996)
Die Charaktermauer
(1996)
Die zweite Erkenntnis
(1996)
Dreams and transference
(1996)
Einige Hinweise auf die psychotherapeutische Einstellung und den Interventionsstil von Erich Fromm
(1996)
Einige Hinweise auf die psychotherapeutische Einstellung und den Interventionsstil von Erich Fromm
(1996)
Einige Hinweise auf die psychotherapeutische Einstellung und den Interventionsstil von Erich Fromm
(1996)
Elöszó (Vorwort),
(1996)
Merton M. Gill's (1914–1994) contributions to psychoanalytic theory are reviewed. Gill's ideas are discussed as they relate to three fundamental challenges facing psychoanalysis: (1) defining the nature of psychoanalysis as a discipline, (2) defining the nature of the psychoanalytic situation and the optimal psychoanalytic technique, (3) finding ways to study the psychoanalytic process empirically. In all three areas special attention is paid to continuities and discontinuities in Gill's thinking over time. With respect to the first challenge, Gill's contributions to classical metapsychology are described as well as his subsequent repudiation of that perspective and its replacement with a >person point of view.< With respect to the second challenge, Gill's writings on hypnosis, on the initial psychiatric interview, and on psychoanalytic technique are reviewed. Gill's later emphasis on the analysis of transference and on the analyst's contribution to the patient's experience are shown to have precursors in his earlier work. Finally, Gill's hermeneutic, perspectivist orientation is described along with his longstanding commitment to systematic empirical research on the analytic process, a commitment he felt was not inconsistent with hermeneutics. Despite the points of continuity in his ideas, Gill's career was marked by radical changes in his point of view, so that one can find him, at different times, standing on opposite sides of fundamental controversies in the field.
This paper reconsiders the case of Frau Emmy von N – Freud's first effort to treat hysteria – from the vantage point of hypnoid states of consciousness and the phenomenon of dissociation. It proposes that Freud, in ultimately repudiating Breuer's concept of autohypnosis and alterations in consciousness, led psychoanalysis for the next century towards a one-sided emphasis on repression at the expense of dissociation. It is suggested here that Freud's inability to >cure< Emmy was largely due to his treating her symptoms simply as pathological pieces of her past to be removed and to his failure to attend to their immediate relevance in the here-and-now context of their own relationship. To comprehend why, as Freud states, Emmy's cure >was not a lasting one< is to accept that patients such as Emmy are not cured of what was done to them in the past rather, we are working to cure them of what they continue to do to themselves and to others in order to cope with what was done to them in the past.
This paper discusses some aspects of consciousness from a psychoanalytical viewpoint, based on a reading of Freud's relevant texts and also incorporating some recent developments in neurophysi-ology and philosophy. Its aim is to put forward a >fuller< concept of consciousness than that often used in analytic theory. Rather than, for example, confining it to a sense organ, or to a receiver of one stream of inner or outer perceptions, the author suggests that consciousness has many streams or >voices,< with perhaps little sense of unity and that, partly because of this, consciousness has an important role to play in channelling the expression of the unconscious, as well as in helping to create a picture of the world, in addition to its familiar censoring and protective functions. The author also questions the notion of >mental representations< which has influenced what we mean by mental life, and discusses an alternative, >nonrepresentational< framework. Much of what the author writes is speculative but still based on the psychoanalytic encounter, for he believes that our model of consciousness does influence how we view clinical material. He presents a clinical session to illustrate some of the themes of the paper.
Erich Fromm
(1996)
Erich Fromm
(1996)
Rainer Funk offers another perspective on social character and clinical work. His main thesis is that the analysis of social character, understood as the syndrome of common traits shared by a class or group within society, is as important for understanding any given person as is his or her particular history and idiosyncracies. According to Funk, most clinical work starts and often ends with the analysis of what makes a particular individual unique and focuses almost exclusively on a patient's childhood. This approach runs the risk of overlooking assumptions shared by analyst and analysand alike that may be pathogenic or limiting, but are not recognized as such by virtue of their being shared social and cultural premises. Funk goes further by saying that contemporary social character, described by Fromm as the marketing orientation, has a pervasive alienating influence that corrupts efforts to build loving relationships or develop creative talents. This corrosive influence will infect the therapeutic effort unless the analyst is aware of social influences that have molded his or her own character and has a vision of human growth that is not distorted by this influence. Funk distinguishes self-alienation rooted in authoritarian structures or symbiotic dependency from self-alienation of the marketing orientation. Following Fromm's analysis, he believes that the marketing character's pervasiveness is due to its being part of a >socially patterned defect.< Funk puts on center stage the analysis of alienating social character that affects the analyst and patient alike. Any stance that deviates from this position would be suspect if not collusive in Funk's view.
Burston and Olfman show how this perspective led Fromm to analyze how so-cial demands create >socially patterned defects< in people required to adapt to prevailing social conditions. The same concept appeared in Fromm's later work as the >pathology of normalcy.< Speaking as a representative for human aspira-tions over the social demand for conformity, Fromm raised the question, Who is sick? Is the individual who rebels against social pressures but is symptomatic, sick? Is the individual who conforms but shows no symptoms, normal? As radical as these questions may seem, Burston and Oilman demonstrate that in fact they are not new, and can be traced as far back as Greek philosophy. Moreover, they were shared by Freud, who valued a neurotic with a capacity for insight more than a normal person who showed no signs of spiritual upheaval.
Erich Fromm's Courage
(1996)
Paul Roazen points out that Fromm was enormously courageous to have sustained a lifelong effort to revise Freud in the face of rejection from the psychoanalytic com-munity. As an example Roazen points to one of Fromm's neglected contributions, Sigmund Freud's Mission (1959), which was the first challenge to Jones's uncritical biography of Freud. In it Fromm called attention to Freud's complex relationship to his mother, who stimulated his ambition of becoming a great leader. This narcissis-tic investment in her son also had negative consequences. The ambivalence of Freud's relationship to his mother did not escape Fromm's observations even be-fore it was known that Freud did not attend his mother's funeral. (Instead Freud sent his daughter, Anna, as an emissary.) Roazen also reminds us how ferocious-and childish-attacks could be on those who dared to deviate from the Freudian party line. In keeping with Freud's original standing as an outsider, it is striking how much of an uphill struggle it has been to establish the legitimate role Erich Fromm has played in the history of psychoanalysis; but that only makes me think that recti-fying the situation, and paying him his due honor, is especially incumbent upon us. Whatever legitimate disagreements there ought to be about what Fromm's legacy adds up to, I think few can deny that his responsible outspokenness, which I have called courage, should be a special beacon to us all.
Daniel Burston and Sharna Olfman's note that early in his career Fromm had begun to question Freud's historical perspective that assumed that the ad-vancement of society would necessarily create a stronger repression of instinc-tual drives. According to Freud, there were no free rides on the route to pro-gress, and any cultural advancement would leave in its wake a legacy of com-mon unhappiness. Regardless of the merits of this position, Freud's sober out-look had the virtue of challenging the belief that reason would bring gradual and inexorable progress. Fromm also thought that society had a repressive function, but as Burston and Oilman point out, Fromm's approach was qualitative rather than quantitative. Social demands based on economic modes of production and unequal distribution of goods would conflict with human demands for freedom and happiness. The conflict between social demands and human aspirations had to be analyzed for each particular case and could not be generalized into false historical categories as Freud's theory did.