Refine
Language
- English (72) (remove)
Document Type
- Dissertations (72) (remove)
Has Fulltext
- yes (72) (remove)
This essay proposes to examine a limited number of critical assessments regarding the scientific status of psychoanalysis with reference to intents and purposes, claims and disclaimers, contrasting views of what constitutes a science and the nature of scientific thinking and how these might apply to psychoanalysis epistemologically. It assumes a certain degree of familiarity with criticisms that have been leveled against psychoanalysis from those who insist on absolutist testing for what some call true science, particularly on the part of those who are not practitioners of the art. It wonders about the concern with scientizing by those who actually practice it, or value it in some way or another. It suggests an open minded approach without premature or even warranted closure on the subject of human beings and of ways of getting to know them, let alone understanding them and perhaps being of help to them.
Johan Jakob Bachofen (1815-1887) was a Swiss anthropologist and sociologist whose 1861 book, Mother Right: An Investigation of the Religious and Juridical Character of Matriarchy in the Ancient World is best known for his radical claims that matriarchy preceded patriarchy, and that matriarchy is the source of human society, religion, and morality. Scholars have acknowledged Bachofen’s influence on a long list of writers, including but not limited to: Lewis Henry Morgan, Friedrich Nietzsche, Thomas Mann, Friederich Engels, Karl Marx, Erich Fromm, Joseph Campbelll, Emile Durkheim, Carl Gustav Jung, Thorstein Veblen, Ferdinand Tonnies, and Pitirim Sorokin. The focus of my thesis is to bring attention to Bachofen’s influence on the early sociologists (Engels, Durkheim, Tonnies, Sorokin), and more importantly, on the later sociologists and other social scientists whom these early sociologists in turn influenced, including: David Riesman, Talcott Parsons, and Jean Baudrillard.
This thesis attempts to advance the underappreciated thought of Erich Fromm as both a crucial contribution to twentieth century intellectual history and a potentially pivotal point from which to transcend current theoretical impasses. In particular, I argue that Fromm's radical humanism can participate in the rejuvenation of contemporary social theory, which is still largely constrained by the dual reductionism of positivism and poststructuralism, and that a return to it will encourage renewed theorising of, and empirical engagement with, the connections that obtain between the >psychological< and the >social<, the >essential< and the >constructed<, and the >is< and the >ought<. I try to show that Fromm's qualified essentialism and ethical normativism are sensible, viable, and desirable, and that they, coupled with his analytic social psychology, which is based on his underlying humanism and elaborated through a unique fusion of Marx and Freud, provide the basis for the development of practical strategies to realise humanism in the world. Perhaps above all, I try to show that there is a deceptive complexity and sophistication to Fromm's ideas, which are all too often taken as simple and naive.
The main purpose of this thesis is to explore the influence of the social unconscious on human beings in a future context. In psychoanalyst Erich Fromm's view, the social unconscious refers to Individuals who are afraid of being separated from the society they live in, they often adapt and distort their human needs to meet the requirements of our social system. However, with the strengthening of personality and self-awareness in our present society, how will the relationship between the social subconscious and people's self-awareness change in the future? This is the key issue of this thesis. In the first part, by studying the definition of the social unconscious and related works, this thesis tries to understand the root cause of the influence of the social unconscious and how it affects people's behavior and decision-making. In the second part, this thesis makes an in-depth study of Cyberpunk and objective imagery in related works, revealing that Cyberpunk is a projection of the real world, and clues for many problems in the real world can be found in the Cyberpunk world. In the third part, this thesis explores the changes in people's consciousness in the Cyberpunk world. Finally, this thesis concludes people will not be rid of the influence of the social unconscious whether in the real world or the future world. Even as people's self-awareness is constantly enhanced, self-awareness and social unconscious will always exist as contradictory to one another.
Though suicide in American literature seems to belong to the twentieth century, core patterns of suicide had already emerged in the nineteenth-century novel. Five suicide themes are analyzed in selected novels from 1798 to 1909, with chapter paradigms drawing on an array of historical, cultural, and social-scientific sources and medical theories from 1792 to the present. Chapter one argues that Charles Brockden Brown's dramatization of the murder-suicide sequence in Wieland (1798), filtered through semi-fictional experimentation on suicide and scientific readings in Erasmus Darwin, maps the new nation's violence, and prefigures contemporary theory about suicidal pathology. Chapter two identifies Nathaniel Hawthorne's Blithedale Romance (1852) as a >suicide-survivor novel< or >Uberlebendenroman.< Erich FROMM's insights about self-destruction and characterological necrophilia, and contemporary theory about suicide survivorship, structure my analysis of how suicide unsettles mode as the arhythmical journey of the survivor's healing and philosophical investigations are traced. Chapter three explores >symbolic-age crisis,< the modern term underscoring what Dr. Henry Morselli perceived in the 1890s: suicides often occur during failed developmental transitions. Such struggles in Rebecca Harding Davis's >Life in the Iron Mills< (1861), Stephen Crane's Maggie (1893), and Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie (1900) parallel the post-Civil War growing pains of our country as social observers such as Jacob Riis and Henry and William James voiced fears about the >epidemic< of suicide. Chapter four probes the choice of a suicide method vis-a-vis its lethality in Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth (1905), which follows the author's excursion into problems of self-determination in the bedrugged upper echelons of society. Modern suicidologist Edwin S. Shneidman's rubrics of classification explain Lily Bart's gradual and ambivalent self-poisoning as a >subintentioned< suicide; nineteenth-century pharmacology on chloral hydrate (in the work of Drs. David H. Tuke and George Miller Beard, among others) provides historical context. Chapter five is also grounded in nineteenth-century cultural perspectives about suicide, evaluating gender-specific features in the suicide deaths of male and female artists in Henry James's Princess Casamassima (1886), Kate Chopin's The Awakening (1899), and Jack London's Martin Eden (1909).
At the beginning of the 20th century, social sciences were institutionalized for the first time. While initially being a part of philosophical thinking, the promise of a scientific, objective interpretation of social phenomena granted social scientists a distinguished place within universities in Germany as well as in the USA. A larger focus on empirical research should guarantee that social science was indeed an independent endeavor, instead of a new form of social philosophy under another name. However, when analyzing the research of social scientists in the early 20th century, it is clear that ideological biases still prevailed and heavily influenced the interpretation of the collected empirical data. In this thesis, the problem of objectivity in social science and its relation to both theory and empirical research is addressed. As a case study, I have used the development of the social research of the members of the Frankfurt School in the period 1923-1950. Starting with a clear call for objectivity, over years it became clear that ideological bias was not easily removed from social science, especially at the background of the emergence and fall of the Weimar Republic and the establishment of the Nazi Regime. In my thesis, I argue that ideologically biased social science is not less empirically or more theoretically orientated than attempts to conduct objective social research, but have different interpretations of what it means to be empirical.
The objective of this scientific research work is to develop the theme >Self - esteem and Development of Human Potential< in a psychoanalytical perspective. Within this proposal we intend to show the importance of this attribute in the life of the people mentioning the advantages of a healthy self-esteem as well as the losses of a deficit self-esteem. We will be discussing and evaluating the social influences in the formation and conservation of self-esteem, revealing that it is not born with the subject, but is formed through the first bonds and strengthened as the child finds favorable environments for its healthy development. We will look at the fact that every impression or internalized belief about inferiority comes from the interpretation of reality or the fantasy of rejection and abandonment, and that excesses or frustrations in excess in early childhood leave narcissistic wounds that can result in the existential void with reflection in the self esteem. We must prove that people with healthy self-esteem will be more courageous, bold, and confident, increasing the likelihood of being more assertive in their choices. We will look at the fact that there is enormous potential within each human being ready to be unveiled and utilized and the fertile ground by which the potential can manifest and develop is self-esteem. Finally, we must conclude that, in addition to being a daily achievement, self-esteem can be rescued at any moment, provided that one has a conscience, desire, attitude of change, courage and discipline.
This is the case of a young woman suffering from a narcissistic personality disturbance with Oedipal aspects. The development of the analytic treatment is stressed through the analysis of her dreams. The analytic setting provided an appropriate mirroring Self-object. Thereby the patient has had the opportunity to express her own defective female grandiose Self, which was at the base of her disturbances.
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.
Erich Fromm criticizes the common notion that >obedience is a virtue< and >disobedience is a vice.< To prove his point, he argues that obedience can be utilized by any unjust and inhumane authority for their evil ends. Not only that, but he also says that the history of Western civilization is replete with stories of the struggle for the affirmation of the human person as an individual entity through disobedience. Thus, Fromm argues that disobedience can be utilized for the liberation and evolution of the human person. Therefore, he affirms that disobedience can be considered a virtue.
This thesis is a statement about a series of paintings based on an invented dollhouse object that conveys the artist’s identity and placement in the world. Through this essay, the artist represents the home as a space that fosters the recovery and rebirth of invisible energy, >ki< and examines ideas of transience, interconnection, and rebirth in the mysterious flow of >ki< in the home. Also the artist will explain her own view about being an artist, the methodologies and specific techniques of her paintings, and her artistic direction for the future.
Given the current juncture in history, humanity is faced with the herculean task of adapting to a tumultuous present and a glimmer future. Should climate projections be accurate, there is little time to waste. This work makes the claim that we are not only in a political gridlock but also in an academic one. Researching climate philosophy from its inception, the concluding view is that no major progress, outside of a standardized descriptive analysis, has been achieved. Thus, the work evaluates an array of climate philosophers e.g. Stephen Gardiner, James Garvey, Peter Singer, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, etc., with specific emphasis on the economic philosopher John Broome, suggesting that their recommendations and assessments fall short of being totalizing in scope and therefore of producing viable theories that, if practically sought after, can achieve social sustainability. To fix the problem of a lack of social and strategic trajectory, I offer up Erich Fromm's humanistic philosophy as a suggestive model. In doing so, the argument is made that this can aid in reorienting our external/empirical obsession by shifting our focus toward our ‘interiority – our internal worlds and psyches –, since a necessary condition in achieving sustainability is changing our mindset. By focusing on the human psyche, its structure and needs, can our behavior finally shift in a way that compliments scientific recommendations and ecological demands. Hence, Fromm lends the climate philosophy discussion an ontological framework from which to better direct and more readily navigate toward less socially precarious and more ethical inclined waters.
Hasidic Elements in the Writings of Erich Fromm. Thesis Los Angeles 1963, 90 pp. (Typoscript).
(1963)
In recent years, identity-based movements have increasingly been criticized by outsiders for espousing a >culture of outrage< both in terms of their academic expressions and activist mobilizations. In the present study, I examine this charge from within the struggle by advancing a self-reflexive socio-psychological investigation into certain emotional responses, attitudes, and practices that have, in significant ways, come to define this type of political agitation. Specifically, I focus my analysis on anti-racist feminism given my personal ties and investment in this movement. Following Wendy Brown, I investigate whether anti-racist feminism suffers from the Nietzschean affliction of ressentiment, and if so, what can be done to reorient the movement towards a more affirmative and humanist future. I address this latter objective through the work of Erich Fromm who I argue provides us with insights that are especially pertinent to our current problem, and which, when developed further with the aid of anti-racist interventions, can offer a fruitful means to moving forward.
This study involves the application of Erich FROMM's theoretical concepts. The more freedom mankind requests; the more isolated mankind becomes. The relationship between social support networks and depression in university students was studied to investigate FROMM's assumptions. The distinction between past social support networks and present social support networks was emphasized. Other variables addressed include place of residence, distance from home, number of contacts with home, and subjects' preferred social support versus their actual social support. – Data was collected from 100 students enrolled in three introductory psychology classes. Students responded to a Social Support Network Questionnaire and a Depression Screening Inventory. – The study failed to establish any relationship between the maintenance of long-term established social support networks that carried over from the past into the present and depression levels. No relationship was found between depression with regards to distance from home and number of contacts to home. No gender or ethnicity relationships with depression were established. One significant finding emerged. If there was discordance between how the subjects wished to spend their time and how they actually spent their time, depression was found.
Erich Fromm’s biophilia, a theory of personality development incorporating an interaction between existential needs and the socio-economic environment, was a significant element of Fromm’s proposed Analytic Social Psychology. Despite an enduring influence, Fromm’s theory of biophilia has been largely untested in the literature. Fromm argued that biophilia was the optimum way to conceptualise malignant aggression, and that the introduction and reward of cooperation was the best way to increase levels of biophilia, and thereby reduce levels of destructive behaviour in a population. It was the aim of this thesis to investigate whether the introduction and reward of cooperation would increase biophilia, and decrease aggression, in a population. In Studies One to Six, a trait biophilia scale was developed and psychometric validity and reliability established. In Studies Seven to Nine, scale predictive validity in comparison to existing trait measures was investigated in theoretically appropriate areas including online behaviour, positive psychology and pro-environmental behaviour. In Study Ten, a game theory paradigm for introducing and rewarding cooperation was developed, and the relationships among biophilia, cooperation and aggression were investigated. Contrary to Fromm’s theory, a positive association between aggression and cooperation, and negative associations between those and biophilia, were found. In addition, the effects of introducing and rewarding cooperation were investigated, and again contrary to Fromm’s theory, introducing and rewarding cooperation produced an increase in aggression and a reduction in biophilia. These findings may reflect an inherent tension within Fromm’s theory between the use of existential needs, that were argued to be the product of competitive natural selection, and the use of cooperative interventions derived from Marxist theory. It is proposed that the relationships among biophilia, cooperation and aggression may be mediated by frustration. Implications for interventions and future research are discussed.
Contra la idea de que Rene Descartes es un filósofo sólo interesado en la razón, alejado de las sensaciones, y desinteresado por las cuestiones morales, se examinan aspectos fundamentales de la ética cartesiana. En primer lugar, se considera el lugar fundamenta que tiene la moral (provisional) para que Descartes pudiera dedicarse al cultivo de su razón y a avanzar tanto como le fuera posible en el conocimiento de la verdad. En segundo lugar, se presentan las cuatro máximas morales que inicialmente considera como el lugar provisional, donde residir confortable y feliz, mientras estaba listo para emprender la labor filosófica de fundamentación del conocimiento verdadero. Finalmente, luego de destacar la influencia estoica en la ética cartesiana, he procurado mostrar que para Descartes el conocimiento está íntimamente ligado a la felicidad.
This thesis is a critique of romantic love theoretically premised on the analytical psychology of Carl Jung and the humanistic psychoanalysis of Erich Fromm. The aim of this critique is to explore whether there are grounds for postulating a conception of love beyond the current romantic framework. As the critique is primarily concentrated at the depth level, romantic love is examined via the medium of Cinderella folklore, with particular focus on Andy Tennant's 1998 film adaptation of Cinderella, >Ever After<. Based on a Jungian approach to the psyche and psychic products, the methodological framework incorporates the three following tools: The tool of interpretation at the subjective level, in which the characters of the Cinderella fairy tale are read symbolically rather than taken to denote literal fictitious characters; the tool of constructive analysis, in which it is argued that romantic love is more than >nothing but< a boy/girl love story or >nothing but< a myth depicting patriarchal oppression; and the tool of amplification, in which archetypal similarities between the Christian myth and the Cinderella fairy tale are highlighted. The central argument of this critique is that while romantic love does not provide a viable model of relatedness if taken and practiced literally, the romantic myth nonetheless contains within it the basis for a fuller and richer experience of love and relatedness if read subjectively. The rationale for a depth critique of romantic love is based upon the Jungian postulate that phenomena such as dreams and myths issue fundamentally from the unconscious psychic realm, and further upon Jung's recognition of a psychological developmental process he refers to as >individuation< activated by engagement with the products of the unconscious. A symbolic/psychological reading of romantic love brings to light that romantic desire toward another is an outward manifestation of an inner desire for individual realisation, and is expressive of the individual's own capacity for wholeness. The value of a symbolic reading of romantic love is appreciated if it is conceived that it is precisely individual realisation that forms the basis for what is referred to by Erich Fromm as productive or knowledge-based love, argued here to be the ideal and only firm basis for human relatedness generally and intimate relatedness specifically.
The study grew out of a desire to examine how it feels to be denied what Hannah Arendt famously referred to as the >right to have rights,< including the right to disobey. More specifically, this study seeks to understand how people living under particular regimes of power – characterised by distinct politics of fear, uncertainty, and silence – feel, define, and express themselves in relation to power, whether in the form of submission or resistance. In other words: How do authoritarian power dynamics affect individuals’ perception of self and how does it play into and shape the everyday life of the individual? At the heart of this inquiry is the notion of the subject, which forms both the conceptual foundation and the central focus of this study.– The study draws primarily on the theoretical contributions of Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, and Hannah Arendt on the interplay of power, resistance, and subjectivity. To frame the discussion, a socio-historical examination of post-independence power practices in Egypt and their impact on the constitution of the political subject is conducted. Research data is generated through an art-inspired qualitative research approach, primarily using Egyptian novels as a source of data to uncover the nuances and interiorities of the process of subject formation. Through a dialogue between Western social theory and Egyptian literature, the study provides an understanding of power practice in Egypt from 1952 to the present, particularly at the level of the inner panorama of the self in society and expands it into a reading of social and political theories on the question of power, subjectivity, resistance, and agency.– The study is divided into six main chapters, including an introduction and a conclusion. Each empirical chapter of this study tells the story of a particular episode in time and is somewhat self-contained, yet all chapters are connected into a large coherent reading of modern Egyptian power practices. Just as the novels examined in this study tell a story with their words, so does my research.– The study concludes that the process of subject formation in Egypt should be understood as an artefact of historical continuity that connects the past to the present, not necessarily in a linear fashion, but in a way that gives it a genealogical context, and as a dynamic process of shifting subject positions. The study further argues for the limitations of the status conception of citizenship as a defining framework for the state – society relationship in the context under study and proposes instead the use of the power – subject framework as a substitute. Last but not least, the study suggests that the connection between theory and method, expressed in the very structure of the research, reveals the epistemic relevance of literature to the conceptual imagination, contributing in a sense, to the discussion of the decolonisation of knowledge production. In some ways, this interdisciplinarity underscores the sheer breadth and hybridity of the concept of subject formation that has become apparent throughout this analysis.
This thesis seeks to uncover the methodological ground-work necessary for the construction of an emancipatory theory of society. The theoretical work of Erich FROMM on the necessary valuative criteria of social sanity is explored first. This leads to a discussion on the subjective and speculative characteristics of social theories; it hopes to demonstrate the presence of an inherent psychological, internal debate that lies at the root of any political agency. This debate is properly located between our accepted social norms and our more deeply rooted, historically acquired beliefs and perspectives, between the public and the private realm. – This dichotomy leads to the more contemporary work of Nancy Chodorow, where this public-private debate is critiqued through the use of the interpretive analysis of object-relations theory, a theory of personality development firmly grounded in specific socially constructed patterns. Her work serves as an example of an interrelational theory of political agency which does not risk becoming self-justifying. This thesis concludes with observations on the fact that mainstream political theory seems to have failed to take into account the subconscious motivational factors as the birth-place of our complex, socio-political behaviour; what we will call the >pre-political,< private debate. It finally restates the possible contribution that psychoanalytic methodology can make to social theory and to the study of political behaviour.
This dissertation is centrally concerned with the ways in which Erich Fromm’s critical analysis of society can be applied to education, specifically looking at the ways in which Fromm’s conceptualizations of freedom, ethics, and love can be used both to critique education and to provide an alternative vision of education through an ethic of love. With its focus on humanization and freedom, critical pedagogy offers a powerful critique, but its liberatory potential has yet to be fully realized, largely because of the ways in which critical theory has been engaged in the work of critical pedagogy. Fromm’s work offers a necessary complication to critical pedagogy through his analysis of the psychological and emotional dimensions of authentic humanization. Combining the liberatory aims of critical pedagogy with Fromm’s work enables us to reveal how schooling functions to perpetuate negative freedom, to propose a universal ethic or moral vision for critical educational studies, and to engage in a critical humanizing praxis. Ultimately, the hope of this project is to show how a more complex understanding of freedom that centers a critical theory of love allows us to develop a pedagogical framework where education as the practice of positive freedom becomes synonymous with teaching as an ethic of love.