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Betrachtet man die Kompetenzen, die ein Subjekt zur Bewältigung des Lebens und der beruflichen Anforderungen benötigt, so gehören dazu auch reflexive Kompetenzen. Diese bewegen sich in der Spannung zwischen Systemzwängen und Eigensinn. Der Mensch wird als verantwortungsvoller Akteur gedacht, der sich und seine Umwelt durch schöpferisches Handeln verändern kann. Bei den Handlungsspielräumen geht es zentral um das Menschenbild, das soziale Implikationen hat. Wichtig ist, Illusionen über das eigene Selbstbild zu verlieren und gesellschaftliche Zwänge und Soziopathologien aufzudecken. Die Kategorie des Eigensinns legt nahe, dass die subjektive Logik von Erfahrung und Handeln nie vollständig in gesellschaftlichen Sinnhorizonten aufgeht, sondern es einen freien Raum der Selbstorganisation gibt, der unvorhersehbar und unkontrollierbar ist. Dies gilt es zu erkennen und auszuschöpfen.
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.
Esta ponencia presenta algunos aspectos de la psicología social analítica de Fromm que pueden relacionarse con el capitalismo de consumo. En vista de los límites a su crecimiento, las consecuencias destructivas del estilo de vida consumista son cada vez más evidentes. Un consumo sano es algo que debemos practicar. Este nuevo consumo fomentaría un desarrollo sostenible como contrapeso a la tendencia que mercantiliza al consumista y el mundo. El planteamiento del carácter social describe la adaptación social de los poderes psíquicos del hombre a las necesidades económicas. En la actualidad, ese proceso adaptativo ha transformado la educación y el aprendizaje, creando estudiantes que pueden ser usados fácilmente por el sistema económico y que habrán de ser consumistas perfectos. Para acortar una vida potencialmente sin sentido, la producción y el consumo deben limitarse y recortarse a un nivel razonable. Más personas deben cambiar su forma de vida. La propuesta de Erich Fromm presenta razones por las cuales el consumismo es un callejón sin salida para el desarrollo humano y plantea soluciones salvadoras que implican cambiar nuestros sistemas educativos.
Veränderungen in der kapitalistischen Produktionsweise in den westlichen Industrie-gesellschaften seit den 1920er Jahren lassen sich grob als Wechsel vom Industrieka-pitalismus zum Konsumkapitalismus beschreiben. Der Wechsel fällt in eine Zeit, in der in und außerhalb der sozialistischen Bewegung Zweifel an dem Fortbestehen eines revolutionären Subjekts formuliert wurden. Auch Fromms Beitrag zum Verhältnis von Psychoanalyse und Marxismus war von dieser Frage bestimmt. In der zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts traten die veränderten Produktions- und Arbeitsbedingungen mit ihren Folgen für die Lebensweise deutlich in den Vordergrund. Das Doppelgesicht des Konsumkapitalismus zeigte sich in einem ungeheuren Zuwachs des Güterwohlstands auf der Grundlage der Massenproduktion und zugleich in sich zuspitzenden Formen von Verelendung, Armut und Unbehagen. Die Transformation des Konsumkapitalis-mus hin zu einer menschlichen Gesellschaftsform verlangt nach einer Lösung sowohl sozialer Probleme (Wohlstandsverteilung) als auch ökologischer Probleme (Ressour-cennutzung).
This paper presents some dimensions of Erich Fromm's analytical social psychology that can be related to consumer capitalism. In view of the limits of growth, the destructive consequences of the consumerist lifestyle are increasingly evident. A sane consumption is something we must develop. This new consumption would promote sustainable development as a counterweight to the commoditization of the consumer and of the world. The social character approach describes the social adaptation of the psychic powers of man to economic needs. At present this adaptive process has transformed education and learning, creating students who can be easily used by the economic system and who will be perfect consumers. To curtail a potentially meaningless life, production and consumption must be limited and cut to a reasonable level. More people must change their way of life. Erich Fromm's approach presents reasons why consumerism is a dead end for human development and he outlines life-saving solutions that involve change in our education systems.
Zur Einführung
(2013)
This paper reveals the basic ideas of Erich Fromm’s analytical social psychology and shows links among work, character and education. Social changes may be better understood in the background of work evolution. Today the concept of waged work has been extended to unpaid activities. At the same time, the working life has been changed from a stable model to a flexible one. The work, its standards and social distribution, are also different now. Erich Fromm’s concept of "social character” clarifies the changes and explains the consequences of the social changes. The relations to work are also different. During these changes – unemployment included – concepts of the unconditional basic income were stud-ied. These concepts explain why it is possible for people without waged work to participate in community life and consumption, without being excluded. The author presents the basic social changes that affected many different subpopulation and age groups.
Erich Fromm als Soziologe. Anregungen aus dem Werk von Alfred Weber und Zuordnungen zur Soziologie
(2004)
Das Unbehagen im Konsumismus
(2002)
Wege aus der Nekrophilie
(2002)
Organisation und Charakter. Sozialpsychologische Aspekte zur Analyse von Sekten und Psychogruppen
(1998)
>Links between Work, Character, and Education<: The transformational processes presently occurring in the techno-economic bases of industrial life are, inevitably enough, accompanied by changes in social character. Though the significance of work for character formation has declined as other influences have moved to centerstage, >work< still remains an important dimension by which human beings define and anchor themselves in the world. Indeed, this >anchoring through work< allows the characterological status quo in the present to be read off. This essay takes the Frommian concept of social character as its departure point, asking what work experiences lead to what character structures and also what work ethic results from these characterological features. An analysis is given of the social-characterological conditions necessarily imported by workers into their job situations, simply in order to break even in an evolving industrial labor process marked by structural unemployment. More stringent vocational requirements, plus an increased release from the coercion of having to work for one's daily bread, pose a real danger for one's psychic balance and make flexibility an imperative. If the identity crisis brought on by the deprivation of work is to be mastered, new vocational outlets must be developed that are removed from financial remuneration and accountability – as an alternative to work in the traditional sense. At the same time, jobs and wages need to be uncoupled and a society-wide minimum income guaranteed. These transformational processes are giving rise to a >post-industrial character structure< principally characterized, in its productive variants, by flexibility andsocial competence; moreover, its behavior patterns are loosened up by quality-orientated, diversified job (or other vocational) requirements capable of appealing to the whole person.
In this contribution we are offered an analysis of Erich Fromm's relation to the Institut für Sozialforschung. In his capacity as director of the Department of Social Psychology, Fromm played a leading role in the empirical investigatory work carried out at the Institute, apart from being Horkheimer's principal interlocutor in questions connected with the psychoanalytic extension of Historical Materialism. Working within the framework of Horkheimer's envisaged goal of an historical-philosophical theory of the development of the contemporary era that was to draw on the various disciplines, Fromm made his own specific contribution that came to be known by the name of analytic social psychology. Fromm's departure from the Institute marked the terminal point of a whole developmental pathway, and was prompted by differences on substantial points as well as by personal differences. In particular, it was Fromm's revision of psychoanalysis that aroused Horkheimer and Adorno's critical ire. To the extent that Adorno's influence grew within the Institute, Fromm's own suffered as a result. After Adorno's appointment to full membership of the Institute in 1938, Fromm found himself increasingly reduced to a marginal position; and after a short while he accepted the consequences and left. Fromm's departure from the Institute led to a lifelong rift between him and the other members of the Institute, the consequence being that Fromm's contribution to the early versions of the Critical Theory – which he had made as head of the Department of Social Psychology and as director of research – was later deliberately passé sous silence.
>Drive Structure or Social Relationships<: After his departure from the Institute, Erich Fromm pursued with renewed intensity his sociological revision of psychoanalysis that was to touch off the debate with Herbert Marcuse, his earlier colleague at the Institute, and which came to be known as the culturalism-revisionism controversy. The charge leveled at Fromm was that he had moved away from recognizing the drive structure as the key bearer of the resistance potential in the Critical Theory and had instead thrown the central focus onto social relationships, where it is the Ego as the mediating factor – rather than the Id – that is geared to alienated reality. But while it is true enough that Fromm did shift the emphasis away from the drive structure to social relationships, it should be added that he grouped these social relationships very much under the rubric of >the pathology of normality< and criticized them as bearing the stamp of the underlying economic order. This contribution examines the background to the controversy between Herbert Marcuse and Erich Fromm, and sets out the principal arguments advanced by the contending parties. What emerges, interestingly enough, is that both protagonists never diverged as much in their respective positions as the noisy exchange of blows perhaps suggested. There is little to distinguish both camps in their common humanistic concern for the advancement of human happiness. Undoubtedly Marcuse and Fromm are at one in advancing a radical social critique: but whereas the one critique is premised on the need to inculcate a drive structure capable of withstanding the forces of repressive socialization, the other seeks its inspiration in a critical anthropology that keeps alive the idea of a more humane society – even in the face of the negation of this idea.
Die pädagogischen Konzepte von Erich FROMM und Alice Miller werden verglichen. Dabei wird versucht, das theoretische Wechselverhältnis der radikal humanistischen Erziehungskritik FROMMs und der antipädagogischen Erziehungskritik Millers herauszuarbeiten. Während Miller in therapeutischer und individuumzentrierter Perspektive das Täter-Opfer-Modell vorzieht, versteht FROMM seine Aussagen zur Erziehung im Zusammenhang mit seinem Konzept des Gesellschaftscharakters und präferiert ein materialistisches und psychoanalytisches Modell des Zusammenhangs von Erziehung, Charakter und Gesellschaft. Es wird deutlich gemacht, dass die beiden Ansätze sich gegenseitig ergänzen. Unvereinbarkeiten bestehen allerdings hinsichtlich des Erziehungsbegriffs. Während Miller diesen strikt ablehnt, verbindet FROMM mit ihm befreiende und emanzipatorische Möglichkeiten.
Der Kulturismus-Revisionismus-Streit – Annäherungen Dortmund 1987, 42 pp. (Private Typoscript)
(1988)