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I argue that on both the small-scale level of the interpersonal relationship, and the large-scale level of society, the manic defense makes it difficult to care about others, and so militates against a sense of social responsibility. I address four basic questions: what is the nature of social responsibility? What is the nature of the manic defense? How does the manic defense interfere with the potential for social responsibility? And, on a more general level, what are the issues with respect to methodology for efforts such as this one to link psychoanalysis and social theory?
In this commentary on Arnold Rothstein's >Compromise Formation Theory: An Intersubjective Dimension,< I address some of the limitations of compromise formation theory in addressing issues of intersubjectivity. Namely, compromise formation theory does not address intersubjectivity as a principal motivation it takes up mutual regulation but not mutual recognition or other aspects of intersubjectivity it does not place the intersubjective matrix at the center of clinical psychoanalytic understanding and it does not sufficiently examine clinical concerns regarding the patient's conflicts regarding intersubjective contact with the analyst. I then discuss Rothstein's clinical vignette in an effort to provide an alternative understanding of the therapeutic action of Rothstein's clinical interventions. Drawing on the work of the late Lloyd Silverman, I present an intersubjective explanation that highlights the analyst's compassionate understanding of the patient's conflicts and acceptance of the pleasure in the patient's impulses, achieved through the analyst's own personal and subjective struggles.
This article examines a debate concerning the exegesis of the story of the garden of Eden and the tree of knowledge, as told in Genesis. Two contradictory interpretations of the garden narrative are examined, the first as the story is elucidated by the psychoanalyst and social theorist Erich Fromm and the alternative interpretation by the Talmudic scholar and philosopher Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik. This article compares and contrasts their exegeses and the respective implications of each view. The controversy, which has profound implications, reflects differences in world views concerning the good life, autonomy and relatedness, assertion and submission, will and surrender, obedience and rebellion, independence and interdependence, subjectivity and intersubjectivity. Links are drawn to a variety of contemporary psychoanalytic theories, developments, and controversies.
Erich Fromm (1900–1980)
(2005)
The interdisciplinary journal Psychiatry, founded in 1938 by the psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan, provided a remarkable interdisciplinary forum for such outstanding social scientists as Edward Sapir, Harold Lasswell, Ruth Benedict, Gregory Bateson, Ashley Montague, Lev Vygotsky, Erich Fromm, Erving Goffman, A. H. Maslow, and Robert Merton. The journal sought an interdisciplinary synthesis concerning personality, problems of living, and community mental health. Almost all of the major contributors to the early years of the journal drew strongly on the pragmatic tradition. In that tradition, Sullivan saw language shaping the development of personality and the interactions that constitute social life. Major themes of articles in the journal included the relation of personality of culture, the relation of the political order to the psychic order, propaganda and the creation of public and private meaning, racial and gender issues, and social arrangements influencing mental health. While pursuing the many dimensions of being human revealed by the different social sciences, the journal never developed an integrative theory to create a coherence among the many thematic strands and disciplinary perspectives on its pages. The journal also never developed an adequate account of how language served a central role in mediating personality development and social interactions. With the added theoretical and methodological tools now at our disposal we may be in a position to advance the unfinished project proposed by this journal.
This paper is an effort to describe and express and the tension between the observing mind and the >wisdom mind,< which has its taproots in the deep and unformulated experience of connectedness. Nominally about the process of writing as a psychoanalyst, it is more like my personal >Credo< in relation to the work of psychoanalysis, the work of writing, and the work of living with contradictions – life. In it I try to bring together disparate reflections, to illustrate in the writing itself the process of making >many into one.< Because so much of this essay relates to themes in Mannie Ghent's work, including his work on surrender and his >Credo,< it seemed to be appropriate to offer it to readers of this issue dedicated to his memory.
The author discusses Arnold Rothstein's paper >Compromise Formation Theory: An Intersubjective Dimension< and challenges his definition of intersubjectivity. She offers a perspective in which the import of intersubjectivity theory is less to dissolve the notion of objectivity than to grasp processes of mutual engagement, regulation, and recognition. While it is true that the recognition that the analyst is also a subject and therefore does not have exclusive knowledge is an important shift in the psychoanalytic paradigm, the author suggests that the intersubjective is far more encompassing than this. Intersubjective theory emphasizes the active creation of consensus or conflict about reality rather than merely the recognition that the analyst's perspective on reality is subjective. This cocreation produces a different emotional experience of connection, not merely a change in the quality of insight. Finally, Rothstein's case illustrates how he responds to the need for recognition and regulation. He shows us how focusing on the procedural allowed him to make an intersubjective shift, not simply an intrapsychic interpretation of compromise formation.