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This article offers a sympathetic appraisal of Erich Fromm’s concept of narcissism as it relates to the emergence, sustenance, and resolution of authoritarian violence. The discussion is first placed within the methodological debate over the analytic operations that are required for an adequate understanding of authoritarian violence, explaining why a psychoanalytic perspective is necessary. The focus then shifts to Fromm’s take on the Freudian concept of narcissism, before proceeding to explore in some depth his account of the symbolic mechanisms and contextual climate that must combine in practice in order for narcissistic energies to be channeled into authoritarianism and violence. Attention in this regard is paid both to the populace and governing elites. The article concludes with a short exposition of Fromm’s notion of benign narcissism, from its specific content to the conditions of its possibility.
The Great Escape: World War II, Neo-Freudianism, and the Origins of U.S. Psychocultural Analysis
(2011)
Psycho-cultural analysis stands as a signal accomplishment of the 1930s U.S. assimilation of European refugee-intellectuals. Scholars in the U.S. had been moving toward a kind of psycho-cultural analysis well in advance of the Great Migration – the U.S. was not an intellectual vacuum or wasteland – nevertheless, it was through their interdisciplinary collaboration, fueled by the specter of war, that these international peers stimulated one of the most wide-ranging, dynamic, and productive exchanges of ideas of the century. Through the lens of Erich Fromm's >Escape from Freedom<, this article explores psycho-culturalism's emergence in the interstices between cultures, nations, ideas, and disciplines – between Europeans and Americans, psychoanalysts and social scientists.
I shall start by showing Erich Fromm’s particular social psychological approach to the understanding of man. In the main part, a new character type is presented that can be observed particularly in highly industrialized countries where people are devoted to the so-called postmodern way of life. Finally, I shall interpret the meaning of an individual’s deep longing for constructing life and reality anew and without any limitations resp. to participate in those enacted life styles that establish a feeling of belonging to those fabricated realities. This will enable me to ask about such an individual’s unconscious feelings and beliefs and his or her social and personal functioning.