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Erich Fromm's scientific contributions were based on his theory of social character and the methods he developed to test it. Social character describes the deep-rooted emotional attitudes shared by people raised in the same culture. Family, schooling, work, and play shape the social character so that people want to do what they need to do to prosper economically and socially in a particular culture. Fromm's first study of German employees and workers before the rise of Hitler showed that despite subscribing to a democratic ideology the majority would support whoever gained power. The second study of Mexican peasant villagers provided statistically significant results demonstrating that social character explained both productivity and psychopathology. These findings were reinforced by subsequent studies. The nucleus of social character is the psychoanalytic character types discovered by Freud and modified by Fromm. This theory makes use of knowledge from economics, sociology, anthropology, and history. Maccoby has continued to show the relevance of the concept of social character in understanding leadership and motivation at work.
Erich Fromm
(1980)
Germany and the Cold War
(1964)
Germany and the Cold War
(1964)
Leadership in Context
(2021)
My studies of leadership build on the work of Sigmund Freud, Erich Fromm, and Erik Erikson. Those psychoanalysts described leaders of large groups, their personalities and relations with their followers. In my studies of leaders and experience with them, I have found that leadership is a relationship in a particular context. There are different kinds of leaders, and someone can be a leader in one context, but not in another. Furthermore, different leadership roles and different cultures call for different personality types and leadership behavior. People follow leaders for different reasons, and leaders can influence why and how they are followed. While Freud, Fromm, and Erikson only described male leaders, women are increasingly filling leadership roles, sometimes more effectively than men.