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Erich Fromm points to a tendency whereby the numerous freedoms gained by the citizens of modern democracies have been accompanied by widespread feelings of loneliness and disconnection. The loosening of traditional social structures leads some individuals to seek out restrictions, for example in order to counteract the feelings of being alone. This essay uses Fromm’s thesis as a lens through which to examine two of Franz Kafka’s novels in which the protagonists exemplify the >fear of freedom< proposed by Fromm. Society in these novels is perceived as a prison cell in which one must comply with social regulations, but also a fortress to which one can retreat from the chaos of the outside world, albeit at the cost of one’s psychological health.
This chapter tackles the perennial critical conundrum of Iago’s motivation. Agreeing with Coleridge’s assessment of his >motiveless malignity,< it argues that all attempts to explain Iago’s character in terms of individual psychology prove inadequate and that he can be more satisfactorily understood by employing Fromm’s concept of >social character.< Iago is the prototype of early modern capitalist man who exhibits the >pathology of normalcy< and exemplifies three of Fromm’s four >unproductive orientations<—exploitative, hoarding, and marketing. Iago’s lack of a sense of self leads him to destroy rather than to create, and thus manifests the impulse for negative transcendence, or what Fromm terms necrophilia. As necrophilia is the most malignant form of the anal character, this analysis accounts for the pervasiveness of anal imagery in Othello, including in the speeches of the otherwise feeble Clown. Iago, neither devil nor human, is at once a product of his age and the quintessence of all those, from Caligula to Hitler, for whom madness is a way of life because they seek to transcend through destruction the limits of human existence.
Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) and humanistic psychotherapy: an integrative approximation
(2019)
This article explores the similarities between humanistic (and existential) psychotherapy, represented here by the ideas of Viktor Frankl, Erich Fromm and Irvin Yalom, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). Despite the ongoing dialogue between both therapies during the last decade, regarding both their convergences and divergences, there is a gap in the literature concerning their complementarity in clinical practice. This analysis addresses this gap with the integrative (or pluralistic) clinician in mind, and approximates a theoretical and practical integration anchored upon the trans-theoretical model.
Theodor W. Adorno's mature thought can be characterized by the attempt to articulate what he calls a >new categorical imperative after Auschwitz.< By this, Adorno means that theory and praxis must be organized in such a way that the Holocaust does not repeat itself. This article argues that Sándor Ferenczi’s metapsychology is key to understanding Adorno’s attempt to rethink the nature of precisely such a new categorical imperative. One of the key themes of Adorno’s entire corpus is the problem of the “identification with the aggressor” – an idea that originates with Ferenzci rather than, as is commonly thought, Anna Freud. The Ferenczian dimension of Adorno’s thinking becomes particularly clear in Adorno’s thoughts on the question of freedom. In this context, Adorno engages in a psychoanalytically informed critique of the philosophy of freedom and a speculative philosophical critique of psychoanalysis. The fashioning of a >new categorical imperative< after Auschwitz entails a form of education directed towards a new form of Mündigkeit, one oriented towards contradiction, resistance, and a steadfast refusal to >identify with the aggressor.<
Erich Fromm had developed a dialectical approach on alienation phenomena in work. On the one side he criticizes today’s poor working conditions and on the other side he shows productive orientation in work. In my essay I will discuss empirical and theoretical contributions of social-psychological research in this Frommian perspective.
Making films can be a lifeline, an aid to going on living when (we feel) the world around us has disappeared. Looking, showing that there’s a >there there,< recording the present moment and thereby preserving it, can, for a time, make us not feel the nothingness within us. But the rescue that comes from making a film is always provisional. Why? Because every film has an end. Because if there are no more films to make, if there is nothing that deserves to be looked at (the worst case scenario), going on living will have exhausted itself, and taking one’s own life (if indeed there was a life to take) may seem the only option. Chantal Akerman’s >No Home Movie< – a film recording the slow death of her mother in her Brussels apartment – is this worst case scenario. A moving record of the psychic devastation that comes about when we, slowly but surely, lose the one object worth looking at. Panic, depression, hopelessness, and a fierce determination to go where the disappeared object went. To this last home where nothing no longer moves.
Alienation is one of the important concepts of social science which has been most studied in Marxism idealogy. The main purpose of the present paper is to review the opinion of Marxist sociologists on alienation. This paper has been compiled to answer the following question: What is self-alienation and what is the Marxists’ view about this complex concept? Regarding this matter, while reviewing the history of Alienation and its conceptual dimensions, theories of Karl Marx, George Lukács, Antonio Gramsci, Erich Fromm, and Juergen Habermas is examined. The research method used in this research is a descriptive and data collection method is librarian. The findings chart is plotted at the end of the paper.
A client who wants his story to be made into a case history presents for psychoanalysis. An artist all his adult life, he expresses his sexual trauma through his art. His more recent artistic output is in the form of avant-garde video montages. The analysis stalls, becalmed by a failure to understand a circumcision event, a punishment for sexual expression. If Ferenczi and the Budapest school model learning from therapeutic errors, freedom of thought, sincerity, and experimentation, then this case history illustrates those. Real sexual trauma and a real circumcision event are entangled with fantasy and art in attempts to come to terms with them. The circumcision event was better understood with multiple readings of Carlo Bonomi’s work, which became part of the analysis. The wider Ferenczi community also became part of the story of the analysis, and in a kind of mutuality the analysis wants to make a contribution to that body of knowledge.
There are different ways of assessing the quality of a good translation. This study tried to approach this task using House's (2015) translation quality assessment (TQA) model and Baker's (2018) marked thematic structure model, each introducing new ideas and novel ways to assess the quality of a translated work. Having reviewed the alternative TQA models, this study aims at a detailed investigation of House’s Model and its potential power to predict the errors in the Persian translation of chosen psychological work for this study. As a kind of complementary assessment for the source text (ST) and its two target texts (TTs), Baker's model was used to compare ST marked thematic structures with their TTs equivalents. Persian translations of Eric Fromm’s >To Have or To Be< on the basis of two chosen models were carried out. First, the errors (overt and covert errors), as well as thematic structures (marked vs. unmarked), were identified and classified, and then the frequency of their occurrences was computed to see whether there is any statistically significant difference. The results indicated that out of 100 selected items of the source text, TT1 and TT2 had 22 and 77 overtly erroneous items, respectively. The most frequent errors especially in TT2 by Mr. Tabrizi were mistranslation, breach of TL system, omission, and addition. The only covert error was a tenor mismatch between the writer of the source text and the translator of the target text. Since in two particular pieces of translation especially TT2, there were a lot of overt errors and according to House’s Model, a good translation has to be translated overtly and any deviation of it will be considered as an error, this translation can be considered as a covert rather than an overt translation. Considering the marked thematic structures, with the percentage of 94.5 and 79 in TT1 and TT2 by Mr. Sabouri and Mr. Tabarizi, it can be claimed that there was a high degree of correspondence between ST and its two TTs for marked structures. The product of this study could be beneficial for translators of psychological works to get familiar with problems in translation of these books as well as strategies used to cope with such problems.
Purpose: The main purpose of the study was to examine if life orientations of young adults (>being< or >having<) differentiate respondents with respect to the degree of life satisfaction. Material and methods: A total of 187 persons (143 woman and 44 man) aged 18 to 29 years were included in the study. The following methods were used in the study: sociodemographic questionnaire, Satisfaction with Life Scale by E. Diener, R.A. Emmons, R.J. Larson, S. Griffin and the Being and Having Orientations Scale of B. Grulkowski. Results: A life orientation is a kind of behaviour regulator, that set the direction of human activity. There is a distinction between a >being< orientation (which refers to spiritual values) and a >having< orientation (which refers to possessing material things) that are manifested in a variety of experiences, and is related to human thinking, feeling, and acting. Therefore, a life orientation may play a really important role in the satisfaction with life. Most of the respondents were characterised by a mixed orientation (>being-having<) and an average level of satisfaction with life. There is no significant difference in the level of satisfaction with life according to gender and the subject of studies. It was shown that people with the >being< orientation have greater satisfaction with life than people with the >having< orientation. The obtained results, which show no differences in satisfaction with life according to gender, are consistent with the earlier studies. And so is the result that people with the dominant of the >being< orientation have greater satisfaction with life, than those with the >having< orientation. Conclusions: Only few papers about >being< and >having< orientations have been published so far since the method used in the study occurs only in the Polish language and there is no data about its adaptations in different countries. Results of conducted research set the direction of educational impact and give the scientific basis for a well-known saying: money can’t buy happiness.
Between Thanatos and Eros: Erich Fromm and the psychoanalysis of social networking technology use
(2019)
Social networking technologies have become a ubiquitous framework for social interaction, serving to organise much of the individual’s social life. Such technological structuring affects not merely the individual’s psyche (as a psycho- technics), it also affects broader aspects of society (as a socio-technics). While social networking technologies may serve to transform society in positive ways, such technologies also have the potential to significantly encroach upon and (re) construct individual and cultural meaning in ways that must be investigated. Erich Fromm, who psychoanalytically describes humans as a product of their society and the economic systems within that society, may provide insight into the influence of social networking technologies in contemporary society. He sees the relationship between the individual and society as being in a constant state of dynamic change. Utilising Fromm’s psycho-societal insight, social networking technologies are shown to conflate and confuse the relation between Thanatos and Eros – the Thanatos of a lifeless and consumerist agenda-filled mechanisation, and the Eros associated with social engagement. Thanatos and Eros are tied together via social networking technologies. This results in, firstly, social networking technologies functioning predominantly to further capitalist agendas through the monetisation of these technologies – particularly in terms of linking commodity fetishism and the foundational social drive of the individual. Secondly, social networking technologies mechanise human action according to predictable behavioural paths through the use of these technologies, especially in terms of how socialisation is possible via these technologies (shaping how platonic and romantic relationships may take place in the contemporary world). Such a mechanisation of interpersonal engagement contrasts with Erich Fromm’s assertion that interpersonal relations (vis-à-vis love) are not “mere emotion”, but rather represent an interpersonal creative capacity and interplay. Fromm’s psycho-societal insights will show how contemporary individuals may take independent and responsible rational action to establish accountable and psychologically beneficial ways of engaging with others through social networking technologies.
Capitalism and Mental Health
(2019)
The psychoanalytical framework developed by Marxist Erich Fromm strongly challenges the dominant biological and individualistic explanations of the mental-health crisis that is now sweeping the globe. Fromm emphasized that all humans have certain needs that must be fulfilled in order to ensure optimal mental health. It follows that capitalism is crucial to determining the experience and prevalence of mental well-being, as its operations are incompatible with true human need.
Trauma is the subject of increasing attention in contemporary psychoanalysis. Its complexities will be explored in a clinical case, emphasizing traumatic experience and unconscious conflict across developmental phases. The patient, a young adult white man began analysis complaining of anxiety and depression. Born to adolescent parents, he had experienced infantile stress and childhood traumatic illness. Needy, greedy, and dependent, he was gratified by the frequency and intimacy of psychoanalysis. Genetic interpretation and reconstruction were particularly important in the analytic process. Analytic progress with attenuation of unconscious conflict and developmental transformation proved enduring after termination.
In the conclusion entitled >A Holistic Relational Paradigm,< the author draws on key themes in the manuscript: attachment, healing, psychosocial development, and an altruistic approach to fostering prosocial behavior. Epstein’s (2014) work relates the early trauma of the Buddha’s loss of his mother after childbirth to his resultant view of ‘suffering.’ Epstein explores how this attachment >wound< is mirrored in the Buddhist view that we suffer as the result of not knowing how to integrate the reality of ‘impermanence.’ The author continues to generalize this universal or psycho-spiritual view (as opposed to one based on our ‘personal’ pathology or ‘narrative’) through the core training principles of Ki Aikido, like the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths, as ways of laying out a more liberatory path in daily life. Drawing on the work of Erich Fromm, he further expands on the notion of love, specifically as an approach that fosters applied skillfulness in relationships as an antidote to narcissism. Expanding further, he draws on Matthieu Ricard’s (2015) work on altruism, based in research on its roots in prosocial behavior rather than as moral idealism or superiority.
Universality is being deconstructed within contemporary social struggles. Focusing on struggles around the discourse on refugees and the nation, and so-called >welcome culture< in the German context in particular, questions arise regarding the emancipatory potential of emerging narratives of a contested common ground (Hark et al. 2015). This article proposes Erich Fromm's understanding of >radical humanism< (1968a) and its line of argumentation towards >global solidarity< (Wilde 2013) instead of national >group narcissism< (Fromm 1964a) as a normative base to evaluate the emancipatory value of emerging narratives.
The following essay is a modified version of an invited presentation given in Florence, Italy in May 2017. It builds on and extends some of the previous psychoanalytic and multidisciplinary studies of Dante’s >Divine Comedy< as a >psychoanalysis of the Middle Ages< that greatly contributed to the incipient changes of the cultural episteme. The paper will explore and elaborate the continued relevance of Dantian proto-psychoanalytic insight into the complex role of regression, destruction, transgression, and conflict in generating growth, expansion, and creativity, and the ways in which ethics and erotics intertwine in a complex path towards unity, within the context of his multivocal presubjective, intrasubjective, and intersubjective inquiry leading to psychic reorganization. The liminal nature of Dante’s poetry, extending the symbolic and representational range in a way unprecedented in the vernacular literature of his time, vivifying and representing what is traditionally thought of as beyond representation, will also be considered in terms of its relevance to the contemporary psychoanalytic discourse.
Propaganda is a centuries-old term, and yet scholars and practitioners are still having a hard time defining it and pinpointing what makes propaganda unique. Many existing definitions fail to distinguish between propaganda and marketing, public relations, advertising, or even mass communications, in general. This essay proposes to define propaganda through psychoanalytical research pioneered by Erich Fromm on symbiotic relations. Symbiotic relations, when transferred from biology to psychology and sociology, describe a process of allowing a person to merge with something big and important, therefore creating meaning beyond an individual’s life. As a result, following its religious roots, propaganda acts similar to religion – asking for a sacrifice of individualism in the name of something bigger – god, country, society, or political party. In the end, people willingly engage in propaganda because, although sacrificing something, they receive unity with the bigger powers of other people, organizations, political parties, countries, and so on. As a result, such persons are not alone against the world; they are now a part of a bigger and stronger union.
Descendants of terror
(2019)
The aim of this paper is to approach transgenerational transmission aspects of the traumatic experience of terror in the large social group. The author makes use of the notion of chosen trauma, coined by Vamik Volkan, which shows how specific mental representations of a traumatizing historical event, shared by the large group, can be transmitted to descendants and eventually used by them as a linking factor of their large group. The above issues, along with the importance of reversal of helplessness and of inability to mourn, are discussed; relevant clinical material focusing on the interplay between large-group and individual transmission is presented.
A longitudinal study of early attachment and social character development of 14 Nahuat mother-infant dyads -since the infants were 11 months, having assessed them at 9 years of age and again in their late adolescence- show a significant improvement on the youngsters’ emotional development. The study conducted by the Seminario de Sociopsicoanálisis within a 40-year-long humanizing project in the village, called >Intercultural Participation Project,< suggests the benefit of promoting the rescue of their indigenous Nahuat culture and tradition.
This chapter takes to task Elisabeth Roudinesco’s biography, Freud in His Time and Others, for innumerable factual errors and, even worse, for the assumption that she is presenting the objective truth about Freud. Three traditions of Freud biography are delineated: the hagiographic, of which Roudinesco’s is the latest example, the Freud-bashing, and the revisionist, which sees Freud as having created something incontestably great but also as having been tragically flawed as a human being. Roudinesco’s errors range from the trivial, to the mildly compromising, to the inexcusable and disqualifying. With respect to Jung, Roudinesco is shown to rely on Deirdre Bair’s biography, which is itself unreliable, instead of on her own reading of the primary sources. Roudinesco’s true colors are displayed above all in her treatment of Freud’s sexuality, as when she asserts that he has been >accused< of masturbation, claims that an affair with his sister-in-law >doubtless never happened,< and alleges that Freud had a >horror of adultery.< The all-too-human Freud was very different from the lifeless icon worshiped by Roudinesco.
The authors note a contradiction between empirical findings and the dismissive conclusion of the German Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth (FMFASWY) that the treatment of children in early day care will not affect their relationship to their mother or entail any serious damage for their future. They use this contradiction as an opportunity to discuss the social function of early childhood socialization in day care. They come to the impression that the FMFASWY, in its assessment of research on day-care centers, was also intuitively guided by sociopolitical interests insofar as the emergence of a social character satisfying current social requirements is favored more by primary socialization in day care than in families.
This paper shows that Fromm's discussion is curiously connected to the tradition of American individualism. In Escape from Freedom, Fromm suggests that authoritarianism derives from aloneness as a result of modern individualism and entrusts his hope in democracy for spontaneous activity and solidarity. But why is spontaneous activity and solidarity hopeful in democracy? The interesting thing is, this conclusion is close to the discussion of Alexis de Tocqueville, who also regarded spontaneous relationships as an important foundation of democracy. Based on Tocqueville's insight, there is a tradition in sociology that argues for the relationship between democracy and individualism, such as David Riesman's The Lonely Crowd and Robert Bellah's Habits of the Heart. This paper attempts to show how Fromm was influenced by the tradition of American individualism and discusses Fromm's impact on later American individualism studies.
In the first part, the article reconstructs, through the idea of >pathology of normalcy,< Fromm's critique of the cultural foundations of contemporary capitalism. In the second part, it is carried forward through the concepts of >social character< and <alienation,< in order to understand how the late twentieth-century capitalism deepens an anti-humanist culture as never before. Finally, in the conclusion, it seeks to demonstrate how Fromm anticipates some essential features of the critique of capitalist culture, later analyzed by critics of the >new< capitalism, such as Axel Honneth, Richard Sennett and Boltanski & Chiapello.
The purpose of this article was to study the creative heritage of Erich Fromm and the formation of >Humanistic Radicalism<. The study was aimed at defining the historical context for the theoretical formation of >Humanistic Radicalism< within the framework of Fromm's >Social Psychoanalysis< and the practical implementation of this concept in the political activities of this personality. Four periods of the introduction of the ideas of >Humanistic Radicalism< by E. Fromm through his political activities were identified. It was found out that the humanistic orientation requires the continuation both in research activities of a person and in everyday socio-cultural life in general, while maintaining dialogical relations with the world.
In my overview of the development of Fromm's theories, I show, first of all, how Fromm and his theory of relatedness and social character aimed to understand the individual and society in a different way from what was usual at that time. Secondly, I expound how relevant the often ignored social psychoanalytical approach is for current thinking in terms of relatedness, and how open his approach is to insights stemming from human biology.
The author explores the relationship between Sándor Ferenczi and Sigmund Freud in the light of their correspondence. This allows us to see how Freud was able to offer and create for Ferenczi a >professional and personal home< that enabled the latter to find a much more meaningful and creative contact with himself. According to the author, this experience played an important role in Ferenczi’s later readiness to offer to and create with his patients a similar >psychoanalytic home.< As Freud was not able to share such clinical research work with Ferenczi, a conflict developed between them whose nature has occupied psychoanalysts ever since, and whose seeds can be found in the 1246 letters that they exchanged between January 1908 and May 1933. From this point of view, Ferenczi’s Clinical diary (written in 1932 and published only in 1985) can be seen as the continuation of the dialogue they had entertained for so many years, as well as Ferenczi’s attempt not to give up the “professional and personal home” that they had created together.
In theoretical considerations on democracy freedom is sometimes understood in unconditional and conditional terms. This general distinction underlies I. Berlin's concept of negative and positive freedom, and E. Fromm's concept of >freedom from< and >freedom to<. The authors of this paper introduce the concept of extrinsic and intrinsic sense of freedom which is meant to be psychological representation of the philosophical distinction on unconditional and conditional freedom, respectively. An extrinsic freedom results from a lack of external restrictions/barriers, whereas intrinsic freedom is based on the belief that being free means compatibility between one's own actions and preferred values, life goals or worldview. Based on nationwide survey data, the authors show that both forms of freedom are embedded in entirely different basic human values and moral intuitions. Further, it is shown that intrinsic freedom negatively predicts liberal orientation and clearly favors communitarian orientation, whereas extrinsic freedom clearly favors liberal orientation. The authors argue that both forms of experiencing freedom have different effects on support for the principles of liberal democracy. The positive effect of extrinsic freedom is indirect, i.e., entirely mediated by liberal orientation. On the other hand, the effect of intrinsic freedom can be decomposed into three components: a) as a positive direct effect, b) as a positive indirect effect (by strengthening the communitarian orientation), and c) as a negative indirect effect (by weakening the liberal orientation). In conclusion, the consequences of intrinsic and extrinsic freedom are discussed in the light of their relationships with support for democratic principles.
This chapter offers a proto-Frommian reading of Paradise Lost. The opening section reviews the debate between >theological< and >Romantic< critics of Milton’s poem—C. S. Lewis and Stanley Fish, on the one hand, and A. J. A. Waldock and William Empson, on the other. Although Waldock pointed to the structural contradictions in the epic, and Empson argued that God was >put on trial< in the narrative, the neo-Christians have gotten the upper hand because the neo-Romantics have been unable to provide an overarching framework to account for their observations. The middle section furnishes such a framework by synthesizing Kenneth Burke’s >logological< analysis of the Fall as inevitable from a narrative perspective with Bernard Paris’s insight that God is the supreme narcissist in the poem. The final section compares Milton’s God and Freud as patriarchs who impose a double bind on their followers and are motivated by a compulsive need for fame.
This chapter employs Fromm’s concept of the >magic helper< to analyze the symbiotic nature of the Freud-Ferenczi relationship. Because both sadists and masochists, according to Fromm, are unable to tolerate genuine freedom, the sadist is dependent on the masochist, no less than the masochist is dependent on the sadist. As Clara Thompson, who was in analysis with both Ferenczi and Fromm, recognized, Ferenczi suffered from his need to be loved and accepted by Freud, and unconsciously resented him for that reason. Fromm’s contrast between the >original self< and the >pseudo self< parallels Winnicott’s antithesis between the True Self and the False Self, as well as Horney’s antinomy between the >real self< and >phony self.< Marcuse’s critique of Fromm is based on an adherence to Freud’s outmoded drive theory. Whereas Freud plays the role of what Daniel Shaw calls the >traumatizing narcissist< in his relationship with Ferenczi, Ferenczi, until his emancipation in his final years, exhibits the deformations resulting from what Bernard Brandchaft calls >pathological accommodation.<
Relational and field theories have much in common, despite divergent foundations. In this paper, several areas of divergence are selected, including the structure of the field as a relational matrix or as an unconscious joint fantasy of the couple; the fate and form of insight; and the nature of the unconscious as relational or ubiquitous. Differences in cognitive and attentional sets are identified and linked to different modes of insight. Using a clinical vignette, these divergences will be illustrated with an attempt to compare and contrast the two approaches through a discussion of how each lens highlights, expands, or forecloses different features of the analytic process. A mode of conceiving the unconscious as unstructured and multiple in potential is offered to reconcile divergent assumptions in therapeutic action. A consideration of Sandor Ferenczi’s clinical emphasis on relaxed technique, elasticity, and especially mutuality suggests that he would have been a field theorist were he among us today.
With growing inequality, the American dream is becoming less effective as a collective myth. With its focus on material success, competition and self-reliance, the intensified diffusion of neoliberal scripts of the self is leading the uppermiddle class toward a mental health crisis while the working class and lowincome groups do not have the resources needed to live the dream. African Americans, Latinos and undocumented immigrants, who are presumed to lack self-reliance, face more rigid boundaries. One possible way forward is broadening cultural membership by promoting new narratives of hope centered on a plurality of criteria of worth, ‘ordinary universalism’ and destigmatizing stigmatized groups.
Erich Fromm was central to the Frankfurt Institute of Social Research under the direction of Max Horkheimer, but the works of each author, while handling at times similar issues, took different paths. The article’s aim is to analyze how Horkheimer’s anthropology, which would be of importance in Dialectic of Enlightenment, was built as the author embodied in his essays elements of Fromm’s social psychology, albeit overcoming some of its limitations, as well as suggesting new potentials of critique.
Fromm's Contribution to the Analysis and Critique of the Ongoing Rise of Right-Wing Movements
(2019)
One of the most important political changes in Europe, the USA and beyond is the growth of nationalistic parties and authoritarian structures within states. This contribution aims to demonstrate how a Frommian perspective on basic psychological needs, asynchronicity and alienation could contribute to a social-psychological understanding of nationalistic trends. At the end of the paper, we present some conclusions drawn from this social-psychological point of view concerning the development of a sane society.
In this article we will explore three important themes: (1) Fromm's anti-objectivistic perspective which stands for the idea that the other Being should not become an object in analysis; (2) the central idea of the relatedness and the relational dimension in the psychotherapeutic practice; (3) in the last part we will analyze the existential-ontological level which is manifested in analysis. We will focus our attention on the different ways in which Fromm as a psychoanalytic thinker, social critic and humanist can help the therapists to include the existential and social dimension in the psychotherapeutic work.
It can be (and has been) claimed that one of the central thematic concerns in Erich Fromm’s immense body of critical work is the exposition of a new >radical< humanist ethic, based upon the normative foundations of human solidarity/relatedness and love. The role of community in this ethic is vital, as Fromm argues for the existence of an intrinsically human need for belonging and communion. According to Fromm, the breakdown of traditional societies in modernity and the adoption of strong anti-traditionalist paradigms in both liberalism and Marxism has paradoxically led to the desire in the contemporary individual to >escape< this freedom, too often resulting in an uncritical adoption of what Eric Hobsbawm calls >invented traditions< in order to rediscover a shared sense of humankind. This article therefore contends that 1) Fromm advocates a form of >critical communitarianism<; and 2) that critical communitarianism can provide a strong foundation for an ethical confrontation with neoliberal modernity, and thereby a reconsidered form of community through human solidarity.
Erich Fromm was one of the first psychoanalytic thinkers who was genuinely interested in Asian philosophies. In the first part of this article, I will show Fromm’s imago of Buddhism as a radical, nontheistic, and ethical philosophy >without God.< I will argue that Fromm made an important difference between the phenomenal ego and being that proves crucial for his understanding of psychoanalysis and his critique of modern society. I will also explore Fromm’s synthesis of Buddhist philosophy and psychoanalysis, and show the similarities and differences between them.
This essay explores the psychoanalytic sanitarium (Therapeutikum) directed by Frieda Fromm-Reichmann and Erich Fromm in Heidelberg from 1924 to 1928. The Therapeutikum aimed to combine adherence to Jewish ritual with psychoanalytic practice and radical politics for a group of GermanJews who were rethinking their Orthodox backgrounds in light of new intellectual and political currents and modern sensibilities. Visitors to the sanitarium included many leading German-Jewish thinkers, and Heidelberg’s proximity to Frankfurt placed the Therapeutikum in the orbit of the Institute for Social Research and near a major hub in the renaissance of Jewish learning then occurring. At the centre of the article is a discussion of essays by Fromm-Reichmann and Fromm that subjected Jewish ritual (kashrut and shabbat) to psychoanalytic investigation. Appearing in Imago in 1927, the articles marked the two writers’ public break with Orthodox Judaism. This essay argues that the Imago articles marked a crucial moment in the political, intellectual, and religious history of German Jewry. Even if the Fromms’ synthesis of Freudianism, radical politics, andJudaism was conceptually shaky, their sanitarium illustrates the centrality of psychoanalysisças a sensibility, a hermeneutic and above all away of creating social and communal bondsçto a generation of GermanJews navigating the challenges of German and Jewish modernity.
Groddeck’s Lessons
(2019)
This chapter examines both >Groddeck’s teaching,< in the sense of the enduing value of his contributions to psychoanalysis, as well as >Groddeck’s lessons,< that is, what we can learn from his blind spots. The question of who is a psychoanalyst stands at the center of Groddeck’s relationship to Freud, and in accepting Groddeck’s assertion that transference and resistance are the >hubs of treatment,< Freud offers his most expansive definition of a psychoanalyst. Groddeck’s genius is most fully displayed in The Book of the It, the epistolary form of which casts him at once in the roles of analyst and patient. From Groddeck’s biography, it is clear that he was an extremely traumatized individual, as is further attested by his analysis in Letter 25 of his penchant for the number 26,783. But Groddeck does not recognize that he has been traumatized, and his one-sided theory that the It is >responsible for everything< reflects his inability to give due weight to environmental factors. Despite his astonishing candor, Groddeck never discusses his divorce from his first wife or the tragic story of his daughter Barbara, wounds that must have too painful for him to expose to the gaze of the reading public.
The present paper is an expansion of the author’s discussion of Harold Blum’s seminal presentation >Hate and its vicissitudes< in Prague in 2017. It aims at an elaboration of various aspects of hate and hatred as a complex dynamic intrapsychic and relational affective-cognitive state, alloyed, in different ways, with aggression and love. In this context, various theoretical perspectives concerning the multifaceted relation between hate, love, and sexuality, and hate and destructive aggression, and transformations between them, including the first study of neurobiological correlates of hate, will be raised and explored. Implication on destruction as well as psychic structuring, adaptation and creativity are also considered. The clinical vignettes illustrates the relevance of multiple theoretical conceptualizations in contemporary psychoanalytic practice.
Part I of this paper discussed various dynamic aspects of hate in the individual developmental and clinical context. Part II, also an expansion of the author’s discussion of Harold Blum’s presentation on >Hate and its vicissitudes< in Prague in 2017, examines the theme of hate as a multidimensional dynamic group phenomenon. The paper uses various theoretical perspectives to focus on group unconscious processes and the group-specific dynamic of regression leading to an activation of primitive ego operations, unleashing destructive aggression as well as creative mobilization. Also considered are the implications in terms of destruction, adaptation, and creativity, in relation to group unconscious dynamic processes and intergenerationally trasmitted trauma and posttraumatic developments.
The International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies (IFPS) was established in 1962. The first 20 years of the Federation were a time when psychoanalysis was divided into so-called liberal and orthodox factions. The (then orthodox) International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA) did not admit all psychoanalytic societies, and some societies did not want to join it. In the IFPS, non-IPA-psychoanalysts from Europe, the USA, and South and Middle America came together to discuss their new approaches to psychoanalysis and to find ways to better cope with their patients’ problems. At the beginning an informal organization of autonomous societies, the IFPS persisted for 12 years without a charter. The first three secretary generals came from the German Psychoanalytical Society and greatly influenced the first few years of the IFPS. The IFPS held several international conferences, and new psychoanalytic societies became members. In 1977, after the VIth Forum in Berlin, the IFPS fell into an identity crisis. The conflicts centered on the assumption of responsibility, the authority of the members, and how to understand the aim and sense of the organization. This article deals with the theoretical background of the early IFPS and the development of its self-concept.
In search of the Human: The trauma of modernity and the >instrumental reason< of the persecutors
(2019)
This article takes the clinical notion of trauma as a historiographic criterion for understanding modernity and its mythologies. If the rewriting of the term trauma – at the intersection of psychoanalysis and neurobiology, cultural anthropology and philosophy of the mind – is the hallmark of contemporaneity, it is quite acceptable to see the Shoah as a radical historical and epistemological watershed. Never before had such a highly productive bureaucratic-industrial system been designed and implemented for the devastation of the very idea of humanity. Auschwitz was, in the most radical ways, the liminal space between Human and Inhuman. It lay right at the cutting edge of the abyss that the executioner shares with his victim – the annihilation of humanity. This essay crosses a question that has always characterized the social construction of subjectivity: the perimeter of the Human, and the interrelationships between identity, alterity, and recognition.
Introduction
(2019)
Introduction >One Man Cannot Be the Same as Many<: Glimpsing New Paradigms through Old Keyholes
(2019)
The introduction sets the stage for the ensuing chapters by meditating on the key phrases in the title, which are indebted to and inspired by the work of Donnel Stern as well as Philip Bromberg. Fromm is praised for his espousal of a humanistic psychoanalysis as well as his critique of authoritarianism, and his concept of >literary psychoanalysis< is introduced. Freud’s interpretation of Oedipus Rex is shown to be important as much for its >unformulated< assumption of a >hidden reality< theory of the mind as for his extrapolation of the idea of the Oedipus complex. The humanism of Fromm is contrasted with Sullivan’s claim that personal individuality is an >illusion<; Stern and Bromberg are critiqued for decoupling trauma from dissociation and for positing that these are normal conditions of the mind. It is argued that a forensic stance is warranted in hermeneutic endeavors and that it is possible to reconcile objectivist and constructivist epistemologies.
In this chapter, the author introduces his autobiographical near-death experience of a motorcycle accident as the basis for examining his life and the self-study that forms this book, within a gestalt or whole. Touching on the figure-ground-contact approach of Gestalt Therapy, the author puts this self-study within the context of a lifetime of involvement in the Japanese art of Ki Aikido. In Aikido, one learns to coordinate their mind, body, and life energy (Japanese: ki) to better attune and move in synchronization with the world around them. The ethos of Aikido reflects the broader virtue ethics of traditional Japanese arts – >do<, >michi<, or >way< – and how this approach to education aims for spiritual self-cultivation in daily life, rather than mere acquisition of technical or intellectual knowledge. Through Aikido, Japanese calligraphy or shodo (which the author took up as a comparative/adjunct >way< for his study), and beyond into increased skillful awareness in motorcycling and educational praxis, this chapter draws on Yasuo Yuasa’s theory of ki as ‘teleological intentionality.’ By taking a ‘path’ approach to learning through this >ki awareness< one thus develops and enhances their embodied presence into what Yuasa calls >transpersonal synchronization.<