>Anxiety and Apathy – And How to React to These<: Joblessness is one of the major social problems of of the day. As of 1994, the number of unemployed in western Germany and the new Federal lands stood at approximately 4 million. In the European Union as a whole it stands at some 17 million. Fear at losing one's job and eventually ending up as a social déclassé has come to characterize a society in which, despite the economic upturn after the last recession, growing numbers of people exist who are permanently excluded from the job sector and who increasingly fail to land in the >social net< erected by the welfare state. Basing its approach on Fromm's early research in the Worker and Employee Study (Erich Fromm, 1980) and the Marienthal Study (M. Jahoda et al., 1978) [the German titles are Arbeiter-und Angestellten-Untersuchung and Marienthaler Studie respectively], this book first attempts a detailed coverage of the various psychic effects of joblessness. In a novel interpretation updating Dieter Duhm's Fear in Capitalism (1974), the author is concerned to depict fear at the likelihood of losing one's job as a typical consequence of the capitalist economic system – more concretely, of the rationalization and competitive pressures that characterize industry. The focus is less on fear as a subjectively experienced, infrapsychic phenomenon, but rather on the reciprocal links between objective social developments, on the one hand, and subjective reactions in the form of fear and apathy on the other. Finally, measures for combatting joblessness are discussed, especially those based on proposals by the unions.
Review Bierhoff, B.: Erich Fromm – Analytische Sozialpsychologie und visionäre Gesellschaftskritik
(1995)
Vorwort – Preface
(1995)