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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.
Mainstream social science has been blindsided by the rise of Trumpism and broader growth of authoritarian populism. We make the case that Frommian work is desperately needed inside the core of contemporary social science theorizing by examining social character theory up against and alongside the concept of habitus developed by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. Both Fromm and Bourdieu were concerned with the human costs of social change and economic development, Fromm with his writings on advanced capitalism in The Sane Society (1955a) and on Mexican village life in Social Character in a Mexican Village (with Michael Maccoby, 1970b), and Bourdieu with his extended studies of peasants in Algeria during the French colonial war of the 1950s and early 1960s. We will compare and contrast the theory of social character developed in the Mexican study with Bourdieu's concept of habitus, and discuss what Fromm's ideas can add to Bourdieu-influenced critical social science.
Las aportaciones científicas de Erich Fromm se basaron en su teoría del carácter social y los métodos que él desarrolló para ponerla a prueba. El carácter social describe las actitudes emocionales bien enraizadas en personas criadas en una misma cultura. La familia, la escolaridad, el trabajo y el juego conforman el carácter social de modo que las personas están dispuestas a hacer lo que tengan que hacer para prosperar económica y socialmente en una cultura determinada. El primer estudio de Fromm sobre empleados y trabajadores alemanes antes del surgimiento de Hitler mostró que, a pesar de suscribir una ideología democrática, la mayoría de ellos apoyaría a quienquiera que llegara al poder. El segundo estudio de campesinos de un pueblo mexicano generó resultados estadísticamente significativos que demostraron que el carácter social explicaba tanto la productividad como la psicopatología. Estos hallazgos se vieron confirmados por los resultados de estudios posteriores. El núcleo del carácter social está conformado por los tipos de caracteres psicoanalíticos descubiertos por Freud y modificados por Fromm. Esta teoría aprovecha los conocimientos de la economía, la sociología, la antropología y la historia. Maccoby ha proseguido la tarea, mostrando la importancia del concepto de carácter social para comprender el liderazgo y la motivación en el trabajo.
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.
To fully develop a science of social character, three aspects of Fromm's social character theory need to be clarified. The first has to do with the difference between individual and social character. Fromm expanded on Freud's description of normal types: erotic (receptive), obsessive (hoarding) and narcissistic (exploitative). Besides the concept of social character, Fromm made three major contributions to the psychoanalytic theory of character: the concept of productiveness, sociopolitical modes of relationship, and the marketing character. Social character is an interac-tion between internalized culture (values) and individual character. This interaction results in variations in social character and helps explain the Secon issue, how so-cial character changes. The concept of social selection explains how narcissistic en-trepreneurs restructure social institutions to shape a new social character. The third issue concerns how social character develops throughout the life cycle. Fromm never offered a developmental theory. Erik Erikson's model of development fit the social character of America at the mid-century. A revision of this model provides a useful construct for understanding changes in the kind of problems being brought to psychoanalysis at the start of the 21st century and also changes in psychoanalytic practice.
E. FROMM's promised volume on clinical psychoanalysis was never completed. Maccoby analyzes the contradictions in E. FROMM's work that contributed to his difficulty in delivering on this promise. Two distinct voices can be discerned in FROMM's work. The analytic voice describes what is and how it came to be. It provides an analysis of the thoughts, emotions, and behavior patterns that may be conscious or unconscious. While the analytic voice helps us understand what can be, the prophetic voice states what should be. The prophetic voice looks to the future and rekindles hope. FROMM's messianic view of hope is central to the prophetic vision.
The two dominant voices in the work of Erich FROMM, particularly in his psychoanalysis, are examined: the analytic and the prophetic. The analytic voice was skeptical and inquiring. It searched for answers to questions and did not condemn the answers received. In contrast, the prophetic voice was urgent and judgmental; condemnation rather than analysis of perverse human behavior was the result. From the analytic perspective, psychoanalysis was a vehicle for the liberation of people from fear and the realization of creative potential. From the prophetic perspective, psychoanalysis was a spiritual discipline that could tap people's social and spiritual revolutionary potential. Unfortunately, FROMM's two voices were often in disharmony. FROMM's failure to harmonize the two voices limited his ability as a therapist and created confusion about the methods and goals of psychoanalysis. D. Generoli
>Methods of Social Character Research in Erich Fromm<: In the 60s team of cultural anthropologists from Mexico and the United States headed by Erich Fromm conducted a socio-psychological survey, the findings of which were published in 1970 under the title >Social Character in a Mexican Village. A Sociopsychoanalytic Study<. The author of the present essay, who closely collaborated with Fromm on this field project, reports both on the data collection methods and evaluational practices used and on the findings reached by the survey. This co-production with Fromm can certainly lay claim to exemplary status for a large part of the Mexican rural population, pointing to a narrow link between the various manifestations of the social character of the villagers, the role of tradition in the culture and family respectively, and the nexus of economic relationships. This research project resulted in the practical conclusion that the situational realities of the most strongly disadvantaged group in the rural population – young people – needed to be improved by educational programs and agricultural projects, so as to stem the growing polarization between rich and poor among the villagers.
Acerca de Erich Fromm
(1982)