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Epilogue
(2020)
Recent decades have witnessed a surge of important studies dealing with intellectuals’ confrontation with fascism and Nazism, and the societal roles that they can play, especially during such “dark times.” This is an area that is close to my study, and it is therefore important to mark the difference between some of these studies and mine in terms of content and form and with regard to the meaning and significance intellectuals assigned to their works.
Erich Fromm was a German social psychologist and psychoanalyst who was associated with the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. He was known for developing the concept that freedom was a fundamental part of human nature and for challenging the theories of Sigmund Freud. In his works he presented the view that understanding of basic human needs is essential to the understanding of society and mankind. In >Escape from Freedom< Fromm explores humanity’s shifting relationship with freedom, with particular regard to the personal consequences of its absence.
>The Mass Psychology of Fascism< (1933) was the first psychological inquiry into Fascism. In this work the psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957) explores how Fascists came into power, and explain their rise as a symptom of sexual repression. It was followed by other psychological interpretations of Nazism by Jewish exiles from the Third Reich, from Erich Fromm’s >Escape from Freedom< (1942), to Siegfried Kracauer’s >From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film< (1947), and Erich Neumann’s >Depth Psychology and a New Ethic< (1949).
Introduction
(2020)
>Jewish Exiles’ Psychological Interpretations of Nazism< examines works of four German-Jewish scholars who, in their places of exile, sought to probe the pathology of the Nazi mind: Wilhelm Reich’s >The Mass Psychology of Fascism< (1933), Erich Fromm’s >Escape from Freedom< (1941), Siegfried Kracauer’s >From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film< (1947), and Erich Neumann’s >Depth Psychology and a New Ethic< (1949). While scholars have examined these authors’ individual legacies, no comparative analysis of their shared concerns has yet been undertaken, nor have the content and form of their psychological inquiry into Nazism been seriously and systematically analyzed. Yet, the sense of urgency in their works calls for attention. They all took up their pens to counter Nazi barbarism, believing, like the English jurist and Judge Sir William Blackstone, that >scribere est agree< (to write is to act).
This paper sets out to examine in a comparative framework Pitirim A. Sorokin and Erich Fromm's conceptions of love. The core argument is s in the complementarity between self-love and altruistic love. In conclude, altruistic love and self-love are not contradictory to each other. Those who don't love themselves cannot love others, nevertheless, those who ignore others cannot love themselves. What I try to show in this thesis is to clarify this fact.
This paper sets out to examine in a comparative framework Pitirim A. Sorokin and Erich Fromm's conceptions of love. The core argument is s in the complementarity between self-love and altruistic love. In conclude, altruistic love and self-love are not contradictory to each other. Those who don't love themselves cannot love others, nevertheless, those who ignore others cannot love themselves. What I try to show in this thesis is to clarify this fact.
We are presently at a point of unique circumstantial convergence where recession, an increased emphasis on business ethics, and marketer’s reluctance to accept shifting social agendas have combined to identify the need for a new approach to marketing. Using concepts from the human resources, marketing and psychology literatures, and especially Erich Fromm’s ideas concerning economic character, this paper posits that marketers – as a professional community – are driven to promote consumerist outcomes; victims of an automaton amalgam of calling and character. The analysis suggests the vulnerability of both marketer and consumer are mutually reinforcing and that we need, somehow, to break this damaging cycle of dependence. We know little, however, about how marketers think and feel about their discipline, so this paper also promotes an agenda for marketer behaviour research, as a countervailing balance to a currently disproportionate focus on the consumer.
In this paper, I compare two theories of ideal love, the Platonic and Frommian, and argue that they give opposite advices to lovers in practice. While Plato emphasizes >whom to love< and urges one to continuously look for a better beloved, Erich Fromm emphasizes >how to love< and urges one to grow and change with one’s imperfect lover. Using the movie >Her< as an example, I explain why an ideal love is extremely difficult to attain under the guidance of the Platonic and Frommian ideals. In an imperfect love, to leave or to stay seems to be a question with no simple answer.
Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to construct a genealogy of therapeutic communities (TCs), with the espoused commitment to flattened hierarchies and democratic ideologies, the paper considers the lineage of the Frankfurt School of Social Research and its influence in setting a frame for TC ideology, with a particular focus on Herbert Marcuse and Erich Fromm. This genealogy provides further context to the contribution of two other key Frankfurters, Karl Mannheim and Michael Foulkes, who progressed therapeutic democracy in the UK and shaped the early days of the TC as a group-based treatment paradigm. Design/methodology/approach: Discourse analysis and collective biography based on biographical details, texts and witness accounts. Findings: The works of Marcuse and Fromm provide a hybrid psychosocial post-Freudian schemas that beckoned philosophic reconciliation between the state and the personal psyche culminating in new left psychoanalytic academic sectors. Erich Fromm's contribution is situated squarely in the clinical sphere in the USA dating from the 1930s after he fled from Germany and settled in the USA where he became a well-known lecturer at Chestnut Lodge during a time when it was developing its approach under the rubric of >milieu therapy<. Marcuse's influence on psychiatry is tracked through the development of ideas and writings emerging from his reading of Freud, finally intersecting with the emergence of TCs and anti-psychiatry when he delivered the keynote address at the Dialectics of Liberation Conference in London in 1967. Held at the height of the first generation of TCs, Joe Berke, R.D. Laing and colleagues considered Marcuse as someone to headline the Dialectics Conference because; >Marcuse was the Grandpapa of Flower Power< (Joe Berke said). Originality/value: A rapprochement between milieu therapy in the USA, influenced by Fromm and Marcuse and the European tradition of TCs, influenced by Mannheim and Foulkes is demonstrated. The Frankfurt Institute of Social Research can be seen as an ideological corner that transcends Atlantic divides, and provides a sturdy and lasting intellectual cornerstone for the history of ideas in the field of social psychiatry.
It is well known that Foulkes acknowledged Karl Mannheim as the first to use the term `group analysis'. However, Mannheim's work is otherwise not well known. This article examines the foundations of Mannheim's sociological interest in groups using the Frankfurt School (1929-1933) as a start point through to the brief correspondence of 1945 between Mannheim and Foulkes (previously unpublished). It is argued that there is close conjunction between Mannheim's and Foulkes's revision of clinical psychoanalysis along sociological lines. Current renderings of the Frankfurt School tradition pay almost exclusive attention to the American connection (Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer) overlooking the contribution of the English connection through the work of Mannheim and Foulkes.
In >Can We Live Together?< Alain Touraine combines a consummate analysis of crucial social tensions in contemporary societies with a strong normative appeal for a new emancipatory >Subject< capable of overcoming the twin threats of atomisation or authoritarianism. He calls for a move from >politics to ethics< and then from ethics back to politics to enable the new Subject to make a reality out of the goals of democracy and solidarity. However, he has little to say about the nature of such an ethics. This article argues that this lacuna could usefully be filled by adopting a form of radical humanism found in the work of Erich Fromm. It defies convention in the social sciences by operating from an explicit view of the >is< and the >ought< of common human nature, specifying reason, love and productive work as the qualities to be realised if we are to move closer to human solidarity. Although there remain significant philosophical and political differences between the two positions, particularly on the role to be played by >the nation<, their juxtaposition opens new lines of inquiry in the field of cosmopolitan ethics.
During his years as a member of the Frankfurt School, Erich Fromm developed a strong interest in the idea that there were distinctive male and female character orientations. Drawing on the positive evaluation of matriarchy made in the nineteenth century by the Swiss anthropologist J. J. Bachofen, Fromm argued that a >matricentric< psychic structure was more conducive to socialism than the patricentric structure which had predominated in capitalism. His interest in maternalism and his opposition to patriarchy played an important part in his rejection of Freud's theory of drives and in the development of a humanistic ethics in which love plays a central part. The idea of a gendered humanism is central to Fromm's social thought, although there is a danger that the over‐emphasis of sex‐based character differences unintentionally re‐opens the danger of the kind of sexual stereotyping which he resolutely opposed.
Psychoanalysis is practiced in context. How relevant are our theories in addressing the psychological impact of disruptive, traumatizing effects of socio-cultural events? This is one of the many critical questions raised by Dr. Holmes in her very telling essay. Particularly on the question of race, Dr. Holmes outlines the shortcomings of our theories, but also challenges what she perceives as the reluctance of psychoanalytic training Institutes to address the traumas of race and racism. This discussion expands on Holmes’s position to wonder whether all psychoanalytic theories are equally remiss, and whether Institutes and psychoanalysts’ perceptions of, and responses to, social trauma are shaped by their particular theoretical orientation. Specifically, this discussion focuses on differences in orientation between Classical psychoanalysis and Interpersonal/Relational theories of mind. The author identifies Sullivan, Fromm, Ferenczi, and others as early psychiatrists and psychoanalysts for whom interpersonal and cultural contexts were central to their theories of human development.
This article explores the essential role of love and understanding in analysis. Love is seen as a healing force keeping the patient connected to life and to health, and as the glue that cements the analytic process. The four components of love which describes – care, respect, responsibility, and knowledge – are the heart of all successful analysis. Two case studies illustrate how the positive countertransference may be used therapeutically to help patients move towards healthy self-esteem and self-care, and a more benevolent and loving relatedness.
Many writers have commented on the lack of Freud's usual level of logic and powers of persuasion in Moses and Monotheism. The majority attribute it to the significance of dynamic determinants in Freud himself--most notably, identification with Moses. Fromm (1972) says >one must assume that Freud's preoccupation with Moses was rooted in the deep unconscious identification with him< (p. 79). Unfortunately, the situation is much more complex. Although many pertinent observations have been made, what is needed is a detailed dissection of the text, a correlation with elements from Freud's personal life, and an overall psychoanalytic synthesis of the data. This paper makes a beginning in that direction, incorporating the ideas of other investigators with those of the author – but it is hoped that much more detailed analysis and biographical correlation will follow. There is a wealth of information about Freud in Moses and Monotheism and no one paper will exhaust it. In this examination no attempt will be made to evaluate Moses and Monotheism for its literary, psycho-historical, or scientific merit. The focus is on the psychodynamic determinants of Freud's essay.
Mexican psychiatry initiated since pre-Hispanic times. Historically, treatments were a mixture of magic, science and religion. Ancient Nahuas had their own medical concepts with a holistic view of medicine, considering men and cosmos as a whole. The first psychiatric hospital appeared in 1566 and a more modern psychiatric asylum emerged until 1910. International exchanges of theoretical approaches started in the National University with the visit of Pierre Janet. There were other important figures that influenced Mexican psychiatry, such as Erich Fromm, Henri Ey, Jean Garrabé and Yves Thoret. Regarding Mexican psychiatrists, some of the most important contributors to Mexican psychiatry were José Luis Patiño Rojas, Manuel Guevara Oropeza and Ramón de la Fuente Muñiz. This article includes excerpts from >Clinical Psychiatry<, a book by Patiño Rojas where he tries to understand and describe the inner world experienced by patients with schizophrenia; also, the thesis conducted by Guevara Oropeza (>Psychoanalisis<), which is a critical comparison between the theories of Janet and Freud. Finally, we include >The study of consciousness: current status< by Ramón de la Fuente, which leads us through the initial investigations concerning consciousness, its evolution, and the contributions made by psychology, philosophy and neurobiology.
Beginning from a critique of neoliberalism, and in particular of its concept of freedom, I develop an alternative notion of freedom as love. In order to escape the current neoliberal hegemony, I argue that we must reconnect with the radical traditions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I thus take as my starting point the debate between Herbert Marcuse and Erich Fromm over the nature of freedom that took place in the pages of Dissent in the mid-1950s. Building on their work I construct a theory of freedom as >connective expression<.
Drawing upon the thought of Eric Fromm, this paper argues that efforts to understand and counter behaviour that causes difficulties in education should begin in a critical and reflective engagement with both the conditions of human freedom and the character of educational institutions and society as a whole. Fromm’s critique of dominating ideas about good mental health within capitalistic societies is examined in relation to disablement and attention-deficient hyperactivity disorder. A study of a sixth-form college in the south of England elucidates connections between Fromm’s insights into social psychology and disablement as a process of oppression.
The present study aimed to delineate the psychological structure of materialism and intrinsic and extrinsic value pursuit. Moreover, we compared models based on self-determination theory (SDT), Fromm's marketing character, and Inglehart's theory of social change to account for racial prejudice. In a sample of undergraduate students (n=131) and adults (n=176) it was revealed that the extrinsic value pursuit Financial Success/Materialism could be distinguished from the extrinsic value scales Physical Appeal and Social Recognition, and Community Concern could be distinguished from the intrinsic value pursuit scales Self-acceptance and Affiliation. Moreover, Financial Success/Materialism and Community Concern were consistently and significantly related to prejudice, whereas the other SDT facet scales yielded weaker relationships with prejudice. Structural models based on SDT and Inglehart were not corroborated, but instead the present data supported a mediation model based on Fromm's work in which the effect of Community Concern was mediated by Financial Success/Materialism. Broader implications for SDT are critically assessed.
The author tells the history of his relationship with Malcolm Pines, and uses it in order to describe the latter’s personality and thinking, as well as to trace the influence that he has had on his thinking and practice. The focus of the discussion is on Malcolm’s understanding of the socio-political context of mental processes, including the creation of psychoanalysis by Freud, and the inner politics of psychoanalytical and group-analytical institutions. Malcolm is described as a revolutionary character, in Fromm’s terms. The article is a celebration of Pines’ life and contributions, as he reaches the age of 85.
Negative freedom was the ideological rallying call of the bourgeoisie’s historically progressive period, when it overthrew the economic and political power of the landed aristocracy and gave birth to modern liberalism. Liberal philosophers asserted the moral primacy and autonomy of the individual and advocated the market and representative democracy as forms of association that allowed freedom from externally imposed authority. Only those relations of obligation and authority entered into voluntarily by the individual could have legitimacy.
In the television series >The Walking Dead<, survivors of an apocalypse take shelter in a prison, while zombies circle the fences looking for a way in. The zombies are shadows cast by a past to which the survivors cannot return but which they cannot escape. The living dead represent the past that, as Karl Marx wrote, >weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.< The prison that holds us today is what right-wing philosopher Francis Fukuyama called >the end of history,< a predicament in which >we cannot picture to ourselves a world that is essentially different from the present one, and at the same time better.<
Is there such a thing as midwifery ethics? Yes, there is. As human beings (moral agents), midwives are to be ethical, moral, responsible persons and professionals. Midwives work in moral relationships with other persons. They serve by the moral standards of their profession as now embodied in written codes of ethics, a profession that is part of the larger health care profession. As part of the professional world, midwives participate in the general standard that to be professional is to be ethical and to be unethical is to be unprofessional. The professions, in turn, are part of what Erich Fromm calls >human ethics<. If midwives are to be ethical, we suggest they need to understand ethics and to reason morally. Better health care for all is the result.
In 1937 Theodor Adorno, in a letter to Erich Fromm, described women as exemplars of commodity fetishism, >agents of the commodity in society<. Adorno wanted Fromm to join him in a study of the invidious psycho-social effects of this phenomenon. Fromm did not respond to this invitation, possibly because his own views on women were diametrically opposed to Adorno’s. To Fromm, women were not agents of capitalist corruption but avatars of altruism, their nurturing qualities providing models for socialist morality. These polarized images of women have their roots in Enlightenment gender theory. This essay outlines the myths of Woman promulgated by Enlightenment intellectuals, in particular the Janus-faced doctrine of ‘female influence’ that dominated eighteenth-century writings on women, which portrayed them simultaneously as acquisitive hedonists and as paragons of self-sacrificial benevolence.
Today the concept of the interpersonal field, while seldom credited to those who created it, is widely used in psychoanalysis. After reviewing how the concept of the field defines interpersonal and relational psychoanalysis, I take up the rejection of the idea in American mainstream psychoanalysis in the decades just after it was proposed by Sullivan and Fromm, why that rejection took place, and how the entire discipline of psychoanalysis in North America might have fared if the idea had been widely recognized earlier than it was.
In her final book, >Environmental Culture< as well as elsewhere, Val Plumwood advances the view that sustainability should properly be seen as emergent from an ecofeminist partnership ethic of nourishment and support between humans and nonhuman nature, and that such an ethic must replace the characteristic institutional structures and dominant conceptions of rationality found in capitalist modernity. In making this case, Plumwood impressively charts the impact and significance of the expansionist, exclusionary models of the disembodied but appropriative self found in Cartesian and Lockean thought along with the impact of private property doctrines derived from this source. However, whilst making reference to eco-socialist alternatives at the broader political level, Plumwood offers no systematic account of property that might dovetail with her wider philosophical concerns. In this paper I attempt to generate the start of such an account, drawing on Plumwood’s own canon and bringing it into relationship with (1) relections on ideas of belonging and culture drawn from a range of thinkers including Erazim Kohák, Erich Fromm, and William James, and (2) the contemporary debate over the relationship between green political thought and the liberal democratic tradition.
More simply human than otherwise: interpersonal psychoanalysis and the field of the >negro problem<
(2022)
Biophilic design, based on humans’ innate connection to nature, evolved into a social movement over many decades. It emerged from Erich Fromm’s early use of the term biophilia to Edward Wilson’s book on Biophilia, the subsequent Biophilia Hypothesis book by Wilson and Stephen Kellert, to the multi-authored Biophilic Design publication in 2008. This progression involved meetings and discussions between people with a shared understanding of the human biological connection to nature and the need to bring nature back into urbanites daily lives. Their vision and passion led to the emergence of the social movement of biophilic design. The moral vision of bringing nature into city design reflects a shared understanding and collective goal beyond self-interest. There was a communal sense of the associated issues with cities which lack nature, such as disconnection from nature, urban heat island effect and water and air pollution, kindling a desire to initiate change.
This chapter explores a fundamental alternative philosophy of the subject. Drawing inspiration from Adorno’s critical theory and from Fromm’s social psychology, Smith offers a contemporary, cross-disciplinary study of the subject, including the individual’s relation with society and social development. What emerges is a deeply insightful approach to understanding social interaction, developmental psychology and the problem of ego colonization. Enriching arguments laid out in early chapters, Smith employs a methodologically innovative conception of the development of the subject: from its (de)formation and early childhood development to more practical issues such as compassion fatigue, deficits of reason and empathy. Smith shows how negative social conditions foster emotionally overwhelmed individuals – a deeply repressed, closed, traumatized subject. This chapter also covers other important practical issues, such as the problem of economic coercion, pathological reproduction, cycles of domination and violence, and the everyday effects of >needless suffering< on the psyche.
Critical Theory was born at a dark moment in world history. The Weimar Republic in Germany had given way to National Socialism, fascism reigned in Italy, and the Bolshevik revolution in Russia had begun its descent into the whirlpool of Stalinism. It became clear that >class consciousness< does not spring fully formed from economic crisis, as many Marxists had imagined, and that socialist democracy is far more difficult to achieve than even its enemies had believed. Nowhere was this more apparent than in Germany, wherein 1933 the proudest and strongest labor movement in history fell victim to a grotesquely reactionary regime. Democracy in every form seemed alarmingly fragile, too feeble and embattled to resist the >dictatorship of the corporals< that Max Weber had feared. This was the context in which the renowned >Frankfurt Institute< began its odyssey from traditional to critical theory.
The aim of the study was to illuminate, from video recorded sequences, interactions between individuals with dementia and aggressive behaviour and caregivers who reported problems dealing with such behaviour and caregivers who did not. Nine caregivers and two residents participated. The video recordings were later transcribed into text and analysed by using a phenomenological hermeneutic approach, inspired by Ricoeur's philosophy. The main themes that emerged from the analysis were >Being involved and developing a positive interaction< and >Being confined to routines and remaining in negative interaction<. The findings indicated the interactions either to be in a positive or negative spiral. Caregivers who had reported problems dealing with behavioural and psychiatric symptoms in dementia focused on accomplishing the task, where the main focus was on >the goal itself<. In other sequences with caregivers who had been satisfied with their capability the focus was placed on >how< the caregivers could reach their goal. Power was central in the material, in different ways, either as a possible way to handle the situation or as a possible way of defending oneself. Parts of Kitwood's framework and Fromm's theory about power >over< and power >to<, has been used in the comprehensive understanding. Our conclusion is that caregivers should use power 'to' when they have to help persons with dementia and aggressive behaviour, as a part of behavioural and psychiatric symptoms of dementia, for being able to give help in the best possible way. They should also act in a sensitive and reflective manner, with the individual in focus.
As we face the past in considering the events of the 20th century, we tend to continue to describe armed conflicts as theatres of war, our backs to the future. Such descriptions presuppose that we are capable of speaking about how the actions are staged and performed and that the experience of such events is not only presentable but also capable of representation. As we look back through the debris, we also notice another tendency, i.e., that genocides frequently have been associated with actions of modern war and rationalized and justified as necessary extensions of violent struggles for survival. This has been no less the case in, most recently, the Balkans, than during the 1970s in Rwanda or Cambodia and from 1939–45 in Nazi Germany.– Speaking of genocide as a kind of >theatre<, however, seems even more absurd than referring to the performative acts of war in terms of protagonistic and antagonistic actors, directors, spectators, and impartial critics of the whole process. But what other choice do we have than to deal with the terms of absurdity? Are we not constrained in our engagements with others to act in one way or another through exercising simulation or dissimulation, revealing or concealing our intentions or desires behind the masks which we daily don? Are we not forced to admit and confront what are considered human aberrations from our stipulations of normal human behaviour? Are we not also then constrained to engage again and again in the difficult tasks of expression and interpretation of signs and gestures? Given that constraint, in the intermingling of our roles as actor, spectator and critic, then, we present and perceive public faces which are marked and masked with lines and traces of our ethical relations.
Three waves of challenges may be perceived from within psychoanalysis to its reductionist attitude to religion and spirit. These historical challenges from within psychoanalysis are an important context for reading the many papers now being published on spirituality and psychotherapy, and increasingly, spirituality and psychoanalysis. The 1st wave began with some of Freud's contemporaries, among them his friend, the psychoanalyst and pastor Oscar Pfister; the Nobel Laureate Romain Rolland, and the poet T. S. Eliot. Challenges continued after Freud's death: In Britain from psychoanalysts such as Rickman and Guntrip, and in America initially by the European immigrants, Erikson and Fromm. British independent psychoanalysts initiated what may be considered to be the 3rd wave, whose momentum is now swelling to a sea change.
Our intention in this brief article is to explore the idea of what it means to be a >good< manager. We discuss some of the dilemmas faced by managers seeking to define their role performance in terms additional to those of organizational effectiveness and efficiency. To do this, we describe critical aspects of the contemporary context. We propose that the changes we are experiencing give organizations a central role in how people define their personal and social well-being. Our contention is that in this central role organizations will be faced with situations requiring solutions of fundamental value conflicts. This means that the nature of the question as to what it means to be a >good< manager will become both increasingly important and increasingly complex. Further, the exploration of the issue can no longer be limited to operational efficiency, but must include the manager's capacity to conceptualise both his own role and that of the organization within the broader socio-environmental context. We contribute to the dialogue by proposing that being >good< will involve on the part of the manager an awareness of the values involved in a decision and an alignment of action with what Erich Fromm has called >life-giving< values. This approach in no way diminishes the requirement that a manager be competent in the fullest sense of the word; it requires, however, a deeper understanding of competence and of the commitment a manager will need to act justly, fairly and with care.
The philosophical foundations of interpersonal psychoanalysis: Albert Dunham Jr. and racial politics
(2022)
Instruments designed to measure Fromm's marketing character (SCOI; Saunders & Munro, 2000) and the vertical and horizontal dimensions of Individualism and Collectivism (Singelis, Triandis, Bhawuk & Gelfand, 1995) were administered to 167 Ss. The hypothesis that scores on the SCOI would be positively correlated with Vertical Individualism was supported. However, there was only partial support for the hypothesis that scores on the SCOI would be positively correlated with Individualism, as the SCOI scores had the same relationship with Collectivism – which was unexpected.
The twentieth century is notable for the widespread growth of market-driven economies which have been associated with dramatic shifts in values both within and across cultures. The present study (N=101) aimed to assess the relationship between a measure of Fromm's (1955) marketing character (the SCOI) and Rokeach values. The hypothesis that the Rokeach value >Equality< would be ranked low when considered in terms of scores on the SCOI was supported, suggesting that social comparisons made in the consumer domain are made with the aim of determining relative success or failure rather than equality.
The article explains the importance of forming identity for the psychological and spiritual development of an individual. The author notes that the role of folk culture in the formation of national identity in modern society has diminished, and it analyzes the socio-psychological conditions in which the specific role of folk culture can be restored: modern economic and socio-cultural activities of new cultural functions; acquisition by assimilation by species; creation of favorable environment, including information environment; unifying the community around the main objectives of the educational process; to look for new educational practices and to consider cultural and historical psychology. Indeed, >one of the worst forms of psychological suffering is boredom, not knowing what to do with yourself and your life<, concluded Fromm. The consequences of the state not formed by individuals or the loss of identity become a crisis of national identity, which is a prerequisite for the loss of national sovereignty (national self-consciousness). Problem researchers tell us that the >living< of our native culture, the deep emotional connection with it, and the understanding of the meanings of it, are made by the individual, the customs, values, special forms of cultural, historical, social and spiritual life of the motherland. Book publishing centers, Russian culture of all nations, etc. Their self-awareness in difficult financial conditions made people think not only about survival, but also to adopt a language and culture that was alien to them.
Alan Watts’ seminal text >Psychotherapy East and West<was authored near Humanistic Psychology’s beginnings, also a transformational time for psychotherapy theory and practice. Watts fostered appreciation for Eastern philosophical traditions, particularly in relation to self, identity, and counterculture. In this article, contributions of innovative thinkers cited by Watts, including Gregory Bateson, Erich Fromm, Jay Haley, George Herbert Mead, Rollo May, and Carl Rogers, are highlighted and historically situated toward tracking threads of contemporary influence vis-à-vis social construction, brief therapy, and therapeutic simplicity. The article begins with a brief note on Watts’ countercultural positioning.
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.
>Each Individual is a Surprise< is a brief account of a dialogue between Marianne Horney Eckardt and myself about the state of psychoanalysis and the psychoanalytic process, the danger of idolatry, the damaging impact of psychoanalytic schools when they create a standardized and pathologizing approach to people, the value of curiosity and humility and retaining one’s clinical creativity. The role of Rank, Horney, Sullivan, and Fromm in Dr. Eckardt’s long life and rich work is touched upon.
Humanism has been criticized as a philosophical and political stance from different points of view in recent decades. The paper summarizes four common types of criticism, stemming from political, ethical, technological, and ecological concerns. These criticisms relate back to a preoccupation with the respect for otherness or difference, either toward human or non-human beings. The paper tries to demonstrate that these concerns are also to be found as essential elements in the development of humanism itself, not only among its political and theoretical opponents. It does so with reference to Erich Fromm’s works, where a life-oriented ethics is coupled with a demand for sustained political relatedness to difference, without giving up notions of a radical humanism and the anthropology that accompanies it.
Obedience
(2022)
This is a phenomenological description of existential obedience, which draws out a contrast between it and ressentiment and existential envy, and compares it with pedagogical obedience. The discussion is developed with reference especially to the work of Erich Fromm, Emerson, and Nietzsche. Eds.: This paper forms part of a special issue titled >Beyond Virtue and Vice: Education for a Darker Age<, in which the editors invited authors to engage in exercises of >transvaluation<. Certain apparently settled educational concepts (from agency and fulfilment to alienation and ignorance) can be reinterpreted and transvaluated (in a Nietzschean vein) such that virtues become vices, and vices, virtues. The editors encouraged authors to employ polemics and some occasional exaggeration to reimagine educational values that are all too readily accepted within contemporary educational discourses.
This chapter presents several different conceptualizations of the ambivalence which, it argues, is a central feature of the psyche of the modern individual. It is produced by two basic but potentially contradictory needs – for the assertion of individuality, and for membership of a collectivity. The understanding of this ambivalence is an important contribution of psychoanalysis to psychosocial theory. It bridges between sociohistorical and clinical perspectives and throws light on many aspects of the contemporary world.– The starting point is Fromm’s >Fear of Freedom< (1942). Fromm describes the depth of fearful aloneness and vulnerability felt by the modern individual who has emerged from the very limited individuation of pre-modern societies. This leads to the dangers of a regressive escape from that fear, and into identification with an idealized collective, which is the basis of popular support for authoritarianism.– This remains a highly relevant analysis, though another, complementary dynamic must now also be considered. This involves a fear of the collective, a libertarian denial of the pains of separation, and an idealization of the unfettered individual. A deficit of confidence in the core, individuated self produces vulnerability to both of these anxieties, trapping us in an ambivalence between freedom and belonging, unable to feel fully secure with either.– Developments in post-Freudian theory have offered clinically-based elaborations and variations on this idea of a basic ambivalence. Here the focus is on Guntrip’s account of the schizoid dilemma, and on descriptions of a >core complex< (Glasser) involving agoraphobic and claustrophobic impulses and oscillations between them. These different formulations converge in their picture of a self unable to live either with or without human relationships.– A number of key topics in politics today are then considered in the light of this analysis: attitudes toward the state, national identity and nationalism, terrorism, and populism. In each area, the expression and interplay of these complementary anxieties and defences against them are seen to contribute to the present difficulties of democracy.
Direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising (DTCPA) is pervasive in the United States. Beyond its effect on consumer behavior, DTCPA changes the relationship between individuals and physicians. The author provides a brief history of pharmaceutical advertising in the United States. The author then analyzes the current commonly used marketing techniques of pharmaceutical companies and argues that pharmaceutical companies are >irrational authorities< in Erich Fromm’s sense of the term since they seek to exploit persons. Using concepts from various philosophers from the Continental tradition, with a particular emphasis on the work of Michel Foucault, the author analyzes the power relations involved in DTCPA and ultimately argues that DTCPA subtly undermines the contemporary paradigm of patient autonomy while simultaneously depending upon it by treating health consumers as >dividuals<, that is, as porous entities to be manipulated.
This article proposes a theory of psychological disturbance (mental illness) as a cultural phenomenon. The theory is based on – and extends – the general cultural psychological theory of Vygotsky, Luria, and Leontiev, as well as the specific social approach to psychopathy of Fromm, Foucault, Laing, and Rieber. We demonstrate that the psychodynamics of individual disturbances are shaped by normative, macro cultural factors, such as gender norms, religious doctrine, family structure, architecture, and clothing. We illustrate this cultural psychological analysis of individual psychology with a case study of a 25 year old Saudi obsessive compulsive patient in Riyadh backed by 50 interviews with students about family relations in Saudi Arabia. We discuss the therapeutic and political implications of our cultural theory of psychological disturbance.