Refine
Language
- English (129) (remove)
Document Type
- Articles (104)
- Reviews (10)
- Books (8)
- Collections (3)
- Interviews (3)
- Dissertations (1)
Year of publication
- 2015 (129) (remove)
Models of the psychoanalytic situation can usefully be thought of as fictions. Viewed this way, the models can be understood as narrative structures that shape what we are able to see and how we are able to think about what happens between us and our analysands. Theories of therapeutic action are elements of what can be called a >controlling fiction<, mediating between these theories and our very real responsibilities, both to our preferred method and to a suffering patient. This venture into comparative psychoanalysis is illustrated by a discussion of published case material.
A group of psychoanalysts led the Seminario de Sociopsicoanálisis to broaden their clinical perspective gained through working with patients in the setting of a private practice. In this paper we describe participatory action research initiated by a community. We started by interviewing impoverished and economically disadvantaged children, first from a miner's village and later on from a center for children living in the streets. A study on Attachment and Social Character of mothers and children as well as the systematic appraisal of the unconscious motivations in the individual's responses to the Social Interpretative Questionnaire are presented. We strive to bring the findings of our social character studies back to the communities themselves. Our purpose is to support or foster possibilities for initiating participatory community-based action projects, aimed at transforming the quality of life and to confront the difficulties and obstacles that emerge on the path to change; furthermore we hope that our research will help to stimulate the development of childcare health policies.
The Institute for Social Research, or Frankfurt School, is an interdisciplinary research center associated with the University of Frankfurt in Germany and responsible for the founding and various trajectories of Critical Theory in the contemporary humanities and social sciences. Three generations of critical theorists have emerged from the Institute. The first generation was most prominently represented in the twentieth century by Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Leo Löwenthal, and also for some time Erich Fromm. The so-called >second generation< of the Institute is centrally represented by Jürgen Habermas, whose work has functioned as the focal point of a wide range of critical theorists. The third generation of the Frankfurt School is represented by Axel Honneth who emerged as a new center, with different strands or readings of who else belongs to the third generation, some in Germany, some internationally, and some more in sociology and social and political theory than philosophy.
Towards a Human Science. The Relevance of Erich Fromm for Today, Giessen (Psychosozial-Verlag) 2015.
(2015)
Introduction
(2015)
Erich Fromm’s Legacy
(2015)
This article addresses the tension between the defining impact of culture on human experience and the role of the person as agent. Focusing on the sociocultural turn in psychoanalysis, it examines the evolution of the notions of culture and the person, first in the culturalist psychoanalysis of Harry Stack Sullivan and Erich Fromm, and then in the hermeneutic turn of recent psychoanalysis. The article maintains that persons are inescapably shaped by the culture in which they live. At the same time, the manner in which individual psychology is organized and experienced within culture points to the role of agency as an emergent human potential. The article suggests that culture and personal agency are mutually reinforcing and that psychoanalysis must account for both. It develops a hermeneutic perspective as an alternative to postmodernism and concludes by outlining a post-Cartesian approach in psychoanalysis that addresses culture and the person in a non-dualistic fashion.
Erich Fromm, the author of >You Shall Be as Gods< and many other well-known works, not only made references to the Hebrew Bible in his writing but also provided lengthy interpretations of the biblical texts themselves. In this paper, I aim to evaluate the influence of the works of Erich Fromm on how exegetes and other scientists interpret the Hebrew Bible. In the conclusion of this paper, I call for further research on the possible applications of Erich Fromm's ideas on Hebrew Bible interpretations. I suggest that Erich Fromm's ideas could help to solve problems of the psalms, vengeance and violence in the Bible, and I also claim that the application of Fromm's model of social character could contribute (from a psychodynamic perspective) to ongoing research on Israel's religious history as well as our understanding of religious symbol systems in general.
Erich Fromm and Critical Theory in Post-War Japanese Social Theory. Its Past, Present, and Future
(2015)
Erich Fromm has been one of the most influential social theorists in Japanese social sciences, especially in sociology and social psychology and the adoption of his theory reflects the socio-cultural structure of post-war Japan and its historical changes. In this paper, I will examine Fromm's social theory in relation to Japan's post-war swift rehabilitation and rapid economic growth and discuss the remarkable role that it played by the 1970s in critical analysis of Japanese society. I will discuss Fromm's popularity and influence in Japan, examining its theoretical features from the view point of Critical Theory, since in Japan Fromm's theory is considered to have its roots not only in American sociology and social psychology but also in German Critical Theory (the Frankfurt School). As a result of Japan's economic success and status as an affluent consumption society, however, postmodern relativism and cynicism prevailed in the world of thought through 1980s and 1990s and consequently Fromm was forgotten. This story of Fromm in Japan is not over, however, for we will discuss how neo-liberal reforms are breaking the fetters of an outdated Japanese-style management regime and giving people the freedom for self-realization. This >pseudo positive freedom<, of course, creates again the social pathologies of escapes from freedom Fromm discussed in 1940s. Fromm's normative anthropology of human freedom is thus recovering its popularity and has a great theoretical potential for critiquing today's neo-liberal reforms.
The aim of this study is to discern intersections between the intellectual path of the young Habermas and the issues addressed by the >Positivismusstreit<, the dispute between Popper and Adorno about methodology in the social sciences. I will present two perspectives, focusing on different temporal moments and interpretative problems. First, I will investigate the young Habermas’ relationship to the intellectual tradition of the Frankfurt School: his views on philosophy and the social sciences, normative bases of critical theory and political attitudes. Second, I will reconstruct Habermas’ contemplation of the >Positivismusstreit<, in light of his social scientific research programme in the 1960s. The thesis supported is that Habermas developed a position diverging from those of Adorno and Horkheimer, and that his position reasserted the agenda of the >first critical theory<. This article highlight the discontinuity between the first and the second generation of the Frankfurt School, the constructive openness to other philosophical and sociological traditions, as well as the aporias of a theory of knowledge not yet oriented towards the program of reconstructive sciences.
Inspired by Erich Fromm
(2015)
This paper discusses some reasons Erich Fromm's thinking is essential in analytic treatment and training today. Nevertheless, one frequently encounters resistances when presenting his ideas to candidates in psychoanalytic programs in the USA. Trends toward relativism have diluted the sense of purpose in psychoanalysis. This makes Fromm's passionate dedication to human freedom and self-actualization crucial. But, ironically, the postmodern sensibility often contributes to a rejection of Fromm's legacy. The paper offers suggestions about how Fromm's thinking, with its emphasis on authenticity, directness, intensity, full presence, and passionate purposefulness, can be fruitfully integrated into an interpersonal psychoanalytic approach.
Two sources, Lawrence Friedman's recent biography and Michael Maccoby's important 1994 essay on the >two voices< of Erich Fromm, present Fromm as torn between his roles as scholarly >scientist< and as revolutionary >prophet<. Contra Friedman and Maccoby, who see the >prophetic< as impinging on Fromm's scholarly objectivity and rigor, I argue that Fromm's prophetic and scientific sides must be understood as fundamentally linked. Fromm's ethical-prophetic orientation and his theory of >prophetic messianism< are intellectually sophisticated. Fromm draws on philosophical traditions that privilege human flourishing (Aristotle, Spinoza, Marx) as the basis for ethical decision-making. Like Marxist Georg Lukács's >totality<, Fromm's prophetic messianism not only doesn't limit his theoretical work – it opens up new vistas, through an encounter with reality that is both theoretical and practical.
Isaiah Berlin’s >Two Concepts of Liberty< was a milestone in the development of modern political theory, with his advocacy of negative freedom supporting the neoliberal demand for ‘freedom from’ the state. This article defends the conception of positive freedom by calling on the neglected insights of the sociological tradition. I demonstrate how Marx, Durkheim and Simmel all understood freedom to be a socially conditioned phenomenon, with >freedom from< being an idealist fiction (Marx), and a recipe for anomie (Durkheim) and loss of meaning (Simmel). I argue, however, that positive freedom as it was theorised by the classical sociologists must be distinguished from the more fashionable idea of individual self-realisation and self-identity, a notion equally susceptible to idealist constructions, and one increasingly targeted by Foucault-inspired critics. Instead I draw on Hannah Arendt and André Gorz to show how positive freedom should be theorised as a worldly, conflictual, and pre-eminently political affair.
This paper presents some dimensions of Erich Fromm's analytical social psychology that can be related to consumer capitalism. In view of the limits of growth, the destructive consequences of the consumerist lifestyle are increasingly evident. A sane consumption is something we must develop. This new consumption would promote sustainable development as a counterweight to the commoditization of the consumer and of the world. The social character approach describes the social adaptation of the psychic powers of man to economic needs. At present this adaptive process has transformed education and learning, creating students who can be easily used by the economic system and who will be perfect consumers. To curtail a potentially meaningless life, production and consumption must be limited and cut to a reasonable level. More people must change their way of life. Erich Fromm's approach presents reasons why consumerism is a dead end for human development and he outlines life-saving solutions that involve change in our education systems.
From >Freedom from< towards >Freedom to<: A Frommian Reading of Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange
(2015)
The Relevance of Erich Fromm
(2015)
Fromm, Marx, and Humanism
(2015)
Fromm's early work connecting Marx and Freud as part of the Frankfurt School has gotten inordinate attention, while his later work interpreting Marx as a humanist, democratic, and anti-totalitarian thinker has received short shrift in recent decades. This paper will examine works like Marx's Concept of Man (1961a) and Socialist Humanism (1965a) in terms of their context, their impact, and the controversies they stirred up with Cold War liberals like Sidney Hook and the young Richard Bernstein. Fromm's differences with Marcuse over humanism are also explored. In addition, this paper discusses Fromm's correspondence with the Marxist feminist and humanist Raya Dunayevskaya and his connections with Eastern European dissident Marxists. Fromm's persistent dialogue with Marx during the last two decades of his life had a wide impact on the 1960s generation and beyond. At a time when the crisis of capitalism has led to a new interest in Marx, this after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it also speaks to us today.