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Exploramos la vida de Erich Fromm durante los años 30, su confrontación con el Nacional Socialismo y las experiencias de su familia en el Holocausto. Relevamos el impacto de este periodo en sus escritos, especialmente El Miedo a la Libertad (Escape from Freedom). La situación política del momento, en la cual el antisemitismo se hubo incrementado y las minorías estaban siendo perseguidas hace especialmente importante el examen de la experiencia y exilio de Fromm. El autor se apoya en la historia de su propia familia alemana y en el descubrimiento del pasado nacionalsocialista de su propio abuelo para examinar la importancia del análisis de Fromm de las tendencias autoritarias en Alemania a principios de la década del 30.
In light of the recent emphasis on social and cultural factors in psychoanalytic theory and practice, this article will elaborate earlier attempts to bridge psychoanalysis and the study of culture. I begin by considering the disciplinary tension between the fields of psychoanalysis and anthropology and the emergence of a >psychoanalytic anthropology,< which began in the 1920s and lasted through the 1950s. I then turn to the works of Harry Stack Sullivan and Erich Fromm, who developed an approach known as >cultural psychoanalysis.< I suggest that Sullivan and Fromm anticipate today’s sociocultural turn in psychoanalysis and that their work on culture and its role in psychological development and experience continues to be relevant. Rather than embracing a social or cultural determinism, Sullivan and Fromm focus on the interaction between culture and the person, thus creating an >integrationist< approach. Sullivan and Fromm develop a broad conception of culture that encompasses a critique of social and cultural norms and values. I suggest that this is particularly valuable because much current discussion of culture focuses chiefly on diversity and difference, thus overlooking the implicit social and cultural values at work in all human experience. I build on Sullivan and Fromm’s insights to illustrate the significance of early interpersonal psychoanalysis for the sociocultural turn in contemporary psychoanalytic theory and practice.
Erich Fromm’s life during the 1930s, his confrontation with Nazism and his family’s experience of the Holocaust is explored. The impact of this period on his writing, especially Escape from Freedom is considered. The current political situation, in which anti-Semitism has increased and minorities are persecuted makes the examination of Fromm’s experience of persecution and exile especially relevant. The author uses his own German family history and his discovery of his grandfather’s Nazi past to examine the importance of Fromm’s analysis of authoritarian tendencies in Germany in the early 1930s.
Psychoanalysis, religion, philosophy and the possibility for dialogue: Freud, Binswanger and Pfister
(2012)
This article considers the longstanding disciplinary tensions between psychoanalysis, religion, and philosophy. It argues for a cross-disciplinary understanding of human experience by examining the relationship of Sigmund Freud to his two Swiss colleagues, Ludwig Binswanger and Oskar Pfister. In contrast to Freud's avowed atheism and pronounced ambivalence on philosophy, Binswanger and Pfister both professed a strong religious sensibility and philosophical outlook. The article juxtaposes their theoretical divergences on religion and philosophy with personal interactions and correspondence. The relationship of Freud to Binswanger and Pfister is instructive for understanding the historical and contemporary interaction of psychoanalytic theory and practice with other disciplines and diverse viewpoints. The dialogical spirit that connects the three protagonists constitutes a critical engagement with learning and is essential to psychoanalysis today.
This essay explores the notion that we are all fundamentally shaped by history. I suggest that psychoanalysis needs to attend not just to the history of the patient, but also to the fact that the psychoanalyst and patient alike are affected by history and its traumas. Human experience cannot be separated from the historical and cultural contexts in which we live out our lives. The approach I am describing is not an endorsement of historical determinism, the notion that the past entirely makes us who we are today. It is, rather, a plea to know history so that we might respond to what it can teach us. In making this argument, I draw on the work of the historian and psychoanalyst by training, Thomas Kohut. His work helps us to avoid reductionist views of human experience, whether in the past or the present, and teaches us to use empathy to think and feel our way into the situation of the other person. This is particularly relevant in light of the ongoing prejudices and social injustices in contemporary society.
This essay addresses some of the challenges involved in accounting for history’s impact on psychological development. First, I consider how the personal beliefs and theoretical assumptions of psychoanalysts and historians can limit their understanding of other people, whether in the past or the present. Second, I examine the degree to which an individual’s perception and understanding is always a reflection of the collective cultural understanding in which that person lives. I apply these two observations to the discussion of how European Jewish psychoanalysts responded to the traumas of the Holocaust in the decades afterWorld War II. I suggest that individual responses were shaped by the absence of a collective discourse about the Holocaust during this time. When examining the past, I maintain that psychoanalysts and historians should be cautious, lest their current theories determine their understanding of the past.
Prólogo
(2011)
Psychoanalysis.
(2011)
Psychoanalysis and Intersubjectivity. Sullivan, Fromm, Merleau-Ponty, Benjamin, and Stolorow,
(2006)
Understanding Intersubjectivity: Psychoanalytic Formulations and Their Philosophical Underpinnings
(2001)
This article addresses the place of society in Erich Fromm's pioneering psychoanalytic work and in the evolution of interpersonal theory and practice. It suggests that there is much to be gained from a re-examination of Fromm's politically progressive perspective. By bridging sociology and psychoanalysis, Fromm developed a new approach known as >social psychoanalysis,< which sought to explain and understand the centrality of society in human experience and the therapeutic process. Fromm moved beyond Freud and found an ally in the American psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan. Together, Fromm and Sullivan became the key founders of the Interpersonal School of Psychoanalysis located at the William Alanson White Institute in New York. Despite their commonalities, however, Fromm and Sullivan differed in central areas, particularly on the issue of “adaptation” to society. Sullivan believed that adaptation was a marker of successful personality development and Fromm maintained that society inscribed pathology into the human being. This difference would prove definitive as interpersonal psychoanalysis moved from its radical beginnings to become a dominant school of contemporary psychoanalysis that focused on the interpersonal dyad and the interactions between the analyst and patient.
As a psychoanalyst, Fromm felt compelled to speak to the social and political crises of his time. Fromm’s social psychoanalysis was a radical departure from the Freudian mainstream and has important implications for how psychoanalysis can address social and political forces today. What is less known and often neglected is the way in which Fromm was himself shaped by the traumatic events of racial discrimination and genocide that marked the twentieth century, particularly the rise of Nazism, virulent anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. This article will weave together Fromm’s life-experience, and that of his family, with his development of key ideas relating to the threat of authoritarianism and racial narcissism. To illustrate the relevance of Fromm’s work in the present moment, I consider the reality of systemic racism and the long shadow of genocide. Drawing on my work as practicing psychoanalyst, I address the racial discrimination experienced by Indigenous peoples in Canada. In the process, I examine how the psychoanalysis and the therapeutic setting is embedded in society and inevitably implicated in the structures of systemic racism.
Psychoanalysis in the shadow of fascism and genocide: Erich Fromm and the interpersonal tradition
(2022)
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.