Articles / Artikel
>The Humanist Critique of School Education<: In a dialectical intellectual process, this critique of school education succeeds in elucidating those typical influence patterns that go into forming social character – which precede the school stage even. Not only diminished authority but a loss of psychic roots testify to the contradictory nature of children’s liberation. The school’s emphasis on individualization means that pupils are educated with the needs of the marketplace in mind. In the school itself, the production of >marketing< character structures is promoted by institutional mechanisms which, in essence, compel pupils to adapt to an authoritarian and hierarchical educational theory. As a counterweight to this >colonization< of schoolchildren, discussion here focuses on key proposals of how the school may have its humanity restored. Paramount here would be a new role for teachers, one involving restructured cognition processes, revised educational programs, and altered self-perspectives in pedagogical psychology. Also needed is a reform of instructional forms so as to make them more living, adventurous, and socially responsive. Growing educationaldifficulties also render essential an extension of counseling and supervision in matters related to pedagogical psychology. Finally, a number of leading categories are developed within which the humanization of the school can best proceed.
Zur Frage nach der analytischen Brauchbarkeit des Begriffs >Gesellschafts-Charakter< bei Erich Fromm
(1993)
>The Analytic Usefulness of the >Social Character< Concept in Erich Fromm’s Thought<: It is a weakness of traditional social research that it is able, at best, to supply accurate descriptions of the social status quo, but is quite at a loss to undertake any serious prognostication worth the name. Erich Fromm, with his theoretical analysis of >social character<, has developed an approach which might just allow us to predict social developments in the making. First, the author shows how the theory of an >authoritarian character<, originally propounded by Erich Fromm in his worker and employee investigations at the end of the twenties, was subsequently expanded and refined by him. By the time Fromm had finished, he possessed a highly differentiated theory of social character. For a researcher to critically scrutinize his own hypotheses is a rare enough undertaking. But just that was what Erich Fromm undertook to do after his relocation to Mexico – by conducting, for this express purpose, a comprehensive case study of a Mexican village. There the great estates had been broken up barely 40 years earlier, at the time of the Revolution, and the land redistributed to the peasants. Fromm wanted to know which expressions of social character would turn out to be readily adaptable and which would prove intractable. The questioning modalities developed by Fromm involving use of an interpretive questionnaire, and especially his methods of interpretation in terms of the biophilia/ necrophilia polarity, were painstaking in the extreme. That is why final publication of the protocolled findings took until 1970 to complete, thirteen years after the start of planning. Apart from the high qualitative and qualificational demands made on interviewers and analysts, the greatest difficulty probably lay in the ease with which related categories could be confused. Notwithstanding, the concept of social character proved an uncommonly fruitful theoretical approach for carrying out studies into a group’s mindsets and ethical qualities.
>The Social Roots of Modern Science<: This discussion is predicated on the following theses: - Modern science, and especially physics as it has developed since Galileo and Newton, is not value-neutral. It is therefore not merely science’s practical outlets and technological spinoffs that embody the interests, values and weltanschauung of its practitioners. Rather its specific mode of grappling with nature is, both in its methodology and basic concepts, interest- and value-laden from the outset; moreover, science is rooted in a particular view of the world. The view of the world in which science is grounded, and hence also its fundamental concepts, are socially mediated historical developments. It is from basic social structures, especially those in the socio-economic sphere, that such scientific concepts as space and time, the knowing subject, and objectivized nature, have been won, i.e. they have derived from them central aspects and structural features of their interpretive edifice. The present attempt at a materialistic explanation of modern science seeks to answer the question of how scientific theory formation and experimentation,science’s characteristic mode of grappling with nature, can be construed as an historically conditioned way of conceiving nature. Here Alfred Sohn-Rethals’ theory, according to which economic modalities are >reflected< in human consciousness, proves too narrow an answer. This article mainly draws on Fromm’s pivotal concept of >social character<. Applying the latter to the problem of deriving the basic concepts of natural science, the author offers the following answer: To each specific historically conditioned mode of production there pertains a specific social character – the ego must accept what is incumbent on it, as a social actor, to secure the preservation of society. It is in need of an orientational framework, an object of reverence, an appropriate identity. As far as the ego’s relation to nature within a given production modality is concerned, the image of nature and the basic concepts of natural science communicate an orientational framework to the ego, together with the necessary means, to stabilize the identity required by the production modality.
>The Humanization of Everyday Life. An Analysis of the Ethics of the Social Professions<: If ethical analysis is to be of any service in elaborating a theory of the social professions, it must not simply be based on the patron-client relationship. Of greater importance are rudimentary social-political and universal ethical maxims, both of which imply a demand for social justice construed as working towards a social state – together with Albert Schweizer's >reverence for life< and Erich Fromm's >biophilia< (in the sense of dealing considerately with nature). Since most social occupations in present-day society are located in the service sector, the influence of commodification (>commodities always come with a price tab attached<) must be as much reflected in the worker's relation to the client as the possibility of abuse and remaining in tutelage. Finally speaking, institutional ties to colleagues and co-workers (>teamwork<) – as well as >looking after oneself< (in the sense of preserving one's psychic balance), work on the >patron syndrome< (W. Schmidtbauer), and the prevention of >burn-out< – are also in need of consideration. In all of these, the goal of a practical ethic for the social occupations not only consists in promoting the most >mature< possible standards of professional behavior; it also involves freeing the way for a showdown with compulsions and deformations that are deeply rooted in the socially conditioned motivational and demand structure, i.e. Erich Fromm's >social character<. Emancipating oneself from these compulsions is, to be sure, not easy and never completely successful – but achieving insight is the first step to liberation.
>The Meaning of Work in a Market Economy<: Work has both an economic and a human value. The latter value is downplayed though in capitalist market economies, since these are based on the expropriation of labor, rather than on the self-fulfillment of the workforce. However, entrepreneurial manipulation of labor as a production factor is today tempered, to an extent at least, by an increased need for social integration within the firm or on the factory floor. From the worker's perspective too, work is not a matter a choice but of hard economic necessity. Most contracted activities performed by workers for remuneration are alienated (on several different levels). The author advances the thesis that proprietors are increasingly discovering an interest in having >self-determined< individuals on their staff. This development is, however, problematic if it means, in concrete terms, that individuals are now expected to internalize formerly external mechanisms of exploitation (a dominance-oriented culture, surveillance, ecological indifference, a technology-heavy approach). Yet this development has another aspect: it could also provide real gains in the struggle for greater onthe- job freedom. Both on the individual and collective level, it could end up giving workers greater room for maneuver.
>On the Present Escalation of Violence: Causes, Connectivities, and Containment Strategies<: The current increase in youthful crimes of violence mainly directed against foreigners is often put down to defective education. This essay will have none of such simplifying explanations, pointing instead to a connection between >direct< (youthful) violence, >structural< violence (in the public sphere and the economy), and >cultural< violence (in the media). As to the psycho-social genesis of youthful crimes of violence, Helmut Johach distinguishes a >classically asocial< socialization type, mainly restricted to the lower class, from a >narcissistic< deviance syndrome that more characterizes the middle class. An alteration in socialization conditions, affecting both types equally, has been brought about by television more and more replacing primary social experiences in the family. The fact that youthful violence by skinheads and other rightist groups is mainly directed against foreigners is seen as being due to a post-reunification >drift to the right< in German public life and society at large – a drift also manifested in e.g. the asylum-seeker debate in the bundestag. Finally, the author locks horns with the thesis that the >anti-authoritarian upbringing< propagated in the aftermath of the 1968 student revolts has led to a >value decay< in today's younger generation. The ideological function of such pronouncements is to attract attention away from the real causes of the crisis, which are in the nature of the capitalist economic system. Helmut Johach concludes that calls for a >strong state< are quite wrongheaded if the aim is to combat rightwing radicalism; what is needed instead is a more energetic commitment to maintaining a democratic and socially concerned framework.