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Salvador Millán's main thesis is that social character--the way patients and therapists internalize the values, cultural beliefs, and class structure of their society--is always present in the consulting room and often becomes manifest as transfer-ence and counter-transference reactions. Indeed, according to Millán, transference and countertransference are just another name for developmental processes of so-cial adaptation as it be-comes expressed in a particular relationship between an analyst and his/her patient. Millán takes us through the origin of the concept of transference in Freud, with its patriarchal and authoritarian overtones, to its classical definition in Fenichel's work. With its surgical metaphors, Fenichel crystallized an approach to technique and the handling of the transference. Analytical technique re-quired a neutral and detached observant role, with precise interpretations directed at the psyche, similar to a surgeon's skilled incisions into the patient's body. Millán compares this approach with the guidance Fromm offered to the students of the Mexican Psychoanalytic Institute during supervision and in his seminars in Cuer-navaca during the 1960s. Fromm's point of departure was like Freud's. Transference has to do with the experience of infancy that is repeated in the presence of the ana-lyst. Fromm (1968) thought that this definition of transference, while true, was lim-ited, since it took into account only one source of irrational strivings based on infan-tile longings. However, if one looked at transference as an experience in which the patient deposits in the person of the analyst the origin of >all of his expectations and fears,< (p. 2) a much broader range of transferential reactions is taken into consid-eration. Some of these reactions may be traced to parental influence. Others may have origins that are broadly social, in which the parents' influence is based on be-ing representatives of societal norms, or parental roles may even be irrelevant. In this definition, transference is not just based on childhood experience, but repre-sents the whole experience of the patient's life. Millán points out that one of the limi-tations of psychoanalysis is that it is primarily based on the experience of working with clinical populations. Millán briefly reviews a series of social character studies that have been conducted in the last two decades in factories, in corporate environ-ments, and in rural communities with normal populations, and that have broadened our understanding of the process of social adaptation beyond the consulting room. According to Millán, these studies provide support for Fromm's more inclusive con-cept of transference.
Der Durchbruch vom Haben zum Sein. Erich Fromms Gesellschaftskritik und die Mystik Meister Eckharts
(1996)
Marianne Horney Eckardt offers a thoughtful meditation on the issue of normative principles in development and the practice of psychotherapy. She discerns three possible positions. The classical position as articulated by Heinz Hartmann would advise the analyst to stay clear of any moral position and hope for the best. In the position taken by Karen Horney, the issue of ethics lies at the center of neurotic development. The analyst's role, to use a metaphor, is to be a good gardener who will restore healthy development by providing the right conditions for further growth. We should mention in passing, that the belief in a self-righting tendency is central to many contemporary views such as Lichtenberg and colleagues' (1992) and Weiss's (1993). A third position, taken by Fromm and Stephen Jay Gould, claims that nature does not provide us with answers to the problem of living. Quoting Gould (1977), Eckardt believes that the complexity of human existence requires >humanists of every stripe< (p. 146) to provide us with moral guidelines by which we can live. She interprets Fromm as believing that humans are not inherently good or evil, but that life presents us with choices that can incline us in one direction or another. The role of the analyst in this position is much like the old biblical prophet or a Greek chorus. As therapists we can describe the alternatives provided by life choices and can urge patients to consider the possible consequences of different paths, some of them dire, others promising and hopeful, but we cannot tell patients which road to take. Fromm's position was dialectical and incorporated elements of the second and third positions. Fromm thought that the main tendency in humans was toward goodness. The path to love and brotherliness also offered the best >solution< toward happiness. Evil was a second, ever-present potential, a capacity for cruelty and destructiveness that far exceeded anything observable in the animal kingdom. At its best, Fromm's approach to a humanistic ethics was historical. Any discussion of real possibilities – in a Hegelian sense – for good and evil had to be inserted within the context of a specific historical period and a particular life history. Without this contextualization, any discussion of ethics results in, by omission or by commission, simply supporting an ideology. Eckardt's distinctions are valuable and help frame some of the issues of a humanistic ethics. We think her discussion of Fromm's belief in a negative theology also has implications for our position as therapists. Just as we cannot know what God is, we are also unable to predict, nor should we prescribe, formulas that lead to the good life. And just as a negative theology is defined by what God is not, so we can and do know about negative consequences for development when favorable conditions are lacking. Furthermore, we should not hide our values as therapists. A central paradox of human development is that while development is lawful, it is not predictable on an individual basis.