Articles / Artikel
Concepts from Self-Determination theory are related to Fromm’s conceptualizations of existential human needs and human strengths. Empirical findings seem to support Fromm (1955a) in stating that socio-economic environments which embody particular values will influence psychological well-being, health and social relations of consumers. Further, empirical studies on effects of working in democratic enterprises and experiencing a sociomoral work climate upon employees’ attitudes and behaviors will be presented. All in all, the findings support Fromm’s vision of a humanization and democratization of work.
Our meta-analytic review investigates how employee participation in democratic enterprises is related to psychological outcomes. We gathered 60 studies through a systematic literature search of quantitative field studies (published between January 1970 and May 2017) and extracted 138 effect sizes related to three indicators of organisational democracy (OD) and 15 psychological outcomes. The overall findings suggest that employees’ individually perceived participation in organisational decision making (IPD) had a stronger relation to job satisfaction (ρ = .25), job involvement/work motivation (ρ = .36), prosocial work behaviours (ρ = .24), civic and democratic behaviours (ρ = .21) and perceived supportive climate (ρ = .44) than the other two OD indicators: structurally anchored employee participation (SAEP) and employee participation in collective ownership (EO). This was not the case for valuebased commitment: the relations of SAEP (ρ = .40), EO (ρ = .34), and IPD (ρ = .46) with commitment were nearly equal. Mediation analyses indicated that IPD partially mediated most of the effects of SAEP and EO on the outcomes mentioned. The cross-sectional database and a small number of studies for some of the outcomes are the main limitations of this study.
Universality is being deconstructed within contemporary social struggles. Focusing on struggles around the discourse on refugees and the nation, and so-called >welcome culture< in the German context in particular, questions arise regarding the emancipatory potential of emerging narratives of a contested common ground (Hark et al. 2015). This article proposes Erich Fromm's understanding of >radical humanism< (1968a) and its line of argumentation towards >global solidarity< (Wilde 2013) instead of national >group narcissism< (Fromm 1964a) as a normative base to evaluate the emancipatory value of emerging narratives.
This paper shows that Fromm's discussion is curiously connected to the tradition of American individualism. In Escape from Freedom, Fromm suggests that authoritarianism derives from aloneness as a result of modern individualism and entrusts his hope in democracy for spontaneous activity and solidarity. But why is spontaneous activity and solidarity hopeful in democracy? The interesting thing is, this conclusion is close to the discussion of Alexis de Tocqueville, who also regarded spontaneous relationships as an important foundation of democracy. Based on Tocqueville's insight, there is a tradition in sociology that argues for the relationship between democracy and individualism, such as David Riesman's The Lonely Crowd and Robert Bellah's Habits of the Heart. This paper attempts to show how Fromm was influenced by the tradition of American individualism and discusses Fromm's impact on later American individualism studies.
This paper explores Fromm’s dialectic analysis of power relations as it applies to the dynamics of change at the societal and personal levels. First, the paper discusses the use of empirical research—system justification theory—to test the impact of socio-psychological and structural resistances to change. Second, it looks at the concept of The Social Third to illustrate Fromm’s clinical approach around connectedness, subjectivity, narcissism, internalization of normative structures and the centrality of the concept of social character in shaping the dynamics of change.
This chapter employs Caroline Polmear’s contemporary reinterpretation of Michael Balint’s concept of the basic fault as a lens through which to read Othello and Macbeth. In Polmear’s view, borderline pathology arises due to a traumatic rupture in the primal bond between mother and child, and it can take the form of either ocnophilia (clinging to people) or philobatism (clinging to spaces). It is proposed that Othello and Macbeth are representations of these complementary character-types. Othello cannot tolerate any separation from Desdemona, while Macbeth retreats into schizoid isolation. The handkerchief, the loss of which is tantamount to the loss of Desdemona’s love, was received by Othello from his mother at the time of her death, while in Macbeth the rupture of the mother-child bond is figured both in Macduff’s having been >untimely ripped< from his mother’s womb and by Lady Macbeth’s description of killing the baby that was nursing at her breast. Two clinical examples—one of an actual patient, the other of Philip Roth—are offered to illustrate the reciprocal interplay of literature and psychoanalysis. It is argued that the traditional notion of >applied psychoanalysis< should be replaced by what might be called, following Shoshana Felman, >implied psychoanalysis,< or what Fromm has called >literary psychoanalysis.<
This chapter provides a comprehensive overview and rehabilitation of Erich Fromm’s importance as a psychoanalyst. Fromm is lauded for having been an unsurpassed analyst of psychoanalytic politics and the incarnation of what it means to be an independent psychoanalyst, who was unjustly attacked both by orthodox analysts and by his erstwhile colleagues in the Frankfurt School. His 1935 essay, >The Social Determinants of Psychoanalytic Therapy,< in which the influence of Ferenczi and Groddeck is directly acknowledged, and his 1959 book, Sigmund Freud’s Mission, are hailed as summits of his achievement, while The Greatness and Limitations of Freud’s Thought shows him in decline. Three weak points in Fromm’s thought are identified: (1) his tendency to flatten out an individual level of analysis into a purely social level; (2) his penchant for shifting the blame for the problems in psychoanalysis away from Freud onto his followers; and (3) his assumption that motherly love is unconditional. Fromm’s defense of radical humanism is compared with that of Orwell, and it is shown to be grounded not only in philosophy but above all in natural science in The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness.