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Erfundene Geschichte
(1980)
Über Zen-Buddhismus
(1960)
Über Zen-Buddhismus
(1960)
Träume und Übertragung
(1990)
>Dreams and Transference<: Freud (1915-16, p. 181f.) states: >It is natural that we should lose some of our interest in the manifest dream... In general we must avoid seeking to explain one part of the manifest dream by another. as though the dream had been coherently conceived and was a logically arranged narrative.< For Fromm (1951a, p. 28) man has two poles of experiencing: on the one hand those pertaining to his waking state and his dreams are the other pole; our waking experinece will help us understand the latent, unconscious content of our dreams, and our dreams will help us comprehend the unconscious motivations of our waking lives. For him (cf. 1951a and 1979a), it is true that the ideographs of the manifest dream may often seem absurd, confused, incoherent, but it does lead us to their coherent intrinsic logic. The manifest dream allows us to formulate some tentative affirmations, but above all, it imposes questions whose answers will emerge in our continued dialogue with the dreamer, for he alone has the answer that will allow us to grasp the intimate over-all symbol of his dreams. The totality of the dream must be appraised as a global symbol that represents at the same time an >instantaneous snapshot< of the moment of his being. From a teleological perspective, it is as if the sites presented, the actors and the rest of the cast, other living beings (be they animals, plants, nature) and diverse objects have all been chosen for what they reveal of the dreamer, thus objectifying and demystifying him. Each dream symbol represents a condensation, thus it is a mistake to jump to the conclusion that such a figure is of necessity mother or father or that another is a penis or a vagina; maybe it will all turn out to be so, but we can wait until all is unequivocally clear. As Freud (1900a, p. 608) stated, the understanding of dreams leads us along >the royal road< to what has been unconscious to the dreamer. Only a few dreams fulfill wishes (cf. E. Fromm, 1979a, p. 72 and p. 95f.); the vast majority tend to objectify our present situation and, not too infrequently, they allow us insight into the personality of others. This paper presents some aspects of the humanist psychoanalytic concept of conscious – unconscious and its import for the understanding of transference phenomena and the process of transcending it. Since our dreams clarify our Here and Now it stands to reason that dreams will clearly reveal the state of the >dream-day< transference. By-and-large, the manifest dream reveals the unconscious relationship to significant individuals of the dreamer’s environment, which always includes the therapist whether or not he (she) is present in the dream. Quite often one can see the waking relationship to the analyst and quite another what is evinced in the analysand’s dreams... We must never loose sight of what these latter reveal, for in our dreams we are free and candid. – This paper also presents clinical material.
>The Fromm-Marcuse Debate Revisited<: After his polemic with Herbert Marcuse in the fifties, Erich Fromm came to be regarded by the intellectuals of the >New Left< as an essentially conformist thinker, although it was indeed Fromm who was initially responsible for drawing attention in the US to the early writings of Marx and who, together with C.W. Mills, was long the best known critic of capitalist society in that country. The fact that Fromm’s work was falsely assessed for a long time was in no small sense due to the massive attacks Marcuse launched against his former colleague from the Institut für Sozialforschung, whom he charged with undermining the critical potential of psychoanalysis in favor of an ideologically glossed over menschenbild in the service of conformist values. Marcuse’s critique, however, is untenable since he wildly overestimates the importance of the libido theory; moreover, Marcuse fails to see that Fromm’s social psychology consistently (i.e. even after his turning away from orthodox psychoanalysis) aims at a critique of the prevailing social character and that his ethical commitment to a >productive< life is no easy bedfellow of capitalist productivity increases. In no less measure, the charge of >sociologism< leveled by Adorno and R. Jacoby – by which is meant a harmonization between personality structure and society – is far wide of the mark, since it overlooks Fromm’s postulate of the need for disobedience and creative non-adaptedness in the face of the omnivorous tendencies of society. From today’s critical perspective on the debate waged at that time, it clearly emerges that Erich Fromm has been unjustly consigned to oblivion as protagonist of the >left<.
Erich Fromm
(1974)
Über Kultur und Äquivalenz
(1971)