Biophilia, Necrophilia, and Messianism Joan Braune

Home , Necrophilia

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Erich Fromm and Thomas Merton: Biophilia, Necrophilia, and Messianism

Joan Braune

Presented at the Italian-English conference “Death and the Love for Life in Psychoanalysis. In Mem- oriam Romano Biancoli“ on June 5-6, 2010 in Ravenna. First published in: Fromm Forum (English Edition - ISBN 1437-1189) 15 / 2011, Tuebingen (Selbstverlag) 2011.

Erich Fromm’s thought was largely motivated by he criticizes).2 Prophetic messianism works for “messianism,” a partially secularized version of and hopes for a future “messianic age” or uto- the traditional Jewish hope and enthusiasm for pia, which will be characterized by justice, ful- the coming of the messianic age.1 The concept fillment, peace, and redemption, and it believes of messianism, though initially developed in the that this future will be brought about by human context of theology, has proven to be a useful effort in history. Prophetic messianism is charac- tool for understanding revolutionary change terized by a “horizontal longing”; it looks ahead and human hopes for utopia. Messianism was a to the future with hope.3 It sees the future ful- topic in the air during his youth, when Fromm fillment of its hopes not as a dramatic “rupture” was a young religious Jew attempting to differ- with history but as a result of historical progress. entiate his messianic philosophy of history from Erich Fromm’s messianic hope rests at the the various other “messianisms” that were to be core of his philosophical, psychoanalytic, and found among left-wing Jewish intellectuals of political program. This messianic hope is highly the time, and he returned to the question in the future-oriented; it looks not to some golden age 1950s, grappling with it from the time of his of the past but to a “golden age of the future,” book The Sane Society (1955) to his death in in which humanity’s long-held dreams of justice, 1980. peace, wisdom, and love, will find fulfillment. Fromm distinguishes between two kinds of According to Fromm, this radical, future- messianism, “prophetic” messianism (which he oriented, messianic hope is central to the psy- defends) and “catastrophic” messianism (which chologically healthy individual and society. This hope is manifested not in passivity or patient waiting, but in action aimed at bringing about a 1 Those of Fromm’s works that directly discuss messi- better future for humanity; it is a commitment anism include, among others, The Sane Society (1955), Let Man Prevail: A Socialist Manifesto and 2 Fromm gives the two kinds of messianism a variety Program (1960), Marx’s Concept of Man (1961), May of names, but in a late manuscript he uses the terms Man Prevail? An Inquiry into the Facts and Fictions of “prophetic messianism” and “catastrophic or apoca- Foreign Policy (1961), Beyond the Chains of Illusion: lyptic messianism” (which I am shortening to “catas- My Encounter with Marx and Freud (1962), You Shall trophic messianism”), and I will use these terms here Be As Gods: A Radical Interpretation of the Old Tes- (cf. Fromm, On Being Human). tament (1966), The Revolution of Hope (1968), To 3 Erich Fromm, You Shall Be as Gods: A Radical Inter- Have or To Be? (1976) and his late, posthumously pretation of the Old Testament and Its Tradition published manuscript Marx and Meister Eckhart on (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1966), p. Having and Being. 133.

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to continually working for a better world, with a brief reply by Fromm, responding to his critics. realistic understanding of the obstacles facing The critics’ contributions to the pamphlet one’s action, and without cynicism or a naïve mainly fail to capture the essence of Fromm’s optimism. argument and are diverted by misunderstand- This paper explores Erich Fromm’s concept ings of Fromm’s essay. Some of them misunder- of necrophilia, as discussed in his 1963 pamphlet stand necrophilia and biophilia to be mere in- War Within Man. There Fromm contrasts the stincts or biological drives, despite the fact that healthy “biophilic” character orientation, which Fromm makes clear in his essay that biophilia is open to growth, change, and the future, with and necrophilia are “character orientations” and the unhealthy “necrophilic” character, which is that he is rejecting Freud’s assertion about the characterized by sentimentality, dwelling upon existence of a death drive in Beyond the Pleas- the past, and an attempt to render the world ure Principle. Roy Menninger particularly plainly static, fixed, predictable, and dead. While the misunderstands, or perhaps intentionally dis- former is future-oriented, like Fromm’s messianic torts, Fromm’s argument. For example, although hope, the latter attempts to flee the burdens of Fromm states in the essay that he does not be- personal responsibility, freedom, and individual- lieve there are simply two types of people (bio- ity through psychological regression into the philic and necrophilic), but that most people past. I conclude by exploring Fromm’s concepts display a mix of biophilic and necrophilic ten- of necrophilia and biophilia in light of his long- dencies, Menninger claims that Fromm believes time correspondence with Thomas Merton. there are simply “two species” of people.4 Of About the pamphlet Fromm’s critics in the pamphlet, only Thomas Merton seems to understand Fromm’s argument Fromm’s 1963 pamphlet War Within Man: A and to take it seriously. I will outline Fromm’s Psychological Enquiry into the Roots of Destruc- assessment of necrophilia in the main part of the tiveness was published as part of a series of pamphlet, and I will return to address Merton’s pamphlets by various authors entitled “Beyond response in light of Fromm’s long-time dialogue Deterrence,” sponsored by the American Friends with Merton. Service Committee, the pro-peace activist or- ganization of the U.S. Quakers. The pamphlets Fromm’s argument opposed the nuclear arms race at a time when The struggle to overcome the desire to regress, the majority of people in the U.S. were gung- and to devote oneself to a future-oriented mes- ho, nationalistic proponents of the arms race sianism, stands at the center of Fromm’s 1963 against the Soviet Union. Prior to writing the pamphlet. An ongoing theme in Fromm’s work pamphlet War Within Man, Fromm had already is the desire of individuals to “escape from free- played an important role in spearheading the dom,” i.e., to flee the burdens of individual U.S. movement against nuclear weapons, and freedom, responsibility, and loneliness, often the first major anti-nuclear weapons organiza- through regression to a childlike dependence tion in the U.S. at the time, SANE, was named upon leaders or other societal influences, or after Fromm’s book The Sane Society. War through politically reactionary efforts to rein- Within Man consists of an approximately state some lost golden age of ancient history or twenty-five page essay by Fromm, exploring prehistory. As early as the mid-1930s, Fromm possible psychological causes of the peculiar apa- explored this question in an essay on J.J. Bacho- thy of Americans about the nuclear arms race, fen’s theory of matriarchy or “Mother Right.” followed by brief critical responses from Trap- According to Fromm, both socialists like Marx pist monk, writer, and peace activist Thomas and Engels and anti-socialist reactionaries like Merton, psychoanalysts Roy Menninger and Je- Klages and Bäumler, all praised Bachofen’s the- rome Frank, Protestant theologian Paul Tillich, political scientist Hans Morgenthau, and soci- 4 Roy Menninger, in Erich Fromm, War Within Man: ologist and anti-Communist Russian émigré A Psychological Enquiry into the Roots of Destruc- Pitirim Sorokin. These responses are followed by tiveness (American Friends Service Committee, 1963), p. 39.

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ory of a pre-historic “matriarchal” world that trophe “only [only!] sixty million Americans existed prior to the rise of contemporary, “pa- [would] die,” and he was acutely aware that, triarchal” societies.5 However, the reactionaries “Almost literally the fate of the human race will praised Bachofen’s theory because they “looked be decided within a year.” In a 1961 letter to back to the past as a lost paradise,” while the Merton, he added, radicals praised Bachofen’s theory from a very I have been thinking a good deal lately different standpoint, since they “looked forward about the increasing discussion of what people 6 hopefully to the future.” The reactionaries will do in their fall-out shelters in case of an yearned to return to a “lost paradise,” a state of atomic attack. It seems that most people take it helpless dependence upon a fascist leader, much for granted that they would defend their shelters like the infant’s helpless dependence upon an with guns against neighbors who want to in- all-giving, all-nurturing mother. The Nazis’ de- trude…This whole discussion shows what kind sire to return to infancy manifested itself in pas- of life we would have, even if millions of peo- sive submissiveness towards nature—a belief that ple could stay alive by protecting themselves history is “fated” or cyclic—a strong preference from fall-out in shelters. Of course big cities are for those with whom one is related by blood, a written off, and those who would survive predilection to honoring the dead through rigid would be the part of the population in the repetition of rituals, and an attachment to land country, removed from the cities. It would be a and “soil” (symbolically associated with moth- life of complete barbarism…Neighbor defending erhood and feminine fertility). his life against neighbor by force, children starv- After escaping Nazism and accepting exile ing, life reduced to its most primitive compo- in the United States, Fromm continued to worry nents of survival. Anyone who believes that in about the political ramifications of desires for this way we can save freedom, I think, is just psychological regression. His new milieu--the dishonest or cannot see clearly.7 United States in the midst of a paranoid and irrational anti-Communist “red scare,” soon to be in the midst of the cold war arms race-- The irrational passivity of Americans in the face presented new but similar problems to his old of the impending destruction of civilization milieu in Germany. Fromm grew increasingly seemed to Fromm to manifest an unconscious concerned with Americans’ passivity about the death wish, in the sense of a desire to escape life arms race and the threat of nuclear catastrophe. through a return to the comfort of the womb. He was especially disturbed by discussions of According to Fromm, this desire arose since in- bomb shelters and by the widely held view in dividuals felt lured to escape the burden of their the U.S. that families could hide below ground freedom and individuality through various me- in the event of a nuclear catastrophe and then chanisms of psychological regression. simply emerge to rebuild civilization. That so As noted above, Fromm’s early reading of many people were willing to accept such a pos- socialists’ and reactionaries’ interpretations of sible outcome to human history, Fromm saw as Bachofen contributed to his conclusion that a profoundly pathological. radical, prophetic messianism must not seek to Fromm’s concerns about nuclear deterrence regress to earlier stages of human development were highlighted in his letters to Thomas Mer- but must proceed towards a future that fulfills ton. Fromm questioned the sanity of those who the hopes of the past and present. The desire to suggested, for example, that in a nuclear catas- restore a lost paradise is reactionary, while the revolutionary looks forward to a future. In his later work, Fromm expressed this dialectic alle- 5Erich Fromm, The Crisis of Psychoanalysis: Essays on gorically, drawing upon the story of Adam and Freud, Marx, and Social Psychology (New York: Hen- Eve. According to Fromm, history began with an ry Holt and Company, 1970), pp. 84-85. 6 Erich Fromm, Beyond the Chains of Illusion: My En- counter with Marx and Freud (New York: Simon and 7Erich Fromm, Letter to Thomas Merton (Thomas Schuster, 1962), pp. 84-5. Merton Center), October 9, 1961.

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act of disobedience. Adam and Eve’s disobedi- sis—“You shall be as gods”—as a blessing and ence of God was, allegorically speaking, the first not a curse. Terrified and burdened by its new- historical act, through which human beings be- found freedom, humanity throughout history gan to develop freedom and awareness of has submitted to authoritarian leaders, seeking themselves as separate individuals.8 Disobedi- to return to the undifferentiated unity of Para- ence was an important step in human develop- dise through blind obedience. ment, a part of humanity’s process of “growing Among the paths by which humans seek to up,” learning not to obey orders blindly (orders escape their freedom and to regain “Paradise” such as, “Don’t eat from that tree”), and break- are three “mechanisms of escape,” which 9 ing its infantile bonds to blood and soil. Adam Fromm discusses in his book Escape from Free- and Eve’s disobedience was “the condition for dom: (1) masochism and/or sadism, characteris- man’s self-awareness, for his capacity to tic of the “authoritarian personality,” in which 10 choose…man’s first step toward freedom.” the individual merges his or her identity with With this act, humanity lost its primal lack of dif- that of another, through either dominating, or ferentiation; that is, it lost its original oneness being dominated by, the other, (2) destructive- 11 with nature and with its fellow humans. ness, in which the individual seeks oneness Despite the great advance represented by through annihilation of what is other,13 and (3) Adam and Eve’s disobedience—the achievement conformity, in which the individual attempts to of self-awareness, freedom, and individuation— merge with the world by making him or herself something was tragically lost with the expulsion identical with it (adopting the same thoughts, from Eden. Like the infant undergoing the trau- attitudes, behaviors, etc., as others).14 All three matic experience of birth, Adam and Eve were options bode ill for an emancipatory politics. thrown from the comfort of Paradise into a But the way back to Paradise is barred; world of loneliness, isolation, and homelessness, “two angels with fiery swords watch the en- and were left yearning for a union that seemed trance and man cannot return.”15 There is no impossible to reclaim. Perhaps love could build simple escape, no mere regression, that can re- a bridge out of this isolation, but Adam and turn the individual to Paradise. Though in some Eve’s lovelessness is evident from their eagerness sense the messianic age will be like the prehis- to blame one another for the act of disobedi- toric Paradise—it will provide once again for ence, rather than defending each other when unity of humans with nature and with one an- 12 faced with God’s interrogation. other—it will not simply restore it. The messi- Humanity is thus faced with a difficult anic future envisioned by Fromm is a dialectical choice of alternatives: it can either seek to es- synthesis in which the individual will feel united cape the reality of its expulsion from Eden with nature and with fellow humans while still through psychological regression, or it can possessing the self-awareness of being an inde- squarely face the problem, move forwards to- pendent, autonomous person. The coming mes- wards a future in which humans will experience sianic time is something never before achieved both individual autonomy and a sense of unity in human history. While the prehistoric state of with nature and one another. According to paradise was defined by “man’s not yet having Fromm, humanity has so far been unable to been born,” Fromm writes, the future messianic recognize the promise of the serpent in Gene- age is defined by “man’s having been fully born.”16

In War Within Man, Fromm argues that the 8 Fromm, Beyond the Chains of Illusion, p. 167. 9 Fromm, You Shall Be as Gods, pp. 122-3. psychological roots of Americans’ passivity to 10 Erich Fromm, The Heart of Man: Its Genius for Good and Evil (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), p. 13Fromm, Escape from Freedom, p. 202. 20. 14Ibid., p. 208. 11 Fromm, You Shall Be as Gods, p. 122. 15Erich Fromm, On Being Human (New York: Contin- 12 Fromm, To Have or To Be? (London: Continuum, uum, 1994), p. 75. 2009), p. 100. 16Fromm, You Shall Be as Gods, pp. 123-4.

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impending destruction could be found in a “ne- be subjugated by, while the destructive person- crophilic,” or death-loving, character orienta- ality needs an other to annihilate. But neither tion. By “necrophilia,” Fromm explains, he does the sadomasochist nor the destructive personal- not mean specifically a sexual desire for corpses. ity are truly concerned for the other. Each feels Rather, he is describing a general psychological personally stunted, and each takes revenge upon orientation towards the world, characterized by another—attempting to render the other a an attraction to all that is static, mechanical, powerless object or non-entity—in order to dead, predictable, and easy to control. Fromm avoid facing the reality of their own unfulfilled, writes that the necrophiliac is “fascinated by all unlived lives. that is dead,” feels drawn “to corpses, to decay, Merton and Fromm to feces, to dirt,” and “[loves] to talk about sickness, about burials, about death.”17 He or Of the various commentators included in she is attracted to darkness, night, caves, and Fromm’s pamphlet, Thomas Merton had an ad- hiding places. vantage; he had already been in dialogue with Fromm for some time and had a good grasp of Fromm’s interpretation of “necrophilia” Fromm’s project. Fromm and Merton ex- clearly has political implications. For example, changed roughly thirty letters from 1954 to Fromm writes that the necrophiliac loves “law 1966, in a lovely example of Marxist/Christian 18 and order” and bureaucracy. The necrophiliac, dialogue on a range of philosophical, religious, like the Nazi bureaucrat Eichmann, “transform[s] and political topics. Merton initiated the corre- 19 all life into the administration of things.” The spondence, having already read three of necrophiliac is attracted to nationalism, since he Fromm’s books (Psychoanalysis and Religion, loves what is “home-made” and that to which Man for Himself, and Escape from Freedom) in he is accustomed, while he is afraid of what is 1954. In the course of the exchange, the two new or different. Finally, the necrophiliac, like frequently sent one another books, with Merton the Soviet Communist, misunderstands justice, reading Fromm’s The Sane Society and Marx’s seeing justice as a merely quantitative matter of Concept of Man, and Fromm reading Merton’s equal distribution. Both capitalist and Soviet bu- The New Man in 1958 and probably reading reaucracy, along with fascism, seem to Fromm Disputed Questions in 1960, and some other of to foster a death-loving, necrophilic character Merton’s writings, including probably Ascent to orientation. Truth, No Man is Island, and Merton’s early bi- Fromm states that necrophilia is closely re- ography The Seven Storey Mountain and, judg- lated both to sadism and the death instinct, al- ing from references to these books in their dis- though neither concept fully explains necro- cussions. The dialogue between Fromm and philia.20 As noted previously, Fromm saw “sa- Merton incorporated extensive discussion of the domasochism" and “destructiveness”21 as mecha- worrying passivity of Americans about the nu- nisms of escape from freedom. The sadomaso- clear arms race and culminated with a joint ef- chist seeks to subject the other or be subjected fort by Merton and Fromm to get the pope to by the other, while the merely destructive orien- sponsor a conference on peace, with the early tation seeks to annihilate the other. Sadomaso- letters emphasizing the two activists’ frustration chism he linked to the “authoritarian character,” with apathy about the nuclear arms race among which views the world solely through the lens of U.S. citizens. power relations. Both the sadomasochist and In his response to Fromm’s essay in War the destructive personality are dependent; the Within Man, Merton agrees with Fromm’s as- sadomasochist needs an other to subjugate or to sessment of the prevalence and danger of necrophilia, though he questions whether Fromm’s 17 Fromm, War Within Man, p. 9. radically future-oriented, biophilic messianic 18 Ibid., p. 11. hope can be adequately grounded without a 19 Ibid., p. 12. theistic faith in a God who can bring human 20 Ibid., p. 9. hopes to fulfillment. In Fromm’s concluding re- 21 Fromm, Escape from Freedom

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sponse to his critics, Fromm sings the praises of Sheen), Merton states, “I am deeply worried by Merton, praising him for being a “true religious the falsity, the superficiality and the fundamental humanist” and for giving a charitable reading of irreverence of what is so often hailed nowadays Fromm’s essay (something some of the others, as a ‘return to God.’ People have resurrected a especially Menninger, seem not to have done). lot of ‘words about’ God…” and he follows this According to Fromm, Merton’s charitable read- statement with a reference to idols, to the ing “transcend[s] the words of the author and “golden calf.” [seeks] to understand what he means or even Perhaps one of Fromm’s most significant what he might mean if he were fully aware of intellectual influences on Merton was through 22 the consequences of his own ideas.” In speak- exposing Merton to the work of French social ing of Merton’s ability to “transcend words,” theorist and Catholic mystic Simone Weil (1909- Fromm was alluding to something he saw as 1943).24 Weil’s analysis of oppression and force, centrally important: the need to oppose an ido- as well as her negative theology, probably ap- latry of words, that is, to refuse to cling to fixed pealed to Fromm. In 1955, Fromm recom- and dead descriptions and to understand reality mended that Merton read Simone Weil’s essay, instead as continually living and becoming. “The Iliad or The Poem of Force.”25 The essay Fromm grew to believe that dialogue and employs Homer’s epic to describe the nature of collaboration between Marxists and people of “force,” which Weil defines as “that x that turns faith should be based upon a common rejection anybody who is subjected to it into a thing.”26 of “idolatry,” a theme that comes up several In his books Fromm frequently quotes Weil’s de- times in the correspondence. This theme of ido- finition of force as the power to transform a latry is in the background in War Within Man, human being into a thing or a corpse.27 This is where Fromm writes that he feels an affinity paralleled by Fromm’s statement in War Within with Merton, despite their differing religious Man that sadism seeks to make its victim into a conceptualizations, since Fromm holds that reli- thing, a “living corpse.”28 gious experience, which transcends language, * * * has primacy over religious concepts. This theme can be found throughout his correspondence Ultimately, the problem that Fromm seems to with Merton. In his first letter to Merton, for see with necrophilia is that it attempts to render example, he stresses his agreement with Mer- ton’s interpretation of religious mysticism, “that 24 Merton later makes various references to Weil in the true mysticism does not know God after the his books, including several in his Conjectures of a 23 manner of an object.” Guilty Bystander, where he expresses his “sympathy Although literally an atheist, Fromm’s de- for” her and her desire “not to be in the middle of scription of his non-belief at times borders on the Catholically approved and well-censored page, negative theology; his atheism is not so much a but only on the margin…as question marks: question- rejection of God’s existence as it is a rejection of ing not Christ, but Christians” (Thomas Merton, Con- jectures of a Guilty Bystander (New York: Doubleday, all positive statements about God. Just as he re- 1966), p. 40). jects positive theology as religious “idolatry,” 25Fromm, Letter to Merton, October 1955. Fromm rejects capitalism as idolatrous, in that 26 Simone Weil, Simone Weil: An Anthology, Ed. and both place more value upon the products of Trans. Sian Miles (New York: Grove Press, 1986), p. human thought and labor than upon human be- 163. ings themselves. Although from a theistic stand- 27 Including Fromm’s “Afterword” to George Orwell’s point, Merton shares Fromm’s worry about 1984; The Dogma of Christ: And Other Essays on Re- “idolatry.” Responding to Fromm’s worries ligion, Psychology, and Culture (Greenwich, Con- about conservative religious leaders in the U.S. necticut: Fawcett Publications, Inc., 1963), p. 188; War Within Man p. 9. For other references to Simone at the time (Billy Graham, Rev. Peale, Bishop Weil in Fromm’s writings, cf. The Art of Loving, The Nature of Man, and The Anatomy of Human Destruc- 22 Fromm, War Within Man, p. 55. tiveness. 23 Fromm, Letter to Merton, October 1954. 28 Fromm, War Within Man, p. 10.

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what is living and uncontrollable into something as Fromm found that his messianic hope for the dead and controllable. “Idolatry,” in all its ma- future was still relevant in the United States in nifestations—whether it is an idolatry of lan- the Cold War as it had been in Germany under guage, of wealth, of the past, of a nation, or the Nazis, we will likely find that in present-day even of ideas about God—functions similarly to society Fromm’s openness to the future, to necrophilia, glorifying what is dead and un- change, to hope, and to life, and his opposition changing over what is living and changing. to the love of what is fixed, dead, and control- Throughout his career, Fromm sought to pro- lable, are no less relevant today than they were mote a future-oriented hope for the messianic in the 1960s. age, in opposition to those who, like the reactionary proponents of Bachofen, sought to regress to some lost paradise, or to dwell senti- Copyright © 2010 by Joan Braune, doctoral candi- date, University of Kentucky mentally upon memories of the (dead and com- E-Mail: jbraune_2000[at-symbol]yahoo.com. pleted) past. Fromm would find many allies in his struggle against necrophilia and idolatry, theologians like Merton among them. But, just

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