The Relevance of Erich Fromm Marco Bacciagaluppi

Propriety of the Erich Fromm Document Center. For personal use only. Citation or publication of material prohibited without express written permission of the copyright holder. Eigentum des Erich Fromm Dokumentationszentrums. Nutzung nur für persönliche Zwecke. Veröf- fentlichungen – auch von Teilen – bedürfen der schriftlichen Erlaubnis des Rechteinhabers. Bacciagaluppi_M_1990 The Relevance of Erich Fromm Marco Bacciagaluppi „The Relevance of Erich Fromm,“ in: Academy Forum, New York (American Academy of Psychoanalysis), Vol. 34, No. 4, Winter 1990, pp. 6f. Copyright © 1990 and 2011 by Dr. Marco Bacciagaluppi, Via Pellini 4, I-20125 Milano / Italien - E-mail: m.bacciagaluppi[at-symbol]marcobacciagaluppi.com. The year 1990 marks both the 90th anniversary of Erich Fromm’s birth and the 10th anniversary of his death. In recognition of this dual anniversary the American Academy of Psychoanalysis is organizing a program on Fromm at its Winter Meeting in San Antonio. In addition, last March, the International Erich Fromm Society held a Congress in Heidelberg on the theme of „Human- ism and Society.“ With Erich Fromm’s work so much in the forefront this year, it may be useful to review and explore its value to contemporary society and psychoanalysis. A look at the current relevance of Fromm’s work and the sources of his ongoing appeal will occupy the first section of this paper. Following that I will present a brief report on the Heidelberg meeting. Fromm and Psychoanalysis At this point in history it may be worthwhile to ask what contributions Erich Fromm’s work can still make to society in general and to psychoanalysis in particular. It is especially appropriate to raise these questions with regard to psychoanalysis because Fromm has always been more popu- lar among the general public than among professionals; and his influence on psychoanalysis seems at present to be at a particularly low ebb. In order to answer these questions, I turned to my favorite book by Fromm, Man for Him- self (1947). At the outset Fromm states that „in order to know what is good or bad for man one has to know the nature of man.“ He adds: „the productive character constitutes the source and the basis of virtue“; „vice in the last analysis, is indifference to one’s own self and self- mutilation.“ In the later chapters of the book, Fromm looks at a series of contrasting concepts: rational vs. irrational authority; humanistic vs. authoritarian ethics; humanistic vs. authoritarian conscience. As regards the latter he writes: „The authoritarian conscience is what Freud has described as the Super-Ego.“ Humanistic conscience „is the voice of our true selves which summons us back to ourselves...to become what we potentially are“ (Fromm’s italics). What emerges is a true-self/false-self dialectic that arises in response to alienated relationships. This theme was already present in Escape from Freedom (1941) and was therefore developed by Fromm long before Winnicott, who wrote his paper on the subject in 1960 and pub- lished it in 1965. In Man for Himself Fromm shows how this dialectic develops in parent-child relationships. In Escape from Freedom Fromm describes this dialectic at the level of religious and political systems. He thus refers to a higher level of organization than the family—something which is conspicuously lacking in most other psycho-analytic writing. All of Fromm’s themes can be traced back to the opposition (at both the individual and social levels), between a true self that is rooted in the nature of man and alienated authoritarian structures. Alienated relationships developed in the course of history and were reflected in the structure of society, family and individual character. As Fromm made clear much later, in The page 1 of 4 Bacciagaluppi, M., 1990 The Relevance of Erich Fromm Propriety of the Erich Fromm Document Center. For personal use only. Citation or publication of material prohibited without express written permission of the copyright holder. Eigentum des Erich Fromm Dokumentationszentrums. Nutzung nur für persönliche Zwecke. Veröf- fentlichungen – auch von Teilen – bedürfen der schriftlichen Erlaubnis des Rechteinhabers. Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1973), these structures only developed in advanced agricultural societies. They do not belong to man’s prehistoric environment but represent an unnatural development. Whereas the nature of man is the result of genetic adaptation to a prehistoric environment, the phenotypic adaptation to an unnatural environment gives rise to a variety of unproductive character types, in which thwarted life leads to destructiveness. A basic premise of this thinking is that the „nature of man“ exists and can be discussed. At first, Fromm defined the nature of man mainly in terms of the philosophical tradition. He con- stantly referred to such authors as Aristotle, Meister Eckhart, and Spinoza. Later, in The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, Fromm came closer to an evolutionary definition: „man’s biological constitution is the source of norms for living. He has the possibility for full development and growth, provided the external conditions that are given are conducive to this aim“ (Fromm’s italics). One could say that under the pressure of a skewed cultural evolution the human species has developed a series of false selves (unproductive character structures) and that Fromm’s aim is to help the true human self emerge. For this to take place, Fromm warns, insight is not enough. In Man for Himself he writes: „Only if these two conditions, the subjective dissatisfaction with a cul- turally patterned aim and the socioeconomic basis for a change, are present can an indispensable third factor, rational insight, become effective.“ This brings us to the powerful conceptual tools which Fromm provides and which are still largely unacknowledged in the psychoanalytic community. In a paper from 1932, „The Method and Function of an Analytic Social Psychology,“ Fromm described the relationship between dif- ferent levels of organization. It is the socioeconomic structure, through the agency of the family, that molds individual character. In this process, socio-economic conditions prevail over instinctual endowment. Later, in the Appendix to Escape from Freedom, Fromm defined the shared character traits in a society as the social character. Still later, in the study he co-authored in 1970 with Michael Maccoby (Social Character in a Mexican Village), he described the mechanism of social selection: when socioeconomic conditions change, the prevailing social character may no longer be adaptive, and hitherto minority character traits may be selected. Selection rather than individual adaptation is the mechanism of change. Because character traits can be deeply en-trenched, a lag may develop between the social character and socioeconomic changes. This explains the failure of many revolutions. One revolution that failed-one example of an escape from freedom—was Freudian psychoanalysis, in which the authoritarian structure soon reasserted itself. In order to bring Fromm back into the picture, after a long period of neglect at the hands of psychoanalysts, connections have to be re-established. To this end, I suggest it may be useful to consider Fromm as one major exponent of an alternative approach in psychoanalysis that was started by Ferenczi and then moved in two directions: the British Middle Group and the Ameri- can interpersonal-cultural approach. Certain points in Fromm’s work may require revision. In Escape from Freedom Fromm pointed out the positive aspects of modernization, but he later became increasingly pessimistic about modern society. He tended to ascribe alienation to industrialization and technology. But, as he started to recognize in The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, the origins of alienation can be traced all the way back to advanced agricultural societies. Modern society, on the con- trary, may lead to an overcoming of alienation. One example is provided by the reduction in family size. Large families and overpopulation are typical of peasant culture. Judging from surviv- ing hunter-gatherer societies, our prehistoric adaptation was characterized by a smaller family size. In the reduction of family size there seems to be a convergence between our prehistorical hunter-gatherer adaptation and Western industrial society. This may bring about a situation more congenial to man’s innate endowment and hence to the unfolding of his potentialities. page 2 of 4 Bacciagaluppi, M., 1990 The Relevance of Erich Fromm Propriety of the Erich Fromm Document Center. For personal use only. Citation or publication of material prohibited without express written permission of the copyright holder. Eigentum des Erich Fromm Dokumentationszentrums. Nutzung nur für persönliche Zwecke. Veröf- fentlichungen – auch von Teilen – bedürfen der schriftlichen Erlaubnis des Rechteinhabers. Fromm’s view of family may also require revision. In his 1932 paper Fromm recognized the importance of the family, but he changed his mind in later years. In an unpublished chapter of To Have or to Be? (1976) he writes: „instead of centering on sexuality and the family, [this approach] claims that the specific conditions of human existence and the structure of society are of more fundamental importance than the family“ (p. 95 of the original typescript). Recent devel- opments, such as attachment theory and family therapy, confirm Fromm’s early emphasis on the family rather than his later abandonment of it. Once these

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