The Relevance of Erich Fromm Marco Bacciagaluppi

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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 published 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

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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.

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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 developments, such as attachment theory and family therapy, confirm Fromm’s early emphasis on the family rather than his later abandonment of it. Once these revisions are taken into account, Fromm’s sociopsychological framework and his passionate plea on behalf of man’s true self could be an essential contribution to a new paradigm for psychoanalysis. In this paradigm man would be seen as the outcome of the dialectic—involving, at certain points, the conflict—between biological and cultural evolution. If we were to summarize what Fromm represents as a moral force, we could say, in Fromm’s own words, that he „summons us back to ourselves.“

A Congress to Commemorate Erich Fromm: Heidelberg, March 1990 In his welcoming remarks Professor Johannes Neumann, the founding President of the Fromm Society, pointed out that in Heidelberg Fromm’s thought developed away from its original Tal- mudic orientation towards more expressly sociological and philosophical methods of inquiry. It is there that Fromm wrote his doctoral dissertation on „Judaic Law: The Sociology of Diaspora Jewry.“ Professor Neumann also stated that one important aim in setting up the Fromm Soci- ety—in addition to providing a framework for the proper utilization of the Erich Fromm Ar- chives—was to break through the barrier of silence which seems to have been erected around the life and work of this important individual. The keynote speech was delivered by Rainer Funk, Fromm’ s literary executor and current President of the Fromm Society, on „Humanism in the Life and Work of Erich Fromm.“ Funk stated that a thread running through Fromm’s life and work is the concept of humanism. He in- dicated two sources of Fromm’s humanism, both connected with the town of Heidelberg. The first was the Jewish humanism of Salmon Baruch Rabinkov, Fromm’s Talmudic teacher in Heidel- berg; and the second was the humanistic dimension in psychoanalysis, to which Fromm was in- troduced by Frieda Fromm-Reichmann (also in Heidelberg). According to Fromm, the humanistic dimension in psychoanalysis consists in the assumption that „all men share the same unconscious strivings,“ and that „there exists an essential human core.“ This is confirmed by the existence of the universal language of dreams. Only if we take our unconscious into account do we regain our wholeness. Funk pointed out that this represents a clean break with earlier humanist thinking. In discussing Fromm’s specific conception of humanism Funk stressed two points: 1) that what binds us together are historical and existential dichotomies; and 2) every society promotes some of the possibilities latent in the human unconscious—thus giving rise to the „social character“—and re-presses the others. As Fromm said: „Our conscious mind represents mainly our own society and culture, while our unconscious represents the universal man in each of us.“ Thus ex- periencing the unconscious is a basic human experience. In Funk’s words, „only in his unconscious is man able to experience the whole of humanity.“ As evidence of Rabinkov’s profound influence on Fromm, Funk noted that Fromm could be described in the very phrases that Fromm and his fellow students used to describe Rabinkov: „an unlimited urge for independence“; „an immediate openness, concern, [and] readiness to partici- pate“; and „he was entirely himself.“ Another highlight of the meeting was the paper by Michael Maccoby, „Erich Fromm’s

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Methods of Social Character Re-search,“ which explored the important conceptual tools provided by Fromm for empirical research. In his lifetime, Fromm contributed to two major research projects. The first was carried out in Germany before World War II in conjunction with the Frankfurt school of sociology. The second took place in Mexico after the War and was published in a book co-written by Fromm and Maccoby entitled Social Character of a Mexican Village. The Mexican study was based on a key theoretical concept of Fromm’s: the social character. Produced by the interaction of basic human strivings and socioeconomic conditions, this is the dominant character structure of the society. The study was also based on use of another of Fromm’s ideas, the interpretive questionnaire, which takes into account the unconscious aspects of personality. Three types of social character were discovered in the Mexican village, and each was found to be linked to a specific socioeconomic situation: the unproductive-receptive character type was the outcome of feudal society; the productive-hoarding type was characteristic of the free peasant land-owner; and the productive-exploitative type was representative of modern society. When socioeconomic conditions change, the previously dominant social character may no longer be adaptive, and hitherto minority character types are selected. The resultant strains may produce social pathology such as alcoholism and violence. The Congress included three more papers. In his talk on „Messianic Thinking in the Jewish Intelligentsia of the Twenties“ Professor Micha Brumlik, of the Seminar for Educational Theory of the University of Heidelberg, suggested that theological themes influenced both the Frankfurt School and Fromm’s own thinking. Ursula Engel spoke about the therapeutic institution that Frieda Fromm-Reichmann opened in Heidelberg in 1924 and in which Erich Fromm was also in- volved. This institution was characterized by the attempt to blend psychoanalysis and an Ortho- dox Jewish religious lifestyle. Finally, Hans Pestalozzi gave a provocative lecture on „Strategies of Social Change,“ in which he pointed out that none of the measures suggested by Fromm to lead us away from the destructive developments of our civilization have been carried out. He main- tained that „it was naive to believe that there could be a positive development within our system,“ and concluded that „by refusing to adjust to this system you eventually will change the system.“ Aside from Maccoby, the only American participant was Harriet Lutzky, who teaches psychoanalysis in France. It is to be hoped that a shared interest in Fromm and in alternative ap- proaches to psychoanalysis may increasingly bring Americans and Europeans together.

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