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Wilhelm Reich, Erich Fromm and the Analytical Social Psychology of the Frankfurt School

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Wilhelm Reich, Erich Fromm and the Analytical Social Psychology of the Frankfurt School 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. Veröffentli- chungen – auch von Teilen – bedürfen der schriftlichen Erlaubnis des Rechteinhabers. Wilhelm Reich, Erich Fromm and the Analytical Social Psychology of the Frankfurt School Ferenc Erös First published in: Michael Kessler und Rainer Funk (Eds.), Erich Fromm und die Frankfurter Schule, Tuebingen (Francke Verlag) 1992, S. 69-72. Numbers in [those brackets] indicate the next page in the book publication. Copyright © 1992 und 2011 by Prof. Dr. Ferenc Erös, tud. osztályvezetö, MTA Pszichológiai Intéze- te, H-1067 Budapest, Teréz krt. 13. / Hungary – E_Mail: erosf[at-symbol]mtapi.hu. „The method and function of an analytical so- logical problems is very strange, indeed. On the cial psychology“, Fromm’s 1932 essay published one hand, he explains that „the phenomenon of in Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung was really a class consciousness is not accessible to psycho- manifesto of the principles along with psycho- analysis, nor can problems which belong to so- analysis and historical materialism could be ciology – such as mass movements, politics, merged into one new discipline: analytical social strikes – be taken as objects of the psychoana- psychology. In the article Fromm argues that lytic method. And so it cannot replace a socio- logical doctrine, nor can a sociological doctrine if instinctual life and the unconscious were develop out of it.“ [Sex-Pol Essays 7]. On the the key to understanding human behavior, other hand, he adds immediately: then psychoanalysis was also entitled and competent about the motives underlying [psychoanalysis] can become an auxiliary social behavior. For ‘society’ too consists of science to sociology, in the form of a social living individuals who must be subject to psychology. For instance, it can explore the the same psychological laws that psycho- irrational motives which have led a certain analysis discovered in the individual“ [The type of leader to join the socialist or na- Frankfurt School Reader 481]. tional-socialist movement; or it can trace the effect of social ideologies on the psy- Asserting the competence of psychoanalysis in chological development of the individual“ the matters of society, Fromm rejoins Wilhelm [ibid.; my italics – F.E.]. Reich, who according to Fromm, „restricts psy- choanalysis to the sphere of individual psychol- Similar argumentation can be found in Reich’s ogy and argues against its applicability to social 1934 pamphlet „The use of psychoanalysis in phenomena (politics, class consciousness etc.)“ historical research“. In this pamphlet – which [ibid.] The controversy goes back to Wilhelm was added later to the revised text of „Dialecti- Reich’s 1929 paper „Dialectical materialism and cal materialism and psychoanalysis“, Reich [070] psychoanalysis“, published in Russian and in declares that „we cannot say anything about the German in the Komintern theoretical Journal background causes of human behavior in the ex- Pod znamenem marksizma / Unter dem Banner tra-psychical sphere – about the economic laws des Marxismus. The 1929 article was also a which determine the social process and the laws manifesto: a manifesto of psychoanalysis com- of physiology which govern the instinctual ap- bined with dialectic materialism, while Fromm paratus – without immediately embracing meta- put füll emphasis on the other, namely histori- physics“ [SPE 67]. According to Reich, Fromm’s cal, component of Marxist theory. Reich’s view assertion that psychoanalysis has something „es- on the competence of psychoanalysis in socio- sential“ to say about the „background cause of Eroes, F., 1992 Wilhelm Reich, Erich Fromm and the Analytical Social Psychology of the Frankfurt School 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. Veröffentli- chungen – auch von Teilen – bedürfen der schriftlichen Erlaubnis des Rechteinhabers. social behavior“, opens the way to the abuses of both claim that psychoanalysis can and must psychology in the spirit of official psychoanalytic understand the nature of ideology as mediator sociology, „which Fromm himself would con- between human drives and the economic Situa- demn“ [ibid. 66.]. Nevertheless, Reich delineates tion. Reich and Fromm assert equally that „the the proper place of psychoanalytic social psy- family is the essential medium through which chology in explaining irrational phenomena, for the economic Situation exerts its formative influ- example in the case when „the sociological- ence on the individual’s psyche“ [FSR 486]. economic Situation is such that it should really They both agreed in condemning the „psy- produce a strike, yet no strike occurs“ [ibid. 72]. chologization“ of economic and social factors Reich is naively sincere about the motives (most notably, Hendrik de Man, the influential of this negative definition of the competence of Belgian socialist who wrote on the „psychology psychoanalysis in social issues. „If I interpret“ – of socialism“ was an arch-enemy for both Reich he writes - and Fromm). Finally, they both are interested in the revolutionary will as rebellion against „false consciousness“, that is, to find an explana- the father [...], I subscribe to the ideology tion to the acts of people which are against their of bourgeois reaction; but if I make a con- rational interest. The attempt to find this expla- crete investigation of how far the revolu- nation leads both of them to characterological tionary will corresponds to a real Situation, constructions – to the basic characterological di- to what extent the lack of such a will is irra- chotomy between neurotic and genital, authori- tional, the point at which the revolutionary tarian and revolutionary character. [071] will really does correspond to an uncon- The main difference between Reich and scious rebellion against the father, etc., then Fromm in this early period was mainly that of I have carried the bourgeois ‘precondi- political backgrounds and affiliations. They had tionless’ science ad absurdum, have done to appeal to different tribunals: Reich had to de- authentic scientific work of my own and fend psychoanalysis in front of „dialectical mate- have thereby done a Service to the work- rialism“, that is, Stalinist ideology, while Fromm ing-class movement and not political reac- appealed, first of all, to the psychoanalytic tion [...] [ibid., 64-65]. Community and wanted to prove that there is „nothing wrong“ with Marxism which does not As we know, Reich’s „service“ was not too contradict to psychoanalysis. On the other hand, much honored in his time. Nevertheless, it is Fromm’s connection with the Frankfurt School quite clear that his main intention with „Dialec- had a liberating effect in the sense that he was tical materialism and psychoanalysis“ was to le- free from direct party obligations and he could gitimize psychoanalysis as something perfectly rely freely to historical materialism which was consistent with the official doctrine of the eo ipso suspect in the eyes of the representatives Comintern and Soviet Marxism, to prove its of the „official Marxism“. Fromm was strongly „innocence“. However, his „negative“ argument committed to the endeavour of the Frankfurt – psychoanalysis is competent only in explaining School thinkers to reconstruct Marxism and to irrational social phenomena – was scandalous give a philosophical solution to the problem of enough to make him by his Marxist colleagues a subjectivity as outlined by György Lukács in his show-case for all the „bourgeois deviations“ of History and Class Consciousness. Analytic social psychoanalysis. Curiously enough, his accuses di- psychology, as outlined by Fromm, was also rected against Fromm (metaphysics etc.) are part of this reconstruction. In the same years as used almost literally against Reich himself by his Fromm published his essay on social psychology, Russian critics (Sapir, Stoljarov etc.). What is in 1932, Max Horkheimer published a study un- even more interesting is that, if we look at the der the title „History and Psychology“. Hork- texts, there is hardly any essential difference be- heimer wrote: tween Fromm’s and Reich’s positions. They both That man preserve economic relations start out from Freud’s libido theory; they both which they have outgrown in force and want to study how unconscious strivings are need, instead of replacing them through a molded by socio-economic conditions. They higher and more rational form of organiza- Eroes, F., 1992 Wilhelm Reich, Erich Fromm and the Analytical Social Psychology of the Frankfurt School 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. Veröffentli- chungen – auch von Teilen – bedürfen der schriftlichen Erlaubnis des Rechteinhabers. tion, is possible only because the actions of subsequently lef t the original f ield of the a numerically significant social stratum are Freudo-Marxist discourse and landed, as it is not determined by cognition but by an in- well known,
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