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Erich Fromm and His Criticism of Sigmund Freud

Romano Biancoli

Presentation at the International Symposium on: Erich Fromm – Life and Work, May 12-14, 1988, Centro didattico in Locarno, Switzerland - „Erich Fromm and His Criticism of Sigmund Freud,“ in: Erich Fromm - Life and Work, Symposium of the International Erich Fromm Society 1988 in Lo- carno, Tübingen (Private Print) 1988.

Copyright © 1988 by Dr. Romano Biancoli; 2011 by the Estate of Dr. Romano Biancoli, Via Antonio Codronchi, 110, I-48100 Ravenna.

1. pay such extremely painful human prices as well as that of scientific organization; nor did he live Freud (1856-1939) and Fromm (1900-1980) are to see the tragic events of Soviet communism two great and very different masters of psycho- and the degeneration of the western democra- analysis, extraordinarily creative and radically cies into societies of „conspicuous consump- original, who succeeded in opening new per- tion“. Every age lives its risks and its tragedies. spectives and alternatives to the history of think- Fromm found himself face to face with thermo- ing. Examination of the relationship between nuclear warfare and environmental pollution their theories raises considerable problems of pervading the entire planet. method. When it is desired to relate one theo- Another complication of the examination of retical construction to another, as a first ap- the Freud-Fromm relationship lies in the diver- proach, one may proceed, in two ways: either sity of their relative cultural pictures as a refer- an analytical-comparative approach, which pre- ence point. From this point of view, it cannot scinds of historical periods, establishing identity, simply be said that Fromm is an author who correspondence, analogies, differences and con- came later, and hence more modernly trasts, or a genetic approach, which grasps and equipped. This is not only true but obvious, and illuminates the derivation of the second theo- can be seen every time two authors who are not retical body from the first. Both approaches are contemporaries are studied. The noticeable legitimate and useful, but in our case, one with- point is that the philosophical terrains in which out the other risks becoming a series of observa- Freud and Fromm are rooted represent perspec- tions, useful enough, but insufficient to convey tives of thought that are different enough from the sense of internal movement and exquisite- each other for connotations not entirely bound ness of the styles of the two structures of to historical periods. If they had their Judaism in thought. common, Freud’s positivism and Fromm’s radi- The Freud-Fromm relationship is of such cal humanism separate them. Freud’s formation complexity that it cannot be contained within a was in the Viennese scientific and academic en- history of psychoanalysis seen as a history of vironment at the end of the nineteenth century, techniques and the theories of these techniques. where research in the natural sciences was shap- One reason for all this lies in the distance of ing a methodology and an epistemology capa- nearly half a century between the two authors. ble of defining limits and capacities of science. Freud did not live to see the second world war Fromm brings to fruition a humanistic course, nor to investigate Nazism, to which he had to which in modern times grew out of Spinoza,

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found themes in Feuerbach and in the Hegelian Freud to criticize historical materialism5, in that left, up to its taking form in the eminent pages this theory, in explaining the genesis of ideolo- of Karl Marx. The differences and the incom- gies, did not take into consideration the under- patibilities that we find between the two mas- ground moral code, unconsciously transmitted ters of psychoanalysis are quite often due to this from one generation to the next. Freud’s criti- assumption of two different lines of thought. cism seemed to have hit upon the question, A further problem of method is that of how however Fromm’s shifting the line of attack to proceed in detecting correspondences, dis- made it meaningless, still before his reflection on tances, irreconcilabilities. One completely legiti- social „filters“ cast new light on the formation of mate way could be the historical and biographi- ideologies. cal-cultural approach. From the mid-twenties to Fromm was already in America, taking part early thirties, the young Fromm was a student of in the great process of revising classical psycho- Freud’s, accepted his theories, used the concept analysis started by a select team of scholars, of libido in his scientific studies. His early crea- among whom Sullivan, Horney, and Thompson. tivity was not concerned with theoretical pro- As concerns criticism of the theory of instincts, posals1, such as the one of „social character“, or emphasis on the cultural factor, a new approach of absolutely new methods in empirical re- to child psychology, revision of the concept of search2. It was a time when prestigious psycho- transference: on these themes Fromm’s elabora- analysts was attempting a union between psy- tion was autonomous, but in harmony with the choanalysis and Marxism, giving rise to a specific work of this illustrious American colleagues. body of literature, which had a revival in the Starting from the early 1940’s we have a long 1970’s.3 series of his great books, in which he gives rec- In 1936 we find Fromm attacking Freud’s ognition to his cultural debts. He gives credit to second topic. By now the line of divergence has Freud over and over again, even though he been established, and will lead Fromm further knows that he is an author who cannot be classi- and further away from the founder of psycho- fied in any school6. Fromm presents the analysis. The „Sozialpsychologischer Teil“ of the achievement of his own cultural identity, he is a „Studien über Autorität und Familie“4 is aimed master with his own teachings. at demolishing the concept of superego to re- This is the problem of method: either to place it with the theme of authoritarianism, ex- follow Fromm’s line of growth, underlining the pressed in sadomasochist psychodynamics. It is changing of his relationship to Freud’s thinking noted that the concept of superego allowed with chronological criteria, or to keep the high level of the peaks reached by the authors and to see them carry on a dialogue from here, or

even, often, turn their back on each other. This 1 Fromm, E. (1932a), Über Methode und Aufgabe ei- ner Analytischen Sozialpsychologie, Gesamtausgabe second approach involves assuming some of the (GA) I, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1980, p. more significant tracts of Frommian thought, 37-57; ders., Die psychoanalytische Charakterolo- those which constitute the arches and hold up gie und ihre Bedeutung für Sozialpsychologie, GA I, the other aspects, and comparing them with p. 58-77. Freud’s theoretical nuclei, grasping derivations, 2 Fromm, E. (1980a), Arbeiter und Angestellte am contrasts, independencies. Both criteria being Vorabend des Dritten Reiches - Eine sozialpsycho- valid, the second one is chosen here as it is be- logische Untersuchung, GA III, 1981, p. 1-230. lieved to lead to the center of some basic 3 Gente, H.P. (Hrsg.) (1970), Sexpol, Guaraldi, Bolo- themes with greater immediacy. gna 1971; Reich, W., Sapir, I., Fromm, E., Psi- coanalisi e marxismo, Samonà e Savelli, Roma 1972; Reich, W., Fromm, E., Riazanov, D., Fraen- 5 Freud, S. (1932b), Neue Folge der Vorlesungen zur kel, B., Brohm, J.M., Contro la morale borghese, Einführung in die Psychoanalyse, in: Opere, Vol. Samonà e Savelli, Roma 1972. XI, Boringhieri, Torino 1979, p. 179-80 und p. 281. 4 Horkheimer, M. (1936), Studien über Autorität und 6 Fromm, E. (1955b), The Human Implications of In- Familie, Alcan, Paris; Fromm E. (1936a), GA I, p. stinctivistic „Radicalism“. A Reply to Herbert Mar- 141-187. cuse, GA VIII, 1981, p. 113.

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in Freud’s thinking: a life instinct and a death in- stinct are hypothesized. No longer libido but the new concept, Eros is enhanced, warms up, gives 2. the idea of love as the capacity of uniting, bind- ing, integrating. Fromm, nearly eighty-years old, One of the themes dealt with by psychoanalysis will pay homage10 to the early eighty-year-old is love. It may be considered non-scientific, but Freud who decades earlier, in a letter to Ein- the scientific quality does not concern what is stein11, had spoken about Eros. dealt with but rather, how it is done. Freud’s Fromm’s point of view is completely differ- theories about love change over time: in his ent. The Freudian Eros is a late construction treatises on „Metapsychology“ (1915)7 love is an which only at a distance can suggest something affect contained in the instinct theory. Earlier of the productive passion of Frommian love. still Freud rarely resorted to the use of the word Not even Freud’s deepest humanist feelings, love, while he clarified the concept of libido as which also go beyond hydraulic and mechanical an energy charge associated with the sexual in- visions of tanks full of libido drained to the out- stinct8. side or pumped inwards, are detached from the Freud adopted a typically dual technique of prevailing biologism of the epoch of his univer- thinking, that is, proceeding by contrasts of two sity studies. In essence, Freud’s instinctual vision groups of antagonistic examples: sexual instincts does not change much with the distinction be- and Ego instincts; narcissistic libido and object tween „Instinkt“ and „Trieb“, an operation little libido; life instinct and death instinct. This proc- more than a linguistic one, as it is clearly possi- ess is vigorous at the moment of attacking a ble in German and in Italian, much less so in theme, which is quickly proposed and investi- English. gated in its internal conflicts; but when subse- Fromm detaches himself from biology, al- quent investigations have to be composed in though accepting the evolutionist hypothesis of coherent group pictures, more arduous theroeti- the human animal that finds himself in the cal problems arise. Here one must recognize world with an extremely developed neocortex Freud’s great intellectual honesty, which on sev- and with his instincts gradually weakened12. It is eral occasions explicitly admitted the changing here that he grafts his theory of the human of theoretical hypotheses, abandoning the old character as a substitute for the instincts, as sec- ones and assuming new ones to open a new ond nature. To give substance to character, to path of enquiry. The concept of metapsychol- give it structure and direction, there are the pas- ogy helped him in this as a theoretical roof tem- sions. Here is Spinoza, here is Marx, inserted in porarily resting on load-bearing walls and on the heart of a quite modern anthropological ap- foundations established by facts, clinical results, proach. Fromm’s accents of existentialism cut and empirical data. It was a typically positivist across radical humanism, along the passage of way of thinking according to which only the history, where one meets, at times almost like facts could claim rights toward the theory, while contemporaries, Socrates, Buddha, Christ, the the theory had nothing other than duties to- mystics of negative theology, Spinoza, Marx, wards the facts, in a relationship between theo- Albert Schweitzer, Rosa Luxemburg, Gandhi. ries and facts that was more mechanical than Unlike Freud, Fomm does not start from a dialectic, not without a certain rigor, however. biological theory, but from an idea of human In his treatise Beyond the Pleasure Principle situation - an incongruent one in that it is at the 9of 1920, the terms of internal contrast change same time part of nature and transcends it.

7 Freud, S. (1915a), Metapsicologia, opere cit., Vol. 10 Fromm, E. (1979a) Sigmund Freuds Psychoanalyse - VIII, p. 1-118. Größe und Grenzen, GA VIII, p. 340-341. 8 Freud, S. (1905a), Tre saggi sulla teoria sessuale, o- 11 Freud, S. (1932c), Perché la guerra?, opere cit., Vol. pere cit., Vol. IV, p. 443-546. XI, p. 300-301. 9 Freud, S. (1920f), Al di là del principio di piacere, 12 Fromm, E. (1973a), Anatomie der menschlichen De- opere cit., Vol. IX, p. 189-249. struktivität, GA VII, p. 201.

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Fromm sees the human essence as an interroga- ever on the whole, the life instinct does not tive that gives impassioned responses, energeti- have a wide field in Freudian works. There are cally charged and tending towards complex theoretical difficulties, labourious relationships formations organized in characters, both indi- with the concept of libido, restrictions imposed vidual and collective. From the character of the by the categorical primacy of sexuality. But people, from their social classes and societies in there is also the vision of Freud’s life: at times it general, behaviour arisis, directly manifest and seems almost as if the life instinct lies in a wast- observable. ing of time of the death instinct15, in complicat- It is important to note that Fromm borrows ing and prolonging its way, which will neverthe- from Marx13 the concept of passion as energy of less be trodden, as the organic tends to trans- relating. The answers man gives to the funda- form into inorganic, and sooner or later a living mental questions of existence are passionate re- thing will die. sponses that are addressed to other men: love, A parallel between the life instinct and the hate, endearment, sense of justice, power, de- death instinct in Freud and biophilia and necro- structiveness, respect, etc. In his reflections on philia in Fromm cannot be drawn. In Freud we love, Fromm is not hampered by a model of are dealing with two instincts, in Fromm only closed, autarcic man, who turns to others only biophilia has a biological basis, while necrophilia when he needs to and on the basis of schemes is distorted from life, from the life not-lived, ex- of relationship that academic economic science cept for the decidedly interesting hypothesis of at the end of the last century formalized for cold incest16. This hypothesis merits the atten- business exchanges. Love for Fromm is an active tion of scholars and clinicians. Fromm notes disposition, genetically based, that is neither how incestuous attachment is usually hot, erot- stored nor exchanged, but the more it is given, ically tinged. But they give extreme cases, in the more it is regenerated. Love is a possible an- which the maternal ties are cold, hostile, and de- swer to the tragic human question on the irrepa- fers the embrace to the tomb, to mother earth. rable break between being in nature and tran- It is those in love with death who consummate scending it in time. It is the response of wanting individual and collective tragedies, driving them- to live, of facing the risk of unpredictable devel- selves and the others into the viscera of the opments, of walking without any definitive earth, in a final union in death. guarantees. But apart from this hypothesis, which ex- In the Frommian vision of living, interior presses the Frommian problematic in tracing self-activation and the productive links are speci- general theories, in necrophilia Fromm does not fications of the biophilia, the experiencing that see instinct but rather, passion. It is true, as he everything is moving, that everything is in the repeatedly affirms, that the passions can be act of being born, of coming to life. And while stronger than the instincts. The constitutional ba- one sees that everything is being born, he too is sis, the first nature, does not determine man’s born. This coming out, detaching oneself from destiny; in fact, if we wish to use the word des- the incestuous embrace and its surrogates, from tiny, it is more on the side of second nature: possessing and being possessed, he emerging of character is man’s destiny. a feeling, trying „self“, is the being mode, the overturning of the alienated view. Paradoxi- cally, letting go of things is to unite with them. 3. Living beings love each other by uniting. Love is the knowledge of unity14. Fromm gives Freud credit for having founded a Freud’s life instinct presents points of con- characterology not classificatory, but rather psy- tact, analogies, with Fromm’s biophilia. How-

13 Marx, K. (1941), Manoscritti economico filosofici 15 Freud, S. 1920f), Al di là del principio di piacere, del 1844, Einaudi Torino 1979, p. 123 Opere cit., Vol IX p. 226. 14 Fromm, E. (1957a), Man Is Not a Thing, GA VIII p. 16 Fromm, E. (1973a), Anatomie der menschlichen De- 23-26. struktivität, GA VII, p. 326-331.

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chodynamic17. In 1908 Freud writes Character The crowning experience as a filed re- and Anal Eroticism18, which gives rise to the psy- searcher was the investigation conducted to- choanalytic theories of character. The anal fixa- gether with Michael Maccoby on social charac- tion is, however, not seen in all its potential ter in a Mexican village in 1970. perniciousness, in that it is not concerned with The double observatory leads to a different the most archaic stage, the oral one, but with characterology than that of Freud, not so much the subsequent one. Freud holds that, at equal in the typological configurations as in their intensity, the more a fixation is related to the psychogenesis. The two authors are divided on early stages of development all the more patho- evaluating in what way and to what extent so- logic it is. Fromm does not agree on this point, ciety enters into the life of the individual. The and considers the anal character traits a danger- concept of social character is really discriminant, ous potential that can be expressed in other when it is seen through the family, „the psycho- people’s regard only in destructive sadomaso- logical agency of the society“21, operating on chist terms. For Fromm, the oral traits would be the infantile psyche and on its development. much less adverse, even if intense. Frommian psychology conceives the individual To construct a psychodynamic characterol- as crossed by innumerable threads of the social ogy, one starts with observation, hypotheses are fabric and participates in the socio-economic formulated on the latent forces that move the and cultural dynamics owing to the character observed phenomena, such hypotheses are de- formation in which he lives and moves, still veloped into typologies, which will then be veri- prior to the concrete external events that may fied with new observations. The fruitfulness of involve him. the inductive method depends in large part on As well the case with the theory of the li- the use to which it is put. The positivistic sover- bido, neither is the theory of infantile psycho- eignty of the „facts“ can impoverish theories, or sexual development believed in Fromm. We see can favour one imaginative component, con- the mercantile character and the receptive one ceded like licence, illation. Freud often declares come out and blend with an economic dynamic the datum of fantasy of certain of his hypotheses that chokes the paleocapitalist formations of the where, among other things, he reveals, beside last century, sweeping them away in the cortical his ingeniousness, his limits of approach. Cer- processes of the affluent economies where eve- tainly, he knows how to question the facts and, rything is goods and market. The devouring di- with great creativity and mastery, from the mension must be at work inside the individual manifest content goes back to the latent con- consumer, so that the demand for goods ab- tent, basing himself, however, on the only ter- sorbs the enormous quantities produced. Ex- rain he knows well: the clinical one. On the change becomes every-day routine, which enters other hand, from the beginning Frommian in- the homes and informs the person’s deepest duction doubles the field: clinical observation feelings, their thoughts, their fantasies, they and socio-historical observation are both pre- themselves, by now goods to buy and sell, sent. His first empirical investigation was mas- where the appearance, the packaging, the play terly, veracious and presagious19. His subsequent of images mark the lines of division from the in- theoretical reflection on social character20 terior human content. marked firm points for the developments of his Adam Schaff believes that Fromm gradually psychoanalytic thinking. moved away from Freud to approach Marx. It should be said that Marx’s distinction between the value of use and the value of exchange ac- 17 Fromm, E. (1979a), Sigmund Freuds Psychoanalyse - Größe und Grenzen, GA VII, p. 326-331. quires truth. The ruinous divarication can be 18 Freud, S. (1908b), Carattere ed erotismo anale, O- seen with one’s own eyes, not only in the mac- pere cit., Vol. V, p. 401-406. roeconomic connection, but also inside the per- 19 Fromm, E. (1980a), Arbeiter und Angestellte am son who, in order to respond to the require- Vorabend des Dritten Reiches, GA III. 20 Fromm, E. (1932a), Über Methode und Aufgabe einer Analytischen Sozialpsychologie, cit. 21 Ibidem.

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ments of functioning in everyday society, be- the extent it pours it out on „objects“, persons, comes schizoid, alienated in his image, in his parts of persons or things, it is the object libido. value of exchange and forgets his value of use, Its withdrawal from the objects returns it to the that is, of his feelings, of his human qualities that Id as secondary narcissism. On this important are not-exercised because they have no market. point of psychoanalysis, Freud’s vision is me- If for Freud the normal bourgeois man of his chanical, hydraulic. time was the healthy man, for Fromm normal- Fromm grasps the importance of the con- ity, as it is historically determined at present, is cept introduced by Freud23 and gives him credit pathology. for it, regretting, however, that this concept If we enquire further into the consideration does not find developments and adequate em- of social aspects and problems, it is easy for us ployment in the theoretical body of Freudian to discern the Freudian anal character dilated to works. Fromm considers narcissism as an ac- the planetary scale in the difficulty of managing cent24, an emotive accent in the relationship be- the enormous wastes of the processes of produc- tween a person and his world. A very narcissistic tion, exchange and consumption, in pollution, person feels only himself and the things belong- in economic catabolism. The excrements of the ing to him or closely concerning him: his body, industrial and post-industrial societes are poison- his properties, his intellectual powers, what is ing the entire earth. The fascination of the feces said about him. Even if he knows well that all directly becomes the fascination of death on a the rest exists, all the surrounding world, the worldwide scale. Necrophilia is present as a so- other persons, he only knows so, without any cial character component. Fromm, who had al- emotional involvement, without any interest. ready delineated four types of non-productive Reality is grasped in an altered mode, deformed. character orientation (the receptive, the ex- The person does not give adequate weight to ploitative, the hoarding and the marketing), has the things that do not touch him so closely or to add a fifth one: the necrophilic. personally. Realism contrasts and mitigates nar- cissism, redistributing involvements and weights, restoring an adequate vision of the relationship 4. between an individual and the others, between his humanity and the humanity of the others. The emphasis on the social aspect is in agree- It might seem as if Fromm’s vision presents ment with the concept of passion as energy of analogies with Freud’s: instead of shifting libido, relating. Fromm has no difficulty in passing from he shifts accents and weights. This is not so. Nar- individual psychology to social psychology and cissism lies in the having mode. The reduction of vice versa, because inside the individual, accord- narcissism, the restoration of the right weight to ing to him, the relationship is already pressing. every thing, the feeling that we are all humans Freud moves from a completely different basic overturns the experience of living: one is, one is approach. The relationship with the others is and everyone else is and things are. Where nar- imposed to reduce a tension, to reduce a dis- cissism is lacking there is freedom and there is pleasure. A theoretical machine is needed to ex- love. One does not pass mechanically or hy- plain why a subject places himself in a relation- draulically from the having mode to the being ship. Thus, an ingenious intuition such as that of mode, but by dialectic leap, or better, by para- narcissism22 is employed by Freud in the distinc- doxical leap. The being mode is not contrasted tion between object libido and narcissistic libido with the having mode, it transcends it. and between primary narcissism and secondary narcissism. The Id is the storage tank of the li- bido and in so much as it retains it, it is narcissis- 5. tic (primary narcissism). On the other hand, to 23 Freud, S. (1979a), Sigmund Freuds Psychoanalyse - Größe und Grenzen, cit., p. 294-301. 22 Freud, S. (1914b), Introduzione al narcisismo, Ope- 24 Fromm, E. (1973a), Anatomie der menschlichen re cit., Vol. VII, p. 442-472. Destruktivität, cit.

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complex to be biological, and thus universal, The having mode concerns those who hold Fromm sees there an intellectual operation of onto things and want to possess them because sewing together of the two distinct mother-son they feel incapable of producing them be them- and father-son relationship with the thread of selves. Wanting to possess and being possessed, infantile sexuality. Fromm’s criticism is sup- at any price, to have the perception of being ported by the reading of Sophocles proposed by bound to others, of not being alone. The person Bachofen27. does not wish to be born but to remain encap- Maternal love allows the mother „to make sulated in the world from which he originated two from one“28. If two are made not only or in its surrogates. He lingers in incestuous ties, physically but also psychologically, she gives remains fixated on his mother and maternal birth twice. Often the second delivery is unsuc- symbols: his country, his city, his family, his clan, cessful and the child remains fixed to the his professional group. Solitude is felt like a terri- mother. This incestuous tie is very difficult to fying abyss. Fear inhabits the pass of individua- break, more difficult than the one with the fa- tion and detachment from the womb and its ther, who in patriarchal societies awards and substitutes. Anxiety is placated only in the recon- punishes the children according to their merits firmation of incestuous embrace, whatever form and their obedience29. Disobedience is the first it manifestly assumes. step of freedom30, but to rebel against an affec- Freud discovered infantile sexuality and tionate but ensnaring mother is much more dif- opened the way for understanding of the child, ficult than to rebel against a father as severe and up to then neither understood nor respected, hard as he is clear in his rules. considered little more than a thing. Once infan- tile sexuality was discovered and the attachment of the child to his mother was seen, Freud 6. thought that such attachment was of a sexual nature, be it in a very ample conception of The unreleased deep ties with the parental fig- sexuality, animated by partial instincts and de- ures are continually relived, by referring them to picting the child as a small „polymorphous per- other persons and other situations. Freud was vert“25. Fromm agrees that on the manifest level the first to realize this phenomenon, which he the child’s desire for its mother is observed, but called transference and studied in relationship to he believes that this desire expresses the need for what happens between the patient and the ana- protection and security of an individual still de- lyst. In this case too, Fromm fully recognizes fenceless and completely dependent on every- Freud’s discovery, but then inserts the concept one, primarily the mother or who acts as the of transference in his vision of human relation- mother figure26. For Fromm, the same infantile ships. One point is to be strongly underlined: pre-genital organization is not due to libidinous Fromm is extremely sensitive to every manifes- investments in the various parts of the body tation, both direct and indirect, of authoritarian- which would thus become erogenous zones, but ism, to which he dedicates a large part of his to maternal care which affectively invests and work, and hence he realizes at once how trans- esteems this or that zone of the body, propogat- ference may be used to dominate others. He ing meanings, symbols social norms and customs notes how it is diffused in all aspects of social as well. life31 and not only circumscribed to the psycho- Freud believes that psychosexual develop- ment passes through the Oedipus complex, a 27 Ibidem, p. 285-290. nuclear complex for every person. If Freud con- 28 Fromm, E. (1956a), Die Kunst des Liebenws, GA IX, siders the triangular structure of the Oedipus p. 470. 29 Fromm, E. (1979a), Anatomie der menschlichen 25 Freud, S. (1905a), Tre saggi sulla teoria sessuale, Destruktivität, opere cit., p. 281-290. Opere cit. Vol. IV, p. 499-500. 30 Fromm, E. (1963d), Disobedience as a Psychological 26 Fromm, E. (1979a), Sigmund Freuds Psychoanalyse and Moral Problem, GA IX, p. 367-373. - Größe und Grenzen, opere cit., S. 282-284. 31 Fromm, E. (1979a), Sigmund Freuds Psychoanalyse -

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analyst relationship. As a psychoanalyst, Fromm thinks that the transference plane exists not only in the patient-analyst relationship, but also in the real one between two persons who confront each other. This latter relationship is the healthy plane of adult existence; the other is the regres- sive plane, deformed, which is treated for the purpose of reducing it or resolving it. Also counter-transference is an expression of immaturity and pathology, this time charged to the psychoanalyst, for whom, in fact, it con- stitutes a counter-attitude. Fromm thinks that counter-transference is a professional illness of the psychoanalyst, inflated in his narcissism by feelings of devotion manifested by his patients. So long as there is transference there is no freedom, but interior coaction, in any human re- lationship whatsoever. The sentimental trans- feral lens distorts the vision of reality and in- duces submission and domination. To a great extent transference is made of hate and reactive formations, where positive feelings hide the un- derlying aggressiveness. Love is not within the reality of transference, since only in freedom is love born. In transference there is a boundless request, the primary demand of archaic love in- evitably frustrated32, with consequent hate. For Freud love and hate have the same root, they come from the same instinct. For Fromm the origins of these two feelings are clearly distinct. Love is born with the reducing of narcissism, with the breaking of incestuous ties and with the joy of wonder of living. Hate comes from wounded narcissism. Interior un- freedom is permanent vulnerability. With Fromm psychoanalysis reassumes the task of human liberation which, in itself, already had Freud’s great lesson. Freud was the inventor of psychoanalysis, and introduced an irreversible change in human knowledge, which he did not bring to its extreme consequences owing to the limits of the cultural approach and deep feeling of his times and of the social class to which he belonged.

Größe und Grenzen, opere cit., p. 292. 32 Balint, M. (1951), Amore e odio, in „L’amore pri- mario“, Guaraldi, Rimini 1973, p. 184-204.

page 8 of 8 Biancoli, R., 1988b Erich Fromm and His Criticism of Sigmund Freud