Fromm - Beyond Freud: From Individual to Social Psychology

Beyond Freud: From Individual to Social Psychoanalysis
The Heart of Man: Its Genius for Good and Evil
The Pathology of Normalcy The Revolution of Hope: Toward a Humanized Technology

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First published in German under the title Gesellschaft und Seele. Copyright 1992 by the Estate of Erich Fromm Introduction copyright 1992 by Rainer Funk Translations of Introduction and Chapter IV 2010 by American Mental Health Foundation Inc

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the permission of The American Mental Health Foundation Inc and American Mental Health Foundation Books.

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Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

I. Mans Impulse Structure
2. The Social Psychoanalytic Approach 3. The Difference in Psychoanalytic Theory

(d) The relevance of different explanations of character genesis and their relevence for character typologies 55

6 | Contents
II. Psychic Needs and Society (Lecture 1956) 75
III. Dealing with the Unconscious in Psychotherapeutic
IV. The Relevance of Psychoanalysis for

(b) Freuds discovery of unconscious conflicts 132

As the present book is published, The American Mental Health Foundation celebrates its 86th anniversary. Organized in 1924, AMHF is dedicated to the welfare of people suffering from emotional problems, with a particular concern for individuals with special needs and the elderly. For many years, AMHF generally devoted its efforts to bettering quality of treatment and developing more effective methods, available even to low-income wage earners.

The major therapeutic advances and improved training methods are described in its existing publications: the series The Search for the Future. Two of these books are available on its Web site under the titles The Challenge for Group Psychotherapy (volume 1) and The Challenge for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy: Solutions for the Future (volume 2). Portions of these books are reprinted on the AMHF Web site in French and German, as they were published internationally (in addition to Italian editions), for a segment of the world community. These books were prepared by Dr. Stefan de Schill under the joint sponsorship of AMHF and The International Institute for Mental Health Research, Zurich and Geneva. Volume 3, written by Dr. de Schill and published by Prometheus Books in 2000, is entitled Crucial ChoicesCrucial Changes: The Resurrection of Psychotherapy.

In 2009, AMHF Books published The Violent Person by Dr. Raymond B. Flannery Jr. This is a book for professionals as well as anyone with a concern for, and an interest in, the mechanisms of human violence, stress at the breaking point (PTSD), and the workings of the brain.

8 | Publishers Foreword

Under the supervision and direction of Dr. William Van Ornum, AMHF Books is an exciting new venture. Within the mission and under the auspices of The American Mental Health Foundation, AMHF Books publishes new research as well as classic authors.

Erich Fromm (19001980) famously remains one of the authoritative voices of the 20th century, a time that witnessed unprecedented changes and upheavals in our understanding of the inner, as well as political, landscape of the human race. AMHF is proud to be the publisher of this world-renowned figure, one that has shaped our culture well into a new century. On the thirtieth anniversary of Fromms death and the hundred and tenth anniversary of his birth, AMHF Books celebrates his visionary humanism by reissuing two of his books, The Revolution of Hope and The Heart of Man, and publishing two, Beyond Freud and The Pathology of Normalcy, for the first time.

None of the board members of The American Mental Health Foundation receives remuneration. Nevertheless, the costs of promoting research, preparing translations, and disseminating its findings and knowledge are high. For this reason, all sales of its books, donations, and legacy bequests constitute a meaningful contribution to the public good. We thank you for helping us improve the lives of our citizens.

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Sigmund Freud was the first scientist to make the attempt, at the beginning of the 20th century, to map the reality of the unconscious in individuals and to find ways to treat unconscious forces. Starting from what are still valid findings today, early in the 1930s Erich Fromm began to look for paths to the unconscious of society. He succeeded in that he brought to the open certain unconscious structures and forces in the individual, which result from the societal situation of the individual, and which therefore allow for social-psychological assertions to be made about the unconscious of society itself. Fromm published the most important theoretical contributions to method and function of an analytical social psychology between 1932 and 1935, in Zeitschrift fr Sozialforschung of the Institute for Social Research.

Throughout his entire scientific work, Fromm pursued the twin goal of uncovering the social unconscious of the individual as well as the unconscious of social entities. This attempt quickly showed him the limitations of drive theory, with which in large measure Freud brought his discoveries into a systematic, explanatory cohesion. Fromm recognized that there are important passionate strivings in humanity for which Freuds drive theory determined that libido theory could provide no plausible explanation. If Fromms view was already honed to societal determinants of social-psychological connections, since his studies in sociology and the writing of his dissertation, and if the discussions about a synthesis of Marxism and psychoanalysis at the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, the so-called Frankfurt School, provided him with an important vocabulary to formulate his social-psychological theory, then it was, on top of his experience with patients in the mid1930s, above all his cultural-anthropological insights and his research on matriarchy that permitted him to go on the offensive against Freudian drive theory.

In 1935, a paper titled The Social Determination of Psychoanalytic Therapy appeared in Zeitschrift fr Sozialforschung (E. Fromm, 1935a). The essay provoked a dual reaction. With this paper, Fromm gave orthodox psychoanalysis, especially of German provenance, which had by this time fallen under the wing of National Socialism, a further reason to distance itself from him, who was both Jew and Marxist. But even at the Institute for Social Research (housed since 1934 at Columbia University in New York), thanks in part to Fromms help, his attack met with little approval and triggered the distancing between Max Horkheimer and Fromm that ultimately led to Fromms exclusion from the Institute for Social Research in 1939. Fromm did, however, awaken lively interest, especially in a circle of psychoanalysts that were connected with Harry Stack Sullivan, as well as with cultural anthropology-oriented psychologists and sociologists.