Fromm - The Pathology of Normalcy

Works by Erich Fromm published by American Mental Health Foundation Books
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

American Mental Health Foundation Inc Post Office Box 3
Riverdale New York 10471-0003

First published in German translation under the title Die Pathologie der Normalitaet Copyright 1991 by the Estate of Erich Fromm

Introduction copyright 1991 and 2010 by Rainer Funk Introduction translation 2010 by The American Mental Health Foundation

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.
www.americanmentalhealthfoundation.org
Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publicattion Data

Fromm, Erich, 19001980.
The pathology of normalcy / Erich Fromm ; edited and with an introduction by Rainer Funk. p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.
In English, with introduction in German. ISBN-13: 978-1-59056-184-3 (alk. paper)

ISBN-10: 1-59056-184-8 (alk. paper)
1. Ethics. 2. Good and evil. 3. Psychoanalysis and philosophy. I. Funk, Rainer. II. Fromm, Erich, 19001980. III. Title. [DNLM: 1. Humanism. 2. Psychological Theory. 3. Ethical Relativism. 4. Mental Health. 5. Religion and Psychology. 6. Social Alienationpsychology.

BF 47 F932p 2010]
BJ45.F68 2010a
170dc22

I Modern Mans Pathology of Normalcy (Four Lectures

(a) Alienation and abstractification 46

6 | Contents

II The Concept of Mental Health

III The Humanistic Science of Man

IV Is Man Lazy by Nature?

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 Foreward

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 works by classic authors.

Erich Fromm (1900-1980) 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 Books 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.

www.americanmentalhealthfoundation.org

At the beginning of the 1950s, Erich Fromm increasingly turned to the question of whether man was psychically healthy in the industrial society of the time. He therefore accepted various invitations to presentations and lectures in order to speak to this theme. Especially his new social psychological approach made the continued development of the psychoanalytic method toward a comprehensive critique of the pathology of the normal, socially integrated person, possible. He could therefore submit to radical analysis the widespread passionate strivings that dominate behavior in society and therefore determine the picture of normality. The question of what is really beneficial to psychic health and what makes a person sick, was now newly answered by Fromm in a very fruitful way.

Thus it is Fromms aspiration to set the passionate strivings that determine behavior in relation to economic and social necessities, so that especially common features of society can be understood as a result of a process of conformation to a certain socialeconomic situation. This method led him to the discovery of the authoritarian social character in the 1930s, the discovery of the marketing character at the end of the 1940s, and the discovery of the necrophilic social character at the beginning of the 1960s.

The analysis of current production methods and the analysis of psychic efforts to conform, with which man is attempting to cope with the demands of the current economy, show that psychic attitudes and strivingssocial character traitsare demanded of him that make him psychically ill. What is good for the function of todays economic system proves to be damaging to the maintenance of mans mental health. That with which someone can be successful in this society reveals itself at closer inspection to be directed against his mental wellness. Normalcy must therefore tolerate the suspicion that it is the expression of a pathological development.

Fromm examines the pathology of normalcy by identifying the pathological effects of the market economy on people. At the center of the affliction of normalcy is the increasing incapacity of man to relate to reality of his own accord. Fromm develops a clinical term of alienation and identifies its multifaceted appearances and implications. The most important implication relates to a new understanding of the human and psychic health. These new conceptions lead into the programmatic call for a humanistic science of man.

This volume unites what at first glance seem very different contributions. In the first part, it contains four lectures from 1953 and a lecture from 1962, which were preserved in transcripts of recordings and which render the spoken word. They are about psychic health and the respectively prevalent pathologies of normalcy. The second part is about the new science of man resulting from the pathology of contemporary culture: namely, a small programmatic article from 1957, with which Fromm wanted to found an Institute for the Science of Man, as well as in a broad scientific contribution about the axiom that man is lazy by nature. This contribution from the years 1973 and 1974 can illustrate how Fromm tries to escape the pathology of normalcy in the scientific domain. First, he answers the question from an interdisciplinary point of view by looking at the findings from the most varying disciplines together, and judges their relevance critical to the ideology of their postulated ideas of man. Second, he ties these findings from various disciplines to his ideas, grounded in a humanistic idea of man, about psychic health.