Erich Fromm
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Having just had a quick read of this article I was reminded of an interesting critique of Fromm (and a critique of the critique) I recently read in an issue of the 1950s journal Contemporary Issues.
Wondering how many people on here are interested in Fromm and related people?
Or have heard of ‘Contemporary Issues’, there’s not much about it on the web.
I used to read a lot of Wilhelm Reich as a youth, but am a lot more critical these days…
I think that Fromm was the best of the “Freudo-Marxists” because he abandoned the idea that there was a biological basis to the drives Freud thought he had discovered and offered instead an explanation based on social interactions. Reich and Marcuse didn’t do this.Whereas Freud (and Reich and Marcuse) saw the mind as something to be explained in terms of the individual’s instinctual biological development, Fromm saw that the mind as a social phenomenon. While Freud explained mental illness in terms of the failure of an individual to develop normally through the various stages of sexual development which his theory posited, Fromm (who was a medical doctor and practising psychiatrist himself) explained mental illness in terms of the failure of the individual to relate properly with other individuals. For him, not only the mind but (most) mental illnesses were social.This seems to me to be much more in line with Marx’s historical materialism, even though Fromm never completely abandoned “psychoanalysis”. While Reich and Marcuse’s ideas have been discredited along with those of Freud, Fromm’s retain some of their validity especially his view that humans need to live and feel part of a genuine community.
I’m not sure that the distinction between biological and social can be a clear cut as it once was thought. It appears certain genes are turned on and off by environmental stimuli. Not that this is directly connected to the concepts of ‘libido’ or ‘orgone’, I’m no Freud expert by any stretch.Behaviour appears to be the result of genes and cirmumstance, but as circumstance affects which genes get activated and de-activated I guess you could say that behaviour wholly the result of circumstance. But now I’m probably heading into Spinozist determinist territory… Which is not that a bad place to be!
Maybe but Freud and his followers didn’t know anything about genes, DNA, etc. Freud proposed that there was (must be/might be) some sort of “sexual energy” but this has never been discovered though Reich thought he had and went completely off the rails with his theory of “orgone energy”. Fromm didn’t suffer from the discrediting of Freud’s hypothesis since he explained the development of the individual as being mainly due to social influences.
Here’s some quotes from the article in issue 34 of Contemporary Issues page 111″It is just as mistaken to seek a purely social explanation for a psychological problem as to seek a psychological explanation for a social problem… when neurotic behaviour is understood to be the result of a disturbance in the sexual function, and when this disturbance is seen to be social in origin, then it must be concluded (in spite of the fact that Freud himself never came to this conclusion) that the way to reduce or eliminate neurotic behaviour is to change the structure of society…..”The jist of the article is the Fromm’s ‘desexualisation’ of Freud results in him calling on people to do nothing. Perhaps the same can be said of Reich, he thought ‘political’ problems could not be solved until all people where freed from their character amour.
” He who is morally impressed by power is never in a critical mood, and he is never a revolutionary character ” – Erich Fromm
Reich was wrong in any case when it comes down to people being released through therapy becoming socialists. They don`t. They feel better and the effect seems to be that they lose interest in socialism. Until they fall ill again, and need therapy. However, those who are already socialists remain so. Those who are not socialists are not made socialists as a result of Reichian therapy. So Reich was wrong here. But I do not find fault with his theory of the orgone. This is not incompatible with socialist understanding, and makes more sense than the obsession with genes, which so suits bourgeois pseudo-science. For his orgonomic theories, however, Reich has never ceased to be assaulted by the capitalist establishment. Wonder why, hmm? Geneticists always do well under capitalism and are rewarded accordingly with veneration.
Like that Fromm quote very much!
I really don't think there's anything in Reich's orgone theories (though I used to when I was a excitable teenager and not so good at critical thought) which is a shame since they obscure what useful stuff he did write.I don't think he claimed people automatically become socialists through therapy either….
He did think social revolution would come about as a result of release (The Sexual Revolution), which is the same thing, isn`t it?
It's been years since I read that stuff but I think he saying something like emotionally damaged (what he would call armored) people will be unable to see a socialist revolution through because they are too dependent on hierarchy etc and it is only until an undamaged generation is raised that socialism would be possible. Though he did change his views as his life progressed and ended up dying thinking that his experiments had summoned UFOs from space…
Most probably read it but this article on Reich from 1973http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1970s/1973/no-825-may-1973/sexual-politics-wilhelm-reich
http://logosjournal.com/2012/winter_anderson/ There is a book written by Kevin Anderson which covers all the correspondences between Marcuse, Fromm and Dunayeskaya. I can say like CLR James: I have not found anything interesting in Hegel, that is the reason why CLR James and Dunayeskaya did not continue together. Fromm as a Psychiatrist is fine, but as a Marxist, he is just another reformist like all the members of the Frankfurt School, and all the members of the so called Marxist Humanist movement
Another good Psychiatrist is Frantz Fannon . Most of these thinkers like CLR James, andf Adorno they were not able to break away from Leninism and Leftism
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