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ABSTRACT
Today, a plague of certitude is spreading within American psychoanalysis. This socially constructed virus is increasingly dominating our unmoderated list serves, appearing in our journals, and slowly seeping into our institutes. Having transcended the objectivism of traditional Freudian analysis, we seem to be revivifying its spirit. Rigorous claims to truth, superior knowledge, and contempt for those not in agreement abound. The life and work of psychoanalyst and sociologist Erich Fromm is offered as an antidote and model for resistance to this plague. He consistently objected to all forms of authoritarianism, from the Right and the Left. As a radical humanist he viewed us all as responsible selves, not mere vessels for instinctual drives or victims of unbearable circumstances. As Paul Roazan said about Fromm: “It still seems to me remarkable how he was willing to stand up for what he believed in. He should be a model of independence and autonomy for us all.”
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Ilene Philipson
Ilene Philipson, Ph.D., Psy.D., holds doctorates in sociology, clinical psychology, and psychoanalysis. She is a training and supervising analyst at the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles, a faculty member at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis, and is in the private practice of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis in Oakland, California. In addition to On The Shoulders of Women: The Feminization of Psychotherapy (Guilford), her books include Married to The Job (Simon & Schuster); Ethel Rosenberg: Beyond the Myths (Rutgers University Press); and Women, Class, and the Feminist Imagination (Ed.) (Temple University Press).