Humanistic transformation and its implications for psychoanalytic theory and therapy

The term “transformation” is on everyone's lips, and there are good reasons for this. On the one hand, the digital revolution changed our way of life fundamentally in a very short time: we have completely new possibilities to work, to produce, to communicate, to be creative, and to organize ourselves socially. Transformation is therefore the order of the day and mostly means favoring the technical creativity made possible by digital technology, electronic media, and networking technology in the form of programs, tools, algorithms, and artificial intelligence.

On the other hand, we are confronted with global developments – first and foremost man-made climate change, but also worsening worldwide social inequalities and wars – which make a radical change in human behavior necessary. Here, too, “transformation” is the order of the day, but it is also a question of changing human behavior. This requires a normative orientation from which we can determine what makes human beings and social interaction prosper in terms of the environment – i.e. ecologically – and in terms of our relatedness. And we need more precise knowledge about the internalized mental powers that determine human behavior, if a certain behavior is to be changed.

Humanistic transformation aims to do justice to both aspects. The subject of the Third International Erich Fromm Research Conference, held at the International Psychoanalytic University in Berlin from June 8 to 11, 2023, was therefore what a humanistic transformation means for the change of society, culture, and the economy, and also for the impulses of the many individuals and for psychotherapeutic practice. For a psychoanalytic view of humanistic transformation, Erich Fromm's (1900–1980) social psychoanalysis is undoubtedly of particular significance. His concept of social character opens the view for the social character of the individual and of social groups.

“Man is not a thing” (Fromm, 1957) – so that mankind also cannot be calculated like a thing. This basic conviction of the humanist Fromm has to be translated into a time when artificial intelligence, but also the academic mainstream sciences rely only on the calculability of the human being and some are already trying to announce an age of trans- and post-humanism.

However, it is not a matter of stigmatizing calculability, if it is really about things and calculable processes; but it is very much a matter of protecting the creativeness of life processes against all attempts at calculation – out of “love for the living” (as Erich Fromm tried to capture it with the term “biophilia”; Fromm, 1964) and in order to keep the responsibility of mankind alive.

A humanistic transformation, as long as it is not only seen as a technical innovation, must counteract another tendency: as beneficial as highly specialized research and scientific findings are today, this specialization, when applied to humans, increasingly leads to the fact that human thinking, feeling, and acting are no longer seen as an integral unit. The object of research is then no longer seen in its relation to the constitutive natural and human environment, and the highly specialized research method has only this or that segment in view; what the economists, the social scientists, the educational scientists, or the psychologists say about this does not affect one’s own research.

Interdisciplinarity is understood as the compilation of different findings based on different methods. Reality is said to be too complex for one to be able to develop and apply a theory and research method that shows, for example, how the digital revolution affects not only the mode of production and the organization of work, but also our conscious and unconscious motivating strivings, our way of dealing with others and with ourselves, or our cultural and artistic life.

Erich Fromm made such an attempt 90 years ago with his concept of social character, which he perfected and applied anew in the course of his life. With the concept of the social character, those socio-economic, cultural, and technical experiences and possibilities in each individual human being can be explored as internalized impulses. The basic striving of a social character – such as the authoritarian one – thereby permeates all spheres of life and determines the public thinking, feeling, and acting of a certain time in as much as such a social character orientation dominates. Social character has this formative power in the life of the individual as well as in public life, regardless of whether it is conducive to the wellbeing of the individual and to the common good or whether it alienates and deprives man of his best human capacities.

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All the papers of this issue were presented at the 2023 Erich Fromm Research Conference in Berlin and are all based on Erich Fromm’s humanistic psychoanalysis and his social-psychoanalytic approach in order to apply it to issues of social, personal, and therapeutic transformation. All authors are practicing psychoanalysts who understand their patients and themselves to be deeply determined by society. Therapeutic transformation of the inner objects can therefore only be understood and achieved by also being focused on economic, technical, social, political, and cultural changes (see Funk, 2023).

Roger Frie's contribution “Erich Fromm's Social Psychoanalysis: Beyond the Interpersonal Dyad” starts from the “social turn” in psychoanalysis that can be observed today. This “social turn” emphasizes the importance of understanding the role of social forces, such as racism and socioeconomic discrimination. Fromm was many decades ahead of his time, having refined the interpersonal approach into a socio-psychoanalytic approach as early as the 1930s and thus bridged psychoanalytic practice with political theorizing by developing his concept of social character.

Sandra Buechler, who has made a name for herself primarily through her work on the significance of values in clinical work, reflects on the “societal shift” in the age of post-truth and asks in her article “Why Truth Matters, Some Notes on Psychotherapy Post-Truth” how therapeutic practice is affected by this societal shift. What is the impact of this change on the clinician’s understanding of psychological health, diagnosis, and treatment methods and goals?

Over the past 20 years, Rainer Funk has analyzed the significance of the digital revolution for the emergence of a new social character, which he calls the ego-oriented social character. As with all social character formations, the ego-oriented character also shows “socially patterned defects,” which have a counterproductive effect on the transformation processes necessary today, because people’s own cognitive, emotional, and imaginative powers are being practiced less and less in view of digital technology and are therefore becoming atrophied.

Ilene Philipson’s paper “From the Lonely Crowd to the Cyber Mob: Erich Fromm on the Social Consequences of Loneliness” picks up on a central aspect of the current social character: when people become more and more alienated from their own emotional ties, a cyber mob increasingly occurs that uses tactics of ridicule, denunciation, and often threats of violence to silence, exclude, intimidate, and “cancel” others online. At its root, this form of group behavior is founded in a profound form of aloneness and alienation brought about by a neo-liberal society controlled by an indifferent market.

As a sociologist and psychoanalyst, Catherine B. Silver came to a very similar conclusion to Erich Fromm: that society as a “social third” must have a psychological representation in every individual. In her article “The Functions of Negativity and Benign Aggression in the Development of Humanistic Values: A Frommian Clinical Journey,” she illustrates how defensive (benign) aggression can become a source of emotional energy. Individuals faced with a severe lack of economic resources, social recognition, and emotional connectedness show the strongest self-accusatory attacks and negative forms of attachment toward self and others. Yet what started as attacks and attempts to conform to power and authority can gradually be transformed into a relatedness based on empathy and a sense of hope between equals – which is illustrated by a case history.

In her paper “Dying to Be Born: How the Failure to Achieve Mature Love Keeps Humanity Shackled to a Necrophilic Orientation,” Meredith Friedson takes up Fromm’s insight that a thwarted biophilic syndrome of growth leads to a necrophilic syndrome of decay. She explores the ways in which the present-day threatening problems are a reflection of our collective failure to overcome our separateness through mature love. A transformation has to begin with taking seriously Fromm’s description of humanity as being in the very beginning stages of its own birth, as well as his assertion that it takes a long time over the course of one’s life to be fully born.

Amparo Espinosa Rugarcía discusses the growing violence in Mexico and raises in her contribution “Violence, Delinquency and the Mexican Penitentiary System under the Lenses of Erich Fromm’s Humanistic Perspective” the important question of how politically engaged psychoanalytic institutes should be. The current director of the Mexican Psychoanalytic Institute founded by Erich Fromm reports on, among other things, what the Institute is doing to counteract the problem of delinquent violence and necrophilia and how there is also a concrete cooperation with judicial institutions.

The social dimension of psychoanalysis was not only addressed by Erich Fromm, but also controversially by Theodor W. Adorno. Nevertheless, Bruno Carvalho’s research shows that there are many more similarities between Adorno and Fromm with regard to the social function of psychoanalysis. Carvalho’s contribution “Adorno and Fromm: A Debate on Psychoanalytic Clinical Practice” summarizes this research on the basis of Adorno’s concept of suffering.

Finally, in his illuminating contribution “The Ontological Dimensions of Erich Fromm's Humanism,” Michael Thompson explores the question of how Erich Fromm substantiates his humanism from the conditions of human existence. A humanistic transformation in the therapeutic as well as in the political and social sphere must develop objectives for how individual and social life can succeed and at the same time be able to critically diagnose today’s pathologies of the self and of society.

Common to all contributions is Erich Fromm’s insight that society with its possibilities and requirements is represented in every individual on the basis of social character formation. To put it in Fromm’s words:

One cannot understand a person, an individual, unless one is critical and understands the forces of society which have molded this person, which have made this person what he or she is. To stop at the story of the family is just not enough. For the full understanding of the patient it is not enough either. He will also only be fully aware of who he is if he is aware of the whole social situation in which he lives, all the pressures and all the factors which have their impact on him.  …  In my opinion social analysis and personal analysis cannot really be separated. (Fromm, 1994/1991 [1974], pp. 102–103)