Progressive Psychoanalysis as a Social Justice Movement [1 ed.] 9781443867511, 9781443816786

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Progressive Psychoanalysis as a Social Justice Movement

Progressive Psychoanalysis as a Social Justice Movement Edited by

Scott Graybow

Progressive Psychoanalysis as a Social Justice Movement Edited by Scott Graybow This book first published 2017 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2017 by Scott Graybow and contributors All rights for this book 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 prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-1678-7 ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-1678-6

Dedicated to: Christopher Christian Jean Lehrman Carol Perlman

It goes without saying that a civilization which leaves so large a number of its participants unsatisfied and drives them into revolt neither has nor deserves the prospect of a lasting existence. —Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion Psychoanalysis, which interprets the human being as a socialized being and the psychic apparatus as essentially developed and determined through the relationship of the individual to society, must consider it a duty to participate in the investigation of sociological problems to the extent the human being or his/her psyche plays any part at all. —Erich Fromm, Psychoanalysis and Sociology

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface ........................................................................................................ ix Scott Graybow Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Scott Graybow Part I: Erich Fromm’s Progressive Psychoanalysis Chapter One ............................................................................................... 16 My Own Concept of Man Erich Fromm Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 26 Concerned Knowledge: Erich Fromm on Theory and Practice Joan Braune Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 42 Erich Fromm’s Psychoanalysis of Transcendence and the Photography of Detroit’s Ruins Chris Vanderwees Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 66 Erich Fromm’s Civics: Sanity, Disobedience, Revolution Nick Braune Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 82 Putting Social Theory into Clinical Practice: Incorporating Fromm’s Theory of Social Character into a Traditional Psychodynamic Treatment Scott Graybow Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 96 Progressive Psychoanalysis in the Works of Erich Fromm and Slavoj Žižek Dan Mills

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Part II: Psychoanalysis as a Social Justice Tool Today Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 116 Confronting Racism: A Challenge to the Psychoanalytic Community Christine Schmidt Chapter Eight ........................................................................................... 148 When Home is Where We Flee From: Writing in Psychoanalysis during Forced Migration as a Revolutionary Act Laurie Bell Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 160 Violence in Our Time: Psychology and Religion Rainer Funk Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 170 Psychoanalysis as Capitalist Enterprise: Or, Reflections on the Past, Present and Future of an Alienated Discipline Scott Graybow Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 185 Society as Patient: The Development of a Psychoanalytic Sociology Leonard A. Steverson Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 201 Psychoanalytic Principles: Valuable Mechanism for Diagnosis in the 21st Century Ritu Sharma and Sharon Writer Notes on Contributors.............................................................................. 214

PREFACE SCOTT GRAYBOW

How many times have we heard the claim that psychoanalysis is only for the well-to-do, the “worried-well?” How many times have we heard people say that psychoanalysis is out of touch, unconcerned with and insensitive to the needs of the poor and working class? For that matter, who within the psychoanalytic community has not heard a colleague say, “She’s un-analyzable, she has too many concrete needs.” As a psychoanalytic psychotherapist, I have heard these claims many times before. When I was a social work student at Columbia University, I repeatedly encountered professors, guest lecturers and fellow students who opined unabashedly that poor social work clients are too distracted by their pressing concrete and environmental needs to be capable of benefiting from psychoanalysis. A quick, universalizing statement of conclusion nearly always reinforced this claim: Psychoanalysis is not concerned about the poor or about the political, economic and cultural factors that create and maintain their poverty. Implicit in this statement, I found, are two critical beliefs. First, there is the belief that psychoanalysis is not committed to social justice, nor does it have the resources–theoretical or technical–to be so. Second, the poor, due to their environmental deficits, lack the capacity to benefit from turning inward, to engage in the process of self-reflection, assessment and learning that is the act of being in psychoanalysis. In other words, corresponding with their environmental flaws, the poor have an impoverished inner world that differentiates them psychically from the well-to-do. But are these conclusions true? If so, what evidence is there to support these drastic claims? My own experience of providing psychoanalytic psychotherapy to poor and working class patients has led me to completely different conclusions as to their analyzability as well as to the relevance of psychoanalysis to today’s pressing social, political and economic crises. Consider the following hypothetical patient: Mr. J started twice-weekly therapy for treatment of depression at a time when his startup company was doing very well. He presented as articulate and insight-oriented. A few months into the treatment, Mr. J’s business suddenly failed and he

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found himself in a very different financial situation. He no longer had any income and lost the large home and luxury car he had obtained with easy credit. In the absence of these external signs of wealth he found himself in possession of nothing but a large amount of personal and business debt. In essence, he was now poor. He maintained, however, the same mind, same inner world and same capacity for self-awareness and insight. Are we now to consider him to be someone who is untreatable using a psychoanalytic approach? Certainly not. This edited volume presumes the inverse of what my Columbia colleagues said are statements of truth that require further exploration. The following chapters make two overarching arguments. First, they argue that psychoanalysis is a progressive force capable of serving as a much-needed clinical and heuristic tool of social justice. Second, they maintain that poor, oppressed and marginalized people and groups, just like the well-todo, have rich, complicated and conflicted inner worlds that, upon being analyzed, yield insights and facilitate transferences and resistances that can lead to the attainment of critical psychoanalytic therapeutic goals. One only has to look at the history of the psychoanalytic movement to see that, even if psychoanalysis today is not in the role of being a force for social justice, that has not always been the case, nor can we say that psychoanalysis does not have within itself theories and techniques that could be applied toward the creation of a more equitable society. Indeed, as the works by Elizabeth Danto (2005) and Russell Jacoby (1983) have demonstrated so beautifully, there was a time when the psychoanalytic movement had a strong social justice orientation. That time was the period between World War I and World War II. During that era analysts such as Erich Fromm, Wilhelm Reich, Ernst Simmel, Max Eitington and Otto Fenichel viewed psychoanalysis not only as a clinical practice, but also as a movement at the core of which was a commitment to understanding and addressing pressing social problems. In practical terms, these analysts sought to actualize Freud’s (1918) call for the establishment of a “psychotherapy for the people” (p. 167). To do so, they participated in the establishment of a string of psychoanalytic clinics that provided free or low-fee psychoanalytic care to members of the poor and working-class communities. These analysts did not subscribe to the false dichotomies of today. They did not adhere to the belief that the well-to-do can benefit from psychoanalysis whereas the poor require an alternative means of clinical intervention. They did not maintain the belief that the poor have inner

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worlds that are less in need of psychic development than are the inner worlds of the members of the privileged classes. What happened to these analysts and their liberal approach? Two authors, George Makari (2008) and Neil Altman (2010), offer possible answers. Makari’s (2008) history of the psychoanalytic movement documents how many early psychoanalysts “believed that social reform or revolution would come from psychological emancipation. They believed that curing the Self could cure a society, and that conversely a sick society resulted in sick men and women” (p. 398). With the rise of fascism, however, less politically inclined analysts began to worry that the attempts by analysts such as Wilhelm Reich to make explicit the connection between psychoanalysis and social justice might attract unwanted attention. A process of de-politicizing psychoanalysis began. The finest example of this swing against social justice-oriented psychoanalytic thinking and its overt affiliation with leftist politics was the expulsion of Wilhelm Reich from the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) during the organization’s biannual conference at Lucerne in 1934 (Makari, 2008). This caused many leftist analysts to begin the process of going underground (Jacoby, 1983). For example, Otto Fenichel and his fellow Rundbriefe collaborators Edith Jacobson, Annie Reich, George Gero, Kate Friedlander, Barbara Lantos and Edith Lukowyk Gyomroi worried, “the IPA would redefine the boundaries of the field [of psychoanalysis] so that the Marxist analysts would all go the way of Reich” (Makari, 2008, p. 411). The de-politicization of psychoanalysis and subsequent isolation of the field from social justice issues and activities continued after World War II when psychoanalysis relocated its center of activity to the United States (Altman, 2010). There a process of medicalization and bureaucratization began that greatly changed the nature and practice of psychoanalysis. No longer would analysts whose backgrounds represented a host of professional and academic milieus practice psychoanalysis. Instead, psychoanalysis would be practiced exclusively by medical professionals. In this way, psychoanalysis became a rigid subspecialty of psychiatry. Furthermore, Altman (2010) points out, the psychoanalysis that developed in the United States did not have the same level of social involvement and association with leftist politics it did in pre-World War II Europe. In this new version of psychoanalysis, “poor people, working class people, [and] people seen in the public sector came to be viewed as unsuitable candidates for psychoanalysis, in contrast to Freud’s views” (Altman, 2010, p. 45). Altman (2010) identifies two reasons for this: 1) the American emphasis on individualism, capitalism and entrepreneurship;

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and 2) the emphasis on ego-psychology, which historically has found poor people and non-white people to be un-analyzable and is difficult to apply to the work done in a clinic because of its emphasis on therapist anonymity and neutrality. As a result, American psychoanalysis of the post-World War II era not only failed to maintain psychoanalysis’ original interest in social progressivism, it strengthened existing racial, economic and cultural oppressions. It replicated the hierarchical class structure of society within the substructure of psychoanalytic culture. By ignoring race, class and culture, psychoanalysis embedded itself in society’s arrangements with regard to these factors and made itself “the functional equivalent of a homogeneous American suburban environment” (Altman, 2010, p. xix). Must psychoanalysis remain isolated from its social justice roots? Have we no choice but to continue to submit to the false dichotomy that would have us provide rich and poor with different types of clinical care? No. I am firmly of the belief that psychoanalysis can once again serve as a social justice tool. In this regard, I am deeply indebted to the work of Lewis Aron and Karen Starr (2013) whose book, A Psychotherapy for the People: Toward a Progressive Psychoanalysis, introduces us to the notion of a “progressive psychoanalysis.” They use the term “progressive” as a “mediating term, one that enables us to challenge traditional dichotomous categories and to transcend binary thinking” in psychoanalytic theory and practice (Aron & Starr, 2013, p. xiv). They agree with Altman (2010) that “psychoanalysis in America became arrogant, self-protective, self-serving, and increasingly narrow and limited” (Aron & Starr, 2013, p. 12). Aron and Starr (2013) challenge us to reconsider the very definition of psychoanalysis and in the process call for a review of our understanding of another key term, “clinical.” They eschew any definition of psychoanalysis that uses polarizations or dichotomous thinking. They argue psychoanalysis must be defined according to what it is, not by contrasting it with things it allegedly is not. Their definition of the new term “progressive psychoanalysis” has two components. First, a call to arms. They point out that, “if psychoanalysis is to survive [its] progressive tradition must be reestablished and brought into the mainstream” (Aron & Starr, 2013, p. 20). Here they are using the term “progressive” as a reference to the former alliance between psychoanalysis and social justice that has been documented by Danto (2005) and Jacoby (1983). Second, they point out that progressive psychoanalysis is a flexible, all-encompassing psychoanalysis, one that respects “the full range of its theories, applications and methodologies. This includes ‘psychoanalysis proper’ and ‘psychoanalytic therapy,’ as well as what has generally been thought of as ‘applied psychoanalysis’; not only the several times per week clinical

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analysis in private practice but also the full range of clinical, educational and social applications in the community and inner cities of America” (Aron & Starr, 2013, p. 8). Whereas Aron and Starr’s (2013) book seeks to guide readers toward a progressive psychoanalysis, this edited volume hopes to allow readers to experience the full range and depth of this new, exciting, highly relevant and timely understanding of the field. My hope is that this book constitutes a beginning exploration of progressive psychoanalysis as a hermeneutic tool and a clinical tool. Hermeneutically, progressive psychoanalysis demands that we seek deeper, more thorough understandings of today’s social problems and apply these insights to our work with patients. It presumes human beings do not exist in a vacuum. We must take into account what is happening around them. For example, it is impossible to extract people from what is happening to them economically or politically. But the environment alone does not dictate the outcome of an individual, either. Rather, as Frie (2014) points out, it is the interaction between a person and their environment that is of crucial importance. In today’s society, that interaction is dominated by acts of economic and racial injustice. These injustices, in turn, are compounded by the greed of certain powerful members of the elite and the acquiescence of a political process that is now firmly in their hands. For this reason, it is imperative that progressive psychoanalysis serve as a clinical tool. The call of progressive psychoanalysis requires that we return to a basic yet thoroughly psychoanalytic understanding of the term “clinical.” Clinical means one person helping another person in a manner that facilitates transferences and resistances. It does not necessarily mean lying on a couch. It does not necessarily mean attending sessions five days a week. It does not mean being removed and remote while ignoring concrete and material needs. It simply means providing help in an authentic, human way such that the sweetness and the tribulations of basic human interaction arise and are allowed room for exploration. That exploration could take place in a beautiful consulting room in a luxury high-rise or in the stairwell of a public housing development. In either case, that exploration is clinical, it is analytic and it must be progressive. Psychoanalysis has been defined in many ways. It has been called a clinical science (Chessick, 2000), a human science (Cohler & GalatzerLevy, 2007), a new form of investigation (Ricoeur, 1970), an attempt to create understandings of human subjective experience (Schwartz, 1996) and an attempt to increase the truthful knowledge of the self about itself (Bianchedi, 1995). Most recently, Aron and Starr (2013) proposed a new definition, one that calls for a return to the progressive origins of

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psychoanalysis while consolidating recent advances in regard to the possibility that we might integrate its various branches into a single, clinical whole. This “progressive psychoanalysis” represents an opportunity for the field to return to its roots as a social justice movement while re-affirming its commitment to the poor and its applicability to today’s pressing social issues. This book seeks to actualize Aron and Starr’s (2013) call to reestablish the progressive tradition of psychoanalysis and bring it into the mainstream. To do so, its chapters attempt to redirect our view of psychoanalysis away from the belief that it is an elitist endeavor and toward the realization that it is relevant and applicable to today’s pressing social problems and the clinical needs these problems create within our patients. It is my hope this book takes readers down the road of progressive psychoanalysis, a road that will expose them to a new way of thinking, one that replaces the false dichotomies that currently prevail with a newfound appreciation for and commitment to psychoanalysis as a social justice movement. Scott Graybow New York, NY April 23, 2015

References Altman, N. (2010). The analyst in the inner city: Race, class and culture through a psychoanalytic lens (2nd ed.). New York: Taylor & Francis Group. Aron, L., & Starr, K. (2013). A psychotherapy for the people: Towards a progressive psychoanalysis. New York: Routledge. Bianchedi, E. (1995). Theory and technique: What is psychoanalysis? Journal of Clinical Psychoanalysis, 4, 471-482. Chessick, R. (2000). What is psychoanalysis? The Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry, 28, 1-23. Cohler, B., & Galatzer-Levy, R. (2007). What kind of science is psychoanalysis? Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 27, 547-582. Danto, E. (2005). Freud’s free clinics: Psychoanalysis and social justice, 1918-1938. New York: Columbia University Press. Frie, R. (2014). What is cultural psychoanalysis? Psychoanalytic anthropology and the interpersonal tradition. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 50, 371-394. Jacoby, R. (1983). The repression of psychoanalysis: Otto Fenichel and the political Freudians. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Makari, G. (2008). Revolution in mind: The creation of psychoanalysis. New York: Harper Collins. Ricoeur, P. (1970). Freud and philosophy: An essay on interpretation. Binghamton, NY: Vail-Ballou Press. Schwartz, J. (1996). What is science? What is Psychoanalysis? What is to be done? British Journal of Psychotherapy, 13, 53-63.

INTRODUCTION SCOTT GRAYBOW

The need for social justice grows as the world becomes a more violent, unpredictable and unequal place. This book strives to demonstrate how and why psychoanalysis should be viewed as a tool that can respond to these dilemmas and meet this call for social justice. To do so, the editor and contributors argue that psychoanalysis has important things to say about topics such as race, class and politics at the level of the individual and at the macro level of analysis. They seek to undo the current perception of psychoanalysis as a cold, clinical method based upon antiquated views about gender and culture and limited in applicability to the psychological needs of the “worried well.” They posit that in today’s neoliberal, capitalist world, psychoanalysis is best conceptualized as a social justice movement that is a clinical technique as well as a hermeneutic tool, or, as Hewitt (2012) states, “a clinical practice and a social theory with an emancipatory aim” (p. 73). Taking their cue from the second-generation activist-psychoanalysts documented by Elizabeth Danto (2005) and Russell Jacoby (1983), and from the Freudo-Marxist tradition of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, the editor and contributors seek to create a volume that replaces today’s narrow, prejudicial view of psychoanalysis with one that sees psychoanalysis as a multifaceted tool whose core mission is to make the world a better place. The focus of our attempts to understand the value of Freud’s discovery should not be on whether the benefits of psychoanalysis are experienced through the resolution of clinical symptoms and the provision of insight at the level of the individual or through the attainment of an improved understanding of a social problem. As Altman (2010, 2015) has demonstrated, the bifurcation of clinical psychoanalytic practice between public and private has led to an unhelpful emphasis on a number of false dichotomies. These dichotomies—psychoanalysis vs. psychotherapy, clinical vs. applied, urban vs. rural, rich vs. poor, black vs. white, inner vs. outer—distract us from the true mission, purpose and, indeed, the value of psychoanalysis. When we disregard these dichotomies and instead look to the activist history of psychoanalysis, we come upon what Aron and Starr

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(2012) refer to as progressive psychoanalysis. This is the psychoanalysis “for the people” called for by Freud and worked toward by the clinicians who staffed such venerable institutions as the Berlin Polyclinic and the Vienna Ambulatorium. The editor and contributors, in seeking to revive this approach to psychoanalytic theorizing and practice, are curious about why it ceased to exist in the first place and agree with Layton, Hollander and Gutwill (2006) that its absence and resultant “split between the psychic and the social…is a dichotomy that serves an individualist and capitalist status quo” (p. 5). To achieve these ends, the book divides itself into two sections. The first section is titled “Eric Fromm’s Progressive Psychoanalysis.” The chapters in this section set out to undo the faulty assumption that from its start psychoanalysis has been disconnected from, uninterested in and inapplicable to matters pertaining to social justice. Rather than make this claim by presenting a history of the activist core of the early psychoanalytic movement, which has already been done by Danto (2005), or by reviewing the efforts of a group of progressive psychoanalysts, which has already been done by Jacoby (1983), this section focuses on the life, contributions and contemporary applications of the Freudo-Marxist thought of Erich Fromm. It is the belief of the editor and contributors to this section that Fromm’s life and work are representative of the sort of progressive psychoanalysis that is greatly needed today. We see Fromm as more than a controversial revisionist. We see him as a committed psychoanalyst whose experience was colored and impacted by a host of personal and political identities including being a participant in Freud’s free clinic movement, a democratic Socialist, an immigrant refugee, and a world renowned public intellectual whose psychoanalytic approach to individual and social problems was remarkably well received within mainstream, non-academic circles. Yet Fromm, like the progressive, multifaceted psychoanalysis he espoused, is largely forgotten. To remember him, to reconnect with his theories and to apply them to contemporary social problems, is to undo the disconnect between our current understanding of psychoanalysis and its activist core. It is a means of reminding ourselves of the contributions of the past and the value and applicability of those contributions to the needs–both individual and societal–of the present. The first chapter in this section exposes us to words written by Erich Fromm himself. Titled, “My Own Concept of Man,” this piece lays out Fromm’s humanist, neo-Freudian understanding of man’s psychology and in so doing demonstrates how psychoanalysis is and has been at the nexus of individual mental health and societal well-being. Rather than driven by

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sexual and aggressive drives, man, Fromm argues, is driven by a desire for relatedness to others. Fromm explains, “In contrast to Freud, I do not look on man chemically as homme machine, driven by the chemically conditioned mechanism unpleasure-pleasure, but as being primarily related to others and in need of them; not, in the first place, for the mutual satisfaction of needs, but for reasons which follow from the nature of man.” Fromm refers to his revisionist account of Freud’s structural model as the “socio-biological viewpoint” and “the dialectic-humanist revision.” In this model, man does not attempt merely to replace unpleasure with pleasure; he seeks a “passionate attempt for union with the world and for the transcending of mere self-preservation and self-purposefulness.” A host of psychosocial forces including but not limited to economic class, violence, historical factors and one’s family of origin influence the manner in which we come to relate to ourselves and others. Fromm refers to the amalgam of these factors as “social character…the nucleus of character traits common to most members of a society or class.” More specifically, social character is a productive force that enables man to derive emotional enjoyment while fulfilling the role he must execute in order for the society in which he lives to function. Fromm writes, “social character has the important function for all individuals of making attractive, or at least tolerable, what is socially necessary, and to create the basis for consistent behavior.” Social character varies. For example, one’s social character might reinforce democratic behavior such as voting or it might reinforce unprogressive behavior such as adherence to racist or other oppressive ideologies. Social character is the result of a dialectical process, which makes Fromm hopeful. True, man is capable of unhealthy decisions that might progress to his own destruction, but he is also capable of making choices that render society able to “liberate itself from the influence of irrational and unnecessary social pathology.” Joan Braune’s “Concerned Knowledge: Erich Fromm on Theory and Practice” debates the assertion made by scholars such as Friedman and Maccoby that tension between Fromm’s identities as a psychoanalytic scholar and socialist activist limits the overall value of his work. Taken more loosely, the chapter addresses the current debate about whether psychotherapy is an art or a science, whether human emotion and intention should have a role in clinical technique or whether it should be determined exclusively by results from empirical procedures. To say there is a conflict or a dichotomy between Fromm’s prophetic side, that is, his activism, and his scientific side, that is, his psychoanalytic research, is inaccurate, Braune argues. To the contrary, Fromm actively and intentionally attempted to synthesize these seemingly contrasting aspects of his identity,

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as he felt melding the two is a prerequisite to operate successfully as a psychoanalyst and scholar. In terms of clinical practice, this was evident in Fromm’s disuse of the analytic couch in favor of sitting face to face with the patient. In less practical terms, Fromm’s belief was that theory and practice are incomplete when not united. Braune writes, “…for Fromm, interpretation and change, theory and practice are a unity; they are not two separate things that can be compared and occasionally brought together or harmonized. Each is united to the other, and when viewed as a dynamic whole, the nature of each is transformed.” Perhaps most importantly, Braune argues, Fromm felt changing the object of study is the goal of research, not a risk to be avoided. Thus, Fromm sought to at once know and to change the world. In describing Fromm’s take on this melding of theory and practice, Braune is able to articulate what Fromm might have considered the end goal of a successful psychoanalysis: “Becoming conscious of the social reality of which I am a part, and seeing myself not only a passive knower of the world but an active knower-doer…I overcome the separation between theory and practice and the related dichotomy in the modern world between knowledge and emotion.” Due to the unity of theory and practice, the researcher and the psychoanalyst are not cold, removed, isolated figures. They are active participants who must struggle constantly with the demand of at once trying to be objective observers and engaged transformers. Braune concludes Fromm’s thinking represents a call to seek a shift in consciousness away from the current belief that thought and emotion, science and human experience, observation and participation, are inevitably in conflict, a call which raises questions about the mental health community’s current preference for the cold science of evidence-based treatment over a deeper but undoubtedly more difficult humanistic clinical approach. Chris Vanderwees’ “Aesthetics of Detroit Ruin Photography and Erich Fromm’s Psychoanalysis of Transcendence” explores the contemporary cultural fascination with Detroit’s ruins, which have been captured in photographs such as those by Andrew Moore in his publication, Detroit Disassembled. Vanderwees argues our current fascination reflects a deeper social concern about the defining characteristics of the late-capitalist era such as economic instability and neoliberal austerity measures. This more nuanced and sophisticated understanding of our fascination with Detroit’s ruins rejects the notion that looking at “ruin porn” is merely “a passive or voyeuristic practice.” Vanderwees uses Fromm’s psychosocial adaptation of the Freudian death drive to unpack the specifics surrounding this claim. He argues that Fromm’s work is useful in this end because it “emphasize[s] the important influence of socio-political relations on the

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subject’s ego-instincts.” Key to this Fromm-based analysis is the notion of transcendence, or the “existential desire to exceed the specific context of individual existence.” Fromm maintains that in capitalist society, which limits opportunities for life-affirming growth, the experience of destruction, catastrophe and death becomes a primary way to achieve transcendence. More specifically, the attraction to Detroit’s ruins is symptomatic of a psychically stunted society, one incapable of creating or even imagining ideological alternatives to capitalism. Vanderwees writes, “The current neoliberal capitalist predicament and the fascination with Detroit ruin photography exemplify Fromm’s conceptualization of the human attraction to death and destruction as a need to experience transcendence.” In other words, when the need for transcendence is met with disempowerment, disenfranchisement and disadvantage, which is the case under capitalism, the death drive dominates. In this way, Vanderwees links transcendence to necrophilia and uses the link to highlight Gounari’s notion of social necrophilia, “the blunt organized effort on the part of the domestic political system and foreign neoliberal centers to implement economic policies that result in the physical, material and financial destruction of human beings.” Such destruction, Vanderwees argues, produces a fear of ruin and also engenders a desire for it through the forced absence of the ability to envision alternatives to it. Viewing photographs of Detroit’s ruins is thus an affective experience that produces a feeling of proximity to death, which simultaneously is feared and desired, not only because of an inherent drive, but also because of the systemic social factors that influence this critical aspect of human identity through shifting economic, cultural and political contexts. Nick Braune’s “Erich Fromm’s Civics: Sanity, Disobedience, Revolution” details how Fromm was a psychoanalyst with a social mission, a mission to “call Americans back to sanity, to a sane society, not a self-destructing one.” To achieve this goal, Fromm sought to make known the psychological qualities necessary for people to effectively challenge the existing social order and lead society to socialist humanism. Through a combination of writing, political activity and social organizing, Fromm attempted to actualize a psychologically healthy, and therefore effective, anti-war, anti-capitalist culture of dissent, one that questioned the status quo yet was impervious to the limitations of other leftist movements such as the rigidity and inhumanity of Soviet state capitalism. Braune explains that the dialectical relationship between sanity, disobedience and revolution was at the center of Fromm’s efforts. Sanity comes through a revolutionary process at the core of which is an individual ability to disobey. Disobedience is often the only way to

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counter the act of obedience, which in a capitalist society is at a minimum emotionally numbing and at worst potentially deadly. The ability to disobey is one of the six characterological distinguishing marks of a revolutionary social character, or the personality of a person best equipped to challenge capitalist norms. Fromm posits it is an appreciation of the nuances of what draws one to want to be a revolutionary and the meanings attached to being a revolutionary, not overt behaviors, which are significant and hold the keys to a truly nuanced understanding of social phenomena, in this case the political actions of those seeking emancipatory political change and those opposing it. In this way, Braune concludes, Fromm and his work are illustrative of how a psychoanalytic lens can inform, enrich and deepen past and present approaches to social theory. Scott Graybow’s “Putting Social Theory into Clinical Practice: Incorporating Fromm’s Theory of Social Character into a Traditional Psychodynamic Treatment” explores the possibility that consideration of Fromm’s social character is relevant not only to an improved understanding of the collective unconscious of an entire community but also to the clinical practice of psychodynamic psychotherapy with individuals. The chapter introduces Fromm’s notion of social character by reviewing three short works by Fromm: Character and Social Process (1942), Human Nature and Social Theory (1969), and Individual and Social Origins of Neurosis (1944). Together, these works highlight how Fromm’s theory of social character represents an interconnection between psychological theory and social change theory. The section of the chapter on theory includes an interesting review of Fromm’s analysis of the American working class, which he believed exhibited a social character that led it to engage in behaviors that are contrary to its own needs. Graybow writes, “[the American worker] is psychologically conditioned to ignore the historical context that gave rise to his misplaced emotional reactions and gravitates towards a worldview that promotes such counterproductive goals and ideals as racism, unregulated competition, neurotic individualism and over-consumption of unnecessary consumer goods.” To illustrate the effects of this conceptualization of social character as well as to address how they might be treated therapeutically, Graybow presents the case of Ms. G, a working-class woman whose social character prevents her from questioning the legitimacy of the status quo and is evident in her view of herself as subservient, voiceless and powerless. This case highlights how factors such as poverty and injustice play a role in one’s psychological development. In his treatment of the patient, Graybow illustrates how discussion of such things as political ideology and practical

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matters such as budgeting do not detract from the goals of a traditional psychodynamic treatment, but rather further them. In this way, Graybow argues, the idea that we must focus on patients’ inner worlds to the exclusion of discussion of factors affecting their outer worlds is a false dichotomy. Specifically, his case suggests it is possible to integrate the inner and the outer in a true psychodynamic fashion if we listen for evidence of what Fromm refers to as social character. Thus, the chapter’s findings represent the beginnings of an attempt to substantiate Fromm’s thesis that historical conditioning contributes to a social character that is often counterproductive to the needs of oppressed and marginalized groups. Such social character takes on a unique psychological perspective when we observe that promotion of social character is rooted in a collective effort to satisfy emotional needs. Graybow’s chapter goes one step further, suggesting that “at the level of the individual, the introjected social character can lead to distinct emotional and social dilemmas because it might promote the use of maladaptive ego defenses or cause a person to engage in behaviors that seem to satisfy an emotional need and be socially condoned but are ultimately detrimental to both individual mastery and group solidarity.” Dan Mills’ “Progressive Psychoanalysis in the Works of Erich Fromm and Slavoj Žižek” compares and contrasts the works and ideas of Erich Fromm with those of the contemporary Marxist-Lacanian, Slavoj Žižek. Mills points out that each man’s works represent a synthesis of psychoanalytic theory and Marxist social theory for the purpose of creating a better society. Specifically, Fromm, by mixing Freud and Marx, hoped to prevent any repeats of Nazi-style fascist totalitarianism. Žižek, on the other hand, mixes Lacan and Marx with the goal of “understanding …what it means to be a subject in what neo-Marxists have called ‘late capitalism.’” Mills underscores the reality that Fromm and Žižek come from very different socio-political backgrounds. On one hand, Fromm witnessed the fall of democracy and the rise of totalitarianism. On the other hand, Žižek lived through the fall of Soviet totalitarianism and the subsequent rise in free-market capitalism. He suggests that in light of this difference Fromm came to espouse a humanist, libertarian version of Marxism whereas Žižek aspires to a more statist version of socialism. Uniting each is a belief that our understanding of these concepts is incomplete without an appreciation for the call of psychoanalysis to search for meaning below the surface. Thus, Mills argues, both men seek “the same utopian vision for the world” and each one has “contributed to an intellectual psychoanalytic tradition that aims to make the world a better place.”

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The second section of the volume is titled “Psychoanalysis as a Social Justice Tool Today.” These chapters seek to leave readers with an impression of the range of ways psychoanalysis might be understood and employed so it once again assumes a position as a vibrant movement dedicated to a clear-cut social justice agenda. The editor and contributors to this section firmly believe psychoanalysis differs from other contemporary psychotherapeutic approaches in regard to its ability to understand social justice issues and promote positive actions that will lead to the resolution of those issues. They maintain that psychoanalysis has a capacity for and inherent interest in matters that require an appreciation for the whole person, whereas manualized interventions such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) are limited by their ability to do anything more than provide brief symptom remission. For example, the psychoanalytic practitioner is at once an expert and a participant. She is engaged in a process that demands not only scientific knowledge and technique but also humanity, empathy and a capacity to serve as an agent for change. Psychoanalysis thus is not only capable of, but demands, a viewpoint in which objective social facts and subjective personal details are connected within a larger totality. CBT, which risks being nothing more than a form of shallow positivism, lacks this depth and nuance. The fact that psychoanalysis has taken a back seat to CBT despite this reality is, we believe, evidence of a neoliberal political process that has sought successfully to undermine and weaken the image of psychoanalysis due to the threat its successful implementation poses to the capitalist status quo. As early as 1991, writers supporting the psychoanalytic perspective were making the claim that CBT and other evidence-based techniques, far from promoting social justice, solidify neoliberal forms of capitalist oppression. Rustin (1991) explained, “behavioral psychology and psychiatry, successful professional rivals to psychodynamic ideas, are closely congruent with the instrumentalist assumptions of liberal utilitarian theory, and can be understood as attempting to provide a psychological technology for it” (p. 13). More recently, Altman (2015) described the workings of this “psychological technology” as antithetical to a social justice agenda and contributing to the oppression of the poor and other marginalized communities who have little choice when seeking mental health assistance but to submit to “time-limited, narrowly goal-oriented, and cost-efficiency focused psychotherapy and medication-based treatments” (p. 1). We firmly agree with Altman’s (2015) claim that, “when psychoanalysis is considered to be relevant on all levels from the individual intrapsychic to the macrocosmic social level, its relevance is enhanced” (p. 63). We

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take this statement one step further and argue that experiencing psychoanalysis in this way represents a return to a true and authentic version of psychoanalysis, one that is consistent with what Freud and the early analysts intended and capable of achieving maximum impact both inside and outside the consulting room. Such a conceptualization of psychoanalysis also does much to counter its current negative image as “a practice that, in theory, honors the humanity of people [but] ends up in danger of dehumanizing, by inattention and marginalization, the great majority” (Altman, 2015, pp. 1-2.). The chapters that follow play with this idea, exploring it from concrete and conceptual angles, from past, present and future perspectives. They touch on issues pertaining to race, technology, forced migration, terrorism, alienation, economic crisis and disobedience. Together, they represent a beginning attempt to once again conceptualize psychoanalysis as a social justice tool. Christine Schmidt’s “Confronting Racism: A Challenge to the Psychoanalytic Community” addresses the lack of attention psychoanalytic practitioners have paid to the issue of racism both in the consulting room and as a macro level social problem. The chapter consists of an introduction followed by six practical recommendations intended to undo the silence among psychoanalytic practitioners about the need for racial justice. The first measure states that analysts must familiarize themselves with the history of racism in the United States. The emphasis here is on unlearning the notion that America is a color-blind, post-racial society. Beginning with a review of the origins of white supremacy, Schmidt goes on to define and discuss the effects of dominative racism, aversive racism and meta-racism. The section ends with some striking facts that readily contradict the idea that America has moved beyond its racist past. The second measure focuses extensively on the idea of colorblindness, which Schmidt defines as a product of the ideology of whiteness. Schmidt writes, “Colorblindness purports to see people as members of the human race without racial categories.” To counter the notion of colorblindness, in the third measure Schmidt calls for the development of “racial consciousness” by “bringing knowledge about racialization and racial oppression into personal and professional relationships [to challenge] colorblindness.” At the core of this step is the development of an awareness of one’s own racial identity. For members of the white majority, the task here is to abandon white entitlement and begin to work on systemic change. The fourth measure addresses psychoanalysts specifically, calling on them to evaluate the impact of race on their psychoanalytic practice. The focus here is on the shift of psychoanalysis away from a clinic-based, social justice model to a medical model that gives preference to affluent, white,

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Introduction

heterosexual patients and tends to over-pathologize black patients. To make measure number four a reality, measure five proposes that analysts facilitate workshops, lead groups and teach courses about racism and psychoanalysis. Schmidt explains that “workshops and courses can blend didactic and reflective opportunities for learning about race matters.” In other words, groups in which race is discussed promote the evolution of racial consciousness in the most effective way possible, that is, through interpersonal interactions. Finally, the sixth measure calls for analysts to speak out about and promote racial equity within professional organizations. Schmidt posits that “fear and shame” presently prevent analysts from speaking out about race in their professional organizations. This speaks to the ever-present effect of white privilege, which is particularly salient in psychoanalytic organizations due to the overwhelming majority of whites within the ranks. Laurie Bell’s “When Home Is Where We Flee From: Writing in Psychoanalysis during Forced Migration as a Revolutionary Act” is a meditation on her experience writing psychoanalytically informed psychosocial assessments for refugees seeking political asylum. She couches her remarks in the observation that psychoanalysis itself developed under conditions of oppression and eventually was forced into exile. She also underscores the psychoanalytic principle that everything, even the most inane statement or interaction, has multiple, valuable meanings worthy of exploration and interpretation. True, her work is an example of applied rather than pure psychoanalysis, but that detail takes a back seat to the fact, expertly illustrated by Bell, that psychoanalytic theory and technique have value and purpose outside the traditional therapeutic setting. In particular, she demonstrates how psychoanalytic theory and technique have important things to say about one of today’s most pressing social problems: forced migration. Rainer Funk’s “Violence in Our Time: Psychology and Religion” offers a psychoanalytic interpretation of the emotional origins of violence and their relationship to the contemporary dilemma of terrorism. Funk begins by explaining that aggression is not always bad. It is a natural and necessary part of the psychic development of humans. Aggression used in the act of self-defense, for example, is life-saving. Likewise, certain types of aggression might be considered to serve a growth-promoting function. This sort of aggression is reactive aggression and differs from characterological aggression. Violence, which is aggression that features perpetrators and victims, is an example of characterological aggression. What is the relationship between violence, a sub-form of aggression, and religion? Religion can serve as a collectively utilized rationalization, also

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known as an ideology, which legitimizes behavior one does not really accept for oneself. Thus, Funk concludes, religion allows “human beings [to] collectively justify their questionable behavior.” As an ideology, then, religion often contradicts its own ethical goals of peace, love and justice. The ideological function of religion is the collective legitimization of violence when it offers “mock justification for the inner willingness to use violence.” But religion does not only serve the purpose of legitimizing violence. It can also help people cope with life, to put words and meaning to the more difficult aspects of being human. It also allows for discussion and experiencing of the feelings–shame, powerlessness, fear of death and neediness–that are integral to the experience of being human yet do not have a place in contemporary society, which views anyone who admits to having these emotions as a failure. Funk explains, “Because our lives and social existence still require us to cope with such negative feelings, religion could be the place where such feelings are experienced, communicated and shared.” How, then, do we ensure religion serves this noble purpose and does not succumb to the role of ideological legitimizer of violence? Funk identifies four preconditions: 1) religion must promote closeness, or solidarity, with the oppressed, the victimized and the downtrodden; 2) religion must allow humans opportunities to experience such unwanted affects as powerlessness and defenselessness in helpful, constructive ways; 3) religion must not “use violence toward the believer,” or, not demand acts such as forced confession or forced conversion; and, 4) religion must teach people to be critical of violence with an understanding that violence and defensive aggression are opposites. Scott Graybow’s “Psychoanalysis as Capitalist Enterprise: Or, Reflections on the Past, Present and Future of an Alienated Discipline” argues psychoanalysis might be conceptualized as an alienated discipline, or, more precisely, as a discipline that has assumed the role of capitalist enterprise and as such is separated from its essence as a radical, subversive activity. The chapter begins with a review of the social justice origins of psychoanalysis. It then details how and why psychoanalysis transitioned away from being a clinic-based, social justice movement into a medical subspecialty geared towards a primarily white and affluent patient population. With this context in mind, the chapter then proceeds to explore the question of whether, as workers operating in the capitalist mode of production, contemporary psychoanalysts suffer with alienation. This review hypothesizes that, while analysts do not fit Marx’s traditional definition of alienation, the fact that money plays a central role in the analytic relationship in a private practice setting suggests the presence of a modern form of alienation, one that all workers in today’s neoliberal

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Introduction

market economy suffer from, even white-collar workers. The chapter concludes with a review of Graybow’s thoughts on how to counter this trend: the establishment of worker-owned, psychoanalytic co-ops. Leonard Steverson’s “Society as Patient: The Development of a Psychoanalytic Sociology” explores the ways a melding of psychoanalysis and sociology might promote much needed social justice outcomes. The chapter begins with a review of the work of the Frankfurt School, and then goes on to highlight contemporary research that seeks to carry on the School’s interest in melding psychology with social change theory. The chapter ends with a discussion of potential areas of application for what Steverson refers to as “socio-psychoanalysis.” These areas include social character analyses, or characterological studies concerning one’s motivations toward such things as terrorist violence, and macro-level social problems such as bullying. The book concludes with Ritu Sharma and Sharon Writer’s “Psychoanalytical Principles: Valuable Mechanism for Diagnosis in the 21st Century.” This chapter explores the ways the social justice core of psychoanalysis can be expanded to address issues stemming from the amalgamation of today’s economic inequality and technological advancements. They begin with a valuable literature review that documents the rise, fall and recent resurgence of psychoanalysis. This review highlights the growing interest in psychoanalysis among empirical researchers who have demonstrated successfully the efficacy of psychoanalysis as a clinical intervention vis a vis more traditional “evidence based” treatments such as cognitive behavioral therapy. Further adding to the contemporary value of psychoanalysis, Sharma and Writer argue, is its ability to enrich our understanding of recent developments in the field of neuroscience. Turning to the matter of technology, the authors explore how a psychoanalytic lens can deepen our understanding of the impact of online social networking. Discussing how social networking allows one a medium to share the contents of the unconscious, they explain, “the idea of ‘out of sight, out of mind’ cannot work in the online world, which has its own unique algorithm to remind one of one’s stored unconscious.” Thus, the application of psychoanalytic concepts to our actions and decisions vis a vis technologies such as social networking underscore the value of psychoanalysis as a means to understand “the new psychological conditions that plague members of a tech-heavy, global culture.”

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References Altman, N. (2010). The analyst in the inner city: Race, class and culture through a psychoanalytic lens (2nd ed.). New York: Taylor & Francis Group. Altman, N. (2015). Psychoanalysis in an age of accelerating cultural change: Spiritual globalization. New York: Routledge. Aron, L., & Starr, K. (2013). A psychotherapy for the people: Towards a progressive psychoanalysis. New York: Routledge. Danto, E. (2005). Freud’s free clinics: Psychoanalysis and social justice, 1918-1938. New York: Columbia University Press. Hewitt, M. (2012). Dangerous amnesia: Restoration and renewal of the connections between psychoanalysis and critical social theory. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 48(1), 72-99. Jacoby, R. (1983). The repression of psychoanalysis: Otto Fenichel and the political Freudians. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Layton, L., Hollander, N., & Gutwill, S. (Eds.). (2006). Psychoanalysis, class and politics: Encounters in the clinical setting. New York: Routledge. Rustin, M. (1991). The good society and the inner world: Psychoanalysis, politics and culture. London: Verso.

PART I: ERICH FROMM’S PROGRESSIVE PSYCHOANALYSIS

CHAPTER ONE MY OWN CONCEPT OF MAN ERICH FROMM

The following paper, written by Fromm in 1969, is the second part of a longer paper titled “Freud’s Model of Man and Its Social Determinants.” It was to be presented by Fromm at the Third International Forum that took place in Mexico City in 1969. Because of his health situation, Fromm stayed in Europe and was not able to present the paper. Thus, one of his pupils read the paper. The first part of “Freud’s Model of Man and Its Social Determinants” was published in 1970 in The Crisis of Psychoanalysis. The second part, titled "My Own Concept of Man," refers to Fromm’s concept of man and his psychoanalytic understanding of man. It is published here in book form in English for the first time. In the following, I want to give a brief sketch of my own anthropological views as they have been expressed in my work since 1931. I should like to say first a word about the question why I call the radical humanistic revision of Freud's theory as I have undertaken it “psychoanalysis,” and why I do not consider it to be a special “school.” The reason is simply that this revision is based upon the findings of Freud, especially with regard to the role of the unconscious, repression, resistance, the significance of childhood experiences, transference and the dynamic concept of character. If one looks at my views from the standpoint of dogmatic, orthodox analysis as not being psychoanalysis, then I can only say that in my opinion a theory that remains unchanged in all its essential points in the course of 70 years proves paradoxically, by this very rigidity, that it has changed in its deepest core. Aside from this, the question can be decided only from a theoretical point of view, and not by the fiat of the psychoanalytic bureaucracy. In describing briefly what I consider to be the social determinants of my own views, I can do so only with the reservation that others may be more objective. The most obvious change lies in the fact that my active

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thinking began after the First World War, while the belle époque was only a beautiful and somewhat nostalgic childhood memory. The last years of the First World War, the revolutionary process since 1917, the hopes of the 20’s and the disappointments in the 30’s determined decisively my own thinking in the direction of a radical critique of society and ideology. A critique not only of capitalist society, but also of the system of “socialism” which, under the leadership of Stalin succeeded in the total falsification of Marxist thought. The philosophical climate of radical humanism, historical materialism, dialectical and process-oriented philosophy have taken the place of mechanistic materialism and biological vitalism. The decisive philosophical influences are characterized by the names of Heraclitus, Spinoza, Hegel and Marx, and in addition to those were the humanist influence of the Prophets, of Buddhism, Master Eckhart and Goethe. In contrast to Freud, I do not look on man chemically as homme machine, driven by the chemically conditioned mechanism unpleasurepleasure, but as being primarily related to others and in need of them; not, in the first place, for the mutual satisfaction of needs, but for reasons which follow from the nature of man. The nature of man I consider to be not a definable, unchangeable substance which is observable as such, but as an opposition which exists exclusively in the human being: an opposition between being in nature and being subject to all its laws and simultaneously to transcend nature, because man, and only he, is aware of himself, and of his existence, in fact, the only instance in nature where life has become aware of itself. At the basis of this insoluble existential dichotomy (existential in contrast to historically conditioned opposites which can be made to disappear, like the one between wealth and poverty) lies an evolutionary, biologically given fact: man emerges from animal evolution at the point where determination by instincts has reached a minimum, while at the same time the development of that part of the brain which is the basis for thinking and imagination has developed far beyond the order of size which is found among the primates. This fact makes man on the one hand more helpless than the animal, and gives him on the other the possibility for a new, even though entirely different kind of strength. Man qua man has been thrown out of nature, yet is subject to it; he is a freak of nature, as it were. This objective, biological fact of man's inherent dichotomy requires new solutions, that is to say, human development. Subjectively, the awareness of having been torn away from his natural basis and of being an isolated and unrelated fragment in a chaotic world, would lead to insanity (the insane person is one who has lost his place in a structured world, one

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which he shares with others and in which he can orient himself.) All the energies of man have the aim to transform the unbearable dichotomy into a bearable one, and to create ever new and, as far as possible, better solutions for this dichotomy. Needless to say that aside from this man, like the animal, is also driven to satisfy his physiological needs, which he shares with the animal. Whatever the solutions for this dichotomy are, they must fulfill certain conditions. Man must be affectively related to others in order to overcome the anxiety produced by his total isolation; he must have a frame of orientation, a picture of the world that permits him to orient himself in the world and to find his place in it as an acting subject; he must adopt certain norms that make it possible for him to make relatively consistent decisions without much hesitation. As far as the contents of his relatedness, of his frame of orientation, and of his norms are concerned, they are important, but nevertheless only of secondary importance from the standpoint of his mental survival. As to the question of the “nature” or the “science” of man, this theory proposes that this science (that by Freud according to which man is man) consists in nothing but the opposition which produces dialectically different solutions; it does not mean that the science of man is identical with any of these solutions. To be sure, the number and quality of its solutions is not arbitrary and unlimited but determined by the qualities of the human organism and its environment. The data of history, child psychology, psychopathology, as well as the history of art, religion and of myths, make it possible to formulate certain hypotheses about the number and kind of such possible solutions. As to the nature of human motivation, certain important differences exist between the revised model and Freud’s. Freud assumed that physiology is a source of human drives. This is character, inasmuch as we deal with the level of human self-preservation and to a certain degree also of sexuality, but the most important part of human passions have a different aim, that of the realization of human faculties and potentialities.1 Human potentialities strive passionately to express themselves in those objects in the world to which they correspond and thus they unite and relate man with the world and free man from his isolation. To put it another way: man is not determined only by a lack of tension (unpleasure) as Freud believed; he is not less strongly motivated to express himself in ways which have no purpose of practical use. In myth, art, religion, play, 1

This idea was expressed clearly by Marx, then again Kurt Goldstein gave it a central place in his scientific thought and Abram Maslow and a number of other psychiatrists have followed him in this respect.

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we see significant examples of this human need from the beginning of man’s history. The interest in all that which transcends the person and man’s survival which requires stimulation and, in turn, is stimulated is an elementary human need. From this socio-biological view-point of man follow consequences for the source of human energy. While in the Freudian system the source of energy is the inner chemistry which gives tension, it only aims at reduction of tension. In the model proposed here the source of energy lies in the total organism and is mobilized by the organism's passionate attempt for union with the world and for the transcending of mere self-preservation and selfpurposefulness. There is no reason to differentiate between various kinds of energy in the organism. Man, then, has two vital needs: one, as far as his physiological constitution is concerned, that of physical survival, and one as far as his mental survival is concerned, sanity. The second need is specifically human, and not less important than the first–in fact, sometimes more important. In this period of nuclear threat one is prone to wish that the drive for physical survival may have a stronger effect than seems to be the case in reality. The vast majority of people play with the possibility of collective suicide because certain psychic needs like the desire for power, property, honor, etc., are stronger than the need to survive. We may assume that the total energy produced by the organism is used by man for both aims, that of physical and mental survival. Hence the various solutions for the existential dichotomy are just as charged with energy as the ego drives or the libido. For this reason it follows that there is no reason to separate various kinds of energy or to speak of desexualized energy as it is suggested by the ego psychologists. Many aims which man passionately pursues are rationalized by modern man as motivated by rational and purposeful considerations, while they are in reality psychological aims which in other social structures have been conceived of as religious, in a broad sense of the word. Modern man is fond of believing that primitive man rationalized practical purposes as religious ones; he does not see that he tends to rationalize religious needs as practical and utilitarian ones. By “religious” I am not using the word in the conventional sense, but in reference to the collective, passionate needs which aim at the regulation of the affective relatedness of man to the world, and to the solution of his existential human problem. The dialectic-humanist revision deviates from Freud’s model still in other aspects, of which I want to mention here only some of the most important ones. First of all, in the concept of the unconscious. In the

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revised model the unconscious is not conceived as a place with a certain content, but as a function. There is no such thing as the unconscious. There is only the function of “being aware” of the reality which exists inside or outside of man. From this it follows that there is no special content of the unconscious. We can repress the awareness of inner or outer reality; that which is repressed can be archaic, irrational and evil but it can also be wiser, more rational and better than that which exists in our consciousness. The admission of certain contents of experience to consciousness is in the first place socially conditioned and only marginally by individual childhood experiences. This is so because an experience is admitted to consciousness only if it can pass through the social filter. This filter consists of language, logic and the “thinkable” and “unthinkable” contents as they are characteristic for every society. What is conscious in one society remains unconscious in another. Only the fully developed society which is not in need of any system for suppression and manipulation can leave man free to be aware of all reality, since such a society has nothing to protect that needs to be repressed.2 Within every society the size and intensity of repression varies with the degree of the development for independence and active productivity which it can permit its members. The moral problem of man is seen differently in this revised concept from what it is in Freud’s system. While, as indicated above, Freud’s theory of the Super-Ego is mainly correct inasmuch as it is a critical theory of the conscience of most men today and in past history, it nevertheless is not entirely correct. Aside from the “authoritarian conscience” man has still another one, the “humanist conscience,” or a voice which in terms of goals and norms calls him back to himself in the name of his optimal and at the same time real possibilities. While this voice is often drowned by the voice of the authoritarian conscience, that is to say, while the humanistic conscience is often 2

I should like to add a remark which refers to the view-point which has been emphasized by Herbert Marcuse. He believes that among other things the liberation of the sadistic and coprophilic perversions is a necessary condition for the full experience of happiness of the free man in the “non-repressive” society. He does not see the clinical fact for which there is ample evidence, that these perversions themselves are the product of pathological social and individual constellations which are based on force and lack of freedom. The problem is not, as he thinks, that these anal-sadistic strivings should not be repressed in a nonrepressive society, but that they do not develop in such a society. As one example I want to point to the fact that the “social character” of the German lower middle class, the core supporters of Hitler, had exactly the character orientation which was described by Freud as anal-sadistic. (I have written in Escape from Freedom about the reasons for this connection.)

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unconscious, the fact is that it exists, and that its existence can be inferred from many observable phenomena, like feelings of guilt, loss of energy, or dreams, nevertheless many times the voice of humanistic conscience is also conscious. The content of this humanistic conscience is essentially identical with the norms as they are common to all great humanist religious and ethical systems. It has to be noted, however, that the conscious recognition of these traditional norms does not prove in any way that they have not become the contents of an authoritarian conscience, and hence have been falsified in their real meaning. Psychoanalytic theory permits going one step further. In order to demonstrate this, we must return once more to Freud’s theory in order to extract from it a thought it contains only implicitly. Freud assumed that character is determined by the various libidinous levels of development. He postulated the development from primary narcissism, that is, total unrelatedness, to oral-receptive, oral-sadistic, and anal-sadistic up to the genital level, which in principle is reached around puberty. He assumed that the fully developed mature person leaves the pre-genital levels essentially behind him and his character is determined mainly by the genital libido. This scheme is first of all an evolutionary scheme of the libido, and of the resulting relatedness to the world, which has no obvious reference to values. Nevertheless, it is not difficult to recognize that implicitly it represents a scheme of values. The adult mature person, the “genital character” in Freud’s sense, is capable of “love and work,” while the pre-genital character is one which has not fully developed and is in this sense crippled. The clinical data of psychoanalysis makes this much clearer than the theory. The oral receptive person is a dependent, and the oral sadistic, an exploitative character. The anal sadistic character is that belonging to a person who enjoys the submission and suffering of others, and who is at the same time an avaricious, hoarding person. Only the genital character has reached full independence. He respects, and as Freud sometimes says, loves the other person. Precisely because the pre-genital fixations are an expression of unsolved libido problems, they tend to foster the development of the neurotic character. What matters here is the fact that in Freud’s scheme (as also in many others) there is a hidden scale of values to be found. The genital character is more highly developed than the pre-genital. He is desirable and represents the goal, and hence the norm for the development of character. For Freud, therefore, the anal-sadistic character, for instance, is not a value-neutral variation but the result of a failure in the normal process of development. Seen in this light we find that the hidden value scale in

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Chapter One

Freud’s scheme of the libido and character is not too different from the humanistic scale of values: independence, respect for others, and love are better than dependence, avarice, and sadism. Freud’s theory that one can separate sexuality and character remains correct, regardless of the problem whether sexuality determines character or character sexual behavior. For this reason the Freudian system does not permit looking at pre-genital sexuality and the perversions rooted in it as so many forms of sexual satisfaction which are not different among themselves in terms of value. Inasmuch as they are regressive in terms of libido development, they are also regressive in terms of character development, and hence negative. Why this holds true especially for the anal sadistic libido and the anal character cannot be demonstrated within the limits of this paper. The scale of values which I have discussed here as being implicit and hidden in Freud’s scheme of the development of the libido and of character is made explicit in the revised model of man’s nature. This revision was made easier by clinical observations which have suggested that instead of the libido and the stimuli mediated by the erogenous zones being the roots of character, they are the total mode of relatedness to the world and to oneself. Man is compelled to put his own system of relatedness (“system of socialization”) in the place of instinctive determination, and to develop his own system of acquisition and use (“system of assimilation”), again as a substitute for the instinctively determined mode of acquisition. The various systems are necessary for the satisfaction of his vital interests, and hence they are charged with energy. There are basically two possibilities for the system of socialization and assimilation. The “unproductive” orientation in the sphere of assimilation in which all that is desired is not obtained by human activity but by receiving, exploiting, or avaricious hoarding; in the sphere of relatedness, dependence, sadistic control, or destructiveness are the manifestations of the unproductive orientation. Briefly, greed and inner passivity, as used by Aristotle and Spinoza, characterize unproductiveness. The productive orientation, on the other hand, is based on generating activity which means in the sphere of acquisition, of work, and in the sphere of relatedness of love, respect and independence. In other terms the unproductive mode of orientation is that of having (and using), the productive that of being. One can still establish conditions of value between various character orientations in an entirely different sense, namely in terms of the optimal functioning of the character system. It can be said with regard to any system that it functions optimally when all its parts are integrated in such a way that each part can function optimally, and that conflicts within the

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system and between the system and other unavoidable systems find fruitful solutions instead of energy-wasting ones. It can be shown in detail that the productive system of character is also that which functions optimally from an energy standpoint. To give only one example: the dependent person in an unproductive system can satisfy his needs for closeness and intimacy, but he loses in independence and freedom. In the productive system, on the other hand, we find a synthesis between love and intimacy on the one hand, and independence and integrity on the other (provided we understand by love the effective union of two persons under the conditions of their mutual independence and their integrity). In this general sense the system of productive orientation is superior to the unproductive one in terms of values. The productive system permits the development of the optimal intensity of life and for the capacity of joy. The unproductive system wastes and destroys a great deal of human energy. One important point must be emphasized here. The theory of character as I have presented it does not refer to the isolated individual, but to man in the only form in which he can exist, namely as a social being. Saying this I do not refer to “a” or “the” society, in which man lives; these terms are empty abstractions. Man lives in a specific social system, characterized by its specific productive forces, mode of production, class relations, etc.– briefly, society in the sense in which Marx conceived it for the first time in full clarity. Individual variants of character determined by personal circumstances and by constitution are essentially variants of the “social character.” In saying this I am introducing a new concept into the presentation of the model of man, that of the “social character.” The social character is the nucleus of character traits common to most members of a society or a class. We start from the premise that man, living in a specific social system needs to develop a character structure which corresponds to this system. First of all one has to consider the fact that every society has an immanent tendency to continue its own structure; not only because the interests of those classes ruling in a society require this, but also because the system of a functioning society corresponds to a considerable degree to the given socio-economic needs and possibilities (when these change an antagonism arises between the social character and the new social factors which in the historical process has often been resolved in a productive synthesis, but also often by catastrophic upheavals). In order to function, each society needs not only material productive forces, but also the energies contained in the productive force=man. These energies, however, cannot be used in their general form, but only in specific forms, namely in character traits which make man desire to do

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what he has to do in his social function: to serve, to rule, to cooperate, to make war, to consume, to work, etc. The social character affects the transformation of general human energy into socially useful energy. People who believe that the social character is “natural,” accept also the system of ideologies and thought systems corresponding to it. These reinforce at the same time the social character because they make it appear as being desirable and “good.” The social system rewards in many ways those whose individual character is closest to the social character. The social character has the important function for all individuals of making attractive, or at least tolerable, what is socially necessary, and to create the basis for consistent behavior because the social character becomes “second nature,” substituting for the lost instincts. To sum up, the social character serves first the function of society by the transformation of human energy from its general into a socially useful form; second, the adaptation of the individual to society, and third, as a mediator between the socio-economic structure and ideology. (In the sense of Marx, between the “economic base” and the “ideological superstructure.”) Concluding these remarks it might be indicated to raise the question whether the revision of Freud’s concept of man as it was sketched in these pages is optimistic, in contrast to Freud’s picture. The revised concept presented here is certainly not optimistic in the sense of faith in the progress of the 18th and 19th centuries. But it is also not tragic in Freud’s sense, who believed that capitalist society is the un-improvable, optimum of all social possibilities, and who, because of this, often looked at ahistorical dichotomies as if they were existential ones. As I have indicated, I believe that the existential dichotomies cannot be abolished, and remain the motivating power of human development, although in their dialectic development these conflicts result in ever higher and more human solutions. Man does not become a superman nor does human society become a paradise. But the dialectic process can humanize the contradiction, and society can liberate itself from the influence of irrational and unnecessary social pathology to such a degree that one can rightly speak, with Marx, of all previous history as being the pre-history of mankind. Related to this is another problem. While this picture of man assumes the basis that human existence is based on a definite empirical, observable dichotomy, this does not imply that one can predict a definite and certain goal of this development. Man driven on by immanent contradictions further and further, remains an open system. The higher his development individually and socially, the greater his vulnerability and with that also the possibility of total destruction. His progress remains always only one

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side of an alternative, the other side of which is barbarism, or psychic or physical self-destruction. All our knowledge of man is based on our previous experience with man, and hence incomplete and questionable. What other unforeseen possibilities exist within man we cannot know. The “human possibility” is unknown, and can manifest itself only in the historical process. That is why man, in the last analysis, is indefinable and indescribable; the total person is unknowable, partly because the hidden possibilities may already exist in him, but partly because he cannot be fully studied inasmuch as he is a living process. If in the course of history, theology becomes transformed into anthropology, one important aspect of God, as it has been emphasized particularly in “negative theology” remains valid also for anthropology: man is unknowable and nameless. This holds true for the alive man in the same sense as theology has formulated it for the “living God.”

CHAPTER TWO CONCERNED KNOWLEDGE: ERICH FROMM ON THEORY AND PRACTICE JOAN BRAUNE

Erich Fromm was many things: a psychoanalyst, a philosopher and public intellectual, an activist and socialist organizer on an international level and a man of deep (non-theistic) faith. Some scholars (L. Friedman, M. Maccoby) have suggested a tension between Fromm’s work as a scholar or psychoanalyst on the one hand and his work as an outspoken advocate of social change on the other. Fromm’s “prophetic” side or so-called “idealism” is often incorrectly contrasted with his scholarly or “scientific” work. In fact, Fromm argued against interlocking false dichotomies between theory and practice, science and values, and reason and emotion. According to Fromm, the pursuit of knowledge should be “concerned” and “interested,” study must be “active” in order to be productive, and the thinker (like the psychoanalyst and patient) must be open to being transformed by ideas at a deep level, able to move fluidly from knowledge of ideas to action upon them. To make this argument, the author employs a range of Fromm’s works, but focuses especially on Beyond the Chains of Illusion: My Encounter with Marx and Freud and the discussion of the “being mode” of study in To Have or To Be? She argues that far from distorting the results of research, such passionate concern opens up new truths. Fromm was far from being blinded by his activist commitment to socialist humanism, and his more “scientific” critics are missing the larger thrust of his thought.

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Introduction Erich Fromm (1900-1980) was many things: a philosopher, psychoanalyst, public intellectual, an activist and socialist organizer on an international level and a man of deep (non-theistic) faith. Some scholars have suggested a tension between Fromm’s work as a theoretician or scientific psychoanalyst on the one hand and his work as an outspoken advocate of social change on the other. Fromm’s “prophetic” side is often— incorrectly—contrasted with his theoretical, scholarly or “scientific” work. In fact, Fromm frequently argued against interlocking false dichotomies between theory and practice, between science and values, and between reason and emotion. According to Fromm, the pursuit of knowledge should be “concerned” and “interested,” study must be “active” in order to be productive, and the thinker must be open to being transformed by ideas at a deep level, able to move fluidly from knowledge of ideas to action upon them. Far from being blinded by his activist commitments to peace and socialist humanism, Fromm’s work was illumined by his engagement with the world. Fromm’s more “scientific” critics are missing the larger thrust of his thought. In other words, for our present purposes: Fromm was not getting distracted from the hard work of psychoanalysis and moving off into more fluffy regions of thought by voicing his political ideals. Rather, he was doing exactly what a psychoanalyst or any other scientist must do in Fromm’s view in order to obtain the truth. In the following, I explore Fromm’s own work on the question of the relationship between theory and practice, as well as employing examples from the life and research of his friend Katherine Dunham, the path-breaking African American anthropologist, choreographer, dancer and activist, another scientific researcher who found that she could not remain outside the object of her study and had to participate fully in order to know. In his psychoanalytic practice as well with his social-theoretical scholarship, Erich Fromm sought to become a “participant” with the patient. When he began feeling bored by his sessions with patients early in his psychoanalytic practice, Fromm shifted from the position of passive observer to active participant. This entailed shifting from the traditional model of the psychoanalyst sitting behind the patient’s couch, to meeting face to face, from “center to center.” This change in external set-up precipitated and was itself reflective of a shift in Fromm’s own understanding and engagement with the patient. Fromm (2009) writes: [I]nstead of being an observer, I had to become a participant; to be engaged with the patient; from center to center, rather than from periphery to periphery. I discovered that I could begin to see things that I had not

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Chapter Two discovered before, that I began to understand him, rather than to interpret what he said, and that I hardly ever felt tired any more during the analytic hour. At the same time I experienced that one can be fully objective while being fully engaged (p. 117).

Like Sandor Ferenczi, whose reputation he defended, Fromm believed that in order to be effective the psychoanalyst had to have genuine love and concern for the patient. Fromm (2006) writes in The Art of Loving that love or “concern” is a precondition of knowledge: “Knowledge would be empty if it were not motivated by concern…[Knowledge is] an aspect of love [in] which one does not stay on the periphery, but penetrates to the core” (p. 27). One reason this love is essential is as a tool of objectivity, as love liberates the psychoanalyst of the narcissism that could prevent him or her from understanding the patient on the patient’s own terms instead of projecting the analyst’s own assumptions onto the patient. A failure to love or to be concerned leads to a failure of objectivity, a failure to “see the patient as he is, and not as I want him to be” (Fromm, 2009, p. 117). Although supporters of Fromm’s psychoanalytic method and theories might be quick to support this idea, they may be unlikely to see its wider sociopolitical implications for Fromm’s thought, when the “patient” becomes not a “sick individual” but a “sick society.” Commentators who accuse Fromm’s “prophetic” impulse of biasing his social theorizing are making this exact mistake, as we see in two important works on Fromm by Lawrence Friedman and Michael Maccoby. Lawrence Friedman’s 2013 biography, The Lives of Erich Fromm: Love’s Prophet, frequently contrasts Fromm as evidence-based, datagathering researcher with Fromm as activist “prophet.” Friedman draws from Michael Maccoby, who assisted on one of Fromm’s most important empirical studies (on “social character” in a Mexican village) and was analyzed by Fromm. In an earlier essay, “The Two Voices of Erich Fromm: The Prophetic and the Analytic” (1994), Maccoby argues that Fromm’s work is characterized by a tension between the analyst and the prophet, and that Fromm’s work is weakest when the prophetic predominates over the analytic. Friedman and Maccoby show wariness towards Fromm’s prophetic impulse and seem to conclude that Fromm’s scholarly objectivity is endangered by his outspoken advocacy. Neither Friedman nor Maccoby accurately grasp Fromm’s conception of the prophetic or of “prophetic messianism,” seeing Fromm’s embrace of the prophetic as either wild-eyed emotionalism or deterministic predictionmaking (Braune, 2014). However, Fromm’s “prophet” is in fact one who denounces injustice and organizes by means of educating the public. Contrary to Friedman’s snickering about “love’s prophet,” Fromm has a

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careful and technical definition of the “prophet,” according to which the prophet is neither an esoteric seer nor a nagging moralizer. The prophet does not make “predictions” and rejects determinism (Fromm, 2010). Fromm considers Spinoza, Marx, and Rosa Luxemburg “prophets” and “alternativists” who rejected determinism. As a public educator and agitator, the prophet warns people about the likely results of particular courses of action, beginning from an informed understanding of present possibilities and an ethical commitment to social change, not mystical foresight. However, even under this definition of the prophetic, Friedman and Maccoby would not be satisfied with Fromm’s prophetic impulse. Friedman and Maccoby are skeptical of Fromm’s syntheses of advocacy and study, denunciation and scholarship, and organizing and analysis. I suggest that such skepticism, found in the work of many of Fromm’s critics, is unwarranted given the contours of Fromm’s own thought on the question of theory and practice, and given the philosophical traditions from which Fromm draws on the question of theory and practice. In fact, far from being naïve or neurotic, Fromm’s melding of the prophetic with the scientific was wholly intentional, playing cleverly on a number of intellectual traditions. In one particularly deep and complex passage, Fromm (2009) subtly links his understanding of the close relationship between theory and practice within the traditions of German philosophy including Kant and Marx, and emphasizes that both theory and practice are incomplete when not united: The interrelation between concern and knowledge has often been expressed—and rightly so—in terms of the interrelation between theory and practice. As Marx once wrote, one must not only interpret the world, but one must change it. Indeed, interpretation without intention of change is empty; change without interpretation is blind. Interpretation and change, theory and practice, are not two separate factors which can be combined; they are interrelated in such a way that knowledge becomes fertilized by practice and practice is guided by knowledge; theory and practice both change their nature once they cease to be separate (p. 118).

Here Fromm states his position on the question of theory and practice and links his own position with Marx’s. Fromm correctly grasps the import of Marx’s eleventh thesis on Feuerbach (“The philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world, the point is to change it.”). Fromm understands that Marx was not abandoning philosophy for a praxisfocused economics, as some vulgar materialists would have it. Rather, Marx was emphasizing that theory or philosophy itself must become a

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material force for change. (As Marx (1843) had earlier stated, “Theory becomes a material force when it grips the masses” (p. 52).) Fromm also alludes to German idealism, with a nod to its progenitor, Immanuel Kant. “Interpretation without change is empty; change without interpretation is blind,” Fromm writes. Although the meaning here is not identical with Kant’s famous line—“Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind”—the resemblance in form is obviously intended. There is also a resemblance in meaning: for both Kant and the Marxist Fromm, the immediacy of sensory, bodily experience cannot occur in strict isolation from the realm of thought in which we deal in logic and argument. Further, just as Kant’s practical philosophy, through the understanding of free will, provides one of the few possible points of entry to the noumenal or ultimate reality, Fromm’s unity of theory and practice through the work of the organizer also provides a point of contact with the ultimate, as will be evident shortly. Finally, as shown here, for Fromm, interpretation and change, theory and practice are a unity; they are not two separate things that can be compared and occasionally brought together or harmonized. Each is united to the other, and when viewed as a dynamic whole, the nature of each is transformed. As both are drawn to Fromm by their interest in psychoanalysis, Maccoby and Friedman would no doubt acknowledge the important role of love and concern in Fromm’s psychoanalytic practice, but they plainly are missing a key theme in his thought if they expect from him a strict division between theory and practice when it comes to social theory and social critique.

Addressing Some Preliminary Objections Although Fromm proudly calls the best thinkers “interested” and “concerned,” many scholars might worry about overly “interested” research. Firstly, one common concern is that a “participant researcher” or “participant observer” interferes with the object of study, leading to potentially biased or inaccurate results. For example, how will a small group of local small business supporters campaigning against Wal-Mart be influenced in their strategy, tactics and conversations by the frequent presence of a note-taking graduate student? Surely the graduate student’s presence will have at least some influence on how the meetings are conducted. On the other hand, as our note-taking graduate student would rightly object, participation surely cannot be dismissed solely on these grounds, since the same concern (that of the researcher’s presence changing the results) exists in situations where the researcher does not intend to be a participant. For example, an anthropologist visiting a remote

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tribe may believe she is offering an accurate ethnography of the tribe’s daily drumming ritual, when in fact the locals are producing an unusual performance to entertain a foreign guest with an interest in the “exotic.” Of course, for a socialist scholar like Fromm (or for our anti-Wal-Mart graduate student), changing the object of study (capitalism, alienation, etc.) is the aim of research, not a risk to be avoided. Unlike the naïve anthropologist who does not realize how her presence has biased her results, Fromm is consciously attempting to simultaneously know and change the world. One could even argue that this conscious awareness leads to more accurate results than allegedly more “objective” studies carried out by scientists who fail to take sufficient account of the impact of their observation on the object of study. Secondly, a similar objection that is likely to be raised against Fromm’s engaged scholarship is that one cannot be certain of obtaining the truth about something that one is simultaneously engaged in changing. That is, one might argue that it is impossible to adequately describe a process in which one is presently involved; even a sympathetic left-leaning Hegelian would point out that the Owl of Minerva only takes flight at dusk. One response to this apparent predicament is an ethical one, i.e., that knowledge must sometimes to be sacrificed to ethical practice. In certain situations, it is plainly unethical to refrain from changing the object of study in the hopes of obtaining more results. (Consider the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis experiments, for example, or some more recent studies of AIDS in Africa in which some research subjects or their partners were not informed that they had AIDS.) On the other hand, the ethical objection seems insufficient to cover all cases. In response to the concern about studying a process in which one is engaged, Fromm would point out that the objects of our study are never simply static before the intervention of our study. To view things as fixed and isolated before our intervention would be as naïve as to imagine them as fixed and isolated after our intervention (like the anthropologist unknowingly entertained by a special dance). The participant theorist is always entering into a situation already in flux. In fact, as I will show in more detail in the third section of this paper, reality for Fromm is not a set of objects but an ongoing process of which we are always already a part. What blinds us to this is not only capitalism, which fragments and reifies our understanding, but language itself. Fromm (2009) warns of a “fetishism of words” in which we stop experiencing what our words reference and instead relate only to the words themselves. Through this affective and intellectual process of losing the meaning of our own

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language, we sacrifice our understanding of the objects of our study far more than the note-taking graduate student does at the Wal-Mart meeting. To understand social reality we must enter more fully into it and become more fully aware of the ways in which we are always already bound up with the object of study, whether that is capitalist alienation, an individual psychoanalytic patient, the educational system or any of the many other areas of interest to Fromm and others. Becoming conscious of the social reality of which I am a part, and seeing myself as not only a passive knower of the world but an active knower-doer, according to Fromm, I overcome the separation between theory and practice and the related dichotomy in the modern world between knowledge and emotion. As Fromm suggests in The Sane Society, following John Dewey, the dichotomy in late capitalism between the intellectual and the emotional/aesthetic is intimately bound up with the loss of forms of “collective art,” such as folk dancing and communal religious ritual, and the replacement of collective art with atomized, passive forms of receiving entertainment. (One can only imagine what Fromm would say about recent developments that have so augmented this loss that the main form of entertainment in the modern world is one in which each individual stares into his or her own private screen, communicating with others and enjoying films and images nearly exclusively through their own individual, technological devices.) To better understand how aesthetic experience might suggest deeper ties between theory and practice that are being undermined in the modern or postmodern world, I will turn now to some insights that can be drawn from the life and writings of choreographer and dance anthropologist Katherine Dunham, a close friend of Fromm’s since the mid-1930s in Chicago.

Katherine Dunham: The Researcher and the Participant The experience of unity of theory and practice, and of reason and the emotional/aesthetic, can be further understood through the work of Katherine Dunham, a pioneering scholar in dance anthropology and Fromm’s sometime romantic partner, who met with Fromm in Chicago, New York, and Mexico (Dunham, 2005; Friedman, 2013). In her work and life Dunham attempted to understand her commitment as an African American to pan-African liberation and to locate this commitment within a humanist internationalism she had adopted partly through the influence of Fromm. It was Fromm, along with Charles Johnson of Fisk University, who encouraged Dunham to apply for a grant to study in the Caribbean. In the opening line of her book Island Possessed, Dunham (1994) ironically

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describes her Caribbean tour as an “invasion” (p. 4). Dunham writes, “It was with letters from Melville Herskovits, head of the Department of Anthropology at Northwestern University, that I invaded the Caribbean— Haiti, Jamaica, Martinique, Trinidad […] then Haiti again for the final stand for the real study” (Dunham, 1994, p. 132). In her study of the Caribbean, Dunham would push the boundaries of the newly emerging area of participant observation in the field of anthropology. Dunham went first to Jamaica, where she was formally and secretly initiated into the vanishing traditional religious practices of the Maroons, ex-slaves who had won their independence in Jamaica. Later, in Haiti, she chose to undergo initiation into Haitian vodou, and she became enmeshed in Haitian culture and society in profound ways, including eventually getting to know two Haitian presidents (Dunham, 1994). In Island Possessed, her memoir of her time in Haiti, Dunham (1994) “dances” back and forth between her roles as researcher and participant. Conceding in part to her thesis advisor Herskovits, she forgoes the “canzo,” or trial by fire ritual, which would have linked her to a particular vodou temple, or houngfor. In a passage worth examining in some detail, Dunham attempts to understand her motivation for refusal of the canzo. Did she simply bow to the authority of her advisor against her own desires (incidentally, a motivation of which Fromm would strongly disapprove)? Or did she reject the idea of loyalty to a single vodou temple as a matter of too much localism, akin to narrow nationalism (Fromm would have loved that reason)? Or were her reasons of some other type, such as a martyr complex? She reflects in particular on an image that she mentions elsewhere in the book: Fromm’s comparison of Dunham to Iphigenia, the Greek heroine who sacrifices herself to save her father and appease the gods. Here is the passage in question from Dunham’s (1994) Island Possessed: I have often wondered whether [this decision to forgo the canzo] was because of the never-ending quest for the novel, the statistics-gathering of the researcher, or another reason, which had troubled me, beginning as a doubt and developing into a full-grown suspicion. I was, in short, not at all sure of my sincerity in these pursuits and there seemed to be no way to put myself to the test, to find out. Could Herskovits tell me, could Erich Fromm, could Teoline or Degrasse tell me what part of me lived on the floor of the house for, felt awareness seeping from the earth and people and things around me, and what part stood to one side taking notes? Each moment lived in participation was real; still, without arranging this expressly, without conscious doing or planning or thinking I stayed outside the experience while being totally immersed in it…I can now observe with some pity, even amusement, the newly traveled, ethnic-

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Chapter Two saturated, homesick-for-Chicago Iphigenia wondering what next to do to prove herself a scientist to her Alma Mater; the true scholar to her country; the selfless sacrificial maiden to her people (p. 228).

Here Dunham explores the wide range of competing loyalties in which she is enmeshed and the variety of situations and perspectives she must parse to understand her identity as a scholar as well as a practitioner of vodou. Dunham knew, of course, of the role that vodou had played in igniting the world’s first and only successful slave revolution in Haiti, and her commitments were as much political as spiritual. As with her study in Jamaica of the Maroons, descendants of rebellious slaves, and her study of Black Muslims and similar religious movements in Chicago for the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s, Dunham’s interest in vodou arose through a fascination with Black culture and liberation struggles. Her travels to the Caribbean were at least in part a search for long-forgotten tools for liberation that might be recovered in that particularly important region of the Black Atlantic. Dunham knew that the Haitian vodou practitioners represented a legacy of struggle for freedom and a link back to Nan Guinée, to Africa, and she was keenly aware that her decision was not only between that of scholar and mystic, but between that of scholar and partisan of her people. Dunham’s ruminations about excessive scholarly distance and excessive loyalty to the world of academia seem out of place in the midst of her account of her thoroughly engaged and entirely bodily initiation into vodou. She suffers through hours of lying on the ground relatively motionless, even as a fellow neophyte involuntarily urinates onto the ground beside her. Some pages later, however, Dunham finds her resolve waning and is ashamed that she is unable to eat a raw egg as part of the ritual. However, she finds that her failure is not regarded and that she is welcomed and encouraged by the others participating in the ritual. As she rises from the uneaten raw egg, she ….danced more than I have ever danced in my life, before or after. I danced out all my anger at unknown things and at myself for trying to know them, frustration at the rotten egg and weariness with strange mores. I found myself alone with one, with another, or just by myself while others clapped and sang and it dawned on me that it was with affection and encouragement (Dunham, 1994, p. 234).

Dunham is seeking not factual information but “an experience” in the full sense of the term. Her embodied scholarship and spiritual existence transcend the prescribed limits of her academic discipline and even the limits of her own ego. She is “both one and two,” in Fromm’s terms; she is

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“alone with one, with another, or just by [herself],” taken up in the dance. Hannah Durkin (2011) writes that, …in Island Possessed, Dunham positions herself as a self-conscious narrator, who engages with and is yet complicit in scientific objectification but who, through religious worship and dance, physically immerses herself into Haitian culture. In her work, Island Possessed, she reconfigures anthropological investigation by blurring the boundaries between self and other in order to facilitate cultural exchange (p. 126).

Dunham’s initiation into the vodou was at least in some sense sincere, even if she frequently wrestled with whether her research might be somehow invasive or “complicit in scientific objectification” (as Durkin suggests above). By means of her initiation, Dunham moved from outside to inside of the object of study, and she was certainly changed by the object of her study and wished to be changed by it, as perhaps the great psychoanalyst or teacher is unafraid to be changed by the patient or the student. Halifu Osumare (2005) explains that Dunham was on a mission to transform the academic discipline of anthropology as well, as she forced it to contend fully, bodily and intellectually, with dance, spirituality and African practices. Osumare argues that Dunham’s work anticipates the “postmodern” work of anthropology in the 1970s, which rejected earlier assumptions about the objectivity of the researcher (p. 615). Hannah Durkin (2011) writes: Herskovits trained Dunham with the purpose of identifying African styles of dance in Haiti, Jamaica, Trinidad and Martinique. He prepared her for this role by instructing her in his anthropological method. He showed her how to be unobtrusive by acting as an unassuming, self-effacing presence within the community, thereby maximizing her chances of gaining cultural acceptance and inclusion. However, Herskovits’s instructions and training methods were not intended to facilitate social and cultural interaction, but instead represented a means of obtaining detailed research (p. 127).

Not only did Herskovits’s method limit social interaction, but certain truths were lost through it. Hannah Durkin (2011), again: Dunham was taught to read her observations as evidence of an African past, rather than as dynamic cultural practices with an ongoing social function and meaning…Herskovits and his contemporaries read cultural practices in historical terms, therefore helping to reinforce an illusory concept of cultural purity and disregarding the Black Atlantic as a key site of modernity (p. 128).

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Because Herskovits’s method cautioned scholarly distance, he may not have been able to contextualize the Koromantee war dance in Jamaica as Dunham did, when she participated enthusiastically in the dance as some of the young Jamaican Maroons looked on wistfully, and she envisioned again the history of the dance in the midst of the anti-slavery uprising against the British troops (Osumare, 2005). Although some experiments with participant observation were occurring in anthropology in the 1930s, few went as far as Katherine Dunham, whose methods were “unusually embracive” (Durkin, 2011, p. 128).

Theory and Practice: Unity with the All Like Dunham, Fromm believed in a unity of theory and practice that moves the scholar’s focus from outside to inside, moving from objective observer to engaged transformer. All such knowledge that adequately unites the theoretical and practical, all “concerned knowledge,” is “therapeutically oriented knowledge,” whether in fact the object of study is a patient or a society. Fromm (2009) writes: If I am a participant rather than a distant observer, I become interested (inter-esse means ‘to-be-in’). ‘To-be-in’ means not to be outside. If ‘I-amin,’ then the world becomes my concern…Concerned knowledge, the ‘being-in’ of knowledge, then, leads to the desire to help; it is, if we use the word in a broad sense, therapeutically oriented knowledge (p. 116).

Fromm would have recognized that in Dunham’s own case, her concerned knowledge led her to a life-long closeness to Haiti. (In her eighties she even embarked on a dangerously long hunger-strike in support of Haitian refugees who were being deported from U.S. shores.) In Fromm’s view, the unity of theory and practice is tied to a (nontheistic) mystical encounter with the totality of reality, an encounter through which one knows oneself and the world by means of a single act. He must have been fascinated by Dunham’s bodily engagement with the spiritual traditions and rebellious dances of the Caribbean, and perhaps he knew how much farther she would take participant research than did other important anthropologists of their time whom Fromm also knew, such as Margaret Mead. Perhaps Fromm sensed in Dunham’s early research on Black religious movements for the WPA in 1930s Chicago, before he encouraged her Caribbean journey, that Dunham was seeking to unite not only theory and practice, but spirituality and political resistance. Fromm’s view on the unity of theory and practice closely resembles Georg Lukács’s class-conscious worker in History and Class Consciousness,

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a book Fromm (2004) praises in Marx’s Concept of Man. After becoming a Marxist, Lukács attempted to distance himself publicly from his early spiritual romanticism and the early influence of thinkers like Kierkegaard on his thought, but Lukács’s vision of the unity of theory and practice in History and Class Consciousness is difficult not to read in somewhat mystical terms. Lukács’s class-conscious worker understands and creates herself and the totality of social reality through the same act. For Lukács in History and Class Consciousness, Marxism is “the standpoint of totality,” which unites theory and practice. This standpoint is a quasi-mystical beholding of reality as a single process, an ongoing human making, in which all that is (including humanity itself) is discovered to be a human product. Even apparently untouched nature (to whatever extent such a thing exists) is always perceived by human beings through the lens of human understanding as shaped by history. The class-conscious worker unites herself with the universe and helps shape world history. She experiences unity with the whole and transcends the limits of individual existence. By attaining the standpoint of totality, the subject becomes the object (through knowing and transforming herself), and the object (subjugated humanity and nature) becomes the subject (agent of change). However, the non-committed “neutral” observer or the “blinkered empiricist” remains blinded by her external viewpoint and cannot see how social facts are connected within a larger, world-historical totality. Lukács, under the influence of Hegel and Marx, can be seen as belonging to a subterranean philosophical current with predecessors including Nicholas of Cusa, Giordano Bruno and Benedict Spinoza. For Cusanus, Bruno and Spinoza, the infinity of God or of nature would be the basis for a new humanism in which limitless possibilities were open to those who could unite themselves by contemplation and activity with the boundless. Fromm was keenly aware of this perspective and he himself stands within it, especially with regard to the credit he gives to Spinoza and as noticed in his interest in Meister Eckhart, D.T. Suzuki’s Zen Buddhism and Walt Whitman’s friend, Maurice Bucke, author of Cosmic Consciousness. Even Fromm’s appreciation for German anarchist revolutionary Gustav Landauer is relevant here. Landauer, who was fascinated by Eckhart and translated Whitman into German, had much to say about the need for a spiritual shift on the left that would make abolition of the state possible, not through merely “smashing” the state, but through humanity transforming itself and “ceasing to be” the state through that transformation. Fromm (1955) praised Landauer as an exponent of “prophetic messianism,” grouping him together with Rosa Luxemburg (p. 239).

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In the essay “Through Separation to Community,” Landauer (2010) paints an image of the shift in consciousness that he hopes to ignite and suggests that the gap between theory and practice manifests itself through a lifeless language that has divorced itself from experience: Since Kant, conceptual thought has only killed the living world. Now the living world finally rises up and kills the dead concept instead…During our former attempts to touch and grasp the world, we have become tired and complacent; instead of incorporating it into ourselves, we have emptied it and handed it over to the hollow compartments of our general concepts… Let us take another way: let us allow the world to pass through ourselves, let us be ready to feel the world, to experience it, to allow ourselves to be grasped and seized by it. Until now everything has been divided into a poor, weak, active I and an unapproachable rigid, lifeless, passive world. Let us instead by the medium of the world, both active and passive…now transform ourselves into the spirit of the world. This is possible (p. 98).

Like Landauer, Fromm critiqued the way in which dead concepts and ideological language create a divorce between theoretical discourse, or even discourse generally on the one hand and action and affect on the other. The “fetishism of words” described by Fromm is instilled at a young age, as the immediacy of experience begins to be replaced by categories rid of life. For example, a child may be fascinated by observing a pigeon picking at a paper cup on a street corner and may watch with great intensity as the pigeon twists its head, blinks intently, smooths the cup with its foot and then tramples clumsily all over it to flatten it, clucking and fluttering its tail. This sort of primal “wonder,” to use Fromm’s (1959) word, is essential for Fromm to the creative experience. If while the child is absorbed in encountering such things in their immediacy, as often happens, an adult grabs the hand of the child and says something like, “Icky! Pigeon!”, the experience may then be replaced by a word and a category. The intense aesthetic experience of the pigeon in motion becomes classified under a category of things that are disgusting and relating to a particular animal going by the name of “pigeon.” The next time the child sees a pigeon, he will think, “Oh, pigeons. I’ve seen those before.” What presents itself in Aristotelian logic as intellectual progress—the progression from an unnamed, undifferentiated experience to an identifiable universal concept—also represents a certain loss of immediate experience, as Fromm keenly understood.

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The fact that the fetishism of language involves a loss of experience does not mean, however, that we can or should try to return to a childlike experience of the world, ditching all logic and crawling back into the womb of immediacy. The modern challenge for Fromm is to unite reason with deep experience and to thereby transcend the severing of thought from emotion, of our slogans from our ideals, and of our ideas from the actions which they demand. The scholar who is interested and concerned, who melds theory and practice, is caught up in a certain unity, in an “experience” in the Deweyan sense of the term, an aesthetic experience, that lifts her from her everyday experience, that stands out as separate. For example, John Dewey (2007) writes in Art as Experience: [W]e have an experience when the material experienced runs its course to fulfillment. Then and then only is it integrated within and demarcated in the general stream of experience from other experiences. A piece of work is finished in a way that is satisfactory; a problem receives its solution; a game is played through; a situation, whether that of eating a meal, playing a game of chess, carrying on a conversation, writing a book, or taking part in a political campaign, is so rounded out that its close is a consummation and not a cessation. Such an experience is a whole and carries with it its own individualizing quality and self-sufficiency. It is an experience… (p. 144).

When she studies the pigeon, the Frommian scholar is transported— she sees herself in the object of her study and feels herself united with the whole—and she achieves this unity through a mature process of knowing. Her experience of the pigeon stands out from the stream of the rest of her experience as a lived moment. It is an aesthetic experience that transcends dead concepts. No doubt Fromm’s insights here also owe much to Max Weber as well. In Weber’s and Fromm’s view, the power of language to distort and destroy is at least partly historically conditioned and is not uniformly troubling across all economic and cultural systems. Where words become tools for controlling people, words are less able to express the yearnings of the human heart. Language, like other commodities, becomes an alien power over humanity. This reification of ideas is deeply related to modernity’s schism between thought and feeling. Modern capitalism produces a world of, in Max Weber’s terms, bureaucratic “specialists without spirit” and consumerist “sensualists without heart.” The specialist without spirit has chosen “reason” (crippled by its devolution into technocratic jargon and its separation from the longings of the human heart), while the “sensualist without heart” embraces an emotionalism that is simultaneously violently dangerous and shallowly frivolous in its

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separation from reason and truth. If this problem arises from capitalism, one might conclude that the problem should be overcome through the creation of a different economic and social system (in Fromm’s case, through the replacement of capitalism with socialist humanism).

Conclusion As we have seen, those who attempt to separate the “prophetic” from the “scientific” Fromm are missing the point, not only in terms of Fromm’s psychoanalytic approach but in terms of the wider implications of “concerned knowledge” for Fromm’s social activism. All knowledge that adequately unites the theoretical and practical is “therapeutically oriented knowledge” for Fromm, that is, explicitly aimed at the repair of a damaged world. Fromm knew very well what he was doing in interlacing his theoretical claims and his sociopolitical programs and demands, and he proactively defended his understanding of the unity of theory and practice. Like his friend Katherine Dunham, Fromm sought to break artificial divisions between observation and participation. Furthermore, as we have only been able to briefly touch upon here, like Eckhart, Bruno, Spinoza and others, Fromm saw the unity of theory and practice as a quasi-mystical path to unity with the all or totality. Uniting theory and practice is not just an optional activity that should be allowed to certain hippie-ish researchers, nor is it merely a way of preventing study from going ethically amiss. Through love, concern and genuine interest (passionate engagement and wonder), we realize that we are always already a part of the processes that we study, and we enter more fully and consciously into social reality in order to both help and understand.

References Braune, J. (2014). Erich Fromm’s revolutionary hope: Prophetic messianism as a critical theory of the future. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Dewey, J. (2007). Art as experience. In T.E. Wartenberg (Ed.), The nature of art: An anthology (144). Belmont, California: Thomas Wadsworth. Dunham, K. (2005). Prologue. In V. Clark & S. E. Johnson (Eds.), Kaiso!: Writings by and about Katherine Dunham (80-81). Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press. —. (1994). Island possessed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Durkin, H. (2011). Dance anthropology and the impact of 1930s Haiti on Katherine Dunham’s artistic and scientific consciousness. International Journal of Francophone Studies, 14(1), 123-142. Friedman, L. (2013). The lives of Erich Fromm: Love’s prophet. New York: Columbia University Press. Fromm, E. (2010). On disobedience: Why freedom means saying “no” to power. New York: Harper. —. (2009). Beyond the chains of illusion: My encounter with Marx and Freud. New York: Continuum. —. (2006). The art of loving. New York: Harper. —. (2004). Marx’s concept of Man. London: Continuum. —. (1959). The creative attitude. In H. A. Anderson (Ed.), Creativity and its civilization. New York: Harper. —. (1955). The sane society. New York: Rinehart and Company. Landauer, G. (2010). Revolution and other writings: A political reader. Oakland, CA: PM Press. Maccoby, M. (1994). The two voices of Erich Fromm: The prophetic and the analytic. Retrieved from http://www.maccoby.com/Articles/TwoVoices.shtml Marx, K. (1843). A contribution to the critique of Hegel’s philosophy of right. Retrieved from http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm Osumare, H. (2005). Katherine Dunham, A pioneer of postmodern anthropology. In V. Clark & S. E. Johnson (Eds.), Kaiso!: Writings by and about Katherine Dunham (612). Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press.

CHAPTER THREE ERICH FROMM’S PSYCHOANALYSIS OF TRANSCENDENCE AND THE PHOTOGRAPHY OF DETROIT’S RUINS CHRIS VANDERWEES

In this chapter, the author draws from Erich Fromm’s psychoanalysis in order to explore the contemporary fascination with photographic representations of Detroit’s industrial ruins. The ruins of Detroit have come to symbolize economic failure, government and corporate austerity, deindustrialization, outmigration, and heated racial politics. In many ways, the fascination with these ruins, which has predominantly become a white middle-class fascination, is correlative with contemporary social anxieties surrounding late capitalism. Recent commentaries often characterize the photography of capitalist ruins as exploitative, voyeuristic, and pornographic. “Ruin porn” has become a common descriptor for representations of Detroit’s sites of dereliction. In an attempt to move beyond simplistic and dismissive characterizations of interest in this photographic trend, the author examines the aesthetics of Andrew Moore’s controversial photography publication, Detroit Disassembled, through Fromm’s psychosocial approach to the ego and subjectivity. He maintains that the fascination with contemporary ruins might be understood through what Fromm designates as the subject’s desire for “transcendence,” the human need to exceed the limits of existence through forms of creative and destructive experience. He argues that Moore’s photographs ultimately stage an aesthetic encounter that evokes transcendence through cognitive dissonance between fears that capitalism is on the brink of catastrophe and a concurrent desire to experience this very catastrophe in mediation. He concludes with the suggestion that the uncanny photography of capitalism’s ruins might encourage

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subjects to confront disaster as unavoidable, as a reality that has already taken place, so that against this background of acceptance, viewers might begin to reflect on traces of more equitable possibilities beyond the past, present, and future of capitalist catastrophes.

Introduction Erich Fromm’s expansive body of work has been largely ignored in recent academic and psychoanalytic circles. His writing extends from the fields of psychoanalysis and psychology to sociology and political theory, but scholars and analysts have generally dismissed many of his contributions to these areas. “Fromm’s work,” writes Kevin B. Anderson (2007), “is unfortunately neglected in academia today, in no small part because his expansive humanism is out of joint with many forms of radical thought popular in those quarters. In addition, university psychology and psychiatry departments have almost excluded Freudians or psychoanalysts of any kind, which leaves no room for Fromm there either” (p. 1). Despite Fromm’s exclusion from contemporary conversations in academia and psychoanalysis, his writing is highly accessible and remains popular with readers beyond university campuses, a characteristic that has left his work open to criticisms that often posit his assessments of individual experience under late capitalism as unscientific, simplistic, or obsolete. Philosopher and political activist Noam Chomsky, for instance, states that he “liked Fromm’s attitudes but thought his work was pretty superficial” (as cited in Barsky, 1998, p. 134). In this chapter, however, I hope to demonstrate, through an application of Fromm’s work, that many of his concepts might be salvaged and put to use for critical and analytical work in a contemporary context. My writing, here, also implies that, in this neoliberal era of global capitalist development, further applications of Fromm’s work might reveal some urgent and relevant philosophical depth that could enable alternative avenues and intersections of thought between psychoanalysis, psychology, sociology, and political theory. To be clear, my aim is not to provide a comprehensive overview of Fromm’s work and its redeeming value, but rather to primarily underline, contextualize, and explore one of his major concepts: “transcendence” and the modern subject’s relationship to images of destruction and ruination. Ultimately, I apply Fromm’s notion of transcendence to photographic representations of Detroit, Michigan, where I argue that this concept sheds light upon the city’s status as an increasingly potent material and symbolic example of

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ruination under conditions of late capitalism that significantly influences contemporary trends in visual culture and the American social imaginary. Detroit, Michigan, has made a reputation for its ruins. The city is commonly recognized as the most severely impoverished and abandoned major urban center in the United States. Detroit’s burgeoning automobile industry of the early to mid-twentieth century once “supplied a continual stream of symbols of America’s cultural power” and the former automotive capital of the world “remains the ancestral birthplace of storied American capitalism” (Grandin, 2010, p. 117). The rapid decline of the manufacturing industry in Detroit has resulted in the pervasive abandonment of residential, municipal, and corporate properties. In many ways, the city has become an iconic and nebulous signifier for civic corruption, economic failure, government and corporate austerity, deindustrialization, outmigration, drug violence, and heated racial politics. In Detroit: An American Autopsy, Charlie LeDuff (2013) provides an unsettling illustration of contemporary life in the city: Today, the boomtown is bust. It is an eerie and angry place of deserted factories and homes and forgotten people. Detroit, which once led the nation in home ownership, is now a foreclosure capital. Its downtown is a ghost museum of skyscrapers. Trees and switchgrass and wild animals have come back to reclaim their rightful places. Coyotes are here. The pigeons have left in droves. A city the size of San Francisco and Manhattan could neatly fit into Detroit’s vacant lots….Once the nation’s richest big city, Detroit is now its poorest. It is the country’s illiteracy and dropout capital, where children must leave their books at school and bring toilet paper from home. It is the unemployment capital, where half the adult population does not work a consistent job (p. 4-5).

Of course, the decline of Detroit is far from a new phenomenon. The city’s struggles with the loss of manufacturing jobs, population decline, poverty, and home abandonment began to intensify as early as the 1950s. There is, however, a more recent ongoing cultural fascination with the documentary and fine art photography of Detroit’s ruins, which emerged following the U.S. financial crisis of 2007-2008 and the city’s bankruptcy in 2013. Urban explorers, artists, and documentarians travel from all over the world to produce and circulate large bodies of photographic work that capture Detroit architecture in states of abandonment, dilapidation, and decay. Detroit ruin photographs have become prominent in the fine art market as objects for display and consumption, appearing in print publications, museum exhibitions, and on various mainstream websites. Scholars note that viewers of this ruin photography are primarily white and middle-class, only positing that there seems to be a vague nostalgic

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desire to experience the Fordism of the city’s past (Gansky, 2014; Steinmetz, 2010). What these scholars appear to overlook is that the widespread images of the city’s architectural remnants have become part of a broader social imaginary of ruins and catastrophe, which echoes the crystallization of contemporary American middle-class anxieties around government and corporate austerity measures. “Although deindustrial decline is widespread across the country and abroad,” writes Dora Apel (2015), “Detroit has become the preeminent example of urban decay, the global metaphor for the current state of neoliberal capitalist culture and the epicenter of the photographic genre of deindustrial ruin imagery” (p. 3). In other words, white middle-class consumers might be the primary viewers of this photography, but the iconographic influence of Detroit’s representation extends far beyond this demographic, influencing a broader social imaginary and cultural fascination with ruination. Many scholars, journalists, and critics argue that the production and circulation of Detroit ruin photography trivializes human suffering and political complexities through the spectacle of sublime aestheticization (Leary, 2011; Morton, 2009; Vultee, 2013). For this reason, many commentators argue that photographs of Detroit’s ruins are morally repugnant, voyeuristic, and exploitative. Scholars and critics frequently accuse urban explorers and documentarians of producing “ruin pornography,” a term that shames photographers, positions viewers as perverted consumers engaged in a deviant act of looking, and offers little understanding of the contemporary fascination with the imagery of ruins. Here, the assumption is that photographs of Detroit’s ruination cannot clearly illustrate systemic historical complexities or function as a form of ideology critique, but will only gratify voyeuristic desires, allowing viewers to engage in libidinous fascination through a modern resurgence of “ruin gazing.” I suggest that this understanding of Detroit photography produces an extremely limited construction of viewership as a passive, mindless act of consumption, whereby the terrible beauty found in images of dereliction overwhelms or displaces a given individual’s critical faculties. What I aim to emphasize is that the broader cultural fascination with Detroit ruin photography is not simply communicative of a pornographic or mindless ruin gazing trend. In The Emancipated Spectator, Jacques Rancière (2009) argues that we need to rethink viewing as a passive and voyeuristic practice since the “spectator also acts, like the pupil or scholar” and “observes, selects, compares, interprets” (p. 13). Rancière refigures viewing through action and critical thought, arguing that those who view a particular photograph, for example, are “both distant spectators and active interpreters of the spectacle offered to them” (p. 13).

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Simplistic accusations of voyeurism tend to foreclose any attempt to understand viewing outside of moralistic judgments or as more than a passive and indirectly exploitative act. In an attempt to move beyond the simplistic and dismissive assertions of “ruin porn,” I explore the affective and aesthetic dimensions of Andrew Moore’s well-known photography publication, Detroit Disassembled (2010) as representative of a broader trend in the social engagement with the imagery of ruination. I do not claim that ruin photography necessarily offers any sort of direct social or political awareness of Detroit’s plight. The aesthetics of Moore’s photographs, for instance, do not offer a directive for political activism or clearly communicate progressive politics. I do not claim that photographs can offer a view of history in its complexity. My aim, however, is to highlight and unpack the aesthetic functions of Detroit ruin photography and why images of American ruination and dereliction have gained such resonance in our contemporary cultural climate. I suggest that Moore’s work and the cultural fascination with Detroit’s ruins might be understood through Erich Fromm’s psychosocial adaptation of the Freudian death drive. Prior to engaging with Moore’s photographs, I provide a brief summary of Fromm’s revisions and adaptations of Freudian theory, which primarily emphasize the important influence of socio-political relations on the subject’s egoinstincts under late capitalism. Fromm argues that the ego-instincts, which form the subject’s sense of individuality and self-preservation, partially manifest through “transcendence,” the existential desire to exceed the specific context of individual existence. According to Fromm, the experience of destruction, catastrophe, or death becomes one of the primary ways that the subject may achieve transcendence when opportunities for creativity or growth cannot occur. I also make connections from Fromm’s notion of transcendence to the experience of the uncanny through the aesthetics of the sublime. Drawing from Fromm’s theory for an understanding of aesthetics, I argue that Moore’s photographs ultimately stage an affective encounter that evokes transcendence through cognitive dissonance between anxieties that capitalism is on the brink of catastrophe and a concurrent desire to experience this very catastrophe in mediation. I suggest that Fromm’s notion of destructive transcendence aligns with the subject’s aesthetic experience of Detroit ruin photography. This photography might map the potential for viewers to be caught between multiple and contradictory temporalities, affects, and imaginings that extend beyond the contemporary late capitalist predicament. In other words, the subject’s aesthetic encounter with the uncanny dimensions of ruins may produce the

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momentary possibility for fragmented meanings or new connections to emerge in consciousness that do not simply point at the past, but also project an orientation towards the future. Subjects, however, do not experience representations of ruins through clear narratives or direct paths to political action, but rather through contradictory poles of creation and destruction, attraction and repulsion, the simultaneous fear of death and desire for it. Taking a cue from Slavoj Žižek’s recent work, I conclude that if late capitalism constantly stages what Francis Fukuyama (1992) has called “the end of history” or what Fredric Jameson (2007) has called the totalizing experience of the perpetual present, the photography of Detroit’s ruins might encourage subjects to reorient themselves toward the death drive, confronting socio-economic catastrophe as unavoidable, as a reality that has already taken place, so that against this background of acceptance, impressions of a new future might appear possible through aesthetics that communicate capitalism’s collapse.

Erich Fromm’s Transcendence and the Freudian Death Drive at the End of History In The End of History and the Last Man, Fukuyama (1992) declares that, with the spread of globalization and the collapse of the Soviet Union, humanity will now experience “the end of history.” Of course, Fukuyama is not referring to the conclusion of actual historical events, but rather to the end of ideological alternatives to Western liberal democracy and freemarket capitalist economics. He sees the disappearance of the conflict between communism and capitalism as what may “constitute the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the final form of human government” (Fukuyama, 1992, p. xi). Fukuyama’s notion is that if only one major contemporary model of social order remains widely legitimized, this marks the universal emergence of the given social order, the universalization of global capitalist democracy. Ultimately, this universalization closes and completes historical and ideological understanding. Anthony Lloyd (2013) argues that, despite political and economic turmoil since the end of the Cold War, late capitalism and neoliberal politics continue to convey the broader social experience of the end of history as Fukuyama describes it: In previous times, culture had retained at least partial autonomy, however a more organized market-based capitalism now occupies the cultural sphere and generates an inability to accept metanarratives in any sphere of social life. We can no longer see beyond the horizons of late capitalism….The intellectual labour, the ideology, of late capitalism

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In other words, the end of history essentially limits the human ability to imagine anything beyond or outside the current global capitalist reality. “The problem of the end of history,” writes Eric Michael Dale (2014), “is the problem of a loss of meaning—or rather, the problem problematizes the definition of struggle as meaningful” (p. 25). It becomes difficult for individual subjects to imagine political or ideological narratives beyond the already existing and totalizing system. Late capitalism forecloses alternative futures as it denounces, absorbs, or commodifies that which is oppositional or different. In a global economic and political state of affairs that suppresses the subject’s experience of the future in the service of a perpetual present, the widespread cultural fascination with representations of Detroit’s ruin, destruction, and decay appears symptomatic of a social imaginary that is unable to create or visualize alternative ideological systems. Further, late modernity and neoliberal politics frequently disseminate essentialist discursive notions of scientific rationality and technological progress, but these discourses also, according to Apel (2015), foster the rapid expansion of what Naomi Klein (2007) has famously called “disaster capitalism,” which manifests through predatory economic and political practices that not only target and exploit the specific conditions of catastrophic events and suffering populations for profit, but also contribute to “the unparalleled power of the security and surveillance state, the stateless subject, the capacity for mass death on an enormous scale, the ability to destroy the earth’s ecology, and new ways of immiserating masses of people, all in the service of producing extraordinary wealth and power for a tiny privileged elite” (p. 5). Neoliberal capitalist austerity measures in response to global financial crises also influence political perspectives that reflect cultural pessimism, the loss of faith in the neoliberal state and capitalist system, and growing anxieties stemming from the fear that the end of the world is imminent. In response to this cultural dilemma, news media manufacturers, producers of popular cinema and television, visual artists, and literary authors frequently represent environmental catastrophe,

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global conflict, and deindustrialization through imagery of American cities, especially Detroit, in ruination with increasing prevalence. The current neoliberal capitalist predicament and the fascination with Detroit ruin photography exemplify Fromm’s conceptualization of the human attraction to death and destruction as a need to experience “transcendence.” Fromm’s notion of transcendence emerges as a critique of Freudian theory and as an adaptation of the death drive. Freud (1955), of course, first develops his controversial theorization of the death instinct, in Beyond the Pleasure Principle where he sees it as opposite to Eros, the instinct to engender life through reproduction and creation. He argues that the life drive tends toward cohesion and unity, whereas the death drive encapsulates the subject’s inclination toward self-annihilation, disintegration, and separation. He suggests that the death drive is the primary motivation for life, which is constantly determined through “complicated detours” and “circuitous paths to death,” the desire to “return to the inanimate state” of rubble and dust (Freud, 1955, p. 38-39). Further, the death drive operates through the compulsion to repeat. “The repetition of the death drive,” writes Patricia Clough (2007), “functions at the limit of the subject’s identity, where there is a contest within subjectivity between mastery and disintegration: repeating near disintegration over and over again seemingly in order to regain integration and restore equilibrium” (p. 10). Therefore, the pleasure principle does not govern the death drive. In guiding the subject toward a return to an inorganic state, the object of the death drive is always elusive, fragmented, displaced, and destined to repeat. The death drive ultimately refers to a given individual’s attraction to destruction, decay, and ruination. The individual’s attraction to death, however, does not denote a craving for self-annihilation, but rather points toward a kind of paradox where the proximity to death produces an experience of life at its limit. In The Parallax View, Žižek (2006) notes that the death drive is Freud’s name for…the way immortality appears within psychoanalysis, for an uncanny excess of life, of an ‘undead’ urge which persists beyond the (biological) cycle of life and death, of generation and corruption. The ultimate lesson of psychoanalysis is that human life is never ‘just life’: humans are not simply alive, they are possessed by the strange drive to enjoy life in excess, passionately attached to a surplus which sticks out and derails the ordinary run of things (p. 62).

Here, Žižek not only alludes to the transgressive and transcendent aspects of the death drive, but also to the significance of its uncanny dimension whereby life is experienced at its most extreme limits through the immediacy of its opposite: destruction and death.

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Throughout several major works including Escape from Freedom (1941), The Sane Society (1955), and The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1973), Fromm adapts and extends the Freudian death drive through an assertion that psychoanalytic theory must carefully account for social, historical, and political factors when considering the ego-instincts and the subject’s conceptualization of the self. As a result, Fromm’s work regularly integrates Freudian theories of the unconscious with the social and political theories of Marxism. Anthony Elliott (1994) acknowledges Fromm’s revisions to Freud in Psychoanalytic Theory: For Fromm, the key error in Freud’s work is that it abstracts from a specific socio-political situation…and projects interpersonal conflict into the solitary world of the individual subject. In contrast to Freud’s approach, Fromm is out to show, not how we suffer repression in order to join society, but how society itself inscribes deformation and isolation at the heart of human relationships….According to Fromm, Freudian theory is needed to supplement Marxism in order to grasp how social structures influence and shape the inner dimension of modern selfhood (p. 43).

Ultimately, Fromm argues that society shapes unconscious drives, projecting ideological social norms and patterns into subjects, ordering the psychic life of individuals. His philosophical and psychoanalytic approach articulates the need for an understanding of systemic social factors that establish human identity through shifting economic, cultural, and historical contexts. Fromm’s emphasis on the psychosocial, of course, extends to his theorization of the death drive. His understanding of Thanatos develops through interpretations of individual and collective cultural experience under mechanization, industrialism, and late capitalism. Departing from Freud, Fromm argues that Eros and Thanatos are not a separate or oppositional dualism, but are rather bound together as a kind of dyad with a reversed interdependence, emerging from the same need for transcendence. In The Sane Society, Fromm (1955) clearly articulates this position: “Creation and destruction…are not two instincts which exist independently. They are both answers to the same need for transcendence” (p. 38). For Fromm, transcendence is an existential need, an ontological grounding that manifests through the human need to create and engender life or, in lieu of the nourishment of this primary drive, the need to experience life at its limits through death and decay. Over the course of his work, Fromm refers to transcendence in several ways. Most significantly, he draws from Heidegger’s concept of each individual’s sense of Geworfenheit or “thrownness,” a notion that refers to human existence as geworfen or “being thrown” into the world. The

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concept communicates that existence is fundamentally alienating, arbitrary, incomprehensible, and precarious. Heidegger’s geworfen aligns with the death drive insofar as it expresses the idea that “mortality is an inexorable result of its thrownness into the world” and the individual’s “thrownness into the world is thrownness into the inexorable certainty of death” (Sembera, 2007, p. 157). Fromm argues that the human need for transcendence arises from this human experience of thrownness or creatureliness. Self-consciousness presents the human problem of having to make meaning from this meaninglessness. Individuals, Fromm (1955) argues, are “driven by the urge to transcend the role of the creature, the accidentalness and passivity of [their] existence” (p. 36). This extends to the idea that humans desire to move beyond ordinary, everyday, and predictable patterns of life. Daniel Burston (1991) notes that Fromm’s understanding of transcendence extends to account for the individual’s yearning to experience something potentially spiritual or transgressive, that which pushes past the limitations of human experience. More specifically, in the context of psychoanalytic theory, Fromm ultimately posits transcendence as the individual’s need to exceed the boundaries of the ego through creative forms of self-organization. This self-organization predominantly manifests through positive and negative forms of creation and destruction. Fromm insists, however, that creation is the primary need of the psyche and that “the will to destroy must arise when the will to create cannot be satisfied” (Fromm, 1955, p. 38). Unlike Freud, Fromm argues that the individual’s destructive or necrophilious tendencies are not instinctual, but rather emerge as a result of the suppression or lack of social and cultural growth, development, or progress. Fromm’s conceptualization of the will to destroy or the attraction to death as a form of transcendence adapts Freud’s death drive for an understanding of the destructive social, economic and political particularities of late capitalism. American capitalism, Fromm argues, is radically hedonist, egotistical, exploitative, and narcissistic, which inevitably produces social instability and psychological affliction. Prior to providing a lengthy diagnosis of modern American society’s pathologically narcissistic, destructive, and individualist tendencies in To Have or To Be?, Fromm (1976) challenges the common notion that late capitalism is synonymous with progress and comfort: “[O]ur kind of ‘pursuit of happiness’ does not produce well-being. We are a society of notoriously unhappy people: lonely, anxious, depressed, destructive, dependent” (1976, p. 6). In Fromm’s view, late capitalism’s promises of limitless progress, mastery over nature, profusion of material goods, and free individualism, do not actually encourage creation or the engenderment

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of life, but rather contribute to international conflict and war, the erosion of community, the exploitation of foreign and domestic workers, widespread inequality in terms of wealth and resource distribution, and destruction of the natural environment. “The root of destructiveness,” writes Fromm (1941), “is easily recognizable as…the isolation of the individual and the suppression of individual expansiveness” (p. 183). Ultimately, Fromm sees the death drive as what manifests in individuals who yearn for transcendence while remaining disempowered, disenfranchised, and disadvantaged.

What Lies Beyond the Frame: Aesthetics of Transcendence and Detroit Ruin Photography If Fromm’s understanding of transcendence designates the individual’s “longing to break out of established and familiar patterns, to step over boundaries, to encounter something unpredictable, awe-inspiring, or uncanny,” then, this designation as applied to the individual’s affective encounter with Detroit ruin photography closely aligns with the aesthetics of the sublime (Mitchell, 2003, p. 39). As both an aesthetic concept as well as an affective experience with a long history of theorization through major thinkers such as Edmund Burke, Immanuel Kant, and Jean Francois Lyotard, the sublime is typically thought of as “an encounter with something tremendous: an infinite; something indefinitely great, grand or boundless; a longed-for absolute” (Battersby, 2007, p. 3). Scholars most often characterize the sublime as an individual’s encounter with that which exceeds human limits of experience. Referring to the Kantian concept, Robert R. Clewis (2009) argues that “rising above or transcending is essential to the sublime” and that “it seems hard to discuss the experience of the sublime without some reference to transcendence” (p. 222). The sublime is the aesthetic sensation which arises from an encounter with the art object that is awe-inspiring, breathtaking, terribly beautiful, or paradoxically, that which appears unrepresentable in its representation. “As a subjective feeling, a bodily response,” writes Gene Ray (2005), “the sublime can never be verified” (p. 7). For this reason, scholars align the sublime with the experience of an event, often an event of shock or trauma, where the moment of the encounter generates a suspension in the subject’s ability to fully comprehend what has taken place. Simon Morley (2010) describes the aesthetic experience of the sublime as “what takes hold of us when reason falters and certainties begin to crumble. [It is] about being taken to the limits. The sublime experience is fundamentally transformative, about the relationship between disorder and order, and the

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disruption of the stable coordinates of time and space. Something rushes in and we are profoundly altered” (p. 12). The sublime entails a going outside or beyond oneself, an experience of self-transcendence, which occurs in the individual’s encounter with danger or death distanced through mediation, encouraging a sensibility of human vulnerability or one’s own mortality. Of course, throughout his work, Fromm discusses actual acts of destruction in the context of transcendence, but it is the cultural attraction to the sublime aspect of Detroit’s ruins in their representation that I highlight, here, for the purpose of linking the notion of transcendence to aesthetics. Several major publications of Detroit ruin photography including Dan Austin’s Lost Detroit (2010), Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre’s The Ruins of Detroit (2010), and Julia Reyes Taubman’s Detroit, 138 Square Miles (2011) contribute to what Apel (2015) calls “the deindustrial sublime,” an aesthetic that generates anxieties around impending societal collapse or disaster through the representation of landscapes of crumbling architecture. Moore’s images of the city’s abandonment and dilapidation, however, are perhaps the most widely circulated and renowned. Moore originally exhibited thirty of his photographs at the Akron Art Museum in Ohio, but a much larger collection of his work, Detroit Disassembled (2010), has since been published, generating a significant amount of attention. Many of the images from the collection have been reprinted in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time magazine, and dozens of other popular periodicals. His work significantly relies upon the aesthetics of the sublime, giving the impression of destruction and decay that is beyond human scale or comprehension. Moore’s attention to detail, color, light, and composition reflects his sensibility for sublime aesthetics in the ruins of deindustrialization. With few exceptions, Detroit Disassembled is a collection that primarily showcases landscapes of vast industrial rubble, the ruins of late capitalism. These are the images of enormous factory buildings in disrepair with water damaged floors and crumbling ceilings, broken windows and peeling wallpaper, rusting metal and rotting wood. The photographs capture iconic buildings and the abandoned rooms within them including the former Ford Motor Company headquarters, Michigan Central Station, the Packard Motor Car Company plant, the Chase Tower, and United Artists Theatre. The dilapidation and decay that Moore captures can be overwhelming and disorienting for viewers. “In some of Moore’s photographs,” writes Philip Levine (2010), “I don’t know what I’m looking at” (p. 115). The photographer often emphasizes the enormity of

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scale through the radical juxtaposition of human subjects with the enormity of the decaying industrial surroundings. In “Scrapper, Packard Motor Company plant,” for instance, Moore captures a man wearing a blue jumpsuit, covered in dust, holding a large pipe, standing on the flatbed of a truck in the center of the frame (p. 11). The man’s eyes are closed, almost as if he were praying. An incredible amount of debris, mostly in the form of bricks and cinder blocks, surrounds the man, as the extraordinarily high ceiling appears to be collapsing behind him. The ruins of the plant ultimately dwarf the man in the frame producing the impression of sublime aesthetics. The photograph depicts a single life in the presence of the ruins of what looks to have been a catastrophic event. The heaps of rubble in contradistinction to the scrapper in the middle of the frame convey an impression of human precariousness. In Fromm’s terms, the photograph encourages a sense of destructive transcendence through the aesthetics of the sublime. Miles Orvell (2006) refers to ruin photography as an inversion of the “technological sublime,” an experience of wonder and awe at the power of human creation in its various forms, whether it is a skyscraper, bridge, or battleship. He calls this inversion “the destructive sublime” (Orvell, 2006, p. 246). Although Orvell does not really explore the term beyond coining it, the destructive sublime presumably refers to the overwhelming experience of an encounter with the massive implosion of impressive technological achievements. The experience of the sublime, however, also opens onto overdetermined interpretations of the encounter where “the comprehension of the sublime object is never complete” (Clemente, 2012, p. 171). The sublime encounter, writes Ray (2005), “would take place at that nexus where an empirical, psychological subject is driven by both social reality and the openings of the possible or virtual realities that would push beyond it” (p. 7). In this exposure to transcendence in the sublime, what might become possible in the subject’s encounter with ruin photography is the temporary cognitive suspension of the dominant ideological narratives of neoliberal capitalism in experience, the momentary possibility for fragmented meanings or new connections to emerge in consciousness. In Industrial Ruins, Tim Edensor (2005) writes that “[r]uins confound the normative spacings of things, practices and people. They open up possibilities for regulated urban bodies to escape their shackles in expressive pursuits and sensual experience, foreground alternative aesthetics about where and how things should be situated, and transgress boundaries between outside and inside, and between human and non-human spaces” (p. 18). It is the ruin’s sublime capacity to reorder space and push viewers beyond dominant narratives of capitalism and the

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experience of the end of history toward involuntary thoughts and cognitive dissonance. Although the sublime might partially characterize the affective and aesthetic encounter with Moore’s photographs and other forms of ruin photography, I suggest that the aesthetics of Detroit Disassembled might further be understood through an extension of the transcendent elements of the sublime: the Freudian concept of the uncanny. Curiously, scholars have not described Moore’s photographs in terms of their uncanny aesthetics. As an affective and aesthetic concept, the uncanny extends from the experience of the sublime, as it is similarly an encounter with transcendence, the attraction to thresholds and limits, the transgression of verifiable borders and boundaries. Anneleen Masschelein (2011), for instance, refers to the uncanny as a kind of “negative sublime” which highlights the more radical and disturbing qualities of aesthetic experience (p. 132-33). In his essay devoted to the topic, Freud (1919) describes the uncanny experience as that which “belongs to all that is terrible–to all that arouses dread and creeping horror….[and] coincide[s] with whatever excites dread” (p. 218). The uncanny is an experience of cognitive dissonance resulting from an encounter with something both familiar and strange, attractive and anxiety provoking. Julia Kristeva draws from Freud’s understanding of the uncanny to theorize the relational concept of abjection, but the uncanny remains distinctive from the abject as it does not manifest as a violent and intense rejection of the object in question. In The Uncanny, Nicholas Royle (2003) writes that the experience frequently arises, much like the death drive, from “a sense of repetition or ‘coming back’–the return of the repressed, the constant or eternal recurrence of the same thing, a compulsion to repeat” (p. 2). Often in association with death, corpses, live burial, darkness, and the foreign, the uncanny disrupts any clear sense of borders between inside and outside. The uncanny is an experience of liminality, an uncomfortable and transcendent encounter with the foreign that is yet recognizable. “The uncanny,” writes Royle (2003), “is a feeling that happens only to oneself, within oneself, but is never one’s ‘own’: its meaning or significance may have to do, most of all, with what is not oneself, with others, with the world ‘itself.’ It may thus be constructed as a foreign body within oneself, even the experience of oneself as a foreign body” (p. 2). Much like Fromm’s theorization of transcendence, the uncanny encounter generates an overwhelming feeling of that which is beyond the human. That which is uncanny cannot be reduced to a direct happening, statement, or description. It is a supplement that manifests not through what is already known or presented, but rather emerges through what is

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unpredictable and additional to what is happening, stated, or shown. In this way, the uncanny is not necessarily, for example, an encounter with death itself, but rather an encounter with transcendence, the experience of life at its limits through the implication of death, decay, and destruction. This uncanny aesthetic haunts Moore’s photography of Detroit as these images of ruins appear not only as figurative, but also as literal sites of death. For instance, Moore (2009) recounts one story as a metaphor for the city’s decline in his brief essay in Detroit Disassembled: “[I]indicative of Detroit’s trajectory is an adjacent nondescript warehouse that was used to store books and supplies for the public school system. Abandoned for many years, in winter 2009 it was the scene of a grotesque discovery: a homeless man had plunged head down into the bottom of an elevator shaft and disappeared in a deep block of ice except for his protruding feet” (p. 119). Moore’s narrative draws a direct comparison between the homeless man’s death and the city’s state of decay. There is an equivalency in this story that speaks to ruins as uncannily representative of death. This aesthetic of death also appears in Moore’s photograph, “Cat, former Mark Twain Branch of the Detroit Public Library, East Side,” where he captures the decaying carcass of a cat, mostly reduced to bones, but with fur and flesh still apparent (p. 104). The body is recognizable, familiar as a cat, but its decomposition communicates the aesthetics of something strange and unsettling, as the cat is no longer properly recognizable as a cat. These images structure the viewer’s affective encounter through simultaneous and dissonant experiences of attraction and repulsion, desire and the provocation of anxiety. The ruin produces a fear of death, but also a desire for it. The individual’s attraction to the uncanny images of late capitalism’s ruins, however, does not necessarily take the form of an action, but often manifests through fascination. In The Anatomy of Human Destruction, for instance, Fromm (1973) links necrophilia to transcendence, defining it in the characterological sense as “the passionate attraction to all that is dead, decayed, putrid, sickly; it is the passion to transform that which is alive into something unalive; to destroy for the sake of destruction….It is the passion to tear apart living structures” (p. 369). The important distinction to note, here, is that Fromm refers to the “passionate attraction,” the “passion to transform,” and the “passion to tear apart,” but not to the concrete act of destruction. Fromm’s contention is that capitalism produces subjects who seek transcendence through necrophilious attraction and destructive social tendencies in their inability to experience creativity or the further engenderment of life. Panayota Gounari (2014) draws from Fromm’s psychoanalytic work to characterize the contemporary corporate-

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state nexus of late capitalism and neoliberal politics as a distribution system of “social necrophilia”: By social necrophilia, I mean the blunt organized effort on the part of the domestic political system and foreign neoliberal centers to implement economic policies that result in the physical, material, social and financial destruction of human beings: policies that promote death, whether physical or symbolic. The goal of the ongoing neoliberal offensive is to destroy symbolically and physically the most vulnerable strata of the population, to put the entire society in a moribund state, in order to impose the most unprecedented austerity measures….Social necrophilia can…be understood as the state of decay, the material and social degeneration of society, and the destruction of social fabric, where illness and death are looming as a result of a dying economy (p. 189).

Capitalism expresses its own death drive through a mode of production where surplus value dominates social relations and the risk of death or destruction is secondary to overproduction and accumulation of wealth and material goods. Eugene W. Holland (2006) similarly suggests that the death instinct “merely expresses the ‘apparent objective movement’ of capitalist society; under capitalism, death does become an instinct. And this is because capital sacrifices social expenditure in favour of accumulation” (p. 164). In alignment with Fromm, Holland maintains that the late capitalist production of material goods results in wasteful overproduction and in the useless exhaustion of resources in ways that actually risk death, destruction, and disaster. Drawing from Fromm’s notion of destructive transcendence, the contemporary cultural fascination with representations of Detroit’s industrial ruins appears directly correlative to the socially necrophilious tendencies of late capitalism.

Future Imaginaries: Transcendence, Ruins, and the Trace In a social climate of austerity and compulsively repetitive financial crises, I suggest that the popularity of Detroit ruin photography emerges as a desire to experience transcendence through representations of destruction that posit something beyond the limitations of late capitalism. In short, these photographs enable viewers to experience a future imaginary that exceeds the limits of late capitalism’s totalizing impression of the end of history. Although Fromm does not explicitly discuss temporality in relation to transcendence, his articulation of the experience of something beyond alludes to the future directed orientation of the individual. In fact, Fromm’s main source for his notion of transcendence, Heidegger’s

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geworfen, clearly expresses the future as what grounds individual experience. “Temporality,” writes Heidegger (1984), “temporalizes itself primarily out of the future, [which] means that the ecstatic whole of temporality, and hence the unity of horizon, is determined primarily out of the future” (p. 211). Transcendence, Heidegger (1982) claims, “is possible only on the basis of the future, because this structural moment of time is intrinsically ecstatic” and it is this ecstatic character of the future, the beyond dimension that is out of the individual’s grasp, that makes transcendence possible (p. 302). Further, the future is not merely an abstract dimension that cannot be known, but it is tangible in the individual’s expectation or projection of it. Michael Watts (2011) writes that “through my anticipation it has become a way of existing fundamental to authentic existence; my deepest sense of meaning is derived from my future” (p. 120). It is this future dimension of transcendence that opens onto the individual’s experience of utopian possibility, the uncanny reflection of dystopian catastrophe, in the representation of death, decay, and destruction. The ruins in Detroit Disassembled appear as dark and eerie places, which suggest transcendent aesthetics through something radically other that lurks beyond the photograph’s frame, something that will arrive in the future, but is never properly represented. Stephen Frosh (2013) argues that the uncanny is best understood “as something that comes from the future: what ghosts intimate about us is what we are about to become” (p. 11). In Moore’s photographs of ruins, viewers may identify “that which appeared to be not there,” the spectral traces that provide a sense that “a haunting is taking place” (Gordon, 1997, p. 8). In this sense, Detroit Disassembled primarily stages affective encounters through the uncanny experience of the event in its becoming, denoting a future yet to arrive. David Campany (2003) refers to photographs of architectural ruins in his discussion of “late photography,” a term which designates a kind of practice or genre, whereby the photographer captures the actual event after its happening. This approach partially draws on the aesthetics of some of the earliest war photography, which displays the scene of ruins after the bombs have fallen and the bodies have been removed (Bull, 2010, p. 117). Although many of Moore’s images quietly convey an uncanny sensibility through abandoned and dust covered interior spaces still seemingly frozen in the moments of the past, these photographs contain the lingering traces of the future in the frame. The traces of others partially denote future possibilities. Apel (2015) writes that Moore’s photographs communicate “a sense of sudden wholesale abandonment….where the inhabitants appear to have simply walked away” (p. 89). One photograph, for instance, captures an abandoned

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FBI shooting range in the Chase Tower with targets that have been left hanging, shot full of holes, communicating a past occurrence in the present moment that also proposes an ambiguous future where someone may return to the range as the viewer does in mediation through the very act of viewership (Moore, 2009, p. 33). In another image entitled “Abandoned videoconferencing room, Chase Tower, Financial District,” Moore depicts a room of red office chairs that have been pushed back from a desk that supports a phone, two speakers, papers, and a notebook as if a meeting has just ended (p. 46). The abandonment of objects, here, suggests the traces of others who may return in the future to collect them. Detroit Disassembled also includes many images of Cass Technical High School, which captures classrooms that seem to have been vacated in a hurry. Textbooks and school resources are strewn across desks, which are tossed and flipped over, glass beakers and measuring instruments are scattered across the shelves and counters of a science classroom. Andrew Emil Gansky (2014) writes that Moore’s photographs “challenge the ability to stabilize meanings or satisfactorily explain the causes of destruction” (p. 125). In other words, these images do not present the viewer with images of the event of abandonment in its happening, but with the distinct and uncanny fragments of what has taken place and what might become. In this sense, each image provides an impression of the future, a transcendence of that which lies beyond the present moment. Photographs of Detroit’s ruins communicate the potential for the actual event as captured in the frame to be transformed on the condition of aesthetic apprehension of the viewer, the possible production of future potentialities through the subject’s affective encounter with the photograph. Ariella Azoulay (2012) similarly understands photographs not as the fixed product of an event, but rather as an encounter that “continues the event of photography that happened elsewhere” (p. 23). A photograph is a representation of an actual event that reproduces and mediates that event as both immanent and external to the original event upon each subject’s encounter with the image. Through the experience of transcendence in aesthetics, this encounter is abstracted from the original event itself, becoming a new event, which may reorder, suspend, or contradict the dominant ideological frames of the actual event in the viewer’s experience. A study of aesthetics, then, must escape dominant frames of historical interpretation in order to make new connections. Jill Bennett’s (2012) approach to aesthetics, for instance, encourages this kind of attempt to engage the event “from the inside, from the point-of-view of the affective engagements that give it traction in experience and imagination” as part of an attempt to “trace threads of aesthetic enquiry”

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(p. 32). This approach inspires viewers to engage with photographs in terms of what transcendent aesthetics might communicate beyond the frame. There is no cause and effect relationship between aesthetics and political action, but rather the aesthetics of Detroit’s ruins function in the form of metapolitical possibility to imagine a kind of transcendence over and beyond capitalism. Campany (2003) writes that the imagery of late photography is “not so much the trace of an event as the trace of the trace of an event” (p. 124). This sense of a late arrival to the event is characteristic of late photography of Detroit’s abandoned buildings and crumbling architecture. “Ruins,” writes Dylan Trigg (2012), “occupy the spectral trace of an event left behind, serving to testify to the past through a logic of voids, disruptions, and hauntings” (p. xxvii). This encounter with late photography and the ruins of Detroit alludes to the event in its becoming, imposing an uncanny awareness of the before through the depiction of the aftermath in the present. The ruin always has a clear relationship with future occurrences. Dillon (2011) writes that “the ruin casts us forward in time; it predicts a future in which our present will slump into similar disrepair or fall victim to some unforeseeable calamity” (p. 11). Moore’s photographic representation of architectural decay and abandonment in Detroit paradoxically communicates the sense that a catastrophic event has already occurred, but has also not yet happened, leaving what is past and future to the imagination. Detroit Disassembled depicts the event through an encounter with the uncanny, a haunting that is becoming on the edge of every frame. Moore’s uncanny photographic representation of Detroit also invokes a broader imaginary of ruins. “Our imaginary of ruins,” writes Andreas Huyssen (2006), “can be read as a palimpsest of multiple historical events and representations” (p. 8). In other words, representations of the ruins always echo the ruins of other temporalities and geographies through uncanny aesthetic and affective traces. A number of reviewers of Detroit Disassembled, for example, draw comparisons between Moore’s photographs and the ruins of Greece, Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s 18th century prints of Roman ruins, Caspar David Friedrich’s 19th century paintings of crumbling churches and castles, and the ruins of Pompeii (Rubin, 2007; Apel, 2015, p. 87). Despite these associations to the past, scholars most often note the resemblance of Moore’s photographs to the settings of post-apocalyptic Hollywood films. Moore’s photographs convey this symbolism through representations of well-known corporate organizations in abandoned states of devastation. After all, viewers of these images are confronted with the remains of a late capitalist industry

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built on automation, mechanization, and mass production. These are, of course, primarily the capitalist ruins of a once thriving auto industry. Images of late capitalism in ruination may produce excitement in the photographic encounter that produces a feeling of proximity to death. “[N]o one,” writes Jean Baudrillard (2002), “can avoid dreaming of the destruction of any power that has become hegemonic to this degree” (p. 5). Moore’s images might also uncannily manifest as a fulfillment of utopian fantasies of a post-capitalist future, the end of an American empire. Representations of ruination, however, may suggest, as Jameson (2003) notes, “that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism,” which is also the equivalent of saying that individuals “imagine capitalism by way of imagining the end of the world” (p. 76). In other words, representations of disaster may convey that, without capitalism, there can only be chaos and destruction. Total catastrophe becomes easier to imagine than even incremental changes towards equitable distributions of wealth. In other words, Moore’s photographs and other images of Detroit’s ruins may function as a visual fulfillment of the death drive or of destructive transcendence, an imaginary of future destruction.

Conclusion Although it seems doubtful that Detroit ruin imagery might be directly utilized for emancipatory struggle, the cultural fascination with Moore’s photographs and other ruin imagery highlights Fromm’s psychoanalytic notion of destructive transcendence as a possible yearning for a more equitable and humanistic society. In his recent work, Žižek obliquely echoes Fromm’s notion of destructive transcendence with a twist. He proposes that the way to avoid future capitalist disasters is to embrace what Jena-Pierre Dupuy calls “enlightened catastrophism,” a position that suggests that the only way to avoid catastrophe is to confront it as inevitable. If catastrophe can only be commonly recognized following its occurrence, contemporary subjects must experience the catastrophe as if it had already happened: [S]ince one believes only when the catastrophe has really occurred (by which time it is too late to act), one must project oneself into the aftermath of the catastrophe, confer on the catastrophe the reality of something which has already taken place. We all know the tactical move of taking a step back in order to jump further ahead….[O]ne has to jump ahead into the aftermath of the catastrophe in order to be able to step back from the

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In this light, if Detroit Disassembled and other forms of ruin imagery convey the uncanny fragments and traces of a possibly catastrophic future for neoliberal capitalism, this suggests the potential for new ethical alternatives to emerge through affective encounters with the event as represented in a photograph. Like many representations of decay and destruction, Moore’s images may not offer clear alternative narratives beyond the current neoliberal capitalist system and the end of history, but they may enable temporary or fleeting engagements with transcendence through impressions of potentially unrealized and uncertain futures. This utopian potential manifests through the aesthetics of disordered space and an uncanny inarticulacy in the photograph’s traces. This sense of future potential in aesthetics of dilapidation or abandonment reveals the possibility of transcendence in the present encounter with the photography of ruins. Detroit ruin photography cannot clearly narrativize any sort of progressive politics, but implicitly aligns with desires for reconstruction through the aesthetics of deconstruction. The aesthetics of American ruins underscore the importance for scholars of psychoanalytic theory and political philosophy to revisit Fromm’s notion of destructive transcendence as an extension of Freud’s death drive that speaks to the current era of disaster capitalism. These ruins simultaneously signify a transcendent future, one that moves beyond the necrophilious tendencies of neoliberalism and toward new beginnings after the end of history.

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Morton, T. (2009). Something, something, something, Detroit: Lazy journalists love pictures of abandoned stuff. Vice. Retrieved from http://www.viceland.com/int/v16n8/htdocs/something-somethingsomething-detroit-994.php?page=1 Orvell, M. (2006). After 9/11: Photography, the destructive sublime, and the postmodern archive. Michigan Quarterly Review, 45(2), 239-256. Ranciére, J. (2009). The emancipated spectator (G. Elliott, Trans.). London: Verso. Ray, G. (2005). Terror and the sublime in art and critical theory. New York, NY: Palgrave. Royle, N. (2003). The uncanny. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Rubin, M. (2007, August 18). Capturing the idling of the motor city. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com. Sembera, R. (2007). Rephrasing Heidegger: A companion to being and time. Ottawa, ON: University of Ottawa Press. Steinmetz, G. (2010). Colonial melancholy and Fordist nostalgia: the ruinscapes of Namibia and Detroit. In J. Hell & A. Schnole (Eds.), Ruins of modernity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Thomson, A. (2009). Erich Fromm. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Trigg, D. (2012). The memory of place: A phenomenology of the uncanny. Athens: Ohio University Press. Watts, M. (2011). The philosophy of Heidegger. New York: Routledge. Žižek, S. (2006). The parallax view. Cambridge: MIT Press. —. (2010). Living in the end times. New York: Verso. —. (2012). Less than nothing: Hegel and the shadow of dialectical materialism. New York: Verso.

CHAPTER FOUR ERICH FROMM’S CIVICS: SANITY, DISOBEDIENCE, REVOLUTION NICK BRAUNE

In the 1950s and early 1960s, Erich Fromm not only worked with the individual patients he scheduled for each day, but he thought of himself as a psychoanalytically-trained socialist treating a “sick society.” (He had been a prominent member of the Frankfurt School in the 1930s, which produced studies of the “authoritarian personality” in Germany.) This chapter examines how Fromm intervened into late 1950s America, a conformist, nervous society, weakening in critical thinking abilities. He helped create a national organization, significantly named SANE, to oppose Cold War dichotomous thinking, and he counseled Americans, counterintuitively, to develop “the virtue of disobedience.” The chapter’s final section explores Fromm’s intervention in the leftwing and radical activist layers trying to change society. His skill as a psychoanalytically-trained social theorist was evident when he urged participants in these movements to become fully awake humanist revolutionaries and not resentful “rebels” unconsciously bent to power.

Introduction In the late 1940s and the early 1950s, America was a frightened society, in many ways blocked, conformist, nervous. In the nation’s capital, McCarthyism had narrowed mental life considerably, and some state legislatures had copycat committees, which could be even more vicious, calling witnesses and investigating “anti-American” activities and associations. There were witch-hunts in universities and unions in the 1950s, and Hollywood had a red scare that caused many progressive

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artists, like Charlie Chaplin, to leave the country or quit the industry. This was the hectic period of the arms race, brinksmanship, and glorification of big bombers and big bombs. There was “ethnic cleansing” against Mexican Americans in 1954: the Republican president who had been Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in WWII, Dwight D. Eisenhower, referred to it with a military name, “Operation Wetback,” and had another general coordinate it. Simultaneously, the solidly Democrat southern states ferociously defended Jim Crow segregation. This was a chilling time for intellectuals, with all manner of science (physics, microbiology, weather science, etc.) being tailored to the massive military industrial machine. Social science was courted and crafted as a tool for Cold War “area studies.” Philosophers praised each other whenever they closely analyzed metaphysical propositions by Aristotle but rolled their eyes if any ventured to engage the issues of the day (McCumber, 2001). The left-wing parties, so important to intellectual life in the 1930s, were suffering “dog days” in the 1950s, and the “social gospel” religious circles were mute, with Rev. Billy Graham and Bishop Fulton J. Sheen being promoted instead (Whitfield, 1991). In the 1950s, the phrase “under God” was added to the “Pledge of Allegiance” and was recited in schools and public meetings in order to taunt the “godless communists.” It was a tough time for social critics, radicals and independent thinkers. Committed to intervening in this blocked and nervous America, Erich Fromm, a clinical psychoanalyst, was not only scheduling daily sessions with individual patients but also opening new avenues in social theory and emerging in the 1950s as a major public intellectual. This paper will develop three aspects of Fromm’s approach to a psychoanalyticallyinformed social theory of the American experience. First, Fromm is shown to be a psychoanalytically trained social theorist and activist who is calling Americans back to sanity, to a sane society, not a self-destructing one. A second section will discuss his adventuresome call for Americans to develop the “virtue of disobedience,” or a habit which requires developing self-awareness and character strength, qualities needed to challenge the existing order. (Back in 1940, Fromm had written an analysis, Escape from Freedom, of how the German population had opposed Hitler but lacked the character strength to disobey him.) The third and final section will show how Fromm intervened in the still small, but newly growing, radical movement, reaching those who have consciously chosen to “disobey” and to lead society to socialist humanism. Fromm calls for leftists and radicals to be fully awake humanist revolutionaries, not rebels who falsely think they are revolutionaries because they simply join the

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same groups the revolutionaries would join or because they read aloud from the same leaflets.

Fromm Calls for Sanity Erich Fromm was committed to intervening in this period, and did it rather well, particularly with Sane Society (1955), with his pamphlet Will Man Prevail?: A Socialist Manifesto and Program (1960) written for, and reproduced by, the Socialist Party-Social Democratic Federation (SPSDP), and with Marx’s Concept of Man (1961). Attempting to expand the imagination of Americans to create better decades ahead, his writings promoted a revitalized democracy and socialism and reminded readers that the democracy heralded widely as the keystone of America must be more than just a political mechanism for conformity. In the past, democracy, according to Fromm (1981), had included a richer meaning than in the stultified 1950s: Rooted in a spiritual tradition which came to us from prophetic messianism, the gospels, humanism and from the Enlightenment thinkers of the 18th century, these ideas of democracy inspired America’s founders. All of these ideas and movements were centered on one hope: that man in the course of his history can liberate himself from poverty, ignorance and injustice, and that he can build a society of harmony, of peace, of union between man and man and between man and nature (p. 63).

But look at our democracy now, Fromm said. Those rituals that the parties offer as periodic elections are far from that democratic hope for mankind. Today we have “empty plebiscites” presenting managed options and false choices channeled with tightly planned mechanisms of suggestion and manipulation, and these plebiscites allow the population no power on fundamental matters like foreign policy (a major issue Fromm was addressing in his essay on disobedience was the atomic brinksmanship endangering our lives). Our political concepts and practice, Fromm (1981) contends, “have lost their roots in the longing of man; they have become empty shells, to be thrown away if expedience warrants it” (p. 64). And even the vaunted concept of progress—remember that Ronald Reagan used to say on General Electric Theatre every week that “Progress is our most important product”—is plainly “flat.” “Progress” has been flattened to mean more and more production of “things” and more effective administration, far from the original dream of a humanity becoming more knowledgeable, wise, emotionally alive, purposeful and charitable.

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As part of his intervention, Fromm, who had been a contributing editor of the SP-SDF’s journal Socialist Call since 1950, formally joined the SPSDF in the late 1950s. And very importantly, along with Norman Thomas, the head of the SP-SDF, Norman Cousins of Saturday Review, and Clarence Pickett of the Friends Service Committee, Fromm helped to form a new, visible, national organization, The Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE). It was intended as a wide grouping, without a specific socialist requirement, which was committed to bringing the “Ban the Bomb” sentiment, which was growing and visible in England particularly, to the United States. SANE began visibly and audibly opposing nuclear bomb testing as well as opposing the bomb shelter confidence game, which was a product of a mass delusion: Many people were being manipulated into believing that if some of us hid underground for a while (with plenty of food down there in our shelter and even toys to keep the children happy) then after the nuclear war explosions some of us would survive and could emerge from the shelters to restart America and civilization de novo. SANE would publicly counter that insanity, and in just two years SANE became an important peace movement with 150 local chapters. It also ran prominent newspaper ads, including three large ones that year in the New York Times, and the group even had the ability to call a rally with 20,000 people, according to historian Milton Katz’s (1987) book, Ban the Bomb. There was also a National Student Council for a Sane Nuclear Policy, called “Student SANE,” with committees on fifteen campuses. Although, of course, 1959-60 was culturally and politically many years before the much larger 1967 to 1973 peace movement, SANE clearly helped break through the silence and the fears of being isolated and labeled unpatriotic. By 1959-60, it had mobilized and highlighted the participation of many prominent figures like Martin Luther King, Linus Pauling, Bruno Walter, Gunner Myrdal, Albert Schweitzer and Pablo Casals. It even had a Hollywood chapter formed by Steve Allen with Harry Belafonte, Marlon Brando, Ozzie Davis, Henry Fonda and about fifty others joining publicly. Although it would be wrong to overemphasize SANE and Fromm’s work, surely it would be worse to miss how their effort helped awaken America by making opposition to nuclear insanity very visible. Fromm made a number of public speeches and added his name to many of the dramatic full-page ads placed by SANE in important newspapers, but how Fromm’s thought played a formative role in the organization becomes visible in a description of the meeting, on September 24, 1957, when the initiating group that was then calling itself “The Provisional Committee to Stop Nuclear Tests” was trying to come up

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with a better name for itself. The initiating group, which included Norman Thomas, head of SP-SDF, and Erich Fromm, a member of Thomas’s party by that time, obviously wanted a name that would reflect their commitment to reach the national psyche and mobilize lots of people. They were not interested in creating a small research or pressure group which would prepare scholarly papers and lobby in the congressional hallways. This is how Milton Katz (1987) describes this meeting: A name [for the new the group came up for] consideration. The famed psychoanalyst and author, Erich Fromm, a refugee from Nazi Germany who had already in his lifetime watched mass madness overcome one great power, insisted that American public life first recognize the revalidation of simply saving sanity. According to Fromm, “The normal drive for survival” had been overwhelmed by the Cold War, and the role of informed citizens was to “try to bring the voice of sanity to the people.” Admitting that it was “pathological” for people to be afraid when there was nothing to fear, he told Clarence Pickett [who, with Norman Cousins, led the meeting] that the lack of fear [in so many Americans] over the current arms race was even worse, “a symptom of a kind of schizophrenic indifference…which is so characteristic of our age.” Heeding his suggestion that they advocate a return to sanity, the organizers finally settled on the name the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (p. 24).

Fromm’s 1955 book, The Sane Society, was well known when SANE was founded. It had sold well—it went as high as fifth on the New York Times bestseller list at the time (Friedman, 2013)—and it was widely reviewed, including in Cousins’ magazine, Saturday Review, and an excerpt from the book was run in the SP-SDF journal, The Socialist Call, which was greatly shaped by Norman Thomas. Fromm must have been thrilled as he spoke to the group about bringing “the voice of sanity to the people”—thrilled that the temper of the somewhat hypnoid 1950s was cracking and thrilled that his books were playing a role. Just a few years later, Tom Hayden’s Port Huron Statement for Students for a Democratic Society would reflect Fromm’s call for humanism and sanity. Although the 1950s was a decade of nightmares, Fromm sensed with some optimism a growing radical potential emerging in the late 1950s as evidenced partially by the rapid growth of SANE. He wanted socialists and other radicals to be able to embrace the moment and lead the country further left with it. SANE itself was very important between 1957 and 1960, but, riddled with timidity, did not play the real leadership function it could have in the years that followed. Fromm’s connection to SANE became less close in the 1960s and 1970s, although he maintained contact

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and of course “contacts.” Fromm, although welcoming any genuine movement toward peace, saw an explicitly socialist humanism, borrowing deeply from Marx, as the real answer to barbarism and militarism, but SANE limited its focus. Confiding to Polish Marxist Adam Schaff in a letter in May, 1962, Fromm said that over the preceding five years, he had been “very active in helping to form an American peace movement,” and then he added almost as an aside, “on the left wing of which I find myself” (Funk, 2000, p. 145). Fromm’s best biographer, Rainer Funk (2000), says in his book that in 1960 Fromm spoke “in favor of the Socialist Party at Yale University to 1200 students and at Chicago University to 2000” (p. 145). Although he mainly lived in southwest Mexico in 1961 and 1962, he traveled and lectured “at Allegheny, Amherst, Bennington, Brooklyn, Marin, Colorado, Haverford, Rutgers, San Francisco State, Wabash, at the Hebrew Union College… Berkeley, Brandeis, Columbia, Harvard, New Hampshire, Roosevelt, Stanford, Massachusetts, Puerto Rico and Washington” (Funk, 2000, p. 143). And Funk (2000) says about those years, “It was clear that Fromm had become the leading figure of a generation pushing for social change. Little wonder that the FBI had accumulated a file on him that ran over 600 pages” (p. 145).

The Promethean Social Virtue: Disobedience Fromm knew that just giving facts to people, for instance about the folly of bomb shelters, would not be enough to change people. He was always thinking of what would reach into the character of the population. And sometimes it required him to make some pretty ironic and startling polemics. Though to advocate “disobedience as a virtue” must have sounded quite counterintuitive to his readers, particularly to parents, Fromm’s (1981) essay On Disobedience did not back down. In Fromm’s clinical assessment—the tensions which would lead to the Cuban missile crisis nuclear standoff with the Soviet Union were clearly on his mind— obedience can be a big problem, a vice, one that could very possibly get the world blown up. Fromm’s alert readers at the time could easily imagine a drunken general demanding a straight-backed lieutenant to push a certain dangerous button. Although we hear a drumbeat in our lives to obey the traffic signs, to obey our parents, teachers, school rules, police, the “doctor’s orders,” and the company directives, and although the beat is often fiercely reinforced by law, religion and convention, Fromm reminds us that there still are some important images of disobedience in Western culture. The mythical Prometheus, for example, was the figure who defied the leader of the

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divine pantheon, Zeus, the powerful god of the thunderbolt. Zeus controlled fire and refused to allow it to be under human control. But Prometheus defied Zeus’s authority and brought fire to mankind; for his “crime” Prometheus was chained to a rock for ever so long, pecked at by a large bird. Prometheus disobeyed and lost, but he is an honored hero, a harbinger for what philosophers call “emancipatory intent.” Yes, fire is dangerous, but mankind needed fire to progress. Obviously, mankind needed fire for cooking, warmth, and light at night, but mankind also needed fire (a symbol of spirit and reason, of science) in order to leave the Stone Age. To reach the Bronze Age, to work with metal, mankind would need fire. Fire would begin a new leap in the productive forces. Interestingly, Karl Marx, who told his daughter that Aeschylus, who wrote Prometheus Bound, was one of his three favorite poets, had embraced the Prometheus image as early as in his dissertation, and so Fromm (1961) is implicitly countering his Frankfurt School opponent, Herbert Marcuse, for missing an important side of Marx. Marcuse, who used a conservative view of Freud and repeatedly attacked Fromm for “revising” Freud, had hastily substituted more subtle, aesthetic, figures like Orpheus and Narcissus for Prometheus in Eros and Civilization. Although some, like Marcuse, were increasingly pessimistic during the late 1950s and the early 1960s, Fromm was sensing ferment and openness everywhere and figured it was a good time for Prometheus (the students joining the civil rights ferment and the workers) to disobey the gods. And, interestingly again, during this period Fromm sought out and began communicating with philosopher/socialist Raya Dunayevskaya, whose Marxism and Freedom was noticing ferment in the working class when others, like Marcuse, were not. Fromm insisted that mankind has been able to continue to evolve only through acts of disobedience. Spiritual, material and intellectual development have only been possible because of those who have dared to say no to power and convention, have dared to be “disobedient to authorities who tried to muzzle new thoughts and [disobedient] to the authority of long-established opinions which declare a change to be nonsense” (Fromm, 1981, p. 17). 1 1

Fromm’s virtue of disobedience, in contrast to a frequently observed pathological inability to disobey, led the author of this chapter to a very interesting classroom discussion in 2006 about the servicemen and private contractors who carried out the torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Students spontaneously noted how the torturers must have shut down their genuine consciences in order to obey those orders. Private Lynndie England, we know, went to prison for following orders to sexually humiliate Iraqi prisoners, and, I contend, she deserved that stern penalty,

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Of course, Fromm knows he must caution the growing social/political leftwing not to praise every kind of disobedience as virtuous, as if all obedience is a vice. Perhaps speaking in contrast to Marcuse, who felt comfortable encouraging nihilism in Eros and Civilization as part of his proposed “Great Refusal,” Fromm (1981), who was no nihilist, states that there is a “dialectical relationship between disobedience and obedience” (p. 18). For example, “All martyrs of religious faiths, of freedom and of science have had to disobey those who wanted to muzzle them in order to obey their own consciences, the laws of humanity and of reason” (Fromm, 1981, p. 18, my emphasis). If we disobey–and we must do so, soon–we are not throwing out all obedience. And if we must obey, reason should decide how, not power. However, reason deserves my service and obedience only if it is genuinely my reason. Although the Frankfurt School never properly credited him, Fromm worked on their famous Studies on Authority in the 1930s and was one of the early figures to identify the “authoritarian personality.” Persons with this type of character structure believe they are using their own reason freely, but they are simply internalizing the external authority of the current established social arrangements and they are accepting as “reasonable” whatever the current authorities direct. And the authoritarian personality feels deeply unsafe without that external authority around. In the authoritarian personality, this feeling of “unsafety” becomes unbearable and submission then becomes the characteristic response in life. Consequently, the authoritarian personality will abandon its own freedom and often will begin to think, says Fromm, that groups, particularly organized institutions, are protective, embracing, all-knowing and all-powerful parents to be followed blindly. And if the authorities forget to explain why they are demanding what they are demanding, just be patient, for surely they must have a good reason and will explain later why their demands are necessary. Fromm describes these people as developing an authoritarian conscience, basically Freud’s superego, but it is not really their own conscience or their own reason.

although I do also wish her supervisors were punished equally. Ever since the Nuremburg trials after World War II, “I was just following orders” has not been an acceptable defense. And reflecting Nuremburg, the U.S. uniform military code of justice eventually outlawed that defense. England “knew, or should have known,” in Nuremburg language, that what she was doing was wrong, even as she posed gleefully pointing at and mocking the naked detainees; and England was explicitly punished for not disobeying the orders.

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Fromm Motivates and Cautions Emerging 1960s Revolutionaries Fromm, ever the organizer, formulated an important concept to support those in the movement for social change: the revolutionary character. A careful reading of his 1960 “socialist manifesto and program” titled, Let Man Prevail, surely shows him trying to win new people to the Socialist Party, of course, but it was also addressed to the party’s regular membership and to others on the left more widely. It can be read as combatting certain problems in leftwing organizations (bureaucratic rigidity, insularity, anti-intellectualism, perhaps), the problems which he felt were holding back the left. Were not Marx’s Concept of Man in 1961 and its follow-up, Beyond the Chains of Illusion: My encounter with Marx and Freud (1962), written to interest newcomers in Marx? Yes, they were intentionally written to be accessible to newcomers who wanted an introduction to Marx, but these books were also addressing the Marxists themselves, east and west, who had been discouraged from reading the “early” humanist writings of Marx and had often succumbed to interpreting Marx in a “scientific” and narrow “practical” way. His book Socialist Humanism in 1965 was obviously addressed to the left.2 Fromm, as a Marxist socialist philosopher, activist, and careful scientific psychoanalyst, was not one to advocate just any kind of disobedience or refusal, because there is a dialectical relationship between disobedience and obedience. But he also had a further clarification to make when speaking to the political left: They need to engage in revolutionary disobedience. This revolutionary (fully developed, humanist) disobedience differs from rebellious disobedience, its pale imitation. In a remarkably dialectical essay, “The Revolutionary Character,” Fromm does what he often does, perhaps consciously repeating Hegel’s approach: Fromm begins his analysis with a concept— not a full proposition. In this case, Fromm wants to figure out what a “revolutionary” is, and he begins his analysis of this concept by describing what a revolutionary is not. He uses three negations: A revolutionary is not “someone who has participated in a revolution,” a revolutionary is not a rebel, and a revolutionary is not a fanatic (Fromm, 1981, p. 150-152). Masquerading as a simple irony, Fromm’s first distinction is nonetheless subtle and has 2

For further discussion of how Fromm was intervening in the left in the period 1959 to 1963 particularly, see my essay in Reclaiming the Sane Society, pages 6073.

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important implications. His concern that a revolutionary is not “someone who has participated in a revolution” reflects his philosophical reading of Marx and his professional psychoanalytic training. It reflects his basic commitment to look behind labels, credentials and external action— preferring to make visible the moral fabric and character of a real revolutionary. For instance, Fromm’s famous characterological study of the German workers thirty years earlier had raised the issue of the workers’ attitudes toward historic figures and revolutionary traditions of the past. But Fromm would not be satisfied hearing this: “Oh, I was there on the barricades. I am in the correct leftist party, so that proves I am a revolutionary.” Fromm was looking for something deeper than just an external confession of loyalty to some tradition or credential. Let us take two German workers in 1929.3 If Worker A, answering the question, “What famous people in history do you admire most?” answered with a list like this: Alexander the Great, Caesar, Napoleon, Marx and Lenin, then Fromm would count that response as a possible indication of an authoritarian personality. On the other hand, if Worker B, responding to the same question answered this way: Socrates, Pasteur, Kant, Marx and Lenin, Fromm would interpret that response differently. He would list it on the side of a democratic character structure, because this second worker’s list placed Marx and Lenin with benefactors of humanity and not so much with people with power. Obviously Fromm in his famous “interpretive questionnaire” study was trying to find out how many workers in Germany, unhappy with their economic situation, would identify with Marx and Lenin rather than with Hitler. But the “manifest answer” that Fromm was looking for—“I would stand with Marx and Lenin”—was of secondary importance in this study. (It was presumed, for instance, that many workers, asked to list people they admire, would list Marx and Lenin. After all, the German working class had been continuously educated by the huge Social Democratic Party of Marx and Engels for forty years.) Both Worker A and Worker B, responding to the questionnaire, identified somehow with the tradition of Marx and Lenin. However, far more important for Fromm and future social science was the “unintended, unconscious meaning” underlying the attachment to Marx and Lenin (Fromm, 1981, p. 148). Though both Worker A and Worker B would say they are in a revolutionary tradition—and the German working class was indeed quite “radicalized”—Worker A was showing signs of not actually being a revolutionary. If that worker’s answers on other items on the questionnaire showed the same bent, it might indicate that this would 3

I build here on Fromm’s second footnote in “The Revolutionary Character.”

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be the sort (characterologically) who would “cut a deal” and tolerate or support Hitler, if Hitler reached power before the left did (Fromm, 1981, p. 150-51). Because a revolutionary, for Fromm, is not just someone who was or is a participant in a revolution, or is “standing with” Marx and Lenin, or is in the right Marxist-Leninist party, Fromm, in his essay “The Revolutionary Character,” may also be critiquing the usual socialist “party building” concept. Parties from the huge German Social Democracy (Engels and Bebel years) to the disoriented sects like the Socialist Workers Party in 1959, identified success with numbers, with the best recruiters being those who recruit the most, and the best members being those who stay the longest, or participated in the old days, etc. Fromm would surely be hesitant about finding what “certifies” one as a revolutionary. Developing this first negation further, that one is not a revolutionary simply because one is in or was in a revolution, Fromm writes his surprising book, May Man Prevail: An Inquiry into the Facts and Fictions of Foreign Policy, published the same year as Marx’s Concept of Man. Fromm speaks of the Soviet “catechism” and those who recite it. In Soviet Russia, the adherence to the “correct” ideology became a test of loyalty. Even Khrushchev, although a critic of the Stalinist tradition, carefully uses formulae which establish, says Fromm, Khrushchev’s “legitimacy,” certifying his “succession to an idolized Marx-Lenin image, insisting on the ‘unbroken continuity of the ideology from Marx to Khrushchev’” (Fromm, 1961, p. 135). As a result there is endless repetition of the “correct” formulae; all new ideas can only be expressed by slight changes of words or emphasis within the framework of the ideology. Identifying someone as a revolutionary simply because he or she speaks words attached to such a tradition reflects the quality of “ideology,” and as Fromm (the psychoanalyst and careful student of philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach and the young Marx) states so simply in one of his nuggets: “It is the very nature of ideology that it deceives not only others, but those that use it” (Fromm, 1981, p. 130). The second negative distinction Fromm offers the left in his quest to find out what constitutes a revolutionary is simple: a revolutionary is not a rebel. A rebel is disobedient to external authority and may sound like a revolutionary and act like one, but a rebel is “someone who is deeply resentful of authority for not being appreciated, not being loved, not being accepted” (Fromm, 1981, p. 140). Clearly, here we can see the authoritarian personality discussion which Fromm first analyzed coming

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into play.4 It appears that the person who is fixated on external authority, whether attached to it in a very conservative way or in rebellious disobedience toward it, has the same deep character flaw. And Fromm brilliantly drives this issue home when he asserts that the person who wants to overthrow authority out of resentment usually wants to make himself the authority, and consequently “when he reaches his aim he will make friends with the very authorities that he was fighting so bitterly before” (Fromm, 1981, p. 140). Fromm references Pierre Laval of France who started out as a socialist and ended up serving the Nazi-installed Vichy regime. And he points to Ramsay MacDonald of England who came from a poor Scottish heritage and socialist circles but who used his connections in the emerging Labor Party to make himself endearing to English duchesses. Both Laval and MacDonald used rebellion against authority to gain an authority they would have deeply hated earlier. Fromm writes, “[T]wentieth Century political life is a cemetery containing the moral graves of people who started out as alleged revolutionaries and who turned out to be nothing but opportunistic rebels” (Fromm, 1981, p. 140). The third negative distinction is that a revolutionary is not a fanatic. But what is a fanatic? Fromm is careful to not use the term in a conventional sense, meaning a person who has strong convictions. Although some people believe that those who have convictions are fanatics and those who have none are “realists,” Fromm disagrees, of course, honoring those with strong convictions. The difference between a revolutionary and a fanatic is hard to distinguish sometimes, especially because a fanatic will often say just what a revolutionary will say! But the fanatic is still identifiable—again Fromm (1981) as a psychoanalyst looks to underlying character structure, not political behavior—as someone who has a cold passion, or stated the other way around, is “burning ice” (p. 152). He or she has made their cause an idol, says Fromm. A lack of human relatedness (narcissism) mixed with an intense relationship to a cause, characterizes the fanatic. Because the fanatic’s causes have become idols, her state of mind is often close to psychosis. A fanatic has two sides: on the one hand, extremely narcissistic and proud, but on the other hand, depressed (often blended with paranoid tendencies) and unable to relate. Fanatics find a “cure,” saving themselves from outright psychosis, says Fromm, by taking up

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Fromm’s essay is a gem and could be important for those today who want to demonstrate how efficacious psychoanalytical training can be for those approaching social theory.

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their cause, submitting themselves to it, and inflating the idol-cause into an absolute, thereby finding a passionate “meaning” for their lives.

Conclusion The preceding three distinctions, paraphrased quite closely here, show the sort of discussion Fromm was bringing to the left in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Philosophers will notice that Fromm almost always uses this dialectical approach, starting with a concept and saying what it is not. Each definiendum (concept to be defined) is subjected to an ironic, closely rubbing negation, as in these cases: What is a revolutionary? A revolutionary is not “someone who participates in a revolution and is saying revolutionary things.” (Participation in a revolution does not constitute a sufficient condition to be a revolutionary, nor perhaps is it a necessary condition.) What is a fanatic? A fanatic is not “someone who holds a conviction.” What is the Sane Society? Sanity is not “appearing to be sane by being normal.” What is Hope? Hope is not “wishing.” Hope is not “waiting.” However, hope is also not “forcing the un-forcible” (Braune, 2014, p. 75). His approach is negative in this manner, exploding the self-evident, somewhat like Hegel in the Phenomenology, or somewhat like the way Meister Eckhart did—Fromm honored both, and even quotes Eckhart in the essay. Fromm, the psychoanalyst and Marxist, was a man very suspicious of easy responses and naïve common sense, hence his work on concepts (definitions) is essential for new beginnings. (Note the title of Fromm’s book introducing the 1844 Manuscripts: Marx’s Concept of Man.) As Marx (1979) states about definitions in his Grundrisse, “The concrete concept is concrete because it is the synthesis of many definitions, thus representing the unity of diverse aspects. It appears therefore in reasoning, as a summing up, a result, and not as the starting point of origin, although it is the real point of origin…” (p. 206).5 Conceding all that it is not, then what is a revolutionary? Fromm, in his Socratic manner, is not going to blurt out an answer to the question and would prefer to occasion the readers (as the emerging new society) to discover the answer. On the other hand, Fromm does offer clear hints at

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I have met a number of leftists who have made fun of Fromm’s The Art of Loving, and I have found they have not read it. But those tempted to mock Fromm for using terms like “faith,” “hope,” and “love” would do well to watch how brilliantly, dialectically, he works at the level of concepts: his definitional work alone justifies reading his books. And as far as the Art of Loving goes, there is a wonderful seven-page discussion in it on paradoxical or dialectical logic.

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what a revolutionary character is. To conclude, here are six characterological distinguishing marks: 1. A revolutionary is free and independent. For Fromm, a Marxist, this concept has to be nuanced carefully, however, because the revolutionary character began to be fostered at the time of the English revolution, when “independent” and “free” could have a simplistic bourgeois edge, freedom as being left alone by authorities. This is a theme Fromm explains in many of his works from Escape from Freedom (first published in 1940) onward: “freedom from” is not fully “freedom for.” In “The Revolutionary Character” essay, he praises the sense of freedom and independence in the writings of the Christian mystic Meister Eckhart, who has a positive sense of self-awareness and of freedom as expressing and realizing what we are: “Life is that which is moved from within by itself.” And Fromm (1981) shows how this is similar to Marx’s concept in the 1844 Manuscripts that my life should not be determined and structured by others (heteronomy) but should flourish by being “my own creation” (p. 145). 2. A revolutionary is life-loving. The example he gives is Albert Schweitzer. The counterexample is Hitler, with his very apparent attraction to death, destruction and decay. 3. A revolutionary is not parochial, but rather identifies with humanity, unrestrained by “accidents of time and geography.” Like his hero, Rosa Luxemburg, Fromm is startlingly anti-nationalistic. For instance, since his earliest Marxist years, in the mid-1920s, when Zionism surely seemed to be progressive to many Jewish intellectuals like Martin Buber, Fromm clearly moved away from it in the 1920s.6 He thinks a revolutionary must resist the myriad temptations on the left and right of nationalism or tribalism. 4. A revolutionary has a “critical mood” (Fromm, 1981, p. 159). Fromm in his writings often points to Socrates, Jesus, Marx, 6

Fromm’s writings on Judaism and messianism are profound and loving—he sang Hassidic songs until old age and wrote a marvelous book on the Old Testament, Ye Shall be as Gods. However, like one of the thinkers he admired in the 1920s, the neo-Kantian Herman Cohen, he saw Zionism as limiting. Joan Braune, in a dissertation written at the University of Kentucky under Arnold Farr, analyzed Fromm’s messianism with attention to intellectual circles in the 1920s, and I am indebted to some insights on this that she began analyzing at the Radical Philosophy Association conference in November, 2008 in San Francisco, which greatly facilitated my inquiry on Fromm’s work in the 1950s and 1960s.

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Spinoza and Bertrand Russell as examples of people who do not fall for clichés or cheap “common sense.” 5. A revolutionary must have a thought-out (demystified, nonidolatrous, and self-aware) relationship to power. Not afraid to look at it, but not bent to it. 6. And lastly, of course, the revolutionary must be able to disobey. Fromm particularly notes that it is harder for people in the twentieth century to disobey, because in our bureaucratized society people are so manipulated they are actually unaware they are obeying. This entire discussion leads to his odd concept, a subject worthy of a follow-up paper, that the disobedient person with a revolutionary character is simply the “fully awake” person in a half-asleep society (Fromm, 1981, pp. 164-65). What more important civic virtue could there be than disobedience understood this way?

References Braune, J. (2014). Erich Fromm’s revolutionary hope: Prophetic messianism as a critical theory of the future. Rotterdam: Sense. Braune, N., & Braune, J. (2014). Erich Fromm’s socialist program and prophetic messianism, in two parts. In S. J. Miri, R. Lake, & T. M. Kress (Eds.), Reclaiming the sane society: Essays on Erich Fromm’s thought (pp. 59-91). Rotterdam: Sense. Friedman, L. J. (2013). The lives of Erich Fromm: Love’s prophet. New York: Columbia University Press. Fromm, E. (1961). May man prevail? New York: Doubleday. —. (1961). Marx’s concept of man. New York: Frederick Ungar. —. (1963). The dogma of Christ and other essays on religion, psychology and culture. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. —. (1967). Let man prevail: A socialist manifesto and program (3rd ed.). New York: Socialist Party, U.S.A. —. (1976). Escape from freedom. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. —. (1981). On disobedience and other essays. New York: The Seabury Press. Funk, Ranier. (2000). Erich Fromm: His life and idea. New York: Continuum. Katz, M. S. (1987) Ban the bomb: A history of SANE, the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy. New York: Praeger Publishers. Marx, K. (1979). A contribution to a critique of political economy. New York: International.

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McCumber, J. (2001). Time in the ditch: American philosophy and the McCarthy Era. Chicago: Northwestern University Press. Whitfield, S. J. (1991). The culture of the Cold War. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Wilde, L. (2004) Erich Fromm and the quest for solidarity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

CHAPTER FIVE PUTTING SOCIAL THEORY INTO CLINICAL PRACTICE: INCORPORATING FROMM’S THEORY OF SOCIAL CHARACTER INTO A TRADITIONAL PSYCHODYNAMIC TREATMENT SCOTT GRAYBOW

This chapter explores the possibility that consideration of Fromm’s social character is relevant not only to an improved understanding of the collective unconscious of an entire community, but also to the clinical practice of psychodynamic psychotherapy with individuals. In doing so it attempts to extend Fromm’s ideas about the intersectionality of psychoanalysis and sociology beyond the realm of social theory. The paper centers around the description of the psychodynamic treatment of an adult female whose psychological problems are thought to be partly the result of her social character, which was internalized during her formative years but whose impact remains apparent in light of her choice of ego defenses and general way of relating to and understanding the world.

Introduction Erich Fromm (1900-1980) was a psychoanalyst, sociologist, philosopher, social critic and democratic socialist. Like other neoFreudians, Fromm sought to apply psychoanalytic theory to social and cultural topics. Fromm was particularly successful at articulating a new and radical understanding of the role of economic conditions in the formation of the psychical structure of communities. Fromm’s idea was grounded in his deeply held notion that psychoanalytic theory and social

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change theories—most notably Marxism—share a common belief in the deterministic role of the unconscious and advocate for solutions that promote personal insight and self-awareness. At the nexus of Fromm’s proposed relationship between psychoanalytic theory and social change theory is the notion of “social character,” which he defines as the historically conditioned emotional responses that create the worldview groups use to understand and respond to social dilemmas. Social character commonly is understood to refer to the characteristics of entire communities. For example, were Fromm alive today he might be interested in exploring why, during the 2012 elections in the United States, an overwhelming number of poor communities whose members are dependent on government food subsidies in order to meet their nutritional needs voted for political candidates who advocated for repeal of those very same subsidies. But what does social character look like at the level of the individual? What impact does it have on the intrapsychic functioning of one person, and what role does it play in determining how that person relates to the world? Applying this lens, a psychodynamic lens, to the notion of social character raises even more fundamental questions. Namely, is the dichotomy between a clinical focus on a patient’s inner world and a focus on his or her concrete needs an objective truth, or is it a false conclusion, one that is more the result of political and social events than an accurate application of basic psychodynamic theory? Stated differently, is it possible to synthesize work focusing on the inner and outer worlds in a manner that maintains and even expands a psychodynamic therapeutic frame? While this paper will not focus on the historical process of how proponents of psychodynamic psychotherapy got to the point that we believe when we deal with a person’s outer world, we sacrifice working psychologically, it will attack this conclusion. In this regard my argument here is not that of a purist; like Erich Fromm, I believe people are too complicated to benefit from being addressed in an exclusively pure way. What I am proposing is an integrative approach, one that acknowledges that our inner and outer worlds intersect on a daily basis, and that integrates various schools of psychodynamic thought to address that reality. This chapter uses the work of one significant psychodynamic theorist– Erich Fromm–and one of his theoretical constructs–social character–to attempt to illustrate the value of working integratively. More specifically, the chapter uses the notion of social character as a starting point to give examples supporting the conclusion that integration of the inner and the outer, with emphasis on helping patients overcome existential deficits and

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poor executive functioning, enriches rather than detracts from the psychodynamic work, and is indeed highly necessary at this time in light of certain social realities such as the ongoing effects of the Great Recession and the ever-strengthening forces of economic neoliberalism. To this end, the chapter explores the possibility that consideration of social character is relevant not only to an improved understanding of the collective unconscious of an entire community, but also to the clinical practice of psychodynamic psychotherapy with individuals. It illustrates ways psychodynamic therapy might be more effective if it included clinical techniques that seek to help patients become conscious of the relationship between their economic class and the psychological symptoms, problematic behaviors and other troubling factors that cause them to seek treatment. To achieve this end, the chapter relates key outtakes from the my work with an adult client in long-term psychodynamic treatment whose presenting problems, relationship with the therapist, and treatment progress are described in a manner in which discussion of traditional psychodynamic concepts and economic class issues are given equal importance. Through this case study, the chapter details how a patient’s social character prevented her from becoming conscious of her status as a member of an economically oppressed class and the impact of that lack of self-awareness upon her life. The case analysis upholds Fromm’s claim that psychoanalytic and social change theories indeed go hand in hand and offers clinical examples of how Fromm’s ideas might be incorporated into a traditional psychodynamic treatment.

Theory Three pieces of writing penned over the course of nearly two decades provide a clear and concise introduction to Fromm’s thesis regarding the interconnection of psychological theory and social change theory. His argument that the two schools of thought share the same worldview was radical in its day and remains highly relevant to our times in light of the economic conditions that have taken hold since the Great Recession of 2008. The first article, written in 1942, is entitled, “Character and Social Process.” In it Fromm lays out his theory that it is not only internal drives and conflicts that induce psychological responses, but also a historical process of social conditioning in response to the unique challenges faced by one’s economic class. At the intersection of psychological and sociological forces is ‘social character,’ which Fromm (1942) states “is formed by the dynamic adaptation of human needs to the particular mode

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of existence of a given society… it determines the thinking, feeling and acting of individuals” (p. 1). Thus, Fromm posits our economic, political and other sociological behaviors, both as individuals and collectively as a society, have emotional roots. The function of social character, then, is to motivate man to behave in a way that maintains the status quo while deriving psychological satisfaction from doing so. Put another way, social character is the internalization of external necessities that harness Man’s creative power and puts it to use maintaining the current social order regardless of the legitimacy or effectiveness of that order, “the social forces uphold the social structure when behavior is at once emotionally satisfying and practical from the standpoint of maintaining the status quo” (Fromm, 1942, p. 1). Fromm points out that the family plays a critical role in transmitting social character from one generation to another. Parents unconsciously indicate to their children which qualities need to be satisfied to realize individual potential and in so doing maintain the social order that creates the environment that makes achievement of these goals a realistic possibility. Fromm concludes that promoting social character promotes maintenance of the current social order. Fromm’s next pieces—“Human Nature and Social Theory” (1969) and “Individual and Social Origins of Neurosis” (1944)—provide an example of social character as it existed among the American working class of his day and explore the connection between social and individual neuroses. These works provide an example of Fromm’s earlier idea that social problems elicit behaviors that seek to satisfy collective psychological needs that develop in light of unsatisfactory economic conditions. These behaviors are often counter-productive to the needs of the people but nevertheless are reinforced through social conditioning at the familial level using rationalizations that vary according to historical context. Fromm (1969) states that each economic class has specific psychological desires that come about “as a response to particular social circumstances and necessities which exist for that particular class” (p. 1). His discussion of the American worker maintains that the members of the American working class are faced with specific stressors–some real, some irrational– to which they have distinct reactions that are rooted in deep-seated emotional conclusions about how the world should be. Unfortunately, as a result of the historical context in which their social character develops, Fromm believes the American working class fails to truly promote its own interests. One example might be the impact of racism and the historical memory of slavery. Although slavery was no more by the time Fromm was writing these articles, the idea that whites were superior to blacks continued to dominate in many areas of the United

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States and influenced the feelings and behaviors of white workers. Particularly in the American South, the racist aspects of the social character of the white working class became apparent when members of this class rejected the labor movement because, although unionization would raise their incomes and promote safer work environments, solidarity meant that black and white workers would be treated equally under union contracts. Acting upon a desire to maintain the racist norms implicit in their social character, the white working class of the American South rejected the labor movement, thereby unconsciously helping to “further the development of economic forces [that] contradict the economic interests of that class” (Fromm, 1969, p. 1) In summary, Fromm says the social character of the American worker is such that, in response to real and perceived threats to his economic and social status, the worker is not wellplaced to espouse such progressive ideas as group solidarity. Instead, he is psychologically conditioned to ignore the historical context that gave rise to his misplaced emotional reactions and gravitates toward a worldview that promotes such counter-productive goals and ideals as racism, unregulated competition, neurotic individualism and over-consumption of unnecessary consumer goods.

The Client Ms. G is a middle-aged female who was born and raised in a rural area of the American West. She has been in treatment for three years to address what she describes as “relationship issues” that are impeding her performance at work. Also of concern to the client are her feelings of depression and anxiety. Ms. G grew up on her family’s small farm. Her father was emotionally and physically abusive. The family was very poor and subsisted mainly on the modest profit they made from selling the products of the farm. Ms. G describes her childhood as one filled with poverty. She remembers there were seasons when the family worried about not having enough food to eat because the harvest was not bountiful. She also remembers growing up in a highly segregated society in which even the poorest white farmer was considered to be superior to members of the black community. Religious attitudes and experiences had the most profound impact on Ms. G during her developing years, though. She and her family attended an evangelical Christian church each Sunday. She recalls that every week the sermon focused on the same lesson: giving into temptation leads to sinful behavior that will cause you to go to Hell. Despite the pain and injustice that defined Ms. G’s childhood, she does not recall any efforts on the part of her family or community to address the

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poverty that oppressed them, nor did they express dissatisfaction with segregation. No one questioned the social order, let alone attempted to alter it. According to Ms. G, the societal expectation was that individuals should ignore the injustices of the physical world and focus on making sure they did what is necessary to ensure they will go to Heaven upon death. In practical terms, this meant accepting a life of poverty and segregation and justified a communal disregard for things such as secular education, social activism and solidarity. At the individual level, Ms. G recalls that the norm was to disregard long-term planning and to focus on meeting needs—both material and emotional—as they arose. This certainly was the script for Ms. G’s adult life. Ms. G recalls that she never questioned the role of religion despite the fear and self-loathing it instilled in her, nor did she find herself particularly upset about poverty or racism. She does not recall ever considering things like what sort of a career she wanted or what practical steps she might take to provide herself with an adulthood more stable and satisfying than that of her parents. Instead, she found herself deeply attracted to religion and wanting to find a religious experience that was more positive than the one she had growing up. As a teenager she converted to Buddhism because she appreciated its emphasis on the relationship between the body and the mind and its focus on man’s place within nature. During her early 20s Ms. G became so involved with Buddhist studies that she lived for a time in a Buddhist community and was selected to teach other converts. During this period, Ms. G found the mixture of spirituality and study of religious scripture to be a pleasant departure from the fear-based sermons she had listened to on Sundays as a child. After 12 years of practicing Buddhism and living in the Buddhist monastery, Ms. G relocated to a major Northeastern city due to a wish to find a more challenging and faster-paced lifestyle. For the first time in her life, Ms. G was responsible for meeting her needs and had to manage finding employment, paying rent, shopping for food, and making relationship choices. During this time she remained religiously active, but moved on from Buddhism and found herself drawn to a new religion, Reform Judaism. Besides her new religious identity, though, Ms. G remained socially isolated and finds herself “not living life, I’m just getting by.” Five years ago she obtained full-time employment as a teacher’s aide. The job pays her just enough to cover her rent and provides health insurance, but she is unable to pay off her credit card debt or accumulate any cash savings. She finds the work unfulfilling. At present, Ms. G is highly unsatisfied with many areas of her life. She becomes frustrated when she is unable to establish relationships that

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extend beyond surface level discussions of religious topics or professional duties. She yearns for a life that continues to focus around faith in God, but she seems more interested in personal spirituality than in returning to membership in a formal religious community. As Ms. G becomes more interested in living life as an autonomous adult free from the rigidity of an organized religious community, she has been forced to confront her inability to meet her newfound practical needs. Ms. G struggles to pay her rent and credit card bills on time and never has enough money left over to start a savings account. Emotionally, Ms. G feels embarrassed and angry about the fact that she is now middle aged but has “nothing to show for it.” She is increasingly anxious about how she will support herself during old age. Despite this discontent, Ms. G consistently is unable to formulate concrete plans that might enable her to achieve the more stable life she desires. She expresses a general feeling of powerlessness and hopelessness in regard to being able to care for herself. She yearns for the security of living back at the monastery where she “didn’t have to worry about my meals or having a roof over my head.” Ms. G is conflicted, though, because she wishes to be individuated from her parents and she has many goals for herself including maintaining a long-term relationship that could lead to marriage, returning to school to complete her studies, finding meaningful employment and moving to a more spacious and comfortable apartment.

Treatment During the treatment, Ms. G was discovered to have a pattern of reverting to fantasy in lieu of tackling her practical needs. This pattern originated in the social character of Ms. G’s community, particularly its religious and socio-economic identity, and was deeply linked to her emotional problems, lack of self-agency, and pursuit of an inauthentic idealized image. During sessions, Ms. G frequently spoke at length about wishing she had a job that was more fulfilling, challenging and that exposed her to a supportive group of colleagues who could appreciate her. As we discussed the theme of meaningful employment further, I learned that a more immediate concern Ms. G had about her current job was that her salary simply did not allow her to lead the sort of stable, predictable life that is necessary for good emotional and physical health. Ms. G initially was embarrassed about discussing her financial dilemma, but I encouraged her to do so by being non-judgmental and suggesting that the need to care for herself emotionally goes hand in hand with taking better care of herself physically and materially.

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As she became more comfortable in the therapy relationship, Ms. G was able to verbalize how she knew she needed to earn more money but found herself struggling to develop practical ideas about how to achieve this end. She would often speak about attending elite private art schools to further her painting skills so that she could open a profitable art studio. When asked how she would fund this educational effort, she said she would take out student loans or perhaps additional credit card debt. I questioned the practical limitations of this plan. I inquired if she had looked into how much people earn when they graduate from these schools or how long she thought it would take to pay off the student loans. Ms. G was genuinely startled; these questions had never occurred to her and were not part of her decision-making process. I saw in this response an opportunity to engage the client in a way that would allow us to relate to each other more authentically and would promote individual autonomy and class-consciousness on the part of the client. I encouraged Ms. G to wonder why these questions had never occurred to her. She was able to identify that discussion of long-term plans, assessment of available resources, and generally preparing for the future had not been part of her childhood, there simply was not enough money, food and other resources to do so. She felt sad about this and was eager to explore further. She was able to see the connection between this history and her current behavior. I offered to serve as a guide to Ms. G. I believed that as her therapist part of providing her with a reparative therapeutic experience meant creating a clinical space where she could gain the experiences and knowledge she lacked growing up, including knowledge about the existence of alternative worldviews and more concrete things such as basic financial skills/knowledge. We agreed to work on budgeting. The client had never made a budget. Ms. G was very fearful that making a budget would be useless because “I just won’t be able to stick with it.” In my mind I took this statement to be the result of the client having internalized and personalized the societal assumption that poor people are poor because they lack the ability to restrain the desire for immediate gratification. My clinical response to the client was to empathize with her anxiety and suggest to her that even if she cannot stick with the budget permanently I would not reject or abandon her. I suggested the reason that she might not be able to stick to a budget is not because of shortcomings on her part, but because her current employment does not provide her with the resources necessary to maintain a budget that realistically meets her needs. We used therapy sessions to create a list of the client’s expenses and income and quickly learned that the majority of her money was going toward paying credit card debt. This led to fruitful discussions in which I learned, and the

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client became consciously aware of, how misuse of easy credit allowed her to maintain a fantastical image of herself as someone who was financially better off, and therefore less oppressed and marginalized, than she really was. Soon, the client was able to verbalize that, “I see now how money touches every aspect of my life, and I need to try to take control of that.” She became conscious of the fact she was living paycheck to paycheck and we talked about her feelings of shame, embarrassment and fear that came with this new awareness of the precariousness of her financial situation. This was a significant change in the way Ms. G interacted with me, given that earlier in our relationship she presented as highly rigid and fearful of expressing feelings that might be perceived as impolite or reason for her to be rejected.

Integration of Theory, Client and Treatment Poverty, injustice and deprivation were constant during the client’s early years and played a formative role in her development. Today, the impact of these factors remains apparent in the client’s self-doubt, lack of self-agency and chronically low self-esteem. The social forces that surrounded Ms. G during childhood influence the manner in which she makes sense of the world and are closely related to the methods she chooses to employ as she attempts to create the life she wishes to lead. Beginning in childhood and continuing until today, Ms. G strives to obtain an idealized image of herself that is consistent with the psychological and sociological expectations put upon her in childhood. Psychologically, Ms. G has an unconscious fear of her own aggression that causes her to remain superficial and, through reaction formation, is acted upon by constantly seeking to submit to and please authority figures, usually in undemocratic religious hierarchies. Sociologically, Ms. G continues to repeat the past by not allowing herself to question the injustices that impact her. Ms. G is aware her limited finances mean she is barely able to provide herself with food and shelter, and her non-union job means she can be fired at any moment, but she does not question the validity of this system. Just like her family when they directed their attention toward the Hell of the bible rather than the poverty and racism that surrounded them, Ms. G employs fantasy, denial and rationalization to make sense of her place in the world; the social character of her childhood world remains firmly introjected into her unconscious. Consequently, her ego employs many of the same defenses used during childhood and her psychic energy is cathected away from more productive pursuits in order to minimize and distract attention

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from the anxiety caused by the harsh realities associated with being a working-class woman living paycheck to paycheck. The client’s religious and career choices can be viewed as a physical manifestation of her unconscious pattern of repeating the past and are therefore a representation of the continuing impact of her social character, which causes her to see herself within the social order as subservient, voiceless, powerless, and always needing to be on guard. In many ways the client’s decision to join the Buddhist religious community might be understood to be her attempt to replace her dysfunctional and unsatisfying family of origin with a more helpful, alternative parental holding environment. The undemocratic, hierarchical structure of this religious community caused the client to remain in a subservient position similar to that of her childhood, however, and seemed to rob her of the chance for individual autonomy or the benefits of group solidarity that she may have unconsciously hoped this place would offer. At Ms. G’s current job as a teacher’s aide, the client’s boss is yet another alternative father who treats her harshly and to whom Ms. G responds according to the expectations of her internalized social character. Although this boss considers himself to be “liberal and progressive,” Ms. G’s job there is an at-will position from which she can be fired at any moment. Ms. G is constantly fearful that something she says or does will displease the boss and cause her to be fired. Analysis of her interpersonal relationships at work revealed the client was continuing to engage in the same pattern of forcing herself to submit to undemocratic authority by disavowing her own practical needs and repressing her feelings. Rather than allow her mind to wander to ideas about how she felt about this dilemma or might resolve it, she succumbed to a rich fantasy life wherein she daydreamed about the meanings behind the tone of her supervisor’s voice, ignored the fact that she cannot stretch her paycheck far enough, and fantasized she would change her life magically by attending an elite private school that would whip her into a famous artist in no time. In Ms. G’s relationship with me, she experienced me as a potential threat, ever fearful that expressing her own needs would be reason for me to despise and reject her. As a result, our relationship threatened to remain superficial and clinically ineffective. As Ms. G’s therapist, I understood this to be a function of a striving to replace her true self with an idealized image that conformed to the harsh expectations of the introjected father. I also included in my assessment of Ms. G an appreciation of the impact of the key parts of her social character, specifically the class dynamics and sociological conditions that were present during her childhood, and worked to ensure these issues were discussed as much as things such as

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the client’s early object relations. Approaching my work with Ms. G in this manner was not without risks. Looking at the description above, it strikes me that offering the client basic financial skills could be seen as a way of empowering her, of compensating for deficits in the client’s social character that were identified by the client herself, but doing so could also easily be interpreted as an effort on my part to provide her with the knowledge to become a more effective consumer. If correct, the latter interpretation would suggest I was unconsciously re-enforcing the power dynamics of our neoliberal society within the therapeutic relationship, perhaps because of shortcomings in my own class-consciousness. This points to the powerful role that the therapist’s own class-consciousness (or lack thereof) can have on the treatment relationship and underscores the power inequalities that potentially arise in the patient/therapist relationship of a traditional psychodynamic treatment. I concluded that my decision to work on budgeting with the client was a logical and acceptable extension of a well-known part of the patienttherapist relationship: establishing the fee and ensuring timely payment of the fee. I reasoned that if discussion between the patient and therapist about the price of therapy is appropriate and indeed clinically helpful, surely broader discussion of economic issues and concrete methods to improve economic well-being are relevant to work within the therapeutic relationship. This is perhaps especially true in today’s economic climate, where pensions have been replaced by 401Ks, temporary workers have replaced unionized employees, and many workers have no choice but to be entrepreneurs at some point in their careers. This raises a final potential ethical issue, namely whether my decision to expose the client to alternative, or some might say radical, ideas during the course of our discussions was clinically appropriate or simply an act of imposing my political views upon the client. In this area I have no concerns about having committing an ethical error. The manner in which I introduced ideas to Ms. G was merely that, an introduction, an exposure to looking at the world through a lens that was not available to her, her family or community, during her formative years. Of course, the content I introduced and did not introduce was limited by my own strengths and weaknesses, and I made the client aware of that. I also made Ms. G aware that my role as her therapist was not to give her answers or to tell her what to do, but to establish an environment wherein she had the intellectual resources and felt safe enough to come to her own conclusions about who she is, what the problems are in her life, and how her life ought to be. This ensured that not only was I not enforcing my personal agenda onto the client but I was also offering her an

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emotional space that was the total opposite of those parental holding environments she had previously known. In the treatment with Ms. G, I sensed that offering assistance with budgeting while simultaneously using sessions to talk about economic and class issues as they related to Ms. G’s personal life experiences helped put the concrete financial skills I was sharing in their proper context and allowed room for the client to obtain a greater awareness of her class, its oppression, and the client’s previously unknown feelings and beliefs about how things might be made better. This can be viewed as a clinical example that supports Fromm’s argument that psychoanalysis and social change theories share the same worldview and goals, namely the attainment of fundamental changes via an improved awareness of the hidden forces that impact and shape our lives.

Conclusion The description of the therapeutic work with Ms. G offers a window into a traditional psychodynamic treatment in which an attempt was made to incorporate the principles of Fromm’s notion of social character into the analytic work. In Ms. G’s case, her unconscious desire to submit to undemocratic authority and tendency to employ denial, rationalization and fantasy was determined to be an unconscious repetition of the world in which she grew up. Rather than process and attempt to resolve the poverty and racism around them, the client’s family and their community accepted a fantastical solution that encouraged and supported a worldview in which problems were ignored and critical thinking was discouraged. Implicit in this worldview was the assumption that the client, her family and the members of their community were powerless vis a vis the sociological forces impacting them, which led them to the conclusion that they could not and should not attempt to change things. Neither personal autonomy nor communal solidarity could flourish under this ideology, and individual and group pathologies took root. These findings are consistent with Fromm’s thesis that historical conditioning contributes to a social character that is often counterproductive to the needs of oppressed and marginalized groups. Such social character takes on a unique psychological perspective when we observe that promoting social character is rooted in a collective effort to satisfy emotional needs. At the level of the individual, the introjected social character can lead to distinct emotional and social dilemmas because it might promote the use of maladaptive ego defenses or cause a person to engage in behaviors that seem to satisfy an emotional need and be

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condoned socially, but are ultimately detrimental to both individual mastery and group solidarity. A newfound interest in the work of Erich Fromm and the notion of social character are important parts of what I believe is the pressing need to work integratively. To work in this manner is wholly consistent with Fromm’s emphasis on two things. First, the melding of the inner and the outer, of the psychological with the seemingly concrete. Second, to avoid approaching our work as purists; not only is the outer fully represented within the complex workings of the inner and therefore ripe to be addressed in a psychodynamic manner, but we must conclude that no one theory can address a patient in his or her entirety. Therefore, this chapter has not attempted to promote a “Frommian” approach, but rather to apply concepts that have their origins in Fromm. Alone, the concept of social character might be insufficient, but when integrated into a comprehensive approach, attention to this piece of the data ensures the patient receives a truly traditional psychodynamic treatment; that is, a treatment that is in line with the goals and techniques of Freud and the second generation analysts who attempted to address theoretically and clinically the impact of issues that remain highly relevant to this day: economic inequality, political motivation and identity, and community solidarity or lack thereof. Incorporating Fromm’s notion of social character into the clinical work of a traditional psychodynamic treatment does not require the use of fancy theoretical terms and does not pose insurmountable ethical or practical dilemmas. Through verbalization and exploration of the feelings surrounding such things as a newfound awareness that her life has been impacted negatively by her economic class status, the patient described in this chapter simultaneously worked toward achieving the basic analytic goal of improved self-awareness while becoming better positioned to respond behaviorally to the social conditions that were the catalyst for the development of the social character she internalized during her formative years.

References Fromm, E. (1942). Character and the social process: An appendix to Fear of Freedom. Retrieved October 8, 2013 from M.I.A. Library, Erich Fromm Archive: https://www.marxists.org/archive/fromm/works/1942/character.htm —. (1944). Individual and social neurosis. American Sociological Review, 9(4), 380-384.

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—. (1969). Human nature and social theory. Personal correspondence from Erich Fromm to Erich Vladimir Dobrenkov. Retrieved October 8, 2013 from M.I.A. Library, Erich Fromm Archive: https://www.marxists.org/archive/fromm/works/1969/human.htm

CHAPTER SIX PROGRESSIVE PSYCHOANALYSIS IN THE WORKS OF ERICH FROMM AND SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK DAN MILLS

One of the Frankfurt School’s most orthodox Marxist-Freudians, second-generation psychoanalyst Erich Fromm drew the ire of fellow Frankfurt School critic Herbert Marcuse, who accused him of being superficial. Nevertheless, Fromm’s melding of Freud and Marx was in keeping with the Frankfurt School’s attempt to understand social psychology by bringing together the thought of two of the most controversial and influential intellectuals of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Decades after the heyday of the Frankfurt School, Slovenian Marxist-Lacanian philosopher Slavoj Žižek revitalized and updated the Frankfurt School’s method by replacing Freud with Lacan and relying more heavily upon Hegel. But Žižek and Fromm share many similarities: both attempt to meld psychoanalysis with a Marxist social theory and both do so while simultaneously writing in a popular style that is accessible to the non-initiated, non-academic reader. This chapter will compare the Marxist-Freudian model as developed in Erich Fromm’s works with the Marxist-Lacanian model pioneered by Slavoj Žižek, and will argue that both Fromm and Žižek expand the potential applications of psychoanalysis by bringing together psychoanalysis with Marxist social theory. While the Frankfurt School focused this marriage of Marx and Freud on the totalitarianism of the Nazi regime, Žižek uses the less accessible theories of Jacques Lacan to come to an understanding of what it means to be a subject in what neo-Marxists have called “late capitalism.” Fromm and Žižek use the same abstract methods to bring together psychology and sociology in a way that allows the non-initiated to appreciate the

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symbiotic relationship between the psychological and sociological aspects of human subjectivity.

Introduction An early scene in the 1963 James Bond film, From Russia with Love, depicts Bond awaiting the explosion of a bomb inside the Russian embassy in Istanbul. Bond twice asks a Russian sitting at a desk if the clock on the wall is correct, to which the Russian replies in the affirmative. When Bond asks a third time, he receives the response, “Russian clocks are always correct,” and the anticipated explosion follows. This brief scene in the adaptation of a novel John F. Kennedy listed as one of his personal favorites perfectly encapsulates the 1960s Western understanding of Soviet Russian ideology: every aspect of a Russian citizen, including time in the abstract, is “correct” and under strict control from the Soviet government. Slavoj Žižek has famously connected the real villainous organization of this film, SPECTRE (and not the USSR’s spy organization, SMERSH), to the opening lines of the Communist Manifesto: “A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of communism.” A renowned and notorious public intellectual, Žižek has produced a vast oeuvre of publications detailing his Marxist-Lacanian model. But a spectre is haunting Žižek, as his model greatly resembles the Frankfurt School’s Freudo-Marxism. Founded by Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse and Erich Fromm, the Frankfurt School pioneered social psychology in the beginnings and in the midst of totalitarian fascism in Europe (Jay, 1973, p. 116). Erich Fromm would eventually write bestselling books bringing together Freud and Marx and become a highly visible public intellectual who named a prominent activist organization after the title of one of his books (Friedman, 2013). Fromm’s success, however, came with sharp criticism from both his Frankfurt School colleagues and others from outside Europe. Similarly, Žižek has received scathing criticism in spite of, or possibly because of, his celebrity status. By comparing the careers and writings of Fromm and Žižek, it becomes apparent that, firstly, Žižek followed in the footsteps of the Frankfurt School more than he himself might like to acknowledge, and secondly, that public and financial success can sometimes have a deleterious effect on academic careers and credentials. Popular understanding of progressive thought likens it to a humanistic democratization that provides a more equitable distribution of resources and opportunities. As such, Fromm and Žižek are both on the cutting edge of what might be referred to as “progressive psychoanalysis.” Building on

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the work of earlier authors such as Russell Jacoby (1983) and Elizabeth Danto (2006), Lewis Aron and Karen Starr (2013) point out that Freud’s program from its very beginning sought a democratization of psychiatric care such that everyone, regardless of their social or economic situation, could benefit from his humanist aims for therapy. Aron and Starr (2013) argue “social, cultural, political, interactional, and interpersonal” factors can limit an individual’s freedom and self-reliance, ultimately leaving the subject “vulnerable” (p. 4). Socialization, in other words, creates the possibility for a rupture in a healthy psychological condition. Progressive psychoanalysis, rather than myopically focusing on questions like whether or not the therapist uses a couch (considered by some to be integral to true psychoanalysis), aims to provide a general, humanistic therapeutic suture for such a rupture. Both Fromm and Žižek give pride of place to this sociological effect on individual psychology, and both believe Marx held part of the solution to the world’s ills, which must be addressed in order to provide true psychological relief. They differ greatly, however, in their divergence about the realities of how to accomplish emancipation from these social ills brought on by consumerism and capitalism. Fromm believes in a humanistic and libertarian Freudo-Marxism, largely informed by the Frankfurt School’s reaction against Nazism. Žižek, on the other hand, believes in a more statist solution, as he witnessed first hand the problems that come with revolutionary social change and the fallout of what neoMarxists have called “late capitalism.” Both seek a progressive alternative but see radically different teleologies and endgames in spite of their union of Marxist theory and psychoanalysis. These similarities and differences open multiple doors for the application of a progressive psychoanalysis today.

Erich Fromm Fromm was born an only child in 1900 to Orthodox Jewish parents, and after completing his psychoanalytic training, he played a central role in founding the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, popularly known as the Frankfurt School. He established his own private clinical practice as a psychoanalyst and became the institute’s expert on psychology and social psychology (Funk, 2000). He moved from Germany to the United States in 1933 and eventually founded the American anti-nuclear proliferation organization, SANE, which took its name from Fromm’s 1955 book, The Sane Society. Fromm even garnered his own 600-page FBI file (Funk, 2000). Fromm produced the Frankfurt School’s first

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writings on Freud and Marx, and he was the only member of the institute with psychoanalytic training (Anderson, 2000). Fromm’s reading and application of Marx differs significantly from that of his contemporaries, however. Fromm (1961) argues that historical materialism is not a psychological theory, because it assumes that man’s thoughts and desires result from creating his own material conditions of existence and not that man’s greatest desire lies only in the pursuit of primitive accumulation. Fromm (1961) indicts the characterization of Marx as a materialist and labels Marx a “messianic revolutionary” interested in freeing man to become an individual who can defeat alienation to more deeply relate to himself, other men, and nature. (p. 3). Elsewhere Fromm (1962) labels Marx a “radical revolutionist” who seeks the liberation of man through “uncompromising faith in truth” as the path to this liberation, which lies in his ability to “break the chain of illusion” (p. 18). In other words, Fromm advocates a Marxist humanism as the solution for the world’s social ills. Like Marx, Fromm believes “human history goes beyond a theistic belief in the existence of God, and beyond the ethic of consumption that dominates capitalism” (Quinney, 2000, p. 24). Contemporary reviewers did not share some of Fromm’s views, however. Bartlett and Shodell (1963), for instance, criticize Fromm’s dismissal of Marxist class struggle, fetishism, and materialism. Fromm also deviated from conventional readings of Freud. Freud’s (1901) early model postulated that psychopathology resulted from sexual repression, and Fromm’s humanistic belief in the power of the individual was at odds with this. Fromm (1962) refers to Freud as a “liberal reformer,” but throughout his work Fromm dismissed Freud’s repression hypothesis in favor of his own construct of social character. Fromm, therefore, departs from Freud’s reliance upon the libido as the sole governing factor in neurosis and mental illness. Instead, he argued our social relations provide most of the fodder upon which our subjectivity is based. Even in his earliest works, Fromm expresses his belief in the power of the individual. In Escape from Freedom, Fromm (1941) examines the Protestant ethic in the context of capitalism and argues that the postReformation subject in the capitalist system does not recognize his “freedom from” as a “freedom to.” The book received positive reviews. Reviewer Jensen (1941), for instance, labels the text as “the book of the year, if not of the decade, in its field” and argues that the text demonstrates that “social psychology gives promise of coming of age” (p. 164). In Man for Himself (1947), Fromm further develops Marxist humanism by addressing the sociological implications of the bureaucratization of

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capitalism from the perspective of a humanistic ethic. Bureaucracy, according to Erich Fromm, was the real bugaboo of communist Russia, as it extended the automation of mankind that had begun during the Industrial Revolution. Marxist humanism, Fromm argues, is the remedy for this bureaucratization. By the time The Sane Society (1955) appeared, however, Fromm had begun to attract more negative criticism. In this book, Fromm develops his Marxist humanism in a refutation of Freudian psychoanalysis to critique the capitalistic society that came with the Industrial Revolution. Fromm (1955) vilifies the materialistic nature of Western culture and its endless string of large-scale wars, and refers to these phenomena as a kind of “social pathology” (p. 6). Reviewers at this point had become more skeptical of Fromm’s methods. Nettler (1956), for instance, labels The Sane Society as “a reasoned and pitiless criticism of Western civilization” that the reader can enjoy only if he shares Fromm’s prejudice against the “consumptive denizen of the package suburb, against commercial bondage, against intelligence used without reason” because Fromm does not supply enough empirical evidence (pp. 644-645). Similarly, Rosen (1956) argues that Fromm does not rely on enough empirical evidence and that the book holds more relevance to intellectuals in the West than Western society at large. In Beyond the Chains of Illusion (1962), Fromm characterizes Freud’s libidinal model as a “mechanistic, materialistic philosophy” that viewed human needs and desires as only sexual, while Marx’s model viewed class society as “crippling,” suggesting that Marx saw the potential of humanity if it ever became “entirely human” (p. 18). Fromm claims Marx’s materialism requires that the desire for “material satisfaction” constitutes the primary motivating factor for man, and that man’s need for sexual gratification and ownership of private property are man’s only two motivating factors (p. 30). Fromm believes that Marx did not develop a “systematic psychopathology,” although Marx addresses “psychic crippledness,” which most fundamentally expresses the psychopathology of alienation he believes only socialism can conquer (p. 35). Fromm privileges Freud in this regard, as he labels Freud’s neurotic adult analysand as alienated, someone who feels weak and scared from his own inability to create the environment of his own existence. Fromm also believes that Freud’s notion of fetishistic object worship, which results from the subject’s alienation, provides transference with its potency. Once again, however, many reviews of this book were negative. Titarenko (1965), for instance, accuses Fromm of contradicting his own theoretical constructs, and criticizes Fromm’s reliance upon his notion of humanism

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instead of traditional Marxist class struggle to overcome the problems Fromm lists in the work. By the early 1970s, Fromm had become a high-profile public intellectual, but his books began to attract ever more withering reviews. Social Character in a Mexican Village: A Sociopsychoanalytic Study (1970) presents the findings of a study that Fromm performed with Michael Maccoby in Mexico. As previously mentioned, Fromm departed from Freud’s reliance upon the libido as the sole governing factor in neurosis and mental illness, and argued that man’s social relations provide most of the fodder upon which his subjectivity is based. Bartell (1971) did not find the book’s argument convincing, believing it impossible to characterize a Mexican village using psychoanalytic character types. Fromm’s interest in alternative spirituality may explain some of the criticism. Co-author Maccoby (2009) writes that during the period they conducted the study Fromm radically altered some of his viewpoints, abandoning his “messianic belief in humanistic socialism with a practice of Zen Buddhism” (p. 142). In The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1973), Fromm delineates two types of aggression: “benign” (for survival and defense) and “malignant” (consisting of cruelty and the desire to control or dominate) (p. xvi). He vehemently indicts what Michel Foucault (1976) called Freud’s early “repressive hypothesis,” which links all human psychopathology to repressed sexual desires and childhood trauma (p. 7). Instead, Fromm posits prevalent character types that lead men to violence and destruction, types that largely come from evolutionary and biological origins, although he argues the malignant character type results from environmental factors. He also boldly attempts to undermine the behaviorism of B. F. Skinner, which was very popular at the time. Reviewer Amis (1974) argues that this book does not provide an adequate analysis of the sources of aggression because it fails to address “social control mechanisms” except in the context of his construct of social character, which itself suffers from Fromm’s weak psychoanalytic methodology. Reviewer Davis (1974) argues Fromm’s claim that violence comes from pathological personality types is flawed because altered social conditions can lead people away from developing a productive character orientation and away from embracing reasonable passions. In addition to receiving mixed reviews for several of his works, Fromm also garnered criticism from his own colleagues at the Frankfurt School. Horkheimer and Marcuse (1955) criticized Fromm’s approach to Freudian theory, with Marcuse labeling him a “new-Freudian revisionist” (p. 238). Fromm and Marcuse engaged in a bitter debate, sparked by what Jay

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(1973) claims was Marcuse’s “bold attempt to read Freud as a revolutionary utopian,” which lead Fromm to accuse Marcuse of misunderstanding Freud and having no practical psychoanalytical experience (p. 111). Fromm (1955/1956) discredited what he saw as Marcuse’s misunderstanding of revisionist Freudians and Marcuse’s conflation of the revisionists into one group, and he attempted to demonstrate that Marcuse was “undialectical” because he denied the possibility of “integrated personalities” (p. 111). Fromm considered it nonsensical to believe the sexual perversity Marcuse allowed for in his “polymorphous perversity” could work in the real world and that sadistic and coprophilic behavior resulted from the negative possibilities inherent in Marcuse’s potentially nihilistic thought (Jay, 1973, p. 111). Most of Fromm’s work predated what has now become known as the “linguistic turn,” which largely followed the structuralism of Russian formalists and Ferdinand Saussure’s lectures on linguistics. American linguistics professor and libertarian socialist Noam Chomsky did not highly regard the work of Marcuse or Fromm, declaring that he knew Marcuse but “thought very little of his work” and that he approved of Fromm’s perspective despite the superficiality of his work (Barsky, 1998, p. 134). Chomsky’s belief in generative and universal grammar, a biologically based determinism for language acquisition, understandably places him at odds with Fromm’s notion of social character, in essence a belief in a psychological tabula rasa, but his comments highlight the anomalistic nature of Fromm’s writings, which sought both popular and specialist audiences. Fromm would ultimately fade from public view and become virtually forgotten. McLaughlin (1998) argues that Fromm’s disappearance demonstrates the way thought can be marginalized from institutions in the social sciences, psychoanalysis, and the American demand for public intellectuals. McLaughlin attributes Fromm’s disappearance to the fact that Fromm’s ideas did not fit in with the “intellectual climate of the times,” and that Fromm never held a teaching position at a prestigious institution (pp. 218-219). Fromm’s work, according to McLaughlin, “was too popular for the smaller and shrinking high-brow American intellectual audience,” while simultaneously being “too theoretical and political for the middle-brow market of self-help books, new age philosophy, and uplifting futurism” (p. 224). Additionally, Fromm’s defense of Marx’s early humanistic approach diverged greatly from “anti-Marxist ex-socialists” (p. 225). McLaughlin’s comments might suggest that Fromm appeared a few decades too early and might have seen greater success had he appeared alongside Žižek instead of before him.

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Although Fromm’s works did not find lasting interest among both popular and specialist readers, his approach is very much in keeping with Freud’s aim to provide psychoanalysis to everyone. Fromm’s dismissal of Freud’s repression hypothesis in favor of a humanist model based on his construct of social character appears very empowering for the individual subject, as it places reasonable responsibility on the part of the individual while still acknowledging the environmental and social aspects of character formation over which we have little or no control. In this way Fromm created a progressive and empowering model of psychoanalysis that unfortunately clashed with the more traditional embrace of Marxist class struggle held by his Frankfurt School colleagues.

Slavoj Žižek Like Fromm, Slavoj Žižek believes a humanist ideology can solve the world’s problems, but Žižek differs from Fromm in his embrace of a statist system as opposed to Fromm’s more libertarian model. Žižek’s biography somewhat informs his embrace of such a statist system. He was born the only son (like Fromm) in Ljubljana to atheist parents who worked in the business world of what was then called Yugoslavia (now Slovenia). He earned a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Ljubljana during a time when the Communist Party of Yugoslavia began making liberal reforms. He would eventually study psychoanalysis at the University of Paris VIII with François Regnault and Jacques-Alain Miller, Jacques Lacan’s son-in-law, and wrote a dissertation for what would be his second doctorate on Hegel and Lacan. He briefly worked at the University of Ljubljana before working for the Yugoslav army, and eventually became an active member of the Yugoslav Communist Party. Like Fromm had been, Žižek has been involved in politics, holding a lower public office in Slovenia after an unsuccessful run for president during the first free elections in Slovenia in 1990. The theories of Lacan play a prominent role throughout Žižek’s works, particularly his tripartite model of human subjectivity, the Symbolic, the Imaginary and the Real. According to Lacan (2002/1956) human subjectivity begins at the point of indoctrination into the Symbolic Order, which houses language. Neurosis, according to Lacan, occurs when the subject slips outside of the Symbolic Order and enters the Imaginary, Lacan’s locus for narcissism. Lacan’s Real denotes that which completely resists signification and therefore is neither part of the Symbolic nor the Imaginary. Lacan thus locates individuation as an internal process, and by implication this suggests that social and environmental factors are

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somewhat irrelevant. Žižek’s embrace of Lacan is thus much more in keeping with the linguistic turn than Fromm’s model, which relied more on sociological factors. Žižek’s first major work, The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989), reflects this singular individuation in its challenge of traditional Marxist understandings of ideology as hegemonic and resituates them in the context of the Lacanian, post-Kantian subject. Very early in the text Žižek briefly pays homage to the Frankfurt School, a rhetorical gesture he rarely performs, and takes issue with the “psychoanalytic fundamentalism” that Marcuse articulates in Eros and Civilization (1955), which he seeks to remedy with Lacanian psychoanalysis in an attempt to surpass postMarxist “anti-essentialism” and its “irreducible plurality of particular struggles” (p. xxvii). Žižek condescendingly claims that conventional critiques of ideology do not work and that Adorno realized this only by erroneously beginning with the assumption that ideology constitutes a “system which makes a claim to the truth,” i.e., a system that is both a lie and a “lie experienced as truth, a lie which pretends to be taken seriously” (p. 27). Žižek also argues that the phallus can be considered the transcendental signifier only by using Adorno’s definition of “transcendental,” by which the subject can only experience “radical limitation” through the inversion of transcendence. The book had an immediate impact and reviews were largely positive. Reviewer Dempsey (1991), for instance, claims that the text resembles a dorma-bidet, because it is “visual, most refreshing,” although the reader needs to keep his “wits” about him in order to catch the paradoxical logic, twisting dialectics and use of examples ranging from consumer products to Joseph Stalin (p. 172). Dempsey, like many other reviewers and interlocutors, correctly identified Žižek’s unique approach to philosophy, which would become even more pronounced throughout Žižek’s career. More recently, Žižek has become known for melding high- and lowbrow material into his Marxist-Lacanian critiques, although the Frankfurt School is never far from view. In his review of The Parallax View for the London Review of Books, Marxist theorist Fredric Jameson (2006) provides a comprehensive description of Žižek’s palette, which he says includes, among many other things, discussions of philosophers Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Kripke, Dennett, Derrida, and Deleuze; mainstream authors such as Patricia Highsmith and Stephen King; Hitchcock’s and other Hollywood films; Lacanian theory; the Marx Brothers; and, frequent obscenity and scatology. More importantly, Jameson likens Žižek to Adorno, whom Jameson likens to tragedy in opposition to Žižek’s comedy. Jameson compares Žižek’s treatment of

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jouissance to Marcuse’s “repressive desublimation” of consumerist society, which conquered desire and found liberation only through satiating its desires. Jameson’s detection of Frankfurt School thought characterizes many reactions to Žižek’s work, although Jameson appears to forgive Žižek’s reinvention of Frankfurt School techniques without entirely acknowledging his debt to them. Žižek’s influence has been vast and comprehensive, having found application in many fields outside continental philosophy and psychoanalysis. In a review of three of Žižek’s books for the London Review of Books, Marxist literary critic Terry Eagleton (1997) calls Žižek “dauntingly prolific and dazzlingly versatile,” as he moves from German Idealism to popular American film, the Ku Klux Klan and Kafka in a “flamboyant parade” of subjects (para. 2). Eagleton also notes the relevance of Žižek’s biographical connection to Marxism, claiming that no other Lacanian could ever have Žižek’s “political nous,” which Žižek developed by personally witnessing the political turmoil and revolution in Yugoslavia. Eagleton likens Žižek’s response to his biographical experiences in Yugoslavia with the Frankfurt School’s response to Nazism. As Jameson’s and Eagleton’s comments illustrate, Žižek has garnered significant public attention outside academia primarily through his engagement with popular culture. In his first full-length book on popular culture, Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture (1991), Žižek declares that he intends to exploit popular culture to explain Lacan’s theories and to address gaps in academic Lacanian scholarship (p. vii). In Enjoy Your Symptom: Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out (1992), Žižek states that he seeks to inform the public of the “nullity of cynical distance” and to further explain the fundamentals of Lacanian thought (p. xi). Žižek is particularly fond of the films of David Lynch, and in 2010 appeared a brief volume on Lynch’s 1997 film Lost Highway entitled The Art of the Ridiculous Sublime: On David Lynch’s Lost Highway (2000). In this text, Žižek attempts an unraveling of the enigmatic “coincidence of opposites,” which he equates with “the enigma of ‘postmodernity’ itself” (p. 3, qtd. in Wood). Žižek’s engagement with popular culture has brought both delight and disdain from reviewers, contemporary philosophers and psychoanalysts. Žižek’s iconoclastic use of philosophy extends beyond his writings on popular culture, however. Žižek refers to Lacan as an “atheist Catholic,” and such a paradoxical moniker for a key figure in his thought characterizes Žižek’s perspective on religion at large. Although an admitted and outspoken atheist, Žižek has written extensively on religion, examining in depth Judaism, Christianity and Islam. In his first full-length

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treatment of religion, The Fragile Absolute: or, Why is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For? (2000), Žižek urges current Marxists to embrace the paradoxically subversive core of originary Christianity, as it conflates symbolic Law with the Christian mandate for Love. In On Belief (2001), Žižek pairs Christians with Marxists and pits them against other, more recent religious systems. In The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity (2003), Žižek argues that Christianity is in fact a humanist atheism that holds the potential to overcome the Stalinist defeat of Lenin’s pure, messianic revolution. The very fact that Žižek has written entire books focusing on religion differentiates him from many other Lacanians and continental philosophers for whom religion largely does not play an important role, and in this way Žižek democratically addresses an important aspect of the modern situation. Žižek’s engagement of religion is arguably the most progressive gesture he makes, both as an atheist as well as a Marxist-Lacanian. Reviews of Žižek’s books on religion have been negative, however. Sociologist Buckser (2004), for instance, labels The Puppet and the Dwarf as both “fascinating and frustrating” because it leaves readers “entertained, disappointed, and simply confused” since its use of non-linear structure and “seemingly random examples” prevent Žižek from constructing a convincing argument in spite of the entertaining examples from popular culture (pp. 563-564). Other reviewers of his books on religion have noted Žižek’s unacknowledged debt to the Frankfurt School. In his review of The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic? (2009), which Žižek coauthored with John Milbank, Harrington (2010) argues that when authors mimic Horkheimer’s “Traditional and Critical Theory” (1937) or Adorno’s “The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology” (1969), social science must transcend its own scientific reflection to address the communal needs of socialized people susceptible to the dangers of “finitude, suffering, evil and injustice in this world” (p. 123). Harrington accuses Žižek of trying to force historical materialism to serve only as a framing mechanism for anything that undermines religion, which in effect privileges only Marxist dogma even though Marxism paradoxically has at its beginnings Judeo-Christian traditions. According to Harrington, Žižek implies that the historic separation between binaries such as religion and politics, faith and science, private and public, never happened and that, therefore, spiritual solutions to twenty-first century problems find no quarter in his thought. In spite of the criticism levelled against his writings on religion, however, Žižek seldom (if ever) denigrates any religion, as he subjects religion and religious intellectual history to the same objective critical analysis he uses to analyze continental philosphy. This egalitarian

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treatment of religious intellectual history is very unique among many of his contemporary interrolcutors. As he has become more famous both within academe and without, Žižek has begun to write more books exclusively about current world events, including the titles, Welcome to the Desert of the Real (2002), Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle (2004), First as Tragedy, Then as Farce (2009), and The Year of Dreaming Dangerously (2012). In his review of First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, Henry (2012) accuses Žižek of being “reductive” because he locates non-ideological cynicism in “liberal bourgeois forms of consciousness” and “fundamental populism and permissive cynicism” (p. 280). Henry also accuses Žižek of only partially examining ideology in this book, and claims that his use of psychoanalysis to understand the capitalist subject does not provide any new understanding of ideology. Henry labels Žižek’s treatment of the working class as that which falls “under the sway of fundamental-populism” and fetishizes “false objects” as “one dimensional,” therefore ignoring the more complicated relationship between true and false objects (p. 284). Henry’s reference to Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man (1964), whether conscious or unconscious, again points to Žižek’s reliance upon Frankfurt School Freudo-Marxism. In 2008 appeared two volumes by Žižek that generated considerable criticism of Žižek’s methods: Violence and In Defense of Lost Causes. In his review of these two books for Max Weber Studies, Hollander (2010) accuses Žižek of using a “shortcut to celebrity status” by creating his own “trademark” persona, which combines “outlandish propositions, manipulations of language, efforts to seize the iconoclastic high ground (increasingly difficult in an age with few taboos left) as well as the projection of traits of personality suggested by physical appearance (beard, tousled hair, T-shirt, sullen facial expression duly displayed on the cover of these books)” (p. 359). Hollander also notes that ideas in the books have a considerable similarity with Herbert Marcuse’s “repressive tolerance,” which Žižek never acknowledges, although both Marcuse and Žižek assume a condescending posture of having better insight into the hidden repression inherent in the Marxist view of capitalist reality (p. 359). In a review of the same two books for The New Republic, Kirsch (2008) argues that Žižek’s praise of terror and violence ingratiates him to the academic left, resulting in Žižek’s cult-like celebrity status whose audience may laugh at him and not just with him because they cannot accept the reality of his propositions. In a review of In Defense of Lost Causes for Dissent, Johnson (2010) characterizes Žižek as an “adolescent” who confuses “inversion with profundity,” and that he does not know what he is talking

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about (pp. 124, 125). Žižek, therefore, at this point in his career had become subjected to the same kind of harsh criticism as Fromm. The criticism levelled at Fromm and Žižek attempted to disguise itself as legitimate critique, but it largely came down to differences of opinion presented as syllogistic and logical analysis. In another attempt to reach a mass audience, Žižek has also starred in four films: The Reality of the Virtual (2004); Žižek! (2005); The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (2006); and The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology (2012). In the two Pervert’s Guides, Žižek employs Lacanian psychoanalysis and Marxist theory to analyze films ranging from those of Charlie Chaplin to The Matrix. He also appeared in a portion of a film entitled Marx Reloaded, the title of which refers to the second Matrix film, The Matrix Reloaded. As in his use of references in his written texts, Žižek engages with film in both high- and low-brow registers, and he never shies away from addressing subjects considered taboo by movie critics and film scholars. Particularly in the Pervert’s Guides, Žižek established himself as a notable public intellectual with things to say that hold interest beyond academic circles. In spite of Žižek’s eccentric personality and comically ironic nihilism, his very involvement with making films in which he analyzes popular movies demonstrates his desire to reach a greater audience, a considerably democratic gesture with very progressive implications. In these films Žižek never condescends or dumbs down the complicated theory he engages with and throughout them he displays a genuine interest in helping the masses better understand the human condition. Because Žižek lived in both the communist Yugoslavia and in the postrevolutionary Slovenia, he has a particularly unique insight into “late capitalism,” a term popularized by Marxist economist Ernest Mandel (1972) to refer to capitalism as it has existed since the end of World War II. Although Eastern Europe would see capitalist opportunities in the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union, many former Iron Curtain countries would also experience extremely violent, and in some cases, genocidal, ethnic clashes. Žižek’s embrace of a statist solution to the problems inherent with late capitalism, namely widespread human exploitation and the iniquitous distribution of virtually every kind of resource, immediately calls to mind Stalinist communism. But what makes Žižek’s call for statist communism a progressive solution is that he also sees as necessary a statist solution that does not include the violent oppression and mass murder perpetrated by Stalin. The truly progressive nature of Žižek’s thought lies in his desire to more clearly define terms that have largely been conflated into an amorphous jumble, with each one meaning nothing without referring to

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the other: socialism, communism, totalitarianism, Marxism. This is Žižek’s greatest and most progressive contribution to cultural theory and the basis of his contribution towards a progressive psychoanalysis.

Fromm and Žizek Although Fromm’s libertarian humanism is clearly different from Žižek’s statist solution, the two share many similarities. In addition to receiving harsh criticism of their writings in spite of their great notoriety, Fromm and Žižek share similarities in their writing style. Fromm frequently refers to his own writing in the form of footnotes and citations in the body of his own texts, and he acknowledges this in The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (and elsewhere), saying he has tried to limit repetition as much as possible (p. xii). Žižek similarly recycles his own writing, but Žižek does it by wholesale “copying and pasting” passages, at times entire paragraphs, from a previous book or essay. As Wood (2012) points out, Žižek frequently revises his own previous arguments and in essence is “his own best critic” who “refines his own method” (p. 9). Hollander (2010) puts it another way, noting that passages from Violence “are repeated verbatim” in In Defense of Lost Causes (p. 360). By refining their systems over the course of numerous monographs, Fromm and Žižek in essence demonstrate that they have a larger, more comprehensive system in mind than what they can merely accomplish in one book. While a source of criticism and ire from some commentators, their similarity in this respect actually points to a more fluid and negotiable series of positions rather than a strict and dogmatic stranglehold on their texts as if they were literally etched in stone. Although neither men likely intended to rise to popular attention as public intellectuals, they both did so and suffered from it. In their studies of public intellectuals, Sassower (2014) labels Žižek a “jester” (p. 44), and Melzer (2003) argues that public intellectuals have become associated with “detachment, alienation, and nonconformity,” and are frequently “the outsider, the misfit, the bohemian” (p. 11). Although he does not mention Žižek in his book, Melzer’s description of the intellectual can easily refer to Hollander’s comments on Žižek’s image. In spite of the criticism, Žižek has maintained and even built upon his celebrity status and continues to remain relevant and notable. In addition, Fromm and Žižek both created similar structuralist paradigms. Fromm created character types and a model that outlines the sources of social pathology and the sources of violence and destructive tendencies, and his embrace of a structuralist paradigm of social character

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is consistent with other intellectual trends during his lifetime. Žižek’s use of structuralist models, however, is somewhat anomalous, as structuralism has almost entirely fallen into obscurity since the advent of poststructuralist thought. In particular, Lacan’s thought, largely based on his famous claim that “the unconscious is structured like a language,” follows very strict rules in the context of his tripartite model of subjectivity (Gasperoni, 1996, p. 77). Žižek relies upon Lacan’s four social ties or discourses (as outlined in Lacan’s Seminar XVII), and he frequently also relies upon Lacan’s tripartite model of subjectivity, the Symbolic, the Imaginary, and the Real. Žižek’s embrace of the structuralist Lacan suggests that his largely statist system can only come about through an embrace of structure. Both Fromm and Žižek, separated by decades and European borders, demonstrate the precarious situation that can come from engaging in a “progressive” form of psychoanalysis. The unfortunate disappearance of Fromm from public view has all but eradicated his style of psychoanalytical critique of social structures, and a more sustained study of Fromm’s works as a predecessor to the more recent wave of self-help books would likely underscore how innovative he was. Similarly, Žižek has weathered criticism from all around him and, although he has survived, it seems as though he may see the same fate as Fromm later in his life. But Fromm and Žižek offer insightful gateways into very complicated intellectual history that cannot be undervalued. Although Žižek would disagree with Fromm’s belief in the power of the individual to make for a better society, he would still have to agree with Fromm’s belief in a humanistic goal for progressive societal improvement.

Conclusion Žižek’s experiences witnessing violent social change differ greatly from those of the Frankfurt School. The Frankfurt School saw the inception and spread of the violent totalitarian Nazi regime over what had been a largely free and democratic Europe. Žižek, on the other hand, witnessed the revolt against a totalitarian regime and geographic structure imposed upon several different ethnic groups at the end of World War II. Furthermore, the Frankfurt School’s founding members largely came from Jewish families, and as Jewish intellectuals in Germany they immediately becamse the enemy of the Nazi party. Žižek, on the other hand, belonged to the dominant ethnic group in what would become the independent state of Slovenia. And, although Žižek co-founded the Ljubljana school of psychoanalysis, he did so under the virtual protection of a temporarily

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stable Yugoslavian government until the Slovene republic attained independence. In other words, the two experienced opposite political transitions: Žižek saw totalitarian rule fall, resulting in much violence and chaos, while the Frankfurt School saw democracy fall and witnessed the resulting totaltitarian control envelop their own country. Fromm’s humanist Marxism logically follows from seeing the elimination of freedom in Germany, and Žižek’s statist endorsement of communism logically follows from his seeing the results of the elimination of control by a domineering social order. Maccoby (2009) points out that during the 1970s Fromm began meeting with Yugoslavian Praxis Marxists, who invited him to speak in Belgrade and Zagreb and attend meetings in Korþula” (p. 142). Perhaps a young Žižek attended or heard about these meetings. But regardless of unconscisous or unacknowledged influence from Fromm, Žižek sought the same utopian vision for the world as Fromm. Fromm and the Frankfurt School made the first critical maneuver to achieve this through bringing together psychoanalytic and social theory, and this move arguably needed to have happened for Žižek to perform his updating and reimagining. In spite of their differences, they have both studied, known, and lived Marxism, a philosophical system that in essence addresses social struggle, and therefore Fromm’s humanist, libertarian model and Žižek’s statist communist model both seek a means to perform this struggle. In this way they each have contributed to an intellectual psychoanalytical tradition that aims to make the world a better place through a progressive, yet neverending, series of improvements and a desire to reach a legitimate utopian world.

References Amis, W. D. (1974). [Review of the book The anatomy of human destructiveness, by Erich Fromm]. Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews, 3, 513–515. Anderson, K., Quinney, R., & Fromm, E. (2000). Erich Fromm and critical criminology: Beyond the punitive society. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Aron, L., & Starr, K. E. (2013). A psychotherapy for the people: Toward a progressive psychoanalysis. New York: Routledge. Barsky, R. F. (1997). Noam Chomsky: A life of dissent. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

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Bartlett, F., & Shodell, J. (1963). Fromm, Marx and the concept of alienation [Review of the book Marx’s concept of man, by Erich Fromm]. Science & Society, 27, 321–326. Buckser, A. (2004). Review of the book The puppet and the dwarf: The perverse core of Christianity, by Slavoj Žižek. Contemporary Sociology, 33, 563–564. Davis, R. (1974). Erich Fromm on human aggression. [Review of the book The anatomy of human destructiveness, by Erich Fromm]. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 13, 240–243. Dempsey, A. (1991). [Review of the book The sublime object of ideology, by Slavoj Žižek]. Sociological Review, 39, 172–174. Eagleton, T. (1997). Enjoy! [Review of the books The indivisible remainder: An essay on Schelling and related matters, The abyss of freedom/Ages of the world and The plague of fantasies, by Slavoj Žižek]. London Review of Books, 19, 7–9. Retrieved from http://www.lrb.co.uk/v19/n23/terry–eagleton/enjoy. Foucault, Michel (1978). The history of sexuality: An introduction (Vol. 1). (R. Hurley, Trans.) New York: Pantheon Books. Freud, S. (1960). The psychopathology of everyday life. London: Hogarth Press. Friedman, L. J., & Schreiber, A. M. (2013). The lives of Erich Fromm: Love’s prophet. New York: Columbia University Press. Fromm, E. (1955). The human implications of instinctive radicalism. Dissent II, 4, 342-349. —. (1956). A counter-rebuttal, Dissent III, 1, 81-83. —. (1973). The anatomy of human destructiveness. New York: Holt. —. (1990). Man for himself: An inquiry into the psychology of ethics. New York: H. Holt. —. (1994). Escape from freedom. New York: H. Holt. —. (2001a). Beyond the chains of illusion: My encounter with Marx and Freud. New York: Continuum. —. (2001b). The sane society. London: Routledge. Fromm, E., & Maccoby, M. (1970). Social character in a Mexican village: A sociopsychoanalytic study. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Funk, R. (2000). Erich Fromm’s life and work. In K. Anderson & R. Quinney (Eds.), Erich Fromm and critical criminology: Beyond the punitive society (pp. 3–18). Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Gabardi, W. (1987). [Review of the book The working class in Weimar Germany, by Erich Fromm[. New German Critique, 41, 166. Gasperoni, J. (1996). The unconscious is structured like a language. Qui Parle, 9(2), 77-104.

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Hamilton, R. (1986). [Review of the book The working class in Weimar Germany, by Erich Fromm]. Society, 23, 82–85. Harrington, A. (2010). [Review of the book The monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or dialectic? by Slavoj Žižek]. Max Weber Studies, 10, 121– 125. Henry, A. (2012). [Review of the book First As tragedy then as farce, by Slavoj Žižek]. Alternate Routes, 23, 279–284. Hollander, P. (2010). Slavoj Žižek and the rise of the celebrity intellectual [Review of the books Violence and In Defense of Lost Causes, by Slavoj Žižek]. Society, 47, 358–360. Jameson, F. (2006). First impressions [Review of the book The parallax view, by Slavoj Žižek]. London Review of Books, 28, 7–8. Jay, M. (1973). The dialectical imagination: A history of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923-1950. London: Heinemann. Jensen, H. E. (1941). [Review of the book The escape from freedom, by Erich Fromm]. Character & Personality, 10, 164–165. Johnson, A. (2009). The reckless mind of Slavoj Žižek [Review of the book In defense of lost causes, by Slavoj Žižek]. Dissent, 56, 122–127. Kirsch, A. (2008). The deadly jester [Review of the books In defense of lost causes and Violence, by Slavoj Žižek]. New Republic, 239, 30–37. Lacan, J. (2002). The function and field of speech and language in psychoanalysis. In Ecrits: The first complete edition in English. (pp. 197-268). New York: Norton. Maccoby, M. (2009). Fromm didn’t want to be a Frommian. In R. Funk (Ed.), The clinical Erich Fromm: Personal accounts and papers on therapeutic technique (pp. 141–143). Amsterdam: Rodopi. Mandel, E. (1972). Late capitalism. London: NLB. Marcuse, H. (1955). Eros and civilization: A philosophical inquiry into Freud. Boston: Beacon Press. McLaughlin, N. (1998). How to become a forgotten intellectual: Intellectual movements and the rise and fall of Erich Fromm. Sociological Forum, 13, 215–246. Melzer, A. M., Weinberger, J., & Zinman, M. R. (2003). The public intellectual: Between philosophy and politics. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Quinney, R. (2000). Socialist humanism and the problem of crime: Thinking about Erich Fromm in the development of critical/peacemaking criminology. In K. Anderson & R. Quinney (Eds.), Erich Fromm and critical criminology: Beyond the punitive society (pp. 21–30). Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

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Sassower, R. (2014). The price of public intellectuals. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Škof, L. (2010). On progressive alternative: Unger versus Žižek. Synthesis Philosophica, 25, 93–100. Unger, R. M. (1998). Democracy realized: The progressive alternative. London: Verso. Wood, K. (2012). Žižek: A reader’s guide. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell. Žižek, S. (1989). The sublime object of ideology. London: Verso. —. (1991). Looking awry: An introduction to Jacques Lacan through popular culture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. —. (1992). Enjoy your symptom! Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and out. New York: Routledge. —. (2000a). The art of the ridiculous sublime: On David Lynch’s “Lost Highway.” Seattle: Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities/ University of Washington. —. (2000b). The fragile absolute, or, why is the Christian legacy worth fighting for? London: Verso. —. (2001). On belief. London: Routledge. —. (2002). Welcome to the desert of the real!: Five essays on 11 September and related dates. London: Verso. —. (2003). The puppet and the dwarf: The perverse core of Christianity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. —. (2004). Iraq: The borrowed kettle. London: Verso. —. (2009). First as tragedy, then as farce. London: Verso. —. (2012). The year of dreaming dangerously. London: Verso. Žižek, S., & Milbank, J. (2009). The monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or dialectic? Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

PART II: PSYCHOANALYSIS AS A SOCIAL JUSTICE TOOL TODAY

CHAPTER SEVEN CONFRONTING RACISM: A CHALLENGE TO THE PSYCHOANALYTIC COMMUNITY CHRISTINE SCHMIDT

Splitting between public and private, personal and political has hampered psychoanalytic practitioners in their efforts (or lack thereof) to confront racism. In the United States, the psychoanalytic community has trended toward a retrogressive approach to psychotherapy that focuses solely on the private and colludes with a racist acceptance of conditions of oppression. Racism has economic and political outcomes. It is embedded in both individual psyches and in institutions such that it influences lives in countless ways. The progressive roots of psychoanalysis support the reshaping of attitudes, beliefs and behaviors about race for the purpose of restoring humanity to all people. This chapter recommends six practical measures for psychoanalysts to end the silence about racial discourse in treatment rooms, institutions and professional organizations.

Introduction Psychoanalytic theory was born a century ago and evolved under specific historical conditions of oppression and two wars (Aron, 2013). Anti-Semitic prejudice, persecution and genocide impacted the lives of early psychoanalysts. The work and writings of politically active individuals in the second generation of psychoanalysts—Wilhelm Reich, Otto Fenichel and Erich Fromm—offer pathways to understand how political events shape thought and how political relationships to power influence life experiences in relation to oppression. Otto Fenichel’s (1940) renowned essay “Anti-Semitism: A Social Disease” brilliantly connects

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the unconscious and the social. He posited that Jews, because of their social separateness, were viewed as foreigners and represented the repressed unconscious of individual anti-Semites. Nazi propaganda fermented an anti-Semitic, social psychosis by creating a paranoid schizophrenia for the mass mind of discontented Germany (Fenichel, 1946). A simple political transformation would not cure this social psychosis. Fenichel warned that, “No revolution changes the essentials so long as it only changes the institutions and ignores the men who live by them. If humanity is a function of institutions, so are institutions a function of humanity. For a transformation of the world to be radical it must grasp things by the root. The root is man. Education changes man” (Fenichel as cited in Jacoby, 1986, p. 61). Fenichel and the other second generation psychoanalysts were social justice activists who confronted conditions of trauma and oppression because they were committed to improving society as well as the wellbeing of individuals (Aron, 2013; Danto, 2007; Jacoby, 1986). Their commitment to social critique and social action as an integral component of treatment offers inspiration to psychoanalysts in the contemporary United States where the trauma of racial oppression, perpetuated for half a millennium, has deeply affected both individual psyches and society at large. When W. E. B. Du Bois (1995) famously stated that “the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line,” he described a plague that, throughout United States history, has lived in the souls of individuals and in social and political institutions (p. 41). While the Thirteenth Amendment legally abolished slavery in 1865, legal racial discrimination enforced through “separate but equal laws” existed until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1965. A century of lynching and terror in the South and ghettoizing and discrimination in the North saturated the traumatic conditions of life for black people. For the past half-century, racial inequities have persisted in the United States because too many people deny the problem of the color line (Bonilla-Silva, 2013; Sue, 2015; Wise, 2010). The myth that the United States has conquered racism and become “post-racial” exploded after grand juries failed to indict white police officers for the shooting deaths of two unarmed black men: Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York. Shortly after, police officers shot more unarmed black men: Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Maryland; Walter Scott in North Charleston, South Carolina; and Tamir Rice in Cleveland, Ohio. In July, 2015, a white terrorist mowed down nine black worshippers in a church in Charleston,

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South Carolina. Rage flooded the streets and inspired postings in print and social media. Social work organizations and schools of social work spoke out against racist practices, policies and structures. However, the psychoanalytic community was silent. By failing to embrace individuals’ social and political experiences, both conscious and unconscious, psychoanalysts unwittingly colluded with maintaining racial oppression in the United States. Splitting between public and private, personal and political, individual and collective has hampered psychoanalytic practitioners from confronting racism. The United States’ psychoanalytic community has trended towards a retrogressive approach to psychotherapy that focuses primarily on the intra-psychic and privileges the individual over the social. Anthropologists, sociologists, social workers and traumatologists have embraced the social nature of human beings, but psychoanalysts have largely relinquished this attention. Even amongst contemporary psychoanalysts with an interpersonal orientation, sociopolitical context is rarely regarded as a priority in treatment (Frie, 2014; Fromm, 1969; Jacoby, 1986; Layton, Holland & Gutwill, 2006). The bedrock of psychoanalysis is unconscious change (Freud, 1915; Kets, de Vries & Freud, 1980; Sandler & Freud, 1981). From the premise that the unconscious is a dynamic, not a static, entity, psychoanalysis can be a dynamic theory for racial justice. By creating interpersonal spaces to critically explore race experiences, biased beliefs, unconscious attitudes and feelings that harm individuals and society, psychoanalysts can work toward racial equity and individual and societal change. Beyond the treatment room, in a dialectical progression that links learning, understanding and action, confronting implicit racism in organizations and institutions can rekindle the progressive soul of the revolutionary theory that is psychoanalysis. Undoing racism begins with individual efforts that eventually fuel institutional change. The confluence of psychoanalytic theory, critical race theory and community organizing theory offers tools to confront the myth of a post-racial America. In the spirit of the second-generation psychoanalysts who were devoted to social justice, this chapter recommends six practical measures for psychoanalysts to challenge silence and inaction about racism. By enlightening oneself, examining one’s practice and initiating dialogues, teamwork, teaching and organizational change, this chapter promotes a continual praxis between theory and action. The first two measures focus on the acquisition of knowledge and self-understanding and the subsequent measures focus on action. While learning and reflection are continuous, these measures need not be pursued in a prescriptive order.

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Measure I: Learn the Psychohistory and History of Racism in the U.S. Fenichel (as cited in Jacoby, 1986) identified education as a starting point for change. This measure promotes self-education about the role of race in United States history from a psychohistorical perspective. Among psychoanalysts, further learning can occur through independent reading or interactively through engagement in workshops, seminars and online courses that teach about the racialization of the United States. Psychohistory is a conceptual framework (Szaluta, 1999). It describes the dialectical relationship between an individual’s unconscious psyche and sociopolitical events, each shaping the other. Psychohistory determines how fantasy and reality intersect in the register of historical accounts, influencing what are considered social norms in a given epoch or locale (Akhtar, 2009). Ideology is a product of psychohistory. The ideological and legal foundation of white supremacy was laid centuries before a nation known as the United States was born. In the psychology behind this racial binary of white and black, white has typically been equated with dominance and power, black with inferiority, animality and filth (Dalal, 2002; Kovel, 1984; Young-Bruehl, 1996). Contrary to the principles of liberty, justice and equality that became the rallying cry for colonial independence, the violent enslavement, forced labor and forced reproduction of African people formed the economic and moral backbone of colonial and post-colonial America. Significant race-related historical events highlighted in the following section illuminate how this country, more than any other in the world, was conceived on racial inequality and black subjugation.

The Birth of White Supremacy In 1492 Europeans arrived in the Bahama Islands with a desire for wealth. They intended to conquer, plunder and enslave. Columbus wrote of the Arawaks, “They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane…. They would make fine servants….With fifty men we could subjugate and make them do whatever we want” (Zinn, 2006, p. 1). In the next fifteen years, over three million Indians died from slavery and war against Spanish conquest (Zinn, 2006). Holland and England broke Spain’s colonial monopoly a hundred years later and populated their colonies with indentured servants from Europe and Africa. European indentured servants could win manumission after seven years but freedom was rarely granted to Africans. Servitude in

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perpetuity is slavery. The first American slave ship, the 79-foot Desire, equipped with leg irons and bars, sailed from Marblehead, Massachusetts, in 1637 (Zinn, 2006). By 1800, fifty million Africans had been stolen from their homelands; only ten to fifteen million Africans survived the horrors of the Middle Passage slave ships (Zinn, 2006). The Virginia House of Burgesses legalized slavery in 1660 by declaring negroes indentured for life and children who were products of miscegenation–rape of enslaved African women by their colonial masters–were also deeded slaves (Higginbotham & Higginbotham, 1978). Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676 rallied white frontiersmen, indentured servants, poor whites and slaves to overthrow the Virginia planter elite. Alarmed by a multiracial alliance of laborers, the rebels were captured, executed and systematic enslavement of Africans emerged as the means to prevent future multi-racial uprisings. (Alexander, 2011; Higginbotham & Higginbotham, 1978; Zinn, 2006). Act XVI of the Virginia statutes of 1691 included the first usage of “White” and declared miscegenation illegal (Higginbotham & Higginbotham, 1978). By banishing all nonwhite and white/mixed marriages, Virginia was effectively designated as a white state. When the same Assembly passed a comprehensive slave statute rewarding freed white indentured servants with land and a musket, black indentured servants were effectively removed from the family of man. Blacks were chattel, property without rights. Immediately following the signing of the United States Constitution, the 1790 Immigration and Naturalization Act granted citizenship only to free, white, aliens (Washington, 2015). This was the first legal construction of white racial identity (Haney-López, 1996). These exclusion acts endured until 1952. The United States was built on the foundation of white supremacy. When European conquistadors and colonists arrived on the American continents, their desire for wealth blinded them to the inhumanity of slavery. Indigenous people were massacred and kidnapped Africans produced sugar, cotton and tobacco. Millions of kidnapped Africans who survived the Middle Passage were sold as chattel to owners of plantations. Their enslaved labor became the economic backbone of the United States of America and a global capitalist economy from which the European and American continents fed on Africa. As the appetite for goods grew, so did the demand for labor. The racism of white supremacy employs a categorizing hierarchy in which people are assigned membership to groups according to visible physical traits such as skin color, hair texture and facial features. Race is a purely social construct that has no genetic underpinning (Ancheta, 1998; Carter, 2007; Dalal, 2002). The purpose of the conceptualization of race is

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to determine who has economic and political power and who does not. While race is not the only social construct that oppresses and excludes people from power (sexuality, gender, income, social class, and other identity categories), race has been the preeminent social construct for distributing sociopolitical status and power in the United States for over 500 years. To illustrate the intentionality of discriminatory laws and social practices, race will be discussed as a black-white binary that has been the underpinning for much legislation and discourse. Understanding the impact of white supremacy begins with knowing the history of what it has meant to be black in America. Legal historian Leon Higginbotham (1978) attests, .

This new nation, “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” began its experiment in self-government with a legacy of more than one half million enslaved blacks—persons denied citizenship and enslaved, not for criminal infractions, but solely as a matter of color...There is a nexus between the brutal centuries of colonial slavery and the racial polarization and anxieties of today. The poisonous legacy of legalized oppression based upon the matter of color can never be adequately purged from our society if we act as if slave laws had never existed (p. 390-391).

From a psychohistorical perspective, psychoanalyst Joel Kovel (1984) demonstrates the existence of three iterations of U.S. racism: dominative, aversive and meta-racism. The phases are differentiated by the economic landscape that bred different social relationships between races. Manifestations of the earlier iterations of racism coexist in present racial dynamics. The degrees of personal prejudice and segregation differ, but the intra-psychic toll is consistently severe in its dehumanizing quality. Common to all is the tendency of society to degrade and commit violence on the basis of race.

Dominative Racism Hunger for material wealth was the singular motive behind slavery: wealth for owners of plantations in the Old South, for financiers and shipping magnates in New England and for industrialists in Europe. The 19th century global economy was generated by the labor of black slaves on southern plantations (Johnson, 2013). As the source of wealth production, slaves were considered property and had great value. They were subjugated by “dominative racism,” a peculiar and violent social structure that governed the relationship between white masters and black slaves who lived in close proximity on plantations.

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Dominative racism had physical and psychological characteristics. White people brutally oppressed black people and white people were sexually obsessed about black people. It was buttressed by the ideology of white supremacy and, like all ideologies, espoused a belief system that protects itself against revealing internal contradictions (Young-Bruehl, 1996). The ideology behind dominative racism rationalized white violence in the name of protecting white womanhood from black sexual predators. What was the psychological matrix that kindled these warped fantasies? In Kovel’s (1984) analysis, the white master, surrounded by strong, physically laboring black slaves, was filled with fears about his sexual inadequacy. Defending against his paranoid fears of impotence, he transformed white women into symbols in need of his protection against hyper-sexualized savages. The savages were his property and the symbol of his power. Their black bodies created his wealth, nursed his children and serviced his sexual desires. Black bodies were a medium of exchange, salable like all commodities. In order to resolve the untenable contradiction of one human being owning another in a nation that championed liberty and freedom, black bodies were demoted to the subhuman category of property, thereby liberating the white master from the horror of his violent actions (Kovel, 1984). Dominative racism is evident in the thinking and actions of contemporary white supremacists and their terrorist organizations. The website of Dylann Roof, the alleged shooter of nine black worshippers in Charleston, South Carolina, paraphrases the Statement of Principles of the Council of Conservative Citizens which “opposes all efforts to mix the races of mankind” (Robles, 2015; Southern Poverty Law Center, 2015). The Council is one of the 41 active hate groups devoted to white supremacy in the United States (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2015).

Aversive Racism Psychologically, the act of owning and controlling is an experience of economic and political power. Power, an essential component of white supremacy, acquired new forms with aversive racism. Domination continued alongside aversion; the pleasure of control was shadowed by disgust (Alexander, 2011; Kovel, 1984). After the Civil War, with the Southern plantation economy destroyed, the political infrastructure in disarray and slavery legally prohibited, whites sought new ways to maintain racial domination that would continue their privileged standard of living. Southern states adopted “Black Codes” and vagrancy laws that made it an offense to not work, effectively instituting a new system of

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forced black labor and restricted movement. Poll taxes and literacy tests restricted black citizens from exercising their new democratic rights against new oppressive laws that racially segregated education and restricted access to public facilities (Alexander, 2011). Jim Crow laws of the South mirrored the racial segregation of the industrial, capitalist north. Northern cities responded to The Great Migration of the 20th century by imposing racially restrictive residency and labor requirements, thus racial segregation was ensured (Cushman, 1995; Kovel, 1984; Wilkerson, 2010). Physical distancing did not diminish race prejudice. Psychologically, the warded-off-parts of the white self were projected into the black “other”— sexuality, filth, depravity. The black self-assumed a double consciousness: simultaneously seeing oneself through one’s own eyes and through the degrading lens of the white world—contempt, pity, fear, timidity, and shame of “Being the Other” (Fanon, 2008; Kovel, 1984). Aversive racism continues to influence implicit bias, the relatively unconscious attitudes and stereotypes that encumber prejudiced judgment and social behavior (Brownstein & Michael, 2015).

Meta-Racism The Second World War exposed irreconcilable ideological contradictions in the United States; the country fought against genocide in Europe while maintaining a racial caste system at home. The face of racial injustice changed as the country changed, but the residue from the early policies was absorbed by societal structure and ideology. Following the war, civil struggles for racial justice, the 1954 Supreme Court ruling on Brown vs. Topeka and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1965 ended much but not all legal racial discrimination. As race prejudice became less visible, racism flourished in the structures and institutions of society. Racially dichotomous systems of education were maintained by funding formulas and tracking systems that ensured white students’ admission into better programs while students of color were relegated to inferior schools; police departments and courts—the institutions charged with public safety— disproportionately targeted and punished black men; housing segregation was maintained by financial institutions that determined which neighborhoods were entitled to mortgages, approving white people for loans and denying credit to people of color; primary healthcare was available to more affluent people (white) and poor people (people of color) received lower quality care in clinics (Kovel, 1984; Leonardo & Zeus, 2004).

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Meta-racism, also called structural racism, is described as racism without racists (Bonilla-Silva, 2013). Because it is deeply embedded in the social fabric, it is felt every day by people of color but does not have visible perpetrators (Abrams & Moio, n.d.). Structural racism is discrimination that appears to be race neutral and therefore can only be identified by its impact on oppressed people. It is psychologically and ideologically supported by the contemporary color-blind, post-racial myth. Data provided by Hsieh (2014), Irwin, Miller and Sanger-Katz (2014) and Kerby (2012) attest to the impact of racism: x In 2013, unemployment among African-Americans with a BA degree was 17% higher than that among whites with a BA degree. x The median weekly pay of white workers is 21.6% higher than that of black workers. x Wealth–measured as a combination of income, inheritance and assets–is accumulated 6.1 times more by white families than by black families. x Almost 20% of blacks are diagnosed as having diabetes compared to 9.5% of whites. x Black life expectancy averages 3.8 years less than life expectancy for whites. x Black students account for 18% of U.S. pre-K enrollment but comprise 48% of suspended pre-K students. x Black students are expelled at three times the rates of whites. x While people of color make up 30% of the U.S. population, they account for 60% of those imprisoned. x One in 15 African American men is incarcerated compared to 1 in 106 white men. x One in three black men can expect to go to prison in their lifetime. x Students of color comprise 70% of those involved in school-related arrests. x African Americans comprise 14% of regular drug users but 37% of those arrested for drug offenses. x Blacks convicted of drug crimes are 20% more likely than whites to be sentenced to prison.

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Measure II: Learn About Colorblindness, a Product of the Ideology of Whiteness Ideology shapes perspective. This measure promotes learning from a critical view about colorblindness, the dominant race ideological lens through which people are exposed to historical and current information. In order to be politically inclusive of oppressed racial/ethnic groups, the term “people of color” will be counter-posed against the term “white” to describe the racial binary of oppression and privilege. Psychoanalysts can continue to learn about colorblindness and its impact on clinical work in professional and community-based seminars that include self-reflective discussion groups. Second-generation psychoanalysts exiled to the United States from Europe embraced colorblindness as an entry point for acceptance into a racist, anti-Semitic society (Cushman, 1995). Fearing marginalization in their adopted country, they became purveyors of values of white culture and strove to keep the experience of race out of the treatment room, relegating it to political concerns rather than an intra-psychic situation to be analyzed. Racial discourse was cultivated in the fields of sociology and anthropology (Frie, 2014). Prevailing psychoanalytic theorists narrowed their focus to the psychobiological dynamics of human development and steered clear of theories about racial identity development even though race is deeply embedded in individuals’ psyches, both consciously and unconsciously. Colorblindness purports to see people as members of the human race without racial categories. Colorblindness rationalizes that racism no longer exists because racial discrimination is illegal. It is an effort to reduce racism to acts of bigotry, hatred, and individual prejudice (McIntosh, 1988). According to this perspective, economic and educational inequalities between people of color and white people are a result of individuals’ different motivations and merit. A colorblind perspective does not give weight to historical inequities since racial discrimination has been illegal for more than a half a century. It is a circular argument that ensures its own cohesion (Bonilla-Silva, 2013; Wise, 2010). Separate-but-equal laws enacted during the hundred years that followed the Civil War privileged white people over people of color in all walks of life. Historically, colorblindness contributed to the defeat of legally-sanctioned white supremacy. Although not heeded at the time they were written, Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan’s words that the “Constitution is colorblind,” were affirmed by the landmark 1954 Brown vs. Topeka, Kansas, decision, which ruled that schools cannot

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discriminate on the basis of race. The decision did not eliminate racial injustice, however (Hitchcock, 2002). Corrective remedies to past discrimination–busing in education and affirmative action in education and employment–embraced racial equity goals but did not defeat racism. Ironically, racism, discussed in the prior section about meta-racism, became colorblind. The ideology of whiteness is premised on the belief that white is a norm, that white is unmarked and not demanding of notice. Hence, it is invisible. It results from a colorblind perspective about racism. For white people, consciously denying one’s own race (“we’re all members of the human race”) unconsciously disavows the shame attached to privileges (Altman, 2006). Altman describes whiteness as a defensive function in which, “the fantasy of whiteness is a way in which whites seek to ward off feelings of lack or of ordinariness, i.e., a lack of specialness or privilege and a sense of un-freedom or constraint” (Altman, 2015, p. 55). Because whiteness purports to have universal values, it is the measuring stick for virtue and success for people of all racial identities in the United States. Whiteness can never be completely achieved nor renounced by people of color. The Horatio Alger myth and the ideal of equal opportunity are lures that maintain white domination. The elusive pursuit of whiteness results in psychic splitting, dissociation and racial melancholia in which the efforts to “become” white require relinquishing one’s cultural identity and ancestral history at great psychic and relational cost (Eng & Han, 2000). Dominant white culture is rooted in individualism where the individual Self is preeminent and de-linked from the social and political Self (Cushman, 1995; Dalal, 2002; Layton et al., 2006). The tragedy of individualism is that by privileging independence and self-reliance over collective action, it isolates and disavows social connections. Individualism de-links people from their history and from social context. Psychoanalysts Erich Fromm and Harry Stack Sullivan urged the American psychoanalytic community to view human beings as historically situated social beings, but their call was not embraced by other psychoanalytic leaders (Cushman, 1995). The ideological impact of individualism on psychoanalysis is pronounced: psychological problems such as depression, alienation and anxiety have been viewed as intra-psychic conflicts rather than products of culture, history or interpersonal interactions. By looking inward for trauma and not at the sociopolitical landscape, psychoanalysis has served to maintain the political status quo (Hollander & Gutwill, 2006). However, personal and social histories are interwoven in a dialectical relationship in which personalities are shaped by culture and culture is shaped by personalities (Frie, 2014). In clinical work and professional organizations,

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psychoanalysts are in a position to open an interpersonal space to examine the impact of colorblindness, dominant white culture and the ideology of whiteness on individual well-being.

Measure III: Develop Racial Consciousness through SelfRefelection and Engagement with Others Bringing knowledge about racialization and racial oppression into personal and professional relationships is an active step towards challenging colorblindness. This measure discusses how people become racialized and suggests guidelines for race conscious conversations. Race has meaning because of the economic and political power associated with it. There are no genetic origins of race, however, the sociopolitical hierarchy established based on visible racial and ethnic differences is deeply embedded in individual and group identities. Racial identity development is the result of the interplay between social and psychological processes (Carter, 1995; Helms & Cook, 1999). People become racialized by exposure to race-weighted cultural messages from family, media, educational systems and civic practices. Racial messages and values are also unconsciously absorbed through intrapersonal and intra-psychic reactions to societal racism. An individual’s racial identity is their psychological reaction to racial socialization (Helms & Cook, 1999). Developing awareness of one’s own racial identity is a prerequisite to developing race consciousness to combat colorblind passivity about racial injustice (Hitchcock, 2002). Although people possess visible racial/ethnic differences, racial oppression has been meted according to one’s classification in the racial binary: “person of color” or “white.” As a result of different socialization experiences, people of color and white people have correspondingly different psychological reactions to racial classifications. For people of color, the developmental task is to surmount internalized racial inferiority and to attain pride. For white people, the developmental task is to abandon white entitlement and to work for systemic change (Helms, 1995). Helms’ (1995) models of People of Color Racial Identity and White Racial Identity offer pathways for a person to overcome internalized racism. By examining the unconscious racial assumptions about themselves and others and the corresponding socialized and negative aspects of racial identity, a person can develop a more conscious, differentiated and positive racial identity. According to Helms (1995), racial consciousness for people of color emerges through successive racial identity statuses, where “statuses are defined as the dynamic cognitive, emotional and behavioral processes that

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govern a person’s interpretation of racial information in her or his interpersonal environments” (p. 184). A person of color moves from an unconsciousness acceptance of white standards of merit that devalues his/her own racial/ethnic group (Conformity), to ambivalence about his/her racial group membership (Dissonance), to idealization of his/her racial group and denigration of whiteness (Immersion/Emersion), to a more positive racial self-perception (Internalization), and to valuing all peoples’ racial identities and engaging with other groups to overcome oppression (Integrative Awareness) (Abernethy, 1998; Helms, 2008). Racial consciousness for white people encompasses six statuses that reflect attitudinal shifts about how white people regard people of color and their awareness of the significance of being white (Helms, 2008). Racial consciousness emerges after the individual abandons racist thinking and begins to evolve a positive white identity. Self-protective psychological defenses are employed in each status and relinquished as the person’s white racial consciousness evolves. When a white person is ignorant and oblivious to race issues, they employ denial as a coping strategy (Contact). Realizing that racism oppresses people of color, they experience confusion about race. They are aware of belonging to a racial group with benefits, but justify privilege as merit for their efforts and intelligence. Thus, they employ distortion of reality as a coping strategy (Disintegration). They consider white superior and acknowledge misfortune to people of color, employing displacement and scapegoating (Reintegration). They begin to understand that white is not superior, embracing an equal opportunity stance for improving quality of life for people of color and employing ego defenses of intellectualization and denial of white privilege (PseudoIndependence). They accept an unsanitized version of white history in the United States and seek others with similar level of awareness, beginning to relinquish psychological defenses (Immersion-Emersion). They feel secure as a white person and are actively confronting racism (Autonomy). Developing racial literacy is more than an intellectual experience. While knowing the history of racial injustice and understanding colorblind ideology are fundamental, developing racial literacy is also highly emotional. It requires engaged practice with others in safe environments. Participants take risks to process their feelings about the devastating impact racism has had on all of their lives. Discourse between people who are willing to acknowledge each other as racialized beings creates honesty that allows for expression of black rage, anger, confusion, confidence and shame, and white fear, confusion, anxiety, guilt, shame and empathy. Such dialogues can be pursued in psychotherapy sessions, supervision, racially diverse groups, workshops and homogeneous racial affinity groups.

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Research by Helms and Cook (1999), Jeffery (2005) and Pinderhughes (1989) suggests attention to the following can establish an atmosphere of trust conducive to race conscious conversations: In dyads: Ɣ Attitude: Be humble and learn from the other’s experiences and history. Recognize and acknowledge the anxiety mobilized in cross-racial interactions. Keep focused on racism: splitting attention with other oppressions diminishes understanding of the impact of racism. Develop humility about what one does not know. Sit with discomfort and examine it. Be patient and know that race conversations are always difficult. Ɣ Expression: Use all senses: listen deeply to the speaker. Examine one’s own feelings before speaking out. Be attuned to language of race-avoidant talk such as referring to culture and ethnicity as euphemisms for race. Interrupt language that diminishes others such as “we” and “them” to refer to racial in-groups and outgroups. Examine the impact of racial micro-aggressions and resist the temptation to dismiss impact of injury by focusing on the misunderstood intent of the perpetrator. Ask questions respectfully, but ask even if it feels awkward. Resist the urge to teach in order to make space for learning. Ɣ Self-Reflection: Explore experiences in which power or lack of power is bestowed in accordance to racial identity. Examine one’s own cultural indoctrination about others. For white people, reflection about privilege is most valuable when focus is on societal privilege accrued by whiteness that grants access and entitlement. For people of color, reflect on how seeing oneself always includes how one is seen by dominant culture (double consciousness). Examine the psychological defenses constructed against acknowledgement of racial identity, e.g., distancing as defense against whiteness, embracing ethnic identity in lieu of racial identity, intellectualization. In groups: Ɣ Brave Space: Invite participants to introduce themselves and their personal goals for participation. Establish a contract that includes individuals’ goals to model that all contributions will be respected despite discomfort aroused in others. Do not allow safety to evolve into protection. Offer advice only when it is requested: advice can

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be perceived as implicit criticism. In racially homogeneous groups, separate cultural from interpersonal differences. Ɣ Inclusivity: Ensure that everyone participates. Invite participants to articulate feelings and fears about speaking about race and their experience of being white or a person of color. Ɣ Pace: Allow sufficient time, both in length of time per contact and in number of meetings or sessions. Summarize commonalities and differences. Attention to differences, ambivalences and conflicts will encourage dialogue. Prior to closure, invite reflections about feelings about speaking about race.

Measure IV: Evaluate the Impact of Race on One’s Psychoanalytic Practice Knowledge about the racialized history of the United States and personal race consciousness provide a critical foundation for psychoanalysts who seek to provide effective treatment in a multicultural society. Whether employed in private practice, clinics, schools or public health settings, honest examination of core professional values and fee arrangements will enable psychoanalysts to examine the implications of race on professional life. Through a race conscious lens, this measure examines the stigma of treatment, medical insurance and the complexity of fees. The author suggests critical questions that psychoanalysts can raise in professional settings with patients, peers and supervisors to formulate changes one might make to one’s practice. Psychoanalysis was born as a healing technique for hysteria and was practiced by medical and lay professionals (Aron, 2013; Danto, 2007). While the practice of psychoanalysis has been significantly affected by social and political historical events, psychoanalysts continue to view themselves as healers in the field of mental health. However, adherence to Hippocratic principles often conflicts with the desires for remuneration and autonomy. These desires often conflict with the desire to offer services to people without means to pay. Maintaining a colorblind approach to treatment often prevents psychoanalysts from focusing on the emotional effects of racism. Those psychoanalysts who consciously attempt to serve a multicultural, multiracial and economically diverse clientele may find their efforts devalued by the psychoanalytic community. While in Europe, many second-generation psychoanalysts integrated their liberal/left-leaning values into their psychoanalytic practices by offering free psychotherapy services in public clinics where people who did not have the means to pay nevertheless received psychoanalytic care

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(Danto, 2007). Exiled by war to the United States, many committed to making their services accessible to people in socioeconomically diverse communities by working in public hospitals, schools and community clinics–Bellevue Hospital, Kings County Hospital, the Menninger Clinic, Chestnut Lodge, Sheppard-Pratt, St. Elizabeth’s, and countless Veterans Association hospitals (Aron, 2013). In these settings they utilized psychoanalytic, sociopolitical concepts about trauma and advocated clinical teamwork but their work was viewed as psychotherapy, not psychoanalysis (Altman, 2015). Psychoanalysis in the post-war United States was absorbed into the medical profession and quickly became the purview of psychiatrists. By the 1960s, psychoanalytic treatment was privatized. An elite class of medical practitioners abandoned clinical and institutional settings in favor of work in private settings that catered to patients of economic means: white people (Altman, n.d.). Sociopolitical perspectives of trauma were rejected by the psychoanalytic community and individualistic ego psychological perspectives of human development dictated mainstream views of mental health and mental illness (Cushman, 1995). An individual’s ability to navigate and adapt to their environment was attributed to internal traits and intra-psychic achievement. Individualism, the ideology at the core of white racism, pervaded American psychoanalytic theory (Altman, 2015). While the contemporary psychoanalytic community has extended to include psychologists and social workers, it is ironic that the core social work values that link social context to psychic functioning (the “person-inenvironment” model) have minimally influenced the field (Altman, 2015). Few psychoanalysts choose to work in public clinics where, particularly in urban areas, people of color comprise large percentages of the clientele. Mental health treatment disparities between white people and people of color have been well documented (Chen & Rizzo, 2010; Tweedy, 2015). In their meta-analysis of racial disparities in mental health, Chen and Rizzo found that fewer than one fourth of African Americans diagnosed with a mental disorder received treatment, as compared with nearly half of white people diagnosed with mental disorders. Economic barriers that are the residue of centuries of racial discrimination are only one reason for the disproportionate lack of access people of color have to mental health treatment. While the expansion of medical insurance has provided coverage to many previously uninsured, black patients distrust the medical establishment due to a long history of medical experimentation on their ancestors such as the notorious Tuskegee syphilis study (Tweedy, 2015; Leonardo, 2004).

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In mental health, more than in other medical professions, the relationship between the patient and provider is especially important. Black patients have been notoriously under-diagnosed and misdiagnosed by the mental healthcare system. Black psychiatrist Damon Scott Tweedy (2015) noted that, “When black patients do receive treatment, it is far more likely to occur in an emergency room or psychiatric hospital than it is for whites, and less likely to be in the calmer office-based setting, where longer-term treatment can take place” (p. 1). Depression, a debilitating mental disorder, is normalized for people of color for whom struggle and suffering is an integral part of daily life in a racist culture (Conner, et al., 2010). Depressive symptoms—sadness, sleep problems, over or under eating, mood, and concentration problems—are often experienced as reasonable responses to life events such as death of children from violence, the experience of raising grandchildren as a result of parental addiction, being consumed with debt, struggling against homelessness and experiencing the loss of black men into the criminal justice system. In truth, enslaved ancestors of people of color endured tremendous hardships and survival demanded extraordinary strength. Paradoxically, the stereotype of black people’s strength stigmatizes depression as a sign of personal weakness. A participant in a focus group for older black people with depression declared, “Black women and black men, we believe we are not to be depressed. We have overcome so many things, so why should we be depressed? We should always look back and see what [price] our forefathers had paid… and we don’t have the right to be depressed” (Conner et al., 2010, p. 12). This belief has been internalized by many people of color and by the medical establishment. The stigma of depression deters many people of color from seeking mental health treatment. The Affordable Care Act of 2010 expanded public and private medical insurance coverage for United States citizens. By October 2014 over ten million people were newly insured and the largest group was 18 to 34 year old blacks, Hispanics and people living in rural areas (Quealy & SangerKatz, 2014). Many of these newly insured citizens are seeking mental health treatment. This poses a dilemma for psychoanalysts who are conflicted about participating in managed healthcare networks. Maintenance of a middle class lifestyle is difficult because contracted fees, universally low, have not kept pace with living and professional expenses, and low fees affront psychoanalysts’ self-worth. Also, contractually established fees rob therapists of the transactional exchange with patients to examine and agree on a value for the service. Managed care depersonalizes the therapeutic aspect of fee-setting by relegating it to a

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purely financial transaction imposed by a corporation or government (Bandini, n.d.). As insurance companies medicalize mental health and press for evidence-based treatments, psychoanalytic therapies that focus on insight rather than mere symptom relief are subject to scrutiny by case managers employed to keep costs down. Psychoanalytic therapies, denied approval by managed care, are available mostly to people of economic means, primarily white people. Furthermore, monetary transactions between a therapist and patient are also a symbolic aspect of their relationship. Transferentially, the fiduciary transaction might represent a transitional object, an enactment of connection that enables the patient to hold onto the therapist. The payment transaction—especially the withholding of payment—can also represent an enactment of power and devaluation (Myers, n.d.). Countertransferentially, the fee aligns with the psychoanalyst’s narcissism of deserving if the payment is high or reflective of altruism or guilt if it is low. Because of the multiple meanings associated with the transaction of payment, negotiation and discussion of fees is rich for critical examination and fruitful for understanding transference and countertransference experiences (Altman & Vaughn, 2002). In private practice, fees are charged according to what the market will tolerate although practitioners claim that their fees reflect the values of their services. The greed for acquisition paradoxically co-exists with psychoanalysts’ yearnings to be recognized as healers, so money and fees are rarely discussed in contemporary psychoanalytic communities. While greed may drive the desire to accumulate wealth reflected by high fees, guilt restores a sense of professional altruism and leads some psychoanalysts in private practice to offer reduced fees. They argue that their reduced fees are aimed at attracting a more racially and socioeconomically diverse practice. However, a reduced fee communicates a patient’s inability to pay and, hence, their defectiveness. It produces shame, envy and anger. As a stigma of inadequacy, it may compound other stigma people of color already carry due to racial oppression. Reduced fees may serve more as narcissistic gratification for psychoanalysts who seek to assuage their guilt and maintain a self-image of generosity. Because the majority of approaches authorized by medical insurance companies for mental health treatment focus on symptom relief and enhancing coping strategies rather than contextualizing a patient’s depression and anxiety, mental health interventions have partially abandoned people of color. As long as psychoanalysis, a therapy oriented towards insight about emotional experience, continues to apply colorblindness to treatment, it, too, will fail to affirm the emotional stress

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from living with racism (Altman, n.d.; Carter, 2007). Stress from harassment and discrimination, shame from poverty and inferior education are some of the emotional and psychological effects of racism. They are reasonable and non-pathological responses to emotional injury. For psychoanalysts to effectively address these injuries, they must consciously resist the dominant cultural lens that locates people’s problems as personal failures. Even though criteria for ‘analyzability’ has excluded people with concrete problems of poverty (Altman, n.d.), interestingly, a 2014 metaanalysis on the efficacy of talk therapy, including psychodynamic treatment, for people of color concluded that it is as effective for people of color as it is for white people (Ünlü Ince, Ripper, van Hof, & Cuijpers, 2014). The following are suggested questions for evaluation of one’s psychoanalytic practice in order to make strategic professional changes. While they may be asked self-reflectively, discussion within professional venues, in professional organizations and in supervision will afford richer evaluation and planning. x Do I go to where people seek help (clinics and institutions) or do I expect people in need of service to seek me out (private practice)? x Do I consciously attempt to serve multicultural, multiracial and economically diverse clients? x How do I communicate my commitment to an anti-racist approach in psychotherapy? x How are fees set for my service? x How do I mediate between offering a healing service and having a business? x What principles guide my decisions?

Measure V: Facilitate Workshops, Lead Groups and Teach Courses about Racism and Psychoanalysis While unconscious bias can be examined in a therapeutic dyad, it is most effectively excavated, examined and transformed in groups. The socialized aspects of racial identity, racialized fears and racial trauma have impacted everyone. Workshops and courses can blend didactic and reflective opportunities for learning about race matters. There are teachable moments in therapeutic groups. This measure will recommend group leadership preparations and approaches to effectively engage participants in dialogue about racial oppression.

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Writing at the height of the Civil Rights movement in 1962, Fromm (2001) called for understanding the reciprocal influences of psychological on social and of social on psychological experiences: The social and the individual unconscious are related to each other and in constant interaction. In fact, unconsciousness/consciousness is, in the last analysis, indivisible. What matters is not so much the content of what is repressed, but the state of mind and, to be more precise, the degree of awakedness and realism in the individual. If a person in a given society is not able to see the social reality, and instead fills his mind with fictions, his capacity to see the individual reality with regard to himself, his family, his friends, is also limited. He lives in a state of half-awakedness, ready to receive suggestions from all sides, and to believe that the fictions suggested to him are the truth (pp. 130-131).

Two people interacting have a personal relationship. However, three or more people interacting form a group and have an interpersonal relationship. It is qualitatively different (Bion, 1989). Groups are social experiences. They involve interpersonal interactions in which each member’s worldviews—the psychic representations of social and political power—are enacted. World views, like ideology, are embedded in communication and are unconscious (Hopper & Weinberg, 2011). Hopper and Weinberg (2011) describe the social unconscious as, “constraints of social, cultural and communication arrangement of which people are unaware, in so far as these arrangements are not perceived (not known) and if perceived not acknowledged (denied) and if acknowledged, not taken as problematic (“given”) and if taken as problematic, not considered with an optimal degree of detachment and objectivity” (p. 126). Psychologically, racism is a group phenomenon because it resides in the social unconscious in the form of worldviews and norms (Dalal, 2002; Layton et al., 2006). Layton and colleagues (2006) refer to this as the “normative unconscious,” the process that introjects dominant ideologies of individualism and white supremacy into individual psyches. Volkan (2013) speaks about large group psychology in which a large group chooses a trauma as a marker for their large group identity. The mythical proportions of a chosen trauma assign symbols, myths and narratives associated with racial/ethnic identities. When psychoanalysts serving as group leaders, workshop facilitators and teachers understand the significance of these representations, they will be able to open a space for examining trauma associated with racial/ethnic identity groups. Group leader preparation is essential because discussion of race intentionally breaks the social code of colorblindness. Race may be the explicit focus of a group interaction or its examination may be catalyzed

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by internal, subjective reactions to an associated theme. The group leader is responsible for facilitating examination of the socialization experiences and for opening a space to develop new norms that will enable group members to engage in understanding the damaging effects of racism. The group leader must have sufficiently evolved race consciousness to mediate racial tensions and stereotypical behaviors enacted in the group. When group leaders operate with an awareness of racial identity development and from an evolved ego status, they will be able to resist the group pressure towards negative racial stereotyping (Abernethy, 1998; Helms, 1995). Helms’ (1995) model of racial identity development, discussed in Measure #3, describes how individuals’ race consciousness evolves through interpersonal interactions. In summary, white people evolve through ego statuses in which their increased awareness about racism leads to abandonment of racial entitlement and towards a positive white identity. People of color evolve through ego statuses in which they discard the devaluing racial self-views imposed by dominant culture and acquire a positive racial/ethnic identity that includes meaningful relationships with other racial/ethnic groups. When individuals interact in a group, they engage and process experiences and information according to the ego status of their racial identity (Helms & Cook, 1999). Helms’ (1999) racial identity interaction model shows how the quality of people’s interactions with each other and their reactions to external events are influenced by their racial identity statuses. The relational interaction is “parallel” when individuals’ racial awareness is governed by a similar racial identity ego status. These exchanges are harmonious, but there is little to stimulate racial identity development. The interaction is “regressive” when the person in a position of power (white/group leader/therapist) operates from an un-evolved racial identity ego status in their interaction with a person of less power (person of color). This interaction breeds tension and discord. The interaction is “progressive” when the person of most social power (therapist/group leader) operates from a sophisticated racial identity ego status, which leads to growthproducing discourse in the group (Helms, 1995). Planning is essential. If co-leading a group, workshop or class, learn about one’s partner’s experiences with race through personal sharing before attempting to develop a curriculum and program. Approach the experience of planning with the humility of a learner and not as an expert on race because everyone has internalized stereotypical thinking, the product of social unconsciousness. The psychological impact of racism is significant, so the environment needs to be safe enough for participants to

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risk emotional vulnerability to sound stupid, express anger, pain, confusion and shame. Regardless of the duration or frequency of the group gathering, it is recommended to establish a contract that includes accordance to listen deeply, respect differences, encourage participation and agreement to stay the duration. Content and process are important and their balance needs to be determined by the composition and size of the group, the duration and frequency of the meetings and the agreed upon objectives. Decide, in advance, the blend of didactic and experiential components so that participants will be able to grow from sharing cognitive and affective experiences. The curriculum should include informational and historical content that demonstrates the impact of racism so that participants can begin to comprehend the structural and intentional effects of racial oppression. The curriculum may include examination of stereotypical thinking and how it stabilizes an individual by disavowing rejected aspects of the self by projecting it into the other via internalized bigotry such as colorism and privilege or the crazy-making impact of microaggressions. Because power is a critical force in racism, the following is an example of the progression of inquiry about ethnicity and race that leads participants to examine their experiences of power: x x x x x

What is your ethnic background? What did you like or dislike? What are the values of your ethnic group? How is your group similar and different from others? What was your first experience feeling different? What are your first memories of race and racial difference? What information were you given to deal with this? x What were your feelings? x What are your experiences having or lacking power in relationship to your racial identity?

It is likely that participants will arrive to the group with a high level of emotional arousal due to the topic. After establishing a contract, the group leaders may choose to share a personal experience to illustrate that conceptual, cognitive, and affective material will be welcome in the group. It is important that the group leaders do not talk above people’s heads. Leaders should guard against intellectualization that is a defense against recognizing the emotional impact of racism. Focusing on differences to the exclusion of similarities can cause anxiety and focusing on similarities to the exclusion of differences can cause distortion that leads to distrust. Focus on both. Leave plenty of room for people to process and talk about their feelings. If the group will meet for multiple sessions, consider

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beginning subsequent sessions with a review of the previous gathering, including commonalities, differences, ambivalences and conflicts. Continually take the pulse of the group (Helms & Cook, 1999; Pinderhughes, 1989). Psychoanalysis offers tools to examine the unconscious and thereby “transform the unthinkable into experiences that can be processed, thought about and contained” (Altman, 2015. p. 63). Examining the impact of racism on groups and from within a group can begin to break the bonds of an oppressive social unconscious. As psychoanalysts comprehend the power arrangements perpetuated by racism, they break the trappings of racial bias in their clinical work by interrupting silence about race.

Measure VI: Speak Out and Promote Racial Equity Within Professional Organizations To be silent against racial injustice is to be complicit. Silence is a tool of whiteness that conveys that race does not matter. Inspired by secondgeneration psychoanalysts who spoke and acted against anti-Semitism and economic injustice, this measure will examine ways psychoanalysts can engage in racial equity work within and beyond the psychoanalytic community. This author suggests skills to mediate psychological obstacles that breed silence. Psychoanalysts may implement additional recommendations to organize within professional organizations to promote racial equity. In the clinical consulting room, psychoanalysts attune to individuals’ stories and perspectives. Beyond the consulting room, they engage in professional communities and organizations. The same inquiry that applies to individuals applies to professional organizations: “Who gets to tell the story?” “Who and what is shaping the narrative?” “Where is the power?” Activist and historian Barbara Ransby (2015) writes, “Without organizations, coalitions and leadership teams, there is no collective strategy or accountability. An independent or freelance activist may share their opinion, and it may be an informed one, but if these words are not spoken in consultation or conversation with people on the ground, they are limited” (para. 1) What are the obstacles that inhibit individuals from speaking out in their organizations against racial injustices? Fear and shame. Many white people fear they will sound racist or fear they will sound ignorant about race matters. Many fear their language usage is not current and will offend people of color. The shame of being ignorant about the impact of racism on people of color is further compounded by white people’s guilt for not learning and acting sooner. Similarly, many people of color decline to

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speak against racial injustice out of fear their anger will be misunderstood and stereotyped as just another “angry black person.” Many people of color fear their truth is so intense it will frighten and alienate white people. Many fear that speaking out about race will eclipse their other identities. The historical legacy of black people caring for and protecting white people enabled whites to develop fragility about race rather than accountability. White fragility is both a defense against honest race talk and an aggression toward people of color who are projected as the wounding other and denied their own vulnerability from racist harm. People of color may be drawn into this enactment by protecting white people from their rage and by offering an escape route from uncomfortable conversations (DiAngelo, 2011; Michael & Bartoli, 2014). How do organizations derail efforts to pursue racial equity? Psychoanalytic organizations decry that the majority of the members are white and their annual goals often include objectives to recruit more racially/ethnically diverse membership. To back up these intentions, workshops and courses are offered that promote cultural competency, diversity and cultural humility. These courses focus on ethnic and racial differences and may allude to resulting prejudices. Their goal is to heighten awareness of differences in order to increase interpersonal sensitivity (Nylund, 2006). Cultural competency and diversity efforts are problematic because they teach that characteristics that embody a cultural group can be studied, learned and mastered. This patronizing approach fails to challenge the domination/subjugation relationship between dominant and other cultural groups. Cultural humility models promote continuous learning about the assets of another’s culture. However, both cultural competence and cultural humility focus on the culture of the other and not on dominant white culture (Tervalon & Murray-Garcia, 1998). As long as whiteness is the norm, it is invisible and defines itself only by what it is not: white is not black and blackness exists in order for whites to split off and disavow undesired aspects of the self, which are projected into a dissociated black other (Altman, 2006; Young-Bruehl, 1996). It is critical to understand this dynamic, which is the cornerstone of dominant culture and is deeply embedded in psychoanalytic organizations. Educational programs that aim to promote authentic dialogue and action about race must embrace a critical multicultural approach. Critical multicultural courses begin with a focus on whiteness. This information and perspective broadens understanding of race for both people of color and white people. Whiteness is a dynamic relationship built on power and domination over others. Multicultural courses must focus on the intentional hegemonic process that normalized whiteness and maintains

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power through invisibility (Abramovitz & Blitz, 2015; Nylund, 2006). Critical multiculturalism employs a historical lens, as described in Measures #1 and #2, to investigate the power differences between racial groups in order to illuminate how differences are socially and politically constructed. If psychoanalytic organizations are committed to authentic racial inclusion, understanding whiteness is a crucial first step in which members begin to learn and challenge the power dynamic embedded in one’s sense of self and one’s identity with one’s cultural group. Developing racial competencies will enable individuals and organizations to challenge racial inequities. Racial competencies include content knowledge about racism and racial identity, and necessary communication skills to engage in progressive dialogue (Dovidio & Gaertner, n.d.; Michael & Bartoli, 2014). In organizational settings, deep listening is critical: Ɣ When a person of color indicates that race is an issue, white people need to listen with an effort to understand, even if they feel defensive, and refrain from moving quickly to explain that the offense was not their intention. Ɣ When a white person makes a racially offensive remark, do not assume someone else will intervene; be prepared to speak up with care given to use of language. Ɣ Be proactive in discussing race and racism if race seems to be a subliminal issue. Ɣ “Listen” to text: if offensive racial messages are embedded in a listserv posting, name the issue. Sometimes issues are identified by code or euphemism. Ɣ When people of color declare the need for a racial affinity group, honor this space as an important resource in construction of a healthy multiracial organization. Social and organizational change is built upon dialogues that lead to collective action (Volkan, 2013). Social change refers, “to characteristics of a group of individuals that change over time, as opposed to changes in the individual members of a group” (Figueroa et al., 2002, p. 15). This participatory model for organizational change could be adopted by psychoanalytic organizations. Usually there is a catalyzing force that disrupts the normal pattern of behavior, e.g., external political event, an internal governance change or a technological innovation like a new listserv. The disruptive event incites the organization toward conflict that is resolved through progressive communication and action. Communication

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is dialogic because conjoint listening is a critical element of the change process. When all parties are listening to each other, they are able to communicate areas of agreement and disagreement. Opposition and conflict provide opportunities for resolution and more negotiation. Communication is a process of back and forth with frequent feedback. Dialogue is primarily a personal and emotional process, not an intellectual one (Volkan, 2013). It begins with recognition of the problem, identification of leaders and stakeholders, clarifications of perceptions about individual versus shared needs, vision of the future, assessment of current status, setting objectives, options for action, consensus on action and the action plan. Mobilizing for change includes the assignment of responsibilities, implementation and collaborative assessment of outcomes. Dialogue and collective action strengthen the cohesiveness of the organization and prepare it for the next challenge (Figueroa et al., 2002; Rogers, 2003). Advancing anti-racism in an organization begins by encouraging individuals to learn about the history of structural racism and the psychological impact of this history, as discussed in the Measures #1 to #4. Knowledge, self-reflection and engagement prepare members of the organization to take steps to examine the organization’s commitment to racial equity. This step is most effective when the executive leadership is engaged in the process. If leadership does not buy in, committed members should consider assuming or being elected to leadership positions. Abramovitz and Blitz (2015) suggest investigation of the following: Ɣ Does the organization have policies that express commitment to racial equity? Ɣ Is there a shared language and analysis about racial bias? Ɣ Is race consciousness articulated as a performance and supervision goal? Ɣ Are there anti-racism professional development opportunities available within the organization or with a consultant? Ɣ What are the mechanisms to address alleged racial bias? Ɣ Is there a committee or special interest group to increase members’ knowledge about racial equity? The organization should be explicit and public about the language and analysis of racial justice and show how it has disproportionately impacted people of color. Otherwise, coded language for racism (like inequality) will enable the myth of post-racial America to persist (Western States Center, 2001). The organization should set clear, achievable racial equity

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goals. The goals should be pursued and there must be a process for dealing with racial tensions as they arise (Wegner, n.d.; Western States Center, 2001).

Conclusion This chapter offers a vision for a progressive, anti-racist psychoanalysis that would begin to heal the split between private and public, personal and political. It recommends practical measures to dismantle silence and inaction about racism. Psychoanalysts know that change is a process that challenges comfort and, therefore, requires critical and self-reflective attention. What is warded off into unconsciousness often rules attitudes, beliefs and behaviors. The unbearable shame, fear and guilt associated with racism will continue to reside unconsciously in individuals and society until there is a conscious desire to know and to become accountable. Becoming race conscious is a process that begins with study and continues with discourse in treatment settings. It requires learning the shameful and true history of the United States that has been obscured by the ideology of white supremacy. It requires knowing the ideology of colorblindness that enforces racial inequities. As social beings, racial discourse needs to be cultivated in private, in public, in institutions and in professional organizations. The second-generation psychoanalysts demonstrated that social critique requires social action. In efforts to promote racial equity, psychoanalysts need to establish responsibility as providers of race conscious mental health services for people of all racial identities. Psychoanalysts’ actions as teachers and organizers can contribute to the reshaping of attitudes, beliefs and behaviors about race. A commitment to anti-racism by psychoanalysts and their professional organizations would restore the progressive roots of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysts could be in the vanguard of reshaping our institutions in a way that restores humanity to all people.

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CHAPTER EIGHT WHEN HOME IS WHERE WE FLEE FROM: WRITING IN PSYCHOANALYSIS DURING FORCED MIGRATION AS A REVOLUTIONARY ACT LAURIE BELL

The refugee experience of Freud and psychoanalysis, along with Erickson’s eight stages of psychosocial development, inform an approach to writing psychosocial assessments of refugee claimants to Canada. Clinical examples of developmental, generational and gender experiences of trauma reported by asylum-seekers are presented toward a greater understanding and preparedness to respond psychoanalytically to the increase in forced migration due to conflict and climate disaster.

Introduction What psychoanalysis knows about home it has learned from its history and identity within the ceaseless and explosive narrative of forced migration, having made its own involuntary crossing from Nazi-occupied Vienna, Austria, to a London, England, coming under siege. Psychoanalysis knows first-hand the rise of menace, danger and harm; the burning of books containing the evolution of thought that is the true home of our inter-disciplinary inquiry; the resistance and then surrender to the necessity of exile; the shocking, if inevitable, departure from home; the train ride that begins a journey to a certain unknown; the invasion and occupation of its consulting room-of-origin at Bergasse 19; and then resettlement and regeneration. 20 Maresfield Gardens, London, where Freud and psychoanalysis fled to escape persecution in 1938, greets visitors with a blue oval heritage address plaque on the traditional English

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stone wall that borders the front of the property. It contains a replication of Freud’s handwriting and signature, identifying this place as “Our last known address on this planet.” The traumatized object in the public figure of “refugee Freud” was inherited by the British school of Object Relations as psychoanalysis, exploring the holding environment when home is where we start from, became itself both the subject and the cure when home is where we start over (Winnicott, 1990). The people of Britain bestowed “refugee Freud” with public recognition in 2013 when a national poll voted Sigmund Freud as the refugee who made the most significant contribution to British society (PA Newsfeeds, 2013). Though he lived there for only one year before his death, Freud topped the poll by a wide margin. No one else among the luminaries on the ballot was even a close second. As the comedian John Cleese joked at the unveiling of the heritage plaque in 2002, “The fact that this treasure house and its objects are here is one of the very few good things we can thank the Nazis for” (Kennedy, 2002, para 3). One (and often the only) occasion for individuals and families seeking asylum in Canada or the United States to have a clinical encounter that addresses their traumatically-forced migration is when they receive a psychological evaluation in advance of their hearing before the refugee board adjudicator assigned to their case. Their lawyer can refer them to a clinician for an assessment session and “specialist report” to diagnose and comment on the psychological impacts of their experience. The Legal Aidfunded fee scale for the in-person appointment and subsequent written report is nominal and the absence of funding for follow-up or ongoing sessions offers little financial or clinical incentive for clinicians to take referrals. At half the fee rate, there is also a category for submissions of “non-specialist reports,” which I used as a window of opportunity to submit psychosocial case reports prepared from within the psychoanalytic tradition I inhabit. In the consideration of a claim for refugee status, traumatic impacts are considered evidence of the severity and veracity of the events in question and the persistent fears of returning to these conditions validate the danger lurking back home that necessitates permanent refuge. Implicitly requiring traumatic stress in order to approve asylum for refugee claimants and then, as an economic austerity measure, to neglect to provide treatment for the identified trauma does not seem the best prescription for successfully integrating newcomers into a society. Even more frustrating is that providing all of the documentation required to support the credibility and necessity of a person’s claim does not necessarily correlate with a

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successful application for permanent refuge. The refugee application systems on both sides of the Canada-US border are so dysfunctional that a review of the Canadian system concluded there was such an inexplicable variance in individual adjudicators’ decisions and reasoning that the outcome is no better than “the luck of the draw” for people whose lives are hanging in the balance (Rehaag, 2014). A 2015 study of the appeals process put in place to correct those errors and improve the odds for some of the high percentage of well-documented refugees who receive a rejection of their claim confirms that there is a crisis in the efficacy of the system not only in terms of backlog, but of basic accuracy in determining decisions (Rehaag, 2015).

Amed The young man I will call Amed, who arrived for the very first psychosocial assessment interview session I conducted with an asylumseeker, turned out to be a revolutionary student activist who had been hanged by his ankles while being further tortured for the offence of being a member of a Kurdish community seeking independence. Our conversation was translated by Suleyman Goven, who had been through the same ordeal years earlier and attends these assessment interviews regularly with the most recent generation of his compatriots arriving to seek asylum. He has not only heard but re-iterated it all. “You have no checklist of questions?” Suleyman asked as he looked at the blank pages and my pen poised to write. It is the effort to comfortably and directly invite a person to tell their story their own way and to freely associate as a means of constructing their narrative that one hopes will distinguish an assessment conducted from a psychoanalytic perspective. I initially asked only that the person start at the beginning of their life and tell me about themselves from the time they were born. No doubt Suleyman’s description of the checklist-free assessment interview is what prompted Amed’s lawyer to call me shortly after, ostensibly to pass on the praise Suleyman had for the session, but also to ensure that such a method would indeed produce an actual assessment report. That first report evolved into a busy practice of writing the psychosocial assessments of people from around the world who escape the trauma of persecution on the basis of the whole calamity of reasons people find themselves fleeing for their lives. Winnicott's dedication of Playing and Reality (1971) to “my patients, who have paid to teach me,” is frequently referenced in psychoanalytic writing to acknowledge that, in developing a practice, the clinical homes

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we start from are the people who come to tell us their stories (p. ix). The clinical process notes, case reports, case studies, and clinical presentations written as an intrinsic part of the process preserve talking therapy as a literary practice. Because the objective of the refugee assessment is to produce a written report, the people forced to migrate from such diverse places who eventually walked through my front door and sat down on my couch to tell me their stories taught me to be a writer in psychoanalysis. And they did so at great cost, coming with great trepidation, many fearing that this interview and the subsequent evaluation interview with a psychologist were being conducted on behalf of the refugee board or the government to find out if they were lying or worried they would be found to be mentally unfit for permanent residency. For some, the fear of answering to a perceived authoritarian figure of the state recalls aspects of their own traumatic experience. For all, there is the question of “who do I trust?” Regardless of whether a refugee was talkative or a person of few words, weepy or stoic, animated or lacking affect, these were hours of very focused emotional communication, including moments of levity and laughter. Ensuring that a person seeking identification of their intrapsychic and relational history and current functioning receives recognition of self and of their inter-subjective dynamics, rather than being reduced to an amalgamation of pathology, is the psychoanalytic method of being highly attuned to what may not be apparent but is absolutely critical to the person’s experience. There is a determination to provide a depiction of the unconscious dimensions that can also be enumerated. Providing insight into what is at stake in the case of each particular forced migration, Erik Erikson’s (1993) schematic of eight stages of psychosocial development provides a framework for delineating the impacts on the sequential phases of life for people seeking asylum. Educations halted. Professions postponed. Biological clocks ticking. Later years and last years ruptured from the lifespan of love and work that is the sum of their lives. A disability barrier left languishing without the conditions to move forward with one’s own aspirations. Childhood stages of development being impeded indefinitely by the stress of multiple stages of the experience: the traumatic incident, the forced migration, the uncertainty of permanent refuge. In addition to a person receiving a recognition of their life in the report, referrals were provided to (usually, the waiting lists of) the most appropriate community mental health services: the centre for victims of torture, sexual assault counseling services, domestic violence support services, LGBT counseling programs, free and low-fee therapy clinics. Most importantly, it was critical to

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address any impediments to the person being able to experience a measure of hospitality in their new location, a cornerstone of any transition. Owen Renik (2006) tells a story in Practical Psychoanalysis for Therapists and Patients about a man who attends only one session with him, and he does not discover until years later that this single conversation—the questions asked in response to the man’s articulation of what was troubling him, the answers and associations they conjured, and the transference interaction between the analyst and the potential patient— consolidated a certain resolve in the man to go start living the life he wanted but resisted. He left the analyst’s office and embarked upon the path toward the life he imagined, never needing to return. While knowing that the traumatic events precipitating forced migration and the continuing uncertainty of future status may preempt such an optimistic outcome for a single session with an asylum-seeker, the psychoanalytic technique of being incisive—‘surgical’ in Freud’s term—is meaningful in such a triage encounter. It equips us to make it possible to not only document the psychological and psychosocial injuries and their sustained impacts but also, in the process, to speak to them.

Nicole If one session is all we have, then a version of an entire analysis might take place in that single exchange, as when a very frightened young woman I will refer to as Nicole, who was fleeing domestic violence, stopped in the middle of a story about her childhood—a cherished memory with her family—chastising herself because “it doesn't have anything to do with what happened.” She received assurance that it most certainly does, because “growing up in a home where you had so much love from your family made you feel really safe. So, this abusive relationship was your first exposure to violence. I think it will help the Refugee Board to know this about you, so they can understand it was shocking in this way for you. And, it’s also important to understand that for you to leave all of your close family behind to travel here all alone is so difficult in itself that it is evidence of the life-threatening danger you face, since only that could have prompted you to leave them.” She wept and then flashed a small smile as I told her, half-speaking, half-singing, “And here you are, ‘sister, doin’ it for yourself! Standing on your own two feet.....’ Your parents must be so proud of you.” It was a salve for the overwhelming guilt Nicole felt for bringing the violence against women that is such an epidemic in her homeland into the family that had worked so hard to protect her from it. The counter-transference

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laboured to reconstitute a willingness to restore trust in herself, even in the face of the pain she felt in the relationship with her parents, who were mourning the loss of the daughter they nurtured and hoped one day would surround them with grandchildren to love and care for, generations that would eventually help care for them in their old age. The inter-generational dimensions of forced migration are always at issue in quite differing and such particular ways for each person who must rupture themselves from the home they started from.

Firat “Comrade,” I addressed the silent, withdrawn young man I will call Firat, who was just as angry at the country where he was suspended during such a long wait for his hearing as he was at the one he had fled. “I have not been called this in so long time,” he told me. “It seems right because I hear how much you learned about camaraderie—this is how you pronounce the word in English for being comrades with each other. “Cam-a-rad-arie,” he repeats aloud, making note of it in his developing English lexicon. “You learned this when you were young. Seeing your father return from detention or your uncle become ‘disappeared’ while you were a child, you saw the camaraderie. Your family and community took care of each other. But, you also saw the trauma that goes with it.” “Yes, I see them.” “Did you know that in the diagnosis for PTSD it says trauma can result from not only threats or violence to you, but also by seeing it happen to people you love?” “I see this,” he affirms. “I hear you use the same words for your feelings when it happened to your family members and when it happened to you. So, it sounds like the little boy who saw them suffer was also in your mind when you were being tortured ten years later. Are you with me? Am I making sense?” “I stay with you, comrade.” “Following this logic, part of your reaction is coming from an eightyear-old version of you. No wonder your feelings don’t make sense, Firat. You are mad at yourself for having these feelings, and you say you tell yourself to ‘just grow up.’ But think about it. Since you were eight years old you wondered, you asked in your mind, ‘Will this happen to me one day?’ Maybe you think it is a family inheritance so…”

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I asked for the translation of ‘inheritance’ from Suleyman, who was backing us up, as Firat preferred to speak to each other directly in English, relying on his progress in the ESL classes he was attending. “Ah, inheritance,” he nods his head, “Ah, yes. I have it!” I speak very slowly, continuing, “....so you think maybe the inheritance of trauma shouldn’t hurt you. But children are shocked to find out there is such cruelty in the world, right?” “A nightmare,” he confirms. “It must have been so frightening to grow up expecting it. I will report that it is as if 1) you had the nightmare, then 2) you had the trauma.” “And now I have no sleep!” There is raucous laughter as our words begin to play more dynamically with each other. “It is painful, but it’s a good thing that when it did happen to you, you could still feel shocked by it. It’s your eight year old self telling you that ‘those bastards’—by the way, your pronunciation of that word in English is excellent—they couldn’t take away your innocence.” His lingering silence then was absent of hostility. His hands rested more openly on the arms of the chair. He seemed to be thinking rather than ruminating. “I should help the kid, not beat him more,” was such a welcome response to hear before our hour or so was up. As he was leaving, Firat told me that despite his cynicism about an “assessment,” which he expected to resemble an interrogation, he thought it was actually very helpful to talk about his difficult experiences and feelings. So, he informed me he would “come back and talk more.” My protestations were futile and he came several times to talk during the months before his hearing. One of the topics that transpired in discussion was the potential influence of the anger he felt toward the “fucking refugee board” on his presentation of himself and his case during his hearing. “Excuse my language,” he apologized out of graciousness, knowing there was no need for inhibition. “Excuse my French,” I corrected him. “Why French?” he wonders at the latest linguistic intrigue of his adopted language. “There is a saying in English when you use a bad word, you say, ‘Excuse my French.’” “Ohhhh.....Why?” “I have no idea, but it can’t be good knowing the historical relationship between the English and the French. But that’s the word on the street.”

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“Excuse my French. Good. I always have more words when I come here.” “Yes, I always think that therapy would make the best way for ESL conversation. Perhaps the government would give funding to therapy if it was packaged as ESL?” On the day of Firat’s hearing, I received a phone call from his lawyer. Success! A short time later, the newly minted card-carrying permanent resident showed up at my door with a pizza in hand. “It is humble but I must say thank you,” he was grinning with tears in his eyes. I started to sing the opening bars of the national anthem and he joined in, laughing, recalling his frustration when no place was home. Some months after, I ran into him at a book launch documenting the spy thriller-worthy account of the translator Suleyman Goven’s migration. I didn’t recognize Firat at first, so changed was his appearance. It was as if I had met him while he had a life-threatening illness and was now seeing him for the first time as a healthy person. “It is my pleasure to introduce you to my girlfriend,” he beamed. Saying goodbye, we had a private moment. “Home is where you find love,” we agreed. Life-threatening traumatic stress is especially difficult to manage for a person who has been denied permanent asylum as a refugee and is mounting a final all-or-nothing appeal. The lengthy wait, and the ineligibility for basic services and opportunities, especially employment, while in this protracted state of limbo, leaves a person quite on their own to deal with the trauma of the past, the stressors of the present, and the anxiety about the future—all rolled into one big ball of insomnia, hypervigilance, depression, anxiety, lethargy, mania, sense of foreclosure and ineffable fear. Listening to people who are so eloquent in their expression of feeling shattered begs the question of what is to be the work of working-through if it isn’t over yet.

Victor This was the case for a man I will introduce as Victor, an educator and teachers’ union activist whose family members were targeted in retaliation for his organizing efforts. The acuity of the depression in this man was profound, impossible to bear, even to be in its presence was wrenching. It seemed unrealistic to work through the traumatic incidents of the past while it was unknown if he and his family would be sent back to their country and all would be “hopeless,” or if they would eventually receive permanent refuge so that the years of forced migration could take root as

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re-settlement. They were stranded in the desert, waiting to gain access to the promised land, but terrorized by the prospect of the opposite outcome, of a return to the brutalities they had fled. I told Victor to keep coming to see me regularly so that the psychosocial report would be current when, at long last, the date for the appeal hearing was set. He became alarmingly thin and almost mute. His will to live was depleted. We spent many hours in silence together. With no translator, we had to experiment with language in infantile ways to find the words, sounds and gestures to express the complex resistances, identifications, analysis and revolutions that comprise a transference milieu. He was confounded that his wife and children were faring much better than him, even though they had been victims of a gruesome assault. “Not only do you feel it’s your fault this happened to them,” I suggested, “but, the women and children are stronger than you. It’s tough being a man when your masculinity is missing.” “No entiendo. What is this you mean?” he is confused more by the idea than the language. “In your mind, those men in the black car with the tinted windows are still parked outside your front door threatening your family and there’s nothing you can do about it as a husband and father—as a man. You might say you are impotent to do anything.” “I feel no different about my wife,” he insisted, “she is no less woman to me after they attack her. So, what is my problem?” “They made your children witness the assault of your wife, their mother, because they know you are a real man and that would hurt you the most. Your problem is that they are cowards. Cowards, that is my official diagnosis of them.” After a long silence, he asks, “Que escribe?” He wants to know what I am scribbling down on the paper. “Victor wants his penis back. Please notify if found.” And he laughed for the first and not the last time in the sessions we continued until the final draft of the report and his successful appeal.

Juan Another man, who I will call Juan, was waiting for a do-or-die final appeal hearing for refugee status because he had been kidnapped for ransom by a political faction in his home country, made the journey with his family to seek asylum. They traveled thousands of miles over land with many harrowing twists and turns along the way. A short time after our

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assessment interview session, his wife caught him before he could fall, holding him as tight as she could as he was headed over the balcony railing (Bollas, 2013). He was barely functional when she brought him to talk with me the next day. “I know you say you are not a therapist, but he spoke with you in the interview,” she said, “he feels comfortable to talk to you.” And he was, but after a number of sessions continuing our discussion for my report, I proposed that “there appears to be something that you can’t tell me, so I don’t know what it is.” He remained silent. “You seem like a man with a secret,” I pushed the envelope. “How do you know that?” he sat up, alert. “Because the man you were is still missing. Not only intimacy with your wife is different, but how you carry your body. You’re hunched over. You don’t have any of that swagger I’ve heard you talk about that gave you the entrepreneurial cojones to start your own business. And the way you beat yourself up as if this is your fault. You were literally plucked off the street by complete strangers. What did you do wrong?” Juan revealed feeling so ashamed during his captivity that he had never been able to bring himself to tell anyone. He was not “attacked in that way,” meaning sexual assault. His tormentors just let his own body fail him, and his bodily functions betray him in their presence, making it the object of their gaze and ridicule. They didn’t have to rape him in order to torture him with the sadism of male homo-dysphoric humiliation. The violation of his masculinity was so deep and yet, precisely because of the emotional constraints placed on it, he was masochistically deprived of feeling entitled to the impacts of such gender annihilation. In the aftermath of the balcony incident, talking to me about such intimate feelings for a number of months as I made notes for the final draft of the psychosocial case report, he walked in the door one day with a definite stride in his step. He had a new haircut, was freshly shaven, and his clothes were more “business-casual” and less “barely-out-of-bed.” Juan sat down, unfolding a piece of paper from his pocket and read to me from Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan (1994) on the wonder of seeing the first photo of the earth ever taken from space. After reading the passage in both English and Spanish, he stated that, “I may be a tiny dot but I carried my child all the way here in my arms, finally crossing the border barefoot in the snow,” affirming his ability to now tolerate the ambiguity of feeling both insignificant as a displaced person and pride as a “big-enough father.” With the integrity of his masculinity and paternal libido restored, he did not wait for the eventual approval of his appeal to begin walking tall once again, demonstrating that the “Winnicottian concept of the holding

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environment provides a novel way of understanding home as a seamless domain of continuity” (Gamble, 2007, para 1).

Conclusion As we are now witness to a drastic increase in the staggering number of people undergoing forced migration around the globe due to violent conflict intersected with environmental crisis, a psychoanalytic social justice becomes acutely concerned with the human tragedy when home is where we flee from. To traverse the economic, racial and language barriers required to engage clinically with the refugees whose numbers are rising at a rate equal to the rising sea-levels that will exponentially increase forced migration is not an act of benevolence by psychoanalysis. As a matter of social justice, “refugee psychoanalysis” is essential to public health, a necessity and an entitlement for all people, as Freud declared so unequivocally at the Fifth Psychoanalytic Congress of 1918 in Budapest (Danto, 2005). And, it is an act of human and disciplinary survival at a time when the survival of our planet is threatened by the destructive relationship between voracious power and astronomical profit that reproduces the escalating crisis in forced migration. The craving for unequal power knows no bounds in its pursuit of splitting off one from another, one from all, and all for one. Capitalism vs. climate justice, corporate politics vs. first nations, mass incarceration vs. #blacklivesmatter are conflicts that perpetuate the archetypal binaries of racialized and sexualized inequality. As a discipline that practices the development of consciousness in response to the dissociating effects of traumatic conditions, psychoanalysis is yet to cultivate a discernible devotion to confronting the life-threatening impacts posed by the economic and climate conditions that reinforce each other to put all people and the planet itself in jeopardy. In three words, Naomi Klein (2014) sums up this historical moment: This Changes Everything. The mind-boggling number of people already fleeing conditions of political-economic-environmental disaster and the denial-inducing projections of future forced migration present us with human trauma occurring at an order of magnitude that urges us to adapt our “practice with boundaries” into a “psychoanalysis without borders.” When the home we start from becomes the home we flee from, psychoanalysis assumes a responsibility not only for the psyches of the violated bodies that are forced to migrate, but also shares responsibility for the well-being of the body politic. In psychoanalysis we have the potential space to overcome the fearful individual and collective resistance to contending with the

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scope of such catastrophic human misery. And it can move us toward an honest assessment of the destructive conflict between profit and people that dominates our present insatiable drive toward an unsustainable future. Writing in psychoanalysis during forced migration is a revolutionary act if it drives us to save the planet that remains our first, last, and only address—the home we cannot flee from.

References Bollas, C. (2013). Catch them before they fall: The psychoanalysis of breakdown. New York: Routledge. Danto, E. (2005). Freud’s free clinics: Psychoanalysis and social justice, 1918-1938. New York: Columbia University Press. Erikson, E. (1993). Childhood and society. New York: Norton. Gamble, J. (2007). Holding environment as home: Maintaining a seamless blend across the virtual/physical divide. M/C Journal, 10(4). Retrieved from http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/11-gamble.php Kennedy, M. (2002, June 29). Comedian unveils blue plaque tribute to Freud. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2002/jun/29/arts.gender Klein, N. (2015). This changes everything: Capitalism vs. the climate. New York: Simon & Schuster. PA News Feeds. (2013, June 16). Sigmund Freud tops refugee poll. London Evening Standard. Retrieved from http://www.standard.co.uk/panewsfeeds/sigmund-freud-tops-refugeepoll-8660537.html Rehaag, S. (2015, May 8). 2014 refugee claim data and IRB member recognition rates. Retrieved from http://ccrweb.ca/en/2014-refugeeclaim-data —. (2014, April 14). 2013 refugee claim data and IRB member recognition rates. Retrieved from http://ccrweb.ca/en/2013-refugeeclaim-data Renik, O. (2006). Practical psychoanalysis for therapists and patients. New York: Other. Sagan, C. (1994). Pale blue dot: A vision of the human future in space. New York: Random House. Winnicott, D. W. (2005). Playing and reality. New York: Routledge. —. (1990). Home is where we start from: Essays by a psychoanalyst. New York: Norton.

CHAPTER NINE VIOLENCE IN OUR TIME: PSYCHOLOGY AND RELIGION RAINER FUNK

A psychoanalytically oriented understanding of aggression sheds light on the origins and methods of today’s terrorist violence. Fromm’s distinction between characterological aggression and reactive aggression is reviewed. Religion, which is closely associated with today’s terrorist acts, can be a catalyst for violence or a catalyst for peace. Four requirements for religion to serve as a catalyst for peace are proposed.

Introduction Since September 11, 2001, at the latest it is evident that terrorism has become a new form of warfare. Until then generally small political fringe groups used the terrorist attack to draw attention to themselves; today, however, organized terrorism constitutes a grave threat to everyone. The dangerousness of terrorism lies, first, in the fact that it is organized in global networks and pursues global changes, otherwise sought only in wars. A second reason for the dangerousness of terrorism is that terrorists can attack not only with explosives but can utilize biological, chemical, and atomic weapons as well. An equally important third reason is the great vulnerability of our technological world and our public utilities and supply systems for food, water, and energy, which can be attacked and substantially damaged with relatively little effort. A fourth reason why present-day terrorism constitutes such a serious threat is related to the suicide attacks, that is, to the religiously justified willingness of human beings to sacrifice their lives for terrorism. As a result there is practically no sure protection against terrorist attacks anymore. The consequences are increasingly elaborate security measures and a deepening sense of mistrust

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among human beings. A fifth reason is, finally, our widespread inability to deal adequately with terrorist violence. This reason is the focus of my reflections here. Is there an alternative to reacting to violence with counter-violence? What role does religion play in this context? Does religion contribute to overcoming violence or does religion reinforce the willingness to use violence? Even though violence in our time primarily takes the form of terrorist violence, the question of dealing with violence is as old as humankind. At the beginning of the biblical history of humankind Abel is murdered by Cain. And up into the present political conflicts have often involved lex talionis, also taught in the Hebrew and Christian Bibles. Lex talionis dictates that the degree of punishment is to be oriented on the magnitude of the offense: “eye for eye, tooth for tooth” (Leviticus 24:20). According to the ancient maxim, violence can only be contained and prevented through counter-violence. This maxim is currently held to be the right approach to overcoming terrorism. However, the opposite will be the case. Counter-violence will generate even more violence. There is a simple explanation for this: in order to commit acts of terrorist violence neither military nor political power and strength are necessary. Almost anyone can carry out terrorist attacks today, even women and children. For this reason alone fighting violence with counter-violence is no longer expedient. What is the alternative to reacting violently to violence? A psychology that attempts to understand how violence arises and why violence generates counter-violence can offer an answer. In the second section I will outline a psychological explanation of the origins of violence.

Psychological Explanation of the Origins of Violence There are endless expressions and terms for describing aggressive behavior: human beings are aggressive, destructive, hostile, resentful, contentious, reproachful, critical, degrading, cynical, sadistic, jealous, envious, deceitful, competitive, et cetera. Such behavior is always an expression of an aggressiveness of some kind. This is why it is sometimes thought that it would be best if there were no human aggression at all. In reality, this would be a poor solution, because aggression is a human capability that the human being needs in order to assert, protect, and defend himself or herself against threats. This aggression in the interest of life and survival is something which human beings have in common with animals. It is essentially defensive in nature, even though it has a destructive effect in the concrete situation.

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The human capability for aggression is, however, not only selfpreservative in life-threatening situations ensuing externally. Aggressive behavior is also crucial to the psychic development of the human being. It is by no means a coincidence that a young child learns to say “no” before he or she can say “yes.” The entire psychic development is actually characterized by the fact that the human being devalues what was important to him or her during a specific phase, distances himself or herself from it, and fights it with hostility. Psychic development is only possible as a process of becoming and dying, of yes and no. Growth is only possible if the human being can turn against what was before–against the pampering and the dependencies imposed by maternal figures or against the subservience and submissiveness imposed by paternal authorities or circumstances. Without aggression there is no freedom, independence, autonomy, and no self-realization. Thus aggression has two sides: it is the reason for destructiveness, war, and disaster in the world but it also has a life-preserving and growthpromoting function. How does the one kind of aggression differ from the other in the human being? And–more important–how does an aggression that is not self-preservative develop in the human being? Erich Fromm (1973) has given a plausible answer to both questions in his book The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness. The defensive, self-preservative form of aggression only arises in those situations in which the life or the growth of the human being is acutely threatened. As soon as the threat has subsided, the human being no longer feels any need to be aggressive. The self-preservative form of aggression is thus always reactive and situational, that is, linked to threatening situations. Precisely this is what distinguishes it from another kind of human aggressiveness, which, independent of a threatening situation, expresses itself as a constant desire to be aggressive. It waits for opportunities in order to bring about “relief” through destructive discharges; if necessary, it even creates these opportunities itself in order to be able to be destructive. Here aggressiveness has become a need, a driven-ness. Erich Fromm called it characterological aggression in contrast to reactive aggression. Naturally, no one wants to be an aggressive person or have an aggressive nature. Accordingly, the active expression of this kind of aggression is rationalized in diverse ways. A person tries to legitimize his or her own behavior, for example, by desiring the best for the child, or by purporting that humiliation was not harmful to himself or herself, or by dropping bombs or waging a “holy” war in the name of freedom. How does this second, characterological kind of aggression arise? Erich Fromm’s explanation is that characterological aggression always

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arises when reactive aggression, enabling psychic growth and survival, is hindered or thwarted. This means concretely: if human beings are not allowed to react defensively with aggression, because all aggression is the work of the devil, another kind of aggression develops, one which is experienced as an aggression instinct constantly demanding gratification. Such persons must always dominate, oppress, or humiliate others–or themselves–because they suffer from a sadistic or masochistic aggressiveness; or they must always abuse themselves or others because they suffer from a narcissistic aggressiveness; or they have the constant desire to destroy or expend something because they suffer from a necrophilic aggressiveness, that is, they sense an urge to render everything lifeless. Whatever form characterological aggression takes, it always arises when human beings are kept from living out their self-preservative and growth-promoting aggression. If it is to come to a dissolution of characterological aggression this is only possible if the person concerned again learns to assert himself or herself against that which he or she actually experiences or experienced as threatening, specifically at the time when the characterological aggression initially developed during childhood, adolescence, or a marriage. Up to this point I have intentionally spoken of aggression only in a general sense, and not of violence, to make clear that every aggressive act can be in the interest of life but can also direct itself against life. Violence is a distinct form of aggression. When do we speak of violence? What distinguishes violence from other forms of aggression? In contrast to other forms of aggression we speak of violence in everyday life when there are perpetrators and victims. We speak of victims when a human being is attacked but cannot defend himself or herself– either because the attacker is stronger or because the victim is unable to defend himself or herself due to weakness, helplessness, or unknowingness. From a psychological perspective, violence always aims at producing defenselessness. It can be defined as that form of aggression directed toward a defenseless victim or pursuing the aim of making a person defenseless. This singularity makes violence the most dangerous form of aggression. For violence tries to eliminate defensive aggression and contributes extensively to the actual emergence of characterological forms of aggression and new violence. Thus the use of violence lends itself particularly well to the psychological observation of how new violence arises. In order to comprehend how new violence emerges we must begin by empathizing with the victim and by trying to discover how he or she experiences violence.

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Violence, in our definition, seeks defenseless victims or intends to make a victim defenseless. How does a child feel who is being sexually abused and being threatened with a juvenile detention home if he or she tells anyone? How does a person feel who is being tied up and tortured? Whose face is being slashed and who is being tormented with electroshocks? How does a spouse feel who never experiences anything but criticism and abasement, and whose protests only provoke more criticism and abasement? How does a young child feel who is afraid at night and whose parents have only gone out for the evening? How does a teenager feel who is not told the truth about his or her biological father? How does a disabled or an elderly person feel when he or she is physically attacked? The answer is always that such persons are filled with unbearable feelings of powerlessness, defenselessness, and helplessness as well as feelings of isolation. Among the worst feelings imaginable are those of being defenseless, helpless, and totally alone in a violent situation. There are many extremely unpleasant feelings: feelings of fear, feelings of failure, feelings of shame, feelings of loneliness, feelings of triviality, feelings of inferiority, feelings of worthlessness, feelings of inner emptiness. Most of us are familiar with such feelings from personal experience to a certain degree. The feelings of powerlessness, helplessness, and isolation arising in the context of violence effecting total defenselessness can be imagined by many people but not actually felt because they are so unbearable. (Some experience these feelings agonizingly in their nightmares.) The examples given were related to situations in which resistance is more or less impossible. Fortunately, not all violent situations are such extreme situations in which a person is totally defenseless. Then the person tries to assert himself or herself, and in these situations other emotional reactions are possible as well: feelings of powerless rage, despair, and grief. The more defenseless human beings are made through violence, the more helpless, powerless and alone they feel, and the more unbearable these feelings become. In precisely this situation–when these intolerable feelings cannot be psychically endured any longer–new violence arises. We human beings have many possibilities for excluding unpleasant feelings from our conscious existence. We can repress them, project them onto others, convert them into the opposite, et cetera. In the case of absolutely unbearable, life-threatening feelings the last resort is to introject these feelings. We incorporate them in us, so that they no longer threaten us and we are no longer at their mercy, helpless and defenseless. Like a

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cannibalistic incorporation these threatening feelings are now within us and are available to us. The violence effecting defenselessness has been averted, admittedly, at a very high price. For now the violence is within oneself, as something foreign and yet one’s own; an introjection which is part of me but which is experienced as a foreign element which should not be part of me. Human beings who have had to or have to fall back on introjection in order to avert violence effecting defenselessness are usually marked human beings. Because from this point on they must fight against this inner violence, we rightly speak of them as traumatized human beings. Whenever we human beings have to fight against difficult, unpleasant, and threatening inner feelings and impulses, there are basically two possibilities open to us for coping with them. One either directs them outwardly toward other people and things or one directs them inwardly toward oneself, above all, toward one’s own body. Both of these possibilities can also be observed in the ways human beings cope with this introjected violence. Some direct it towards themselves by cutting themselves, by becoming self-destructive, by becoming suicidal, or by becoming anorexic; others direct it outwardly and themselves become violent and threatening, abusive, rendering others defenseless. As tragic as the development is for the individual, psychologically seen, violence is in this way reborn in the victim, the victim becoming the perpetrator. Many parents who beat their children were beaten as children themselves. The sexually abused become perpetrators themselves and abuse others sexually. Persons who have suffered from violence in the form of public humiliation cannot restrain from publicly humiliating others themselves, et cetera. One inflicts the same type of violence on others that was inflicted on oneself: “eye for eye, tooth for tooth.” The example of coping with violence effecting defenselessness illustrates psychologically how characterological aggression arises: because violence makes defensive aggression impossible, violence is born again in the victim. This reborn violence is constantly perceptible as a willingness to employ violence and demands gratification. Moreover, this example of coping with violence effecting defenselessness shows how a spiral of violence develops and how counter-violence effecting defenselessness will cause new violence. Here the question of the reaction to terrorist violence which I raised at the beginning can be approached from a different perspective: is the political response of reacting to terrorist violence with counter-violence and of waging war on terrorism the result of an introjection and traumatization? Does counter-violence simply reinforce the spiral of violence? The question cannot be answered with a simple yes or no.

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Valuable in clarifying this question is the significance religion has for each side. Both terrorist violence as well as the political counter-violence legitimize their use of violence by appealing to religion. This question, what significance religion has for both sides in violence in our time, is our focus in the following section.

The Significance of Religion for Violence in Our Time Human beings do not act violently without inner necessity. Whoever is violent out of inner necessity, however, does not wish to appear as violent to himself or herself or to others. This is why many people prefer to inflict violence on themselves rather than on others. If, however, they do act violently toward others, their violence must be legitimized through rationalizations and ideologies. These rationalizations are individual legitimations for behavior that one does not really accept for oneself. Ideologies, on the other hand, are collective legitimations: I only am doing what other people do and consider to be right. A typical rationalization is well-known from the discussion on corporal punishment. The father who beats his children says: “A good beating never hurt me” though—the sentence should continue—“that’s why I beat my own children, something I actually detest.” Through the sentence “A good beating never hurt me,” the father legitimizes his own use of violence, even though the sentence is obviously untrue; the beatings that he received as a child did harm him in actuality. They led to his having to become violent himself. Among the many meanings that religion has for human beings pertinent in this context are those with which human beings collectively justify their questionable behavior. It is indisputable that religion also has an ideological function when it legitimizes actions contradicting the ethical goals of religion. We find numerous examples in all religions throughout history. Obvious examples in Christianity include the Crusades and the Inquisition, the blessing of weapons or the discrimination against women. The ideological function of religion is striking when it is a matter of the collective legitimation of violence. A prominent example is the legitimation of murder and suicide by the suicide attackers. How can a devout Muslim be motivated to kill himself and others? Islamic ethics clearly rule out such a use of violence, and no Muslim would be capable of a suicide attack of his or her own accord. Religious zealots lead the potential extremist to believe that he or she has an inordinately important mission to carry out in a holy war. How important the mission is becomes

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evident in the reward. Upon dying he or she will directly go to paradise. Both the talk of a holy war as well as the singularity of the mission are aspects of an ideology with the express intention of initiating the rejection of moral scruples and the complete abandonment of previous restraint from employing violence. The ideological function of religion is not only evident in the case of Islamic fundamentalists. In the declaration of war against terrorism by the American government the ideological function of religion is also of central importance. With obvious allusions to the book of Revelation, apocalyptic images of the fight against evil and against the “axis of evil” are conjured with the sole purpose of legitimizing counter-violence and persuading soldiers to willingly go to war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Here, too, visions and missions play a role taken from religious fundamentalism. Of course, it does not preach suicide attacks; only the desperate are capable of those. Yet what distinctively characterizes Western religious fundamentalism is that it is beyond reproach. Since the religious “rebirth” God is absolutely reliable and is always on one’s own side. Why should there be any doubts whatsoever about the necessity of using violence for freedom and for a just cause? Here, too, religion offers a mock justification for the inner willingness to use violence. From a psychological perspective an inner willingness to use violence always arises from a personally endured experience of violence—a traumatization. The willingness of the Islamic fundamentalists to use violence definitely has a different historical background than that leading to the declaration of war against terrorism. This traumatization can be identified with a specific date. On September 11, 2001, the self-image of the American people underwent a severely violent experience, which was traumatizing above all for those, who, as religiously “born-again” Christians, imagined themselves to be unassailable. At this point it is useful to recall what traumatization actually entails. We speak of traumatizations in a psychological sense when someone is defenselessly subjected to violence and cannot cope with the ensuing feelings of powerlessness, helplessness, defenselessness, and isolation other than by incorporating the violence, and having it under his or her control as an introjection. In this way external violence has become an inner willingness to use violence demanding to be gratified. Religion plays a decisive role in the question of coping with feelings of powerlessness, helplessness, and isolation. Up to this point the impression may have arisen that religion only serves the purpose of legitimizing violence. This impression is false. On the contrary, I am convinced that

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above all religion can help to cope differently with feelings of powerlessness and can thus contribute to the prevention of new violence. From a psychological point of view, religion has a variety of functions that are indispensable for human beings. One of the most important tasks of religion is to thematize hidden and forgotten aspects of our being as human beings. Religion is concerned with areas of reality that go beyond everyday life and do not have a place in everyday life. I am not only thinking of the question of the meaning of life, but also the origins and the scope of human existence. In our current daily life many feelings no longer have a place anymore, are quite literally out of place–feelings that are crucial to an integrative being as a human being. In our society feelings of failure, shame, powerlessness, fear of old age and death, of dependence or hopelessness, for example, are to a great degree taboo. There is no longer any place for them because such feelings only indicate that someone is a failure. Because our lives and social existence still require us to cope with such negative feelings, religion could be the place where such feelings are experienced, communicated, and shared. With respect to the question of violence religion actually does have two sides: it can rationalize new violence and in this way reinforce or even increase the potential for violence; however, it can also contribute to enduring the feelings of powerlessness, helplessness, and isolation in the face of violence effecting defenselessness as well to counteracting defenselessness. This possibility will be the final subject of my reflections. Whether a religion contributes to a decrease in violence is not contingent on its stigmatization of violence and its condemnation of violence as the root of all evil. On the contrary, if religion is apprehensive about confronting violence it actually puts itself at the service of violence. This is only a contradiction at first glance. Once it has been comprehended that violence always has its roots in the incapability of a person to defend himself or herself and to sense and endure feelings of powerlessness, defenselessness, helplessness, and isolation, it becomes understandable why someone who is apprehensive about confronting violence is at the same time influenced by violence. In actuality he or she is defenseless and–like the violent person–does not want to have anything to do with these intolerable feelings of powerlessness and defenselessness. In my opinion religion must fulfill four preconditions in order to contribute to a decrease in violence. First, in religious practice there must be a unity and solidarity with the victims and the losers of a society structured on violence. Such solidarity is only possible if closeness is sought to those who are powerless, defenseless, helpless, and isolated.

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This leads to the second precondition: religion must offer the individual human being space in which he or she learns to be able to feel powerless, defenseless, helpless, and isolated. Third, religion must itself refrain from the use of violence toward the believer. Religious violence takes many forms. Ritualized acts of humility and self-humiliation are more often than not another form of religious violation. Conversion cannot be forced. Mandatory confessions of guilt and public testimonies of personal sin and wrongdoing are gestures of submission. And conflicts with dissidents and infidels can never be resolved through violence. Fourth, religion must encourage people to be critical toward every kind of violence and to assert themselves against every claim to violence. Violence is always aimed at making people defenseless and at curtailing defensive aggression. In American English there is a word that does not exist in contemporary German and that expresses this capability to defend oneself succinctly: empowerment. When religion facilitates empowerment it prevents violence from being born again in the victim.

Conclusion Counter-violence is not an adequate response to violence. On the contrary, it only contributes to the rebirth of violence. This psychological insight is valid to an exceptional degree in the case of terrorist violence. Terrorist violence does not only constitute a challenge for politics not to react with counter-violence. It equally constitutes a challenge for religion because religion is instrumentalized by both sides to legitimize violence. This, and how the Christian religion in particular, with its central message of the powerlessness of the cross and the solidarity with the defenseless, could and should play a role in the reduction of violence, is what I have attempted to suggest at the end of my reflections. The provocation of terrorist violence cannot be countered with the alternatives “peace in our time” or “violence in our time.” Neither Chamberlain’s appeasement policy toward Hitler nor Bush’s declaration of war against terrorism have ended the cycle of violence. Violence arises from defenselessness and aims at effecting defenselessness. If it is possible to successfully reduce feelings of powerlessness on both sides through empowerment, violence will be deprived of its breeding ground.

Reference Fromm, E. (1973). The anatomy of human destructiveness. New York: Holt.

CHAPTER TEN PSYCHOANALYSIS AS CAPITALIST ENTERPRISE: OR, REFLECTIONS ON THE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE OF AN ALIENATED DISCIPLINE SCOTT GRAYBOW

In today’s neoliberal market economy, psychoanalysis might be conceptualized as an alienated discipline, or, more precisely, as a discipline that has assumed the role of capitalist enterprise and as such is separated from its essence as a radical, subversive activity. Using this conceptualization, this chapter raises and attempts to respond to two central questions. First, how can the notion of alienation enrich our understanding of the transition of psychoanalysis from a clinic-based, social justice movement into a rarefied medical subspecialty practiced largely in the confines of private consulting rooms? Second, what role might solidarity play in returning psychoanalysis to its radical roots such that it is once again available and applicable to the poor and oppressed? In responding to these questions, the chapter divides itself into three sections. First, a psychohistory is provided wherein it is revealed how and why psychoanalysis transitioned away from a clinicbased, social justice model. Second, the chapter uses Marx’s (2004) concept of alienation as presented in his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 to underscore the ethical and practical shortcomings of this transition. Third, the potentially reparative role of solidarity in overcoming the psychoanalytic movement’s current alienation from its social justice origins is discussed. The chapter suggests that, while alienation is problematic for psychoanalysts, these practitioners are at the less-alienated end of a continuum wherein psychoanalysis is seen to offer greater chances

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for solidarity, class-consciousness and social justice than other contemporary mental health interventions.

Introduction What words come to mind when we think of psychoanalysis? Many of us would verbalize: Freud, Jung, conscious, unconscious, dreams, transference, counter transference, and so on. What images do we see when we think of psychoanalysis? Some of us might imagine a book-filled office with an analytic couch in a beautiful brownstone. We might think of an elderly, white, male psychiatrist and a well-to-do, white, female patient. These associations suggest a link between our perception of psychoanalysis and issues pertaining to race, class and cultural privilege. Our failure to associate words such as progressivism and social justice to psychoanalysis, or to visualize a poor, minority client on the analytic couch is indicative of the alienation of psychoanalysis from its historical and theoretical relationship to social justice and leftist theories such as Marxism. This chapter seeks to explore the ramifications of that alienation as they relate to the role or non-role of psychoanalysis as a tool for social justice. More specifically, the chapter lays out the manner in which psychoanalytic practitioners, as workers operating within the capitalist mode of production, might be considered alienated in the manner described by Marx in his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. This analysis reveals the nuances of alienation as it is understood today among members of what Ehrenreich (1979) calls a “professionalmanagerial class.” It underscores the differences between a radical psychoanalysis and a traditional psychoanalysis. This analysis also highlights the differences between alienation among psychoanalysts and other mental health practitioners in a manner that suggests psychoanalysis is the type of mental health intervention most capable of serving as a tool of social justice. To add context, this analysis is preceded by a historical review of the manner in which psychoanalysis as a movement became alienated, in a general sense, from its roots as a clinic-based movement committed to a host of progressive causes including the practical amelioration of the lives of the poor and the intellectual exploration of the social problems contributing to and stemming from their oppression. The chapter offers a solution to the dilemma of alienation: a return to the clinic-based practice of psychoanalysis by way of worker self-directed enterprises (WSDEs). Such clinics could provide solutions to the dilemma of attempting to practice psychoanalysis in the context of a global capitalist system that

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undermines, sometimes violently, non-normative attempts to replace alienation with a sense of solidarity.

The Rise and Fall of Psychoanalysis as a Social Justice Movement Contrary to popular opinion, psychoanalysis was not founded with the intention of creating a means to earn a comfortable living by keeping wellto-do patients on the couch for years upon end. Far from that, Sigmund Freud and the generation of psychoanalysts that followed him recognized the important role psychoanalysis could play in empowering the poor and working classes and supported the expansion of programs such as universal public healthcare, income redistribution and the legalization of abortion and homosexuality (Danto, 2005; Jacoby, 1983). The typical psychoanalyst of the 1920s and 1930s was a progressive liberal who was greatly concerned with his or her personal responsibility to make the world a better place and who worked for that change under the political label of social democrat, socialist, Marxist or even communist. But beyond labels, there was at the same time an intense interest in social justice. At the center of the psychoanalytic struggle for justice were Freud’s free clinics, an informal string of centers of psychoanalytic treatment and learning that were united not only in their appreciation of psychoanalysis, but also their commitment to the use of psychoanalysis as a means of making poor and working class people better able to advocate for their own emancipation (Danto, 2005). Freud’s vision for society, which he debuted in Budapest in 1918 at the fifth congress of the International Psychoanalytic Association, was the result of a newfound interest in social welfare that came to the fore following the death and destruction of World War I. At the core of Freud’s social vision was a belief in government-funded universal healthcare and a desire to see it expanded to include free access to psychoanalysis for all, regardless of one’s ability to pay (Danto, 2005). Freud (1918) stated, “the conscience of the community will awake and remind it that the poor man should have just as much right to assistance for his mind as he now has to the lifesaving help offered by surgery and that the neuroses threaten public health no less than tuberculosis and can be left as little as the latter to the impotent care of individual members of the community” (p. 167). He summed up this vision of universal psychoanalysis for all as “a psychotherapy for the people” (Freud, 1918, p. 167). Indeed, Freud felt a compelling drive to make psychoanalytic treatment available to all, “to make our therapy accessible to the great numbers of people who suffer no

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less than the rich from neurosis, but are not in a position to pay for treatment” (Freud, 1930, p. 5). To turn this vision into reality, Freud proposed a system of psychoanalytic clinics that would offer free, sliding scale or full-fee services to patients from an array of class backgrounds (Danto, 2005). The first such clinic to open was the Berlin Poliklinik. It opened on February 24, 1920. Notable staff included Karl Abraham, Franz Alexander, Karen Horney, Ernst Simmel and Max Eitingon. The clinic was in existence until it was taken over by the Nazis in 1933, and during its 13 years of operation it reveled in the fact that it was the world’s first clinic to attempt to put into practice Freud’s call for universal public access to psychoanalysis. The second such clinic to open was the Vienna Ambulatorium. It began operations on May 22, 1922. Notable staff included Eduard Hitschmann, Wilhelm Reich and Annie Reich. The Vienna Ambulatorium was truly a product of its time; the clinic’s disregard for patients’ ability to pay complemented the political and social attitudes that prevailed in postWorld War I Red Vienna. One of the last psychoanalytic clinics to open was the Budapest General Ambulatorium for Nervous and Mental Patients, which began operations on December 18, 1931, and was headed by Sandor Ferenczi. This clinic was significant because, as fascism spread in Germany and Austria, there were hopes Budapest would become the new capital of psychoanalysis. Of course, there were many other clinics during this era, each with its own unique qualities, but all sharing in the belief that: 1) the low-fee clinic should be the center of the psychoanalytic movement; and, 2) equal access to psychoanalytic treatment for poor and working class people is a guiding principle of the social mission of the psychoanalytic movement (Danto, 2005). While Freud identified with democratic socialist causes but chose not to become overtly involved in politics, the generation of psychoanalysts that followed him did not hesitate to become directly involved in radical leftist movements (Danto, 2005; Jacoby, 1983). They made significant progress in linking psychoanalytic theory with progressive social, political and economic theories, most notably Marxism. In practice, the clinic system that Freud initiated became the testing ground where this mix of theory and practice was put into action, and psychoanalysis truly became a force for progressive social change (Danto, 2005). The second generation of psychoanalysts saw in Freud’s theory a method not only to alleviate mental health symptoms, but also a means to achieve insight and selfawareness in relation to social, economic and political events. Firmly aligned with the leftist politics of Red Vienna and Weimar Berlin, these analysts believed that to be relevant psychoanalysis must not just be

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accessible, it must also have the ability to help people become aware of their class oppression and the relationship between that oppression and mental health symptoms. Central to the logic of these second generation analysts was the use of Marxist ideas and terms such as alienation, class consciousness, commodity fetishism, dialectical materialism, exploitation and cultural reproduction. This mix of Freudianism and Marxism allowed for an improved understanding of the interconnectedness of man and society, of the psychological and the sociological, and was applied in the treatment rooms of Freud’s free clinics, which were extremely popular with the local populations and always had waiting lists. With the rise of Nazism, many psychoanalysts escaped to the United States. The psychoanalysis that developed in the United States, however, did not have the same level of social involvement and association with leftist politics. In this new version of psychoanalysis, “poor people, working class people, [and] people seen in the public sector came to be viewed as unsuitable candidates for psychoanalysis, in contrast to Freud’s views” (Altman, 2010, p. 45). As a result, American psychoanalysis of the post-World War II era not only failed to maintain Freud’s interest in social progressivism, it strengthened existing racial, economic and cultural oppressions. It replicated the hierarchical class structure of society within the substructure of psychoanalytic culture. By ignoring race, class and culture, psychoanalysis embedded itself in society’s arrangements with regard to these variables and made itself “the functional equivalent of a homogeneous American suburban environment” (Altman, 2010, p. xix). As a result, the links between psychoanalysis and progressivism that had been so strong and visible in Europe during the interwar years went underground, and psychoanalysis in the United States became fodder for jokes about its limited scope and antiquated views (Jacoby, 1983). It also ceased to be relevant to the needs of the poor and working class; it was now a highly medicalized tool limited in scope and applicability to the needs of an exclusively well-to-do, white population. Or, as Zaretsky (2005) explains it, psychoanalysis (at least in the clinical sense) became, “a veritable fount of homophobia, misogyny, and conservatism, central to the cold war project of normalization” (p. 276).

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Psychoanalytic Practitioners as Alienated Workers in the Capitalist Mode of Production Past and Present Conceptualizations of Marx’s Notion of Alienation Karl Marx is perhaps best known for his works The Communist Manifesto and Capital. These works are representative of the materialist Marx, the Marx who focuses on productive forces, class struggle and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Less known but perhaps equally important is the humanist Marx of the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. The humanist Marx highlights the importance of human nature and alienation. This Marx firmly believes in such a thing as the nature of man, or, as Fromm (2004) states, in the idea that “man can be defined as man not only biologically, anatomically and physiologically, but also psychologically” (p. 23). According to Ollman (1971) Marx conceives of human nature as the summation of man’s relationship with himself, with others and with nature. When man is deprived of a meaningful relationship to himself and the natural sources of life, his interactions with fellow men and nature are alienated. In this way, alienation is understood to be the antithesis of that which is natural and human. Summing up Marx, Fromm (2004) explains, “alienation means, for Marx, that man does not experience himself as the acting agent in his grasp of the world… Alienation is essentially experiencing the world and oneself passively, receptively, as the subject separated from the object” (p. 37). Alienation is associated with the life man leads under the capitalist mode of production whereas, “unalienation is the life man leads under communism” (Ollman, 1971, p. 132). Alienation, therefore, is best conceptualized as a product of capitalism. More specifically, it is an emotional state common to members of the working class that exists because of the capitalist mode of production, which produces not only goods and services but also feelings and emotions in the minds of workers. Marx believed that, at its best, work is what makes us human. It provides a forum in which we can be creative and achieve our essence as humans thereby enabling us to live rather than simply survive. Under capitalism, however, work replaces this sense of unalienation with alienation by separating the worker from his labor in four ways: 1) alienation of man “to the produce of his labor…which dominates him”; 2) alienation of man in the “process of production, within the productive activity itself”; 3) alienation of man from “his own body, external nature, his mental life and

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his human life”; and, 4) alienation of man “from other men” (Marx, 2004, pp. 82, 81, 85). In the first type of alienation, “the worker is related to his product as to an alien object,” so that work becomes nothing more than a “means of existence” (Marx, 2004, pp. 80-81). This refers to the fact that the worker is unlikely to enjoy the benefit of the consumption of the product of his labor. Rather, the product is likely to be consumed by someone richer and more powerful. As a result, the creation of the product offers little opportunity for creative expression and holds no deep personal meaning. In the second type of alienation, man is part of a production process that is so regimented and industrialized that the connection between his contribution and the total sum of the completed product is invisible. Once again, we see this alienation as having a psychological component, in this case rendering the act of work an act of “self-alienation…an activity which is directed against [the worker], independent of him and not belonging to him” (Marx, 2004, p. 83). The third type of alienation takes away man’s species life, that is, his work efforts to turn his consciousness into something concrete such that he “sees his own reflection in a world which he has constructed,” and renders it nothing more than a “means of physical existence” (Marx, 2004, pp. 84-85). Last, in the fourth type of alienation, “man is alienated from other men” meaning that “every man regards other men according to the standards and relationships in which he finds himself placed as a worker (Marx, 2004, p. 85). In other words, rather than collective common effort to promote personal survival and a better society, there is competition, specifically a competitive labor market, which pits worker against worker thereby alienating them from their mutual economic interests. Marx’s theorizing focused on factory workers. Today, though, alienation is seen as problematic to the lives of workers from a host of industries and class statuses. This line of thinking holds that, in the current capitalist economy, factory workers are not the only type of workers whose work robs them of individuality, transforms them into objects and renders them slaves to the effects of materialism. Fromm (2004), for example, points out that “…the clerk, the salesman, the executive, are even more alienated today than the skilled manual worker” (p. 45). Likewise, the World Congress of Sociology in 2006, which addressed the topic of alienation, was organized around the assumption that “alienating factory work has now been eradicated, humanized and/or simply compensated for by high levels of consumption in post-industrialized societies, with alienation from work having been ‘exported’ to offices

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there and sweatshops in newly industrializing countries” (Archibald, 2009, p. 151). The belief that alienation touches more than just members of the industrial working class represents the conclusion that alienation has “become the fate of the vast majority of people” (Fromm, 2004, p. 45). This reading of Marx’s theory of alienation reveals the essence of the humanist Marx, the Marx who wishes to undo the economic exploitation of the working class, but also the “destruction of individuality and its enslavement of man, not by the capitalist, but the enslavement of man– worker and capitalist–by things and circumstances of their own making (Fromm, 2004, p. 40). In this context, Archibald (2009a) provides a thorough and timely definition of contemporary alienation wherein it is seen as but one part of a complex psychological response to today’s economic uncertainties. Today, he explains, “alienation is not likely to be the immediate response even to moderately high objective powerlessness” (Archibald, 2009a, p. 160). Rather, before succumbing to psychic alienation an individual might first attempt to find alternative employment or attempt to regain power through collective organization. In this regard, today alienation might be conceived as, “leaving the field emotionally and cognitively” or “a lowering of expectations and aspirations for control…in order to lessen the severity of repeated deprivation and frustration” in the face of economic uncertainty after other concrete defensive maneuvers have been exhausted (Archibald, 2009, pp. 160, 312).

Alienation and Contemporary Psychoanalysts How might we apply the concept of alienation to the contemporary psychoanalytic practitioner? To answer this question, we must first consider what makes psychoanalysis a radical, progressive act, then ask whether alienation is impeding on this process such that unalienation is being replaced by a lowering of expectations and aspirations on the part of contemporary psychoanalysts. Psychoanalysis becomes a progressive act, in the clinical sense, when the analyst facilitates an intervention wherein the act of being curious about and questioning everything is directed outward. That is, when the patient reaches the stage where he or she is curious about and questions why things are the way they are on a macro scale, he or she can be said to be participating in a progressive form of clinical psychoanalysis. For example, in a traditional psychoanalysis patients are encouraged to be curious about themselves, particularly as it relates to those things that we might initially assume are insignificant such as slips of the tongue or incidents of forgetting. Through the treatment,

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patients come to see these events not as meaningless acts but as symptoms possessing a greater unconscious meaning. Take, for example, the patient who “forgets” to silence his cell phone during analytic sessions. By forgetting to do so, his free associations constantly are interrupted by phone calls. At first, this patient might simply conclude this act of omission was a mindless mistake. Later, such an act comes to be seen as a rich source of clinical material ripe for interpretation; the act of forgetting to silence the cell phone might represent a behavioral expression of an unconscious ambivalence about being fully enveloped in the treatment. Likewise, when the patient begins to wonder why his boss and the corporation he works for expect him to be permanently available, even during an hour as personal and intimate as the hour of the analytic session, another type of curiousness begins. This curiosity, while still couched in the assumption that there is a clinical benefit to critically questioning everything, is now directed outward and is suddenly applicable to a new host of issues. This, then, is the essence of what makes psychoanalysis radical. This is what makes psychoanalysis, in a clinical sense, a tool of social justice. That being said, let us consider the topic of alienation among psychoanalysts from two perspectives, first from the perspective of the traditional definition of alienation as Marx originally conceived it, then from a second perspective, one that permits a more flexible definition of alienation such as that proposed by Archibald (2009a, 2009b). In both analyses, we must consider first and foremost that the contemporary psychoanalyst is clearly not a manual laborer. To the contrary, the contemporary psychoanalyst is a member of what Ehrenreich and Ehrenreich (1979) refer to as the “professional managerial class.” As explained by Dimen (2006), this class of work “ranges from law and medicine to middle management, from social work and psychotherapy to education, from academe to journalism. It entails what is crudely called mental labor but is better characterized as labor that combines intellect and drive with considerable, although not total, autonomy and self-direction” (p. 33). In regard to a strict application of the term alienation, we see that it simply does not fit. The contemporary psychoanalyst is not related to his product, that is, his patient, as to an alien object. Working with a patient psychoanalytically offers innumerable opportunities for creative expression and demands that the analyst experience the therapeutic dyad as a source of deep personal meaning. Interpreting, clarifying and actively listening all require the analyst to be fully present, to be a part of the analytic experience of the patient. Thus, the contemporary psychoanalyst

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cannot be said to be participating in work which is directed against him, is independent of him nor belonging to him. Unlike the factory worker who sees little connection between his contributions and the outcome of the finished product, the analyst has the chance to experience with the patient the impact of every detail of the therapeutic relationship. In this way the contemporary psychoanalyst is not seen as participating in work that takes away his species life, that is merely a means of physical existence. Rather, through his work the analyst is creating a mutually lived experience between himself and the patient that is the direct result of their combined efforts. Last, the contemporary psychoanalyst, although likely to be operating in a private practice setting and technically being in economic competition with his fellow analysts, remains connected to his fellow man through participation in the scholarly life of analytic institutes, by attending conferences and through other mutual pursuits typical of a member of the professional managerial class. In principle, then, psychoanalysis promotes unalienation and functions best in an environment of freedom. It differs from other contemporary psychotherapeutic approaches in this way; it endeavors to meet the whole person while offering the analyst the chance to be personally and fully involved in the therapeutic process. Indeed, the analytic process cannot occur without the analyst, whose countertransference reactions are taken into consideration when making interpretations. On the other hand, manualized treatments such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) are the opposite. This sort of treatment offers fewer opportunities for creative expression. Failure to acknowledge transference and countertransference means the therapeutic relationship risks not penetrating the surface. The CBT therapist, her behavior predetermined by a manual rather than guided by her inner experience, is expected to bring the patient to where he should be, rather than meet him where he is at. In such a treatment, there is no room for spontaneity. This routinized process harkens to that of a machine and calls to mind an assembly line. Clinically, such interventions offer little more than brief symptom remission. Oppositely, psychoanalysis might serve both a clinical and political purpose. Samuel (2006) points out that psychoanalysis has the capacity to allow for the conscious identification and verbal articulation of rage about social injustices that then can be used to combat those injustices. The experience of being in a truly progressive psychoanalysis, that is, an analysis facilitated by an unaliented analyst, helps the analysand see the connections between the private and public spheres, thus undoing the false dichotomies identified by Aron and Starr (2013) that would have us believe the clinical and the political are somehow not intertwined. Samuel (2006) writes, “…I do not

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agree that analysis and therapy inevitably siphon off rage that might more constructively be deployed in relation to social injustices. In fact, I think that it is the reverse that often happens: experiences in therapy act to fine down generalized rage into a more constructive form, hence rendering emotions more accessible for social action” (p. 12). So, can we hypothesize that the contemporary psychoanalyst is unalienated and capable of promoting a therapeutic technique that integrates inner and outer such that the clinical is understood to be connected to the political? Not exactly. While he or she might not fit Marx’s traditional definition of alienation because this definition did not account for the nuances faced by a member of the professional managerial class, certain factors suggest the contemporary psychoanalyst may experience a non-traditional sort of alienation, an “alienation-lite.” In practical terms, the absence of discussion of race, class, and politics in contemporary psychoanalytic discourse, and the presence of money at the heart of the clinical relationship, are two ways this alienation-lite might come into play. Regarding the former, Layton, Hollander and Gutwill (2006) point out that Žižek has made the claim that omitting discussion of race, class and politics in psychoanalytic discourse (both theoretical and clinical) reinforces the capitalist status quo. They interpret this statement to mean, “those left academic theorists (and we could add left psychoanalytic practitioners) who write as though capitalism is natural and here to stay are not effective in helping us understanding its obscured dynamics of class and power” leading them to conclude the absence of discussion of these matters among psychoanalysts is a “profoundly political phenomenon” (Layton, Hollander & Gutwill, 2006, pp. 1, 5). An additional element that might suggest a type of mild alienation, that is, a separating of the analyst from himself psychically and from the analytic mission, is the reality that at the core of the analyst/patient relationship is the matter of money. Marx described money as the agent of alienation (Marx, 2004). Freud said that analysts lease their time to patients (Gay, 2006). Matters of money raise issues pertaining to class and can create anxiety which then shows up in the transference and the countertransference (Dimen, 2006). In today’s neoliberal market economy, dominated by economic crisis and austerity measures, both patients and analysts are prone to anxiety about money and their class status. Without a solid social safety net, patients and therapists alike find themselves bound by a mutual fear of losing their financial well-being, their status, their employment and their professional identities. Dimen (2006) writes, “This theft of the personal satisfaction you take in work and in your relationship with whom you work is alienation” (p. 35). Thus, she argues, alienation is

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at the heart of psychoanalysis, a process in which “you pay a stranger to recover yourself” (p. 36).

From Alienation to Solidarity: The Need for Worker SelfDirected Enterprises (WSDES) The establishment of psychoanalyst-run worker self-directed enterprises (WSDEs) could represent a solution to the problem of alienation among analysts. Wolff (2012) defines WSDEs as business organizations that are defined by two essential qualities, “the appropriation and distribution of surplus are done cooperatively and the workers who cooperatively produce the surplus and those who cooperatively appropriate and distribute it are identical” (p. 122). These organizations, which strive to bring democracy into the workplace, seek to undo alienation through solidarity. They represent an alternative to the undemocratic system of top-down decision making that defines contemporary corporations and, perhaps more relevant to psychoanalysis, they replace isolation and competition with solidarity and cooperation. As such, WSDEs are non-exploitative organizations, meaning “they do not involve one group of people appropriating the surplus produced by another” (Wolff, 2012, p. 123). They represent an important part of a much-needed transition away from capitalism to a more democratic political and economic system. Forming worker-owned cooperatives among practicing psychoanalysts would not be without precedent. As Danto’s (2005) research has shown, Freud’s free clinic movement relied on the collective financial and professional efforts of concerned psychoanalysts who pooled their time and money to fund clinics that served low income and working class patients. Today, those clinics have been replaced by a psychoanalytic milieu in which the private office predominates and is in fact idealized (Altman, 2009, 20015 ). Altman points out the reasons for this. First, the prevalence of ego psychology in America during the 1950s and its strict demand for analyst neutrality made its application in a clinic setting difficult. Second, the American emphasis on individualism and the capitalist model ensured that a collective approach such as that represented by a collectively run clinic was denigrated and eschewed. With time, these trends caused the very idea of treatment being conducted in a non-private practice, clinic setting to be thought of as incapable of being labeled psychoanalytic (Aron & Starr, 2012). Yet it can be argued that an analyst-owned WSDE could provide benefits to analysts and patients alike. As Dimen (2006) has pointed out, perpetual austerity and crisis, the predominant symptoms of the current

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capitalist economic system, mean both patients and analysts are at constant risk of financial upheaval. The pooled resources and resulting economic predictability could shield WSDE owners and clients from at least some of the practical problems and resultant psychic anxiety associated with being a participant in the neoliberal market economy. Further, by participating in a business mechanism that represents an effort to transition to a more just economic and political system, what Wolff (2012) refers to a “cure for capitalism,” analysts would be contributing to the ethical aspect of psychoanalysis (p.115). As such, WSDE participation would represent a much-needed first step toward a way for analysts collectively to address the social inequalities that increasingly are the root of the issues that drive patients into therapy in the first place. So, how might one effectuate a transition from a private-practice based psychoanalysis to a psychoanalysis practiced largely in analyst-owned WSDEs? Obviously, the transition would have to be gradual. Perhaps analysts might maintain their private practices for the time being and first simply establish a WSDE. The WSDE would not necessarily require actual physical space; patients could be seen in analysts’ private offices. What would be required would be a financial commitment and a time commitment. Financially, analysts would pay a fee to be a member of the WSDE, and they would accept the right of the WSDE to determine the fee. (The fee scale would be decided upon democratically by the WSDE membership, of course.) In regard to time, analysts would set aside a certain number of hours per week to see WSDE patients and also reserve time to tend to WSDE matters (administrative issues, meetings, voting on important decisions, etc.).

Conclusion Psychoanalysis allows us to see the big picture, to see the cumulative effect of the interrelationship of a host of variables that other contemporary psychotherapeutic interventions fail to consider. It helps people to be more creative, to flourish, to truly live. In this sense, it promotes unalienation. But are psychoanalysts themselves unalienated, or do they suffer with the emotional effects of being cut off from the product of their labor, from the process of their labor, from themselves and from fellow analysts? This analysis suggests that, as members of the professional managerial class, psychoanalysts do not readily meet criteria for Marx’s traditional conception of alienation. When we consider alienation more generally, though, and remember that money is at the heart of the analytic relationship and as a result analysts often eschew

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discussion of topics such as race, class and politics, a variation of alienation might be said to exist. This is especially the case in light of the fact that contemporary psychoanalysts are disconnected from the radical roots of their profession and as such might not see themselves as social justice advocates or consider their work to be related to efforts to establish a more socially just world. This is unfortunate in a clinical sense and contrary to the goals and intentions of the second generation of psychoanalysts who struggled to draw connections between psychoanalysis and Marxism and to turn those connections into meaningful schemes such as the free clinic movement. By replacing the dominance of the private practice milieu with analyst-owned worker self-directed enterprises (WSDEs), some of the effects of this alienation might be counteracted.

References Altman, N. (2010). The analyst in the inner city: Race, class and culture through a psychoanalytic lens (2nd ed.). New York: Taylor & Francis Group. —. (2015). Psychoanalysis in an age of accelerating cultural change: Spiritual globalization. New York: Routledge. Aron, L., & Starr, K. (2013). A psychotherapy for the people: Towards a progressive psychoanalysis. New York: Routledge. Archibald, W. P. (2009a). Globalization, downsizing and insecurity: Do we need to upgrade Marx’s theory of alienation? Critical Sociology, 35(3), 319-342. Archibald, W.P. (2009b). Marx, globalization and alienation: Received and underappreciated wisdoms. Critical Sociology, 35(2), 151-174. Danto, E. (2005). Freud’s free clinics: Psychoanalysis and social justice, 1918-1938. New York: Columbia University Press. Dimen, M. (2006). Money, love and hate: Contradiction and paradox in psychoanalysis. In L. Layton, N. Hollander, & S. Gutwill (Eds.), Psychoanalysis, class and politics: Encounters in the clinical setting (pp. 29-50). New York: Routledge. Ehrenreich, B., & Ehrenreich, J. (1979). The professional managerial class. In P. Walker (Ed.), Between love and capital (pp. 5-48). Boston: South End Press. Fromm, E. (2004). Alienation. In E. Fromm (Ed.), Marx’s concept of man (pp. 37-47). New York: Continuum. Gay, P. (2006). Freud: A life for our time. New York: Norton. Jacoby, R. (1983). The repression of psychoanalysis: Otto Fenichel and the political Freudians. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Layton, L., Hollander, N., & Gutwill, S. (Eds.). (2006). Psychoanalysis, class and politics: Encounters in the clinical setting. New York: Routledge. Marx, K. (2004). First manuscript: Alienated labor. In E. Fromm (Ed.), Marx’s concept of man (pp. 78-90). New York: Continuum. Ollman, B. (1971). Alienation: Marx’s conception of man in capitalist society. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press. Wolff, R. (2012). Democracy at work: A cure for capitalism. Chicago: Haymarket. Zaretsky, E. (2005). Secrets of the soul: A social and cultural history of psychoanalysis. New York: Vintage.

CHAPTER ELEVEN SOCIETY AS PATIENT: THE DEVELOPMENT OF A PSYCHOANALYTIC SOCIOLOGY LEONARD A. STEVERSON

Although it might seem to be an odd mix, sociological perspectives can be melded with psychoanalytic concepts in order to create a more just society. Considered in this chapter is how the merging of sociology and psychoanalysis has been, and can continue to be, used to benefit society in the promotion of social justice. Examined will be early attempts at this endeavor by the critical sociologists of the Frankfurt School who sought to impede any attempts by states to impose dictatorships in the aftermath of Hitler’s atrocities. Also, current and future ideas and implications about the merger are considered. In addition, a psychoanalytic sociology is further examined in the work of newer scholars who wish to use this amalgam to better understand racial inequality, psychosocial trauma, economic devastation, and other social problems.

Introduction At first glance, the integration of psychoanalysis with sociology might seem an odd marriage. Psychoanalysis was conceived by Sigmund Freud within the realm of psychiatric treatment, where both the etiology and the remediation of mental concerns could be located in the confines of the individual (Dineen, 2001). The aim of sociology, with its much more varied ancestry, is to look toward the complexities of social life to understand the world and alleviate its problems. Therefore, psychoanalysis is normally perceived as possessing a micro level focus and sociology a macro level one. This is a bit deceiving as psychoanalysis has been conceived by many thinkers, such as the ones presented in this essay, as

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having a focus on the social world. Sociology is normally considered as a rejection of the individual as its unit of analysis. However, many sociologists adhere to the micro level of analysis particularly in the theoretical form known as symbolic interactionism, which is closely aligned with social psychology. It is quite possible, then, that the fields of psychoanalysis and sociology can be “wedded” and a greater understanding can be made between the individual and society, a nexus that is very complex and often contradictory (Golding, 1982; Smelser, 1998). The union of psychoanalysis and sociology has not been an easy one. Contemporary sociologists tend to eschew and marginalize the exploration of psychoanalytic principles (Chancer, 2013). Psychoanalysis has traditionally been ignored or at least marginalized by social theorists as Freud’s ideas have been deemed by many to be outside the sociological perspective. Taking a historical perspective on this issue, Inkeles (1959) notes that psychoanalysis failed to become part of the sociological landscape due to a marked resistance to what was seen as psychological reductionism by some of the earliest sociologists including Emile Durkheim, one of the disciple’s founders. Inkeles notes, however, that some concepts of the early sociologists, including those of Durkheim, seem to mesh with psychoanalysis. Following this vein, Chancer (2013), argues the founding members of the discipline-Durkheim, Karl Marx and Max Weber-all used (though less than Freud, of course) the idea of the unconscious in understanding social behavior in the formulation of their thought. Even later social theorists such as Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Foucault relied upon psychoanalytic concepts though they notably distanced themselves from Freud (Chancer, 2013). While Golding (1982) rejects the idea of a grand synthesis of sociology and psychoanalysis, he still advocates the employment of some psychoanalytic concepts within sociology. He promotes the psychoanalytic use of delving into unconscious processes as a supplement to sociology’s focus on the socialization process. He notes that understanding the internalization of norms fails to account for the process by which a child “…is transformed into a person, nor how, or in what manner that person will relate to society. Once the existence of an unconscious life is admitted, it becomes possible to move towards answers to such questions” (p. 560). Echoing Golding, Chancer (2013) explains that a sociology that rejects or marginalizes psychoanalysis as an ancillary is deficient in that it lacks a sufficient exploration into the unconscious motivations necessary to understand actors in their social environments. Internal human drives obviously find their way into external social situations (the pleasure vs. reality principle distinction) and a better understanding of these drives can

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be beneficial to social scientists. Chancer notes the role of the unconscious is to operate “behind the back” of individual actors and advocates the use of “intellectual translation” to find “a relationship of affinity if not equivalency” between sociology and psychoanalysis (p. 453, 457). Smelser (1998) notes that psychoanalysis can assist in explaining aspects of culture and organizations. It supplements ideas on the socialization process, and, of course, it has been used to supplement a critical analysis of society. As Golding (1982) notes, some answers to key questions in sociology can result from a psychoanalytic analysis. For the purpose of this chapter a critical question is this: how can an augmentation of some of the precepts of psychoanalysis lead to a more comprehensive understanding of sociology’s analysis of social problems such as prejudice, discrimination, oppression, alienation, and anomie? Theoretical development and research activity along these lines could result in policies that seek to assuage these problems.

The Frankfurt School of Critical Theory Most people are aware of many of Freud’s concepts even without having taken an advanced college course in psychology. The unconscious, repression, dream interpretation, free association, the tripartite components of the personality (id, ego, and superego), transference/countertransference, Freudian slips, the Freudian stages of child psychosexual development, and the pleasure and reality principles are part of our culture. Indeed, the “therapy couch” is an iconic figure representing mental health treatment. As Collins and Makowsky (1998) note “…Freud’s most basic discoveries have been vindicated, so much that they have almost passed into the realm of common knowledge” (p. 155). Of course, many have found flaws in Freud’s work. It can certainly be stated that aspects of his thought are culture bound and limited by mistakes involving the generalizability of his observations and the reification of his own ideas. Also, his work has less of a connection to non-Western culture and is considered by many to be sexist (Salerno, 2004). In spite of these criticisms, Freud’s ideas have influenced not only the discipline of psychology, but also created a corpus of writing on social theory, derived, of course from his theory of psychoanalysis. To say that Freud’s theories made the middle and upper classes of Victorian Europe uncomfortable would be an understatement. His ideas on the omnipresent repressed sexual desires (particularly those involving children) and the instinctive drive toward aggression insulted the social

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elites who had come to believe they were more civilized than the members of the culturally inferior lower class. Philosophers of the Enlightenment had espoused this idea of upper class superiority and by his revelations Freud “disturbed Europe’s sleep” (Collins & Makowsky, 1998, p. 144). Several of Freud’s important works encompass the social milieu such as Civilization and its Discontents, Moses and Monotheism, Totem and Taboo, and The Future of an Illusion. In these works, Freud moves from a focus on the individual to a focus on society. As will be covered under the investigation of the Frankfurt School, Freud’s ideas have often been supplemented with those of Marx, whose focus was on structures of the economy and society rather than the psyche. Collins and Makowsky (1998) sum up the differences in Marxian and Freudian thought in this way: “Unlike Marx, who sees the historical deck stacked against the collectivity, Freud sees it stacked against the individual. In lieu of homo economicus Freud presents us with an image of humankind as homo sexualis, whose irrational drives must be channeled into productive labor in order for civilization to carry on” (p. 152). Another perspective is provided by Dahmer (1987) who states that in lieu of the Marxian focus on economic dependence, Freud focuses on libidinal dependence. As can be seen in the ideas above regarding Freud’s social theory, whether the pathological condition is considered psychological or sociological depends on the level of analysis. Many attempts have been made to integrate psychoanalysis into other fields of social science, most notably anthropology, history, and sociology, with anthropology being the first of these to embrace Freud’s ideas, and history being the last (Levine, 1978). To fully integrate psychoanalysis with any social science discipline is futile, primarily since psychoanalysis is a means of understanding the unconscious rather than a branch of social science (Golding, 1982). In addition, it is a clinical intervention. However, a synthesis of this field with sociology began some time ago and made great progress via the work of the Frankfurt School of critical theory. The critical theory of social thought was the product of a group of theorists at the Institute for Social Research, founded in 1923 in Frankfurt, Germany (Bronner & Kellner, 1989). The association was formed with the backdrop of the Bolshevik revolution and the defeat of the Central European revolutions at a time when leftist intellectuals were seeking a reinterpretation of Marx (Bottomore, 1984). The people associated with this organization comprised what is also known as the Frankfurt School, though this label is a bit of a misnomer as much of their work was not performed in Germany, but in America while in exile from Hitler’s Nazi regime (Kellner, 1989). The name was given by reviewers of their work,

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not by the members themselves; early program director Max Horkheimer preferred they be addressed as adherents to “critical theory”—the term was taken from the Marxist “critique of political economy” (Therborn, 1977, p. 85). Horkheimer became the third director of the Institute for Social Research in 1930. Critical theory began to take shape as Horkheimer introduced a synthesis of philosophy and social theory as the institution’s new focal point (Kellner, 1989). Theodor Adorno had been friends with Horkheimer since the early 1920s and shared similar interests with him in the concerns of the working class (Applerouth & Edles, 2011). Adorno explored the concept of the unconscious in his comprehensive but unpublished work, The Concept of the Unconscious in the Transcendental Theory of Mind. In this work he introduced psychoanalysis to develop his ideas on the unconscious (an obvious choice of reference) and introduced Marxism as well. The general conclusion was that social life determines consciousness (Wiggenshaus, 1994). In 1950, Adorno published the highly influential (and often criticized) work The Authoritarian Personality which explored the psychological aspects of authority with the use of various scales, including the famous F-scale (for Fascism)—it should be noted that this was an idea that was earlier introduced by Erich Fromm. Borrowing Freud’s stages of childhood development, both Fromm and Adorno formulated their analysis of authoritarian styles. As time passed, Adorno’s philosophical perspective changed and so did the course of the Frankfurt School as it moved away from a Marxist critique of society. At this time the influence of the school declined (Bottomore, 1984). Herbert Marcuse joined the Institute for Social Research to work with Horkheimer and Adorno to fuse Marxist ideology with psychoanalysis. Marcuse himself became a premier intellectual upon which radical students of the 1960s based their actions. Known as the “guru of the New Left,” the theorist published two works that solidified his image-Eros and Civilization and One Dimensional Man-though other lesser known works also revealed the ideas of this iconic intellectual. Marcuse states the Freudian ideas of the primary drives of Eros and Thanatos (life and aggression) develop in the different social milieus that regulate these drives. Repression, he noted, occurs in various societies to differing degrees and those with the most repression will in turn have more surplus aggressiveness. With the progression of society, the drives will require mobilization and conflict (Marcuse, 1978). This idea offered some insight into the turbulence and social unrest in the 1960s when he was a professor in California.

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Erich Fromm became a practicing psychoanalyst and was one of the few analysts of the era who desired to merge Freud’s theory of instincts with Marx’s analysis of social class. According to Wiggenshaus (1994), Fromm developed the idea that “…the power structure of class societies reproduces the infantile situation for those who are subjected to it” (p. 56). Therefore, in this conceptualization, the children are represented by the proletariat, who are dependent upon the demands of the adult figures, the bourgeoisie. The members of this group drew their ideas from a variety of sources: sociology, philosophy, cultural studies, political science, economics, and psychoanalysis, and had a host of intellectual progenitors including Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Weber, and Sigmund Freud. Their primary aim was to assemble a social theory that would tackle the social problems of their era (Kellner, 1989). Marx, of course, provided the initial influence for this group as they sought to understand why the revolution Marx predicted did not come to pass. The essential elements of Marxism (particularly as viewed from their experiences in Europe) seemed evident—the oppression of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie by methods of false consciousness resulting in class inequality—but what remained unanswered was why the workers did not achieve class consciousness, or at least, did not revolt, creating the political and economic model envisioned by Marx. Marxism also failed to answer the reasons people would accept the dictates of a totalitarian ruler, a question that haunted the theorists as Nazism became a major social phenomenon. As the Frankfurt School developed its theoretical approach, issues involving the unconscious motivations of people who remained in subordinate situations, whether it was the oppressed proletariat or citizens under the control of an authoritarian dictator, required the introduction of Freudian psychoanalysis. Like Weber and Nietzsche, the group evidenced pessimism due to the changes occurring in the industrializing modern world. Coupled with their fundamental desire to bring about social change, the intellectuals of the school have been described as “radicals in despair” (Bottomore, 1984, p. 37). These scholars needed more than sociology and philosophy to guide their theory, however, and psychoanalysis supplemented their belief that social life and individual life are inexorably linked and that psychoanalysis should be viewed as “…both a clinical practice and a social theory with an emancipatory aim” (Hewitt, 2012, p. 73). Increasing industrialization and the creation of false needs by capitalists was a focus of this group and, again, psychoanalysis was used to understand the motivations of consumers who were easily mislead by propaganda campaigns.

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The etiology of the early critical theorists’ pessimism can certainly be found in their experiences and observations of the harm wrought by Nazism. This pessimism resulted in the critical school theorists being referred to by one scholar as “Marxism’s dark thinkers” (Therborn, 1996, p. 61). It is questionable if this level of pessimism is useful in psychoanalysis, especially in its clinical application. Although many modern-day psychoanalytic clinicians might disagree, Hewitt (2012) notes that a certain level of pessimism (or at least a certain amount of critical thought about conformity to the status quo) is healthy because without it, the oppressive structures that do exist in people’s lives will simply be reproduced. The dialectic that evolves in analyzing this perspective is, then, the critical pessimism of the Frankfurt School versus the optimistic utopianism of modern psychoanalysis, and the question is—in a therapeutic context—which of these approaches creates a better chance of individual (and also social) liberation? Hewitt (2012) states there should be an exchange here by stating “…critical theory settles for depicting the ‘reality of hell,’ psychoanalysis invites human beings to ‘break out of it’” (p. 97). Hewitt also concludes that psychoanalysis needs critical theory if there is any chance for an individual to experience “…genuine transcendence and reconciliation that has a chance of effecting a transformation, however slight, within the patient, and in the world through his or her reconstituted relationships” (p. 97). There should be no doubt that the Frankfurt School had a major impact on ideas of social justice through the integration of Marxist and Freudian thought. During the time of their greatest influence, this integration was so important that eminent social philosopher Michel Foucault (1983) stated “…there was a certain way of thinking correctly, a certain ethics of the intellectual. One had to be on familiar terms with Marx, not let one’s dreams stray too far from Freud” (p. xi). The critical theorists were certainly acquainted with the work of both great thinkers. Their ideas were framed by the effects of Nazism in the midst of a concern that possibly, once again, fascism or something equally destructive could creep into society, creating suffering for large numbers of people.

Current Theorizing in Psychoanalytic Sociology There are a number of contemporary scholars who seek to develop a better understanding of a host of issues and social problems through a psychoanalytically oriented sociology similar to that of the Frankfurt School. These scholars follow Chancer and Andrews’ (2014) call to find

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“...an unfulfilled promise in the relationship” between sociology and psychoanalysis (p. xii). Some have examined the “social character” that so concerned the Frankfurt School theorists, others have analyzed sociology’s “bread and butter issues—including class, race, and gender inequalities— that concern and frame the field in the U.S.” (Chancer & Andrews, 2014 p. 1). Additionally, there are new developments in research as sociopsychoanalysis provides new methods of understanding these areas.

Social Character and Political Issues Recent theoretical work on the socio-psychoanalytic synthesis includes an essay by Langman (2014) who suggests that as social scientists analyze current situations in society, we should “bring the critical back in” and return to the approach of the early Frankfurt School theorists to address social problems. Our current epoch is replete with problems of an excessively capitalist orientation, most notably problems stemming from income inequality. Langman likens the current post-2008 recession era to that of the post-World War I era in Europe that created the emergence of the Frankfurt School. We should, according to her analysis, return to a focus on national character as the original critical theorists did in their era. The current zeitgeist consists of a growing secularity, increasing gun violence, and achievement and identity based on a misdirected capitalist economy. Langman offers a short analysis of two groups borne out of the current national character, the reactionary Tea Party and the radical Occupy Wall Street movement, based on a critical perspective. The idea that psychoanalysis is needed to supplant sociology in order to link theory with actual measures to promote positive social change is also addressed by Hewitt (2012). The aim of critical theory is to fully explore the issues of domination, alienation, and repression and the most appropriate path to meet this goal is through psychoanalytic insights. As noted earlier, the fear of an overly repressive government or political figure can be found in the work of the critical theorists, especially Fromm and Adorno; a Freudian approach suggests that citizens under a dominant authoritarian figure have libidinal and narcissistic investment in the oppressive figure, thereby continuing the oppression. Noting Fromm’s work specifically in the critical framework, McLaughlin (2014) introduces the idea of paranoia in the American political sphere in the midst a host of recent conspiracy theories promoted by television political commentator Glenn Beck. The “birther” conspiracy that alleges Barack Obama was not born in the U.S. and therefore is carrying out an illegitimate presidency, the urban legend that millionaire

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George Soros is financing a liberal take-over of the country, and the claim that social work professors Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven were mounting a revolutionary overthrow of the U.S. government and economy produced many adherents. McLaughlin states a psychoanalytic sociology can help to explain how such irrational notions can create a society of believers in the same way that irrational notions could produce the fascism of Fromm’s time. In her research on the symbolic and ceremonial Indian event known as the Kanwar, Singh (2014) suggests the Durkheiman concept of “social facts,” while important, is incomplete in exploring complex social phenomena such as race and neoliberalism in addition to religion. To fill the void, Singh recommends psychoanalysis to add a degree of creativity in understanding linkages between these and other phenomena to better analyze both social and psychic forces. Elliot (2014), reflecting the transformation and globalization of the modern world, sees the cultural imperative of “reinvention” as people are increasingly living in a world that values a makeover of the self, a renovation that creates an existential realization that human bodies deteriorate in a world that increasingly values permanence. A societal focus on the “new individualism,” by which he refers to the “making, reinvention, and transformation of selves…” is occurring within the rapid self-reinvention activities derived primarily from consumerism (Elliot, 2014, p. 319). Free floating anxiety and a sense of dread accompany these social changes and, Elliot suggests, a psychoanalytic approach to deal with this new type of melancholia is required.

Prejudice and Discrimination Jeffrey Prager (2014), a student of socio-psychoanalytic adherent Neil J. Smelser, examines racism from a psychosocial perspective as a source of melancholia and observes the psychic ramifications of the racial binary of “black and white.” Prager sees racism as an American social problem that is deeply embedded in our culture and not easily ameliorated. He describes the American form of racism as “racialized melancholia” based on Freud’s conception of melancholia as an ambiguous psychological condition that experiences a sense of loss that lingers but is incapable of being mourned due to its intractability. Jefferson (2014) also makes an analysis of racism in an essay on racial prejudice which examines the issue of hate from both psychoanalytic and sociological perspectives. He relates a study of offenders convicted of racial harassment in the U.K. and notes the role of confusion in dealing with issues involving race and the

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underlying issue of hate which permeates many acts of racial violence as well as homophobia, anti-Semitism, and gender-based violence. Ethnicity, sexuality, and citizenship are analyzed by Yorukoglu (2014) who introduces the topic of intersectionality to this integration. This term refers to how dominance and oppression in society are linked to personal characteristics such as race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation, using both sociology and psychoanalysis in its analysis. She explores the role of anxiety in a Freudian sense and how it relates to the human need to belong to social groups.

Violence and Trauma Andrews (2014) observes the phenomenon of property destruction following the home foreclosure crisis of 2008. He likens the subprime mortgage issue to Marx’s concept of fictitious capital (money with no basis in commodities) and he also views the destruction of foreclosed homes not as a simple act of revenge but as the psychic adaptation of rage presented in both the financial and Freudian conceptualizations—the psychoanalytic interpretation referring to the ego breaking from reality. Andrews notes how the Occupy Our Homes movement (associated with Occupy Wall Street), in which residents of foreclosed homes refused to leave and later started a social movement, is an example of how rage and other emotions can be used to create positive political change. Stein (2014) analyzes the guilt and shame responses that are often a byproduct of psychosocial trauma such as that which occurred during the Holocaust, and notes the connection between the psychic and the social. Although Americans have failed to acknowledge the collective loss of others, Stein maintains that by creating a culture that possesses a “memory milieu” that fosters loss narratives, feelings of shame in society can be diminished (p. 353).

Research Potential Manning (2014) states his case for a psychoanalytically oriented ethnographic research method and considers the “back-and-forth” process between analyzing the subjects under study from an internal level then making general observations to the social level to be the true art of field research (p. 221). He proposes the use of what he terms the “ethnographic spiral” in which the researcher, after making her observations and formulating ideal types, “spirals back” to challenge the assumptions based on the ideal typing against other observations and potential motivations.

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Manning uses an example of one case study from Anderson’s (1999) research to discuss how the psychosocial motivations of this individual would have provided more completeness to the work. Since ethnographic studies involve personal levels of analysis, it is surmised that psychoanalysis could supplement social observations where individual motivations are involved. Another recommendation made by Clarke (2006) involves “psychosocial studies,” which refer to psychoanalytically informed sociological research. In moving this integration from theory to methodological practice, a more comprehensive analysis is possible. This analysis takes into account unconscious processes possessed by the researcher that are potentially projected onto the subject; these processes are based on hidden characteristics such as race, ethnicity, and gender identities. By including the often neglected area of emotions, according to the author’s perspective, research of this type can be more comprehensive. Long (2013) addresses the emerging field of socio-psychoanalysis as a specific research methodology. She notes that the socioanalytic process has been developed from several different psychoanalytic perspectives and she pulls together a collection of these perspectives in an attempt to observe their commonality. Socioanalysis in this conception (as opposed to Bourdieu’s theoretical development of the term) highlights research of certain collectivities. Long considers this concept as a combination of a social systems perspective with psychoanalytic contributions that has primarily been used to research organizations but also social movements and social dynamics of different countries. The system underpinning socioanalytic methods is derived from the abduction logic of American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce. Long notes that “in socioanalysis, the interest is not in the individual, but in the matrix of thought that is the associate unconscious of the system under study” (p. 312).

Potential Areas of Application for a Contemporary Socio-Psychoanlaysis Social Character Analyses As noted earlier, the potential for this integration to address social problems is basically limitless. Certainly, the social character analyses initially formulated by the Frankfurt School and more recent scholars have utility today in many areas. The current political climate in the U.S., which is increasingly identified by a polarity in political ideology between the conservatives and liberals, has resulted in Congress’s low levels of

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productivity and decreasing popularity among the citizenry. The current political chasm might deserve a socio-psychoanalytic investigation. From the perspective of the two major political parties, their representations and financial supporters, the need for power seems to have grown to pathological levels. It is questionable if their objectives are to obtain positive social change or to make themselves the beneficiaries of power, the seductive power that sometimes promotes corruption. From the perspective of the voting public, the immediate gratification of wish fulfillment is not present as with the parties seeking election. Therefore, the motivations of the voters could be explored. Another social character issue that is ripe for investigation is the current situation emanating from the omnipresent existential threat of global terrorism. Especially since the 9/11 attacks on American soil by terrorists, this threat has permeated many areas of life. Aggression is an important element in terrorism, as are the fear, intimidation, and insecurity that come from not feeling protected by one’s government. Understanding the motivations for terrorist actions would obviously be beneficial as insight into this can enrich our understanding of the continued growth of terrorist organizations and recruitment. Also important are the feelings that result from the citizen/government relationship that can be analogized in the infant/parent relationship. The related issue of the identification of the victims with captors (the Stockholm syndrome) is worthy of investigation and the use of the Freudian concepts could be beneficial in understanding this phenomenon.

Social Problems There are a number of current social problems and issues that could benefit from a socio-psychoanalysis in addition to those already mentioned. For example, the issue of historical trauma, in which indigenous Americans experience a generational sense of cultural loss due to early American colonization efforts, is a good area for exploration. The continuing problem of substance abuse contributes to a number of social problems, both at the individual and social levels and could benefit from such an analysis. Another area of current interest is bullying (including cyberbullying) and understanding the motivations of the offenders and the experiences of the victims. The issue of extensive military deployment in hostile foreign environments and its effects on both military personnel and their families has created an array of dysfunctions and would benefit from analysis. Lastly, the recurring shootings on educational campuses could also be a worthy area of exploration. Many psychoanalytic concepts could

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be considered in such investigations such as unconscious motivations, repression, defense mechanisms, primary and secondary processes, cathexis, displacement, and instinctual formations.

Conclusion Due to the fact that psychoanalysis relies on concepts that are difficult to research, it can be seen as not having a place in contemporary social science research or theory. Its failure to develop as an academic discipline and its rejection in the field of psychology (its most closely related discipline) attests to the problems it has had in its acceptance in the mainstream. However, it has not dissipated into the realm of pseudoscience. In fact it has certainly been used to supplant other social sciences, notably sociology, for many decades, though this marriage has sometimes been rocky. The potential of this union to combat social problems is immense. Simply put, the goal of sociology is to better understand social life with the hope that this understanding will lead to better methods to improve it. Achieving this goal requires uncovering hidden aspects of society, aspects that are difficult to observe due to our own experiences and understandings of the social world. Certain tools are needed in the academic endeavor that is sociology such as intellectual probes and vivid imaginations to understand the motivations of individuals in a social environment. Psychoanalysis, as both a theory and a practice, provides these tools and more. Indeed, psychoanalysis and sociology share many of the same methods and goals. A goal of clinical psychoanalysis is to liberate the patient from a host of maladies. Likewise, a goal of applied sociology is to liberate people from the social problems of the era in which they live. Marx famously proclaimed that while it is the goal of scholars to understand the world, the most important thing is to change it (Marx, 1998). The potential for social justice is a reason to renew our interest in a socio-psychoanalysis. As noted by Singh (2014), “if the work of the scholar includes the charge to search beyond the obvious (and how something is made more obvious)…it cannot afford to be arrested by the given” (p. 398). Psychoanalysis can be a useful tool for providing insight and liberation to society as patient.

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References Anderson, E. (1999). The code of the streets: Decency, violence, and the moral life of the inner city. New York: W.W. Norton and Company. Andrews, J. (2014). Foreclosure from Freud to Fannie Mae. In L. Chancer & J. Andrews (Eds.), The unhappy divorce of sociology and psychoanalysis (pp. 269-283). UK: Palgrave MacMillan. Appelrouth, S. & Desfor Edles, L. (2011). Sociological theory in the contemporary era: Text and Readings (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press. Bottomore, T. (1984). The Frankfurt School. Chicester, Sussex: Ellis Horwood Limited. Bronner, S. E. & Kellner, D.M. (1989). Critical theory and society: A reader. New York: Routledge. Chancer, L. S. (2013). Sociology, psychoanalysis, and marginalization: Unconscious defenses and disciplinary interests. Sociological Forum, 28, 452-468. Chancer, L. & Andrews, J. (2014). The unhappy divorce of sociology and psychoanalysis. London: Palgrave MacMillan. Clarke, S. (2006). Theory and practice: Psychoanalytic sociology as psycho-social issues. Sociology, 40, 1153-1169. Collins, R. & Makowsky, M. (1998). The discovery of society (6th ed.). Boston: McGraw Hill. Dineen, T. (2001). Manufacturing victims: What the psychology industry is doing to people (3rd ed.). Montreal: Robert Davies Multimedia Publishing. Dahmer, H. (1987). Psychoanalysis as social theory. In V. Meja, D. Misgeld, & N. Stehr (Eds.), Modern German sociology (pp. 383-401). New York: Columbia University Press. Elliott, A. (2014). On the melancholia of new individualism. In L. Chancer & J. Andrews (Eds.), The unhappy divorce of sociology and psychoanalysis (pp. 317-337). UK: Palgrave MacMillan. Foucault, M. (1983). Preface. In G. Deleuze & F. Guattari (Ed.), AntiOedipus capitalism and schizophrenia. (p. xi). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Golding, R. (1982). Freud, psychoanalysis, and sociology: Some observations on the sociological analysis of the individual. The British Journal of Sociology, 33, 545-562. Hewitt, M. A. (2012). Dangerous amnesia. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 48, 72-99.

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Inkeles, A. (1959). Psychoanalysis and sociology. In S. Hook (Ed.). Psychoanalysis, scientific method and philosophy (pp. 117-129). New York: New York University Press. Jefferson, T. (2014). Racial hatred and racial prejudice: A difference that makes a difference. In L. Chancer & J. Andrews (Eds.), The unhappy divorce of sociology and psychoanalysis (pp. 359-379). UK: Palgrave MacMillan. Kellner, D. (1989). Critical theory, Marxism, and modernity. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Langman, L. (2104). Bringing the critical back in: Toward the resurrection of the Frankfurt School. In H.F. Dahms (Ed.). Mediations of social life in the 21st century (pp. 195-227). London: Emerald Group. Levine, D. N. (1978). Psychoanalysis and sociology. Psychological anthropology: A Perennial frontier? Symposium conducted at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Houston, TX. Long, S. (2013). Using and creating socio-analytic methods. London: Karnac Books. Manning, P. (2014). The ethnographic spiral: Reflections on the intersection of life history and ideal-typical analysis. In L. Chancer & J. Andrews (Eds.), The unhappy divorce of sociology and psychoanalysis (pp. 220-233). UK: Palgrave MacMillan. Marcuse, H. (1978). Herbert Marcuse on the Frankfurt School. Interviews with Philosophers (video recording). (Magee, BBC). McLaughlin, N. (2014). Escapes from freedom: Political extremism, conspiracy theories, and the sociology of emotions. In L. Chancer & J. Andrews (Eds.), The unhappy divorce of sociology and psychoanalysis (pp. 284-316). London: Palgrave MacMillan. Marx, K. (1998). The German ideology: Including theses on Feuerbach and an introduction to the critique of political economy. New York: Prometheus Books. Prager, J. (2104). Melancholia and the racial order: A Psychosocial analysis of America’s enduring racism. In L. Chancer & J. Andrews (Eds.), The unhappy divorce of sociology and psychoanalysis (pp. 284316). UK: Palgrave MacMillan. Salerno, R. A. (2004). Beyond the Enlightenment: Lives and thoughts of the social theorists. Westport, CT: Praeger. Singh, V. (2014). Definitive exclusions: The social fact and the subjects of neo-liberalism. In L. Chancer & J. Andrews (Eds.), The unhappy divorce of sociology and psychoanalysis (pp. 380-400). UK: Palgrave MacMillan.

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Smelser, N. J. (1998). The edges of psychoanalysis. Berkeley: University of California Press. Stein, A. (2014). The shame of survival: Rethinking trauma’s aftermath. In L. Chancer & J. Andrews (Eds.), The unhappy divorce of sociology and psychoanalysis (pp. 338-356). London: Palgrave MacMillan. Therborn, G. (1977). The Frankfurt School. In New Left Review (Eds.), Western Marxism: A critical reader (pp. 83- 139). Old Woking, Surrey: The Greshman Press. Therborn, G. (1996). Critical theory and the legacy of twentieth-century Marxism. In B. S. Turner (Ed.). The Blackwell companion to social theory. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Wiggershaus, R. (1994). The Frankfurt School: Its history, theories, and political significance. Boston: MIT Press. Yorukuglu, I. (2014). “One has to belong, somehow”: Acts of belonging at the intersection of ethnicity, sexuality, and citizenship. In L. Chancer & J. Andrews (Eds.), The unhappy divorce of sociology and psychoanalysis (pp. 401-414). London: Palgrave MacMillan.

CHAPTER TWELVE PSYCHOANALYTIC PRINCIPLES: VALUABLE MECHANISM FOR DIAGNOSIS ST IN THE 21 CENTURY RITU SHARMA AND SHARON WRITER

The chapter aims to understand the role of psychoanalytical principles in comprehending human behavior in the current technology-dominated era. A systematic literature review was conducted to understand the relevance and current standing of psychoanalysis. The major sources of the studies reviewed herein include books and articles available through various websites, and selected refereed international and national journals. Manifestations of structural violence such as social inequality, gender bias, and disparity in the availability of basic resources draw attention to the need to reconsider psychoanalytic theories as the outlook of the psychoanalytical approach gives sufficient consideration to and provides integration across various domains of human development. The chapter concludes the psychoanalytic approach could find renewed appeal thanks to its emphasis on explaining human intentions and their impact on individuals’ social decision making in a world that is increasingly unequal and dominated by the effects of such technology as social media.

Introduction The obstacles of distance and time that once hindered and delayed our ability to communicate and interact are rapidly fading. The present technological times have redefined individual relations and hugely altered the human capacity for interpersonal involvement both in terms of significance and magnitude. Information technology is playing a critical role in enhancing globalization; it has completely and perhaps

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permanently transformed the way in which humankind functions. As such, the public and personal contact of technology has become one of the defining issues of the present era. The rapidity of human networking in the 21st century has led to the evolution of a new era of the expression of emotions, cognition and behavior. Personal experiences, choices and desires have again become extremely important to both the social and the business worlds. The process of selection and elimination of choices has become far more vivid and explicit. After the rise of behaviorism and its heavy influence until the middle of the 20th century, a strong need was felt among psychologists to fill the gaps it has left by ignoring subjective experience (Buckler & Castle, 2014). While this led to the emergence of the cognitive approach, it also signaled the need for a resurgence of psychoanalytic thought. Although the popular notion of psychoanalysis is that of a cold therapeutic method that is exclusive and accessible to only a privileged few, this notion is far from the truth. In fact, right from the beginning psychoanalysts including Freud had as their clients people from the lower and underprivileged classes (Danto, 2005). Consequently, it is perhaps inaccurate to conclude that psychoanalysis is neither relevant nor applicable to the poor and oppressed. We argue, then, that psychoanalysis needs to be given a new look. Specifically, the present chapter is an effort to explore the resurgence of interest in psychoanalytical principles with an emphasis on their applicability to the needs of poor and oppressed or otherwise marginalized populations in the context of today’s globalized, technological world. It further tries to explore the convergence of psychoanalysis, neuroscience and cognitive psychology to justify a newfound interest in psychoanalysis from a scientific perspective. In doing so it suggests we look once again to psychoanalysis as a mechanism for diagnosis in light of the new psychological conditions that plague members of a tech-heavy, global culture.

Psychoanalysis: An Empirically Validated Method with a Social Justice Core The cause of social justice was pursued vigorously even by the early psychoanalysts (Danto, 2005). It was, however, the second generation psychoanalysts practicing in the interwar era who were credited with adopting an approach which, many decades later, would be recognized and recommended by the United Nations General Assembly (1998) as a way of promoting “cultures of peace” (Wessells, Schwebel, & Anderson, 2001, p. 350.) Their sociocultural approach formed an enduring legacy in the

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theory and practice of psychoanalysis. Thus, Karen Horney (1994) turned the spotlight on culture and social relationships while explaining the development of pathological conditions in the individual, or the emergence of the feminine personality. According to her, the universality of feelings and attitudes suggested by Freud was non-existent since these are constructs that are dependent on the cultural environment of the person. Erich Fromm (1941) lamented the fact that traditional psychoanalysis had overlooked the huge impact of social structure and social change on personality. Considering personality as a function of social expectations and of the current social situation, Harry Stack Sullivan (1947) went so far as to state that an individual can have as many personalities as the interpersonal situations experienced warrant. Erik Erikson (1959) saw the development of personality as a lifelong process moving through eight stages. At each stage, the person is confronted with a particular psychosocial crisis whose outcome is determined by the social relations that are significant at that point in time. Thus, for example, one’s ability to trust others is rooted in the way one’s immediate needs were responded to by one’s mother or mother substitute during infancy. The post-World War I period in Europe was one of infectious enthusiasm to rebuild nations and to contribute to the welfare of one and all. In keeping with the spirit of the times, Max Eitington and Ernst Simmel initiated the establishment of the first free psychoanalytic clinic—the Berlin Poliklinik—in February 1920. Practitioners such as Karl Abraham, Therese Benedek, Otto Fenichel, Edith Jacobson, Karen Horney, Erich Fromm, Helene Deutsch, Hans Sachs, Wilhelm Reich, Annie Reich and Melanie Klein were among those who made a commitment to devote at least one-fifth of their working time to this clinic (Zoja, 2011). Similarly, a contemporary and close associate of Freud, Sandor Ferenczi, started a free clinic in Budapest, and was known for taking up the cause of the marginalized. Such practices flourished over the next two decades with more experts wholeheartedly embracing the idea. With many European psychoanalysts ultimately choosing to settle in North America, the influence of the psychodynamic approach spread throughout that continent as well. Psychoanalysis is understood to have been the most widely used psychotherapy in the 1950s (Abao, Kobiowu, & Adebowale, 2010). Until perhaps even the 1960s, public interest in this approach was apparent. But, from then onwards, several factors led to its steady decline. To begin with, psychoanalysis was already at a disadvantage in comparison to other methods of psychotherapy due to the long duration for which it needed to be continued, which also made it less

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affordable. Each doctrine within it, whether Freudian, Jungian, or Lacanian, adhered rigidly to its own views, leaving little room for alternate thought or questioning of one’s own system, consequently hindering its own growth and reducing its efficacy. Adding to its woes was the distancing of its own practitioners from the public; they were experienced as elitist and thought to be concerned only with improving their own status and financial prospects (Safran & Kriss, 2014). As evidence based practice took the world of psychiatry by storm, newer psychotherapeutic methods such as the cognitive-behavioral technique became far more attractive to prospective clients. Combined with this new reality and the aforementioned limitations of psychoanalysis, Freud’s discovery was unable to retain its earlier stature. One criticism that was persistently aimed at psychoanalytic therapy was that unlike other therapeutic traditions it did not provide empirical evidence to prove its utility and effectiveness (Safran & Kriss, 2014). How long could psychoanalysis sustain itself without establishing its own relevance? With this being the position, it seemed it would be only a matter of time before psychoanalysis became obsolete. However, a change in its leadership in recent years gradually managed to stem this decline, with internal reforms and modification being initiated. What is heartening for its supporters is that numerous scientific studies have been taken up that give cause for a renewal of faith in the system. For example, a literature review of nineteen outcome-intervention studies done between 1970 and 2007 revealed that apart from being able to significantly reduce symptoms of psychopathology, long-term psychoanalytic psychotherapy is effective in facilitating changes in personality, too, with an overall success rate of 64% at termination (de Maat, de Jonghe, Shoevers, & Dekker, 2009). The review was restricted to studies that had chosen to focus on ambulatory patients aged 18 to 65 years, and on therapy that lasted for a minimum of 50 sessions or one year. The investigators concluded that in the case of moderate/mixed pathology not only did these benefits accrue from therapy, but the changes seen also persisted reasonably well over a long period of time as suggested by a success rate of 55% at follow-up. The effects of therapy were more prominent for symptom reduction than for personality changes, with therapists and clients generally agreeing about the success rates. Similarly, a meta-analysis by Leichsenring and Rabung (2008) attempted to bring about some clarity regarding the effectiveness of longterm psychodynamic psychotherapy (LTTP) especially in comparison with short-term psychotherapy for patients having multiple mental disorders, those with chronic mental disorders, and those with personality disorders.

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The conclusions were based on an examination of twenty-three studies covering 1053 patients who attended therapy for a minimum duration of either one year or 50 sessions. The results clearly showed that LTTP was significantly more effective than psychotherapy of shorter durations in terms of overall outcome, target problems and personality functioning. Effect sizes in the treatment of all three groups of patients—those with multiple mental disorders, chronic mental disorders and personality disorders—were found to be large as well as stable. A remarkable finding was that at the time of follow-up further improvement was evident in the status of a majority of the patients. Shedler (2010) reported the results of several meta-analyses of both short-term and long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy. Findings of one such meta-analysis by Abbass and colleagues (2006) of short-term psychodynamic therapy that lasted less than forty hours revealed significant symptom improvement at termination and further gains which were assessable at long-term follow-up. Shedler is of the opinion that dynamic therapy is instrumental in initiating a psychological process within the individual that ensures positive changes long after the termination of therapy. The remaining meta-analyses of short-term psychodynamic psychotherapy highlighted by Shedler also leave no doubt regarding its effectiveness. Shedler strongly believes that it would be highly misleading to state that empirical evidence supporting the efficacy of psychodynamic psychotherapy has not been available to mental health professionals or academicians. According to him, the past arrogance of those in the field of psychoanalysis has cost them dearly. While scientific evidence proving the value of non-psychodynamic psychotherapies was received and disseminated with fervor by the academic community, similar evidence in support of psychoanalytic therapies was largely ignored.

The Convergence of Psychoanalysis, Neuroscience and Cognitive Psychology Erich Kendel, the Nobel Prize winner for medicine in 2000, states that psychoanalysis remains an invaluable scientific tool. He writes, “Psychoanalysis still represents the most coherent and intellectually satisfying view of the mind” (1999, p.505). In a conversation with Madhu Sarin in 2008, Sudhir Kakar made a very apt analysis that, “the future of psychoanalysis, if it is going to have a future, will depend upon whether it will be able to substantiate its clinical assertions and findings.” More specifically, he argues that psychoanalysis offers neuroscientists the most

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suitable theoretical starting point from which to embark upon their studies of the complexities of the human mind. In essence, he has called for a merging of psychoanalysis and neuroscience, and sees this amalgamation as a “new intellectual framework for psychiatry” in the twenty-first century (Kakar and Sarin, 2008). Thus, understanding the contemporary relevance of psychoanalysis can be aided by a blending of neuroscience, cognitive psychology and psychoanalysis. According to the psychoanalytic vision, each of us lives in our own subjective world pursuing pleasures and private fantasies, constructing a life and a fate that will vanish when our time is over. This view emphasizes the desirability of reflective awareness of one’s inner states, an insistence that our psyches harbor deeper secrets than we care to confess, the existence of an objective reality that can be known, and an essential complexity and tragedy of life whereby many wishes are fated to remain unfulfilled (Kakar and Sarin, 2008). In reality, much of the early philosophical debate about psychoanalysis focused on one question: Is it possible in principle to test Freudian theory? Similarly, Farrell (1981) also claims that psychoanalytic theory is, and will continue to be, of great heuristic interest and value to psychologists. In assessing this claim, it is not enough to ask if Freud’s theory has had great impact. It indeed shows that the cognitivist-neurobiologist model of the individual consciousness has outmoded the Freudian model; it is outdated in the psychiatric clinic, where psychoanalytic treatment is losing ground to drug treatment and behavioral therapy; and it is outdated in society more largely, where the perception of social norms which inhibit the individual’s sexual drives does not hold up in the face of today’s selfgratification. But we should not be too swift. Perhaps we must in its place insist that the time of psychoanalysis has only now arrived. Whether psychoanalytic and cognitive science views of consciousness are fraternal or identical twins we do not know, but they were certainly reared apart from one another. The psychoanalytic twin was raised in the consulting room, exposed to primal scenes, intrapsychic conflict and the risky improvisations of clinical work, whereas the cognitive twin was raised in the scientific laboratory where calm and order prevailed. There is no doubt that the cognitive and psychoanalytic views are different and come out of different traditions (Shervin and Dickman,1980). Cognitive science focuses on motive, affect and conflict, whereas psychoanalysis focuses on conflict and underlying psychological processes. There are in fact convergences between these two radically different views but from a holistic perspective. They follow a similarity in the nature of the problems they address, though at first look they seem to be far apart.

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In De Sousa’s (2011) opinion the rapidly developing field of cognitive science will soon be able to describe in its own idiom the hierarchical relationship of conscious and unconscious experiences, thereby reducing what was believed to have been the gap between scientific investigation and psychoanalytic practice. According to him it will take both creativity and good intention to achieve that, but the time is right for it. The possibility of conceptualizing unconscious processes from a perspective that represents the convergence of psychoanalysis and other scientific disciplines is fast becoming a reality. In fact, Heather Berlin (2011) refers to the study of the neural basis of the various dimensions—cognition, affect and motivation—of the unconscious process. The investigation of these processes from both psychoanalytic and neuro-scientific angles is not merely justified; it is actually necessary if we are to advance and update our knowledge regarding these phenomena.

Technology as a Change Agent It is the opinion of the authors that the beauty of the current technological age is its capacity to facilitate freedom of expression. The freedom to express oneself and share personal beliefs publically via such platforms as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest has thinned the invisible lines between the conscious and unconscious selves. The increasing ratio of overt self as compared to covert shadow suggests a redefinition of the self in light of increasing human-machine interfacing is due. As defined by Mansfield (2000), this is an age that understands human life purely in terms of subjectivity. Technology has introduced a completely new way of being in the world. Beyond offering speed to the human ability to communicate, it has also added the ability for multifaceted communication. Adaptation as well as forbearance to multicultural expectation is fast evolving across the globe. The globe has completely homogenized. Every point on the world’s surface is in immediate contact with every other point. Every locality, and consequently everything and everybody, is instantaneously accessible, or more accurately, vulnerable (Virilio 1998). The impact of technology on human behavior, emotions and interpersonal relationships has become one of the defining issues of the current times. By technology, here we are specifically referring to the role of social networking sites. Technology and its vast diverse forum can be considered one of the most sought after sources of need satisfaction. Technology has proven itself to be a one-stop shop for the individual to

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share his or her unique, personal belief system. As such, the individual’s entanglement with social media is leading to massive changes in interpersonal stimulation as well as in the resultant responses. The scope both in terms of quality and quantity of freedom for self-expression afforded by such online platforms permits the channeling of impulses which otherwise may have remained subdued. Thus, one is justified in being curious and, perhaps, even cynical about the role of technology in the evolution of modern human behavior, and in expecting further elaboration regarding these dynamics from the experts in this field in the near future. Nick Mansfield (2000) in his book Subjectivity: Theories of the Self From Freud to Haraway rightly says that the technology to which we have been accustomed for decades, centuries and millennia seems to us to be perfectly in tune with what we imagine to be our true selves. Faced with the combination of the presence of easy outlets and very few restrictions and inhibitions in utilizing the same, the personality structures as conceptualized by psychoanalysis might also function in a different manner. No longer is it taboo to express certain opinions, use certain language or show an inclination towards particular preferences when online. The id, therefore, operates with greater liberty since fear of rejection has gone down drastically. Thus, an engagement with present day technology permits a rendezvous with the more vague and unexplained parts of one’s personality in a manner somewhat similar to what would be attempted in psychoanalysis. Interestingly, several generations simultaneously seem to be availing themselves of the same type of benefits, with the youngest generation doing so with the least amount of self-consciousness. However, this may possibly be restricted merely to one’s online interactions, presenting a great contrast to the dynamics of interpersonal relationships in the “real” world. And negotiating the path between these two worlds could well pose one of the greatest challenges to us as well as to future generations. Thus, the changing social scenario across the globe with the entry of the use of technology for social exchanges within varying cultural systems is bringing about a new paradigm shift. Freud’s views show their true value in our everyday reality where more and more takes the form of a lie made real. Freedom offered to articulate the forbidden side of one’s personality, which because of social and legal systems was previously restricted from expression, reveals the true self. If we think about the interactive computer games played compulsively, which certainly permit a medium to express non-verbal aggression, we might rationalize that in order to escape from a repetitive reality we take

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solace in the virtual cyber world. In this sense, as Lacan put it, the truth has the structure of a fiction: what appears in the guise of dreaming, or even daydreaming, is sometimes the truth on whose repression social reality itself is founded. The altered self-perception of people about themselves and the world has been significantly exacerbated by the new era of technology. The idea of “out of sight and out of mind” cannot work in the online world, which has its own unique algorithm to remind one of one’s stored unconscious. To integrate with society is one of the most prominent needs of human beings. Recent technological advances in social media give individuals more scope and choices to determine their pattern of social involvement. Selective communication and selective socialization are two of the means of exhibiting one’s preference. Technology permits an externalization of the personal unconscious suggesting a new and previously unheard of level of freedom of expression.

Conclusion: Avoiding the Pitfalls of the Past Since the descent of the psychoanalytic movement is partly of its own making and partly due to changing circumstances, it is imperative for its practitioners to acknowledge its shortcomings and remedy them while adapting to the demands of the current times if the field is to retain its significance. The present-day psychoanalytic community must resist the tendency to rely entirely on contributions of classical psychoanalysis and, instead, must promote a climate that welcomes newly evolved theory to overcome both conceptual and practical hurdles (Bornstein, 2001). This will prevent it from sliding into irrelevance. According to Bornstein (2005), this refinement in theory can be achieved using the cutting-edge empirical methods employed in other areas of psychology and science. This is an urgent requirement if the criticism that psychoanalysis makes unfalsifiable claims—claims that can be neither proved nor disproved—is to be stemmed (Gellner, 2003). It must further be emphasized that the strengthening of the neurological and biological base of psychoanalysis is a non-negotiable requirement in today’s context. Demos (2001) has opined that it is time for the disparate schools of thought within psychoanalysis to examine their differences and decide which of their ideas can be integrated and which need to be discarded. As a result, psychoanalysis would be perceived less as a multitude of disjointed systems at conflict with each another and more as a cohesive whole in which flexibility is possible. The insularity of psychoanalysis has limited its own growth and that of some other disciplines. The reciprocal

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influence that psychoanalysis and areas such as cognitive psychology, developmental psychology and the neurosciences can have on one another promises mutual enhancement, as is beginning to be apparent already. While neuroimaging techniques such as the PET scan and functional MRI reveal the association between certain psychological events and functional changes in the brain, psychoanalytic concepts enable a layered and complex understanding of phenomena such as dreams (Bornstein, 2005). The initiative taken by contemporary researchers to establish the validity of the effectiveness of psychodynamic practices must gain wider acceptance and methodological tools to demonstrate various facets of the analytic process must be developed. Psychoanalytic practice is likely to achieve greater popularity if the focus is on making therapy more attractive to clients. A deterrent to many prospective clients—the length of therapy—can be overcome by exploring the possibility of conducting short-term psychoanalytic therapy, as has been demonstrated with success in the case of depressive disorders (Gaskin, 2014). Finally, a note of caution comes from the psychoanalytical fraternity itself. As president of the International Psychoanalytic Association, Otto Kernberg (1996) highlighted the ways in which any creativity or novelty on the part of trainee analysts was being crushed by training institutes themselves. He satirically drove home the point that these institutes aggressively discouraged questioning and criticism of established views and tenets, rejected fresh ideas as well as a harmonious approach toward different systems, and were content teaching courses which had failed to move with the times. Falzeder (2015) believes that this is the very opposite of what should be happening. For psychoanalysis to reclaim its position, its representatives must be encouraged to think in diverse ways and maintain an openness to novel ideas in their own and related disciplines. Manifestations of structural violence such as social inequality, gender bias and disparity in the availability of basic resources draw attention to the need to rebuild theories. While psychoanalytic thought may not be an alternative to practical efforts to eliminate structural violence, it does inform us of the ways in which we tend to avoid unpleasant truths and thereby deprive ourselves of healthier, more adjusted styles of living. Juxtaposed against the existing inequities is an emerging cyber world that is still in its infant stage, and brings with it possibilities for increased freedom of expression and their distinct implications, which are ripe for psychoanalytic exploration. Due to this increased inter-connectedness, enterprising individuals are able to use the Internet to capitalize on other changes happening in society. On the other hand, the unfenced boundaries of freedom of expression mean we must deal with the effects of having the

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contents of our unconscious rendered permanently visible through such things as our internet activity. The psychoanalytic approach, with its emphasis on explaining human intentions and their impact on social decision-making, can find renewed appeal and usefulness in this context. Thanks to technological advances in social media, human-machine interfacing in the present times has reordered the priorities of our needs and the medium of their satisfaction.

References Alao, K. A., Kobiowu, S. V., & Adebowale, O. F. (2010). Fundamentals of educational and counseling psychology. Horsham: Strategic Insight Publishing. Bornstein, R. F. (2001). The impending death of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 18(1), 3-20. Bornstein, R. F. (2005). Reconnecting psychoanalysis to mainstream psychology: Challenges and opportunities. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 22(3), 323-340. Buckler, S., & Castle, P. (2014). Psychology for teachers. London: SAGE Publications. Danto, E. A. (2005). Freud’s free clinics: Psychoanalysis and social justice, 1918-1938. New York: Columbia University Press. De Maat, S., de Jonghe, F., Schoevers, R., & Dekker, J. (2009). The effectiveness of long-term psychoanalytic therapy: A systematic review of empirical studies. Harvard Review of Psychiatry, 17(1), 1-23. Demos, E. V. (2001). Psychoanalysis and the human sciences: The limitations of cut-and-paste theorizing. American Imago, 58(3), 649684. Der Derian, J. (Ed.). (1998). The Virilio reader. Oxford: Blackwell. De Sousa A., (2011), Freudian theory and consciousness: A conceptual analysis. In A. R. Singh & S. A. Singh (Eds.), Brain, mind and consciousness: An international, interdisciplinary perspective (pp. 210-217). Mednow Publications and Media Pvt Limited. Edward E. (1984). The standing of psychoanalysis. The British Journal For The Philosophy Of Science, 35(2), 115-118. Erikson, E. H. (1959) Identity and the life cycle. New York: International Universities Press. Falzeder, E. (2015). Psychoanalytic filiations: Mapping the psychoanalytic movement. London: Karnac Books. Farrell, B. A. (1981). The standing of psychoanalysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Fertuck, E. (2014). The scientific study of unconscious processes: The time is ripe for (re)convergence of neuroscientific and psychoanalytic conceptions. Neuropsychoanalysis, 13(1), 45-48. Freud, S. (1917). The history of the psychoanalytic movement. New York: Nervous and Mental Disease Publishing. Fromm, E. (1941). Escape from freedom. New York: Henry Holt and Company, LLC. Gaskin, C. (2014). The effectiveness of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy: A literature review of recent international and Australian research. Melbourne: PACFA. Gilman, S. L. (1987). The struggle of psychiatry with psychoanalysis: Who won? Critical Inquiry, 13(2), 293-313. Gellner, E. (2003). The psychoanalytic movement: The cunning of unreason. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Kernberg, O. (1996). Thirty methods to destroy the creativity of psychoanalytic candidates. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 77(5), 1031-1040. Leichsenring, F., & Rabung, S. (2008). Effectiveness of long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy: A meta-analysis. The Journal of the American Medical Association, 300(13), 1551-1565. Mansfield, N. (2000). Subjectivity: Theories of the self from Freud To Haraway. New York: Allen & Unwin. Paris, B. J. (1994). Karen Horney: A psychoanalyst’s search for selfunderstanding. New Haven: Yale University Press. Pick, D. (2015). Psychoanalysis: A very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Safran, J. D., & Kriss, A. (2014). Psychoanalytic psychotherapies. In D. Wedding, & R. Corsini (Eds.), Current psychotherapies. Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning. Shedler, J. (2010). The efficacy of psychodynamic psychotherapy. American Psychologist, 65(2), 98-109. Solms, M., & Turnbull, O. (2002). The brain and the inner world: An introduction to the neuroscience of subjective experience. London: Karnac Books. Sullivan, H. S. (1952). Conceptions of modern psychiatry. In P. Mullahy (Ed.), The contributions of Harry Stack Sullivan. New York: Hermitage. United Nations General Assembly. (1998). Resolution adopted by the General Assembly, 52/13, Culture of Peace. Retrieved from http://www3.unesco.org/iycp/kits/res52-13_en.htm

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Wessells, M., Schwebel, M., & Anderson, A. (2001). Psychologists making a difference in the public arena: Building cultures of peace. In D. J. Christie, R. V. Wagner, & D. D. Winter (Eds.), Peace, conflict, and violence: Peace psychology for the 21st century (pp. 350-362). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Zoja, E. P. (2011). Sandplay therapy in vulnerable communities. London: Routledge.

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Laurie Bell, M.A. established Clinical Assessment Canada in Toronto to provide psychosocial refugee reports from a psychoanalytic perspective and to have an immersive clinical writing practice. In 2015, after more than 20 years of political organizing and personal agonizing to receive federal government recognition of gay and lesbian relationships, she immigrated to the United States, where she provides literary consultation to clinical writers in psychoanalysis. Her previous publications include Good Girls/Bad Girls: Sex Trade Workers and Feminists Face to Face and ‘Who’s Your Daddy?’ in Who's Your Daddy? LGBT Parenting, and No Safe Bed: Residential Care and LGBT Youth. She can be contacted at [email protected]. Joan Braune, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Mount Mary University. She is author of Erich Fromm’s Revolutionary Hope: Prophetic Messianism as a Critical Theory of the Future (Sense Publishers, 2014). She has published several articles and chapters on Erich Fromm and presented on Critical Theory at twenty conferences. She is on the committee planning the first major North American Erich Fromm conference and is also engaged in activism through organizations such as School of the Americas Watch and Jewish Voice for Peace. Nick Braune, M.A., M.T.S. is Associate Professor of Philosophy at South Texas College, a large community college on the Mexico-Texas border, an impoverished and heavily policed area of the country. He is also an antiwar and anti-militarization activist who has been interested in Erich Fromm since about 1963. He requires students in his ethics classes to read Fromm’s book, Beyond the Chains of Illusion: My Encounter with Marx and Freud, dealing with character formation and “the psychology of ethics.” He finds that students like the book today, as they did in the 1960s. Braune has written another essay on how Fromm addressed American political radicals, which appears in Reclaiming the Sane Society (Sense Publishers, 2014).

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Erich Fromm, Ph.D. (1900-1980) was a German-born sociologist, psychoanalyst, philosopher, humanist and democratic socialist. He was best known for his ideas on the being and having modes of existence, security versus freedom, social character and character orientation. At one time or another in his life he was affiliated with the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, the William Alanson White Institute and the National Autonomous University of Mexico. He was the author of over a dozen books including Escape from Freedom, The Sane Society and The Art of Loving. Rainer Funk, Ph.D. was Erich Fromm’s personal assistant from 1974 to 1980. He is the executor of Erich Fromm’s estate and administers his rights. He is on the board of the International Erich Fromm Society and the director of the Erich Fromm Institute. He is the author of Erich Fromm: The Courage to be Human and Erich Fromm: His Life and Ideas An Illustrated Biography and edited The Clinical Erich Fromm: Personal Accounts and Papers on Therapeutic Techniques. In addition to his scientific work, Dr. Funk operates a psychoanalytic practice in his home town of Tübingen, Germany. Scott Graybow, Ph.D. is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist from New York City. He holds a Doctor of Philosophy in Social Welfare from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and a Master of Social Work degree from Columbia University. His writings have appeared in Fromm Forum, Social Work Perspectives, Critical and Radical Social Work, The Journal of Psychohistory and the Columbia Social Work Review. He is an adjunct professor at Metropolitan College of New York. He can be reached at [email protected]. Dan Mills, Ph.D. has a doctorate in English from Georgia State University. He has had essays published in the collections The Return of Theory in Early Modern Studies, Volume II (Palgrave) and Disgust in Early Modern English Literature (Ashgate). He has a forthcoming article in the Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion (Springer). He currently is working on a revision of his dissertation that will bring together the theories of Jacques Lacan and Michel Foucault through a study of subjectivity in early modern utopian literature. He can be contacted at [email protected].

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Christine Schmidt, L.C.S.W. is a clinical social worker and psychoanalytic psychotherapist from Brooklyn, New York. She holds a Master of Social Work degree from the Hunter College School of Social Work and a certificate in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis from the Postgraduate Center for Mental Health. Ms. Schmidt has served as an instructor at New York’s Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Center and as an adjunct professor at Fordham University’s Graduate School of Social Service. She is interested in discovering racially and culturally inclusive approaches to psychodynamic psychotherapy. Ritu Sharma, Ph.D. is engaged as an Assistant Professor and is Head of Department at Pandit Deendayal Petroleum University’s psychology department, School of Liberal Studies in Gandhinagar, India. She holds a doctoral degree in psychology. Dr. Sharma was a guest speaker at the TEDx conference held in Ahmedabad, India, in 2010. She is an Associate Life Member of the Indian Association of Clinical Psychology. She is an Executive Council Member of the Indian Association of Cognitive Behavior Therapy, life member of the Indian Society for Training and Development (ISTD) and a senior member of the International Economics Development and Research Center (IEDRC). Leonard A. Steverson, Ph.D. is associate professor emeritus of sociology at South Georgia State College and adjunct professor of sociology at Flagler College in Florida. His areas of interest include applied sociology, sociological theory, family sociology, social problems and deviance. He is the author of Policing in America: A Reference Handbook and Giants of Sociology: A Little Guide to the Big Names in Sociological Theory (coauthored with C. Ballard) and several book chapters on social science topics. Chris Vanderwees, Ph.D. is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow in the Faculty of Media and Information Studies at Western University. He is also a therapist in private practice, a member of Lacan Toronto, and a candidate of the Advanced Training Program in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy at the Toronto Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. His current academic research explores historical, theoretical and clinical intersections between photography and psychoanalysis. He can be contacted at chrisvanderwees @gmail.com.

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Sharon Writer, M.A. is an Associate Professor at L.D. Arts College in Ahmedabad, India. She holds an M.A. in Clinical Psychology and completed a post-graduate diploma in Clinical and Community Psychology. She is currently a student in the psychology Ph.D. program at Pandit Deendayal Petroleum University in Gandhinagar. Her academic and research interests include the socialization of emotions of children, the psychology of adolescence and youth, aggression and peacemaking, the biopsychosocial experience of pain, sleep psychology and psychological assessment.