Progressive Psychoanalysis as a Social

Justice Movement 1st Edition Scott

Graybow
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmeta.com/product/progressive-psychoanalysis-as-a-social-justice-move
ment-1st-edition-scott-graybow/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

Transhumanism as a New Social Movement: The Techno-

Centred Imagination 1st Edition James Michael
Macfarlane

https://ebookmeta.com/product/transhumanism-as-a-new-social-
movement-the-techno-centred-imagination-1st-edition-james-
michael-macfarlane/

School Psychologists as Advocates for Social Justice

Kathleen Ness

https://ebookmeta.com/product/school-psychologists-as-advocates-
for-social-justice-kathleen-ness/

Righteous Troublemakers Untold Stories of the Social

Justice Movement in America Sharpton Al

https://ebookmeta.com/product/righteous-troublemakers-untold-
stories-of-the-social-justice-movement-in-america-sharpton-al/

Lawyers Networks and Progressive Social Change 1st

Edition Jacqueline Kinghan

https://ebookmeta.com/product/lawyers-networks-and-progressive-
social-change-1st-edition-jacqueline-kinghan/
Psychoanalysis as an Ethical Process 1st Edition Robert
P. Drozek

https://ebookmeta.com/product/psychoanalysis-as-an-ethical-
process-1st-edition-robert-p-drozek/

Uprooted Minds A Social Psychoanalysis for Precarious

Times 2nd Edition Nancy Caro Hollander

https://ebookmeta.com/product/uprooted-minds-a-social-
psychoanalysis-for-precarious-times-2nd-edition-nancy-caro-
hollander/

Mobilities Mobility Justice and Social Justice 1st

Edition Nancy Cook (Editor)

https://ebookmeta.com/product/mobilities-mobility-justice-and-
social-justice-1st-edition-nancy-cook-editor/

Just Practice: A Social Justice Approach to Social Work

4th Edition Janet L. Finn

https://ebookmeta.com/product/just-practice-a-social-justice-
approach-to-social-work-4th-edition-janet-l-finn/

Social Memory as a Force for Social and Economic

Transformation 1st Edition Muxe Nkondo

https://ebookmeta.com/product/social-memory-as-a-force-for-
social-and-economic-transformation-1st-edition-muxe-nkondo/
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
viii Table of Contents

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
x Preface

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-to-
do, 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
 Progressive Psychoanalysis as a Social Justice Movement xi

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;
xii Preface

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
 Progressive Psychoanalysis as a Social Justice Movement xiii

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 & Galatzer-
Levy, 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
xiv Preface

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.
 Progressive Psychoanalysis as a Social Justice Movement xv

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
2 Introduction

(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
 Progressive Psychoanalysis as a Social Justice Movement 3

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,
4 Introduction

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
 Progressive Psychoanalysis as a Social Justice Movement 5

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
6 Introduction

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 counter-
productive 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
 Progressive Psychoanalysis as a Social Justice Movement 7

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.”
8 Introduction

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
 Progressive Psychoanalysis as a Social Justice Movement 9

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,
10 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
 Progressive Psychoanalysis as a Social Justice Movement 11

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
12 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.”
 Progressive Psychoanalysis as a Social Justice Movement 13

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
 My Own Concept of Man 17

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 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. 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
18 Chapter One

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.
 My Own Concept of Man 19

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 self-
purposefulness. 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
20 Chapter One

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 non-
repressive 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.)
 My Own Concept of Man 21

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
22 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
 My Own Concept of Man 23

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
24 Chapter One

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
 My Own Concept of Man 25

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.
 Concerned Knowledge: Erich Fromm on Theory and Practice 27

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
28 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, data-
gathering 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 prediction-
making (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
 Concerned Knowledge: Erich Fromm on Theory and Practice 29

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 praxis-
focused economics, as some vulgar materialists would have it. Rather,
Marx was emphasizing that theory or philosophy itself must become a
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Building a
championship football team
 This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License
included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the
laws of the country where you are located before using this
eBook.

Title: Building a championship football team

Author: Paul W. Bryant

Author of introduction, etc.: Lloyd Jefferson Gregory

Release date: July 6, 2022 [eBook #68466]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: Prentice-Hall, 1960

Credits: Tim Lindell and the Online Distributed Proofreading

Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was
produced from images made available by the
HathiTrust Digital Library.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BUILDING A

CHAMPIONSHIP FOOTBALL TEAM ***
 Building a
CHAMPIONSHIP
Football Team

PAUL W. “BEAR” BRYANT

Athletic Director and
Head Football Coach,
University of Alabama

Englewood Cliffs, N.J.

PRENTICE-HALL, INC.

© 1960, BY
PRENTICE-HALL, INC.
Englewood Cliffs, N.J.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS BOOK
MAY BE REPRODUCED IN ANY FORM, BY MIMEOGRAPH
OR ANY OTHER MEANS, WITHOUT PERMISSION
IN WRITING FROM THE PUBLISHER.
Library of Congress
Catalogue Card Number: 60-53173
Eighth Printing February, 1968

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

08605—BC
 Dedication
To a few close associates who were genuinely dedicated to the
game of football. These men were not only great assets to the game;
they also exemplified the true American way of life. Had it not been
for men like these, many of us would have fallen by the wayside. To
them, I am forever grateful.

Robert A. Cowan Herman Hickman

Fordyce, Arkansas Yale University—Sports Illustrated
Frank W. Thomas Jim Tatum
University of Alabama University of North Carolina
W. A. Alexander G. A. Huguelett
Georgia Tech University of Kentucky
H. R. “Red” Sanders Herman L. Heep
U. C. L. A. Texas A & M
Charles Caldwell Rex Enright
Princeton University University of South Carolina
 Acknowledgment
This book would not have been possible had it not been for the
untiring efforts of Eugene Stallings, co-captain Texas A & M 1956, All
Conference SWC End, and assistant football coach, University of
Alabama. “Bebes” Stallings exemplifies the true meaning of football,
both as a player and as a coach.
 A Real Competitor
“Fight on, my men,” Sir Andrew says,
“A little I’me hurt, but yett not slaine;
“I’le but lye downe and bleede awhile,
“And then I’le rise and fight againe.”

“Sir Andrew Barton,” Part 2, St. 16

(PERCY’S RELIQUES, Series II, Book II)

If Sir Andrew were coaching football today, he would be accused

of teaching “hard-nosed football,” for his battlecry “I’ll rise and fight
again” is that of Paul “Bear” Bryant, author of this book and self-
acknowledged teacher of hard-nosed or all-out football.
Paul Bryant is one of the ablest, most colorful, most controversial
mentors. Fans either love Bear Bryant or despise him—which makes
him excellent box office.
Competitive fires flame high in Coach Bryant. Legend has it he
once played an entire game with a broken leg, believable when one
considers the all-out effort he demands of himself and his players.
Deep down, he is a sentimentalist who leaves a heavy imprint on his
players. John David Crow, All-American back and Heisman Trophy
winner under Bryant at Texas A & M, and now a National Football
League star, says, “Coach Paul Bryant is the greatest coach in
America. He made a man out of me.”
Paul Bryant is a builder. When he came to Texas A & M in 1954,
Aggie fortunes were at a low ebb. In four years, Bryant’s Aggies won
25, lost 14, tied 2, and nine of those losses were in his first year.
As a sports writer and television commentator, this observer has
watched Southwest Conference football since 1915, the first year a
grid champion was crowned. The conference’s best job of coaching
was Bryant’s, beginning in 1954. His outstanding player walked out
of the Junction, Texas training camp, and Bryant would not let him
return. In their first game, the Aggies lost to Texas Tech 9 to 41. The
Aggies dropped all six conference games, but only Baylor was able
to achieve a two-touchdown margin. In 1956, Bryant built an
unbeaten team, with “my Junction boys” the nucleus.
There was something almost mystical about Bryant’s story of why
he was leaving Texas A & M for his alma mater, the University of
Alabama: “As a small boy, I sometimes would play until after dark,
and then, from afar off, I’d hear my beloved mother calling, ‘Paul,
come home.’ I’d run as fast as my legs would carry me.”
Some cynics sneer at Paul Bryant’s explanation. But the many
sportsmen who hold for him lasting respect and affection know this
warm-hearted man is telling the truth.
Lloyd Gregory
Houston, Texas
 Table of Contents
Chapter Page
1. Why Football? 1
2. The Theory of Winning Football 8
3. Making the Most of the Coaching Staff 18
4. Defense—Our Kind of Football 24
5. Pass Defense—Objectives and Tactics 62
6. Our Kicking Game Techniques 111
7. Our Offensive Running Game 140
8. Our Offensive Passing Game Techniques 176
9. Training the Quarterback 186
10. Planning for a Game 203
11. Our Drills 215
12. Those Who Stay Will Be Champions 231
Index 235
 Building a
CHAMPIONSHIP
Football Team
 CHAPTER 1
Why Football?

Have you ever wondered about football? Why it’s only a game
which is as fundamental as a ball and a helmet. But the sport is a
game of great importance. If you take all of the ingredients that go
into making up the game of football and put them into a jar, shake
well and pour out, you’ve got a well-proportioned phase of the
American way of life.

FOOTBALL IS MORE THAN A GAME

Football is the All-American and the scrub. It’s the Rose Bowl with
102,000 cheering fans, and it’s the ragged kids in a vacant lot using
a dime-store ball. It’s a field in Colorado ankle-deep in snow, and
one in Florida sun-baked and shimmering.
Leaping cheerleaders, a brassy band, and the Dixie Darlings are a
part of the wonderful game of football. It’s a rich guy being
chauffeured to the stadium gate, and a frightened boy shinnying the
fence and darting for the end zone seats. It’s a crowd which has
gone crazy as it rips down the goal posts. And it’s a nation stunned
and wet-eyed at the news of Knute Rockne’s death.
Football is drama, music, dignity, sorrow. It’s exhilaration and
shock. It is also humor and, at times, comedy. It’s a referee sternly
running the game. It’s an inebriated character staggering onto the
field and trying to get into the action.
Football is the memory of Red Grange, the Four Horsemen, and
the Seven Blocks of Granite. It’s a team’s traditional battle cry, such
as, “War Eagle,” in the middle of the summer. It’s a crisp fall day,
traffic jams, portable radios and hip flasks. It’s train trips, plane flights
and victory celebrations. It’s the losers moaning, “You were lucky,
just wait’ll next year!”
Names are football, such as Bronco, Dixie, Night Train, The Horse,
Hopalong, Bad News, The Toe, and Mr. Outside.

FOOTBALL IS THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL

For four quarters, football is the Great American Novel, with
chapters from Frank Merriwell, the Bible, Horatio Alger, the life of
Lincoln and Jack the Giant-Killer.
Newspaper photos, arguments, Mr. Touchdown USA, yellowed
clippings, the Hall of Fame, The Star-Spangled Banner—they’re all
football.
It’s a game of young men with big shoulders and hard muscles. It’s
also a game of old pros, such as, 38-year-old Charlie Conerly
quarterbacking the New York Giants to a football championship.
Football is popcorn, cokes, banners and cigaret smoke. It’s people
standing for the kick-off, lap blankets, pacing coaches, penalties and
melodious alma maters.
Football is a game of surprises. The big guy everybody picks in
pre-season as All-American fizzles out. But a kid nobody ever heard
of scores the winning touchdown and a star is born. It’s Tennessee
going 17 games without being scored on. It’s also tiny Chattanooga
upsetting mighty Tennessee, making a coach’s dream come true.
It’s the pro halfback who is a movie star. And the water boy who
got into a game at Yale. It’s Bronco Nagurski butting down a
sandbag abutment, and dwarfish Davey O’Brien disappearing from
sight behind an array of 250 pound linemen. It’s Harry Gilmer
jumping high to pass, and Coach Jim Owens proving that nice guys
finish first.
Football is Bud Wilkinson, whose Sooners are 40 points ahead,
walking up and down the sideline like a caged lion. It’s 35-year-old
Paul Dietzel and 90-year-old Amos Alonzo Stagg. It’s 6′8″ Gene “Big
Daddy” Lipscomb and 5′6″ Eddie LeBaron.
Women who don’t know a quick kick from a winged-T cheer every
move on the field, waving pennants, purses and even mink stoles.
That’s football. So is the pressbox with its battery of clattering
typewriters. And the oldtimer who claims they played a better game
in his day is a part of football, too.
It’s Ray Berry, who wears contact lenses, making unbelievable
catches for the Baltimore Colts. And after the game, when he dons
his thick glasses, he looks the part of a studious school teacher—
which he is after football season terminates.
It’s a scramble for tickets, playing parlays, wide-eyed youngsters
getting autographs, a fist fight in the stands, second guessing,
banquets, icy rains, color guards, fumbles, goal line stands,
homecoming queens, and the typical mutt running onto the field
attracting everyone’s attention.
Football is Tommy Lewis jumping off the bench in the Cotton Bowl
game and tackling a touchdown-bound Rice runner simply because,
“I’ve got too much Alabama in me, I guess.” It’s the quivering voice
of a dying George Gipp telling his Notre Dame teammates, “Win one
for the Gipper.”
It’s New Year’s, Christmas and the Fourth of July rolled into one.
It’s VJ Day, the Declaration of Independence, Haley’s comet and
Bunker Hill. It’s tears and laughter, pathos and exuberance.
Football is a game that separates the men from the boys, but also
it’s a game that makes kids of us all.
Most of all it’s a capsule of this great country itself.[1]

[1] The author extends sincerest thanks to Clettus Atkinson,

Assistant Sports Editor, Birmingham Post-Herald, for contributing
his fine depiction to the meaning of football.

FOOTBALL IS THE AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE

 Football, in its rightful place, can be one of the most wholesome,
exciting and valuable activities in which our youth can possibly
participate. It is the only sport I know of that teaches boys to have
complete control of themselves, to gain self-respect, give forth a
tremendous effort, and at the same time learn to observe the rules of
the game, regard the rights of others and stay within bounds dictated
by decency and sportsmanship.
Football in reality is very much the American way of life. As in life,
the players are faced with challenges and they have an opportunity
to match skills, strength, poise and determination against each other.
The participants learn to cooperate, associate, depend upon, and
work with other people. They have a great opportunity to learn that if
they are willing to work, strive harder when tired, look people in the
eye, and rise to the occasion when opportunity presents itself, they
can leave the game with strong self-assurance, which is so vitally
important in all phases of life. At the same time they are developing
these priceless characteristics, they get to play and enjoy fellowship
with the finest grade and quality of present day American youth.

The Game’s Intrinsic Values

Not only is football a great and worthwhile sport because it

teaches fair play and discipline, but it also teaches the number one
way of American life—to win. We are living in an era where all our
sympathy and interest goes to the person who is the winner. In order
to stay abreast with the best, we must also win. The most
advantageous and serviceable lesson that we can derive from
football is the intrinsic value of winning. It is not the mere winning of
the game, but it is teaching the boys to win the hectic battle over
themselves that is important. Sure, winning the game is important,
and I would be the last to say that it wasn’t, but helping the boy to
develop his poise and confidence, pride in himself and his
undertakings, teaching him to give that little extra effort are the real
objectives of teaching winning football.
If I had my choice of either winning the game or winning the faith
of a boy, I would choose the latter. There is no greater reward for a
coach than to see his players achieve their goals in life and to know
he had some small part in the success of the boys’ endeavors.
Boys who participate in football, whether in high school or college,
are in their formative years. It is every coach’s responsibility to see
that each boy receives the necessary guidance and attention he so
rightly deserves. I would be deeply hurt and embarrassed if I learned
a boy wasn’t just a little better person after having played under my
guidance. If we, as coaches, lose the true sense of the value of
football and get to a point where we cannot contribute to a boy
progressing spiritually, mentally, and physically, we will be doing this
wonderful game of football a great injustice by remaining in
coaching.
The coaching profession is honorable and dignified and we
football coaches are in a position to contribute to the mental
development and desirable attitudes which will remain with the boys
throughout their lives. We have the opportunities to teach intangible
lessons to our players that will be priceless to them in future years.
We are in a position to teach these boys intrinsic values that cannot
be learned at home, church, school or any place outside of the
athletic field. Briefly, these intangible attributes are as follows: (1)
Discipline, sacrifice, work, fight, and teamwork; (2) to learn how to
take your “licks,” and yet fight back; (3) to be so tired you think you
are going to die, but instead of quitting you somehow learn to fight a
little harder; (4) when your team is behind, you learn to “suck up your
guts” and do whatever it takes to catch up and win the game; and (5)
you learn to believe in yourself because you know how to rise to the
occasion, and you know you will do it! The last trait is the most
important one.

The Greatest Display of Courage

One personal reference will illustrate the intangible attributes that

football teaches. We have all seen or heard someone tell about the
greatest display of courage a team has ever shown. When a team
you coach has had such an experience, it makes you exceedingly
happy and proud of your position and the team. While I have never
been ashamed of any of my football clubs, I will always have a soft
spot in my heart for one of my teams in particular. I think my 1955
Texas A & M team displayed the greatest courage, rose to the
occasion better, and did more of what I call “sucking up their guts
and doing what was required of them” in a particular game than any
other team with which I’ve ever been associated.
We were playing Rice Institute in Houston on a hot, humid
afternoon. Our play was very sluggish and before we fully realized it,
the game was almost over, and we were behind 12-0. We were
leading the Conference race up to this point, but it was beginning to
look as if we were going to be humiliated before 68,000 people.
Having become disgusted with my starting unit’s ineffective play, I
withdrew the regulars from the game early in the fourth quarter. With
approximately four minutes left to play, I decided to send the regulars
back in. I told them they still had time to win the game if it meant
enough to them to do so.
The first unit went on to the field and immediately called time out. I
later found out they vowed to each other they were going to do
whatever it took to win the game. We eventually got possession of
the football on our own 42-yard line, and the clock showed 2:56
remaining to play. Again the boys called time out, giving each man a
few seconds to make up his mind just exactly what he was going to
do. On the first play from scrimmage, Lloyd Taylor, a little halfback
from Roswell, New Mexico ran 58 yards around left end for a
touchdown. He kicked the extra point and the score was 12-7, with
2:08 remaining in the game. We tried an on-side (short) kick, and
Gene Stallings recovered the ball on Rice’s 49-yard line. Our
quarterback, Jimmy Wright, then threw a 49-yard pass to Lloyd
Taylor who made a beautiful catch as he crossed the goal line. Taylor
scored his fourteenth point as he kicked his second point-after-
touchdown placement. With the score 14-12, we lined up and kicked
the ball deep to Rice. Forcing Rice to gamble since they were
behind, they attempted a deep pass which our great fullback, Jack
Pardee, intercepted and returned 40 yards to the 3-yard line. On the
next play Don Watson carried the ball across for a touchdown,
making the final score 20-12 in our favor.
 After the game in our dressing room when everyone was
congratulating each other, and everything was in a state of
confusion, Lloyd Taylor suggested we thank the Master for giving us
the courage to make the great comeback. From that game on we
have always said a prayer of gratitude after the game, win, lose, or
draw.
The particular incident cited was the greatest display I have ever
seen of boys reaching back and getting that little extra, showing their
true colors, and rising to the occasion and putting into practice the
thing that we preach and believe in.
What do we get out of coaching? There is nothing in the world I
would swap for the associations with those boys, and the other fine
men I have coached, and the self satisfaction of knowing I’ve helped
many boys to find themselves. In my estimation, football is truly a
way of life.
 CHAPTER 2
The Theory of Winning Football

Every football team has a slogan, and each coach has his own
theory as to what makes a winning team. We are no exception. Our
slogan is, “Winning is not everything, but it sure beats anything that
comes in second.” Our theory on how to develop a winning team is
very simple—WORK! If the coaches and players will work hard, then
winning will be the result.
We want to win. We play to win. We are going to encourage, insist
and demand that our players give a 100% effort in trying to win.
Otherwise we would be doing them a great injustice. It is very
important for the boys to have a complete understanding of what
they must do in order to win.
When a boy has completed his eligibility or has played four years
under our guidance, I like to believe he will graduate knowing how to
suck up his guts and rise to the occasion, and do whatever is
required of him to get his job done. If our boys are willing to work
hard, and we give them the proper leadership and guidance, then
they will graduate winners and our athletic program will be a
success.

HOW TO START BUILDING A WINNER

Building a winning football team is something that cannot be
accomplished overnight, or even in a year or two, if the program is
starting from scratch. I believe, irrespective of the time element
involved, a football program has little chance of succeeding unless
the following “musts” are adhered to:
 1. The coach must have a definite plan in which he
believes, and there must be no compromise on his part.
2. The football coach must have the complete cooperation
and support of the administrators and the administration, who
must believe in the head coach, his staff, and his plan.
3. The coach must have a long term contract.
4. The coach must not only be dedicated to football, but he
must be tough mentally.
5. The head coach must have the sole responsibility and
authority of selecting his staff of dedicated men, who must
believe in the head coach and his plan.

The Administration Must Believe in Your Plan

It is vitally important that a coach build a solid foundation for his

program. In order to do this he must have complete cooperation from
every member of the school’s administration. In many cases the
school officials will not have a complete and thorough understanding
of your athletic program. It is important that you explain to them just
what you are trying to accomplish, how long it will take, and why you
are doing it in your particular manner. The administrators and the
administration must understand the value the program has for each
boy who participates, and the ways the program can benefit the
entire school system. Therefore, before a coach accepts a particular
position he should give considerable thought to the administration’s
philosophy, attitude or point-of-view toward the football program. If
the school president or principal is skeptical, consider the position
seriously before accepting it. Building a championship team is
difficult enough with full cooperation from everyone, but it is an
impossible coaching situation without the administration’s full support
and confidence.

The Coach Must Have a Long Term Contract