Beyond Freud: From Individual to Social Psychoanalysis

By Erich Fromm

The acclaimed social psychologist and New York Times–bestselling author of The Art of Loving examines what drives human beings.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Sigmund Freud was the first scientist to attempt to present the reality of the individual human being’s unconscious and to find ways of dealing with unconscious forces. In the early 1930s, Erich Fromm built upon Freud’s insights on the individual and began to study the unconscious of society. However, this attempt soon revealed the limits of the theory of drives, which Freud used to bring his discoveries into a systematic explanatory context.

In Beyond Freud, Fromm discusses his findings in relation to Freud’s. In studying both the unconsciousness of the individual and of society, Fromm found that Freud wrongly based psychology totally on natural factors; Freud needed to include social influences as well.

This book is broken into three dynamic sections:
1. Man’s Impulse Structure and Its Relation to Culture
2. Psychic Needs and Society (1956 lecture)
3. Dealing with the Unconscious in Psychotherapeutic Practice (1959 lecture)

Beyond Freud explores the understanding of psychoanalytic theory, relating Freudian observations and practices to the needs of society; handling the unconscious in psychotherapeutic practice; and considering the relevance of Freud’s discoveries for therapy today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Release date: Feb 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9781504082785

Erich Fromm

Erich Fromm (1900–1980) was a bestselling psychoanalyst and social philosopher whose views about alienation, love, and sanity in society—discussed in his books such as Escape from Freedom, The Art of Loving, The Sane Society, and To Have or To Be?—helped shape the landscape of psychology in the mid-twentieth century. Fromm was born in Frankfurt, Germany, to Jewish parents, and studied at the universities of Frankfurt, Heidelberg (where in 1922 he earned his doctorate in sociology), and Munich. In the 1930s he was one of the most influential figures at the Frankfurt Institute of Social Research. In 1934, as the Nazis rose to power, he moved to the United States. He practiced psychoanalysis in both New York and Mexico City before moving to Switzerland in 1974, where he continued his work until his death.

Book preview

I. Man’s impulse structure and its relation to culture

1. Psychoanalysis and the understanding of social phenomena

a) The two principles of explanation according to Freud

Social psychology is pointed in two directions. On the one hand, it deals with the problem of the extent to which the personality structure of the individual is determined by social factors and on the other hand, with the extent to which psychological factors themselves influence and alter the social process. The two sides of the problem are indissolubly bound together. The personality structure, which we can recognize as affecting the social process, is itself the product of this process and whether we observe the one side or the other, the question is only which aspect of the whole problem is the center of interest at the time.

Bearing in mind the problem of the interaction between society and the psychic structure, there is no difference in principle between social and individual psychology. Fundamentally it makes no difference whether an individual or a group is under psychological examination. The individual’s manner of life is determined by society. Society itself is nothing without individuals. Freud, despite his centering of interest on the individual, recognized clearly that the difference between social psychology and individual psychology is only an apparent one.

Although he says, [S. Freud, 1921c, S. E. XVIII, p. 69.], individual psychology is carried out and concentrated on the individual, on the path he chooses to satisfy his instincts, still it happens rarely, under certain exceptional conditions, that the relationship of one to other individuals can be overlooked. In the inner life of the individual another comes up regularly as an example, as an object, as a helper and as an opponent and individual psychology therefore, is, from the beginning, also social psychology in this broader but absolutely justifiable sense.¹

This conception is in keeping with Freud’s fundamental method of explaining the psychic structure of the individual. Always fundamentally considering the influence of constitutional factors, Freud’s guiding principle in the analysis of an individual is to explain the development of impulse and character structure by the experiences—especially the early childhood experiences—which the individual suffers in collision with the outside world. Put in a short formula, the principle of analytical method is the explanation of the impulse structure by life experiences, that is to say, the external factors that affect the individual.

Looking closer, however, it [can be] seen that this formula is too general and actually includes two different principles of explanations which are used and confused in psychoanalytical interpretation. The principle under discussion is as follows: The individual, driven by pressure for satisfaction of his needs, especially his sexual needs, must come to terms with the outside world, which serves partly as a means towards the satisfaction he seeks and partly as a hindrance to that satisfaction. In this process of adjusting to the outside world there arise certain impulses and fears, certain friendly and hostile attitudes towards the outside world, or to express it differently, [there arises] a certain type of object relation. An example of this principle of explanation is offered by the Oedipus complex.

Here Freud starts with the point that the child (for the sake of simplicity, a little boy) has sexual desires towards his mother. In attempting to fulfill the impulses corresponding to his desires he comes across his father who forbids him to satisfy these desires and threatens him with punishment. This experience with the forbidding father creates a definite psychic reaction in the child, a definite relation to the father: namely, one of hatred and hostility. The hostile impulses directed against the father meet with his superiority, which creates fear in the boy and compels him to repress these impulses: he instead submits to the father or identifies himself with him. Hostility, submission, identification are the products of the boy’s collision, driven by his sexual desires, with a definite configuration in the outside world. Even aside from the question of the general validity of the Oedipus complex and of Freud’s assumption that the Oedipus complex is a hereditary acquisition, the fact remains that Freud attributes the intensity and special qualities of the particular development of the Oedipus complex in an individual to the peculiarities in his life experiences.

Quite different from this principle of interpretation is one which Freud employs in explaining the connection between life experiences and the structure of drives. In this second principle, he assumes that the outside world operates on and changes sexuality in a pronounced manner, and that certain psychic impulses are the immediate products of specific forms of sexuality. This principle of explanation assumes the Freudian libido theory. In this theory it is assumed that sexuality goes through various developmental stages; that oral, anal, phallic and genital developmental stages are at various times centered around an erogenous zone, and further (something that more or less ties up with these erogenous zones), that certain partial sexual drives are evident, such as sadism and masochism, voyeurism and exhibitionism. Quite independent of conditions that the outside world imposes, the individual, by reason of given biological facts, goes through all these stages until matured genital sexuality becomes the dominant instinct. However, insofar as the outside world—partly through denials, partly through over-indulgence—affects the various stages of sexuality, they become fixed in one or the other form (even though such fixations, according to Freud, can be appreciately determined also by constitutional strengthening and weakening of certain erogenous zones). Thus, in contrast to normal development, they retain unusual force and become the source for development of important psychic impulses—be it through sublimation or through reaction formation. In this way Freud explains the existence of such important drives or character traits as greed, parsimony, ambition, orderliness, etc.

The foregoing analytical interpretation according to this principle also explains, in the same way, certain attitudes and certain relations to other people. Thus parsimony and greed are understood as the sublimation of the impulse to withhold the faeces. A contemptuous attitude towards people is explained by the fact that these people stand for faeces in the unconscious of an individual and the disgust he [feels] is carried over to the people. An attitude characterized by the conviction of a person that he need not exert himself at all to achieve all his ambitions, that somehow all his wishes will suddenly be fulfilled, is interpreted as the sublimation of the desire for a sudden bowel movement after a long retention of the faeces.

The difference between the two principles of explanation is obvious. In one case, a psychic phenomenon is understood to be a reaction of the individual to the outside world which has behaved in one way or another towards the fulfillment of his needs. In the other case the psychic phenomenon is directly attributed to sexuality; it is not a reaction to the outside world, but an expression of sexuality modified by the outside world.

A schematic presentation should further define this statement. The reactions falling under I are understood by Freud to be direct derivates of sexuality, which in turn are modified by the influences of the outside world. The reactions falling under II are object relations which are not the direct products of sexuality, but reactions to the outside world that occur in the process of working out the impulses.

[The following diagram is a reconstruction of an original handwritten sketch in German:]

Diagram Description automatically generated

The two explanatory principles here distinguished are confused throughout psychoanalytical literature without their distinction being noted. (The differentiation between object relations and sublimation and reaction formations of genital sexuality was [recently] indicated in E. Fromm, Die psychoanalytische Charakterologie und ihre Bedeutung für die Sozialpsychologie [Psychoanalytic Characterology and Its Relevance for Social Psychology], 1932b, and at greater length by Balint.) This has led to a lack of clarity which has often [complicated] understanding the analytical theory. A good example of the confusion of the two principles of explanation is offered in the concept of the anal characters conceived by Freud and carried further by others, especially Abraham and Jones. Freud found [that] a frequently repeated syndrome of three character traits, orderliness, parsimony and [obstinacy], [was] associated with definite experiences in the history of defecation and the toilet habit. Obstinacy or wilfulness is understood to be a reaction to an outside world which confronts the infant with hostility and strictness in regard to its physiological needs. The principle of explanation here is the one we outlined above for the Oedipus complex. The anal function merely plays the role as an important [factor enforcing] a certain kind of contact with the outside world. Parsimony, on the other hand, is regarded as a direct product of anal eroticism, to be more exact, the pleasure in holding back the faeces, and the fact that specifically this pleasure is so strong is explained only by outside world influences.

We content ourselves here with the description of these two principles of explanation, but before we embark on a critical discussion of them we wish to present another disagreement with the Freudian theory that is important for the problem of social psychology.

b) Freud’s bourgeois concept of man and his disinterest in the character of a society

We said above that Freud explains the structure of drives by life experiences, that is, outside influences at work on the individual. This statement must be [carefully delimited]. Actually, it holds only in so far as it deals with the explanation of individual differences in the impulse structure among individuals whom Freud observed in his practice or [elsewhere]. As long as he found differences here, such for instance as that of one patient who displayed an unusually strong fear of paternal authority; or another who, to an extraordinary degree, became the rival of everyone with whom he came in contact, he explained these peculiarities in the impulse structure (along with an indication of the possibility of constitutional strengthening) by the individual peculiarities in the life experiences of the patient. In one case he found, speaking very schematically, that the patient had a very strict father of whom he was afraid; in another case a sibling was born who was shown preference and against whom he developed an intense rivalry. But as long as Freud was not interested in the individual differences of his patients, but examined the psychic traits which were common to all patients, he gave up essentially the historical, that is to say, the social principle of explanation, and saw in these common traits human nature, as it is physiologically and anatomically constituted. In other words, character structure, as is generally common to the society of normal people and of people observed by Freud, was not itself important to analyse; [indeed] for him the middle-class character was essentially identical with human nature.

We will content ourselves here with just a few important examples of this thesis. Freud regards the Oedipus complex as a fundamental mechanism of the entire inner life. We have indicated above that special modifications of the Oedipus complex are traced back to the peculiarities in life experiences; but the Oedipus complex is given modern man through heredity, or at least so Freud assumes hypothetically.

Another example of the same principle is found in Freud’s conception of the psychology of woman. He assumes that because of knowledge of anatomical differences she must necessarily develop feelings of inferiority, resentment and envy of man, that is to say, of his genitals, and that feelings of inferiority in woman are necessary phenomena because of the lack of male sexual organs. ‘Anatomy is Destiny’, to vary a saying of Napoleon’s says Freud [1924d, S. E. XIX, p. 178]. The same principle of absolutizing the middle-class character is seen in Freud’s view that the individual is primarily narcissistic, that is, fundamentally isolated from his fellow-beings and those alien to him. Even here he does not inquire into the social imputation of this phenomenon, but accepts the estranged person that he finds in our society as the necessary product of human nature.

In the same respect Freud goes even further in his theory of the death drive. While he, as he himself says, to his own surprise, originally more or less overlooked the role of non-sexual aggression in human inner life, he sees it now in its full implications. However, he does not trace it to social conditions, but assumes that, [in respect of] its quantity, it is biologically derived from the death drive, and that a person has only the alternative [in amalgamating death tendencies with erotic drives, of turning them destructively outwards or masochistically inwards].

We said that for Freud middle-class character is identical with human nature. This statement requires a certain delimitation. It would be more accurate to say that Freud identifies