Ethical-Psychological Theory by Erich Fromm as a Tool of Social Transformation

Zakharov Aleksandr Dmitrievich ORCID: 0000-0003-4422-4797 Postgraduate Student, Faculty of Social Sciences and Mass Communications, Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation 125167, Russia, Moscow region, Moscow, 49/2 Leningradsky Ave. zaharofff1997@gmail.com Other publications by this author

IntroductionErich Seligmann Fromm is an outstanding thinker of the XX century, whose works and contributions either remain undervalued, or are misinterpreted, or are hastily dismissed and receive a negative assessment from researchers and scientists from various humanities disciplines.

Indeed, as the Finnish researcher Jarno Hietalahti notes, during his lifetime Fromm was considered insufficiently philosophical for philosophers, insufficiently sociological for sociologists and insufficiently psychoanalytic for psychoanalysts. Nowadays, the situation has changed, and various disciplines are happy to stick their labels when classifying Fromm's works. And they are absolutely right in this – Fromm, among other things, is a philosopher, sociologist and psychoanalyst, a broad thinker and interdisciplinary in the best sense of the word ^{[1, p. 101]}.

I. O. Shafarevich focuses on the grounded interdisciplinarity of Fromm's concepts and works, especially on the connection of the philosophical ethical system with the psychological and sociological practice of the scientist. The Belarusian researcher claims that both humanistic objective ethics and psychology, according to E. Fromm, develop in an interconnected way. He (E. Fromm) believed that the transition from Aristotelian ethics to B. Spinoza's ethics was due to the superiority of B. Spinoza's dynamic psychology over Aristotle's static psychology. This is how E. Fromm explains that psychology and psychoanalysis have a connection with ethics and vice versa: this is a prerequisite for the emergence of more extensive and deep possibilities that allow us to build a humanistic ethics, which can be supported not only by philosophical foundations, but also by the attitudes of psychological science ^{[2, p. 52]}. T. D. Skudnova and E. V. Bekh pay attention to the modernity and relevance of Fromm's views within the framework of the issue of interdisciplinarity and believe that the unification of existential anthropology, psychoanalysis and social philosophy under a single banner defines spiritual life in a new way: experiences, choice, existence, subjectivity, meaning of life, purpose ^{[3, p. 122]}.

Indian scientist Naushaba Anjum, understanding the issues of mental health of modern society, emphasized the obvious differences between Fromm's concept and purely behavioristic and psychoanalytic, to which the Austrian-American scientist himself was close. While behaviorists view individuals as passively reacting to external stimuli, and psychoanalysts see people as victims of biological forces and childhood conflicts, humanist psychologists can make every effort to study the development from normality to a healthy personality ^{[4, p. 48]}. Erich Fromm was just such a scientist who saw the development of society in the formation of a cluster of healthy individuals.

Analyzing the destructive anti-humanistic sentiments of modern society, it seems that in the XXI century it is more urgent than ever to preserve, develop and multiply the legacy of Fromm, again and again considering his ethical and psychological system of transformation of society through each individual healthy person in every sense.

The main partIt is worth explaining beforehand why Fromm devoted so much time and effort to ethical issues – he sincerely and reasonably believed that psychoanalysis had done a great job in terms of increasing and improving the quality of knowledge about a person and his deep motivations, but apart from exposing inner life, he did not offer any effective options for how a person should live and what to do it under conditions of all kinds of irrational subjective motivating motives ^{[5, p. 19]}.

It was the thinker who was busy explaining this question, he insisted that the problem of mental health and neurosis is inextricably linked with the problems of ethics. Fromm believed that every neurosis is a moral problem, in which one can see a failure on the path of a person's self-realization ^{[5, pp. 283-284]}. The thinker was also a supporter of moral indifference and considered morality objective, regardless of the probability of a person realizing his capabilities and special conditions constraining him, the assessment remains unbiased despite all kinds of indulgences ^{[5, p. 299]}.

Within the framework of his theory, Fromm identified five basic human needs: the need to establish connections with people, the need to overcome one's limitations, a system of orientations and worship, identity and the need for unity ^{[6, p. 314]}. With all this, a person necessarily has a need for an orientation system – it is a source of energy, which is certainly implemented destructively or productively, in the worship of power and destruction or reason and love ^{[7, p. 72]}.

Erich Fromm argued that the virtues and vices of traditional ethics, due to their ambiguity and variability of contextual use, may imply different and even contradictory human attitudes. So he gives an example of humility caused by fear or extreme arrogance, and fear and arrogance themselves can be a sign of self-abasement or self-doubt. The thinker concludes that individual ethical traits cannot be considered in isolation from the character of a person as a whole ^{[5, pp. 52-53]}, which is the subject of Fromm's humanistic ethics, i.e. he, following Adler, postulates the holism of the human psyche and calls this holism primarily valuable.

Next, it is worth paying attention to the issue of dividing ethics into authoritarian (heteronomous) and humanistic (autonomous), in each of which he distinguished formal and material criteria. According to the formal criterion, authoritarian ethics denies a person's ability to distinguish between the moral aspects of life on the basis of weakness, the need for dependence and the rejection of their own reason and knowledge, this ability is shifted to the authority-idol with its magically acquired power; according to the material criterion, it is exploitative (including in spiritual terms), although the exploited individual can receive or use the various benefits that authority provides ^{[5, pp. 23-24]}. According to the formal criterion, humanistic ethics postulates the person himself as the creator and user of moral values; according to the material criterion, the only criterion of ethical value is human well-being, while well-being is generally understood as something that does not contradict the creative attitude ^{[5, p. 27]}. Such ideas about productivity go beyond the capabilities of classical psychoanalysis, which is emphasized by Fromm himself ^{[6, p. 314]}.

Thus, good in Fromm's ethics means everything that contributes to the deployment of a person's inner forces, and evil means everything that weakens them ^{[5, p. 36]}. Good means to be alive and appreciate life and the living, to develop, to get involved in the life process (here one can trace the influence of the philosophy of life on the thinker), and evil means spiritual deadness, materialism ^{[8, pp. 200-201]}. At the same time, the philosopher does not believe that people, from birth or in their actual existence, are inevitably divided into good or evil – they become such in the process of individual growth and development, and evil is rather a failure on the way to a good and favorable development of internal processes and aspirations of a person than a naturally given orientation. As can be understood from the text above, the cornerstone of Erich Fromm's theory is the obligatory process of individuation, the disclosure of a person's internal potential productive forces, which do not exist without a special attitude to life and without a certain level of spiritual development and human health.

Erich Fromm overcomes the relativism of opposing ethical positions due to the fact that all knowledge about the other is based on shared experience, on getting used to and experiencing similar events, thoughts and feelings. Also in many works Fromm notes that in every person there are unconscious makings of polar behavior in psycho-emotional, economic, social, political, ethical and many other plans, and the realization always lies in the field of potential and becoming ^{[8, pp. 203-204]}. And yet the philosopher's position did not become internationally accepted, his ethical system remained blurred and filled with slogans instead of constructive positive proposals.

X-experience as the basis of ethics of the futureOne of the most unusual and noteworthy concepts of Erich Fromm is what in his early works he called "systems of orientation and commitment", namely x-experience – that is, a kind of metaphysical-teleological construction (ethically, aesthetically, axiologically neutral), the basis of a deep existential experience that lies behind any religious, spiritual, moral experience.

Fromm wonders what can take the place of religion in a world where, instead of the concept of God, there is still a positive present reality that is the basis of this concept? It was important for the author not to cause disdain and rejection of his own terminology among both religious and secular people, which he quite succeeded. According to the philosopher, it is difficult to use words like "religiosity" or "spirituality" because of their ambiguity and complexity of definition and distinction. Following the example of the non-theistic concepts of Buddhists, Spinoza, he chose to use a neutral phrase ^{[8, p. 68]}. Fromm went to this term for decades and was able to formulate it only in the book "You will be like Gods", published in 1966, when the author was 66 years old. This book does not give a direct definition of a complex and elusive concept, but provides some characteristic features that a person with this kind of experience possesses:

1) love of life (absence of destructive and "necrophilic" tendencies);

2) the perception of life as a problem, as a question that requires an answer;

3) the existence of a productive humanistic system of ideals and higher values (optimal development of one's own powers of reason, love, empathy, courage);

4) the goal of life is a "man" who never turns out to be a means (postulating Kant's categorical imperative);

5) the condition of psychological transcendence (going beyond the ego, involvement in the world /lack of detachment, getting rid of narcissism, greed and fears).

6) discernment to distinguish between false x-experiences rooted in hysteria and other forms of mental illness, and non-pathological experiences of love and togetherness.

7) the presence of a conscious concept of true independence ("... you need to be able to distinguish rational authority from irrational, idea from ideology, willingness to suffer for your own beliefs from masochism" ^{[8, pp. 68-72]}).

Further, Erich Fromm names two more qualities necessary for the formation of an authentic x-experience, which are possible only thanks to psychoanalysis and the use of its specific terminology:

1) the need to distinguish between conscious thoughts and affective experiences that may or may not express adequate conceptualization;

2) understanding and correlating unconscious experiences that underlie x-experiences with opposing or blocking them (without understanding unconscious processes, it is difficult to assess the relative and often random nature of our conscious thoughts ^{[8, p. 72]}).  

This is probably Fromm's biggest and most underrated contribution to philosophy and social sciences. The rudimentary nature of this concept within the framework of Erich Fromm's general philosophical-socio-psychological system can be explained by the lack of thinkers who could and would like to develop it, as well as the specificity of the author's views and idealistic ethical position on the question that fewer and fewer scientists and researchers pose in their research, which fewer and fewer people consider worthy of attention and spiritual forces.

Erich Fromm, skeptical about his contemporaries in general, notes the common tendency to neglect the highest values of modern man. Living in an atmosphere of boredom, anxiety and emptiness, a person covers his growing depression with uncontrolled consumption. The goal was to acquire technical innovations, not direct life, to have more, not to become more ^{[8, p. 246]}. Nevertheless, the concept of x-experience could unite religious and secular people and give the necessary impetus to their desire to know reality in all possible dimensions, to accumulate the forces of humanity in the fight against disunity, increasing psychological alienation and disorientation.

Criticism of E. Fromm's ideas of social transformationAs it was written earlier in the work, Fromm's concepts were repeatedly subjected to harsh criticism, especially from colleagues at the neo-Marxist Frankfurt School. A.V. Gnedko cites G. Marcuse as an example.

A Russian researcher writes: "A reasonable question arises: is such a productive psychological orientation possible within the whole society?.. According to Marcuse, it is impossible to remain "healthy" while continuing to exist in an alienated destructive society. In addition, he argues that the values that a productive orientation carries (love, solidarity, respect, etc.) are also the values of a repressive civilization. Productive orientation actually only contributes to conformal behavior and adaptation. The reason for such optimistic and incorrect views, according to Marcuse, is Fromm's underestimation of biological factors, as well as his excessive idealism caused by a mixture of psychoanalysis and religious philosophy." ^{[6, pp.321-322]}

Oddly enough, the most severe criticism of Erich Fromm's work is from Marxists, including in Russian scientific articles. The main subject of disagreement is the psychological and individual mediation of the proposed social changes instead of the mass "basic" economic or financial-social changes familiar to Marxists. Thus A. F. Polomoshnov, V. D. Bakulov and E. A. Kotlyarova write that Fromm's theory is a utopian abstraction due to inattention to the issue of ownership of the means of production. The scientists listed above claim that his entire program is a reformist utopia, where a person corrupted by capitalism must carry out qualitative changes in society, and a "naive and unsupported" belief in the transformative power of Eurocentric humanistic ideals is taken as the most rational form of society organization, which he seeks to spread everywhere.  Scientists come to the conclusion about the sterility, impotence, abstractness of Fromm's humanism, which, as a result of all the above, becomes anti-humanism and contributes to its development ^{[9, p. 250]}.

Both Erich Fromm himself responds wonderfully to these attacks in his various works, and especially attentive researchers who have been studying him for decades. The thinker, as if taking into account the attacks of critics in advance, thought as follows: "Only in the presence of these two conditions – subjective dissatisfaction with a culturally set goal and a socio–economic basis for change – can the third necessary factor, rational understanding, begin to act. This is the principle of social and psychological changes in general and changes in the meaning of self-interest in particular." ^{[5, pp. 181-182]}

G. M. Tikhonov notes and echoes Fromm that socialism is at risk of infection by excessive consumption, therefore, it may deviate from the true goals in the form of comprehensive human liberation. Opposing researchers began to note the focus of socialism precisely on the economic fate of the working class, while the spiritual side is dismissed as insignificant, instead of overcoming socialism, people drown in it, which is why Fromm chose the alienated middle class as the target audience of his transformation, and not the worker, and reproaches socialist countries for reducing socialism to a system with universally the same equal consumption which, in the criticized capitalism, is guaranteed only to a select minority ^{[10, p. 20]}. The ideas of K. Marx, as E. Fromm notes bitterly, were perverted on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

ConclusionK. A. Vysotskaya and S. M. Kravtsov succinctly express Fromm's assessment of contemporary society, they write that rationalization and mechanization of life generates in an individual a feeling of loneliness, powerlessness, helplessness, frustration and anxiety – all this determines his self-traumatic experience ^{[11, p. 20]}.

Erich Fromm himself writes about this: "A lot of facts indicate that a person apparently chooses robotics (automation and alienation), and this ultimately means madness and destruction" ^{[7, p. 410]}.  More than once touching on religious issues in parallel with ethical ones, Fromm asks either to himself, or to readers and spiritual descendants: "... if we mean is the sensation dead, then instead of asking if God is dead, it is better to ask the question, is man dead?.. A person is in danger of becoming a thing, an increasingly alienated being, losing sight of the real problems of human existence and no longer being interested in the answers to these questions." ^{[8, p. 247]}

As you can see, at the same time, the consistent Austrian-American philosopher admits in his works some indiscretions (he calls a person and the concept of a person dead, postulates defeatist moods in society), justifying existing and emerging anti-humanistic thoughts and concepts: "... a person will be completely born, i.e. will become completely human if he cuts the umbilical cord connecting he is with his mother, as well as with his family and with the soil. However, dissection of incestuous bonds is not enough. A person cannot become completely human if he does not get rid of a person." ^{[8, p. 206]} I note that by incestuous bonds Erich Fromm does not mean the orthodox Oedipus complex of Freud, but increased attention and strengthening for a person the importance of emotional attachment to his mother/blood or named relatives, belonging to the people/nation which can and directly become an obstacle in the process of individuation and separation of a person. The thinker asserts that "... complete independence is one of the most difficult gains, even if a person overcomes his fixation on blood and land, on mother and clan, he relies on other forces that give him security and confidence: his people, his social group, his family, his achievements, his strength, your money. Or he plunges so deeply into narcissism that he does not feel like a stranger in the world, because he is the world, nothing exists but him and outside of him ^{[8, p. 91]}.

Despair and extremely pessimistic remarks about modern man are periodically seen through the author's text, although Fromm is considered to be an optimist on the issue of human development. Erich Fromm's humanism is on the borderline between defeat in the struggle against materialism and faith in the spiritual transformation of a person tired of his helplessness. It seems that it is this fact and this dichotomy within the psychoanalyst himself that influenced not only his special interest in the inner processes and motives of a person, but also his overwhelming affirmation optimism in written works and oral speeches. Fromm is a vivid personification of his contradictory views, and his concept remained on the verge between realization and possibility, it in itself reflects the mirage elusive potentiality of human life and transformations of society as a whole.

It follows from this that Erich Fromm's legacy can rather be considered a poetic monument to the contradictory nature of man than a clear guide to activity, and this is precisely his absurdist, truly existential motivating deep transformative nature, this contains a challenge to every person, humanity in his person and humanity as a whole. The translator of the book "The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness" noted in the preface that Fromm's psychoanalysis is rather a pointer for a person, gives an opportunity to choose, and is not a "substitute for religion", for which classical Freudianism was condemned ^{[12, p. 10]}. At the same time, the thinker himself emphasizes that descendants pay more attention to the reality of the values they personally perceive, which are replicated after years and centuries, and not to words and concepts that have rather the charm of relevance and the present moment ^{[8, pp. 247-248]}, because, according to Fromm, "the task of an ethical thinker is to support and strengthen the voice of human conscience, to show what is good and what is bad for a person, regardless of whether it is good or bad for society at a certain period of its evolution." ^{[5, p. 308]}