Beyond the Chains of Illusion

My Encounter with Marx and Freud

Erich Fromm

• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781480402102
• Topic: Psychologie
• Subtopic: Psychoanalyse

Profound insights into Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud from the "prolific and eclectic" social theorist and bestselling author of Escape from Freedom ( The Washington Post).
 
According to renowned psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, three people shaped the essential character of the twentieth century: Albert Einstein, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud. While the first two figures had a great physical and political impact on the world, Fromm believes that Freud had an even deeper impact, because he changed how we think about ourselves.
 
Beyond the Chains of Illusion is one of Fromm's most autobiographical works, as Fromm not only comments on the ideas of Freud and Marx, but also crystallizes his own theories on social character and unconscious values. The book brilliantly summarizes Fromm's ideas on how culture and society shape our behavior.
 
This ebook features an illustrated biography of Erich Fromm including rare images and never-before-seen documents from the author's estate.
 
 
 

IX. The Social Unconscious

The social character which makes people act and think as they have to act and think from the standpoint of the proper functioning of their society is only one link between the social structure and ideas. The other link lies in the fact that each society determines which thoughts and feelings shall be permitted to arrive at the level of awareness and which have to remain unconscious. Just as there is a social character, there is also a “social unconscious.”

By “social unconscious” I refer to those areas of repression which are common to most members of a society; these commonly repressed elements are those contents which a given society cannot permit its members to be aware of if the society with its specific contradictions is to operate successfully. The “individual unconscious” with which Freud deals refers to those contents, which an individual represses for reasons of individual circumstances peculiar to his personal life situation. Freud deals to some extent with the “social unconscious” when he talks about the repression of incestuous strivings as being characteristic of all civilization; but in his clinical work, he mainly deals with the individual unconscious, and little attention is paid by most analysts to the “social unconscious.”

Before I can begin to discuss the “social unconscious,” it is necessary to present briefly the concept of the unconscious as Freud developed it, and the corresponding concept in Marx’s system.

There is, indeed, no more fundamental discovery of Freud’s than that of the unconscious. Psychoanalysis can be defined as a system which is based on the assumption that we repress the awareness of the most significant experiences; that the conflict between the unconscious reality within ourselves and the denial of that reality in our consciousness often leads to neurosis, and that by making the unconscious conscious, the neurotic symptom or character trait can be cured. While Freud believed that this uncovering of the unconscious was the most important tool for the therapy of neurosis, his vision went far beyond this therapeutic interest. He saw how unreal most of what we think about ourselves is, how we deceive ourselves continuously about ourselves and about others; he was prompted by the passionate interest to touch the reality, which is behind our conscious thought. Freud recognized that most of what is real within ourselves is not conscious, and that most of what is conscious is not real. This devotion to the search for inner reality opened up a new dimension of truth. The person who does not know the phenomenon of the unconscious is convinced he says the truth if he says what he knows. Freud showed that we all deceive ourselves to a larger or smaller degree about the truth. Even if we are sincere with regard to what we are aware of, we are probably still lying because our consciousness is “false,” it does not represent the underlying real experience within ourselves.

Freud started out with observation on an individual scale. Here are some random examples: a man may have a secret pleasure in looking at pornographic pictures. He does not admit any such interest to himself but is convinced, consciously, that he considers such pictures to be harmful and that it is his duty to see to it that they are not exhibited anywhere. In this way he is constantly concerned with pornography, looks at such pictures as part of his campaign against them, and thus satisfies his desire. But he has a very good conscience. His real desires are unconscious, and what is conscious is a rationalization which hides completely what he does not want to know. Thus he is enabled to satisfy his desire without sensing the conflict with his moral judgment. Another example would be that of a father with sadistic impulses, who tends to punish and mistreat his children. But he is convinced that he beats them because that is the only way to teach them virtue and to protect them from doing evil. He is not aware of any sadistic satisfaction—he is only aware of the rationalization, his idea of duty and of the right method of bringing up children. Here is still another example: a political leader may conduct a policy which leads to war. He may be motivated by a wish for his own glory and fame, yet he is convinced that his actions are determined exclusively by his patriotism and his sense of responsibility to his country. In all these instances the underlying and unconscious desire is so well rationalized by a moral consideration that the desire is not only covered up, but also aided and abetted by the very rationalization the person has invented. In the normal course of his life, such a person will never discover the contradiction between the reality of his desires and the fiction of his rationalizations, and hence he will go on acting according to his desire. If anyone would tell him the truth, that is to say, mention to him that behind his sanctimonious rationalizations are the very desires which he bitterly disapproves of, he would sincerely feel indignant or misunderstood and falsely accused. This passionate refusal to admit the existence of what is repressed, Freud called “resistance.” Its strength is roughly in proportion to the strength of the repressive tendencies.

Naturally, while every kind of experience can be repressed, it follows from Freud’s theoretical frame of reference that in his view the strivings which are most severely repressed are the sexual ones which are incompatible with the norms of civilized man, and first of all the incestuous strivings. But according to Freud, hostile and aggressive strivings also are repressed inasmuch as they are in conflict with the existing mores and the Super-Ego. Whatever the specific contents of the repressed strivings are, in Freud’s view they represent always the “dark” side of man, the antisocial, primitive equipment of man which has not been sublimated, and which is in contrast to what man believes to be civilized and decent. It must be stressed again that in Freud’s concept of the unconscious, repression means that the awareness of the impulse has been repressed, not the impulse itself; in the case of sadistic impulses, for instance, this means that I am not aware of my wish to inflict pain on others. However, this does not necessarily mean that I do not inflict pain upon others, provided that I can rationalize it as duty, or that I inflict pain on others without being aware that they suffer from my actions. There is also the possibility that the impulse is not acted upon precisely because I could not prevent myself from being aware of it, nor find a fitting rationalization. In this case the impulse will still exist, but the repression of its awareness will lead to its suppression as far as acting upon it is concerned. In any case, repression means a distortion in man’s consciousness; it does not mean the removal of forbidden impulses from existence. It means that the unconscious forces have gone underground and determined man’s actions behind his back.

What, according to Freud, causes repression? We have said already that those impulses are prevented from becoming conscious which are incompatible with existing social or family mores. This statement refers to the contents of repression; but what is the psychological mechanism through which the act of repression is possible? According to Freud, this mechanism is fear. The most representative example in Freud’s theory is that of the repression of the boy’s incestuous strivings toward his mother. Freud assumes that the little boy becomes afraid of his rival—father—and, specifically, that father will castrate him. This fear makes him repress the awareness of the desire and helps him channel his desires in other directions, although the scar of the first fright never entirely disappears. While “castration fear” is the most elementary fear leading to repression, other fears such as that of not being loved or of being killed or abandoned can, according to Freud, have the same power as the original castration fear, namely, to force man to repress his deepest desires.

While in individual psychoanalysis, Freud would look for the individual factors of repression, it would nevertheless be erroneous to assume that his concept of repression is to be understood only in individual terms. On the contrary, Freud’s concept of repression also has a social dimension. The more society develops into higher forms of civilization, the more instinctive desires become incompatible with the existing social norms, and thus the more repression must take place. Increasing civilization, to Freud, means increasing repression. But Freud never went beyond this quantitative and mechanistic concept of society and he did not examine the specific structure of a society and its influence on repression.

If the forces which cause repression are so powerful, how did Freud ever hope to make the unconscious conscious, to “de-repress” the repressed? It is well known that the psychoanalytic therapy he devised serves precisely this end. By analyzing dreams, and by understanding the “free associations,” the uncensored and spontaneous thoughts of the patient, Freud attempted to arrive, with the patient, at knowing what the patient did not know before: his unconscious.

What were the theoretical premises for this use of the analysis of dreams and of free association for the discovery of the unconscious?

Doubtlessly in the first years of his psychoanalytic research, Freud shared the conventional rationalistic belief that knowledge was intellectual, theoretical knowledge. He thought that it was enough to explain to the patient why certain developments had taken place, and to tell him what the analyst had discovered in his unconscious. This intellectual knowledge, called “interpretation,” was supposed to effect a change in the patient. But soon Freud and other analysts had to discover the truth of Spinoza’s statement that intellectual knowledge is conducive to change only inasmuch as it is also affective knowledge. It became apparent that intellectual knowledge as such does not produce any change, except perhaps in the sense that by intellectual knowledge of his unconscious strivings a person may be better able to control them—which, however, is the aim of traditional ethics, rather than that of psychoanalysis. As long as the patient remains in the attitude of the detached self-observer, he is not in touch with his unconscious, except by thinking about it; he does not experience the wider, deeper reality within himself. Discovering one’s unconscious is, precisely, not only an intellectual act, but also an affective experience, which can hardly be put into words, if at all. This does not mean that thinking and speculation may not precede the act of discovery; but the act of discovery is not an act of thinking but of being aware and, still better perhaps, simply of seeing. To be aware of experiences, thoughts or feelings, which were unconscious, does not mean thinking about them, but seeing them, just as being aware of one’s breathing does not mean to think about it. Awareness of the unconscious is an experience which is characterized by its spontaneity and suddenness. One’s eyes are suddenly opened; oneself and the world appear in a different light, are seen from a different viewpoint. There is usually a good deal of anxiety aroused while the experience takes place, while afterward a new feeling of strength is present. The process of discovering the unconscious can be described as a series of ever-widening experiences, which are felt deeply and which transcend theoretical, intellectual knowledge.

In the question of the possibility of making the unconscious conscious, it is of the foremost importance to recognize factors which obstruct this process. There are many factors which make it difficult to arrive at insight into the unconscious. Such factors are mental rigidity, lack of proper orientation, hopelessness, lack of any possibility to change realistic conditions, etc. But there is probably no single factor which is more responsible for the difficulties of making the unconscious conscious than the mechanism which Freud called “resistance.”

What is resistance? Like so many discoveries, it is so simple that one might say anyone could have discovered it—yet it required a great discoverer to recognize it. Let us take an example: your friend has to undertake a trip of which he is obviously afraid. You know that he is afraid, his wife knows it, everyone else knows it, but he does not know it. He claims one day that he does not feel well, the next day that there is no need to make the trip, the day after that that there are better ways to achieve the same result without traveling, then the next day that your persistence in reminding him of the trip is an attempt to force him, and since he does not want to be forced, he just won’t make the trip, and so on, until he will say that it is now too late to go on the trip, anyway, hence there is no use in thinking any further about it. If, however, you mention to him, even in the most tactful way, that he might not want to go because he is afraid, you will get not a simple denial, but more likely a violent barrage of protestations and accusations which will eventually drive you into the role of having to apologize, or even—if you are now afraid of losing his friendship—of declaring that you never meant to say that he was afraid and, in fact, ending up with enthusiastic praise of his courage.

What has happened? The real motivation for not wanting to go is fear. (What he is afraid of is of no significance for the purposes of this discussion; suffice it to say, that his fear could be objectively justified or the reason for his fear merely imagined.) This fear is unconscious. Your friend, however, must choose a “reasonable” explanation for his not wanting to go—a “rationalization.” He may discover every day a new one (anyone who has tried to give up smoking knows how easily rationalizations come) or stick to one main rationalization. It does not matter, in fact, whether the rationalization as such is valid or not; what matters is that it is not the effective or sufficient cause for his refusal to go. The most amazing fact, however, is the violence of his reaction when we mention the real motive to him, the intensity of his resistance. Should we not rather expect him to be glad, or even grateful for our remark, since it permits him to cope with the real motive for his reluctance? But whatever we think about what he should feel, the fact is that he does not feel it. Obviously he cannot bear the idea of being afraid. But why? There are several possibilities. Perhaps he has a narcissistic image of himself of which lack of fear is an integral part, and if this image is disturbed, his narcissistic self-admiration and, hence, his sense of his own value and his security would be threatened. Or perhaps his super-ego, the internalized code of right and wrong, happens to be such that fear or cowardice are bitterly condemned; hence to admit fear would mean to admit that he has acted against his code. Or, perhaps, he feels the need to save for his friends the picture of a man who is never frightened because he is so unsure of their friendship, that he is afraid they would cease liking him if they knew he was afraid. Any of these reasons may be effective, but why is it that they are so effective? One answer lies in the fact that his sense of identity is linked with these images. If they are not “true”—then who is he? What is true? Where does he stand in the world? Once these questions arise, the person feels deeply threatened. He has lost his familiar frame of orientation and with it his security. The anxiety aroused is not only a fear of something specific as Freud saw it, like a threat to the genitals, or to life, etc.; but it is also caused by the threat to one’s identity. Resistance is an attempt to protect oneself from a fright, which is comparable to the fright, caused by even a small earthquake—nothing is secure, everything is shaky; I don’t know who I am nor where I am. In fact, this experience feels like a small dose of insanity which for the moment, even though it may last only for seconds, feels more than uncomfortable.

More will be said later about resistance and the fears which produce repression, but we must first return to the discussion of some other aspects of the unconscious.

In psychoanalytic terminology, which by now has become quite popular, one speaks of “the unconscious” as if it were a place inside the person, like the cellar of a house. This idea has been reinforced by Freud’s famous division of the personality into three parts: the Id, the Ego, and the Super-Ego. The Id represents the sum total of instinctual desires, and at the same time, since most of them are not permitted to arrive at the level of awareness, it can be identified with the “unconscious.” The Ego, representing man’s organized personality inasmuch as it observes reality and has the function of realistic appreciation, at least as far as survival is concerned, may be said to represent “consciousness.” The super-ego, the internalization of father’s (and society’s) commands and prohibitions, can be both conscious and unconscious, and hence does not lend itself to being identified with the unconscious or the conscious respectively. The topographical use of the unconscious has certainly been stimulated further by the general tendency in our time to think in terms of having, which will be discussed later on in this chapter. People say that they have insomnia, instead of being sleepless, or of having a problem of depression, rather than of being depressed; thus they have a car, a house, a child, as they have a problem, a feeling, a psychoanalyst—and an unconscious.

This is the reason why so many people today prefer to speak of the “subconscious”; it is still more clearly a region, rather than a function; while I can say I am unconscious of this or that, one could not say, “I am subconscious of it.”⁵¹ Another difficulty in the Freudian concept of the unconscious lies in the fact that it tends to identify a certain content, the instinctual strivings of the Id, with a certain state of awareness/unawareness, the unconscious, although Freud was careful to keep the concept of the unconscious separate from that of the Id. One must not lose sight of the fact that one is dealing here with two entirely distinct concepts; one deals with certain instinctual impulses—another with a certain state of perception—unawareness or awareness. It so happens that the average person in our society is unaware of certain instinctual needs. But the cannibal is quite aware of his desire to incorporate another human being, the psychotic is quite aware of that or other archaic desires, and so are most of us in our dreams. It will clarify the understanding of “the” unconscious if we insist on the separation between the concept of archaic contents and that of the state of unawareness, or unconsciousness.

The term “the unconscious” is actually a mystification (even though one might use it for reasons of convenience, as I am guilty of doing in these pages). There is no such thing as the unconscious; there are only experiences of which we are aware, and others of which we are not aware, that is, of which we are unconscious. If I hate a man because I am afraid of him, and if I am aware of my hate but not of my fear, we may say that my hate is conscious and that my fear is unconscious; still, my fear does not lie in that mysterious place: “the” unconscious.

But we repress not only sexual impulses or affects such as hate and fear; we repress also the awareness of facts provided they contradict certain ideas and interests which we do not want to have threatened. Good examples for this kind of repression are offered in the field of international relations. We find here a great deal of simple repression of factual knowledge. The average men, and even policy makers, forget conveniently facts which do not fit into their political reasoning. For instance, while discussing the Berlin question in the spring of 1961 with a very intelligent and knowledgeable newspaperman, I mentioned the fact that in my opinion we had given Khrushchev reason to believe that we were willing to compromise on the Berlin question in terms which had been dealt with in the Foreign Ministers’ conference in Geneva in 1959, those of symbolic troop reduction and cessation of anticommunist propaganda from West Berlin. The newspaper man insisted that there had been no such conference, and that there was never a discussion of such terms. He had completely repressed the awareness of facts which he had known less than two years befor...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Epigraph
• I. Some Personal Antecedents
• II. The Common Ground
• III. The Concept of Man and His Nature
• IV. Human Evolution
• V. Human Motivation
• VI. The Sick Individual and the Sick Society
• VII. The Concept of Mental Health
• VIII. Individual and Social Character
• IX. The Social Unconscious
• X. The Fate of Both Theories
• XI. Some Related Ideas
• XII. Credo
• Notes
• A Biography of Erich Fromm
• Copyright