Frankfurt School, 1935 (4): Erich Fromm on Freud and the nature of tolerance (Part 1 of 3)

Psychologist Erich Fromm (1900-1980)

Erich Fromm contributed an article to the 3/1935 issue of Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung titled "Die gesellschaftliche Bedingtheit der psychoanlytischen Therapie" (The Social Conditioning of Psychoanalytic Therapy). Despite the expansive-sounding title, Fromm is focusing in particular on a criticism of an technical aspect of clinical psychoanalytic therapy, described more fully below, in which the analyst listens to the spontaneous associations the patient is making with an attitude of tolerance, in the sense of not making judgments of a moral or other nature on what the patient is saying. Fromm relies heavily on the criticisms made by Sándor Ferenczi (1873-1933), one of Sigmund Freud’s inner circle who had broken with Freud’s method of treatment.

I’m not going to try to evaluate the strengths or weaknesses of Fromm’s clinical argument. For good or bad, that particular technique is still used by Freudian psychoanalysts today, as Stanley Leavy points out in "What Happened to Psychoanalysis?" American Imago 1/2010.

But in the process of his criticism, Fromm describes some of the larger historical background of tolerance, one relevant to one of the more famous products of the Frankfurt School, Herbert Marcuse’s essay, "Repressive Tolerance."

But to understand what Fromm is addressing, it’s necessary to know the role tolerance plays in the clinical technique he references. Freud himself described the rule to which Fromm refers in "Psycho-Analysis" (1922) Sigmund Freud: Collected Papers Vol. 5. Here he calls it the Fundamental Technical Rule:

The treatment is begun by the patient being required to put himself in the position of an attentive and dispassionate self-observer, merely to read off all the time the surface of his consciousness, and on the one hand to make a duty of the most complete candour while on the other not holding back any idea from communication, even if (1) he feels that it is too disagreeable or if (2) he judges that it is nonsensical or (3} too unimportant or (4) irrelevant to what is being looked for. It is uniformly found that precisely those ideas which provoke these last-mentioned reactions are of particular value in discovering the forgotten material. ...

It was now a matter of regarding the material produced by the patients' associations as though it hinted at a hidden meaning and of discovering that meaning from it. Experience soon showed that the attitude which the analytical physician could most advantageously adopt was to surrender himself to his own unconscious mental activity, in a state of easy and impartial attention, to avoid so far as possible reflection and the construction of conscious expectations, not to try to fix anything that he heard particularly in his memory, and by these means to catch the drift of the patient's unconscious with his own unconscious. It was then found that, except under conditions that were too unfavourable, the patient's associations emerged like allusions, as it were, to one particular theme and that it was only necessary for the physician to go a step further in order to guess the material which was concealed from the patient himself and to be able to communicate it to him. It is true that this work of interpretation was not to be brought under strict rules and left a great deal of play to the physician's tact and skill; but, with impartiality and practice, it was usually possible to obtain trustworthy results—that is to say, results which were confirmed by being repeated in similar cases. [my emphasis]

Stanley Leavy describes the technique from today’s perspective:

No psychoanalytic method exists that isn't still a "talking cure." Psychoanalysis depends on words, spoken almost always in the participant presence of another person. The "basic rule" propounded by Freud holds as always, that the patient try to say whatever comes to mind, notwithstanding self-criticism, embarrassing or otherwise troubling self-revelation, including also uncomplimentary comment - or the reverse - about the analyst's personality, history as known, profession, family, or chosen milieu, etc. What is the intention of this relaxation of some of the standards of ordinary courtesy, privacy, and the normal proprieties in general? Quite simply: self-disclosure, recognizing that we know much more of ourselves than we profess, or could acknowledge without this massive self-examination.

It is not a conversation. The listener, the analyst, does not engage in it as an equal participant, that is, has no intention of revealing a paralllel inner world. ... Everything uttered by the speaker [the patient] is worth hearing, without judgment, patiently and with interest. [my emphasis]

(Continued tomorrow in Part 2)

Tags: erich fromm, frankfurt school, freud