Fromm, “The Social Determinants of Psychoanalytic Therapy” (1935) (III)

As we found in our last discussion, in Fromm’s judgment, “Freud…attributed comparatively little importance to the actual behavior and the particular character of the analyst” (151), assuming that the patient’s “transferential" anxiety goes its autonomous way, independently of these qualities. But this prejudice, Fromm continues, is difficult to reconcile with Freud’s own “magnificent achievement” — namely, “to have created this situation of radical openness and truthfulness” (151). More broadly, Freud neglects the humane “ethics” inseparable from his program, preferring the image of the affectless surgeon and describing the analysis itself “as a medical, therapeutic procedure” (151). Yet for Fromm, this medico-technical model not only fails to “capture” the “novel, human side of the situation” (151) — as though it were simply a matter of misdescribing its concrete, lived-reality. Beyond this, the model deforms that lived-reality, making the analytic situation itself less humane, honest, transparent, and the like.

To be sure, Freud introduced innovations that might have counteracted this deformation. He advised the would-be analyst to undergo her own analysis, in order to master unconscious dynamics and remedy  “blind spots” that distort her perceptions. And he recommended to her “an objective, unprejudiced, neutral, and benevolent stance towards anything the patient brings forth” (152), for which the norm of “tolerance” became a shorthand. Fromm suggests, however, that in practice these prescriptions began to coincide with the “emotional coldness and indifference” (152) Freud no less frequently idealized.

How exactly the concept of “tolerance” has come to embrace these (seemingly contradictory) semantic elements; what the relation of this concept is to the sociopolitical developments of the era; how this value does not serve, or no longer serves the purposes of psychoanalysis — Fromm addresses these questions in the remainder of his essay (152-164).

The evolving political context of the value of tolerance (152-154) concerns especially “two aspects of tolerance,” which seem to constitute the two endpoints of a spectrum. At one pole, tolerance indicates “mildness of judgment.” According to this use of the concept, we may recognize a position or behavior as unambiguously wrong, while still displaying “tolerance” inasmuch as we are “forbearing” and tend to “excuse the weaknesses of human beings” (152) — to “forgive” persons and actions, the moral inferiority of which we do not doubt. At the opposite pole, tolerance signals, not an attitude of forbearance or forgiveness, but the renunciation of moral judgment entirely: “Judgment itself is viewed as being intolerant and one-sided” (152).

Fromm indicates that the first meaning of tolerance — a mildness of judgment encapsulated by the maxim, “Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner” — took hold in the early modern era and announced an essentially progressive political orientation:

“Until the 18th century, the call for tolerance had a militant connotation. This call was directed against the state and the church, both of which forbade people to believe in certain things, let alone state them aloud. The fight for tolerance was a fight against the oppression and the silencing of human beings. It was fought by the representatives of the upcoming bourgeoisie who attacked the political and economical chains of the absolutistic state.” (152)

This “call for tolerance” entails no renunciation of moral judgment — indeed, it seems to possess a morality of its own. At stake here is rather the authority of the church and state to impose a (potentially legitimate) morality. This standpoint urges, or even demands, that authorities display “mildness” in their — hitherto rigid and violent — judgment.

By contrast, the second meaning of tolerance — the total renunciation of judgment suggested by another maxim, Frederick the Great’s “Let everyone find salvation according to his own fashion” (152) — should be associated with a distinct political-economic reality:

“The meaning of the concept of tolerance shifted with the victory of the middle classes and their establishment as the ruling class. Formerly the battle cry against oppression and for freedom, tolerance more and more came to stand for an intellectual and moral laissez faire. This kind of tolerance was the prerequisite for a relation between people who met as buyers and sellers in the free market; individuals had to accept themselves as being of equal value, abstractly speaking, regardless of their subjective opinions and standards. They had to view standards of value as something private, which was not to be used for judging an individual. Tolerance became a relativism of values, and the latter were declared as belonging to the private sphere of the individual that was not to be intruded” (152)

I would like to say something about Fromm’s methodological orientation here, since he arranges this history briefly — almost in passing — without alerting the reader to his premises. As I see it, Fromm has in these passages developed a type of ideological analysis sometimes associated with Max Horkheimer — one of whose articles is, indeed, approvingly cited in a footnote. Such an analysis shows how a value or position may serve different ideological “functions,” depending on the surrounding historical constellation. Hence a value such as freedom, justice, or equality will possess distinct meanings — regressive or progressive — that can only be determined in light of these constellations.

(While there are any number of antecedents for this sort of critique, including Marx, one important source is surely the “Second Essay” of Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morality, in which the history of the concept “punishment” is examined at length. Nietzsche shows that this concept contains multiple meanings which depend on the many “purposes” to which the practice has been put, and famously concluding: “[A]ll concepts in which an entire process is semiotically concentrated elude definition; only that which has no history is definable” (GM, II, ¶13). In “Social Determinants,” Fromm’s focus is “tolerance,” and he tacitly follows Nietzsche’s dictum regarding the historicity, hence the overdetermined social function of all values-concepts.)

Thus the value of “tolerance,” which in the early modern period was antagonistic toward the dominant powers — state and church — was gradually co-opted by the ascending class of property-owners as a warrant for its economic interests. Whereas before tolerance checked tyranny, it tended now to eliminate any moral scruple which might interfere with the “free exchange of goods.”

Now, by the time Freud grounds his psychoanalytic ethos in “tolerance,” the value had come to embrace heterogeneous elements as a result of this changing historical function. For Fromm, this heterogeneity or tension would be “reconciled” in a basically mystifying way:

“The concept of liberalistic tolerance, as it was developed in the 19th century, is in itself contradictory: Consciously, there is relativism with regard to any values whatsoever, in the unconscious there is an equally strong condemnation of all violations of taboos" (153)

This full spectrum of meanings was exhibited, Fromm continues, by “the various bourgeois reform movements” (153) — for example, in penal and school reform. Both promoted a naturalistic understanding and explanation of deviant behaviors, the “humane” correction of criminals and the education of children, but on behalf of certain liberal ideals that were never seriously challenged.

“Even the most liberal law reformer would have refused—albeit with all kinds of rationalizations—to have a ”criminal” as a son-in-law, if his daughter wished to marry an embezzler who had spent time in jail” (153)

And similarly with regard to children: “Striving for success, the fulfillment of duty, and respect for facts were the unalterable goals of education” (153). In both cases, taboos with deep psychological roots prevent any application in practice of the “value-free" doctrine preached in word.

Finally, the same sort of tension surfaces in psychoanalysis, and in perhaps its most pointed form:

“The concept of bourgeois-liberal tolerance finds another expression in the psychoanalytic situation. In it, a person is supposed to express, in the presence of another, exactly such thoughts and impulses that are in crassest contradiction to the social taboos; and the other is supposed not to flare up indignantly, not to take a moralistic stance, but to remain unbiased and friendly, in short, to refrain from any judgmental attitude whatsoever…The tolerance of the psychoanalyst…shows the two sides mentioned above: On the one hand he does not judge, remains neutral and objective towards all manifestations; on the other hand, like any other member of his class, he shares the respect for the fundamental social taboos and the dislike for anyone violating them” (153-154)

In terms of the polarity introduced above, Fromm seems to be arguing that, notwithstanding (a) the self-styled “value-free” neutrality of the analytic attitude, according to which the patient’s productions are to be dispassionately observed as would any other “natural” phenomena, (b)  a definite moralism continued to cling to that attitude, mainly unconsciously, according to which all the “taboos” of the liberal order — political, economic, sexual — are essentially taken for granted. Indeed: precisely because these taboos and norms are tacitly acknowledged, Freud can help himself to a condescending “mildness of judgment” when speaking, for instance, of the sorry state of neurotics who — owing to their failure to thrive according to dominant legal, economic, and sexual norms — deserve our pity, rather than reproach or punishment.