SIGMUND FREUD: 1856-1956
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"a whole society of psychically crippled and unproductive people,"
and that certain primitive cultures seem to be "predominantly de–
structive of man's best interests."
If
Fromm has read more modem
anthropology than Freud, he has apparently been less affected by it,
and cultural relativism has not laid a glove on him. In
The Sane
Society,
Fromm equates all ethics with "Greco-Judaeo-Christian"
ethics, a moral absolute, and remarks casually, "natural ethics, the
Decalogue," with the engaging footnote: "Minus the first command–
ment, which bears on man's destiny and not on ethics."
The opportunity, vastly greater than Freud's, that the neo–
Freudians have for acquiring some accurate information about the
nature of man in society seems to have resulted only
in
cheerier
illusions. Malinowski in
Sex and Repression in Savage Society
would
appear to have confirmed the universality of the Oedipus complex
by finding among his matriarchal Trobrianders an equivalent-the
male child's rivalry with the culture's father-surrogate, the mother's
brother. The neo-Freudians have taken it instead to show that, in
Homey's words, "the generation of such a complex depends on a
whole set of factors operating in family life"; in other words, that
all such unwholesome manifestations are socially produced and could
be eliminated by social change.
If
Freud generalized a universal hu–
man psyche from an early practice consisting largely of neurotic Jew–
ish middle-class women in tum-of-the-century Vienna, a reading of
The Golden Bough,
and his own self-analysis, all we can say is that
the ingredients of that curious stew simmered down to more wisdom
than all the resources of American industriousness have brought the
neo-Freudians. Socrates sitting on a stone in the market place still
knows more about the world than Alexander conquering it.
Ultimately, the differences of Homey, Fromm, and Sullivan
with Freud reduce themselves to a contrasting view of human nature,
to philosophic disagreement. The revisionists see man as fundamentally
good, innocent, and unfallen; thus they inevitably have a different
conception of human drives, relationships, and the aims of therapy.
In Homey's view of the child, frustration, sibling rivalry, the Oedi–
pus complex, and similar factors are not ultimately determining; the
important matters are "such parental attitudes as having real interest
in a child, real respect for it, giving it real warmth," and "such
qualities as reliability and sincerity."
As
for adults:
