FREUD AND CULTURE
121
tion of whether we could not study the "cultural super-ego" as an in–
dependent social agency and thus apply psychoanalysis to the pathology
of whole cultures. He presently warned, however, that such an under–
taking would encounter serious difficulties. For in the case of an in–
dividual neurosis, we have a fixed, though arbitrary and conventional,
standard of "reality" by which we are guided in the therapeutic situa–
tion. It is the cultural pattern itself "which we assume to be 'normal'."
No such standard of comparison would be available in dealing with the
neurosis of a whole culture.
II
This hint thrown out at the end of
Civilization and its Dis–
contents
has produced a spate of studies on the pathology of cultures–
German, Russian, Japanese, English, French, and American. None of
them, I think, has been able to avoid the danger against which Freud
warned wisely. All of them have blithely proceeded on the doubtful as–
s:.tmption that there is a
cultural
standard of "normalcy" against which
we can measure and evaluate deviations. The latest study in this direc–
tion is Erich Fromm's book
The San e Society.
2
In
Escape From Freedom,
Fromm attempted to diagnose the pathology of totalitarianism;
The Sane
Society
is his contribution to the pathology of democratic capitalism.
There is much in this analysis, particularly in the long fifth chapter
called "Man in Capitalistic Society," which is first-rate social psychology;
but in this survey I wish to concentrate only upon the over-all phil–
osophical perspective from which the book is written. For
The Sane
Society
is a most instructive document for clarifying, once and for all,
( 1) the differences between the "cultural schools" of psychoanalysis and
Freud's approach to culture, and (2) the social and philosophical
im–
plications of these differences.
Fromm's concept of culture is in the tradition of Marx and Freud.
Only instead of using terms like "ideological superstructure" or "cultural
super-ego," he introduces the notion of a "social character," which he
has used in previous books. It is the characterological counterpart of the
cultural super-ego in that it refers to those character traits and attitudes
which people have in common by virtue of the fact that they live in the
same society. Similarly, Fromm's explanation of neurosis, whether indiv–
vidual or social, is quite traditional. A neurosis is, roughly speaking, the
result of a severe conflict between the social character
(i.e.,
cultural
super-ego), on the one hand, and basic human drives, on the other. What
2 Rinehart. $5.00.
