Abstract
This chapter introduces a psychosocial strand of thinking that offers a way to conceive of creative relations between the psyche and the world. Whereas much current psychosocial theory stresses how anxieties are managed by defending the self against the world or fuel subjection to oppressive social norms, the theories we engage with here point to ways in which anxieties can be employed in the urge to bridge inner longings and external realities. These ideas took form in the early Frankfurt School, which despite their comprehensive integration of psychoanalytic and social theory until recently has been comparatively marginalized in Anglophone Psychosocial Theory.
The chapter presents and discusses three notions: Erich Fromm’s Freedom, Hans Loewald’s Resonance, and Alfred Lorenzer’s Interaction. Even though different in emphasis and outlook, these notions contribute to a shared intellectual project, namely, to point to potentially productive and non-antagonist interactions between the psyche and society. They do so not by virtue of some resistant part of unspoiled nature residing in the body or in the mind, but by virtue of being able to point to the more or less life-enhancing and life-impeding forms this interaction of psychic energies and societal needs may take.
We argue that these theorists and their notions of freedom, resonance and interaction, contribute to further develo** the materialist conception of the psychosocial in ways that appear specifically urgent today. They enable us to theorize tensions within current society, between dynamics that drive instrumentalization and reification on the one hand, and more life-enhancing and mutually enriching interactions between human beings, social structures, and natural environments on the other.
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Notes
- 1.
Fromm, Lorenzer and Loewald have witnessed renewed interest the last decades (see, for example, on Fromm: Dunkan, 2019; Dunkan & Braune, 2020; Funk, 2019; on Loewald: special issue, Psychoanalysis, Culture, and Society, Whitebook, 1995; Lear, 1996, 1998; Chodorow, 2003; on Lorenzer: special issue, Psychoanalysis, Culture, and Society, Redman et al., 2010).
- 2.
The early Frankfurt School theorists drew on Marx’ critique of capitalist economy and the notion of reified relationships among people as well as between them and their environments. They also took inspiration from Lukacs’ elaboration of the concept of reification, and Max Weber’s (2001 [1904]) notion of rationalization and the disenchantment of the world (see, e.g., Marcus, 1984; Whitebook, 1995). These strands of sociological thinking were combined with the Freudian theory of the unconscious, in order to identify emancipatory powers that could point to new forms of sociality or to understand the development of psychological defenses that could contribute to the rise of fascism.
- 3.
Freud developed his notion of drives, or “Triebe,” from his early to his later writings. In Freud’s early writings, drives, or “Triebe,” aim toward tension reduction, or their neutralization in a homeostatic state. He reworks this conception throughout his writings, with a turning point in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (Freud, 1920), where he introduced the term Eros, which was further developed in his subsequent writings. Also, the notion of drives has been subject to various interpretations and partly confusion. Some point to the English translation of “Triebe” to ‘instinct’ as one source of confusion. For a detailed review on this concept in Freud’s works, see, for example, James Strachey’s introduction to Instincts and Their Vicissitudes (Freud & Strachey, 1964 [1915]).
- 4.
Psychoanalytic perspectives had been more or less absent at the Institute for Social Research after Adorno died in 1969, but they were continued at the Sigmund Freud Institute, founded in 1960, under the lead of Alexander Mitscherlich and later Marianne Leutzinger-Bohleber and Vera King. Also, scholars located in universities in Bremen, Marburg, and Hannover continued to draw on psychoanalytic theories in their social psychological work in the 1980s and 1990s, within fields of study often referred to as materialist socialization theory, psychoanalytic social psychology, or psychoanalytic cultural theory. Most notably Alfred Lorenzer, who is represented in this chapter, but one could also mention important contributors like Alfred Krovoza, Thomas Leithäuser, Ulrike Prokop, Birgit Vollmerg, and Thomas Ziehe.
- 5.
Strictly speaking, of the theorists we engage with in the following, only Erich Fromm was member of the Frankfurt School. Yet, in different ways, all the three theorists developed further the psychosocial theory that was formulated in the early Frankfurt School.
- 6.
Marx’ notion of praxis is something distinct from practical pursuits. It refers to the dialectic of human needs and powers that drive the development of subjectivities, societies, and histories. Marx developed the Aristotelian concept of praxis in his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (Marx, 1964). Praxis does not primarily refer to goal-directed action, but to the realization of human potential of action through creative self-expression (see Fromm, 1961; Joas & Knöbl, 2009; Thompson, 2016).
- 7.
Rosa’s collaborations with psychoanalytic thinkers (e.g., King et al., 2018) nevertheless indicate his proximity to that branch of psychosocial thinking. We would argue that Winnicottian object-relational thinking and Loewald’s notion of Eros and resonance come very close to Rosa’s theoretical aims.
- 8.
A seeming difference between Loewald and Fromm is that the latter is very critical to the concept of sublimation because it implies that it is the libidinal forces themselves that are transformed, instead of their form of satisfaction in the encounter with the world. However, Loewald’s reworking of the concept to embrace psychic motivational forces that become organized in tandem with the processes of individuation may bring it closer to Fromm’s position.
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Aarseth, H., Krüger, S., Nielsen, H.B. (2023). Freedom, Resonance, Interaction. In: Frosh, S., Vyrgioti, M., Walsh, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Psychosocial Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61510-9_53-1
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