...
"In studying the psychological reactions of a social group we deal with
the character structure of the members of the group, that is, of individual
persons; we are interested, however, not in the peculiarities by
which
these persons differ from each other, but in that part of their character
structure that is common to most members of the group. We can call this
character the social character. The social character necessarily is less
specific than the individual character. In describing the latter we deal
with the whole of the
traits which in their particular configuration form
the personality structure of this or that individual. The social character
comprises only a selection of traits, the essential nucleus of the
character structure of most members of a group which has developed as the
result of the basic experiences and mode of life common to that group.
Although there will be always 'deviants' with a totally different
character structure, the character structure of most members of the group
are variations of this nucleus, brought about by the accidental factors of
birth and life experience as they differ from one individual to another. If
we want to understand one individual most fully, these differentiating
elements are of the greatest importance. However, if we want to understand
how human energy is channelled and operates as a productive force in a
given social order, then the social character deserves our main interest."
"The concept of social character is a key concept for the understanding of
the social process. Character in the dynamic sense of analytic psychology
is the specific form in which human energy is shaped by the dynamic
adaptation of human needs to the particular mode of existence of a given
society. Character in its turn determines the thinking, feeling, and acting
of individuals. To see this is somewhat difficult with regard to our
thoughts, since we all [240] tend to share the conventional belief that
thinking is an exclusively intellectual act and independent of the
psychological structure of the personality. This is not so, however, and
the less so the more our thoughts deal with ethical, philosophical,
political, psychological or social problems rather than with the empirical
manipulation of concrete objects. Such thoughts, aside from the purely
logical elements that are involved in the act of thinking, are greatly
determined by the personality structure of the person who thinks. This
holds true for the whole of a doctrine or of a theoretical system as well
as for a single concept, like love, justice, equality, sacrifice. Each such
concept and each doctrine has an emotional matrix and this matrix is rooted
in the character structure of the individual."
...
At this point we can restate the most important differences
between the psychological approach pursued in this book and that
of Freud. The first point of difference [is that]
: we look upon human nature as essentially historically conditioned,
although we do not minimize the significance of biological factors and do
not believe that the question can I be put correctly in terms of cultural
versus biological factors. In
the second place, Freud's essential principle is to look upon man
as an entity, a closed system, endowed by nature with certain
physiologically conditioned drives, and to interpret the development of his
character as a reaction to satisfactions and frustrations of these drives;
whereas, in our opinion, the fundamental approach to human personality is
the understanding of man's relation to the world, to others, to nature, and
to himself. We believe that man is primarily a social being, and not, as
Freud assumes, primarily self-sufficient and only secondarily in need of
others in order to satisfy his instinctual needs. In this sense,
we believe that individual psychology is fundamentally social
psychology or, in Sullivan's terms, the psychology of interpersonal
relationships; the key problem of psychology is that of the particular kind
of relatedness of the individual towards the world, not that of
satisfaction or frustration of single instinctual desires. The problem of
what happens to man's instinctual desires has to be understood as one part
of the total problem of his relationship towards the world and not as the
problem of human personality. Therefore, in our approach, the needs and
desires that centre about the [p.248] individual's relations to others,
such as love, hatred, tenderness, symbiosis, are the fundamental
psychological phenomena, while with Freud they are only secondary results
from frustrations or satisfactions of instinctive needs.
The difference between Freud's biological and our own social orientation
has special significance with regard to the problems of characterology.
Freud - and on the basis of his findings, Abraham, Jones, and others -
assumed that the child experiences pleasure at so-called erogenous zones
(mouth and anus) in connection with the process of feeding and defecation ;
and that, either by over-stimulation, frustration, or constitutionally
intensified sensitivity, these erogenous zones retain their libidinous
character in later years when in the course of the normal development the
genital zone should have become of primary importance. It is assumed that
this fixation on the pregenital level leads to sublimations and
reaction-formations that become part of the character structure. Thus, for
instance, a person may have a drive to save money or other objects, because
he sublimates the unconscious desire to retain the stool. Or a person may
expect to get everything from somebody else and not as a result of his own
effort, because he is driven by an unconscious wish to be fed which is
sublimated into the wish to get help, knowledge, and so forth.
Freud's observations are of great importance, but he gave an erroneous
explanation. He saw correctly the passionate and irrational nature of these
"oral" and "anal" character traits. He saw also that such desires pervade
all spheres of personality, man's sexual, emotional, and intellectual life,
and that they colour all his activities. But he mistook the causal relation
between erogenous zones and character traits for the reverse of what they
really are. The desire to receive everything one wants to obtain - love,
protection, knowledge, material things - in a passive way from a source
outside oneself, develops in a child's character as a reaction to his
experiences with others. If through these experiences the feeling of his
own strength is weakened by fear, if his initiative and self-confidence are
paralysed, if hostility develops and is repressed, and if at the same time
his father or mother offers affection or care under the condition of
surrender, such a constellation leads to an attitude in which active
mastery is given up and all his energies are turned in the direction of an
outside source from which the fulfilment of all wishes will eventually
come. This attitude assumes such a passionate character because it is the
only way in which such a person can attempt to realize his wishes. That
[249]
often these persons have dreams or phantasies of being fed, nursed, and so
on, is due to the fact that the mouth more than any other organ lends
itself to the expression of this receptive attitude. But the oral sensation
is not the cause of this attitude; it is the expression of an attitude
towards the world in the language of the body.
The same holds true for the "anal" person, who on the basis of his
particular experiences is more withdrawn from others than the "oral"
person, seeks security by making himself an autarchic, self-sufficient
system, and feels love or any other outgoing attitude as a threat to his
security. It is true that in many instances these attitudes first develop
in connection with feeding or defecation, which in the early age of the
child are his main activities and also the main sphere in which love or
oppression on the part of the parents and friendliness or defiance on the
part of the child, are expressed. However, over-stimulation and frustration
in connection with the erogenous zones by themselves do not lead to a
fixation of such attitudes in a person's character ; although certain
pleasurable sensations are experienced by the child in connection with
feeding and defecation, these pleasures do not assume importance for the
character development, unless they represent - on the physical level -
attitudes that are rooted in the whole of the character structure.
For an infant who has confidence in the unconditional love of his mother,
the sudden interruption of breast-feeding will not have any grave
characterological consequences ; the infant who experiences a lack of
reliability in the mother's love may acquire "oral" traits even though the
feeding process went on without any particular disturbances. The "oral" or
"anal" phantasies or physical sensations in later years are not important
on account of the physical pleasure they imply, or of any mysterious
sublimation of this pleasure, but only on account of the specific kind of
related-ness towards the world which is underlying them and which they
express.
Only from this point of view can Freud's characterological findings become
fruitful for social psychology. As long as we assume, for instance, that
the anal character, as it is typical of the European lower middle class, is
caused by certain early experiences in connection with defecation, we have
hardly any data that lead us to understand why a specific class should have
an anal social character. However, if we understand it as one form of
related-ness to others, rooted in the character structure and resulting
from the experiences with the outside world, we have a key for under-
[250] standing why the whole mode of life of the lower middle class, its
narrowness, isolation, and hostility, made for the development of this kind
of character structure.
The third important point of difference is closely linked up with the
previous ones. Freud, on the basis of his instinctivistic orientation and
also of a profound conviction of the wickedness of human nature, is prone
to interpret all "ideal" motives in man as the result of something "mean";
a case in point is his explanation of the sense of justice as the outcome
of the original envy a child has for anybody who has more than he. As has
been pointed out before, we believe that ideals like truth, justice,
freedom, although they are frequently mere phrases or rationalizations, can
be genuine strivings, and that any analysis which does not deal with these
strivings as dynamic factors is fallacious. These ideals have no
metaphysical character but are rooted in the conditions of human life and
can be analysed as such. The fear of falling back into metaphysical or
idealistic concepts should not stand in the way of such analysis. It is the
task of psychology as an empirical science to study motivation by ideals as
well as the moral problems connected with them, and thereby to free our
thinking on such matters from the unempirical and metaphysical elements
that befog the issues in their traditional treatment.
Finally, one other point of difference should be mentioned. It concerns the
differentiation between psychological phenomena of want and those of
abundance. The primitive level of human existence is that of want. There
are imperative needs which have to be satisfied before anything else. Only
when man has time and energy left beyond the satisfaction of the primary
needs, can culture develop and with it those strivings that attend the
phenomena of abundance. Free (or spontaneous) acts are always phenomena of
abundance. Freud's psychology is a psychology of want. He defines pleasure
as the satisfaction resulting from the removal of painful tension.
Phenomena of abundance, like love or tenderness, actually do not play any
role in his system. Not [251] only did he omit such phenomena, but he also
had a limited understanding of the phenomenon to which he paid so much
attention: sex. According to his whole definition of pleasure Freud saw in
sex only the element of physiological compulsion and in sexual satisfaction
the relief from painful tension. The sexual drive as a phenomenon of
abundance, and sexual pleasure as spontaneous joy - the essence of which is
not negative relief from tension - had no place in his psychology.