1939a-e Erich Fromm The Social Philosophy of Will Therapy

First published under the title The Social Philosophy of Will Therapy, in: Psychiatry. Journal for the Study of Interpersonal Process, Washington (The William Alanson Psychiatric Foundation), Vol. 2 (1939), pp. 229-237. The numbers in {brackets} refer to the pages of this first English publication. - Copyright 1939by Erich Fromm; Copyright 2004 by The Literary Estate of Erich Fromm, Ursrainer Ring 24, D-72076 Tuebingen, Germany, Email: frommfunk[at-symbol]aol.com.

Modern psychotherapy has developed as a branch of medicine. It is a general belief that medicine, as other sciences, is objective, that is, that the philosophical, social, or political viewpoint of the scientist does not influence his results or his method. This assumption, like many others of the kind, is not true. The aims and methods of medicine are in part determined by the particular condition of a given society. This may be illustrated by a simple example. The attitude of physicians toward physical or psychic injuries which may result from abortion, differ widely. In some countries the opinion prevails that abortion is highly dangerous, while in others it is considered no more than a minor operation. Neither of these viewpoints is altogether wrong; each simply represents a different focus on the problem and it is easy to see the relationship between different political and social systems and the different attitudes toward abortion. Or to take another similar example, one might imagine that in a culture where contraception is more recognized as a legitimate means of birth control, there would have developed much better scientific methods for contraception than exist in our culture. But, of course, such differences in medical opinion are found only in regard to exceptional problems. The treatment of a broken leg would be the same regardless of the social setting and the doctors political outlook. In the field of psychotherapy, on the other hand, the picture is no longer one in which Weltanschauung is of little practical importance. In this field, the fundamental concepts of aim and method depend on ones personal religious, philosophical, political and social opinions. Answers to the questions--what is a neurotic, what is the aim of psychotherapeutic treatment, what is psychic health--all depend on what the therapist considers best for man. If he answers simply by saying the patient should become healthy he uses a word which can mean many things. Health, as the aim of psychotherapy, may mean complete adaptation to the rules of our society, expressed in terms of success, popularity, earning capacity. Or, it may mean that the neurotic person should regain the spontaneity and inner freedom which he has lost yet is still struggling for. This means that the patient should learn to become the subject for his own feelings and thoughts, that he should be able to feel what he really feels, to think what he really thinks, and to want what he really wants, instead of feeling, thinking, and wanting what he believes he is supposed to feel, think, and want. It is a matter of ones philosophy whether one believes that human happiness consist of spontaneous selfexpression and is inseparable from inner freedom and activity or whether one believes in success and adaptation as aims of life which psychotherapy has to restore to those, who are in danger of not attaining them. These remarks by no means imply that lack of adaptation is an ideal per se or that the ability to be ones real self excludes the possibility of a socially well ordered life: In a few cases there might he an insoluble conflict, but usually the person who becomes himself and therefore stronger will be able at least to manage reality and live a 1

dignified, though sometimes perhaps not a conventional life. The following {230} example deals with a not infrequent type of case where there is a conflict between adaptation and self-expression. If Nora, in Ibsens Dolls House, had consulted an analyst, his opinion as to whether or not she should leave her husband would have influenced the procedure of the analyst. If he believed in the conventional values of marriage, he would regard as neurotic her reasons for wanting to leave her husband and would have primarily psychoanalyzed these. If, however, he shared Ibsens belief that the integrity and development of her personality depended on leaving her overbearing and narrow-minded husband, then the analyst would have focused on psychoanalyzing those fears which would make her put up with an unbearable situation. Another important problem is the analysts attitude toward the patient; it may be one of aloofness, or of authority and superiority; or it may be one of warm, human friendliness. These attitudes determine technique--the way in which the analyst influences the patient. The attitude of the analyst toward the patient is a function of his personality; it is part of his type of thinking, of his philosophy. Usually people are not aware of the fact that they have any particular philosophy. Psychoanalysts like to believe that their procedure is scientific; that it is a technique which has developed purely objectively, and is followed independent of personal opinions and value-judgments. One will find, for instance, in Freudian terminology that what used to be called wicked is now called neurotic or irrational or infantile, or what was simply bad is now often called regressive or something similar. The change in terminology does not make so much difference, excepting that it makes analytic work much harder for the patient, because when he is called bad he at least knows where he stands and may be able to fight, while when scientific terms are applied to him, he is pretty helpless and feels that he must accept them as something the higher wisdom of scholars has thought up. Although the main purpose of this paper is to point out the social philosophy underlying Ranks Will Therapy,1 I shall start by analyzing Freuds social philosophy partly to illustrate the general point that a psychological system is rooted in certain philosophical premises and partly in order to make Ranks philosophy clearer by contrasting it with Freuds. The most important philosophic premise of Freud is his belief in the effectiveness of reason; his method is based on the opinion that one can cure people by helping them to know the truth about themselves. Freud tries to show the patient the illusions he has, to make him able to see the truth about his own problems, in the hope that by this procedure the patient will be able to change, to overcome a character structure which requires those illusions. This belief that truth has a healing effect, that truth changes things, that truth makes people happy is an old one. It is the principle of original Buddhism--not that knowledge makes for happiness, but that. knowledge eliminates suffering, which was the best the Buddhists believed man could attain. Socrates and other Greek philosophers believed that to know the truth is to become good, and to be good means not only to be virtuous but happy. In modern times, it is especially the German and French enlightenment philosophers who have emphasized the power of reason as their central tenet, believing that the knowledge of the truth is a means through which this can be made a better world. A second premise of this progressive philosophy is that man is as he is, through the influence of his surroundings, his milieu; that external circumstances for which man is not responsible mould him and make him into the person he is.
I am indebted to Miss Marion Weidenreich, who is writing a thesis on Ranks work, for having drawn my attention to the increasing influence which Ranks latest books have on social work in America.
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This thought has been expressed by Helvetius, Herder and many of the more popular writers of progressive philosophy since the 18th century. Political and social movements may be identified as carrying {231} out this idea that by changing the conditions of life you can change human character. It does not require any long explanation to prove that this is also Freuds premise. His whole method is based on the idea that understanding a persons character structure means knowing the experiences this person has had in his life, and especially in his early childhood. Freud was the first to recognize the importance of the most minute details of personal experience. He has made it clear that only these minute details count and not the general situation of family or community background. It should be noted however that Freuds emphasis on milieu is in some contradiction with his instinctivistic approach. Schematically, milieu operates only by its influence on the sexual instinct in the broad meaning Freud has given to it; sometimes directly as is the case with {232} certain traits of the anal character, which are supposed to be sublimations of pregenital sexuality (e.g., stinginess as sublimation of an underlying satisfaction in the retention of feces); sometimes indirectly, as in the case where hatred is aroused by the frustration of infantile sexual desires. The emphasis on biological factors versus social factors has become increasingly strong in Freuds writings of recent years. It has found its particular expression in the theory of the death instinct which holds that man is burdened with biologically given impulses driving him to destroy either himself or others. He cannot change this; the most he can do is what Freud calls to sublimate it (which is and always has been a vague notion of his entire system). Another Freudian concept which is not consistent with the progressive, philosophical premise of environmental determination is that the interests of individual and those of society are essentially contradictory. To put it in a very simple formula: here is the individual with a number of instincts which want to be satisfied; there is society wanting to suppress these instincts because of their opposition to the requirements of society. The repression of instincts can lead to sublimation,. which is the essential condition for cultural achievements. But sublimation is, according to Freud a talent, which many people do not possess to the extent required by a particular culture. With those people the necessity of repression of instincts leads to neurotic disturbances. Freud arrives at a conclusion which can be put schematically in this way: the more repression of instincts, the more sublimation and the more culture. But, also, the more culture, the more neuroses there are. On the other hand, if instincts are not repressed there might be a society of wild men such as Rousseau pictured--people who simply follow their natural instincts, are happy in doing so but do not have culture. This requirement of a choice between culture which is a good thing and repression of instincts which, as Freud has shown, is not such a good thing, presents a rather pessimistic outlook which is basically in contradiction to the progressive part of his philosophy mentioned before. What is Freuds aim in therapy? He has formulated a concept which says that the aim is to give to the individual a capacity for work and pleasure, This concept is one of compromise. There are two factors in it. An individual should enjoy life, which to Freud means essentially to enjoy sex. This is a narrow idea of what human happiness means,2 but at least it is the individuals satisfaction which Freud has in mind. As far as the capacity for work is concerned, Freud uses this conventional term for social adaptation and success. Not that there is a necessary contradiction between work and happiness; work if it is the spontaneous expression of a person in a given medium, can be one of the most profound sources of human happiness. This, however, is not often the case with
2

It may be noted that this concept of happiness or rather satisfaction is always a negative one, relief from painful tension. This is inseparably connected with his instinctivistic theory. His system does not know happiness which comes from overflowing vital energy (sexual or otherwise) but only satisfaction which is rooted in hunger (again sexual or hunger in the narrower sense). Love as overflowing life (Balzac) is a concept alien to Freuds thinking.

work in our culture, where, for most people work is only a means to an end, making money and achieving success. This ability to play the role in society which the individual is supposed to play, to be able to function smoothly as a cog in a big machine, is essentially what capacity for work implies. Freud and the orthodox wing of his school waver between adaptation and happiness as aims of psychoanalytic therapy. The emphasis is neither entirely on one or the other side but they look toward a compromise between individual happiness and social adaptation. Freud certainly has not taken a very radical stand as far as that problem goes; he has not said that self-expression, growing development of the self, is the aim of psychotherapy. He has not discussed what he considers to be the more important aim in those cases where there exists an actual conflict between human happiness and adaptation. Again, one might easily see that this compromise attitude which is characteristic of Freuds therapeutic aim is more or less the same as that found in modern reformist movements--in criminal reform, in sexual reform, in educational reform-which claim that the person should have more happiness, more opportunity, more ability to express himself and to be himself, but which do not say exactly where and how the line is to be drawn between the individuals claims and the claims of society to have him function as a cog in the machine. A last premise in Freuds technique concerns his attitude toward the patient. Freuds advice is that the analyst should be blank like a mirror; he should be neutral and tolerant, as though saying to the patient, After all, you are neurotic because you have had these experiences in childhood, or because you could not sublimate so well. We can understand that. Understanding means forgiving. As I have tried to show elsewhere (E. Fromm, 1935a) Freuds attitude toward sexual morality is not quite as liberal as it is supposed to be. There is a rather strong underlying condemnation of sexual liberty, and a rather Puritan attitude toward sex. This whole approach to the patient, of being tolerant, friendly, though not too friendly, of looking at him as if he were an object much as when a doctor looks at the lungs through a fluoroscope, is the general attitude of medicine and it is quite all right as far as medicine goes. There is little question of the emotional rapport with a patient while his lungs are being examined or his appendix removed. But in psychotherapy it matters a great deal. It seems to me that perhaps the greatest error in Freuds technique lies in this very tact of his neutral distant attitude toward the patient. One cannot help anyone emotionally or understand him psychologically if one remains distant and looks at him as an object. There is a sentence by Goethe which expresses all that could be said about this problem: If you want to understand a person, you must not depend on his coming to you, you must go and visit him. The implication seems to be obvious. There is no. psychological understanding if we do not make a move, if we do not reach out toward the person whom we want to understand. Not only is there no psychotherapeutic help otherwise, but there is no real understanding of the person--if by understanding we mean more than simply putting two and two together. One often hears discussion as to whether psychoanalysis involves any danger to the person. It seems to me that often people who hold that idea overestimate the effect of psychoanalysis in general. The danger is at times not great because in many cases psychoanalysis is not effective enough to be dangerous. There is one danger, however, which really exists; it is the danger of a hidden hostility on the part of the analyst toward the patient. If an anxious and insecure person is brought into a situation where he must be himself, where he must disarm, where he must give up his defenses, where he is assured at least of some tolerance if not of friendliness, and actually instead {233} meets with hostility, this in my opinion is sufficient to cause grave dangers to the patient. All these elements, truth as effecting change, milieu as a basically molding factor, the compromise between human happiness and social adaptation, human 4

distance and neutrality toward the patient, which are some of Freuds philosophical premises are also premises which are typical of modern liberal and progressive thought. This philosophy originated with the urban middle class who in their struggle against the absolute state developed this kind of Weltanschauung. If one looks at the analysts and the patients who come to analysis, one will find that they belong more or less to the same social stratum, that is, the middle and upper classes of the large cities. The same people are also those who are susceptible to progressive or liberal thought. Of course, this must be taken with a grain of salt. It does not mean that everybody--every analyst or every patient--comes from that group or has that philosophy; but it means that there is a certain impressive coincidence between the social stratum from which psychoanalysts and patients emerge and the social philosophy underlying psychoanalysis. Turning now to Rank, I will not attempt to evaluate his system as a whole. I wish only to emphasize the social philosophy underlying the last phase of Ranks work and to contrast it with Freuds philosophy. The first of Ranks philosophical premises to be considered is the premise that there is no truth and truth is ineffectual in curing a person. This is exactly the opposite of Freuds main principle. I shall quote some of Ranks remarks at random: If doubt represents the conscious counter-will truth represents the will intellectually. Crudely put, one might say; What I will is true, that is, what I make truth, or to be banal, What I want. to believe. Truth therefore is the conscious concomitant, yes, the affirmation of the constructive or creative completion of will on the intellectual level, just as we understand the perception of pleasure as the emotional affirmation of will expression. (O. Rank, 1936, pp. 76-77.) That is, truth is not anything, objective, but is, as he says, what we want. It is to the effect, he says also in Truth and Reality, that our seeking the truth in human motives for acting and thinking is destructive. With the truth, one cannot live. To be able to live one needs illusions, not only outer illusions such as art, religion, philosophy, science and love afford, but inner illusions which first condition the outer. The more a man can take reality as truth, appearance as essence, the sounder, the better adjusted, the happier will he be. At the moment when we begin to search after truth we destroy reality and our relation to it. (Ibid., p. 83) ... the more one experiences of truth, the more one knows, the unluckier one becomes. (O. Rank, 1936a) I think that these few quotations are sufficient to illustrate Ranks principle that truth is not only ineffective but that it is dangerous. The second principle emphasized by Rank is that the neurotic has a bad relationship to reality not because reality is bad but because he wants to create it instead of using it. (O. Rank 1936a, p. 275.) Although he says that acceptance of reality is in actuality never a passive taking over of the given but an active appropriation of it for individual ends. (Ibid., p. 279) The fact remains that he puts the whole emphasis on the inner ambivalence while criticism of social reality is of no importance to him. His final suggestion in Will Therapy is that if the patient learns to live in harmony with the inevitable in himself, not outside, then he will also be able to accept reality as it is. (Ibid., p. 289) Again, the contradiction of this viewpoint with that of Freud can be easily seen. While it is true that Freud has not taken a very radical stand with regard to changing reality, he certainly has not put the emphasis as onesidedly on the inner reality as Rank does, who says: Everything {234} has its roots within. (O. Rank, 1936, p. 103.) This difference between Rank and Freud was evident already in Ranks birth trauma theory; if a great deal of anxiety is generated by the process of birth, then, of course, not much can be done to avoid this anxiety. But Freuds belief that the way in which children are brought up is largely responsible for their anxieties implies that something can be done. It is only in line with Ranks attitude toward reality that he stresses the value 5

of illusions and self-deception. He says: This displacement if it succeeds, we regard and rightly so as healing, for this constantly effective process of selfdeceiving, pretending and blundering, is no psychopathological mechanism, but the essence of reality, the--as it were--continuous blunder. (Ibid., p. 84) If man is the more normal, healthy and happy, the more he can accept the appearance of reality as truth, that is, the more successfully he can repress, displace, deny, rationalize, dramatize himself and deceive others, then it follows that the suffering of the neurotic comes not from a painful reality but from painful truth which only secondarily makes reality unbearable... .He [the neurotic] suffers not from all the pathological mechanisms which are psychically necessary for living, and wholesome, but in the refusal of these mechanisms which is just what robs him of the illusions important for living. (Ibid., p. 85.) The aim off psychotherapy is therefore that the patient learns to live on the plane of illusion. (O. Rank, 1936a, p. 246.) We refer, Rank says, in general to religion, art, play, sport and certain professional ideologies, which not only lift man out of his every-dayness, but out of himself. (Ibid., p. 244.) This whole notion of lifting man out of himself has a very definite implication, namely, that man should not, and in fact cannot, become himself. but that our happiness consists in being lifted out of ourselves. Another philosophical premise of Rank is what may be called sadomasochistic Weltanschauung; for him the world consists of the weak and the strong, or rather, the powerful and the powerless, and the weak are to be sacrificed for the sake of the strong. At all events, Rank says, the use or alteration of reality must come about individually, and is certainly determined for different types. It is important to remember that in the last analysis the neurotic remains as to type that which he was before the treatment, just as the psychopathic and also the creative type will always maintain their essential quality. If one conceives of the neurotic as a type, with psychological significance in itself, and not as a person deviating from a social norm, then one can see that there exists a place for this type socially, yes, a real need, otherwise he would perhaps not have come into existence in our civilization at all. If the fundamental life fear of the individual leads, figuratively speaking, to the end that he has no other choice than to be slain or to slay, the question is who are the sacrifices that must constantly fall in this way? I think it is the type which we today designate as neurotic and whom Nietzsche in the ideology of earlier times has described as the slave type. These humans who constantly kill themselves, perhaps to escape being sacrificed, need at all events not be killed any more in order to be utilized as fertilizers of civilization. In offering themselves up as it were in a false Christian sense, they make it not too hard for the others who slay, the lordly natures, the men of will. In view of the difficulties of the therapy one must ask whether it is not a vain therapeutic ambition to want to transform this. sacrificial type into god-men, and even if this were successful, where shall be forthcoming the necessary hecatombs for the creative type. (O. Rank, 1936a, p. 280.) The same viewpoint that any relationship is one of rulership and dependence is implied in Ranks belief about love. He says, for instance: A deeper study of {235} the love life makes it clear also that human beings depend more on the one who rules them than on the one who loves them. Love, where it exists in such cases, is then taken only as proof that this ruling will not be too severe or earnest, that one will be punished just enough to spare self-punishment, but that this punishment will be no death punishment. (O. Rank, 1936a, p. 287.) Consistent with his conviction of the necessity of the subordination of the powerless to the powerful are Ranks ideas concerning the attitude of the analyst 6

toward the patient. According to Freuds technique the analysts attitude is one of neutrality, tolerance, distance, and it is a criterion of a successful analysis to have analyzed and dissolved the transference relationship to the analyst. For Rank the analyst functions as an assistant ego. The treatment shows whether the patient will remain neurotically dependent on the assistant ego or whether he can use the situation constructively as assistant reality. Both are possible and good outcomes if the patient carries it through consistently to the end. Even in the first case the patient may become socially valuable and personally satisfied and happy as a life long dependent. (O. Rank, 1936a, p. 282.) In surveying the chief points of Ranks social philosophy--his disbelief in the existence and effectiveness of truth, his emphasis on the unimportance of reality, his concept of the necessity of submission and sacrifice and finally his view that life long dependence on the analyst is a possible and good outcome of therapy strikes one that there is a close kinship with the elements of Fascist3 philosophy. Fascism is not only what it seems to be on the surface, a political system and creed, but there is a more or less well defined philosophy underlying it. This philosophy has its roots in the period before Fascism came to power and it. is to be found also in democratic countries and in groups which politically are or believe to be enemies of political fascism. It would transcend the scope of this; paper were I to try to give a description of Fascist philosophy. It might suffice to point to several of its essential features and to show that they are parts of Ranks philosophy. Needless to say, this analysis does no imply any inference as to Ranks political conviction. One essential feature of Fascist philosophy is the relativismthe believe that there is no truth and that the search for truth is vain and even harmful. Mussolini has emphasized the relativistic character of Fascist philosophy. The ideology and practice of German Nazism leaves no doubt that it believes in the power of arms and not in the power of truth and that words and ideologies essentially have the function of being manipulated for the sake of power. The same viewpoint is expressed by Rank, in this formulation: What I will is true, that is, what I make truth, or to be banal, what I want to believe. To be sure, skepticism toward truth is not an invention of Fascist philosophy. It can be traced back to the liberal thinking of the 19th century, and the same skepticism is to be found among positivistic thinkers of our day who although believing that they insist on factual knowledge, actually are spiritually rooted in complete nihilism and assume philosophical attitudes which lead to complete nihilism. The second element of Fascist philosophy is its deep conviction that injustice and suffering as it exists in our society and as it has existed throughout the greater part of history cannot be changed; that it is an essential part of human existence. Hitlers Mein Kampf expresses his feeling that every attempt basically to change reality in the sense of lessening the suffering of man, is futile; it is less than futile. To him the man who believes in a basic improvement of human existence is either a swindler or an idiot. The question is only whether you will slay or whether your will be slain, whether you suffer or whether you make another person or nation suffer; injustice and unhappiness are inherent and necessary features of human life. Fascist philosophy prides itself on being realistic; its basic {236} policy is to stamp out the wish for a better world and to force people to accept reality and to adapt to it. This attitude is an exact opposite of the hope which has run through the progressive philosophical and political thought of Europe and America in the last few centuries. Ranks belief that reality is not bad, but that the fault is in the neurotic who cannot adapt himself to it, and therefore that not reality but the individual has to be changed, corresponds to Fascist philosopher as much as it contradicts the trend of progressive thought just mentioned. Another essential point in Fascist philosophy is its authoritarian outlook. For this authoritarian or as we may also call it masochistic Weltanschauung
3 The term Fascist is used here and throughout the paper to denote both the Italian and German authoritarian systems.

there are only two sexes, not men and women, but powerful ones and powerless ones. These two groups have a very specific attraction to the sadomasochistic person, the powerful are to be loved and the powerless to be crushed and enslaved. Hitlers philosophy is pervaded by the idea of power over others. He believes that what the masses wish is the victory of the strong one and the destruction and complete surrender of the weak one. The supreme man, according to him, will become the sole master of this world and he hopes that the German Reich will become master of the Universe. On the other hand, there is an unlimited love for the powerful. Hitler when writing Mein Kampf is as much impressed by the power of nature, destiny, the past, as he is by the power of Great Britain. He makes fun of those oriental revolutionaries who fought for the liberation of their countries from British domination. He calls them charlatans who will never succeed in freeing India. It should be noted however that strong and weak to Hitler means powerful and powerless and have not at all the meaning of inner weakness or strength. In the authoritarian philosophy any concept of equality is lacking; since one can only be superior or inferior, differences such as differences of race or sex are always conceived in terms of superiority inferiority. Therefore, it is one of the fundamental dogmas of Fascist philosophy to believe in the principle of inequality of all men. (H. Brcher, 1925.) Since Fascist philosophy conceives of mankind as divided into the powerful who have to slay and the powerless who must be slain, its political system affords ample opportunity to rule and to obey at the same time. It is a hierarchy in which everybody has a superior to whom to submit and an inferior over whom to rule. Even the leader, as the supreme being, is subjected to destiny, fate or God, who for Hitler is nothing but a symbol of supreme power. This philosophy is expressed in Fascist political strategy. It is its fundamental axiom not to attack an enemy who is believed to have real power. Both in Hitlers domestic and later in his foreign policy he waits for the enemy to reach a state of weakness where there is no real danger in attack. Balzac gives an excellent description of this kind of courage: There are people whose courage consists in correctly evaluating the anxiety of their enemies. The quotations cited should show without further comment that the authoritarian philosophy closely corresponds to what Rank has to say about the necessity of hecatombs to be sacrificed by the strong-willed men. It is essentially the same theory, whether expressed in the categories of racial differences of Nazi philosophy or in psychological terms of Rank. Closely connected with this philosophy of power and submission is the leader principle in Fascist philosophy. Schematically Fascist philosophy says, You as an individual are nothing; you are just a little bit of dust. You must recognize that and renounce the false claims for individuality nourished by the 18th and 19th centuries. If, however, you give yourself up entirely as an individual, if you submit completely to the leader, then you can become part of him and by participating in his glamour and strength, you can gain self-confidence and strength. The principle of Fascism is to strengthen the {237} individual, not by increasing his independence, but by making the leader his alter ego, on the strength of which he Ives. There are elements in Ranks views which are contradictory to the ones pointed out here, as for instance, his emphasis on creativeness. As a matter of fact one can easily find quite a number of such contradictory statements. But analysis of the spirit of a particular system must be a matter of understanding its fundamental trends and can not be a mechanical compilation of individual quotations. To use the latter method would be particularly difficult with an author with as much versatility and lack of consistency as Rank. The essential point is that the basic trend of Ranks philosophy is akin to Fascist philosophy and this seems the more convincing since he certainly had no intention of copying a Nazi formula. 8

There remains a puzzling problem: how is it that Ranks work has been warm accepted by many people who are strictly opposed to Fascist ideas and why in particular by many social workers? Two answers may be offered tentatively. One is that this acceptance of Rank seems to indicate the inroads that Fascist philosophy can make, if only it avoids mention of those political symbols which make it unacceptable to liberals and Jews. The popularity of Ranks theories among social workers might be attributed to the specific difficulty of social work in trying to help solve the emotional problems of clients. Social workers deal mainly with people whose economic situation is so distressing that efficient remedy without a basic change in the clients material situation is frequently not possible. Ranks theory seems to offer a solution to this difficult and sometimes insoluble problem. If, as he says, reality is not bad and the aim of psychotherapy is to teach the patient to live with illusions, many social workers may feel much relieved and most appreciative of Ranks theory without becoming aware of the real reasons.

References: Brcher, H., 1925: Ernst Hckel. Ein Wegbereiter des biologischen Staatsdenksn, in: Nationalsozialistische Monatshefte, 1925. Fromm, E., 1935a: Die gesellschaftliche Bedingtheit der psychoanalytischen Therapie, in: Zeitschrift fr Sozialforschung, Paris (Librairie Flix Alcan), Band IV (1935), S. 365-397. English translation: The Social Determinants of Psychoanalytic Theory, in: International Forum of Psychoanalysis, Vol. 9 (No. 3-4, October 2000) S. 149-165; English by Ernst Falzeder and Caroline Schwarzacher. Rank, O., 1936: Truth and Reality, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1936, IX and 193 pp. Rank, O., 1936a: Will Therapy, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1936, XXV and 290 pp.

Copyright 1939by Erich Fromm Copyright 2004 by The Literary Estate of Erich Fromm Ursrainer Ring 24, D-72076 Tuebingen, Germany E-mail: frommfunk[at-symbol]aol.com