The Sane Society by Erich Fromm

Author:Erich Fromm [Fromm, Erich]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: D
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The talking and listening to eventually has become the indoor sport of those who cannot afford a professional listener, or prefer the layman for one reason or another. It has become fashionable, sophisticated, to “talk things out.” There is no inhibition, no sense of shame, no holding back. One speaks about the tragic occurrences of one’s own life with the same ease as one would talk about another person of no particular interest, or as one would speak about the various troubles one has had with one’s car.

Indeed, psychology and psychiatry are in the process of changing their function fundamentally. From the Delphic Oracle’s “Know thyself!” to Freud’s psychoanalytic therapy, the function of psychology was to discover the self, to understand the individual, to find the “truth that makes you free.” Today the function of psychiatry, psychology and psychoanalysis threatens to become the tool in the manipulation of men. The specialists in this field tell you what the “normal” person is, and, correspondingly, what is wrong with you; they devise the methods to help you adjust, be happy, be normal. In the Brave New World this conditioning is done from the first month of fertilization (by chemical means), until after puberty. With us, it begins a little later. Constant repetition by newspaper, radio, television, does most of the conditioning. But the crowning achievement of manipulation is modern psychology. What Taylor did for industrial work, the psychologists do for the whole personality—all in the name of understanding and freedom. There are many exceptions to this among psychiatrists, psychologists and psychoanalysts, but it becomes increasingly clear that these professions are in the process of becoming a serious danger to the development of man, that their practitioners are evolving into the priests of the new religion of fun, consumption and self-lessness, into the specialists of manipulation, into the spokesmen for the alienated personality.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.