Paranoid or Hysterical Thinking:
FROMM, ERICH
The Couch and the Bomb—II PARANOID OR HYSTERICAL THINKING By Erich Fromm Sidney Hook, in his article, "The Couch and the Bomb" (NL, April 24), attacks me and—somewhat less directly—the...
...Erich Fromm, a wellknown psychoanalyst, is the author of many books, including Man for Himself, The Sane Society and Escape from Freedom...
...It should be added that in a letter to the New York Times which appeared May 2, Hook elaborates on the argument made in "The Couch and the Bomb" by stating that "many well meaning people have fallen into the error of believing that our own pacific action of unilateral disarmament will generate a corresponding response on the part of the Kremlin...
...If one takes Kahn's figures, the number of casualties would be at least 100 million, since it is obvious that blast-proof shelters and tactical or strategic evacuation of cities is sheer fiction because we would be attacked by missiles and by nuclear bombs which in a few years will be many times more destructive than even today's giant 10' megaton bomb...
...War would be a calamity for all the peoples of the world...
...The facts are that the Stalinist terror which abounded in political murders inside and outside of the Soviet Union has disappeared, and has been replaced by methods of a police state...
...It exists only in the fertile imagination of some men, not in physical reality...
...the Chinese anti-individualistic total mass Communism...
...His piece, I think, is a good summary of the current cliches on the problem of disarmament...
...Let us not approach the matter commercially," Khrushchev has said, "and figure out the losses this or the other side would sustain...
...I have attempted to do so in a forthcoming book, Is Peace Still Possible?—An Enquiry into the Facts and Fictions of Foreign Policy, to be published in the late fall by Doubleday and Anchor Books...
...The Couch and the Bomb—II PARANOID OR HYSTERICAL THINKING By Erich Fromm Sidney Hook, in his article, "The Couch and the Bomb" (NL, April 24), attacks me and—somewhat less directly—the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE) by criticizing a short article on "paranoid versus sane thinking" which I wrote and which the Committee published as an ad in various newspapers...
...There is no question about it...
...Is he not aware of the fact that, unlike the situation in Britain, most Americans who warn of the "nuclear holocaust" favor multilateral controlled disarmament...
...We differ, however, in our conclusions...
...indeed it is now impossible...
...These bombs will not distinguish between Communists and nonCommunists...
...And explaining this statement to a newspaperman, Kahn said: "I meant that the quality of life after a thermonuclear attack would not be much different than before...
...To suggest that I would have "assured" Leon Trotsky and Andres Nin that they were victims of a persecution complex is not only a gratuitous insult to my political intelligence, it is also precisely the kind of fuzzy thinking I am criticizing...
...There are many other distortions, many of them produced by irrational passions and by the tendency of many experts to refuse to modify their own concepts and stick to the model of Stalinism in the '30s...
...If this fear is hysterical, then let us have more of it...
...It is amazing that a scholar as much devoted to logical procedure as he is, should indulge in the type of loose thinking expressed in the paragraph on "the hysteria of the nuclear holocaust"—especially when this is the key sentence which accuses the pacifists of weakening the position of the free world vis-à-vis the Communist bloc...
...One of the chief misconceptions is the image of Khrushchev as a revolutionary leader like Lenin (as he would like to appear), rather than as the leader of a totalitarian, industrial managerialism: a system with a rigid class stratification in which monetary gain is the main incentive for both managers and workers...
...But more important than this inconsistency is the substance of the argument...
...In fact, as Oscar Morgenstern, one of the most distinguished specialists in this field, writes in his book, The Question of National Defense: "Defense against these nuclear weapons is practically non-existent...
...Hook's attack is directed first of all against what he calls pacifism...
...Here Fromm answers Hook's article, and Hook, in turn, comments on Fromm's reply...
...In "The Couch and the Bomb" (NL, April 24), Sidney Hook criticized the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE) and Dr...
...Or does Hook mean that calling the sudden death of 80-160 million Americans and as many Russians and neutrals a "holocaust" is hysterical...
...Sidney Hook is chairman of the philosophy department at New York University...
...What does Hook mean when he speaks of the "mounting hysteria of a nuclear holocaust...
...We must accept the fact that the underdeveloped countries will not choose between Communism and capitalism, but only between various types of socialism: the Russian totalitarian managerialism...
...No, everything alive can be wiped out in the conflagration of nuclear explosions...
...they are assumed as being definite possibilities by Kahn and a number of experts...
...And it is proper, with the kind of calculations we are making today, to compare the horror of war and the horror of peace and see how much worse it is...
...It is somewhat inconsistent of Hook to label the warning of the nuclear holocaust as "hysteria,' when he criticizes my article on paranoid thinking by accusing me of "'substituting irrelevant personal insinuation for argument...
...But so is peace...
...Certainly there is nothing hysterical about the assumption that a nuclear war is likely to occur if the present arms race continues...
...But I cannot enter into a discussion of these problems here...
...We'd be just about the same after a war—and we'd still be economically useful" (San Francisco Chronicle, March 27, 1961...
...Imagine what will happen when bombs begin to explode over cities...
...By the present policy of continued armament and support of economically and politically reactionary regimes, we shall lose the battle for the minds of men in Africa, Asia and Latin America...
...If so, he is in agreement with some of our non-pacifist atomic strategists, but equally in disagreement with others, like Herman Kahn, who stresses that a nuclear war may occur either without anyone wanting it or as the result of the rational calculation of one of the two power blocs...
...Is it fair to single out unilateral disarmament in order to have a better argument...
...foreign policy, and most utterances by the press and many "Sovietologists...
...Does he mean that given the present policy of the deterrent, there is little likelihood of a nuclear war...
...and various forms of decentralizing, humanistic socialism, as presented in a wide gamut ranging from Yugoslavia to Burma and India...
...Only an unreasonable person can be fearless of war in our day...
...As to the warning expressed in the article published by SANE, which urged the abandonment of paranoid in favor of sane thinking, paranoid thinking was defined as that which deals only with possibilities and not with probabilities...
...Does Hook mean to say, then, that the Russians are not afraid of nuclear war—or that they are, but they are not hysterical...
...The battle for men's minds will not be won with bombs and invasions, but only by proving that planning and various degrees of state intervention are possible together with freedom and individual activity and responsibility...
...It [the Kremlin] believes," he says, "that time is on its side, that as Khrushchev's speech [of January 6] shows, the mounting hysteria of a nuclear holocaust (absent in the Soviet Union) will, with the help of pacifism, erode the will of the free world to resist, so that Communism with all its terrors will appear as a lesser evil than the threat of war" (italics mine...
...Better, at least, in Hook's opinion...
...I believe that the Western reaction to Communism, of which Hook's article is such a typical example, is a symptom of a deep defeatism...
...He can hardly question these figures...
...Or, more probably, we shall help to blow Western man and his civilization to pieces...
...The failure to explain what he means by the "hysteria of a nuclear holocaust" is compounded by the remark (in parenthesis) that this hysteria is absent in the Soviet Union...
...If neither the chance of nuclear war nor the degree of destruction is deniable, what is it that Hook calls hysterical in the warning of a nuclear holocaust...
...among his books are Political Power and Personal Freedom, The Hero in History and, most recently, The Quest for Being...
...Furthermore, even in Stalin's time the persecution of political opponents was quite a different problem from the foreign policy pursued by Stalin...
...I had suggested that we must analyze the nature of Khrushchev's policy to know whether certain Russian moves are not only possible but likely, and not, as it would appear from Hook's article, that we should arrive at conclusions on the basis of a psychological consideration...
...We prefer to see Communism as a challenge of military aggression or subversion, rather than as a challenge for us to change our attitudes and our policies...
...Erich Fromm for implying, in recent newspaper advertisement, that those who differ with SANE's views on Communism, foreign policy and arms control suffer from paranoia because they unnecessarily impute hostile motives to the Soviet Union...
...He must be aware that Premier Khrushchev in his speeches (in contrast to the Chinese Communists) has again and again emphasized that nuclear war would be catastrophic for all concerned...
...If a concern with the horror of wholesale destruction of even the minimal figure of one-third of our own and of the Russian populations, plus hundreds of millions of neutrals (depending on which way the wind blows), is called hysterical, then I am afraid Hook calls hysterical that which in sober judgment should be called a normal and not yet dehumanized attitude: a respect for life and a horror of mass slaughter...
...Hook must be aware that practically all visitors to the Soviet Union agree on one point: The people over there share one fear, that of war...
...I should hate to think that Hook shares the views of Kahn, who says in his book, On Thermonuclear War: "In other words, war is horrible...
...And who the hell is happy and normal right now...
...But quite aside from these unnecessary misrepresentations of my point of view, there is agreement between Hook and myself about the necessity for a realistic, thorough and knowledgeable appreciation of the Russian position...
...I believe that this assumption is based on several errors and misunderstandings...
...The main point underlying Hook's position is the assumption that Russia's policy is motivated by a wish for world domination, either as a revolutionary or as an imperialist power—an assumption which seems to underlie U.S...
Vol. 44 • May 1961 • No. 22
