MAN AND HIS GOALS
Boehm, Werner
Man and His Goals SPEAKING OF MAN, by Abraham Myerson. Alfred A. Knopf. 279 pp. $3. PSYCHOANALYSIS AND RELIGION, by Erich Fromm. Yale University Press. 119 pp. $2.50. NEUROSIS AND HUMAN GROWTH,...
...He is a scientist who pokes fun at psychoanalysis because he thinks it unscientific, yet is not beyond assimilating psycho-analytic concepts...
...He might wish that in Horney the cleverness of the metaphor might have occasionally yielded to more precise formulations and to more of an acknowledgment that by present accepted scientific standards, many of her theories have not been tested but are the result of frequently brilliant distillations of clinical observation...
...Or the neurotic may subordinate himself and appease, or he may try to dominate and manipulate others...
...II Neurosis and Human Growth is perhaps Karen Horney's best book and of interest both to the expert and to the layman...
...W. W. Norton & Co., 391 pp...
...Each one of them, it seems to me, accomplishes its purpose...
...The eunuch who looks after a harem has different realities from those of the inmates, and it is assumed that he is incapable of at least one reality of his master...
...Instead, he lives with a "diffuse sense of failure," tends to "feel guilty, inferior, and contemptible...
...Erich Fromm deals with religion by examining the relationship between emotional and spiritual well-being...
...From all three, one fact emerges: Although psychiatry and psychology have made strides in understanding man's emotional structure and functioning, we are still in the realm of pre-science with regard to tested knowledge about man and his goals...
...Instead, the individual develops a sense of neurotic pride which is not based on reality, but represents a distorted image which the neurotic must develop of himself in order to bear the pain of failure...
...At least he said so...
...Unfortunately, all these efforts at perfection and glory do not bring the results which are the hallmark of the healthy person: self-confidence and self-respect...
...These neurotic disturbances have their bases within the human being, but are bound to manifest themselves in inter-personal relations, such as work and marriage...
...Fromm shows that the goals of most religions are not in disagreement with this view of man...
...The suffering which accompanies these developments leads to attempts to reestablish inner peace...
...The critic might take issue, also, with Fromm's insufficiently clear formulation of the relationship between individual self-expression and the good of society...
...Lest, in our scientific zeal, we throw out the baby with the bath, let us not forget that theories, even un-proven ones, can provide new insights...
...Homey contributes to the science of man a comprehensive theory of neurosis...
...Is a society normal in which war is extolled and the warrior is the greatest man...
...But he said many other things, some of them contradictory...
...Whenever man fails to be "productive," i.e...
...For me the most interesting part of Speaking of Man is his essay on "social ambivalence...
...Neurosis, to her, is a failure of growth (rather than the price for the containment of instinctual drives, as Freud would have it), just as to Fromm neurosis is the result of unproductivity...
...He is an outstanding neuro-psychiatrist who never bothers to develop a clear-cut theoretical system and prefers to remain an eclectic in his own field...
...Myerson's book...
...We psychiatrists are fond of a slogan: 'adjust to reality.' But whose reality must one adjust to...
...he clearly sees the conflict between man's biological endowment and social demands...
...The cause of all neurosis, according to Horney, is the replacement of self-realization by what she calls self-idealization, or the attempt to be someone other than one's self...
...The important question to Fromm is not "whether man returns to religion and believes in God, but whether he lives love and thinks truth...
...Taken as a whole, however, I cannot help but hope that these books may find many astute readers, both in the laity and among scholars, because they do bring us at least one step closer to a unitary theory of man...
...Myerson took the position that he would not interfere with his patients' religious beliefs...
...Or he may resort to the most illusory solution of all—resignation...
...He is much at odds with God and theologians and much opposed to absolutes and dogmas—a skeptic with a tender heart and faith in social progress...
...It is scarcely possible to do justice in one review to three books so different in conception...
...Myerson would have agreed with this view, for he was a scientist who had little patience with the unproven...
...Homey devotes a whole chapter to the methods of psychoanalytic therapy whose goal is to arrest the process of neurosis by putting in the place of the ineffective and artificial solutions of the neurotic individual those which, as a result of insight and self-knowledge, permit him to recover his ability of self-realization and to resume growth...
...Like Fromm, she departs from Freud's pessimistic view of man and considers man in terms of his ability to grow...
...Dr...
...He must have been both charming and pugnacious, and, above all, must have had a tremendous zest for living—to him, the main criterion of mental health—even though he knew life's tragedy...
...I am not sure that the late Dr...
...Myerson leaves a powerful and inspiring monument of his wisdom and wit...
...Briefly, Fromm's thesis in Psychoanalysis and Religion is that man is capable, through self-knowledge, of achieving self-fulfillment and going about self-fashioning his life in accordance with his interests...
...He distinguishes between "authoritarian" religions, which postulate that man cannot be the master of his fate and the "humanistic" religions which help man "in the unfolding of his powers of love and reason...
...Erich Fromm lifts into a new dimension the old controversy between psychiatry and religion...
...to aim for the achievement of his potential—a striving which in personal terms is the basis for mental health, and in social terms the basis of social progress-—he does harm to himself in the psychological sense of the word or sins in the religious sense...
...While this effort bears testimony to man's constant striving for health, it is bound to end in failure, because the neurotic is unable to find effective solutions...
...3.75...
...Myerson, who was a tough child of Boston's South Side slums, and received thorough training in the mental disciplines from his father (a well-trained if rebellious product of the rabbinical tradition of Eastern Jewry) reveals himself as a man of considerable wisdom, depth of experience, and penetrating wit...
...Other penalties for the failure to grow in terms of one's potential are "self-hate and self-contempt" and a gradual "alienation from self" which reduces and eventually kills spontaneity of feelings...
...NEUROSIS AND HUMAN GROWTH, by Karen Homey...
...This is expressed with regard to the outside world by a "search for glory," power, and triumph, and, with regard to one's self, by an attempt at perfection in every respect, which causes one to fall victim to "the tyranny of the should...
...Reviewed by Werner Boehm THESE three books written by psychiatrists are variations of the theme "man," a theme which has never ceased to baffle philosophers, scientists, and theologians...
...In his contradictions lay part of his wisdom, for he would not bother about "the foolish consistency which is the hobgoblin of little minds...
...While the books do not give definitive answers about man and his relation to himself and his fellows, they manage, nevertheless, to throw light on man's aspirations and many facets of his make-up...
...Dr...
...He writes about genius, sterilization, desire and mental health, the survival of the fit, heredity, and environment...
...The critic might take issue with the contradictions in Dr...
...He might point out that repeatedly the great anti-absolutist makes absolute judgment, and that, after all, he was not so much of an anti-Freudian as he thought he was...
...If he does so, the symbol systems he uses are of secondary importance...
...In the latter endeavor, psychoanalysis and religion see eye to eye...
...The neurotic, however, is not condemned to a life of suffering...
Vol. 15 • March 1951 • No. 3
