SOCIAL CHARACTER

INTRODUCTION TO THE THEORY OF SOCIAL CHARACTER

The Theory of Social Character


Psychoanalytic theory was enriched by including in its understanding of unconscious motivations not only "libidinal drives" (Freud, 1908) but also human needs in relation to others and their location within the social economic system in which they are found. develop and perform (Fromm, 1962, 1970).

 

The theory of social character was developed by Erich Fromm (Fromm, 1932, 1947) and maintains that the meaning of experience is closely linked to the material conditions of daily existence of people located within a specific economic system, who develop the traits shared character and thus respond to the social role that these people play.

 

The research “is based on the premise that the energy of the individual is not structured only in terms of Freud's dynamic concept of character, but that there is a character structure common to most members of groups or classes within a group. Given society (ibid. page 16) is this shared character structure that Fromm has called social character. The concept of social character does not refer to the total and in fact unique structure as it exists in an individual, but to a matrix of character, a syndrome of character traits that have developed as an adaptation to economic conditions. Social and cultural common to that group ”(Ibid.).

 

For Fromm it is clear that the first critical influences of the growing child come from the family. The internal emotional reactions and the educational ideals and values it embodies are in turn conditioned by the social and class background of the family; in a word, they are conditioned by the social structure in which it is rooted. For example, says Fromm, the relationships between father and son are very different if he comes from a family that is part of a bourgeois class, of a patriarchal society; than in a family in a matriarchal society. The social groups that come from a society with a feudal economic system, the social character of the fiefdoms is predominantly receptive and that of the feudal lords, cumulative, or from a mercantile society, the predominant social character is the consumerist mercantilist.

 

The social character is then the set of shared character traits in the social group to which one belongs.

INTERPRETIVE QUESTIONNAIRE OF A SOCIAL CHARACTER (CS)

The Interpretive Social Questionnaire


The Social Interpretative Questionnaire is an instrument developed by Fromm (1932, 1970, 1986, Fromm & Maccoby 1970,1996) to assess shared character traits in a group, based on their common material conditions of daily existence (Ibídem p 16) . Its antecedent is in Germany when Fromm studied the character traits of the Germans before the votes for the National Socialist party, concluding that those who showed authoritarian traits captured beyond their conscious opinions would vote in favor.

 

In Mexico, in the character research published in the book Sociopsychoanalysis of the Mexican Peasant, Fromm and Maccoby (1970) put to the test the approaches about the Theory of character, applying the interpretive questionnaire for the first time in Mexico and basically confirmed it in function of of the work of the peasants and the type of demands of the sugar production of the State of Morelos in Mexico that was just beginning its industrialization. Since then at Semsoac we have used the instrument, adapting it to the different study groups and communities.

 

 

"The interpretive questionnaire is a method that allows the application of psychoanalytic categories to the study of social groups, through an examination of the personality of each member of the group, by simultaneous and equally instantaneous observation of all socioeconomic and cultural data and eventually , for the attempt to use refined statistical methods for data analysis "((ibid. p 8). It is" an analogy between a social interview and a personal one ... in which the psychoanalyst ", and the researcher who interviews a person "tries to understand the unconscious meaning of certain phrases and statements used by the subject of study" or who answers the interview, "a meaning that he does not try to give or is not aware of expressing" (p. 25).



By analyzing each of the responses and the total of the responses to the questionnaire (p. 26), the method proposed by Fromm “tries to get to know the dynamic tendencies of the character of those who respond that are more relevant to their social and political attitudes… a character structure found in each of the questionnaires with all the others and with objective data such as age, sex, socioeconomic level and level of education ”.

 

The main difference between this type of questionnaire, called an interpretive questionnaire, and most of the questionnaires used in social research, is not that one is open and the other pre-formulated, but that the answers are used differently. The main effort is not to choose an adequate sample of relevant questions and the most profitable statistical elaboration of them, but to interpret the answers with respect to the unconscious or unintended meaning.

 

The task of interpreting is like any other psychoanalytic interpretation, difficult, and takes an amount of time to train. It requires knowledge of psychoanalytic theory and practice (including the experience of the analysis itself) and, as in everything else, skill and talent. Our workshop on Social Character and Social Character Questionnaire offers the minimum training necessary for its understanding, application, and qualification.

FOUNDATIONS

CARL MARX Y ERICH FROMM

CARL MARX (1818-1883)


Marx was a humanist philosopher, a German Jewish family, a revolutionary. For Marx, the authentic reality is the material reality. And it is that Marx maintains a dialectical Historical Materialism that tries to explain the evolution of History.

Man must reconcile with nature and transform it. Of those means of transformation of nature, work is essential to man. It means it. Man is seen as being social. The relations of production, of the means of subsistence, matter to him. those that condition it, whose transformation, in turn, conditions the transformation of society.

The true forging factor of history is the concrete-economic situation, the relationship between production and consumption, between the means of production and the labor force. Each man depends on the economic structures of his time and place.

The economic structure responds to the social situation that in turn conditions the legal and political order and the entire "ideological assembly": philosophy, morality and religion, which are a later theoretical construction, aimed at justifying and ensuring the material economic and social situation. for the benefit of the ruling class.


ERICH FROMM (1900-1980)


Fromm was a German humanist from a Jewish family. As a student of the work of Freud, as well as that of Marx, and the relationship between the two, what he called "My encounter with Marx and Freud", in his book Beyond the Chains of Illusion, which is his intellectual autobiography, he developed his own contributions from the Freud-Marxist synthesis. He believed that both theories had been revolutionary and humanistic, under the premises that "nothing human is alien to me" and "reason will set you free."

For Fromm, above all, psychoanalysis studies the problem of critical consciousness, the discovery of illusions and rationalizations that paralyze the ability to act productively.

Fromm proposes an analytical social psychology. Well, just as psychology studies the socialized individual and sociology studies, analyzes a group of individuals, considers that it is necessary to take into account the social structures in their context that also determine the psyche in addition to the psychic mechanisms themselves.

He is interested in the role that psychic factors play in social phenomena. He proposes the integration of both disciplines and rejects the thesis that psychology only studies the individual, while sociology only deals with "society." (The crisis of Psychoanalysis, p. 172)

“The theory of society with which psychoanalysis seems to have the greatest affinity and also the greatest differences is historical materialism. (p.172) Both are materialistic sciences. They do not start from "ideas", but from life and earthly needs. They are very close, especially in their assessment of consciousness, which they both see, not so much as the driving force behind human behavior, but as the reflection of other hidden forces. But when it comes to the nature of the factors that really condition man's consciousness, there seems to be an irreconcilable opposition between the two theories. Historical materialism sees consciousness as the expression of social existence; psychoanalysis sees it as determined by instinctual drives.


Character Orientation - Concepts

Biophilia - Necrophilia

Biofilia


The concept was used for the first time in 1973 by Erich Fromm to refer to "the attraction to life".


Biophilia is a concept that means love of living things, its essence is favorable to life and its conservation. It is not constituted by a single trait, but rather represents an orientation and a way of being.


It is a tendency to preserve life and fight against death, to maintain the life of all living organisms, as an inherent quality of all living organisms, living, preserving existence, integrating, uniting, growing.


The cycle of life is union, birth and growth, but even the sexual instinct, although biologically it serves life, is not necessarily the only thing that biophilia expresses psychologically.


The biophilic person is capable of being amazed, surprised. She fully loves life and is drawn to the process of life and growth in all spheres. The desire of the human being to live with nature, expressing their natural goodness and their tendency to mutual support. He prefers to be constructive than conservative, to see the new, the whole instead of the parts, he loves the adventure of living, for all that is alive, for the joy and joy that everything that is born and grows produces. He has the ability to shape and influence others through love, reason and example, not by force, he enjoys life in all its manifestations.

 

 

Necrofilia

 

This concept is related to Freud's sadistic-anal character and to the death instinct. It is the orientation that most opposes the force of life; these are behavioral traits as different as the attraction to death, corpses, the putrefied, the garbage. It is attraction to death, sadism, the inanimate, destructiveness, the perverse. Everything that withdraws from life or is directed against it attracts him.


The person with a necrophilous orientation is attracted and fascinated by everything that does not live, what does not grow, by everything dead, the mechanical, the bureaucratic. They are individuals who are fond of talking about diseases, burials, deaths, total and absolute destruction. They live in the past, they are cold, elusive people, they may not kill, but they may deprive a person of their freedom. Humiliating, or stripping her of her property, behind all these actions is her ability and desire to destroy, the use of force and the power to control are not transitory actions but a way of life. Your feelings and thoughts of life are transformed into things and possessions. They are interested in "having, and not being."


Necrophilic tendencies tend to manifest themselves most clearly in dreams; that can be repeated frequently and deal with murders, blood, corpses, skulls, feces; sometimes also of men transformed into machines or who act like machines.


(Fromm, E., The heart of man. FCE)

Productivity - unproductivity

This orientation is related to the internal and external forces and energies that move the individual, it is understood as spontaneous activity, activity on their own initiative, the realization of the potentialities of the subject that are characteristic of them, in the sense of not only being engaged in activities exteriors but with a certain interior activity in favor of life, love and work (Fromm) leads a more emotional life.


This orientation is related to the non-use of potentialities, it is difficult to find their activating or energizing effects and the effects that make the person passive as unable to change a given situation or to influence it or empty as diminished and exhausted in the situation dominate. vital energy by the conditions of your life, by external forces. They express what they do as canceled, they do not lead an emotional life but rather like a robot or an automaton that works as a body that does what it has to do, does not show new but repetitive initiatives, the same is always done with conformity

The Social Character Questionnaire in the Seminar Attachment Research

This study explores shared character traits (Fromm & Maccoby 1970) and their states of mind (Main, Goldwyn & Hesse, 2003/2008), as well as their relationship to their infants' attachment patterns (Ainsworth, Bell & Stayton , 1974, Ainsworth et al, 1978) in Mexican mothers; some urban middle, upper-middle and upper class and other poor indigenous people in peasant families.


The fundamental approach is in relation to the participation of women within the family, although it does not exclude that some of them, in addition to raising children and housework, also work outside the home (“double shift”). It is concluded that the daily material conditions of existence are closely related to shared character traits and that these are in turn related to the attachment patterns of their babies, their sensitivity in the treatment they offer to babies and their Attachment Interviews Adult (Main Goldwyn & Hesse, Gojman 2004).


Women have been the mainstay and pillar of the subsistence of both urban populations and the poorest and most excluded. A participation that is as widespread as it is undocumented by women.

Social character traits

The interviews are seen as a whole, and analyzed in group sessions to be classified according to the character orientation: Receptive, Cumulative, Exploitative-authoritarian or Self-developmental and these as in turn productive or unproductive, according to the vividness or not of the their expressions.

 

Productive Receptive: Responses to the Social Character Questionnaire tend to be loving, affectionate, close, they show affection through physical contact; it is less cool than women with a productive cumulative orientation. Describe your relationships with authority based on what they give you. He usually reports that he experiences deep sadness when he has been away from his parents; presents memories of fear of being abandoned by her authority figures. She considers affection important, she is kind, altruistic; the fundamental thing in life is for her the relationships with others and / or the emotional life.

 

Receptive Unproductive: Motherhood and children are lived as a burden, without active interest, there is an absence of joy of living or rejection of life. An unproductive receptive woman submits to what she has to do, although she manifests in one way or another that she does not like the job but that she has to do it. He cannot get out of that traditional role of having to do the chores necessary for the survival of the family nucleus. Your dreams, for example, can be a metaphor of what your life is, of vulnerability and not knowing where it is going, or what is going to happen, or where it is going to fall; he is powerless, he cannot do anything, there is no inner activity or inner strength in search of some solution. The person tends to try to fulfill what is expected of him to be accepted in the social group to which he belongs (even sometimes by the person who is interviewing him). For example, it says that children should be told not to misbehave and not to fight, due to their inability to exercise their own authority; it depends on the authority of its elders and the anonymous authority. He never disobeys or disobeyed parents and usually considers it good for children to be afraid of their parents, because fear implies obeying.

 

Cumulative Productive: Methodical, tenacious, persevering can be very sensitive but does not manifest it in a physical way. She is systematic, caring but not close through physical contact. Tends not to be loving. Lower scores on the love scale and higher on the sensitivity scale. Tends to intellectualize.

 

Cumulative Unproductive. It implies a distancing from other people, any intimacy with the outside world constitutes a threat. This orientation causes people to have little faith in anything they can get from the outside world. Your security is based on accumulating and saving, while spending is felt as a threat. They surround themselves as if with a protective wall and their main goal is to bring as much as possible to this fortified position. Love is essentially a possession; they do not offer love, but seek to obtain it by possessing the beloved.

Narcissistic Authoritarian Exploiter: Enterprising, bold, dynamic; It is about a person whose basic premise is to feel that the source of all good is outside; that whatever one wishes to obtain has to be sought there and that the individual cannot produce anything for himself. However, he does not wait to receive the objects of others as gifts but to take them away by means of cunning or violence. Their attitudes are often colored by a mix between hostility and calculation. Suspicion and cynicism, envy and jealousy are highlighted, they conceive that they are right and must impose themselves on the will of others.

 

Developer Auto. Respondents may have a productive motivation to learn, to work in a team, and to solve problems. They value independence, community work and keeping their employees. He seeks his own intellectual or work development, even if it may be at the cost of family problems or colleagues at work. There are certain narcissistic components that go beyond true personal development interests.

 

Basic tendencies shared by the different character orientations

Once the dominant orientation of each of the mothers has been appreciated, they are grouped according to the basic productive or unproductive tendency.

Living for Fromm is an art that must be exercised. The art of living requires the daily exercise of a life from one's own strengths. You have to discover it in yourself and in your relationship with reality, often against the resistance of the “pathologies of normality” masquerading as “common sense”.

The objective of the art of living is to be in relationship with the outer and inner reality with one's own mental, spiritual and bodily forces in such a way that the love of life and the orientation towards the Being (productive orientation) can grow, as opposed to to the love of death and the orientation to having (unproductive orientation) typical of the society oriented exclusively by the philosophy of marketing, the form of economic market production. The exercise and practice of artistic creative life alternatives, as well as expression in children and young people enable this productive development that is mental health.

Scales to rate mothers in the responses to the Social Character Questionnaire

a) Sensitivity to the emotional needs of children. This scale deals with the ability to perceive, notice, experience impressions to identify the range of needs, emotions and communications of your child. The mother is in a state of vigilant serenity, open to all changes related to the infant's situation, she deals with the degree of being alert and empathetic, but above all accessible to the children, without distortions, who responds promptly and appropriately according to the need

 

b) Loving. This scale refers to the responses to the interpretive questionnaire that have to do with the faculty or ability of the interviewee to be affectionate with her children. Loving implies for this scale several elements: giving material care, but above all emotional care, physical contact, hug, lullaby, respect, and knowledge.

 

c) Joy of Living. This scale deals with the existence and degree of a vibrant feeling of joy for life itself and for people, specifically with her children, but also with herself and others. The person shows interest, is awake, lively, tends to establish meaningful living relationships, demonstrates the capacity for enjoyment and enjoyment of the activities carried out; manifestation of joy, it gives pleasure to growth, development, what sprouts or has just been born.

 

d) Instrumental Attention to the Daily Survival of Children. It is about the way in which it can be inferred that the interviewee takes care of her children, her duties and functions as a regulator of material and basic care, the degree of responsibility in general towards herself and towards others. The mother responds with attention, care, in a timely and direct manner to the survival and physical care needs of her child or not.

 

e) Passive Hopelessness refers to a state of mind, in which the despondency and impotence to change the conditions that are adverse to her daily life, place the interviewee in a condition of inertia and passive acceptance. This condition of passivity excludes ideas, imagination or alternative solutions.

 

f) Active or violent hopelessness: It refers to a state of mind, in which the despondency and impotence to change the adverse conditions to their daily life are placing them in a condition of irritability-despair, or impulsiveness that translates into actions aggression-violence that can range from subtle damage, whether physical or emotional, to the extreme of greater damage in the most extreme cases.

 

The first three scales, sensitivity towards the emotional needs of children, love and joy of living, point in the direction of what we consider favors a humanly significant emotional development in children in the long term, and therefore offer the tools to overcome or contend with adversity, resilience.

 

The fourth scale, instrumental attention to the survival needs of her children, refers to the mother who provides what is indispensable, the minimum, basic and necessary for development, offering her children an organized way of life.

 

Two scales, the passive hopelessness and the violent hopelessness we consider point in the direction of what we consider does not favor or could be contrary to the significant emotional development of the children, and they denote character traits of the mothers that indicate possible affective or traumatic deficiencies that do not favor the ability to overcome adversity, either through resignation -which does not look for alternatives or acceptable solutions- manifesting passive-hopelessness, or through violence, revenge and despair, which manifests itself as active-violent hopelessness.

 

These elements of each scale are identified and the respective passages are marked, for the qualification of the score or grade, how high or low they are, since many times several trends may be present, although in different proportions and degrees. With the rating of the Scales the aim is to determine which trends stand out.

EVENTS

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