I am too lazy to translate it by myself. Whatever. The transcript is not perfect. I speak German.
Transcript:
LODEMANN: You once said:
"We live in a society of notoriously unhappy people"
How did you come to this surprising conclusion?
FROMM: Well, it's not that surprising to be honest.
It's something you can easily observe by taking a loser look at people:
People pretend to be happy.
Even to themselves.
They pretend because life has taught them this is how you are supposed to be happy.
Being unhappy would mean they did something wrong
and failed at being a normal, functioning part of society.
They're afraid people could see them as a failure
so they put on a mask – unknowingly.
But all you need to do is to take a close look to see what's behind their masks:
Restlessness, irritation, anger, depression, insomnia, unhappiness –
In France it was called the "Malaise",
more precisely the "Malaise du siècle"
and Freud called it the "uneasiness in culture".
But it isn't the uneasiness in culture.
It is the uneasiness in our modern society that turned people into working machines
and suppressed the facets of our lives that have actual meaning:
To love and take care of each other. To keep an open mind.
To use our economy as a tool, instead of becoming its tools.
All of this this leads us to where we are now
and is the reason why I believe that our picture of being a happy, modern society
is nothing but fiction we all silently agreed on.
But these observations have been made by many people before me.
After all, people simply need to take a closer look
if they'd like to see for themselves.
LODEMANN: You've worked as a psychotherapist in the past
which helped gaining insight and making these observations, right?
FROMM: That's correct
I've started in 1926 and have analysed and reviewed many hundreds of my cases
or cases of colleagues I supervised.
A lot of empirical data that disclosed a certain pattern:
New clients usually sought help because of mild symptoms
and random minor complaints.
But in many cases these turned out to be just the tip of the iceberg:
In truth they were deeply unhappy and desperate.
Their life felt meaningless and pointless to them.
The minds attempt to suppress these feelings was what caused their initial symptoms.
LÄMMLE: So from your point of view, the people we commonly consider "normal" are in fact sick?
FROMM: Oh, absolutely!
The normal are the sick and the sick are the normal.
This might sound a bit provocative but I'm serious, it's not just a funny phrase:
"The sick individual" is so detached from society, that they are able to retain, rather than surpress, most of their individual, authentic self,
so that they constantly come into conflict with certain aspects of our culture
and as a result of that permanent conflict, exerience pathological symptoms.
And a symptom, similar to pain, simply indicates that "something's not right":
Fortunate is, who shows symptoms; fortunate is, who feels pain when something is missing.
It is well known that someone who is unable to feel pain is in great danger.
"The normal individual" on the other hand is highly adapted to society, so much in fact, that they have abandoned their authentic self
in order to become the person they believe they are supposed to become, pursuing goals they believe they are supposed to pursue.
They're so estranged, so instrumentalized, so robotic, that they're unable to feel conflicted about society at all.
So their capability of realizing their true, authentic self, along with their true feelings, is entirely suppressed – or withered even,
so that they actually meet the diagnostic criteria for a chronic mild schizophrenia.
INTERVIEWER: Do you suspect the causes for this within our society?
FROMM: Well, the causes are quite evident to me;
our society is based on the assumption, that the meaning of life, the ultimate goal,
is profitability, consumption, 'bigger and better' and the facilitation of economical growth:
As of now, we essentially live for economical and technological progress – not our own wellbeing.
Our wellbeing – the wellbeing of the human race – is irrelevant at this point.
Not even what's harmful to us seems to be of relevance
which we can see every day when ads try to convince us into buying products that are often harmful, sometimes even deadly.
Exporting dairy products to Africa – to name a recent example – where many children passed away
due to companies encouraging women to use their products instead of breastfeeding their children.
But all that doesn't matter: Where's profit, there's a lack of conscience.
If you need an even more drastic example you just need to look at the arms industry;
weapons and tools for war being made available to the whole world,
atomic weapons being built. What this means for the people – irrelevant.
All this however, has just started during the industrialisation and was quite different in the middle-ages –
which actually applies to most past cultures – where culture and economy *served* the people, not the other way around.
Freud actually heavily criticised civil society unintentionally when he said
"The civil society is a neurotic society, because it's dominated by the principle of possession, collection, of accumulation, of clinging-onto things – of greed, essentially.
INTERVIEWER: This implies, that the industrialised society, compared to other societies, is actually a underdeveloped society
FROMM: From a human-friendly point of view, yes absolutely.
If I look at other cultures and places, a tribe in Africa for example,
or a simple rural farmers life – where that's still possible – yes, in a way they're far more advanced than we are.
Modern people believe, that the more developed you are, the more machines you will need and use.
And that the less machines you use, the less developed you are.
That's why our people look down on cultures that don't build or use machines the way we do.
Me OP of the thread again. I wonder what his take would have been on the members of this forum. And maybe his take on promortalists. "The normal are the sick and the sick are the normal." I think promortalists would be called by some average people sick. On the other hand I cannot imagine that he would actually endorse promortalism.
I enjoyed the interview but psychoanalysis always makes me sad because my parents massively failed in the way they raised me. One reason why I never was interested to head to psychology courses It needs a lot of social skills also which I don't have. And the psychological elements at college for non-therapists are rather like how can you squeeze money or performance out of people. And I dislike that notion.
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