Alchemists of Human Nature - Psychological Utopianism in Gross, Jung, Reich and Fromm

299 Pages·2007·3.03 MB·English

by  Petteri Pietikainen

ALCHEMISTS OF HUMAN NATURE:
PSYCHOLOGICAL UTOPIANISM IN GROSS,
JUNG, REICH AND FROMM

ALCHEMISTS OF HUMAN NATURE:
PSYCHOLOGICAL UTOPIANISM IN GROSS,
JUNG, REICH AND FROMM
by
Petteri Pietikainen
london
PICKERING & CHATTO
2007
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© Petteri Pietikainen 2007
british library cataloguing in publication
Pietikainen, Petteri
Alchemists of human nature: psychological utopianism in Gross, Jung, Reich
and Fromm
1. Gross, Otto, 1877–1920 2. Jung, C. G. (Carl Gustav), 1875–1961 3.
Reich, Wilhelm, 1897–1957 4. Fromm, Erich, 1900–1980 5. Psychoanalysis
– History 6. Utopias
I. Title
150.1’95’0922
ISBN-13: 9781851969234
∞

Th is publication is printed on acid-free paper that conforms to the American
National Standard for the Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials.
Typeset by Pickering & Chatto (Publishers) Limited
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction 1
1 Th e Nature of Psychological Utopianism 7
2 Th e New Soviet Man: Psychoanalysis and the Conquest of the
Unconscious in the Early Days of the Soviet Union 31
3 Anarchy, Eros and the Mother Right: Utopianism in Otto Gross 46
4 Individuation and ‘National Individuation’: Utopianism in Carl G. Jung 94
5 Sexual Revolution and the Power of Orgone Energy: Utopianism in
Wilhelm Reich 129
6 Socialist Humanism and the Sane Society: Utopianism in Erich Fromm 167
Conclusion: Utopia, Illusion and Second Reality 208
Notes 221
Works Cited 261
Index 285

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Th ere is a place called Utopia in Texas (http://www.utopiatexas.com/). Once
I toyed with the silly idea of writing my book on utopia in Utopia. For practi-
cal reasons, I gave up the idea, but in my mind I still have an enduring image of
myself sitting in a coff ee-house in the centre of Utopia, sipping coff ee, eating
doughnuts and thinking utopian thoughts. Maybe next time …
Meanwhile, this is what happened in a place called reality. During the diff er-
ent stages of this work I have been in contact with a great number of colleagues
who have off ered me assistance in one way or another, and many people and
institutions who have made it possible for me to research and write this book.
Grants from Ella and Georg Ehrnrooth’s Foundation and Lehto Foundation
helped me to get started with my research in Helsinki, and with the help of the
the Academy of Finland’s post-doctoral funding I was able to spend an academic
year at the Department of Psychology, University College Dublin. Conversa-
tions with Adrian Brock and other historically-minded psychologists in Dublin
stimulated my thought and increased my understanding of the critical questions
in the history of psychology.
From Dublin I moved further to the west to Boston, where I spent another
academic year as a Fulbright scholar at the Department of History, Massachu-
setts Institute of Technology. My friendly host at MIT was Bruce Mazlish, who
off ered encouragement and thoughtful comments at a time when I was trying to
build a solid structure to my wandering ideas. A year in Boston also off ered valu-
able time for further research, archival work and conversations with intellectual
historians, psychoanalysts and scholars of psychology in various conferences,
seminars and cosy little restaurants across the country, as well as in the nearby
Cambridge area. I would like to express my gratitude especially to the late
professor Paul Roazen, who was always willing to engage in long enthusiastic
discussions with me (with anyone, basically) about the history of psychoanalysis
and psychiatry.
Back in Europe, two travel grants from the Emil Öhmann Foundation sup-
ported my study trips to German-speaking Europe. In one of these trips, Rainer
Funk from the Erich Fromm Archives in Tubingen showed me warm hospitality
– vii –
when I spent a few hectic days there going through Fromm’s letters and other
archival material.
My research took an important step forward when the Ax:son Johnson
Foundation in Sweden decided to organize an international conference on psy-
chological utopias. I was given an opportunity not only to invite speakers to
the conference but also to act as the chairman of the meeting. Th is was almost
like a psychological utopia to me – too good to be true. In lovely surroundings
in Swedish countryside, I had a unique chance to exchange ideas with Swedish
(Kay Glans, Olav Hammer, Inga Sanner, Lennart Warring), Finnish (Juhani Iha-
nus), British (Paul Bishop, Gottfried Heuer, Janet Stewart), Russian (Alexander
Etkind) and American (Jonathan Beecher, Alan C. Elms, Bruce Mazlish) schol-
ars and writers in a near-utopian setting. During this conference I learned much
about Otto Gross, B. F. Skinner, Charles Fourier, C. G. Jung and other utopian
authors. I am very grateful for the generous support that Vicky Ax:son John-
son and Kurt Almqvist from the Ax:son Johnson Foundation off ered me during
that year and also later. Indeed, in the early 2000s, I spent three years in Sweden
working as a project leader in a historical project funded by the Foundation. Th is
gave me an opportunity to write a number of articles on psychological utopian-
ism, as well as to examine in depth the history of Swedish mental medicine and
intellectual culture. Aft er returning to Finland and the University of Helsinki, I
was able to fi nish the manuscript for this book with the help of a grant from the
Wihuri Foundation.
In the last decade I have been sustained and entertained intellectually and
emotionally by a community of scholars and friends, who have made sure that
my utopian energies have not been exhausted. For their support and their valu-
able ideas, I would like to thank Stephen Berger, Paul Bishop, Jaap Bos, John
Burnham, David Clark, Raymond Fancher, Martin Green, Benjamin Harris, Ari
Helo, Gottfried Heuer, Juhani Ihanus, Horst Junginger, Dave Park, Hans Pols,
Markku Roinila and Juha Siltala. Particular thanks are due to Heikki Sarmaja
and Janne Kivivuori, whose insights, humour and unconventional understand-
ing of human nature have inspired me all these years.
Finally, I would like to thank my family: my wife Anne, our daughter Mona
and our son Eero. Th ey have taught me to give a satisfactory answer to the
annoying question: ‘what is the meaning of life?’ Eero has also provided me with
a motto I like to use when things get too serious and important: ‘Hands up if I
shoot you!’
INTRODUCTION
Th is is a study of utopian elements in the writings of four psychological authors:
Otto Gross, Carl G. Jung, Wilhelm Reich and Erich Fromm. Th ey were all psy-
choanalytic renegades in one way or another, for aft er a period of collaboration
with Freud (Gross, Jung and Reich), or with the faithful guardians of the psycho-
analytic doctrine (Fromm), they were renounced as revisionists or stigmatized as
mentally disturbed by Freud and his loyal cadre of followers. Consequently, they
either retreated from the nascent psychoanalytic movement voluntarily (as did
Jung) or were more or less forced to leave it (as did Gross, Reich and Fromm). As
this book demonstrates, these four authors started to display utopian propensi-
ties only aft er their break with Freudian psychoanalysis.
Th e purpose of this book is to be the fi rst to analyse historically the uto-
pian elements in the writings of these four authors, and to demonstrate that,
while they saw themselves as healers, explorers of the unconscious and, at best,
political activists and proponents of specifi c belief systems, their thought pat-
terns included distinct visionary and prophetic elements that belong squarely to
the Western tradition of utopian thought. It is quite understandable that they
did not openly refer to their ideas as ‘utopian’ or place any of them within this
tradition, because it did not exactly boost an author’s professional and intellec-
tual status if his ideas were identifi ed as representing utopianism – that is, idle,
‘non-scientifi c’ dreaming.
I have chosen to examine the ideas of these particular authors because they
exemplify psychodynamic1 utopianism better than any other psychoanalysts
or psychoanalytically-inspired philosophers. Th ere have been psychodynamic
authors (such as Alfred Adler or R. D. Laing) as well as non-medical authors
inspired by psychoanalysis (such as Herbert Marcuse) who expressed utopian
ideas in some of their writings, but the point of this book is not to compile an
exhaustive catalogue of all psychodynamic texts where utopian elements are
discernible, but to examine in a historical context the utopian elements in the
ideas of four authors, whose propensity to psychoutopian visions characterizes
not only a certain publication or a certain period of their lives, but their very
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