Ethological Aspects of the Work of Erich Fromm

PSYCHOPATHOLOGY MAY BE VIEWED as the result of the interference of an alien culture with the unfolding of biologically given behavioral sequences (1982). There is an affinity between this ethological point of view, as set forth by Bowlby, and the ideas of one of the founders of the interpersonal-cultural school, i.e., Erich Fromm.

I shall base myself mainly on Man for Himself, which I consider Fromm's most seminal work. I shall present the ethological viewpoint, offering it as a critique of Western European bourgeois society, much like Fromm's. After a review of Bowlby's attachment theory, I shall suggest extensions and integrate these with ethological aspects of Fromm's work.

The ethological viewpoint could be summarized as follows. The human species is characterized by a prevalence of culture influence in interaction with biological potential. The opposite holds true at the beginning of development. The biologically determined behavior we observe in the infant, and the complementary response it evokes in caretaking adults, emerged in the course of evolution because of their survival value. The environment to which our innate behavior is adapted is called by Bowlby the "environment of evolutionary adaptedness."

In the history of man, cultural evolution has modified the environment at an increasing pace. Culture itself has become a manmade environment to which man has had to adapt—a filter between himself and nature (Rosenthal, 1971). The rate of cultural evolution has far outstripped that of man's biological evolution. Our genetic endowment, and in particular our innate responsive