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The term “transformation” is on everyone's lips, and there are good reasons for this. On the one hand, the digital revolution changed our way of life fundamentally in a very short time: we have completely new possibilities to work, to produce, to communicate, to be creative, and to organize ourselves socially. Transformation is therefore the order of the day and mostly means favoring the technical creativity made possible by digital technology, electronic media, and networking technology in the form of programs, tools, algorithms, and artificial intelligence.
On the other hand, we are confronted with global developments – first and foremost man-made climate change, but also worsening worldwide social inequalities and wars – which make a radical change in human behavior necessary. Here, too, “transformation” is the order of the day, but it is also a question of changing human behavior. This requires a normative orientation from which we can determine what makes human beings and social interaction prosper in terms of the environment – i.e. ecologically – and in terms of our relatedness. And we need more precise knowledge about the internalized mental powers that determine human behavior, if a certain behavior is to be changed.
Humanistic transformation aims to do justice to both aspects. The subject of the Third International Erich Fromm Research Conference, held at the International Psychoanalytic University in Berlin from June 8 to 11, 2023, was therefore what a humanistic transformation means for the change of society, culture, and the economy, and also for the impulses of the many individuals and for psychotherapeutic practice. For a psychoanalytic view of humanistic transformation, Erich Fromm's (1900–1980) social psychoanalysis is undoubtedly of particular significance. His concept of social character opens the view for the social character of the individual and of social groups.
“Man is not a thing” (Fromm, 1957) – so that mankind also cannot be calculated like a