Humanistic Transformation and the Ego-Oriented Social Character

This paper explores Erich Fromm’s significant scientific contribution through his development of a theory and method that elucidates the representation of society within the individual through their psychic structure formation, termed the “social character.” Initially, an outline of Fromm’s theory and methodology is presented, highlighting his insights into the formation of various social characters and examining their alienating and pathogenic impacts as “socially patterned defects.” Using the example of the authoritarian character conceived by Fromm, it is relatively easy to understand from a historical distance what the “socially patterned defects” consist of and how a humanistic transformation ought to look. This will be illustrated in a second part. Since the formation of social character is time-related, the third part uses Fromm’s theory and method to analyze the effects of the digital revolution on the formation of social character. The “ego-oriented social character” I have identified distinguishes itself from both the marketing character and narcissistic social character formations. This is reflected last but not least in the “socially patterned defects” of a pronounced ego weakness, which will be discussed in conclusion.