Erich Fromm's Productivity: Creativity as Exemplified by Joyce's Blooming of Leopold and Molly

According to Erich Fromm, the productive character expresses what he called the life force in ways that are, by nature, artistic in quality. His valuing of the vital and the artistic, fueled by this life force in our potential to be human, serves as the cornerstone of his model of psychoanalysis. Gilbert Rose, author of Necessary Illusion: Art as “Witness, “ also has identified the parallel between analytic and artistic processes, building on the assumption that the therapeutic alliance and the aesthetic alliance are one and the same. In elaborating this assumption and extending the parallel between Rose and Fromm, I draw the conclusion that the qualities of relationships have an impact on one's ability to express oneself creatively, to live an artistic life—that is, to live productively. Psychoanalysis is, in practice, a process that is artistic, creative, and re-creative in nature. To the degree that authentic expression of emotionally charged implicit knowledge of the ineffable (the emotional life that resides deep in the bodymind) results in transformation and healing, the process is artistic in nature. This process is exemplified by examining the life and literary creations of James Joyce, especially Joyce's characters of Molly and Leopold Bloom in Ulysses.