ABSTRACT
Erich Fromm, the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research theorist, systematically outlined the relations between psychoanalysis and sociology. The reader will find many other features of our present Western society in George Orwell’s description in 1984, provided he can overcome enough of his own “doublethink.” Erich Fromm succinctly suggests the line along which this connection between society and character training may be sought: “In order that any society may function well, its members must acquire the kind of character which makes them want to act in the way they have to act as members of the society or of a special class within it. Undeniably a vast amount of such segmental and partially integrated pathological behavior exists in our society and has impressed many writers in the field of social pathology. The process of American identity formation seems to support an individual’s ego identity as long as he can preserve a certain element of deliberate tentativeness of autonomous choice.
