Horney’s cultural determinism slid into ignoring social distortion of instinctive structure
Evidence
Fromm’s assumption that instinctual structures were produced by the conditions of existence led him to demonstrate that the prevailing conditions of existence would continue indefinitely because they were embedded in instinctual structures. For Horney, an insight into the formative nature of social realities and norms became the springboard for a theory which released all forms of behaviour, perception and thinking from their embeddedness in instinctual structure and, in combination with the priority given to determination by social factors, left room for a redefinition and reshaping of the behaviour of women, for example. But her exposure of the premiss of biological determination as merely a piece of ideology developed into a conception in which the distorting effects of social conditions on instinctual structures were ignored, and in which better upbringing and better analytical therapy were supposed to provide a relatively simple solution to the difficulties of various cultures. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1119 (
#qualifies, via linked claim)
“Empowerment,” a legal term referring both to the act of giving power to someone and to someone’s power to act, becomes a metaphysical quality defining secular human agency, its objective as well as precondition. Although the various usages of agency have very different implications that do not all hang together, cultural theory tends to reduce them to the metaphysical idea of a conscious agent-subject having both the capacity and the desire to move in a singular historical direction: that of increasing self-empowerment and decreasing pain. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 383 (
#complicates, via linked claim)
Lack of pride, lack of joy in oneself and others, lack of self-confidence, dejection, feelings of guilt (in spite of a decision at one point to live a definite kind of life for certain definite reasons)all of these have as their common root a bourgeois instinctual structure created by our upbringing (being prevented from doing what is fun). Only conscious pride, which opposes the rights and the value of our partnership to a hostile world, can help to overcome this instinctual structure, which constantly questions the maxims of gaîté and courage. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 439 (
#expands, via linked claim)
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Fromm and Horney diverged over whether instinct or social conditions determine human behavior. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1119; Psychic dejection stems from a bourgeois instinct structure produced by childhood repression — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 439; Cultural theory collapses agency into a drive for self-empowerment and less pain — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular:…, 383 (+3 more)
Related
- Fromm and Horney diverged over whether instinct or social conditions determine human behavior. (similarity 0.87)
- Horney’s relational model replaced Freud’s libido-stage theory with social-environmental determinants. (similarity 0.82)
- Psychic dejection stems from a bourgeois instinct structure produced by childhood repression (similarity 0.79)
Broader Connections
- Fromm and Horney diverged over whether instinct or social conditions determine human behavior.
#qualifies(0.82) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1119 - Cultural theory collapses agency into a drive for self-empowerment and less pain
#complicates(0.78) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 383 - Psychic dejection stems from a bourgeois instinct structure produced by childhood repression
#expands(0.75) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 439 - The collective unconscious is culturally imposed, not biologically inherited
#contradicts(0.75) — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 668 - Biological determinism lets privileged subjects dismiss the social causes of inequality
#exemplifies(0.73) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 118