Concept
Social character
Fromm's term for the core of character structure that most members of a group share, formed by the way of life that their society's economic and social conditions impose on them. It channels psychic energy so that people come to want to do what they have to do, and so links a society's economic base to its ideas and ideals. Fromm first sketched it in the early 1930s as the libidinal structure of society and set it out in the appendix to Escape from Freedom (1941).
Read more- Narrower concepts
- Authoritarian character
- Introduced by
- Erich Fromm
- Key works
- 1
introduced by
- Erich Fromm 1941 Fromm used the phrase social character structure in his 1935 essay on the social determination of psychoanalytic therapy, after sketching the idea in the early 1930s as the libidinal structure of society, and set out the concept systematically in the appendix to Escape from Freedom (1941).