Fromm and Maccoby on the Total Character Structure

The nonproductive forms of social relatedness in a predominantly productive person—loyalty, authority, fairness, assertiveness—turn into submission, domination, withdrawal, destructiveness in a predominantly nonproductive person. Any of the nonproductive orientations has, therefore, a positive and a negative aspect, according to the degree of productiveness in the total character structure. (78)

Erich Fromm and Michael Maccoby
Social Character
in a Mexican Village (1970)

p. 79 has a long list of "positive aspects" along with their "negative aspects," the idea being as above that the productive/nonproductive binary is the linchpin distinction which colors most other secondary traits.

These sorts of theoretical edifices are always a bit unsightly, but the general insight that the beneficence or malevolence of a given trait is actually a function of many or all of the accompanying traits is a brilliant one. In Minneapolis of course, the nonproductive version of openness is apathy. (CalArts too.)

[from a notebook, 2016 or 2017]