Erich Fromm

Erich Fromm (1900-1980) achieved international fame for his writings and lectures in the fields of psychoanalysis, psychology, and social philosophy. He wrote extensively on a variety of topics ranging from sociology, anthropology, and ethics to religion, politics, and mythology.

Erich Fromm was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, on March 23, 1900, and died in Muralto, Switzerland, on March 18, 1980. He grew up in a devout Jewish family, but abandoned religious orthodoxy early in life when he became convinced that religion was a source of division of the human race. His academic career was impressive. He studied at the Universities of Frankfurt and Munich and received his Ph.D. from the University of Heidelberg. Later, he obtained psychoanalytic training at the prestigious Psychoanalytic Institute of Berlin under the leadership of such prominent Freudian analysts as Hanns Sachs and Theodor Reik. After pursuing a brief career as a psychoanalyst he left Nazi Germany in 1934 and settled permanently in the United States. Fromm taught in various universities such as Bennington College, Columbia, Yale, New School for Social Research, Michigan State, and the Universidad Autónoma de México. In 1962 he became professor of psychiatry at New York University.

Fromm wrote more than 20 books. Some of them became popular bestsellers: Escape from Freedom (1942); Man for Himself (1947); Psychoanalysis and Religion (1950); The Forgotten Language (1951); The Sane Society (1955); The Art of Loving (1956); Marx's Concept of Man (1961); Beyond the Chains of Illusion: My Encounter with Marx and Freud (1962); The Dogma of Christ, and Other Essays on Religion, Psychology and Culture (1963); Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis (1960); The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud (1963); The Heart of Man (1964); Social Character in a Mexican Village (1970); The Revolution of Hope (1968); The Crisis of Psychoanalysis (1970); and The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1973).

A sincere and profound humanism permeates all of Fromm's writings. He was genuinely concerned with the reality of human existence and the full unfolding of man's potentialities. He searched for the essence of man, the meaning of life, and the nature of individual alienation in the modern technological world. Deeply moved by the destruction and the suffering caused by two world wars, Fromm wrote extensively on the threats of technology and the insanity of the arms race. Faith in the future of man and the unity of humanity was the base of his humanistic vision.

Freud and Marx were the most decisive influences on Fromm's thinking. Originally Freudian in his intellectual orientation and clinical practice, he gradually grew more distant from Freudian therapeutic principles and later became a major critic of Freud. Along with Karen Horney, Harry Sullivan, and Karl Jung, Fromm was considered a Freudian revisionist and the founder of the neo-Freudian school. He rejected Freud's libido theory, the Oedipus complex, and the instincts of life and death as universally constant in the human species. Instead, he insisted on cultural variations and the influence of the larger context of history and social conditions upon the character of the individual. The concept of the unconscious and the dynamic conception of character were considered to be Freud's major achievements. The task of analytical social psychology, Fromm wrote, is that of understanding unconscious human behavior as the effect of the socio-economic structure of society on basic human psychic drives. Likewise, the character of the individual is rooted in the libidinal structure of society, understood as a combination of basic human drives and social forces. In the last analysis, Fromm rejected Freudian theory as authoritarian, repressive, and culturally narrow, enabling the individual to overcome the conflict between society and personal gratification and accept bourgeois norms.

In contrast, Fromm's admiration for Marx was complete. He considered Marx a sincere humanist who sought an end to human alienation and the full development of the individual as the precondition for the full development of society (Marx's Concept of Man). Marx's emphasis on the socio-economic base of society as a major determinant of human behavior was accepted as a given by Fromm. Marxism, though, needed to be completed by a dynamic and critical psychology - that is, a psychology which explained the evolution of psychic forces in terms of an interaction between man's needs and the socio-historical reality in which he lives (The Crisis of Psychoanalysis). Fromm never renounced his project of merging psycho-analysis and Marxism. This was his major work as a member of the Frankfurt School (The Institute for Social Research), a school committed to Critical Theory, a critique of the repressive character of bourgeois society. Psychological theory, he wrote, can demonstrate that the economic base of a society produces the social character, and that the social character produces ideas and ideologies which fit it and are nourished by it. Ideas, once created, also influence the social character and, indirectly, the socio-economic structure of society (Socialist Humanism).

In his popular book Escape from Freedom Fromm analyzed the existential condition of man. The source of man's aggressiveness, the human instinct of destructiveness, neurosis, sadism, and masochism were not viewed as sexually derived behavior, but as attempts to overcome alienation and powerlessness. His notion of freedom, in contrast to Freud and the critical theorists of the Frankfurt School, had a more positive connotation. It was not a matter of attaining "freedom from" the repressive character of the technological society, as Herbert Marcuse, for instance, held, but "freedom to" develop the creative powers of man. In Man for Himself Fromm focussed on the problem of neurosis, characterizing it as the moral problem of a repressive society, as the failure of man to achieve maturity and an integrated personality. Man's capacity for freedom and love, he noted, are dependent upon socio-economic conditions, but are rarely found in societies where the drive of destructiveness prevails.

In the Sane Society he attempted to psychologize society and culture and showed that psychoanalytic principles can be successfully applied to the solution of social and cultural problems. In a society becoming increasingly insane, he wrote, only a concern for ethics can restore sanity. Each person needs to develop high ethical standards in order to rejuvenate society and to arrest the process of robotization of the human being. Technological domination is destructive of human personality. Man's need to destroy, for Fromm, stemmed from an "unlived life," that is, the frustration of the life instinct. Love becomes the only answer to human problems (The Art of Loving). He advocated a "socialist humanism" which in theory and practice is committed to the full development of man within the context of a socio-economic system that, by its rationality and abundance, harmonizes the development of the individual and society (Socialist Humanism).

In contrast to the pessimistic and deterministic conclusions of Freudian theory and the nihilistic implications of Critical Theory, Fromm functioned as a voice of conscience. He maintained that true happiness could be achieved and that a happiness-oriented therapy, through empathy, was the most successful one. He severely criticized established psychoanalysis for contributing to the dehumanization of man (The Crisis of Psychoanalysis). Also, consistent with his philosophy of love and peace, Fromm fought against nuclear weapons and helped organize a "sane society" movement to stop the insanity of the arms race.

His influence on humanistic psychology was enormous. Many later social analysts were inspired by Fromm's writings. An example would be the work of Christopher Lasch on the Culture of Narcissism, which continued in the United States Fromm's effort to psychoanalyze culture and society in a neo-Freudian and Marxist tradition.

Further Reading

Fromm is listed in most social science encyclopedias. For a general summary of his work, a more complete intellectual biography, and a critical assessment of his theories see: Jay Martin, The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School (1973); Don Hausdorff, Erich Fromm (1972); B. Landis and E. Tauber (editors), In the Name of Life: Essays in Honor of Erich Fromm (1979) and "Erich Fromm: Clinician and Social Philosopher," in Contemporary Psychoanalysis (1979); and Richard Evans, Dialogue with Erich Fromm (1966).

Numerous dissertations have been written on Fromm. See J. Zimmerman, "Transcendent Psychology: Eric H. Erikson, Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, A. Maslow and Harry S. Sullivan and the Quest for a Healthy Humanity," Dissertation Abstracts International (1982); S. J. Dembo, "Synthesis of Liberation: Marx-Freud and the New Left, An Examination of the Work of W. Reich, E. Fromm and H. Marcuse," Ph.D. Dissertation, Rutgers University (1975); and C. E. Daly, "The Epistemology and Ethical Theory of Erich Fromm as the Basis for a Theory of Moral Education," Ph.D. Dissertation, New York University (1977).

Additional Sources

Evans, Richard I. (Richard Isadore), Dialogue with Erich Fromm, New York, N.Y.: Praeger, 1981, 1966.

Knapp, Gerhard Peter, The art of living: Erich Fromm's life and works, New York: P. Lang, 1989.

For more information on Erich Fromm, visit Britannica.com.

Fromm, Erich (ĕr'ĭkh frōm, frŏm) , 1900–1980, psychoanalyst and author, b. Frankfurt, Germany, Ph.D. Univ. of Heidelberg, 1922. From 1929 to 1932 he lectured at the Psychoanalytic Institute, Frankfurt, and at the Univ. of Frankfurt. He came to the United States in 1934, where he practiced psychoanalysis and lectured at various institutions, including the International Institute for Social Research (1934–39), Columbia Univ. (1940–41), the American Institute for Psychoanalysis (1941–42), and Yale (1949–50). He served on the faculty of Bennington College (1941–50). He went on to teach at the National Univ. of Mexico (1951), at Michigan State Univ. (1957), and at New York Univ. (1961). Breaking from the Freudian psychoanalytic tradition which focused largely on unconscious motivations, Fromm held that humans are products of the cultures in which they are bred. In modern, industrial societies, he maintained, they have become estranged from themselves. These feelings of isolation resulted in an unconscious desire for unity with others. Fromm's works include Escape from Freedom (1941), The Sane Society (1955), The Art of Loving (1956), Sigmund Freud's Mission (1958), May Man Prevail? (1973), and To Have or to Be (1976).

Bibliography

See biographical studies by D. Hausdorff (1972) and G. Knapp (1989); R. I. Evans, Dialogue with Erich Fromm (1966, repr. 1981).

1900-1980

Erich Fromm, a German psychoanalyst and sociologist, was born on March 23, 1900, in Frankfurt, Germany, and died on March 18, 1980, in Locarno, Switzerland. He grew up in a Jewish family in Germany. From age eighteen to twenty-two he attended the University of Heidelberg, where he studied sociology, receiving his doctorate under the supervision of Alfred Weber. He wrote his thesis on Talmudic law in three separate Jewish communities. In 1924 he met Frieda Reichmann, who became his first analyst and later his wife. At the time she was running a small sanatorium in Frankfurt. Fromm had two other analysts before he moved to Berlin, where in 1927 he was analyzed by the Viennese Hanns Sachs.

From the 1930s, after about ten years of being a traditional Freudian, Fromm began to look critically at the central moral and philosophical bases of Freud's writings. As a Marxist, Fromm was shrewd in spotting the middle-class, liberal assumptions Freud had taken for granted. As a psychologist, Fromm's special theoretical contribution was an understanding of the social forces that stabilize or undermine the political community. In Escape from Freedom (1941), a landmark in modern social science, Fromm enunciated the important concept of "social character" in building theoretical bridges between the study of the individual and the study of society. He was fascinated with the problem of social change and how sociological issues can be understood in the light of depth psychology. He also wanted to examine people in their social milieus. Fromm had his predecessors within psychoanalysis, the most notable perhaps being Wilhelm Reich, who also tried to synthesize Marxist and Freudian principles. Fromm has his detractors: not only strict psychoanalysts but also Marxist hardliners, who have been determined to dismiss Fromm as a so-called social democrat.

After Fromm fled from Nazi Germany in 1933, he moved to the United States, where he was soon in contact with a whole new school of analysts, anthropologists, and sociologists that became known as the neo-Freudian movement. This group included analysts like Harry Stack Sullivan, Karen Horney, Abram Kardiner, and Clara Thompson, as well as academics such as Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, and Ralph Linton. Fromm found that he had been quietly dropped as a direct member of the International Psychoanalytical Association. Despite this setback, he was made clinical director of the William Alanson White Institute in New York City, which focuses on training psychoanalysts, and served from 1946 until 1950.

In 1949 Fromm moved for much of the year to Mexico for his second wife's health. There he founded the Mexican Institute of Psychoanalysis, where his ideas are still being taught in a clinical context as of 2005. He also continued to write in his isolated retreat near Mexico City. Especially in Germany, where the International Erich Fromm Society is headquartered, but also in Italy and elsewhere, Fromm's clinical concepts are still being extended.

Millions of people around the world read Fromm's works, but it has usually been his social philosophy that catches the public's attention. Works like The Sane Society (1955) represent a serious indictment of modern capitalist culture. Man for Himself (1947) was an early popular effort to extract a humanitarian core from analytic teachings. The Art of Loving (1956) is perhaps Fromm's best-selling book. The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1973) showed the comprehensive nature of Fromm's system of thought. To Have or to Be? (1976) was a widely read restatement of his attempt to connect humanistic Marxism with analysis. More technical works like The Forgotten Language (1951) and Psychoanalysis and Religion (1950) are of direct clinical relevance, even though they are no longer studied at most professional training centers.

Fromm was one of the first and boldest to challenge the ideological underpinnings of Ernest Jones's quasi-official three-volume life of Freud. In Sigmund Freud's Mission (1959) he gave a path-breaking response to the orthodox version of Freud's career and its controversies. For example, he asked some serious questions about Freud's relationship with his mother—a subject that has not received adequate attention in the literature. Fromm also discredited Jones's account of the supposed mental deterioration of both Sándor Ferenczi and Otto Rank.

Fromm, one of the most conceptually clear-cut thinkers in the tradition of dissenting analysts, claimed to be truer to the intellectually radical implications of the spirit of Freud's thought than the organized following generally supposed to be Freud's heirs. One cannot correct some central problems where Freud could be mistaken by piously fixing translations or re-editing Freud's writings. By pointing out some of these central problems, Fromm ranks as an important critic of Freud's. Part of Fromm's strength came from a deep identification with Freud as a warrior of the spirit; to be genuinely like Freud meant also to be independent-minded. Fromm proved fearless in expressing his analytic convictions, even though the orthodox-minded to reacted to him by branding him as a dissenting voice.

Bibliography

Burston, Daniel. (1991). The legacy of Erich Fromm. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Fromm, Erich. (1941). Escape from freedom. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.

——. (1947). Man for himself. Greenwich, CT: Fawcett Premier Books.

——. (1950). Psychoanalysis and religion. New Haven: Yale University Press.

——. (1951). The forgotten language: An introduction to the understanding of dreams, fairy tales, and myths. New York: Rinehart.

——. (1955). The sane society. Greenwich, CT: Fawcett Premier Books.

——. (1956). The art of loving. New York: Harper.

——. (1959). Sigmund Freud's mission: An analysis of his personality and influence. New York: Harper.

——. (1973). The anatomy of human destructiveness. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.

——. (1976). To have or to be? New York: Harper and Row.

Funk, Rainer. (1982). Erich Fromm: The courage to be human (Michael Shaw, Trans.). New York: Continuum.

—PAUL ROAZEN

(1900-1980)

1940	Escape from Freedom. The German American psychoanalyst and social philosopher explores what motivates human beings to accept tyranny. Fromm would continue exploring this theme in Man for Himself (1947).

Quotes:

"Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, so the social process requires standardization of man, and this standardization is called equality."

"Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve."

"Only the person who has faith in himself is able to be faithful to others."

"The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that men may become robots. True enough, robots do not rebel. But given man's nature, robots cannot live and remain sane, they become Golems, they will destroy their world and themselves because they cannot stand any longer the boredom of a meaningless life."

"By alienation is meant a mode of experience in which the person experiences himself as an alien. He has become, one might say, estranged from himself. He does not experience himself as the center of his world, as the creator of his own acts -- but his acts and their consequences have become his masters, whom he obeys, or whom he may even worship. The alienated person is out of touch with himself as he is out of touch with any other person. He, like the others, is experienced as things are experienced; with the senses and with common sense, but at the same time without being related to oneself and to the world outside positively."

"Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction."

See more famous quotes by Erich Fromm

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