Erich Fromm

German psychologist

• Born: March 23, 1900
• Birthplace: Frankfurt am Main, Germany
• Died: March 18, 1980
• Place of death: Muralto, Switzerland

Fromm was influential in synthesizing the field of psychology with social, political, and philosophical ideas. Through his many popular books, he explored the theme of the dehumanizing effects of modern society on humankind and the actions people must take to save themselves from destruction. Fromm also insisted on a more humanistic approach to psychoanalysis.

Early Life

Erich Fromm (frohm) was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. His father, an independent businessman, was the son of a rabbi. Fromm, an only child, grew up in a very religious household and was a close student of the Old Testament. There was an underlying tension in Fromm’s household, however, produced by the Orthodox Jewish traditions that were so deeply a part of his family’s past and his father’s strong materialistic striving. Fromm studied the Talmud at an early age and was profoundly influenced by the ethical and humanistic implications of the writings as well as the mystical revelations found throughout.

Two major incidents occurred in his early teens that were influential in his eventual decision to enter the field of psychology. The first was the suicide of a young woman friend, an incident that he found both monstrous and incredible. The second was World War I. Fromm was overwhelmed by the war and could not understand how his family and acquaintances could one moment be sympathetic to a particular group of people and then suddenly metamorphose into irrational, hateful fanatics.

By the war’s end, Fromm had become obsessed with a desire to understand the hidden forces that act to produce irrational, mass human behavior. In 1918, he began studying psychology, philosophy, and sociology at the University of Frankfurt. At this time, he was introduced to the writings of Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx, the two major figures in Fromm’s life. Throughout the rest of his life, Fromm would attempt to synthesize the philosophies of these two thinkers into his own view of humans and society.

From 1919 to 1922, Fromm studied at the University of Heidelberg, where he obtained his doctorate in philosophy with a dissertation on the sociopsychological structure of three Jewish communities; thus, with his first major paper, Fromm blended the disciplines of sociology, psychology, and philosophy, a practice that he would perfect in his later writings. Around this time, Fromm discovered Zen Buddhism and broke with his Jewish heritage.

After further studies in psychology and psychiatry at the University of Munich, Fromm married Freida Reichmann, a psychoanalyst and physician, and began practicing therapy as a strict Freudian. His marriage, however, lasted briefly, and in 1929 he moved to Berlin to attend the Psychoanalytic Institute, where he was a student of Hans Sachs and Theodor Reik. From 1930 on, Fromm’s research was directed toward a synthesis of the various insights and practices that he had learned as a child, student, and trained observer of the human psyche.

Life’s Work

The madness of World War I had produced in Fromm a deeply suspicious attitude toward any official dogmatic ideology. Out of this questioning of authoritarian principles came his first major work, Die Entwicklung des Christusdogmas: Eine Psychoanalytische Studie zur Sozialpsychologischen Funktion der Religion (1931; The Dogma of Christ, and Other Essays on Religion, Psychology, and Culture , 1963). Writing from the point of view of a strict Freudian, Fromm adhered closely to Freud’s own view of religion, that it is an infantile psychic gratification transferred to a collective fantasy. Unlike Freud, however, Fromm stressed the importance of taking into account the total character structure of a particular individual within a group, how private individual needs are made public, thus hinting in this early work the development of his “social character” theory. Fromm also brought into question the dogma of Freud himself.

In 1930, Fromm became a member of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt, where he taught psychoanalysis. Out of this association emerged an even deeper questioning of Freud’s theories. Freud’s beliefs were based on principles that he believed to be universal to all human beings, rooted in biological drives specifically sexual that, if repressed, produced neurosis. According to Freud, civilization could be viewed as the result of redirected sexual energy. Without civilization, said Freud, humans are savage beasts; however, the price of civilization was neurosis, anxiety, and depression.

With the alarming rise of Nazism in Germany in the early 1930’s, the Institute for Social Research was forced to move its headquarters, first to Geneva, then to Columbia University. Fromm followed the move, emigrating to the United States in 1934 and resuming his psychoanalytic practice in New York. At the institute’s new headquarters, he met fellow émigré Karen Horney and American Harry Stack Sullivan, both of whom were influential in Fromm’s decision to break formally with Freud’s theories and emphasize the importance environment plays on the development of the individual. Although Fromm never discounted the biological factors involved in the shaping of the individual, he, along with other Freudian revisionists, began to offer evidence about the wide range of effects that different cultures could have on the individual psyche.

In 1941, during the height of Nazi fanaticism, Fromm produced Escape from Freedom , a work obviously influenced by the events of the time. Fromm addressed a person’s susceptibility to authoritarian ideas, saying that human individuation the striving of an individual to define him- or herself as an autonomous being is a lifelong struggle that begins with the severing of the umbilical chord. Each new striving for biological and social autonomy brings a growth in strength but at the same time brings new insecurities and fears. Fromm then correlated this idea with the growth of civilizations and how a society willfully supports a totalitarian state out of a fear of independence, for the result of more freedom is more choices, more fears, and more insecurities. Fromm warned that either humankind moves from viewing freedom as a positive choice or it is in severe jeopardy of surrendering freedoms altogether.

Escape from Freedom established Fromm’s reputation as one of the most provocative thinkers of his time, a psychologist who had applied psychoanalytic theory to sociological problems. Fromm’s next major work, Man for Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics , appeared in 1947 and is considered his central work. Fromm was responding to a work written in 1938 by Karl Menninger, Man Against Himself , in which Menninger put forth the Freudian idea that one of humankind’s most powerful drives is toward destruction, a death instinct. Fromm argued that the primary drive of humans is toward an affirmation of life and that all of humanity indeed all living organisms has a drive to live. What sets humans apart from all other living creatures is that humans alone know they are alive and that they are fated to die. Humans also know that, because of their relatively short life span, they will not live up to their full potential. This knowledge can lead to neuroses and, at times, destructive tendencies. Fromm emphasized that the human drive to live and to live a morally productive life was quite often thwarted by the norms of a particular society. While Freud defined neurosis as the result of sexual energy being blocked or repressed, Fromm defined neurosis as the result of humankind’s failure to use its productive powers. Fromm used the term “humanistic ethics” to name his attempt to provide an objective foundation for a theory of morality. What Fromm was attempting in Man for Himself was to formulate an objective basis for ethics to create a link between psychology and moral philosophy. He was also attacking the amoral, mechanistic position of Freudian behaviorism.

In 1951, Fromm moved from New York to Mexico City. His second wife, Henny Gurland, was ill, and it was hoped that the climate change would help her condition. Although Henny died the following year, Fromm remained in Mexico and accepted a directorship at the National University of Mexico. He remained in Mexico until 1965, eventually becoming director of the Mexican Institute of Psychoanalysis and professor of psychoanalysis at the medical school. He also met and married his third wife, Annis Freeman.

In addition to his teaching duties in Mexico, he attended to duties at the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry in New York, held a position as professor of psychology at Michigan State University, and was adjunct professor of psychology at the graduate division of arts and sciences at New York University. Despite his extensive teaching activities, he kept up his psychoanalytic practice for more than forty-five years, participated in sociopsychological fieldwork in Mexico over the years out of which he wrote Sociopsicoanálisis del campesino Mexicano: Estudio de la economía y la psicología de una comunidad rural (1973; social character in a Mexican village: a study of the economy and psychology of a rural community) and kept politically active in the American Socialist Party. He was also cofounder of SANE, an international peace organization that fought against the atomic arms race as well as the war in Vietnam.

Throughout his life, Fromm continued to produce books that stretched the boundaries of the field of psychology. In Psychoanalysis and Religion (1950), Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis (1960), and You Shall Be Gods: A Radical Interpretation of the Old Testament and Its Tradition (1966), Fromm explored the connections between the ethical heart of various religions and the need for psychology to examine the basic ethical code of humans. In Sigmund Freud’s Mission (1959), Marx’s Concept of Man (1961), and Beyond the Chains of Illusion: My Encounter with Marx and Freud (1962), he examined the beliefs of the two most influential figures in his life and pointed out their likenesses and their revolutionary impact on humankind’s intellectual growth. Fromm’s most popular book, The Art of Loving (1956), declared that the need for humans to connect with one another, the desire for “interpersonal fusion,” is the most powerful and fundamental passion of humans.

Fromm produced more than twenty major works ranging from the threat of nuclear war to the mystical power of love. In his later years, he and his wife, Annis, took up residence in Muralto, Switzerland, where he concentrated on his writing. It was in Muralto that he died on March 18, 1980, only a few days short of his eightieth birthday.

Significance

Fromm was criticized for his unscientific approach to psychology, his vague concepts, his lack of clinical data, and a writing style that was geared more to the general public than to the scientific community. Fromm’s motive for emphasizing a humanistic rather than a scientific approach to psychology was to transcend formal techniques, conventional logic, even language, in the study of humans. Fromm abhorred the clinical approach because of its inherent restrictions. He believed that humans are much more than merely physiological cases, collections of symptoms to be studied from a detached state. Fromm used the term “humanistic psychoanalysis” to explain his approach to dealing with his own patients. He believed in identifying with his patients’ neuroses and in becoming involved. Fromm applied and expanded this approach to examine modern society, philosophy, religion, and other forms of human expression to define more fully human beings and to understand better their problems.

In his book The Sane Society (1956), in which he examined the growing problem of alienation and the dehumanizing effects of modern society, Fromm spoke his core belief: A person is not a thing. In the book, Fromm declared modern society sick and called for a total economic, political, and cultural transformation so that society might begin to realize full human potential. The aim in life, Fromm said, should be to “love it intensely, to be fully born, to be fully awake.” When mechanized, materialistic “things” have truly become the servants of humans rather than their idols, human “powers will be in the service of life, and not in the service of death.”

Bibliography

Evans, Richard I. Dialogue with Erich Fromm. New York: Harper & Row, 1966. An interview with Fromm in which he discusses his psychoanalytic method and how his theories differ from those of other prominent psychologists. Includes information on Fromm’s techniques with patients, with additional comments on Fromm’s theories by the author.

Funk, Rainer. Erich Fromm: The Courage to be Human. Translated by Michael Shaw. New York: Continuum, 1982. An examination of Fromm’s theories, using terminology from the various fields of study Fromm himself synthesized with psychology to study humans.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Erich Fromm: His Life and Ideas, an Illustrated Biography. Translated by Ian Portman and Manuela Kunkel. New York: Continuum, 2002. Fromm’s literary executor provides an illustrated overview of Fromm’s life and philosophy.

Hammond, Guyton B. Man in Estrangement: A Comparison of the Thought of Paul Tillich and Erich Fromm. Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt University Press, 1965. Fromm’s humanistic, albeit atheistic, theories are compared to Tillich’s modern religious ideas.

Hausdorff, Don. Erich Fromm. New York: Twayne, 1972. A biography of Fromm concentrating on his works and theories. Examines how Fromm’s ideas developed as a reaction to his own environment and to the historical time in which he lived.

Schaar, John H. Escape from Authority: The Perspectives of Erich Fromm. New York: Basic Books, 1961. A sharply critical examination of Fromm’s theories written by a political philosopher.

Wilde, Lawrence. Erich Fromm and the Quest for Solidarity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Examines Fromm’s ideas of authoritarianism, the experience of work, the dangers of consumerism, the need to revive democracy, and other concepts. Wilde concludes that Fromm offers an ethical framework to analyze alienation in affluent societies and the social forces capable of challenging that alienation.