Erich Fromm

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Lore & Background

Erich Fromm was born on March 23, 1900, in Frankfurt am Main, the only child of Rosa and Naphtali Fromm. He started his academic studies in 1918 at the University of Frankfurt am Main with two semesters of jurisprudence. During the summer semester of 1919, Fromm studied at the University of Heidelberg, where he began studying sociology under Alfred Weber, psychiatrist-philosopher Karl Jaspers, and Heinrich Rickert. Fromm received his Ph.D. in sociology from Heidelberg in 1922 with a dissertation titled *Das jüdische Gesetz. Ein Beitrag zur Soziologie des Diaspora-Judentums* (The Jewish Law: A Contribution to the Sociology of Jewish Diaspora). He became strongly involved in Zionism under the influence of religious Zionist rabbi Nehemia Anton Nobel, but soon turned away, saying it conflicted with his ideal of a 'universalist Messianism and Humanism'. During the mid-1920s, he trained to become a psychoanalyst through Frieda Reichmann's psychoanalytic sanatorium in Heidelberg. They married in 1926, but separated shortly after and divorced in 1942. He began his own clinical practice in 1927. In 1930 he joined the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research and completed his psychoanalytical training. After the Nazi takeover of power in Germany, Fromm moved first to Geneva and then, in 1934, to Columbia University in New York. Together with Karen Horney and Harry Stack Sullivan, Fromm belongs to a Neo-Freudian school of psychoanalytical thought. Their relationship ended in the late 1930s. After leaving Columbia, Fromm helped form the New York branch of the Washington School of Psychiatry in 1943, and in 1946 co-founded the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and Psychology. He was on the faculty of Bennington College from 1941 to 1949, and taught courses at the New School for Social Research in New York from 1941 to 1959. When Fromm moved to Mexico City in 1949, he became a professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and established a psychoanalytic section at the medical school there. He taught as a professor of psychology at Michigan State University from 1957 to 1961 and as an adjunct professor of psychology at the graduate division of Arts and Sciences at New York University after 1962. He taught at UNAM until his retirement in 1965, and at the Mexican Society of Psychoanalysis (SMP) until 1974. In 1974, he moved from Mexico City to Muralto, Switzerland, and died at his home in 1980, five days before his eightieth birthday. All the while, Fromm maintained his own clinical practice and published a series of books. Fromm was reportedly an atheist but described his position as 'nontheistic mysticism'.

Reader's Guide

Erich Fromm's significance lies in his synthesis of psychoanalysis, sociology, and humanistic philosophy. Beginning with his first seminal work of 1941, *Escape from Freedom* (known in Britain as *The Fear of Freedom*), Fromm's writings were notable for their social and political commentary as well as their philosophical and psychological underpinnings. *Escape from Freedom* is viewed as one of the founding works of political psychology. His second important work, *Man for Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics*, first published in 1947, continued and enriched the ideas of *Escape from Freedom*. Fromm's most popular book was *The Art of Loving*, an international bestseller first published in 1956, which recapitulated and complemented the theoretical principles of human nature found in *Escape from Freedom* and *Man for Himself*. Central to Fromm's world view was his interpretation of the Talmud and Hasidism. He began studying Talmud as a young man under Rabbi J. Horowitz and later under Rabbi Salman Baruch Rabinkow, a Chabad Hasid. While working towards his doctorate in sociology at the University of Heidelberg, Fromm studied the Tanya by the founder of Chabad, Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi. Fromm also studied under Nehemia Nobel and Ludwig Krause while studying in Frankfurt. Fromm turned away from orthodox Judaism in 1926, towards secular interpretations of scriptural ideals. The cornerstone of his humanistic philosophy is his interpretation of the biblical story of Adam and Eve's exile from the Garden of Eden. Departing from traditional religious orthodoxy, Fromm extolled the virtues of humans taking independent action and using reason to establish moral values. He used the story as an allegorical explanation for human biological evolution and existential angst, asserting that when Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge, they became aware of themselves as being separate from nature while still being part of it. According to Fromm, the awareness of a disunited human existence is a source of guilt and shame, and the solution is found in the development of one's uniquely human powers of love and reason. Fromm considered love an interpersonal creative capacity rather than an emotion, always having the common elements of care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge. He pointed to the story of Jonah as demonstrative of his belief that the qualities of care and responsibility are generally absent from most human relationships. Fromm believed that freedom was an aspect of human nature that we either embrace or escape. He outlined three common escape mechanisms: automaton conformity, authoritarianism, and destructiveness. The word biophilia was frequently used by Fromm as a description of a productive psychological orientation and 'state of being'. In an addendum to his book *The Heart of Man: Its Genius For Good and Evil*, Fromm wrote as part of his humanist credo: 'I believe that the man choosing progress can find a new unity through the development of all his human forces, which are produced in three orientations. These can be presented separately or together: biophilia, love for humanity and nature, and independence and freedom.'

Did You Know?

• Fromm received his Ph.D. in sociology from Heidelberg in 1922 with a dissertation on Jewish law titled *Das jüdische Gesetz. Ein Beitrag zur Soziologie des Diaspora-Judentums*.
• He married Frieda Reichmann in 1926, but they separated shortly after and divorced in 1942.
• Fromm helped form the New York branch of the Washington School of Psychiatry in 1943 and co-founded the William Alanson White Institute in 1946.
• He moved to Mexico City in 1949, became a professor at UNAM, and established a psychoanalytic section at the medical school there.
• Fromm described his own position as 'nontheistic mysticism' and was reportedly an atheist.