Erich Zeligmann Fromm is a world-famous American psychologist and humanist philosopher of German origin. His theories, although rooted in Freud's psychoanalysis, focus on the individual as a social being, using the powers of reasoning and love to go beyond instinctual behavior.
Fromm believed that people should be held accountable for their own moral decisions, and not just for compliance with the norms imposed by authoritarian systems. In this aspect of his thinking, he was influenced by the ideas of Karl Marx, especially his early "humanistic" thoughts, so his philosophical works relate to the neo-Marxist Frankfurt school - a critical theory of industrial society. Fromm rejected violence, believing that through compassion and compassion people could rise above the instinctive behavior of the rest of nature. This spiritual aspect of his thinking could have been the result of his Jewish background and Talmudic education, although he did not believe in the traditional Jewish God.
Erich Fromm's humanistic psychology had the greatest influence on his contemporaries, although he was estranged from its founder Karl Rogers. His book, The Art of Love, remains a popular bestseller, as people seek to understand the meaning of “true love, ” a concept so profound that even this work has revealed only superficially.
Early biography
Erich Fromm was born on March 23, 1900 in Frankfurt, which at that time was part of the Prussian Empire. He was the only child in an orthodox Jewish family. His two great-grandfathers and paternal grandfather were rabbis. His mother's brother was a respected Talmudist. At the age of 13, Fromm began the study of the Talmud, which lasted 14 years, during which he became acquainted with socialist, humanistic and Hasidic ideas. Despite his religiosity, his family, like many Jewish families in Frankfurt, was engaged in trade. According to Fromm, his childhood passed in two different worlds - traditional Jewish and modern commercial. By the age of 26, he rejected religion because he felt that it was too contradictory. Nonetheless, he retained his early recollections of the Talmudic message of compassion, redemption, and messianic hope.
Two events in the early biography of Erich Fromm seriously affected the formation of his views on life. The first happened when he was 12 years old. It was the suicide of a young woman who was a friend of the Erich Fromm family. She had a lot of good things in her life, but she could not find happiness. The second event occurred at the age of 14 - the First World War began. According to Fromm, many usually good people have become vicious and bloodthirsty. The search for an understanding of the causes of suicide and militancy is the basis of many philosophical thoughts.
Teaching in Germany
Fromm began his studies at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main in 1918. The first 2 semesters were devoted to jurisprudence. During the summer semester of 1919, he transferred to Heidelberg University to study sociology with Alfred Weber (Max Weber's brother), Karl Jaspers and Heinrich Rickert. Erich Fromm received a diploma in sociology in 1922 and in 1930 completed his studies in psychoanalysis at the Psychoanalytic Institute in Berlin. In the same year, he began his own clinical practice and began working at the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research.
After the Nazis came to power in Germany, Fromm fled to Geneva and in 1934 to Columbia University in New York. In 1943, he helped open the New York branch of the Washington School of Psychiatry, and in 1945, the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and Psychology.
Personal life
Erich Fromm was married three times. His first wife was Frida Reichmann, a psychoanalyst who gained a good reputation for her effective clinical work with schizophrenics. Although their marriage ended in divorce in 1933, Fromm admitted that she taught him a lot. They remained friendly until the end of their lives. At the age of 43, Fromm married the same emigrant from Germany of Jewish origin, Henny Gurland. Due to health problems in 1950, the couple moved to Mexico, but in 1952, his wife died. After a year, Fromm married Annis Freeman.
Life in America
After moving to Mexico City in 1950, Fromm became a professor at the National Academy of Mexico and created the psychoanalytic sector of the medical school. He taught there until his retirement in 1965. Fromm was also a professor of psychology at Michigan State University from 1957 to 1961 and a freelance professor of psychology at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at New York University.
Fromm changes his preferences again. A strong opponent of the Vietnam War, he supports pacifist movements in the United States.
In 1965, he completed his teaching career, but for several more years he lectured at various universities, institutes, and other institutions.
Last years
In 1974, he moved to Muralto, Switzerland, where he died in his house in 1980, before he lived only 5 days before his eightieth birthday. Until the very end of his biography, Erich Fromm led an active life. He had his own clinical practice and published books. Erich Fromm's most popular work, The Art of Love (1956), has become an international bestseller.
Psychological theory
In his first semantic work, Escape From Freedom, first published in 1941, Fromm analyzes the human exestational state. As a source of aggressiveness, destructive instinct, neurosis, sadism and masochism, he does not consider the sexual background, but presents them as attempts to overcome alienation and powerlessness. Fromm's view of freedom, unlike Freud and the critical theorists of the Frankfurt School, had a more positive connotation. In his interpretation, it is not an exemption from the repressive nature of the technological society, as, for example, Herbert Marcuse suggested, but represents an opportunity to develop the creative powers of man.
Erich Fromm's books gained fame both for his social and political comments, and for their philosophical and psychological foundations. His second semantic work, “Man for himself: a study of the psychology of ethics”, first published in 1947, was a continuation of “Escape from Freedom”. In it, he focused on the problem of neurosis, characterizing it as the moral problem of a repressive society, the inability to achieve maturity and integrity of the individual. According to Fromm, a person’s ability to freedom and love depends on socio-economic conditions, but is rarely found in societies where the desire for destruction predominates. Together, these works set forth the theory of human character, which was a natural continuation of his theory of human nature.
Erich Fromm's most popular book, The Art of Love, was first published in 1956 and became an international bestseller. The theoretical principles of human nature, published in the works “Escape from Freedom” and “Man for Himself, ” which were also repeated in many other major works of the author, are repeated and supplemented in it.
The central part of Fromm's worldview was his concept of "I" as a social character. In his opinion, the basic human character stems from existential disappointment with the fact that, being part of nature, he feels the need to rise above it due to the ability to reason and love. The freedom to be a unique person is scary, so people tend to give up authoritarian systems. For example, in the book Psychoanalysis and Religion, Erich Fromm writes that for some, religion is the answer, not an act of faith, but a way to avoid intolerable doubts. They make this decision not because of devotional service, but in search of security. Fromm extols the virtues of people who take independent actions and use their minds to establish their own moral values, rather than following authoritarian standards.
People evolved into beings that are self-aware, their own mortality and powerlessness in front of the forces of nature and society, and are no longer one with the Universe, as it was in their instinctive, subhuman, animal existence. According to Fromm, the realization of a separate human existence is a source of guilt and shame, and the solution to this existential dichotomy is found in the development of unique human abilities to love and reflect.
One of Erich Fromm’s popular quotes is his statement that the main task of a person in life is to give birth to himself, to become who he really is. His personality is the most important product of his efforts.
Love concept
Fromm separated his concept of love from popular concepts to such an extent that his reference to it became almost paradoxical. He considered love to be an interpersonal, creative ability rather than emotion, and he distinguished this creativity from what he considered different forms of narcissistic neurosis and sadomasochistic tendencies, which are usually cited as evidence of “true love”. Indeed, Fromm considers the experience of “falling in love” as evidence of an inability to comprehend the true nature of love, which, he believed, always has elements of care, responsibility, respect and knowledge. He also argued that few people in modern society respect the autonomy of other people, and even more so objectively know their real needs and needs.
Links to the Talmud
Fromm often illustrated his basic ideas with examples from the Talmud, but his interpretation is far from traditional. He used the story of Adam and Eve as an allegorical explanation of the biological evolution of man and existential fear, arguing that when Adam and Eve ate from the “tree of knowledge”, they realized that they were separated from nature, still remaining part of it. Adding a Marxist approach to this story, he interpreted the disobedience of Adam and Eve as a justified rebellion against an authoritarian God. The destiny of a person, according to Fromm, cannot depend on any participation of the Almighty or any other supernatural source, but only by his own efforts can he take responsibility for his life. In another example, he mentions the story of Jonah, who did not want to save the inhabitants of Nineveh from the consequences of their sin, as evidence of the belief that in most human relationships there is no care and responsibility.
Humanistic creed
In addition to his book, “The Soul of Man: Its Ability to Good and Evil, ” Fromm wrote part of his famous humanistic creed. In his opinion, a person who chooses progress can find a new unity through the development of all his human forces, which is carried out in three directions. They can be presented separately or together as a love of life, humanity and nature, as well as independence and freedom.
Political ideas
The culmination of Erich Fromm's social and political philosophy was his book Healthy Society, published in 1955. In it, he spoke out in favor of humanistic democratic socialism. Based primarily on the early works of Karl Marx, Fromm sought again to emphasize the ideal of personal freedom, absent from Soviet Marxism, and more often found in the works of libertarian socialists and liberal theorists. His socialism rejects both Western capitalism and Soviet communism, which he considered dehumanizing, a bureaucratic social structure that led to the almost universal modern phenomenon of alienation. He became one of the founders of socialist humanism, promoting the early writings of Marx and his humanistic messages from the USA and the Western European public. Fromm published two books on the ideas of Marx in the early 1960s (The Concept of the Man of Marx and Beyond the Enslaving Illusions: My Meeting with Marx and Freud). While working to stimulate Western and Eastern cooperation between Marxist humanists, in 1965 he published a collection of articles entitled Socialist Humanism: An International Symposium.
The following quotation by Erich Fromm is popular: "Just as mass production requires the standardization of goods, the social process requires the standardization of man, and this standardization is called equality."
Participation in politics
Erich Fromm's biography is marked by his periodic active participation in US politics. He joined the US Socialist Party in the mid-1950s and did everything possible to help her present a point of view that was different from the prevailing “McCarthyism” that was best expressed in his 1961 article, “Can a person prevail?” A study of facts and fiction in foreign policy. ” However, Fromm, as a co-founder of SANE, saw as his greatest political interest the international peace movement, the fight against the nuclear arms race and US involvement in the Vietnam War. After Eugene McCarthy’s candidacy did not receive Democratic support in nominating candidates for the US presidency in the 1968 election, Fromm left the American political scene, although in 1974 he wrote an article entitled “The Senate Committee on Foreign Relations” Remarks on the policy of detente. ”
