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[[Image:Fromm2k.jpg|framed|Erich Fromm]]
'''Erich Fromm''' ([[March 23]], [[1900]] – [[March 18]], [[1980]]) was an internationally renowned [[German people|German]]-[[Hyphenated Americans|American]] [[psychology|psychologist]] and [[humanism|humanistic]] [[philosophy|philosopher]]. He is associated with what became known as the [[Frankfurt School]] of critical thinkers.
==Life==
Erich Fromm started his studies in [[1918]] at the [[Johann Wolfgang Goethe Uniersity Frankfurt am Main|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 switched from studying jurisprudence to studying [[sociology]] under [[Alfred Weber]] (brother of [[Max Weber]]), [[Karl Jaspers]], and [[Heinrich Rickert]]. Fromm received his [[Doctor of Philosophy|Ph.D.]] in sociology from Heidelberg in [[1922]], and completed his psychoanalytical training in [[1930]] at the [[Psychoanalytical Institute in Berlin]]. In that same year, he began his own clinical practice and joined the Frankfurt [[Institute for Social Research]]. After the Nazi takeover of power in Germany, Fromm moved to [[Geneva]], then, in 1934, to [[Columbia University]] in New York. After leaving Columbia, he helped form the New York Branch of the [[Washington School of Psychiatry]] in [[1943]], and in [[1945]] the [[William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and Psychology]].
When Fromm moved to Mexico City in 1950, he became a professor at the [[UNAM]] (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico) and established a psychoanalytic section at the medical school there. He taught at the [[UNAM]] until his retirement in [[1965]]. Meanwhile, 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]]. In 1974 he moved 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.
==Psychological theory==
[[Image:Erich Fromm writing.jpg|framed|Erich Fromm writing]]
Beginning with his first [[seminal work]], ''Escape from Freedom'' (known in [[United Kingdom|Britain]] as ''The Fear of Freedom''), first published in [[1941]], Fromm's writings were notable as much for their social and political commentary as for their philosophical and psychological underpinnings. His second seminal work, ''Man for Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics'', first published in [[1947]], was a continuation of ''Escape from Freedom''. Taken together, these books outlined Fromm's theory of human character, which was a natural outgrowth of Fromm's theory of human nature. 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'', principles which were revisited in many of Fromm's other major works.
Central to Fromm's [[world view]] was his interpretation of the [[Talmud]], which he began studying as a young man under [[Rabbi J. Horowitz]] and later studied under [[Rabbi Salman Baruch Rabinkow]] while working towards his doctorate in sociology at the University of Heidelberg and under [[Nehemia Nobel]] and [[Ludwig Krause]] while studying in Frankfurt. Fromm's grandfather and two great grandfathers on his father's side were rabbis, and a great uncle on his mother's side was a noted Talmudic scholar. However, Fromm turned away from orthodox [[Judaism]] in [[1926]] and turned towards secular interpretations of scriptural ideals.
The cornerstone of Fromm's humanistic philosophy is his interpretation of the [[Bible|biblical]] story of [[Adam and Eve]]'s exile from the [[Garden of Eden]]. Drawing on his knowledge of the Talmud, Fromm pointed out that being able to distinguish between good and evil is generally considered to be a virtue, and that biblical scholars generally consider Adam and Eve to have sinned by disobeying [[God]] and eating from the [[Tree of Knowledge]]. However, departing from traditional religious orthodoxy, Fromm extolled the virtues of humans taking independent action and using reason to establish moral values rather than adhering to authoritarian moral values.
Beyond a simple condemnation of authoritarian value systems, Fromm used the story of Adam and Eve as an allegorical explanation for [[human evolution|human biological evolution]] and [[existentialism|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 a part of it. This is why they felt "naked" and "ashamed": They had [[evolution|evolved]] into [[human being]]s, conscious of themselves, their own mortality, and their powerlessness before the forces of nature and society, and no longer united with the universe as they were in their [[instinct|instinctive]], pre-human existence as [[animal]]s. According to Fromm, the awareness of a disunited human existence is the source of all [[guilt]] and [[shame]], and the solution to this existential dichotomy is found in the development of one's uniquely human powers of [[love]] and reason. However, Fromm so distinguished his concept of love from popular notions of love that his reference to this concept was virtually paradoxical.
Fromm considered love to be an interpersonal creative capacity rather than an [[emotion]], and he distinguished this creative capacity from what he considered to be various forms of [[narcissism|narcissistic neuroses]] and [[sado-masochism|sado-masochistic tendencies]] that are commonly held out as proof of "true love." Indeed, Fromm viewed the experience of "falling in love" as evidence of one's failure to understand the true nature of love, which he believed always had the common elements of ''care'', ''responsibility'', ''respect'', and ''knowledge''. Drawing from his knowledge of the Talmud, Fromm pointed to the story of [[Jonah]], who did not wish to save the residents of [[Nineveh]] from the consequences of their sin, as demonstrative of his belief that the qualities of ''care'' and ''responsibility'' are generally absent from most human relationships. Fromm also asserted that few people in modern society had ''respect'' for the autonomy of their fellow human beings, much less the objective ''knowledge'' of what other people truly wanted and needed.
The word "biophilia' was frequently used by Fromm as a description of a productive psychological orientation and "[[state of being]]". For example, in an addendum to his book ''The Heart of Man: Its Genius For Good and Evil'', Fromm wrote as part of his famous [[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." (c. 1965)
The concept of biophilia was used by Fromm as an inverse to [[necrophilia]], while some other resources state the opposite of biophilia as [[biophobia]].
==Political ideas and activities==
The culmination of Fromm's social and political philosophy was his book ''The Sane Society'', published in [[1955]], which argued in favor of humanist, [[democratic socialism]]. Building primarily upon the early works of [[Karl Marx]], Fromm sought to re-emphasise the ideal of personal freedom, missing from most Soviet Marxism, and more frequently found in the writings of libertarian socialists and liberal theoreticians. Fromm's brand of socialism rejected both [[Capitalism|Western capitalism]] and [[Communism|Soviet communism]], which he saw as dehumanizing and bureaucratic social structures that resulted in a virtually universal modern phenomenon of [[alienation]]. He became one of the founders of the Socialist Humanism, promoting the early Marx's writings and his humanist messages to the US and Western European publics. Thus, in the early 1960s, Fromm has published two books dealing with the Marx thought (''Marx's Concept of Man'' and ''Beyond the Chains of Illusion: my Encounter with Marx and Freud''). Working to stimulate the Western and Eastern cooperation between [[Marxist Humanism|Marxist Humanists]], in [[1965]] Fromm has published the collection of articles entitled ''Socialist Humanism: An International Symposium''.
For a period Fromm was also active in US [[politics]]. He joined the [[Socialist Party of America]] in the middle [[1950]]s, and did his best to help them provide an alternative viewpoint to the prevailing [[McCarthyism]] of the time, a viewpoint that was best expressed in his [[1961]] paper ''May Man Prevail? An Inquiry into the Facts and Fictions of Foreign Policy''. However, as a co-founder of [[SANE]], Fromm's strongest political interest was in the international peace movement, fighting against the nuclear arms race and US involvement in the [[Vietnam war]]. After supporting the then Senator [[Eugene McCarthy]]'s losing bid for the [[1968 Democratic National Convention|Democratic presidential nomination]], Fromm more or less retreated from the American political scene, although he did write a paper in [[1974]] entitled ''Remarks on the Policy of Détente'' for a hearing held by the [[U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations]].
==Major works==
*''Escape from Freedom'' (AKA ''The Fear of Freedom''), [[1941]]
*''Man for Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics'', [[1947]]
*''Psychoanalysis and Religion'', [[1950]]
*''The Forgotten Language: the Understanding of Dreams, Fairy Tales and Myths'', [[1951]]
*''The Sane Society'', [[1955]]
*''The Art of Loving'', [[1956]]
*''Sigmund Freud's Mission: an analysis of his personality and influence'', [[1959]]
*''Let Man Prevail: a Socialist Manifest and Program'', [[1960]]
*''Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis'' with D.T. Suzuki and Richard de Martino, [[1960]]
*''May Man Prevail? An inquiry to the Facts and Fictions of Foreign Policy'', [[1961]]
*''Marx's Concept of Man'', [[1961]]
*''Beyond the Chains of Illusion: my Encounter with Marx and Freud'', [[1962]]
*''The Heart of Man: its Genius for Good and Evil'', [[1964]]
*''You Shall Be as Gods'', [[1966]]
*''The Revoluton of Hope: Toward a Humanized Technology'', [[1968]]
*''The Crisis of Psychoanalysis: Essays on Freud, Marx, and Social Psychology'', [[1970]]
*''Social Character in a Mexican Village'' (with Michael Maccoby), [[1970]]
*''The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness'', [[1973]]
*''To Have or to Be'', [[1976]]
*''The Working Class in Weimar Germany'' (a psycho-social analysis done in the 1930s), [[1984]]
*''For the Love of Life'', [[1986]]
*''The Art of Being'', edited by Rainer Funk, [[1989]]
== See also ==
* [[Psychology of religion]]
* [[Social character]]
==External links==
{{wikiquote}}
*[http://www.erichfromm.de/ The International Erich Fromm Society]
*[http://marxists.org/archive/fromm/index.htm Erich Fromm Archive] at the [http://marxists.org Marxists.org Internet Archive]
*[http://www.philosophicalsociety.com/Archives/Love%20&%20Its%20Disintegration.htm "Love & Its Disintegration"] An excerpt from Fromm's book "The Art of Loving."
*[http://www.angelfire.com/or/sociologyshop/FROMM.html The Erich Fromm Room] - A collection of articles
[[Category:German psychologists|Fromm, Erich]]
[[Category:German philosophers|Fromm, Erich]]
[[Category:Frankfurt School|Fromm, Erich]]
[[Category:Jewish scientists|Fromm, Erich]]
[[Category:Humanists|Fromm, Erich]]
[[Category:Marxist theorists|Fromm, Erich]]
[[Category:Columbia University alumni|Fromm, Erich]]
[[Category:National Autonomous University of Mexico faculty|Fromm, Erich]]
[[Category:1900 births|Fromm, Erich]]
[[Category:1980 deaths|Fromm, Erich]]
[[Category:People]]
[[Category:Psychoanalysis]]
Fromm, Erich (146)
'''Erich Fromm''' ([[March 23]], [[1900]] – [[March 18]], [[1980]]) was an internationally renowned [[German people|German]]-[[Hyphenated Americans|American]] [[psychology|psychologist]] and [[humanism|humanistic]] [[philosophy|philosopher]]. He is associated with what became known as the [[Frankfurt School]] of critical thinkers.
==Life==
Erich Fromm started his studies in [[1918]] at the [[Johann Wolfgang Goethe Uniersity Frankfurt am Main|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 switched from studying jurisprudence to studying [[sociology]] under [[Alfred Weber]] (brother of [[Max Weber]]), [[Karl Jaspers]], and [[Heinrich Rickert]]. Fromm received his [[Doctor of Philosophy|Ph.D.]] in sociology from Heidelberg in [[1922]], and completed his psychoanalytical training in [[1930]] at the [[Psychoanalytical Institute in Berlin]]. In that same year, he began his own clinical practice and joined the Frankfurt [[Institute for Social Research]]. After the Nazi takeover of power in Germany, Fromm moved to [[Geneva]], then, in 1934, to [[Columbia University]] in New York. After leaving Columbia, he helped form the New York Branch of the [[Washington School of Psychiatry]] in [[1943]], and in [[1945]] the [[William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and Psychology]].
When Fromm moved to Mexico City in 1950, he became a professor at the [[UNAM]] (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico) and established a psychoanalytic section at the medical school there. He taught at the [[UNAM]] until his retirement in [[1965]]. Meanwhile, 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]]. In 1974 he moved 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.
==Psychological theory==
[[Image:Erich Fromm writing.jpg|framed|Erich Fromm writing]]
Beginning with his first [[seminal work]], ''Escape from Freedom'' (known in [[United Kingdom|Britain]] as ''The Fear of Freedom''), first published in [[1941]], Fromm's writings were notable as much for their social and political commentary as for their philosophical and psychological underpinnings. His second seminal work, ''Man for Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics'', first published in [[1947]], was a continuation of ''Escape from Freedom''. Taken together, these books outlined Fromm's theory of human character, which was a natural outgrowth of Fromm's theory of human nature. 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'', principles which were revisited in many of Fromm's other major works.
Central to Fromm's [[world view]] was his interpretation of the [[Talmud]], which he began studying as a young man under [[Rabbi J. Horowitz]] and later studied under [[Rabbi Salman Baruch Rabinkow]] while working towards his doctorate in sociology at the University of Heidelberg and under [[Nehemia Nobel]] and [[Ludwig Krause]] while studying in Frankfurt. Fromm's grandfather and two great grandfathers on his father's side were rabbis, and a great uncle on his mother's side was a noted Talmudic scholar. However, Fromm turned away from orthodox [[Judaism]] in [[1926]] and turned towards secular interpretations of scriptural ideals.
The cornerstone of Fromm's humanistic philosophy is his interpretation of the [[Bible|biblical]] story of [[Adam and Eve]]'s exile from the [[Garden of Eden]]. Drawing on his knowledge of the Talmud, Fromm pointed out that being able to distinguish between good and evil is generally considered to be a virtue, and that biblical scholars generally consider Adam and Eve to have sinned by disobeying [[God]] and eating from the [[Tree of Knowledge]]. However, departing from traditional religious orthodoxy, Fromm extolled the virtues of humans taking independent action and using reason to establish moral values rather than adhering to authoritarian moral values.
Beyond a simple condemnation of authoritarian value systems, Fromm used the story of Adam and Eve as an allegorical explanation for [[human evolution|human biological evolution]] and [[existentialism|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 a part of it. This is why they felt "naked" and "ashamed": They had [[evolution|evolved]] into [[human being]]s, conscious of themselves, their own mortality, and their powerlessness before the forces of nature and society, and no longer united with the universe as they were in their [[instinct|instinctive]], pre-human existence as [[animal]]s. According to Fromm, the awareness of a disunited human existence is the source of all [[guilt]] and [[shame]], and the solution to this existential dichotomy is found in the development of one's uniquely human powers of [[love]] and reason. However, Fromm so distinguished his concept of love from popular notions of love that his reference to this concept was virtually paradoxical.
Fromm considered love to be an interpersonal creative capacity rather than an [[emotion]], and he distinguished this creative capacity from what he considered to be various forms of [[narcissism|narcissistic neuroses]] and [[sado-masochism|sado-masochistic tendencies]] that are commonly held out as proof of "true love." Indeed, Fromm viewed the experience of "falling in love" as evidence of one's failure to understand the true nature of love, which he believed always had the common elements of ''care'', ''responsibility'', ''respect'', and ''knowledge''. Drawing from his knowledge of the Talmud, Fromm pointed to the story of [[Jonah]], who did not wish to save the residents of [[Nineveh]] from the consequences of their sin, as demonstrative of his belief that the qualities of ''care'' and ''responsibility'' are generally absent from most human relationships. Fromm also asserted that few people in modern society had ''respect'' for the autonomy of their fellow human beings, much less the objective ''knowledge'' of what other people truly wanted and needed.
The word "biophilia' was frequently used by Fromm as a description of a productive psychological orientation and "[[state of being]]". For example, in an addendum to his book ''The Heart of Man: Its Genius For Good and Evil'', Fromm wrote as part of his famous [[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." (c. 1965)
The concept of biophilia was used by Fromm as an inverse to [[necrophilia]], while some other resources state the opposite of biophilia as [[biophobia]].
==Political ideas and activities==
The culmination of Fromm's social and political philosophy was his book ''The Sane Society'', published in [[1955]], which argued in favor of humanist, [[democratic socialism]]. Building primarily upon the early works of [[Karl Marx]], Fromm sought to re-emphasise the ideal of personal freedom, missing from most Soviet Marxism, and more frequently found in the writings of libertarian socialists and liberal theoreticians. Fromm's brand of socialism rejected both [[Capitalism|Western capitalism]] and [[Communism|Soviet communism]], which he saw as dehumanizing and bureaucratic social structures that resulted in a virtually universal modern phenomenon of [[alienation]]. He became one of the founders of the Socialist Humanism, promoting the early Marx's writings and his humanist messages to the US and Western European publics. Thus, in the early 1960s, Fromm has published two books dealing with the Marx thought (''Marx's Concept of Man'' and ''Beyond the Chains of Illusion: my Encounter with Marx and Freud''). Working to stimulate the Western and Eastern cooperation between [[Marxist Humanism|Marxist Humanists]], in [[1965]] Fromm has published the collection of articles entitled ''Socialist Humanism: An International Symposium''.
For a period Fromm was also active in US [[politics]]. He joined the [[Socialist Party of America]] in the middle [[1950]]s, and did his best to help them provide an alternative viewpoint to the prevailing [[McCarthyism]] of the time, a viewpoint that was best expressed in his [[1961]] paper ''May Man Prevail? An Inquiry into the Facts and Fictions of Foreign Policy''. However, as a co-founder of [[SANE]], Fromm's strongest political interest was in the international peace movement, fighting against the nuclear arms race and US involvement in the [[Vietnam war]]. After supporting the then Senator [[Eugene McCarthy]]'s losing bid for the [[1968 Democratic National Convention|Democratic presidential nomination]], Fromm more or less retreated from the American political scene, although he did write a paper in [[1974]] entitled ''Remarks on the Policy of Détente'' for a hearing held by the [[U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations]].
==Major works==
*''Escape from Freedom'' (AKA ''The Fear of Freedom''), [[1941]]
*''Man for Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics'', [[1947]]
*''Psychoanalysis and Religion'', [[1950]]
*''The Forgotten Language: the Understanding of Dreams, Fairy Tales and Myths'', [[1951]]
*''The Sane Society'', [[1955]]
*''The Art of Loving'', [[1956]]
*''Sigmund Freud's Mission: an analysis of his personality and influence'', [[1959]]
*''Let Man Prevail: a Socialist Manifest and Program'', [[1960]]
*''Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis'' with D.T. Suzuki and Richard de Martino, [[1960]]
*''May Man Prevail? An inquiry to the Facts and Fictions of Foreign Policy'', [[1961]]
*''Marx's Concept of Man'', [[1961]]
*''Beyond the Chains of Illusion: my Encounter with Marx and Freud'', [[1962]]
*''The Heart of Man: its Genius for Good and Evil'', [[1964]]
*''You Shall Be as Gods'', [[1966]]
*''The Revoluton of Hope: Toward a Humanized Technology'', [[1968]]
*''The Crisis of Psychoanalysis: Essays on Freud, Marx, and Social Psychology'', [[1970]]
*''Social Character in a Mexican Village'' (with Michael Maccoby), [[1970]]
*''The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness'', [[1973]]
*''To Have or to Be'', [[1976]]
*''The Working Class in Weimar Germany'' (a psycho-social analysis done in the 1930s), [[1984]]
*''For the Love of Life'', [[1986]]
*''The Art of Being'', edited by Rainer Funk, [[1989]]
== See also ==
* [[Psychology of religion]]
* [[Social character]]
==External links==
{{wikiquote}}
*[http://www.erichfromm.de/ The International Erich Fromm Society]
*[http://marxists.org/archive/fromm/index.htm Erich Fromm Archive] at the [http://marxists.org Marxists.org Internet Archive]
*[http://www.philosophicalsociety.com/Archives/Love%20&%20Its%20Disintegration.htm "Love & Its Disintegration"] An excerpt from Fromm's book "The Art of Loving."
*[http://www.angelfire.com/or/sociologyshop/FROMM.html The Erich Fromm Room] - A collection of articles
[[Category:German psychologists|Fromm, Erich]]
[[Category:German philosophers|Fromm, Erich]]
[[Category:Frankfurt School|Fromm, Erich]]
[[Category:Jewish scientists|Fromm, Erich]]
[[Category:Humanists|Fromm, Erich]]
[[Category:Marxist theorists|Fromm, Erich]]
[[Category:Columbia University alumni|Fromm, Erich]]
[[Category:National Autonomous University of Mexico faculty|Fromm, Erich]]
[[Category:1900 births|Fromm, Erich]]
[[Category:1980 deaths|Fromm, Erich]]
[[Category:People]]
[[Category:Psychoanalysis]]
Fromm, Erich (146)
