Erich Fromm: biography, family, main ideas and books of the philosopher. Biographies, stories, facts, photographs Erich Fromm years of life

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Biography

Erich Fromm, psychoanalyst and philosopher, was born on March 23, 1900 in Frankfurt am Main into an Orthodox Jewish family. His mother Rosa Fromm, née Krause, was the daughter of a rabbi who emigrated from Russia. Erich's father, Naftali Fromm, was also the son and grandson of rabbis, and although he was engaged in trade, he preserved and supported the orthodox religious traditions in the family.

In Frankfurt, Fromm attended a national school, where, along with the basics of doctrine and religious traditions, all subjects of general education were taught. After graduating in 1918, he entered the University of Heidelberg, where he studied philosophy, sociology and psychology. In 1922, under the supervision of Alfred Weber, he defended his doctoral dissertation. Fromm completed his psychoanalytic training at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute. Over the years, Sandor Rado, Max Eitingon, Wilhelm Reich, and other prominent analysts practiced and taught here. Here Fromm became closely acquainted with Karen Horney, whose patronage later helped him obtain a professorship in Chicago.

In 1925, Fromm completed his mandatory psychoanalytic training and opened his own private practice. Extensive practice and communication with patients gave Fromm rich material for rethinking the relationship between the biological and the social in the formation of the human psyche. The analysis of empirical material was carried out by him while working at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt am Main (1929-1932). After Hitler came to power in 1933, Fromm moved first to Geneva and then in 1934 to New York, USA. In the USA he taught at Columbia University.

In 1943 Fromm helped form the New York branch of the Washington School of Psychiatry, and in 1946 he co-founded the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry.

In 1950 Fromm moved to Mexico City, where he taught at the National Autonomous University of Mexico until 1965.

While in Mexico, Fromm devotes himself to the study of the New Age, the study of social projects of the past and present. Publishes the book “Healthy Society”, in which he criticizes the capitalist system. In 1960, Fromm joined the US Socialist Party. Writes the Party Program. However, due to party disputes, the Program was rejected. But he continues to be involved in political activities, gives lectures, writes books, and participates in rallies. From 1957 to 1961 Fromm also taught psychology at Michigan State University, and since 1962 at New York University.

In 1962, he participated as an observer at the disarmament conference in Moscow.

In 1968, Fromm had his first heart attack.

In 1974 he moved to Muralto (or Locarno). Soon after finishing the famous work “To Have or to Be,” in 1977, he suffered a second, and then a third (1978) heart attack. He died in Switzerland, at his home in 1980, five days before his eightieth birthday.

Fromm's social and philosophical ideas

According to Fromm, classical psychoanalysis contributed to the enrichment of knowledge about man, but it did not increase knowledge about how a person should live and what he should do. In his opinion, Freud tried to present psychoanalysis as a natural science, but made the mistake of paying insufficient attention to ethical issues. Meanwhile, it is impossible to understand a person if we consider him from the angle of repression of sexual desires, and not in his entirety, including the need to find an answer to the question of the meaning of his existence and to find the norms in accordance with which he should live. Fromm sought to shift the emphasis from the biological motives of human behavior in psychoanalysis to social factors, to show that “human nature - human passions and anxieties - is a product of culture.”

“friendliness or hostility and destructiveness, the thirst for power and the desire for submission, alienation, the tendency towards self-aggrandizement, stinginess, craving for sensual pleasures or fear of them - all these and many other aspirations and fears that can be found in a person develop as reactions to certain living conditions. None of these tendencies are inherent in humans. The way of life, determined by the peculiarities of the economic system, turns into a fundamental factor determining the character of a person, for the powerful need for self-preservation forces him to accept the conditions in which he has to live.”

In his 1941 book “Flight from Freedom,” Fromm explored the difficult situation in which a person of Western culture finds himself, where the desire for individuality leads to loneliness, a feeling of insignificance and powerlessness. He analyzed the period of personality formation in the era of capitalism. The period of formation of a new philosophy, a new worldview of man and his meaning of life. He pays much attention to the period of the Reformation and the teachings of Luther and Calvin, seeing in their ideas the origins of the modern capitalist structure. Using the example of psychological analysis by L. and K. Fromm tries to give a more detailed and complete picture of historical processes and their influence on a person, to determine the reasons for a person’s flight from himself and from his own freedom. In his second book, “Man for Himself,” 1947, which is essentially a continuation of “Flight from Freedom,” Fromm examines the problems of ethics, norms and values ​​that lead a person to self-realization and the realization of his capabilities. “Our behavior is largely determined by value judgments, and our psychological health and well-being rest on their validity. Recent evidence has shown that neuroses are considered a symptom of moral failure (although “adjustment” can in no way be considered a symptom of moral well-being).”

For Fromm, neuroses are symptoms of a person’s moral defeat in his life, including in the struggle for freedom. Neurosis can be understood as an unsuccessful attempt to resolve the conflict between an insurmountable internal dependence and the desire for freedom, a conflict that has a moral background. In many cases, neurotic symptoms are a concrete expression of a moral conflict. This means that the success of therapeutic efforts depends primarily on understanding and addressing the person's moral problem.

“neuroses are the expression of moral problems, and neurotic symptoms arise as a consequence of unresolved moral conflicts.”

The main moral problem of modernity, as Fromm saw it, is man’s indifference to himself. The task of humanistic psychoanalysis is to reveal by a person the truth about himself, to identify those psychological orientations in the world, thanks to which his social character is formed (an intermediate link between the socio-economic structure and the ideas and ideals dominant in society), to comprehend moral problems that contribute to understanding that man is the only creature endowed with conscience. And that love is a creative activity, and not a blind passion leading to crazy actions.

Discussing moral problems, Fromm draws a distinction between authoritarian conscience (the voice of the external authority of parents, the state, which is an analogue of the Freudian Super-Ego) and humanistic conscience (not the internalized voice of authority, but the person’s own voice, independent of external sanctions and rewards, expressing his personal interest and integrity, requiring one to become who one potentially is). Fromm contrasts necrophilia (love for the dead) with biophilia (love for life and the living). Identifies various forms of aggression (benign, that is, biologically adaptive, serving the cause of life, and malignant, historically acquired, associated with cruelty and aggressiveness, with a passion to torture and kill). Shows the need for a change in lifestyle, based on a person’s willingness to give up various forms of possession (possession) in order, first of all, to be himself.

In the context of the problems discussed by Fromm, humanistic psychoanalysis is a therapy that is aimed not so much at adapting a person to the existing culture and social reality, but at the optimal development of his abilities and inclinations, the realization of his individuality. The psychoanalyst does not act as a mentor for adaptation, but as a “healer of the soul.”

“To be means to give expression to all the inclinations, talents and gifts with which each of us is endowed. This means overcoming the narrow boundaries of one’s own “I”, developing and renewing oneself and at the same time showing interest and love for others, a desire not to take, but to give. Perhaps the mode of being can best be described symbolically, as Max Hunziger suggested to me. A blue glass appears blue when light passes through it because it absorbs all other colors and thus does not allow them to pass through. This means that we call the glass “blue” precisely because it does not retain blue waves (waves with a frequency of ~ 440-485 nm, which we perceive as blue), that is, not because it retains, but because what he lets through himself.”

The art of loving

Love is an abstraction

Karl Marx criticizes the fallacy of turning a predicate (that is, an abstraction) into a subject. As a result of such an action, love turns into Moloch [The Art of Loving 1]. Erich Fromm draws attention to the fact that love is an abstraction, and “in reality there is only an act of love” [The Art of Loving 2].

Love is not a thing, but a process, an action, an act

Idiomatic changes occurring in language make love a thing: “I have great love for you.” Such an expression is meaningless [The Art of Loving 3]. You can talk about a loving person, about a person’s love, but you cannot talk about a person who loves. “The noun “love” as a kind of concept for denoting the action “to love” is detached from the person as the subject of the action. Love turns into a goddess, into an idol onto which man projects his love; As a result of this process of alienation, he ceases to experience love; his ability to love finds expression in the worship of the “goddess of love.” He ceased to be an active, feeling person; instead he became an aloof idolater” [The Art of Loving 4].

“Some nouns also perform the same function: for example, love, pride, hatred, joy; they create the appearance of permanent, unchanging substances, but there is no reality behind them; they only prevent us from understanding that we are dealing with processes occurring in a human being” [The Art of Loving 5].

Love is not just a feeling

Erotic love “is not just a strong feeling, it is determination, it is a reasonable choice, it is responsibility, it is an act. If love were only a feeling, then there would be no reason to promise to love each other forever. The feeling comes and goes. How can I know that it will remain forever if my action does not include intelligent choice and decision? [The Art of Loving 6].

Two opposite forms of love

Erich Fromm compares two opposite forms of love: love according to the principle of being, or fruitful love, and love according to the principle of having, or unfruitful love. If the first “involves a manifestation of interest and care, knowledge, emotional response, expression of feelings, pleasure and can be directed at a person, a tree, a picture, an idea. It excites and enhances the feeling of fullness of life. This is a process of self-renewal and self-enrichment” [The Art of Loving 7], then the second means depriving the object of one’s “love” of freedom and keeping it under control. “Such love does not give life, but suppresses, destroys, strangles, kills it” [The Art of Loving 8].

Love according to the principle of being or fruitful love

Such world religions as Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and a number of other religions and teachings are dedicated to the culture of fruitful love [The Art of Loving 9].

But fruitful love is the exception rather than the rule[The Art of Loving 10], and this remark echoes the biblical “...strait is the gate and narrow is the way that leads to life, and few find it” (Matt. 7:14)[The Art of Loving 11][The Art of Loving 12].

To understand the nature of love, it is necessary to understand human nature: “Man can adapt to slavery, but he reacts to it by reducing his intellectual and moral qualities; he can adapt to a culture permeated with general mistrust and hostility, but he reacts to such adaptation with weakening of his powers and sterility. A person can adapt to cultural conditions that require the suppression of sexual desires, but with such adaptation, as Freud showed, he develops neurotic symptoms. A person can adapt to almost any cultural system, but to the extent that these systems contradict his nature, he develops mental and emotional disturbances, forcing him, in the end, to change these conditions, since he cannot change his nature "[The Art of Loving 13]. An important place in the doctrine of human nature is occupied by the section on the existential and historical dichotomies of man [The Art of Loving 14], on the dominant of ethics.

Only if a person "is aware of the human situation, the dichotomies inherent in his existence, and his ability to discover his powers, will he be able to successfully solve this task of his: to be himself and for himself, and to achieve happiness through the full realization of the gift that constitutes his peculiarity, - the gift of reason, love and fruitful work” [The Art of Loving 15].

Possessive love or unfruitful love

The transition from “falling in love” to the illusion of love-“possession” can often be observed in all specific details in the example of men and women who “fell in love with each other.” During the courtship period, both are still unsure of each other, but each tries to conquer the other. Both are full of life, attractive, interesting, even beautiful - because the joy of life always makes the face beautiful. Both do not yet possess each other; consequently, the energy of each of them is aimed at being, that is, giving to the other and stimulating him. After marriage, the situation often changes radically. The marriage contract gives each party the exclusive right to own the body, feelings and attention of the partner. Now there is no longer any need to conquer anyone, because love has turned into something that a person possesses - into a kind of property. Neither one nor the other partner no longer makes any effort to be attractive and arouse love, so both begin to bore each other, and as a result, their beauty disappears. Both are disappointed and puzzled. Aren't they the same people they used to be? Were they wrong?

As a rule, each of them tries to find the reason for such a change in their partner and feels deceived. And not one of them sees that now they are no longer the same as they were when they fell in love with each other; that the mistaken idea that love can be had led them to stop loving. Now, instead of loving each other, they are content with joint ownership of what they have: money, social status, house, children. Thus, in some cases, a marriage, initially based on love, turns into a peaceful joint ownership of property, a kind of corporation in which the selfishness of one is combined with the selfishness of the other and forms something whole: a “family.”

When a couple cannot overcome the desire to revive the old feeling of love, one or the other of the partners may have the illusion that the new partner (or partners) is able to satisfy his thirst. They feel that the only thing they want to have is love. However, for them love is not an expression of their being; this is the goddess they long to submit to. Their love inevitably fails, because “love is the child of freedom” (as an old French song says), and the one who was a worshiper of the goddess of love eventually becomes so passive that he turns into a sad, annoying creature, having lost the remains its former attractiveness.

All this does not mean that marriage cannot be the best solution for two people who love each other. The whole difficulty lies not in the marriage, but in the possessive existential essence of both partners and, ultimately, of the entire society. Adherents of such modern forms of living together as group marriage, changing partners, group sex, etc., are trying, as far as I can tell, just to evade the problem that the difficulties that exist for them in love create by getting rid of boredom with the help of everything. new and new stimuli and striving to have as many “lovers” as possible instead of learning to love at least one [The Art of Loving 16].

Love is an art

Most people start from the premise that “love is a gift from God that falls to a person as a happy occasion, good luck” [The Art of Loving 17], however, after conducting a study of the nature of love, Erich Fromm shows that “love is an art, the same as the art of living” [The Art of Loving 18], and this art requires “knowledge and effort” [The Art of Loving 19].

Fromm in his works reflects many facets of love: art, self-renewal, self-enrichment, pleasure, etc., and when outlining the theory of love, he gives the following definition: “Love is an active interest in the life and development of the one for whom we feel this feeling "[The Art of Loving 20].

He also explores the motivation for activity and shows that there are two types of activity, and the activity of the creator differs from the “passive” activity of the “victim” [Art of Loving 21].

Cognitive factor

The cognitive cluster covers such concepts as “signal”, “sensation”, “image”, “consciousness”, “mind” [Art of Loving 22].

“If one were to study the effect of a mother who truly loves herself, he would be able to see that nothing is more conducive to instilling in a child the experience of love, joy and happiness than the love of a mother who loves herself.” [The Art of Loving 23] .

In contrast, “History knows of cases where babies were lost in the jungle, and they grew up among animals. And not a single one of the children found was able to become a full-fledged person, could not join our human community” [Art of Loving 24] [Art of Loving 25] [Art of Loving 26].

Theory of love

Love is the answer to the problem of human existence

Man is a self-aware life for which the experience of alienation from nature and from other people is unbearable. Therefore, the deepest, core need of a person is the desire to leave the prison of his loneliness, the desire to find unity with other people. “The history of religion and philosophy is the history of the search for answers to this question” [The Art of Loving 27].

And complete unity is possible only “in achieving interpersonal unity, the merging of one’s “I” and the “I” of another person, that is, in love” [The Art of Loving 28]. However, in addition to the true, mature form of love, there are immature forms of love, which can be called a symbiotic union. “The passive form of the symbiotic union is submission, or, to use the clinical term, masochism” [The Art of Loving 29]. “The active form of the symbiotic union is domination, or, to use a clinical term associated with masochism, sadism” [The Art of Loving 30].

“In contrast to a symbiotic union, love is unity subject to the preservation of one’s own integrity and individuality. Love is an active force in man, a force that breaks down the walls that separate a person from his fellow men; which unites him with others. Love helps him overcome his feelings of isolation and loneliness, while allowing him to remain himself and maintain his integrity. There is a paradox in love: two beings become one and yet remain two” [The Art of Loving 31]. “It has been established that frustration of the need for love leads to a deterioration in somatic and mental states” [The Art of Loving 32].

Love between parents and children

The newborn perceives the mother as a source of warmth and food, he is in a euphoric state of satisfaction and security, in a state of narcissism. Later, he experiences the “guaranteed” love of his mother, “I am loved because it is me.” If maternal love exists, then it “is equal to bliss, but if it is not there, it is the same as if everything beautiful has passed away from life - and nothing can be done to artificially create this love” [The Art of Loving 33]. Time passes and the child gains the feeling of being able to arouse love through his own activity. “For the first time in his life, the idea of ​​love passes from the desire to be loved into the desire to love, into the creation of love.”

Many years will pass from this first step to mature love. In the end, the child, perhaps already in adolescence, will have to overcome his egocentrism, seeing in another person not only a means to satisfy his own desires, but a valuable being in himself. The other person's needs and goals will become just as important, if not more important, than your own. Giving, giving will be much more pleasant and joyful than receiving; loving is even more valuable than being loved. By loving, a person leaves the prison of his loneliness and isolation, which are formed by a state of narcissism and self-focus. A person experiences the happiness of unity, fusion. Moreover, he feels that he is able to evoke love with his love - and puts this opportunity above the one when he is loved. Childhood love follows the principle “I love because I am loved,” mature love follows the principle “I am loved because I love.” Immature love screams, “I love you because I need you.” Mature love says: “I need you because I love you” [The Art of Loving 34].

In the parental love of every adult there are maternal and paternal principles. Mother's love (maternal principle) is unconditional, and father's love (paternal principle) is conditional. “...a mature person combines maternal and paternal feelings in his love, despite the fact that they seem to be opposite to each other. If he had only a fatherly feeling, he would be evil and inhuman. If he had only maternal qualities, he would be prone to losing his sanity, preventing himself and others from developing” [The Art of Loving 35]. And one beginning is not enough for normal personality development.

Oedipus complex

Many psychoanalysts have revised Freud's fundamental idea about the nature of the Oedipus complex. From Fromm's point of view, the founder of psychoanalysis did not correctly interpret the myth of Oedipus. Freud relied on Sophocles' tragedy Oedipus Rex, while it is necessary to take into account the entire Sophocles trilogy, including such parts as Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone. In Fromm's understanding, the myth of Oedipus can be viewed not as a symbol of incestuous love between mother and son, but as “a child’s reaction to the pressure of parental authority, which is an integral feature of the patriarchal organization of society.”

Objects of love

The ability to love is closely related to a person’s attitude to the world in general, and not just to one “object” of love. Therefore, love is an attitude, an orientation of character. However, most people are sure that love does not depend on one’s own ability to love, but on the properties of the object of love. “They are even convinced that since they do not love anyone other than the “beloved” person, this proves the strength of their love” [The Art of Loving 36], however, this is not love, but a symbiotic union.

Thus, love is an orientation that is aimed at everything, and not at one thing. However, there are differences between different types of love, depending on the types of love object.

Brotherly love

“The most “fundamental” type of love, which forms the basis of all its types, is brotherly love. By it I mean responsibility, care, respect, detailed knowledge of another human being, the desire to prolong his life. This type of love is discussed in the Bible when it says: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Brotherly love is love for all human beings; it is characterized by a complete lack of preference. If I have developed the capacity for love, I cannot help but love my brothers” [The Art of Loving 37].

“Brotherly love is love between equals; but even equals are not always “equal.” As people, we all need help. Today I, tomorrow you. But this need does not mean that one is always helpless and the other is omnipotent. Helplessness is temporary; the ability to get by on your own is a stable state.” “True love begins to manifest itself only in relation to those whom we cannot use for our own purposes.”

Mother's love

Mother's love has two aspects: one is the care, responsibility, knowledge and respect that are absolutely necessary to preserve the health of the child and his biological growth. “The other aspect goes beyond simply preserving life. This is an attitude that instills in a child a love of life, which makes him feel that it is good to be alive, it is good to be a boy or a girl, it is good to live on this earth! These two aspects of motherly love are succinctly expressed in the biblical account of creation. God created the world and man. This corresponds to simple care and affirmation of existence. But God went beyond this minimum requirement. Every day after the creation of nature - and man - God says: “This is good.” Maternal love at this second, highest stage makes the child feel how good it is to be born into the world; it instills in the child a love of life, and not just a desire to exist.”

At the same time, a woman should not only be a good mother, but also a happy person.

“But the child must grow. He must leave his mother's womb, tear himself away from his mother's breast, and finally become a completely independent human being. The very essence of maternal love - caring for the growth of the child - presupposes the desire for the child to separate from the mother. This is its main difference from erotic love. In erotic love, two people who were separate become one. In maternal love, two people who were united become separate from each other. The mother must not only accept, but also want and encourage the separation of the child. It is at this stage that maternal love takes on such a difficult mission, requiring the selflessness of the ability to give everything and want nothing in return except the happiness of the loved one. It is at this stage that many mothers are incapable of true love” [The Art of Loving 38].

“A mother’s love for her growing child, a love that desires nothing for itself, is perhaps the most difficult form of love to achieve and the most deceptive because of the ease with which a mother loves her child in infancy” [The Art of Loving 39].

Erotic love

What brotherly and maternal love have in common is that they are not inherently limited to one person. Love for a child does not stop with one of my children, it extends to all my children; Moreover, it also applies to all other people’s children who need my help. Brotherly love does not rest on the love of only one brother, it extends to all brothers.

The situation is the opposite with erotic love, which longs for complete unity, merging with one single person. It is inherently exclusive, not universal.

Erotic love is the most deceptive form of love. Erotic love is often confused with the living, moving, stormy experience of “falling in love” (romantic love [The Art of Loving 40]), when the obstacles that existed until a certain moment between two strangers are magically broken down. But this experience of sudden intimacy is, by its very nature, short-lived. This situation is reflected in the parable of Adam and Eve, for whom intimacy is established primarily through sexual contact, but who have not yet learned to love each other (“which is quite understandable from the fact that Adam justified himself by blaming Eve, instead to try to protect her” [The Art of Loving 41]).

Proximity. But “lovers” also accept anger, hatred, intemperance, childishness, childishness, and conversations about their personal lives, about their own anxieties and hopes as overcoming alienation, as intimacy. “But in all these cases, intimacy tends to fade over time” [The Art of Loving 42]. And then the desire to get closer to another person arises, and history repeats itself. This is also due to the deceptive nature of sexual desire.

Sexual desire. Sexual desire craves intercourse, but it (physical attraction) is based not only on the desire to get rid of painful tension. The peculiarity of sexual desire is that it is provoked, or freely combined with any other strong emotion. It can be “whispered” not only by love, but also by confusion, and concern, and excitement, and loneliness, and loneliness, and vanity, and arrogance, and arrogance, and the thirst to conquer and the thirst to be conquered, the need to inflict pain and even humiliate. It kindles for a short time a chimera of unity, but without love “it leaves people as alien to each other as they were before” [The Art of Loving 43]. Moreover, sometimes sexual desire “makes them subsequently feel ashamed and even hate each other, because when the illusion disappears, they feel their alienation even more strongly than before” [The Art of Loving 44].

Tenderness. In those cases when physical intimacy is a consequence of love, it is devoid of greed, the need to conquer or be conquered, but is filled with tenderness. “Tenderness does not mean, as S. Freud thought, the sublimation of the sexual instinct; it is a direct result of brotherly love, and is present in both physical and non-physical forms of love” [The Art of Loving 45].

Erotic love is often understood as an unfruitful form of love - love based on possession, or selfishness together. “Their experience of connectedness is an illusion. True love makes its choice, but in another person it loves all of humanity, everything that is alive. It is preferable only in the sense that I can unite myself completely and firmly with only one person. Erotic love excludes love for others only in terms of erotic fusion, complete union in all aspects of life, but not in the sense of deep brotherly love” [The Art of Loving 46].

General and individual. Will and unique drive. Insofar as all men are part of Adam, and all women are part of Eve, then love must be an act of will, a determination to completely unite one’s life with the life of another person. But insofar as each of us is a unique, inimitable being, then “erotic love requires certain, highly individual elements that are not present in all people” [The Art of Loving 47].

Marriage. “Both points of view are correct - the one that erotic love is, from beginning to end, a unique attraction of two specific people, and the other, which states: erotic love is nothing more than a manifestation of the will. Or, to put it more precisely, neither one nor the other is true. The idea that a relationship can be easily dissolved if it is unsuccessful is just as wrong as the idea that a relationship should not be dissolved under any circumstances” [The Art of Loving 48].

Self love

The statement that it is virtuous to love other people (“love your neighbor as yourself”) and sinful to love yourself is internally contradictory, insofar as I am also a person. Love is an active struggle for the development and happiness of a loved one, emanating from the very ability to love, and the attitude towards self-love is present in everyone who is capable of loving others. [The Art of Loving 49].

On the contrary, an egoist, due to lack of creativity, is not able to love others, but in the same way he is not able to love himself.

Selfishness can also manifest itself in the form of “unselfishness.”

“A person devoid of egoism “wants nothing for himself,” “lives only for others,” and is proud of the fact that he does not consider himself in any way worthy of attention. He is puzzled that, despite his unselfishness, he is unhappy and his relationships with loved ones are unsatisfactory. Analysis shows that the complete absence of egoism is one of its signs, and often the most important one. A person's ability to love or enjoy something is paralyzed, he is imbued with hostility towards life; behind the façade of unselfishness is hidden a subtle, but no less powerful egocentrism. Such a person can be cured only if one recognizes his unselfishness as a painful symptom and eliminates its cause - the lack of creativity" [The Art of Loving 50].

“If an individual is able to love creatively, he also loves himself; if he loves only others, he cannot love at all” [The Art of Loving 51].

Love for God

The basis of the religious form of love, love of God, is also the experience of loneliness and the resulting need to overcome the anxiety of loneliness through unification.

In primitive religions, the animal turns into a totem; at a later stage, these are idols - the creation of human hands. Later, an anthropomorphic god and two tendencies appear. “One comes from the feminine or masculine nature of God, the other starts from the level of maturity achieved by man, a level that determines the nature of his gods and the nature of his love for them” [The Art of Loving 52].

The development goes further and “God has become what he potentially is in monotheistic theology, a nameless One, something inexpressible, understood as a unity that forms the basis of the entire phenomenal world, the basis of all existence; God became truth, love, justice. God is me, as much as I am a man” [The Art of Loving 53].

Non-theistic systems appear (early Buddhism, Taoism). “In a non-theistic system there is no spiritual world external to man or transcendental to him, and the world of love, reason, justice exists as a reality only because and only to the extent that man is able to develop these forces in himself in the process of his evolution. From this point of view, there is no meaning in life except what a person gives to it himself; a person is absolutely alone if he does not help another person” [The Art of Loving 54]. Both the points of view of strict monotheism and the non-theistic system “should not fight each other” [The Art of Loving 55]. The difference in religions, systems and teachings also lies in the difference in the logical systems that underlie them. This is Aristotelian logic, which “leads to the Catholic Church, to dogma and science, to the discovery of atomic energy” [The Art of Loving 56]. And paradoxical logic.

“Teachers of paradoxical logic say that a person can comprehend reality only in contradictions and can never comprehend in thought the highest reality - unity, the One in itself. This leads to the fact that a person should not look for the answer in thinking as the highest goal. Thought can only lead us to the knowledge that it cannot give us a final answer. The world of thought is caught in a paradox. The only way in which the world in its highest sense can be grasped is not through thinking, but through action, through the experience of unity. Thus, paradoxical logic leads to the conclusion that love for God is not the knowledge of God by thought, not the thought of one’s own love for God, but the act of experiencing unity with him” [The Art of Loving 57].

“This leads to an increase in the importance of a healthy lifestyle. Everything in life - every small and every important action - is devoted to the knowledge of God, but knowledge not with the help of right thought, but through right action” [The Art of Loving 58].

“In modern times the same principle was expressed by Spinoza, Marx and Freud. In Spinoza's philosophy, the center of gravity is shifted from correct faith to correct behavior in life. Marx argued the same principle, saying that philosophers have only explained the world in different ways, but the point is to change it. Freud’s paradoxical logic led him to psychoanalytic therapy, a person’s ever-deepening experience of himself” [The Art of Loving 59]. Paradoxical logic asserts that “the essence is not in thought, but in action” [The Art of Loving 60]. This attitude, firstly, leads to tolerance, and secondly, it “leads to emphasizing the importance of human change to a greater extent than the importance of the development of dogmas, on the one hand, and science, on the other” [The Art of Loving 61].

“We can now return to the important parallel between the love of one’s own parents and the love of God. A child begins life with attachment to his mother “as the basis of all being.” He feels helpless and the need for his mother's all-encompassing love. He then turns to his father as the new center of his affection; the father becomes the guiding principle of thought and action. At this stage, the child's behavior is motivated by the need to achieve his father's praise and avoid his displeasure. At the stage of full maturity, he frees himself from his mother and father as guardian and guiding forces, affirming in himself the maternal and paternal principles. In the history of the human race we see - and can foresee in advance - the same development: from the initial love of God as a helpless attachment to the mother goddess, through obedient attachment to God the father, to the mature stage when God ceases to be an external force, when man absorbs the principles of love and justice as he becomes one with God, finally to the point where he speaks of God only in a poetic, symbolic sense.

From these reflections it follows that love for God cannot be separated from love for one’s parents. If a person does not free himself from blood attachment to mother, clan, people, if he retains childhood dependence on a punishing and rewarding father or some other authority, he cannot develop in himself a more mature love for God; therefore, his religion is what it was in the early stages of development, when God was perceived as a caring mother or a punishing-rewarding father.

In modern religion we find all stages: from the earliest and most primitive development to the highest stage. The word “God” denotes both a tribal leader and “absolute nothingness.” In the same way, each individual retains in himself, in his unconscious, as was shown by S. Freud, all stages, starting with the stage of a helpless baby. The question is to what stage a person has grown. One thing is certain: the nature of his love for God corresponds to the nature of his love for man. The real nature of his love for God and man often remains unconscious, being hidden and rationalized by the more mature thought of what his love is. Further, a person's love, although directly woven into his relationship with his family, is ultimately determined by the structure of the society in which he lives. If the social structure is based on submission to authority - obvious authority or anonymous authority, say, the market and public opinion - his concept of God is necessarily infantile and far from mature" [The Art of Loving 62].

Interesting Facts

It was Fromm who introduced the concept (in the 20s) that is widely used to characterize modern society - “consumer society.”
- In the novel “The Hour of the Ox” by Ivan Antonovich Efremov, the characters often refer to the “philosopher and historian of the fifth period” Erf Rom, whose name is a thinly veiled initial and surname of Fromm.

Biography

Erich Fromm is an outstanding thinker of the 20th century, who largely determined the public mood of his era. There are few psychologists whose ideas would enjoy such wide popularity throughout the world (even during Fromm’s lifetime, his main works went through dozens of reprints in millions of copies). At the same time, many practical psychologists who are keen on diagnostic and training manipulations know almost nothing about Fromm, since he never did either one or the other. His works are mainly devoted to philosophical, ethical, socio-psychological questions of human nature, his place in the world, the meaning of his existence. But these, in fact, are the core questions around which all applied psychological research and development branch.

GOOD TRADITIONS

Erich Fromm was born on March 23, 1900 in Frankfurt am Main into a Jewish family. His mother, Rosa Fromm, née Krause, was the daughter of a rabbi who emigrated from Russia, and her uncle, Dayan Ludwig Krause, was known as one of the most authoritative Talmudists in Poznan. Under the influence of this great-uncle, who regularly sent the boy instructions on reading the Talmud, young Erich intended to devote his life to the study and preaching of Judaism. The whole way of family life contributed to this.

Erich's father, Naftali Fromm, was also the son and grandson of rabbis, and although he devoted himself to trade (he did it without much enthusiasm), he preserved and supported the orthodox religious traditions in the family. All day long he sat in his modest shop over the sacred books, each time complaining that customers were distracting him from such a pious occupation. It is not difficult to guess that with this approach to commerce, the family’s financial affairs went from bad to worse.

The Jewish environment from which Fromm came and with which he maintained contact until the end of his days had nothing in common with the world of pragmatic and self-interested businessmen. Fromm himself called his world pre-capitalist, and sometimes simply medieval, emphasizing that the atmosphere in which he was brought up was completely alien to the bourgeois spirit of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Fromm recalled: “I was perplexed when anyone in my presence admitted that he was a businessman, that is, he spent his life making money. I felt very ashamed of him.” After all, according to the Jewish tradition, the ultimate goal of any work, any activity is self-improvement, and the surest means for this is economic independence; therefore, property can serve not as a goal, but only as a means of achieving freedom for the sake of satisfying spiritual needs. In fact, this ideology was embodied in Fromm’s philosophical concept, although no longer in close connection with the Judaic tradition, from which Fromm gradually moved away as his interests expanded.

Probably, back in his youthful studies, when Fromm studied the Torah and Talmud, the idea arose that he expressed many years later: “The history of mankind begins with an act of disobedience, which at the same time is the beginning of its liberation and intellectual development.” This idea was later enthusiastically taken up by a generation of young rebels in the sixties.

It is characteristic that Fromm was attracted and inspired by very specific moments in the Holy Scriptures - the story of the fall of Adam and Eve, the intercession of Abraham for the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, the fate of the prophet Jonah.

Fromm’s own “fall from sin” occurred in an extremely banal manner. One day, feeling very hungry, he was attracted by the delicious smell emanating from a street stall. Without thinking twice, the young Talmudist bought and ate a hot pork sausage on the go. And the world didn’t turn upside down! Moreover, the young man did not feel like a sinner, did not feel that he had become worse. Perhaps we owe it to that same sausage that the world lost an ordinary rabbi, but gained a wonderful psychologist.

In Frankfurt, Fromm attended a national school, where, along with the basics of doctrine and religious traditions, all subjects of general education were taught. In 1918, he passed his matriculation exams and, after some hesitation, decided not to continue his religious education, but to study law. Such a decision was not something radical, since Fromm understood law as “the crystallized minimum of ethics of any society.” However, the prospect of becoming a lawyer quickly lost its appeal for him, and he went to Heidelberg to study philosophy, sociology and psychology.

The prestige of sociology at Heidelberg University was confirmed by Max Weber, whom Fromm, however, did not have time to meet. He studied sociology with his brother Alfred Weber and, under his supervision, completed his doctorate in 1922.

An important event in Fromm’s personal life and scientific career was his acquaintance with Frida Reichman, who had previously been an assistant to Kurt Goldstein, then the founder of the school of autogenic training I.H. Schulz, and in 1923 she mastered psychoanalysis at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute under the leadership of Hans Sachs. In 1924, Frida Reichmann opened the Therapoiticum boarding house in Heidelberg (at Mönchofstrasse 15), where she began to practice psychoanalysis.

The acquaintance took place through a third party and at first was of a purely friendly nature. However, pretty soon Frida Reichman managed to interest Fromm in psychoanalysis and offered to act as an analyst for him. And, like the stories of Sandor Rado and Wilhelm Reich, who married their patients, the therapeutic relationship between Frieda Reichmann and Erich Fromm led to marriage (try not to confuse love with transference after that!). Many were perplexed why neither analytical revelations nor the significant age difference (Frida was 10 years older) prevented the marriage. However, the doubts turned out to be not unfounded. After living together for only four years, the couple separated (the divorce was finalized only in 1940 in the United States, where their paths again coincided by chance). However, they managed to maintain good relations, and in all subsequent years Frida lived under a double surname - Fromm-Reichman, under which she gained considerable fame.

PSYCHOANALYSIS COMMITTEE

Fromm completed his psychoanalytic training at the Berlin Institute, which, since the late 20s, increasingly became the center of attraction for analysts and their clients and challenged the primacy of the Vienna Institute. Over the years, Sandor Rado, Franz Alexander, Max Eitingon, Hans Sachs, Wilhelm Reich, Rene Spitz and other prominent analysts practiced and taught here. Here Fromm became closely acquainted with Karen Horney, whose patronage later secured him a professorship in Chicago.

In 1925, Fromm, having completed his mandatory psychoanalytic training (a serious flaw in which, however, was considered to be his lack of medical education), opened his own private practice. Among his patients were many Americans. By practicing spoken English with them, Fromm made great progress, which later allowed him to easily assimilate overseas.

Initially, Fromm took the position of orthodox Freudianism; his early works were published in reputable psychoanalytic journals, including the authoritative “Imago”. He never knew Sigmund Freud personally, but was deeply imbued with the spirit of his teaching. Over time, however, adherence to Freudian doctrine began to weaken, and Fromm eventually emerged as one of the most determined revisionists of psychoanalysis.

TERRIBLE FORECAST

Hitler's rise to power was perceived in Germany as the restoration of order and was therefore welcomed by the population. Fromm concluded that responsibility for one’s destiny, associated with personal freedom, is an unbearable burden for the majority, so people are ready to part with freedom

Extensive practice and communication with patients gave Fromm rich material for rethinking the relationship between the biological and the social in the formation of the human psyche. The analysis of empirical material was carried out by him while working at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt am Main (1929–1932).

As the head of the social psychology department at the institute, Fromm in 1932 organized a study of the unconscious motives of behavior of large social groups. As a result, he came to the conclusion that the masses not only would not resist the emerging fascism, but would also bring it to power with their own hands. Fromm saw an explanation for this “irrational” phenomenon in the mechanism of “flight from freedom,” when the masses, exhausted by national humiliation, unemployment, and inflation, willingly renounce the privileges given by freedom and readily sacrifice them in exchange for “order” and a guaranteed bowl of gruel. (Is it because this concept has become a psychological classic because life confirms it again and again?)

Fromm was one of the first to leave Germany in 1933, because the results of his research forced him to abandon all illusions. (Those of his colleagues who continued to harbor illusions about a “steady hand” and a “new order” were subsequently forced to flee in panic, while others did not succeed.)

FREUDISM

Fromm settled in the USA, where in 1941 the book “Escape from Freedom”, written by him in English, was published, exposing various modifications of totalitarianism. The book brought the author fame in America and aroused hatred towards him in Germany, where he did not return after the end of the war.

In America - first in the USA and then in Mexico - Fromm is engaged in extensive research and teaching activities, conducts extensive clinical practice, writes and publishes books that bring him increasing fame: “A Man for Himself” (1947), “Fairy Tales, Myths and Dreams" (1951), "A Healthy Society" (1955), "The Art of Love" (1956), "Revolution of Hope" (1968), "To Have or to Be?" (1976) and others (today, most of Fromm’s main works have been published in Russian translation). The last of these books can be considered a response to the work of the French philosopher G. Marcel “To be or to have?”, where many judgments close to Fromm were made about the negative aspects of technocratic civilization with its uncontrolled cult of consumption. The subtitle of Fromm's book clearly indicates the trend of his search - "Towards a humanized technology."

The rethinking and creative development of Freud's theory placed Fromm at the head of one of the influential trends in modern humanities - neo-Freudianism. (Although it is not without reason that he is also ranked among the theorists of humanistic psychology. The idea of ​​self-actualization is clearly visible in his judgment: “The main life task of a person is to give life to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important fruit of his efforts is his own personality.”)

Fromm seeks to shift the emphasis from the biological motives of human behavior in psychoanalysis to social factors and thereby, as it were, balance these two principles. In this, he, in particular, relies on the Marxist concept of the alienation of a person from his essence in the process of work and life, when a person is used as a means, but not as an end.

Various versions of the synthesis of Freudianism and Marxism were generally characteristic of many representatives of the Frankfurt School, but they differed in their views on the role of revolutionism in the transformation of social structures. Thus, G. Marcuse, with whom Fromm personally and in absentia polemicized back in Europe, in his book “Eros and Civilization” accused the neo-Freudians, primarily K. Horney and E. Fromm, of transforming Freudianism into a moral preaching - conformist and suitable (or rather, unsuitable) for all times and cultures.

Fromm criticized in the teachings of Marcuse those ideas that placed the latter among the leaders of the so-called youth revolution of 1968. Marcuse offers a revolutionary, “surgical” way to treat the diseases of consumer society; Fromm is more inclined to “therapeutic” methods of education, enlightenment, and humanization based on eternal moral values, which, while remaining in the soul of an individual, will not disappear in society.

Here, as we see, is an old philosophical dispute about foundations - where to start: with “I” or with “we”? Fromm understood that history creates man, and one of his most famous books, “Man for Himself,” is dedicated to this. The meaning of the book and its title will become clear if we quote the words Fromm took from the Talmud (the years of his apprenticeship were not in vain) as an epigraph:

If I am not for myself, then who will stand up for me?
If I am only for myself, then who am I?
If not now, then when?

THE ART OF FAITH

Fromm analyzed the types of social characters formed by various types of cultures, showed the role of humanistic and authoritarian ethics in this formation and came to the conclusion that a person can, and therefore must, oppose his own mind and will to both the external authority of power and the anonymous authority of public opinion . That is, Fromm saw salvation from authoritarianism in all its various forms in the independence and self-improvement of a person.

This idea is the main one for perhaps his most famous book, “The Art of Love.” A person has to independently choose the path between two abysses - aggressiveness and humility. He differs from other living beings in his mind, and apart from his mind, he has nothing to rely on. However, Fromm should not be considered a purely rationalist, because he had extensive experience in studying human irrationality and could not underestimate its role at the personal level and especially at the level of large social groups. Even on the eve of the Second World War, he showed that totalitarianism, that is, the suppression of independent thought and free will, is the result not only of usurpation and terror of power, but also of the inability of millions of people to value and love freedom and reason, which makes them silent accomplices in atrocities, otherwise and executioners.

Essentially, in today’s world, the only worthy and reliable counteraction to irrational destructiveness remains only reason and good will. The “healthy society” that Fromm thought about has not yet been built. Loneliness, alienation, escape from oppressive reality into the world of narcotic illusions, psychopathology in everyday and social life, the exhausting routine of Sisyphean labor - aren’t these our problems today? Therefore, Fromm’s words are still relevant today: “A person cannot live without faith. The decisive question for our and the next generation is whether it will be an irrational faith in leaders, machines, success, or a rational faith in man, based on the experience of our own fruitful activity.”

Name: Erich Fromm

Age: 79 years old

Activity: sociologist, philosopher, psychologist, psychoanalyst

Family status: was married

Erich Fromm: biography

Erich Fromm is an American psychoanalyst with German roots who developed the concept of humanistic psychoanalysis. A prominent representative of the Frankfurt School, one of the founders of neo-Freudianism and Freudo-Marxism.

Many books by the personality psychology theorist, written in living language, became bestsellers: “Escape from Freedom”, “Man for Himself”, “To Have or to Be”, “The Art of Loving”.

The main theme of the work of Erich Fromm, who devoted almost his entire life to the study of the subconscious, was the contradictions of human existence in the world.

Childhood and youth

The future psychoanalyst was born in Frankfurt am Main in 1900. Erich is the only child in an Orthodox Jewish family. Naftali Fromm, the head of the family, owned a wine shop. Erich's mother, Rosa Krause, is the daughter of emigrants from Poznan (then Prussia). Religious traditions were maintained in the family, and the parents dreamed of seeing their son become a rabbi or, at worst, a musician.

Erich studied at a school where the basics of Judaism and general education subjects were taught. In 1918, Fromm graduated from school and became a student at Heidelberg University. At the university, Erich chose philosophy, sociology and psychology as his priority subjects.

In 1922, Erich Fromm defended his doctoral dissertation, choosing the topic of Jewish law and the sociology of the Jewish Diaspora. Alfred Weber, the younger brother of the world-famous historian and economist, became his supervisor.

Fromm continued his education in Berlin, at the Institute of Psychoanalysis, famous for its students and teachers Sandor Rado, Max Eitingon, Wilhelm Reich.

In Berlin, Erich Fromm met his future lover Karen Horney, a psychoanalyst, graduate of the institute and a key figure in neo-Freudianism. The influential Horney helped Fromm secure a position as a professor of psychology in Chicago.

Philosophy

In the mid-1920s, Erich Fromm became a psychoanalyst and opened a private practice, which he did not stop for 35 years. Communication with patients provided rich material for the analysis of biological and social factors in the formation of the human psyche.

In Frankfurt, working at the Institute for Social Research from 1929 to 1932, Fromm interpreted and classified his observations. During these years, he wrote and published his first works on the methods and tasks of psychology.

In 1933, when he came to power, the scientist moved to Switzerland, and a year later to America. In New York, Fromm was taken to Columbia University, entrusted with teaching psychology and sociology. In the early 1940s, the German scientist was at the forefront of the formation of the Washington School of Psychiatry, and in 1946 he became the founder of the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry.

In 1950, the psychoanalyst moved to the capital of Mexico and worked for 15 years as a teacher at the National Autonomous University, the largest in the Americas. Erich Fromm studied social projects of different eras and published the work “A Healthy Society,” in which he criticized the capitalist system.

In 1960, the scientist became a member of the American Socialist Party and even wrote the program principles, which the party members rejected after much debate. Erich Fromm gave lectures to students, wrote scientific works and participated in rallies. The eminent psychoanalyst and sociologist was invited to the universities of New York and Michigan.

Fromm's works were extremely popular. The book “Escape from Freedom,” published in the early 1940s, became a bestseller. The scientist studied changes in the psyche and behavior of a person in Western culture, examined how his desire for individuality leads to loneliness. Fromm paid special attention in his work to the period of the Reformation and the teachings of theologians and.

In 1947, the scientist wrote a continuation of the popular study on flight from freedom, calling it “Man for Himself,” in which he developed a theory of human self-isolation in the world of Western values ​​and culture. Erich Fromm saw the cause of neuroses in the moral defeat of a person in the struggle for freedom, and called the task of psychoanalysis the disclosure by an individual of the truth about himself.

In the mid-1950s, the founder of humanistic psychoanalysis published the book “Healthy Society,” in which he raised the topic of the relationship between society and man. In this work, Erich Fromm tried to “reconcile” opposing theories and. The first believed that man is antisocial by nature, the second - that the individual is a “social animal.” The book became a bestseller, which was disassembled into quotes. One of them:

“In the 19th century. the problem was that God was dead; in XX – that a person is dead.”

Studying human psychology and behavior in different strata of societies and countries, the psychoanalyst came to the conclusion that the least suicides occur in the poorest countries. And Fromm called cinema, radio, television, and public events “ways of escape” from nervous disorders, and if these “benefits” are taken away from the people of Western civilization for 4 weeks, then many thousands will be diagnosed with neurosis.

In the mid-1960s, Fromm presented fans with a new work called “The Soul of Man.” In the book, the German psychologist focused on the essence of evil. In a certain sense, this work became a continuation of another, called “The Art of Loving.” Discussing the nature of evil, Erich Fromm concluded that violence is a product of the desire to rule, and it is not so much sadists and monsters who are dangerous as ordinary people who have concentrated power in their hands.

In the 1970s, Erich Fromm, continuing to analyze the most pressing problems of the era, published the work “The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness,” in which he developed the theme of the nature of human self-destruction.

Personal life

Erich Fromm explained his love for older women as a lack of maternal warmth in childhood. The first wife of the 26-year-old scientist was his 10-year-older colleague Frieda Reichmann, from whom the young scientist took a lecture course in psychoanalysis.

Fromm lived with Frida for only 4 years, but the woman influenced the professional development of her husband. After the separation, they remained friends, and officially divorced in 1940, when Erich met Karen Horney.

The famous feminist and psychoanalyst Horney often entered into romantic relationships with colleagues, invariably being disappointed in her chosen ones. Sometimes Karen had several lovers at the same time, each of them complementing the missing qualities of the others.

Karen and Erich met in Berlin. The romance broke out in America, where they immigrated. Horney taught Fromm the techniques of psychoanalysis, and he taught her the basics of sociology. The romance did not result in marriage, but the scientists complemented each other’s knowledge and influenced further professional growth.

Fromm officially married for the second time at the age of 40. His wife was 10 years older Henny Gurland, a photographer and journalist. Henny had a serious back problem. To alleviate his wife’s suffering, Fromm, on the advice of doctors, moved to Mexico City. The death of his beloved in 1952 shocked the scientist. While living with Gurland, the German psychoanalyst became interested in mysticism and Zen Buddhism.

Erich was able to cope with depression by meeting Annis Freeman. She became Fromm's only woman who was younger than him.

The couple lived together for 27 years, until the scientist’s death. American Annis inspired her husband to write the scientific bestseller “The Art of Loving.”

Death

Towards the end of the 1960s, Erich Fromm was diagnosed with his first heart attack. In the mid-1970s, the scientist moved to the Swiss commune of Muralto, where he completed work on the book “To Have and to Be.” In 1977 and 1978, Fromm had his second and third heart attacks.

The famous psychoanalyst's heart stopped in 1980. Erich Fromm did not live 5 days before his 80th birthday.

Bibliography

• 1922 – “The Jewish Law. Toward the sociology of Diaspora Jewry"
• 1941 – “Flight from Freedom”
• 1947 – “A Man for Himself”
• 1949 – “Man and Woman”
• 1950 – “Psychoanalysis and Religion”
• 1951 – “Forgotten language. Introduction to the science of understanding dreams, fairy tales and myths"
• 1955 – “Healthy Society”
• 1956 – “The Art of Loving”
• 1962 – “Beyond the illusions that enslave us. How I Encountered Marx and Freud"
• 1968 – “Human Nature”
• 1970 – “The Crisis of Psychoanalysis”
• 1973 – “The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness”
• 1976 – “To Have or To Be”
• 1979 – “The Greatness and Limitations of Freud’s Theory”
• 1981 – “On Disobedience and Other Essays”

Fromm E., 1900-1980). Philosopher and sociologist, author of the concept of humanistic psychoanalysis.

F. received a philosophical education at the Universities of Heidelberg and Munich in Germany, specializing in social psychology. He graduated from the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute and since 1925 worked as a practicing psychoanalyst. In 1925-1932 - employee of the Institute of Social Research named after. W. Goethe in Frankfurt am Main. He was strongly influenced by the Frankfurt school with its left-radical social and philosophical orientation. F. sought to synthesize Marxist ideas with psychoanalysis and existentialism, showed interest in religious issues, and in 1930 he published the article “Christian Dogma,” in which he tried to combine Marxist sociology with psychoanalysis. In 1933, after the Nazis came to power, he emigrated to the United States and taught at Columbia, New York and Michigan universities. Since 1951 he lived in Mexico; died in Muralto (Switzerland).

F. viewed man as a social being, analyzed the influence on the human psyche of sociocultural factors dominant in society, and acted as a critic of capitalist society. In 1941, F.’s book “Escape from Freedom” was published, in which he outlined the main provisions of his social philosophy, analyzing the existence of man within the framework of Western civilization. These ideas were further developed in the works “Man for Himself” (1947), “Healthy Society” (1955), “Modern Man and His Future: A Social-Psychological Study” (1960), “The Art of Love” (1962), “ Marx's picture of man: from the most important part of the early letters of Karl Marx" (1963), "The Heart of Man" (1964), "Revolution of Hope" (1968), etc. In recent works - "The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness" (1973) and "To Have or be?" (1976) - F.’s social philosophy and concept of humanistic psychoanalysis acquired their final form. He proposed a theory of reformation of society and the achievement of socialism based on psychoanalysis. F. assessed human actions and mass socio-political movements as “mechanisms of escape from reality, which are the driving forces of normal human behavior.” Unconscious "escape mechanisms" located in the deeper layers of the personality include masochistic and sadistic aspirations, withdrawal from the world, destruction and automatic submission.

F., did not make any distinction between a patient with neurosis and a healthy person: “The phenomena that we observe in patients with neuroses do not, in principle, differ from those in healthy people.”

Since the 50s In F.'s work, a second theme arose - humanistic religion. Its main provisions are set out in the work “Psychoanalysis and Religion” (1950), and were further developed in the books “Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis” (1960) and “You Will Be Like Gods: A Radical Interpretation of the Old Testament and Its Traditions” (1966).

FROM Erich

1900–1980) - German-American psychoanalyst, psychologist and philosopher, who critically rethought the psychoanalytic teaching of S. Freud about man and culture, criticized the conformist tendency in the psychoanalytic movement of the second half of the twentieth century and advocated for the creative revival of psychoanalysis - for the development of what he called humanistic psychoanalysis.

Erich Fromm was born on March 23, 1900 in Frankfurt am Main (Germany). He was the only child in an Orthodox Jewish family. His great-grandfather was an expert on the sacred books and a Talmud researcher, his father was the son of a rabbi, and his mother was the niece of the famous Talmudist L. Krause, under whose influence he wanted to become a Talmudist. His mother dreamed of him becoming a famous pianist, and before the outbreak of the First World War the boy studied music.

At the age of twelve, the boy was shocked by the suicide of a young artist who took her own life shortly after the death of her father and in her will asked that her last will be carried out so that she would be buried next to her father. Young E. Fromm could not understand how this could happen when the love of a young beautiful woman for her father turned out to be so strong that she preferred death and being in a coffin next to him to the joys of life and painting. Only later, having become acquainted with S. Freud’s ideas about the Oedipus complex, did he come to understand the reasons for the suicide of a young artist that shocked him in childhood.

Subsequent events associated with the First World War also made young E. Fromm think about how and why people succumb to hatred and national self-deification, what are the causes of wars and how is it possible that people begin to kill each other. Later, recalling his youthful experiences, he wrote: “I was tormented by questions about the phenomena of individual and social life, and I longed to get answers to them.”

During his school years, E. Fromm studied Latin, English and French, and was interested in the texts of the Old Testament. After graduating in 1918, he studied law in Frankfurt and philosophy, sociology and psychology in Heidelberg. In 1922, he graduated from the University of Heidelberg, received a doctorate in sociology, and, under the guidance of the German sociologist A. Weber, prepared a dissertation “On the Jewish Law. Toward the sociology of the Jewish Diaspora." In 1926, E. Fromm completed his postgraduate studies at the University of Munich.

In 1924, he met F. Reichmann, who had undergone psychoanalytic training with G. Sachs, practiced psychoanalysis, became his first analyst, and two years later, his wife. Subsequently, he was analyzed by three psychoanalysts, including W. Wittenberg and G. Sachs. Like F. Reichmann, he moved away from Jewish orthodoxy, and later broke with Zionism, which cultivated nationalism. The marriage with F. Reichmann, who was ten years older than E. Fromm, turned out to be short-lived. After more than three years of marriage, they separated, but maintained friendly relations both until the official divorce in 1940, and over the following years, when F. Fromm-Reichmann gained worldwide fame as a psychoanalyst who achieved significant results when working with patients suffering from mental disorders , including schizophrenia.

In 1927–1928, E. Fromm established contacts with the Berlin Institute of Psychoanalysis, where he made such reports as “Treatment of a case of pulmonary tuberculosis using psychoanalysis” (1927) and “Psychoanalysis of the petty bourgeois” (1928). The last report caused a lively discussion, in which famous psychoanalysts of the time participated, including F. Alexander, Z. Bernfeld, S. Rado, G. Sachs, M. Eitingon. In 1929–1930, E. Fromm completed a course of study at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute and opened his office for private psychoanalytic practice. In early 1929, at the opening ceremony of the Frankfurt Psychoanalytic Institute, he gave a lecture on the application of psychoanalysis in sociology and the science of religion. In 1930, E. Fromm was elected as a freelance member of the German Psychoanalytic Society.

In the late 20s and early 30s, he met psychoanalysts such as K. Horney and W. Reich, and also participated in discussions of their reports in the psychoanalytic community. Under the influence of T. Raik, in 1930 he published a discussion article “The Development of the Dogma of Christ. Psychoanalytic study of the socio-psychological function of religion” and a report “On the question of belief in the omnipotence of thoughts” was made. In 1931, he fell ill with pulmonary tuberculosis and was treated in Davos by G. Groddeck, who at different times treated such psychoanalysts as G. Sachs, W. Reich, K. Horney, S. Ferenczi and who told E. Fromm about that his illness was the result of a reluctance to admit to an unsuccessful marriage with F. Fromm-Reichmann.

In 1929, E. Fromm worked at the Frankfurt Psychoanalytic Institute, which received shelter at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt am Main, headed by M. Horkheimer, who took a course of psychoanalysis with K. Landauer. From 1930 to 1933, he worked at the Institute for Social Research, where he headed the department of social psychology and conducted empirical research, based on which it was concluded that workers and employees in Germany would not resist the rise of Nazism to power. It was during this period that he became acquainted with the ideas of K. Marx and J. Bakhoven, who published works on the theory of maternal law. In 1932, his article “Psychoanalytic characterology and its significance for social psychology” was published, which contained ideas about social character.

In 1933, at the invitation of F. Alexander, E. Fromm came to the USA to lecture at the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute, where K. Horney had settled by that time. A year later he moved to New York, where he worked for several years at the Institute for Social Research, which operated in Geneva until 1934, and then joined Columbia University. Within the framework of the institute, he prepared a socio-psychological section, which included ideas about the authoritarian character. This section was included in the collection “Studies on Authority and the Family” published by M. Horkheimer (1936), which predetermined the subsequent study of this issue, which was reflected, in particular, in the widely known work of T. Adorno “Authoritarian Character” (1950).

In the 30s, E. Fromm taught at New York, Columbia and Yale universities, and also collaborated with G.S. Sullivan, K. Horney, F. Fromm-Reichmann and K. Thompson, who, having undergone analysis from S. Ferenczi, subsequently continued it from E. Fromm. Founded in 1938 by G.S. Sullivan journal "Psychiatry" for the first time published his articles in English. Due to ideological differences with colleagues (in particular, T. Adorno and M. Horkheimer), who did not share his critical attitude towards some of Freud's concepts, in 1938 he refused to cooperate with the Institute for Social Research.

In 1941–1943, E. Fromm taught at the American Institute of Psychoanalysis, created by a number of psychoanalysts who left the New York Psychoanalytic Society due to the disqualification of K. Horney as a training analyst (in fact, for her criticism of classical psychoanalysis). In 1943, the commission of this institute did not satisfy the students’ demand to grant E. Fromm, who did not have a medical education, the right to conduct a clinical and technical seminar and, in response to his disagreement with such a decision, deprived him of his teaching privileges. The conflict was predetermined not only by the position of American colleagues who shared the official point of view, according to which psychoanalysts should have a medical education, but also by the deterioration of relations with K. Horney, one of whose daughters was analyzed by E. Fromm, as a result of which her protest against mother.

Some psychoanalysts, including G.S. Sullivan and K. Thompson, left with E. Fromm from the American Institute of Psychoanalysis and, teaming up with colleagues from the Washington-Baltimore Psychoanalytic Society, created a branch of the Washington School of Psychiatry, founded by G.S. Sullivan in 1936. Over the years, starting in 1946, when a branch of the Washington School of Psychiatry was renamed the New York Institute of Psychology, Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis. W. White, E. Fromm took an active part in the work of this Institute and the training of specialists in the field of psychoanalysis. Before moving to Mexico City, he supervised the academic department and teaching staff, and after his departure from the United States, he periodically came to New York to give lectures and conduct seminars at the institute.

From 1949 to 1967, E. Fromm lived and worked in Mexico, where he had to move on the advice of doctors who recommended that his second sick wife, whom he married in 1940, change the climate and try treatment with radioactive sources in San Jose Purna. In 1951 he became a visiting professor at the Faculty of Medicine at the National University of Mexico City. As a training and supervising analyst, he trained a group of Mexican psychoanalysts. In 1953, after the death of his second wife, E. Fromm married again and moved to the suburbs of Mexico City.

In 1956, on his initiative, the Mexican Psychoanalytic Society was founded. In order to disseminate psychoanalytic knowledge in the Spanish-speaking region, E. Fromm organized the publication of the “Psychological Library” series, founded the “Journal of Psychoanalysis, Psychiatry and Psychology,” and also organized a series of lectures in which prominent scientists took part. In 1957, on his initiative, a seminar on psychoanalysis and Zen Buddhism was held, in which, along with the then famous representative of Zen Buddhism D. Suzuki, about forty psychoanalysts and psychiatrists took part. For several years, E. Fromm trained psychoanalysts at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Mexico City, and since 1963 at the Mexican Institute of Psychoanalysis. In 1957, together with M. Maccoby and other collaborators, he began to explore the character of a Mexican village. The results of this field research are reflected in the publication “Psychoanalytic characterology in theory and practice. Social Character of the Mexican Village" (1970).

Not being a member of the International Psychoanalytic Association, E. Fromm initiated the creation of the International Forum of Psychoanalysis, which allowed like-minded people to exchange opinions on current issues in the theory and practice of psychoanalysis. This forum was held in Amsterdam (1962), Zurich (1965), Mexico City (1969), New York (1972), Zurich (1974), Berlin (1977).

In the 1960s, E. Fromm took an active part in political events in the United States and the world as a whole. He became a member of the Socialist Party of the USA, prepared a new program, but after it was not accepted by the leadership of this party, he left it. E. Fromm became involved in the political movement in defense of peace, and in 1962 he took part as an observer in the disarmament conference held in Moscow. He was a member of the national committee of the American Civil Liberties Union, supported the campaign for nuclear disarmament, collaborated with the Washington Peace Research Institute, and took an active part in the 1968 election campaign for the nomination of Democratic Senator Yu. McCarthy as a candidate for US President. .

From 1960 to 1973, E. Fromm spent his summer time in Locarno (Switzerland). In 1974, he decided not to return to Mexico, and in 1976 he finally moved to Switzerland. Having suffered three heart attacks, in old age E. Fromm continued to engage in daily meditation exercises, following the teachings of one of the Buddhist monks from Sri Lanka. He died on March 18, 1980 in Muralto, of which he became an honorary citizen shortly before his death. In Frankfurt, where he was born, a posthumous honor took place, accompanied by the awarding of the Goethe Memorial Medal.

E. Fromm is the author of numerous articles and books. His first fundamental work was “Escape from Freedom” (1941), which brought him fame, was repeatedly republished in various countries around the world and contained basic ideas, the creative development of which was reflected in his subsequent publications. Some of his most significant works include “Man for Himself” (1947), “Psychoanalysis and Religion” (1950), “The Forgotten Language” (1951), “A Healthy Society” (1955), “The Art of Loving” (1956). ), “Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis” (1960, co-authored with D. Suzuki), “Marx’s Concept of Man” (1961), “Beyond the Chains of Illusion” (1962), “The Soul of Man” (1964), “You Will like gods. A Radical Interpretation of the Old Testament and Its Traditions" (1966), "Revolution of Hope" (1968), "The Mission of Sigmund Freud" (1969), "The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness" (1973), "To Have or to Be" (1976), "The Psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud - greatness and boundaries" (1979) and others.

Erich Seligmann Fromm is a world-famous American psychologist and humanistic philosopher of German origin. His theories, although rooted in focus on the individual as a social being, using the faculties of reason and love to transcend instinctive behavior.

Fromm believed that people should be responsible for their own moral decisions, and not just for complying 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 belong to the neo-Marxist Frankfurt School - a critical theory of industrial society. Fromm rejected violence, believing that through empathy and compassion, people can rise above the instinctive behavior of the rest of nature. This spiritual aspect of his thinking may have resulted from his Jewish background and Talmudic education, although he did not believe in a traditional Jewish God.

The humanistic psychology of Erich Fromm had the greatest influence on his contemporaries, although he distanced himself from its founder, Carl Rogers. His book, The Art of Loving, remains a popular bestseller as people seek to understand the meaning of “true love,” a concept so profound that even this work only scratches the surface.

Early biography

Erich Fromm was born on March 23, 1900 in Frankfurt am Main, then part of the Prussian Empire. He was the only child in an Orthodox Jewish family. His two great-grandfathers and his paternal grandfather were rabbis. His mother's brother was a respected Talmudist. At the age of 13, Fromm began studying the Talmud, which lasted 14 years, during which he became familiar with socialist, humanist and Hasidic ideas. Although religious, his family, like many Jewish families in Frankfurt, was engaged in trade. According to Fromm, his childhood took place in two different worlds - the traditional Jewish one and the modern commercial one. By age 26, he had rejected religion because he felt it was too controversial. However, he retained his early memories of the Talmud's messages of compassion, redemption, and messianic hope.

Two events in the early biography of Erich Fromm seriously influenced 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 family friend of Erich Fromm. There were many 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 kind people became evil and bloodthirsty. The search for understanding the causes of suicide and militancy underlies many of the philosopher’s thoughts.

Teaching activities in Germany

In 1918 Fromm began his studies at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main. The first 2 semesters were devoted to jurisprudence. During the summer semester of 1919, he transferred to the University of Heidelberg to study sociology with Alfred Weber (brother of Max Weber), Karl Jaspers and Heinrich Rickert. Erich Fromm received a diploma in sociology in 1922 and completed his studies in psychoanalysis at the Psychoanalytic Institute in Berlin in 1930. That same year he started 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 Frieda Reichmann, a psychoanalyst who gained a good reputation for her effective clinical work with schizophrenics. Although their marriage ended in divorce in 1933, Fromm acknowledged that she taught him a lot. They maintained friendly relations until the end of their lives. At the age of 43, Fromm married a fellow emigrant from Germany of Jewish origin, Henny Gurland. Due to problems with her health, the couple moved to Mexico in 1950, but the wife died in 1952. A year later, 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 an adjunct professor of psychology in 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 ended 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 at his home in 1980, just 5 days short of 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 Loving (1956), became an international bestseller.

Psychological theory

In his first semantic work, Escape from Freedom, first published in 1941, Fromm analyzes the existential state of man. He does not consider sexual reasons as the source of aggressiveness, destructive instinct, neurosis, sadism and masochism, but presents them as attempts to overcome alienation and powerlessness. Fromm's idea of ​​freedom, in contrast to Freud and the critical theorists of the Frankfurt School, had a more positive connotation. In his interpretation, it is not liberation from the repressive nature of technological society, as, for example, he believed, but represents an opportunity to develop human creative powers.

Erich Fromm's books are renowned both for his social and political commentary and for their philosophical and psychological underpinnings. His second semantic work, Man for Himself: A Study in the Psychology of Ethics, first published in 1947, was a sequel to Flight from Freedom. In it, he focused on the problem of neurosis, characterizing it as a moral problem in a repressive society, the inability to achieve maturity and personal integrity. According to Fromm, a person's capacity for freedom and love depends on socio-economic conditions, but is rarely found in societies where the desire for destruction prevails. Taken together, these works set forth a theory of human character that was a natural extension of his theory of human nature.

Erich Fromm's most popular book, The Art of Loving, was first published in 1956 and became an international bestseller. It repeats and expands on 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.

A central part of Fromm's worldview was his concept of the self as a social character. In his view, basic human character stems from the existential frustration of being part of nature and feeling the need to rise above it through the ability to reason and love. The freedom to be a unique individual is scary, which is why people tend to surrender to authoritarian systems. For example, in 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 take this decision not out of devotional service, but out of search for security. Fromm extols the virtues of people taking independent action and using reason to establish their own moral values ​​rather than following authoritarian norms.

Humans have evolved into beings aware of themselves, their own mortality and powerlessness before the forces of nature and society, and are no longer one with the Universe, as they were in their instinctive, pre-human, animal existence. According to Fromm, the awareness of a separate human existence represents a source of guilt and shame, and the solution to this existential dichotomy is found in the development of the uniquely human abilities to love and reflect.

One of the popular ones is his statement that a person’s main task 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 capacity rather than an emotion, and he distinguished this creativity from what he saw as the various forms of narcissistic neuroses and sadomasochistic tendencies that are usually cited as evidence of "true love." Indeed, Fromm views 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, much less objectively know their real needs and wants.

Links to the Talmud

Fromm often illustrated his main 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 human biological evolution and existential angst, arguing that when Adam and Eve ate from the “tree of knowledge,” they realized that they were separate from nature while still being part of it. Adding a Marxist perspective to the story, he interpreted Adam and Eve's disobedience as justifiable rebellion against an authoritarian God. Man's destiny, according to Fromm, cannot depend on any participation of the Almighty or any other supernatural source, but only through his own efforts can he take responsibility for his life. In another example, he mentions the story of Jonah, who was unwilling to save the people of Nineveh from the consequences of their sin, as evidence of the belief that most human relationships lack care and responsibility.

Humanistic credo

In an addendum to his book, The Human Soul: Its Capacity for Good and Evil, Fromm wrote part of his famous humanistic credo. In his opinion, a person who chooses progress can find a new unity through the development of all his human powers, which is carried out in three directions. They can be presented separately or together as 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 The Healthy Society, published in 1955. In it he argued in favor of humanistic democratic socialism. Drawing primarily on the early work of Karl Marx, Fromm sought to reemphasize the ideal of personal freedom absent from Soviet Marxism and more commonly found in the writings of libertarian socialists and liberal theorists. His socialism rejected both Western capitalism and Soviet communism, which he saw as a dehumanizing, 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 humanist messages to the US and Western European publics. In the early 1960s, Fromm published two books on Marx's ideas (Marx's Concept of Man and Beyond Enslaving Illusions: My Encounter with Marx and Freud). 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 quote from 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 he could to help it represent a viewpoint different from the prevailing "McCarthyism" of the time, which was best expressed in his 1961 article "Can Man Prevail?" A Study of Fact and Fiction in Foreign Policy.” However, Fromm, as a co-founder of SANE, saw his greatest political interest in the international peace movement, the fight against the nuclear arms race and US involvement in the Vietnam War. After Eugene McCarthy's candidacy failed to receive Democratic Party support in the 1968 presidential nomination, Fromm left the American political scene, although in 1974 he wrote an article for hearings held by the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations entitled " Remarks on the policy of détente."

Heritage

Fromm did not leave a noticeable mark in the field of psychoanalysis. His desire to substantiate Freud's theory with empirical data and methods was better succeeded by other psychoanalysts such as Erik Erikson and Fromm is sometimes cited as the founder of neo-Freudianism, but he had little influence on its followers. His ideas in psychotherapy were successful in the field, but he criticized Carl Rogers and others to such an extent that he isolated himself from them. Fromm's theories are not usually discussed in personality psychology textbooks.

His influence on humanistic psychology was significant. His work has inspired many social analysts. An example is Christopher Lasch's The Culture of Narcissism, which continues efforts to psychoanalyze culture and society in the neo-Freudian and Marxist traditions.

His sociopolitical influence ended with his involvement in American politics in the 1960s and early 1970s.

Nevertheless, Erich Fromm's books are constantly being rediscovered by scholars who are individually influenced by them. In 1985, 15 of them founded the International Society named after him. The number of its members exceeded 650 people. The Society is dedicated to encouraging scientific work and research based on the work of Erich Fromm.

Erich Seligmann Fromm (German: Erich Seligmann Fromm, March 23, 1900, Frankfurt am Main - March 18, 1980, Locarno) - German sociologist, philosopher, social psychologist, psychoanalyst, representative of the Frankfurt School, one of the founders of neo-Freudianism and Freudo-Marxism

Erich Fromm was born into a family of Orthodox Jews. His mother Rosa Fromm, née Krause, was the daughter of a rabbi who emigrated from Russia. Erich's father, Naftali Fromm, was also the son and grandson of rabbis, and although he was engaged in trade, he preserved and supported the orthodox religious traditions in the family.

In Frankfurt, Fromm attended a national school, where, along with the basics of doctrine and religious traditions, all subjects of general education were taught. After graduating in 1918, he entered the University of Heidelberg, where he studied philosophy, sociology and psychology. In 1922, under the supervision of Alfred Weber, he defended his doctoral dissertation. Fromm completed his psychoanalytic training at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute. Over the years, Sandor Rado, Max Eitingon, Wilhelm Reich and other prominent analysts practiced and taught here. Here Fromm became closely acquainted with Karen Horney, whose patronage later helped him obtain a professorship in Chicago.

In 1925, Fromm completed his mandatory psychoanalytic training and opened his own private practice. Overall, Fromm was an active practicing psychoanalyst for 35 years.

After Hitler came to power in 1933, Fromm moved first to Geneva and then in 1934 to New York, USA. There he taught at Columbia University.

In 1943, Fromm helped form the New York branch of the Washington School of Psychiatry, and in 1946 he co-founded the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry.

In 1950, Fromm moved to Mexico City, where he taught at the National Autonomous University of Mexico until 1965.

In 1960, Fromm joined the US Socialist Party and wrote its Program, which, however, was rejected due to party disputes. Fromm continued to be involved in political activities, giving lectures, writing books and participating in rallies.

From 1957 to 1961 he also taught psychology at Michigan State University, and from 1962 at New York University. In 1962, he participated as an observer at the disarmament conference in Moscow.

In 1968, Fromm had his first heart attack. In 1974 he moved to Muralto (or Locarno). Soon after finishing the work “To Have or to Be”, in 1977, he suffered a second, and then a third (1978) heart attack.

He died in Switzerland at his home in 1980.

Books (22)

Anatomy of human destructiveness

The book is dedicated to a philosophical rethinking of the most pressing problem of our time - the nature of the destructive in the individual, in society and in history. In this fundamental work, E. Fromm, forming a holistic view of reformed psychoanalysis, reveals a wide panorama of biological, psychological and anthropological teachings.

Escape from freedom

This book is part of an extensive study devoted to the psyche of modern man, as well as to the problems of the relationship and interaction between psychological and sociological factors of social development. I have been doing this work for several years, its completion will require even more time

You will be like gods. Collection

Erich Fromm unconditionally broke with Judaism at the age of 26 and from then on considered himself a Christian.

However, the Christianity of the great philosopher, his understanding of God and the divine, the role of Christ in world history, the interpretation of the evolution of the image of the Savior to this day surprises with its courage and unorthodoxy.

In the works presented in this collection, Erich Fromm addresses the topic of Christianity, considering it primarily as the evolution of human ideas about religion - from slavish veneration of a higher principle and clan narrowness to free will, emancipation of the individual and the unity of nations.

Forgotten language

Erich Fromm is the greatest thinker of the 20th century, one of the great cohort of “philosophers from psychology” and the spiritual leader of the Frankfurt School of Sociology.

Healthy society

The relationship between man and society has long attracted philosophers who have sought to determine which of the elements of this binary opposition is primary. Is the individual antisocial by nature, as Freud argued, or, on the contrary, is man a social animal, as K. Marx believed? An attempt to reconcile these opposing points of view was made by the founder of “humanistic psychoanalysis” Erich Fromm.

The art of being

Erich Fromm is the greatest thinker of the 20th century, one of the great cohort of “philosophers from psychology” and the spiritual leader of the Frankfurt School of Sociology.

The works of Erich Fromm are always relevant, because the main theme of his research was the disclosure of human essence as the realization of a productive, life-creative principle.