Erich Fromm was one of the main pioneers in renewing the conception of psychoanalysis, once it settled in Europe. Fromm opposed the reductionist vision of psychoanalysis that detailed that the human being is conditioned by a set of unconscious forces that cannot be controlled by our conscious will. Faced with this opposition arose the humanistic psychoanalysis. From then on, Erich Fromm developed his theories focused on psychoanalysis and criticism of the Western world. He published more than thirty books and is considered, today, one of the most highly valued psychologists in psychology. If you are interested in knowing who he was Erich Fromm: biography, theory and bookscontinue reading this Psychology-Online article.
Biography of Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm was born on March 23, 1900 in Frankfurt., Germany, in a family of Orthodox Jewish origin, which had had several generations of ancestors serving as rabbis. The only son of Neftalí Fromm and his mother Rosa Krause, he grew up feeling identified in the religion that surrounded him, wanting to follow the same directions as the ancestors of his family, recounting himself: “I was raised in a religious Jewish family, and the pages of the Old Testament moved and stimulated me more than anything else to which I was exposed.”
However, The arrival of World War I produced a change in mentality by Erich Fromm, upon seeing that the people he had associated as people with a strong pacifist spirit, jumped on the bandwagon of the rulers’ violence, in addition to seeing close cousins and uncles die. From then on, his main objective focused on understanding how government forces were capable of influencing a multitude of the population, who moved peacefully, to enter into a fight that would hardly bring benefits to the community. population.
After the war, Erich Fromm unleashed a critical attitude towards everything, without taking anything for granted. This new way of seeing the world was what brought him closer to Freud’s ideas, to understand individual mechanisms, and Marx, to understand social ones. His thinking ended up being radically shaped when he began to study Law at the University of Frankfurt and Sociology in Heidelberg later.
However, he never stopped having contact with the Jewish people. His doctoral thesis in 1922 focused on Jewish Lawwhich Fromm considered essential for the Jewish people to remain united.
In 1924, Fromm began his practice in psychoanalysis in a therapeutic center in the city of Hielderberg, where his sociological thinking acquired new psychological terms. His first psychoanalyst, Frieda Reichman, ended up being his wife, separating in 1930-1931 and divorcing in 1940, however, they maintained a friendly relationship throughout their lives.
His psychoanalytic training was completed in Berlin, at the Berlin Institute, where he later opened his first office and definitively abandoned his orthodox religious beliefs, to convert to atheism. Subsequently, at the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, he came closer to Marxist ideas.
In the year 1931, fell ill with tuberculosis and traveled to Davos to get better, where he lived for a year. At that time, Nazism was on the rise to come to power and the Institute had to emigrate to Geneva until 1934 and, later, to Columbia University in New York. In the big city, he had the opportunity to have a lot of contact with great thinkers, including refugees from the United States. With this, in 1943 he obtained the recognition of being one of the founding members of the New York branch of the Washington School of Psychiatry.
He then remarried Henney Gurland, with whom he moved to Mexico in 1950. However, she died two years later, while he was teaching at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). In addition, he was requested by many of the large universities to give talks and present his books. In 1953, he remarried Annis Glove.
In the midst of the Vietnam War, Fromm once again postulated new preferences and ideals, becoming fully involved in pacifist movements. During this time, he wrote his great best seller “The Art of Loving” (1956).
Eric He obtained a professorship at Michigan State Universitylater being appointed as a professor at New York University in 1962. He then retired from professional practice in 1965, although he continued to give talks at many of the large universities and institutes.
Erich Fromm wanted to spend his last years in Switzerland, in Muralto, where In 1980 he died of a heart attack.
Erich Fromm theory
The factor that triggered great significance in Erich Fromm’s research was that, unlike his fellow psychoanalysts, He started from sociology and not from medicine or psychiatry. It was as a result of this perspective, from which Fromm was able to observe the human being in great complexity, as an integral whole. From this conception of the person as a whole, he was able to expose the idea that not everything responds to biology, to organic pathology, since the environment and vital circumstances and, above all, the society in which the person finds himself. , are conditioning factors of the human being and not only their organic condition.
In order to understand Erich Fromm’s theory, we must know that this was influenced by the ideas of Freud and Marx. Freud based his theory on the unconscious drives that conditioned our conscious wills, as well as our biological impulses. On the other hand, Marx postulated that individuals were determined by the economy and society.
Faced with this, Fromm tried to unify the two movements, psychoanalysis and sociology, calling it analytical social psychology. Erich Fromm considered that these two practices excluded man’s freedom. Freud’s psychoanalysis conditioned man to his biological nature, while Marx associated it with socio-economic determinism.
This is how Fromm established the freedom of man as a central point of his theory, seeking for man to transcend the determinisms of his own biology and society. Faced with this, from a sociocultural point of view, Fromm’s highest objective was not to achieve social adjustment or adaptation, but rather the integrity of the individual himself. On the other hand, from the biological point of view, he emphasized that the origin of psychological problems is not based solely on the organic condition. Since a set of environmental variables interfere that also condition the origin of psychological problems, such as interpersonal relationships, culture, models of coping with problems,… Based on these ideas.
In summary, faced with these two systems established by two great thinkers, who supported a deterministic theory, Erich Fromm encouraged society to transcend the conditions attributed to them and to seek freedom and their own reason for being. Something that is reflected in.
Books by Erich Fromm
In addition to being one of the most influential thinkers of our times, Erich Fromm was a great writer, who wrote dozens of books, including some examples that we can find:
- Freedom’s Escape (1941)
- Man for Himself (1947)
- Art of Loving (1956)
- The Healthy Society (1955)
- The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1973)
- The Heart of Man (1964)
- The fear of freedom (1941)
- Can man survive? (1961)
- And you will be like gods (1966)
The art of loving by Erich Fromm
The Art of Loving, a book published by Erich Fromm in 1956, had a great impact, becoming a best seller, because it allowed several generations to reflect on one of the most important themes of our reason for being, love. The book helps the reader questioning some aspects of love that may seem simple at first, like: what does it mean to love? Or how do we let go of ourselves to experience this feeling? Furthermore, it manifests the different forms of the expression of love, such as brotherly, filial, parental, self-love, etc., these forms being a trait of maturity and not just a personal relationship.
He also teaches us that love is not mechanical or fleeting, it is an art that is obtained through learning. With this he shows us that to learn to love, the person must act as he would if he wanted to learn any art discipline, such as music, painting, medicine… Finally, he highlights that we should not live looking for success, power or money, but in learning and cultivating the art of loving.
«Love tries to understand, convince, vivify. For this reason, the one who loves is constantly transformed. He captures more, observes more, is more productive, is more himself. »1
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References
- Fromm, E. (1956). The Art of Loving. Harper & Brothers: New York
Bibliography
- Cañal, J. (2012). Technical and etiological aspects in the psychoanalytic conception of Erich Fromm. Psychoanalysis, 3, 17.
- Manzo, G. (2014). The origins of Erich Fromm’s Analytical Social Psychology in the early Frankfurt School. Perspectives in Psychology, 11, 25-33.
- Rivas, R. (2013). Erich fromm: bases for a paradoxical anthropology and a “negative” ethics. In-Keys of thought, 14, 103-122.
- Silva, O. (1994). The convictions of Erich Fromm.