Erich Fromm

Erich Fromm was a German-born American psychoanalyst and social philosopher who explored the interaction between psychology and society. He was one of the founders of The William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Psychology in New York City and was associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory. He was a prolific writer who published more than 30 books and hundreds of articles on topics such as humanism, social theory, Marxism, religion, ethics, love, freedom, and alienation. He also applied his psychoanalytic insights to the analysis of contemporary social problems such as fascism, authoritarianism, consumerism, and nuclear war. He advocated for a humanistic and democratic socialism that would respect the dignity and autonomy of individuals while fostering social solidarity and cooperation. He was influenced by various thinkers such as Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Martin Buber, Baruch Spinoza, and Zen Buddhism. Fromm was born on March 23, 1900, in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, to Orthodox Jewish parents. He studied law at the University of Frankfurt before switching to sociology at the University of Heidelberg, where he earned his PhD in 1922 with a dissertation on Jewish law. He then trained as a psychoanalyst at the Psychoanalytic Institute in Berlin under Hanns Sachs. He married Frieda Reichmann, a psychoanalyst and psychiatrist, in 1926, but they separated in 1931 and divorced in 1942. He joined the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research in 1930 and became a member of the Frankfurt School, a group of Marxist-oriented intellectuals who critically examined the cultural and ideological aspects of modern capitalism. He collaborated with Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Walter Benjamin, and others on various research projects and publications. After the Nazi takeover of power in Germany in 1933, Fromm fled to Switzerland and then to the United States in 1934. He became a professor of psychology at Columbia University and later taught at Yale University, Bennington College, Michigan State University, New York University, and the National Autonomous University of Mexico. He also founded The William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Psychology in New York City in 1946 with Harry Stack Sullivan and Clara Thompson. He became a naturalized American citizen in 1941. He married Henny Gurland, a German-born psychoanalyst who had escaped from Nazi Germany with her two sons, in 1953. She died in 1959 in an automobile accident in Mexico. Fromm then moved to Switzerland in 1974 and lived there until his death on March 18, 1980, from heart failure. He was buried at the Cimitero di Muralto in Ticino, Switzerland.