Erich Fromm: His Life and Ideas

The work of Erich Fromm, who was born in 1900, is more compelling and popular in our new century than ever before. This beautifully illustrated biography depicts Fromm amid the backdrop of his world.
From childhood, Fromm wanted to make Judaic studies his life’s work. Yet from the beginning, he felt a great tension between “the old world of traditions” and the Germany in which he lived as a young Jew. With the completion of his degree, Fromm’s life took a decisive turn from the centered Orthodox Judaism of his childhood to psychoanalysis. Though he never met Sigmund Freud, Fromm’s discovery of Freudian theory had a profound effect, even as Fromm critiqued much of it throughout his lifetime.
Fromm’s seminal work with Leo Lowenthal, Max Horkheimer, and others associated with the Institute for Social Research, the so-called Frankfurt School – as well as the controversies that culminated in Fromm’s break in 1939 – follows. By the 1930s, Fromm had also established himself in the United States, as a Jewish immigrant seeking refuge from the Nazis. During this period, he maintained an important personal and professional relationship with Karen Horney. In 1940, Fromm was elected to the New York Academy of Science; during the 1940s, he taught at the New School for Social Research and Bennington College; through the 1950s, Fromm moved to Mexico “part time,” where D. T. Suzuki became one of his most profound later influences. As age advanced, throughout the turbulent 1960s and 1970s, Fromm enjoyed his greatest popularity until a series of heart attacks culminated in his death, just five days short of his eightieth birthday, on March 18, 1980.