Erich Fromm

 Life

Erich Fromm, a psychoanalyst and social philosopher, was born on March 23^rd, 1900 in Frankfurt, Germany. Hisfather Naphtati Fromm was a businessman and, rather moody. His mother Rosa nee Krause suffered from depression. His family was very much religious, like Jung's, the orthodox Jews. But he later became what he called an 'atheistic mystic'. In short, his childhood wasn't very happy. He was the only child of his anxious parents. His grandfather was the famous rabbi of his time. He came from a religious, orthodox, middle-class Jew family.

His whole family was of rabbinical ancestors, who sat the whole day and studied Talmud. Erich studied Talmud, read Bible, and heard lot of stories about his ancestors. He had only one non-Jewish teacher whom he admired and was greatly influenced by.

After receiving his Ph. D. from the University of Heidelberg in 1922, he took training in psychoanalysis at Munich and then at the Psycho-Analytic Institute of Berlin. Later he started practicing psychoanalysis as a disciple of Sigmund Freud. He did not agree with Freud's preoccupation of unconscious drives and consequent negligence of the role of societal factors in human psychology. In Fromm's views, an individual's personality is the product of his culture as well as his biology. He moved to the United States in 1933. He had already attained a distinguished reputation as a psychoanalyst, when he left Nazi- Germany. In United States, he came into conflict with the orthodox Freudian psychoanalytic circles. He stayed in New York, where he met many great thinkers, who also left their motherland because of their principles. One of them was Karen Horney, with whom he had an affair.

For six years, he worked in the faculty of Columbia University, where his views became increasingly controversial. Then he went to Vermont as a member of the faculty at Bennington College, worked there for ten years. In 1951, he was appointed as a professor of psychoanalysis at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. From 1957 to 1961 he held the post at Michigan State University, finally returning to New York as a professor of psychiatry at New York University.

Toward the end of his career, he moved to Mexico City to teach. He did considerable research on the relationship between economic class and personality types. He breathed his last in Switzerland at the age of 80.

 Influence of Sigmund Freud on his life

Freud influenced Erich's life a great deal. He taught Erich that only a small part of oneself is conscious. He distinguished two kinds of unconsciousness :

1. Preconscious; something, which could be conscious but is not at the moment.
2. The sense of repression, which prevents some force within oneself from becoming conscious.

Besides Freud, there were two important psychoanalysts, Sandor Ferenczi and Georg Groddeck.

Influence of Karl Marx on his life

Erich was drawn by Marx primarily for his philosophy, vision of socialism which expressed, in secular forms, the idea of human self-realization, total humanization, the idea of human being whose goal is vital self-expression and not the acquisition and accumulation of dead, materialistic things.

Freud and Marx have been the two great disillusioners, although Marx saw deeper because he looked at the forces underneath which need illusions, while Freud only individually dissolved illusions people had in their own individual relationship to reality":.

Fromm was heavily influenced by the writings of Karl Marx, particularly by an early work 'The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts' composed in 1844. This work is an English translation by T. B. Bottomore which is included in Fromm's 'Marx's concept of Man' (1961). In 'Beyond The Chains of Illusion' (1962), Fromm has compared the ideas of Freud and Marx. Fromm has regarded Marx as a more profound thinker than Freud, and used psychoanalysis mainly to fill the gaps in Marx. Fromm wrote a highly critical, even polemical, analysis of Freud's personality; it was influenced by way of contrast, and unconditional eulogy of Marx. Although, Fromm could be accurately called a Marxian personality theorist, he himself preferred to be called a 'dialectic humanist'. Fromm's writings were inspired by his extensive knowledge of history, sociology, literature and philosophy.