The Lives of Erich Fromm: Love’s Prophet by Lawrence J. Friedman, assisted by Anke M. Schreiber [Book Review]

Abstract

Few twentieth century thinkers had greater influence on public opinion and socialist thought in the West than Erich Fromm (1900-1980), whose long, dynamic life of organizing encompassed founding roles in numerous influential institutions: The Free Jewish Study House in Frankfurt (which included Franz Rosenzweig, Abraham Heschel, Gershom Scholem, and many other eminent scholars), the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, the International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies (a radical alternative to Freud’s organization), and many others. Fromm spoke to audiences of thousands in the 1960s, appeared on television, wrote books that sold millions of copies, and constantly sought to reach a popular audience and to build discussion of, and a movement for, “socialist humanism.” His pioneering synthesis of Marx and Freud, his study of the early Marx, his theoretical accounts of hope and love as qualities of the true revolutionary, and his dialogues with disparate religious and cultural traditions, forge a legacy of emancipatory thought that cannot be ignored.