Erich Fromm





Erich Fromm

Author profile


born
in Frankfurt am Main, Germany
March 23, 1900

died
March 18, 1980

gender
male

genre

influences
Spinoza, Eckhart, Kierkegaard, Marx, Freud, Alfred Weber


About this author

Erich Fromm was a German-born U.S. psychoanalyst and social philosopher who explored the interaction between psychology and society. His works include The Art of Loving; Love, Sexuality, and Matriarchy; and Man for Himself. He died in 1980.

Fromm's theory is a rather unique blend of Freud and Marx. Freud, of course, emphasized the unconscious, biological drives, repression, and so on. In other words, Freud postulated that our characters were determined by biology. Marx, on the other hand, saw people as determined by their society, and most especially by their economic systems.


Average rating: 4.06 · 903,828 ratings · 17,411 reviews · 109 distinct works · Similar authors
The Art of Loving
3.97 of 5 stars 3.97 avg rating — 10,477 ratings — published 1956 — 101 editions
Escape from Freedom
4.17 of 5 stars 4.17 avg rating — 2,613 ratings — published 1941 — 50 editions
To Have or to Be? The Natur...
4.17 of 5 stars 4.17 avg rating — 1,512 ratings — published 1976 — 64 editions
The Anatomy of Human Destru...
4.18 of 5 stars 4.18 avg rating — 900 ratings — published 1973 — 25 editions
The Art of Being
by
4.08 of 5 stars 4.08 avg rating — 630 ratings — published 1992 — 14 editions
The Sane Society
4.2 of 5 stars 4.20 avg rating — 558 ratings — published 1956 — 30 editions
Man for Himself: An Inquiry...
4.1 of 5 stars 4.10 avg rating — 532 ratings — published 1947 — 21 editions
Psychoanalysis and Religion
3.96 of 5 stars 3.96 avg rating — 280 ratings — published 1950 — 14 editions
Marx's Concept of Man
by
3.89 of 5 stars 3.89 avg rating — 246 ratings — published 1961 — 17 editions
The Forgotten Language
3.9 of 5 stars 3.90 avg rating — 227 ratings — published 1951 — 18 editions
More books by Erich Fromm…
“Love is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go. How can I judge that it will stay forever, when my act does not involve judgment and decision.”
Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving

“A person who has not been completely alienated, who has remained sensitive and able to feel, who has not lost the sense of dignity, who is not yet "for sale", who can still suffer over the suffering of others, who has not acquired fully the having mode of existence - briefly, a person who has remained a person and not become a thing - cannot help feeling lonely, powerless, isolated in present-day society. He cannot help doubting himself and his own convictions, if not his sanity. He cannot help suffering, even though he can experience moments of joy and clarity that are absent in the life of his "normal" contemporaries. Not rarely will he suffer from neurosis that results from the situation of a sane man living in an insane society, rather than that of the more conventional neurosis of a sick man trying to adapt himself to a sick society. In the process of going further in his analysis, i.e. of growing to greater independence and productivity,his neurotic symptoms will cure themselves.”
Erich Fromm

“Immature love says: 'I love you because I need you.' Mature love says 'I need you because I love you.”
Erich Fromm

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