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The Indispensability of Erich Fromm: The Rehabilitation of a >Forgotten< Psychoanalyst

  • This chapter provides a comprehensive overview and rehabilitation of Erich Fromm’s importance as a psychoanalyst. Fromm is lauded for having been an unsurpassed analyst of psychoanalytic politics and the incarnation of what it means to be an independent psychoanalyst, who was unjustly attacked both by orthodox analysts and by his erstwhile colleagues in the Frankfurt School. His 1935 essay, >The Social Determinants of Psychoanalytic Therapy,< in which the influence of Ferenczi and Groddeck is directly acknowledged, and his 1959 book, Sigmund Freud’s Mission, are hailed as summits of his achievement, while The Greatness and Limitations of Freud’s Thought shows him in decline. Three weak points in Fromm’s thought are identified: (1) his tendency to flatten out an individual level of analysis into a purely social level; (2) his penchant for shifting the blame for the problems in psychoanalysis away from Freud onto his followers; and (3) his assumption that motherly love is unconditional. Fromm’s defense of radical humanism is compared with that of Orwell, and it is shown to be grounded not only in philosophy but above all in natural science in The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness.

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Metadaten
Author:Peter L. Rudnytsky
Parent Title (English):P. Rudnytsky: Formulated Experiences. Hidden Realities and Emergent Meanings from Shakespeare to Fromm, London and New York (Routledge) 2019, pp. 70-103.
Document Type:Articles
Language:English
Year of first Publication:2019
Release Date:2020/11/03
Format:to purchase via publisher
IdNo:Rudnytsky_P_L_2019c
Writings about Erich Fromm (Secondary Literature):Articles / Artikel
Erich Fromm's Library and Erich Fromm Archive:Articles / Artikel
International Erich Fromm Society's Writings:Articles / Artikel
Licence (German):
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