[…] This somewhat polemic study in applied socio-economics, psychology, and ideology concentrates on one aspect of a larger work the author is preparing and >interrupted< because of >Present political developments< and >dangers<: he therefore was unable to 1941. This is all very nice but the author does not seem to know how this ideal is to be achieved. In his relative deposition of the man of special talent and thinking who has the >answers,< and would therefore be most unique and individual, the author creates a paradox in his quest for further development of the individual. His >Social Character< is more totalitarian than he imagines. Ironically, the author’s quotations from >Mein Kampf< read very much like Old Testament. (APA PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)
Dr. E. Fromm, in a recent report to the Journal of the American Home Economics Association, discussed the two kinds of hatred which he claims exist. One is what he calls the >counterpoint of life<. It is rational hatred, aroused by an attack on life, freedom, country, some person or institution we love. Such hatred is necessary for winning a war against aggression. >People must love what they are defending, in order to hate their attackers effectively.< The other kind of hatred, which he calls >character-conditioned<, was made use of by the Nazis in recruiting their party. The bulk of their recruits came from the lower middle class, who had led a starved and frustrated life socially and economically, particularly since 1918, in Germany. This led to tremendous irrational hatred and destructiveness which could only be expressed in small doses before the Nazi party offered an outlet.
That our world stands in flames and that no one can say with any hope of finality what in fact is happening to us are facts which are present in everyone's mind. Most of the attempts to explain the situation from recent economic and sociological causes are patently insufficient, and Dr. Fromm is wise enough to present his excellent survey with a clear eye on its necessary limitations. His analysis of the individualistic character-structure of modern man, shown in relief against the contained collectivity of the Middle Ages, is an excellent example of the value of the historical method to psychological understanding. The fundamental premises of the Gothic mind were self-evident and unquestioned. Men marched in step with their time. Their fate was laid down and contained in their community. From the Reformation onward this containing envelope was ruptured and the individual began to emerge into a world which no longer shielded him from the deep-rooted sense of his own impotence and powerlessness over and against dangers and forces he could not control. Instead of being integrated and enclosed he felt exposed and alone, and this was projected into the idea of a hostile deity whose arbitrary nature demanded indefinite and intense placatory effort. The Calvinistic conception of God and the world were the inevitable result of this ejection of medieval man from his contained paradise.
[…] Erich Fromm's latest work is an ambitious attempt to synthesize psychoanalysis and ethics by grounding the norms of the latter in the integrated personality. The ethical agent is characterized by a >productive orientation< which permits him to realize his constructive potentialities in thought, work, and love. Virtue consists in recognizing his obligation to his mature self; vice, in denying his obligation and therefore >mutilating< his thwarted self. The good life finds itself validated not by authoritarian dogma or supernatural sanction but by man's constructive needs and aspirations as disclosed in the findings of psychology and anthropology. Fromm's position, therefore, allies him not only with those rationalists and humanists whose ethical orientation is anthropocentric in the best sense of the word but also with the modern naturalists who maintain that ethical judgments can be the subject matter of a scientific morality. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)
[…] Aside from its major thesis, this book has strong incidental values. It condenses, as ably and readably as few have achieved, the concepts and theories of Freud, Adler, Jung, Rank, Karen Horney, Erich Fromm and Harry Stack Sullivan. The result is a volume that students can use with profit, and in which busy psychologists can find a meaty and accurate account of the psychoanalytic moderns. The chapter on Sullivan is of great value, much of it taken from unpublished material presented only in his lectures. (APA PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
The author undertook to review critically both the theoretical and the empirical studies of anxiety and to synthesize them into a comprehensive framework that would take account of biological, psychological and cultural dimensions of anxiety. The selection of material included in the book is naturally determined, at least in part, by the viewpoint of the author, who has been strongly influenced by the writings of Goldstein, Horney, Sullivan, and Fromm. Since the book is not meant to be a handbook on anxiety, the pointing out of specific omissions does not seem necessary. The contributions that have been included are presented very adequately in their main outline, though not all of them in equal detail. The book certainly fulfills the function of a synopsis of much that is most significant in the modern thinking on anxiety, and will be very useful as such. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
>The Forgotten Language< is an introduction to symbolism, and to the understanding of symbols in dreams, fairy tales, and myths. Fromm ably supports his thesis that symbolic language expresses inner experiences and feelings that cannot readily be formulated in conventional social communication. >Universal< symbolism >is shared by all men< and >does not have to be learned<. (APA PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)