Erich Fromm

June 7, 2007 6:34 AM

The website of the Erich Fromm Society hosts PDFs of a number of essays by Fromm, author of The Art of Loving (review) and The Sane Society. (Click on Download in the left-hand menu to get to them.) Works in English include Faith as a Character Trait (1942), The Psychology of Normalcy (1954), Love In America (1959), and a review from 1950 of a new book by L. Ron Hubbard called Dianetics.
posted by Prospero (9 comments total)

I can no longer think of Fromm without hearing Screeching Weasel's Kamala's Too Nice go through my head. I think it's a fair trade:

She took me into her lovely home
Called Nicaragua on the phone
Read Art of Loving by Erich Fromm
She made enchiladas for me man
I won't take advantage of her and
I won't even ask her to book my band
Kamala's too nice I'm such a dick
Kamala's too nice and I'm a pig
Kamala's too nice she makes me sick
I sit in her apartment acting rude
Eat mashed potatoes in the nude
She don't care cause she's totally way rad dude
I keep her television onall night
And then I start up a fight
And tell her she's wrong cause I'm always right
posted by OmieWise at 7:09 AM on June 7, 2007

On a more serious note, the middle paragraph's of that Hubbard review are a great distillation of what's wrong with Dianetics and what's right with the model of the mind Freud promulgated.
posted by OmieWise at 7:12 AM on June 7, 2007

An Amazon reviewer on The Art of Loving: Stunning artwork and a main character you can relate to make this Yaoi book an exciting and pleasurable read.
posted by fleetmouse at 8:15 AM on June 7, 2007

I'd love to hear what Fromm would have said about Scientology given what he wrote about Dianetics.
posted by tommasz at 10:14 AM on June 7, 2007

Dick Cheney, take note.

The mixture of some oversimplified truths, half truths and plain absurdities, the propagandistic technique of impressing the reader with the greatness, infallibility and newness of the author's system, the promise of unheard of results attained by the simple means of following Dianetics...

war in Iraq?
posted by sswiller at 12:58 PM on June 7, 2007

Great post, thanks. I quite like Fromm, and the Frankfurt School in general, despite the fact that they tend towards a very rhetorical, ideological approach to sociology, pretty much lacking in any attempt to apply any kind of formal, scientific methodologies to their analysis.

I think that Fromm & Marcuse, in particular, provided strong intellectual parallels & support for what a number of others in the post-WW2 period were doing...thinking specifically of the Beats, and the hippie movements that followed.
posted by UbuRoivas at 5:16 PM on June 7, 2007

I'd love to hear what Fromm would have said about Scientology given what he wrote about Dianetics.

Well, I'm sure the Scientologists love him. Can you not imagine the following sarcastic quote taken out of context & used as part of the blurb for Dianetics?

"Problems of values and conscience do not exist. If the engrams are erased you have no conflicts. All great philosophical and religious teachers wasted their efforts. There is no problem which does not result from engram command" - Erich Fromm, eminent philosopher & psychiatrist
posted by UbuRoivas at 5:25 PM on June 7, 2007

I think that Fromm & Marcuse, in particular, provided strong intellectual parallels & support for what a number of others in the post-WW2 period were doing...thinking specifically of the Beats, and the hippie movements that followed.

I think that's precisely why they aren't taken very seriously, in the US at least, any more. I tend to think Marcuse is a bit more interesting than Fromm, but even he is not really studied or thought about in circles where psychoanalytic thought and social justice come together, which is where you would expect him to have the most to say. There is a guy at the New School, actually, whose book and name I can't remember right now (to my shame, I cited him in my Master's thesis) who has done some interesting psychoanalytic work on Marcuse, but it's not without substantial criticisms.
posted by OmieWise at 5:35 PM on June 7, 2007

The Erich Fromm society has its offices in Rue d’Auseil, the third house from the top of the street, sixth floor, I assume?
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 9:23 PM on June 7, 2007