After having spent the first years of his life under the fear and insecurities of the First World War, Erich Fromm decides to turn his life around again. Without a doubt one of the most representative exponents of the last century, managed to position himself among the most widely read writers of the time, in turn, he was a passionate Marxist who was in charge of giving a different meaning to Neo-Freudism with the founding of the first Neo-Freudian school.
He is also one of the most relevant thinkers of the time whose life took unexpected turns in the most significant historical moments of humanity. For this and more, you should know about of his biography and the theories that he contributed to the world of psychoanalysis and to culture in general.
Early biography
He grew up in a home whose parents had an unstable relationship, his father was a violent man with an abysmally changing temperament and his mother was a submissive and depressed woman, few were the times that he could do something to defend his life.
He was also born in 1900 in Germany, a country that would give him an even more dysfunctional life in conjunction with the one he already led at home with his parents. Within an air of war Erich Fromm spent the first years of his life with fears and phobias to the outside and to himself, where insecurities grew even stronger to prevail in him until he was almost of age.
Submerged in an environment not favorable for his growth, he decided to lean towards the religiosity of his uncles, becoming a rabbi together with his uncles. It is in that moment that he sees, that he can discern much more than any ordinary person in his environment; As a result, he would later decide to be an atheist.
Without a doubt, the church outings helped him have a perspective of reality different from the concept he already had prior to his childhoodIt helped a lot to leave his house to the church as a way of liberation from the cage where he lived.
A new sensation of humanism would take him to different directions and to become a relatively free man. Humanism and World War I were the basis for a new and liberating duda on the faculties of human discernment, the thinking of the masses and the power to discredit any ideology or collective behavior in order to find peace within the universal truth.
Significant changes and twists in the life of Erich Fromm
At the beginning of the 20s, being a young university man, his passion for teaching began. With a degree in Law at the University of Frankfurt and Sociology at the University of Heidelberg.
Another key piece that helped him develop his research In depth was the Psychoanalyst Frieda Reichmann with whom he would not last long married, however a beautiful story of friendship is born.
It is at this point in his life that he puts aside his time as a believer and becomes an atheist, equally influenced by the political air of Berlin in those years.
It would be the year 1929 when he began to practice as a psychoanalyst to train students who were not considered "doctors" at the time. A year later, he was Director of the Department of Psychology of the Institute for Social Research, simultaneously beginning the first studies on Marxist theories.
Moving to another continent
After three years from this promotion and important position within the Institute, he decides to go to live in the United States due to a strong persecution from Adolf Hitler, when he began to gain more and more popularity, Erich had to emigrate to America. In turn, it is said that he had certain differences with Theodor Adorno, another teacher at the same institute where Erich was Director.
So together with several colleagues from the same institute, he embarks on a new course towards America, the place where his first and most significant works as a psychologist would be born, always based on the Theories and foundations of Sigmund Freud.
He married again in 1943 with a German immigrant named Henny Gurland. Fromm's marriage to Gurland lasted three years, which were spent in Cuernavaca, Mexico. After three years of marriage, his second wife died.
Established in Mexico, he teaches at the Autonomous University of Mexico as a psychoanalyst and psychologist, the same place would become his first home of the Psychoanalysis section created by himself.
With several years of experience and a successful bond with literature, Fromm remarries Annis Glove Freeman, this union caused Fromm to make another crucial decision for his life: to leave Marxism behind and completely disconnect from socialist thought.
Living in Washington, he becomes a supporter of the pacifist movements against the Vietnam War and with a strong inspiration after having published one of his most successful books "The art of loving"; Fromm has a much more humanistic and loving perspective on life. Where man is capable of loving because of his living condition but not because of his desire to possess, which in the end is ego.
He had a life full of successes full of emotional meanings, he ventured into the world of spirituality and the study of the human psyche. In his 70s, he moves to Switzerland to die five days before his eightieth birthday.
Erich Fromm Ideals
Strongly humanist, Erich had the conception of the consequences and attitudes of being as a result of a social miscellany that conditioned his behavior. Since the origin of man, according to Fromm and humanism, he has been conditioned according to the progress and behavior of the societies to which he belongs.
According to Erich, society is Machiavellian and has a great impact on the moral decisions that man makes regarding his day to day life. One of the main premises to establish social ties with third parties, it was spontaneous love and respect; the need not to force anyone else to "be."
To remember
“If man wants to be able to love, he must place himself in his supreme place. The economic machine must serve him, instead of him being the one at his service. You must train yourself to share the experience, the work, instead of sharing, in the best of cases, its benefits. Society must be organized in such a way that man's social and loving nature is not separated from his social existence, but rather unites with it. " Excerpt from "The Art of Loving", page 128.
Erich Fromm, went through many emotional and psychological transitions throughout his life, is, one of the most significant contributions to psychoanalysis and to the study of the pure soul that inhabits being. Going through a stage of intrinsic Marxism until reaching the total detachment of all social dogma.