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The Lives of Erich Fromm: Love’s Prophet (2013)

By Lawrence J. Friedman

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[Lawrence J. Friedman is a professor in Harvard University’s Mind/Brain/Behavior Initiative, visiting scholar at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, and a professor emeritus at Indiana University. The author of eight scholarly books and more than fifty articles, he has lectured in eleven countries and was named International Writer of the Year for 2003 by the International Biographical Center. His works include Identity’s Architect: A Biography of Erik Erikson; Menninger: The Family and the Clinic; Gregarious Saints: Self and Community in American Abolitionism; and The White Savage: Racial Fantasies in the Postbellum South.]

The Lives of Erich Fromm: Love’s Prophet (2013)

By Lawrence J. Friedman
Harvard University

“The brilliantly comprehensive study of . . . Erich Fromm’s many “lives” as a clinician, philosopher, social critic and political activist . . . Academic biography at its best.”

—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Interview with the author on Book TV (hosted on C-SPAN). 54 min.

Erich Fromm was a political activist, psychologist, psychoanalyst, philosopher, a Talmudic scholar, and one of the most important intellectuals of the twentieth century. Known for his theories of personality and political insight, Fromm dissected the sadomasochistic appeal of brutal dictators while also eloquently championing love—which, he insisted, was nothing if it did not involve joyful contact with others and humanity at large. Admired all over the world, Fromm continues to inspire with his message of universal brotherhood and quest for lasting peace.

The first systematic study of Fromm’s influences and achievements, this biography revisits the thinker’s most important works, especially Escape from Freedom and The Art of Loving, which conveyed important and complex ideas to millions of readers. The volume recounts Fromm’s political activism as a founder and major funder of Amnesty International, the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, and other peace groups. Consulting rare archival materials across the globe, Lawrence J. Friedman reveals Fromm’s support for anti-Stalinist democratic movements in Central and Eastern Europe and his efforts to revitalize American democracy. For the first time, readers learn about Fromm’s direct contact with high officials in the American government, like President John F. Kennedy, on matters of war and peace while accessing a deeper understanding of his conceptual differences with Freud, his rapport with Neo-Freudians like Karen Horney and Harry Stack Sullivan, and his association with innovative artists, public intellectuals, and world leaders. Friedman elucidates Fromm’s key intellectual contributions, especially his innovative concept of “social character,” in which social institutions and practices shape the inner psyche, and he clarifies Fromm’s conception of love as an acquired skill. Taking full stock of the thinker’s historical and global accomplishments, Friedman portrays a man of immense authenticity and spirituality who made life in the twentieth century more humane than it might have been.

“More than a highly enlightening study of the life and work of a remarkable 20th century figure. The penetrating review and analysis of the many facets of Fromm’s writing and activities also illuminates the intellectual ferment and political history of the turbulent and often terrifying times during which Fromm played such a constructive and influential role, with lasting significance.”

—Noam Chomsky


“In this riveting biography of Erich Fromm, Lawrence Friedman reveals how Fromm’s writings continue to speak to many of the most crucial issues of our time. His ideas about social character have been validated by recent discoveries in the human sciences and his insights about politics and political organizing anticipate the successful 2008 and 2012 Obama campaigns. Fromm’s work can help us to recover the grand vision of the social sciences as a means to understanding and ameliorating the human condition, or, as Fromm would put it, to choosing life over destructiveness.”

—Carol Gilligan

$29.95 / £19.95 · cloth · 978-0-231-16258-6 February 2013 456 pages


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