Review of The legacy of Erich Fromm.

Abstract

Nearly 30 years ago I read Erich Fromm's The Art of Loving for a required undergraduate course in philosophical psychology. Quickly, I became enamoured of Fromm as writer and thinker. In subsequent years I read Fromm's Man for Himself (1947), Marx's Concept of Man (1961), and The Sane Society (1955), finding his unique blend of ethical, Freudian, and Marxian approaches illuminating. Yet I could not help but wonder how come mainstream North American psychology, and community psychology in particular, ignored Fromm's understanding of the dialectical relation between social historical forces and the individual, as in the concept of social character. Then along came Daniel Burston's inspired book. In his effort to breathe new life into Fromm's legacy, Burston employs a critical, developmental perspective, clearly showing both the continuities and the anomalies in Fromm's texts, research, and clinical practice. Writing in a highly readable, lucid style, accented with metaphorical expressions, Burston initially provides some biographical context, discusses Fromm's ambivalent involvement with the Freudian movement, and analyzes Fromm's many original contributions and relation to psychoanalysis, critical theory, existential and humanistic psychology, and social psychology. Both an intellectual historian and a clinician by training, the depth, breadth, and sensitivity of Burston's scholarship are impressive. He adroitly guides the reader along potentially confusing, intersecting paths of knowledge in Fromm's work derived from Judaic and Christian thought, variants of psychoanalytic theory and practice, and developments in Marxian critiques. Throughout Burston's treatment of Fromm, he maintains a balanced yet affectionate perspective, elucidating not only Fromm's strengths but also his contradictions and weaknesses.Readers who are fascinated by the evolution of psychoanalytic thought and by the melodramatic characteristics of the principal actors and supporting players in the psychoanalytic movement will be intrigued by Fromm's roles. Besides exploring Fromm's struggle with Freud piety and dealing with the obvious relationships between Fromm and Frieda Fromm - Reichmann, Karen Hornei, Sandor Ferenczi, and Wilhelm Reich, Burston shows the connections between Fromm's earlier theoretical formulations and subsequent developments in object relations theory, such as the parallels between Fromm and W.R.D. Fairbairn. Regrettably, Burston does not spend much time considering Fromm's actual clinical work in terms of its goals, format, and methods. More coverage of the implications for practice of Fromm's explicitly ethical stance with analysands and his preference for a more classically Freudian approach to analysis would be informative. In fact, Burston devotes far more attention later to the well - known Asch and Milgram experiments in order to demonstrate, in part, that Fromm also had something to say about conformity and obedience to irrational authority. I found this section overdrawn, but readers especially interested in the history of orthodox social psychology might have a different impression. For me, the most appealing aspects of Fromm's oeuvre pertain to his theoretical and empirical explorations of social character, which Michael Maccoby (1976) in The Gamesman updated and refined to account for the more recent stage of monopoly capitalism. Fromm identified the relation between personality development and socio - economic structures and dynamics in free market cultures. Moreover, in his studies of social character Fromm did not adopt an ecological position of person - environment fit, which originates in sociological relativism with respect to ethical values, and which posits adaptation to the environment. …