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The Lives of Erich Fromm, Lawrence J. Friedman's new biography of Erich Fromm, has rightly been seen, in the nonanalytic circles in which it has been reviewed, as an evenhanded, rich treatment of Fromm in his professional, intellectual, political, and sociocultural contexts. Lives indeed. In his acknowledgments, Friedman outlines a great number of extensive debts he feels he owes to friends and colleagues for help in many specific areas in preparing what he calls the hardest book he has had to write. I learned an enormous amount about Fromm in this detailed and meticulous book, but I remain puzzled about the variable and shifting places of Fromm in the interlocking yet distinct worlds he inhabited. It is both to explore this puzzle and to revive interest in some important controversies in psychoanalysis that I have undertaken this essay.
Erich Fromm was born in 1900 in Frankfurt and died in Muralto, Switzerland, in 1980. He grew up into a scene of intellectual ferment and deep engagement, in respect to Jewish studies, Marxism, and psychoanalysis. He was in contact with the leadership in psychoanalysis, undertook analysis with Hanns Sachs after a disastrous experience with Frieda Reichmann that ended in a boundary violation. He had links to Georg Groddeck and therefore to the work of Ferenczi in Europe and later, in a growing tilt toward an interpersonal, sociocultural psychoanalytic tradition, he established strong connections to Sullivan, Horney, and Thompson upon immigrating to the United States in 1934.
He was a central figure and actually the savior of the Frankfurt Institute, which, under threat in Europe, relocated to America under Fromm's care and management. He undertook this important and principled service while still in the throes of settling into American life after