Erich Fromm—1900–1980

CHARLES DARWIN ONCE CLASSIFIED SCIENTISTS as either "splitters" or "lumpers." Erich Fromm, who died at the age of 79 in Lucerne, Switzerland, on March 18, 1980, was clearly a lumper. Trained as a psychoanalyst, Fromm emerged, on the basis of his own erudition, as a social critic and moral philosopher of considerable reknown. In a very real sense he applied his gifts as a clinician to diagnoses of the ills of society and of social institutions. His well-known books such as Escape From Freedom, The Sane Society, and The Art of Loving attest not only to his original social insights but also to his ability to communicate his ideas simply and directly to a wide audience.

Erich Fromm was born in Germany in 1900 to middle-class Jewish parents. After completing his work at the Gymnasium, he attended the University of Heidelberg, where he studied sociology, philosophy, and psychology, attaining his Ph.D. at the age of 22. Although Fromm's scholarly interests were deep and abiding, so too was his concern for people; this concern stimulated his interest in psychoanalysis. At that time (in accord with Freud's wishes) the training of lay analysts was common practice, and Fromm was accepted and trained at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute.

At the Berlin Institute Fromm met and married his first wife, Freida Fromm-Reichmann. After completing their training, Fromm and his wife helped to found and run the Psychoanalytic Institute in Frankfurt. In 1933, as the political situation in Germany worsened, Fromm accepted an invitation from the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute to come to the United States. Fromm liked America, but preferring to settle in New York City instead of Chicago, he became one of the founders and trustees, along with Harry Stack Sullivan, of the William Alanson White Institute.

Fromm had a private practice in New York City for many years and also held faculty positions at a number of colleges and universities, including the New School for Social Research, Y