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ERICH FROMM'S MOST IMPORTANT CONTRIBUTION to my personal and professional life was involving me in being a citizen of the world, a member of the wider and more universal human community, as he was. This he did for me through his writing, through the many courses I took with him as a graduate psychoanalyst, through my association with him on the faculty of the William Alanson White Institute when he was chairman, and through a year of personal supervision with him in 1946–1947. Just as he was student of the human condition all of his life, so I have found my satisfaction in so being.
My acquaintance with Erich was through his first work translated into English, Escape from Freedom, a poor translation for the German title, Furcht vor Freiheit, which means fear of freedom, which the book is really about. Clara Thompson had recommended this book to me. Much of what I had learned about people was in general and theoretical terms; this volume and Fromm's Man for Himself were most useful in helping me to put his ideas in formulations for patients which surprised them and helped them grow. His discussion of character types and their origin and function made much more sense to me than the Freudian accounts of character.
When Fromm and Horney were teaching together in the newly formed Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis, of