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THE INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY MENÉNDEZ PELAYO has honored its invited guests from Spain and other countries by encouraging expressions of homage to Erich Fromm. Via the presentation of papers, the initiation of seminars and discussion groups, it is the wish and hope of all of us that we can perpetuate our affection, respect for, and gratitude to Dr. Fromm.
Fromm's faith in man and in man's possibilities for growth persevered throughout his life. His concern with the human condition in its most immediate and also its broadest sense emerged while he was still a young man. This attitude toward himself and toward others would seem to have had its origins in a dedication to grasp the nature of love. To have known Fromm and his writings, I believe, lends support to this assertion. The love for man, and for his fate, have been of signal importance for Fromm. This is attested to in all his contributions. Clarifications in the search for the understanding of love have been central in his works: vide "The Art of Loving"; but more to the point, the theme of love has flowed into the crevices of all of his inquiries. To him, the concern with love was never the exclusive province of the arts, literature, or the church; loving must be an activity lived out by man as part of his responsibility to himself and to his fellows.
Love is terrifyingly difficult to study and to confront. Failing to struggle to know something about it removes the substantiveness of our work in psychoanalysis. Searching for a metaphor, I suspect that the physicists and cosmologists consider it axiomatic to understand the nature of space no matter how mind-boggling the enterprise