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IN STRESSING FROMMIAN THEMES in this case, no claim is made to founding a Frommian school of psychoanalysis—something to which Fromm himself was much opposed. In an unpublished chapter of To Have or to Be?, Fromm (1975) wrote:
In the past I sometimes used the term "humanistic" psychoanalysis, and then dropped it, partly because it was taken over by a group of psychologists whose views I did not share, partly because I wanted to avoid the impression that I was establishing a new "school" of psychoanalysis. As far as schools of psychoanalysis are concerned, experience has shown that they are detrimental to the theoretical development of psychoanalysis and to the competence of their practitioners (pp. 95–96 of the original typescript).
It is suggested, instead, that there already exists an alternative approach to psychoanalysis, which was started by Ferenczi and then proceeded in two directions: the British "Middle Group" and the American interpersonal-cultural school. With regard to Freud's rejection of the seduction theory in 1897, this approach may be characterized as involving the reappraisal of real-life situations in parent-child relationships. It practically coincides with that group of psychoanalytic theories which Greenberg and Mitchell (1983) term "relations-oriented."
This alternative approach has already been partly shaped by Fromm. Further important contributions can come from Fromm by calling attention to neglected aspects of his published works and by drawing on his unpublished writings. Since his published works are mainly framed in theoretical terms, clinical consequences