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All of Fromm's writings are of one piece. He is very clear in phrasing and rephrasing his messages, yet I doubt that his central themes find many understanding ears. We are not open to a language which appeals to fundamental spiritual values in all spheres of life — the sphere of society's political and economic organization, and the sphere of individual values and life philosophy. When, at some point in The Sane Society, he states that Western man is dead, I assume that he refers to our having become deaf to basic spiritual considerations. If Fromm's writing is urgent, it is urgent not only because he sees our society and thus Western man in danger, but because he wishes to reach our reduced capacity to hear and understand these basic humanistic spiritual values. Fromm's moralism is not one which says, “You will go to hell if you do not reform,” but rather, “You have your life in your own hands, and you can make it better or allow it to become worse.” In that sense he is not a reformer.
I will try to present my understanding of Fromm's central themes and then discuss the relevance of these themes to our psychoanalytic concerns.
Fromm, the son of a rabbi, came from sociology to psychoanalysis. Well versed in philosophy, his roots remained in theology. Fromm's themes are biblical; that is, he interprets biblical themes. He uses biblical stories or messages to explain his basic concepts and writes in the spirit of the prophetic mode. The loss of paradise