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In this book Erich Fromm repeats a number of criticisms of Freud that he has made in the past, as well as adding some new interpretations.
The first six chapters are devoted to an evaluation of Freud's personality and are entitled: Freud's Passion for Truth and His Courage; His Relationship to His Mother; Self-Confidence and Insecurity; Freud's Relationship to Women; Love; His Dependence on Men; His Relationship to his Father; Freud's Authoritarianism. The last four chapters are more general, and explain the title of the book. The chapter headings are: Freud, the World Reformer; The Quasi-Political Character of the Psychoanalytic Movement; Freud's Religious and Political Convictions; Summary and Conclusions.
Freud's mission, according to Fromm, was to bring a new message to mankind, not a happy but a realistic one. To achieve this goal he created the psychoanalytic movement whose “central dogma” (p. 93) is the conquest of passion by reason. Freud's real aim, indeed, was to found a movement for the ethical liberation of man, a new secular and scientific religion for an elite which was to guide mankind. But the new religion has shared the fate of most religious movements; what we are confronted with today is dogma, ritual and idolatry of the leader.
Although the work purports to be a thorough attempt at historical scholarship, its inaccuracy in the use of sources will prevent anyone from taking it too seriously, unless they are merely looking for ammunition with which to condemn Freud.
While references to Ernest Jones' three-volume biography of Freud, Freud's works and other sources are numerous, a careful study of these suggests Fromm's haste and carelessness as a scholar. For the most part the dates of Freud's works from which quotations are taken are not given; for example, although Civilization and Its Discontents is referred to on pp. 29, 33, 97, 98 and 99, the date given on page 29 is that of the edition published in 1953, and nowhere is the reader told that the boo