You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
For me Erich Fromm, whom I have never met, is one of the giants of our century, as complete and educated person as one can find. As a psychoanalyst, I quickly turned to him after Freud, and feel sorry for my colleagues who didn't. For Freud, in all of his greatness, presented lacunae which made understanding of a client grossly inadequate. Freud did well enough but “knew not” either Marx or Mill. (Freud translated Mill.) Without them, or their equivalents, psychoanalysis could never rise above the level of parochial wisdom. Fromm was perhaps the only analyst who made it his business to study the demiurges of economy, politics, and social changes. And, what to me was the greatest thrust forward, Fromm was able to enter Freud's very own preserve, sex, and with the teachings of Mill, Bachofen, and Adler, derived in effect the very heuristic concept of the “problems of the sexes” as a correction of Freud's preoccupation with “sexual problems.”
This book, published to honor Fromm, presents cameos of luminaries brought together for, as we say, a “most auspicious occasion.” Each essay is brilliant in its own way—some making reference to Fromm, others seemingly unrelated, with the unifying factor being the hope for rational humanism. In pursuit of this ideal, each contribution personifies Erich Fromm.
The book is divided into three parts: (1) Psychoanalysis, with contributions by Will, Guntrip, Singer, Searles, Schecter, and Aramoni; (2) Philosophy and Science, with contributions by Wald, Schmitt, Dobzhansky, Eiseley, Xirau, Illich, and Adams; and (3) Social and Political Issues, with contributions by Riesman, Hall, Frank, Kahler, Asimov, Markovic, Petrovic, Schaff, and Bottomore. These writers were chosen from many countries and share “Erich Fromm's conviction of man's fundamental capacity for love and reason.” For a reviewer to comment briefly on each essay would be profane even if he were competent to do so. Instead, I will restrict myself to the area of psychoanalysis whe