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Fromm, Erich (1900-1980
After receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Heidelberg in 1922, Fromm trained in psychoanalysis at the University of Munich and at the Psycho-Analytic Institute of Berlin. He began practicing psychoanalysis as a disciple of Sigmund Freud but soon took issue with Freud's preoccupation with unconscious drives and consequent neglect of the role of societal factors in human psychology. Fromm had already attained a distinguished reputation as a psychoanalyst when he left Nazi Germany in 1933 for the United States, where he came into conflict with orthodox Freudian psychoanalytic circles. From 1934 to 1941, Fromm was on the faculty of Columbia University, where his views became increasingly controversial. In 1941, he went to Bennington College, Vermont, and in 1951 was appointed Professor of Psychoanalysis at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico City. In 1962, he returned to the US to take up the position of Professor of Psychiatry at New York University.
In his early work in Germany, Fromm argued that an understanding of the psychological needs of human beings was essential in order to build a healthy society, and he put these ideas forward in sveeral books and articles on the development of Christianity. In Fromm's first major work, Escape from Freedom (1941), he charted the growth of human freedom and self-awareness from the Middle Ages to modern times and, using psychoanalytic techniques, analysed the tendency of modern emancipated man to take refuge from his new insecurities by turning to totalitarian movements such as Nazism. See Fear of Freedom, from the same period.
In The Sane Society (1955), Fromm presented his argument that modern man has become alienated and estranged from himself within consumer-oriented industrial society and called for a rebirth of enlightenment to allow each person to fulfil his individual needs while maintaining bonds of social fraternity.
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