PI = Personal interview; TI = Telephone interview; TRI = Tape-recorded interview; LJF = Lawrence J. Friedman
1. The Unsteady Apprentice
1. “I felt quite at home”: “Autobiographical Sidelights by Erich Fromm,” International Forum on Psychoanalysis 9 (2000): 251. Fromm on “a medieval atmosphere”: Gérard Khoury, interviews with Erich Fromm, Locarno, 1978–1979, transcript in Fromm Archive. On Seligmann Bamberger, see Leo Jung, ed., Jewish Leaders, 1750-1940 (New York: Bloch 1953,1964), 179–195; and Leo Jung, The Bamberger Family: The Descendants of Rabbi Seligman Bär Bamberger, 2nd ed. (Jerusalem, 1979), ix, x, xi. Admitting to his “idealized” portrayal of Bamberger: Erich Fromm to Ernst Simon, Oct. 9, 1973. On Bamberger’s centrality to Fromm: Gertrud Hunziker-Fromm, TRI by LJF, Zurich, May 9, 2004.
2. Jung, ed., Jewish Leaders, 183–195; Hunziker-Fromm, TRI by LJF, May 10, 2004.
3. Gertrud Hunziker-Fromm, TRI by LJF, Zurich, May 9, 2004, detailing the early generations of the Bamberger and Fromm family.
4. See Miriam Rothbacher, TRI by LJF, Vienna, May 18, 2004; and Gertrud Hunziker-Fromm, TRI by LJF, Zurich, May 10, 2004, for details of the family history.
5. Erich Fromm, TRI by Gérard Khoury, 1978–1979, especially on defending Rosa against Naphtali. Family photographs in the Fromm Archive in Tubingen assisted me greatly in understanding Erich’s relationship with both parents, as did the Rothbacher and Hunziker-Fromm interviews. The Fromm archivist did not allow the author to publish the childhood photographs. Finally, it is extremely important to study Erich’s autobiographical essay, “Some Personal Antecedents,” in Beyond the Chains of Illusion (New York: Continuum, 1962, 1990); and Rainer Funk, Erich Fromm: His Life and Ideas (New York: Continuum, 2000), chap. 1.
6. Erich Fromm, TRI by Gérard Khoury, 1978–1979. The 1978–1979 interview Fromm gave to Gérard Khoury houses his retrospective remarks on his father and rich detail on the evolving father-son relationship. Dorothy Gurland, PI by LJF, Providence, RI, August 23, 2009 on Fromm’s memory of his father as “a sick man” and “a very odd man” and likely mentally ill.
7. On his “suffering” childhood: Erich Fromm to Annelie Brandt, Sept. 10, 1963. On being an “unbearable, neurotic child”: Fromm, Beyond the Chains of Illusion, 5. On Erich in relation to Gertrud’s father, Emmanuel: Gertrud Hunziker-Fromm, TRI by LJF, Zurich, May 9–10, 2004.
8. The most detail I have received on Ludwig Krause was from Miriam Rothbacher, TRI by LJF, Vienna, May 18, 19, 2004. The interview is supplemented nicely by portions of Fromm, “Some Personal Antecedents”; and Funk, Erich Fromm, esp.14.
9. The abundant photograph collection in the Fromm Archive is telling on family dynamics. Erich Fromm to Annelie Brandt, Sept. 10, 1963, Fromm Archive.
10. On Sussman: Funk, Erich Fromm, 20, 32. On the suicide of the young woman: Fromm, Beyond the Chains of Illusion, 4.
11. On the suspension of humanistic values in the German gymnasium, such as the Woehlerschule he attended: Fromm, Beyond the Chains of Illusion, 7–9; Fromm to Lewis Mumford, April 29, 1975, Fromm Archive; Fromm to Albert Speer, Feb. 13, 1974, Fromm Archive.
12. On “partisanship and objectivity”: Fromm, Beyond the Chains of Illusion, 6–7; and Fromm to Clara Urquhart, July 10, 1967, Fromm Archive. On “a deeply troubled”: Fromm, Beyond the Chains of Illusion, 9.
13. Rainer Funk, “The Jewish Roots of Erich Fromm’s Humanistic Thinking,” 1988, unpublished mss., Fromm Archive, 2–4; Funk, Erich Fromm, 37–43; Daniel Burston, The Legacy of Erich Fromm (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991), 12–13.
14. Funk, “Jewish Roots,” 3–5; Funk, Erich Fromm, 37–39.
15. Funk, Erich Fromm, 40–43; Burston, The Legacy of Erich Fromm, 12.
16. Funk, Erich Fromm, 40–41.
17. Ibid. Funk, Erich Fromm, 38–42, is particularly helpful on the Nobel circle. Fromm’s obituary for Nobel is found in the Frankfurt Neue Jüdische Presse (February 2, 1922).
18. Copies of Fromm’s transcripts at the University of Heidelberg are available in the Fromm Archive. Funk, Erich Fromm, 44, 50–52, is very helpful on the decision to study in Heidelberg.
19. Erich Fromm to Alfred Weber, Dec. 23, 1975, Fromm Archive, with his retrospective feelings on Weber. Burston, The Legacy of Erich Fromm, 100–101, places Alfred Weber’s social thought in perspective.
20. Erich Fromm, Das Jüdische Gesetz: Ein Beitrag Zur Soziologie des Diaspora-Judentums (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Heidelberg, 1922). First published under this title posthumously in 1989 by the Munich publishing house of Wilhelm Heyne and edited by Rainer Funk. It is noteworthy that Jorge Silva, Fromm’s student at the Mexican Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, will soon be bringing out a Spanish edition of Fromm’s dissertation.
21. Ibid. (1989 ed.), 70–92, 134–156. See also Rainer Funk, Erich Fromm’s Kleine Lebensschule (Freiburg: Herder, 2007), 60–62.
22. Ibid. (1989 ed.), 157–187. Funk, Erich Fromm’s Kleine Lebensschule, 62–64.
23. Recalling Naphtali’s fear he would commit suicide at his dissertation defense: Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, “Reminiscences of Europe,” in Psychoanalysis and Psychosis, ed. Ann-Louise Silver (Madison, Conn.: International Universities Press, 1989), 480–481; and Erich Fromm, TRI by Gérard Khoury, 1978–1979, in Fromm Archive. On Weber suggesting an academic career: Erich Fromm to Alfred Weber, Dec. 23, 1975, Fromm Archive. See also Funk, Erich Fromm, 52–53.
24. One of the best sources on Rabinkow is J. J. Schacter, ed., “Reminiscences of Shlomo Barukh Rabinkow,” in Sages and Saints, ed. Leo Jung (Hoboken, N.J.: Ktav Publishing House, 1987). In it, Fromm has a short essay (99–105) underscoring Rabinkow’s centrality to his life and reviewing those qualities that impressed him most. Fromm, “Memories of Rav Zalman Baruch Rabinkow” (ca. 1964); and Fromm, “Memories of Rabbi Salman Baruch Rabinkow” (1971), both in the Fromm Archive, have even more detailed comments. “Rabinkow influenced my life”: Fromm to Frau T. E. Rabinkow-Rothbard, July 9, 1964, Fromm Archive. An almost identical remark on Rabinkow as his principal influence appears in Fromm’s reminiscence in Schacter, “Reminiscences,” 103. See also Fromm to Ernst Simon, Oct. 9, 1973, Fromm Archive, recalling their time together with Rabinkow. Finally, see Fromm to Leo Jung, June 10, 1970, Fromm Archive, citing discussion of Rabinkow in The Autobiography of Nahum Goldmann (New York: Holt, Rinehard, and Winston, 1969), 45–47, as very much the mentor Fromm remembered.
25. Fromm, “Memories of Rav Zalman Baruch Rabinkow”; and Fromm, “Reminiscences of Rabinkow,” in Jung, Sages and Saints, 99–105, detailing his study with Rabinkow. In Sages and Saints, 98–99, Abraham Frankel described how Rabinkow used the Lithuanian rather than the Hungarian method of Talmudic study.
26. Ibid., plus Funk, Erich Fromm’s Kleine Lebensschule, 61–63.
27. Ibid. In all three of his reminiscences on Rabinkow, Fromm often implicitly and explicitly compares his qualities with Rabinkow’s. On Rabinkow’s hands, cleanliness, and other personal qualities: Fromm to Rose Cohn-Wiener, May 10, 1973, Fromm Archive. Fromm to Lewis Mumford, Apr. 29, 1975, Fromm Archive, compares himself to Rabinkow as both became disenchanted with Zionism.
28. The best attempt to connect Fromm’s 1922 dissertation with Rabinkow’s 1929 article is Rainer Funk, “Humanism in the Life and Work of Erich Fromm: A Commemorative Address on the Occasion of His Ninetieth Birthday,” 1990, Fromm Archive. Funk astutely underscores how Fromm corrected a draft of an essay on Rabinkow so that it spoke more to the mentor-student relationship than how they were always “studying together” (6).
29. S. B. Rabinkow, “Individuum und Gemeinschaft im Judentum,” in Die Biologie der Person, ed. T. Brugsch and F. H. Levy (Berlin: Urgan & Schwarzenberg, 1929), 799–824.
30. Rainer Funk has written two very thoughtful and richly documented papers that, in part, underscore how central Rabinkow’s humanistic Judaism was to Fromm even as Fromm turned from Judaism and became a secular humanist. See his “The Jewish Roots of Erich Fromm’s Humanistic Thinking” (1988) and “Humanism in the Life and Work of Erich Fromm” (1990), both in Fromm Archive. Although I see Fromm’s 1922 dissertation reflecting differences as well as similarities with Rabinkow and his 1929 article—suggestive of a fruitful early 1920s tension between them—Funk sees this difference emerging later, when Fromm distanced himself from Judaism (without Rabinkow’s disapproval). However, Funk is also attentive to a collegial quality in their relationship.
31. “Frieda Fromm-Reichmann Autobiographical Tapes” (1956). Transcript in Fromm Archive.
32. Fromm-Reichmann, “Reminiscences in Europe,” 469–481; “Frieda Fromm-Reichmann Autobiographical Tapes” (1956); Klaus Hoffmann, “Notes on Frieda Fromm-Reichmann’s Biography,” Fromm Forum 2 (1998): 24–25, is especially good on Reichmann’s early professional background.
33. Ibid. The rape and the romance with Fromm is treated in Gail Hornstein, To Redeem One Person Is to Redeem the World: The Life of Frieda Fromm-Reichmann (New York: The Free Press, 2000). Hornstein claims (61–62) that Fromm seduced Reichmann during the analysis and that he was then a “ladies’ man.” Hornstein’s shortage of primary evidence on Fromm on these matters makes somewhat problematic her characterization of his sexual life as a young man.
34. “Frieda Fromm-Reichmann Autobiographical Tapes” (1956) provides much detail on the origins and activities of the therapeuticum and her secret affair with Erich. See also Fromm-Reichmann, “Reminiscences of Europe,” 479–480.
35. All of the Reichmann quotations: “Frieda Fromm-Reichmann Autobiographical Tapes” (1956). See also Hornstein, To Redeem One Person, 61–62; and Ann-Louise Silver, “Introduction to Fromm-Reichmann’s ‘Female Psychosexuality’ and ‘Jewish Food Rituals,’” Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis 23, no. 1 (1995): 4.
36. Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, “Das Jüdische Speiseritual,” Imago 13 (1927): 235–246; Erich Fromm, “Der Sabbath,” Imago 13 (1927): 234. “We announced”: Fromm-Reichmann, “Reminiscences of Europe,” 481. See also Silver, “Introduction,” 5.
37. On Frieda’s memory of Erich having told her “Having a child is nothing”: Hornstein, To Redeem One Person, 69. On Fromm confiding to Silva that Frieda could not have children: Jorge Silva García, TRI by LJF, Mexico City, March 21, 2004. Ann-Louise Silver, “Frieda Fromm-Reichmann and Erich Fromm,” International Forum on Psychoanalysis 8, no. 1 (April 1999): 22, cogently argues that Frieda deeply wanted a child, while Erich wanted enhanced professional productivity instead. On the stillbirth or myoma and her reaction to its physical dimensions: Frieda Fromm-Reichmann to Georg Groddeck, July 31, August 16, 1932 (Fromm Archive). Hornstein, To Redeem One Person, 69, citing only the Fromm-Reichmann letter of July 31, 1932, to Groddeck, discounts the possibility of a stillbirth and claims it was entirely a myoma. On her closeness to Groddeck amid the troubled marriage: see also Fromm-Reichmann to Groddeck, August 23, 1933, Fromm Archive. On the import of Fromm being an only child in his decision to avoid having a child: Gertrud Hunziker-Fromm, TRI by LJF, Zurich, July 30, 2003, and May 10, 2004. Mauricio Cortina, PI by LJF, Washington, D.C., Feb. 1, 2003, recalls Fromm telling him that having children attached one to the current culture and values. On Fromm breaking up emotionally when asked if he regretted having no children: Rainer Funk, PI by LJF, Tubingen, July 25, 2003.
38. An excellent account of Groddeck’s life and thought, particularly his relation to Freud, is provided by Martin Grotjahn, “George Groddeck: The Untamed Analyst,” in Psychoanalytic Pioneers, ed. Franz Alexander (New York: Basic Books, 1966), 308–320. See also Romano Biancoli, “Georg Groddeck, the Psychoanalyst of Symbols,” International Forum of Psychoanalysis 6 (1997): 117–125. An insightful discussion of the relationship between Groddeck on the “it” and Freud on the “id” is provided in Jaap Bos, David Park, and Petteri Pietikainen, “Strategic Self-Marginalization: The Case of Psychoanalysis,” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 41, no. 3 (Summer 2005): 212–213.
39. Funk, Erich Fromm, 62–63; Fromm to Sylvia Grossman, Nov. 12, 1957, Fromm Archive; Fromm to Jack L. Rubins, Sept. 26, 1972, Fromm Archive.
40. Fromm to Groddeck, Aug. 15, 1934, Fromm Archive; Fromm to Grossman, Nov. 12, 1957, Fromm Archive.
41. On the formation of the Southwest German Psychoanalytic Study Group and its key participants: Erich Fromm to Jack L. Rubins, Sept. 26, 1922, Fromm Archive. See also Thomas Plankers and Hans-Joachim Rothe, “‘You Know That Our Old Institute Was Entirely Destroyed … ’: On the History of the Frankfurt Psychoanalytical Institute 1929–1933,” Psychoanalysis and History 1, no. 1 (1998), esp. 103–109.
42. Romano Biancoli, “Mother Fixation and the Myth of Demeter,” International Forum of Psychoanalysis 6, no. 1 (April 1998): 28–29; Burston, The Legacy of Erich Fromm, 15–16; Hendrik M. Ruitenbeek, ed., Heirs to Freud (New York: Grove Press, 1966), 7, 87–94.
43. Erich Fromm, “Psychoanalyse und Soziologie,” in Zeitschift für Psychoanalytische Pädagogik 3 (1929): 268–270.
44. Hornstein, To Redeem One Person, 67; Gertrud Hunziker-Fromm, TRI by LJF, Zurich, May 10, 2004; Silver, “Fromm-Reichmann and Fromm,” 21–22. Rainer Funk to Bernard Paris, July 19, 1990, Fromm Archive, is particularly instructive, noting what Fromm told him about Groddeck’s interpretation of his tuberculosis in 1931.
2. Frankfurt Scholar
1. Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History, Theories, and Political Significance (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1995), chaps. 1 and 2, represent a very thorough coverage of the origins of the Institute for Social Research. For further analysis, see Martin Jay’s The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt Institute of Social Research (Boston: Little & Brown, 1973).
2. Ibid., plus Thomas Plankers and Hans-Joachim Rothe, “‘You Know That Our Old Institute Was Entirely Destroyed … ’: On the History of the Frankfurt Psychoanalytic Institute 1929–1933,” Psychoanalysis and History 1, no.1 (1998): 101–114, on the overlap between the Institute for Social Research and the Frankfurt Psychoanalytic Institute during Fromm’s early years in both.
3. Erich Fromm, “Psychoanalyse und Soziologie,” Zeitschrift für Psychoanalytische Pädagogik 3 (1928–1929): 268–270.
4. Erich Fromm, “Memorandum for Dr. Kurt Rosenfeld” [1939], Fromm Archive, Tubingen. Rainer Funk, Erich Fromm: His Life and Ideas (New York: Continuum, 2000), 72–73.
5. Erich Fromm, The Dogma of Christ, and Other Essays on Religion, Psychology, and Culture (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963), includes the English translation of the 1930 essay.
6. Horkheimer to Sigmund Freud, Mar. 18, 1932, Fromm Archive and also Fromm Collection, New York Public Library.
7. These two Fromm essays on criminology are presented in English translation in Kevin Anderson and Richard Quinney, eds., Erich Fromm and Critical Criminology: Beyond the Punitive Society (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000). 123–156.
8. Ibid., plus Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 118–120.
9. Ibid. For a helpful critique of Frromm’s posture here, see Richard Quinney, “Socialist Humanism and the Problem of Crime: Thinking About Erich Fromm in the Development of Critical Criminology,” Crime, Law, and Social Change 23, no. 2 (1995): 147–156.
10. Ibid. There is also profit in noting Martin Jay, Permanent Exiles: Essays on the Intellectual Migration from Germany to America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 23–24, 109.
11. Erich Fromm, “Politik und Psychoanalyse,” Psychoanalytische Bewegung 3, no. 5 (September–October 1931): 440–447.
12. Erich Fromm, “The Method and Function of an Analytic Social Psychology: Notes on Psychoanalysis and Historical Materialism,” Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung 1 (1932): esp. 39–40, 53.
13. Erich Fromm, “Psychoanalytic Characterology and Its Relevance for Social Psychology,” is found in English translation in Fromm’s The Crisis of Psychoanalysis (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970), 163–187; and in German in Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung (Hirschfeld-Leipzig, 1932). I used the article as it appeared in the Fromm Papers of the New York Public Library.
15. Ibid., esp. 183–184 and n. 21.
16. Ibid., and focused on 185–187.
17. Ibid., esp. n. 30 and n. 37.
18. For a most cogent summary of the essence of early Critical Theory, see Wilfred M. McClay, The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 205–206.
19. Wolfgang Bonss, ed., The Working Class in Weimar Germany: A Psychological and Sociological Study (Warwickshire: Berg, 1984), does an excellent job of introducing the principal actors in the study, contextualizing it, and, most importantly, publishing the study for the first time. Bonss’s introduction (1–33) is especially helpful.
21. Ibid., 24–26; Wiggershaus, Frankfurt School, 170–172. See also recollections of the German worker study in Erich Fromm to Martin Jay, May 14, 1971, Fromm Archives; and Erich Fromm and Michael Maccoby, Social Character in a Mexican Village: A Sociopsychoanalytic Study (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970), 23–26.
22. Ibid., plus Wiggershaus, Frankfurt School, 171.
23. Ibid. See also David Smith, “The Ambivalent Worker: Max Weber, Critical Theory, and the Antinomies of Authority,” Social Thought and Research 21, no. 1–2 (1998): 64–67, for especially cogent commentary on Fromm’s unrepresentative sampling.
24. Wolfgang Bonss, editor of the 1980 published version of the German worker project, was able to construct his text from Fromm’s surviving materials. Bonss maintains (The Working Class, 8) that 584 of the 1,100 completed questionnaires survived the institute’s move to New York in 1934. Since Bonss was able to inspect the materials physically, this seems to be a credible finding. However, in Erich Fromm to Martin Jay, May 14, 1971, Fromm Archive, Fromm denied that any of the questionnaires were lost and that his staff analyzed seven hundred (not 584) of them. In all likelihood, either Fromm’s memory was playing tricks on him concerning the loss of materials or he meant to refer to the 1,100 questionnaires that were initially returned in Germany.
25. Bonss, The Working Class, esp. 28, 228–230; Wiggershaus, Frankfurt School, 173; Fromm to Charles A. Pearce, June 22, 1938, Fromm Archive.
26. Bonss, 228–230; Fromm to Michael Maccoby, April 11, 1974, Maccoby private papers, reflects in detail on the German workers project and the different estimates of surviving questionnaires.
27. Wilhelm Reich to Erich Fromm, June 5, 1932, Fromm Archive; Funk, Erich Fromm, 74. In the third edition of The Mass Psychology of Fascism (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1970), 219, it is noteworthy that Reich discussed Fromm and chastised him for disregarding how sexual repression of the masses augmented their craving for authority. Perhaps rooted in a clash between two large egos, neither Fromm nor Reich acknowledged intellectual kinship with the other. Only a few of Fromm’s articles cited Reich on fascism and authoritarianism, even after he published Mass Psychology. Conversely, although Reich knew of Fromm’s German worker investigation in its preliminary stages, he did not refer to it in his book. To be sure, Mass Psychology rooted working-class authoritarianism in a patriarchal family structure that promoted sexual repression, economic exploitation, and a fear of freedom. Fromm critiqued Mass Psychology in a 1936 report on his German workers study and praised it as a pioneering work. He noted (as few other critics had) that the Reich volume had overemphasized the importance of genital sexuality.
28. Max Horkheimer to Charles P. Muller, Nov. 12, 1938; Friederich Pollock to Fromm, Oct. 10, 1932, both in Fromm Archive. The most comprehensive study of the move to Columbia, which established Fromm’s central role in the relocation, is Thomas Wheatland, “Critical Theory on Morningside Heights: From Frankfurt Mandarins to Columbia Sociologists,” German Politics and Society 22, no. 4 (Winter 2004): 1–85. See also Wiggershaus, Frankfurt School, 143–148; Funk, Erich Fromm, 74–77; and Fromm to Horkheimer, Nov. 4, 1938, Horkheimer Archive, Frankfurt.
29. Fromm, “The Theory of Mother Right and Its Relevance for Social Psychology” (1934), in Love, Sexuality, and Matriarchy (New York: International Publishing Corporation, 1997), 21–37.
31. Fromm, “On the Theory of Mother Right and Its Relevance for Social Psychology” (1934), “The Male Creation” (1934), and “Robert Briffault’s Book on Mother Right” (1933), plus some subsequent Fromm papers on Bachofen in Love, Sexuality, and Matriarchy, 19–84 but esp. 30–45.
32. Fromm, Love, Sexuality, and Matriarchy, 38–45; Funk, Erich Fromm, 75. Fromm, “The Social Psychological Significance of the Theory of Matriarchy,” Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung 3 (1934): 215.
33. Fromm, “Robert Briffault’s Book on Mother Right” (1933), in Love, Sexuality, and Matriarchy, 76–84.
34. Erich Fromm to Tom Bottomore, Mar. 26, 1974, Fromm Archive; Wiggershaus, Frankfurt School, chap. 3; Wheatland, “Critical Theory on Morningside Heights,” 1–3.
35. Fromm, “Sozialpsychologischer Teil,” in Studien über Autorität und Familie, Forschungsberichte aus dem Institut für Sozialforschung (Paris: Felix Alcán, 1936), 78–134. Wiggershaus, Frankfurt School, 151.
36. Fromm, “Sozialpsychologischer Teil,” 95, 123.
43. Ibid., 131–135. See also Wiggershaus, Frankfurt School, 270.
44. The most detailed account of Fromm’s travel to seek recovery from illness during the 1930s is in Funk, Erich Fromm, 74–88.
45. On his four-hundred-dollar monthly salary: Erich Fromm to Whom It May Concern, Dec. 31, 1936. On contract conditions, salary, and expenses: Frederick Pollock to American Consul General, Berlin, Jan. 6, 1939, Société Internationale de Recherches Sociales; and Erich Fromm, Agreement, June 1937, Fromm Archive. In the Fromm Archive, one finds expense statements Fromm submitted to the Institute during the late 1930s. See the Horkheimer-Fromm correspondence in the Horkheimer Archive, Frankfurt, esp. Horkheimer to Fromm, Dec. 10, 1935; and Fromm to Horkheimer, Nov. 4, 1938. Fromm memorandum to Kurt Rosenfeld, Nov. 16, 1939, Fromm Archive.
46. Fromm to Kurt Rosenfeld, Nov. 19, 1939; and Fromm to Friederich Pollock, Nov. 7, 1939, Fromm Archive. Horkheimer to Fromm, Nov. 7, 11, 1939, in Horkheimer Archive. Wiggershaus, Frankfurt School, 271; Martin Jay, Dialectical Imagination, 167–168.
48. Fromm to Rosenfeld, Nov. 16, 1939, Fromm Archive; Wiggershaus, Frankfurt School, 271–272; Fromm to Harcourt, Brace, and Company, Apr. 27, 1937, Fromm Archive.
49. Wiggershaus, Frankfurt School, 265–271; Fromm to Martin Jay, May 14, 1971, Fromm Archive. “The manner of a girlfriend”: Adorno to Horkheimer, Nov. 2, 1934, Horkheimer Archive.
50. Adorno to Horkheimer, Sept. Nov. 2, 1934, Horkheimer Archive; Fromm to Jay, May 14, 1971, Fromm Archive; Wiggershaus, Frankfurt School, 270–271; Jay, Dialectical Imagination, 116–117.
51. Erich Fromm to Karl A. Wittfogel, Dec. 18, 1936, Fromm Archive; Fromm to Max Horkheimer, Sept. 10, 1937, Horkheimer Archive.
52. Erich Fromm, “A Contribution to the Method and Purpose of Analytical Social Psychology” (1937), Fromm Papers, New York Public Library, and Fromm Archive, 2–9. This essay was published for the first time in the Yearbook of the International Erich Fromm Society 6 (1995): 189–236, but I am quoting from the original 1937 draft that Fromm translated into English.
53. Ibid., 23, 33, 42 (mentioning Marx), 44.
54. Wiggershaus, Frankfurt School, 265–267; Adorno to Horkheimer, Mar. 21, 1936, Horkheimer Archive; Fromm to Raya Dunayevskaya, Oct. 2, 1976, Fromm Archive, recalling how he described Adorno as “a puffed up phrase-maker.” Richard H. King, Race, Culture, and the Intellectuals (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2004), 75.
55. Wiggershaus, Frankfurt School, 268; Martin Jay, “The Frankfurt School’s Critique of Marxist Humanism,” Social Research 39 (1972): 301.
56. Jay, “Frankfurt School’s Critique,” 294–305, brilliantly discusses this difference between Fromm on the one hand and Adorno and Horkheimer on the other. Wiggershaus, Frankfurt School, 268. Adorno to Fromm, Nov. 16, 1937, Fromm Papers, New York Public Library, seems to defer to Fromm in the Institute hierarchy but already indicates a marked difference between the two in their perspectives on social psychology. “On account of grave scientific differences …”: Theodor Adorno, Letters to His Parents, 1939–1951 (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006), 62–63 (July 23, 1940, letter).
3. The Americanization of a European Intellectual
1. Wilhelm Reich to Erich Fromm, March 9, June 5, July 12, August 3, Sept. 3, 5, Oct. 31, 1932, Fromm Archive, Tubingen. Louise Hoffman, “Psychoanalytic Interpretations of Adolf Hitler and Nazism, 1933–1945: A Prelude to Psychohistory,” Psychohistory Review 11, no. 1 (Fall 1982): 76–77, linking Reich’s Mass Psychology to Fromm’s Escape from Freedom. Fromm recounting early worries of the Nazi menace: Gerard Khoury, TRI by LJF, Aix-en-Provence, Oct. 24, 2005. See also Martin Jay, The Dialectic Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923–1950 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), 94–97.
2. Fromm to Margaret Mead, Dec. 26, 1936, Fromm Archive; Fromm to Gustav Bally, Oct. 10, 19, 1936, Jan. 4, Mar. 4, 1937, May 24, 1938, Fromm Archive. See also Fromm to Karl Wittfogel, Dec. 18, 1936, Fromm Archive.
3. Fromm to Otto Rühle, Dec. 29, 1937; and Fromm to Horkheimer, Feb. 1938, Fromm Archive. Fromm to Horkheimer, Nov. 7, 1938, Max Horkheimer Archive, Frankfurt.
4. Gertrud Hunziker-Fromm, TRI by LJF, Zurich, May 9, 2004, on the import of giving the canary the option of freedom. Fromm to Robert Lynd, Mar. 1, 1939, Fromm Archive. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (New York: Vintage, 1945), 2:347. See also Charles Pearce to Fromm, Mar. 17, 1937; and Fromm to Charles Pearce, June 22, 1938, Fromm Archive. On “finally” being cured of tuberculosis: Rainer Funk, Erich Fromm: His Life and Ideas (New York: Continuum, 2000), 87. Lynd’s efforts are acknowledged in Fromm to Lynd, Mar. 1, 1939, Fromm Papers, microfilm reel, New York Public Library. See also Thomas Wheatland, “Critical Theory on Morningside Heights: From Frankfurt Mandarins to Columbia Sociologists,” German Politics and Society 22, no. 4 (Winter 2004): 1–87.
5. Fromm to Carl Müller-Braunschweig, Mar. 11, 1936, Archive of the British Psychoanalytic Society, and reprinted in Funk, Erich Fromm, 128. On the 1938 Davos meeting where she and Erich discussed the threat to their relatives: Gertrud Hunziker-Fromm, TRI by LJF, Zurich, May 10, 2004.
6. Funk, Erich Fromm, 77; Erich Fromm, “Declaration of Intention,” Nov. 21, 1934, and “Petition, for Naturalization,” Jan. 5, 1940, Certificate #4768531. Copies of both were ordered from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Rainer Funk commented that Fromm’s library contained very few volumes from his time in Germany.
7. Funk, Erich Fromm, 48; Rosa Fromm to Erich Fromm, Apr. 2, 1935, Fromm Archive; Erich Fromm to Harold Lasswell, Nov. 21, 1936, Fromm Archive.
8. U.S. individual income tax returns filed by Fromm for 1937, 1938, and 1939, Fromm Archive. Fromm to Frankfurter Sparkasse, June 26, 1936; and Fromm to Charles Somlo & Co., Jan. 7, June 22, Dec. 14, 1937, Fromm Archive. Miscellaneous receipts for money orders sent to Rosa Fromm, Fromm Archive. The exact 2008 equivalents of the 1936 amounts are $77,670.63 to $93,204.76 (the Frankfurt Institute salary), $31,068.25 from the psychoanalytic practice, and $3,184.50 in monthly payments to Fromm’s mother. These amounts represent the purchasing-power equivalents and were calculated with the help of www.measuringworth.com. I had to make rough estimates without the existence of a revised formula for Fromm’s income in 2012 dollars, but these cannot be far off the mark.
9. Funk, Erich Fromm, 48–49; Fromm to Max Horkheimer, Dec. 1, 1938; and Horkheimer to Fromm, Dec. 1, 1938 (cable), Horkheimer Archive; Bella Fromm to Erich Fromm, Apr. 27, 1939, Fromm Archive. Bella was from the National Coordinating Committee.
10. Affidavit of Support for Heinz Brandt (by Fromm), New York County Clerk, Mar. 5, 1941; Fromm Papers, New York Public Library, promising Ludwig Krause to help his grandchildren.
11. Knud Andresen to LJF (e-mail), Dec. 13, 14, 2005; and especially Andresen, Widerspruch als Lebensprinzip: Der Undogmatische Sozialist Heinz Brandt, 1909–1986 (Bonn: Dietz, 2007), 82–139, detailing (as Heinz Brandt’s biographer) his sundry imprisonments and deportations. See also Fromm, “Heinz Brandt as a Man of Faith” (1963); Fromm to Clara Urquhart, Feb. 27, 1964; EF memo about Mr. Gotsche’s letter, Jan. 2, 1964; all in Fromm Archive. Miriam Rothbacher, TRI by LJF, Vienna, May 19, 2004.
12. Knud Andresen to LJF, Dec. 13, 14, 2005 (e-mail); Miriam Rothbacher, TRI by LJF, Vienna, May 19, 2005.
13. Charles Somlo to Fromm, Nov. 17, 1936, Jan. 6, 1937; Fromm to Max Horkheimer, Dec. 22, 1938, Horkheimer Archive, Frankfurt; Hermia Neild to Fromm, Apr. 5, 1939; and Fromm to Neild, n.d. (1939); Madame Favez to Fromm, Feb. 17, 1939; all in Fromm Archive. Miriam Rothbacher, TRI by LJF, Vienna, May 19, 2004. Knud Andresen, e-mail to LJF, Dec. 13, 2005.
14. Madame Favez to Fromm, Jan. 26, Feb. 28, 1940; Fromm to Favez, Apr. 25, 1940; all in Fromm Archive. Fromm to Ernest Levy, June 19, 1940 (Fromm Archive) asking for Shanghai money from him and William Reichart in Boston at Gertrud Brandt’s request. Fromm’s affidavits of support (Fromm Archive) are dated Jan. 1939, Dec. 19, 1940, and March 5, 1941. The 1941 affidavit contains Fromm’s “Since this young man has lost his father” remark. See also Knud Andresen to LJF, Dec. 13, 14, 2005.
15. Fromm, “Heinz Brandt as a Man of Faith” (1963), and Fromm to Clara Urquhart, Feb. 27, 1964, both in Fromm Archive. Miriam Rothbacher, TRI by LJF, Vienna, May 19, 20, 2004. Correspondence between Gertrud Brandt and Lisa Jacob, largely covering the year 1941, was held for decades by Lili Brandt but eventually made its way to Miriam Rothbacher, who allowed me to make copies. Another set of copies are in the Fromm Archive. Knud Andresen, e-mail to LJF, Dec. 13, 14, 2005. Andresen quotes Brandt’s “luck, luck, and luck again” remark. See also Andresen, Widerspruch als Lebensprinzip, 127–158.
16. Ibid., plus Knud Andresen, e-mail to LJF, June 16, 2004, Dec. 14, 2005 (detailing Fromm’s correspondence with and support for Brandt from 1945 on).
17. I deposited copies of all of Sophie Krause Engländer’s letters to Eva Engländer Krakauer between 1939 and 1942 in the Fromm Archive. Archivist Rainer Funk provides a wonderful contextual introduction to the larger Krause family and reproduces some of Sophie’s letters in “Erleben von Ohnmacht im Dritten Reich,” Fromm Forum 9 (2005): 35–79.
18. Miriam Rothbacher, TRI by LJF, Vienna, May 19, 2004. Sophie Engländer to “Meine Kinder” (Eva and Bernhard Krakauer), May 1, 1939; David Engländer to “Meine Kinder,” June 18, 1939.
19. Rothbacher, TRI by LJF, Vienna, May 18, 19, 2004.
20. Sophie Krause Engländer to Eva Krakauer, Jan. 1, 1940 (on no “rich” American relative); Aug. 8, 1939 (hoping “Erich would chip in”); Aug. 12, 1940; and June 20, 1941 (on Fromm helping Heinz Brandt and implying that he should also help her more). Miriam Rothbacher, TRI by LJF, Vienna, May 18, 19, 2004, recalling that her mother, Eva Krakauer, felt that the childless Fromm lacked a sense of family responsibility and preferred the politically active Heinz Brandt over Sophie and David.
21. Sophie Engländer to Eva Krakauer and family, Apr. 18, May 1, May 6, May 10, June 6, June 28, 1939. Although Sophie’s letters to Eva reveal details on these family migrations, the most comprehensive account is provided in Miriam Rothbacher, TRI by LJF, Vienna, Mar. 18, 2004.
22. See, e.g., Sophie Krause Engländer to Eva Engländer Krakauer, Mar. 30, 1939, June 5, 1939, Nov. 16, 1941. Miriam Rothbacher, TRI by LJF, Vienna, May 19, 2004. Erich Fromm “Affidavit of Support” (for Martin and Johanna Krause), May 1941, Fromm Archive.
23. Sophie Krause Engländer to Eva Engländer Krakauer, July 13, Aug. 29, 1942; Sept. 30, 1939; Nov. 2, 1940.
24. Sophie Krause Engländer to Eva Engländer Krakauer, May 5, July 11, Oct. 10, Oct. 17, Nov. 10, 1939; Mar. 9, Aug. 12, 1940; June 20, 1941. Miriam Rothbacher, TRI by LJF, Vienna, May 18, 19, 2004.
25. Sophie Krause Engländer to Eva Engländer Krakauer, Oct. 10, 1939; Jan. 11, Oct. 20, 1940; Nov. 11, 16, 1941.
26. For Fromm’s efforts in the Peter Glück case, see Fromm to Glück, Feb. 5, 1940; Fromm Affidavit of Support for Glück, Aug. 1940; Fromm to Sheba Stronski, Dec. 5, 1940; Fromm to John Norman, June 3, 1943; Eva Wiegelmesser to Erich Fromm, Dec. 12, 1940; Catherine Fitzgibbon to Erich Fromm, Aug. 10, 1940. All of this correspondence on Fromm’s role in specific emigration cases is found in the Fromm Archive.
27. Fromm to Joe Stone, Oct. 1, 1936; and John Dollard to Fromm, Feb. 8, 1938, both in Fromm Archive; Rainer Funk to LJF, Nov. 23, 2005. On Fromm’s enthusiastic acquisition of English: Funk, PI by LJF, Tubingen, Jan. 1, 2004.
28. Joanne Meyerowitz, “‘How Common Culture Shapes the Separate Lives’: Sexuality, Race, and Mid-Twentieth-Century Social Constructionist Thought,” Journal of American History 96, no. 4 (2010): 1057–1084.
29. Ibid. For one of the stronger presentations on the “modernist” and heavily Freudian turn in early and mid-twentieth-century thought and values, see Dorothy Ross, After Freud Left: New Reflections on a Century of Psychoanalysis in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011).
30. Funk, Erich Fromm, 104; Marianne Horney Eckardt, “Karen Horney: A Portrait,” unpublished paper (1950), 5; Eckardt, PI by LJF, Laguna Woods, Calif., Dec. 17, 2005.
31. Renate Horney, PI by LJF, Laguna Woods, Calif., June 26, 2004, recalls Fromm visiting the Horney house in Berlin almost as a family member. For the beginnings of the break from psychoanalytic orthodoxy in Berlin, see Funk, Erich Fromm, 104; Bernard J. Paris, Karen Horney: A Psychoanalyst’s Search for Self-Understanding (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1994), 144; Janet Sayers, Mothers of Psychoanalysis: Helene Deutsch, Karen Horney, Anna Freud, Melanie Klein (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991), 88–102.
32. Sayers, Mothers, 102–111; Funk, Erich Fromm, 76–77.
33. Erich Fromm to Paul Roazen, Sept. 5, 1973, Fromm Papers, recalling his admiration of Horney as “a rather courageous person” and her bold critique of psychoanalytic orthodoxy. Sayers, Mothers, 105; While Paris, Horney, chap. 21, treats Horney’s sex life in some detail, especially the particulars of her relationship with Fromm, one learns no little amount from Marianne Horney Eckardt, PI by LJF, Laguna Hills, Calif., Sept. 9, 2006, Feb. 3, 2007; Daniel Burston, The Legacy of Erich Fromm (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991), 23.
34. Karen Horney, The Neurotic Personality of Our Time (New York: Norton, 1937), esp. 290; Sayers, Mothers, 113.
35. Karen Horney, New Ways in Psychoanalysis (New York: Norton, 1939); Karen Horney, Self-Analysis (New York: Norton, 1942). See also Sayers, Mothers, 122–126, 130–133.
36. On insisting he was not a formal member of the Zodiac circle but recalling these early friendships: Funk, Erich Fromm, 105; Fromm to Jack L. Rubins, Sept. 26, 1972, Fromm Archive. On Fromm explicating to the Zodiac circle the psychological basis of the Nazi appeal: Helen S. Perry, Psychiatrist of America: The Life of Harry Stack Sullivan (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982), 354–355.
37. Horney, Self-Analysis, 205–238; Paris, Horney, 145–147. Sayers, Mothers, 130–133.
38. For a very cogent discussion of building distance in the Fromm-Horney relationship, see Paris, Horney, 145–148.
39. Marianne Horney Eckardt, PI by LJF, Laguna Woods, Calif., July 4, 2003, Dec. 17, 2005; and Eckardt, TI by LJF, June 17, 2004, for her analysis with Fromm and its considerable impact on her relationship with her mother.
40. Paris, Horney, 144–147. On recalling seeing firsthand the presence of Dunham as Fromm’s “girl friend”: Patrick Mullahy to Helen Swick Perry, Aug. 8, 1965, Perry private collection.
41. Paris, Horney, 147–155; Fromm to Jack L. Rubins, Sept. 26. 1972, Fromm Archive; Marianne Horney Eckardt, PI by LJF, Laguna Woods, Calif., Dec. 17, 2005. See also Douglas Noble and Donald L. Burnham, “A History of the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute and Society,” in Psychoanalysis and Psychosis, ed. Ann-Louise Silver (Madison, Conn.: International Universities Press, 1989), chap. 26.
42. In his rich biography of Horney, Paris clearly recognizes (146–150) that the course of the Horney-Fromm relationship both helped shape and was shaped by Escape from Freedom. As Fromm’s biographer, my emphasis on this connection naturally differs somewhat from his.
43. Fromm, Escape from Freedom (New York: Henry Holt, 1941, 1965); Fromm to Harry Stack Sullivan, Nov. 29, 1939, Fromm Archive. For the eight reviews of Escape from Freedom, see Psychiatry 5 (1942): 109–134.
44. Perry, Psychiatrist of America, remains the most thorough and sensitive work on Sullivan’s life, even though his relationship with Fromm could have been expanded. Chapter 23 covers his work with schizophrenics at Sheppard-Pratt.
45. Sullivan initially sketched out his theoretical position in 1932–1933, and it is available in his Personal Psychopathology (New York: Norton, 1972). See also Sullivan’s Schizophrenia as a Human Process (New York: Norton, 1962), which contains selected Sullivan papers published between 1924 and 1935. Clara Thompson, “Sullivan and Fromm,” Contemporary Psychoanalysis 15, no. 9 (1979): 195–200, brilliantly elaborates Sullivan’s interpersonal psychoanalysis and shows how it overlaps decidedly with Fromm’s perspectives. See also Stephen A. Mitchell and Margaret J. Black, Freud and Beyond: A History of Modern Psychoanalytic Thought (New York: Basic Books, 1995), chap. 3. Fromm summarized Sullivan’s essential theory in “Harry Stack Sullivan’s Conceptions of Modern Psychiatry” (1940), Fromm Archive.
46. Indications of Fromm’s early response to Sullivan’s thought are suggested in Funk, Erich Fromm, 108, 112–114; Fromm, “Harry Stack Sullivan’s Conceptions of Modern Psychiatry” (1940), Fromm Archive; and Thompson, “Sullivan and Fromm,” 195–197, 199. See also Patrick Mullahy to Helen Swick Perry, Aug. 7, 1965, Perry private papers. Direct Fromm-Sullivan correspondence is not in evidence before 1936.
47. Thompson, “Sullivan and Fromm.” 195–197; Fromm, “Sullivan’s Conceptions,” Fromm Archive.
48. Perry, Sullivan, 380–388, shows Sullivan’s support for Fromm at a consistent level.
49. Harry Stack Sullivan to Erich Fromm, Oct. 21, 1939; and Fromm to Sullivan, Oct. 27, 1936, Fromm Archive. Funk, Erich Fromm, 105–108.
50. Sullivan to Fromm, June 21, 1936; Fromm to Sullivan, June 26, 1936, Fromm Archive, on the nomination to the Biographical Directory. On praising the journal Psychiatry “covering the field”: Fromm to Victor Gollancz, Nov. 3, 1942. On love as “readinesses” and illustrating how Sullivan helped Fromm frame theoretical issues: Fromm to Sullivan, Nov. 29, 1939, Fromm Archive. In gratitude, Fromm sent him Alsatian wine. See also Fromm to Sullivan, Apr. 31, 1936; and Sullivan to Fromm, Oct. 28, 1940, both in Fromm Archive.
51. Perry, Sullivan, 201–212.
52. Thompson’s “Freud and Sullivan” essay came to be framed in the 1930s as she brought them together, but it was not completed until 1956. It appeared in M. R. Green, ed., Interpersonal Psychoanalysis: The Selected Papers of Clara Thompson (New York: Basic Books, 1964), and was reprinted in Contemporary Psychoanalysis 15, no. 9 (1979): 195–200.
54. Fromm to Margaret Mead, July 28, 1935, Jan. 18, 1939, May 20, 1946, Margaret Mead Papers, Library of Congress. Mead to Fromm, Jan., 1936, Feb. 2, 1936, Fromm Archive.
55. David Engerman, Know Your Enemy: The Rise and Fall of America’s Soviet Experts (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), is perhaps the top recent study of the emergence and progression of the field of Soviet studies and includes the Mead group as one of the constituencies. Mead wrote interesting letters to Erikson on the background of her group’s Russian project and encouraged his involvement (Feb. 1, 8, Aug. 19, Mead Papers, B4, Library of Congress).
56. Mari Jo Buhle, Feminism and Its Discontents: A Century of Struggle with Psychoanalysis (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998), esp. 99–124, is one of the few studies to flesh out the feminist link between the neo-Freudians and Mead’s cultural anthropologists. Clara Thompson summarized the three gender premises of the neo-Freudians in her book Psychoanalysis: Evolution and Development (New York: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1950), which summarized the evolution of their thought. See also Thompson’s On Women, ed. Maurice Green (New York: Mentor, 1971); it is noteworthy that Fromm wrote the foreword to the book.
58. Fromm to Katherine Dunham, Feb. 20, 1937; and Dunham to Fromm (telegram), Feb. 24, 1937, both in Fromm Archive, on Fromm helping with her New York performances. Fromm to Dunham, June 25, 1940 (telegraph) shows Fromm wiring her money. On recalling the events leading to Sullivan taking Dunham into his house: Fromm to Sullivan, Oct. 6, 1939, Fromm Archive. See also Patrick Mullahy to Helen Swick Perry, Aug. 7, 1965, Perry private papers, recalling as a student residing in Sullivan’s house how Fromm had persuaded Sullivan to let Dunham live there.
59. Fromm to Dunham, Feb. 20, 1937; and Fromm to Sullivan, Oct. 6, 1939, both in Fromm Archive.
60. There is a wonderful correspondence file in the Fromm Archive covering the Fromm-Dunham relationship after their affair ceased. Letter exchanges actually picked up in the 1960s, and these letters recounted earlier years.
61. “I see more and more”: Dunham to Fromm, Dec. 9, 1966; “I thank you”: Fromm to Dunham, Jan. 1, 1967, in Fromm Archive. On recollections of her relationship with Fromm and the evolution of her health and career: Dunham to Fromm, Nov. 30, Dec. 2, Dec. 21, 1966, Jan. 20, 1967. See also Fromm to Dunham, Dec. 16, 1966, on his heart troubles, advising her against using LSD, and offering to send her a safe antidepressant medication. All of these letters are in the Fromm Archive.
4. Escape from Freedom
1. Fromm to Robert Lynd, Mar. 1, 1939; Fromm to Stanley Rinehart Jr., Nov. 12, 1940; Fromm to David Riesman, Dec. 5, 1940, all in Fromm Archive, Tubingen.
2. Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom (New York: Owl Books edition of Henry Holt and Co., 1994), ix–xi. The pagination of this paperback edition is identical to the original 1941 Holt, Rinehart, and Winston edition. For the best discussion of positive and negative freedom, see Isaiah Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty” in Four Essays on Liberty (London, 1969).
4. Ibid., 8 n. 3, 10, 12, 12 n. 6, 17, 20.
5. “Our aim is to show”: Ibid., 104.
9. Ibid., 39–45, esp. 39–40 n.1 on periodization and 46–47 n. 5 deploying Burckhart to understand early capitalism with the “growing competitive struggle for self-advancement.” Fromm to Thomas Lewis Merton, Dec. 8, 1954, Fromm Archive.
12. Fromm, Escape, 46–48, 73–74.
14. Ibid., 85, 87–91, 93.
15. “Destroyed the confidence”: ibid., 97–98, 100–101. “Compulsion to work”: 101–102. “In a closed world”: 62.
16. For a sampling of the many reviews taking issue with Escape from Freedom on early Protestantism, see those by Anton Boisen, Patrick Mullahy, and M. F. Ashley Montagu in Harry Stack Sullivan’s journal Psychiatry 5 (1942). Fromm acknowledged several of the failings of Escape in his remarkable letter to Thomas Merton, Dec. 8, 1954, Fromm Archive.
17. Fromm, “Selfishness and Self-Love,” Psychiatry 2 (1939): 507–514, 523; Fromm, Escape, 110–117 (114 n. 2 on Sullivan).
18. Fromm, Escape, 116; and Fromm, “Selfishness and Self-Love,” 521, both present the “the person who is not fond of himself” remark. For other remarks on how the absence of self-regard creates a depleted and greedy, always acquisitive personality, see Fromm’s “Selfishness and Self Love,” 518–523; and Escape, 119–121. It is instructive that much the same appraisal of the depleted self is presented half a century later in Philip Cushman’s seminal article “Why the Self Is Empty: Toward a Historically Situated Psychology,” American Psychologist 45, no. 5 (1990), esp. 600.
19. Fromm, Escape, 104–105, 107, 123–125.
25. “Style,” “powerful though smooth,” “fall in”: ibid., 131. “A reflex,” “compelled to conform”: 203. See 183–204 for Fromm’s fullest discussion of “automaton conformity.”
26. Ibid., 149–156, 162–169, delineating sadomasochism. “He admires”: 162. “That life is determined”: 169.
27. Ibid., 220–235, analyzing Mein Kampf as the major source for the Nazi sadomasochist appeal. Fromm to Dr. Hartshorne, Jan. 8, 1940, Fromm Archive, acknowledging that “the theme of the Jews is so complex that it really requires a longer discussion” than he provided in Escape.
28. Fromm, Escape, 207–219. Timothy S. Brown, Weimar Radicals: Nazis and Communists Between Authenticity and Performance (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2009), argues cogently that communist and Nazi extremisms in the Weimar Republic overlapped a great deal in its appeal, undermining Fromm’s claim of working-class hostility toward the Nazi regime and ideology. Richard F. Hamilton, Who Voted for Hitler (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982), takes on the lower-middle-class hypothesis and demonstrates through massive electoral statistical and other data that it does not hold up.
29. Fromm, Escape, 177–183. 179 n. 11, citing Horney. “The more the drive,” “an intense envy”: 182.
31. Ibid., 236. “This respect for,” “there is no higher power”: 262–263.
33. Ibid., p. 238 on “the authoritarian systems.” For amplification of how Germany would ultimately throw off the Nazis: Fromm to Dr. Hartshorne, Jan. 8, 1941, Fromm Archive.
34. Fromm, Escape, 236–237.
35. Thomas Harvey Gill’s review of Escape, in Psychiatry 5 (1942): 111.
36. Ibid.; Otto Fenichel, “Psychoanalytic Remarks on Fromm’s Book Escape from Freedom,” Psychoanalytic Review 31 (1944): 147–149, 152; Victor White, review of Escape from Freedom in The Dublin Review 212 (January 1943): 69. Russell Jacoby, The Repression of Psychoanalysis: Otto Fenichel and the Political Freudians (New York: Basic Books, 1983), provides the context for Fenichel’s critique of Fromm.
37. Martin Jay’s The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt Institute of Social Research (Boston: Little & Brown, 1973), 65, brilliantly presents Arendt’s critique not only of Fromm but of most participants in the Frankfurt Institute.
5. Clinician and Ethicist
1. Erich Fromm, Man for Himself: An Inquiry Into the Psychology of Ethics (repr.; New York: Owl Books edition of Henry Holt, 1990), vii, 244. See also Fromm to Clara Urquhart, Dec. 20, 1971, Fromm Archive, Tubingen, for a clear continuation of his 1940s orientation. For a very cogent explication of “ethical” or “socialist” humanism, see Martin Halliwell and Andy Mousley, Critical Humanism: Humanist/Antihumanist Dialogues (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003), chap. 3.
2. K. A. Cuordileone, Manhood and American Political Culture in the Cold War (New York: Routledge, 2005), 6–9, 99–100, argues compellingly that through Escape from Freedom, Fromm profoundly influenced the immediate postwar generation of liberal public intellectuals, including Schlesinger Jr., Lindner, and Tillich. Correspondence in the Fromm Archive, however, indicates that during the decade after Escape, he engaged in somewhat more limited exchanges with such figures.
3. Marianne Horney Eckardt, “Organizational Schisms in American Psychoanalysis,” in American Psychoanalysis: Origins and Development, ed. Jacques Quen and Eric Carlson (New York: Brunner/Mazel, 1978), 144–149. Clara Thompson, “History of the White Institute,” William Alanson White Newsletter 8, no. 1 (Fall 1973): 3–5.
4. Ibid., plus Eckardt, TRI by LJF, Laguna Hills, Calif., July 4, 2003.
5. Helen Swick Perry, Psychiatrist of America: The Life of Harry Stack Sullivan (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), 385–391; Thompson, “History of the White Institute.” Marianne Eckardt, TI by LJF, June 17, 2004, reviewing the origins of the White Institute.
6. Thompson, “History of the White Institute.” Recalling Fromm as director of clinical training in the late 1940s: Robert M. Crowley, “Tribute to Erich Fromm,” Contemporary Psychoanalysis 17, no. 4 (1981): 441–443. On Fromm’s de facto marginalization at the White Institute: Marianne Eckardt, TI by LJF, June 17, 2004. Erich Fromm, “Foreword” (1964), Fromm Papers, New York Public Library (an introduction to the Clara Thompson papers), acknowledges that Thompson essentially ran White in its early years and did it well. For his reflections on the White Institute’s first decade, see also Fromm to Clara Thompson, Apr. 12, 1956, Fromm Archive.
7. Harry K. Wells, The Failure of Psychoanalysis: From Freud to Fromm (New York: International Publishers, 1963), 191–196; Clara Thompson, Psychoanalysis (1950; repr. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 2003), 209–210. Fromm’s paper, “Die gesellschaftliche Bedingtheit der Psychoanalytischen Therapie,” in Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung (1935), is the first and perhaps the most comprehensive articulation of his clinical approach. This paper was published in English under the title “The Social Determinants of Psychoanalytic Theory,” International Forum of Psychoanalysis 9, no. 3–4 (October 2000): 149–165.
8. Edward S. Tauber, “Erich Fromm: Clinician and Social Philosopher,” Contemporary Psychoanalysis 15 (1970): 202–205, excellently summarizes the productive and unproductive orientations delineated in Fromm’s Man for Himself (1947).
9. Erich Fromm, “The Social Order and Its Relation to Psycho-Analytic Therapy,” Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung 4, no. 3 (1935): 365–397.
10. Fromm address at Memorial Meeting for Harry Stack Sullivan, White Institute, May 17, 1949, 5, Fromm Archive, distinguishing the “core” from the “periphery” and reacting “with our human core” even with psychotic patients. Fromm to Clara Urquhart, June 29, 1964, Fromm Archive. For witnesses to and elaborations of Fromm’s “center to center” approach, see Leonard Feldstein, “The Face of Erich Fromm,” William Alanson White Newsletter 15, no. 1 (Winter 1981): 5; Enzo Lio, “Erich Fromm: Psychoanalyst and Supervisor,” Fromm Forum 2 (1998): 31–34; David E. Schecter, “Contributions of Erich Fromm,” Contemporary Psychoanalysis 17, no. 4 (1981): 475; Marianne Horney Eckardt, “The Core Theme of Erich Fromm’s Writings and Its Implication for Therapy,” Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis 11 (1983): 397–398. On center-to-center relatedness and “So that’s you. And that’s me too”: Erich Fromm, “The Aim of the Psychoanalytic Process,” Fromm Forum 2 (1998): 17–18 (reprint of presentation to William Alanson White Institute). Marco Bacciagaluppi, “Erich Fromm’s Views on Psychoanalytic ‘Technique,’” Contemporary Psychoanalysis 25, no. 2 (April 1989): 233, quoting Fromm’s “The analyst understands the patient only….” See also Gérard Khoury, interview of Fromm, Fromm Forum 12 (2008): 35.
11. Fromm to Gertrud Hunziker-Fromm, Mar. 29, 1964, Hunziker-Fromm private papers, Zurich, reviewing the evolution of his technique for restoring “authentic thinking” in the patient. “In rational thought”: Erich Fromm, “Remarks on the Problem of Free Association,” Psychiatric Research Reports 2 (December 1955): 3.
12. Erich Fromm, Greatness and Limitations of Freud’s Thought (New York: Harper & Row, 1980), 40, recalling his Berlin training with the couch and “this boredom,” which he changed by “face to face” analysis. For comments on the timing of Fromm’s transition to the chair, see Marianne Horney Eckardt, “From Couch to Chair,” in The Clinical Erich Fromm: Personal Accounts and Papers on Therapeutic Technique, ed. Rainer Funk (Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi, 2009), 71–72. On Fromm’s frequent questions for his analysands: Fromm, “Remarks on the Problem of Free Association,” 4–5. For Fromm’s pressing sense of urgency in his clinical work, see Bacciagaluppi, “Erich Fromm’s Views on Psychoanalytic ‘Technique,’” 234–235.
13. Fromm’s students and colleagues differ on the import of his downplaying the transference issue. Michael Maccoby argues that it limited his clinical effectiveness in his essay “The Two Voices of Erich Fromm,” in A Prophetic Analyst, ed. Michael Maccoby and Mauricio Cortina (New York: Aronson, 1996), chap. 2. Salvador Millan differs, arguing that Fromm was sufficiently attentive to transference (“The Social Dimension of Transference,” in A Prophetic Analyst, chap. 9). Militiades Zaphiropoulos, TI by LJF, Nov. 14, 2005, substantially agrees with Maccoby. Interestingly, Ruth Lesser points out in her essay, “There Is Nothing Polite in Anyone’s Unconscious,” in The Clinical Erich Fromm, 91–99, that Fromm discouraged a focus on the broad analytic relationship, that is, transference and countertransference.
14. There is a file in the Fromm Archive of correspondence between Schecter and Fromm that points to Schecter’s dependency and inability to foster his own autonomy (see, e.g., Fromm to Schecter, March 28, 1974). But the file affords only a few clues on why he committed suicide after Fromm’s death. Some of Schecter’s articles on Fromm indicate that he could not separate his conceptual and clinical work from Fromm’s. See, e.g., Schecter’s “Contributions of Erich Fromm,” Contemporary Psychoanalysis 17, no. 4 (1981): 468–480; Schecter, “Awakening the Patient,” in The Clinical Fromm, 73–83; and esp. Schecter, “On Human Bonds and Bondage,” Contemporary Psychoanalysis 11, no. 4 (October 1975): 435–455 (which focuses on dependency and autonomy in a tribute to Fromm).
15. For Fromm on direct intervention versus potential transference distortions, see Erich Fromm, Psychiatric Research Reports 2 (December 1955): 3–6; Schecter, “Contributions of Erich Fromm,” 475–478; Bacciagaluppi, “Erich Fromm’s Views on Psychoanalytic ‘Technique,’” 234–236; and especially Michael Maccoby, TRI by LJF, Washington, D.C., Feb. 2, 2003. Greta Bibring had warned Maccoby before his own analysis with Fromm that Fromm was reticent to analyze patient transference.
16. Fromm to David Schecter, Mar. 28, 1974, Fromm Archive. Erich Fromm, The Forgotten Language: An Introduction to the Understanding of Dreams, Fairy Tales, and Myths (1951; repr. New York: Grove, 1957), 47, 109, defining his view of what a dream reveals as against Freud’s and Jung’s views. See 167–168 on the dream “like a microscope” but with no “quantitative” dimension. See also Biancoli, “The Humanism of Erich Fromm,” Contemporary Psychoanalysis 28, no. 4 (1992): 720–721, for a cogent comment on Fromm’s approach to dream interpretation.
17. Fromm, The Forgotten Language, 47,109–110, 167–174.
18. Ibid., esp. 185, 192, 157 (“What is important”), 263 (apprehensions of death). On Fromm’s approach to dream interpretation, see also Jay Kwawer, “A Case Seminar with Erich Fromm,” Contemporary Psychoanalysis 11, no. 4 (October 1975): 454.
19. Fromm, The Forgotten Language, 9–10. On going into detail on Fromm’s eclectic approach to dream interpretation: Gertrud Hunziker-Fromm, TRI by LJF, Zurich, May 10, 2004. See also Gérard Khoury’s interview of Fromm published in Fromm Forum 12 (2008): esp. 35. Sales figures come from 1997 estimates by Rainer Funk, Fromm’s literary executor.
20. Miltiades Zaphiropoulos, TI by LJF, Nov. 14, 2005; Tauber, “Erich Fromm,” 206–207; Schecter, “Contributions of Erich Fromm,” 470–473; Rose Spiegel, “Tribute to Erich Fromm,” Contemporary Psychoanalysis 17, no. 4 (1981): 438–439; Ralph M. Crowley, “Tribute to Erich Fromm,” Contemporary Psychoanalysis 17, no. 4 (1981): 443–444; Edward Tauber and Bernard Landis, “On Erich Fromm,” Contemporary Psychoanalysis 11, no. 4 (October 1975): 414–417.
21. Ibid., especially the comments of Zaphiropoulos, Spiegel, and Tauber.
22. Ibid., particularly comments in my interview with Zaphiropoulos.
23. Helen Lynd interview by Mrs. Walter Gelhorn, 1973, transcript, 27–28, Columbia Oral History Project, Butler Library. Marianne Horney Eckardt, “Reflections on ‘What Helps a Patient?’” unpublished 1980 lecture to Nassau County Psychoanalytic Group, esp. 4–9 on her analysis with Fromm. That analysis was also covered in some detail in Eckardt, TRI by LJF, Laguna Hills, Calif., July 4, 2003; and Eckardt, TI by LJF, June 17, 2004.
24. Eckardt, TRI, July 4, 2003.
25. Eckardt, TRI, July 4, 2003; and Eckardt, TI, June 17, 2004.
26. Rollo May to Fromm, Oct. 16, 1940, June 15, 1942, and Nov. 6, 1942, all in Fromm Archive in and the Fromm Papers. I have also drawn heavily on Robert Abzug’s excellent biography in process on May and on his thoughts on Fromm’s analysis of May. On May cribbing material from Fromm’s analytic sessions: Daniel Burston, The Legacy of Erich Fromm (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991), 164–165. May’s book, Man’s Search for Himself (1954) lends some credence to Burston’s charge of cribbing. See also May, Power and Innocence: A Search for the Sources of Violence (New York: Delta, 1972), 227.
27. Fromm to May, Sept. 28, 1951, May Papers, University of California at Santa Barbara, expressing warmth toward May. See May on Fromm at the White Institute, and favorable to Fromm’s approach, in Pastoral Psychology 6, no. 56 (September 1955): 10. May to Fromm, Oct. 9, 1965, holding up Tillich and on Fromm’s “superficial writing”; Fromm to May, Oct. 18, 1965, on “angry mood,” both in May Papers.
28. Two outstanding sources on Riesman’s early life and his analysis with Fromm are David Barboza, “An Interview with David Riesman,” Partisan Review (1994): 574–585; and Wilfred M. McClay, The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 238–255, 336 n. 30. See also Steven Weiland’s very stimulating article “Social Science Toward Social Criticism: Some Vocations of David Riesman,” Antioch Review 44 (Fall 1986): esp. 446–454. Although I have reviewed the extensive Fromm–Riesman correspondence in the Fromm Archive, it offers only suggestive glimmerings into the analysis.
29. Barboza, “An Interview with Riesman,” 575–576, 582–584; McClay, Masterless, 336 n. 30.
30. Barboza, “An Interview with Riesman,” 575–577; McClay, Masterless, 253–255. Robert J. Lifton, TI by LJF, Aug. 13, 2008, recounts in some detail what Riesman told him about being analyzed by Fromm. Erich Fromm, “Individual and Social Origins of Neurosis,” in Personality in Nature, Society, and Culture, ed. Clyde Kluckhohn and Henry A. Murray (New York: Knopf, 1949), esp. 11. See also parts of Riesman to Rainer Funk, Oct. 10, 1980, Fromm Archive. Although the evidence on Robert Lynd’s wife, Helen, is fragmentary for her analysis with Fromm, it had an intellectual quality, like Riesman’s (i.e., he “cured” her writing block). See Mrs. Walter Gellhorn, interview of Helen Lynd, 1973, transcript, 27–28, Columbia Oral History Project.
31. Mauricio Cortina, PI by LJF, Washington D.C., July 30, 2009.
32. Joseph Gurland, “The Story of My Mother: Henny (Meyer) Gurland, 1900–1952,” 3–5, Fromm Archive.
34. Ibid., 13–16; plus Joseph Gurland to Rainer Funk, Dec. 28, 1992; and Gurland to Rolf Tiedemann, June 25, 1981, both in Fromm Archive. On the metal in Henny’s side: Doris Gurland, PI by LJF, Providence, R.I., Aug. 23, 2009.
35. Joseph Gurland, “The Story of My Mother,” 17–18; Rainer Funk, Erich Fromm: His Life and Ideas (New York: Continuum, 2000), 122.
36. Joseph Gurland, “The Story of My Mother,” 18; J. H. Coler to Erich Fromm, Nov. 13, 1941, Fromm Archive (Fromm helping Henny through the National Refugee Service). “I am no longer homesick”: Henny Gurland to Izette de Forest, Nov. 26, 1943, Fromm Archive. Burston, The Legacy of Erich Fromm, 25, emphasizes the rapidity of the development of the Fromm–Henny Gurland relationship and Fromm’s early offer to fund Joseph’s education.
37. Henny Gurland to Izette de Forest, Feb. 20, 1944. Joseph Gurland, “Application for Federal Employment,” n.d. (1946), Fromm Archive, details his wartime duties with the army.
38. On her photography work, the pending move to Bennington, and how “Erich wants to finish his book”: Henny Gurland to Izette de Forest, June 5, 1946, Fromm Archive. On Selver’s impression of Fromm, his busy schedule in New York, and the move to Bennington: Funk, Erich Fromm, 122–126.
39. Henny Gurland to Izette de Forest, June 5, 1946, Fromm Archive. On Henny’s “searching and penetrating mind”: Erich Fromm, Psychoanalysis and Religion (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1950), v.
40. On Binger telling him of Henny as schizophrenic: Michael Maccoby, PI by LJF, Cambridge, Mass., May 6, 2005. Detail on the new Bennington home (the address at the time was 228 Murphy Road) is provided in a residential listing form when it was put up for sale (Fromm Archive). Fromm mentions the loan from Riesman in a letter dated Sept. 10, 1976.
41. Lewis Webster Jones to Erich Fromm, June 17, July 8, 1942 and Fromm to Jones, July 10, 1942, all in the Fromm Archive and covering many aspects of his teaching at Bennington, including his self-doubts which he expressed to Jones. A long obituary appearing in the Bennington Quadrille (March 1980), described Fromm’s teaching there and his selection as commencement speaker. On Fromm’s almost letting the baby slide off his lap: Doris Gurland, PI by LJF, Providence, R.I., Aug. 23, 2009. The exact 2008 equivalent of $2,500 1946 dollars is $27,546.44, based on purchasing-power equivalents, and was calculated using www.measuringworth.com. Fromm to Frances Davis, Aug. 18, 1948; and Davis to Fromm, Sept. 3, 1948, Fromm Archive. On preparing to teach a second Bennington course on interpersonal relations: Fromm to Ernest Oppenheimer, Dec. 3, 1948, Fromm Archive. Fromm was also very much in demand at the New School. When he decided not to teach there in 1949, the New School’s president, Bryn Hovde, strongly urged him to reconsider.
42. Funk, Erich Fromm, 126–127; Joseph Gurland, “Henny Gurland,” 19 (underscoring Henny’s elevated blood pressure problem, which others have omitted). For evidence of Erich Fromm attending to Henny night and day while rejecting invitations and opportunities, see, e.g., Fromm to M. F. Ashley Montagu, Dec. 31, 1947; and Fromm to Lucien Hanks, Oct. 14, 1948, both in Fromm Archive. Doris Gurland, PI by LJF, Providence, R.I., Aug. 23, 2009, on Henny’s treatment. Gertrud Hunziker-Fromm, PI by LJF, Zurich, July 30, 2003, on Henny’s depression being more debilitating than her pain.
43. On Gurland’s 1948 marriage and the honeymoon gift: Rainer Funk, “Joseph Gurland” (obituary), Fromm Forum 9 (2005): 49. On the trip to the ocean: Fromm to William Gutman, Mar. 29, 1949, Fromm Archive. Fromm to Henry Pachter, Dec. 5, 1949, hopeful of a get-together; and Fromm to Djane Herz, Dec. 23, 1949, declining a concert invitation (both letters in Fromm Archive). The foreword of Fromm’s published Yale lectures (Psychoanalysis and Religion) thanked Henny for her suggestions. Funk, Fromm, 126, quoting Fromm’s June 3, 1949, letter to his sister-in-law.
44. Funk, Erich Fromm, 127; On Joseph and Dorothy Gurland living in Boston and Fromm staying with them: Fromm to Clyde Kluckhohn, March 22, 1949. On Henny being unable to complete the photograph order: Fromm to David Riesman, Nov. 29, 1949. All letters are found in the Fromm Archive. Doris Gurland, PI by LJF, Providence, R.I., Aug. 23, 2009.
45. Jorge Silva Garcia, TRI by LJF, Mexico City, March 21, 2004; and Renate Horney, PI by LJF, Laguna Hills, Calif., June 26, 2004. Fromm to Mr. Spratling, March 17, 1937; Fromm to Otto Rühle, Nov. 16, 1937, May 3, 1940; Fromm to Mrs. Durieux, May 14, 1937; Fromm to Señor Guadalupe, May 14, 1937; all in Fromm Archives.
46. Silva Garcia, TRI by LJF, Mexico City, March 21, 2004; Gertrud Hunziker-Fromm, PI by LJF, Zurich, July 30, 2003; Rainer Funk, PI by LJF, Tubingen, March 16, 2003; Fromm to Djane Lavois Herz, Dec. 23, 1949, Fromm Archive.
47. Rainer Funk, PI by LJF, Tubingen, March 16, 2003; Funk, Erich Fromm, 127. The Fromm-Selver correspondence of the early 1950s after the move to Mexico is in the Selver Papers, Special Collections, University of California, Santa Barbara. See especially Fromm to Selver, Sept. 29, Oct. 2, Oct. 7, Oct. 28, Nov. 2, Nov. 12, 1952; Selver to Fromm, Oct. 16, 1952.
48. Funk, Erich Fromm, 127, on Henny’s health and the trips and ultimate move to Mexico City. On his “hope that Mexico will help to bring about her recovery”: Fromm to Djane Herz, Dec. 23, 1949. On the birth of his first child and its effect on Erich: Joseph Gurland, “Henny Gurland,” 19. Here Joseph attributed Henny’s death to “heart failure” though he almost certainly knew otherwise. Funk, PI by LJF, Tubingen, March 16, 2003, presenting his account and private archival data indicating that death came when Henny slit her wrists. Doris Gurland confirmed this to Funk. For a reference to Erich Fromm’s discovery of Henny after her suicide, see also Rainer Funk, “Meet Erich Fromm,” in Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving (New York: Harper Perennial, 2006), 16. For an additional reference to Fromm’s discovery of Henny and the quote “Now I am quite sure,” see Fromm to Izette de Forest, July 22, 1952. For Charlotte Selver’s recollection and contextualization of Fromm’s statement that he could not help Henny, see Charlotte Selver, PI by Rainer Funk, St. Ulrich, Aug. 10, 1997, Fromm Archive. Translated from the German original (“Ich konnte Henny nicht helfen”) by Anke Schreiber.
49. On Henny’s final years and death and their effect on Fromm: Funk, Erich Fromm, 136; and Funk, PI by LJF, Tubingen, March 18, 2003. Acknowledging the affairs after Henny’s death: Fromm to Annis Freeman, March 25, 1953. Robert Coles sensitively recounts helping Horney when he was a medical student at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York as she was dying of cancer; see Coles’s The Secular Mind (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999), 83–85. Fromm to Charlotte Selver, Feb. 26, 1953; Selver to Fromm, Oct. 16, 1953, Selver Papers, University of California, Santa Barbara. For strong suggestions of an affair between Fromm and Charlotte Selver, see Fromm to Selver, Dec. 6, 19, 1952, Feb. 15, 1953, Fromm Archive.
50. Erich Fromm to Ashley Montagu, May 7, Dec. 31, 1947, Fromm Papers, on a book concerning Freud’s publications. The UNESCO project and Fromm’s potential role in it are covered in Fromm to Pendleton Herring and Herbert Abraham, Jan. 1, 1949; Fromm to O. A. Oesar, May 20, 1949 (“more complicated”); Fromm to Charles Dollard, March 4, 1949 (on Carnegie Foundation funding and “authoritarianism versus independence”). All letters in Fromm Archive.
51. Fromm, Man for Himself, 213–214, 244. Menninger’s negative review in K. Menninger, “Loneliness in the Modern World,” The Nation (March 14, 1942): 154.
52. Fromm, Man for Himself, 206, 210–213.
53. Ibid., 187–191, 206, 216.
55. Ibid., Man for Himself, 212 n. 67, suspecting criticism from Niebuhr. Reinhold Niebuhr, review of Man for Himself in Christianity and Society 13, no. 2 (Spring 1948): 26–28.
56. Erich Fromm, “Psychoanalytic Characterology and Its Application to the Understanding of Culture,” in Culture and Personality, ed. S. Stansfeld Sargent and Marian W. Smith (New York: Viking, 1949), 1–12.
57. Fromm, Man for Himself, 62–63, 114.
62. Maslow’s fully annotated copy of Man for Himself is in the Archives of the History of American Psychology, University of Akron. For astute reviews showing how Man for Himself anticipated Rieff’s The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith After Freud (1966) and Rieff’s earlier book, Freud: The Mind of the Moralist (1959), see, e.g., Asher Brynes, “End of Psychological Man Proclaimed,” Saturday Review 31 (July 2, 1948): 25–26; and Milton Singer essay’s on Man for Himself in Ethics 58 (1947–1948): 220–222.
63. Fromm, Psychoanalysis and Religion, v. Sales figures come from 1997 estimations by Rainer Funk, Fromm’s literary executor.
67. Ibid., 38–41 (especially 41 n. 4 on Suzuki).
69. Ibid., 49–50. Like Feuerbach, Fromm had a strong affinity to a younger and more flexible Marx than appeared in Das Kapital. In some ways, however, the young Marx was more determined to render historical change than Fromm and assuredly more so than Feuerbach.
70. Ibid., 84. Perhaps an indicator of Fromm’s increasing popularity, Psychoanalysis and Religion was reviewed favorably by three popular psychology (“how to”) reviewers—H. A. Overstreet in the New York Times Book Review 29, no. 10 (1950): 5–6; Andrea Nobile in Filosofia Torino 17 (1966): 124–126; and M. H. Maskin in The New Republic 124 (1951): 21–22.
6. To Love and to Mentor
1. David Riesman to Fromm, Nov. 2, 1960 (Riesman Papers, Harvard University), on an unpublished study conducted at UC Berkeley in 1959 by Hilde Himmelweig of the London School of Economics, asking whether students were vaguely familiar with the works of a number of leading “names.” Students were more familiar with Freud, Faulkner, and Berlin than Fromm, but less with Jack Kerouac, Gide, William Whyte, and Riesman.
2. Jorge Silva Garcia, “Fromm in Mexico: 1950–1973,” Contemporary Psychoanalysis 25, no. 2 (April 1989): 246–249; John Reichert, TRI of Alfonso Millán, circa 1985, transcript in Fromm Archives, Tubingen.
3. Ibid., plus Aniceto Aramoni, TRI by LJF, Mexico City, March 17, 2004; and Michael Maccoby to LJF, Sept. 29, 2011 (e-mail).
4. Maccoby to LJF, Sept, 28, 29, 2011 (e-mails). See also Marie Langer, From Vienna to Managua: Journey of a Psychoanalyst (London: Free Association Books, 1989), 131–133.
5. Maccoby to LJF, Sept. 29, 2011 (e-mail); and Maccoby, PI by LJF, Cambridge, April 13, 2012.
6. Ibid., plus Silva Garcia, TRI by LJF, Mexico City, March 21, 2004.
7. Silva Garcia, “Fromm in Mexico,” 245; Silva Garcia, TRI by LJF, Mexico City, March 21, 2004. See also Michael Maccoby, TRI by LJF, Washington, D.C., Feb. 2, 2003.
8. Alfonso Millán, TRI by John Reichert, Mexico City, circa 1985, transcript in Fromm Archive; Salvador Millán, PI by LJF, Mexico City, March 16, 2004; Silva Garcia, “Fromm in Mexico,” 248–250; Silva Garcia, TRI by LJF, Mexico City, March 21, 2004. Salvador Millán, “Mexican Time: Erich Fromm in Mexico—A Point of View,” initially appeared in the Jahrbuch der Internationalen Erich Fromm Gesellschaft (1995) and has been modestly revised. It brilliantly discusses the contrast between Fromm’s precise German sense of time, punctuality, and exactitude and the more joyous, less disciplined qualities in the culture that his Mexican students knew.
9. Alfonso Millán, TRI by Reichert, circa 1985, Fromm Archive; Salvador and Sonja Millán, PI by LJF, Mexico City, March 17, 2004; Silva Garcia, “Fromm in Mexico,” 251; Silva Garcia, TRI by Reichert, circa 1985, Fromm Archive.
11. Alfonso Millán, TRI by Reichert, circa 1985; Aniceto Aramoni, TRI by LJF, Mexico City, March 17, 2004; Rebecca Aramoni Serrano, PI by LJF, Mexico City, March 21, 2004.
12. Alfonso Millán, TRI by Reichert, circa 1985, Fromm Archive.
13. Rainer Funk, Erich Fromm: His Life and Ideas (New York: Continuum, 2000), 131–132.
14. Aniceto Aramoni, TRI by LJF, Mexico City, March 17, 2004; Rebecca Aramoni Serrano, PI by LJF, Mexico City, March 21, 2004.
15. Fromm to Aniceto Aramoni, Oct. 8, 1973 (“I have always felt badly”); Feb. 7, 1967 (“It is important that the group learns … The main thing is that the group really learns to function without me”); Aramoni to Fromm, July 2, 1973, Sept. 26, 1973, Jan. 25, 1976, Nov. 5, 1975, July 9, 1979; all in Fromm Archive. There are many more letters in the Aramoni files in the Fromm Archive that underscore the problems inherent in this dependency relationship. See also Aramoni, TRI by LJF, March 17, 2004.
16. A. Irwin Switzer, D. T. Suzuki: A Biography (London: The Buddhist Society, 1985), provides a very comprehensive account of Suzuki’s life and thought.
17. D. T. Suzuki, Zen Buddhism: Selected Writings of D.T. Suzuki (New York: Anchor, 1956), 103–108. See also D. T. Suzuki, An Introduction to Zen Buddhism (1934), republished with a foreword by C. G. Jung (London: Rider & Co, 1948); D. T. Suzuki, The Training of the Zen Buddhist Monk (repr. New York: University Books, 1959); D. T. Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture (New York: Pantheon, 1959).
18. Fromm to D. T. Suzuki, Oct. 18, 1956, Fromm Archive, on the dinner in New York, the December trip to Cuernavaca, and an offer of a permanent residence for Suzuki at Fromm’s expense. See also Suzuki to Fromm, Sept. 9, 1955, May 7, 1956, Fromm Papers, New York Public Library.
19. Suzuki to Fromm, n.d. (Nov. 1956); Fromm to Suzuki, Nov. 15, 18, 1956, all in Fromm Papers, NYPL.
20. Suzuki to Fromm, Feb. 14, March 13, 1957; Fromm to Suzuki, Jan. 29, Feb. 25, March 3, 1957, all in Fromm Papers, NYPL.
21. Fromm, “Memories of Dr. D. T. Suzuki,” 1–3, Fromm Archive.
22. Funk, Erich Fromm, 134, underscores the importance of spiritual religion in Fromm’s life.
23. Fromm, “Psychoanalysis and Zen Buddhism” (the 1959 revised edition of Fromm’s 1957 conference paper), 3–8, Fromm Papers, NYPL.
30. Fromm to Maurice Green, Dec. 13, 1958; Fromm to Suzuki, Nov. 19, 1960, on sales and royalties. Both letters are in the Fromm Archive. See also Fromm to Suzuki, July 3, 1958, June 15, 1960 (listing Suzuki as senior author), Fromm Papers. Sales figures are 1997 estimations by Rainer Funk, Fromm’s literary executor.
31. On the increasingly personal support each gave to the other since the 1957 conference: Fromm, “Memories of Dr. D. T. Suzuki.” On Suzuki’s gifts of trees and seeds: Fromm to Suzuki, July 3, 1958. On his hearing loss and need to focus on writing: Suzuki to Fromm, July 21, 1959. On how “irksome” it was to accomplish tasks in old age: Suzuki to Fromm, April 27, 1966. All in Fromm Archive. On traveling to New York for advice on Annis’s potential breast cancer: Fromm to Suzuki, Aug. 2, 1958, Fromm Archive.
32. Funk, Erich Fromm, 136–138; Gertrud Hunziker-Fromm, TRI by LJF, Zurich, May 9, 10, 2004; Funk, PI by LJF, Tubingen, March 18, 200.
33. In Funk, Erich Fromm, 138, the Fromm archivist Rainer Funk published one of many notes of deep affection Fromm wrote to Annis Freeman. It typifies the epistles Fromm wrote to Annis not only while they were engaged to be married but for the next several decades.
35. Gertrud Hunziker-Fromm, TRI by LJF, May 9, 2004 (including reference to the suicide pledge after Annis was operated on for cancer); Hunziker-Fromm, PI by LJF, Zurich, July 30, 2003; Maccoby, TRI by LJF, Feb. 2, 2003; Dec. 18, 19, 2008. Funk, PI by LJF, Locarno, May 8, 2004, Hernando Ibarra, TRI by LJF, Cuernavaca, March 19, 2004, corroborating the cancer surgery and describing differences between Annis and Erich that seemed to endear them to each other. Sandy Lee Maccoby, TRI by LJF, Washington, D.C., Feb. 2, 2003, recalling as next-door neighbors in Cuernavaca how Annis was glamorous, worshipped Erich, and taught the principles of astrology. Fromm to Selver, Dec. 2, 1952, on initial contact with Annis, Fromm Archive.
36. Jorge Silva Garcia, “Fromm in Mexico,” 245; Silva Garcia, TRI by LJF, Mexico City, March 21, 2004. See also Michael Maccoby, TRI by LJF, Washington, D.C., Feb. 2, 2003.
37. The best source on Fromm’s food and drink and cigar favorites in Mexico is one of Alicia Garcia’s son’s, Hernando Ibarra. See Ibarra, TRI by LJF, Cuernavaca, March 19, 2004. On Fromm’s love for Hassidic music and the piano: Silva Garcia TRI by LJF, Mexico City, March 21, 2004; and Silva Garcia to John Reichert, June 1, 1985. On Fromm’s Buick, cigars, and Hassidic music: Michael Maccoby, TRI by LJF, Washington, D.C., Feb. 2, 2003. On New Year’s Day Alaskan salmon: Rainer Funk, PI by LJF, Tubingen, May 15, 2004. On “Erich Fromm punch” and the love of baked goods: Salvador Millán, PI by LJF, Mexico City, March 21, 2004.
38. Carmen Delachica owned the Fromm’s Cuernavaca house from 1976 until her death in 2005, and she let me walk through it and the grounds leisurely in March 2004 and answered a great many of my questions about the estate. See also Delachica, TRI by LJF, Cuernavaca, March 19, 2004.
39. Ibid., plus Hernando Ibarra, TRI by LJF, Cuernavaca, March 19, 2004.
40. These particulars of Fromm’s joyous everyday life in Cuernavaca are reported in Michael Maccoby, TRI by LJF, Washington D.C., Feb. 2, 2003; and especially Maccoby, PI by LJF, Cambridge, April 14, 2012. Salvador Millán, PI by LJF, Mexico City, March 20, 21, 2004. Jorge Silva Garcia TRI by LJF, Mexico City, March 21, 2004.
41. Rainer Funk, “Titles by Erich Fromm,” Fromm Archive, lists the sales figures and translations of all of Fromm’s books by 1997 (at which time, The Art of Loving had been translated into thirty-three languages). In Funk, Erich Fromm, 139, Funk writes that the book had been translated into fifty languages. The Art of Loving was by far the best seller and the most frequently translated volume.
42. Fromm, The Art of Loving (repr. New York: Continuum Centennial Edition, 2000), 97–120.
43. Ibid., chap. 3, addressed why love was so difficult to fathom in modern Western capitalist society. Fromm took issue with Freud on 83; see 93 on love only occurring when “two people experience themselves from the essence of their existence.” Maslow made extensive notes between 1957 and 1968 on Fromm’s writings, especially Man for Himself but also The Art of Loving, as evident in the Maslow collection in the History of American Psychology Archive at the University of Akron.
44. Fromm, The Art of Loving, 24.
45. Ibid., 42, 52 n. 13, responding to Tillich. John N. Schaar, Escape from Authority: The Perspectives of Erich Fromm (New York: Basic Books, 1961), 134–136, makes a very cogent case against Fromm’s conflation of self-love, love of another, and love of humankind. Love, Schaar insists, is not an embrace of all of humanity but of particular human beings with unique characteristics in specific contexts.
46. Fromm, The Art of Loving, 42–44.
49. Ibid., 57–74, esp. 63, 73–74. Fromm’s secularism and his cultural Judaism from this point on in his life were well characterized in Moshe Budmor, TI by LJF, April 22, 2008; and Rainer Funk, PI by LJF, Tubingen, July 15, 2003.
50. Fromm, The Art of Loving, 95–96.
51. Joshua Loth Liebman, Peace of Mind (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1946). For perhaps the most penetrating of all discussions of Liebman and his book, see Andrew R. Heinze, Jews and the American Soul: Human Nature in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004), 217–239.
52. Fromm, The Art of Loving, 97–100.
57. Clara Thompson to Erich Fromm, Nov. 24, 1956, Fromm Archive.
58. For sales figures on The Art of Loving, the most comprehensive data comes from the Fromm Archive. Various editions of the book advertise sales figures on the book jackets. Rainer Funk synthesized much of the sales data in a May 6, 2008, letter to me; other figures are available in Funk, Erich Fromm, 139. I personally saw the volume in the window of the Harvard Cooperative on Valentine’s Day 2008 and in all subsequent years. Indeed, a month before February 14, 2012, the Coop had stocked dozens of copies, anticipatory of Valentine’s Day purchases.
7. Politics and Prose
1. Lawrence S. Wittner, Resisting the Bomb: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1954–1970 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1997), 52; and Rainer Funk, Erich Fromm: His Life and Ideas (New York: Continuum, 2000), 141, on Fromm’s role in the founding of SANE.
2. Long-term sales figures for The Sane Society are noted in Rainer Funk, “Titles by Erich Fromm,” Fromm Archive, Tubingen. On the growing number of lectures he was asked to give after The Sane Society: Fromm to Richard Schifter, July 29, 1960, Fromm Archive. Fromm’s summary of the book (“The Present Human Condition”) appeared in Perspectives 16 (Summer 1956): 71–77. On the Gay lecture: New York Times (April 26, 1957). On The Sane Society and the widespread currency of the arguments Fromm made in it: Fromm to Thomas L. Merton, April 13, 1955; Merton to Fromm, Sept. 12, 1955, Fromm Archive.
3. Erich Fromm, The Sane Society (New York: Rinehart and Winston, 1955; repr. Owl Books, 1990), vii–viii, 3–21.
4. Ibid., 30–36. “Love is”: 31.
5. “To create” and “if I cannot create life”: ibid., 37. On matriarchy, patriarchy, and brotherly love: 44–45. “An inalienable right”: 57. On identity: 60–62. On a frame of orientation with “an object of devotion”: 63–65.
6. “As a business grows”: Fromm, Sane Society, 86, 94–99. Quoting Stevenson and asserting “We do not submit”: 102.
7. Ibid., 131–134, citing and deploying the 1844 Marx.
8. On Marx’s utopianism: ibid., 236. On the current embrace of humanist activities: 207. Delineating the qualities of a sane society: 276.
9. Ibid., 295–336, esp. 295, 331, 335–336; Fromm, “The Present Human Condition,” The American Scholar 25 (Winter 1955–1956): esp. 35.
10. Fromm, Sane Society, 339–343.
11. “Here again”: ibid., 350. “Act out” and the meaning of “collective art”: 347–348.
12. On education: ibid., 344–346. On humanistic religion: 349–352.
13. Although there is a good deal of scholarship on the young Marcuse, perhaps the most penetrating remains Richard King, The Party of Eros: Radical Social Thought and the Realm of Freedom (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972), chap. 4.
14. For excellent discussions on Dissent’s early years and positions, and especially the perspectives of Howe and Coser on Fromm and related matters, see Maurice Isserman, If I Had a Hammer: The Death of the Old Left and the Birth of the New Left (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 89–108; and Joanne Barkan, “Cold War Liberals and the Birth of Dissent,” Dissent (Summer 2006): 95–102.
15. Herbert Marcuse, “The Social Implications of Freudian ‘Revisionism,’” Dissent 2, no. 3 (Summer 1955): 221–240; Paul Goodman, “The Political Meaning of Some Recent Revisions of Freud,” Politics 2, no. 7 (July 1945): 198–202.
16. Marcuse, “The Social Implications of Freudian ‘Revisionism,’” 231–234, 238–239.
17. Erich Fromm, “The Human Implications of Instinctive ‘Radicalism,’” Dissent 2, no. 4 (Autumn 1955): 342–349.
19. Herbert Marcuse, “A Reply to Erich Fromm,” Dissent 3, no. 1 (Winter 1956): 79–81.
20. Erich Fromm, “A Counter-Rebuttal,” Dissent 3, no. 1 (Winter 1956): 81–83.
21. For prominent intellectuals who largely reiterated Marcuse’s critique of Fromm, see, e.g., H. Stuart Hughes, The Sea Change: 1930–1965 (New York: Harper & Row, 1975); Paul Robinson, The Freudian Left (New York: Harper & Row, 1969); Russell Jacoby, Social Amnesia: Conformist Psychology from Adler to Laing (Boston: Beacon Press, 1975); Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism (New York: Basic Books, 1979). Neil McLaughlin’s remark is from his article “Origin Myths in the Social Sciences: Fromm, the Frankfurt School, and the Emergence of Critical Theory,” Canadian Journal of Sociology 24, no. 1 (1999): 109–139.
22. On Fromm’s recall of the train incident with Marcuse: Gertrud Hunziker-Fromm, TRI by LJF, Zurich, May 10, 2004. On Marcuse asking for a review of One-Dimensional Man and Fromm politely refusing: Marcuse to Fromm, Dec. 8, 1963; Fromm to Marcuse, January 8, 1964, Fromm Archive. Fromm to Raya Dunayevskaya, July 31, 1968; Fromm to Margit Norell, June 28, 1971, Fromm Papers, New York Public Library. In a letter to Fromm, Nov. 30, 1976, Fromm Archive, Dunayevskaya suggested that the fact that Fromm had been far more critical of Israel during the 1950s than Marcuse may have been an unstated factor in his attack on Fromm.
23. Fromm detailed his income and some of his donations during the 1950s and early 1960s in letters to his attorney Richard Schifter, April 17, 1959; July 29, 1960; June 3, 1960, Fromm Archive. Schifter put much of this data together in a memorandum: “In the Matter of Erich Fromm—Memorandum of Law and Fact” (1960), Fromm Archive.
24. A copy of Fromm’s full FBI file (where his name is misspelled “Erick”) was procured under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act and can be found in the Fromm Archive. Fromm to Norman Thomas, John Bennett, Lewis Mumford, Clarence Pickett, Max Lerner, Daniel Bell, Stephen Siteman, April 22, 1955, Fromm Archive, fashioning the public letter to the president on America’s China policy. David Riesman to Rainer Funk, Oct. 10, 1980, Fromm Archive, outlining in considerable detail his work with Fromm and Fromm’s funding for AFSC and the Committee on Correspondence. See also Fromm to Adam Schaff, May 8, 1962; Fromm to Thomas Merton, Nov. 3, 1960; Karl Polanyi, June 22, 1960; and Fromm to Polanyi, Nov. 21, 1960; Fromm to Bertrand Russell, Nov. 6, 1962; and Russell to Fromm, July 22, 1966, all in Fromm Archive.
25. Erich Fromm to Adlai Stevenson, Nov. 15, 1952, Fromm Archive. Fromm to Charlotte Selver, Nov. 15, 1952, Fromm Archive, indicates he had donated to the 1952 Stevenson campaign.
26. Adlai Stevenson to Erich Fromm, Nov. 26, 1952, Fromm Archive.
27. Fromm to Stevenson, March 24, 1954, Fromm Archive.
30. David Riesman to Rainer Funk, Oct. 10, 1980, Fromm Archive, notes the details of his and Fromm’s 1956 meeting with Stevenson.
31. Stevenson to Fromm, Oct. 23, 1961; Fromm to Stevenson, January 20, 1961, Fromm Archive.
32. Stevenson to Fromm, May 1, 1962; Fromm to Stevenson, May 31, 1962, Sept. 15, 1962, Fromm Archive. Emphasizing how Fromm got documents on Germany unavailable to high U.S. officials and how he used this material to explain the Soviet relationship to the United States: Riesman to Funk, Oct. 10, 1980, Fromm Archive.
33. For a few illustrations of the strong personal dimension in the Riesman-Fromm political activist correspondence, see Riesman to Fromm, June 18, 1973, March 20, 1974; Fromm to Riesman, Oct. 9, 1947, April 19, 1955 (on life insurance), Feb. 1, March 6, 1975, Feb. 12, 1976. All letters are in the Fromm Archive.
34. On Riesman’s background in law and the public sphere: Wilfred M. McClay, The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 236. On his and Fromm’s early efforts in countering Zionism and pushing for a binational state in Palestine: Riesman to Rainer Funk, Oct. 10, 1980. On the Commentary article: Riesman to Fromm, Oct. 19, 1947. Recalling their work to secure a change in U.S. policy toward Israel: Riesman to Fromm, Dec. 17. 1973. On Israel’s “Sampson [sic] complex”: Riesman to Fromm, January 13, 1975. All letters are in the Fromm Archive.
35. Riesman to Funk, Oct. 10, 1980, Fromm Archive, provides the most detailed information available on how Riesman guided Fromm into a diversity of political activist ventures over the course of the 1950s and early 1960s, especially the Committee on Correspondence. See also Riesman to Brian R. Betz, Aug. 15, 1972, Fromm Archive.
36. On how Congressmen “find their relations with the Jewish community”: J. William Fulbright to Erich Fromm, Nov. 25, 1975. “Your observations” and how to “be persuasive with the American Jewish community”: Dec. 22, 1973. Urging Fromm to write to the New York Times: n.d. (1973). Urging Fromm to publish in a variety of national publications: Fulbright to Fromm, Aug. 21, 1975. All letters between Fulbright and Fromm are in both the Fulbright Papers at the University of Arkansas and in the Fromm Archive.
37. Fulbright to Fromm, May 7, 1968, and April 1, 1974, acknowledges Fromm’s substantial contributions to the Fulbright reelection campaigns. Offering advice on campaign themes: Fromm to Fulbright, n.d. (Spring 1968). On testifying before Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings: Fulbright to Fromm, April 11, 1972; Fromm to Fulbright, June 10, 1974. On the centrality of Fromm to Fulbright’s intellectual stimulation: Fulbright’s biographer, Randall Wood, to LJF, Dec. 17, 2008. See, pertinent to this point, Tristram Coffin to David Riesman, Oct. 10, 1966; Coffin to Fromm, Nov. 6, 1966, both in Fromm Archive.
38. “We did enjoy so much seeing you and Annis”: Fulbright to Fromm, April 25, 1968. On health issues and surgeries for their wives and the zest for life evident in Erich and Annis: Fulbright to Fromm, Nov. 24, 1975. “Tocqueville was right”: Fulbright to Fromm, n.d. (1973). On Fromm’s finding an “inner questioning” in America: Fulbright to Fromm, Oct. 31, 1967. “You are so much a man resting in himself”: Fromm to Fulbright, June 10, 1974. On Fromm contributing to the campaign and on sources for the Fulbright defeat: Tristram Coffin to David Riesman, March 30, June 23, May 18, 1974. All in Fromm Archive. On donating to the campaign: Fromm to Michael Maccoby, April 11, 1974 (Maccoby private papers).
39. Erich Fromm, “The Case for Unilateral Disarmament,” Daedalus (Fall 1960), reprinted in Arms Control, Disarmament, and National Security, ed. Donald G. Brennan (New York: George Braziller, 1961), 187–197. Much of the exchange between Kennedy and Daedalus’s editor Gerald Holton is available in the archival holdings of the American Academy in Cambridge and supplemented by several discussions I had with Holton in June 2009 and May 2012. Discussions with Michael Maccoby in April 2011 focused on what Kennedy had read of Fromm’s, the 1960 Daedalus article, and Fulbright and Stevenson acquainting Kennedy with Fromm’s foreign policy perspectives.
40. Michael Maccoby elaborates the “Harvard connection” quite cogently in Maccoby, TRI by LJF, Washington, D.C., Feb. 2, 2003; Maccoby, TI by LJF, Jan. 16, 2007; Maccoby, PI by LJF, Apr. 14, 2012.
41. On Maccoby’s thoughts on Kennedy’s contact with Fromm: Maccoby, TI by LJF, Jan. 16, 2007; Maccoby, PI by LJF, Cambridge, April 14, 2012.
42. On several occasions in the 1990s, both Riesman and Kaysen told me that Kennedy contacted Fromm soon after the Cuban Missile Crisis. Riesman showed me his notes to that effect and was known for his accuracy and his memory. Kaysen’s account of the Kennedy contact comported in all essentials with Riesman’s. While Fromm never recounted to Maccoby the direct Kennedy contact with him, Maccoby felt it was entirely possible. Maccoby, PI by LJF, Apr. 14, 2012. Also see Riesman to Funk, Oct. 10, 1980, Fromm Archive.
43. Robert Dallek, An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917–1963 (Boston: Little, Brown, 2003), 613–623; “far more security and far fewer risks”: 620. I am especially indebted to Professor Dallek for helping me to understand how Bundy saw to it that the president knew of all perspectives (including Fromm’s) on international relations concerns.
8. Prophecies for a Troubled World
1. Sales figures are 1997 estimates by Rainer Funk, Fromm’s literary executor.
2. Erich Fromm, “Credo,” in Beyond the Chains of Illusion: My Encounter with Marx and Freud (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1962; repr. New York: Continuum, 2001), 175–177.
6. Rainer Funk, Erich Fromm: His Life and Ideas (New York: Continuum, 2000), 136, reproduces Fromm’s 1953 wedding dinner photograph. It and other photographs of Fromm with his mother are found in abundance in the Fromm Archive, Tubingen. On bringing Rosa to his Cuernavaca home owing to her depression: Fromm to Izette de Forest, Oct. 31, 1957, Fromm Archive. The Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv in Wiesbaden has extensive records of Fromm’s restitution actions (register no. W 54353) through Paul Simon on Rosa’s behalf beginning in 1958 and extending to 1965, several years after her death. Beyond official documents, it houses several very revealing letters written by Simon to German authorities explaining the course of the legal actions and underscoring Fromm’s distress with the process. On Fromm’s sense of relief and energy with Rosa’s death in 1959, confirming my own sense of the sparse documentary record: Rainer Funk, e-mails to LJF, Oct. 12, 13, 2006.
7. Rainer Funk, “Krankheiten”: an incomplete list of Fromm’s bouts of illness from 1932 to 1978, based on letters in the Fromm Archive. Fromm’s correspondence with Adam Schaff, Angelica Balabanoff, and Clara Urquhart reveals considerably more illnesses, hospitalizations, and general periods of convalescence during the 1960s than Funk’s long list indicates. Funk, Erich Fromm, 150, reports Annis’s bout with breast cancer, and it is alluded to in several of Fromm’s letters to friends. Salvador Millán, PI by LJF, Mar. 17, 2004, Mexico City, discusses Annis’s breast cancer in some detail and her limited diet, which Fromm shared for a year as a token of support.
8. Paul Roazen, “The Exclusion of Erich Fromm from the IPA,” Contemporary Psychoanalysis 37, no. 1 (2001): 5–42, is the most detailed account. It is based heavily on Fromm–Eissler correspondence in the Fromm Archive. The most important letters in this correspondence are Fromm to Eissler, May 28, 1953; Eissler to Fromm, Jun. 11, 1953; Fromm to Eissler, Jun. 29, 1953 (“my psychoanalytic views do not correspond”); Eissler to Fromm, Jul. 27, 1953; Fromm to Eissler, Aug. 26, 1953.
9. For Fromm’s growing difficulties with the Washington Psychoanalytic Society, see, e.g., Stanley Olinick to Fromm, May 20, 1955; Fromm to Olinick, May 31, 1955; Fromm to Sidney Berman, March 5, 1959; and Berman to Fromm, Mar. 30, 1959, all in Fromm Archive. For Fromm’s efforts in establishing the International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies, see Funk, Erich Fromm, 134–135; Roazen, “Exclusion of Fromm,” 37.
10. The evolution of Fromm’s critique of the three-volume Jones biography of Freud is clearly indicated in Fromm to Izette de Forest, Oct. 31, Nov. 14, Dec. 10, 1957, Jun. 14, 1958; de Forest to Fromm, Feb. 18, Oct. 22, Nov. 6, Dec. 17, 1957, May 25, 1958, all in Fromm Archive. On praising Sigmund Freud’s Mission: David Riesman to Fromm, Feb 10, 1959, Riesman papers, Harvard Archives.
11. Erich Fromm, Sigmund Freud’s Mission: An Analysis of His Personality and Influence (New York: Harper and Row, 1959), 115–117.
12. Ibid., 117–119, 106–108.
13. Ibid., 107–111, summarizes his critique of Freud and his movement, especially the four essential problem areas discussed earlier in the manuscript.
14. Erich Fromm, Marx’s Concept of Man (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1961), 1 n. 1, 43.
15. Ibid., 33–39, 41–43, 69.
16. Ibid., 80–83. Some of the strongest scholarship on Marx is available in Theodor von Laue’s books and articles, which are more comprehensive than Fromm’s characterization.
17. Fromm, Beyond the Chains of Illusion, 88–89, 100–101.
19. Ibid., 12, 26, 43–44 n. 1, 45–47, 49.
20. Ibid., 67–70. Fromm to Thomas Louis Merton, Oct. 6, 1961, Fromm Archive.
21. “Comes so close to my own feeling”: Fromm to Merton, Oct. 9, 1961, Fromm Archive.
22. Fromm to Karl Polanyi, Apr. 14, 1960, Fromm Archive.
23. Fromm to Robert J. Alexander, Aug. 29, 1958, Fromm Archive, accepting membership on the Socialist Party-Social Democratic Federation National Committee and agreeing to write What Is Socialism? Fromm to Karl Polanyi, Apr. 14, May 4, Nov. 21, 1960, Fromm Archive, recalling his decision to join the Socialist Party and concerning his lectures to students based on early drafts of the manifesto. See also Fromm to Werner Thonnessen, Jan. 23, 1960, Fromm Archive, sending a draft of the manifesto for translation and publication in Germany.
24. Erich Fromm, Let Man Prevail: A Socialist Manifesto and Program (New York: The Call Association, 1960), 10–11, 18–19.
29. Ibid., esp. 3. See Fromm to Miss Larry Gulotta, Aug. 22, 1969, Fromm Archive, on how he was “puzzled” that his manifesto “has been bought by so many people, and yet the number of people within the Socialist Party who would stand for its ideas, is so small.”
30. Rainer Funk, “Titles from Erich Fromm” (1997), Fromm Archive, on sales figures and translations for May Man Prevail? On taking “a year off from my regular writing to work on this book” and pegging it to Congress through advanced mimeographed copies: Fromm to J. William Fulbright, Sept. 7, 1974, Fromm Archive.
31. Erich Fromm, May Man Prevail? An Inquiry Into the Facts and Fictions of Foreign Policy (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday-Anchor, 1961), ix, xi.
32. Ibid., 42–46. In Fromm to Angelica Balabanoff, Oct. 14, 1961, Fromm Archive, he acknowledges that Lenin too practiced centralized terrorism but aimed for a socialist society rather than Stalin’s “reactionary state capitalism.”
33. Fromm to Tristram Coffin, Nov. 16, 1966, Fromm Archive; Fromm, May Man Prevail? 47, 81, 84–85.
34. Fromm, May Man Prevail? 111, 135–138. See also Fromm, “Khrushchev and the Cold War” (unpublished 1961 paper, Fromm Archive).
35. Erich Fromm, “The New Communist Program” (1961), Fromm Archive.
36. Fromm, May Man Prevail? 142–145, 150–151. It is interesting that Fromm drew heavily on Robert J. Lifton, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism (New York: W. W. Norton, 1961), for his crucial discussion of the Chinese approach to thought reform.
37. Fromm, May Man Prevail? 147, 150–152, 157–158. Fromm considerably enlarges upon these comments on China in “Memo on Foreign Policy” (unpublished ms., 1965), Fromm Archive.
38. Fromm, May Man Prevail? 162–164; Fromm, “Memo on Foreign Policy” (1965).
39. Fromm, May Man Prevail? 167–168.
42. Ibid., 185, 195–199, 207; Erich Fromm, “The Case for Unilateral Disarmament,” Daedalus 89, no. 4 (Fall 1960): 1015–1028. The parallel to C. Wright Mills’s The Causes of World War Three (1958) becomes especially striking in Daniel Geary, “Becoming International Again: C. Wright Mills and the Emergence of the Global New Left, 1956–1962,” Journal of American History 95, no. 3 (December 2008): 723–725. Charles O. Lerche Jr., The Cold War and After (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1965), on the early 1960s accord on no first use between the United States and the Soviets.
43. Fromm, May Man Prevail? 217–221. Fromm to Bertrand Russell, Nov. 16, 1962, Fromm Archive, elaborates considerably on his solution to Berlin as a solution to the entire German “problem.”
44. Fromm, May Man Prevail? 157–161, 226–230. See also Fromm, “Remarks on a Realistic Foreign Policy” (1961), Fromm Archive, written in conjunction with May Man Prevail?
45. Fromm, May Man Prevail? 230–239; on Yugoslavian growth with freedom: 230 n. 48; “they will act as a dam”: 239.
9. A Third Way
1. Karl Polanyi to Fromm, March 18,1960, January 13, 1961, Fromm Archive, Tubingen.
2. Fromm to Angelica Balabanoff, Aug. 27, 1963. Fromm to Clara Urquhart, Apr. 18, Oct. 1, 1963. All of these letters are in the Fromm Archive.
3. Fromm to Urquhart, Apr. 18, Oct. 1, 1963, Fromm Archive. Fromm’s first mention of the Humanist Studies venture can be found in a letter dated Jan. 23, 1960, to Thönnessen, where Fromm mentions sending one hundred letters, receiving five positive answers. In a letter to Karl Polanyi dated Apr. 14, 1960, Fromm notes “the alternative between Western capitalism.” On Rahner and others like him: Fromm to Adam Schaff, Oct. 5, 1963, Fromm Archive.
4. On “what they represent as human beings” and the “spirit” of democratic socialism: Fromm to Adam Schaff, Nov. 8, 1963, Fromm Archive. On the board of editors Fromm selected in 1963 for Humanist Studies and the failure of the venture: Rainer Funk, Erich Fromm: His Life and Ideas (New York: Continuum, 2000), 148. On the mailing of one hundred letters with only four replies: Fromm to Polanyi, Apr. 19, 1960. Repeated references to the strains on Fromm’s financial resources can be found in the Fromm-Riesman correspondence about the Committee of Correspondence. For several examples, see Riesman to Fromm, Jun. 12, 1962 (“In every way you are much the most generous among us … it won’t surprise you to know that those who can least afford it on the whole (not including me) give the most”); Fromm to Riesman, Feb. 19, 1963 (“I am at the moment somewhat short of funds”); Riesman to Fromm, Mar. 4, 1964, (“it is heroic what you have managed to do in the light of all the other demands on your resources.”) All three letters in Riesman papers, Harvard Archive.
5. On Cardenas: Fromm to Urquhart, Jan. 5, 1962. Fromm to A. J. Muste, Aug. 20, 1963; Fromm to Paulo Freire, Oct. 14, 1966, Mar. 22, 1968; Fromm to Raya Dunayevskaya, Oct. 29, 1966. Bottomore to Fromm, Dec. 7, 1973; Bottomore to Brian Betz, Jul. 17, 1972. All in Fromm Archive.
6. Fromm to Angelica Balabanoff, Jul. 16, 1964; Fromm to Raya Dunayevskaya, Oct. 29, 1966, warning of the danger of consumerism and “materialist interest in money.” Balabanoff to Fromm, n.d. All three letters in Fromm Archive.
7. Funk, Erich Fromm, 147; Mihailo Marković to Fromm, Oct. 15, 1971, Fromm Archive; Mihailo Markovic and Robert S. Cohen, Yugoslavia: The Rise and Fall of Socialist Humanism: A History of the Praxis Group (Nottingham: Spokesman Books, 1975).
8. On protesting to Tito and other Yugoslavian officials: Fromm to Gajo Petrović, Feb. 10, 1975. Fromm to Dragoslav Markovic (president of Serbia), Nov. 15, 1974; Fromm to Toma Granfil (Yugoslav ambassador to the United States), Nov. 15, 1974, Mar. 15 and Oct. 1, 1975, all in Fromm Archive.
9. For information on Schaff, I draw heavily on his correspondence with Fromm in the Fromm Archive and from Erich Fromm, ed., Socialist Humanism: An International Symposium (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966), 141.
10. Fromm to Schaff, May 8, 1962, Fromm Archive, and referencing Schaff’s Mar. 21 letter to him, which is not in the archive.
11. On their common “essence” and “my respect”: Fromm to Schaff, Mar. 9, 1964. Approving of Schaff’s interests in linking Marxism to psychoanalysis: Fromm to Schaff, Aug. 30, 1966. Admiring him as a person: Fromm to Schaff, Oct. 4, 1966. All letters in Fromm Archive.
12. On promoting Fromm’s books in Poland and the success of The Art of Loving: Schaff to Fromm, May 23, 1973. Fromm to Norman Thomas, Aug. 19, 1966. Fromm to Richard B. Fisher, Apr. 6, 1965; and to Thomas Kelley, Mar. 9, 1969, pushing Schaff’s book with McGraw-Hill. Fromm reports to Schaff on his contacts with McGraw-Hill in Fromm to Schaff, Mar. 9, 1969: all in Fromm Archive. Adam Schaff, Marxism and the Human Individual (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1970), ix–xii, representing Fromm’s laudatory introduction to this American edition.
13. On “the scope and aliveness”: Fromm’s introduction to Schaff, Marxism and the Human Individual, xi n. 1. “No longer a concern of a few dispersed intellectuals”: Fromm, Socialist Humanism, x. “A volume of an international nature”: Fromm to Schaff, May 8, 1962. Rainer Funk, “Titles by Erich Fromm,” 1997, Fromm Archive, listing the global sales figures and translations for Socialist Humanism.
14. Fromm to contributors to Socialist Humanism, Apr. 21, 1963 (Fromm Archive) establishing the financial arrangements, the guidelines for the articles, and the focus on intellectuals and students. Fromm to D. T. Suzuki, Apr. 29, 1964, and Fromm to Schaff, Mar. 9, 1964, both in Fromm Archive.
15. On the importance of what a contributor stood for as a human being and on the decision to exclude Garaudy: Fromm to Norman Thomas, Aug. 18, 1962; Fromm to Schaff, Nov. 8, 1963. On excluding Garaudy: Fromm to Schaff, Feb. 8, 1964. On including Marcuse’s contribution: Fromm to Schaff, Mar. 9, 1964. All in Fromm Archive.
16. Fromm to Herbert Marcuse, Jan. 8, 1964; Fromm to Raya Dunayevskaya, Apr. 15, 1964; Fromm to Adam Schaff, Mar. 9 and Aug. 5, 1964. All in Fromm Archive.
17. The clearest and richest elaboration of these themes defining humanist socialism in Socialist Humanism are by Danilo Pejović (199–210), Adam Schaff (141–150), and Milan Prucha (151–161).
18. Considering dedicating Socialist Humanism to Brandt: Fromm to Adam Schaff, Mar. 9, 1964, Fromm Archive.
19. Erich Fromm’s foreword to Heinz Brandt, The Search for a Third Way: My Path Between East and West (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1970), xi–xvi; Fromm to Peter Benenson, Nov. 22, 1963, including his short essay on Brandt as a “Man of Faith.” Brandt to Schaff, Mar. 9, 1964. Fromm memo re. letter from Mr. Gotsche, Jan. 2, 1964. All in Fromm Archive. Knud Andersen, Widerspruch als Lebensprinzip: Der undogmatische Sozialist Heinz Brandt (1909–1986) (Bonn: Dietz, 2007), chap. 5, is especially helpful on the Brandt conflict with the GDR in the early 1960s.
20. On Brandt’s damaged hand: Fromm to Clara Urquhart, Feb. 27, 1964. On Brandt’s purported immoralities: Fromm memo re. letter from Mr. Gotsche, Jan. 2, 1964. On the letters to world leaders he has written: Fromm to Annelie Brandt, Dec. 27, 1961. On paying for the Canon Collins trip: Fromm to Annelie Brandt, Oct. 16, 1962. On the Collins trip and contact with the Peace Union in West Germany: Fromm to Peter Benenson, Aug. 17, 1962, Fromm Archive.
21. Fromm to Clara Urquhart, Oct. 20, 1963, providing a detailed description of Annelie Brandt. The Fromm–Annelie Brandt correspondence in the Fromm Archive is extremely helpful.
22. On attending to her financial needs: Fromm to Annelie Brandt, Jan. 2, 1963. On the member of the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee: Fromm to Annelie Brandt, Dec. 6, 1961. On avoiding making the Ulbricht government “more rigid”: Fromm to Annelie Brandt, May 30, 1962. On the pamphlet or book: Fromm to Annelie Brandt, Jan. 5, Sept. 29, 1962. See also Annelie Brandt to Fromm, Aug. 1, 1962. All in Fromm Archive.
23. Fromm to Peter Benenson, Aug. 17, Sept. 21, Oct. 3, 1962; Mar. 15, May 31, 1963; Jan. 20, 1964. Benenson to Fromm, Sept. 3, Oct. 15, 1962; Feb. 20, May 16, 1963. On the importance of the Amnesty “prisoner of the year” announcement and on his work with Benenson: see also Fromm to Urquhart, Oct. 20, 1963. On the importance of the Russell connection: Fromm to Urquhart, Jan. 2, 1964.
24. Fromm to Bertrand Russell, May 30, 1962.
25. Bertrand Russell to Fromm, Jul. 1, 1962; Russell to President of the Moscow Conference on Disarmament, Jul. 4, 1962, both in Fromm Archive. See also Fromm to Michael Maccoby, Jul. 21, 1962, Fromm Archive.
26. Fromm reported on his strategic meetings and discussions with Russell in Fromm to Annelie Brandt, Aug. 28, 1963; and Fromm to Clara Urquhart, Jan. 2, 1964. A copy of Russell’s letter to Ulbricht, Jan. 26, 1963, is in the Fromm Archive. On meeting with Annelie and suggesting that Russell urge Ulbricht to allow Heinz Brandt to go to Sweden: Fromm to Russell, Dec. 14, 1963 (cable copy). On her crucial role in shaping these negotiations, particularly Russell’s response to Ulbricht, see Fromm to Annelie Brandt, Jun. 15, 1964.
27. The particulars of Russell returning the medal of honor and agreeing to write the article are reported in Fromm to Urquhart, Jan. 14, 1964. In this letter, Fromm also remarks on how Russell’s action made him “quite sad” but hoping that the Russians now might prod the GDR. On how Russell’s action closed off “discreet private appeals”: Charles Ellis to Urquhart, Jan. 31, 1964 (copy in Fromm Archive). “The only thing to do”: Fromm to Benenson, Jan. 20, 1964. Erich Fromm, “Prophets and Priests,” in Bertrand Russell, Philosopher of the Century: Essays in His Honor, ed. Ralph Schoenman (London: Allen & Unwin, 1967), 6–7, portrays Russell with some balance but also as Fromm would have liked to have seen himself.
28. Fromm, in Brandt, Search for a Third Way, xiv. Fromm to Annelie Brandt, Jun. 15, 1964; Fromm to Urquhart, Jan. 14, 1964 (misdated; actually Jan. 14, 1965). Both in Fromm Archive.
29. Fromm to Annelie Brandt, Jun. 15, 1964, instructing her on Heinz’s care, a vacation, and a visit with him. On the Brandts’ visit to Cuernavaca: Fromm to Urquhart, Jan. 14, 1964 (misdated; actually 1965); see also Benenson to Fromm, Dec. 14, 1964. All in Fromm Archive.
30. Fromm to Riesman, April 26, 1966, Riesman Papers, Harvard.
10. “Life Is Extravagance”: Almost
1. Fromm to Clara Urquhart, Sept. 29, 1962, Fromm Archive, Tubingen.
2. Erich Fromm, “War Within Man: A Psychological Inquiry into the Roots of Destructiveness” (Philadelphia: American Friends Service Committee, 1963), 4–8. This manuscript was initially titled “On the Psychological Causes of War,” which can be found in both the Fromm Papers, New York Public Library, and the Fromm Archive.
5. For Merton and Fromm: ibid., 28, 33. For Tillich, Morgenthau, and Fromm: 20–21, 31. For Frank, Sorokin, and Fromm: 19, 25–26, 32.
6. Erich Fromm, The Heart of Man: Its Genius for Good and Evil (New York: Harper & Row, 1964, 1968), esp. 37–61, 108–114, 148–150.
7. Sales figures are a 1997 estimation by Rainer Funk, Fromm’s literary executor.
8. Fromm, The Heart of Man, esp. 37–61, 108–114, 148–150.
10. Ibid., 20. Fromm to Ernst Simon, Jan. 7, 1977, Fromm Archive.
11. Fromm to Angelica Balabanoff, Jul. 16, 1964; Fromm to Thomas Merton, Feb. 7, 1966, both in Fromm Archive.
12. Fromm to Balabanoff, Jul. 16, 1964; Fromm to Clara Urquhart, Jul. 16, 1964; Fromm to Adam Schaff, Jan. 13, 1965; Fromm to Urquhart, Jan. 10, 1966. All in Fromm Archive.
13. Sales figures come from 1997 estimations by Rainer Funk, Fromm’s literary executor.
14. Erich Fromm, “For a Cooperation Between Jews and Arabs,” New York Times (April 18, 1948). Drafts of this Fromm-written public statement are in the Fromm Archive. On the Eichmann trial: Fromm letter to the editor, New York Times (June 17, 1960); Fromm to Balabanoff, Oct. 29, 1962, Fromm Archive. “Prophetic Messianism has always been”: Fromm to Schaff, Mar. 21, 1966. On “my deep roots in the humanistic tradition of Judaism, which, as I see it, the Israelis are thoroughly destroying by a reversal of all values”: see also Fromm to Mumford, Apr. 29, 1975, Fromm Archive.
15. Erich Fromm, You Shall Be as Gods: A Radical Interpretation of the Old Testament and Its Tradition (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966), 13.
17. Ibid., 31, 40, 42–44. For a very helpful discussion of this chain of Fromm’s thought, see Svante Lundgren’s Fight Against Idols: Erich Fromm on Religion, Judaism, and the Bible (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1998).
18. Fromm, You Shall Be as Gods, 57–62, 81, 226–227.
19. Ibid., 202–203, 207–208, 220.
20. Ibid., 220–221. For a brilliant comment on Fromm’s chapter on the psalms, see Marianne Horney Eckardt, “The Theme of Hope in Erich Fromm’s Writing,” Contemporary Psychoanalysis 18, no. 1 (1982): esp. 145–46. See also Rainer Funk, Erich Fromm: His Life and Ideas (New York: Continuum, 2000), 53–54, on Rabinkow’s lifelong importance to Fromm.
21. Fromm, You Shall Be as Gods, 197–99. Also see Erich Fromm, “Meaning of the Sabbath,” in Jewish Heritage Reader, ed. Lily Edelman (New York: Taplinger, 1965), 138–141.
22. Fromm, You Shall Be as Gods, 117–118. In addition to Camus’ The Rebel (1951), I am underscoring a persisting theme in Robert J. Lifton’s writing: the revolutionary “totalist” who felt compelled to do more than bump against societal ills.
23. For cogent discussions of SANE during the years of the Vietnam War and Fromm’s role in the organization, see Milton S. Katz, Ban the Bomb: A History of SANE (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986); and Lawrence Wittner, Resisting the Bomb: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1954–1970 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1997). Wittner to LJF (e-mail), April 27, 28, 2011, was exceedingly helpful in understanding schisms within SANE at the time and other internal issues. So was Swarthmore College Peace Collection Curator Wendy Chmielewski, TI, April 29, 2011.
24. Erich Fromm, “The War in Viet Nam and the Brutalization of Man,” delivered at SANE Madison Square Garden Rally, Dec. 8, 1966, Fromm Papers. The address may also be found in the Fromm Archive.
25. Michael Maccoby, telephone interview by LJF, Jan. 16, 2007, recalling the details of the Madison Square Garden rally and the subsequent heart attack. See also Funk, Erich Fromm, 153.
26. Fromm to Aniceto Aramoni, Feb. 7, 1967; Fromm to Adam Schaff, Apr. 10, 1967, both in Fromm Archive. Fromm to Schaff, Apr. 26, June 24, 1967, Fromm Archive, on his short trips from Locarno. See also Funk, Erich Fromm, 153; and Salvador Millán, “Tangible Memories” (2008). 1967 Executive Sessions of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee were made public in 2007, and the session where Fromm was discussed is to be found in vol. 19 of the proceedings of the 1st session of the 90th Congress.
27. On cardiac “repetitions”: Fromm to Adam Schaff, Aug. 29, 1967, Fromm Archive. Much of the data on Fromm’s health problems and concerns and those of his wives have been reviewed in earlier chapters. Two of his close friends viewed the 1966 heart attack heavily in this larger health context. See, e.g., Marianne Horney Eckardt, PI by LJF, Laguna Hills, Calif., Feb. 3, 2007; and Gertrud Hunziker-Fromm, TRI by LJF, Zurich, May 9, 2004.
28. Erich Fromm, “The Psychological Problem of Aging,” Journal of Rehabilitation (October 1966), reprinted in Erich Fromm, On Disobedience and Other Essays (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984), 117–132. The article may also be found in the Fromm Papers.
11. Hope and Stasis
1. Michael Maccoby, “Fromm Didn’t Want to Be a Frommian,” in The Clinical Erich Fromm, ed. Rainer Funk (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009), 141–143, which closely approximates Maccoby, TI by LJF, Jan. 16, 2007, on Fromm’s deeper embrace of spirituality after the heart attack. Gerald Holton, PI by LJF, June 5, 2009; and Nina Holton, PI by LJF, May 6, 2012, both recall their friend, Erich Fromm, recounting that the actress Elizabeth Taylor was one of his patients in Cuernevaca and how she would lie down and pretend she was dead while having sexual intercourse. It is, of course, unclear whether this connected to the part of Fromm’s meditation ritual where he would lie on the floor to practice dying. What is clear is that Fromm was violating patient confidentiality.
2. There is a modest file in the Fromm Archive indicating Fromm’s growing interest in the junior senator from Minnesota and on Fromm’s role in the 1968 campaign. The best study of the Senator’s life and the 1968 campaign is Dominic Sandbrook, Eugene McCarthy and the Rise and Fall of Postwar American Liberalism (New York: Random House, 2005). For the campaign and the broader context of U.S. developments in 1968, see Jules Witcover, The Year the Dream Died: Revisiting 1968 (New York: Warner Brothers, 1977). There is also value in consulting Eugene McCarthy and Christopher Hitchens, 1968: War and Democracy (Red Wing, Minn.: Lone Oak Press, 2000). See Riesman to Stewart Meacham, Mar. 21, 1968, Riesman Papers, Harvard Archive, on Fromm’s early interest in McCarthy.
3. Ibid., plus Fromm to Eugene McCarthy, April 13,15, 1968, Fromm Archive.
4. Sandbrook, Eugene McCarthy, chap. 9, represents the most cogent coverage of the 1968 New Hampshire primary where Johnson was “defeated.” Fromm to Eugene McCarthy, Apr. 15, 1968, Fromm Archive, contains Fromm’s response to Johnson’s speech withdrawing his candidacy.
5. Erich Fromm, “Memo on Political Alternatives,” Mar. 16, 1968, 1–6, Fromm Archive.
7. Fromm to Eugene McCarthy, Apr. 13, 1968, Fromm Archive.
8. Fromm to McCarthy, Apr. 15, 1968, Fromm Archive.
9. Erich Fromm, “Preface to the French Edition, The Revolution of Hope” (March 1970), first draft, Gerard Khoury private papers, Aix-en-Provence, reflecting on how the book broke from “academic fashion” and was profoundly “appealing to the love for life.” Fromm’s private reservations are best captured in his letter to Stewart Meacham of Feb. 3, 1968, Riesman Papers, Harvard Archive. The sales figures come from 1997 estimates by Rainer Funk, Fromm’s literary executor.
10. Fromm to Schaff, July 24, 1968; and Fromm to Gertrud Hunziker-Fromm, July 5, 1968; both in the Fromm Archive. The interview of Fromm by Frederick Rovekamp in May 1968 was published in Fromm Forum 9 (2005): 31–40.
11. Erich Fromm, “Why I Am for McCarthy,” Los Angeles Times (May 29, 1968; California Citizens for McCarthy advertisement). New York Times (July 14, 1968) covers the Fromm-Maccoby poll of Santa Cruz voters. McCarthy to Fromm, July 1968, inviting him to help acquire delegates, Fromm Archive. “The People’s Choice,” New York Review of Books 11, no. 3 (August 22, 1968) contains the appeal to convention delegates. It is signed by Fromm and others but is clearly in Fromm’s writing style. Humphrey received 1,761 delegate votes to 601 for McCarthy in the Democratic Party nominating convention.
12. Fromm to Gertrud Hunziker-Fromm, July 5, 1968; Fromm to Adam Schaff, July 24, 1968; both in Fromm Archive. Michael Maccoby, TI by LJF, Jan. 16, 2007, presented an excellent review of Fromm’s role in the McCarthy campaign, including financial contributions and meetings with the senator.
13. On the book being “a response” to the 1968 situation, which saw America and the world “at the crossroad”: Erich Fromm, The Revolution of Hope: Toward a Humanized Technology (New York: Harper & Row, 1968), xvii–xviii; on the McCarthy campaign representing “a longing”: 145; explaining the Council, Clubs, and Groups structure preceding the questionnaire: 151–162.
14. On the three thousand responses and his health problems: Fromm to Sarah-Sue Wittes, Apr. 9, 1970, Fromm Archive. On the minimal response to the questionnaires and on Fromm’s bitterness over McCarthy failing to meet with him after the convention: Michael Maccoby, TI by LJF, Jan. 16, 2007. Jeremy Larner, Nobody Knows: Reflections on the McCarthy Campaign (New York, 1969), appraises McCarthy as drifting and uninspiring during and especially after the campaign from the perspective of one of his speechwriters. Book sales and translations of The Revolution of Hope are reported in Rainer Funk, “Titles by Erich Fromm,” Fromm Archive.
15. Fromm, The Revolution of Hope, 13, 21, 135–137.
16. Ibid., 11–12. Mumford’s (and Fromm’s) mythic organic community of old is cogently discussed in Richard Chase, “The Armed Obscurantist,” Partisan Review (Summer 1944): 346–348.
17. Fromm, The Revolution of Hope, 30, 32–38. It is interesting that Fromm’s characterization of a consumption-centered “technological society” with people who feel constantly depleted was a predecessor statement of the psychologist Philip Cushman’s classic article, “Why the Self Is Empty: Toward a Historically Situated Psychology,” American Psychologist 45, no. 5 (May 1990): 599–611.
18. Fromm, The Revolution of Hope, 96–97.
21. Fromm, “Preface to the French Edition, The Revolution of Hope,” reflecting retrospectively on the 1968 campaign and book.
22. Erich Fromm and Michael Maccoby, Social Character in a Mexican Village (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970), 31–40, 134.
23. Fromm and Maccoby, Mexican Village, ix–xiii; Fromm to Harold Anderson, Mar. 4, 1957; Fromm to Charles F. Wrigley, Mar. 19, 1959, Fromm Archive. Aniceto Aramoni, TRI by LJF, Mexico City, Mar. 17, 2004.
24. Fromm and Maccoby, Mexican Village, 24–30, demonstrates quite conclusively how he regarded the Weimar study, particularly the interpretive questionnaires, as the major forerunner to the Chiconcuac project and a central motive for pursuing it. See also Fromm to Charles Wrigley, Mar. 17, 1959, Fromm Archive; and Michael Maccoby, TRI by LJF, Washington, D.C., Feb. 2, 2003.
25. Fromm to Charles Wrigley, Mar. 17, 1959, Fromm Archive.
26. Fromm and Maccoby, Mexican Village, x–xi; Theodore Schwartz to David Riesman, Jan. 26, 1967, copy in Fromm Archive. Michael Maccoby, PI by LJF, Cambridge, Mass., May 6, 2005.
27. Fromm and Maccoby, Mexican Village, x–xi. Michael Maccoby, TRI by LJF, Washington, D.C., Feb. 2, 2003. Fromm to Margaret Mead, Apr. 20, 1968 (Schwartz “showed his antagonism”); Fromm to David Riesman, Jan. 19, 1967; Theodore Schwartz to David Riesman, Jan. 18, 26, 1967, all in Fromm Archive.
28. Ibid., plus Oscar Lewis, The Children of Sanchez: Autobiography of a Mexican Family (New York: Penguin, 1961); Maccoby, TI by LJF, Dec. 18, 19, 2008. Riesman to Margaret Mead, Feb. 1, 1968; and to T. Schwartz, Jan. 23, 1967, Riesman Papers, Harvard Archives, connecting the “scandal” Oscar Lewis created in Children of Sanchez to one that Theodore and Lola Schwartz might have created with the Chiconcuac project. Fromm to Riesman, Mar. 19, 1968, Riesman Papers, reveals Fromm’s and Maccoby’s close attentiveness to the Lewis book and the untoward “sensationalism” it created. Together with my December 2008 interview of Maccoby, Fromm’s March 1968 letter indicates how the two (to a certain extent at least) shared Lewis’s hardnosed conclusions that made little of reformist “amelioration.”
29. Ibid., plus Fromm to Riesman, Jan. 4, 19, Aug. 19, 1967; Theodore Schwartz to Fromm, Feb. 4, 1968; Schwartz to Riesman, Jan. 10, 1967; Fromm to Schwartz, Mar. 19, 1968; Lola Schwartz to Fromm, Jan. 31, 1968; all in Riesman Papers, Harvard Archive. Especially telling is Fromm to Riesman, Feb. 22, 1968, on Theodore: “that he was employed to help …”
30. Maccoby, “Fromm Didn’t Want to Be a Frommian,” 141–143. See also Maccoby’s introduction to the 1996 edition: Erich Fromm and Michael Maccoby, Social Character in a Mexican Village (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1996), esp. xxi.
31. Maccoby, TRI by LJF, Washington, D.C., Feb. 2, 2003. Maccoby, “Fromm Didn’t Want to Be a Frommian,” 141–143.
32. Maccoby, TRI by LJF, Washington, D.C., Feb. 2, 2003; PI, Cambridge, May 6, 2005; TI, Jan. 16, 2007.
33. Ibid., plus Maccoby’s introduction to the 1996 Transaction edition of Mexican Village, xxi–xxii. On the orphanage issue that distressed Fromm: Salvador and Sonia Millán, “His Deeply Inspirational Presence and Thoughtfulness,” in The Clinical Erich Fromm, ed. Rainer Funk (2009), 157–158. Rainer Funk, PI by LJF, Tubingen, July 15, 2003, agreeing with Maccoby that Fromm was often absent from the village project research. Funk also points out that Maccoby’s hegemony in the process of formulating the book is evident in his rather rigid dichotomization between productive and nonproductive social character. See also David Riesman to Fromm, Dec. 7, 1966, Jan. 17, 1967, Fromm Archive.
34. Fromm to Theodore Schwartz, Feb. 11, 1967; Riesman to Fromm, Dec. 7, 1966, Jan. 17, 23, 1967; Schwartz to Riesman, Jan. 18, 1967; Fromm to Margaret Mead, Apr. 20, 1968. Copies of all of this correspondence are in the Fromm Archive. See also Maccoby, TRI by LJF, Washington, D.C., Feb. 2, 2003. In Riesman’s Feb. 1, 1968, letter to Fromm (Riesman Papers, Harvard Archive), he reported on Mead’s defense of the Schwartzes. Nina Holton, PI by LJF, Cambridge, Mass., Mar. 4, May 5, 2009, recounts the occasional breaches of client confidentiality.
35. Fromm to Schwartz, Feb. 11, 1967, and Schwartz to Riesman, Jan.18, 1967, both in Fromm Archive. Riesman to Fromm, Feb. 1, 1968, Riesman Papers, Harvard Archive. Maccoby, TRI by LJF, Washington, D.C., Feb. 2, 2003.
36. Fromm to Mead, Apr. 20, 1968, Fromm Archive; Maccoby, TI by LJF, Jan. 16, 2007; Fromm to V. I. Dobrenkov, Apr. 11, 1970, Fromm Archive. In his introduction to the 1996 Transaction edition of Mexican Village, xxi, Maccoby detailed the process of working with Fromm on the book, what he (Maccoby) wrote and revised, and what Fromm wrote.
37. Sales figures and translations of Social Character in a Mexican Village are reported in Rainer Funk, “Titles by Erich Fromm” (1997), Fromm Archive. See also Fromm and Maccoby, Mexican Village, 32–33, 39; and Maccoby’s introduction to the 1996 Transaction edition of Mexican Village, xiv–xvii (with Fromm’s letter complaining about Prentice-Hall); and Daniel Burston, The Legacy of Erich Fromm (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991), 129. The recollection that Fromm aspired to produce a work similar to that of Oscar Lewis comes from Michael Maccoby, PI by LJF, Jan. 16, 2007.
38. Fromm and Maccoby, Mexican Village, 130–135.
39. Ibid., 99–100, 130–31, 200–203.
41. Ibid., 213, 217, Millán, “His Deeply Inspirational Presence and Thoughtfulness,” 6. Maccoby’s and Fromm’s recollections of Wasson are provided in “Obituary: Father William B. Wasson,” International Erich Fromm Society 11 (2007): 78, with Maccoby emphasizing his religious faith and Fromm how he showed “that one can organize and be efficient.”
42. Fromm and Maccoby, Mexican Village, 217–224.
44. Ibid., 235–236; Maccoby, TI by LJF, Jan. 16, 2007.
45. Fromm and Maccoby, Mexican Village, 134.
46. Maccoby, TI by LJF, January 16, 2007; Aramoni, TRI by LJF, March 17, 2004.
47. Fromm to Maccoby, July 22, 1969, on the moon landing (original letter with Maccoby).
1. Aniceto Aramoni, TRI by LJF, Mexico City, Mar. 17, 2004; Salvador Millán, PI by LJF, Mexico City, Mar. 21, 2004; Aniceto Aramoni to Fromm, Feb. 1, 1967, Fromm Archive, Tubingen.
2. Aramoni, TRI by LJF, Mexico City, Mar. 17, 2007; Salvador Millán, PI by LJF, Mexico City, Mar. 20, 21, 2004; Rebecca Aramoni Serrano, PI by LJF, Mexico City, Mar. 21, 2004; Michael and Sandy Lee Maccoby, TRI by LJF, Washington, D.C., Feb. 2, 2003; Hernando Ibarra, TRI by LJF, Cuernavaca, Mar. 19, 2004.
3. Aniceto Aramoni, TRI by LJF, Mexico City, Mar. 17, 2007; Jorge Silva, TRI by LJF, Mexico City, Mar. 22, 2004; Salvador Millán, PI by LJF, Mexico City, Mar. 17, 18, 2004; Rebeca Aramoni Serrano, PI by LJF, Mexico City, Mar. 21, 2004. For the arrival of the Buenos Aires contingent of orthodox psychoanalysts, see Marie Langer, From Vienna to Managua: Journal of a Psychoanalyst (London: Free Association Books, 1989), 132–133. A cogent discussion of the Argentine psychoanalytic context at the time is provided in Jorge Balan, Cuentame tu Vida: Una Biografia Colectiva del Psicoanalysis Argentino (Buenos Aires: Planeta Argentina, 1991), 228–236.
4. Aramoni to Fromm, Feb. 1, 1967; Fromm to Aramoni, Feb. 7, 1967, both in Fromm Archive. See also Rebeca Aramoni Serrano, PI by LJF, Mar. 21, 2004; and Salvador Millán, PI by LJF, March 19, 20, 21, 2004.
5. Rainer Funk, PI by LJF, Tubingen, Mar. 16, 2003; Michael Maccoby, TRI by LJF, Washington, D.C., Feb. 2, 2003; Fromm to Aniceto Aramoni, Sept. 1, 1973, Fromm Archive; Moshe Budmore, TI by LJF, Apr. 22, 2008; Fromm to Clara Urquhart, Aug. 4, 1969, Fromm Archive. On the Swiss tax benefits as one of several motives for the move: Fromm to Gail Bashein, May 15, 1975, Fromm Archive.
6. Rainer Funk to LJF, June 24, 2008; Rainer Funk, Erich Fromm: His Life and Ideas (New York: Continuum, 2000), 162–163. Gertrud Hunziker-Fromm, TRI by LJF, Zurich, May 9, 2004. On Kreutzberger’s backgound: Fromm to Karl Darmstadter, Feb. 13, 1974, Fromm Archive. On the Fromm-Illich relationship, see Brian Betz to Ivan Illich, June 29, 1972, Fromm Archive; and Illich’s reply on the same letter. For data on Nyanaponika Mahathera in the Fromm Archive, see Max Kreutzberger to Fromm, Jan. 11, 1972; Fromm to Nyanaponika, Dec. 4, 1972, Sept. 4, 1973, May 2, Dec. 1, 1975; and Nyanaponika to Fromm, Aug. 28, Oct. 13, Dec. 31, 1972, Mar. 21, Oct. 31, 1973, Apr. 6, Nov. 13, 1975.
7. Aramoni to Fromm, Feb. 1, 1967, Aug. 26, 1973, Mar. 3, Aug. 27, 1974, all exemplifying how Aramoni acknowledged that his generation needed to run the Mexican Psychoanalytic Institute’s affairs while somehow keeping Fromm involved in those affairs. On being away from institute affairs: Fromm to Aramoni, Feb. 7, 1967. On the benefits of writing in the Swiss Alps: Fromm to Aramoni, Sept. 1, 1973. “So completely immersed in my work”: Fromm to Aramoni, Sept. 27, 1974. On putting his Cuernavaca house up for sale: Fromm to Aramoni, Feb. 11, 1976. All correspondence in the Fromm Archive. On the transporting of books and correspondence to Locarno: Moshe Budmore, TI by LJF, Apr. 22, 2008.
8. Funk, PI by LJF, Tubingen, Mar. 16, 2003. On his relationship to Beatrice Mayer: Fromm to de Forest, July 21, 1958, Tavis de Forest private collection. Fromm to Aramoni, Feb. 11, 1976, Fromm Archive; Rebecca Aramoni Serrano, PI by LJF, Mexico City, Mar. 21, 2004; Annis Freeman to Clara Urquhart, Mar. 24, 1970, Fromm Archive.
9. In 2006, I visited the Locarno-Muralto area and, from the fifth floor of Casa La Mondo, mixed joy with envy as I witnessed the arresting view that Fromm saw daily. Relevant to this Muralto apartment is Rainer Funk’s “Erich Fromm’s Kleine Lebensschule,” (Freiburg: Herder, 2007), 7–27.
10. Fromm to Kaplan, Feb. 14, Apr. 11, 1972, Fromm Archive.
11. See, e.g., Fromm to Kaplan, Feb. 17, 1973, on Kaplan’s inspiration in the completion of Anatomy of Human Destructiveness.
12. Erich Fromm, The Crisis of Psychoanalysis: Essays on Freud, Marx, and Social Psychology (New York: Henry Holt, 1970), chap. 1. It is instructive to note that in the Dissent exchange of 1955, Marcuse had accused Fromm, Sullivan, and Horney of betraying Freud through promotion of social conformity.
13. See the brilliantly succinct three-page epilogue in Fromm’s Crisis of Psychoanalysis. For Fromm’s 1966 critique of Horney and Sullivan, see Richard Evans, ed., Dialogue with Erich Fromm (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), 59.
14. Charles O. Lerche’s brilliant volume The Cold War and After (1965) argued this point of first strike becoming a nonoption of the American and the Soviet leadership after 1963. The preponderance of scholarship since has, with important qualifications, sustained his argument.
15. Annis Freeman to Clara Urquhart, Mar. 24, 1970, Fromm Archive, reporting how her husband “sighed yesterday and said he needed another 30 years to write all the things that he hasn’t written yet.” On Brams and Fromm moving into wholly new areas of research: Maccoby, e-mail to LJF, June 15, 2011.
16. Fromm to J. William Fulbright, Mar. 19, 1974, Fromm Archive, recounting Fulbright’s initial and very favorable response to Lorenz. Erich Fromm, The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (New York: Holt McDougal, 1973), 23, notes how the arguments in the Ardrey and Morris books approximated Lorenz’s argument.
17. Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression (New York: Harcourt Brace, Jovanovich, 1966), which closely parallels Konrad Lorenz, Evolution and Modification of Behavior (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), in its essential argumentative structure.
18. Fromm to David Riesman, Nov. 2, 1973; Fromm to Ernst Simon, Apr. 12, 1975 (both in Fromm Archive). Fromm, Anatomy, 38–39.
19. Fromm, Anatomy, 38–54, 499–501, 515–517.
20. Fromm to Fulbright, Mar. 19, 1974, Fromm Archive.
21. B. F. Skinner most fully amplified his neobehaviorism in Science and Human Behavior (New York: Macmillan, 1953) and Beyond Freedom and Dignity (New York: Knopf, 1971).
22. Fromm, Anatomy, 56–68, esp. 63–65.
23. Fromm presents these anti-Skinner sources in his case against Skinner in footnotes in Anatomy, esp. 56–68. It is interesting to note that Chomsky was given the annual Erich Fromm Award of the International Fromm Society in March 2010, in Stuttgart, for his intellectual affinity with Fromm.
24. Fromm to Clara Urquhart, Aug. 3, 1971, Fromm Archive.
25. Fromm, Anatomy, 133–142.
30. Fromm to Clara Urquhart, Sept. 18, 1963, Fromm Archive, discussing Arendt’s New Yorker articles that preceded Eichmann in Jerusalem. Fromm, Anatomy, 334–335. Arendt and Fromm maintained a modest correspondence, which one can find in the Fromm Archive.
31. Fromm, Anatomy, 336–344; Bradley F. Smith, Heinrich Himmler: A Nazi in the Making, 1900–1916 (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institute, 1971); Josef Ackermann, Heinrich Himmler als Ideologe (Göttingen: Musterschmidt, 1970); Bradley Smith, “Diaries of Heinrich Himmler’s Early Years,” Journal of Modern History 31, no. 3 (1959): 206–224. Peter Loewenberg, “The Unsuccessful Adolescence of Heinrich Himmler,” American Historical Review 76, no. 3 (June 1971): 612–641. Fromm probably did not recognize the partial similarity between young Himmler’s situation at home and Fromm’s own parents: a mother who treated the son as younger than he was and a less-than-respectable and weak father.
32. Fromm, Anatomy, 345–346.
37. Ibid., 446–450, 476, 479. The propensity of Hitler and others in the Nazi command to regard homosexuals as “defective” people is covered well in Richard Plant, The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals (New York: Henry Holt, 1986).
38. Fromm, Anatomy, 470–471, 474–475, 479–480.
40. Fromm to Robert M. W. Kempner, Sept. 15, 1972, Fromm Archive; Fromm to Maccoby, Oct. 11, 1972 (sent to me courtesy of Maccoby).
41. Fromm to Speer, June 1, 23, 1973, Fromm Archive.
42. Fromm to Speer, Oct. 11, 20, 1972; Nov. 3, 28, 1973; Sept. 20, Oct. 7, 1974; August 7, 1975, all in Fromm Archive.
43. “Sales Figures and Translations of Fromm’s Books” (estimates to 1997) and “Book Titles by Erich Fromm and their Translations” (on translations to 2011), both in Fromm Archive. These and other materials in the Archive pinpoint sales figures for The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness rather precisely. A global array of reviews of the book, including those referenced here, are available in archival files for Anatomy.
44. Fromm to Karl Darmstädter, Jan. 27, 1975; Fromm to Lewis Mumford, Apr. 29, 1975; Fromm to Fulbright, Feb. 11, 1976; Fromm to Ernst Simon, Jan. 7, 1977; Fromm to Angelica Balabanoff, Oct. 29, 1962; Fromm to Hans Krause, May 27, 1971, all in Fromm Archive.
45. Fromm to Michael Maccoby, June 22, Sept. 27, 1973; David Riesman to Michael Maccoby, Dec. 20, 1973; all reflecting Fromm’s continued interest and concern over international affairs, including Yugoslavia and Chile, Michael Maccoby collection. Fromm to Aniceto Aramoni, Feb. 13, 1974; Fromm to Lewis Mumford, Oct. 16, 1973, both in Fromm Archive. The 1974 paper for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “Remarks on the Policy of Détente,” appeared in the New York Times (December 11, 1975) as “Paranoia and Policy.”
46. Fromm to Karl Darmstädter, Jan. 27, Nov. 3, 1975, Fromm Archive.
47. Fromm to Tristram Coffin, Oct. 25, 1974, Fromm Archive.
48. See, e.g., Fromm to Raya Dunayevskaya, Feb. 12, 1974; and (summarizing the collaboration) Dunayevskaya to Fromm, Mar. 13, 1974; and Fromm to Dunayevskaya, Feb. 18, 1976, all in Fromm Archives. The research she did for him is very well exemplified by Dunayevskaya to Fromm, Mar. 13, 1974; and Fromm to Dunayevskaya, July 8, 1975, Fromm Archive. See also Kevin Anderson, “On the 100th Anniversary of His Birth: Erich Fromm’s Marxism Dimension,” Theory and Practice Newsletter (August–September 2000): 3–4.
49. Fromm to Rainer Funk, June 27, 1973, July 3, 1974, Nov. 7, 1975, April 24, 1976. I learned the most about the evolving Fromm-Funk relationship through conversations with Funk over many years and particularly in two long e-mail letters he wrote to me (Jan. 21, 2007; May 31, 2008).
50. Fromm to Funk, Nov. 7, 1975; Fromm to Clara Urquhart, Mar. 18, 1975; Fromm to Dunayasakya, Feb. 18, 1976; Joan Hughes to Funk, Apr. 24, 1976; Aramoni to Fromm, Jan. 25, 1976, Fromm Archive.
51. Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be? (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), 1–11. Philip Cushman, “Why the Self Is Empty: Toward a Historically Situated Psychology,” American Psychologist 45, no. 5 (May 1990): 559–611.
53. Fromm, To Have or to Be? 29–34.
59. Abundant sales figures for To Have or to Be? over a long period of time are found in the Fromm Archive. Supplementary sales data was reported in e-mails from Fromm archivist Rainer Funk in May 2008 and November 2009. See also reports on sales from Michael Maccoby to LJF, Dec. 19, 2008. For a few examples of Fromm’s guru status, see Roth-Hilpoltsteiner Volkszeitung (March 2, 1977) and Deutsches Allgemeines Sonntagsblatt (March 20, 1983).
60. Funk to LJF (e-mail), Jan. 31, 1977; Funk, PI by LJF, Tubingen, Mar. 22, 2009; plus Funk’s compilation of all of Fromm’s book sales to 1999.
61. Erich Fromm, The Working Class in Weimar Germany: A Psychological and Sociological Study (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984), came out a few years after the German edition. The Bonss background is noted in his introduction to the volume. Additionally, the Fromm Archive now houses information on Bonss and all of the elements that Bonss assembled to form the book.
62. Rainer Funk, Erich Fromm: His Life and Ideas (New York: Continuum, 2000), 164; Fromm to Fulbright, June 2, 1976, Fulbright Papers, University of Arkansas. Fromm to Annelie and Heinz Brandt, Apr. 28, 1978; Joan Hughes to David Riesman, July 31, 1975; to Funk, June 22, 1978; to Paul Roazen, July 31, 1978; and to Helen Hatchett, Mar. 11, 1980; Fromm to Aniceto Aramoni, June 28, 1979, all in Fromm Archive. Funk, PI by LJF, Tubingen, Mar. 18, 2003. Annis Fromm to Aniceto Aramoni, Sept. 26. 1979, Fromm Archive, reporting on Erich being able to do very little since the 1978 heart attack.
63. Fromm to Funk, Nov. 16, 1977, asking Funk to take charge of his writings and be his literary executor; Funk to Erich and Annis Fromm, Feb. 10, 1978, typifying Funk’s extensive work on Fromm’s manuscripts; Annis Fromm to Gérard Khoury, Nov. 28, 1979, on Funk standing in for Fromm in public occasions, all in Fromm Archive. Funk, PI by LJF, Tubingen, Mar. 18, 2003, Oct. 10, 2009, reviewing all of his activities with Fromm in Fromm’s final years and underscoring Funk’s broad construction of his duties as literary executor. Funk’s e-mails to LJF, Dec. 15, 2011, January 6, 11, 22, 23, 2012, underscore a global vision of the executor function and a deep commitment to the acquisition of Fromm materials.
64. Fromm to Izette de Forest, Nov. 26, 1956, Taves de Forest private collection, outlining what eventually became Greatness and Limitations. Funk e-mail to LJF, May 31, 2008, acknowledging that “I prepared the book” and discussing how he had. Funk to Fromm, Oct. 2, 1978, Fromm Archive, discussing what he had done to complete the book and to bring it toward publication. Funk, e-mail to LJF, June 13, 2010, reviewing his considerable role in “not really a new book.” The statement regarding the continuity and repetitious quality of Fromm’s critique of Freud can be found in the preface (xi) of the 1980 Harper & Row edition.
65. Nyanaponika Mahathera to Fromm, Dec. 4, 1977; Fromm to Nyanaponika Mahathera, June 1, 1978; Fromm to Lewis Mumford, Nov. 7, 1975, Dec. 14, 1977; Fromm to Ernst Simon, Oct. 24, 1977; Fromm to Funk, Nov. 7, 1975; Fromm to Chaim Kaplan, Jan. 24, 1980, all in Fromm Archive.
66. A full audio copy and transcript of Khoury’s interview of Fromm has been deposited in the Fromm Archive. See also Khoury, PI by LJF, Oct. 24, 2005, Oct. 7, 2009, on the nature and conditions of the 1978–1979 interviews. Helpful too is Gérard Khoury, “A Crucial Encounter,” in The Clinical Erich Fromm, ed. Rainer Funk (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009), 161–168; and interviews in France that I conducted with Khoury in 2005 and 2009.
67. Annis Freeman to Aniceto Aramoni, Sept. 26, 1979, Fromm Archive, describing much of her husband’s condition before the death. Locarno Giornale del Popolo (February 18, 1980) provides a comprehensive description of Fromm’s birthday party.
68. Gertrud Hunziker-Fromm, TRI by LJF, May 10, 2004, provided an extensive and touching discussion of Fromm’s death and the memorial service. See also Funk, Erich Fromm, 164; Fromm Forum 7 (2003): 60. The only photographs of the ceremony from unidentified Swiss newspapers are in the Fromm Archive.
69. Annis’s health history before Erich’s death is recounted in Fromm to Funk, June 22, 1978; and Fromm to Aramoni, Aug. 29, 1977, both in Fromm Archive. The examples of letters of condolence are Nyanaponika Mahathera to Annis Freeman, Mar. 24, 1980; and James Luther Adams to Annis Freeman, July 18, 1980, Fromm Archive. On her medication and how Erich’s death continued to disturb her: Annis Freeman to Isadore Rosenfeld, Mar. 16, 1984.
70. A list of newspaper and other notices of Fromm shortly after his death is to be found in the Fromm Archive. See David Elkind, “Erich Fromm,” American Psychologist 36, no. 5 (May 1981): 521–522, for the complete text; a shorter version appeared in the Newsletter of the William Alanson White Institute 15 (Winter 1980–1981). See also Elkind’s obituary for Fromm in the New York Times (March 19, 1980).
71. Rose Spiegel, “Reminiscence of Erich Fromm,” Contemporary Psychoanalysis 17, no. 4 (October 1981): 436–441.