Escape from Freedom - Softcover

Erich Fromm

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0030255252 ISBN 13: 9780030255250

Publisher: Henry Holt & Company, Inc.

Synopsis

lf a man cannot stand freedom, he will probably turn Fascist. This, in the fewest possible words, is the essential argument in this modem classic, ESCAPE FROM FREEDOM. The author, Erich Fromm, is a distinguished psychologist, late of Berlin and Heidelberg, now of New York City. He applies the psychoanalytical method to the illness of our civilization which expresses itself in an abject submission to dictatorship. It is true that the rise of democracy set men free and brought to an end the authority of the medieval state and the medieval church. But it brought into existence a society where a man feels isolated from his fellows, where relationships in an industrial age are impersonal, where insecurity replaces a sense of belonging. This sense of isolation may drive an individual to one of various forms of escape. lt may drive a people to seek escape in blind devotion to a Leader, in utter submission to an all-powerful State, into a barbarous and sadistic program of aggression against minority groups or neighbor nations. Few- books since the rise of the dictators have thrown such light upon our times. Few books have penetrated so clearly into the causes of Fascism and Nazism - and into the inherent qualities of a democracy. In his psychoanalysis of the social scene, the author makes a new contribution to psychology by modifying the basic concepts of Freud in placing a purely biological orientation by a cultural one. To all who see that democracy today faces its gravest hour, Dr' Fromm illustrates the essential character of the danger and the nature of democracy's responsibility. By its brilliant exposition of the modern social scene ESCAPE FROM FREEDOM will help clarify many of today's most perplexing problems'

About this title

About the Author:

Erich Fromm was born in Frankfurt, Germany on March 23, 1900 and was still living there and in Berlin Germany when Hitler took power but he managed to escape to New York which was, way back then, a bastion of freedom. Erich Fromm was a German-American Jewish social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, and democratic socialist. He was associated with what became known as the Frankfurt School of critical theory. Beginning with his first seminal work of 1941, Escape from Freedom (known in Britain as Fear of Freedom), Fromm's writings were notable as much for their social and political commentary as for their philosophical and psychological underpinnings. Indeed, Escape from Freedom is viewed as one of the founding works of political psychology. His second important work, Man for Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics, first published in 1947, continued and enriched the ideas of Escape from Freedom. Taken together, these books outlined Fromm's theory of human character, which was a natural outgrowth of Fromm's theory of human nature. Fromm's most popular book was The Art of Loving, an international bestseller first published in 1956, which recapitulated and complemented the theoretical principles of human nature found in Escape from Freedom and Man for Himself — principles which were revisited in many of Fromm's other major works. After escaping from the Nazis, Erich Fromm became an American citizen in 1940. After the war was over, Fromm moved to Mexico City where he became a professor of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. He stayed in Mexico until 1974 when he returned to Switzerland. He died on March 18, 1980 in Locarno, Switzerland.

Review:

“An analysis par excellence of our cultural neurosis. -The Nation” ―The Nation

“An important and challenging work.” ―The New York Herald Tribune

“Fromm's thought merits the critical attention of all concerned with the human condition and its future.” ―The Washington Post

About this edition

• Publisher: Henry Holt & Company, Inc.
• ISBN 10: 0030255252
• ISBN 13: 9780030255250
• Binding: Paperback