New Books In Psychoanalysis

Erich Fromm, the prominent twentieth-century public intellectual and psychoanalyst, was recognized for his courageous stand against fascism, racism, and human destructiveness. Until now, however, little has been known about the extent to which Fromm's personal experience of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust shaped his outlook and work.In Edge of Catastrophe: Erich Fromm, Fascism and the Holocaust (Oxford 2024), Roger Frie introduces for the first time the unpublished Holocaust correspondence in Fromm's family. The letters provide insight into Fromm's life as a German-Jewish refugee and help us to understand the effect of Nazi Germany's racial terror on Fromm and his German-Jewish family. In the aftermath of the genocide, Fromm returned again and again to the themes of responsibility, social justice, and human solidarity, yet without revealing his own experience. As this book powerfully shows, Fromm's social, political, and psychological writings take on new meaning in light of the traumas and tragedies that he a