Feist−Feist: Theories of
Personality, Seventh
EditionII. Psychodynamic
Theories- Fromm: Humanistic
Psychoanalysis
© The McGraw−Hill^195
Companies, 2009firsthand. He was sure that the British and French were equally irrational, and once
again he was struck by a troubling question: How could normally rational and peace-
ful people become so driven by national ideologies, so intent on killing, so ready to
die? “When the war ended in 1918, I was a deeply troubled young man who was ob-
sessed by the question of how war was possible, by the wish to understand the irra-
tionality of human mass behavior, by a passionate desire for peace and international
understanding” (Fromm, 1962, p. 9).
During adolescence, Fromm was deeply moved by the writings of Freud and
Karl Marx, but he was also stimulated by differences between the two. As he stud-
ied more, he began to question the validity of both systems. “My main interest was
clearly mapped out. I wanted to understand the laws that govern the life of the indi-
vidual man, and the laws of society” (Fromm, 1962, p. 9).
After the war, Fromm became a socialist, although at that time, he refused to
join the Socialist Party. Instead, he concentrated on his studies in psychology, phi-
losophy, and sociology at the University of Heidelberg, where he received his PhD
in sociology at either age 22 or 25. [Fromm was such a private person that his biog-
raphers do not agree on many facts of his life (Hornstein, 2000).]
Still not confident that his training could answer such troubling questions as
the suicide of the young woman or the insanity of war, Fromm turned to psycho-
analysis, believing that it promised answers to questions of human motivation not of-
fered in other fields. From 1925 until 1930 he studied psychoanalysis, first in Mu-
nich, then in Frankfurt, and finally at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute, where he
was analyzed by Hanns Sachs, a student of Freud. Although Fromm never met Freud,
most of his teachers during those years were strict adherents of Freudian theory
(Knapp, 1989).
In 1926, the same year that he repudiated Orthodox Judaism, Fromm married
Frieda Reichmann, his analyst, who was more than 10 years his senior. Reichmann
would later obtain an international reputation for her work with schizophrenic pa-
tients. G. P. Knapp (1989) claimed that Reichmann was clearly a mother figure to
Fromm and that she even resembled his mother. Gail Hornstein (2000) added that
Fromm seemed to have gone directly from being his mother’s darling to relationships
with a number of older women who doted on him. In any event, the marriage of
Fromm and Fromm-Reichmann was not a happy one. They separated in 1930 but
were not divorced until much later, after both had emigrated to the United States.
In 1930, Fromm and several others founded the South German Institute for
Psychoanalysis in Frankfurt, but with the Nazi threat becoming more intense, he
soon moved to Switzerland where he joined the newly founded International Insti-
tute of Social Research in Geneva. In 1933, he accepted an invitation to deliver a se-
ries of lectures at the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute. The following year he emi-
grated to the United States and opened a private practice in New York City.
In both Chicago and New York, Fromm renewed his acquaintance with Karen
Horney, whom he had known casually at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute. Horney,
who was 15 years older than Fromm, eventually became a strong mother figure and
mentor to him (Knapp, 1989). Fromm joined Horney’s newly formed Association for
the Advancement of Psychoanalysis (AAP) in 1941. Although he and Horney had
been lovers, by 1943 dissension within the association had made them rivals. When
students requested that Fromm, who did not hold an MD degree, teach a clinical
course, the organization split over his qualifications. With Horney siding against
Chapter 7 Fromm: Humanistic Psychoanalysis 189