What does it mean to be both a social critic and a practicing psychotherapist? In view of the social and political crises we face, this is surely one of our profession’s most pressing challenges. This talk will draw on the work of Erich Fromm, one of the twentieth century’s best known public intellectuals and least understood psychoanalysts. Fromm escaped Nazi Germany and was one of very few psychoanalysts to speak publicly about the dangers of fascism at the time. As Director of Social Psychology and Psychoanalysis at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, he developed a view of the human psyche as fundamentally social and political in nature. Shortly before the United States declared war on Nazi Germany, Fromm published Escape From Freedom, which sought to explain why so many Germans enthusiastically supported Hitler. What has remained virtually unknown is that when Fromm’s was openly arguing against fascism, he was simultaneously engaged in a campaign to save family members and colleagues who remained behind in Nazi Germany. Drawing on unpublished Holocaust correspondence, and on Fromm’s analyses of fascism and racism, this talk will show how the traumas and tragedies in Fromm’s private life shaped his stance against human destructiveness. For Fromm, the personal was always political, and time was short. In an era when psychoanalysts sought to keep the individual psyche strictly separate from social and political concerns, Fromm was ostracized for his progressive stance. Given the growth of fascism and the prevalence of racism today, what can we learn from Fromm’s sense of urgency? How might Fromm’s ethical stance apply to our current situation and to our work as practitioners?

Roger Frie, PhD, PsyD, RPsych, is Professor of Psychoanalysis and Education at the University of Vienna, Austria, and Faculty and Supervisor at the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Psychology in New York. He is also Affiliate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of British Columbia and Emeritus Professor at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. His most recent visiting positions have been at the Center for Research on Antisemitism at the Technical University of Berlin, Department of Sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York, and the Faculty of Education and Psychology at Kyoto University, Japan. He writes and lectures on the themes of historical trauma, memory and social responsibility. His newest books are Wounds of Silence: Legacies of Genocide and Racism (Oxford, in press), Edge of Catastrophe: Erich Fromm, Fascism and the Holocaust (Oxford, 2024), and Not in My Family: German Memory and Responsibility after the Holocaust (Oxford, 2017). His most recent edited book, with Pascal Sauvayre, is Culture, Politics and Race in the Making of Interpersonal Psychoanalysis: Breaking Boundaries (Routledge, 2022). He is co-editor of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, editorial board member of Psychoanalytic Psychology and Psychoanalytic Discourse, and a former editor of Psychoanalysis, Self and Context.