Roger Frie, "Edge of Catastrophe: Erich Fromm, Fascism and the Holocaust" (Oxford UP, 2024)

About this episode

Roger Frie discusses Erich Fromm's experiences during the Holocaust and how they influenced his work against fascism and for social justice.

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Edge of Catastrophe: Erich Fromm, Fascism and the Holocaust (Oxford 2024), Roger Frie introduces for the first time the unpublished Holocaust correspondence in Fromm's family.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 and his family experienced.The image of Fromm that emerges from this book enriches our understanding of what it means to be both a social critic and practicing psychologist…

People in this episode

Host: Marshall Poe

Guest: Roger Frie

Topics covered

• Erich Fromm
• fascism
• Holocaust
• social justice
• human solidarity
• psychology
• antisemitism

Keywords

• Erich Fromm
• fascism
• Holocaust
• social justice
• human solidarity
• psychology
• antisemitism
• Nazi Germany
• German-Jewish refugee
• responsibility

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Oxford UP

Places: Nazi Germany, Germany

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