Erich Fromm’s writings (academic and otherwise) reliably display his considerable personal and intellectual merits and powers as a clinician, social psychologist, and existential humanist. In the history of psychoanalysis, Fromm is aptly classified by Daniel Burston as among Freud’s “loyal opposition,” that is, “those analysts whose loyalties to Freud prompted them to stay within the organizational framework of psychoanalysis despite their disagreements with him on important issues and despite the diminished trust, esteem, and credibility they often suffered among their colleagues as a consequence.”
This group is further divided by Burston into “independent analysts” (e.g., Sandor Ferenczi and Karen Horney), “object relations” theorists (e.g., W.D. Fairbairn and Harry Guntrip), and “Freudo-Marxists” like Wilhelm Reich, Otto Fenichel, and of course Fromm himself.
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