Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom

Gerhard P. Knapp (University of Utah)

Ed. by Gerhard P. Knapp, University of Utah
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Nicole Kennedy (University of Newcastle), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Sean Seeger (University of Essex), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Domains

Philosophy (any)
Psychoanalysis

Dates

First circulation or publication 1941

Places

Germany (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Non-Fiction
- Commentary / Criticism (literary)

Resources

Erich Fromm’s first book publication, Escape from Freedom (1941, British edition as The Fear of Freedom, 1942), established his fame as a social psychologist almost overnight. Fromm began work on the study when he was still associated with Max Horkheimer’s Institute for Social Research. In the inaugural volume (1932) of Horkheimer’s Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung [Journal for Social Research] Fromm had published two seminal articles, “Über Methode und Aufgabe einer analytischen Sozialpsychologie” [“On the Methods and Goals of Analytical Social Psychology”] and “Die psychoanalytische Charakterologie und ihre Bedeutung für die Sozialpsychologie” [“Psychoanalytical Characterology and its Relevance to Social Psychology”]. The studies are grounded in Critical Theory and contain the methodological foundations of his later work. Psychoanalysis, argues Fromm, must augment Marx’ dialectical materialism to interpret the interrelations between material conditions and human thought processes and to...

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

1815 words

Citation: Knapp, Gerhard P.. "Escape from Freedom". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 23 March 2005 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=16622, accessed 14 December 2025.]