It is classic theorists week on The Annex Sociology Podcast, as we discuss Eric Fromm with Neil McLaughlin (McMaster). Neil recently published Eric Fromm and Global Public Sociology (2021, Bristol University Press).
We discuss the case of Amy Cuddy, a researcher who rose to fame on research whose failure to replicate prompted backlash.
Melissa Wilde from the University of Pennsylvania discusses her recent article in The Conversation, which argues that the Roman Catholic Church might […]
Our coverage of the 2019 ASA election continues with an interview of Vice Presidential candidate Jennifer Earl.
A conversation with Dr. Casey Jakubowski. With a PhD in Educational Policy and Leadership from SUNY Albany, Casey is a prolific author, […]
One thought on “Eric Fromm (Neil McLaughlin)”
In this illuminating podcast, Neil McLaughlin shows how Erich Fromm is for the ages.
As a child of the 60s, I was introduced to Fromm in 1958 as a fledgling student at Brown University. This was notoriously an era of bland conformity, and reading The Sane Society changed my life. Fromm exposed the multitudinous ways in which American society was consumed with individualism and materialism, and an unwitting source of human unhappiness. Essentially he ministered to society writ large. In 1956, he invited scandal by publishing The Art of Loving. It was a sensation, especially in an age of sexual repression. Fromm envisioned a society that cultivated hidden capacities for love, and his book was an international best seller!
Thirty years later, Neil was a student in my class at the CUNY Graduate Center, where he updated Fromm. His long-awaited book is an illuminating biography that traces how Fromm was disregarded by the cognoscenti of the 1950s, yet later emerged as one of the most influential public intellectuals of the 20th century.
As you can tell from the podcast, Neil has stepped into Fromm’s shoes by nurturing a unique blend of Freud and Marx that is still as relevant and illuminating as it was in the soporific 50s.
Stephen Steinberg