Edge of Catastrophe: Erich Fromm, Fascism, and the Holocaust

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In Edge of Catastrophe, Roger Frie introduces for the first time the unpublished Holocaust correspondence in Fromm’s family.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. In light of the racial hatred and antisemitism we see today, Frie demonstrates that a politics of engagement and a psychology of well-being go hand in hand. Frie suggests that there is much to be learned from the urgency in Fromm’s writings as we seek to respond to the social crises and the renewed threat of fascism in our present age.

Roger Frie is Professor of Education at Simon Fraser University; Affiliate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver; and Faculty and Supervisor at the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Psychology in New York. A clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst as well as historian and social philosopher, Frie is the author and editor of many works including the award-winning book Not in My Family: German Memory and Responsibility After the Holocaust (Oxford) and History Flows Through Us: Germany, the Holocaust and the Importance of Empathy.