Reclaiming the Sane Society

Erich Fromm's body of work, written more than 50 years ago, was prophetic of the contemporary moment: Increasingly, global society is threatened by the many-headed monster of corporate greed, neo-liberalism, nihilism, extreme fundamentalist beliefs, and their resulting effects on the natural world and the lived lives of people. Fromm clearly warned us of the peril of the misuse of technology and the destructive nature of man's perverse desire to possess, control and/or destroy. Through his theories of having vs. being, the importance of hope as active resistance, and his notion of freedom as the capacity to love self, and others, Fromm encouraged his readers to cultivate biophilic ways of being in the world that will counter and heal the impending necrophilic plunder of man's hubris. This multi-authored volume sheds new light on Fromm's forgotten role in the formation of contemporary thought through an engaging variety of reflexive and historical narratives from fields of sociology, clinical psychology, political science, critical theory of religion and education. Key concepts from his body of work are interpreted and expressed in ways that offer hopeful and humane alternatives to the present global conditions of despair, greed and depersonalization.

Inhalt

Preface; Foreword: Fromm's Social Psychological Approach and Its Relevance for Today; PART I: THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF ERICH FROMM; On the Psychology and Libertarian Socialism of Erich Fromm: Towards an Empirically Based Psychological Retrofit; Fromm's Dialectic of Freedom and the Praxis of Being; Humanism and Sociological Imagination in a Frommesque Style; Normative Humanism as Redemptive Critique: Knowledge and Judgment in Fromm's Social Theory; Erich Fromm's Socialist Program and Prophetic Messianism, In Two Parts; PART II: FROMM AND RELIGION 6. On Marx and Religion; What is Spirituality?: Insights from Religious Studies and Humanistic Psychology; Erich Fromm's Social Psychological Theory of Religion: Toward the X-experience and the City of Being; Erich Fromm and Thomas Merton: Biophilia, Necrophilia, and Messianism; Fromm's Notion of the Prophet and the Priest: Ancient Antagonisms, Modern Manifestations; PART III: APPLYING AND EXTENDING FROMM'S THEORY; The Relevance of Fromm's Concept of the Distorted Personality; Neoliberalism as Social Necrophilia: Erich Fromm and the Politics of Hopelessness in Greece; Hope-Faith-Fortitude Praxis: Retheorizing U.S. Schooling with Erich Fromm; Revisiting Beyond the Chains of Illusion: My Encounter with Marx and Freud: Reflections on Fromm's Theory and Practice within the Psychotherapeutic Encounter; Notes on Contributors;