In the first episode of our new season, sociologist Neil McLaughlin guides us through the life and ideas of Erich Fromm, the psychoanalyst and social theorist whose warnings about modern society’s psychological dangers seem more relevant than ever.
McLaughlin, who has spent decades studying Fromm’s work and its reception, explains how this member of the Frankfurt School became simultaneously one of the best-selling intellectuals of the mid-twentieth century and one of the most marginalised in academic discourse. Despite writing prescient analyses of authoritarianism, alienation, and the human tendency to “escape from freedom,” Fromm has been largely erased from both psychoanalytic and sociological canons.
The conversation explores Fromm’s core insight, that modern capitalism creates not just economic inequality but profound psychological damage. His concept of “social character,” how economic systems shape personality structures, offers a framework for understanding everything from Trump supporters to social media addiction. McLaughlin explains how Fromm saw both Western capitalism and Soviet communism as systems that alienate people from their authentic selves and creative potential.
We discuss why Fromm’s humanistic approach fell out of favor, caught between Marxists who found him insufficiently radical, psychoanalysts who resented his critiques of Freudian orthodoxy, and academics suspicious of anyone who wrote bestsellers. McLaughlin argues that Fromm’s marginalisation reflects broader problems in how knowledge is produced and validated in universities, where boundary-crossing thinkers are often punished rather than celebrated.
The episode delves into Fromm’s vision of “socialist humanism,” a democratic alternative to both corporate capitalism and authoritarian socialism that emphasised human creativity, genuine community, and what he called “the art of loving.” We explore his influence on the 1960s counterculture, his prescient warnings about consumer society’s psychological costs, and why his integrated approach to understanding humans as both psychological and social beings offers tools we desperately need today.
McLaughlin makes a compelling case that recovering Fromm’s legacy isn’t just about intellectual history—it’s about finding resources for understanding our current crisis of democracy, meaning, and mental health in an age of algorithmic manipulation and authoritarian temptation.
