What is it about?
This article introduces a Special Issue on Erich Fromm’s humanistic psychology and its relevance for today’s world. It explains how Fromm’s work connects inner life and social structures by showing how our needs, fears, and desires are shaped by the societies we live in, and how, in turn, our psychological patterns stabilize or challenge those societies. The editorial outlines Fromm’s idea of “social character” and his humanistic ethics, and it shows how these ideas can guide research on topics like right-wing populism, digital outrage, leadership, and cooperative projects. We also briefly present the individual contributions to the Special Issue and show how each of them uses Fromm’s concepts to address concrete contemporary conflicts and fields of practice.
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Why is it important?
Psychological research often focuses on individuals, while social theory often focuses on structures and systems. Fromm’s perspective helps to bridge this divide: it insists that we cannot fully understand political crises, polarization, or social change without looking at unconscious needs and fears, and we cannot understand the psyche without looking at economic and cultural conditions. In a time of growing inequality, climate crisis, and geopolitical tensions, the article argues that we need a clear normative orientation grounded in a humanistic view of the person: all human beings share basic needs for relatedness, creativity, and meaningful participation in society. This orientation allows us to critically assess social arrangements that produce exclusion, exploitation, or despair, and to imagine alternatives that are both psychologically and socially sustainable.
Perspectives
As one of the editors and authors, I see this article as an invitation to take Fromm seriously as both a psychoanalyst and a critical social theorist. For me, his humanism is not a naïve optimism, but a demanding framework that asks what kinds of people our societies are producing—and what kinds of societies our psychological theories are implicitly supporting. I believe that making our own normative commitments explicit is a strength rather than a weakness: it helps us to be honest about the visions of humanity that guide our work and to argue for them openly. With this Special Issue, I hope to contribute to a renewed conversation in which psychology, psychoanalysis, and social theory work together to understand and transform the crises of our time.
Niclas O'Donnokoé
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Erich Fromm’s humanistic psychology as normative orientation amid social and political challenges., The Humanistic Psychologist, December 2025, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/hum0000413.
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