Man for Himself: An Enquiry Into the Psychology of Ethics

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Routledge, 1990 - Social Science - 254 pages
Erich Fromm fought long and hard for the rights and freedoms of the individual. He also recognized that fundamental to this pursuit is the promotion of self-knowledge. In encouraging people to analyse their own behaviour, Fromm identified the crucial link between psychology and ethics that underpins all our actions. Moreover, he saw in this a way out of the meaningless impasse which he regarded as the plight of the modern human race. The task that Fromm sets himself, therefore, in Man for Himself is no less than to identify what man is, how he ought to live and how the tremendous energies within man can be released and used productively.

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About the author (1990)

Psychologist and philosopher Erich Fromm was born in Frankfurt, Germany on March 23, 1900. He received a Ph.D in sociology from the University of Heidelberg in 1922 and finished his psychoanalytical training at the Psychoanalytical Institute in Berlin in 1930. He started his own clinical practice and joined the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research. In 1934, he moved to New York and became a professor at Columbia University. In 1950, he moved to Mexico City and became a professor at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico, where he created a psychoanalytic section at the medical school. He retired from there in 1965 and moved to Muralto, Switzerland in 1974. Throughout his life, Fromm maintained a clinical practice and wrote books. His writings were notable for both their social and political commentary and their philosophical and psychological underpinnings. He became known for linking human personality types with socioeconomic and political structures. His most popular book, The Art of Loving, was first published in 1956 and became an international bestseller. He died on March 18, 1980.

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