I think that Fromm was the

[ALB]

I think that Fromm was the best of the “Freudo-Marxists” because he abandoned the idea that there was a biological basis to the drives Freud thought he had discovered and offered instead an explanation based on social interactions. Reich and Marcuse didn’t do this.Whereas Freud (and Reich and Marcuse) saw the mind as something to be explained in terms of the individual’s instinctual biological development, Fromm saw that the mind as a social phenomenon. While Freud explained mental illness in terms of the failure of an individual to develop normally through the various stages of sexual development which his theory posited, Fromm (who was a medical doctor and practising psychiatrist himself) explained mental illness in terms of the failure of the individual to relate properly with other individuals. For him, not only the mind but (most) mental illnesses were social.This seems to me to be much more in line with Marx’s historical materialism, even though Fromm never completely abandoned “psychoanalysis”. While Reich and Marcuse’s ideas have been discredited along with those of Freud, Fromm’s retain some of their validity especially his view that humans need to live and feel part of a genuine community.