On Erich Fromm: Why he left the Frankfurt School

When Leo Lowenthal introduced the twenty-eight year old Fromm to Max Horkheimer, the latter was seeking a psychoanalyst to join the flourishing interdisciplinary Institute for Social Research (ISR) (which we now call the Frankfurt School). Horkheimer had himself become intrigued by the subject after undergoing psychoanalysis in a bid to find a cure for his reliance on notes when public speaking. Horkheimer wanted the scholar to merge the then new psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud with the theories of Karl Marx. Fromm fit the bill. He was a bespectacled, shy thinker, fresh from psychoanalytic training in Munich and Berlin, and with the sort of interdisciplinary background that would enable him to undertake the challenge set by Horkheimer. Fromm joined the Institute in 1928.