Erich Fromm

Erich Fromm was a German-American psychoanalyst and social philosopher who brought together Freud, Marx, and humanist ethics to produce one of the twentieth century's most widely read philosophical diagnoses of modernity. His 1941 work Escape from Freedom argued that the freedoms of modern liberal society had produced, paradoxically, an unbearable anxiety that drove people toward authoritarian solutions.

The Art of Loving — his most popular work — argued that love is not a feeling that happens to us but a practice that requires discipline, patience, and self-knowledge. Fromm's "humanist psychoanalysis" held that human beings have genuine needs for connection, creativity, and meaning, and that capitalism systematically frustrates these needs by encouraging having rather than being. His account of the "marketing character" — the person who experiences themselves as a commodity to be sold — remains one of the sharpest critiques of consumer society.