Panel Features Erich Fromm

The talk at the Divinity School Forum touched on an array of topics last night, but although he sandwiched quotes from the Talmud and the Buddha with clinical observations, Erich Fromm always returned to one basic theme: all psychiatric problems are moral problems.

Emphasizing the moral concern of psychoanalysis, the psychiatrist attacked a modern tendency to "adjust men to an inhuman industrial society." He said that analysis must not become an instrument to smooth out any traces of individuality in men, nor must analysts continue in their role as "priests of the industrial age."

Analysis is moral in that it serves to make man "at home in the world," Fromm continued. But this is not at all the same thing as "adjustment," and analysis must deal with religious, philosophical, and political concerns. Psychoanalysis must help men revolt from a social order "which demands that they not be very human," Fromm insisted.

Analysis is thus allied with a religious tradition which opposes idolatry, "the worship of things by man," Fromm said.

Originally, Paul J. Tillich, University Professor, was scheduled to speak along with Fromm. When he was unable to attend the forum, however, the program was changed to that of a panel discussion with Fromm as leader.