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International Mental Health Day

To mark International Mental Health Day on 10 October, we would like to draw your attention to a video in which Fromm shares some thoughts on the subject. 

Visit our Media Center for more viedeos with and about Erich Fromm.

Fromm has of course also commented on the subject of mental health in his books:

  • In the Fear of Freedom (1942), Fromm approches the topic of (mental) health from two different angles: looking at the society or looking at the individual.

    „The term normal or healthy can be defined in two ways. Firstly, from the standpoint of a funcioning society, one can call a person normal or healthy if he is able to fulfil the social role he is to take in that given society [...] Secondly, from the standpoint of the individual, we look upon health or normalcy as the optimum of growth and happiness of the individual.“ 

    Erich Fromm (1960): The Fear of Freedom. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, S. 118

  • In The Sane Society, (1955), Fromm focusses on the examination of the topic of mental health by looking at society itself: 

    „Yet many psychiatrists and psychologists refuse to entertain the idea that society as a whole may be lacking in sanity. They hold that the problem of mental health in a society is only that of the number of "unadjusted" individuals, and not that of a possible unadjustment of the culture itself. This book deals with the latter problem; not with individual pathology, but with the pathology of normalcy, particularly with the pathology of contemporary Western society.“

    Erich Fromm (1991): The Sane Society. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, S. 6