On December 10, 2025, the Erich Fromm Study Center invites you to the annual Erich Fromm Lecture.

This year, Prof. Dr Neil McLaughlin, Professor of Sociology at McMaster University in Canada, will be speaking on the topic of "Public Psychoanalysis for today: Why Erich Fromm matters". McLaughlin is author of Erich Fromm and Global Public Sociology (Bristol University Press 2023). He is one of the leading sociological scholars on Fromm and engages, among other things, with questions of public intellectual life and the culture of political debate. As an advisor, Neil McLaughlin has been an integral part of the annual International Doc and Postdoc Seminar organised by the EFSC, which takes place at the Erich Fromm Institute in Tübingen, since 2016.

Abstract of the lecture "Public Psychoanalysis for today: Why Erich Fromm matters":

Erich Fromm was the most important public psychoanalyst of the 20th century because of his best-selling books starting with Escape from Freedom (1941). In the age of the paperback before the invention of the internet and social media, Fromm popularized the Freudian perspective with best selling political but also psychoanalytic books such as Psychoanalysis and Religion (1950), The Forgotten Language (1951) and Sigmund Freud's Mission (1959). Fromm was a great public psychoanalyst, however, because he was both a student of and critic of Freud and his movement. This presentation will tell the story of Fromm's public psychoanalytic career and discuss how public psychoanalytic life has been transformed by new technology and our polarized politics. We will conclude by making the case that the example of Fromm's public intellectual work is a more valuable model to build on than contemporary public psychosocial thinkers such as Jordan Peterson, Gabor Mate and Avgi Saketopoulou.

Following the lecture, we invite you to join us for a discussion and a convivial conclusion with drinks and fingerfood. The event will be held in English at the International Psychoanalytic University Berlin, Stromstr. 2, Hörsaal 1. Online participation is also possible. Participation is free of charge. Please register for the event here.