The German-American psychoanalyst and social philosopher Erich Fromm (1900–80) proclaimed from the mid-1950s onwards that the life we live and the society we live in are sick, alienated and inadequate. The solution he offered for the sick society was ‘Socialist Humanism’, a fusion of Marxist, psychoanalytic and Messianic doctrines that would provide a viable political and existential alternative to state socialism and bureaucratic capitalism – the ‘third way’. In this chapter, I shall focus on the utopian aspects of Fromm's Socialist Humanism from the mid-1950s to the late 1960s. Most students of his life and work have analysed either his psychological theories or his relationship with the Frankfurt school; there are no detailed analyses of his Socialist Humanism and its utopian aspects. My leading idea in this chapter is that a systematic inquiry into Fromm's social and political thought since the mid-1950s illustrates the intricate ways in which psychodynamic, religious and Marxist elements made up a particularly powerful form of utopian thought in the third quarter of the twentieth century.

Fromm is the youngest psychoutopian in this book; his last book was published in 1980, and his most utopian period began only with the publication of The Sane Society in 1955. By that time, Gross had been dead for thirty-five years; Reich was to die two years later; and the ageing Jung, who was immersed in alchemy and religion, had long ago ceased to develop ideas of ‘national individuation’. Of these four authors, Fromm was the only one who did not have a medical degree; he became a ‘lay analyst’ who was early on interested in social psychology and especially in the various ways in which social structures have an impact on the human personality.