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A review by niconorico
The Dogma of Christ & Other Essays on Religion, Psychology & Culture by Erich Fromm
4.0
Reading Fromm is like dumpster diving knowing there's a gold Rolex at the bottom. You have to wade through old shit before you find immense treasure.
What I mean is that Fromm is inseparable from the discourse of his time, and also of his own status as a well-off cis-hetero guy. When reading Fromm, it is important to keep in mind what is being left out and what is being looked at that he is trying to describe. In particular, we must use this method when he is applying Freudian psychoanalysis, much of which being an attempt to communicate the importance placed on authority figures (the 'father').
Sex and Character is a cishet farce, but there is great value in Fromm's spiritualism for anyone living under Christian hegemony. It provides a language with which to translate liberation from the political to the religious. Christianity in its present form is intolerant, merciless, oppressive—but by channeling the revolutionary message of its founders, folks can be made to see what Jesus of Nazareth meant by 'the kingdom of heaven is at hand'. We cannot persuade this population through political language alone.
The social process behind religion is powerful, it is at minimum a social coping mechanism and process of popular education that is inseparable from hegemony. No attempt at liberation will succeed, Fromm argues, unless we address both the human and the spiritual.
What I mean is that Fromm is inseparable from the discourse of his time, and also of his own status as a well-off cis-hetero guy. When reading Fromm, it is important to keep in mind what is being left out and what is being looked at that he is trying to describe. In particular, we must use this method when he is applying Freudian psychoanalysis, much of which being an attempt to communicate the importance placed on authority figures (the 'father').
Sex and Character is a cishet farce, but there is great value in Fromm's spiritualism for anyone living under Christian hegemony. It provides a language with which to translate liberation from the political to the religious. Christianity in its present form is intolerant, merciless, oppressive—but by channeling the revolutionary message of its founders, folks can be made to see what Jesus of Nazareth meant by 'the kingdom of heaven is at hand'. We cannot persuade this population through political language alone.
The social process behind religion is powerful, it is at minimum a social coping mechanism and process of popular education that is inseparable from hegemony. No attempt at liberation will succeed, Fromm argues, unless we address both the human and the spiritual.