Erich Fromm, Fascism and the Holocaust. A conversation with Roger Frie

Shownotes

In this episode, Jonathan Keir talks with Roger Frie, a clinical psychologist, psychoanalyst and historian whose work examines how personal memory and historical catastrophe shape ethical life. Drawing on his new book "Edge of Catastrophe: Erich Fromm, Fascism and the Holocaust", Frie reconstructs the largely untold story of the Holocaust in Fromm’s family and shows how it informed Fromm’s analysis of authoritarianism, racial narcissism and human destructiveness. The conversation moves between archival letters, Fromm’s classic works "The Fear of Freedom", "The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness" and "To Have or To Be", and present-day questions about refugees, antisemitism and the resurgence of fascist politics.