Books in Brief

Dialogue with Erich Fromm, by Richard I. Evans (Harper, $4.95). We have had the East-West dialogue, the Protestant-Catholic dialogue, and the Christian-Marxist dialogue. Now we have one with Erich Fromm. Itistobe followed in this series by other dialogues with important behavioral scientists. Will all of them make this book’s claim? “Lucidly presented and absorbing to read,” promises the dust jacket, “it offers an unusual opportunity to learn a great deal with pleasure and without pain.” This reviewer read the book totally without pleasure and, if not in pain, with a certain dull ache. “We can progress only to the extent that we have increased our own human powers of reason . . . and to the same extent we can cut the ties to mother, to father, to soil, to blood, to idols.” Dull ache. Besides being the father of “humanistic psychoanalysis,” Fromm poses of course as a philosopher and a sociologist. It is probably from his philosopher/sociologist viewpoint that he surveys the nuclear-arms race, writing, apparently without irony, that “men seem to be somewhat indifferent to the wish to live.” What is one to do confronted by such a thinker? Nuclear arms may be condemned on a number of grounds, but that we build them precisely because we are tired of living is preposterous.

G. M. PEPPER

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Dialogue with Erich Fromm, by Richard I. Evans (Harper, $4.95). We have had the East-West dialogue, the Protestant-Catholic dialogue, and the Christian-Marxist dialogue. Now we have one with Erich Fromm. Itistobe followed in this series by other dialogues with important behavioral scientists. Will all of them make this book’s claim? “Lucidly presented and absorbing to read,” promises the dust jacket, “it offers an unusual opportunity to learn a great deal with pleasure and without pain.” This reviewer read the book totally without pleasure and, if not in pain, with a certain dull ache. “We can progress only to the extent that we have increased our own human powers of reason . . . and to the same extent we can cut the ties to mother, to father, to soil, to blood, to idols.” Dull ache. Besides being the father of “humanistic psychoanalysis,” Fromm poses of course as a philosopher and a sociologist. It is probably from his philosopher/sociologist viewpoint that he surveys the nuclear-arms race, writing, apparently without irony, that “men seem to be somewhat indifferent to the wish to live.” What is one to do confronted by such a thinker? Nuclear arms may be condemned on a number of grounds, but that we build them precisely because we are tired of living is preposterous.

G. M. PEPPER