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The Erich Fromm Research Conference aims at bringing together international researchers engaged with the work of Erich Fromm, examining the actuality of Fromm’s social-analytical approach, as well as exploring the potential for further development of this approach with regard to contemporary social developments. The conference is in English. It is organized by the Erich Fromm Study Center at the IPU Berlin and conducted by Dr. Rainer Funk, Tübingen, and Prof. Dr. Thomas Kühn, Berlin.

Transformation is an omnipresent term in the current social, political as well as scientific discourse. Its increasing usage seems to express a widespread wish for change of society. At the same time, despite its frequent usage, the term often stays vague and underdetermined. On the one hand, it seems widely agreed upon that transformation processes should be turning the status quo into a better future, on the other hand, it often stays undefined, what a better future should look like. A critical discussion of the goals, a transformation should aim at, is often missing. The conference therefore aims at introducing the radical humanistic perspective of Erich Fromm to the analysis of ongoing social change, encompassing a critical debate on the directions this change should head at as well as the means it takes. With Fromm, we would like to shift the focus from technical innovations, a perspective that is predominant in current discourses on transformation, to human change. From a Frommian perspective, the question of human change inevitably encompasses aspects of technical innovation as well but does not stop there. Broadly speaking, we seek to analyze all aspects of society including unconscious forces that form the social character in a Frommian sense and therefore are important for a humanistic transformation.

We welcome contributions in five main thematic fields: