In this provocative book, the distinguished author writes to break the deadlock in the struggle between the instinctivism of Konrad Lorenz and behavior psychologist B.F. Skinner.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
48 of 55 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
It's a destructive culture, not a destructive species,
By
This review is from: The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (Paperback)
I encountered this book in 1988 or so, and it changed my life. It is I think Fromms best and most important book. This is the book that first let me know that the violence of the dominant culture is not biological in its origin. The book is centered around the question, obviously, of why humans commit atrocities. Fromm begins this book by exploring many of the theories, such as the notion that we are biologically overdetermined to be so violent. But he conclusively shows that cannot be the case. He then gives examples of nonviolent cultures, and explores why these cultures are the way they are. He then concludes with a powerful and detailed exploration of Hitler, showing how Hitler manifests the essence of this awful civilization that is killing the planet. A powerful book that helped form the foundations of my thinking.
22 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A MUST READ FOR PSYCH TYPES,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (Paperback)
The photo of Hitler unable to pull his eyes away from adecaying corpse is alone worth the price of admission. As this was aBook of the Month Club "featured selection" about 25 years ago, Pr. Fromm explores the dark side of humanity, from ego-centrism, to our twisted love of death. Hurtful at times, addressing basal issues most of us would rather deny, this is a truly life-changing volume. Fromm discusses our vanity and obsessions so objectively, we can actually wade through it without getting mad. A Freudian Delight!
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Human Nature Defined - For Those Daring Enough to Look,
This review is from: The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (Paperback)
Whichever path through this masterpiece you take, you will need to keep reminding yourself that you entered the land of the brave and you need to go through things that may be too recognizable to accept without resistance. But when you do, it will make you a better person. Then, you may need to be brave enough to forget the part of what you read if you start recognizing too many rationalizations in your everyday walk and talk of life. This work has amazing composition that allows you to read it in different ways. You can skip the whole Part I, if you don't have time and you know that Fromm knows what is he attacking and why, and you can skip big case studies, if you don't have time and don't particularly care for the brains of Stalin and Hitler :-). And still you will get the whole and earth-shattering definition of the human nature and how and why a human can get hurt so easily and can hurt others so easily. Or, you can start with big case studies, if that is what motivates you to read, and in order to read through them you will have to read the rest, probably with your own pattern of chapters. Or, you can start from the page one, to see how deeply wrong currently popular behavioral theory is and take it from there in a linear fashion.
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