Identity and assimilation. Fromm’s, Bettelheim’s and Erikson’s careers in America

Abstract

The essay attempts to compare the careers of three famous psychoanalysts, Erich Fromm, Bruno Bettelheim, and Erik H. Erikson from the point of view of the history of science and the sociology of knowledge. All of them came from Central Europe, from Jewish families. Their life work unfolded in America, but their thinking had been determined by their European experiences and questions: the meaning of freedom, the dilemma of survival, and the nature of identity. In the 1960s and 1970s they were respected not only as psychoanalysts and social thinkers, but as public intellectuals, too. For today, however, they became “forgotten intellectuals”. The essay points out those social, scientific, political, and personal factors that played a part in their decline. Keywords: Erich Fromm, Bruno Bettelheim, Erik H. Erikson, identity, Judaism, America, assimilation, psychoanalysis, Nazism, public intellectuals