An Appreciation of Larry Friedman

I first met Larry at the Wellfleet psychohistory group meetings hosted by Robert Lifton. He was a regular attendee and I looked forward to seeing him once a year in the early fall when we met. I talked with him about the biography of Erich Fromm that he was in the process of writing. We had several talks about the ethics of whether or not to disclose certain information he had obtained in the course of doing research for the book. My position was that he should publish the information he had for the sake of creating an accurate historical record. Ultimately, he chose not to include the material in his book.

After his book The Lives of Erich Fromm: Love’s Prophet was published in 2013, I wrote a review, which was published in The Journal of Psychohistory. Most of the piece was devoted to summarizing the long list of Fromm’s accomplishments. To quote from my review: “Erich Fromm was an incredibly productive and prolific individual, full of energy, at times exuberant or perhaps hypomanic, with a richly complex intellectual and personal life… Fromm had multiple interests and identities… He was a teacher, mentor, public lecturer, political activist… He is the author of 31 books…” On rereading what I had written, I realized that the above description applied to Larry as well as to Erich; although Larry has only written seven books.

Larry’s Curriculum Vitae is available online. It is 12 pages long. In addition to what has been mentioned, Larry is an award-winning teacher and prolific writer of articles, papers, and book reviews. Furthermore, he is, of course, the author of the excellent psychobiographies of Erik Erikson and Erich Fromm.

Larry also has a masochistic streak—he has been a lifelong Cleveland Indians fan.

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