Psychological Precarity and the Magic Helper: Talking about Erich Fromm at Columbia University

On October 10, 2026, I had the opportunity to join other Erich Fromm scholars at the 2nd biennial Erich Fromm Society of North America conference held at Columbia University, New York. In my talk, I address the ways in which false consciousness is created by what Erich Fromm calls the “Magic Helper,” the person, ideology, movement, or group that the psychological precariat offload responsibility for their lives to. In times of great change, including economic and political chaos, those who suffer from what I have called “psychological precocity” – the abiding sense that one can or will “fall off the cliff” into an undesirable state of being – grows exponentially. In such time, people look for an authority outside of themselves that will magically resolve their conflicts, will slay the chaos, and restore them to their desired state of being. The conference was entitled, Erich Fromm and the Crisis of Democracy: Educational, Psychological, and Sociological Perspective, and was organized by Rory Varrato, Ph.D., and Chiara Ginevra Berra, MPhil. I was joined in my panel by James E. Block, who spoke on “fashioning a democratic individual,” and Stephen Onley, who spoke on “the self-concealing crisis: automaton conformity and democratic legitimacy.” It was great to see my dear friend, Rainer Funk again. He gave a wonderful talk entitled, “The Having Mode of Existence and Artificial Intelligence: Psychological Impact on Democracy.”

Here is the schedule of events from the conference: Erich Fromm Society of North America Conference 2026