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The Art of Loving - Erich Fromm - Quotations

Here is the longest book review of mine, though it was not the idea. I have started this book almost by chance. Let me tell the story: I watched the movie of Art of Loving, the story of Michalina Wislocka which is an excellent and really good movie about Dr. Michalina Wislocka who worked for woman sexuality. I am going to learn from the film that she had written a book about it. I searched and searched, but apparently, her book has not been translated into English or I could not find it in the available places. Disappointment. But, wait, there was another book which is called “Art of Loving” but from another author Erich Fromm whose name is familiar to me from somewhere. Then, my office-mate intervened my desperate book search, and she said she read the book of Fromm and it changed her life and perception of love. I decided to buy and read it at that point as I already spend so much time for book researching. Though it took a long time to take the book into my hands till a very close friend of mine told me that she is waiting to read the same book from the German copy. So, it was the time, and we started, I continued, the book traveled with me to three different countries in three different continents. Well, this is how I started to read the book but what I am thinking about it:

This is one of the first English written sociology books about love that I enjoy to read. Simply stated I enjoyed his simplifications, Freud criticisms -though that both of them psychoanalyst- and deeply digging the human feelings. I am not a person who can judge or criticize his knowledge simply because I do not know the literature at all. However, I know myself and how it feels to love a person. All in all, I want to state some criticisms humbly. First of all, throughout my reading, I felt like he is in between to be anti-capitalist and tolerant of capitalism. Although he raised solid criticisms over capitalism and the system’s created handicap over the human race, he cannot stop to seek rational foundations for loving and true love. This is the second point, stating and preaching the “true love”… I do not know in which extent such attitude compatible with his “being nothing” arguments in the section of God love. The third point, I found him a bit sexist and Western racist. I am so sorry to state that, but this is how I felt even though I really tried to read the piece with a purified mind of today's’ feminist/queer mind. But still… There were priceless feminist/queer works while he was writing his piece and he cannot miss them. I don’t know, I felt uncomfortable even irritated at some places because of his “man-woman” and “Western – Eastern” usages. He seems to be sensitive on these terms, he also states that he uses the term man for all humankind, though such sensitivity somehow does not feel natural. Especially when he defines motherly and father love, or erotic love, his sexist mind -sorry again- is quite visible. Moreover, his plain ignorance of homosexual love is also disturbing. Regarding western and eastern cultures, one should ask him how he defines those terms and where he draws the distinctive line? He states that Western civilization is lack of some values which Eastern culture has, but then he implies that these differences led the Westerns to create science as if Eastern culture is lack of science. Not enough, Eastern culture consists of China and India, and nothing else? Really? No mention of Islam, no mention of Arabs for example? Anyways, all in all, as I said I enjoyed reading the piece even though I have some criticisms. He asserts valuable arguments in and against to loving attitude of the human race. And, I suggest it to everyone who struggles and overthinks about loving.

ps: The book has been left in New Haven as a gift for the spirit of the city and comemoration for my 4 months experience here.

Hazal Basarik

It wants to convince the reader that all his attempts for love are bound to fail, unless he tries most actively to develop his total personality, so as to achieve a productive orientation; that satisfaction in individual love cannot be attained without the capacity to love one’s neighbor, without true humility, courage, faith and discipline. In a culture in which these qualities are rare, the attainment of the capacity to love must remain a rare achievement. (Preface)

The experience of separateness arouses anxiety; it is, indeed, the source of all anxiety. Being separate means being cut off, without any capacity to use my human powers. Hence to be separate means to be helpless, unable to grasp the world -things and people- actively; it means that the world can invade me without my ability to react. Thus, separateness is the source of intense anxiety. Beyond that, it arouses shame and the feeling of guilt. This experience of guilt and shame in separateness is expressed in the Biblical story of Adam and Eve. (8)

The awareness of human separation, without reunion by love- is the source of shame. It is at the same time the source of guilt and anxiety. (9)

… since the sexual act without love never bridges the gap between two human beings, except momentarily. (12)

But actually, people want to conform to a much higher degree than they are forced to conform, at least in the Western democracies.

Most people are nor even aware of their need to conform. They live under the illusion that they follow their own ideas and inclinations, that they are individuals, that they have arrived their opinions as the result of their own thinking – and that it just happens that their ideas are the same as those of the majority. The consensus of all serves as a proof for correctness of “their” ideas. Since there is still a need to feel some individuality, such need is satisfied with regard to minor differences; the initials on the handbag or the sweater, the name plate of the bank teller, the belonging to the Democratic as against the Republican party, to the Elks instead of to the Shriners become the expression of individual differences. The advertising slogan of “it is different” shows up this pathetic need for difference, when in reality there is hardly any left. (13)

In contemporary capitalistic society the meaning of equality has been transformed. By equality one refers to the equality of automatons; of men who have lost their individuality. Equality today means “sameness” rather than “oneness”. (14)

The proposition of Enlightenment philosophy, l’ame n’a pas de sexe, the soul has no sex, has become the general practice. (…) Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, so the social process requires standardization of man, and this standardization is called “equality.” (…) In addition to conformity as a way to relieve the anxiety springing from separateness, another factor of contemporary life must be considered: the role of the work routine and of the pleasure routine. (15)

A third way of attaining union lies in creative activity, be it that of the artist, or of the artisan. (16)

The passive form of symbiotic union is that of submission, or if we use a clinical term, of masochism. The masochistic person escapes from the unbearable feeling of isolation and separateness by making himself part and parcel of another person who directs him, guides him, protects him; who is his life and his oxygen, as it were. The power of the one to whom one submits is inflated, may he be a person or a god; he is everything, I am nothing, except inasmuch as I am part of him. (…)

The active form of symbiotic fusion is domination or, to use the psychological term corresponding to masochism, sadism. The sadistic person wants to escape from his aloneness and his sense of imprisonment by making another person part and parcel of himself. He inflates and enhances himself by incorporating another person, who worships him. The sadistic person is as dependent on the submissive person as the latter is on the former; neither can live without the other. The difference is only that the sadistic person commands, exploits, hurts, humiliates and the masochistic person is commanded, exploited, hurt, humiliated. This is a considerable difference in a realistic sense; in a deeper emotional sense, the difference is not so great as that which they both have common: fusion without integrity. (18-19)

Love is an activity, not a passive affect; it is a “standing in,” not a “falling for.” (21)

Love is the active concern for the life and the growth of that which we love. (25)

Care and concern imply another aspect of love; that of responsibility. Today responsibility is often meant to denote duty, something imposed upon one from the outside. But responsibility, in its true sense, is an entirely voluntary act; it is my response to the needs, expressed or unexpressed, of another human being. To be “responsible” means to be able and ready to “respond.” (…)

Responsibility could easily deteriorate into domination and possessiveness, were it not for a third component of love, respect. Respect is not fear and awe; it donates, in accordance with the woot of the word (respicere = to look at), the ability to see a person as he is, to be aware of his unique individuality. Respect means the concern that the other person should grow and unfold as he is. (26)

Respect exists only on the basis of freedom: “l’amour est l’enfant de la liberte” as and old French song says; love is the child of freedom, never that of domination. (27)

The idea of this polarization is most strikingly expressed in the myth that originally man and woman were one, that they were cut in half, and from then on each male has been seeking for lost female part of himself in order to unite again with her. (…)

The polarity between male and female principles exists also within each man and each woman. Just as physiologically man and woman each have hormones of the opposite sex, they are bisexual also in the psychological sense. They carry in themselves the principle of receiving and penetrating, of matter and of spirit. Man -and woman- finds union within himself only in the union of his female and his male polarity. This polarity is the basis for all creativity. (…) the homosexual deviation is a failure to attain this polarized union, and thus the homosexual suffers from the pain of never-resolved separateness; a failure, however which he shares with the average heterosexual who cannot love. (31)

In fact, erotic attraction is by no means only expressed in sexual attraction. There is masculinity and femininity in character as well as in sexual function. The masculine character can be defined as having the qualities of penetration, guidance, activity, discipline and adventurousness; the feminine character by qualities of productive receptiveness, protection, realism, endurance, motherliness. (It must always be kept in mind that in each individual both characteristics are blended, but with the correspondence of those appertaining to “his” or “her” sex. (…)

Very often if the masculine character traits of a man are weakened because emotionally, he has remained a child, he will try to compensate for this lack by exclusive emphasis on his male role in sex. The results is the Don Juan, who needs to prove his male prowess in sex because he is unsure of his masculinity in a characterological sense. (…) If the feminine sexuality is weakened or perverted, it is transformed into masochism, or possessiveness. (34-35)

By loving, he has left the prison cell of aloneness and isolation which was constituted by the state of narcissism and self-centeredness. (…) Infantile love follows the principle: “I love because I am loved.” Mature love follows the principle: “I am loved because I love.” Immature love says: “I love you because I need you.” Mature love says: “I need you because I love you.” (38)

Furthermore, “deserved” love easily leaves a bitter feeling that one is not loved for oneself, that one is loved only because one pleases, that one is, in the last analysis, not loved but used. (39)

One cause for neurotic development can lie in the fact that a boy has a loving, but overindulgent or domineering mother, and a weak and uninterested father. In this case he may remain fixed at an early mother attachment, and develop into a person who is dependent on mother, feels helpless, has the striving characteristic of the receptive person, that is, to receive, to be protected, to be taken care of, and who has a lack of fatherly qualities – discipline, independence, an ability to master life by himself. He may try to find “mothers” in everybody, sometimes in women and sometimes in men in a position of authority and power. If, on the other hand, the mother is cold, unresponsive and domineering, he may either transfer the need for motherly protection to his father, and subsequent father figures – in which case the end result is similar to the former case- or he will develop into a one-sidedly father oriented person, completely given to the principles of law, order and authority, and lacking in the ability to expect or to receive unconditional love. This development is further intensified if the father is authoritarian and at the same time strongly attached to the son. What is characteristic of all these neurotic developments is the fact that one principle, the fatherly or motherly, fails to develop or – and this is the case in the more severe neurotic development – that the roles of mother and father become confused both with regard to persons outside and with regard to persons outside and with regard to these roles within the person. Further examination may show that certain types of neurosis, like obsessional neurosis, develop more on the basis of a one-sided father attachment, while others, like hysteria, alcoholism, inability to assert oneself and to cope with life realistically, and depressions, result from mother-centeredness. (42)

Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person; it is an attitude, an orientation of character which determines the relatedness of a person to the world as a whole, not toward one “object” of love. If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to the rest of his fellow men, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism. Yet, most people believe that love is constituted by the object, not by the faculty. In fact, they even believe that it is a proof of the intensity of their love when they do not love anybody except the “loved” person. (…) If I truly love one person I love all persons, I love the world, I love life. If I can say to somebody else, “I love you,” I must be able to say, “I love in you everybody, I love through you the world, I love in you also myself.” (43)

Here lies the basic difference to erotic love. In erotic love, two people who were separate become one. In motherly love, two people who were one become separate. The mother must not only tolerate, she must wish and support the child’s separation. (48)

First of all, it is often confused with the explosive experience of “falling: in love, the sudden collapse of the barriers which existed until that moment between two strangers. But, as was pointed out before, this experience of sudden intimacy is by its very nature short-lived. (49)

If the desire for physical union is not stimulated by love, if erotic love is not also brotherly love, it never leads to union in more than an orgiastic, transitory sense. (51)

If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each forever. A feeling comes and it may go. How can I judge that it will stay forever, when my act does not involve judgement and decision? (52)

Let us first speak of the development from mother centered to father centered religions. According to the great and decisive discoveries of Bachofen and Morgan in the middle of the nineteenth century, and in spite of the rejection their findings have found in most academic circles, there can be little doubt that there was a matriarchal phase of religion preceding the patriarchal one, at least in many cultures. In the matriarchal phase, the highest being is the mother. She is the goddess, she is also the authority in family and society. In order to understand the essence of matriarchal religion, we have only to remember what has been said about the essence of motherly love. Mother’s love is unconditional, it is all-protective, all-enveloping; because it is unconditional, it can also not be controlled or acquired. Its presence gives the loved person a sense of bliss; its absence produces a sense of lostness and utter despair. Since mother loves her children because they are her children, and not because they are “good,” obedient, or fulfill her wishes and commands, mother’s love is based on equality. All men are equal, because they all are children of a mother, because they all are children of Mother Earth. (60-61)

The truly religious person, if he follows the essence of the monotheistic idea, does not pray for anything, does not expect anything from God; he does not love God as a child loves his father or his mother; he has acquired the humility of sensing his limitations, to the degree of knowing that he knows nothing about God. (66)

This logic is based on the law of identity which states that A is A, the law of contradiction (A is not non-A) and the law of the excluded middle (A cannot be A and non-A, neither A nor non-A). Aristotle explains his position very clearly in the following sentence: “It is impossible for the same thing at the same time o belong and not to belong to the same thing and in the same respect; and whatever other distinctions we might add to meet dialectical objections, let them be added. This, then, is the most certain of all principles …” (…)

In opposition to Aristotelian logic is what one might call paradoxical logic, which assumes that A and non-A do not exclude each other as predicates of X. Paradoxical logic was predominant in Chinese and Indian thinking, in the philosophy of Heraclitus, and then again, under the name of dialectics, it became the philosophy of Hegel, and of Marx. The general principle of paradoxical logic has been clearly described by Lao-tse. “Words that are strictly true seem to be paradoxical.” (…)

(Heraclitus) assumes the conflict between opposites is the basis of all existence. “They do not understand,” he says, “that the all-One, conflicting in itself, is identical with itself: conflicting harmony as in the bow and in the lyre.” (67-69)

“We look at it, and we do not hear it, and we name “Equable.” We listen to it, and we do not hear it, and we name it the “Inaudible.” We try to grasp it, and do not get hold of it, and we name it the “Subtle.” With these three qualities, it cannot be made the subject of description; and hence we blend them together and obtain The One.” (…)

But paradoxical philosophy is neither in India not in China to be confused with a dualistic standpoint. The harmony (unity) consist in the conflicting position from which it is made up. (70)

Inasmuch as God represents the ultimate reality, and inasmuch as the human mind perceives reality in contradictions, no positive statement can be made of God. (…) Man can only know the negation, never the position of ultimate reality. “Meanwhile man can not know what God is, even though he be ever so well aware of what God is not…” (71)

The teachers of paradoxical logic say that man can perceive reality only in contradictions, and can never perceive in thought the ultimate reality-unity, the One itself. This led to the consequence that one did not seek as the ultimate aim to find the answer in thought. Thought can only lead us to the knowledge that it cannot give us the ultimate answer. The world of thought remains caught in the paradox. The only way in which the world can be grasped ultimately lies, not in thought, but in act, in the experience of oneness. Thus paradoxical logic leads to the conclusion that the love of God is neither the knowledge of God in thought, not the thought of one’s love of God, but the experiencing the oneness with God. (72)

Secondly, the paradoxical standpoint led to the emphasis on transforming man, rather than to the development of dogma on the one hand, and science on the other. From the Indian, Chinese and mystical standpoints, the religious task of man is not to think right, but to act right, and/or to become one with the One in the act of concentrated mediation. (73)

The emphasis on thought has also another and historically a very important consequence. The idea that one could find the truth in thought led not only to dogma, but also to science. (…) In the dominant Western religious system, the love of God is essentially the same as the belief in God, in God’s existence, God’s justice, God’s love. The love of God, is essentially a thought experience. (…) In the stage of full maturity he has freed himself from the person of mother and of father as protecting and commanding powers; he has established the motherly and fatherly principles in himself. He has become his own father and mother; he is farher and mother. In the history of the human race we see -and can anticipate- the same development: from the beginning of the love for God as the helpless attachment to a mother Goddess, through the obedient attachment to a father God, to a mature stage where God ceases to be an outside power, where man has incorporated the principles of love and justice into himself, where he has become one with God, and eventually, to a point where he speaks of God only in a poetic, symbolic sense. (73-74)

Love for man, furthermore, while directly embedded in his relations to his family, is in the last analysis determined by the structure of the society in which he lives. (76)

Shoes, useful and needed as they may be, have no economic value (exchange value) if there is no demand for them on the market; human energy and skill are without exchange value if there is no demand for them under existing market conditions. (78)

Our character is geared to exchange and to receive, to barter and to consume; everything, spiritual as well as material objects, becomes an object of exchange and of consumption. (81)

One of the most significant expressions of love, and especially of marriage with this alienated structure, is the idea of the “team.” In any number of articles on happy marriage, the ideal described is that of the smoothly functioning team. This description is not too different from the idea of a smoothly functioning employee; he should be “reasonably independent,” cooperative, tolerant, and at the same time ambitious and aggressive. Thus, the marriage counselor tells us, the husband should “understand” his wife and be helpful. He should comment favorably on her new dress, and on a tasty dish. She, in turn, should understand when he comes home tired and disgruntled, she should listen attentively when he talks about his business troubles, should not be angry but understanding when he forgets her birthday. All this kind of relationship amount to is the well-oiled relationship between two persons who remain strangers all their lives, who never arrive at a “central relationship,” but who treat each other with courtesy and who attempt to make each other feel better. (81)

It fitted the general illusion of the time to assume that using the right techniques is the solution not only to technical problems of industrial production, but of all human problems as well. (82)

Fear of or hatred for the other sex are at the bottom of those difficulties which prevent a person from giving himself completely, from acting spontaneously, from trusting the sexual partner in the immediacy and directness of physical closeness. (83)

In order to prove that capitalism corresponded to the natural seeds of man, one had to show that man was by nature competitive and full of mutual hostility. While economists “proved” this in terms of the insatiable desire for economic gain, and the Darwinists in terms of the biological law of the survival of the fittest, Freud came to the same result by the assumption that man is driven by a limitless desire for the sexual conquest of all women, and that only the pressure of society prevented man from acting on his desires. (84-85)

It is remarkable that Sullivan speaks here of expressed needs, when the least one could say about love is that it implies a reaction to unexpressed needs between two people. (87)

Their aim is to loved, not to love. There is usually a good deal of vanity in this type of man, more or less hidden grandiose ideas. If they have found the right woman, they feel secure, on top of the world, and can display a great deal of affection and charm, and this is the reason why these men are often so deceptive. But when, after a while, the woman does not continue to live up to their phantastic expectations, conflicts and resentment start to develop. If the woman is not always admiring them, if she makes claims for a life of the own, if she wants to be loved and protected herself, and in extreme cases, if she is not willing to condone his love affairs with other women (or even have an admiring interest in them), the man feels deeply hurt and disappointed, and usually rationalizes this feeling with the idea that the woman “does not love him, is selfish, or domineering.” Anything short of the attitude of a loving mother toward a charming child is taken as proof of a lack of love. These men usually confuse their affectionate behavior, their wish to please, with genuine love and thus arrive at the conclusion that they are being treated quite unfairly; they imagine themselves to be the great lovers and complain bitterly about the ingratitude of their love partner. (89)

Mother can give life, and she can take life. She is the one to revive, and the one to destroy; she can do miracles of love – and nobody can hurt more than she. In religious images (such as the Hindu goddess Kali) and in dream symbolism the two opposite aspects of mother can often be found. (90)

Needless to say it is not rare that two persons find each other in a mutual idolatry which, sometimes, in extreme cases, represents the picture of folie a deux. (…) As long as love is a daydream, they can participate; as soon as it comes down to the reality of the relationship between two real people – they are frozen. (…) This tendency coincides with a general attitude characteristic of modern man. He lives in the past or in the future, but not in the present. He remembers sentimentally his childhood and his mother – or he makes happy plans for the future. (93)

Any detailed study would show, however, that the atmosphere of tension and unhappiness within the “unified family” is more harmful to the children than an open break would be – which teaches them at least that man is able to end an intolerable situation by a courageous decision. (95)

Love, experienced thus, is a constant challenge; it is not a resting place, but a moving, growing , working together; even whether there is harmony or conflict, joy or sadness, is secondary to the fundamental fact that two people experience themselves from the essence of their existence, that they are one with each other by being one with themselves, rather than by fleeing from themselves. There is only one proof for the presence of love: the depth of the relationship, and the aliveness and strength in each person concerned; this is the fruit by which love is recognized. (96)

By irrational faith I understand the belief (in a person or an idea) which is based on one’s submission to irrational authority. In contrast, rational faith is a conviction which is rooted in one’s own experience of thought of feeling. Rational faith is not primarily belief in something, but the quality of certainty and firmness which our convictions have. Faith is a character trait pervading the whole personality, rather than a specific belief. (112)

We are aware of the existence of a self, of a core in our personality which is unchangeable, and which persists throughout our life in spite of varying circumstances, and regardless of certain changes in opinions and feelings. It is the core which is the reality behind the word “I.” and on which our conviction of our own identity is based. Unless we have faith in the persistence of our self, our feeling of identity is threatened and we become dependent on other people whose approval then becomes the basis for our feeling of our identity. (114)

Because of the fact that faith and power are mutually exclusive, all religions and political systems which originally are built on rational faith become a=corrupt and eventually lose what strength they have, if they rely on power or ally themselves with it.

To have faith requires courage, the ability to take a risk, the readiness even to accept pain and disappointment. Whoever insists on safety and security as primary conditions of life cannot have faith; whoever shuts himself off in a system of defense, where distance and possession are his means of security, makes himself a prisoner. (117)

To love means to commit oneself without guarantee, to give oneself completely in the hope that our love will produce love in the loved person. Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love. (118)

Fairness meaning not to use fraud and trickery in the exchange of commodities and services, and in the exchange of feelings. “I give you as much as you give me,” in material goods as well as in love, is the prevalent ethical maxim in capitalist society. It may even be said that the development of fairness ethics is the particular ethical contribution of capitalist society. (119)

But the practice of love must begin with recognizing the difference between fairness and love. (120)

They arrive at the result that to speak of love today means only to participate in the general fraud; they claim that only a martyr or a mad person can love in the world of today, hence that all discussion of love is nothing but preaching. (121)

All activities are subordinated to economic goals, means have become ends; man is an automaton -well fed, well clad, but without any ultimate concern for that which is his peculiar human quality and function. If man is to able to love, he must be put in his supreme place. The economic machine must serve him, rather than he serve it. He must be enabled to share experience, to share work, rather than, at best, share profits. Society must be organized in such a way that man’s social, loving nature is not separated from his social existence, but becomes one with it. (…) to have faith in the possibility of love as a social and not only exceptional-individual phenomenon, is a rational faith based on the insight into the very nature of man. (123)

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