Erich Fromm with his book “The Art of Loving” left us a great reflection on love that everyone should read. He understands love as an art resulting from learning, just as living is also an art.
If you want to learn the art of loving, we recommend that you continue reading this Psychology-Online article. In it, you will find everything you need to know about Erich Fromm and the art of loving, with a summary and phrases. Because, despite everything, is there anyone who is not interested in learning to love?
Erich Fromm: biography
Erich Fromm (1900-1980), born in Frankfurt, was psychoanalyst and social philosopherl. He trained in psychoanalysis at the University of Munich and the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute. He left Nazi Germany in 1933 and went to the United States.
From 1934 to 1941, Fromm was on the faculty of Columbia University in New York, where his views became increasingly controversial. In 1941 he joined the faculty at Bennington College in Vermont, and in 1951 He was appointed professor of psychoanalysis at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. He applied psychoanalysis to social and cultural issues.
He presented the view that an understanding of basic human needs was essential to a good understanding of society.
Most important books by Erich Fromm
The first important work he published was Escape from Freedom (1941). It was in 1956 when he published the book: the art of Loving. He has many other books such as: “Man for Himself”, “Psychoanalysis and Religion”, “Beyond the Chains of Illusion”, “The Revolution of Hope” and “The Crisis of Psychoanalysis”.
“The art of loving”: Summary
The book titled “the art of loving” is not a self-help manual, it is a reflection on the nature of love understood as an art. That is to say, you can learn and evolve and we all have the potential to generate it, although it requires great care to maintain it. Real love is not something we fall into, it is something we learn to do.
Throughout the story analyzes romantic lovelove fraternal, maternal, love of God and the self-love and refers to some basic concepts to maintain a relationship.
It is based on the fact that society has false premises about love: love is measured in the fact of being loved and not in one’s own ability to love, and real love is confused with the initial experience of falling in love.
What the art of loving is about: brief synopsis
Erich Fromm talks about love is the only healthy response and satisfactory to the problem of human existence. A moment of happiness can compensate for all the suffering that life throws at us and it is when you know how to love and let yourself be loved by your friends, your partner, your family, that you find meaning in your life to always move forward.
He talks about love as an art, which must be learned in order to be able to exercise it with mastery and depth. It is not just desire, impulse, it is much more than all this. And there is nothing easier than loving, the difficult thing is keeping the flame of love of falling in love alive.
Love is energy, but it is not enough to feel it; you also have to take care of it and feed it to be able to live it. To do so, it starts from four basic premises that any art needs to be developed:
- Discipline
- Concentration
- Patience
- Concern to master the art
Mature love according to the art of loving by Erich Fromm
- For Fromm, mature love is saying “I need you because I love you”.
- On the contrary, immature love, that is, “I love you because I need you”.
Loving someone is equivalent to wanting that person to develop and be happy, and not loving to satisfy my needs.
The objective is to achieve a interpersonal union through a mature love where one’s own individuality is preserved and is based on respect and the desire to give to the other. If you are interested in this type of love, we also recommend reading this article about the characteristics of .
Fromm’s phrases about the art of loving
- “The great paradox of love is that two beings become one but remain two.”
- “If two people who have been strangers… suddenly let the wall between them break so they can feel and discover each other, this will be one of the most exciting experiences in life.”
- “Envy, jealousy, ambition, all kinds of greed, are passions: love is an action, the practice of a human power, which can only be realized in freedom and never as a result of a compulsion.”
- “For most people, the problem of love consists fundamentally in being loved, and not in loving, not in the capacity to love itself.”
- “Sexual attraction creates, for a moment, the illusion of union, but without love, such union leaves strangers as desperate as before.”
This article is merely informative, at Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.
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