Fromm (1900-1980)

Erich Fromm (1900-1980)

On Love

I love the world through you

Erich Fromm (1900-1980) was a German-born Jewish psychologist, psychiatrist, and philosopher. He did his doctorate in sociology, and then studied psychiatry and practiced it. After the rise of the Nazis he left Germany, and practiced and taught in New York, Vermont, Mexico City, Michigan, and Switzerland. For several years he was associated with Neo-Freudian psychologists, but he later developed a humanistic approach to psychology and philosophy. He published many books that addressed basic issues of the individual and society.

The Art of Loving (1956) is one of Erich Fromm’s most popular books. In this book he distinguishes between true love and distorted forms of love, and claims that true love is rare in our contemporary society. In true love we respond to our fundamental isolation, we transcend our boundaries and connect with the world and with life. This is very different from false love, which centers on myself – on personal needs and self-interest. Since love is an active attitude, it is an art which can be learned and cultivated. 

(From Chapter 2, section 1)
Love is an active power in the person, a power which breaks though the walls that separate the person from his fellow human beings, which unites him with others. Love makes him overcome the sense of isolation and separateness, yet permits him to be himself, to retain his integrity. In love the paradox occurs that two persons become one, yet remain two.
[…]
Envy, jealousy, ambition, any kind of greed are passions. Love is an action, the practice of a human power, which can be practiced only in freedom and never as the result of a compulsion. Love is an activity, not a passive effect. It is a “standing in,” not a “falling for.” In the most general way, the active character of love can be described by saying that love is primarily giving, not receiving.
     What is giving? Simple as the answer to this question seems to be, it is actually full of ambiguities and complexities. The most widespread misunderstanding assumes that giving is “giving up” something, being deprived of, sacrificing.
[…]
Giving is the highest expression of potency. In the act of giving I experience my strength, my wealth, my power. The experience of heightened vitality and potency fills me with joy. I experience myself as overflowing, spending, alive, therefore as joyous. Giving is more joyous than receiving – not because it is a deprivation, but because in the act of giving lies the expression of my aliveness.
[...]

What does one person give to another? He gives of himself, of the most precious he has, he gives his life. This does not necessarily means that he sacrifices his life for the other – but that he gives him from what is alive in him. He gives him from his joy, from his interest, from his understanding, from his knowledge, from his humor, from his sadness – from all the expressions and manifestations of what is alive in him. In this giving from his life, he enriches the other person, he enhances the other’s sense of aliveness by enhancing his own sense of aliveness. He does not give in order to receive. Giving is in itself an exquisite joy. But in giving he is necessarily giving something to life in the other person, and what is brought to life reflects back to him. In truly giving, he cannot help receiving that which is given back to him. Giving means to make the other person a giver also, and they both share in the joy of what they have brought to life. In the act of giving something is born, and both persons involved are grateful for the life that is born for both of them. With regards to love that means: Love is a power which produces love. Impotence is the inability to produce love.

(From Chapter 2, section 3)
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 human beings, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism. […] If I truly love one person, I love all persons, I love the world, I love life. If I can say to somebody, “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.”