Y Series - The Art of Loving

So. For reasons I’m not entirely clear on in my own head, I recently picked up Erich Fromm’s The Art of Loving. The cover said it was the first of the ‘relationship’ books - the progenitor of the self-help foundation on which American capitalism thrives. I mean, it didn’t use those words, but that seemed to be the general impression.

The Art of Loving was written in the 1950’s by a psychoanalyst from Germany who immigrated to the United States during the Second World War. He had a series of unsuccessful romantic relationships with work colleagues and ‘sensual’ women, dabbled in Buddhism, and eventually wound up a reasonably successful lecturer living the dream in Mexico.

I say this because reading The Art of Loving seems to be mostly a lesson in context. There’s a lot of Freud in there. A lot of bullshit happening about male and female poles and pages of anti-homosexual, male-centered gratuitous parental bashing that does feel very 1950-ish. Pretty classic reinforced gender roles, very serious psychoanalyst language babble and a strong undercurrent of egoism and arrogant assertions that don’t really make sense when you read about his life of being a wandering serial monogamist. As in, how is his book the foundation of the modern relationship theory when he doesn’t seem to be able to keep relationships or provide examples of any stable relationship that is not romantic/sexual in nature? But this is the prophet of human love? Or at least, the first ‘legitimate scientist’ to talk about love as if it were real.

Poppycock.

He might be the first ‘legitimate’ voice advocating for love in Western society, but his ideas are just a hodgepodge of vague religious sentiments mixed in with a good dose of classic Christian/Jewish orthodox family roles with a vague nod to Taoist/Buddhist principles of bodhicitta and universal oneness. He’s Alan Watts without the charisma or thoughtfulness, which surprised me since the reviews all tout his work as being sort of penultimate.

So, besides calling homosexuals deficient and focusing every single example (except one) on men with domineering mothers and literally excluding every element of the female experience except motherhood, there was one concept that was interesting to me. The idea that even in 1950, there was a strengthening movement tied to capitalist ideals that essentially made romantic love a commodity that was stripping it of its value and hollowing out the souls of the capitalist citizens. His core premise is essentially that love is the only thing worth living for, however, modern society has scraped out any real love elements from our lives and has reduced us to mindless consumers and ‘exchangers’ that do not allow human love to factor into any decisions because it’s not profitable. Not real love anyway. The idea of exchanging lovers for prettier, wealthier, or younger objects, yes. Real selfless love or brotherly love (same as bodhicitta - here, he splits it into spiritual love and brotherly love, but I think the Buddhist tenant he took this from essentially sees those two as one and the same) is unnecessary because it makes for content, resilient, generous individuals. Those are people who don’t need to ‘trade up’ or buy anything or do anything. They are self-contained. Unprofitable. Sex and love as a commodity only works when the citizens can ‘shop’ and are constantly needing to be loved. It’s no good to love. Being loved sells and convincing people that they are helpless infants, emotionally speaking, that need unconditional, ego-stroking, constant affirmational love (regardless of how bizarre it is) makes us discontent, unloved, and ready to buy things to make us prettier, wealthier, whatever.

That was interesting. Not earth-shattering, but interesting. Also had some interesting thoughts about narcissistic mothers and demanding fathers that resonated a little close to home.

But the take-away at the end was faith. That a faith in humanity, a love of all creatures and especially of all humans could only be possible through love of the self. That faith in oneself and faith in the lovability of all humans was the defining path to meaning and the defining path to real love, though he didn’t really explain how. It was in the ‘practical’ portion of the book and I have to admit, I skipped a little bit as he basically wrote in circles about what spiritualism and faith meant. I didn’t think he articulated this portion very well, but all the critics seemed to really like it.

Anyway. An interesting, fast read. I do feel like it was just a rehash of Buddhist principles with some psychobabble tossed in for ratings and it was heavily slanted toward an extremely patriarchal, normative culture that made me feel pretty defective and uncomfortable, but I’m glad I read it. I’ll turn the comments on in case anyone else reads it and has thoughts.