Love

7 July 2024

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There is a general conception that love is something that happens to us, something one falls into, rather than something that stems from our own efforts. Erich Fromm's 1956 book The Art of Loving is based on the latter view: that love is an art that requires both knowledge and effort. He opens his book by explaining why people tend to subscribe to the former view. He argues that:

• people see love as a problem of being loved, rather than of loving; we develop lovable qualities rather than our capacities to love;
• people see love as a need to find the right person to love, that there is the "one" out there for us;
• people confuse the initial feeling of falling in love with the permanent state of being in love; the former is a passive experience, while the latter is an active one that eminates from within.

Then he presents the theory of love, and explains the functional role of love in human existence. Love, according to Fromm, is the answer to the fundamental problem of human existence: the need to overcome the feelings of separateness and isolation that is inherent in the human condition. Our capacity for abstract thought and self reflection has enabled us to thrive as a species, but it has also left us feeling alone and alienated. We feel disconnected as a result of our departure from nature, from our instinctual unity with the world. This generates a deep-seated anxiety, which we try to overcome through various means, such as drugs, conformity, and work. Fromm argues that these attempts at unifying ourselves with the world are ineffective, as they do not address the root of the problem: orgiastic fusion is not permanent, conformity is not authentic, and productive work is not interpersonal. Fromm argues that the full answer lies in the achievement of interpersonal union, of fusion with another person, in love.

But love as a term is broad and can be interpreted in many ways. Fromm warns against the dangers of confusing mature love with symbiotic union. In a symbiotic union, the two people are psychologically bound to each other through masochism and sadism, which results in a loss of individual integrity. Mature love, on the other hand, is a kind of union where integrity and individuality are preserved. Furthermore, love is an activity, rather than a passive feeling. Genuine love is primarily about giving, not in the sense of depriving oneself of one's own needs and possessions, but of giving oneself, in the sense of expressing one's own humanness to the other person.

This active aspect of love is further characterised by certain basic elements, which are care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge:

• care is the active concern for the life and growth of the other;
• responsibility is the ability to respond to and meet the needs of the other;
• respect is the ability to see the other as he/she is, to be aware of his/her unique individuality, and not undermine it;
• knowledge is the effort to understand the other person, his/her quirks, needs, desires, and perspective.

Thus, mature love is an active, creative, and unselfish act that involves one person's total commitment to the growth and well-being of another. By participating in the act of loving, one becomes responsible for the other person, for meeting his/her needs, for understanding his/her nature, without undermining his/her individuality and integrity.

Apart from the existential need for union, there is also a biological one, which is the need for union between the different sexual poles of masculinity and feminity. This union is a crucial one as it leads to the creation of new life, not only in the biological sense of procreation, but also in the psychological sense of creating new possibilities and potentials in the world. By uniting with another person of the opposite sex, we are able to discover new aspects of ourselves, and to create new possibilities for growth and development.

Fromm also distinguishes between various forms of love:

• brotherly love, which is the most basic and universal form of love, based on the recognition of the other person as a fellow human being;
• motherly love, which is the love that a mother feels for her child, characterised by its unconditional nature;
• erotic love, which is the love that we feel for a particular person, characterised by its exclusivity;
• self-love, which is the love that we feel for ourselves; it is not to be confused with narcissism or selfishness, which is the opposite of self love (a selfish person does not love him/herself, and compensates for this lack of self-love by taking from others to fill the void within).

Finally, Fromm discusses the practice of love, and the various obstacles that prevent us from loving. Like the practice of any art, the practice of love requires discipline, concentration, and patience. However, in the case of love, the main condition for its practice is the overcoming of one's own narcissism. According to Fromm, narcissism is an orientation in which "one experiences as real only that which exists within oneself, while the phenomena in the outside world have no reality in themselves, but are experienced only from the viewpoint of their being useful or dangerous to one". Although we are all narcissistic to some extent, the degree of narcissism varies from person to person. The opposite of narcissism is objectivity, which is the faculty to "see people and things as they, objectively, and to be able to separate this objective picture from a picture which is formed by one's desires and fears." The faculty to think objectively is reason, and the emotional attitude behind reason is humility. Thus, "love being dependent on the relative absence of narcissism, it requires the development of humility, objectivity, and reason." Other components of the practice of love include faith, trusting in the unchanging core and personalities of the other person; courage, the readiness to take risks and face the unknown; and activity, the ongoing effort to care for and understand the loved person.