Fromm Criticizes Modern Loving

It is something of a shock to pick up a slim book of 132 catalog-card size pages and find the volume entitled The Art of Loving. Such a title might be appropriate for a collection of poetry or perhaps some parables, but it is hardly a humble beginning for an essay. One has the strange sensation of being party to a Marlboro book sale where the theory of Yoga and the occult sciences of the Orient are neatly passed along in a hundred pages. This sense of condensation and over-simplification is furthered by the division of The Art of Loving into a section on the theory of love, and another on the practice of love. Fortunately Fromm has the good sense to say in his forward--"The reading of this book would be a disappointing experience for anyone who expects easy instruction in the art of loving."

Poor Start

If another sour note can be struck immediately without ruining the rest of the piece, the introduction provided by Ruth Nanda Anshen is a mighty blast, especially for such a small trumpet. In her forward to the series, (Miss or Mrs.?) Anshen manages to embrace the Declaration of Independence, the rights of man, the United Nations' charter, Ruth Benedict, Buddha, and the hobo party platform in a prospectus with little perspective.

Despite the halting starts, the volume gets off the ground in the first chapter, where Fromm presents his thesis that loving is an art, in a very professional sense. According to Fromm, like other arts loving requires knowledge and efforts, discipline and concentration. Having presented this extremely Teutonic theory of love, Fromm proceeds to indulge his pet concerns: Freud's ideas about sex, and social criticism.

To justify his philosophy that loving requires conscious effort, Fromm revises Freud's insistence on the biological nature of the sex drive. For Fromm, sex becomes just another means whereby man tries to overcome his feeling of isolation. What happens is that Fromm's Psychology becomes a psychology of the conscious rather than of the unconscious. This accounts for the feeling we get after examining the thesis; that the ability to love requires more than discipline or knowledge, at least on the level of right and wrong.

Fromm has adequate grounds for criticizing current notions of love as "sensation," or "market exchange." He also makes a worthwhile claim for a more mature idea of love based on respect for a different roles of man and woman, parent and child. But by shifting the ground to the conscious he does not seem to give enough attention to the spontaneous and erotic aspects of love which lie behind the idea of love as a sensation. Furthermore he confuses the picture of the unloving person by making him seem more capable of overcoming his state than he actually is. It is clearing away of the unconscious blocks that restores spontaneous expression and genuine love.

Lost Love

Before long, the examination of the nature of love dissolves into social-criticism, since Fromm believes modern Western society is destroying our ability to love. The "market concept of love" in capitalistic societies is criticized. The concept of equality meaning sameness instead of oneness is another confusion dwelled upon. Fromm even concludes that the principle of capitalism is incompatible with the principle of love.

This does not lead him to support revolution, however, because "one must admit that capitalism is in itself a complex and constantly changing structure which still permits a good deal of nonconformity and personal lassitude." The possibilities of love in any society might be more obvious if Fromm spent time discussing them instead of telling how they are frustrated in our society. He enhances the value of the book as a document of social criticism while at the same time he weakness it as a psychological treatise.

Less Fantasy

It is hard to tell how valuable the disciplined approach to love could be, whether in fact it might not spoil that naturalness that must exist if life is not to become rigid and formalized. At any rate Fromm argues for more responsibility in our interpersonal relations and less fantasy. And it is conceivable that the loving person could develop through great conscious effort that final stage of ease and naturalness that mark great artists in other areas.

Despite certain misgivings with Fromm's theoretical approach, this book more than proves its worth in the searching analysis of unhealthy kinds of love. As in other works Fromm pokes brilliantly through history and myth for examples to support his themes. Yet this volume again leaves one wondering whether Fromm isn't more of a critic than a liberator.