Essay on the book The Art of Amar de Erich Fromm
Introduction
In this essay I will talk about the book ‘‘ The art of loving ’’ of the author Erich Fromm who addresses love as an art. It is not a magical manual where the recipe or secret formula is given to love and be loved, the author states that love is not an easy feeling but an art that requires knowledge and effort to be understood and dominated. ‘‘ The art of loving ’’ is a reflection on the human condition in one of its main facets, love and everything that is needed to be able to feel it mature, accompanied by strong criticisms. In the introduction the author warns: the reading of this book will disapprove of those who expect easy teachings in the art of loving. (Fromm and Rosenblatt 2000). The purpose of the book is to demonstrate that love is not an easy feeling for anyone, whatever the degree of maturity achieved. Its purpose is to persuade the reader that all their attempts to love are condemned to fail, (Fromm and Rosenblatt 2000). Unless you seek, in the most active and efficient way, to develop your total personality, in the form of a productive orientation;And that satisfaction in individual love cannot be achieved without the ability to love neighbor, without humility, courage, faith and discipline.
Loving, this is a very simple word of only 4 letters, writing or pronouncing it is the simplest, but that changes when talking about its meaning, since it is difficult to define or explain, however, it is a very important issue, since in my opinion it is a fundamental part of life and existence, I could personally say that life revolves around love. Maybe it sounds very exaggerated, but if we stop to analyze a moment, we can realize that love is implicit everywhere.
Is love an art?
”Is love an art? Or is love a pleasant sensation, whose experience is a matter of chance, something with which one "stumbles" if he is lucky?’’ (Fromm and Rosenblatt 2000) The author is based on the first premise, but criticizes that today most people believe in the second that refers to love as a pleasant sensation that depends on luck.
Something very important that the author mentions is that people are thirsty for love, and we can realize it since people are daily visualizing a number of films based on love stories, both happy and unfortunate. As well as listen to love songs and do not say heartbreak. Love is perceived as something that is received, an object and to obtain it we must be worthy of this. Comply with the successful social patterns commonly accepted, be sexually attractive and others like that. The belief is that the easy thing is to love and the difficult thing to get to those who love, this thought caused by the predominance of romantic love today where the main problem is to achieve the couple and feel no more than an automatic reaction is considered.
There is another characteristic feature in contemporary culture, closely linked to that factor. All our culture is based on the desire to buy, on the idea of a mutually favorable exchange. The happiness of modern man is the excite. The man (or the woman) considers people in a similar way. An attractive woman or man are the awards you want to get. "Attractive" usually means a good set of qualities that are popular and for which there is demand in the personality market.
In spite of the evidence against, the ability to love is considered an innate gift to man, not an art that must be studied conscientiously and practices it to achieve mastery of matter. And this book aims to give some guidelines to successfully face this problem.
The theory of love
Before theorizing love, analyzes the subject of the same. The man. considers the main characteristic of this, self-awareness. The human being is the only one who knows that he will die, he knows different from others and different from others, a separate entity.
Man is endowed with reason, he is a life aware of herself;He is aware of himself, his fellow men, his past and the possibilities of his future. That self-consciousness as a separate entity, the awareness of its brief period of life, of the fact that it is born without intervening its will and must die against its will, that it will die before those he loves, or these beforeHe, the awareness of his loneliness and his "separatality" (from and Rosenblatt 2000), of his helplessness in the face of the forces of nature and society, all this makes his existence separated and disjointed an unbearable prison. He would go crazy if he could not free himself from his prison and extend his hand to join in one way or another with the other men, with the outside world.
The consciousness of separation is what generates the search for love, the desire for unity, to transcend and overcome intrinsic loneliness to the human being. Each human being depending on who he is, their circumstances will give different answers. Religious worship, human sacrifices, organic ceremonies, obsessive work, asceticism, lust are different aspects of this incessant search.
The author sets as an example uniformity as a unit search with mass. It is argued in this chapter that moving away from the flock for most men is unbearable, maintaining the illusion of individuality through weak substitutes that only place it on one side of the dough as being an amateur to a team or fan of a star of some star. Until the alleged equality of genres is a symptom. This critical position is understood coming from someone with strong socialist influences. In this sense, some conquests generally celebrated as signs of progress, such as women’s equality, should also be received with some skepticism.
Such is the price paid for equality: women are the same because they are no longer different. The proposition of the philosophy of Illuminism, L´ame N’a Pas de Sexe, the soul has no sex, has become a general practice. The polarity of the sexes is disappearing, and with it the erotic love, which is based on that polarity. Men and women are identical, not equal as opposite poles. Contemporary society preaches the ideal of non -individualized equality, because it needs human atoms, all identical, to make them function, gently, without friction;All obey the same orders, and, however, all are convinced that they follow their own wishes. Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of products, thus the social process requires the standardization of man, and that standardization is called "equality".
Love between parents and children
This is one of my favorite chapters, since it explains the two types of love, maternal and paternal. The author states that since we were born we experience the first possible love, maternal love. The infant surrounds it, protects him is his whole mother. When the father or father figure grows, the order is imposed, the discipline is imposed, the non -unconditional love but granted by merit and effort.
In close relationship with the development of the ability to love this evolution of the love object. In the first months and years of life, the closest relationship of the child is the one with the mother. That relationship begins before birth, when mother and son are still one, even if they are two. Birth modifies the situation in some aspects, but not as much as it would seem. The child, although he now lives outside the mother’s belly, still depends completely on the mother. But day by day he becomes more independent: he learns to walk, to speak, to explore the world on his own;The relationship with the mother loses some of her vital significance;On the other hand, the relationship with the father becomes increasingly important.
There is talk about maternal love as an unconditional love by nature since the mother loves the newborn because she is her son, not because the child satisfies any specific condition or because he fills his particular aspirations.
When talking about the relationship with the father the author expresses that it is entirely different. The mother is home where we come from, nature, the ground, the ocean;The father does not represent such a natural home. He has little relationship with the child during the first years of his life, and his importance for him cannot be compared to that of the mother. But, although the father does not represent the natural world, it means the other pole of human existence;The world of thought, of things done by man, law and order, discipline, travel and adventure. The father is the one who teaches the child, who shows him the way to the world.
Fromm differentiates maternal and paternal love and stipulates the importance they both have in the future adult. On the one hand, the desire to be loved without conditions and on the other hand the merit and effort, being loved by the qualities that make a person better. The first is unconditional, it is received for no reason, the second is controlled and can be won if one acts as expected of one. Both are necessary for the development of the person and cause of problems when either failure or does not do what is expected.
Love objects
The belief that love is exclusive and unique by a single person is fought by Fromm, states that love is an attitude towards the world, a way of seeing life and relationship with others.
Love is not essentially a relationship with a specific person;It is an attitude, an orientation of the character that determines the type of relationship of a person with the world as a whole, not with a love "object". If a person loves only another and is indifferent to the rest of his fellow men, his love is not love, but a symbiotic relationship, or an expanded egotism.
Erich Fromm shows us a very interesting illustration in which he compares that attitude with that of a man who wants to paint, but that instead of learning art he argues that he must wait for the right object, and that he paints wonderfully well when he finds it. Talk about that, if a person really loves each other, all people are loved, the world is loved, life is loved. If I can tell someone "I love you", I must be able to say "I love everyone in you, through you I love the world, in you I love myself".
But still recognizes various types of love among which the following stands out:
Fraternal love
Love of equals, others, to others. Despite certain left influences in his words, it is still true that respect and mutual appreciation is the basis of every society.
Erotic love
It is love as commonly understood, the desire of the other and the merger is loved. The year of full fusion, union with one other person. By its very nature, it is exclusive and not universal;It is also, perhaps, the most deceptive form of love that exists.
self-love
Sometimes misunderstood, good self – esteem is essential to relate to others. How can you love if you don’t even love yourself? It follows that my own person must be an object of my love just like another person is. The affirmation of life, happiness, growth and freedom of its own is rooted in the ability to love, that is, in care, respect, responsibility and knowledge. If an individual is able to love productively, he also loves himself;If he only loves others, he can’t love at all.
Love to god
The love of God goes through various stages depending on whoever worships. From the worship of animals, gods in the form of humans, gods without any way to reach the last state. God as all desirable;justice, love, compassion, truth.
Love and its disintegration in contemporary western society
Is love in the contemporary west possible? It is what the author wonders, and the answer is surprising considering the number of novels, movies, books, poems and songs of an obsse culture with the theme of love. It is very difficult and rare to find love.
Fromm dissects the commercialization of love and the mistakes in which it has been incurred when considering it basically sexual, a mutual shot and daca or a work team. In that concept of love and marriage, the most important thing is to find a refuge of the sensation of loneliness that, otherwise, would be intolerable. In the "love" there is, finally, a remedy for loneliness. An alliance of two against the world is established, and that selfishness is confused to Deux with love and intimacy.
The author expresses that love is not the result of adequate sexual satisfaction;On the contrary, sexual happiness- and even the knowledge of the so-called sexual technique- is the result of love. If, apart from the daily observation, more evidence was necessary in support of that thesis, they could be found in the vast material of psychoanalytic data. The study of the most frequent sexual problems -frizz in women and the most serious forms of psychic impotence in men -demonstrates that the cause does not lie in a lack of knowledge of the appropriate technique, but in the inhibitions that preventto love. Fear or hatred of the other sex are at the root of the difficulties that prevent a person from surrendering completely, acting spontaneously, trusting the sexual partner, immediately and directly from the sexual union. If a sexually inhibited person can stop fearing or hate, and then become able to love, their sexual problems are solved. If not, no knowledge about sexual techniques will help you.
It then proceeds to analyze the influences of parents in the ability to love. Of clearly Freudiana, these paragraphs will give an idea of the degree of determinism that can sometimes reach. The basic condition of neurotic love lies in the fact that one or the two "lovers" have remained linked to the figure of a parent and transfer the feelings, expectations and fears that once in front of the father or mother, the person, the personloved in adult life;Such people have not overcome the pattern of children’s relationship, and aspire to repeat it in their affective demands in adult life.
Of male neurosis writes
With respect to our prior analysis of personality focused on the mother or father, the following example of that type of frequent loving neurotic relationship today, refers to men who, in their emotional development, have remained fixed to aInfant relationship with the mother. It was men who, so to speak, were never weaned;They keep feeling as children;They want protection, love, heat, care and admiration of the mother;They want the unconditional love of the mother, a love that occurs for the only reason they need it, because they are her children, because they are helpless. Such individuals are usually very affectionate and charming when they try to get a woman to love them, and even after having achieved it. But their relationship with women (as, in reality, with all people) is superficial and irresponsible. Its purpose is to be loved, do not love.
Of the female
More complicated is the neurotic disturbance class that appears in love based on a different type. At the same time, their departure takes away spontaneity in the relationship with the children. What a girl experiences is an atmosphere of "correction", but never allows intimate contact with the father or mother and therefore the bewilderment and frightens. He is never sure of what his parents feel or think;There is always an unknown, mysterious element in the atmosphere. As a result, the girl retracts in a world of her own, has reveries, remains remote;And her attitude will be the same in posterior love relationships.
In summary, it is a fundamentally psychoanalytic chapter, where Fromm makes its Freudian formation clear. As usual, the presentation of cases is the best form of dissemination of psychoanalysis and its reading is light and interesting when comparing with similar events known by one.
The practice of love
This is the end of the book and it is the chapter where the author seeks to give a series of approaches that help the reader improve their practice of love. This is a personal experience to which there are no recipes, however, there are certain approaches and premises that can be useful to us. It was already said that love is an art, and all art requires discipline, concentration, patience, a supreme concern about the domain of art and, finally, being aware that an art is not learned except in an indirect way. In the first place, being disciplined, no art is called if it is only practiced when they are humorous. Act within certain time limits, be moderate in customs and above all do not consider discipline something imposed from outside but in expression of one’s own will.
One of the unfortunate aspects of our western concept of discipline (as of all virtue) is that its practice should be somewhat painful and only if it is painful is "good". The East has long recognized that what is good for man-for his body and for his soul-must also be pleasant, although at the beginning some resistance must be overcome.
The concentration, trying to maintain that condition is an end in itself, we tend to do many things at the same time and it is common to despair if it is left for a while just with yourself. The concentration is, with much, more difficult to practice in our culture, in which everything seems to be against the ability to concentrate. The most important step to concentrate is to learn to be alone with oneself without reading, listen to the radio, smoking or drinking. Without a doubt, being able to concentrate means to be alone with oneself-and that ability is precisely a condition for the ability to love.
The author expresses that, if man wants to be able to love, he must be placed in his supreme place. The economic machine must serve it, instead of being the one who is at your service. It must be trained to share experience, work, instead of sharing, in the best case, its benefits. Society must organize in such a way that the social and loving nature of man is not separated from his social existence, but is one to her. If it is true, as I have tried to demonstrate, that love is the only satisfactory response to the problem of human existence, then every society that excludes, relatively, the development of love, in the long run due to its own contradiction with thebasic needs of the nature of man. Talking about love is not "preaching", for the simple reason that it means talking about the fundamental and real need of every human being. That this need has been obscured does not mean that there is no. Analyze the nature of love is to discover its general absence in the present and criticize the social conditions responsible for that absence. Having faith in the possibility of love as a social and not only exceptional and individual phenomenon is to have a rational faith based on the understanding of man’s very nature.
conclusion
Without a doubt this book changed my thought and allowed me to analyze and relate my experiences. At the end of reading the book I conclude that it is love is a need of the human being, as mentioned in the introduction, I think that all or the vast majority of things and situations revolve around love, since this weIt drives to the realization of various activities, for example, love for myself drives me to make better decisions, to value myself and among other things to fight for a better future. I think love moves the world since it is the fuel that drives us to carry out activities, to achieve objectives and above all to value. I do not know much about psychology, but I have the belief that due to lack of love there have been wars, and bad decisions have been made in the history of humanity, that is why I infer that love has great importance in everyone’s lifeSince it is not just a feeling but goes further, when we talk about love we talk about a world of meanings, as if it were a pseudoproblema, and as this book mentions, love is an art, and if we learnTo practice it, we avoid failing in it.
Bibliography
- Fromm, e. and n. Rosenblatt (2000). The art of loving, Martins Fontes São Paulo.
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