The art of loving

The Art of Loving is a 1956 book by psychologist and social philosopher Erich Fromm, which was published as part of the "World Perspectives Series" edited by Ruth Nanda Anshen. In this work, Fromm recapitulated and complemented the theoretical principles of human nature found in Fromm's Escape from Freedom and Man for Himself - principles which were revisited in many of his other major works.Fromm presents love as a skill that can be taught and developed. He rejects the idea of loving as something magical and mysterious that cannot be analyzed and explained, and is therefore skeptical about popular ideas such as "falling in love" or being helpless in the face of love. Because modern humans are alienated from each other and from nature, we seek refuge from our aloneness in romantic love and marriage (pp. 79-81). However, Fromm observes that real love "is not a sentiment which can be easily indulged in by anyone." It is only through developing one's total personality to the capacity of loving one's neighbor with "true humility, courage, faith and discipline" that one attains the capacity to experience real love. This should be considered a rare achievement (p. vii). Fromm defended these opinions also in interview with Mike Wallace when he states: "love today is a relatively rare phenomenon, that we have a great deal of sentimentality; we have a great deal of illusion about love, namely as a...as something one falls in. But the question is that one cannot fall in love, really; one has to be in love. And that means that loving becomes, and the ability to love, becomes one of the most important things in life.