Fromm, Erich.  The Art of Loving.  New York:  Harper & Row Publishers, 1974.  Originally published in 1956.  

The Theory of Love 

I. Love, The Answer to the Problem of Human Existence.

Any theory of love must begin with a theory of man, of human existence.  While we find love, or rather, the equivalent of love, in animals, their attachments are mainly a part of their instinctual equipment; only remnants of this instinctual equipment can be seen operating in man.  What is essential in the existence of man is the fact that he has emerged from the animal kingdom, from instinctive adaptation, that he has transcended nature - although he never leaves it; he is a part of it - and yet once torn away from nature, he cannot return to it; once thrown out of paradise - a state of original oneness with nature - cherubim with flaming swords block his way, if he should try to return.  Man can only go forward developing his reason, by finding a new harmony, a human which is irretrievably lost. (p. 6)

Man is gifted with reason; he is life being aware of itself; he has awareness of himself, he has awareness of his fellow man, of his past, and of the possibilities of his future.  This awareness of himself as a separate entity, the awareness of his own short life span, of the fact that without his will he is born and against his will he dies, that he will die before those whom he loves, or they before him, the awareness of his aloneness and separateness, of his helplessness before the forces of nature and of society, all this makes his separate, disunited existence an unbearable prison.  He would become insane could he not liberate himself from this prison and reach out, unite himself in some form or other with men, with the world outside (pp. 6-7).   

The deepest need of man, then, is the need to overcome his separateness, to leave the prison of his aloneness.  The absolute failure to achieve this aim means insanity, because the panic of complete isolation can be overcome only by such a radical withdrawal from the world outside that the feeling of separation disappears - because the world outside, from which one is separated, had disappeared.  (p. 8)

One way of achieving this aim lies in all kinds of orgiastic states.  These may have the form of an auto-induced trance, sometimes with the help of drugs.  Many rituals of primitive tribes offer a vivid picture of this type of solution.  In a transitory state of exaltation the world outside disappears, and with it the feeling of separateness from it.  In a transitory state of exaltation the world outside disappears, and with it the feeling of separateness from it.  (p. 9)

All forms of orgiastic union have three characteristics: they are intense even violent; they occur in the total personality, mind and body; they are transitory and periodical.  Exactly the opposite holds true for that form of union which is by far the most frequent solution chosen by man in the past and in the present:  the union based on conformity with the group, its customs, practices and beliefs.  (p. 10) 

Most people are not even aware of their need to conform.  They live under the illusion that they follow their own ideas and inclinations, that they are individualists, that they have arrived at their opinions as the result of their own thinking - and that it just happens that their ideas are the same as those of the majority.  The consensus of all serves as a proof for the correctness of "their" ideas.  Since there is still a need to feel some individuality, such need is satisfied with regard to minor differences; the initials on handbag or the sweater, the name plate on of the bank teller, the belonging to the Democratic as against the Republican party, to the Elks instead of the Shriners become the expression of individual differences.  The advertising slogan of "it is different" shows up this pathetic need for difference, when in reality there is hardly any difference left.  (pp. 11-12)

Union by conformity is not intense and violent; it is calm, dictated by routine, and for this very reason often is insufficient to pacify the anxiety of separateness.  The incidence of alcoholism, drug addiction, compulsive sexualism, and suicide in contemporary Western society are symptoms of this failure of herd conformity. (p. 13)

The Theory of Love: Part 2

A third way of union lies in creative activity, be it that of the artist, or of the artisan.  In any kind of creative work the creating person unites himself with his material, which represents the world outside of himself.  (p. 14)

The unity achieved in productive work is not interpersonal; the unity achieved in orgiastic fusion is transitory; the unity achieved by conformity is only pseudo-unity.  Hence, they are only partial answers in the achievement of interpersonal union, of fusion with another person, in love. (p. 15)

mature love is union under the condition of preserving one's integrity, one's individuality.  Love is an active power in man; a power which breaks through the walls which separate man from his fellow men, which units him with others; love makes hum overcome the sense of isolation and separateness, yet it permits him to be himself, to retain his integrity.  In love the paradox occurs that two things become one and yet remain two.  (p. 17)

Beyond the element of giving, the active character of love becomes evident in the fact that it always implies certain basic elements, common to all forms of love.  These are care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge.  (p. 22)

Love is the active concern for the life and the growth of that which we love. (p. 22)

Today responsibility is often meant to denote duty, something imposed upon from the outside.  But responsibility, in its true sense, is an entirely voluntary act; it is my response to the needs, expressed or unexpressed, of another human being.  To be "responsible" means to be able and ready to "respond." (p. 23)

Responsibility could easily deteriorate into domination and possessiveness, were it not for a third component of love, respect.  Respect is not fear and awe; it denotes, in accords with the root word (respicere = to look at), the ability to see a person as he is, to be aware of his unique individuality.  Respect means the concern that the other person should grow and unfold as he is.  (p. 23)

To respect a person is not possible without knowing him; care and responsibility would be blind if they were not guided by knowledge.  Knowledge would be empty is it were not motivated by concern.  (p. 24)

Love is the only way of knowledge, which in the act of union answers my quest.  In the act of loving, of giving myself, in the act of penetrating the other person, I find myself, I discover myself, I discover us both, I discover man.  (p. 26)

Love between parent and child

The infant, at the moment of birth, would feel the fear of dying, if a gracious fate did not preserve it from any awareness of the anxiety involved in the separation from other, and from intra-uterine existence.  Even after being born, the infant is hardly different from what it was before birth; it cannot recognize objects, it is not yet aware of itself, and of the world as being outside of itself.  It only feels positive stimulation of warmth and food, and it does not yet differentiate warmth and food from its source:  mother.  Mother is warmth, mother is food, mother is,  the euphoric state of satisfaction, and security. (p. 32)

Motherly love by its very nature is unconditional.  Mother loves the newborn infant because it is her child, not because the child has fulfilled any specific conditions, or lived up to any specific expectation.  (p. 35)

Fatherly love is conditional love.  Its principle is "I love you because you fulfill my expectations, because you do your duty, because you are like me." (p. 36)

The negative aspect is the very fact that fatherly has to be deserved, that it can be lost if one does not do what is expected.  In the nature of fatherly love lies the fact that obedience becomes the main virtue, that disobedience is the main sin - and its punishment is withdrawal of fatherly love.  (p. 36)

 One cause for neurotic development can lie in the fact that a boy has a loving, but overindulgent or domineering mother, and a weak and uninterested father.  In this case he may remain fixed at an early mother attachment, and develop into a person who is dependent on mother, feels helpless, has the strivings characteristic of the receptive person, that is, to receive, to be protected, to be taken care of, and who has a lack of fatherly qualities - discipline, independence, an ability to master life by himself (pp. 37-38). 

Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person; it is an attitude, an orientation of character, which determines the relatedness of a person to the world as a whole, not toward one "object" of love.  If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to the rest of his fellow men, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism.  Yet, most people believe that love is constituted by the object, not by the faculty.  (pp. 38-39)

In fact, they even believe that it is a proof of the intensity of their love when they do not love anybody except the "loved" person.  This is the same fallacy which we have already mentioned above.  Because one does not see that love is an activity, a power of the soul, one believes that all that is a necessary to find is the right object - and that everything goes by itself afterward.  This attitude can be compared to that of a man who wants to paint but who, instead of learning the art, claims that he has just to wait for the right object, and that he will paint beautifully when he finds it. (p. 39)

Saying that love is an orientation which refers to all and not to one does not imply, however, the idea that there are no differences between various types of love, which depend on the kind of object which is loved.  (p. 39)

a. Brotherly Love

The most fundamental kind of love, which underlies all types of love, is brotherly love.  By this I mean the sense of responsibility, care, respect, knowledge of any other human being, the wish to further his life.  This is the kind of love the Bible speaks of when it says:  love thy neighbor as thyself.  Brotherly love is love for all human beings; it is characterized by its very lack of exclusiveness.  (p. 39)

If I have developed the capacity for love, then I cannot help loving my brothers.  In brotherly love there is the experience of union with all men, of human solidarity, of human at-onement.  Brotherly love is based on the experience that we all are one.  The differences in talents, intelligence, knowledge are negligible in comparison with the identity of the human core common to all men.  In order to experience this identity* it is necessary to penetrate from the periphery to the core.  If I perceive in another person mainly the surface, I perceive mainly the differences, that which separates us.  If I penetrate to the core, I perceive our identity, the fact of our brotherhood.  (pp. 39-40)

This relatedness from center to center - instead of that from periphery to periphery - is "central relatedness."  Or as Simone Weil expressed it so beautifully:  "The same words [e.g., a man says to his wife, "I love you"  can be commonplace or extraordinary according to the manner in which they are spoken.  And this manner depends on the depth of the region in a man's being from which they proceed without the will being able to do anything.  And by a marvelous agreement they reach the same region in him who hears them.  Thus the hearer can discern, if he has any power of discernment, what is the value of the words."  (p. 40)

Brotherly love is love between equals:  but, indeed, even as equals we are not always "equal,"  inasmuch as we are human, we are all in need of help.  Today I, tomorrow you.  But this need of help does not mean that the one is helpless, the other powerful.  Helplessness is a transitory condition; the ability to stand and walk on one's own feet is the permanent and common one.  (p. 40)

Yet, love of the helpless one, love of the poor and the stranger, are the beginning of brotherly love.  To love one's flesh and blood is no achievement.  The animal loves its young and cares for them. (p. 40)

Only in the love of those who do not serve a purpose, love begins to unfold.  Significantly, in the Old Testament, the central object of man's love is the poor, the stranger, the widow and the orphan, and eventually the national enemy, the Egyptian and the Edomite.  By having compassion for the helpless one, man begins to develop love for his brother and in his love for himself he also loves the one who is in need of help, the frail, insecure human being.  Compassion implies the element of knowledge and of identification." (pp. 40-41)

b. Motherly Love

We have already dealt with the nature of motherly love in a previous chapter which discussed the difference between motherly and fatherly love.  Motherly love, as I said there, is unconditional affirmation of the child’s life and his needs.  But one important addition to this description must be made here.  Affirmation of the child’s life has two aspects; one is the care and responsibility absolutely necessary for the preservation of the child’s life and his growth.  The other aspect goes further than mere preservation.  It is the attitude which instills in the child a love for living, which gives him the feeling:  it is good to be alive, it is good to be a little boy or girl, it is good to be on this earth! (p. 41)

These two aspects of motherly love are expressed very succinctly in the Biblical story of creation.  God creates the world, and man.  This corresponds to the simple care and affirmation of existence.  But God goes beyond this minimum requirement.  On each day after nature – and man- is created, God says: “It is good.”  Motherly love, in this second step, makes the child feel: it is good to have been born; it instills in the child the love for life, and not only the wish to remain alive.  (p. 41)

The same idea may be taken to be expressed in another Biblical symbolism.  The promised land (land is always a mother symbol)  is described as “flowing with milk and honey.”  Milk is the symbol of the first aspect of love, that of care and affirmation.  Honey symbolizes the sweetness of life, the love for it and the happiness in being alive.  Most mothers are capable of giving “milk,”  but only a minority of giving “honey” too.  (pp. 41-42)

In order to be able to give honey, a mother must not only be a “good mother,”  but a happy person – and this aim in not achieved by many.  The effect on the child can hardly be exaggerated.  Mother’s love for life is as infectious as her anxiety is.  Both attitudes have a deep effect on the child’s whole personality; one can distinguish indeed, among children – and adults – those who got only “milk” and those who got “milk and honey.” (p. 42).

Motherly love for the growing child, love which wants nothing for oneself, is perhaps the most difficult form of love to be achieved, and all the more deceptive because of the ease with which a mother can love her small infant.  But just because of this difficulty, a woman cab be a truly loving mother only if she can love; if she is able to love her husband, other children, strangers, all human beings.  The woman who is not capable of love in this sense can be an affectionate mother as long as the child is small, but she cannot be a loving mother, the test of which is the willingness to bear separation – and even after the separation to go on loving. (p. 44)

c. Erotic Love

Brotherly love is love among equals; motherly love is love for the helpless.  Different as they are from each other, they have in common that they are by their very nature not restricted to one person.  If I love my brother, I love all my brothers; if I love my child, I love all my children; no, beyond that, I love all children, all that are in need of my help.  In contrast to both types of love is erotic love; it is the craving for complete fusion, for union with one other person.  It is by its very nature exclusive and not universal; it is also perhaps the most deceptive form of love there is.  (p. 44)

First of all, it is often confused with the explosive experience of “falling” in love, the sudden collapse of the barriers which existed until that moment between two strangers.  But, as was pointed out before, this experience of sudden intimacy is by its very nature short-lived.  After the stranger has become an intimately known person there are no more barriers to overcome, there is no sudden closeness to be achieved.  (p. 44)

Sexual desire aims at fusion – at is by no means only a physical appetite, a relief of a painful tension.  But sexual desire can be stimulate by the anxiety of aloneness, by the wish to conquer or be conquered, by vanity, by the wish to hurt and even to destroy, as much as it can be stimulated by love.  It seems that sexual desire can easily blend with and be stimulated by any strong emotion, of which love is only one.  Because sexual desire is in the minds of  most people coupled with the idea of love, they are easily misled to conclude that they love each other when they want each other physically.  (pp. 44-45)

Erotic love, if it is love, has one premise.  That I love from the essence of my being – and experience the other person in the essence of his or her being.  In essence, all human beings are identical. (p. 47)

To love somebody is not just a strong feeling – it is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise.  If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever.  A feeling comes and it may go.  (p. 47)

d. Self-Love

While it raises no objection to apply the concept of love to various objects, it is a widespread belief that, while it is virtuous to love others, it is sinful to love oneself.  It is assumed that to the degree to which I love myself I do not love others, that self-love is the same as selfishness.  (p. 48)

Love, in principle, is indivisible as far as the connection between “objects” and one’s own self is concerned.  (p. 50)

Selfishness and self-love, far from being identical, are actually opposites.  The selfish person does not love himself too much but too little; in fact he hates himself.  This lack of fondness and care for himself, which is only one expression of his lack of productiveness,  leaves him empty and frustrated.  He is necessarily unhappy and anxiously concerned to snatch from life the satisfactions which he blocks himself from attaining.  He seems to care too much for himself, but actually he only makes an unsuccessful attempt to cover up and compensate for his failure to care for his real self.  (p. 51)

It is true that selfish persons are incapable of loving others, but they are not capable of loving themselves either. 

Love and its Disintigration in Contemporary Western Society

If LOVE is the capacity of the mature, productive character, it follows that the capacity to love in an individual living in any given culture depends on the influence this culture has on the character of the average person.  If we speak about love in contemporary Western culture, we men to ask whether the social structure of Western civilization and the spirit resulting from it are conducive to the development of love. (p. 70)

To raise the question is to answer it in the negative.  No objective observer of our Western life can doubt that love - brotherly love, motherly love, and erotic love - is a relatively rare phenomenon, and that its place is taken by a number of forms of pseudo-love which are in reality so many forms of the disintegration of love. (p. 70)

Capitalistic society is based on the principle of political freedom on the one hand, and of the market as the regulator of all economic, hence social, relations, on the other.  The commodity market determines the conditions under which commodities are exchanged, the labor market regulates the acquisition and sale of labor.  Both useful things and useful energy and skill are transformed into commodities which are exchanged without the use of force and without fraud under the conditions of the market.  (p. 70)

This has been the basic structure of capitalism since its beginning.  But while it is still characteristic of modern capitalism, a number of factors have changed which give contemporary capitalism its specific qualities and which have a profound influence on the character structure of modern man.  (p. 71)

As the result of the development of capitalism we witness an ever-increasing process of centralization and concentration of capital.  The large enterprises grow in size continuously, the smaller ones are squeezed out  (p. 71) The ownership of capital invested in these enterprises is more and more separated from the function of managing them.  Hundreds of thousands of stockholders "own" the enterprise; a managerial bureaucracy which is well paid, but which does not own the enterprise, manages it.  (p. 71)

Modern capitalism needs men who co-operate smoothly and in large numbers; who want to consume more and more; and whose tastes are standardized and can be easily influence and anticipated.  It needs men who feel free and independent, not subject to any authority or principle or conscience - yet willing, to do what is expected of them, to fit into the social machine without friction; who can be guided without force, led without leaders, prompted without aim - except the one to make good, to be on the move, to function, to go ahead. (p. 72)

What is the outcome?  Modern man is alienated from himself, from his fellow men, and from nature.  He has been transformed into a commodity, experiences his life forces as an investment which must bring him the maximum profit obtainable under existing market conditions.  Human relations are essentially those of alienated automatons, each basing his security on staying close to the herd, and not being different in thought, feeling or action.  (p. 72)

The situation as far as love is concerned corresponds, as it has to by necessity, to this social character of modern man.  Automatons cannot love; they can exchange their "personality packages"  and hope for a fair bargain.  One of the most significant expressions of love, and especially of marriage with this alienated structure, is the idea of the "team."  In any number of articles on happy marriage, the ideal described is that of the smoothly functioning team.  This description is not too different from the idea of a smoothly functioning employee; he should be "reasonably independent,"  co-operative, tolerant, and at the same time ambitious and aggressive.  

In this concept of love and marriage the main emphasis is on finding a refuge from an otherwise unbearable sense of aloneness.  In "love"  one has found, at last, a haven from aloneness.  One forms an alliance of two against the world, and this egoism a deaux is mistaken for love and  intimacy. (p. 74)

Love as mutual sexual satisfaction, and love as "teamwork" and as a haven from aloneness, are the two "normal" forms of the disintegration of love in the modern Western society, the socially patterned pathology of love.  There are many individualized forms of the pathology of love, which result in conscious suffering and which are considered neurotic by psychiatrists and an increasing number of laymen alike. (p. 79)

The basic condition for neurotic love lies in the fact that one or both of the "lovers" have remained attached to the figure of a parent, and transfer the feelings, expectations and fears one once had toward father or mother to the loved person in adult life; the persons involved have never emerged from a pattern of infantile relatedness, and seek for this pattern in their affective demands in adult life.  In these cases, the person has remained, affectively, a child of two, or five, or of twelve, while intellectually and socially he is on the level of his chronological age.   In the more severe cases, this emotional immaturity leads to disturbances in his social effectiveness; in the less severe ones, the conflict is limited to the sphere of intimate personal relationships.  (pp. 79-80)