Erich Fromm (1900-1980) was an internationaly renowned social psychologist, psychoanalyst, humanistic philosopher and democratic socialist. He was associated with what became known as the Frankfurt School of critical theory. This book was first published in 1963.

This book was among the earliest selected for Bantam Books’ World Perspectives by Ruth Nanda Anshen (philosopher, author, editor), who describes the selections in a 6-pp Epilogue as “short books written by the most conscious and responsible minds of today (1956). In his Foreword, Erich Fromm begins with, “The reading of this book would be a disappointing experience for anyone who expects easy instruction in the art of loving. This book, on the contrary, wants to show that love is not a sentiment which can be easily indulged in by anyone, regardless of the level of maturity reached by him. It wants to convince the reader that all his attempts for love are bound to fail, unless he tries most actively to develop his total personality, so as to achieve a productive orientation; that satisfaction in individual love cannot be attained without the capacity to love one’s neighbor, without true humility, courage, faith, and discipline. In a culture in which these qualities are rare, the attainment of the capacity to love must remain a rare achievement. Or – anyone can ask himself how many truly loving persons he has known. Yet the difficulty of the task must not be a reason to abstain from trying to know the difficulties as well as the conditions for its achievement.”

In the short Ch I – Is Love an Art? – he answers this question by, “Then it requires knowledge and effort. Or is love a pleasant sensation, which to experience is a matter of choice, something one “falls into” if one is lucky? This little book is based on the former premise, while undoubtedly the majority of people today believe in the latter. In the longest chapter, Ch II – The Theory of Love – he discusses the various types of love as follows. 1. Love, the answer to the Problem of Human Existence; 2. Love between Parent and Child; 3. The Objects of Love: a. Brotherly Love, b. Motherly love, c. Erotic Love, d. Self-Love, e. Love of God. I felt that this chapter had greater depth and more insight than did C. S. Lewis’ book on love: The Four Loves (book 185). In Ch III – Love and Its Disintegration in Contemporary Western Society – Fromm elaborates on what he saw as the lacking of love, as indicated by his strong statement, “No objective observer of our Western Life can doubt that love – brotherly love, motherly love, and erotic love – is a rather 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." He sees this as a result of our capitalist society and the values it holds most highly.

Ch IV – The Practice of Love – states at the outset that, “Having dealt with the theoretical aspect of the art of loving, we now are confronted with a much more difficult problem, that of the practice of the art of loving. Can anything be learned about the practice of an art, except by practicing it?” Erich Fromm does not offer any prescription, as such are inadequate, but discusses in depth what he said in his Foreword. He spells out necessary personal characteristics, such as discipline, concentration, patience, humility, faith – all positive aspects for any art. He feels very strongly that social conditions of today make this practice more difficult, for “the principles underlying capitalistic society and the principle of love are incompatible.” … “If man is to be able to love, he must be put in his supreme place. The economic machine must serve him, rather than he serve it. He must be enabled to share experience, to share work, rather than, at best, share in profits. Society must be organized in such a way that man’s social loving nature is not separated from his social existence, but becomes one with it. If it is true, as I have tried to show, that love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence, then any society that excludes, relatively, the development of love, must in the long run perish of its own contradictions with the basic necessities of human existence.” … “To have faith in the possibility of love as a social and not only exceptional-individual phenomenon, is a rational faith based on insight into the very nature of man.”

This book was a fortunate find. My wife bought it in 1967 (the 20th Bantam printing). I found it by accident at the bottom of a bookcase just after I had read Spiritual Evolution by George Valliant (book 314) that focuses on the inherent positive emotions of humans – the greatest of which is, of course, love. So finding this old book about love was the ideal book to read next. Reading The Art of Loving just after reading Spiritual Evolution gave greater strength to the deep insights of both books. I was disappointed by this book's lack of a bibliography and an index. So I give only a strong recommendation to The Art of Loving. But I wished it had been longer!