The Art of Loving
The Art of Loving “The art of loving”, written by an American psychologist Erich Fromm in 1957, mainly discusses about three aspects: the reasons of love being an art, the theory of love, and the practice of love. He thoughtfully explains that an art of loving requires many effort and knowledge, comprehensively analyzes the theory of love, and specifically introduces the ways of practice the art of loving. Even if the work is done for about fifty years ago, there still have many remarkable ideas that can be appreciate in recent years. I will discuss about some opinions that I agree and disagree with.
In the first part of the book, Fromm discusses about is love an art that requires knowledge and effort, or a sensation that to experience a matter of change. Although the topic of love has always received high recognition and attention, there are some misunderstandings on what love is. First of all, in recent years many people see the problem of love as the capacity of being loved rather than that of loving. They try to be loved or lovable, pursuing the capacity of being successful, rich, powerful, and attractive. They think that only by being loved by others can they truly experience the real love. The second misunderstanding is that people think that to love is simple, while the difficult thing is to find the right object to love or to be loved. In recent decades, our whole culture is based on the appetite for buying, which caused the idea of choosing a “love object”. The attractiveness, personalities, and outlooks of people have become a kind of goods, which are the characters of a love object. For example, two people will fall in love when they think that the other one is the right object available on the market, with consideration of the quantities of their own exchange values. Finally, most people regard the sudden intimacy toward others as the initial experience of falling in love or being in love, while the intensity of the infatuation caused
In the first part of the book, Fromm discusses about is love an art that requires knowledge and effort, or a sensation that to experience a matter of change. Although the topic of love has always received high recognition and attention, there are some misunderstandings on what love is. First of all, in recent years many people see the problem of love as the capacity of being loved rather than that of loving. They try to be loved or lovable, pursuing the capacity of being successful, rich, powerful, and attractive. They think that only by being loved by others can they truly experience the real love. The second misunderstanding is that people think that to love is simple, while the difficult thing is to find the right object to love or to be loved. In recent decades, our whole culture is based on the appetite for buying, which caused the idea of choosing a “love object”. The attractiveness, personalities, and outlooks of people have become a kind of goods, which are the characters of a love object. For example, two people will fall in love when they think that the other one is the right object available on the market, with consideration of the quantities of their own exchange values. Finally, most people regard the sudden intimacy toward others as the initial experience of falling in love or being in love, while the intensity of the infatuation caused