What are the principles for learning to love according to Erich Fromm?Love, according to this psychoanalyst, must be celebrated every day as a liberating and enriching act, because anyone who can learn to love in a mature and conscious way understands that love knows neither possessions nor conditions. Love is first and foremost the active concern of life, it is care and a firm desire to promote the growth of those we love.
It is quite possible that Fromm himself has not foreseen the great importance of his book The Art of Loving Him. However, it is also likely that not everyone knows the conditions under which this fabulous and always interesting work developed, anyone who has had the opportunity to meet this Jewish psychoanalyst and humanist philosopher said that few people have changed their lives as significantly as he has.
“The mature answer to the problem of existence is love” – Erich Fromm-
Until the age of 50, Fromm was a great talmud scholar and a Marxist psychoanalyst who, at one point, wanted to distance himself from the theoretical foundations of Sigmund Freud, was an intellectual, a little taciturn, who moved to the United States afterwards. World War II. He left behind the weight of a divorce, the death of his last wife by suicide and the memory of a Europe still fragmented and in ruins.
It was during this decade that she decided to move to Mexico and become an activist for peace and women’s rights, she wanted to change her vision of life, she wanted to open he heses he or she to the world, to happiness and to the struggle for what she believed in. In Fromm she became a very influential therapist, befriended President Kennedy and, above all, found love in a brilliant woman: Annis Freeman.
Always with the bitter memory of his previous wives, Fromm has set himself a firm goal: to learn to love, he wanted to make this moment the best stage of Annis Freeman’s life and his own, at the same time, he wanted to teach the world to love. Thus he wrote his famous book and experienced happiness during the last decades of his life.
“Love without knowing how much it hurts the person you love. “Thich Nhat Hanh’s phrase sums up a very obvious reality. Most of us are not masters in this art. We are, in fact, apprentices of a reality in which we immerse ourselves by chance. and unknowingly, full of needs, but lacking tools. However, if we sometimes limit ourselves to loving as children and not as adults, it is mainly because of our culture.
We are made up of a series of cultural models that establish love as a construction of magical and ideal dyes In our social fabric, this?Complimentary love? From the Middle Ages, in which gentlemen fell in love with the ladies. We like to think that we are victims of Cupid’s arrows, that passion is what Shakespeare’s eternal Verona lovers feel and that each of us is destined for someone. through the red thread of fate.
Erich Fromm, a prominent social psychologist, made this clear in “The Art of Love,” that few dimensions require as much responsibility and discernment as love, because loving is a task of trained artists, not just uncontrolled dreamers. practice, mastery and continuous work, in which effort leaves nothing to chance or luck.
So let’s look at some of the principles presented to us by Erich Fromm.
If there is something we want for much of our life it is to be loved, we want to be cared for, valued, appreciated, revered and validated in everything we do, are or have; however, there is one thing we need. to understand as soon as possible: love, in a passive voice, is not right, it is not mature.
Love is not a resting place. It is a scenario in which the present is combined in the active voice, we love each other, we take care of ourselves, we respect each other, we value ourselves, we create together, we plan together. it involves having the dominion of those who know how to participate, give and receive, build and be an active part of a project in which the growth mindset is always present.
Learning to love also means being aware of another aspect, we are often too concerned not to find the ideal person who fits all our dreams and longings, are we looking for her?Object? From love without first stopping to think about whether we are equal to love itself.
Sometimes we are so infected with idealisms and romantic constructs that we forget the most important thing: love requires work, is to know how to face the challenges of a relationship.
Learning to love first is knowing how to get rid of all needs, because anyone looking to have a relationship to support the other will find two things: they will never feel satisfied and lead another person into a state of permanent slavery.
Erich Fromm reminds us, in “The Art of Love”, that a healthy and happy relationship must first and foremost be a highly productive bond. A bond in which everyone has overcome their gaps and dependencies. It is to extinguish our narcissistic omnipotence, the desire to accumulate and explore others, to be loved without burdens or fears, so that we may offer ourselves fully.
“The role of the new society must be to foster in us the will to renounce all forms of power and possession. At the same time, he must be able to get everyone to build a sense of identity and trust based on the faith of who you are, the need to identify you, to be interested, to love, to support the world around you, rather than to be based on a desire to have, to possess, to dominate the world, and thus to become a slave to one’s own possessions. ?. – Erich Fromm-
Love, according to Erich Fromm, is an energy. It is an impulse that pushes us to mobilize, to express ourselves, to create, etc. However (and in the face of the above), this expansive and creative force only appears when our basic needs are met.
At the same time, one thing That Fromm emphasizes in The Art of Love is that it is not enough to feel this energy, love, we must remember, not only feel it, you have to live it and shape it. Because true passion, fueled by feeling, maturity and balance, understands that the best work requires work and dedication in the day to day.
Love is like music, painting, carpentry, writing or architecture, it is necessary to understand the theory and then be a master in practice, as a highly creative engineer, we will also be able to face every challenge, every challenge, every unforeseen. Along the way?
In conclusion, learning to love according to Erich Fromm requires leaving aside many of the childish visions that often define us (and which have been instilled in us). We must stop combining love in the passive voice and see it as the spark that, at some point, magically joins two people.
Because love is substance, it’s the body and it’s matter. A raw material to build a good project, the best of our life if we want it and take responsibility for it ?.