© Roger M Tagg 2013
Welcome to FROLIO – a new attempt to merge philosophy and the "semantic web" . This website is under continuing development.
Erich Fromm (EF) was a psychoanalyst associated with the Frankfurt School and Critical Theory - which I regard as 'a thoughtful sort of anti-capitalism'. Like many of the school's members, he was forced to flee the Germany of the 1930s, and settled in America.
The book was a best-seller from the late 1950s to the mid 1960s - I always wonder whether buyers thought they would be getting a sex manual. I bought the book in the days when I was a member of the 'Encounter Group' run by Brian Duckworth at the Hinde Street Methodist Church in London's West End.
To me, his stance seems reminiscent of Max Weber style pessimism about modernity, but maybe that applies to all the Frankfurt School.
Note: My copy (acquired 1966) was a paperback published by Unwin in the UK from 1957 on.
| Chapter | Page | Highlight |
|---|---|---|
| Preface | 5 | EF posits right up front that "Satisfaction in individual love cannot be obtained without the capacity to love one's neighbour; (and) without true humility, faith and discipline". [RT: faith in what?] |
| 1 - | "Is Love an Art?" | |
| 9 | "Most people see the problem of love primarily as that of being loved, rather than that of loving." | |
| "Many of the ways to make oneself lovable are the same as those used to make oneself successful, 'to win friends and influence people'." ... (Being lovable) "is essentially a mixture between being popular and having sex appeal". | ||
| 9-10 | EF seems to regret the change from marriage by social convention or a contract, leading [RT: hopefully!] to love, to the idea of romantic love leading to marriage. | |
| 10 | "Our whole culture is based on the appetite for buying, on the idea of a mutually favourable exchange." [RT: EF clearly regrets this, but surely there's no way that this can be legislated out of the equation.] | |
| Even marriage has become a bit like making the best bargain within the time constraints of our life. | ||
| 11 | We talk more about 'falling in love' than 'being in love'; the former doesn't last. | |
| 12 | In modern culture, "almost everything else is considered to be more important than love". | |
| 2 - | "The Theory of Love" | |
| 13 | EF's view of humanity is that it has been "thrown out of paradise - a state of original oneness with nature ... pre-human harmony which is irretrievably lost". [RT: I think this is nostalgic nonsense - it was 'kill or be killed' anarchy, and it's not surprising our better feelings revolted against that. | |
| Human life brings inevitable anxiety [RT: Why any more than for animals? Is it just our extra brain power?] | ||
| 14 | EF says we have a problem with 'separateness'. He claims that "the awareness of human separation, without reunion by love - is the source of shame". [RT: EF was certainly 'hung up' with his reading of the Adam and Eve myth.] | |
| 15 | "The history of religion and philosophy is the history (of answers to the question of how to overcome separateness)." EF enumerates the alternative answers as "by animal worship, by human sacrifice or military conquest, by indulgence in luxury, by ascetic renunciation, by obsessional work, by artistic creation, by the love of God, and by the love of Man". [RT: Yes, we have tried all these, but most of these seem very ill-targeted. 'Just cooperate' sounds much better.] | |
| It's the same with rituals and orgiastic states. EF suggests that sexual experience is like the effects of a trance or a drug. Orgies might have been OK as a commonly shared ritual, but now we tend to go for the same as experience but as individuals. | ||
| 16-17 | "If I conform in custom, dress, ideas to the pattern of the group, I am saved; saved from the frightening experience of aloneness." | |
| 17 | "People want to conform to a much higher degree than they are forced to ..." | |
| 18 | EF hopes for the "abolition of exploitation" (as a socialist ideal). [RT: This is probably impossible.] | |
| "Equality today means sameness rather than oneness." [RT: I'm always suspicious about the use of this sense of 'oneness' - it implies the group matters and the individual doesn't. And this remark is both overly pessimistic and vague.] | ||
| 18-19 | EF laments "hard conformity" [RT: But this is a feature of packs of animals.] | |
| 20 | Love should be "interpersonal fusion" [RT: whatever that means.] It is "the mature answer to the problem of existence" [RT: maybe we don't feel we have such a problem?], as opposed to "symbiotic union" or dependency. He talks about psychic dependency as 'masochism' (we want to be dependent, or dominated) or 'sadism' (we have an urge to dominate others). | |
| 21 | 'Psychic masochism' can also be "submission to fate, to sickness, to rhythmic music, to the orgiastic state produced by drugs or under hypnotic trance - in all these instances the person renounces his integrity, makes himself the instrument of somebody or something outside of himself". [RT: So, EF would never recommend Islam (submission to the will of God).] | |
| "Love is union under the condition of preserving one's integrity, one's individuality." | ||
| 22 | Activity is no good if one is just a slave to some passion. "Envy, jealousy, ambition, any kind of greed are passions; love is an action ... which can be practiced only in freedom and never as the result of a compulsion." | |
| Giving love expects nothing in return - not like acting as a trader. [RT: But again, trading can't be effectively outlawed, even in a 'City of God'.] | ||
| 24 | Giving of one's joy to others isn't a problem. It should be similar for love. | |
| 25 | To love well one has to "overcome dependency, narcissistic omnipotence, the wish to exploit others, or to hoard ..." | |
| Love has to include "care, responsibility, respect and knowledge". | ||
| 28 | "The only way of full knowledge lies in the act of love; this transcends thought ..." [RT: Sure, but no-one could in practice rely on that sort of knowledge alone.] | |
| 29 | Applying this idea of knowledge to God, rather than to other people, leads inevitably to mysticism. | |
| 34 | The adolescent has to overcome his egocentricity as the one who is loved (but doesn't have to love). [RT: Seems like a lot never get past this hurdle.] | |
| 37 | [RT: EF launches into a spiel about 'fatherly' and 'motherly' conscience.] | |
| 38 | "Brotherly love" is the ideal (compared with that of mother, self or God). | |
| 39 | "Only in the love of those who do not serve a purpose, love begins to unfold." | |
| 49 | "In all theistic religions (mono- or poly-) God stands for the highest value, the most desirable good." [RT: But what is that good?] | |
| 50 | EF discusses the development from mother-centered to father centered religions. In the latter, as in families, the father "likes the son who is most like him, who is most obedient and who is best fitted to become his successor, as the inheritor of his possessions". EF felt that this leads to private property, hierarchies and competition [RT: which he seems not keen on!] | |
| 51 | Luther's 'justification by faith in God's grace (i.e. not by works) is really a mother-feature without a mother figure - i.e. it's submission to the hope that God (like a mother) will unconditionally love us. | |
| 53 | God telling Moses that his (God's) 'name is nameless' "aims at the same goal, that of freeing man from the idea that God is a father, (or) that he is a person". [RT: I wouldn't have thought that this is an orthodox reading, but maybe it is more so in Judaism than in Christianity.] | |
| "To say of God that he is wise, strong, good implies again that he is a person; the most I can do is to say what God is not." | ||
| 53-4 |
"Inasmuch as God is the father, I am the child; I have not emerged fully from the autistic wish for omniscience and omnipotence. I have not yet acquired the objectivity to realize my limitations as a human being, my ignorance, my helplessness. I still claim, like a child, that there must be a father who rescues me, who watches me, who punishes me, a father who likes me when I am obedient, who is flattered by my praise and angry because of my disobedience. Quite obviously, the majority of people have, in their personal development, not overcome this infantile stage, and hence the belief in God to most people is the belief in a helping father - a childish illusion." [RT: That's a bit similar to Freud's view.] | |
| 54 | "The truly religious man, if he follows the essence of the monotheistic idea, does not pray for anything, does not expect anything from God... God becomes to him a symbol in which man ... has expressed the totality of that which man is striving for, the realm of the spiritual world of love, truth and justice ..." | |
| "To love God, if he were going to use this word, would mean, then, to long for the attainment of the full capacity to love ..." This negates all theology or "knowledge about God". | ||
| Even a non-theological, mystic but theistic system assumes "the reality of the spiritual realm ...". EF maintains that Buddhism and Taoism don't [RT: I'm not so sure.] | ||
| 55 | EF himself does "not think in terms of a theistic concept" - that's just a historical hangover. | |
| 55-60 | EF goes on about 'paradoxical' versus 'Aristotelian' logic. The former is common in Chinese and Indian thinking, and in Heraclitus. He even claims that it's the basis of Hegel's (and Marx's) dialectic. [RT: I don't think I agree; "conflict between opposites" may be a useful model, but I wouldn't say these are logical contradictions.] | |
| 58 | "The teachers of paradoxical logic say that man can perceive reality only in contradictions." | |
| "One did not seek as the ultimate aim to find an answer in thought." | ||
| 59 | Spinoza, Marx and Freud took this line, too. | |
| "If the right thought is not the ultimate truth, and not the way to salvation, there is no reason to fight others whose thinking has arrived at different formulations." [RT: But institutions do fight rivals, as they feel that their institution must be defended.] | ||
| We should think about transforming man, instead of splitting dogma and science. [RT: Presumably dogma is deemed inviolable, while science is only a set of provisional theories.] | ||
| "The person who believed in God - even if he didn't live God - felt himself to be superior to the one who lived God, but did not believe in him." | ||
| 60 | EF seems to prefer mysticism to theism. [RT: That would fit with Kabbalah or Hasidic Judaism.] | |
| 61 | [RT: EF takes a Hegel/Marx approach to the historical development of religion from 'mother' through 'father' to 'spirit', but has totally missed out on the intermediate stage of 'personal hero/example', e.g. Buddha or Christ.] | |
| "If the social structure is one of submission to authority - overt authority or the anonymous authority of the market and public opinion, his concept of God must be infantile and far from the mature concept, the seeds of which are to be found in the history of monotheistic religion." | ||
| 3 - | 62-77 | "Love and the Disintegration in Contemporary Western Society" |
| 62 | "We mean to ask whether the social structure of Western civilization and the spirit resulting from it are conducive to the development of love." [RT: Sure, the answer is 'No", but were previous civilizations that much more conducive?] | |
| But there are several forms of 'pseudo-love'. | ||
| [RT: EF presents a rather stereotyped Marxist analysis, overlooking the fact that many workers now provide much of the 'capital' through savings and pension funds, even if they don't 'dabble' in stocks and shares.] | ||
| 63 | EF claims that large enterprises squeeze out small ones. [RT: But he doesn't mention that new small ones start up and grow, and that there is more and more freelancing.] | |
| He claims "modern man is alienated from himself, from his fellow men, and from nature". [RT: That's Marxist dogma, and of doubtful truth value.] | ||
| 64 | "Human relations are essentially those of alienated automatons." [RT: That seems an overstatement and looks pretty silly.] EF thinks we are already in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. | |
| "Everything, spiritual as well as material objects, becomes an object of exchange and consumption." | ||
| "Automatons cannot love; they can exchange their 'personality packages' and hope for a fair bargain." | ||
| "The ideal (nowadays, even with marriage) ... is that of the smoothly functioning team." | ||
| 65 | "Egoism à deux" is mistaken for love and intimacy." | |
| It has been the vogue to say that unhappiness in marriage was because "partners had not made a correct 'sexual adjustment', ... (through) ignorance regarding 'correct' sexual behaviour." It has also been said that "love is the child of sexual pleasure" (rather than vice versa. [RT: Sounds a bit like Freud.] | ||
| 67 | EF rails against Freud, likening his 'it's all sex' view to capitalism's 'it's all material gain' view, and he claims that the answer is Marx's historical materialism. | |
| 68-9 | H.S.Sullivan said "Love begins when a person feels another person's needs to be as important as his own". | |
| HSS also said "Intimacy is that type of situation involving two people which permits validation of all components of personal worth ... (which) requires a type of relationship which I call collaboration ... (towards) more and more nearly mutual satisfactions, and in the maintenance of increasingly similar security operations." But that's "Egotism à deux"! | ||
| 69 | "Love as mutual sexual satisfaction, and love as 'teamwork' and as a haven for loneliness, are the two 'normal' forms of the disintegration of love in modern Western society ..." | |
| 70 | "Anything short of the attitude of a loving mother towards a charming child is taken as proof of a lack of love." | |
| 72 | One can get "neurotic disturbance in love which is based on a situation where parents do not love each other, but are too restrained to quarrel or indicate any signs of dissatisfaction outwardly." Girls often "withdraw into a world of their own, day dreams, remain remote, and retain the same attitude in their love relationships later on". | |
| 72-3 | Another form of pseudo-love is "idolatrous love" (as in movies and novels). Then one gets "Folie à deux"! | |
| 73 | Similar to this is "sentimental love" - which we learn from looking at stories on the screen or in books. | |
| There's also "nostalgic love" for how things were in earlier days. | ||
| 73-4 | Another problem is projecting away from one's own problems by concern "with the defects and frailties of the 'loved' person - including one's own children. | |
| 74 | People often also raise minor conflicts that mask the real ones. | |
| 75 | Current religious renaissances (EF says) are "a regression to an idolatric concept of God". | |
| In the Middle Ages, "the paramount goal of (a religious person's) life was to live according to God's principles, to make 'salvation' the supreme concern to which all other activities were subordinated". [RT: I'd say EF is indulging in unrealistic nostalgia, except for a very few great mystics. Anyhow, salvation from what?] | ||
| "Today, nothing of such effort is present. Daily life is strictly separated from any religious values." [RT: Surely that's because religions emphasize dogma and ritual.] | ||
| 76 | If mediaeval religious man was like a child of 8, contemporary (religious) man is like a child of 3. | |
| "We are closer to a primitive idolatric tribe than to the religious culture of the Middle Ages." [RT: I think that's very debatable.] | ||
| "Modern man has transformed himself into a commodity; he experiences his life energy as an investment with which he should make the highest profit, considering his position and the situation on the personality market. He is alienated from himself, from his fellow men, and from nature. His main aim is profitable exchange of his skills, knowledge and of ... his 'personality package', with others who are equally intent on a fair and profitable exchange. Life has no goal except the one to move, no principle except the one of fair exchange, no satisfaction except the one to consume." [RT: All very Weberian, pessimistic and over-generalized,] | ||
| "... Belief in God has been transformed into a psychological device to make one better fitted for the competitive struggle." An example is N.V. Peale's The Power of Positive Thinking. | ||
| 77 | "Brotherly love has been replaced by impersonal fairness." | |
| "God has been transformed into a remote General Director of Universe, Inc." | ||
| 4 - | 78-95 | "The Practice of Love" |
| 78-80 | There's no prescription or procedure for how to practice love, but one needs discipline, concentration, patience and 'supreme concern'. | |
| 80 | EF mentions a book Zen in the Art of Archery by E Herrigel! | |
| 81 | To help concentration, one must "learn to be alone with oneself, without reading, listening to the radio, smoking or drinking". [RT: Or chatting!] | |
| "Paradoxically, the ability to be alone is the condition for the ability to love." EF refers to the 'Gindler method'. | ||
| 82 | One should avoid bad company, not just of poisonous and depressing people, but also of 'zombies', "whose soul is dead, although their body is alive; of people whose thoughts and conversation are trivial, who chatter instead of talk, and who assert cliché opinions instead of thinking". (But if we resist the temptation to do the same in response, they may improve!) | |
| Listening is important, but many people don't really listen or "take the other person's talk seriously". | ||
| To concentrate properly, one has to live in the present, and not think of the next thing to be done. | ||
| 84-5 | We need examples to follow, and not "movie stars, radio entertainers, columnists, important business or government figures" - unless they have good spiritual qualities, like Albert Schweitzer (RT: presumably not Paris Hilton.] | |
| 85 | "The main condition for the achievement of love is the overcoming of one's narcissism" - and, being able to be objective, beyond one's own fears and desires. | |
| 86 | "From one day to another, another nation is made out to be utterly depraved and fiendish, while one's own nation stands for everything that is good and noble." | |
| "To be objective ... is possible only if one has achieved an attitude of humility." | ||
| 87 | One must also emerge "from the incestuous fixation with mother and clan". | |
| 88 | We need 'rational faith', and "faith in the persistence of our own self". | |
| 89 | "Irrational faith is rooted in submission to a power, which is felt to be overwhelmingly strong, omniscient and omnipotent, and in the abdication of one's own power and strngth." | |
| 90 | We need faith in "human potentialities and human growth", not just in current power situations. | |
| 91 | "Love is an act of faith." | |
| 92 | "There is no 'division of labour' between love for one's own and love for strangers." | |
| 93 | 'Fairness' is not the same as "love thy neighbour as thyself". | |
| "The principle underlying capitalistic society and the principle of love are incompatible" - in an abstract sense, at least. | ||
| 94 | "One must admit that 'capitalism' is in itself a complex and constantly changing structure which still permits of a good deal of non-conformity and of personal latitude." [RT: That's the same as saying, anyone who practices love in a capitalistic society is a non-conformist!] | |
| EF feels that a new society more favourable to love is needed. [RT: But he rather rubbishes Russian 'soviet' totalitarianism, and doesn't (here, at least) give any indication of what such a new society would look like.] | ||
| "Our society is run by a managerial bureaucracy, by professional politicians; people are motivated by mass suggestion; their aim is producing more and consuming more, as purposes in themselves." [RT: Is that the managers or all people?] | ||
| "All activities are subordinated to economic goals, means have become ends; man is an automaton - well fed, well clad, but without any ultimate concern for that which is his peculiarly human quality and function." [RT: This last bit is rather vague.] | ||
| "The economic machine must serve him (the individual human), rather than he serve it." | ||
| "Society must be organized in such a way that man's social, loving nature is not separated from his social existence." | ||
| EF's assumption is that "love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence" - so if we exclude it, our society will "in the long run perish of its own contradiction with the basic necessities of human nature." [RT: Like Marx and soviet leaders thought would happen soon to capitalism, but their own answer didn't last the course. I am not sure that we have a clear idea what better system could pragmatically replace what we have now - maybe all we can do is improve what we've currently got.] |
The book contains many good points, but Fromm's agenda doesn't seem that well thought out. Does he really envisage that his interpretation of religious history will carry the day?
For my taste, he is slightly too nostalgic, probably unjustifiably, about previous civilizations such as the Middle Ages and 'pre-Adam man as prehistoric hunter-gatherer'. There were many thing about those societies that we would be unprepared and unwilling to go back to.
The blurb for another of his books, The Sane Society, says that Fromm "sets forth the goals of a society in which the emphasis is on each person and on the social measures designed to further function as a responsible individual". His ideas seem to involve a form of individual-friendly socialism. I think many might agree with that goal, but how can we get there? See a review of this book by the anti-Bolshevik Marxist Paul Mattick.
See also this 2006 article about Fromm by Bonnie Brennen.
Index to more highlights of interesting books
Some of these links may be under construction – or re-construction.
This version updated on 1st April 2013
If you have constructive suggestions or comments, please contact the author rogertag@tpg.com.au .