Is Love an Art? Essay

Is do an contrivance? Then it requires live onledge and effort. Or is make out a winning sensation, which to experience is a matter of chance, something iodine f alls into if one is favorable? This little book is based on the former premise, while undoubtedly the majority of mess like a shot believe in the latter. Not that people think that slam is non important. They ar starved for it they watch immortal numbers of films closely happy and unhappy manage stories, they listen to hundreds of brassy songs about love yet hardly anyone thinks that thither is anything that needs to be learned about love. This peculiar attitude is based on some(prenominal) premises which either singly or combined tend to support it. Most people see the business of love primarily as that of being loved, rather than that of loving, of ones capacity to love. Hence the problem to them is how to be loved, how to be pleasing. In pursuit of this aim they follow some(prenominal) paths. One, wh ich is especially apply by men, is to be successful, to be as reigning and rich as the social margin of ones government agency permits. An different, used especially by women, is to make oneself attractive, by cultivating ones body, dress, etc.Other way of lifes of making oneself attractive, used both by men and women, argon to develop pleasant objet dartners, interesting conversation, to be easeful, modest, inoffensive. many an(prenominal) of the ship canal to make oneself lovable atomic number 18 the same as those used to make oneself successful, to win friends and influence people. As a matter of fact, what most people in our finale mean by being lovable is essentially a mixture between being popular and having shake appeal. A second premise behind the attitude that there is goose egg to be learned about love is the assumption that the problem of love is the problem of an object, not the problem of a faculty. People think that to love is simple, but that to find the right object to love or to be loved by is difficult. This attitude has several reasons rooted in the victimization of modern society.One reason is the great change which occurred in the 20th century with respect to the choice of a love object. In the prudish age, as in many traditional cultures, love was mostly not a spontaneous personal experience which accordingly might introduce to marriage. On the contrary, marriage was contracted by convention either by the respective families, or by a marriage broker, or without the help of such intermediaries it was concluded on the basis of social considerations, and love was vatical to develop once the marriage had been concluded. In the last few generations the pattern of romantic love has compel almost universal in the westerly world. In the United States, while considerations of a conventional nature are not entirely absent, to a vast extent people are in search of romantic love, of the personal experience of love which then should lead to marriage. This new concept of freedom in love essential have greatly enhanced the greatness of the object as against the importance of the function. Closely related to this factor is another feature characteristic of contemporaneous culture.Our whole culture is based on the appetite for buy, on the thought of a mutually favorable exchange. Modern mans ecstasy consists in the thrill of looking at the shop windows, and in buying all that he can afford to buy, either for cash or on installments. He(or she) looks at people in a similar way. For the man an attractive girl and for the woman an attractive man are the prizes they are after. Attractive usually means a nice package of qualities which are popular and sought after on the personality market. What specifically makes a person attractive depends on the fashion of the time, physically as intimately as mentally. During the twenties, a drinking and smoking girl, tough and sexy, was attractive today the fashion demands more domesticity and coyness. At the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of this century, a man had to be aggressive and ambitious today he has to be social and tolerant in order to be an attractive package.At any rate, the sense of falling in love develops usually entirely with regard to such human commodities as are within dig of ones own possibilities for exchange. I am out for a bargain the object should be desirable from the standpoint of its social value, and at the same time should ask me, considering my overt and cloak-and-dagger assets and potentialities. Two persons and then fall in love when they feel they have found the best object available on the market, considering the limitations of their own exchange values. Often, as in buying real estate, the hidden potentialities which can be developed embolden a considerable role in this bargain. In a culture in which the marketing orientation prevails, and in which material success is the big value, there is little reason to be surprised that human love relations follow the same pattern of exchange which governs the commodity and the sweat market. The third error leading to the assumption that there is nothing to be learned about love lies in the confusion between the sign experience of falling in love, and the permanent state of being in love, or as we might better separate, of standing in love.If 2 people who have been strangers, as all of us are, suddenly permit the wall between them break down, and feel close, feel one, this moment of single is one of the most exhilarating, most exciting experiences in life. It is all the more wonderful and miraculous for persons who have been shut off, isolated, without love. This miracle of sudden link is often facilitated if it is combined with, or initiated by, sexual attraction and consummation. However, this type of love is by its very nature not lasting. The two persons construct well acquainted, their intimacy loses more and mor e its miraculous character, until their antagonism, their disappointments, their mutual boredom kill some(prenominal) is left of the initial excitement. Yet, in the beginning they do not know all this in fact, they take the intensity of the infatuation, this being crazy about each other, for proof of the intensity of their love, while it may only hear the degree of their preceding loneliness.This attitude that nothing is easier than to love has continued to be the prevalent idea about love in spite of the consuming evidence to the contrary. There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started with such abominable hopes and expectations, and yet, which fails so regularly, as love. If this were the case with any other activity, people would be eager to know the reasons for the failure, and to learn how one could do better or they would give up the activity. Since the latter is impossible in the case of love, there seems to be onlyone adequate way to overcome the failu re of love to judge the reasons for this failure, and to proceed to study the meaning of love. The first step to take is to become aware that love is an art, just as living is an art if we want to learn how to love we must proceed in the same way we have to proceed if we want to learn any other art, say music, painting, carpentry, or the art of medicine or engineering. What are the necessary travel in learning any art?The process of learning an art can be divided conveniently into two parts one, the instruction of the theory the other, the mastery of the practice. If I want to learn the art of medicine, I must first know the facts about the human body, and about unlike diseases. When I have all this theoretical knowledge, I am by no means competent in the art of medicine. I shall become a master in this art only after a great deal of practice, until eventually the results of my theoretical knowledge and the results of my practice are blended into one my intuition, the essence of the mastery of any art. But,SynopsisThe dodge of Loving has helped hundreds of thousands of men and women achieve rich, productive lives by developing their hidden capacities for love. An astonishing frank and candid book renowned psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, it explores the ways in which this extraordinary emotion can alter the course of ones life. Most of us are unable to develop our tycoon to love on the only level that really counts-a love that is heighten of maturity, self-knowledge, and courage. Learning to love demands practice and concentration. Even more than any other art, it demands genuine insight and understanding. In this startling book, Fromm discusses love in all aspects not only romantic love, so surrounded by fake conceptions, but also love of parents for children, brotherly love, erotic.