best book on psychology of love 

There are several excellent books that delve into the psychology of love. Here are a few highly regarded ones:

"The Psychology of Love" by Robert J. Sternberg
This book by renowned psychologist Robert Sternberg explores the complexities of love through the lens of his triangular theory of love, which includes three components: intimacy, passion, and commitment. Sternberg's work provides valuable insights into the different types of love and how they interact.

"The Art of Loving" by Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm's classic work examines love from a philosophical and psychological perspective. He discusses the nature of love, its various forms, and the challenges people face in achieving authentic, fulfilling relationships.

"Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find – and Keep – Love" by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller
This book explores the concept of attachment styles in adult relationships. It provides insights into how our early attachment experiences shape our behaviors and attitudes toward love, and how understanding attachment can help improve our romantic connections.

"Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence" by Esther Perel
Esther Perel, a renowned therapist and relationship expert, delves into the complexities of desire and intimacy in long-term relationships. She discusses how maintaining a sense of mystery and independence can contribute to a passionate and fulfilling partnership.

"Love and Limerence: The Experience of Being in Love" by Dorothy Tennov
In this book, Tennov explores the psychological concept of limerence, which refers to intense romantic feelings often characterized by obsessive thoughts and a strong desire for reciprocation. The book delves into the emotional and psychological aspects of falling in love.

"The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate" by Gary Chapman
Gary Chapman introduces the concept of the "love languages," which are different ways people express and receive love. By understanding and catering to each other's love languages, couples can improve their communication and emotional connection.

"Love: A History" by Simon May
Simon May's book takes a historical and philosophical approach to the concept of love. It traces the evolution of love throughout different cultures and time periods, exploring how societal changes have shaped our understanding of love.

"Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love" by Helen Fisher
Helen Fisher, a biological anthropologist, delves into the biological and neurochemical basis of romantic love. She discusses the role of brain chemistry, hormones, and evolution in shaping our experiences of love and attraction.

"Love 2.0: How Our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything We Feel, Think, Do, and Become" by Barbara L. Fredrickson
Barbara Fredrickson, a positive psychology researcher, examines love from a scientific perspective, discussing how positive emotions like love can shape our well-being, relationships, and personal growth.

"The Course of Love" by Alain de Botton
Alain de Botton, a philosopher and writer, offers a novelistic exploration of a couple's relationship over the course of many years. The book combines fiction with insights from psychology to provide a realistic portrayal of the challenges and dynamics in long-term relationships.

"Love Sense: The Revolutionary New Science of Romantic Relationships" by Dr. Sue Johnson
Dr. Sue Johnson, a psychologist and relationship expert, focuses on the science of attachment and emotional bonding in relationships. The book provides insights into how couples can create and maintain secure emotional connections.

"Love's Executioner and Other Tales of Psychotherapy" by Irvin D. Yalom
Irvin Yalom, a psychiatrist and psychotherapist, offers a collection of engaging and insightful case studies from his therapy practice. While not solely about romantic love, the book explores the complexities of human relationships and emotions.

"Love and Awakening: Discovering the Sacred Path of Intimate Relationship" by John Welwood
John Welwood combines psychological insights with spiritual perspectives to explore the transformative potential of love and relationships. The book delves into how relationships can serve as a path of personal growth and self-discovery.

"The All-or-Nothing Marriage: How the Best Marriages Work" by Eli J. Finkel
Eli Finkel, a social psychologist, examines the changing landscape of modern marriage and offers insights into what makes a successful and fulfilling long-term partnership. He discusses the challenges couples face in the contemporary world and strategies to navigate them.

"The Secret Psychology of How We Fall in Love" by Paul Dobransky
Dr. Paul Dobransky, a psychiatrist, delves into the psychological and evolutionary factors that contribute to falling in love. He explores concepts such as attraction, attachment, and the role of gender dynamics in romantic relationships.

"Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection" by Barbara L. Fredrickson
In this book, Barbara Fredrickson further explores the concept of love from a scientific perspective. She discusses how micro-moments of positive connection can impact our well-being and offers practical advice for nurturing these moments in daily life.

"Couples: A Novel" by John Updike
John Updike's novel offers a fictional exploration of marriage and extramarital affairs. While a work of fiction, the book delves into the complexities of human emotions, desires, and the dynamics of romantic relationships.

"The Brain in Love: 12 Lessons to Enhance Your Love Life" by Daniel G. Amen
Dr. Daniel Amen, a psychiatrist and brain health expert, examines the neurological and physiological aspects of love. He provides practical advice on how to foster a healthy brain environment for lasting love and emotional well-being.

"The Relationship Cure: A 5 Step Guide to Strengthening Your Marriage, Family, and Friendships" by John Gottman
Renowned relationship researcher John Gottman offers practical insights into building and maintaining strong relationships. He discusses communication, emotional intimacy, and strategies for resolving conflicts.

"Love, Freedom, and Aloneness: The Koan of Relationships" by Osho
Osho, a spiritual teacher, explores the paradoxes of love and relationships. The book encourages readers to find a balance between love and individuality, highlighting the importance of self-awareness and personal growth.

Remember that the best book for you will depend on your specific interests and the depth of exploration you're seeking. Whether you're looking for scientific insights, practical relationship advice, philosophical contemplation, or a mix of these elements, these books can offer valuable perspectives on the psychology of love.
Remember that each book offers a unique perspective on the psychology of love, so your choice might depend on the specific aspects of love you're most interested in exploring.


_lnu JiM.
THE ART OF LOVING
Copyright © 1956 by Erich Fromm
Printed in the United States of America
All rights in this book are reserved,—^ No part of the book may be used or reproduced
in any manner whatsoever without written per- mission except in the case of/ brief quotations
embodied in critical articles/ and reviews. For
information address Harper & Row,
10 East 53d Street \ New York, N.Y. 10022 X 79 80^32 31 30
Library of Congress catalog card number: 56-8750
Contents
ii.
hi.
World Perspectives ix Foreword xix
Is Love an Art? 1 The Theory of Love 7
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
Love and Its Disintegration in Contemporary Western Society 83
The Practice of Love 107
Cs
World Perspectives
WORLD PERSPECTIVES is dedicated to the concept of man born out of a universe perceived through a fresh vision of reality. Its aim is to present short books written by the
most conscious and responsible minds of today. Each volume
represents the thought and belief of each author and sets forth the interrelation of the changing religious, scientific,
artistic, political, economic and social influences upon man's
total experience.
This Series is committed to a re-examination of all those
sides of human endeavor which the specialist was taught to
believe he could safely leave aside. It interprets present and
past events impinging on human life in our growing World
Age and envisages what man may yet attain when sum- moned by an unbending inner necessity to the quest of what
is most exalted in him. Its purpose is to offer new vistas in terms of world and human development while refusing to betray the intimate correlation between universality and in- dividuality, dynamics and form, freedom and destiny. Each
author treats his subject from the broad perspective of the
world community, not from the Judaeo-Christian, Western
or Eastern viewpoint alone. Certain fundamental questions which have received too
little consideration in the face of the spiritual, moral and
political world crisis of our day, and in the light of technology
X WORLD PERSPECTIVES
which has released the creative energies of peoples, are
treated in these books. Our authors deal with the increas- ing realization that spirit and nature are not separate andapart; that intuition and reason must regain their importance
as the means of perceiving and fusing inner being with outer
reality.
World Perspectives endeavors to show that the conception
of wholeness, unity, organism is a higher and more concrete conception than that of matter and energy. Thus it wouldseem that science itself must ultimately pursue the aim of in- terpreting the physical world of matter and energy in terms
of the biological conception of organism. An enlarged meaning of life, of biology, not as it is revealed in the test tube of
the laboratory but) as it is experienced within the organism
of life itself is attempted in this Series. For the principle of
life consists in the tension which connects spirit with the
realm of matted. The element of life is dominant in the very
texture q£ nature, thus rendering life, biology, a transempirical science. The laws of life have their origin beyond their mere physical manifestations and compel us to consider their
spiritual source. In fact, the widening of the conceptual
framework has not only^served to restore order within the
respective branches of knowledge, but has also disclosed
analogies in man's position regarding the analysis and synthesis of experience in apparently separated domains of knowledge suggesting the possibility of an ever more embracing objective description of the meaning of life. Knowledge, it is shown in these books, no longer consists in a manipulation of mstn and nature as opposite forces, nor
in the reduction of data to mere statistical order, but is a
WORLD PERSPECTIVES XI means of liberating mankind from the destructive power of
fear, pointing the way toward the goal of the rehabilitation of the human will and the rebirth of faith and confidence in the human person. The works published also endeavor to reveal that the cry for patterns, systems and authorities is growing less insistent as the desire grows stronger in both
East and West for the recovery of a dignity, integrity and
self-realization which are the inalienable rights of man who
may now guide change by means of conscious purpose in the
light of rational experience.
Other vital questions explored relate to problems of inter- national understanding as well as to problems dealing with
prejudice and the resultant tensions and antagonisms. The
growing perception and responsibility of our World Age
point to the new reality that the individual person and the
collective person supplement and integrate each other; that
the thrall of totalitarianism of both right and left has been
shaken in the universal desire to recapture the authority of truth and of human totality. Mankind can finally place its trust not in a proletarian authoritarianism, not in a secular- ized humanism, both of which have betrayed the spiritual
property right of history, but in a sacramental brotherhood
and in the unity of knowledge. This new consciousness has
created a widening of human horizons beyond every parochialism, and a revolution in human thought comparable to the basic assumption, among the ancient Greeks, of the
sovereignty of reason; corresponding to the great effulgence
of the moral conscience articulated by the Hebrew prophets;
analogous to the fundamental assertions of Christianity; or
to the beginning of a new scientific era, the era of the science
Xll WORLD PERSPECTIVES
of dynamics, the experimental foundations of whichwerelaid by Galileo in the Renaissance.
An important effort of this Series is to re-examinethecontradictory meanings and applications which are giventoday to such terms as democracy, freedom, justice, love,peace, brotherhood and God. The purpose of such inquiriesis to clear the way for the foundation of a genuine worldhistory not in terms of nation or race or culture but in termsof man in relation to God, to himself, his fellow manandthe universe that reach beyond immediate self-interest. Forthe meaning of the World Age consists in respecting man'shopes and dreams which lead to a deeper understandingofthe basic values of all peoples.
Today in the East and in the West men are discoveringthat they are bound together, beyond any divisiveness, byamore fundamental unity than any mere agreement in thoughtand doctrine. They are beginning to know that all menpossess the same primordial desires and tendencies; thatthedomination of man over man can no longer be justifiedbyany appeal to God or nature; and such consciousness is thefruit of the spiritual and moral revolution, the great seismicupheaval, through which humanity is now passing.
World Perspectives is planned to gain insight intothemeaning of man, who not only is determined by historybutwho also determines history. History is to be understoodasconcerned not only with the life of man on this planetbutas including also such cosmic influences as interpenetrateourhuman world.
This generation is discovering that history does not con-form to the social optimism of modern civilization andthat
WORLD PERSPECTIVES Xlllthe organization of human communities and the establish-ment of justice, freedom and peace are not only intellectualachievements but spiritual and moral achievements as well,demanding a cherishing of the wholeness of human personality and constituting a never-ending challenge to man,emerging from the abyss of meaninglessness and suffering, tobe renewed and replenished in the totality of his life. "Foras one's thinking is, such one becomes, and it is becauseofthis that thinking should be purified and transformed, forwere it centered upon truth as it is now upon things perceptible to the senses, who would not be liberated fromhisbondage.9
' * There is in mankind today a counterforce to the sterilityand danger of a quantitative, anonymous mass culture, anew, if sometimes imperceptible, spiritual sense of conver-gence toward world unity on the basis of the sacredness ofeach human person and respect for the plurality of cultures.There is a growing awareness that equality and justice arenot to be evaluated in mere numerical terms but that theyare proportionate and analogical in their reality.
We stand at the brink of the age of the world in whichhuman life presses forward to actualize new forms. The falseseparation of man and nature, of time and space, of free-dom and security, is acknowledged and we are faced withanew vision of man in his organic unity and of history offer-ing a richness and diversity of quality and majesty of scopehitherto unprecedented. In relating the accumulated wisdomof man's spirit to the new reality of the World Age,inarticulating its thought and belief, World Perspectives seeks* Mditri Upanishad 6.34.4. 6,
XIV WORLD PERSPECTIVES
to encourage a renaissance of hope in society and of pridein man's decision as to what his destiny will be. The vast extension of knowledge has led to a diminutionof consciousness as a result of the tendency, due to somemodern interpretations of science, to accept as the total truthonly limited descriptions of truth. The triumphant advanceof science, culminating in new realities concerning the subatomic world and overthrowing traditional assumptionsofcausality and uniformity, has almost succeeded in enfeeblingman's faith in his spiritual and moral worth and in his ownsignificance in the cosmic scheme. The experience of dread,into which contemporary man has been plunged throughhisfailure to transcend his existential limits, is the experienceofthe problem of whether he shall attain to being through theknowledge of himself or shall not, whether he shall annihilatenothingness or whether nothingness shall annihilate him.For he has been forced back to his origins as a result of theatrophy of meaning, and his anabasis may begin once morethrough his mysterious greatness to re-create his life. The suffering and hope of this century have their originin the interior drama in which the spirit is thrust as a resultof the split within itself, and in the invisible forces whichareborn in the heart and mind of man. This suffering andthishope arise also from material problems, economic, political,technological. History itself is not a mere mechanical unfolding of events in the center of which man finds himself asastranger in a foreign land. The specific modern emphasisonhistory as progressive, the specific prophetic emphasis onGod as acting through history, and the specific Christianemphasis on the historical nature of revelation must now
WORLD PERSPECTIVES XVsurrender to the new history embracing the new cosmology
a profound event which is in the process of birth in the
womb of that invisible universe which is the mind and heart
of man. For our World Age is indeed the most dire andapocalyptic mankind has ever faced in all history, and the
endeavor of World Perspectives is to point to that ultimate
moral power at work in the universe, that very power uponwhich all human effort must at last depend.
This is the crisis in consciousness made articulate throughthe crisis in science. This is the new awakening after a long
history which had its genesis in Descartes' denial that theol- ogy could exist as a science, on the one hand, and on the
other, in Kant's denial that metaphysics could exist as a
science. Some fossilized forms of such positivistic thinking
still remain, manifesting themselves in a quasi-sociological
mythology which, in the guise of scientific concepts, has generated a new animism resulting in a more primitive religion
than the traditional faiths which it endeavors to replace.
However, it is now conceded, out of the influences of Whitehead, Bergson and some phenomenologists that in addition
to natural science with its tendency to isolate quantitative
values there exists another category of knowledge whereinphilosophy, utilizing its own instruments, is able to grasp
the essence and innermost nature of the Absolute, of reality.
The mysterious universe is now revealing to philosophy andto science as well an enlarged meaning of nature and of man which extends beyond mathematical and experimental
analysis of sensory phenomena. This meaning reiects tht>
XVI WORLD PERSPECTIVES
of mythology adequate only for the satisfaction of emotionalneeds. In other words, the fundamental problems of philosophy, those problems which are central to life, are againconfronting science and philosophy itself. Our problem is todiscover a principle of differentiation and yet relationshiplucid enough to justify and to purify both scientific andphilosophical knowledge by accepting their mutual inter-dependence.
Justice itself which has been "in a state of pilgrimage andcrucifixion" and now is slowly being liberated from the gripof social and political demonologies in the East as well as inthe West, begins to question its own premises. Those modernrevolutionary movements which have challenged the sacredinstitutions of society by protecting social injustice in thename of social justice are also being examined and re-evaluated in World Perspectives.
When we turn our gaze retrospectively to the early cosmiccondition of man in the third millennium, we observe thatthe concept of justice as something to which man has an in-alienable right began slowly to take form and, at the time ofHammurabi in the second millennium, justice as inherentlya part of man's nature and not as a beneficent gift to bebestowed, became part of the consciousness of society. Thisconcept of human rights consisted in the demand for justicein the universe, a demand which exists also in the twentiethcentury through a curious analogy. In accordance with theancient view, man could himself become a god, could assumethe identity of the great cosmic forces in the universe whichsurrounded him. He could influence this universe, not bysupplication, but by action. And now again this consciousness
WORLD PERSPECTIVES XV11of man's harmonious relationship with the universe, withsociety and with his fellow men, can be actualized, and againnot through supplication but through the deed.
Though never so powerful materially and technologically,Western democracy, with its concern for the sacrednessofthe human person gone astray, has never before beensoseriously threatened, morally and spiritually. Nationalse-curity and individual freedom are in ominous conflict. Thepossibility of a universal community and the techniqueofdegradation exist side by side. There is no doubt that evilisaccumulated among men in their passionate desire for unity.And yet, confronted with this evil which had split, isolatedand killed the living reality, confronted with death, man,from the very depths of his soul, cries out for "the un-mediated whole of feeling and thought" and for the possibility to reassemble the fragments, to restore unity throughjustice. Christianity in history could only reply to this protestagainst evil by the Annunciation of the Kingdom, bythepromise of Eternal Life—which demanded faith. Butthespiritual and moral suffering of man had exhausted his faithand his hope. He was left alone. His suffering remainedunexplained.
However, man has now reached the last extremityofdenigration. He yearns to consecrate himself. And so, amongthe spiritual and moral ruins of the West and of the Eastarenaissance is prepared beyond the limits of nihilism, darkness and despair. In the depths of the Western and Easternspiritual night, civilization with its many faces turningto-ward its source may rekindle its light in an imminent newdawn—even as in the last book of Revelation which speaks
XV1U WORLD PERSPECTIVES
of a Second Coming with a new heaven, a new earth andanew religious quality of life. And I saw a new heaven and a new
earth: for the first heaven and the
first earth were passed away. . . .* In spite of the infinite obligation of men and in spiteoftheir finite power, in spite of the intransigence of nationalisms, and in spite of spiritual bereavement and moralamnesia, beneath the apparent turmoil and upheaval ofthepresent, and out of the transformations of this dynamicperiod with the unfolding of a world-consciousness, the purpose of World Perspectives is to help quicken the "unshakenheart of well-rounded truth'
5 and interpret the significantelements of the World Age now taking shape out of thecoreof that undimmed continuity of the creative process whichrestores man to mankind while deepening and enhancinghiscommunion with the universe.
New York, 1956 Ruth Nanda AnshenRevelation, 21:1.
Foreword
THE READING of this book would be a disappointing ex-perience for anyone who expects easy instruction in the artof loving. This book, on the contrary, wants to show thatlove is not a sentiment which can be easily indulged in byanyone, regardless of the level of maturity reached by him.It wants to convince the reader that all his attempts for loveare bound to fail, unless he tries most actively to develophis total personality, so as to achieve a productive orientation; that satisfaction in individual love cannot be attainedwithout the capacity to love one's neighbor, without truehumility, courage, faith and discipline. In a culture in whichthese qualities are rare, the attainment of the capacitytolove must remain a rare achievement. Or—anyone can askhimself how many truly loving persons he has known.
Yet, the difficulty of the task must not be a reasontoabstain from trying to know the difficulties as well as theconditions for its achievement. To avoid unnecessary complications I have tried to deal with the problem in a languagewhich is non-technical as far as this is possible. For the samereason I have also kept to a minimum references to theliterature on love. For another problem I did not find a completely satisfac-tory solution; that, namely, of avoiding repetition of ideasexpressed in previous books of mine. The reader familiar,
XX FOREWORD
especially, with Escape from Freedom, Man for Himself,and The Sane Society, will find in this book many ideas ex-pressed in these previous works. However, The Art of Lovingis by no means mainly a recapitulation. It presents manyideas beyond the previously expressed ones, and quite naturally even older ones sometimes gain new perspectivesbythe fact that they are all centered around one topic, thatof the art of loving. E. F.
He who knows nothing, loves nothing. He whocan do nothing understands nothing. He whounderstands nothing is worthless. But he whounderstands also loves, notices, sees. . . . Themore knowledge is inherent in a thing, the
greater the love. . . . Anyone who imaginesthat all fruits ripen at the same time as the
strawberries knows nothing about grapes. Paracelsus
Is Love an Art?
IS LOVE an art? Then it requires knowledge and effort. Oris love a pleasant sensation, which to experience is a matterof chance, something one "falls into'
5 if one is lucky? Thislittle book is based on the former premise, while undoubtedlythe majority of people today believe in the latter. Not that people think that love is not important. Theyarestarved for it; they watch endless numbers of films abouthappy and unhappy love stories, they listen to hundredsoftrashy songs about love—yet hardly anyone thinks that thereis anything that needs to be learned about love. This peculiar attitude is based on several premises whicheither singly or combined tend to uphold it. Most peopleseethe problem of love primarily as that of being loved, ratherthan that of loving, of one's capacity to love. Hencetheproblem to them is how to be loved, how to be lovable.Inpursuit of this aim they follow several paths. One, whichisespecially used by men, is to be successful, to be as powerfuland rich as the social margin of one's position permits. Another, used especially by women, is to make oneself attractive, by cultivating one's body, dress, etc. Other waysof
2 THE ART OF LOVING
making oneself attractive, used both by men and women,areto develop pleasant manners, interesting conversation, to behelpful, modest, inoffensive. Many of the ways to makeoneself lovable are the same as those used to make oneself successful, "to win friends and influence people." Asa matter of fact, what most people in our culture meanbybeing lovable is essentially a mixture between being popularand having sex appeal.
A second premise behind the attitude that there is nothingto be learned about love is the assumption that the problemof love is the problem of an object, not the problem ofafaculty. People think that to love is simple, but that to findthe right object to love—or to be loved by—is difficult. Thisattitude has several reasons rooted in the developmentofmodern society. One reason is the great change whichoc-curred in the twentieth century with respect to the choiceof a "love object." In the Victorian age, as in many tradi-tional cultures, love was mostly not a spontaneous personalexperience which then might lead to marriage. On the contrary, marriage was contracted by convention—either bytherespective families, or by a marriage broker, or without thehelp of such intermediaries; it was concluded on the basis ofsocial considerations, and love was supposed to develop oncethe marriage had been concluded. In the last few generationsthe concept of romantic love has become almost universalin the Western world. In the United States, while considerations of a conventional nature are not entirely absent, toavast extent people are in search of "romantic love," of thepersonal experience of love which then should lead to marriage. This new concept of freedom in love must have greatly
IS LOVE AN ART? 3enhanced the importance of the object as against the importance of the function.
Closely related to this factor is another feature characteristic of contemporary culture. Our whole culture is basedon the appetite for buying, on the idea of a mutually favorable exchange. Modern man's happiness consists in the thrillof looking at the shop windows, and in buying all that hecan afford to buy, either for cash or on installments. He(orshe) looks at people in a similar way. For the man an attractive girl—and for the woman an attractive man—are theprizes they are after. "Attractive*
5 usually means a nice package of qualities which are popular and sought after on thepersonality market. What specifically makes a person attractive depends on the fashion of the time, physically as well asmentally. During the twenties, a drinking and smoking girl,tough and sexy, was attractive; today the fashion demandsmore domesticity and coyness. At the end of the nineteenthand 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 senseof falling in love develops usually only with regard to suchhuman commodities as are within reach of one's own possibilities for exchange. I am out for a bargain; the object shouldbe desirable from the standpoint of its social value, and at thesame time should want me, considering my overt and hiddenassets and potentialities. Two persons thus fall in love whenthey feel they have found the best object available on themarket, considering the limitations of their own exchangevalues. Often, as in buying real estate, the hidden potentialities which can be developed play a considerable role in this
4 THE ART OF LOVING
bargain. In a culture in which the marketing orientationprevails, and in which material success is the outstandingvalue, there is little reason to be surprised that humanloverelations follow the same pattern of exchange which governsthe commodity and the labor market.
The third error leading to the assumption that thereisnothing to be learned about love lies in the confusion betweenthe initial experience of "falling" in love, and the permanentstate of being in love, or as we might better say, of "standing" in love. If two people who have been strangers, as allof us are, suddenly let the wall between them break down,and feel close, feel one, this moment of oneness is one of themost exhilarating, most exciting experiences in life. It is allthe more wonderful and miraculous for persons whohavebeen shut off, isolated, without love. This miracle of suddenintimacy is often facilitated if it is combined with, or initiatedby, sexual attraction and consummation. However, this typeof love is by its very nature not lasting. The two personsbecome well acquainted, their intimacy loses more and moreits miraculous character, until their antagonism, their disappointments, their mutual boredom kill whatever is left of theinitial excitement. Yet, in the beginning they do not knowall this: in fact, they take the intensity of the infatuation,this being "crazy" about each other, for proof of thein-tensity of their love, while it may only prove the degreeoftheir preceding loneliness. This attitude—that nothing is easier than to love—hascontinued to be the prevalent idea about love in spite of theoverwhelming evidence to the contrary. There is hardly anyactivity, any enterprise, which is started with such tremen-
IS LOVE AN ART? 5dous 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 wouldgiveup the activity. Since the latter is impossible in the caseoflove, there seems to be only one adequate w
ray to overcomethe failure of love—to examine 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 anart, just as living is an art; if we want to learn how to lovewe must proceed in the same way we have to proceed if wewant to learn any other art, say music, painting, carpentry,or the art of medicine or engineering.
What are the necessary steps in learning any art? The process of learning an art can be divided convenientlyinto two parts: one, the mastery of the theory; the other,the mastery of the practice. If I want to learn the art ofmedicine, I must first know the facts about the humanbody,and about various diseases. When I have all this theoreticalknowledge, I am by no means competent in the art of medicine. I shall become a master in this art only after a greatdeal of practice, until eventually the results of my theoreticalknowledge and the results of my practice are blended intoone—my intuition, the essence of the mastery of anyart.But, aside from learning the theory and practice, there is athird factor necessary to becoming a master in any art—themastery of the art must be a matter of ultimate concern;there must be nothing else in the world more important thanthe art. This holds true for music, for medicine, for car-pentry—and for love. And, maybe, here lies the answerto
b THE ART OF LOVING
the question of why people in our culture try so rarelytolearn this art, in spite of their obvious failures: in spiteofthe deep-seated craving for love, almost everything elseisconsidered to be more important than love : success, prestige,money, power—almost all our energy is used for the learn-ing of how to achieve these aims, and almost none to learnthe art of loving.
Could it be that only those things are considered worthyof being learned with which one can earn money or prestige,and that love, which "only55 profits the soul, but is profitlessin the modern sense, is a luxury we have no right to spendmuch energy on? However this may be, the following discus-sion will treat the art of loving in the sense of the foregoingdivisions: first I shall discuss the theory of love—andthiswill comprise the greater part of the book; and secondlyIshall discuss the practice of love—little as can be said aboutpractice in this, as in any other field.
II.
The Theory of Love
I. LOVE, THE ANSWER TO THE PROBLEM OF HUMANEXISTENCE
ANY THEORY of love must begin with a theory of man,of human existence. While we find love, or rather, theequivalent of love, in animals, their attachments are mainlya part of their instinctual equipment; only remnants of thisinstinctual equipment can be seen operating in man. Whatis essential in the existence of man is the fact that he hasemerged from the animal kingdom, from instinctive adaptation, that he has transcended nature—although he neverleaves it; he is a part of it—and yet once torn away fromnature, he cannot return to it; once thrown out of paradise—a state of original oneness with nature—cherubim withflaming swords block his way, if he should try to return.Man can only go forward by developing his reason, by find-ing a new harmony, a human one, instead of the prehumanharmony which is irretrievably lost. When man is born, the human race as well as the indi-vidual, he is thrown out of a situation which was definite, as7
8 THE ART OF LOVING
definite as the instincts, into a situation which is indefinite,uncertain and open. There is certainty only about the pastand about the future only as far as that it is death.
Man is gifted with reason; he is life being aware of itself;he has awareness of himself, of his fellow man, of his past,and of the possibilities of his future. This awareness of himself as a separate entity, the awareness of his own shortlifespan, of the fact that without his will he is born and againsthis will he dies, that he will die before those whom he loves,or they before him, the awareness of his aloneness andseparateness, of his helplessness before the forces of natureandof society, all this makes his separate, disunited existenceanunbearable prison. He would become insane could henotliberate himself from this prison and reach out, unite himselfin some form or other with men, with the world outside.The experience of separateness arouses anxiety; it is, in-deed, the source of all anxiety. Being separate meansbeingcut off, without any capacity to use my human powers.Hence to be separate means to be helpless, unable to graspthe world—things and people—actively; it means thattheworld can invade me without my ability to react. Thus,separateness is the source of intense anxiety. Beyond that,itarouses shame and the feeling of guilt. This experienceofguilt and shame in separateness is expressed in the Biblicalstory of Adam and Eve. After Adam and Eve have eatenofthe "tree of knowledge of good and evil," after they havedisobeyed (there is no good and evil unless there is freedomto disobey), after they have become human by having emancipated themselves from the original animal harmonywithnature, i.e., after their birth as human beings—theysaw
THE THEORY OF LOVE 9"that they were naked—and they were ashamed." Shouldwe assume that a myth as old and elementary as this hasthe prudish morals of the nineteenth-century outlook, andthat the important point the story wants to convey to usisthe embarrassment that their genitals were visible? Thiscanhardly be so, and by understanding the story in a Victorianspirit, we miss the main point, which seems to be the following: after man and woman have become aware of themselves and of each other, they are aware of their separateness,and of their difference, inasmuch as they belong to differentsexes. But while recognizing their separateness they remainstrangers, because they have not yet learned to love eachother (as is also made very clear by the fact that Adamdefends himself by blaming Eve, rather than by tryingtodefend her). The awareness of human separation, withoutreunion by love—is the source of shame. It is at the sametime the source of guilt and anxiety.
The deepest need of man, then, is the need to overcomehis separateness, to leave the prison of his aloneness. Theabsolute failure to achieve this aim means insanity, becausethe panic of complete isolation can be overcome only bysucha radical withdrawal from the world outside that the feelingof separation disappears—because the world outside, fromwhich one is separated, has disappeared.
Man—of all ages and cultures—is confronted withthesolution of one and the same question: the question of howto overcome separateness, how to achieve union, how to tran-scend one's own individual life and find at-onement. Thequestion is the same for primitive man living in caves, fornomadic man taking care of his flocks, for the peasantin
10 THE ART OF LOVING
Egypt, the Phoenician trader, the Roman soldier, the medieval monk, the Japanese samurai, the modern clerk andfac-tory hand. The question is the same, for it springs fromthe same ground: the human situation, the conditionsofhuman existence. The answer varies. The question canbeanswered by animal worship, by human sacrifice or mili-tary conquest, by indulgence in luxury, by ascetic renunciation, by obsessional work, by artistic creation, by the loveofGod, and by the love of Man. While there are many answers—the record of which is human history—they are nevertheless not innumerable. On the contrary, as soon as one ignoressmaller differences which belong more to the periphery thanto the center, one discovers that there is only a limited number of answers which have been given, and only could havebeen given by man in the various cultures in which hehaslived. The history of religion and philosophy is the historyofthese answers, of their diversity, as well as of their limitationin number.
The answers depend, to some extent, on the degreeofindividuation which an individual has reached. In the infantI-ness has developed but little yet; he still feels one withmother, has no feeling of separateness as long as motherispresent. Its sense of aloneness is cured by the physical pres-ence of the mother, her breasts, her skin. Only to the degreethat the child develops his sense of separateness and individuality is the physical presence of the mother not sufficientany more, and does the need to overcome separatenessinother ways arise. Similarly, the human race in its infancy still feels one withnature. The soil, the animals, the plants are still man's world.
THE THEORY OF LOVE IIHe identifies himself with animals, and this is expressedbythe wearing of animal masks, by the worshiping of a totemanimal or animal gods. But the more the human race emergesfrom these primary bonds, the more it separates itself fromthe natural world, the more intense becomes the need to findnew ways of escaping separateness.
One way of achieving this aim lies in all kinds of orgiasticstates. These may have the form of an auto-induced trance,sometimes with the help of drugs. Many rituals of primitivetribes offer a vivid picture of this type of solution. In a transi-tory state of exaltation the world outside disappears, andwith it the feeling of separateness from it. Inasmuch as theserituals are practiced in common, an experience of fusion withthe group is added which makes this solution all the moreeffective. Closely related to, and often blended with thisorgiastic solution, is the sexual experience. The sexual orgasmcan produce a state similar to the one produced by a trance,or to the effects of certain drugs. Rites of communal sexualorgies were a part of many primitive rituals. It seems thatafter the orgiastic experience, man can go on for a timewithout suffering too much from his separateness. Slowlythetension of anxiety mounts, and then is reduced again bytherepeated performance of the ritual. As long as these orgiastic states are a matter of commonpractice in a tribe, they do not produce anxiety or guilt. Toact in this way is right, and even virtuous, because it is away shared by all, approved and demanded by the medicinemen or priests; hence there is no reason to feel guiltyorashamed. It is quite different when the same solutionischosen by an individual in a culture which has left behind
12 THE ART OF LOVING
these common practices. Alcoholism and drug addiction arethe forms which the individual chooses in a non-orgiasticculture. In contrast to those participating in the socially patterned solution, such individuals suffer from guilt feelingsand remorse. While they try to escape from separatenessbytaking refuge in alcohol or drugs, they feel all the more separate after the orgiastic experience is over, and thus are drivento take recourse to it with increasing frequency and intensity.Slightly different from this is the recourse to a sexual orgiasticsolution. To some extent it is a natural and normal formofovercoming separateness, and a partial answer to the problemof isolation. But in many individuals in whom separatenessisnot relieved in other ways, the search for the sexual orgasmassumes a function which makes it not very different fromalcoholism and drug addiction. It becomes a desperate at-tempt to escape the anxiety engendered by separateness, andit results in an ever-increasing sense of separateness, since thesexual act without love never bridges the gap between twohuman beings, except momentarily.
All forms of orgiastic union have three characteristics:they are intense, even violent; they occur in the total personality, mind and body; they are transitory and periodical.Exactly the opposite holds true for that form of union whichis by far the most frequent solution chosen by man in thepast and in the present : the union based on conformity withthe group, its customs, practices and beliefs. Here again wefind a considerable development.
In a primitive society the group is small; it consists ofthose with whom one shares blood and soil. With the growing development of culture, the group enlarges; it becomes
; THE THEORY OF LOVE 1the citizenry of a polls3 the citizenry of a large state, thej members of a church. Even the poor Roman felt pride(because he could say "clvls romanus sum"; Rome andthej fimpire were his family, his home, his world. Also in con-temporary Western society the union with the group is theprevalent way of overcoming separateness. It is a unioninwhich the individual self disappears to a large extent, andwhere the aim is to belong to the herd. If I am like everybody else, if I have no feelings or thoughts which makemedifferent, if I conform in custom, dress, ideas, to the patternof the group, I am saved; saved from the frightening experi-ence of aloneness. The dictatorial systems use threats andterror to induce this conformity; the democratic countries,suggestion and propaganda. There is, indeed, one great dif-ference between the two systems. In the democracies nonconformity is possible and, in fact, by no means entirelyabsent; in the totalitarian systems, only a few unusual heroes| and martyrs can be expected to refuse obedience. But in spite1 of this difference the democratic societies show an over-| whelming degree of conformity. The reason lies in the factI that there has to be an answer to the quest for union, andif[(there is no other or better way, then the union of herdcon-; formity becomes the predominant one. One can only understand the power of the fear to be different, the fear to beonlya few steps away from the herd, if one understands the depthsof the need not to be separated. Sometimes this fear of nonconformity is rationalized as fear of practical dangers whichcould threaten the non-conformist. But actually, people wantto conform to a much higher degree than they are forcedtoconform, at least in the Western democracies.
14 THE ART OF LOVING
Most people are not even aware of their need to conform.They live under the illusion that they follow their ownideasand inclinations, that they are individualists, that theyhavearrived at their opinions as the result of their own thinkingand that it just happens that their ideas are the same as thoseof the majority. The consensus of all serves as a proof forthecorrectness of "their" ideas. Since there is still a need tofeelsome individuality, such need is satisfied with regard to minordifferences; the initials on the handbag or the sweater,thename plate of the bank teller, the belonging to the Democraticas against the Republican party, to the Elks instead of totheShriners become the expression of individual differences. Theadvertising slogan of "it is different" shows up this patheticneed for difference, when in reality there is hardly anyleft.This increasing tendency for the elimination of differencesis closely related to the concept and the experience of equality, as it is developing in the most advanced industrialsocieties. Equality had meant, in a religious context, thatweare all God's children, that we all share in the same humandivine substance, that we are all one. It meant also thatthevery differences between individuals must be respected,thatwhile it is true that we are all one, it is also true that eachone of us is a unique entity, is a cosmos by itself. Suchconviction of the uniqueness of the individual is expressedforinstance in the Talmudic statement: "Whosoever savesasingle life is as if he had saved the whole world; whosoeverdestroys a single life is as if he had destroyed the wholeworld." Equality as a condition for the development ofin-dividuality was also the meaning of the concept inthephilosophy of the Western Enlightenment. It meant(most
THE THEORY OF LOVE 1clearly formulated by Kant) that no man must be the meansfor the ends of another man. That all men are equal inas-much as they are ends, and only ends, and never meanstoeach other. Following the ideas of the Enlightenment, Socialist thinkers of various schools defined equality as abolitionofexploitation, of the use of man by man, regardless of whetherthis use were cruel or "human."
In contemporary capitalistic society the meaning of equality has been transformed. By equality one refers to theequality of automatons; of men who have lost their individuality. Equality today means "sameness" rather than"oneness." It is the sameness of abstractions, of the menwhowork in the same jobs, who have the same amusements,whoread the same newspapers, who have the same feelings andthe same ideas. In this respect one must also look with someskepticism at some achievements which are usually praisedas signs of our progress, such as the equality of women. Needless to say I am not speaking against the equality of women;but the positive aspects of this tendency for equality mustnot deceive one. It is part of the trend toward the elimination of differences. Equality is bought at this very price:women are equal because they are not different any more.The proposition of Enlightenment philosophy, Vame n*a pasde sexe, the soul has no sex, has become the general practice.The polarity of the sexes is disappearing, and with it eroticlove, which is based on this polarity. Men and womenbe-come the same, not equals as opposite poles. Contemporarysociety preaches this ideal of unindividualized equality be-cause it needs human atoms, each one the same, to makethem function in a mass aggregation, smoothly, without fric-
1

THE ART OF LOVING
tion; all obeying the same commands, yet everybody beingconvinced that he is following his own desires. Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, so the social process requires standardizationofman, and this standardization is called "equality.'
5 Union by conformity is not intense and violent; it is calm,dictated by routine, and for this very reason often is insufficient to pacify the anxiety of separateness. The incidenceofalcoholism, drug addiction, compulsive sexualism, andsui-cide in contemporary Western society are symptoms of thisrelative failure of herd conformity. Furthermore, this solu-tion concerns mainly the mind and not the body, andforthis reason too is lacking in comparison with the orgiasticsolutions. Herd conformity has only one advantage: it ispermanent, and not spasmodic. The individual is introducedinto the conformity pattern at the age of three or four, andsubsequently never loses his contact with the herd. Evenhisfuneral, which he anticipates as his last great social affair,isin strict conformance with the pattern.
In addition to conformity as a way to relieve the anxietyspringing from separateness, another factor of contemporarylife must be considered : the role of the work routine andofthe pleasure routine. Man becomes a "nine to fiver" heispart of the labor force, or the bureaucratic force of clerksand managers. He has little initiative, his tasks are prescribedby the organization of the work; there is even little differ-ence between those high up on the ladder and those onthebottom. They all perform tasks prescribed by the wholestructure of the organization, at a prescribed speed, andinaprescribed manner. Even the feelings are prescribed: cheer-
THE THEORY OF LOVE 1fulness, tolerance, reliability, ambition, and an ability togettlong with everybody without friction. Fun is routinizedinimilar, although not quite as drastic ways. Books are selected»y the book clubs, movies by the film and theater ownersid the advertising slogans paid for by them; the rest is alsoItiniform: the Sunday ride in the car, the television session,|the card game, the social parties. From birth to death,fromMonday to Monday, from morning to evening—all activitiesiare routinized, and prefabricated. How should a mancaughtin this net of routine not forget that he is a man, a uniqueI individual, one who is given only this one chance of living,|with hopes and disappointments, with sorrow and fear, with; the longing for love and the dread of the nothing andofI separateness?
A third way of attaining union lies in creative activity,beit that of the artist, or of the artisan. In any kind of creativework the creating person unites himself with his material,which represents the world outside of himself. Whetheracarpenter makes a table, or a goldsmith a piece of jewelry,whether the peasant grows his corn or the painter paintsapicture, in all types of creative work the worker andhisobject become one, man unites himself with the worldintheprocess of creation. This, however, holds true only forproductive work, for work in which / plan, produce, seetheresult of my work. In the modern work process of aclerk,the worker on the endless belt, little is left of this unitingquality of work. The worker becomes an appendix tothemachine or to the bureaucratic organization. He has ceasedto be he—hence no union takes place beyond that ofconformity.
1

THE ART OF LOVING
The unity achieved in productive work is not interpersonal; the unity achieved in orgiastic fusion is transitory; theunity achieved by conformity is only pseudo-unity* Hence,they are only partial answers to the problem of existence. Thefull answer lies in the achievement of interpersonal union,offusion with another person, in love. This desire for interpersonal fusion is the most powerfulstriving in man. It is the most fundamental passion, it is theforce which keeps the human race together, the clan, thefamily, society. The failure to achieve it means insanityordestruction-—self-destruction or destruction of others. Without love, humanity could not exist for a day. Yet, if wecallthe achievement of interpersonal union "love," we find ourselves in a serious difficulty. Fusion can be achieved in dif-ferent ways—and the differences are not less significant thanwhat is common to the various forms of love. Should theyallbe called love? Or should we reserve the word "love" onlyfor a specific kind of union, one which has been the idealvirtue in all great humanistic religions and philosophicalsystems of the last four thousand years of Western andEastern history?
As with all semantic difficulties, the answer can onlybearbitrary. What matters is that we know what kind of unionwe are talking about when we speak of love. Do we refertolove as the mature answer to the problem of existence, ordowe speak of those immature forms of love which maybecalled symbiotic union? In the following pages I shall calllove only the former, I shall begin the discussion of "love"with the latter. Symbiotic union has its biological pattern in the relation-
THE THEORY OF LOVE 1
ship between the pregnant mother and the foetus. Theyaretwo, and yet one. They live "together," (sym-biosis) , theyneed each other. The foetus is a part of the mother, it re-ceives everything it needs from her; mother is its world,asit were; she feeds it, she protects it, but also her ownlife isenhanced by it. In the psychic symbiotic union, the twobodies are independent, but the same kind of attachmentexists psychologically.
The passive form of the symbiotic union is that of submission, or if we use a clinical term, of masochism. Themasochistic person escapes from the unbearable feelingofisolation and separateness by making himself part and parcelof another person who directs him, guides him, protects him
who is his life and his oxygen, as it were. The power of theone to whom one submits is inflated, may he be a person oragod; he is everything, I am nothing, except inasmuchasIam part of him. As a part, I am part of greatness, of power,of certainty. The masochistic person does not have to makedecisions, does not have to take any risks; he is never alonebut he is not independent; he has no integrity; he is notyetfully born. In a religious context the object of worshipiscalled an idol; in a secular context of a masochistic lovere-lationship the essential mechanism, that of idolatry, is thesame. The masochistic relationship can be blended withphysical, sexual desire; in this case it is not only a submissionin which one's mind participates, but also one's whole body.There can be masochistic submission to fate, to sickness,torhythmic music, to the orgiastic state produced by drugsorunder hypnotic trance—in all these instances the personre-nounces his integrity, makes himself the instrument of some-
THE ART OF LOVING
body or something outside of himself; he need not solve theproblem of living by productive activity.
The active form of symbiotic fusion is domination or,touse the psychological term corresponding to masochism,sadism. The sadistic person wants to escape from his aloneness and his sense of imprisonment by making another personpart and parcel of himself. He inflates and enhances himselfby incorporating another person, who worships him.
The sadistic person is as dependent on the submissive per-son as the latter is on the former; neither can live withoutthe other. The difference is only that the sadistic personcommands, exploits, hurts, humiliates, and that the masochistic person is commanded, exploited, hurt, humiliated.This is a considerable difference in a realistic sense; inadeeper emotional sense, the difference is not so great as thatwhich they both have in common : fusion without integrity.If one understands this, it is also not surprising to find thatusually a person reacts in both the sadistic and the masochistic manner, usually toward different objects. Hitlerre-acted primarily in a sadistic fashion toward people, butmasochistically toward fate, history, the "higher power"ofnature. His end—suicide among general destruction—is ascharacteristic as was his dream of success—total domination. 1 In contrast to symbiotic union, mature love is union underthe condition of preserving one's integrity, one's individuality. Love is an active power in man; a power which breaksthrough the walls which separate man from his fellow men,1 Cf. a more detailed study of sadism and masochism in E. Fromm,Escape from Freedom, Rinehart & Company, New York, 1941.
THE THEORY OF LOVE 21jityirhich unites him with others; love makes him overcometheIsfense of isolation and separateness, yet it permits himtobeIjihimself, to retain his integrity. In love the paradox occursthat two beings become one and yet remain two.
If we say love is an activity, we face a difficulty whichlies in the ambiguous meaning of the word "activity."ByInactivity," in the modern usage of the word, is usually meant|UV action which brings about a change in an existing situa-|
tion by means of an expenditure of energy. Thus a manisConsidered active if he does business, studies medicine, worksI
1 on an endless belt, builds a table, or is engaged in sports.| Common to all these activities is that they are directedP i I toward an outside goal to be achieved. What is not takeninto| Recount is the motivation of activity. Take for instance aman| driven to incessant work by a sense of deep insecurityandii joneliness; or another one driven by ambition, or greedfor% money* In all these cases the person is the slave of a passion,| and his activity is in reality a "passivity" because heis<; driven; he is the sufferer, not the "actor." On the otherhand, a man sitting quiet and contemplating, with nopurl pose or aim except that of experiencing himself andhis[ oneness with the world, is considered to be "passive," because; he is not "doing" anything. In reality, this attitude of concentrated meditation is the highest activity there is, anactivity of the soul, which is possible only under the conditionof inner freedom and independence. One concept of activity,the modern one, refers to the use of energy for the achievement of external aims; the other concept of activity refers; to the use of man's inherent powers, regardless of whetherany external change is brought about. The latter conceptof
22 THE ART OF LOVING
activity has been formulated most clearly by Spinoza. Hedifferentiates among the affects between active and passiveaffects, "actions" and "passions." In the exercise of an activeaffect, man is free, he is the master of his affect; in theexercise of a passive affect, man is driven, the objectofmotivations of which he himself is not aware. Thus Spinozaarrives at the statement that virtue and power are one andthe same.
2 Envy, jealousy, ambition, any kind of greedarepassions; love is an action, the practice of a human power,which can be practiced only in freedom and never as theresult of a compulsion.
Love is an activity, not a passive affect; it is a "standingin," not a "falling for." In the most general way, the activecharacter of love can be described by stating that loveisprimarily giving, not receiving.
What is giving? Simple as the answer to this questionseems to be, it is actually full of ambiguities and complexities. The most widespread misunderstanding is that whichassumes that giving is "giving up" something, being deprivedof, sacrificing. The person whose character has not developedbeyond the stage of the receptive, exploitative, or hoardingorientation, experiences the act of giving in this way. Themarketing character is willing to give, but only in exchangefor receiving; giving without receiving for him is beingcheated.3 People whose main orientation is a non-productiveone feel giving as an impoverishment. Most individualsof2 Spinoza, Ethics IV, Def. 8.
3 Cf. a detailed discussion of these character orientations in E.Fromm, Man for Himself, Rinehart & Company, New York, 1947,Chap. Ill, pp. 54-117.
THE THEORY OF LOVE 23Ithis type therefore refuse to give. Some make a virtue outof\ giving in the sense of a sacrifice. They feel that just because|it'is painful to give, one should give; the virtue of givingto|: them lies in the very act of acceptance of the sacrifice. For\ them, the norm that it is better to give than to receive meansthat it is better to suffer deprivation than to experiencejoy.For the productive character, giving has an entirelydif-| ferent meaning. Giving is the highest expression of potency.In the very act of giving, I experience my strength,my-''Wealth, my power. This experience of heightened vitalityand potency fills me with joy. I experience myself as overI flowing, spending, alive, hence as joyous.4 Giving is more| joyous than receiving, not because it is a deprivation,butbecause in the act of giving lies the expression of myaliver ness.
It is not difficult to recognize the validity of this principle^applying it to various specific phenomena. The mostele-tnentary example lies in the sphere of sex. The culminationof the male sexual function lies in the act of giving; themangives himself, his sexual organ, to the woman. At the moment| pf orgasm he gives his semen to her. He cannot help givingit if he is potent. If he cannot give, he is impotent. Forthewoman the process is not different, although somewhatmorecomplex. She gives herself too; she opens, the gates toherfeminine center; in the act of receiving, she gives. If sheisincapable of this act of giving, if she can only receive, sheisfrigid. With her the act of giving occurs again, not inherfunction as a lover, but in that as a mother. She givesofherself to the growing child within her, she gives her milkto* Compare the definition of joy given by Spinoza.
24 THE ART OF LOVING
the infant, she gives her bodily warmth. Not to give wouldbe painful.
In the sphere of material things giving means being rich.Not he who has much is rich, but he who gives much. Thehoarder who is anxiously worried about losing somethingis,psychologically speaking, the poor, impoverished man,re-gardless of how much he has. Whoever is capable of givingof himself is rich. He experiences himself as one whocanconfer of himself to others. Only one who is deprived of allthat goes beyond the barest necessities for subsistence wouldbe incapable of enjoying the act of giving material things.But daily experience shows that what a person considers theminimal necessities depends as much on his character asitdepends on his actual possessions. It is well known that thepoor are more willing to give than the rich. Nevertheless,poverty beyond a certain point may make it impossible togive, and is so degrading, not only because of the sufferingit causes directly, but because of the fact that it deprives thepoor of the joy of giving.
The most important sphere of giving, however, is not thatof material things, but lies in the specifically human realm.What does one person give to another? He gives of himself,of the most precious he has, he gives of his life. This does notnecessarily mean that he sacrifices his life for the other—butthat he gives him of that which is alive in him; he gives himof his joy, of his interest, of his understanding, of his knowledge, of his humor, of his sadness—of all expressions andmanifestations of that which is alive in him. In thus givingof his life, he enriches the other person, he enhances theother's sense of aliveness by enhancing his own sense of alive-
THE THEORY OF LOVE 25ness. He does not give in order to receive; giving is in itselfexquisite joy. But in giving he cannot help bringing something to life in the other person, and this which is brought tolife reflects back to him; in truly giving, he cannot help re-ceiving that which is given back to him. Giving implies tomake the other person a giver also and they both share inthe joy of what they have brought to life. In the act of givingsomething is born, and both persons involved are gratefulfor the life that is born for both of them. Specifically withregard to love this means: love is a power which produceslove; impotence is the inability to produce love. This thoughthas been beautifully expressed by Marx: "Assume," he says,"man as man, and his relation to the world as a human one,and you can exchange love only for love, confidence for confidence, etc. If you wish to enjoy art, you must be an artis-tically trained person ; if you wish to have influence on otherpeople, you must be a person who has a really stimulatingand furthering influence on other people. Every one of yourrelationships to man and to nature must be a definite expression of your real, individual life corresponding to theobject of your will. If you love without calling forth love,that is, if your love as such does not produce love, if by meansof an expression of life as a loving person you do not makeof yourself a loved person, then your love is impotent, amisfortune." 6 But not only in love does giving mean receiving. The teacher is taught by his students, the actor is stimulated by his audience, the psychoanalyst is cured by his5 "Nationalokonomie und Philosophic," 1844, published in KarlMarx' Die Friihschriften, Alfred Kroner Verlag, Stuttgart, 1953, pp.300, 301. (My translation, E. F.)
26 THE ART OF LOVING
patient—provided they do not treat each other as objects,but are related to each other genuinely and productively.It is hardly necessary to stress the fact that the ability tolove as an act of giving depends on the character development of the person. It presupposes the attainment of a pre-dominantly productive orientation; in this orientation theperson has overcome dependency, narcissistic omnipotence,the wish to exploit others, or to hoard, and has acquiredfaith in his own human powers, courage to rely on his powersin the attainment of his goals. To the degree that thesequalities are lacking, he is afraid of giving himself—henceof loving.
Beyond the element of giving, the active character of lovebecomes evident in the fact that it always implies certainbasic elements, common to all forms of love. These are care,responsibility, respect and knowledge.
That love implies care is most evident in a mother's lovefor her child. No assurance of her love would strike usassincere if we saw her lacking in care for the infant, if sheneglected to feed it, to bathe it, to give it physical comfort;and we are impressed by her love if we see her caring forthe child. It is not different even with the love for animalsorflowers. If a woman told us that she loved flowers, andwesaw that she forgot to water them, we would not believeinher "love" for flowers. Love is the active concern for the lifeand the growth of that which we love. Where this active con-cern is lacking, there is no love. This element of love has beenbeautifully described in the book of Jonah. God has toldJonah to go to Nineveh to warn its inhabitants that they willbe punished unless they mend their evil ways. Jonah runs
THE THEORY OF LOVE 27away from his mission because he is afraid that the people ofNineveh will repent and that God will forgive them. Heis aman with a strong sense of order and law, but without love.However, in his attempt to escape, he finds himself in thebelly of a whale, symbolizing the state of isolation and imprisonment which his lack of love and solidarity has broughtupon him. God saves him, and Jonah goes to Nineveh. Hepreaches to the inhabitants as God had told him, and thevery thing he was afraid of happens. The men of Ninevehrepent their sins, mend their ways, and God forgives themand decides not to destroy the city, Jonah is intensely angryand disappointed; he wanted "justice" to be done, notmercy. At last he finds some comfort in the shade of a treewhich God had made to grow for him to protect him fromthe sun. But when God makes the tree wilt, Jonah is depressed and angrily complains to God. God answers : "Thouhast had pity on the gourd for the which thou hast notlabored neither madest it grow; which came up in a night,and perished in a night. And should I not spare Nineveh,that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousandpeople that cannot discern between their right hand andtheir left hand; and also much cattle?" God's answer toJonah is to be understood symbolically. God explains toJonah that the essence of love is to "labor" for somethingand "to make something grow," that love and labor are in-separable. One loves that for which one labors, and onelabors for that which one loves. Care and concern imply another aspect of love; that ofresponsibility. Today responsibility is often meant to denoteduty, something imposed upon one from the outside. But re-
28 THE ART OF LOVING
sponsibility, in its true sense, is an entirely voluntary act;itis my response to the needs, expressed or unexpressed,ofanother human being. To be "responsible" means to be ableand ready to "respond." Jonah did not feel responsibletothe inhabitants of Nineveh. He, like Cain, could ask: "AmI my brother's keeper?" The loving person responds. Thelifeof his brother is not his brother's business alone, but his own.He feels responsible for his fellow men, as he feels responsible for himself. This responsibility, in the case of the motherand her infant, refers mainly to the care for physical needs.In the love between adults it refers mainly to the psychicneeds of the other person.
Responsibility could easily deteriorate into dominationand possessiveness, were it not for a third component of love,respect. Respect is not fear and awe; it denotes, in accord-ance with the root of the word (respicere =to look at),the ability to see a person as he is, to be aware of his uniqueindividuality. Respect means the concern that the other per-son should grow and unfold as he is. Respect, thus, impliesthe absence of exploitation. I want the loved person to growand unfold for his own sake, and in his own ways, andnotfor the purpose of serving me. If I love the other person,Ifeel one with him or her, but with him as he is, not as I needhim to be as an object for my use. It is clear that respectispossible only if / have achieved independence; if I can standand walk without needing crutches, without having to dominate and exploit anyone else. Respect exists only on the basisof freedom: "l'amour est l
3 enfant de la liberty" as anoldFrench song says; love is the child of freedom, never thatofdomination.
THE THEORY OF LOVE 29j) To respect a person is not possible without knowinghim;If Care and responsibility would be blind if they werenot^guided by knowledge. Knowledge would be empty if it werenot motivated by concern. There are many layers of knowledge; the knowledge which is an aspect of love is one which| does not stay at the periphery, but penetrates to the core.It is possible only when I can transcend the cencernfor: myself and see the other person in his own terms. I mayknow, for instance, that a person is angry, even if hedoespiiibt show it overtly; but I may know him more deeply than|
; that; then Iknow that he is anxious, and worried; thathe.'feels lonely, that he feels guilty. Then I know that his angerI' is only the manifestation of something deeper, and I see himI ; as anxious and embarrassed, that is, as the suffering person,| rather than as the angry one. Knowledge has one more, and a more fundamental,re-lation to the problem of love. The basic need to fuse withanother person so as to transcend the prison of one's separateness is closely related to another specifically humandesire,that to know the "secret of man." While life in its merelybiological aspects is a miracle and a secret, man in his humanaspects is an unfathomable secret to himself—and to his fel-low man. We know ourselves, and yet even with all the effortswe may make, we do not know ourselves. We know ourfel-low man, and yet we do not know him, because we are notathing, and our fellow man is not a thing. The furtherwe( ,.. reach into the depth of our being, or someone else's being,r the more the goal of knowledge eludes us. Yet we cannoti; help desiring to penetrate into the secret of man's soul, into' the innermost nucleus which is "he."
30 THE ART OF LOVING
There is one way, a desperate one, to know the secret : itis that of complete power over another person; the powerwhich makes him do what we want, feel what we want,think what we want; which transforms him into a thing, ourthing, our possession. The ultimate degree of this attempttoknow lies in the extremes of sadism, the desire and ability tomake a human being suffer; to torture him, to force himtobetray his secret in his suffering. In this craving for penetrating man's secret, his and hence our own, lies an essentialmotivation for the depth and intensity of cruelty and destructiveness. In a very succinct way this idea has been expressedby Isaac Babel. He quotes a fellow officer in the Russian civilwar, who has just stamped his former master to death, assaying: "With shooting—I'll put it this way—with shootingyou only get rid of a chap. . . . With shooting you'll neverget at the soul, to where it is in a fellow and how it showsitself. But I don't spare myself, and I've more than oncetrampled an enemy for over an hour. You see, I want to getto know what life really is, what life's like down our way."6 In children we often see this path to knowledge quiteovertly. The child takes something apart, breaks it upinorder to know it; or it takes an animal apart; cruelly tearsoff the wings of a butterfly in order to know it, to force itssecret. The cruelty itself is motivated by something deeper:the wish to know the secret of things and of life. The other path to knowing "the secret" is love. Loveisactive penetration of the other person, in which my desire toknow is stilled by union. In the act of fusion I know you,Iknow myself, I know everybody—and I "know" nothing.6 I. Babel, The Collected Stories, Criterion Book, New York, 1955.
THE THEORY OF LOVE 3
I know in the only way knowledge of that which is aliveis possible for man—by experience of union—not by anyknowledge our thought can give. Sadism is motivated bythewish to know the secret, yet I remain as ignorant as I wasbefore. I have torn the other being apart limb from limb, yetall I have done is to destroy him. Love is the only wayofknowledge, which in the act of union answers my quest. Inthe act of loving, of giving myself, in the act of penetratingthe other person, I find myself, I discover myself, I discoverus both, I discover man. The longing to know ourselves and to know our fellowman has been expressed in the Delphic motto "Knowthyself." It is the mainspring of all psychology. But inasmuchasthe desire is to know all of man, his innermost secret, the desire can never be fulfilled in knowledge of the ordinary kind,in knowledge only by thought. Even if we knew a thousandtimes more of ourselves, we would never reach bottom. Wewould still remain an enigma to ourselves, as our fellow manwould remain an enigma to us. The only way of full knowledge lies in the act of love: this act transcends thought,ittranscends words. It is the daring plunge into the experienceof union. However, knowledge in thought, that is psychological knowledge, is a necessary condition for full knowledgein the act of love. I have to know the other person and myselfobjectively, in order to be able to see his reality, or rather, toovercome the illusions, the irrationally distorted pictureIhave of him. Only if I know a human being objectively, canI know him in his ultimate essence, in the act of love. 7
7 The above statement has an important implication for the role ofpsychology in contemporary Western culture. While the great popu-
32 THE ART OF LOVING
The problem of knowing man is parallel to the religiousproblem of knowing God. In conventional Western theologythe attempt is made to know God by thought, to make state-ments about God. It is assumed that I can know God in mythought. In mysticism, which is the consequent outcomeofmonotheism (as I shall try to show later on), the attemptisgiven up to know God by thought, and it is replaced bytheexperience of union with God in which there is no moreroom—and no need—for knowledge about God.
The experience of union, with man, or religiously speaking, with God, is by no means irrational. On the contrary,itis as Albert Schweitzer has pointed out, the consequenceofrationalism, its most daring and radical consequence. It isbased on our knowledge of the fundamental, and not acci-dental, limitations of our knowledge. It is the knowledge thatwe shall never "grasp" the secret of man and of the universe,but that we can know, nevertheless, in the act of love. Psychology as a science has its limitations, and, as the logicalconsequence of theology is mysticism, so the ultimate conse-quence of psychology is love. Care, responsibility, respect and knowledge are mutuallyinterdependent. They are a syndrome of attitudes whichareto be found in the mature person; that is, in the person whodevelops his own powers productively, who only wantstohave that which he has worked for, who has given upnarcissistic dreams of omniscience and omnipotence, whohaslarity of psychology certainly indicates an interest in the knowledgeofman, it also betrays the fundamental lack of love in human relationstoday. Psychological knowledge thus becomes a substitute for fullknowledge in the act of love, instead of being a step toward it.
THE THEORY OF LOVE 33acquired humility based on the inner strength which onlygenuine productive activity can give.
Thus far I have spoken of love as the overcoming ofhuman separateness, as the fulfillment of the longing forunion. But above the universal, existential need for unionrises a more specific, biological one : the desire for unionbetween the masculine and feminine poles. The idea of thispolarization is most strikingly expressed in the myth thatoriginally man and woman were one, that they were cut inhalf, and from then on each male has been seeking for thelost female part of himself in order to unite again with her.(The same idea of the original unity of the sexes is also contained in the Biblical story of Eve being made from Adam'srib, even though in this story, in the spirit of patriarchalism,woman is considered secondary to man.) The meaningofthe myth is clear enough. Sexual polarization leads mantoseek union in a specific way, that of union with the other sex.The polarity between the male and female principles existsalso within each man and each woman. Just as physiologically man and woman each have hormones of the oppositesex, they are bisexual also in the psychological sense. Theycarry in themselves the principle of receiving and of penetrating, of matter and of spirit. Man—and woman—finds unionwithin himself only in the union of his female and his malepolarity. This polarity is the basis for all creativity.
The male-female polarity is also the basis for interpersonalcreativity. This is obvious biologically in the fact that theunion of sperm and ovum is the basis for the birth of a child.But in the purely psychic realm it is not different; in thelove between man and woman, each of them is reborn. (The
34 THE ART OF LOVING
homosexual deviation is a failure to attain this polarizedunion, and thus the homosexual suffers from the painofnever-resolved separateness, a failure, however, whichheshares with the average heterosexual who cannot love.)
The same polarity of the male and female principle existsin nature; not only, as is obvious in animals and plants, butin the polarity of the two fundamental functions, that of re-ceiving and that of penetrating. It is the polarity of the earthand rain, of the river and the ocean, of night and day, ofdarkness and light, of matter and spirit. This idea is beautifully expressed by the great Muslim poet and mystic, Rumi:Never, in sooth, does the lover seek without beingsought by his beloved.
When the lightning of love has shot into this heart,
know that there is love in that heart. When love of God waxes in thy heart, beyond anydoubt God hath love for thee. No sound of clapping comes from one hand without theother hand.
Divine Wisdom is destiny and decree made us lovers of one another.
Because of that fore-ordainment every part of the worldis paired with its mate.
In the view of the wise, Heaven is man and Earthwoman : Earth fosters what Heaven lets fall. When Earth lacks heat, Heaven sends it; when she haslost her freshness and moisture, Heaven restores it. Heaven goes on his rounds, like a husband foraging forthe wife's sake;
And Earth is busy with housewiferies: she attends to
births and suckling that which she bears.
THE THEORY OF LOVE 35Regard Earth and Heaven as endowed with intelli- gence, since they do the work of intelligent beings.
Unless these twain taste pleasure from one another, whyare they creeping together like sweethearts?
Without the Earth, how should flower and tree blos- som? What, then, would Heaven's water and heat
produce?
As God put desire in man and woman to the end that the world should be preserved by their union,
So hath He implanted in every part of existence the
desire for another part.
Day and Night are enemies outwardly; yet both serve one purpose,
Each in love with the other for the sake of perfecting
their mutual work,
Without Night, the nature of Man would receive noincome, so there would be nothing for Day to spend.8 The problem of the male-female polarity leads to somefurther discussion on the subject matter of love and sex. Ihave spoken before of Freud's error in seeing in love exclusively the expression—or a sublimation—of the sexual instinct, rather than recognizing that the sexual desire is onemanifestation of the need for love and union. But Freud'serror goes deeper. In line with his physiological materialism,he sees in the sexual instinct the result of a chemically produced tension in the body which is painful and seeks for relief. The aim of the sexual desire is the removal of this painful tension; sexual satisfaction lies in the accomplishmentofthis removal. This view has its validity to the extent that the8 R. A. Nicholson, Rural, George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., London,1950, pp. 122-3.
36 THE ART OF LOVING
sexual desire operates in the same fashion as hunger or thirstdo when the organism is undernourished. Sexual desire, inthis concept, is an itch, sexual satisfaction the removal of theitch. In fact, as far as this concept of sexuality is concerned,masturbation would be the ideal sexual satisfaction. WhatFreud, paradoxically enough, ignores, is the psycho-biologicalaspect of sexuality, the masculine-feminine polarity, and thedesire to bridge this polarity by union. This curious errorwas probably facilitated by Freud's extreme patriarchalism,which led him to the assumption that sexuality per se ismasculine, and thus made him ignore the specific femalesexuality. He expressed this idea in the Three Contributionsto the Theory of Sex, saying that the libido has regularly "amasculine nature," regardless of whether it is the libido in aman or in a woman. The same idea is also expressed in arationalized form in Freud's theory that the little boy experi-ences the woman as a castrated man, and that she herselfseeks for various compensations for the loss of the malegenital. But woman is not a castrated man, and her sexualityis specifically feminine and not of "a masculine nature."
Sexual attraction between the sexes is only partly motivated by the need for removal of tension; it is mainly theneed for union with the other sexual pole. In fact, erotic at-traction is by no means only expressed in sexual attraction.There is masculinity and femininity in character as well asin sexual junction. The masculine character can be definedas having the qualities of penetration, guidance, activity, dis-cipline and adventurousness; the feminine character by thequalities of productive receptiveness, protection, realism, en-durance, motherliness. (It must always be kept in mind that
THE THEORY OF LOVE 37in each individual both characteristics are blended, but withthe preponderance of those appertaining to "his" or "her"sex.) Very often if the masculine character traits of a manare weakened because emotionally he has remained a child,he will try to compensate for this lack by the exclusiveemphasis on his male role in sex. The result is the Don Juan,who needs to prove his male prowess in sex because he is unsure of his masculinity in a characterological sense. Whentheparalysis of masculinity is more extreme, sadism (the useofforce) becomes the main—a perverted—substitute for masculinity. If the feminine sexuality is weakened or perverted,it is transformed into masochism, or possessiveness.
Freud has been criticized for his overevaluation of sex.This criticism was often prompted by the wish to removeanelement from Freud's system which aroused criticism andhostility among conventionally minded people. Freud keenlysensed this motivation and for this very reason fought everyattempt to change his theory of sex. Indeed, in his time,Freud's theory had a challenging and revolutionary character. But what was true around 1900 is not true any morefifty years later. The sexual mores have changed so muchthat Freud's theories are not any longer shocking to theWestern middle classes, and it is a quixotic kind of radical-ism when orthodox analysts today still think they are coura-geous and radical in defending Freud's sexual theory. Infact, their brand of psychoanalysis is conformist, and doesnot try to raise psychological questions which would leadtoa criticism of contemporary society.
My criticism of Freud's theory is not that he overemphasized sex, but his failure to understand sex deeply enough.
38 THE ART OF LOVING
He took the first step in discovering the significance of inter-personal passions; in accordance with his philosophicpremises he explained them physiologically. In the furtherdevelopment of psychoanalysis it is necessary to correct anddeepen Freud's concept by translating Freud's insights fromthe physiological into the biological and existential dimension. 9
2. LOVE BETWEEN PARENT AND CHILD
The infant, at the moment of birth, would feel the fearof dying, if a gracious fate did not preserve it fromanyawareness of the anxiety involved in the separation frommother, and from intra-uterine existence. Even after beingborn, the infant is hardly different from what it was beforebirth; it cannot recognize objects, it is not yet awareofitself, and of the world as being outside of itself. It onlyfeels the positive stimulation of warmth and food, and it doesnot yet differentiate warmth and food from its source:mother. Mother is warmth, mother is food, mother is theeuphoric state of satisfaction and security. This state is oneof narcissism, to use Freud's term. The outside reality, per-sons and things, have meaning only in terms of their satisfying or frustrating the inner state of the body. Real is onlywhat is within; what is outside is real only in terms of myneeds—never in terms of its own qualities or needs.
9 Freud himself made a first step in this direction in his later concept of the life and death instincts. His concept of the former (eros)as a principle of synthesis and unification is on an entirely differentplane from that of his libido concept. But in spite of the fact that thetheory of life and death instincts was accepted by orthodox analysts,this acceptance did not lead to a fundamental revision of the libidoconcept, especially as far as clinical work is concerned.
THE THEORY OF LOVE 39When the child grows and develops, he becomes capableof perceiving things as they are ; the satisfaction in being fedbecomes differentiated from the nipple, the breast from themother. Eventually the child experiences his thirst, the satis-fying milk, the breast and the mother, as different entities.He learns to perceive many other things as being different, ashaving an existence of their own. At this point he learns togive them names. At the same time he learns to handle them;learns that fire is hot and painful, that mother's bodyiswarm and pleasureful, that wood is hard and heavy, thatpaper is light and can be torn. He learns how to handle people; that mother will smile when I eat; that she will takeme in her arms when I cry; that she will praise me whenIhave a bowel movement. All these experiences become crystallized and integrated in the experience: / am loved. I amloved because I am mother's child. I am loved becauseIam helpless. I am loved because I am beautiful, admirable.I am loved because mother needs me. To put it in a moregeneral formula: / am loved for what I am, or perhaps moreaccurately, J am loved because I am. This experience ofbeing loved by mother is a passive one. There is nothingI have to do in order to be loved—mother's love is unconditional. All I have to do is to be—to be her child. Mother'slove is bliss, is peace, it need not be acquired, it need not bedeserved. But there is a negative side, too, to the unconditional quality of mother's love. Not only does it not needtobe deserved—it also cannot be acquired, produced, controlled. If it is there, it is like a blessing; if it is not there, it is as if all beauty had gone out of life—and there is nothingI can do to create it.
40 THE ART OF LOVING
For most children before the age from eight and a halftoten,
10 the problem is almost exclusively that of being loved—of being loved for what one is. The child up to this age doesnot yet love; he responds gratefully, joyfully to being loved.At this point of the child's development a new factor entersinto the picture: that of a new feeling of producing lovebyone's own activity. For the first time, the child thinks of giving something to mother (or to father), of producing something—a poem, a drawing, or whatever it may be. Forthefirst time in the child's life the idea of love is transformedfrom being loved into loving; into creating love. It takesmany years from this first beginning to the maturing of love.Eventually the child, who may now be an adolescent, hasovercome his egocentricity; the other person is not any moreprimarily a means to the satisfaction of his own needs. Theneeds of the other person are as important as his own—infact, they have become more important. To give has becomemore satisfactory, more joyous, than to receive; to love, moreimportant even than being loved. By loving, he has left theprison cell of aloneness and isolation which was constitutedby the state of narcissism and self-centeredness. Hefeelsasense of new union, of sharing, of oneness. More than that,he feels the potency of producing love by loving—rather thanthe dependence of receiving by being loved—and for thatreason having to be small, helpless, sick—or "good."Infantile love follows the principle: "I love because Iamloved/' Mature love follows the principle: "I am lovedbe10 Cf. Sullivan's description of this development in The InterpersonalTheory of Psychiatry, W. W. Norton & Co., New York, 1953.
THE THEORY OF LOVE 4cause I love." Immature love says: "I love you because I needyou!' Mature love says: "I need you because I love you"Closely related to the development of the capacity of loveis the development of the object of love. The first monthsand years of the child are those where his closest attachmentis to the mother. This attachment begins before the momentof birth, when mother and child are still one, although theyare two. Birth changes the situation in some respects, but notas much as it would appear. The child, while now livingoutside of the womb, is still completely dependent on mother.But daily he becomes more independent : he learns to walk,to talk, to explore the world on his own; the relationship tomother loses some of its vital significance, and instead therelationship to father becomes more and more important.In order to understand this shift from mother to father,we must consider the essential differences in quality betweenmotherly and fatherly love. We have already spoken aboutmotherly love. Motherly love by its very nature is unconditional. Mother loves the newborn infant because it is herchild, not because the child has fulfilled any specific condition, or lived up to any specific expectation. (Of course,when I speak here of mother's and father's love, I speakofthe "ideal types"—in Max Weber's sense or of an archetypein Jung's sense—and do not imply that every mother andfather loves in that way. I refer to the fatherly and motherlyprinciple, which is represented in the motherly and fatherlyperson.) Unconditional love corresponds to one of thedeepest longings, not only of the child, but of every humanbeing; on the other hand, to be loved because of one'smerit, because one deserves it, always leaves doubt; maybe
42 THE ART OF LOVING
I did not please the person whom I want to love me,maybe this, or that—there is always a fear that love coulddisappear. Furthermore, "deserved" love easily leavesabitter feeling that one is not loved for oneself, that oneisloved only because one pleases, that one is, in the last analysis, not loved at all but used. No wonder that we all clingto the longing for motherly love, as children and alsoasadults. Most children are lucky enough to receive motherlylove (to what extent will be discussed later). As adultsthesame longing is much more difficult to fulfill. In the mostsatisfactory development it remains a component of normalerotic love; often it finds expression in religious forms, moreoften in neurotic forms.
The relationship to father is quite different. Motheris thehome we come from, she is nature, soil, the ocean; fatherdoes not represent any such natural home. He has little connection with the child in the first years of its life, andhisimportance for the child in this early period cannot be compared with that of mother. But while father does not represent the natural world, he represents the other pole of humanexistence; the world of thought, of man-made things, of lawand order, of discipline, of travel and adventure. Fatheristhe one who teaches the child, who shows him the roadintothe world.
Closely related to this function is one which is connectedwith socio-economic development. When private propertycame into existence, and when private property could bein-herited by one of the sons, father began to look for that sonto whom he could leave his property. Naturally, that wastheone whom father thought best fitted to become his successor,
THE THEORY OF LOVE 43I the son who was most like him, and consequently whomhe[liked the most. Fatherly love is conditional love. Its principleis "I love you because you fulfill my expectations, becausefyou do your duty, because you are like me." In conditionalfatherly love we find, as with unconditional motherly love,a negative and a positive aspect. The negative aspect is the| very fact that fatherly love has to be deserved, that it canbelost if one does not do what is expected. In the natureoffatherly love lies the fact that obedience becomes the mainvirtue, that disobedience is the main sin—and its punishmentthe withdrawal of fatherly love. The positive side is equallyimportant. Since his love is conditioned, I can do somethingto acquire it, I can work for it; his love is not outside of mycontrol as motherly love is. The mother's and the father's attitudes toward the childcorrespond to the child's own needs. The infant needsmother's unconditional love and care physiologically as wellas psychically. The child, after six, begins to need father'slove, his authority and guidance. Mother has the functionof making him secure in life, father has the functionofteaching him, guiding him to cope with those problems withwhich the particular society the child has been born intoconfronts him. In the ideal case, mother's love does nottryto prevent the child from growing up, does not try to putapremium on helplessness. Mother should have faith in life,hence not be overanxious, and thus not infect the child withher anxiety. Part of her life should be the wish that the childbecome independent and eventually separate from her.Father's love should be guided by principles and expectations; it should be patient and tolerant, rather than threaten-
44 THE ART OF LOVING
ing and authoritarian. It should give the growing childanincreasing sense of competence and eventually permit himtobecome his own authority and to dispense with that of father.Eventually, the mature person has come to the point wherehe is his own mother and his own father. He has, as it were,a motherly and a fatherly conscience. Motherly consciencesays: "There is no misdeed, no crime which could depriveyou of my love, of my wish for your life and happiness."Fatherly conscience says : "You did wrong, you cannot avoidaccepting certain consequences of your wrongdoing,andmost of all you must change your ways if I am to like you."The mature person has become free from the outside motherand father figures, and has built them up inside. In contrastto Freud's concept of the super-ego, however, he has builtthem inside not by incorporating mother and father, butbybuilding a motherly conscience on his own capacity for love,and a fatherly conscience on his reason and judgment.Furthermore, the mature person loves with both the motherlyand the fatherly conscience, in spite of the fact that they seemto contradict each other. If he would only retain his fatherlyconscience, he would become harsh and inhuman. Ifhewould only retain his motherly conscience, he would beaptto lose judgment and to hinder himself and others in theirdevelopment.
In this development from mother-centered to father-centered attachment, and their eventual synthesis, lies thebasis for mental health and the achievement of maturity.In the failure of this development lies the basic causeforneurosis. While it is beyond the scope of this book to develop
THE THEORY OF LOVE 45phis trend of thought more fully, some brief remarks mayperve to clarify this statement. One cause for neurotic development can lie in the factithat a boy has a loving, but overindulgent or domineeringphother, and a weak and uninterested father. In this caseheItyfiay remain fixed at an early mother attachment, anddefcivelop into a person who is dependent on mother, feels helpMtess, has the strivings characteristic of the receptive person,ptliat is, to receive, to be protected, to be taken care of, andpvho has a lack of fatherly qualities—discipline, independence, an ability to master life by himself. He may try to findIjf /mothers" in everybody, sometimes in women and some-feimes in men in a position of authority and power. If, onthefether hand, the mother is cold, unresponsive and domineer-||ng, he may either transfer the need for motherly protection|:|o his father, and subsequent father figures—in whichcaseJjthe end result is similar to the former case—or he will de-|!fVelop into a onesidedly father-oriented person, completely^glven to the principles of law, order and authority, andJackie ing in the ability to expect or to receive unconditional love.| This development is further intensified if the fatherisauthoritarian and at the same time strongly attached to theB/$Oil What is characteristic of all these neurotic developments| is the fact that one principle, the fatherly or the motherly,fails to develop or—and this is the case in the more severeI, neurotic development—that the roles of mother and fatherbecome confused both with regard to persons outside andwith regard to these roles within the person. Further examiPnation may show that certain types of neurosis, like obses-| Sional neurosis, develop more on the basis of a one-sided
46 THE ART OF LOVING
father attachment, while others, like hysteria, alcoholism,inability to assert oneself and to cope with life realistically, anddepressions, result from mother-centeredness.
3. THE OBJECTS OF LOVE
Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person; itis an attitude, an orientation of character which determinesthe relatedness of a person to the world as a whole, nottoward one "object" of love. If a person loves only one otherperson and is indifferent to the rest of his fellow men,hislove is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlargedegotism. Yet, most people believe that love is constitutedbythe object, not by the faculty. In fact, they even believe thatit is a proof of the intensity of their love when they donotlove anybody except the "loved" person. This is the samefallacy which we have already mentioned above. Becauseone does not see that love is an activity, a power of the soul,one believes that all that is necessary to find is the rightobject—and that everything goes by itself afterward. Thisattitude can be compared to that of a man who wantstopaint but who, instead of learning the art, claims thathehas just to wait for the right object, and that he will paintbeautifully when he finds it. If I truly love one person I loveall persons, I love the world, I love life. If I can say to some-body else, "I love you," I must be able to say, "I loveinyou everybody, I love through you the world, I love in youalso myself."
Saying that love is an orientation which refers to all andnot to one does not imply, however, the idea that there are
THE THEORY OF LOVE 47no differences between various types of love, which dependon the kind of object which is loved.
a. Brotherly Love
The most fundamental kind of love, which underlies alltypes of love, is brotherly love. By this I mean the sense ofresponsibility, care, respect, knowledge of any other humanbeing, the wish to further his life. This is the kind of love theBible speaks of when it says: love thy neighbor as thyself.Brotherly love is love for all human beings; it is characterizedby its very lack of exclusiveness. If I have developed thecapacity for love, then I cannot help loving my brothers. Inbrotherly love there is the experience of union with all men,of human solidarity, of human at-onement. Brotherly loveisbased on the experience that we all are one. The differencesin talents, intelligence, knowledge are negligible in comparison with the identity of the human core common to all men.In order to experience this identity it is necessary to penetrate from the periphery to the core. If I perceive in anotherperson mainly the surface, I perceive mainly the differences,that which separates us. If I penetrate to the core, I perceiveour identity, the fact of our brotherhood. This relatednessfrom center to center—instead of that from periphery toperiphery—is "central relatedness." Or as Simone Weil ex-pressed it so beautifully: "The same words [e.g., a mansaysto his wife, "I love you"] can be commonplace or extra-ordinary according to the manner in which they are spoken.And this manner depends on the depth of the region in aman's being from which they proceed without the will beingable to do anything. And by a marvelous agreement they
48 THE ART OF LOVING
reach the same region in him who hears them. Thusthehearer can discern, if he has any power of discernment, whatis the value of the words." 1X Brotherly love is love between equals : but, indeed, evenasequals we are not always "equal"; inasmuch as wearehuman, we are all in need of help. Today I, tomorrow you.But this need of help does not mean that the one is helpless,the other powerful. Helplessness is a transitory condition;the ability to stand and walk on one's own feet is the per-manent and common one. Yet, love of the helpless one, love of the poor and thestranger, are the beginning of brotherly love. To love one'sflesh and blood is no achievement. The animal loves itsyoung and cares for them. The helpless one loves his master,since his life depends on him; the child loves his parents,since he needs them. Only in the love of those who do notserve a purpose, love begins to unfold. Significantly, in theOld Testament, the central object of man's love is the poor,the stranger, the widow and the orphan, and eventually thenational enemy, the Egyptian and the Edomite. By havingcompassion for the helpless one, man begins to develop lovefor his brother; and in his love for himself he also loves theone who is in need of help, the frail, insecure human being.Compassion implies the element of knowledge and of identification. "You know the heart of the stranger," says the OldTestament, "for you were strangers in the land of Egypt;. . . therefore love the stranger!" 12
11 Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York,1952, p. 117.
12 The same idea has been expressed by Hermann Cohen in his Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums, 2nd edition, J. Kaufmann Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1929, p. 168 ff.
THE THEORY OF LOVE 49b. Motherly Love
We have already dealt with the nature of motherly loveina previous chapter which discussed the difference betweenmotherly and fatherly love. Motherly love, as I said there,isunconditional affirmation of the child's life and his needs.But one important addition to this description must be madehere. Affirmation of the child's life has two aspects; oneisthe care and responsibility absolutely necessary for the preser-vation of the child's life and his growth. The other aspectgoes further than mere preservation. It is the attitude whichinstills in the child a love for living, which gives himthefeeling: it is good to be alive, it is good to be a little boyorgirl, it is good to be on this earth! These two aspects ofmotherly love are expressed very succinctly in the Biblicalstory of creation. God creates the world, and man. This cor-responds to the simple care and affirmation of existence. ButGod goes beyond this minimum requirement. On each dayafter nature—and man—is created, God says: "It is good."Motherly love, in this second step, makes the child feel : it isgood to have been born; it instills in the child the love forlife, and not only the wish to remain alive. The same ideamay be taken to be expressed in another Biblical symbolism.The promised land (land is always a mother symbol)isdescribed as "flowing with milk and honey." Milk is thesymbol of the first aspect of love, that of care and affirmation. Honey symbolizes the sweetness of life, the love for itand the happiness in being alive. Most mothers are capableof giving "milk," but only a minority of giving "honey" too.In order to be able to give honey, a mother must not onlybe a "good mother," but a happy person—and this aimis
50 THE ART OF LOVING
not achieved by many. The effect on the child can hardlybeexaggerated. Mother's love for life is as infectious as heranxiety is. Both attitudes have a deep effect on the child'swhole personality; one can distinguish indeed, amongchil-dren—and adults—those who got only "milk" and thosewho got "milk and honey."
In contrast to brotherly love and erotic love whicharelove between equals, the relationship of mother and childisby its very nature one of inequality, where one needs all thehelp, and the other gives it. It is for this altruistic, unselfishcharacter that motherly love has been considered the highestkind of love, and the most sacred of all emotional bonds.Itseems, however, that the real achievement of motherly lovelies not in the mother's love for the small infant, but in herlove for the growing child. Actually, the vast majorityofmothers are loving mothers as long as the infant is small andstill completely dependent on them. Most women wantchil-dren, are happy with the new-born child, and eager in theircare for it. This is so in spite of the fact that they donot"get" anything in return from the child, except a smile or theexpression of satisfaction in his face. It seems that this atti-tude of love is partly rooted in an instinctive equipmenttobe found in animals as well as in the human female. But,whatever the weight of this instinctive factor may be, thereare also specifically human psychological factors whichareresponsible for this type of motherly love. One may be foundin the narcissistic element in motherly love. Inasmuch as theinfant is still felt to be a part of herself, her love andin-fatuation may be a satisfaction of her narcissism. Anothermotivation may be found in a mother's wish for power,or
THE THEORY OF LOVE 5
possession. The child, being helpless and completely subjectto her will, is a natural object of satisfaction for a domineering and possessive woman.
Frequent as these motivations are, they are probably lessimportant and less universal than one which can be calledthe need for transcendence. This need for transcendenceisone of the most basic needs of man, rooted in the fact of hisself-awareness, in the fact that he is not satisfied with therole of the creature, that he cannot accept himself as dicethrown out of the cup. He needs to feel as the creator, asone transcending the passive role of being created. Therearemany ways of achieving this satisfaction of creation; themost natural and also the easiest one to achieve is themother's care and love for her creation. She transcends herself in the infant, her love for it gives her life meaning andsignificance. (In the very inability of the male to satisfy hisneed for transcendence by bearing children lies his urgetotranscend himself by the creation of man-made things andof ideas.

But the child must grow. It must emerge from mother'swomb, from mother's breast; it must eventually becomeacompletely separate human being. The very essence ofmotherly love is to care for the child's growth, and thatmeans to want the child's separation from herself. Hereliesthe basic difference to erotic love. In erotic love, two peoplewho were separate become one. In motherly love, two peoplewho were one become separate. The mother must not onlytolerate, she must wish and support the child's separation. Itis only at this stage that motherly love becomes such a dif-ficult task, that it requires unselfishness, the ability to give
52 THE ART OF LOVING
everything and to want nothing but the happiness of theloved one. It is also at this stage that many mothers fail intheir task of motherly love. The narcissistic, the domineering, the possessive woman can succeed in being a "loving"mother as long as the child is small. Only the really lovingwoman, the woman who is happier in giving than in taking,who is firmly rooted in her own existence, can be a lovingmother when the child is in the process of separation.
Motherly love for the growing child, love which wantsnothing for oneself, is perhaps the most difficult form of loveto be achieved, and all the more deceptive because of theease with which a mother can love her small infant. Butjustbecause of this difficulty, a woman can be a truly lovingmother only if she can love; if she is able to love her husband, other children, strangers, all human beings. Thewoman who is not capable of love in this sense can beanaffectionate mother as long as the child is small, butshecannot be a loving mother, the test of which is the willing-ness to bear separation—and even after the separation togoon loving.
c. Erotic Love
Brotherly love is love among equals; motherly love is lovefor the helpless. Different as they are from each other, theyhave in common that they are by their very nature notre-stricted to one person. If I love my brother, I love all mybrothers; if I love my child, I love all my children; no,beyond that, I love all children, all that are in need of myhelp. In contrast to both types of love is erotic love; it is thecraving for complete fusion, for union with one other per-
THE THEORY OF LOVE 53|>n. It is by its very nature exclusive and not universal; it is so perhaps the most deceptive form of love there is. First of all, it is often confused with the explosive experiliice of "falling" in love, the sudden collapse of the barriersjtyhich existed until that moment between two strangers. But,tS was pointed out before, this experience of sudden intimacyby its very nature short-lived. After the stranger has bepme an intimately known person there are no more barriersbe overcome, there is no more sudden closeness to bechieved. The "loved" person becomes as well knownas|neself. Or, perhaps I should better say as little known. Ifere were more depth in the experience of the other person,|f one could experience the infiniteness of his personality, the|ther person would never be so familiar—and the miracle of||)vercoming the barriers might occur every day anew. But forlost people their own person, as well as others, is soon ex-plored and soon exhausted. For them intimacy is establishedl^imarily through sexual contact. Since they experience thegseparateness of the other person primarily as physical sepaJp'ateness, physical union means overcoming separateness.
Beyond that, there are other factors which to many peoplejftenote the overcoming of separateness. To speak of one'sp^wn personal life, one's hopes and anxieties, to show oneself|with one's childlike or childish aspects, to establish a com-mon interest vis-a-vis the world—all this is taken as over-Itoming separateness. Even to show one's anger, one's hate,one's complete lack of inhibition is taken for intimacy, andI this may explain the perverted attraction married couples|| dften have for each other, who seem intimate only when theyare in bed or when they give vent to their mutual hate and
54 THE ART OF LOVING
rage. But all these types of closeness tend to become reducedmore and more as time goes on. The consequence is oneseeks love with a new person, with a new stranger. Againthestranger is transformed into an "intimate" person, againtheexperience of falling in love is exhilarating and intense, andagain it slowly becomes less and less intense, and ends in thewish for a new conquest, a new love—always with the illu-sion that the new love will be different from the earlier ones.These illusions are greatly helped by the deceptive characterof sexual desire. Sexual desire aims at fusion—and is by no means onlyaphysical appetite, the relief of a painful tension. But sexualdesire can be stimulated by the anxiety of aloneness, bythewish to conquer or be conquered, by vanity, by the wishtohurt and even to destroy, as much as it can be stimulatedby love. It seems that sexual desire can easily blend with andbe stimulated by any strong emotion, of which love is onlyone. Because sexual desire is in the minds of most peoplecoupled with the idea of love, they are easily misled to con-clude that they love each other when they want each otherphysically. Love can inspire the wish for sexual union;inthis case the physical relationship is lacking in greediness, ina wish to conquer or to be conquered, but is blended withtenderness. If the desire for physical union is not stimulatedby love, if erotic love is not also brotherly love, it never leadsto union in more than an orgiastic, transitory sense. Sexualattraction creates, for the moment, the illusion of union, yetwithout love this "union" leaves strangers as far apartasthey were before—sometimes it makes them ashamed of eachother, or even makes them hate each other, because when
THE THEORY OF LOVE 55the illusion has gone they feel their estrangement even moremarkedly than before. Tenderness is by no means, as Freudbelieved, a sublimation of the sexual instinct; it is the directoutcome of brotherly love, and exists in physical as wellasin non-physical forms of love. In erotic love there is an exclusiveness which is lackinginbrotherly love and motherly love. This exclusive characteroferotic love warrants some further discussion. Frequentlytheexclusiveness of erotic love is misinterpreted as meaningpossessive attachment. One can often find two people "in love"with each other who feel no love for anybody else. Theirlove is, in fact, an egotism a deux; they are two people whoidentify themselves with each other, and who solve the problem of separateness by enlarging the single individual intotwo. They have the experience of overcoming aloneness, yet,since they are separated from the rest of mankind, theyre-main separated from each other and alienated from themselves; their experience of union is an illusion. Erotic loveisexclusive, but it loves in the other person all of mankind,allthat is alive. It is exclusive only in the sense that I can fusemyself fully and intensely with one person only. Erotic loveexcludes the love for others only in the sense of erotic fusion,full commitment in all aspects of life—but not in the senseof deep brotherly love. Erotic love, if it is love, has one premise. That I love fromthe essence of my being—and experience the other personin the essence of his or her being. In essence, all humanbeings are identical. We are all part of One; we are One. Thisbeing so, it should not make any difference whom welove.Love should be essentially an act of will, of decision to com-
56 THE ART OF LOVING
mit my life completely to that of one other person. Thisis,indeed, the rationale behind- the idea of the insolubility ofmarriage, as it is behind the many forms of traditional marriage in which the two partners never choose each other,but are chosen for each other—and yet are expected to loveeach other. In contemporary Western culture this idea appears altogether false. Love is supposed to be the outcomeofa spontaneous, emotional reaction, of suddenly being grippedby an irresistible feeling. In this view, one sees only thepeculiarities of the two individuals involved—and not thefact that all men are part of Adam, and all women partofEve. One neglects to see an important factor in erotic love,that of will. To love somebody is not just a strong feeling—itis a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. If love wereonly a feeling, there would be no basis for the promisetolove each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go. Howcan I judge that it will stay forever, when my act does notinvolve judgment and decision?
Taking these views into account one may arrive at theposition that love is exclusively an act of will and commitment, and that therefore fundamentally it does notmatter who the two persons are. Whether the marriage wasarranged by others, or the result of individual choice, oncethe marriage is concluded, the act of will should guaranteethe continuation of love. This view seems to neglect the paradoxical character of human nature and of erotic love. Weare all One—yet every one of us is a unique, unduplicableentity. In our relationships to others the same paradoxisrepeated. Inasmuch as we are all one, we can love everybodyin the same way in the sense of brotherly love. But inasmuch
THE THEORY OF LOVE 57as we are all also different, erotic love requires certain specific,highly individual elements which exist between some peoplebut not between all. Both views then, that of erotic love as completely indi-vidual attraction, unique between two specific persons, aswell as the other view that erotic love is nothing but anactof will, are true—or, as it may be put more aptly, the truthis neither this nor that. Hence the idea of a relationshipwhich can be easily dissolved if one is not successful withitis as erroneous as the idea that under no circumstances mustthe relationship be dissolved.
d. Self-Love 13 While it raises no objection to apply the concept of loveto various objects, it is a widespread belief that, while it isvirtuous to love others, it is sinful to love oneself. It is as-sumed that to the degree to which I love myself I donotlove others, that self-love is the same as selfishness. This viewgoes far back in Western thought. Calvin speaks of self-loveas "a pest." 14 Freud speaks of self-love in psychiatric terms13 Paul Tillich, in a review of The Sane Society, in Pastoral Psychology, September, 1955, has suggested that it would be better todrop the ambiguous term "self-love" and to replace it with "naturalself-affirmation" or "paradoxical self-acceptance." Much as I can seethe merits of this suggestion, I cannot agree with him in this point. Inthe term "self-love" the paradoxical element in self-love is containedmore clearly. The fact is expressed that love is an attitude which is thesame toward all objects, including myself. It must also not be forgottenthat the term "self-love," in the sense in which it is used here, hasahistory. The Bible speaks of self-love when it commands to "love thyneighbor as thyself/' and Meister Eckhart speaks of self-love in thevery same sense.
14 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, translated byJ.Albau, Presbyterian Board of Christian Education, Philadelphia, 1928,Chap. 7, par. 4, p. 622.
58 THE ART OF LOVING
but, nevertheless, his value judgment is the same as thatofCalvin. For him self-love is the same as narcissism, theturning of the libido toward oneself. Narcissism is the earlieststage in human development, and the person who in laterlife has returned to this narcissistic stage is incapable of love;in the extreme case he is insane. Freud assumes that loveisthe manifestation of libido, and that the libido is eitherturned toward others—love; or toward oneself—self-love.Love and self-love are thus mutually exclusive in the sensethat the more there is of one, the less there is of the other.If self-love is bad, it follows that unselfishness is virtuous.These questions arise: Does psychological observationsupport the thesis that there is a basic contradiction betweenlove for oneself and love for others? Is love for oneself thesame phenomenon as selfishness, or are they opposites? Furthermore, is the selfishness of modern man really a concernfor himself as an individual, with all his intellectual, emotional and sensual potentialities? Has "he" not becomeanappendage of his socio-economic role? Is his selfishness identical with self-love or is it not caused by the very lack ofit?Before we start the discussion of the psychological aspectof selfishness and self-love, the logical fallacy in the notionthat love for others and love for oneself are mutually exclusive should be stressed. If it is a virtue to love my neighboras a human being, it must be a virtue—and not a vice—tolove myself, since I am a human being too. There is noconcept of man in which I myself am not included. Adoctrinewhich proclaims such an exclusion proves itself to beintrinsically contradictory. The idea expressed in the Biblical"Love thy neighbor as thyself!" implies that respect for one's
THE THEORY OF LOVE 59own integrity and uniqueness, love for and understandingofone's own self, cannot be separated from respect andloveand understanding for another individual. The love formyown self is inseparably connected with the love for any otherbeing.
We have come now to the basic psychological premisesonwhich the conclusions of our argument are built. Generally,these premises are as follows: not only others, but weourselves are the "object" of our feelings and attitudes; theattitudes toward others and toward ourselves, far from beingcontradictory, are basically conjunctive. With regard totheproblem under discussion this means : love of others andloveof ourselves are not alternatives. On the contrary, an attitudeof love toward themselves will be found in all those whoarecapable of loving others. Love, in principle, is indivisibleasfar as the connection between "objects" and one's ownselfis concerned. Genuine love is an expression of productiveness and implies care, respect, responsibility and knowledge.It is not an "affect" in the sense of being affected by somebody, but an active striving for the growth and happinessof the loved person, rooted in one's own capacity to love.To love somebody is the actualization and concentrationof the power to love. The basic affirmation contained in loveis directed toward the beloved person as an incarnationofessentially human qualities. Love of one person implies loveof man as such. The kind of "division of labor," as WilliamJames calls it, by which one loves one's family but is withoutfeeling for the "stranger," is a sign of a basic inabilitytolove. Love of man is not, as is frequently supposed, anabstraction coming after the love for a specific person, butit
60 THE ART OF LOVING
is its premise, although genetically it is acquired in lovingspecific individuals. From this it follows that my own self must be as muchanobject of my love as another person. The affirmation of one'sown life, happiness, growth, freedom is rooted in one'scapacity to love, i.e., in care, respect, responsibility, andknowledge. If an individual is able to love productively,heloves himself too; if he can love only others, he cannot loveat all. Granted that love for oneself and for others in principleis conjunctive, how do we explain selfishness, which obviouslyexcludes any genuine concern for others? The selfish personis interested only in himself, wants everything for himself,feels no pleasure in giving, but only in taking. The worldoutside is looked at only from the standpoint of what hecanget out of it; he lacks interest in the needs of others, andrespect for their dignity and integrity. He can see nothingbut himself; he judges everyone and everything fromitsusefulness to him; he is basically unable to love. Doesnotthis prove that concern for others and concern for oneselfare unavoidable alternatives? This would be so if selfishnessand self-love were identical. But that assumption is the veryfallacy which has led to so many mistaken conclusions con-cerning our problem. Selfishness and self-love, far frombe-ing identicaly are actually opposites. The selfish person doesnot love himself too much but too little; in fact he hateshimself. This lack of fondness and care for himself, whichis only one expression of his lack of productiveness, leaveshim empty and frustrated. He is necessarily unhappyandanxiously concerned to snatch from life the satisfactions
THE THEORY OF LOVE 6which he blocks himself from attaining. He seems to care tooj; much for himself, but actually he only makes an unsuccessfulattempt to cover up and compensate for his failure to care| for his real self. Freud holds that the selfish person is narcissistic, as if he had withdrawn his love from others andturned it toward his own person. // is true that selfish perI sons are incapable of loving others, but they are not capableof loving themselves either.
It is easier to understand selfishness by comparing it with| greedy concern for others, as we find it, for instance, in anoversolicitous mother. While she consciously believes that she| is particularly fond of her child, she has actually a deeply"repressed hostility toward the object of her concern. Sheisoverconcerned not because she loves the child too much,but'/because she has to compensate for her lack of capacitytoI' love him at all. This theory of the nature of selfishness is borne outbypsychoanalytic experience with neurotic "unselfishness/5 a| symptom of neurosis observed in not a few people whousually are troubled not by this symptom but by others con-Jnected with it, like depression, tiredness, inability to work,failure in love relationships, and so on. Not only is unselfish-ness not felt as a "symptom55
; it is often the one redeemingcharacter trait on which such people pride themselves. The"unselfish
35 person "does not want anything for himself
55
; he"lives only for others,
55 is proud that he does not considerhimself important. He is puzzled to find that in spite of hisunselfishness he is unhappy, and that his relationships tothose closest to him are unsatisfactory. Analytic work showsthat his unselfishness is not something apart from his other
62 THE ART OF LOVING
symptoms but one of them, in fact often the most importantone; that he is paralyzed in his capacity to love or to enjoyanything; that he is pervaded by hostility toward life andthat behind the fagade of unselfishness a subtle but notlessintense self-centeredness is hidden. This person can be curedonly if his unselfishness too is interpreted as a symptom alongwith the others, so that his lack of productiveness, whichisat the root of both his unselfishness and his other troubles,can be corrected. The nature of unselfishness becomes particularly apparentin its effect on others, and most frequently in our cultureinthe effect the "unselfish" mother has on her children. Shebelieves that by her unselfishness her children will experiencewhat it means to be loved and to learn, in turn, whatitmeans to love. The effect of her unselfishness, however, doesnot at all correspond to her expectations. The childrendonot show the happiness of persons who are convinced thatthey are loved ; they are anxious, tense, afraid of the mother'sdisapproval and anxious to live up to her expectations.Usually, they are affected by their mother's hidden hostilitytoward life, which they sense rather than recognize clearly,and eventually they become imbued with it themselves. Altogether, the effect of the "unselfish" mother is not too dif-ferent from that of the selfish one; indeed, it is often worse,because the mother's unselfishness prevents the children fromcriticizing her. They are put under the obligation not to dis-appoint her; they are taught, under the mask of virtue, dis-like for life. If one has a chance to study the effect ofamother with genuine self-love, one can see that thereisnothing more conducive to giving a child the experienceof
THE THEORY OF LOVE 63j|hat love, joy and happiness are than being loved byafjother who loves herself. These ideas on self-love cannot be summarized better thanquoting Meister Eckhart on this topic: "If you love yourjfclf, you love everybody else as you do yourself. As longyou love another person less than you love yourself, youfill- not really succeed in loving yourself, but if you love alllike, including yourself, you will love them as one person|ftd that person is both God and man. Thus he is a greatid righteous person who, loving himself, loves all otherslually."
15 fiLbve of God
It has been stated above that the basis for our need to lovelies in the experience of separateness and the resulting needpQ overcome the anxiety of separateness by the experienceofanion. The religious form of love, that which is called theRove of God, is, psychologically speaking, not different. ItBprings from the need to overcome separateness andtoIftchieve union. In fact, the love of God has as many differentfeualities and aspects as the love of man has—and to a largef{ Extent we find the same differences. In all theistic religions, whether they are polytheistic orpinonotheistic, God stands for the highest value, the most dell, sirable good. Hence, the specific meaning of God dependsonfcwhat is the most desirable good for a person. The understanding of the concept of God must, therefore, start withan;kftalysis of the character structure of the person who wor-ships God.
|f 15 Meister Eckhart, translated by R, B. Blakney, Harper & Brothers,New York, 1941, p. 204.
64 THE ART OF LOVING
The development of the human race as far as wehaveany knowledge of it can be characterized as the emergenceof man from nature, from mother, from the bonds of bloodand soil. In the beginning of human history man, thoughthrown out of the original unity with nature, still clings tothese primary bonds. He finds his security by going back,orholding on to these primary bonds. He still feels identifiedwith the world of animals and trees, and tries to find unityby remaining one with the natural world. Many primitivereligions bear witness to this stage of development. An animalis transformed into a totem; one wears animal masks in themost solemn religious acts, or in war; one worships an animalas God. At a later stage of development, when humanskillhas developed to the point of artisan and arti$tic skill, whenman is not dependent any more exclusively on the gifts ofnature—the fruit he finds and the animal he kills—mantransforms the product of his own hand into a god. Thisisthe stage of the worship of idols made of clay, silver or gold.Man projects his own powers and skills into the things hemakes, and thus in an alienated fashion worships his prowess,his possessions. At a still later stage man gives his gods theform of human beings. It seems that this can happen onlywhen he has become still more aware of himself, and whenhe has discovered man as the highest and most dignified"thing" in the world. In this phase of anthropomorphic godworship we find a development in two dimensions. Theonerefers to the female or male nature of the gods, the othertothe degree of maturity which man has achieved, and whichdetermines the nature of his gods and the nature of his loveof them.
THE THEORY OF LOVE 65Let us first speak of the development from mother-centeredto father-centered religions. According to the great and decisive discoveries of Bachofen and Morgan in the middleofthe nineteenth century, and in spite of the rejection theirfindings have found in most academic circles, there can belittle doubt that there was a matriarchal phase of religionpreceding the patriarchal one, at least in many cultures. Inthe matriarchal phase, the highest being is the mother. Sheis the goddess, she is also the authority in family and society.In order to understand the essence of matriarchal religion,we have only to remember what has been said about theessence of motherly love. Mother's love is unconditional, it
is all-protective, all-enveloping; because it is unconditionalit can also not be controlled or acquired. Its presence givesthe loved person a sense of bliss ; its absence produces a senseof lostness and utter despair. Since mother loves her childrenbecause they are her children, and not because they are"good," obedient, or fulfill her wishes and commands,[' mother's love is based on equality. All men are equal, be-cause they all are children of a mother, because they all arechildren of Mother Earth.
The next stage of human evolution, the only one of whichwe have thorough knowledge and do not need to rely on in-ferences and reconstruction, is the patriarchal phase. In thisphase the mother is dethroned from her supreme position,and the father becomes the Supreme Being, in religion aswell as in society. The nature of fatherly love is that he makesdemands, establishes principles and laws, and that his lovefor the son depends on the obedience of the latter to thesedemands. He likes best the son who is most like him, whois
66 THE ART OF LOVING
most obedient and who is best fitted to become his successor,as the inheritor of his possessions. (The developmentofpatriarchal society goes together with the developmentofprivate property.) As a consequence, patriarchal societyishierarchical; the equality of the brothers gives way to competition and mutual strife. Whether we think of the Indian,Egyptian or Greek cultures, or of the Jewish-Christian,orIslamic religions, we are in the middle of a patriarchal world,with its male gods, over whom one chief god reigns, or whereall gods have been eliminated with the exception of the One,the God. However, since the wish for mother's love cannotbe eradicated from the hearts of man, it is not surprisingthat the figure of the loving mother could never be fullydriven out from the pantheon. In the Jewish religion, themother aspects of God are reintroduced especially in thevarious currents of mysticism. In the Catholic religion,Mother is symbolized by the Church, and by the Virgin.Even in Protestantism, the figure of Mother has not beenentirely eradicated, although she remains hidden. Lutheres-tablished as his main principle that nothing that mandoescan procure God's love. God's love is Grace, the religiousattitude is to have faith in this grace, and to make oneselfsmall and helpless; no good works can influence God—ormake God love us, as Catholic doctrines postulated. Wecanrecognize here that the Catholic doctrine of good worksispart of the patriarchal picture ; I can procure father's lovebyobedience and by fulfilling his demands. The Lutherandoctrine, on the other hand, in spite of its manifest patriarchalcharacter carries within it a hidden matriarchal element.Mother's love cannot be acquired; it is there, or it is not
THE THEORY OF LOVE 67there; all I can do is to have faith (as the Psalmist says,"Thou hadst let me have faith into my mother's breasts.
3 ' ie)and to transform myself into the helpless, powerless child.But it is the peculiarity of Luther's faith that the figureofthe mother has been eliminated from the manifest picture,and replaced by that of the father; instead of the certainty] of being loved by mother, intense doubt, hoping againsthope for unconditional love by father, has become the paramount feature.
I had to discuss this difference between the matriarchaland the patriarchal elements in religion in order to showthatthe character of the love of God depends on the respectiveweight of the matriarchal and the patriarchal aspects ofre-ligion. The patriarchal aspect makes me love Godlikeafather; I assume he is just and strict, that he punishesandrewards; and eventually that he will elect me as his favoriteson; as God elected Abraham-Israel, as Isaac elected Jacob,as God elects his favorite nation. In the matriarchal aspectof religion, I love God as an all-embracing mother. I havefaith in her love, that no matter whether I am poorandpowerless, no matter whether I have sinned, she will loveme, she will not prefer any other of her children to me;whatever happens to me, she will rescue me, will saveme,will forgive me. Needless to say, my love for God and God'slove for me cannot be separated. If God is a father, he lovesme like a son and I love him like a father. If God is mother,her and my love are determined by this fact.
I This difference between the motherly and the fatherly\ aspects of the love of God is, however, only one factorin16 Psalm 22:9.
68 THE ART OF LOVING
determining the nature of this love; the other factor is thedegree of maturity reached by the individual, hence in hisconcept of God and in his love for God.
Since the evolution of the human race shifted fromamother-centered to a father-centered structure of society,aswell as of religion, we can trace the development of a maturing love mainly in the development of patriarchal religion.17In the beginning of this development we find a despotic,jealous God, who considers man, whom he created, as hisproperty, and is entitled to do with him whatever he pleases.This is the phase of religion in which God drives manoutofparadise, lest he eat from the tree of knowledge andthuscould become God himself; this is the phase in whichGoddecides to destroy the human race by the flood, because noneof them pleases him, with the exception of the favorite son,Noah; this is the phase in which God demands from Abraham that he kill his only, his beloved son, Isaac, to provehis love for God by the act of ultimate obedience. Butsimultaneously a new phase begins; God makes a covenantwith Noah, in which he promises never to destroy the humanrace again, a covenant by which he is bound himself. Notonly is he bound by his promises, he is also bound byhisown principle, that of justice, and on this basis Godmustyield to Abraham's demand to spare Sodom if there areatleast ten just men. But the development goes further thantransforming God from the figure of a despotic tribal chief17 This holds true especially for the monotheistic religions of theWest. In Indian religions the mother figures retained a good dealofinfluence, for instance in the Goddess Kali; in Buddhism and Taoismthe concept of a God—or a Goddess—was without essential signif-icance, if not altogether eliminated.
THE THEORY OF LOVE 69into a loving father, into a father who himself is boundbythe principles which he has postulated; it goes in the direc-tion of transforming God from the figure of a father into asymbol of his principles, those of justice, truth and love.God is truth, God is justice. In this development God ceasesto be a person, a man, a father; he becomes the symbolofthe principle of unity behind the manifoldness of phenomena,of the vision of the flower which will grow from the spir-itual seed within man. God cannot have a name. Anamealways denotes a thing, or a person, something finite. Howcan God have a name, if he is not a person, not a thing?
The most striking incident of this change lies in the Biblical story of God's revelation to Moses. When Moses tellshim that the Hebrews will not believe that God has senthim, unless he can tell them God's name (how could idolworshipers comprehend a nameless God, since the veryessence of an idol is to have a name?), God makes a concession. He tells Moses that his name is "I am becomingthat which I am becoming." "I-am-becoming is my name."The "I-am-becoming" means that God is not finite, notaperson, not a "being." The most adequate translation of thesentence would be: tell them that "my name is nameless."The prohibition to make any image of God, to pronouncehis name in vain, eventually to pronounce his name at all,aims at the same goal, that of freeing man from the idea thatGod is a father, that he is a person. Iri the subsequent theological development, the idea is carried further in the principle that one must not even give God any positive attribute.To say of God that he is wise, strong, good implies againthat he is a person; the most I can do is to say what Godis
70 THE ART OF LOVING
not, to state negative attributes, to postulate that he is notlimited, not unkind, not unjust. The more I know whatGodis not, the more knowledge I have of God.18 Following the maturing idea of monotheism in its furtherconsequences can lead only to one conclusion: not to mention God's name at all, not to speak about God. ThenGodbecomes what he potentially is in monotheistic theology,the nameless One, an inexpressible stammer, referring totheunity underlying the phenomenal universe, the ground ofallexistence; God becomes truth, love, justice. God is I, inas-much as I am human.
Quite evidently this evolution from the anthropomorphicto the pure monotheistic principle makes all the differencetothe nature of the love of God. The God of Abraham canbeloved, or feared, as a father, sometimes his forgiveness, sometimes his anger being the dominant aspect. Inasmuch as Godis the father, I am the child. I have not emerged fully fromthe autistic wish for omniscience and omnipotence. I havenot yet acquired the objectivity to realize my limitationsasa 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 mewhen I am obedient, who is flattered by my praise andangry because of my disobedience. Quite obviously, themajority of people have, in their personal development,notovercome this infantile stage, and hence the belief in Godtomost people is the belief in a helping father—a childish illu-sion. In spite of the fact that this concept of religion hasbeen overcome by some of the great teachers of the human18 Cf. Maimonides' concept of the negative attributes in The Guidefor the Perplexed.
THE THEORY OF LOVE 7race, and by a minority of men, it is still the dominant formbi religion.
Inasmuch as this is so, the criticism of the idea of God,asit was expressed by Freud, is quite correct. The error, however, was in the fact that he ignored the other aspectof; monotheistic religion, and its true kernel, the logic of whichleads exactly to the negation of this concept of God. Thetruly religious person, if he follows the essence of the monotheistic idea, does not pray for anything, does not expectanything from God; he does not love God as a child loveshis father or his mother; he has acquired the humilityofsensing his limitations, to the degree of knowing that heknows nothing about God. God becomes to him a symbolinwhich man, at an earlier stage of his evolution, has expressedthe totality of that which man is striving for, the realmofthe spiritual world, of love, truth and justice. He has faithin the principles which "God" represents; he thinks truth,lives love and justice, and considers all of his life only valuable inasmuch as it gives him the chance to arrive at aneverfuller unfolding of his human powers—as the only realitythat matters, as the only object of "ultimate concern"; and,| eventually, he does not speak about God—nor even mentionhis name, To love God, if he were going to use this word,would mean, then, to long for the attainment of the fullcapacity to love, for the realization of that which "God"stands for in oneself. From this point of view, the logical consequenceofmonotheistic thought is the negation of all "theo-logy,"ofall "knowledge about God." Yet, there remains a differencebetween such a radical non-theological view and a non-
72 THE ART OF LOVING
theistic system, as we find it, for instance in early Buddhismor in Taoism.
In all theistic systems, even a non-theological, mysticalone, there is the assumption of the reality of the spiritualrealm, as one transcending man, giving meaning and validityto man's spiritual powers and his striving for salvation andinner birth. In a non-theistic system, there exists no spiritualrealm outside of man or transcending him. The realmoflove, reason and justice exists as a reality only because, andinasmuch as, man has been able to develop these powersinhimself throughout the process of his evolution. In this viewthere is no meaning to life, except the meaning man himselfgives to it; man is utterly alone except inasmuch as he helpsanother.
Having spoken of the love of God, I want to make it clearthat I myself do not think in terms of a theistic concept, andthat to me the concept of God is only a historically conditioned one, in which man has expressed his experience ofhishigher powers, his longing for truth and for unity at a givenhistorical period. But I believe also that the consequencesofstrict monotheism and a non-theistic ultimate concern withthe spiritual reality are two views which, though different,need not fight each other. At this point, however, another dimension of the problemof the love of God arises, which must be discussed in orderto fathom the complexity of the problem. I refer to a fundamental difference in the religious attitude between the East(China and India) and the West; this difference can beex-pressed in terms of logical concepts. Since Aristotle, theWestern world has followed the logical principles of Aris-
THE THEORY OF LOVE 73totelian philosophy. This logic is based on the law of identitywhich states that A is A, the law of contradiction (Ais notnon-A) and the law of the excluded middle (A cannotbeA and non-A, neither A nor non-A). Aristotle explainshis position very clearly in the following sentence: "It is impossible for the same thing at the same time to belongandnot to belong to the same thing and in the same respect; andwhatever other distinctions we might add to meet dialecticalobjections, let them be added. This, then, is the most certainof all principles. . . ." 19 This axiom of Aristotelian logic has so deeply imbuedourhabits of thought that it is felt to be "natural" andself-evident, while on the other hand the statement that Xis Aand not A seems to be nonsensical. (Of course, the statementrefers to the subject X at a given time, not to X now andXlater, or one aspect of X as against another aspect.)
In opposition to Aristotelian logic is what one mightcallparadoxical logic, which assumes that A and non-A donotexclude each other as predicates of X. Paradoxical logic waspredominant in Chinese and Indian thinking, in the philosophy of Heraclitus, and then again, under the nameofdialectics, it became the philosophy of Hegel, and of Marx.The general principle of paradoxical logic has been clearlydescribed by Lao-tse. "Words that are strictly true seemtobeparadoxical" 20 And by Chuang-tzu : "That which is oneis19 Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book Gamma, 1005b. 20. Quoted fromAristotle*s Metaphysics, newly translated by Richard Hope, ColumbiaUniversity Press, New York, 1952.
20 Lao-tse, The Tdo Teh King, The Sacred Books of the East, ed.by F. Max Mueller, Vol. XXXIX, Oxford University Press, London,1927, p. 120.
74 THE ART OF LOVING
one. That which. is not-one, is also one." These formulationsof paradoxical logic are positive : it is and it is not. Anotherformulation is negative: it is neither this nor that. Theformer expression of thought we find in Taoistic thought,inHeraclitus and again in Hegelian dialectics; the latter formulation is frequent in Indian philosophy.
Although it would transcend the scope of this book to givea more detailed description of the difference between Aristotelian and paradoxical logic, I shall mention a few illustra-tions in order to make the principle more understandable.Paradoxical logic in Western thought has its earliest philosophical expression in Heraclitus9 philosophy. He assumesthe conflict between opposites is the basis of all existence."They do not understand," he says, "that the all-One, conflicting in itself, is identical with itself: conflicting harmonyas in the bow and in the lyre." 21 Or still more clearly: "Wego into the same river, and yet not in the same; it is weandit is not we" 22 Or "One and the same manifests itself inthings as living and dead, waking and sleeping, youngandold." 23 In Lao-tse's philosophy the same idea is expressed inamore poetic form. A characteristic example of Taoist paradoxical thinking is the following statement : "Gravity is theroot of lightness; stillness the ruler of movement." 24 Or"TheTao in its regular course does nothing and so there is noth21 W. Capelle, Die Vorsokratiker, Alfred Kroener Verlag, Stuttgart,1953, p. 134. (My translation. E. F.)
22 Ibid., p. 132. ™ Ibid., p. 133.
24 Mueller, op. cit., p. 69.
THE THEORY OF LOVE 75ing which he does not do." 25 Or "My words are very easyto know, and very easy to practice; but there is no oneinthe world who is able to know and able to practice them.'
3 26 In Taoist thinking, just as in Indian and Socratic thinking,the highest step to which thought can lead is to know thatwe do not know. "To know and yet [think] we do not knowis the highest [attainment] ; not to know [and yet think] wedo know is a disease.
35 27 It is only a consequence of thisphilosophy that the highest God cannot be named. The ulti-mate reality, the ultimate One cannot be caught in wordsor in thoughts. As Lao-tse puts it, "The Tao that can betrodden is not the enduring and unchanging Tao. The namethat can be named is not the enduring and unchangingname.
33 28 Or, in a different formulation, "We look at it, andwe do not see it, and we name it the 'Equable.3 We listen toit, and we do not hear it, and we name it the 'Inaudible.'We try to grasp it, and do not get hold of it, and we nameit 'the Subtle.
5 With these three qualities, it can not be madethe subject of description ; and hence we blend them togetherand obtain The One.33 29 And still another formulation ofthe same idea: "He who knows [the Tao] does not [careto] speak [about it] ; he who is [however ready to] speakabout it does not know it.
33 30 Brahmanic philosophy was concerned with the relation-ship between manifoldness ( of phenomena ) and unity25 Ibid., p. 79.
26 ibid., p. 112.
27 ibid., p. 113.
28 Ibid., p. 47.
29 Ibid., p. 57.
so Ibid., p. 100.
76 THE ART OF LOVING
(Brahman). But paradoxical philosophy is neither in Indianor in China to be confused with a dualistic standpoint. Theharmony (unity) consists in the conflicting position fromwhich it is made up. "Brahmanical thinking was centeredfrom the beginning around the paradox of the simultaneousantagonisms—yet—identity of the manifest forces and formsof the phenomenal world. . . ." 31 The ultimate powerinthe Universe as well as in man transcends both the conceptual and the sensual sphere. It is therefore "neitherthisnor thus." But, as Zimmer remarks, "there is no antagonismbetween c real and unreal' in this strictly non-dualistic realiza-tion." 32 In their search for unity behind manifoldness,theBrahman thinkers came to the conclusion that the perceivedpair of opposites reflects the nature not of things but oftheperceiving mind. The perceiving thought must transcenditself if it is to attain true reality. Opposition is a categoryof man's mind, not in itself an element of reality. IntheRig-Veda the principle is expressed in this form: "I amthetwo, the life force and the life material, the two at once."The ultimate consequence of the idea that thought canonlyperceive in contradictions has found an even more drasticsequence in Vedantic thinking, which postulates that thought—with all its fine distinction—was "only a more subtle hori-zon of ignorance, in fact the most subtle of all the deludingdevices of maya." 33 Paradoxical logic has a significant bearing on the concept31 H. R. Zimmer, Philosophies of India, Pantheon Books, NewYork,195L
32 Ibid,
33 Ibid., p. 424.
THE THEORY OF LOVE 77; of God. Inasmuch as God represents the ultimate reality,and inasmuch as the human mind perceives reality in con-| tradictions, no positive statement can be made of God.In; the Vedantas the idea of an omniscient and omnipotent God!' is considered the ultimate form of ignorance.34 We see herethe connection with the namelessness of the Tao, the name-' less name of the God who reveals himself to Moses, of the"absolute Nothing55 of Meister Eckhart. Man can only knowthe negation, never the position of ultimate reality. "Meanwhile man can not know what God is, even though he beever so well aware of what God is not. . . . Thus contentedwith nothing, the mind clamors for the highest goodofall."
35 For Meister Eckhart, "The Divine One is a negationof negations, and a denial of denials. . . . Every creaturecontains a negation: one denies that it is the other." 36 It isonly a further consequence that God becomes for MeisterEckhart "The absolute Nothing," just as the ultimate realityis the "En Sof," the Endless One, for the Kabalah.
I have discussed the difference between Aristotelian andparadoxical logic in order to prepare the ground for an important difference in the concept of the love of God. Theteachers of paradoxical logic say that man can perceivereality only in contradictions, and can never perceive inthought the ultimate reality-unity, the One itself. This ledto the consequence that one did not seek as the ultimate aimto find the answer in thought. Thought can only lead us to84 Cf. Zimmer, ibid., p. 424.
35 Meister Eckhart, translated by R. B. Blakney, Harper & Brothers,New York, 1941, p. 114.
36 Ibid., p. 247. Cf. also the negative theology of Maimonides.
78 THE ART OF LOVING
the knowledge that it cannot give us the ultimate answer.The world of thought remains caught in the paradox. Theonly way in which the world can be grasped ultimately lies,not in thought, but in the act, in the experience of oneness.Thus paradoxical logic leads to the conclusion that the loveof God is neither the knowledge of God in thought, nor thethought of one's love of God, but the act of experiencing theoneness with God.
This leads to the emphasis on the right way of living. Allof life, every little and every important action, is devotedtothe knowledge of God, but a knowledge not in right thought,but in right action. This can be clearly seen in Oriental religions. In Brahmanism as well as in Buddhism and Taoism,the ultimate aim of religion is not the right belief, but theright action. We find the same emphasis in the Jewish religion. There was hardly ever a schism over belief in theJewish tradition (the one great exception, the difference between Pharisees and Sadducees, was essentially one of twoopposite social classes). The emphasis of the Jewish religionwas (especially from the beginning of our era on) ontheright way of living, the Halacha (this word actually havingthe same meaning as the Tao)
.
In modern history, the same principle is expressed in thethought of Spinoza, Marx and Freud. In Spinoza's philosophy the emphasis is shifted from the right belief to the rightconduct of life. Marx stated the same principle whenhesaid, "The philosophers have interpreted the world in dif-ferent ways—the task is to transform it." Freud's paradoxicallogic leads him to the process of psychoanalytic therapy, theever deepening experience of oneself.
THE THEORY OF LOVE 79From the standpoint of paradoxical logic the emphasisisnot on thought, but on the act. This attitude had severalother consequences. First of all, it led to the tolerance whichwe find in Indian and Chinese religious development. If theright thought is not the ultimate truth, and not the waytosalvation, there is no reason to fight others, whose thinkinghas arrived at different formulations. This tolerance is beautifully expressed in the story of several men who were askedto describe an elephant in the dark. One, touching his trunk,said "this animal is like a water pipe" ; another, touchinghis ear, said "this animal is like a fan" ; a third, touching; his legs, described the animal as a pillar.
Secondly, the paradoxical standpoint led to the emphasisi on transforming man, rather than to the developmentofdogma on the one hand, and science on the other. Fromthe; Indian, Chinese and mystical standpoints, the religious taskof man is not to think right, but to act right, and/ortobecome one with the One in the act of concentrated meditation.The opposite is true for the main stream of Westernthought. Since one expected to find the ultimate truth in theright thought, major emphasis was on thought, althoughright action was held to be important too. In religious development this led to the formulation of dogmas, endlessarguments about dogmatic formulations, and intolerance ofthe "non-believer" or heretic. It furthermore led to theemphasis on "believing in God" as the main aim of a re-ligious attitude. This, of course, did not mean that therewas not also the concept that one ought to live right. But
80 THE ART OF LOVING
nevertheless, the person who believed in God—even if hedid not live God—felt himself to be superior to the onewho lived God, but did not "believe" in him.
The emphasis on thought has also another and historicallya very important consequence. The idea that one could findthe truth in thought led not only to dogma, but also toscience. In scientific thought, the correct thought is all thatmatters, both from the aspect of intellectual honesty, as wellas from the aspect of the application of scientific thoughttopractice—that is, to technique.
In short, paradoxical thought led to tolerance andaneffort toward self-transformation. The Aristotelian standpoint led to dogma and science, to the Catholic Church, andto the discovery of atomic energy.
The consequences of this difference between the two standpoints for the problem of the love of God have already beenexplained implicitly, and need only to be summarized briefly.In the dominant Western religious system, the love of Godis essentially the same as the belief in God, in God's exist-ence, God's justice, God's love. The love of God is essentiallya thought experience. In the Eastern religions and in mysticism, the love of God is an intense feeling experienceofoneness, inseparably linked with the expression of this loveinevery act of living. The most radical formulation has beengiven to this goal by Meister Eckhart: "If therefore I amchanged into God and He makes me one with Himself, then,by the living God, there is no distinction between us. . . . Some people imagine that they are going to see God, thatthey are going to see God as if he were standing yonder, andthey here, but it is not to be so. God and I: we are one.
THE THEORY OF LOVE 8lBy knowing God I take him to myself. By loving God,Ipenetrate him," 37 We can return now to an important parallel betweenthelove for one's parents and the love for God. The child startsout by being attached to his mother as "the ground ofallbeing.
55 He feels helpless and needs the all-envelopingloveof mother. He then turns to father as the new center ofhisaffections, father being a guiding principle for thoughtandaction; in this stage he is motivated by the need to acquirefather's praise, and to avoid his displeasure. In the stageoffull maturity he has freed himself from the person of motherand of father as protecting and commanding powers; hehasestablished the motherly and fatherly principles in himself.He has become his own father and mother; he is fatherandmother. In the history of the human race we see—andcananticipate—the same development: from the beginningofthe love for God as the helpless attachment to a motherGoddess, through the obedient attachment to a fatherly God,to a mature stage where God ceases to be an outside power,where man has incorporated the principles of love andjustice into himself, where he has become one with God,andeventually, to a point where he speaks of God only inapoetic, symbolic sense. From these considerations it follows that the love for Godcannot be separated from the love for one's parents. If aper-son does not emerge from incestuous attachment to mother,clan, nation, if he retains the childish dependence onapunishing and rewarding father, or any other authority,hecannot develop a more mature love for God; then hisre37 Meister Eckhart, op. cit., pp. 181-2.
82 THE ART OF LOVING
ligion is that of the earlier phase of religion, in whichGod was experienced as an all-protective mother orapunishing-rewarding father. In contemporary religion we find all the phases, fromtheearliest and most primitive development to the highest, stillpresent. The word "God" denotes the tribal chief as wellasthe "absolute Nothing.'
5 In the same way, each individualretains in himself, in his unconscious, as Freud has shown,all the stages from the helpless infant on. The question is towhat point he has grown. One thing is certain : the natureof his love for God corresponds to the nature of his loveforman, and furthermore, the real quality of his love for Godand man often is unconscious—covered up and rationalizedby a more mature thought of what his love is. Loveforman, furthermore, while directly embedded in his relationsto his family, is in the last analysis determined by the struc-ture of the society in which he lives. If the social structureis one of submission to authority—overt authority or theanonymous authority of the market and public opinion,hisconcept of God must be infantile and far from the matureconcept, the seeds of which are to be found in the historyof monotheistic religion.
III.
Love and Its Disintegration in
Contemporary Western SocietyIF LOVE is a capacity of the mature, productive character,it follows that the capacity to love in an individual living inany given culture depends on the influence this culture hason the character of the average person. If we speak aboutlove in contemporary Western culture, we mean to askwhether the social structure of Western civilization andthespirit resulting from it are conducive to the developmentoflove. To raise the question is to answer it in the negative.No objective observer of our Western life can doubt thatlove—brotherly love, motherly love, and erotic love—is arelatively rare phenomenon, and that its place is taken byanumber of forms of pseudo-love which are in reality so manyforms of the disintegration of love. Capitalistic society is based on the principle of politicalfreedom on the one hand, and of the market as the regulatorof all economic, hence social relations, on the other. Thecommodity market determines the conditions under whichcommodities are exchanged, the labor market regulates the83
84 THE ART OF LOVING
acquisition and sale of labor. Both useful things and usefulhuman energy and skill are transformed into commoditieswhich are exchanged without the use of force and withoutfraud under the conditions of the market. Shoes, useful andneeded as they may be, have no economic value (exchangevalue) if there is no demand for them on the market; humanenergy and skill are without exchange value if there is nodemand for them under existing market conditions. Theowner of capital can buy labor and command it to workforthe profitable investment of his capital. The owner of labormust sell it to capitalists under the existing market conditions, unless he is to starve. This economic structure is re-flected in a hierarchy of values. Capital commands labor;amassed things, that which is dead, are of superior valuetolabor, to human powers, to that which is alive. This has been the basic structure of capitalism sinceitsbeginning. But while it is still characteristic of moderncapitalism, a number of factors have changed which give con-temporary capitalism its specific qualities and which havea profound influence on the character structure of modernman. As the result of the development of capitalismwewitness an ever-increasing process of centralization andconcentration of capital. The large enterprises grow in sizecontinuously, the smaller ones are squeezed out. The ownership of capital invested in these enterprises is more andmoreseparated from the function of managing them. Hundredsofthousands of stockholders "own" the enterprise; a managerialbureaucracy which is well paid, but which does not owntheenterprise, manages it. This bureaucracy is less interestedinmaking maximum profits than in the expansion of the enter-
LOVE—DISINTEGRATION IN WESTERN SOCIETY85! jprise, and in their own power. The increasing concentrationof capital and the emergence of a powerful managerialI bureaucracy are paralleled by the development of the laborI movement. Through the unionization of labor, the indi-vidual worker does not have to bargain on the labor marketby and for himself; he is united in big labor unions, also ledby a powerful bureaucracy which represents him vis-a-vis theindustrial colossi. The initiative has been shifted, for betterI or worse, in the fields of capital as well as in those of labor,from the individual to the bureaucracy. An increasingnumber of people cease to be independent, and becomede-|
pendent on the managers of the great economic empires.Another decisive feature resulting from this concentrationof capital, and characteristic of modern capitalism, lies inthe specific way of the organization of work. Vastly centralized enterprises with a radical division of labor leadtoan organization of work where the individual loses his in-dividuality, where he becomes an expendable cog in themachine. The human problem of modern capitalism canbeformulated in this way

Modern capitalism needs men who co-operate smoothlyand in large numbers; who want to consume moreandmore; and whose tastes are standardized and can be easilyinfluenced and anticipated. It needs men who feel free andindependent, not subject to any authority or principleorconscience—yet willing to be commanded, to do what is ex-pected of them, to fit into the social machine without fric-tion; who can be guided without force, led without leaders,prompted without aim—except the one to make good, tobeon the move, to function, to go ahead.
86 THE ART OF LOVING
What is the outcome? Modern man is alienated fromhimself, from his fellow men, and from nature.1 He has beentransformed into a commodity, experiences his life forces asan investment which must bring him the maximum profitobtainable under existing market conditions. Humanrela-tions are essentially those of alienated automatons, eachbasing his security on staying close to the herd, and not beingdifferent in thought, feeling or action. While everybody triesto be as close as possible to the rest, everybody remainsutterly alone, pervaded by the deep sense of insecurity,anxiety and guilt which always results when human separateness cannot be overcome. Our civilization offers manypalliatives which help people to be consciously unaware of thisaloneness: first of all the strict routine of bureaucratized,mechanical work, which helps people to remain unawareoftheir most fundamental human desires, of the longing fortranscendence and unity. Inasmuch as the routine alone doesnot succeed in this, man overcomes his unconscious despairby the routine of amusement, the passive consumption ofsounds and sights offered by the amusement industry; fur-thermore by the satisfaction of buying ever new things,and soon exchanging them for others. Modern man is actually close to the picture Huxley describes in his Brave NewWorld: well fed, well clad, satisfied sexually, yet withoutself, without any except the most superficial contact with hisfellow men, guided by the slogans which Huxley formulatedso succinctly, such as: "When the individual feels, the com1 Gf. a more detailed discussion of the problem of alienation and ofthe influence of modern society on the character of man in The SaneSociety, E. Fromm, Rinehart and Company, New York, 1955.
LOVE DISINTEGRATION IN WESTERN SOCIETY 87munity reels"; or "Never put off till tomorrow the fun youi can have today," or, as the crowning statement : ""Everybodyis happy nowadays." Man's happiness today consists in "having fun." Having fun lies in the satisfaction of consumingand "taking in" commodities, sights, food, drinks, cigarettes,people, lectures, books, movies—all are consumed, swallowed. The world is one great object for our appetite, a bigapple, a big bottle, a big breast; we are the sucklers, theeternally expectant ones, the hopeful ones—and the eternallydisappointed ones. Our character is geared to exchange andto receive, to barter and to consume; everything, spiritual aswell as material objects, becomes an object of exchange andof consumption.
The situation as far as love is concerned corresponds, as it has to by necessity, to this social character of modern man.Automatons cannot love; they can exchange their "personality packages" and hope for a fair bargain. One of themost significant expressions of love, and especially of marriage with this alienated structure, is the idea of the "team."In any number of articles on happy marriage, the idealdescribed is that of the smoothly functioning team. Thisdescription is not too different from the idea of a smoothlyfunctioning employee; he should be "reasonably independent," co-operative, tolerant, and at the same time ambitiousand aggressive. Thus, the marriage counselor tells us, thehusband should "understand" his wife and be helpful. Heshould comment favorably on her new dress, and on a tastydish. She, in turn, should understand when he comes hometired and disgruntled, she should listen attentively whenhetalks about his business troubles, should not be angry but
88 THE ART OF LOVING
understanding when he forgets her birthday. All this kindofrelationship amounts to is the well-oiled relationship betweentwo persons who remain strangers all their lives, whoneverarrive at a "central relationship,
55 but who treat each otherwith courtesy and who attempt to make each other feel better.In this concept of love and marriage the main emphasisis on finding a refuge from an otherwise unbearable senseof aloneness. In "love" one has found, at last, a haven fromaloneness. One forms an alliance of two against the world,and this egoism a deux is mistaken for love and intimacy.
The emphasis on team spirit, mutual tolerance andsoforth is a relatively recent development. It was preceded,inthe years after the First World War, by a concept of lovein which mutual sexual satisfaction was supposed to bethebasis for satisfactory love relations, and especially for a happymarriage. It was believed that the reasons for the frequentunhappiness in marriage were to be found in that the marriage partners had not made a correct "sexual adjustment"; the reason for this fault was seen in the ignoranceregarding "correct" sexual behavior, hence in the faultysexual technique of one or both partners. In order to "cure"this fault, and to help the unfortunate couples who couldnot love each other, many books gave instructions and counsel concerning the correct sexual behavior, and promisedimplicitly or explicitly that happiness and love would follow.The underlying idea was that love is the child of sexualpleasure, and that if two people learn how to satisfy eachother sexually, they will love each other. It fitted the generalillusion of the time to assume that using the right techniquesis the solution not only to technical problems of industrial
LOVE DISINTEGRATION IN WESTERN SOCIETY 89production, but of all human problems as well. One ignoredthe fact that the contrary of the underlying assumptionis true.Love is not the result of adequate sexual satisfaction, butsexual happiness—even the knowledge of the so-called sexualtechnique—is the result of love. If aside from everyday observation this thesis needed to be proved, such proof can befound in ample material of psychoanalytic data. The studyof the most frequent sexual problems—frigidity in women,and the more or less severe forms of psychic impotence inmen—shows that the cause does not lie in a lack of knowledge of the right technique, but in the inhibitions whichmake it impossible to love. Fear of or hatred for the othersex are at the bottom of those difficulties which preventaperson from giving himself completely, from acting spontaneously, from trusting the sexual partner in the immediacyand directness of physical closeness. If a sexually inhibitedperson can emerge from fear or hate, and hence becomecapable of loving, his or her sexual problems are solved. Ifnot, no amount of knowledge about sexual techniques willhelp.
But while the data of psychoanalytic therapy point to thefallacy of the idea that knowledge of the correct sexualtechnique leads to sexual happiness and love, the underlyingassumption that love is the concomitant of mutual sexualsatisfaction was largely influenced by the theories of Freud.For Freud, love was basically a sexual phenomenon. "Manhaving found by experience that sexual (genital) love af-forded him his greatest gratification, so that it becameinfact a prototype of all happiness to him, must have been
90 THE ART OF LOVING
thereby impelled to seek his happiness further along the pathof sexual relations, to make genital eroticism the centralpoint of his life."
2 The experience of brotherly love is, forFreud, an outcome of sexual desire, but with the sexual in-stinct being transformed into an impulse with "inhibitedaim." "Love with an inhibited aim was indeed originally fullof sensual love, and in man's unconscious mind is so still."
3As far as the feeling of fusion, of oneness ("oceanic feel-ing"), which is the essence of mystical experience andtheroot of the most intense sense of union with one other personor with one's fellow men, is concerned, it was interpreted byFreud as a pathological phenomenon, as a regression to astate of an early "limitless narcissism." 4 It is only one step further that for Freud love is in itselfan irrational phenomenon. The difference between irrationallove, and love as an expression of the mature personalitydoes not exist for him. He pointed out in a paper on trans-ference love, 5 that transference love is essentially not differentfrom the "normal" phenomenon of love. Falling in lovealways verges on the abnormal, is always accompaniedbyblindness to reality, compulsiveness, and is a transferencefrom love objects of childhood. Love as a rational phenomenon, as the crowning achievement of maturity, was, to Freud,no subject matter for investigation, since it had no real exist-ence. However, it would be a mistake to overestimate the influ2 S. Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, translated by J. Riviere,The Hogarth Press, Ltd., London, 1953, p. 69.
s Ibid., p. 69.
* Ibid., p. 21.
5 Freud, Gesamte Werke, London, 1940-52, Vol. X.
LOVE DISINTEGRATION IN WESTERN SOCIETY 9
ence of Freud's ideas on the concept that love is the resultof sexual attraction, or rather that it is the same as sexualsatisfaction, reflected in conscious feeling. Essentially theI
causal nexus proceeds the other way around. Freud's ideaswere partly influenced by the spirit of the nineteenth century; partly they became popular through the prevailingspirit of the years after the First World War. Some of thefactors which influenced both the popular and the Freudianconcepts were, first, the reaction against the strict moresofthe Victorian age. The second factor determining Freud'stheories lies in the prevailing concept of man, which is basedon the structure of capitalism. In order to prove that capitalism corresponded to the natural needs of man, one hadtoshow that man was by nature competitive and full of mutualhostility. While economists "proved" this in terms of theinsatiable desire for economic gain, and the Darwinists interms of the biological law of the survival of the fittest, Freudcame to the same result by the assumption that manis driven by a limitless desire for the sexual conquest of allwomen, and that only the pressure of society prevented manfrom acting on his desires. As a result men are necessarilyjealous of each other, and this mutual jealousy and competition would continue even if all social and economic reasonsfor it would disappear.6 Eventually, Freud was largely influenced in his thinkingby the type of materialism prevalent in the nineteenth6 The only pupil of Freud who never separated from the master, andyet who in the last years of his life changed his views on love, wasSandor FerenczL For an excellent discussion on this subject see TheLeaven of Love by Izette de Forest, Harper & Brothers, New York,1954.
92 THE ART OF LOVING
century. One believed that the substratum of all mentalphenomena was to be found in physiological phenomena
hence love, hate, ambition, jealousy were explained by Freudas so many outcomes of various forms of the sexual instinct.He did not see that the basic reality lies in the totality ofhuman existence, first of all in the human situation commonto all men, and secondly in the practice of life determinedby the specific structure of society. (The decisive step beyondthis type of materialism was taken by Marx in his "historicalmaterialism," in which not the body, nor an instinct like theneed for food or possession, serves as the key to the understanding of man, but the total life process of man, his "practice of life"). According to Freud, the full and uninhibitedsatisfaction of all instinctual desires would create mentalhealth and happiness. But the obvious clinical facts demonstrate that men—and women—who devote their lives to unrestricted sexual satisfaction do not attain happiness, andvery often suffer from severe neurotic conflicts or symptoms.The complete satisfaction of all instinctual needs is not onlynot a basis for happiness, it does not even guarantee sanity.Yet Freud's idea could only have become so popular in theperiod after the First World War because of the changeswhich had occurred in the spirit of capitalism, fromtheemphasis on saving to that on spending, from self-frustrationas a means for economic success to consumption as the basisfor an ever-widening market, and as the main satisfactionfor the anxious, automatized individual. Not to postponethesatisfaction of any desire became the main tendency in thesphere of sex as well as in that of all material consumption.It is interesting to compare the concepts of Freud, which
LOVE DISINTEGRATION IN WESTERN SOCIETY 93Correspond to the spirit of capitalism as it existed, yet unbroken, around the beginning of this century, with the theoretical concepts of one of the most brilliant contemporary^psychoanalysts, the late H. S. Sullivan. In Sullivan's psychoparialytic system we find, in contrast to Freud's, a strict|fdivision between sexuality and love. What is the meaning of love and intimacy in Sullivan'sIf&ohcept? "Intimacy is that type of situation involving twopeople which permits validation of all components of per-gonal worth. Validation of personal worth requires a type offj relationship which I call collaboration, by which I meanijitlearly formulated adjustments of one's behavior to the ex-pressed needs of the other person in pursuit of increasingly^identical—that is, more and more nearly mutual satisfac-| tions, and in the maintenance of increasingly similar securityoperations." 7 If we free Sullivan's statement from its some-what involved language, the essence of love is seen in a situa-tion of collaboration, in which two people feel: "Weplayaccording to the rules of the game to preserve our prestigeand feeling of superiority and merit." 8 Just as Freud's concept of love is a description of the ex7 H. S, Sullivan, The Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry3 W.W.Norton Co., New York, 1953, p. 246. It must be noted that althoughSullivan gives this definition in connection with the strivings of pre-adolescence, he speaks of them as integrating tendencies, coming outduring pre-adolescence, "which when they are completely developed,we call love," and says that this love in pre-adolescence "represents thebeginning of something very like full-blown, psychiatrically definedlover
8 Ibid., p. 246. Another definition of love by Sullivan, that lovebegins when a person feels another person's needs to be as importantas his own, is less colored by the marketing aspect than the aboveformulation.
94 THE ART OF LOVING
perience of the patriarchal male in terms of nineteenth-century capitalism, Sullivan's description refers to the experienceof the alienated, marketing personality of the twentieth century. It is a description of an "egotism a deux" of twopeople pooling their common interests, and standing togetheragainst a hostile and alienated world. Actually his definitionof intimacy is in principle valid for the feeling of anyco-operating team, in which everybody "adjusts his behaviortothe expressed needs of the other person in the pursuitofcommon aims" (it is remarkable that Sullivan speaks hereof expressed needs, when the least one could say aboutloveis that it implies a reaction to unexpressed needs betweentwo people).
Love as mutual sexual satisfaction, and love as "teamwork" and as a haven from aloneness, are the two "normal"forms of the disintegration of love in modern Westernsociety, the socially patterned pathology of love. Therearemany individualized forms of the pathology of love, whichresult in conscious suffering and which are considered neurotic by psychiatrists and an increasing number of laymenalike. Some of the more frequent ones are briefly describedin the following examples.
The basic condition for neurotic love lies in the fact thatone or both of the "lovers" have remained attached to thefigure of a parent, and transfer the feelings, expectationsand fears one once had toward father or mother to the lovedperson in adult life ; the persons involved have never emergedfrom a pattern of infantile relatedness, and seek for this pattern in their affective demands in adult life. In these cases,the person has remained, affectively, a child of two, orof
LOVE—DISINTEGRATION IN WESTERN SOCIETY 95I'five, or of twelve, while intellectually and socially he is onI the level of his chronological age. In the more severe cases,
\ this emotional immaturity leads to disturbances in his social
j effectiveness; in the less severe ones, the conflict is limited
["to
1 the sphere of intimate personal relationships.
Referring to our previous discussion of the mother- orI father-centered personality, the following example for this type of neurotic love relation to be found frequently todayfleals with men who in their emotional development haveremained stuck in an infantile attachment to mother. Thesei'ja're men who have never been weaned as it were frommother. These men still feel like children; they want mother'sprotection, love, warmth, care, and admiration; they wantmother's unconditional love, a love which is given for noother reason than that they need it, that they are mother'schild, that they are helpless. Such men frequently are quite
affectionate and charming if they try to induce a womanto love them, and even after they have succeeded in this. Buttheir relationship to the woman (as, in fact, to all other
people) remains superficial and irresponsible. Their aim is to be loved, not to love. There is usually a good deal of vanity in this type of man, more or less hidden grandioseideas. If they have found the right woman, they feel secure, on top of the world, and can display a great deal of affection and charm, and this is the reason why these men are often
so deceptive. But when, after a while, the woman does notcontinue to live up to their phantastic expectations, conflicts and resentment start to develop. If the woman is not alwaysadmiring them, if she makes claims for a life of her own, if She wants to be loved and protected herself, and in extreme
96 THE ART OF LOVING
cases, if she is not willing to condone his love affairs withother women (or even have an admiring interest in them),the man feels deeply hurt and disappointed, and usuallyrationalizes this feeling with the idea that the woman"doesnot love him, is selfish, or is domineering." Anything shortof the attitude of a loving mother toward a charming childis taken as proof of a lack of love. These men usually confusetheir affectionate behavior, their wish to please, with genuinelove and thus arrive at the conclusion that they are beingtreated quite unfairly; they imagine themselves to be thegreat lovers and complain bitterly about the ingratitudeoftheir love partner.
In rare cases such a mother-centered person can functionwithout any severe disturbances. If his mother, in fact,"loved" him in an overprotective manner (perhaps beingdomineering, but without being destructive), if he findsawife of the same motherly type, if his special gifts and talentspermit him to use his charm and be admired (as is the casesometimes with successful politicians), he is "well adjusted"in a social sense, without ever reaching a higher level ofmaturity. But under less favorable conditions—and these arenaturally more frequent—his love life, if not his social life,will be a serious disappointment; conflicts, and frequently in-tense anxiety and depression arise when this type of personality is left alone. In a still more severe form of pathology the fixation tomother is deeper and more irrational. On this level, the wishis not, symbolically speaking, to return to mother's protecting arms, nor to her nourishing breast, but to her all-receiv-ing—and all-destroying—womb. If the nature of sanityis
LOVE DISINTEGRATION IN WESTERN SOCIETY 97I to grow out of the womb into the world, the nature of severe mental disease is to be attracted by the womb, to be sucked
back into it—and that is to be taken away from life. This
kind of fixation usually occurs in relation to mothers whorelate themselves to their children in this swallowing-destroying way. Sometimes in the name of love, sometimes of duty,
they want to keep the child, the adolescent, the man, within
them; he should not be able to breathe but through them;
not be able to love, except on a superficial sexual level—degrading all other women; he should not be able to be free and independent but an eternal cripple or a criminal.
This aspect of mother, the destructive, engulfing one, is the negative aspect of the mother figure. Mother can give
life, and she can take life. She is the one to revive, and the one to destroy; she can do miracles of love—and nobody can
hurt more than she. In religious images (such as the Hindugoddess Kali) and in dream symbolism the two opposite
aspects of mother can often be found.
A different form of neurotic pathology is to be found in such cases where the main attachment is that to father. A case in point is a man whose mother is cold and aloof,
while his father (partly as a result of his wife's coldness) concentrates all his affection and interest on the son. He is a "good father," but at the same time authoritarian. Whenever he is pleased with the son's conduct he praises him,
gives him presents, is affectionate; whenever the son dis- pleases him, he withdraws, or scolds. The son, for whomfather's affection is the only one he has, becomes attached to father in a slavish way. His main aim in life is to please
father—and when he succeeds he feels happy, secure and
98 THE ART OF LOVING
satisfied. But when he makes a mistake, fails, or does notsucceed in pleasing father, he feels deflated, unloved, . cast
out. In later life such a man will try to find a father figure to whom he attaches himself in a similar fashion. His wholelife becomes a sequence of ups and downs, depending onwhether he has succeeded in winning father's praise. Suchmen are often very successful in their social careers. They areconscientious, reliable, eager—provided their chosen fatherimage understands how to handle them. But in their relation- ships to women they remain aloof and distant. The womanis of no central significance to them; they usually have aslight contempt for her, often masked as the fatherly concernfor a little girl. They may have impressed a woman initially
by their masculine quality, but they become increasingly dis- appointing, when the woman they marry discovers that sheis destined to play a secondary role to the primary affection for the father figure who is prominent in the husband's life at any given time; that is, unless the wife happens to haveremained attached to her father—and thus is happy with ahusband who relates to her as to a capricious child. More complicated is the kind of neurotic disturbance in love which is based on a different kind of parental situation,
occurring when parents do not love each other, but are toorestrained to quarrel or to indicate any signs of dissatisfac- tion outwardly. At the same time, remoteness makes themalso unspontaneous in their relationship to their children. What a little girl experiences is an atmosphere of "correctness," but one which never permits a close contact witheither father or mother, and hence leaves the girl puzzledand afraid. She is never sure of what the parents feel or
LOVE DISINTEGRATION IN WESTERN SOCIETY 99think; there is always an element of the unknown, the mysterious, in the atmosphere. As a result the girl withdrawsI
into a world of her own, day-dreams, remains remote, andretains the same attitude in her love relationships later on. Furthermore the withdrawal results in the development of intense anxiety, a feeling of not being firmly grounded in the
world, and often leads to masochistic tendencies as the only
way to experience intense excitement. Often such womenwould prefer having the husband make a scene and shout, to
his maintaining a more normal and sensible behavior, be- cause at least it would take away the burden of tension andI fear from them; not so rarely they unconsciously provokesuch behavior, in order to end the tormenting suspense of
affective neutrality.
Other frequent forms of irrational love are described in the following paragraphs, without going into an analysis of the specific factors in childhood development which are at their roots

A form of pseudo-love which is not infrequent and is often
experienced (and more often described in moving pictures
and novels) as the "great love" is idolatrous love. If a person
has not reached the level where he has a sense of identity, of
I-ness, rooted in the productive unfolding of his own powers,
he tends to "idolize" the loved person. He is alienated fromhis own powers and projects them into the loved person,
who is worshiped as the summum bonum, the bearer of all love, all light, all bliss. In this process he deprives himself of
all sense of strength, loses himself in the loved one instead
of finding himself. Since usually no person can, in the long
run, live up to the expectations of her (or his) idolatrous
100 THE ART OF LOVING
worshiper, disappointment is bound to occur, and as aremedy a new idol is sought for, sometimes in an unendingcircle. What is characteristic for this type of idolatrous loveis, at the beginning, the intensity and suddenness of the loveexperience. This idolatrous love is often described as thetrue, great love; but while it is meant to portray the intensityand depth of love, it only demonstrates the hunger anddespair of the idolator. Needless to say it is not rare that twopersons find each other in a mutual idolatry which, sometimes, in extreme cases, represents the picture of a folie adeux.
Another form of pseudo-love is what may be called "senti-mental love" Its essence lies in the fact that love is ex-perienced only in phantasy and not in the here-and-nowrelationship to another person who is real. The most widespread form of this type of love is that to be found in thevicarious love satisfaction experienced by the consumerofscreen pictures, magazine love stories and love songs. All theunfulfilled desires for love, union, and closeness find theirsatisfaction in the consumption of these products. Amanand a woman who in relation to their spouses are incapableof ever penetrating the wall of separateness are movedtotears when they participate in the happy or unhappy lovestory of the couple on the screen. For many couples, seeingthese stories on the screen is the only occasion on which theyexperience love—not for each other, but together, as spectators of other people's "love." As long as love is a daydream, they can participate; as soon as it comes down to thereality of the relationship between two real people—they arefrozen.
LOVE—DISINTEGRATION IN WESTERN SOCIETY 1 01Another aspect of sentimental love is the abstractification of love in terms of time. A couple may be deeply movedby memories of their past love, although when this past was present no love was experienced—or the phantasies of
their future love. How many engaged or newly marriedcouples dream of their bliss of love to take place in the
future, while at the very moment at which they live they are already beginning to be bored with each other? This tendency coincides with a general attitude characteristic of modern man. He lives in the past or in the future, but not
in the present. He remembers sentimentally his childhood
and his mother—or he makes happy plans for the future. Whether love is experienced vicariously by participating in the fictitious experiences of others, or whether it is shifted away from the present to the past or the future, this abstractified and alienated form of love serves as an opiate
which alleviates the pain of reality, the aloneness and separateness of the individual.
Still another form of neurotic love lies in the use of projective mechanisms for the purpose of avoiding one's ownproblems, and being concerned with the defects and frailties of the "loved" person instead. Individuals behave in
this respect very much as groups, nations or religions do.
They have a fine appreciation for even the minor shortcomings of the other person, and go blissfully ahead ignoring
their own—always busy trying to accuse or to reform the
other person. If two people both do it—as is so often the
case-^-the relationship of love becomes transformed into oneof mutual projection. If I am domineering or indecisive, or greedy, I accuse my partner of it, and depending on my
102 THE ART OF LOVING
character, I either want to cure him or to punish him. Theother person does the same—and both thus succeed in ignoring their own problems and hence fail to undertake anysteps which would help them in their own development.
Another form of projection is the projection of one'sown problems on the children. First of all such projectiontakes place not infrequently in the wish for children. In suchcases the wish for children is primarily determined by projecting one's own problem of existence on that of the children.When a person feels that he has not been able to make senseof his own life, he tries to make sense of it in terms of thelife of his children. But one is bound to fail within oneselfand for the children. The former because the problemofexistence can be solved by each one only for himself, andnot by proxy; the latter because one lacks in the very qualitieswhich one needs to guide the children in their own searchfor an answer. Children serve for projective purposes alsowhen the question arises of dissolving an unhappy marriage.The stock argument of parents in such a situation is thatthey cannot separate in order not to deprive the children ofthe blessings of a unified home. Any detailed study wouldshow, however, that the atmosphere of tension and unhappiness within the "unified family" is more harmful to thechildren than an open break would be—which teaches themat least that man is able to end an intolerable situation bya courageous decision. One other frequent error must be mentioned here. Theillusion, namely, that love means necessarily the absence ofconflict. Just as it is customary for people to believe thatpain and sadness should be avoided under all circumstances,
LOVE DISINTEGRATION IN WESTERN SOCIETY IO3
they believe that love means the absence of any conflict. Andthey find good reasons for this idea in the fact that the struggles around them seem only to be destructive interchanges
which bring no good to either one of those concerned. But
the reason for this lies in the fact that the "conflicts" of most
people are actually attempts to avoid the real conflicts. Theyare disagreements on minor or superficial matters which by
their very nature do not lend themselves to clarification or
solution. Real conflicts between two people, those which do
not serve to cover up or to project, but which are experienced on the deep level of inner reality to which they belong,
are not destructive. They lead to clarification, they produce
a catharsis from which both persons emerge with more
knowledge and more strength. This leads us to emphasize
again something said above.
Love is possible only if two persons communicate with
each other from the center of their existence, hence if each one of them experiences himself from the center of his exist- ence. Only in this "central experience" is human reality,
only here is aliveness, only here is the basis for love. Love,
experienced thus, is a constant challenge; it is not a resting
place, but a moving, growing, working together ; even whether there is harmony or conflict, joy or sadness, is sec- ondary to the fundamental fact that two people experience
themselves from the essence of their existence, that they are one with each other by being one with themselves, rather than
by fleeing from themselves. There is only one proof for the
presence of love: the depth of the relationship, and the alive- ness and strength in each person concerned; this is the fruit by which love is recognized.
104 THE ART OF LOVING
Just as automatons cannot love each other they cannotlove God. The disintegration of the love of God has reachedthe same proportions as the disintegration of the love of man.This fact is in blatant contradiction to the idea that wearewitnessing a religious renaissance in this epoch. Nothingcould be further from the truth. What we witness (eventhough there are exceptions) is a regression to an idolatricconcept of God, and a transformation of the love of Godinto a relationship fitting an alienated character structure.The regression to an idolatric concept of God is easy to see.People are anxious, without principles or faith, they findthemselves without an aim except the one to move ahead;hence they continue to remain children, to hope for fatheror mother to come to their help when help is needed.
True, in religious cultures, like that of the Middle Ages,the average man also looked at God as to a helping fatherand mother. But at the same time he took God seriously also,in the sense that the paramount goal of his life was to live ac-cording to God's principles, to make "salvation" the supremeconcern to which all other activities were subordinated. Today, nothing of such effort is present. Daily life is strictlyseparated from any religious values. It is devoted to the striv-ing for material comforts, and for success on the personalitymarket. The principles on which our secular efforts are builtare those of indifference and egotism (the latter often labeledas "individualism," or "individual initiative"). Man of trulyreligious cultures may be compared with children at the ageof eight, who need father as a helper, but who begin toadopt his teachings and principles in their lives. Contemporary man is rather like a child of three, who cries for father
LOVE—DISINTEGRATION IN WESTERN SOCIETY IO5
when he needs him, and otherwise is quite self-sufficient when he can play.
In this respect, in the infantile dependence on an anthropomorphic picture of God without the transformation of life according to the principles of God, we are closer to a primitive idolatric tribe than to the religious culture of the Middle
Ages, In another respect our religious situation shows fea- tures which are new, and characteristic only of contemporary
Western capitalistic society. I can refer to statements madein a previous part of this book. 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 menand from nature. His main aim is profitable exchange of his
skills, knowledge, and of himself, 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. What can the concept of God mean under these circumstances? It is transformed from its original religious meaning
into one fitting the alienated culture of success. In the reli- gious revival of recent times, the belief in God has been trans- formed into a psychological device to make one better fitted for the competitive struggle.
Religion allies itself with auto-suggestion and psychotherapy to help man in his business activities. In the twenties one had not yet called upon God for purposes of "improving
one's personality." The best-seller in the year 1938, Dale
106 THE ART OF LOVING
Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People, re-mained on a strictly secular level. What was the functionofCarnegie's book at that time is the function of our greatestbest-seller today, The Power of Positive Thinking bytheReverend N. V. Peale. In this religious book it is not evenquestioned whether our dominant concern with success is initself in accordance with the spirit of monotheistic religion.On the contrary, this supreme aim is never doubted, butbelief in God and prayer is recommended as a means to in-crease one's ability to be successful. Just as modern psychiatrists recommend happiness of the employee, in order to bemore appealing to the customers, some ministers recommendlove of God in order to be more successful. "Make Godyourpartner" means to make God a partner in business, ratherthan to become one with Him in love, justice and truth. Justas brotherly love has been replaced by impersonal fairness,God has been transformed into a remote General Directorof Universe, Inc.; you know that he is there, he runs theshow (although it would probably run without him too),you never see him, but you acknowledge his leadership whileyou are "doing your part."
IV.
The Practice of Love
HAVING dealt with the theoretical aspect of the art ofloving, 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 bypracticing it? The difficulty of the problem is enhanced by the fact thatmost people today, hence many readers of this book, expectto be given prescriptions of "how to do it yourself," and thatmeans in our case to be taught how to love. I am afraidthat anyone who approaches this last chapter in this spirit will be gravely disappointed. To love is a personal experi-ence which everyone can only have by and for himself; infact, there is hardly anybody who has not had this experi-ence in a rudimentary way, at least, as a child, an adolescent,an adult. What the discussion of the practice of love can dois to discuss the premises of the art of loving, the approachesto it as it were, and the practice of these premises and approaches. The steps toward the goal can be practiced onlyby oneself, and discussion ends before the decisive step is taken. Yet, I believe that the discussion of the approaches107
108 THE ART OF LOVING
may be helpful for the mastery of the art—for those at leastwho have freed themselves from expecting "prescriptions."
The practice of any art has certain general requirements,quite regardless of whether we deal with the art of carpentry,medicine, or the art of love. First of all, the practice of an artrequires discipline. I shall never be good at anything if I donot do it in a disciplined way; anything I do only if "I amin the mood" may be a nice or amusing hobby, but I shallnever become a master in that art. But the problem is notonly that of discipline in the practice of the particular art(say practicing every day a certain amount of hours) butit is that of discipline in one's whole life. One might think that~nothing is easier to learn for modern man than discipline.Does he not spend eight hours a day in a most disciplinedway at a job which is strictly routinized? The fact, however,is that modern man has exceedingly little self-discipline outside of the sphere of work. When he does not work, he wantsto be lazy, to slouch or, to use a nicer word, to "relax." Thisvery wish for laziness is largely a reaction against the routini-zation of life. Just because man is forced for eight hoursaday to spend his energy for purposes not his own, in waysnot his own, but prescribed for him by the rhythm of thework, he rebels and his rebelliousness takes the form of aninfantile self-indulgence. In addition, in the battle againstauthoritarianism he has become distrustful of all discipline,of that enforced by irrational authority, as well as of rationaldiscipline imposed by himself. Without such discipline, however, life becomes shattered, chaotic, and lacks in concentration. That concentration is a necessary condition for the mas*-
THE PRACTICE OF LOVE 109tery of an art is hardly necessary to prove. Anyone who evertried to learn an art knows this. Yet, even more than self- discipline, concentration is rare in our culture. On the contrary, our culture leads to an unconcentrated and diffused
mode of life, hardly paralleled anywhere else. You do manythings at once; you read, listen to the radio, talk, smoke,eat, drink. You are the consumer with the open mouth, eagerand ready to swallow everything—pictures, liquor, knowledge. This lack of concentration is clearly shown in ourdifficulty in being alone with ourselves. To sit still, withouttalking, smoking, reading, drinking, is impossible for mostpeople. They become nervous and fidgety, and must dosomething with their mouth or their hands. (Smoking is oneof the symptoms of this lack of concentration; it occupieshand, mouth, eye and nose.
)
A third factor is patience. Again, anyone who ever tried to master an art knows that patience is necessary if you wantto achieve anything. If one is after quick results, one neverlearns an art. Yet, for modern man, patience is as difficult to practice as discipline and concentration. Our whole industrial system fosters exactly the opposite: quickness. All ourmachines are designed for quickness: the car and airplanebring us quickly to our destination—and the quicker thebetter. The machine which can produce the same quantityin half the time is twice as good as the older and slower one. Of course, there are important economic reasons for this. But, as in so many other aspects, human values have becomedetermined by economic values. What is good for machinesmust be good for man—so goes the logic. Modern manthinks he loses something—time—when he does not do
110 THE ART OF LOVING
things quickly; yet he does not know what to do with the
time he gains—except kill it. Eventually, a condition of learning any art is a supremeconcern with the mastery of the art. If the art is not something of supreme importance, the apprentice will never learn
it. He will remain, at best, a good dilettante, but will neverbecome a master. This condition is as necessary for the art of loving as for any other art. It seems, though, as if the
proportion between masters and dilettantes is more heavily
weighted in favor of the dilettantes in the art of loving thanis the case with other arts. One more point must be made with regard to the general
conditions of learning an art. One does not begin to learn an art directly, but indirectly, as it were. One must learn agreat number of other—and often seemingly disconnectedthings—before one starts with the art itself. An apprentice
in carpentry begins by learning how to plane wood; an apprentice in the art of piano playing begins by practicing
scales; an apprentice in the Zen art of archery begins bydoing breathing exercises.1 If one wants to become a masterin any art, one's whole life must be devoted to it, or at
least related to it. One's own person becomes an instrumentin the practice of the art, and must be kept fit, according to the specific functions it has to fulfill. With regard to the art of loving, this means that anyone who aspires to become amaster in this art must begin by practicing discipline, concentration and patience throughout every phase of his life.
1 For a picture of the concentration, discipline, patience and concern
necessary for the learning of an art, I want to refer the reader to Zen
in the Art of Archery, by E. Herrigel, Pantheon Books, Inc., New York,
1953.
THE PRACTICE OF LOVE IIIHow does one practice discipline? Our grandfathers wouldhave been much better equipped to answer this question.Their recommendation was to get up early in the morning,not to indulge in unnecessary luxuries, to work hard. Thistype of discipline had obvious shortcomings. It was rigid andauthoritarian, was centered around the virtues of frugalityand saving, and in many ways was hostile to life. But in a re-action to this kind of discipline, there has been an increasingtendency to be suspicious of any discipline, and to makeundisciplined, lazy indulgence in the rest of one's life the counterpart and balance for the routinized way of life imposedon us during the eight hours of work. To get up at a regularhour, to devote a regular amount of time during the daytoactivities such as meditating, reading, listening to music,walking; not to indulge, at least not beyond a certain minimum, in escapist activities like mystery stories and movies,not to overeat or overdrink are some obvious and rudimentary rules. It is essential, however, that discipline should notbe practiced like a rule imposed on oneself from the outside,but that it becomes an expression of one's own will; that it
is felt as pleasant, and that one slowly accustoms oneself toa kind of behavior which one would eventually miss, if onestopped practicing it. It is one of the unfortunate aspects ofour Western concept of discipline (as of every virtue) thatits practice is supposed to be somewhat painful and only if
it is painful can it be "good." The East has recognized longago that that which is good for man—for his body and forhis soul—must also be agreeable, even though at the beginning some resistances must be overcome.
Concentration is by far more difficult to practice in our
112 THE ART OF LOVING
culture, in which everything seems to act against the abilityto concentrate. The most important step in learning concentration is to learn to be alone with oneself without reading,listening to the radio, smoking or drinking. Indeed, to beable to concentrate means to be able to be alone with oneself—and this ability is precisely a condition for the ability tolove. If I am attached to another person because I cannotstand on my own feet, he or she may be a lifesaver, but therelationship is not one of love. Paradoxically, the ability tobe alone is the condition for the ability to love. Anyone whotries to be alone with himself will discover how difficult it is.He will begin to feel restless, fidgety, or even to sense considerable anxiety. He will be prone to rationalize his unwillingness to go on with this practice by thinking that it hasnovalue, is just silly, that it takes too much time, and so on,and so on. He will also observe that all sorts of thoughtscome to his mind which take possession of him. He will findhimself thinking about his plans for later in the day, orabout some difficulty in a job he has to do, or where to goin the evening, or about any number of things that will fillhis mind—rather than permitting it to empty itself. It wouldbe helpful to practice a few very simple exercises, as, for in-stance, to sit in a relaxed position (neither slouching, norrigid) j to close one's eyes, and to try to see a white screeninfront of one's eyes, and to try to remove all interfering pic-tures and thoughts, then to try to follow one's breathing;not to think about it, nor force it, but to follow it—andindoing so to sense it; furthermore to try to have a sense of"I" ; I =myself, as the center of my powers, as the creatorof my world. One should, at least, do such a concentration
THE PRACTICE OF LOVE II3exercise every morning for twenty minutes (and if possible
longer) and every evening before going to bed.2 Besides such exercises, one must learn to be concentrated
in everything one does, in listening to music, in reading abook, in talking to a person, in seeing a view. The activity at
this very moment must be the only thing that matters, to which one is fully given. If one is concentrated, it matters
little what one is doing; the important, as well as the unimportant things assume a new dimension of reality, becausethey have one's full attention. To learn concentration re- quires avoiding, as far as possible, trivial conversation, that
is, conversation which is not genuine. If two people talk about the growth of a tree they both know, or about the
taste of the bread they have just eaten together, or about acommon experience in their job, such conversation can berelevant, provided they experience what they are talking
about, and do not deal with it in an abstractified way; onthe other hand, a conversation can deal with matters of
politics or religion and yet be trivial; this happens when the
two people talk in cliches, when their hearts are not in whatthey are saying. I should add here that just as it is importantto avoid trivial conversation, it is important to avoid badcompany. By bad company I do not refer only to peoplewho are vicious and destructive ; one should avoid their com2 While there is a considerable amount of theory and practice on this point in the Eastern, especially the Indian cultures, similar aims have
been followed in recent years also in the West. The most significant, in my opinion, is the school of Gindler, the aim of which is the sensing of
one's body. For the understanding of the Gindler method, cf. also Charlotte Selver's work, in her lectures and courses at the New School, in New York.
114 THE ART OF LOVING
pany because their orbit is poisonous and depressing. I meanalso the company of zombies, of people whose soul is dead,although their body is alive; of people whose thoughts andconversation are trivial; who chatter instead of talk, andwho assert cliche opinions instead of thinking. However, it is not always possible to avoid the company of such people,nor even necessary. If one does not react in the expectedway—that is, in cliches and trivialities—but directly andhumanly, one will often find that such people change their behavior, often helped by the surprise effected by the shockof the unexpected.
To be concentrated in relation to others means primarilyto be able to listen. Most people listen to others, or even giveadvice, without really listening. They do not take the otherperson's talk seriously, they do not take their own answersseriously either. As a result, the talk makes them tired. Theyare under the illusion that they would be even more tired
if they listened with concentration. But the opposite is true. Any activity, if done in a concentrated fashion, makes onemore awake (although afterward natural and beneficial
tiredness sets in), while every unconcentrated activity makesone sleepy—while at the same time it makes it difficult tofall asleep at the end of the day.
To be concentrated means to live fully in the present, in the here and now, and not to think of the next thing to bedone, while I am doing something right now. Needless tosay that concentration must be practiced most of all bypeople who love each other. They must learn to be close to each other without running away in the many ways in whichthis is customarily done. The beginning of the practice of
THE PRACTICE OF LOVE II5concentration will be difficult; it will appear as if one could never achieve the aim. That this implies the necessity to havepatience need hardly be said. If one does not know that
everything has its time, and wants to force things, then in- deed one will never succeed in becoming concentrated—norin the art of loving. To have an idea of what patience is oneneed only watch a child learning to walk. It falls, falls again,
and falls again, and yet it goes on trying, improving, until one day it walks without falling. What could the grown-upperson achieve if he had the child's patience and its concentration in the pursuits which are important to him

One cannot learn to concentrate without becoming sensi- tive to oneself. What does this mean? Should one think aboutoneself all the time, "analyze" oneself, or what? If we wereto talk about being sensitive to a machine, there would belittle difficulty in explaining what is meant. Anybody, for
instance, who drives a car is sensitive to it. Even a small,
unaccustomed noise is noticed, and so is a small change in the pickup of the motor. In the same way, the driver is sensi- tive to changes in the road surface, to movements of the cars before and behind him. Yet* he is not thinking about all these factors; his mind is in a state of relaxed alertness, opento all relevant changes in the situation on which he is concentrated—that of driving his car safely.
If we look at the situation of being sensitive to anotherhuman being, we find the most obvious example in the sensitiveness and responsiveness of a mother to her baby. Shenotices certain bodily changes, demands, anxieties, before
they are overtly expressed. She wakes up because of herchild's crying, where another and much louder sound would
Il6 THE ART OF LOVING
not waken her. All this means that she is sensitive to themanifestations of the child's life; she is not anxiousorworried, but in a state of alert equilibrium, receptive to anysignificant communication coming from the child. In thesame way one can be sensitive toward oneself. One is aware,for instance, of a sense of tiredness or depression, and insteadof giving in to it and supporting it by depressive thoughtswhich are always at hand, one asks oneself "what happened?55 Why am I depressed? The same is done by noticingwhen one is irritated or angry, or tending to daydreaming,or other escape activities. In each of these instances the important thing is to be aware of them, and not to rationalizethem in the thousand and one ways in which this canbedone; furthermore, to be open to our own inner voice, whichwill tell us—often rather immediately—why we are anxious,depressed, irritated. The average person has a sensitivity toward his bodilyprocesses; he notices changes, or even small amounts of pain;this kind of bodily sensitivity is relatively easy to experiencebecause most persons have an image of how it feels to bewell. The same sensitivity toward one's mental processes ismuch more difficult, because many people have never knowna person who functions optimally. They take the psychicfunctioning of their parents and relatives, or of the socialgroup they have been born into, as the norm, and as longas they do not differ from these they feel normal and withoutinterest in observing anything. There are many people, forinstance, who have never seen a loving person, or a personwith integrity, or courage, or concentration. It is quiteobvious that in order to be sensitive to oneself, one hasto
THE PRACTICE OF LOVE 117have an image of complete, healthy human functioning
and how is one to acquire such an experience if one has not
had it in one's own childhood, or later in life? There is cer- tainly no simple answer to this question; but the question
points to one very critical factor in our educational system.
While we teach knowledge, we are losing that teaching
which is the most important one for human development:
the teaching which can only be given by the simple presence
of a mature, loving person. In previous epochs of our ownculture, or in China and India, the man most highly valued was the person with outstanding spiritual qualities. Eventhe teacher was not only, or even primarily, a source of in- formation, but his function was to convey certain humanattitudes. In contemporary capitalistic society—and the sameholds true for Russian Communism—the men suggested for admiration and emulation are everything but bearers of
significant spiritual qualities. Those are essentially in the
public eye who give the average man a sense of vicarious
satisfaction. Movie stars, radio entertainers, columnists, important business or government figures—these are the modelsfor emulation. Their main qualification for this function is often that they have succeeded in making the news. Yet, the
situation does not seem to be altogether hopeless. If one considers the fact that a man like Albert Schweitzer could be- come famous in the United States, if one visualizes the manypossibilities to make our youth familiar with living and his- torical personalities who show what human beings canachieve as human beings, and not as entertainers (in the
broad sense of the word), if one thinks of the great worksof literature and art of all ages, there seems to be a chance
Il8 THE ART OF LOVING
of creating a vision of good human functioning, and henceof sensitivity to malfunctioning. If we should not succeed inkeeping alive a vision of mature life, then indeed we areconfronted with the probability that our whole cultural tradi-tion will break down. This tradition is not primarily basedon the transmission of certain kinds of knowledge, but ofcertain kinds of human traits. If the coming generationswill not see these traits any more, a five-thousand-year-oldculture will break down, even if its knowledge is transmittedand further developed.
Thus far I have discussed what is needed for the practiceof any art. Now I shall discuss those qualities which are ofspecific significance for the ability to love. According to whatI said about the nature of love, the main condition for theachievement of love is the overcoming of one's narcissism.The narcissistic orientation is one in which one experiencesas real only that which exists within oneself, while thephenomena in the outside world have no reality in themselves, but are experienced only from the viewpoint of theirbeing useful or dangerous to one. The opposite pole to narcissism is objectivity; it is the faculty to see people and thingsas they are, objectively, and to be able to separate this objective picture from a picture which is formed by one's desiresand fears. AH forms of psychosis show the inability to beobjective, to an extreme degree. For the insane person theonly reality that exists is that within him, that of his fearsand desires. He sees the world outside as symbols of his innerworld, as his creation. All of us do the same when we dream.In the dream we produce events, We stage dramas, whichare the expression of our wishes and fears (although some-
THE PRACTICE OF LOVE 119times also of our insights and judgment), and while we are
asleep we are convinced that the product of our dreams is as real as the reality which we perceive in our waking state. The insane person or the dreamer fails completely in having an objective view of the world outside; but all of us are more or less insane, or more or less asleep; all of us havean unobjective view of the world, one which is distorted byour narcissistic orientation. Do I need to give examples?Anyone can find them easily by watching himself, his neighbors, and by reading the newspapers. They vary in the
degree of the narcissistic distortion of reality. A woman, for
instance, calls up the doctor, saying she wants to come to his
office that same afternoon. The doctor answers that he is not
free this same afternoon, but that he can see her the next
day. Her answer is: But, doctor, I live only five minutes fromyour office. She cannot understand his explanation that it does not save him time that for her the distance is so short. She experiences the situation narcissistically: since she saves
time, he saves times; the only reality to her is she herself. Less extreme—or perhaps only less obvious—are the dis- tortions which are commonplace in interpersonal relations. How many parents experience the child's reactions in terms
of his being obedient, of giving them pleasure, of being acredit to them, and so forth, instead of perceiving or even
being interested in what the child feels for and by himself?
How many husbands have a picture of their wives as being
domineering, because their own attachment to mother makesthem interpret any demand as a restriction of their freedom?How many wives think their husbands are ineffective or
120 THE ART OF LOVING
stupid, because they do not live up to a phantasy pictureofa shining knight which they might have built up as children?The lack of objectivity, as far as foreign nations are concerned, is notorious. From one day to another, anothernation is made out to be utterly depraved and fiendish, whileone's own nation stands for everything that is good andnoble. Every action of the enemy is judged by one standard—every action of oneself by another. Even good deedsbythe enemy are considered a sign of particular devilishness,meant to deceive us and the world, while our bad deeds arenecessary and justified by our noble goals which they serve.Indeed, if one examines the relationship between nations, aswell as between individuals, one comes to the conclusion thatobjectivity is the exception, and a greater or lesser degreeofnarcissistic distortion is the rule. The faculty to think objectively is reason; the emotionalattitude behind reason is that of humility. To be objective,to use one's reason, is possible only if one has achieved anattitude of humility, if one has emerged from the dreamsofomniscience and omnipotence which one has as a child. In terms of this discussion of the practice of the art ofloving, this means: love being dependent on the relativeabsence of narcissism, it requires the development of humility, objectivity and reason. One's whole life must be devotedto this aim. Humility and objectivity are indivisible, just aslove is. I cannot be truly objective about my family if Icannot be objective about the stranger, and vice versa. IfIwant to learn the art of loving, I must strive for objectivityin every situation, and become sensitive to the situationswhere I am not objective. I must try to see the difference
THE PRACTICE OF LOVE 121
between my picture of a person and his behavior, as it is harcissistically distorted, and the person's reality as it exists regardless of my interests, needs and fears. To have acquired
the capacity for objectivity and reason is half the road to achieving the art of loving, but it must be acquired with
regard to everybody with whom one comes in contact. If someone would want to reserve his objectivity for the loved
person, and think he can dispense with it in his relationship to the rest of the world, he will soon discover that he fails both here and there. The ability to love depends on one's capacity to emergefrom narcissism, and from the incestuous fixation to motherand clan; it depends on our capacity to grow, to develop a
productive orientation in our relationship toward the world
and ourselves. This process of emergence, of birth, of waking up, requires one quality as a necessary condition: faith. The practice of the art of loving requires the practice of faith. What is faith? Is faith necessarily a matter of belief in God, or in religious doctrines? Is faith by necessity in contrast to, or divorced from, reason and rational thinking?
Even to begin to understand the problem of faith one mustdifferentiate between rational and irrational faith. By irra- tional faith I understand the belief (in a person or an idea)
which is based on one's submission to irrational authority.
In contrast, rational faith is a conviction which is rooted in one's own experience of thought or feeling. Rational faith is not primarily belief in something, but the quality of cer- tainty and firmness which our convictions have. Faith is a
character trait pervading the whole personality, rather than
a specific belief.
122 THE ART OF LOVING
Rational faith is rooted in productive intellectual andemotional activity. In rational thinking, in which faith is supposed to /have no place, rational faith is an importantcomponent. How does the scientist, for instance, arrive at anew discovery? Does he start with making experiment after experiment, gathering fact after fact, without having avision of what he expects to find? Rarely has a truly important discovery in any field been made in this way. Norhave people arrived at important conclusions when theywere merely chasing a phantasy. The process of creative
thinking in any field of human endeavor often starts withwhat may be called a "rational vision," itself a result of considerable previous study, reflective thinking, and observation.When the scientist succeeds in gathering enough data, or in working out a mathematical formulation to make his original
vision highly plausible, he may be said to have arrived at atentative hypothesis. A careful analysis of the hypothesis in order to discern its implications, and the amassing of datawhich support it, lead to a more adequate hypothesis andeventually perhaps to its inclusion in a wide-ranging theory.
The history of science is replete with instances of faith in reason and visions of truth. Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, andNewton were all imbued with an unshakable faith in reason. For this Bruno was burned at the stake and Spinoza sufferedexcommunication. At every step from the conception of arational vision to the formulation of a theory, faith is necessary: faith in the vision as a rationally valid aim to pursue,faith in the hypothesis as a likely and plausible proposition,
and faith in the final theory, at least until a general consensus about its validity has been reached. This faith is
THE PRACTICE OF LOVE 1^3
rooted in one's own experience, in the confidence in one's power of thought, observation, and judgment. While irra- tional faith is the acceptance of something as true only
because an authority or the majority say so, rational faith
is rooted in an independent conviction based upon one's ownproductive observing and thinking, in spite of the majority's
opinion.
Thought and judgment are not the only realm of experi- ence in which rational faith is manifested. In the sphere of human relations, faith is an indispensable quality of any
significant friendship or love. "Having faith" in another
person means to be certain of the reliability and unchangeability of his fundamental attitudes, of the core of his personality, of his love. By this I do not mean that a person
may not change his opinions, but that his basic motivations
remain the same; that, for instance, his respect for life and
human dignity is part of himself, not subject to change.
In the same sense we have faith in ourselves. We are aware of the existence of a self, of a core in our personality
which is unchangeable and which persists throughout our
life in spite of varying circumstances, and regardless of certain changes in opinions and feelings. It is this core which
is the reality behind the word "I," and on which our conviction of our own identity is based. Unless we have faith in the persistence of our self, our feeling of identity is threatened
and we become dependent on other people whose approval
then becomes the basis for our feeling of identity. Only the
person who has faith in himself is able to be faithful to
others, because only he car* be sure that he will be the same
at a future time as he is today and, therefore, that he will
124 THE ART 0F LOVING
feel and act as he now expects to. Faith in oneself is a condition of our ability to promise, and since, as Nietzschesaid, man can be defined by his capacity to promise, faith is one of the conditions of human existence. What matters inrelation to love is the faith in one's own love; in its ability toproduce love in others, and in its reliability.
Another meaning of having faith in a person refers to thefaith we have in the potentialities of others. The most rudimentary form in which this faith exists is the faith whichthe mother has toward her newborn baby: that it will live,
grow, walk, and talk. However, the development of the childin this respect occurs with such regularity that the expectation of it does not seem to require faith. It is different withthose potentialities which can fail to develop: the child'spotentialities to love, to be happy, to use his reason, andmore specific potentialities like artistic gifts. They are theseeds which grow and become manifest if the proper conditions for their development are given, and they can be stifled
if these are absent. One of the most important of these conditions is that thesignificant person in a child's life have faith in these potentialities. The presence of this faith makes the differencebetween education and manipulation. Education is identicalwith helping the child realize his potentialities.3 The oppositeo£ education is manipulation, which is based on the absenceof faith in the growth of potentialities, and on the conviction that a child will be right only if the adults put into himwhat is desirable and suppress what seems to be undesirable.8 The root of the word education is e-ducere, literally, to lead forth, or to bring out something which is potentially present.
THE PRACTICE OF LOVE 125
There is no need of faith in the robot, since there is no life in it either* The faith in others has its culmination in faith in mankind. In the Western world this faith was expressed in re- ligious terms in the Judaeo-Christian religion, and in secular
language it has found its strongest expression in the humanistic political and social ideas of the last hundred and fifty years. Like the faith in the child, it is based on the idea that
the potentialities of man are such that given the proper conditions he will be capable of building a social order governed
by the principles of equality, justice and love. Man has not
yet achieved the building of such an order, and therefore the
conviction that he can do so requires faith. But like all rational faith this too is not wishful thinking, but based upon
the evidence of the past achievements of the human race and on the inner experience of each individual, on his ownexperience of reason and love. While 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
strength, rational faith is based upon the opposite experi- ence. We have this faith in a thought because it is the result of our own observation and thinking. We have faith in the
potentialities of others, of ourselves, and of mankind because,
and only to the degree to which, we have experienced the
growth of our own potentialities, the reality of growth in
ourselves, the strength of our own power of reason and of
love. The basis of rational faith is productiveness; to live by
our faith means to live productively. It follows that the belief in power (in the sense of domination) and the use of power
126 THE ART OF LOVING
are the reverse of faith. To believe in power that exists isidentical with disbelief in the growth of potentialities whichare as yet unrealized. It is a prediction of the future basedsolely on the manifest present; but it turns out to be a gravemiscalculation, profoundly irrational in its oversight of thehuman potentialities and human growth. There is no rationalfaith in power. There is submission to it or, on the partofthose who have it, the wish to keep it. While to many powerseems to be the most real of all things, the history of manhas proved it to be the most unstable of all human achievements. Because of the fact that faith and power are mutuallyexclusive, all religions and political systems which originallyare built on rational faith become corrupt and eventuallylose what strength they have, if they rely on power or allythemselves with it. To have faith requires courage, the ability to take a risk,the readiness even to accept pain and disappointment. Whoever insists on safety and security as primary conditionsoflife cannot have faith; whoever shuts himself off in a systemof defense, where distance and possession are his meansofsecurity, makes himself a prisoner. To be loved, and to love,need courage, the courage to judge certain values as ofultimate concern—and to take the jump and stake every-thing on these values. This courage is very different from the courage of whichthat famous braggart Mussolini spoke when he used theslogan "to live dangerously." His kind of courage is thecourage of nihilism. It is rooted in a destructive attitudetoward life, in the willingness to throw away life because oneis incapable of loving it. The courage of despair is the op-
THE PRACTICE OF LOVE 127
posite of the courage of love, just as the faith in power is the opposite of the faith in life. Is there anything to be practiced about faith and courage?
Indeed, faith can be practiced at every moment. It takes
faith to bring up a child; it takes faith to fall asleep; it takes
faith to begin any work. But we all are accustomed to having this kind of faith. Whoever does not have it suffers from
overanxiety about his child, or from insomnia, or from the
inability to do any kind of productive work; or he is sus- picious, restrained from being close to anybody, or hypochondriacal, or unable to make any long-range plans. Tostick to one's judgment about a person even if public opinion
or some unforeseen facts seem to invalidate it, to stick to one's convictions even though they are unpopular—all this requires faith and courage. To take the difficulties, setbacks
and sorrows of life as a challenge which to overcome makes
us stronger, rather than as unjust punishment which should
not happen to us, requires faith and courage.
The practice of faith and courage begins with the small
details of daily life. The first step is to notice where and when
one loses faith, to look through the rationalizations which
are used to cover up this loss of faith, to recognize where
one acts in a cowardly way, and again how one rationalizes
it. To recognize how every betrayal of faith weakens one, and how increased weakness leads to new betrayal, and so
on, in a vicious circle. Then one will also recognize that
while one is consciously afraid of not being loved, the real,
though usually unconscious fear is that of loving. To love means to commit oneself without guarantee, to give oneself completely in the hope that our love will produce love in the
128 THE ART OF LOVING
loved person. Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love. Can one say more about the practice of faith? Someone else might; if I were a poet or apreacher, I might try. But since I am not either of these, Icannot even try to say more about the practice of faith, butam sure that anyone who is really concerned can learn tohave faith as a child learns to walk.
One attitude, indispensable for the practice of the art ofloving, which thus far has been mentioned only implicitlyshould be discussed explicitly since it is basic for the practiceof love: activity, I have said before that by activity is notmeant "doing something/5 but an inner activity, the productive use of one's powers. Love is an activity; if I love, I amina constant state of active concern with the loved person, butnot only with him or her. For I shall become incapable of re-lating myself actively to the loved person if I am lazy, if I amnot in a constant state of awareness, alertness, activity. Sleepis the only proper situation for inactivity; the state of awakeness is one in which laziness should have no place. The paradoxical situation with a vast number of people today is thatthey are half asleep when awake, and half awake when asleep,or when they want to sleep. To be fully awake is the condition for not being bored, or being boring—and indeed, not tobe bored or boring is one of the main conditions for loving.To be active in thought, feeling, with one's eyes and ears, throughout the day, to avoid inner laziness, be it in the formof being receptive, hoarding, or plain wasting one's time,is an indispensable condition for the practice of the art ofloving. It is an illusion to believe that one can separate life in such a way that one is productive in the sphere of love
THE PRACTICE OF LOVE 129
and unproductive in all other spheres. Productiveness does
not permit of such a division of labor. The capacity to love
demands a state of intensity, awakeness, enhanced vitality,
which can only be the result of a productive and active
orientation in many other spheres of life. If one is not productive in other spheres, one is not productive in love either. The discussion of the art of loving cannot be restricted to the personal realm of acquiring and developing those characteristics and attitudes which have been described in this chapter. It is inseparably connected with the social realm.
If to love means to have a loving attitude toward everybody,
if love is a character trait, it must necessarily exist in one's
relationship not only with one's family and friends, but
toward those with whom one is in contact through one's
work, business, profession. There is no "division of labor"
between love for one's own and love for strangers. On the
contrary, the condition for the existence of the former is the
existence of the latter. To take this insight seriously means
indeed a rather drastic change in one's social relations from
the customary ones. While a great deal of lip service is paid
to the religious ideal of love of one's neighbor, our relations are actually determined, at their best, by the principle of fair- ness. Fairness meaning not to use fraud and trickery in the
exchange of commodities' and services, and in the exchange
of feelings. "I give you as much as you give me," in material
goods as well as in love, is the prevalent ethical maxim in
capitalist society. It may even be said that the development
of fairness ethics is the particular ethical contribution of
capitalist society.
The reasons for this fact lie in the very nature of capitalist
130 THE ART OF LOVING
society. In pre-capitalist societies, the exchange of goods wasdetermined either by direct force, by tradition, or by per-sonal bonds of love or friendship. In capitalism, the all-deter- mining factor is the exchange on the market. Whether wedeal with the commodity market, the labor market, or themarket of services, each person exchanges whatever he hasto sell for that which he wants to acquire under the conditions of the market, without the use of force or fraud.
Fairness ethics lend themselves to confusion with the ethics of the Golden Rule. The maxim "to do unto others as youwould like them to do unto you" can be interpreted asmeaning "be fair in your exchange with others." But actually, it was formulated originally as a more popular versionof the Biblical "Love thy neighbor as thyself." Indeed,the Jewish-Christian norm of brotherly love is entirely dif- ferent from fairness ethics. It means to love your neighbor,that is, to feel responsible for and one with him, while fair- ness ethics means not to feel responsible, and one, but distantand separate; it means to respect the rights of your neighbor,but not to love him. It is no accident that the Golden Rulehas become the most popular religious maxim today; becauseit can be interpreted in terms of fairness ethics it is the onereligious maxim which everybody understands and is willingto practice. But the practice of love must begin with recognizing the difference between fairness and love. Here, however, an important question arises. If our wholesocial and economic organization is based on each one seek-ing his own advantage, if it is governed by the principle ofegotism tempered only by the ethical principle of fairness,
how can one do business, how can one act within the frame-
THE PRACTICE OF LOVE I3I
work of existing society and at the same time practice love?
Does the latter not imply giving up all one's secular concerns and sharing the life of the poorest? This question has been
raised and answered in a radical way by the Christian monks,
and by persons like Tolstoi, Albert Schweitzer, and Simone
Weil. There are others 4 who share the opinion of the basic
incompatibility between love and normal secular life within our society. They arrive at the result that to speak of love
today means only to participate in the general fraud; they
claim that only a martyr or a mad person can love in the
world of today, hence that all discussion of love is nothing
but preaching. This very respectable viewpoint lends itself readily to a rationalization of cynicism. Actually it is shared
implicitly by the average person who feels "I would like to be a good Christian—but I would have to starve if I meant
it seriously." This "radicalism" results in moral nihilism. Both the "radical thinkers" and the average person are unloving automatons and the only difference between them is that the latter is not aware of it, while the former knows it and recognizes the "historical necessity" of this fact. I am of the conviction that the answer of the absolute in- compatibility of love and "normal" life is correct only in an
abstract sense. The principle underlying capitalistic society
and the principle of love are incompatible. But modern so- ciety seen concretely is a complex phenomenon. A salesman
of a useless commodity, for instance, cannot function eco- nomically without lying; a skilled worker, a chemist, or a
physician can. Similarly, a farmer, a worker, a teacher,
4 Cf. Herbert Marcuse's article "The Social Implications of Psychoanalytic Revisionism," Dissent, New York, summer, 1955.
132 THE ART OF LOVING
and many a type of businessman can try to practice lovewithout ceasing to function economically. Even if one recognizes the principle of capitalism as being incompatible withthe principle of love, one must admit that "capitalism" is initself a complex and constantly changing structure whichstill permits of a good deal of non-conformity and of per-sonal latitude. In saying this, however, I do not wish to imply that wecan expect the present social system to continue indefinitely,and at the same time to hope for the realization of the idealof love for one's brother. People capable of love, under thepresent system, are necessarily the exceptions; love is bynecessity a marginal phenomenon in present-day Westernsociety. Not so much because many occupations would notpermit of a loving attitude, but because the spirit of a production-centered, commodity-greedy society is such that onlythe non-conformist can defend himself successfully againstit. Those who are seriously concerned with love as the onlyrational answer to the problem of human existence must,then, arrive at the conclusion that important and radicalchanges in our social structure are necessary, if love is tobecome a social and not a highly individualistic, marginalphenomenon. The direction of such changes can, within thescope of this book, only be hinted at.
5 Our society is runbya managerial bureaucracy, by professional politicians; peopleare motivated by mass suggestion, their aim is producingmore and consuming more, as purposes in themselves. Allactivities are subordinated to economic goals, means have5 In The Sane Society, Rinehart & Company, New York, 1955, Ihave tried to deal with this problem in detail.
THE PRACTICE OF LOVE 1 33
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. 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
which excludes, relatively, the development of love, must in the long run perish of its own contradiction with the basic
necessities of human nature. Indeed, to speak of love is not
"preaching," for the simple reason that it means to speak
of the ultimate and real need in every human being. That
this need has been obscured does not mean that it does not
exist. To analyze the nature of love is to discover its general absence today and to criticize the social conditions which
are responsible for this absence. To have faith in the possibility of love as a social and not only exceptional-individual
phenomenon, is a rational faith based on the insight into the
very nature of man.
