The Art of Listening [Hardcover]

Erich Fromm (Author), Rainer Funk (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1994 | ISBN-10: 0826406548 | ISBN-13: 978-0826406545

Though generally thought of as a brilliant social commentator, Fromm was first a great psychoanalyst. These posthumous writings combine two aspects of Fromm's thinking, building on Freudian theory and also modifying it with a unique humanist view. For Fromm, the essence of psychological health involves communication between the irrational and rational parts of the personality. The art of therapy is the art of listening.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This posthumous work by the noted psychoanalyst and social critic is drawn from transcripts of talks and seminars Fromm gave between 1964 and 1980, the year he died. Even edited, the material meanders too casually, while facile generalizations and digressions abound. There are some gems in the rough: interesting comments on Freud, Reich, Groddek, et al., as well as a case presentation with dream analysis. And there is a useful bibliography. Still, compared with many other works of the last 20 years, this will not rank with Fromm's major contributions or prove particularly valuable to phychotherapists or their patients. Only for comprehensive collections.
E. James Lieberman, George Washington Univ. Sch. of Medicine, Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

While the coming of August is enough to send most psychoanalysts fleeing the needs of their patients for the beach, it appears that not even death can keep the wizened Fromm (On Being Human, 1993, etc.) from dispensing wisdom. Fromm gained renown less for his writings about clinical psychology than for his more contemplative works that fused the insights of psychoanalysis with those of existentialist philosophy to ask--and occasionally answer- -the Big Questions traditionally left to priests, rabbis, and barkeeps. But this posthumous collection focuses on the relationship between analyst and analysand, and its goal is much more modest than that of some of his other books. Fromm is concerned here, it seems, not with building a better world but with building a better shrink. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 204 pages
• Publisher: Continuum Intl Pub Group (Sd) (June 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0826406548
• ISBN-13: 978-0826406545
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,739,599 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A request to (...) listen, December 11, 2001

By 

"onbeinghuman" (Athens Greece) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Art of Listening (Paperback)

(...)This, as any other books by the renowened analyst and sociologist is richly textured with insights on the human condition, on its psyche and healing. It is as valueable as any of his books and the next too reviews do a good job of a synopsis of what this book deals with. In every book or article authored by Fromm you will find an author who is compassionate, caring, with a wide breadth of knowledge and an vast depth of enquiry and sensitivity.

Some have critisized Fromm for being too analytical, and putting too much emphasis on rationality and abstract conceptualizing and too little on measurable evidence, laboratory experiments, statistics and the like. But to me this seems to miss the point. Our reasoning does have limitations due to our social upbringing, our character and idiosyncrasy, our logical limitations and discrepancies vis a vis the complexity of the world, etc. But being aware of these limitations and being actively involved in examining them, evaluating them, and in a sense knowing their limitations does give us the right to make estimates and to develop hypothetical constructs that might or might not reflect reality more or less accurately. Social Science is an art, and as any art it is an imperfect endeavour. Logical positivism has been written off in the annals of history for good. For me the most important test for a theory is how well, and in what detail, and to what extent, it explains the physical, social, psychic etc. phenomena around us with some degree of internal coherency, accuracy and scope.

And in this respect Fromm's ideas have, and will continue to be, exemplary, his thought as relevant in our modern neo-liberal capitalist "democracies", as in the rest of the world, as ever. He is a creative ("productive" in his own words)force to be reckoned with.

This book contains his pearls of wisdom on the art of listening, on the art of therapy and on the art of living. I would heartily recommend it to anyone in the therapeutic vocations as well as to the individual who just wants to be inspired and enlightened.

17 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A required reading for all the world leaders, November 5, 1998

By 

[e-mail]; ING. EMILIO CIRSTANCHO ; MBA (South America) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Art of Listening (Paperback)

This book answered my question why sometimes when slums are converted into nice neighborhoods, why those neighborhood have a tendency to become slums again (pag 68-69). Dr, Fromm explains that unless the whole individual is help to modify his personality (( his super-ego) : the way he thinks , act, feels, behaves, etc... , unless we modify all those things simultaneously, many of the hundreds of millions of dollars in aid will be almost wasted, because it must be an INTEGRAL overall program to be able to help people to succeed in life . This should be arequired book for all the presidents of third world countries, so that the international aid funds can be used more effectively, to obtain more development in their respective countries.

1 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Misunderstood, December 8, 2010

By 

Don Jaime - See all my reviews

This review is from: Art of Listening (Paperback)

The title is misleading, at least it was for me. This is a book about psychoanalysis. This book is not for casual reading. I was disappointed.