The Art of Loving [Audiobook] [Audio Cassette]

Erich Fromm (Author), Jeff David (Reader)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 24, 1993

The only recording available of a renowned psychologist's classic work tells how love can conquer shame and anxiety, release hidden potential, and become life's most exhilarating experience. 2 cassettes.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"In his most famous work Erich Fromm explores all aspects of this art from romantic and parental love to love of God. He explains how to move beyond anxiety, fear, and shame to experience the best that life has to offer." -- Values and Visions, May/June 1993

From the Back Cover

A classic in its own time...The original self-help treatise that has inspired countless numbers of men and women throughout the world. Learn how love can release hidden potential and become life's most exhilarating experience. In this fresh and candid work, renowned psychoanalyst Erich Fromm guides you in developing your capacity for love in all its aspectsromantic love, love of parents for children, brotherly love, erotic love, self-love, and love of God. Read by a professional narrator, this powerful rendition of the book shows how you can alter the whole course of your life. The Art of Loving has been continuously in publication since 1956 and has sold over 6 million copies. It is considered the seminal work in developing the psychology of person growth.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Audio Partners, The (February 24, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0945353782
• ISBN-13: 978-0945353782
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (95 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,577,356 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

157 of 160 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The art of real love., September 12, 2002

By 

G. Merritt (Boulder, CO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Art of Loving (Perennial Classics) (Paperback)

This book belongs on the life changers shelf in the bookstore. Because modern man is alienated from himself, from his fellow men, and from nature, we seek refuge from our aloneness in the concepts of love and marriage (pp. 79-81). However, psychologist and social philosopher, Erich Fromm (1900-1980), observes that real love "is not a sentiment which can be easily indulged in by anyone." It is only through developing one's total personality to the capacity of loving one's neighbor with "true humility, courage, faith and discipline" that one attains the capacity to experience real love. This should be considered a rare achievement (p. vii). The active character of true love, Fromm observes, involves the basic elements of care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge (p. 24).

Readers will be disappointed if they approach this book as a how-to book. Rather, Fromm's 1956 classic is more of an exploration into the theories of brotherly love, motherly love, erotic love, self-love, and the love of God (pp. 7-76), and an insightful examination into love's disintegration in contemporary Western culture (pp. 77-98). We are starved for love, yet all our attempts to attain love in Western society are bound to fail. However, like art, Fromm observes that real love is possibile with discipline, concentration, patience, and a supreme concern for mastering love (pp. 99-123). For anyone interested in what it means to love, Fromm's book is a must read.

G. Merritt

57 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Love Conquers All... Surrender to it.. E. FROMM, February 12, 2002

By 

Richard R. Rohde, Esq. (West Covina, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Art of Loving (Perennial Classics) (Paperback)

"Love," says Fromm, "is the only satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence." Poets have written that, "Love conquers all," and to "surrender to it." Urging one to surrender implies resistence to Love, but why?

Fromm asks, is Love an art, or is Love a pleasant sensation or feeling which to experience is a metter of chance, i.e. something one, "falls into," if one is lucky. Fromm asserts that Love is an art, and says that to truly Love, in all its forms, one must possess: Maturity; Self-Knowledge; and Courage.

"Object," or "faculty,": Many people pursue objects or affection, or objects to love, and correspondingly treat them as possessions. Fromm asserts that Love is the faculty or ability to Love in its different forms: brotherly love; romantic love, etc. Since Love is an art to be practiced, Fromm asserts that it can only be practiced in freedom with one another. In other words, people cannot treat others as objects or possessions to be controlled for ones own egotistical or selfish purposes. Such behavior to result in certain destruction and never to attain true Love.

"Love," vs. "falling in Love/Infatuation,": People speak of falling in Love, with new people they meet. Falling in Love is not necessarly Love, but infatuation, e.g., strangers meet, they break down social walls between one another, they feel close/as one. This new experience, infatuation, Fromm describes as "one of the most exhilarating and most exciting experiences in life. However, Fromm argues astutely, that this initial infatuation feeling slowly and naturally loses its miraculous character more and more with time, as the two people get more acquainted and learn more and more about eachother - flaws, character defects, etc. Fromm says the problem all-to-often arises when people confuse infatuation feelings (exhilaration/excitement) for proof of the intensity of their Love. As the infatuation feelings naturally subside, it results in the wish for a new conquest, a new "Love," with a new stranger. Again the stranger is transformed into an "intimate" person, again the experience of falling in love is exhilarating and intense, and again it slowly becomes less and less, and ends in another wish for a new conquest - a new "Love," always with the illusion that the new "Love," will be different from the earlier ones. Fromm says this is not Love. These illusions are greatly helped by the deceptive character of sexual desires. Sexual desire aims at fusion, says Fromm. It can be stimulated by the anxiety of aloneness, by the wish to conquer, by vanity, by the wish to hurt or even to destroy, as much as it can be stimulated by Love. Because most people associate sexual desire with the idea of Love, says Fromm, they are easily misled to conclude that they Love each other only when they want each other physically. Fromm asserts this is not unlike a drug addiction, when people constantly seek out the exhilaration/excitement of infatuation. Fromm cautions that if the desire for physical union is not stimulated by Love, if romantic/erotic Love is not also coupled with other forms of Love, that it will never lead to union in more than an orgiastic, transitory sense.

An implication of this that when this happens, i.e., when one finds new infatuation, the other one on the losing end gets scarredm then after a few times of getting burnt will begin to actively destroy or sabotage Love in the nascent stage when it occurs in the future, in an effort to avoid the past painful feelings associated with Love gone wrong or to avoid feelings of vulnerability and/or to maintain control -- in essence to not surrender to Love.

Fromm describes what he calls the essential components that need to be mastered, for all forms of Love: Care (the active concern for the life and the growth of that which we love); Responsibility (to be able, willing and ready to respond to the psychic nneds of the other); Respect (concern that the other person should grow and unfold as he/she is on their own, to be aware of her unique individuality - freedom); and Knowledge(a desire to discover what makes the other "tick," an active penetration of the other person).

Fromm concludes that Love is not just a feeling, it is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. To love means to surrender and commit without guarantees. Love is an act of utter faith says Fromm.

50 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read it, then give a copy to the people you care about, November 10, 2004

By 

Ben R. (NYC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Art of Loving (Perennial Classics) (Paperback)

I have reread this book more than any other that I own, partly because it's short, but mostly because Fromm is such a lucid and perceptive writer. I simply cannot recommend this book highly enough. I don't agree with all of it -- his take on homosexuality, for instance, which may or may not be attributable to the day in which it was written -- and many readers may not care for the way he frames behavioral patterns in psychoanalytic terms. That said, you can read right past those stylistic elements, because his prose is positively oozing with compassion. I don't think it's overly dramatic to say that it would take me longer to convey how excellent this little book is than it would take you to read it.