About two years ago I read Erich Fromm's book The art of loving. I have it in case you would like to borrow it from me. The content of this book has some relation to the role of culture in the formation and maintenance of relationships.
In the book, Fromm claims that love is not only a pleasant emotion, but an art, which therefore requires knowledge and effort. Love is something we learn through experience, which leads to understanding, which leads to love. Fromm claims that true love is rare in modern society. According to him, this is because we live in a market society. The focus is not how to love, but to find someone who is attractive; has all the traits that are sought after at the "personality market". Love has nowadays become a commodity, an exchange of goods. (one may of course argue that the traditional arranged marriage is also a type of economic exchange) The development of the market society coincides with the development of romantic love, which has transformed the view on love from an art in itself to the art of finding someone to love. In more traditional societies, marriages were arranged and not based on romantic love and freedom of choice. Love was expected to grow after some time. Indeed, as that Indian study by Gupta and Singh that we talked about in class shows, love grows after a few years in arranged marriages, while it tends to decrease in marriages that originated from romantic love. According to the contemporary view of romantic love, it is easy to love, but difficult to find the right person to love. As the increasing number of failed marriages in modern society show, love is not that easy. Fromm claims that the need for love originates from anxiety. It is the realization of our separateness from others, that drives us to union with others. This need of love can explain many psychological phenomena, such as conformity. Fromm means that this need has gone too far in modern society, that there now is an increasing tendency to eliminate differences between people because of egalitarian values. Instead of accepting that we are different and respecting those differences, Fromm argues that we now want others to think and believe as we do. For Fromm, real love is to preserve one's own individuality, and at the same time bond and unite with another being. He relates true love to altruism, when he claims that love is primarily giving and not receiving. For him, giving is the highest expression of strength and it is those that refuse that are impoverished in terms of human power and freedom. In order to practise the art of love (it may take you a few failed relationships until you learn), Fromm recommends self discipline (I believe that you need to have worked with your own issues to a certain extent before you can have satisfying relationships), patience, concentration (the ability to be present in a relationship and enjoy the moments with your partner), a supreme concern for love ("love each other or perish", as Auden said. If you are not courageous, don't have faith and believe in love, how is a relationship going to last?), and last but not least humility (accept that you are not always right). In short, Fromm means that in order to love, we should develop our inner qualities and not only focus on consumerism and accumulation of wealth.
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AuthorThis is my class blog for IB Psychology. Here I will publish reflections on psychology, reviews of psychology books, recommended links, lecture notes, and information on psychology topics that are not covered by the syllabus. You are free to add comments or ask me questions. Archives
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