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 love wemust proceed in the same way we have to proceed if we wantto learn any other art, say music, painting, carpentry, or theart of medicine or engineering. - P5
In the shadow of Naziism, Fromm wrote about authoritariangovernments and their tendency to produce sadists. Much ear-lier than Freud, Fromm saw the potential for disaster in Europe.
At the invitation of the feminist psychoanalyst Karen Horney, Fromm visited the United States in 1933 and then emigrated.
Though never uncritical, he embraced his new country; by the1940s, Fromm was writing in English.
Fromm was popular precisely because, in an age of ideolo-gies, he was not an ideologue. He took what he needed andenthusiastically-from Judaism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, and,
later, Taoism and Zen Buddhism, but Fromm was finally ahumanist. He worked at the task conscientiously. For the wholeof his life, he devoted his mornings to activities that could notmake money—to study and quiet thought. Late in life, he sup-plemented contemplation with political action, taking a leader-ship role in antinuclear and antiwar movements.
For Fromm, love is rebellion against a commercial ideal. Hehas particular contempt for glossy magazine articles in whichhappy marriage looks like corporate middle management. The
"smoothly functioning team," he writes "is the well-oiled rela-tionship between two persons who remain strangers all theirlives." Even love as a "haven from aloneness" is bound to fail. Tolove at all is to be engaged with humankind, with eyes open. "Ifsomeone would want to reserve his objectivity for the belovedperson, and think he can dispense with it in his relationship tothe rest of the world, he will soon discover that he fails both hereand there."
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