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Anatha's Reviews > The Art of Loving
The Art of Loving
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I couldn't finish it. I just couldn't. Not only does it focus on the psyche through an exclusively heteronormative lens (which made me uncomfortable, yeah, but wasn't an outright deal breaker then), but it also drew too many conclusions based on the outdated archetype of a cartoonishly puffed-up man enslaved by the faculties of reasoning and logic and other things dickweeds of history have attached inalienably to machismo (but never the capacity for love!) and that of the woman who is (of course!) simultaneously soft and the salt of the earth as well as its goddamn scourge.
What few beautiful and telling ideas pertaining to erotic, familial, and self-love expounded upon in Fromm's self-help (oh god, self-HELP...?)book are ultimately founded upon harmful psychoanalytic hooplah-relics that were abandoned in the late 20th century for a reason.
Just. No. No.
What few beautiful and telling ideas pertaining to erotic, familial, and self-love expounded upon in Fromm's self-help (oh god, self-HELP...?)book are ultimately founded upon harmful psychoanalytic hooplah-relics that were abandoned in the late 20th century for a reason.
Just. No. No.
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Reading Progress
March 5, 2011
– Shelved
February 13, 2015
– Shelved as:
own
August 12, 2015
–
Started Reading
August 24, 2015
–
23.73%
""The homosexual deviation is a failure to attain [polarized] union, and thus the homosexual suffers from the pain of never-resolved separateness, a failure, however, which he shares with the average heterosexual who cannot love.'
... uh. uh oh."
page
28
... uh. uh oh."
August 26, 2015
–
Finished Reading
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Kate
(new)
Jan 29, 2022 11:06AM
Thank you, this review is very helpful to me. While I'm not against heteronormative depictions, romantic and erotic love in an intimate relationship should have overarching philosophies/theories that don't alienate those outside of heteronormative roles. It's so weird how many of these "psychoanalytical" books are geared towards outdated stereotypes regarding the "roles" assigned to gender.
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I partly disagree. While he claims certain character traits to be feminine and others to be masculine, I found that it was meant to be seperated from genders and more in a way that every human contains both polarities. In the book he mentions that in a pychologically, every human is in a way bisexual, which I found quite inspiring. Other than that, it is of course full of problematic statements reflecting the time it was written in.
The author is talking about social sex, not biological sex.
