Fromm

Erich Fromm. The Art of Loving. New York: Bantam Books, 1956.

I. THE THEORY OF LOVE

Love as an answer to human existence

Any theory of love must begin with a theory of man, of human existence. [6]

Man is gifted with reason; he is life being aware of itself; he has awareness of himself, of his fellow man, of his past, and of the possibilities of his future. This awareness of himself as a separate entity, the awareness of his short life span, of the fact that without his will he is born and against his will he dies, that he will die before those whom he loves, or they before him, the awareness of his aloneness and separateness, of his helplessness before the forces of nature and of society, all this makes his separate, disunited existence an unbearable prison. [7]

The experience of separateness arouses anxiety; it is, indeed, the source of all anxiety. Being separate means being cut off, without any capacity to use my human powers. Hence to be separate means to be helpless, unable to grasp the world—things and people—actively; it means that the world can invade me without my ability to react. Thus, separateness is the source of intense anxiety. [7]

The deepest need of man, then, is the need to overcome his separateness, to leave the prison of his aloneness. [8]

Man—of all ages and cultures—is confronted with the solution of one and the same question: the question of how to overcome separateness, how to achieve union, how to transcend one’s individual life and find at-onement. [8]

But the more the human race emerges from these primary bonds, the more it separates itself from the natural world, the more intense becomes the need to find ways of escaping separateness. [9] [emphasis mine]

Ways of Overcoming Separateness

i. Unity by orgiastic fusion

One way of achieving this aim lies in all kinds of orgiastic states. These may have the form of auto-induced trance, sometimes with the help of drugs. [9]

ii. Unity by conformity...