The Art of Loving - Erich Fromm Page 0,37
end the tormenting suspense of affective neutrality.
Other frequent forms of irrational love are described in the following paragraphs, without going into an analysis of the specific factors in childhood development which are at their roots:
A form of pseudo-love which is not infrequent and is often experienced (and more often described in moving pictures and novels) as the “great love” is idolatrous love. If a person has not reached the level where he has a sense of identity, of I-ness, rooted in the productive unfolding of his own powers, he tends to “idolize” the loved person. He is alienated from his own powers and projects them into the loved person, who is worshiped as the summum bonum, the bearer of all love, all light, all bliss. In this process he deprives himself of all sense of strength, loses himself in the loved one instead of finding himself. Since usually no person can, in the long run, live up to the expectations of her (or his) idolatrous worshiper, disappointment is bound to occur, and as a remedy a new idol is sought for, sometimes in an unending circle. What is characteristic for this type of idolatrous love is, at the beginning, the intensity and suddenness of the love experience. This idolatrous love is often described as the true, great love; but while it is meant to portray the intensity and depth of love, it only demonstrates the hunger and despair of the idolator. Needless to say it is not rare that two persons find each other in a mutual idolatry which, sometimes, in extreme cases, represents the picture of a folie à deux.
Another form of pseudo-love is what may be called “sentimental love.” Its essence lies in the fact that love is experienced only in phantasy and not in the here—and—now relationship to another person who is real. The most widespread form of this type of love is that to be found in the vicarious love satisfaction experienced by the consumer of screen pictures, magazine love stories and love songs. All the unfulfilled desires for love, union, and closeness find their satisfaction in the consumption of these products. A man and a woman who in relation to their spouses are incapable of ever penetrating the wall of separateness, are moved to tears when they participate in the happy or unhappy love story of the couple on the screen. For many couples, seeing these stories on the screen is the only occasion on which they experience love—not for each other, but together, as spectators of other people’s “love.” As long as love is a daydream, they can participate; as soon as it comes down to the reality of the relationship between two real people—they are frozen.
Another aspect of sentimental love is the abstractification of love in terms of time. A couple may be deeply moved by memories of their past love, although when this past was present no love was experienced—or the phantasies of their future love. How many engaged or newly married couples dream of their bliss of love to take place in the future, while at the very moment at which they live they are already beginning to be bored with each other? This tendency coincides with a general attitude characteristic of modern man. He lives in the past or in the future, but not in the present. He remembers sentimentally his childhood and his mother—or he makes happy plans for the future. Whether love is experienced vicariously by participating in the fictitious experiences of others, or whether it is shifted away from the present to the past or the future, this abstractified and alienated form of love serves as an opiate which alleviates the pain of reality, the aloneness and separateness of the individual.
Still another form of neurotic love lies in the use of projective mechanisms for the purpose of avoiding one’s own problems, and being concerned with the defects and frailties of the “loved” person instead. Individuals behave in this respect very much as groups, nations or religions do. They have a fine appreciation for even the minor shortcomings of the other person, and go blissfully ahead ignoring their own—always busy trying to accuse or to reform the other person. If two people both do it—as is so often the case—the relationship of love becomes transformed into one of mutual projection. If I am domineering or indecisive, or greedy, I accuse my partner of it, and depending on my character, I either want to cure him or to punish