For Fromm, love is learned, practiced, and sustained against the grain of modern life.

First published in 1956, The Art of Loving is Erich Fromm’s quiet demolition of the idea that love is a feeling that simply happens to us. Drawing on psychoanalysis, philosophy, and social critique, he argues that capitalism trains us to treat love as a transaction — a matter of exchange value, status, and self-optimisation — rather than an active ethical commitment. He explores romantic love, self-love, parental love, and love of humanity, insisting that none can exist without attention, responsibility, respect, and knowledge.

This Harper Colophon edition places the text firmly in its mid-century intellectual moment, when psychology still dared to ask structural questions about care, freedom, and alienation.