Life Itself Is an Art

A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year

Erich Fromm (1900-1980) is known to most readers as the author of the international bestseller The Art of Loving (1956). What may be less widely known is that Fromm was a social psychoanalyst whose psychoanalytic theories, developed around a humanistic concept of man and society, have had a profound impact on many fields and disciplines: on social life and societal organization, on politics, on religion, on psychotherapy and, last but not least, on the practice of mindfulness.

Rainer Funk was Erich Fromm's last assistant. He wrote his dissertation about Fromm, was designated by Fromm's last will to be his sole literary executor, and is the editor of Fromm's writings. From his very intimate knowledge of Fromm's life and ideas, and his access to an archive that includes 6,000 letters, Funk introduces Fromm's central concepts and examines them in relation to Fromm's lived experiences and to his idea that life itself is an art.

The question of "the art of living" runs through all of the chapters, from the Introduction, in which Funk describes meeting Fromm for the first time in 1972, to the last chapter, in which Funk reflects on the impact of Fromm's social-psychoanalytic writings and his efforts to live well.

Autorentext

Rainer Funk is Director of the Erich Fromm Institute Tuebingen, Co-Director of the Erich Fromm Study Center at the International Psychoanalytic University (IPU) in Berlin, and a practicing psychoanalyst based in Tuebingen, Germany. He is Erich Fromm's sole Literary Executor and among his publications are the 10-volume German edition of Erich Fromm Collected Works (1980 and 1981; expanded to 12-volumes in 1999).

Inhalt

List of Figures
Preface
Introduction: Direct Encounter
Face to Face
Letting Someone Sense: "This is You"
An Exhilarating Experience
Encountering the Stranger
The Art of **Living as Direct Encounter
1 Roads to the Unconscious
Fromm's Road to Psychoanalysis
The Unconscious as Repressed
The Power of Rationalization
Indicators of the Unconscious
Defensive Strategies against Becoming Conscious of the Unconscious
Understanding the Unconscious
The Dream as a Road to the Unconscious
Free Association as a Road to the Unconscious
Parapraxis as a Road to the Unconscious
Transference as a Road to the Unconscious
2 The Individual as a Social Being
Erich Fromm - An Only Child Becomes a Psychoanalyst of Society
What Makes a Father Beat His Children?
The Individual as Socialized Being
The Meaning of Character Formations
Society within the Individual - the Social Character
3 How Man Succeeds
Love in the Life of Erich Fromm
What is Good for Man
The Primary Tendency to Grow
The Growth Orientation of One's Own Powers
Conceptual Approaches
The Productive Orientation
The Capacity for Growth at the Crossroads
4 How Society Succeeds at the Expense of Man
Erich Fromm's Suffering in Society
The Authoritarian Character - at the Expense of Autonomy
The Marketing Orientation - at the Expense of a Sense of Identity
The Narcissistic Character - at the Expense of Interest in the Other
The Ego Orientation - at the Expense of Ego Strength
5 Ways toward Direct Encounter
Fromm's Guides on the Way toward Direct Encounter
Preconditions for an Encounter with One's Own Self
Capacity for Critique and Readiness for Dis-Illusionment
Preparatory Exercises
Self-Analysis as a Way of Encounter
Encounters and Their Effects

Bibliography
Index