Armin A. Zadeh - The Forgotten Art of Love: What Love Means and Why It Matters

Praise for The Forgotten Art of Love

We know that love is a many-splendored thing, but what is this thing called love? The Forgotten Art of Love provides maps to greater understanding as well as ways better to appreciate some of the mysteries on the wide spectrum of what love is and what it isnt, along with insights on how to love. Armin Zadeh takes us beyond Eric Fromms seminal The Art of Loving into a broader historical and contemporary understanding of what we really mean and may indeed be talking about when we talk about love.

Michael Krasny, host of Forum with Michael Krasny and author of Spiritual Envy

In The Forgotten Art of Love physician Armin Zadeh reminds us in eloquent and well-reasoned prose just how important and difficult healthy loving is. With a scientists critical mind and an artists careful eye, he unpacks the different types of love we all have the capacity to feel and in so doing teaches us how to feel them all. An inspiring book that couldnt be more timely!

Alex Lickerman, MD, author of The Undefeated Mind

Wise, thoughtful, and beautifully written, The Forgotten Art of Love is a book you will not soon forget.

Daniel Gilbert, PhD, professor, Harvard University, and author of Stumbling on Happiness

If youre looking for a clearer understanding of the whys behind love as it applies to sex, religion, romance, society, and ourselves take a deep dive into this enlightening philosophical and scientific exploration of all that love invites into our world. The Forgotten Art of Love guides you on a vast and fascinating mental trip in a space often reserved only for our hearts. Armin Zadeh is likely to change the way you think and feel about love in the process.

Scott Stabile, author of Big Love: The Power of Living with a Wide-Open Heart

In a thought-provoking, accessible, wide-ranging, and ultimately satisfying analysis, Armin Zadeh addresses one of the greatest mysteries of life what is love? Even more importantly, he describes how we can improve our capacity to love and how we can teach our children of its importance.

Peter Rabins, MD, MPH, professor, Johns Hopkins University, and author of The Why of Things

Weaving together the insights from the ancient traditions and the latest neuroscience, The Forgotten Art of Love will inspire you to find the sublime beauty in everyday acts of love. This book will strengthen the many kinds of love that make our social lives so richly complex and meaningful.

Dacher Keltner, professor of psychology, UC Berkeley, and author of The Power Paradox and Born to Be Good

Copyright 2017 by Armin A. Zadeh

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, or other without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Text design by Tona Pearce Myers

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Zadeh, Armin A., author.

Title: The forgotten art of love : what love means and why it matters / Armin A. Zadeh.

Description: Novato, California : New World Library, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017022096 (print) | LCCN 2017035513 (ebook) | ISBN 9781608684885 (Ebook) | ISBN 9781608684878 (alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Love.

Classification: LCC BF575.L8 (ebook) | LCC BF575.L8 Z23 2017 (print) | DDC 177/.7dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017022096

First printing, November 2017

ISBN 978-1-60868-487-8

Ebook ISBN 978-1-60868-488-5

Printed in Canada on 100% postconsumer-waste recycled paper

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Contents

L ove is a fundamental concern for all of us. Indeed, most people would list love as the most important element in a happy life. Yet our knowledge of how love evolves, how we can have love, and how it helps us attain happiness is surprisingly scant. For most aspects of life that are important to us, such as our hobbies or job, we typically spend many years training and mastering skills. People may spend weeks and months mastering a video game that may be of little relevance to the practicalities of life.

If love is so vital to us, why dont we invest similar effort to bring it into our lives and keep it strong? First, many believe that love is something we cannot control. We may think that we just have to be lucky, and love will come to us. I challenge this view and argue that anybody can find love. Another problem particularly in the English language is that the word love is not clearly defined: it has different meanings in different contexts. We may say, I love ice cream, but we probably dont mean the same thing as when we say, I love my children. We may also whisper, I love you, to somebody on whom we have an enormous crush, but we may feel something quite different when we say the same to an old friend. Do we really mean love when we try to love our neighbors? Are these different loves? Is there a unifying concept of love?

I did not have answers to these questions thirty years ago, when a book on my parents bookshelf grabbed my attention. Its title was The Art of Loving, by Erich Fromm, first published in the 1950s. As a young adult, I hoped this was a new version of the Kama Sutra, and I eagerly pulled the book off the shelf. After overcoming my disappointment at finding a rather sober analysis of the phenomenon of love instead of practical instructions on lovemaking, I found myself drawn into the authors arguments. I read for hours in growing fascination.

Fromm described aspects of love that rang true to me but at the same time seemed contrary to the general perception of love. Fromms concepts seemed helpful in addressing many problems in human relationships and the entire human condition. At the time, I did not know that I was holding an international bestseller that has helped thousands of people develop a fuller understanding of love. In a speech in London in December 1964, just days before he received the Nobel Peace Prize, Martin Luther

While I found Fromms understanding of love compelling, I also felt that he did not get it entirely right. Several aspects of his descriptions and arguments struck me as incorrect, or at least incomplete. Furthermore, Fromm wrote his book in the context of the field of psychology in the 1950s, influenced by personal and widely prevalent religious views on the purpose of human existence. The book was written before the social revolution in the 1960s and before we gained vast insights into human biology in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. I discussed Fromm extensively with my mother, a psychologist, and my father, a forensic psychiatrist, but I did not get satisfying answers to my questions.