Midweek pick-me-up: The year of better listening—humanistic philosopher and psychologist Erich Fromm's 6 rules of listening & unselfish understanding

NOTE: This newsletter might be cut short by your email program. [View it in full](.  If a friend forwarded it to you and you'd like your very own newsletter, [subscribe here]( — it's free.  Need to modify your subscription? You can [change your email address]( or [unsubscribe](. [Brain Pickings]( [Welcome] Hello, {NAME}! This is the Brain Pickings midweek pick-me-up: Once a week, I plunge into my 13-year archive and choose something worth resurfacing and resavoring as timeless nourishment for heart, mind, and spirit. (If you don't yet subscribe to the standard Sunday newsletter of new pieces published each week, you can sign up [here]( – it's free.) If you missed the annual review of the best of Brain Pickings 2019, you can catch up [right here]( if you missed the two annual specials of the year's loveliest children's books and overall favorite books, they are [here]( and [here](. And if you find any value and joy in my labor of love, please consider supporting it with a [donation]( – over these thirteen years, I have spent tens of thousands of hours and tremendous resources on Brain Pickings, and every little bit of support helps keep it going. If you already donate: THANK YOU. [FROM THE ARCHIVE | Erich Fromm’s 6 Rules of Listening: The Great Humanistic Philosopher and Psychologist on the Art of Unselfish Understanding]( [fromm_artoflistening.jpg?fit=320%2C495]( “An experience makes its appearance only when it is being said,” wrote Hannah Arendt in reflecting on [how language confers reality upon existence](. “And unless it is said it is, so to speak, non-existent.” But if an experience is spoken yet unheard, half of its reality is severed and a certain essential harmony is breached. The great physicist David Bohm knew this: “If we are to live in harmony with ourselves and with nature,” he wrote in his excellent and timely treatise on [the paradox of communication]( “we need to be able to communicate freely in a creative movement in which no one permanently holds to or otherwise defends his own ideas.” How to do that is what the influential humanistic philosopher and psychologist Erich Fromm (March 23, 1900–March 18, 1980) explored in a 1974 seminar in Switzerland, the 400-page transcript of which was eventually adapted into the posthumously published [The Art of Listening]( ([public library](. [erichfromm_cosmos.jpg?resize=680%2C873] Erich Fromm Listening, Fromm argues, is “is an art like the understanding of poetry” and, like any art, has its own rules and norms. Drawing on his half-century practice as a therapist, Fromm offers six such guidelines for mastering the art of unselfish understanding: - The basic rule for practicing this art is the complete concentration of the listener. - Nothing of importance must be on his mind, he must be optimally free from anxiety as well as from greed. - He must possess a freely-working imagination which is sufficiently concrete to be expressed in words. - He must be endowed with a capacity for empathy with another person and strong enough to feel the experience of the other as if it were his own. - The condition for such empathy is a crucial facet of the capacity for love. To understand another means to love him — not in the erotic sense but in the sense of reaching out to him and of overcoming the fear of losing oneself. - Understanding and loving are inseparable. If they are separate, it is a cerebral process and the door to essential understanding remains closed. In the remainder of the [The Art of Listening]( Fromm goes on to detail the techniques, dynamics, and mindsets that make for an optimal listening relationship, in therapy and in life. Complement it with Ursula K. Le Guin on [the magic of real human communication]( and Alain de Botton on [what makes a good communicator]( then revisit Fromm on [the art of living]( [the art of loving]( [how to transcend the common laziness of optimism and pessimism]( and [the key to a sane society](. [Forward to a friend]( Online]( [Like on Facebook]( donating=loving In 2019, the 13th year of Brain Pickings, I poured tremendous time, thought, love, and resources into this labor of love, which remains free and is made possible by patronage. If you found any joy and solace here this year, please consider supporting it with a donation. And if you already donate, from the bottom of my heart: THANK YOU. monthly donation You can become a Sustaining Patron with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a Brooklyn lunch.  one-time donation Or you can become a Spontaneous Supporter with a one-time donation in any amount. [Start Now](  [Give Now]( RELATED READING: [Alain de Botton on What Makes a Good Communicator and the Difficult Art of Listening in Intimate Relationships]( * * * [An Illustrated Ode to Attentiveness and the Art of Listening as a Wellspring of Self-Understanding, Empathy for Others, and Reverence for the Loveliness of Life]( * * * [How to Disappear: The Art of Listening to Silence in a Noisy World]( [---] You're receiving this email because you subscribed on Brain Pickings. This weekly newsletter comes out each Wednesday and offers a highlight from the Brain Pickings archives for a midweek pick-me-up. Brain Pickings NOT A MAILING ADDRESS 159 Pioneer StreetBrooklyn, NY 11231 [Add us to your address book]( [unsubscribe from this list](   [update subscription preferences](