The Art of Listening

(...)This, as any other books by the renowened analyst and sociologist is richly textured with insights on the human condition, on its psyche and healing. It is as valueable as any of his books and the next too reviews do a good job of a synopsis of what this book deals with. In every book or article authored by Fromm you will find an author who is compassionate, caring, with a wide breadth of knowledge and an vast depth of enquiry and sensitivity. Some have critisized Fromm for being too analytical, and putting too much emphasis on rationality and abstract conceptualizing and too little on measurable evidence, laboratory experiments, statistics and the like. But to me this seems to miss the point. Our reasoning does have limitations due to our social upbringing, our character and idiosyncrasy, our logical limitations and discrepancies vis a vis the complexity of the world, etc. But being aware of these limitations and being actively involved in examining them, evaluating them, and in a sense knowing their limitations does give us the right to make estimates and to develop hypothetical constructs that might or might not reflect reality more or less accurately. Social Science is an art, and as any art it is an imperfect endeavour. Logical positivism has been written off in the annals of history for good. For me the most important test for a theory is how well, and in what detail, and to what extent, it explains the physical, social, psychic etc. phenomena around us with some degree of internal coherency, accuracy and scope. And in this respect Fromm's ideas have, and will continue to be, exemplary, his thought as relevant in our modern neo-liberal capitalist "democracies", as in the rest of the world, as ever. He is a creative ("productive" in his own words)force to be reckoned with. This book contains his pearls of wisdom on the art of listening, on the art of therapy and on the art of living. I would heartily recommend it to anyone in the therapeutic vocations as well as to the individual who just wants to be inspired and enlightened.

This book answered my question why sometimes when slums are converted into nice neighborhoods, why those neighborhood have a tendency to become slums again (pag 68-69). Dr, Fromm explains that unless the whole individual is help to modify his personality (( his super-ego) : the way he thinks , act, feels, behaves, etc... , unless we modify all those things simultaneously, many of the hundreds of millions of dollars in aid will be almost wasted, because it must be an INTEGRAL overall program to be able to help people to succeed in life . This should be arequired book for all the presidents of third world countries, so that the international aid funds can be used more effectively, to obtain more development in their respective countries.