Love and the Person: A Theory of the Couple Relationship (Sophia-Analysis Book 3)

This volume is a collection of a series of lessons held for the students of the Sophia University of Rome, as a commentary on Erich Fromm’s book The Art of Loving, whose English edition has sold over 2,000,000 copies worldwide.

Besides testifying to the validity of Fromm’s work, this success indicates the enormous need there is to have a clearer idea of what has become one of the greatest problems for human existence: the ability to love.
A. Mercurio was inspired by Fromm’s ideas to present his own thought on this subject, referring especially to love within the couple relationship. His view is in part the same as Fromm’s, and in part it differs from it.
He is particularly indebted to Fromm for two fundamental concepts, which are at the basis of his own thought:

- The first is that love has nothing to do with symbiotic union. Nevertheless, in this particular moment in human history, the deep need to be symbiotically united with the mother, a need that has been traumatically frustrated or exaggerated during the childhoods of our current generations, has come forth as a dominant model within the couple. This has meant that the Oedipal motivations of the past, or purely economic or social ones, have been set aside.

It happens, however, that no partner can accept to be their partner’s mother for long – either good or bad according to the timing and the specific cases involved. This explains why there is such grave instability within current couple relationships, and why it seems so impossible to love and be loved as everyone would wish.

As a solution to this, Mercurio proposes that the need for symbiotic union be consciously and dialectically experienced within the couple, which for this reason must be open and not closed in a reciprocal possession of the other. In this way it could be truly possible to move from one stage to the next within the relationship, in other words, to go from the symbiotic stage to one that is more authentic and mature.

- A second concept that Mercurio owes to Fromm is that love is an active power, not a passive one. It is action and not passion.

This is a highly stimulating and exciting concept, because it brings humanity back to its true nature: that of being a creator and not simply a leaf blown about by the wind (see the Greek Tragedies).

In this book Mercurio explains how human beings can become Persons at the highest level only if they use all the creative power that love contains.
But for this to happen, what is impossible must become possible.

Human beings must go beyond the phase of love as possession and step into the phase of love as a gift. This does not mean denying there is a need to possess the other, but rather means we must go dialectically beyond it once it has been experienced.

Possession of the other gives us security, but it does not allow for joy. If we don’t overcome the need to possess the other, to possess the other’s life, hatred is generated, and hatred sets off destructiveness both within the family and within society.
Only love as a gift that goes beyond possession can offer both security and joy, one’s own personal self-actualization as well as that of one’s partner. It helps go beyond symbiotic union and move towards the Person’s freedom. It builds a new Oedipal experience that creates better relationships between parents and children, individuals and society.

Love, therefore, is no longer simply the only effective answer to the problem of aloneness, as Fromm says, but it becomes a life purpose, to create a world of Persons who can experience joy because they have learned to love and to be loved by dialectically passing through all their psychological needs and by actualizing all the creative potential of their existential dimension.