...in spite of the deep-seated craving for love, almost everything else is considered to be more important than love: success, prestige, money, power-almost all our energy is used for the learning of how to achieve these aims, and almost none to learn the art of loving. Could it be that only those things are considered worthy of being learned with which one can earn money or prestige, and that love, which "only" profits the soul, but is profitless in the modern sense, is a luxury we have no right to spend energy on?

). He observed that embracing our freedom of will was healthy whereas escaping freedom through the use of escape mechanisms was the root of psychological conflicts. Drawing from his knowledge of the Torah Fromm pointed to the story of Jonah who did not wish to save the residents of Nineveh from the consequences of their sin as demonstrative of his belief that the qualities of care and responsibility are generally absent from most human relationships.

Erich SeligmannFromm (March 23 1900 – March 18 1980) was a German social psychologist psychoanalyst sociologist humanistic philosopher and democratic socialist.