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It is difficult to provide a univocal definition of [[love]]. The [[Greeks ]] differentiated among [[eros]], philia, and agapè, distinctions that were picked up by [[Freud]], who distinguished sensual love from affection and from love in the more general [[sense ]] of the term. Although he leaves discussions of love to the poets, Freud refers to the polysemy of the term "love," which he judges to be well founded: [[sexual ]] and amorous relations between men and [[women]], love between [[parents ]] and [[children]], [[friendship]], [[self]]-love, the love of [[truth ]] or humanity. "We are of the opinion, then, that [[language ]] has carried out an entirely justifiable piece of unification in creating the [[word ]] 'love' with its numerous uses, and that we cannot do better than take it as the basis of our [[scientific ]] discussions and expositions as well" (1921c).

The [[concept ]] of "[[genital ]] love" has [[meaning ]] only if it is associated with the concept of the "genital [[phase]]" of [[libidinal ]] [[development]]. It would thus stand in contrast to that which characterizes the [[object ]] relations of the preceding "[[pregenital]]" phases. Genital love should not be [[understood ]] here solely as love in the [[form ]] of sexual congress, but as the type of love organized after the [[oedipal ]] phase and the [[latency ]] period, at the [[moment ]] when the [[libido ]] is sufficiently evolved to enable the organization of the [[adult ]] genital phase.

Thus, genital love is characterized by the unification, under the primacy of the genital, of all the sexual components that have not been [[repressed ]] or sublimated, and of those pregenital sexual aims that have been maintained as preliminary pleasures. This unification is prepared during the [[infantile ]] genital [[stage ]] and is "completed" only after [[puberty ]] with the development of adult [[sexuality]].

During the period of oedipal decline, a new distribution of impulse [[cathexes ]] will leave its traces throughout the sexual [[life ]] with a new distribution of inhibited or sublimated [[erotic ]] investments. In [[particular]], there is a conjunction of the sensual erotic current and the affectionate current of adolescence following their relative disjunction during the latency phase. There is a reunion of "genital [[satisfaction ]] and pregenital affection" ([[Balint]], Michael, 1947). The union of these two currents brings [[about ]] an equilibrium that is rarely static but can rather be compared to an interlacing, a [[struggle ]] (Parat, Catherine, 1996).

The [[model ]] of adult genital organization implies the [[choice ]] of a heterosexual object, which leads to the reproduction, in a couple, of what was for the [[child ]] the [[representation ]] of the couple created by his or her parents. This assumes that the sexual [[nature ]] of the [[images ]] of the parents that were internalized during the oedipal phase have been sufficiently differentiated. In this sense genital love, that is, adult genital organization, is indeed the successor of the oedipal [[complex]], and assumes further that it renounces the oedipal [[objects ]] formed during [[childhood ]] (Perron, Roger, Perron-Borelli, Michèle, 1994). Genital, or post-oedipal love, is the form of love best able to articulate the two currents—heterosexual and homosexual—of oedipal love. Positive oedipal erotic investments are reflected onto the sexual partner in the couple, while [[homosexual ]] investments will nourish, in a more or less desexualized form, [[social ]] and professional relations.

[[Michael Balint ]] (1947) emphasized the idealist nature of a concept that would [[manifest ]] no trace of [[ambivalence ]] or pregenital [[object relation]]. This type of [[ideal ]] object relation would, therefore, contain no [[oral ]] characteristics, would have no [[desire ]] to devour the object; there would be no desire to dominate or [[master ]] the object, no [[sadistic ]] traits and therefore no vestige of anality; there would be neither [[envy ]] nor [[fear ]] of the [[genital organs ]] of the [[other ]] sex, therefore no trace of the [[phallic ]] phase or [[castration ]] complex, and so on. Clearly, such love does not [[exist]]. The pregenital components cannot all be integrated and every love assumes the [[destruction ]] of the [[narcissistic ]] "shell." We are justified, then, in emphasizing the idealist nature of such a concept, even its [[normative ]] aura. This does not mean that a certain [[maturation ]] of the ego and its abilities does not take [[place ]] gradually when the genital phase of libidinal development is achieved. The [[state ]] of [[being ]] in love (David, [[Christian]], 1996) then becomes possible: it is the result of the simultaneous [[activity ]] of free sexual tendencies and inhibited tendencies and, in particular, of the union of sensuality and affection.

See also: Aberastury, Arminda, known as "La Negra"; Adolescence; [[Genital stage]]; Love; Organization; [[Partial ]] [[drive]]; Pregenital; [[Psychosexual ]] development; Puberty; [[Three ]] Essays on the [[Theory ]] of Sexuality