Difference between revisions of "Love"

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From a psychoanalytic point of view, love is the investment in, and ability to be loved by, another without experiencing this love as a subjective threat, such as that represented by the Thing (<i>das Ding</i>) which Freud described in the Project of 1895. For psychoanalysis the genesis of the love investment must be taken into consideration and the very different modalities through which it manifests itself must be identified.
+
From a psychoanalytic point of view, love is the investment in, and ability to be loved by, another without experiencing this love as a subjective threat, such as that represented by the Thing (<i>das Ding</i>) which Freud described in the Project of 1895.  
It is important to differentiate love from infatuation or being in love (<i>Verliebtheit</i>), which is associated with a pathological feeling (<i>Leidenschaft</i>): "That the state of being in love (Verliebtheit) manifests itself abnormally can be explained by the fact that other amorous states outside the analytic cure resemble abnormal rather than normal psychic phenomena" (1915a). Being in love is essentially marked by an overestimation of the love object and a devaluation of the self that resembles the condition of melancholia (1921c).
+
 
The genesis of love begins with the oral relation of the infant's mouth and the mother's breast: "The picture of the child at the mother's breast has become the model of all sexual relations" (1905d). Also, in choosing an object later in life, the child will attempt "to reestablish this lost happiness" (1905d). But this happiness, even if it is marked by this choice of a primary infantile object, must later reunite and conjoin two libidinal currents, the tender current arising from infantile cathexis and the sensual current that appears during puberty, "The man will leave his mother and father—as the Bible indicates—and will follow his wife—tenderness and sensuality are therefore reunited" (1912d). This can only occur through the loss of the infantile object choice: "The individual human must devote himself to the difficult task of separating from his parents," as Freud indicated in the twenty-first of the <i>Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis</i> (1916-1917a [1915-16]). Yet, in "On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love" (1912d), Freud recalls the difficulty of loving and the numerous splits that remain: "When they love, they do not desire, and when they desire, they cannot love."
+
For psychoanalysis the genesis of the love investment must be taken into consideration and the very different modalities through which it manifests itself must be identified.
In "Instincts and their Vicissitudes" (1915c), he examines the different splits and oppositions in which love plays a role; these are: loving/hating, loving/being loved, and loving and hating together in opposition to the state of indifference. The pair loving/hating is related to the pleasure/unpleasure polarity; the ego interjects pleasure and expels unpleasure, which is transformed into the opposition ego-pleasure/exterior world-unpleasure. Thus, hatred and the rejection of the exterior world emanate from the narcissistic ego. The pair loving/being loved originates in the reversal of an impulse into its opposite, of activity into passivity, and corresponds to the narcissism of self-love. The pair love/indifference is associated with the polarity ego/exterior world. We love the "object that dispenses pleasure" and we repeat "the original flight before the exterior world" (1926d) in the face of an object that does not dispense pleasure. In this way the intellectual economy of love is profoundly affected by these different forms of ambivalence.
+
 
 +
 
 +
It is important to differentiate love from infatuation or being in love (<i>Verliebtheit</i>), which is associated with a pathological feeling (<i>Leidenschaft</i>):  
 +
 
 +
<blockquote>"That the state of being in love (Verliebtheit) manifests itself abnormally can be explained by the fact that other amorous states outside the analytic cure resemble abnormal rather than normal psychic phenomena."<ref>1915a</ref></blockquote>
 +
 
 +
Being in love is essentially marked by an overestimation of the love object and a devaluation of the self that resembles the condition of melancholia (1921c).
 +
 
 +
The genesis of love begins with the oral relation of the infant's mouth and the mother's breast:
 +
<blockquote>"The picture of the child at the mother's breast has become the model of all sexual relations."<ref>1905d</ref></blockquote>
 +
 
 +
Also, in choosing an object later in life, the child will attempt "to reestablish this lost happiness."<ref>1905d</ref>
 +
 
 +
But this happiness, even if it is marked by this choice of a primary infantile object, must later reunite and conjoin two libidinal currents, the tender current arising from infantile cathexis and the sensual current that appears during puberty:
 +
 
 +
<blockquote>"The man will leave his mother and father—as the Bible indicates—and will follow his wife—tenderness and sensuality are therefore reunited."<ref>1912d</ref></blockquote>
 +
 
 +
This can only occur through the loss of the infantile object choice: "The individual human must devote himself to the difficult task of separating from his parents," as Freud indicated in the twenty-first of the <i>Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis</i>.<ref>1916-1917a [1915-16]</ref>
 +
 
 +
Yet, in "On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love,"<ref>1912d</ref> Freud recalls the difficulty of loving and the numerous splits that remain: "When they love, they do not desire, and when they desire, they cannot love."
 +
 
 +
In "Instincts and their Vicissitudes" (1915c), he examines the different splits and oppositions in which love plays a role; these are: loving/hating, loving/being loved, and loving and hating together in opposition to the state of indifference.  
 +
 
 +
The pair loving/hating is related to the pleasure/unpleasure polarity; the ego interjects pleasure and expels unpleasure, which is transformed into the opposition ego-pleasure/exterior world-unpleasure.  
 +
 
 +
Thus, hatred and the rejection of the exterior world emanate from the narcissistic ego.  
 +
 
 +
The pair loving/being loved originates in the reversal of an impulse into its opposite, of activity into passivity, and corresponds to the narcissism of self-love.  
 +
 
 +
The pair love/indifference is associated with the polarity ego/exterior world.  
 +
 
 +
We love the "object that dispenses pleasure" and we repeat "the original flight before the exterior world" (1926d) in the face of an object that does not dispense pleasure.  
 +
 
 +
In this way the intellectual economy of love is profoundly affected by these different forms of ambivalence.
  
 
==Definition==
 
==Definition==
LOVE (see also EXCEPTION NOT-ALL JEW CHRISTIAN)
+
 
Love in the sense Žižek understands it was first developed by Lucan in his Seminar XX. It is thus from the beginning associated with a certain 'feminine' logic of the not-all and implies a way of thinking beyond the master-signifier and its universality guaranteed by exception: 'Lacan's extensive discussion of love in Seminar XX is thus to be read in the Paulinian sense, as opposed to the dialectic of the Law and its transgression. This latter dialectic is clearly "masculine" or phallic ... Love, on the other hand, is "feminine": it involves the paradoxes of the not-All' (p. 335). Žižek associates love with St Paul, and it is a way for him to think the difference between Judaism, whose libidinal economy is still fundamentally that of the law and its transgression, and Christianity, which through forgiveness and the possibility of being born again seeks to overcome this dialectic: 'It is here that one should insist on how Lacan accomplishes the passage from Law to Love, in short. from Judaism to Christianity" (p.345). In other words, this love might be seen to testify - as we also find with drive and enunciation - to a moment that precedes and makes possible the symbolic order and its social mediation, the way in which things are never directly what they are but only stand in for something else: 'Love bears witness to the abyss of a self-relating gesture by means of which, due to the lack of an independent guarantee of the social pact. the ruler himself has to guarantee the Truth of his word" (p. 267 n. 5).
+
Love in the sense Žižek understands it was first developed by Lucan in his Seminar XX.  
 +
 
 +
It is thus from the beginning associated with a certain 'feminine' logic of the not-all and implies a way of thinking beyond the master-signifier and its universality guaranteed by exception:  
 +
 
 +
<blockquote>"Lacan's extensive discussion of love in Seminar XX is thus to be read in the Paulinian sense, as opposed to the dialectic of the Law and its transgression. This latter dialectic is clearly "masculine" or phallic ... Love, on the other hand, is "feminine": it involves the paradoxes of the not-All."<ref>p. 335</ref></blockquote>
 +
 
 +
Žižek associates love with St Paul, and it is a way for him to think the difference between Judaism, whose libidinal economy is still fundamentally that of the law and its transgression, and Christianity, which through forgiveness and the possibility of being born again seeks to overcome this dialectic:  
 +
 
 +
<blockquote>"It is here that one should insist on how Lacan accomplishes the passage from Law to Love, in short, from Judaism to Christianity."<ref>p.345</ref></blockquote>
 +
 
 +
In other words, this love might be seen to testify - as we also find with drive and enunciation - to a moment that precedes and makes possible the symbolic order and its social mediation, the way in which things are never directly what they are but only stand in for something else:  
 +
 
 +
<blockquote>'Love bears witness to the abyss of a self-relating gesture by means of which, due to the lack of an independent guarantee of the social pact. the ruler himself has to guarantee the Truth of his word"<ref>p. 267 n. 5</ref></blockquote>
  
 
Lacan conceives of love as a narcissistic misrecognition which obscures the truth of desire.
 
Lacan conceives of love as a narcissistic misrecognition which obscures the truth of desire.
 +
 +
==Quotes==
 +
"Love means giving something you don't have to someone who doesn't want it."<ref></ref>
  
 
==See Also==
 
==See Also==
 +
(see also EXCEPTION NOT-ALL JEW CHRISTIAN)
 
* [[Ambivalence]]
 
* [[Ambivalence]]
 
* [[Counter-transference]]
 
* [[Counter-transference]]

Revision as of 04:08, 21 June 2006

From a psychoanalytic point of view, love is the investment in, and ability to be loved by, another without experiencing this love as a subjective threat, such as that represented by the Thing (das Ding) which Freud described in the Project of 1895.

For psychoanalysis the genesis of the love investment must be taken into consideration and the very different modalities through which it manifests itself must be identified.


It is important to differentiate love from infatuation or being in love (Verliebtheit), which is associated with a pathological feeling (Leidenschaft):

"That the state of being in love (Verliebtheit) manifests itself abnormally can be explained by the fact that other amorous states outside the analytic cure resemble abnormal rather than normal psychic phenomena."[1]

Being in love is essentially marked by an overestimation of the love object and a devaluation of the self that resembles the condition of melancholia (1921c).

The genesis of love begins with the oral relation of the infant's mouth and the mother's breast:

"The picture of the child at the mother's breast has become the model of all sexual relations."[2]

Also, in choosing an object later in life, the child will attempt "to reestablish this lost happiness."[3]

But this happiness, even if it is marked by this choice of a primary infantile object, must later reunite and conjoin two libidinal currents, the tender current arising from infantile cathexis and the sensual current that appears during puberty:

"The man will leave his mother and father—as the Bible indicates—and will follow his wife—tenderness and sensuality are therefore reunited."[4]

This can only occur through the loss of the infantile object choice: "The individual human must devote himself to the difficult task of separating from his parents," as Freud indicated in the twenty-first of the Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis.[5]

Yet, in "On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love,"[6] Freud recalls the difficulty of loving and the numerous splits that remain: "When they love, they do not desire, and when they desire, they cannot love."

In "Instincts and their Vicissitudes" (1915c), he examines the different splits and oppositions in which love plays a role; these are: loving/hating, loving/being loved, and loving and hating together in opposition to the state of indifference.

The pair loving/hating is related to the pleasure/unpleasure polarity; the ego interjects pleasure and expels unpleasure, which is transformed into the opposition ego-pleasure/exterior world-unpleasure.

Thus, hatred and the rejection of the exterior world emanate from the narcissistic ego.

The pair loving/being loved originates in the reversal of an impulse into its opposite, of activity into passivity, and corresponds to the narcissism of self-love.

The pair love/indifference is associated with the polarity ego/exterior world.

We love the "object that dispenses pleasure" and we repeat "the original flight before the exterior world" (1926d) in the face of an object that does not dispense pleasure.

In this way the intellectual economy of love is profoundly affected by these different forms of ambivalence.

Definition

Love in the sense Žižek understands it was first developed by Lucan in his Seminar XX.

It is thus from the beginning associated with a certain 'feminine' logic of the not-all and implies a way of thinking beyond the master-signifier and its universality guaranteed by exception:

"Lacan's extensive discussion of love in Seminar XX is thus to be read in the Paulinian sense, as opposed to the dialectic of the Law and its transgression. This latter dialectic is clearly "masculine" or phallic ... Love, on the other hand, is "feminine": it involves the paradoxes of the not-All."[7]

Žižek associates love with St Paul, and it is a way for him to think the difference between Judaism, whose libidinal economy is still fundamentally that of the law and its transgression, and Christianity, which through forgiveness and the possibility of being born again seeks to overcome this dialectic:

"It is here that one should insist on how Lacan accomplishes the passage from Law to Love, in short, from Judaism to Christianity."[8]

In other words, this love might be seen to testify - as we also find with drive and enunciation - to a moment that precedes and makes possible the symbolic order and its social mediation, the way in which things are never directly what they are but only stand in for something else:

'Love bears witness to the abyss of a self-relating gesture by means of which, due to the lack of an independent guarantee of the social pact. the ruler himself has to guarantee the Truth of his word"[9]

Lacan conceives of love as a narcissistic misrecognition which obscures the truth of desire.

Quotes

"Love means giving something you don't have to someone who doesn't want it."Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; refs with no name must have content

See Also

(see also EXCEPTION NOT-ALL JEW CHRISTIAN)

References

  1. 1915a
  2. 1905d
  3. 1905d
  4. 1912d
  5. 1916-1917a [1915-16]
  6. 1912d
  7. p. 335
  8. p.345
  9. p. 267 n. 5
  1. Freud, Sigmund. (1905d). Three essays on the theory of sexuality. SE, 7: 123-243.
  2. ——. (1912d). On the universal tendency to debasement in the sphere of love. SE, 11: 177-190.
  3. ——. (1915a). Observations on transference-love: technique of psycho-analysis. SE, 12: 157-171.
  4. ——. (1921c). Group psychology and the analysis of the ego. SE, 18: 65-143.
  5. ——. (1926d). Inhibitions, symptoms and anxiety. SE, 20: 75-172.