The phenomenon of love. The phenomenon of love in existential psychology and philosophy

The concept of "love" is one of the few words that express an almost absolute abstraction (along with "truth", "god", etc.). The fact that people put different meanings into the concept of "love" is beyond doubt. However, "individual" love has the right to exist, just as various psychophysical substances called "man" have the right to life. There is hardly a person in years who claims that he never loved and never even fell in love. Many people want to love, but everyone wants to be loved themselves. Throughout his life, the average person has several milestones that delimit himself into "before" and "after meeting" with this person, with love, with fate, with life and death. Love, no matter what is hidden behind it, is a significant event, state, process for people included in its field. According to the descriptions of eyewitnesses and participants, interested and rejecting, love for a person brings an impossible in another place and time, the possibility of both endless bliss and happiness, and inexhaustible melancholy, inexorable pain and indefatigable torment. A person seeks love and runs away from it at the same time. In real life, love is a litmus test of the essential qualities of a person. Undoubtedly, each person is both born and dies in his own way. Physical birth and death are the "beginning" and "end", the most important in our life. Roughly generalizing, we can say that life is a refraction of spatio-temporal "beginnings" and "ends" in its dynamic interpenetration and, finally, transformed from energetically divergent (opposite, divergent) into the unity of life-giving and death-bearing units of the world order. The very course of life at certain moments reflects its dual, contradictory essence. A series of small elections, which are also energetically charged poles of "beginning" and "end", are replaced by important elections, which are more reminiscent of the struggle between "life" and "death". One of these key self-expressions of life is “love”. What kind of person, such are his choices, his big and small “beginnings” and “ends”. So, apparently, love reveals to a person his essence, which distinguishes him from others. Each person loves in his own way, and perhaps it is the ability to love that makes a person a person and a person different from other people. Pierre de Chardin, in The Phenomenon of Man, asks: "When do those who love each other so completely master themselves, if not when they are lost in each other?" Through love man opens and closes, conquers and is defeated by life, ascends and falls, becomes free and a slave (liberated and enslaved), revives and kills.

Psychology has long been interested in "love", do not count the pages devoted to love, but this has not ceased to be a mystery. Love is one, but there are thousands of fakes for it. Love remains a revelation for every person today, as it was thousands of years ago. Even in the ancient Indian treatise "Peach Branch" the emergence of love was described as follows:

“There are three sources of human attraction: soul, mind and body. Attractions of souls breed friendship. The inclinations of the mind breed respect. The desires of the body give rise to desire. The union of the three drives produces love."

In these metaphorical words, with all their naive schematism, the image of almost ideal love shines through, completely captivating a person. Such an all-consuming love is apparently not often encountered: other, simpler types of love reign in the world.

In ancient Greek, the following terms were used to define various manifestations and forms of love: eros - spontaneous, passionate, irrational love-obsession, striving for complete physical possession; philia - love-friendship, due to social ties and personal choice, rational and amenable to consciousness control; storge - calm, reliable love-tenderness, especially family. And, finally, agape - selfless, sacrificial love, it is associated with complete self-giving, the dissolution of the lover in caring for the beloved.

Myths and fairy tales of various times and peoples speak about the universality, archetypical nature of the theme of love. Is it because love is the strongest need of the human soul. This is precisely what the myth of Cupid and Psyche told by Apuleius * speaks of.

* Quoted. Cited from: Florenskaya T. A. Dialogue in practical psychology. M., 1991.

“One king had three daughters. The youngest was the most beautiful of all, her name was Psyche. The fame of her beauty flew all over the earth, and many came only to admire her, but Psyche suffered from the fact that she was only admired: she wanted love. Psyche's father, according to the custom of the time, turned to the oracle for advice, and the oracle replied that Psyche, dressed in burial clothes, should be taken to a secluded place to marry the monster. The unfortunate father fulfilled the will of the oracle. Left alone, Psyche felt a gust of wind that carried her to a wonderful palace, where she became the wife of an invisible husband. The mysterious husband of Psyche took from her a promise that she would not inquire who he was, would not strive to see his face - otherwise they would face separation, many troubles and ordeals. But the evil sisters, burning with envy, persuaded the gullible Psyche to see her husband when he fell asleep. At night, burning with curiosity, Psyche lit a lamp and, seeing her husband, recognized him as the god of love - Cupid. Struck by the beauty of his face, Psyche admired Cupid - and then a drop of hot oil from the lamp fell on his shoulder, and Cupid woke up in pain. Insulted, he flew away, and the abandoned Psyche went across the earth to look for her lover. After long ordeals, Psyche found herself under the same roof with Cupid, but she could not see him. Cupid's mother - Venus - forced her to do impossible work; only thanks to the miraculous help of Psyche did they cope with her tasks. When Cupid recovered from a burn, he begged Zeus to allow him to marry Psyche: seeing their love and the exploits of Psyche in the name of love, Zeus agreed to their marriage. Psyche received immortality and was ranked among the host of the gods. Such is the parable of the god of love and the soul of man.

Translated from the Greek "psyche" means "soul". For the psychology of love, the myth of Cupid (love) and Psyche (soul) is of great importance. The soul, personified in the image of Psyche, strives for love, cannot resist it. Cupid flew in (passion, because in Roman mythology the winged Cupid (aka Cupid) is the god of passion) and carried away Psyche (passion seized the soul, picked it up and carried it away.). But it's not love yet. At the same time, passion, like love, is invisible to the external eye (not subject to rational dissection). Being turned into an object of curious peeping hurts her, and, like Cupid flying away from Psyche, she leaves the one who explores her. Further, Psyche (soul) goes in search of Cupid (love). At the same time, Psyche (soul) has to work hard to find Cupid (love). True love arises when the soul learns to work. The soul that has endured a lot, shown steadfastness, learned to work, finds love. Psyche (soul) and Cupid (love) unite. The gods have mercy! Moreover, such a soul, filled with love, becomes immortal.

This myth has a small continuation, which is rarely given. Cupid and Psyche had a daughter, and they named her Pleasure. Comments, as they say, are unnecessary.

Twenty-four centuries ago, Plato created the first philosophy of love in human culture; this was a very big step forward in the understanding of human love, and later - the source for most love theories.

Love for Plato is a dual feeling, it combines the opposite sides of human nature. It lives in people's craving for beauty - and the feeling of something missing, flawed, the desire to make up for what a person does not have. Eros is two-faced, says Plato, he brings a person both benefit and harm, gives him evil and good. Love is hidden in the very nature of man and is needed in order to heal the flaws of this nature, to compensate for them.

One of the foundations of Plato's love theory is his doctrine of the winged nature of the soul. For the idealist Plato, man consists of an immortal soul and a mortal body. The human soul is a small particle of the “universal soul”, and at first it soars in the “beyond-heavenly region”, over which the “essence”, “truth” is poured - the great beginning of the whole world.

The basis of all types of human love, as it were, the deepest axis of its feelings, is the attitude towards another person as towards oneself: a state of mind when everything in it is as dear to the subconscious as he is.

Modern concepts that explain the mechanisms of the emergence of love take physiological attraction as the starting point. Romantic love is interpreted as a strong excitement, which can be the result of anything, but often coexists with danger, death, fear. The tendency to interpret may be greater than the excitement itself. Romantic love is fickle and unstable, as 1) the causes of excitement in everyday situations quickly disappear; 2) associated with the constant experience of strong (both positive and negative) emotions, from which they quickly get tired; 3) is focused on a stable idealization of a partner, in which a real person becomes a phantom. A statistically normal outcome of family relationships built on romantic love is disintegration.

In love, in addition to emotional interpretation, the level of self-acceptance is important. In favorable situations, the level of self-acceptance rises, in decay, it decreases.

An important source of the formation of the image of love in a person is the experience gained in the parental home, the influence of the behavior of the father and mother, since the image of love is not limited to ideas about how to behave during sexual intercourse, but is largely determined by the learned way of communicating in life together with others. people. A person who grew up in an atmosphere of authoritarianism and despotism will seek the sexual precisely with these traumatic traits. On the contrary, excessive guardianship of parents will form the future infantile man and woman.

Attempts to build theoretical models of love are distinguished by a claim to greater globality. And yet such cases are known. The differences between the models of love are based on the evaluation parameter: optimism-pessimism. The pessimistic model postulates the weakness and imperfection of man, while the optimistic model postulates the constructive power of love.

The pessimistic model was proposed by L. Kasler. He identifies three reasons that make a person fall in love: 1) the need for recognition; 2) satisfaction of sexual needs; 3) conformist reaction (so accepted). According to Kasler, love is an alloy of a set of emotions, among which the fear of losing the source of satisfaction of one's needs plays a leading role. Being in love, constructed by the constant fear of losing him, makes a person unfree, dependent and interferes with personal development. He connects the positive emotional state of a lover with a person's gratitude for satisfying his needs. Consequently, L. Kasler concludes, a free person does not experience love.

The optimistic model of love was proposed by A. Maslow. According to this model, love is characterized by the removal of anxiety, a sense of complete security and psychological comfort, satisfaction with the psychological and sexual side of relationships, which grows over the years, and the interest of loving people in each other is constantly increasing. During their life together, the partners get to know each other well, the real assessment of the spouse is combined with his complete acceptance. Maslow associates the constructive power of love with the connection of the sexual sphere with the emotional, which contributes to the fidelity of partners and the maintenance of equal relations.

J. S. Kon* gives a typology of love by D. A. Lee, the experimental substantiation of which was carried out by K. Hendrik:

* Kon I.S. Introduction to sexology. M., 1989.

1. eros - passionate love-hobby;

2. ludus - hedonistic love game with betrayals;

3. storge - love-friendship;

4. mania - love-obsession with uncertainty and dependence;

6. agape - selfless love-self-giving.

L. Ya. Gozman gives a scheme for characterizing dyadic relations according to T. Kemper*. The system-forming factors are power and status.

* Gozman L. Ya. Psychology of emotional relations. M., 1987.

Power (P) is interpreted as the ability to get someone to do something. Status (S) is understood as the desire of the individual to meet the requirements of the partner through positive emotional relationships.

In these coordinates, the following options are possible:

Scheme 1. Variant of parent-child relationship. The parent (1) has a lot of power, and the child (2) has a high status.

Scheme 2. A variant of romantic love. Individuals have great (equal) power over each other and have a high status.

Scheme 3. Variant of love-worship. An individual (2) has no power over another (1). but the status of the latter in the eyes of the former is inaccessible.

Scheme 4. Change in the dyad. Partner 1 has a high status and power over 2, which has lost its real status.

Scheme 5. Variant of unrequited love. Partner 1 has a high status in the eyes of the other (2) and real power over him. 2 has nothing.

E. Fromm distinguishes 5 types of love: brotherly, maternal, erotic, love for oneself and love for God. He highlights in love: care, responsibility, respect for each other, knowledge of the characteristics of the other, an indispensable feeling of pleasure and joy for love.

R. Hatiss highlights in love respect, positive feelings for a partner, erotic feelings, the need for positive feelings of a partner, a sense of intimacy and intimacy. He also includes here the feeling of hostility, which stems from too short a distance between partners and emotional closeness.

According to Z. Rubin, love contains affection, care and intimacy.

"Individual" love has the right to exist, just as various psychophysical substances called "man" have the right to life. Of particular note is such a feature of love as its universality: each person finds his own love, and each is or will eventually become an object of love. The reason for this is simple: love is the main and accessible to everyone way of self-affirmation and rooting in life, which without love is incomplete and incomplete. A rarity is a man in years who claims that he never loved or even fell in love with anyone. Many people want to love, but everyone wants to be loved themselves. Throughout his life, the average person has several milestones that delimit himself into "before" and "after meeting" with this person, with love, with fate, with life and death. Love, no matter what is hidden behind it, is a significant event, state, process for people included in its field. According to the descriptions of eyewitnesses and participants, interested and rejecting, love for a person brings an impossible in another place and time the possibility of both endless bliss and happiness, and inexhaustible longing, inexorable pain and indefatigable torment. A person seeks love and runs away from it at the same time.

In real life, love is a litmus test of the essential qualities of a person. Apparently, love, being one of the key self-expressions of life, reveals to a person his essence, which distinguishes him from others. So, apparently, love reveals to a person his essence, which distinguishes him from others. Each person loves in his own way, and perhaps it is the ability to love that makes a person a person and a person different from other people. Pierre de Chardin, in The Phenomenon of Man, asks: "When do those who love each other so completely master themselves, if not when they are lost in each other?" Through love man opens and closes, conquers and is defeated by life, ascends and falls, becomes free and a slave (liberated and enslaved), revives and kills.

Scientific knowledge has long been interested in "love", do not count the pages devoted to love, but this has not ceased to be a mystery. Love is one, but there are thousands of fakes for it. Love remains a revelation for every person today, as it was thousands of years ago.

Dionysius, a disciple of the Apostle Paul, paid special attention to the issues of spiritual eros. He calls Eros and love that unified and unifying force, which is contained in the Beautiful-and-Good. The beautiful and good is presented to the author as eros and love, at the same time - longed for and beloved.

One of the followers of Dionysius, Maximus, identifies five types of love:

1) “for the sake of God” - this is how a virtuous person loves all people;

2) "by nature" - love between parents and relatives;

3) “out of vanity” - the glorified loves the glorified;

4) “out of greed” - so they love the rich for the gifts given to him;

5) "out of voluptuousness" - carnal love, not intended to give birth to a child.

Only the first kind of love in the eyes of a Christian is worthy of praise.

The Florentine Neoplatonist of the 15th century M. Ficilo spoke about the possibilities of three types of love. These are love for the lower, expressed in touching guardianship, love of the lower for the higher, manifested in grateful reverence, and love of equal beings, which is the basis of humanism. C. S. Lewis distinguishes between love-need and love-gift.

A typical example of the second is the love for the children of a person who works for them, sparing no effort, gives them everything and cannot live without them. Love-need is experienced by a frightened child who rushes to his mother.

Twenty-four centuries ago, Plato created the first philosophy of love in human culture; it was a very big step in the understanding of human love, and later became the source for most love theories.

One of the foundations of Plato's love theory is his doctrine of the winged nature of the soul. For the idealist Plato, man consists of an immortal soul and a mortal body. The human soul is a small particle of the “universal soul”, and at first it soars in the “heavenly region”, over which the “essence”, “truth” is poured - the great beginning of the whole world.

The basis of all types of human love, as if the deepest axis of its feelings, is the attitude towards another person as towards oneself: a state of mind when everything in it is as dear to the subconscious as you are.

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Plan Love and its types. Sources and styles of love. Love is a normal feeling of an adequate person. Causes of negative attitude towards oneself and family life. Causes of family conflicts. Prevention of conflicts between wife and husband.

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LOVE AND ITS TYPES

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Psychology has long been interested in "love", do not count the pages devoted to love, but this did not stop it from being a mystery. Love is one, but there are thousands of fakes for it. Love remains a revelation for every person today, as it was thousands of years ago.

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Romantic love is fickle and unstable, because: the causes of excitement in everyday situations quickly disappear; 2) associated with the constant experience of strong (both positive and negative) emotions, from which they quickly get tired; 3) is focused on a stable idealization of a partner, in which a real person becomes a phantom. The statistically normal outcome of a family relationship built on romantic love is breakup. In love, in addition to emotional interpretation, the level of self-acceptance is important. In favorable situations, the level of self-acceptance rises, in decay, it decreases.

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An important source of the formation of the image of love in a person is the experience gained in the parental home, the influence of the behavior of the father and mother.

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Pessimistic model of building love according to L. Kasler: 1) the need for recognition; 2) satisfaction of sexual needs; 3) conformist reaction (so accepted). According to Kasler, love is an alloy of a set of emotions, among which the leading role is played by the fear of losing the source of satisfaction of one's needs. Being in love, constructed by the constant fear of losing him, makes a person unfree, dependent and interferes with personal development. He connects the positive emotional state of a lover with a person's gratitude for satisfying his needs. Consequently, L. Kasler concludes, a free person does not experience love.

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Fromm highlights in love: - care, responsibility, respect for each other, knowledge of the characteristics of the other, a sense of pleasure and joy.

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SOURCES AND STYLES OF LOVE

Love as a reflection of personal inadequacy. Z. Freud and V. Reikras viewed "love" as a reflected perception of their own unattained ideals in a partner. Peel draws a parallel between drug use and love (addiction to satisfaction contributes to low self-esteem). According to Kesler, "love" is a sign of a need in a healthy person, and according to Freud and Reik, "love" is not a pathology, but characterizes a neurotic personality.

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There are three types of love: Eros - love based on the principle of opposites. It occurs most often, unfortunately, the strong side of the other does not add strength to the weak side. Love - envy - hate. Philia is love based on the principle of identity. Kindred souls, recognizing each other, eventually find themselves in front of their reflection in the mirror. Static, boring. Agape is love-evolution, moving partners from opposite to identity. A fruitful, real "formula of love" leads to the harmonization of the personalities of those who love.

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Love is a normal feeling of an adequate personality

Studies have shown that there are three stages of "love":

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J. Lee's theory of love (styles and colors of love). John Alan Lee developed his theory of "love", which is largely devoted to only sexual relationships. The most important problem for everyone, according to the author, is a meeting with a partner who would share our ideas, our opinions, our views on life. To make the right choice, the author advises to study "love", its styles-colors. Styles of love (inherent in each person's views on love) are not like the zodiac, they can change.

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Having determined his style (out of eight given by the author), a person can choose the appropriate style for his partner. Matching styles ensures effective partner relationships.

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RJ Sternberg's theory of love (triangular love) Robert J. Sternberg proposed his theory of love - triangular.

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If we analyze all possible combinations of the above components, we get 8 subgroups that form the classification of love according to RJ Sternberg:  sympathy (only intimacy); one of the partners has only one intimate component in the absence of passion and decision/commitment;  reckless love (only passion); love is an "obsession", the object of love, as a rule, is idealized; all-consuming love (time, energy, impulses are subject to passion); "... this love, to a greater extent, is a projection of the needs of the lover, and not a genuine interest"; usually asymmetrical;  empty love (only a decision/commitment component); the relationship is based on the decision to love and the obligation to a loved one, in the absence of passion and intimacy; possible in the last stages in long-term relationships and in societies where marriages are ordered by tradition (the asymmetry is exacerbated by guilt);  romantic love (intimacy and passion); lovers are connected by physical and sexual attraction, but there are no obligations to each other (partners rely on chance); marriage is unlikely; • love in marriage (intimacy and decision/commitment); long-term friendship (some spouses look for hobbies on the side); • senseless love (passion and commitment); "extremely susceptible to destruction", passion fades, and obligations are shallow; perfect love (intimacy, passion and commitment); "Achieving perfect love can be difficult, but keeping it is even harder";  dislike (absence of all components); business relationship.

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R. May's theory of love. R. May points out that in the West there are traditionally 4 types of love:

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REASONS FOR NEGATIVE ATTITUDE TO YOURSELF AND FAMILY LIFE

David Burns cites the causes of negative attitudes towards oneself and life, which are "destroyers" of emotional relationships. The most common among them are: 1) thinking in categories of black and white extremes; 2) a tendency to a high level of generalizations ("this always happens", "you always pester", "I will never be able to do this"); 3) the use of a negative filter, focusing on failures, mistakes and misses, constant criticism; 4) downplaying positive factors, discarding any positive; 5) the habit of making hasty conclusions, negatively interpreting events and phenomena on the basis of "mind reading" ("he definitely wanted to say by this that I was not fit for anything ...") and "negative clairvoyance" ("probably nothing of this it won't work and it will get worse"); 6) application of the "inverted telescope" method: the close and accessible is underestimated, and the unattainable and distant is exaggerated; 7) perception of the world exclusively through emotions; 8) excessive enthusiasm for the words "I must" and "I must", which completely displace "I want", "I need", "I like"; 9) posting "labels" as generalized assessments of one's own or someone else's behavior, personal qualities, abilities, etc.; 10) the habit of taking responsibility for events and situations (especially those relating to loved ones) that are beyond their control.

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Causes of family conflicts

For marriage, small, often repeated quarrels are extremely dangerous. They gradually but steadily lead to a mental alienation between spouses, because as a result of the numerous critical remarks that fall on each other, each of them loses self-esteem.

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The well-being of marriage largely depends on the preparedness of the spouses for it. Willingness should include not so much sex education and housekeeping skills (although both are necessary), as the ability to communicate, show delicacy, a sense of tact, a desire to listen to the interests and needs of others. Otherwise, family life has an unfavorable prognosis. As you know, a happy family life is based on the mutual love of spouses. This condition is indeed necessary, but not sufficient.

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Jealousy should be mentioned as one of the causes of family conflict. Although it is considered a relic and condemned, it can nevertheless greatly poison life.

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An ideal home This is a flexible formation, like an organism, in which a reasonable balance of isolation from the world and openness to the world and people is maintained.

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Prevention of conflicts between spouses

For young wives Many sorrows and even suffering in family life are connected with the fact that the husband does not correspond to the ideal nurtured in his soul. In accordance with established ideas, most women value reliability in a man, the ability to make a decision in a difficult situation, and independence. These wonderful qualities can be identified and enhanced in any man. The strength of a woman is manifested in selflessness, dedication. Especially carefully maintain in your husband a sense of self-confidence and your indispensability in the family and at work during periods of decline and failure. In difficult times, it is harmful to focus on past miscalculations and mistakes. Only the unshakable faith of family members in the success of its head awakens the inner strength he needs to bring his undertakings to a successful end. The feeling of psychological security is determined by the constant, stable support from loved ones. Therefore, one must try courageously and cheerfully to meet various difficulties, including financial ones, without criticizing her husband for his mistakes and without comparing him with more successful men.

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For young husbands This situation is very typical for men. After breaking up with their first love, they easily fall in love "rebound". When the image of the first love is destroyed, an emptiness and a large charge of emotions remain in their psyche, striving for immediate compensation. Women intuitively consider the main advantage of men to be their intelligence, logic and reliability, and men, also intuitively, are most of all fascinated by the external beauty of women. Therefore, they say that men and women love differently, men with their eyes, and women with their ears. Speaking about the causes of misunderstanding in the family, first of all, we must remember the different dominance of men and women. Studies have shown that among men, persons with the left dominant hemisphere are more common, and among women - with the right. Not understanding the behavior of women, men are convinced that "women's logic" is the absence of any logic! However, this is simply more the logic of feelings and relationships.

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Useful links Prose: Pierre de Chardin "The Phenomenon of Man" Chekhov A.P. "Darling" Daninos "Mr. Blo" Paisia: Yevgeny Baratynsky "Love" Fedor Tyutchev "I love your eyes, my friend ..." Mikhail Lermontov "First Love" Vladimir Benediktov " I love you "Alexey Apukhtin "Love" Innokenty Annensky "Two loves" Fyodor Sologub "Your love is that magic circle", "Love is an irresistible force ..." Zinaida Gippius "Love", "Love is one" Konstantin Balmont "First love", " She surrendered herself without reproach” Alexander Blok “Love” Andrey Belykh “Declaration of love” Elena Tikhopoy “You deserve my love…”. Painting: Hanna Nagel "Love" Paolo Veronese "Mars and Venus in Love" Marc Chagall "The Lovers" Edward Burne-Jones "The Tree of Forgiveness" Edward Henry Corboult "The Lovers" Jacques-Louis David "Cupid and Psyche" Francois Boucher "Callisto and Jupiter" , "Hercules and Omphala" John William Harvard "Loves, does not love" Andreotti F. "Love letter" Tulmush O. "Note" Svedomsky P. A. "Messalina"

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Prepared by a student of the Faculty of Preschool Education and Practical Psychology Department of Practical Psychology Group 3 PP Redko Ksenia Sergeevna G. Slavyansk 2014

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The concept of "love" is one of the few words that expresses an almost absolute abstraction. The fact that people put different meanings into the concept of “love” is beyond doubt. Love is the most alluring of all feelings, but also the most disappointing. It gives the strongest pleasure and the strongest pain, the sharpest happiness and the heaviest anguish. Its advantages and contrasts merge into a mass of unique combinations, and which of these combinations will fall out to a person, this is how he sees love. This feeling is so thousand-sided that no one has yet been able to catch it in the network of conceptual logic.

However, "individual" love has the right to exist, just as various psychophysical substances called man have the right to life. Of particular note is such a feature of love as its universality: each person finds his own love, and each is or will eventually become an object of love. The reason for this is simple: love is the main and accessible to everyone way of self-affirmation and rooting in life, which without love is incomplete and incomplete. A rarity is a man in years who claims that he never loved or even fell in love with anyone. Many people want to love, but everyone wants to be loved themselves.

Throughout his life, the average person has several milestones that delimit himself into “before” and “after” meeting this person, with love, with fate, with life and death. Love, no matter what is hidden behind it, is a significant event, state, process for people included in its field. According to the descriptions of eyewitnesses and participants, interested and rejecting, love for a person brings an impossible in another place and time, the possibility of both endless bliss and happiness, and inexhaustible melancholy, inexorable pain and indefatigable torment. A person seeks love and runs away from it at the same time.

Scientific knowledge has long been interested in "love"; do not count the pages devoted to love, but this did not stop it from being a mystery. Love is one, but there are thousands of fakes for it. Love remains a revelation for every person today, as it was thousands of years ago.

Romantic love is fickle and unstable, as 1) the causes of excitement in everyday situations quickly disappear; 2) associated with the constant experience of strong (both positive and negative) emotions, from which they quickly get tired; 3) is focused on a stable idealization of a partner, in which a real person becomes a phantom. A statistically normal outcome of family relationships built on romantic love is disintegration.

In love, in addition to emotional interpretation, the level of self-acceptance is important. In favorable situations, the level of self-acceptance rises, in decay, it decreases.

In love, the diversity of its types and forms is especially striking. Attempts to build theoretical models of love are marked by a claim to greater globality, but paradoxically simplify the phenomenon. Researchers talk about love for oneself, love for man and God, love for life and for the motherland, love for truth and goodness, love for freedom and power, etc. Allocate love romantic, knightly, platonic, brotherly, erotic, charismatic, etc. There is love-passion and love-pity, love-need and love-gift, love for the neighbor and love for the absent, love of a man and love of a woman.

The differences between the models of love are based on the evaluation parameter: optimism-pessimism. The pessimistic model postulates the weakness and imperfection of man, while the optimistic model postulates the constructive power of love.

Pessimistic model. There are three reasons that make a person fall in love: 1) the need for recognition; 2) satisfaction of sexual needs; 3) conformist reaction (so accepted). Love is a fusion of a set of emotions, among which the leading role is played by the fear of losing the source of satisfaction of one's needs. Being in love, constructed by the constant fear of losing him, makes a person unfree, dependent and interferes with personal development. The positive emotional state of a lover is associated with a person's gratitude for meeting his needs. Therefore, a free person does not experience love.

Optimistic model. According to this model, love is characterized by the removal of anxiety, a sense of complete security and psychological comfort, satisfaction with the psychological and sexual side of relationships, which grows over the years, and the interest of loving people in each other is constantly increasing. During their life together, the partners get to know each other well, the real assessment of the spouse is combined with his complete acceptance. The constructive power of love is associated with the connection of the sexual sphere with the emotional, which contributes to the fidelity of partners and the maintenance of equal relations.

In one of the schemes, the system-forming factors are power and status. Power is defined as the ability to get someone to do something.

Status is understood as the desire of an individual to meet the requirements of a partner through positive emotional relationships.

Depending on whether the level of power and status is high or low, seven types of love are distinguished, which can be represented in the following ways:

1. Variant of parent-child relationship. The parent has great power and the child has high status.

2. Variant of romantic love. Individuals have great (equal) power over each other and have a high status. Both partners strive to meet each other halfway, and at the same time, each of them can deprive the other of manifestations of their love.

3. Love is worship. The individual has no power over the other, but the status of the other in the eyes is inaccessible. This is a variant of the worship of a literary or other hero, with whom there is no real contact and who has no power, but a high status, and his admirer has neither power nor status.

4. Treason in the Dyad. The 1st partner has a high status and has power over the second, which has lost its real status. This option takes place in a situation of adultery, when both spouses retain power over each other, but one of them no longer causes a desire to go towards the other.

5. Variant of unrequited love. One has a high status in the eyes of the other and real power over him. The other has nothing. Such a state of falling in love happens in the case of one-sided, unrequited love.

In addition, it is still possible to highlight;

* brotherly love, in which both members of the couple have little power over each other, but willingly go towards each other;

* charismatic love that takes place, for example, in a teacher-student pair.

This interesting typology of love, distinguished by its simplicity and clarity, is nevertheless abstract and clearly incomplete, two elementary factors, power and status, are obviously insufficient to identify and distinguish between all those diverse relationships that are covered by the general word love. The pair "power - status" very approximately characterizes the relationship of love, and sometimes even identifies it with some other relationship between people.

Erich Fromm identifies 5 types of love; brotherly, motherly, erotic, self-love and God-love. He highlights in love: care, responsibility, respect for each other, knowledge of the characteristics of the other, an indispensable feeling of pleasure and joy for love.

According to Z. Rubin, love contains affection, care and intimacy.

A.A. Ivin gives the concept of nine steps or forms of love. The author presents love in the form of steps or "circles". Each of the circles includes somewhat close types of love, and the movement from the core to the periphery is subject to certain principles.

1. In the first "circle" he includes erotic or sexual love and self-love. Human love necessarily begins with selfishness, self-love, and carnal love. A person's love for himself is a prerequisite for his existence as a person and, therefore, a condition for all his love. Self love is the primary school of love. He who neglects himself is incapable of either loving or appreciating another. One must learn to understand oneself in order to gain the ability to understand others, and at the same time, without understanding others, it is impossible to understand oneself.

2. The second circle of love is love for your neighbor. It includes love for children, for parents, for brothers and sisters, for family members, and so on. The principle “love your neighbor as yourself” speaks of justice, mutual respect for the rights and interests of loved ones. Love for one's neighbor is the best test of love for a person. In love for one's neighbor, parental love and the love of children for their parents occupy a special place. Fromm's idea is interesting that in every person there is both a paternal and a maternal conscience - a voice that commands to fulfill a duty, and a voice that commands to love and forgive other people and ourselves.

3. The third "circle" of love is love for a person, about which it was said in ancient times that it can only be big, there is no small love. It is love for every other person, regardless of any further definitions of it. This, in particular, is love for future generations and the responsibility to them associated with it. The guiding principle of such love is simple - the needs of future people are just as important as the needs of today.

4. In the fourth "circle" of love, Ivin highlights love for the motherland, love for life, love for God, etc.

5. In the fifth "circle" - love for nature, in particular "cosmic love." Ivin understands by cosmic love a feeling directed at the world as a whole, it speaks of the unity of man and the world, of their fusion and even mutual influence.

6. The sixth circle is the love of truth, the love of goodness, the love of beauty, the love of justice.

7. The seventh circle is the love of freedom, the love of creativity, the love of glory, the love of power, the love of one's work, the love of wealth.

8. The eighth circle is the love of the game, the love of communication, the love of gathering, the love of entertainment, the constant novelty.

9. The ninth "circle" - what is no longer love, rather addiction - love for food, alcohol, drugs.

In this movement from the first "circle" of love to its last "circle", from its center to the periphery, some direction is quite clearly detected. First of all, as you move away from the center, the emotional component of love, the immediacy and concreteness of this feeling, decreases. From the “circle” to the “circle”, the intensity of love, its coverage of the whole soul of a person, also decreases. Erotic love and love for children can fill the whole emotional life of an individual. The love of creativity or the love of fame most often makes up only a part of such a life. Decreases from the "circle" to the circle and the amount of love covered by it many people. Erotic love captures everyone, or almost everyone. Not everyone loves God, truth or justice anymore. With the decrease in the immediacy and concreteness of love, the social component of this feeling grows. It is present both in love for oneself and in love for children, but it is much more noticeable in love for power, love for freedom or wealth.

The Russian philosopher Frank Semyon Ludwigovich writes about the idea of a certain path of love, for which each specific type of love is only a stepping stone. Love is very heterogeneous, it includes not only different types and their subtypes, but also what can be called forms of love and its modes. Types of love are, for example, love of neighbor and erotic love. The forms of manifestation of love for one's neighbor are love for children, love for parents, brotherly love, etc. The modes are the love of a man and the love of a woman, the love of a northerner and the love of a southerner, medieval love and modern love.

Questions about the mutual relations of types of love are no simpler than the question about its meaning. Many have tried to answer these questions about the types and essence of love in a clear form in antiquity. But there are no generally accepted and universally recognized answers, which connects extremely heterogeneous passions, inclinations, attachments, etc. into the unity called "love" no.

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