Sigmund Freud was born on May 6, 1856 in the small town of Freiberg in Moravia (Czech region). His father was a merchant with a sharp mind and a subtle sense of humor. His mother was a woman with a lively character, 20 years younger than her husband. She was 21 years old when she gave birth to her first child and favorite - Sigmund. When he was about five, the family moved to Vienna, where Freud lived most of his life. A brilliant student, he entered medical school, one of the few "viable" options for a Jewish boy in Austria at the time.

It was Freud who suggested that forgetfulness or reservations are not accidental, they are manifestations of internal conflicts and desires. He also concluded that sexual attraction is the most powerful creator of human psychology (arguing that two motives underlie all our actions: the desire to become great and sexual attraction) and shocked society with the assumption that sexuality is present even in babies. His most famous theory, the Oedipus Complex, suggests that boys have a sexual attraction to their mother and a feeling of jealousy towards their father.

Sigmund Freud - thoughts on love and sex

• Ideal, eternal, hatred-free love exists only between the addict and the drug.

• We choose each other not by chance... We meet only those who already exist in our subconscious.

• The more perfect a person is on the outside, the more demons he has inside.

• If one could not find anything in the other that should be corrected, then the two of them would be terribly bored.

• Everything you do in bed is beautiful and absolutely right. As long as they both like it. If there is this harmony, then you and only you are right, and all those who condemn you are perverts.

• Only the complete absence of sex can be considered a sexual deviation, everything else is a matter of taste.

• Each person has desires that he does not communicate to others, and desires that he does not acknowledge even to himself.

• People in general are insincere in sexual matters. They do not openly show their sexuality, but hide it by wearing a thick coat made of a material called “lie”, as if the weather is bad in the world of sexual relations.

• The great question that has not been answered, and which I still cannot answer in spite of my thirty years of research into the female soul, is the question: "What does a woman want?"

• When an old maid gets a dog and an old bachelor collects figurines, the former compensates for the absence of married life, while the latter creates the illusion of numerous love victories.

• A husband is almost always only a substitute for a beloved man, and not this man himself.

• He who loves many knows women, he who loves one knows love.

• A person never refuses anything, he simply replaces one pleasure with another.

• Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

“Since I love you, you also participate in this, because there is something in you that makes me love you. It is a mutual feeling, because there is a movement in both directions: the love that I feel for you arises in response to the reason for love that is in you.

My feeling for you is not only my business, but yours too. My love says something about you that perhaps you don't know yourself." Jacques-Alain Miller

What is love?

At all times, people are looking for an answer to this question, and the most ordinary and great minds, but they still have not come to a common opinion. And it is not surprising, because the subject of research is very extensive and subjective.

Poems are written about love, books are written, songs are sung, they are silent about love, they shout about love. What people call love makes them dance with happiness or kill with grief.

Love concerns everyone, regardless of social status, age and gender. In my opinion, it is impossible to unequivocally answer the question "What is love?".

Someone thinks that he loves or loved, and then it turns out that it was not love; someone claims that he has not yet met his love; that love is a disease; or that love lasts three years. Some are sure that love is based on sexual desire, others - that spiritual values. One way or another, people feel what they call the word “love”.

Because of love, we are jealous, we experience a bright range of feelings and emotions. Arguing with partners about how to love. Women try to explain to men how to love a woman, and men try to defend their point of view. Some people get love, some don't.

One way or another, love in all its manifestations is an integral part of the life of every person. That is why love is studied so long and desperately.

For all the time of studying this issue, so many thinkers, opinions and theories have accumulated that it is impossible to list them all. However, there are theories that have received the greatest response in the souls of people and therefore have gained their popularity. They will be discussed in this article. It can be assumed that these theories have come closer to understanding the issue under discussion than the others. As Freud often said: "Your reaction would not have been so violent if I had not hit the target".

This article will be of interest to those who experience love and wonder: why is everything in love so difficult and ambiguous?

Despite the fact that love can be maternal, paternal, brotherly, in this material I propose to talk about love, which often excites more than others - about love between a man and a woman.

Love according to Schopenhauer

I cannot but pay attention to the great thinker, whom Leo Tolstoy called "the most brilliant of people."

The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer is an author whose view of love deserves attention, if only because his discussions on this topic influenced Freud's understanding of love. What Schopenhauer called "the will to live" Freud later called "Eros".

Schopenhauer believed that the basis of all sexual love is an instinct aimed exclusively at procreation. The choice of the object of love occurs instinctively.

In his work “The Metaphysics of Sexual Love,” the German philosopher explains how this choice occurs and why people, when choosing an object of love, are attracted to one thing and disgusted by the other.

Within the framework of this article, I find a remarkable passage from the above-mentioned work of the philosopher:

“... It should be noted that a man by nature tends to be fickle in love, and a woman to constancy. A man's love noticeably weakens from the moment when she receives satisfaction for herself: almost every other woman is more attractive to him than the one he already possesses, and he longs for a change; a woman's love, on the contrary, increases from that moment on.

This is the result of the goals set by nature for itself: it is interested in the preservation, and therefore in the greatest possible reproduction of any given kind of creatures. Indeed, a man can easily bring into the world more than a hundred children a year, if there are as many women at his service; on the contrary, a woman, no matter how many men she knows, can still give birth to only one child a year (I'm not talking about twins here).

That is why a man is always looking at other women, while a woman is strongly attached to one, because nature instinctively and without any reflection prompts her to take care of the breadwinner and protector of future offspring.

And that's why marital fidelity is artificial in a man, and natural in a woman and thus the adultery of a woman, both objectively, in its consequences, and subjectively, in its unnaturalness, is much more unforgivable than the adultery of a man.

<...>

The main condition that determines our choice and our inclination is age. In general, he satisfies us in this respect from the period when the menstruation begins until the time it ceases; but we give special preference to the age from eighteen to twenty-eight years.

Beyond these limits, no woman can be attractive to us: an old woman, i.e. no longer menstruating, disgusts us. Youth without beauty is still attractive, beauty without youth is never.

Evidently, the consideration which unconsciously guides us here is the possibility of procreation in general; therefore every individual loses his attraction to the other sex to the extent that he moves away from the period of greatest fitness for a productive function or for conception.

The second condition is health.: acute diseases are in our eyes only a temporary hindrance; chronic or emaciated diseases completely repel us, because they pass on to the child.

The third condition that we comply with when choosing a woman is her addition, because the type of the genus is based on it. After old age and sickness, nothing repels us so much as a twisted figure: even the most beautiful face cannot reward us for it; on the contrary, we certainly prefer the ugliest face, if it is combined with a slender figure.

Further, any disproportion in the physique affects us most noticeably and most strongly, for example, a lopsided, crooked, short-legged figure, etc., even a limping gait, if it is not the result of some external accident.

On the contrary, a strikingly beautiful camp can compensate for all sorts of flaws: it enchants us. This also includes the fact that everyone highly appreciates small legs: the latter are an essential feature of the genus, and in no animal the tarsus and metatarsus, taken together, are as small as those of a person, which is due to his straight gait: a person - upright creature.

That is why Jesus Sirachov says (26, 23, according to the corrected translation of Krause): "A woman who is slender and who has beautiful legs is like a golden column on a silver support."

Teeth are also important to us, because they play a very significant role in nutrition and are especially inherited.

The fourth condition is a known fullness of the body, those. the predominance of the plant function, plasticity: it promises the fetus abundant nutrition, and therefore strong thinness immediately repels us.

A full female breast has an unusual attraction for a man., because, being in direct connection with the reproductive functions of a woman, she promises the newborn abundant nutrition.

On the other hand, overly fat women are disgusting to us.; the fact is that this property indicates atrophy of the uterus, i.e. for infertility; and it is not the head that knows about it, but instinct.

Only the last role in our choice is played by the beauty of the face. And here, first of all, the bony parts are taken into account: this is why we pay the main attention to a beautiful nose; a short upturned nose ruins everything.

The happiness of a lifetime for many girls decided a small bend of the nose up or down; and rightly so, because it's about a generic type. The small mouth, due to small jaws, plays a very important role, because it constitutes a specific feature of the human face, as opposed to the mouth of animals.

The chin set back, as if cut off, is especially disgusting, because the protruding chin is a characteristic feature exclusively of our human species.

Finally, our attention is attracted by the beautiful eyes and forehead: they are already associated with mental properties, especially intellectual, which are inherited from the mother.

I consider it important to note that the discrepancy between the criteria proposed by Schopenhauer for choosing an object of love does not mean that love is guaranteed to pass by. Indeed, a person, choosing a mate for himself, instinctively reacts to certain external features that may affect the choice.

However, the criteria change over time, a person has a complex mental apparatus and is not limited only to what is called “instincts”.

Life is rich in examples when a person who does not meet the criteria of an “ideal” object finds a mate and creates a strong family. As well as vice versa: a person with the “right” parameters spends his life alone.

Freud's love

Given the fact that the writings of Schopenhauer had a significant impact on Freud, it seems logical to me to continue the article with the theory of the "Father of Psychoanalysis".

Speaking about Freud's views on love, it may seem that everything is simple: love is based on sexual desire, Freud called "libido". And really - nothing complicated at first glance. But if you try to figure it out by studying the works of Sigmund, you quickly realize that everything is much more complicated.

That is why, until now, disputes between psychoanalysts, psychologists, psychotherapists and psychiatrists who are trying to figure out what Freud had in mind have not subsided all over the world.

Considering that these debates have been going on for more than a hundred years, and a complete understanding has appeared, I will not even try to analyze the works of the classic within the framework of this article, but I will write about the features of choosing an object of love.

Freud talks about the peculiarities of choice in men, but personally I will not separate men and women in this context, because Freud himself writes in his Essays on the Theory of Sexuality: “... libido is always - and naturally natural - masculine, regardless of whether it occurs in a man or a woman, and regardless of its object, whether it be a man or a woman.

In On Narcissism, the founder of psychoanalysis gives a brief overview of the ways in which an object is chosen. There are two types of love:

1) According to the narcissistic type: when you find and love in a partner “what you yourself represent (yourself), then what [himself] used to be, then what I would like to be, the person who was part of himself.”

That is, the search for an image of yourself in another person. Such a partner is a mirror in which you can enjoy your reflection.

2) According to the supporting or adjoining type: the partner acts as a "feeding woman, protecting the man and the whole range of people who come to replace them in the future."

That is, we are talking about choosing an object of love that will help you, complement you, support, replenish - give what you do not have - that is, take care of you.

Freud, at one time noticed that the first type of choice of the object of love is more typical for women, but not for all:

“... Especially in those cases where development [puberty] is accompanied by the flowering of beauty, the self-satisfaction of a woman is developed. <...>

Strictly speaking, such women love themselves with the same intensity with which a man loves them. They have no need to love and be loved, and they are ready to be satisfied with a man who meets this main condition for them.

Such women are most attracted to men, not only for aesthetic reasons, since they are usually of great beauty, but also because of an interesting psychological constellation.

Namely, it is easy to see that the narcissism of a person seems to be very attractive to those people of a different type who have given up experiencing their narcissism to its fullest and are striving for love of the object.<...>

But even narcissistic women who remain cold to a man can move on to true love for an object.<...>

Deep love for the object according to the support type, in essence, is characteristic of a man. It shows such a striking overestimation of the object, which probably comes from the child's original narcissism and expresses the transfer of this narcissism to the sexual object.

Such a sexual overestimation makes possible the emergence of a peculiar state of falling in love, reminiscent of a neurotic obsession, which is explained by the taking away of the libido from the "I" in favor of the object.

At the same time, Freud did not believe that all people fall into two different groups depending on the narcissistic or basic type of object choice. He wrote: “I am willing to admit that there are many women who love the masculine way, and they develop the sexual overestimation that this type has.”.

From myself, I note that at present it is believed that the nature of object relations of the type "object - support" is characteristic not for a neurotic structure, but for people with borderline personality disorder. This disorder was not known at the time of Freud.

At the same time, I fully agree with the author and believe that a strict division into two types and binding each of them to a specific gender is unacceptable. Both in my work and outside the office, I often meet people who, regardless of gender, have one or another type of choice of the object of love.

Most often you can meet people whose type of partner choice is mixed. “We say that a person has initially two sexual objects: himself and the woman who brings him up, and at the same time we admit in each person a primary narcissism, which can sometimes take a dominant position in choosing an object.”

Freud points out two main factors under the influence of which either normal sexual behavior develops or its deviant forms develop.

The first factor is the requirements of culture passed through consciousness: shame, compassion, disgust, constructions of morality and authority, etc.

The second is the choice of one or another sexual object. Normal development proceeds if the genitals of a subject of the opposite sex become such an object.

Love according to Fromm

Further, I cannot ignore the theory of love of a very popular author all over the world, who is considered one of the founders of the new Freudianism.

The German sociologist, philosopher, social psychologist and psychoanalyst, Erich Fromm, as well as the ancient philosophers, believed that there several types of love, namely: brotherly love, maternal, erotic, self-love and love of God.

Speaking about Fromm's theory, I will highlight only what, in my opinion, is the most interesting for reflection.

Fromm argued that there is mature and immature love.. He called immature love "pseudo-love" and did not consider love as such, but he considered mature love to be true love.

Immature love, according to the scientist, is not love at all, but something like a biological symbiosis.

"Symbiotic union" or "immature love" is a symbiosis of co-dependent sadist and masochist who have lost their mental integrity and do not have their own "I".

Such people do not feel complete and compensate for this inferiority through a partner. They regularly quarrel, believing that they are wrongly loved and misunderstood.

Often, representatives of “immature love” evaluate love by the number of material investments: giving gifts means you love, and not giving means there is no love, etc.

Those who engage in and enjoy "pseudo-love" often "love" the partner's brain for various little things and seem to invade the partner's personality. Such people use their partners to satisfy their sadomasochistic needs.

True love between them does not work, because. deep down - unconsciously they gave their hearts to their parents, most often mothers. Therefore, they are not able to "depart from narcissism and from incestuous attachment to mother and family" in order to build love. It is this attachment to mother that interferes with love that I often have to work through with my patients.

Turning to true love, I note that one of the indicators of mature love is the ability to "respect and protect each other's loneliness".

"Mature love" according to Fromm is an art. Love implies mutual respect, care, responsibility and good knowledge of each other.

This is not a fleeting outburst of feelings, not falling in love, which the scientist also referred to as "pseudo-love", but an alliance in which partners assist each other, helping to grow and develop in all directions. To do this, each of the partners must be capable of selfless love and, first of all, love themselves.

"Only the one who truly loves himself can love someone else" .

Mature love is a voluntary union of two full-fledged, self-loving personalities, in which each of the partners retains his own individuality and independence and at the same time does not claim the partner's independence and does not encroach on his "I".

“Mature love is unity, subject to the preservation of one’s own integrity and one’s own individuality” <...>

If immature love says: "I love because I love", then mature love comes from the principle: "I am loved because I love."

Immature love screams, "I love you because I need you!" Mature love reasoning: "I need you because I love you"- wrote Fromm and was sure that true love is not available to everyone, and most often there is immature love.

Mature love is possible only when both partners are mentally mature. From myself I want to note that mental maturity is a very rare phenomenon in our time. That is why there are so many divorces and incomplete families.

Love according to Horney

Another view of love that I find interesting and worthy of consideration is that of the neo-Freudian neo-Freudian Karen Horney.

In her lecture at a meeting of the German Psychoanalytic Society in 1936, Horney presented an audience with a paper on love, namely the neurotic need for it.

By the term "neurosis" Horney did not understand a situational neurosis, but a character neurosis that began in early childhood and captured the entire personality, absorbing it to one degree or another.

I will also immediately note that Horney called normal what is usual for the culture in which a person [grew up and] lives.

“We all want to be loved and enjoy it if we can. It enriches our lives and fills us with happiness. To this extent, the need for love, or rather the need to be loved, is not neurotic."

“The difference between normal and neurotic need for love can be formulated as follows: it is important for a healthy person to be loved, respected and valued by those people whom he values ​​himself, or on whom he depends; the neurotic need for love is obsessive and indiscriminate. In a neurotic, the need for love is noticeably exaggerated. Horney notes.

If the saleswoman, waiter, or any other random person is not very kind, then this can spoil the mood of a neurotic or even hurt him, depending on the degree of neurosis. The neurotic perceives such "unkindness" as dislike directed specifically at him.

Another feature characteristic of neurotic love, according to the psychoanalyst, is overestimation of love.

“I mean, in particular, the type of neurotic women who feel insecure, unhappy and depressed all the time, as long as there is no one infinitely devoted to them who would love and care for them. I am also referring to women in whom the desire to marry takes the form of an obsession.

They get stuck on this side of life (getting married) as if hypnotized, even if they themselves are absolutely unable to love and their attitude towards men is obviously bad.. <...>

The essential characteristic of the neurotic need for love is its insatiability, expressed in terrible jealousy: You are obliged to love only me! .

This phenomenon can be observed in many married couples and in love affairs. Even in neurotic friendships, this behavior often occurs when friends or girlfriends quarrel and get jealous as if they were a married couple. By jealousy Horney means "gluttony and the demand to be the only object of love".

The insatiability of the neurotic need for love is also expressed in the desire to be unconditionally loved (mine).

“You have to love me no matter how I behave” and/or “Loving someone who loves you back is not that difficult, but let's see if you can love me without getting anything in return” .

You can also often hear from a neurotic: "He (a) loves me only because he receives sexual satisfaction from me." In a neurotic relationship, the partner is obliged to constantly prove his "true" love, sacrificing his moral ideals, reputation, money, time, etc., and failure to do the above is perceived by the neurotic as a betrayal.

Karen Horney then asks: “Observing the insatiability of the neurotic need for love, I asked myself - does the neurotic personality achieve love for itself, or is it really striving with all its might for material acquisitions?<...>

There are people who consciously reject love, saying, “All this talk about love is just nonsense. You give me something real!"<...>

Doesn't the demand for love only serve as a cover for a secret desire to receive something from another person, be it location, gifts, time, money, etc.?It is difficult to answer this question unambiguously.

Indeed, at that time it was difficult for Horney, at least much more difficult than it would be today, to answer this question unequivocally, because, as in Freud's time, borderline personality disorder was still not known. Knowing about BPD, I want to note that many of those formulations that Horney considered neurotic, I refer specifically to the borderline state.

“As a rule, these people are faced with the cruelty of life very early, and they believe that love simply does not exist. They cut her out of their lives completely. The correctness of this assumption is confirmed by the analysis of such personalities. If they go through analysis long enough, they sometimes still agree that kindness, friendship and affection do exist.” Horney shares his experience.

“Another sign of the neurotic need for love is the extreme sensitivity to rejection which is so common in hysterical persons.

Any nuances and in any relationship that could be interpreted as rejection, they perceive only this way, and respond to this with manifestations of hatred.

One of my patients had a cat who sometimes allowed himself not to respond to his caress. One day, in a rage because of this, the patient simply slammed the cat against the wall. This is a rather demonstrative example of the rage that rejection can cause in a neurotic. The reaction to real or imagined rejection is not always so obvious, it is often hidden.

Within this theme, Horney says that also often there are people with unshakable, albeit unconscious, convictions that love does not exist. Such a worldview (protection) is characteristic of those who suffered from severe disappointments in childhood, which "made them cut love, affection and friendship out of their lives once and for all."

Due to the insatiability of the need for love, the neurotic almost never manages to achieve the level of love that he needs - there will always be not enough.

If love requires from a person the ability and desire to spontaneously surrender to other people, a cause or an idea, then a neurotic is usually incapable of this return due to anxiety and overt or covert aggression towards others.

Most often, the foundation of such behavior is laid in childhood due to ill-treatment of the child. Over time, anxiety and hostility increase, and the neurotic often does not realize the causes of the symptoms.

For the same reason, he is never able / or unwilling to take the place of another. “He doesn’t think about how much love, time and help the other person can or wants to give him – he only wants all the time and all the love! Therefore, he takes as an insult any desire of the other to be alone sometimes, or the interest of the other in something or someone else besides him.

In most cases, "the neurotic is not aware of his inability to love." However, some of them are able to admit: "No, I do not know how to love." Another symptom inherent in neurotics is an exorbitant fear of rejection..

“This fear can be so great that it often prevents them from approaching other people with even a simple question or a sympathetic gesture. They live in constant fear that the other person will push them away. They may even be afraid to give gifts for fear of rejection.”

There are many examples of how real or imagined rejection generates heightened hostility in neurotic personalities. Over time, such fear can cause the neurotic to move more and more away from people.

"I'm not afraid of sex at all, I'm terribly afraid of love." Indeed, she could barely pronounce the word "love", and did everything in her power to keep her inner distance from people who showed this feeling..

Just like Horney, I believe that love does not guarantee sexual contact, just like sex is not a guarantee of love. The world is home to a huge number of neurotics who are afraid of love, while having a regular sex life. Often with different partners.

Summarizing his report, Horney talks about the causes of the previously mentioned fears, rooted in increased basal anxiety, and lists basic neurotic defenses from her:

1. The neurotic need for love, whose motto, as already mentioned: "If you love me, you won't hurt me" .

2. Subordination: “If you give in, always do what is expected of you, never ask for anything, never resist - no one will hurt you” .

3. The third way was described by Adler and especially Künkel. This is a compulsive desire for power, success and possession under the motto: “If I am stronger and higher than everyone, you won’t offend me.”

4. Emotional distancing from people as a way to achieve security and independence. One of the most important goals of such a strategy is to become invulnerable.

5. Convulsive hoarding, which in this case does not express a pathological desire for possession, but a desire to ensure one's independence from others.

Very often we see that the neurotic chooses more than one path, but tries to alleviate his anxiety in a variety of ways, often opposite and even mutually exclusive.

Love according to Lacan

In the end, I left the theory of a very insightful author: “To love is to give what you don’t have to someone who doesn’t want it” -, says the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. (L "amour c" est donner ce qu "on n" a pas à quelqu "un qui n" en veut pas)

This wording has intrigued many, myself included. This view of love is now able to immediately revive any discussion on the topic of love. There are many interpretations of this definition of love.

As for me, I am a supporter of the classical interpretation, which can be found in Alain Badiou, Jean-Luc Nancy, Jacques-Alain Miller and other Lacan experts.

Let's try to figure it out. “To love is to give what you don’t have”. In order for this to become possible, you must admit to yourself that you are not complete.

“In other words, “to give what you don’t have” means to admit that you are missing something, and to give this “something” to another, “to place it in another.”

This does not mean giving him what you own - things or gifts; it means giving away something that you do not own, something that is outside of yourself. And for this, one must admit one’s incompleteness, “castration,” as Freud said..

«. ..In this sense, you can truly love only from the position of a woman. Love feminizes. That's why a man in love is always a little funny. But if he is embarrassed by this, afraid to seem ridiculous, this means that in fact he is not too confident in his male strength..

Based on what has been written, we can conclude that a man in love can sometimes feel inferior, and feeling anxious, be situationally aggressive towards his beloved, which involuntarily makes him feel castrated and dependent.

This can explain the desire sometimes arising in a man to “go left” to an unloved woman:“thus he again finds himself in a position of power, from which he partly departs in love relationships” that is, it can be said that it replenishes its own completeness lost with the beloved woman (the struggle with castration anxiety, which Freud wrote about).

As far as women are concerned, “They tend to have a split in the perception of a male partner. On the one hand, he is a lover who gives pleasure, they are attracted to him. But he is also a loving man, feminized by this feeling, essentially castrated.

More and more women prefer the male position: one man, at home, for love, others for physical pleasure., says a student of Lacan.

Jacques-Alain Miller continues:

“The more a man devotes himself to one woman, the more likely it is that she will eventually acquire maternal status for him: the more he loves her, the more he deifies, erects on a pedestal. And when a woman becomes attached to a single man, she "castrates" him.

Therefore, it turns out that the path of ideal relationships is very narrow. Aristotle, for example, believed that the best continuation of marital love is friendship.

But there is something that prevents the implementation of the Aristotle model: “... dialogue between opposite sexes is impossible: each of the lovers is essentially doomed to forever comprehend the partner's language, acting by touch, picking up the keys to the lock, which is constantly changing.

Love is a labyrinth of misunderstandings, from which there is no way out.

Finishing the article, I want to express my personal opinion: I think that a complete and unambiguous understanding of love and an answer to the question "What is love?" - still does not exist.

I believe that there are only different concepts, theories, ideas and views on this issue that are subjectively suitable or not suitable for each individual person.

Each person finds among the many theories the one that is subjectively closest and more than the others corresponds to the life position, requirement and degree of neurosis.

Whatever this complex set of emotions is and no matter what this complex set of emotions is called, we can definitely say that this is what many people around the world live and develop for, even if they do not have the slightest encyclopedic knowledge about what is commonly called the word " love".

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Positive thinking is the key to happiness!
Quite often we are faced with the problem of relationships with other people, whether it be our relatives, friends or acquaintances.

How to keep yourself in a good mood, when sometimes passions run high?

How to remove resentment, rage, anger, irritation and feel joy, peace, peace?

The first person who comes to mind dealing with this issue is Louise Hay, author of 15 bestsellers. She helped thousands of people to believe in themselves and...

A lot of advice is given about this, but one thing is always repeated: respect each other. Most divorces occur in the first years of married life, and all because the process of getting used to each other is quite difficult. British scientists have calculated that family happiness occurs in 2 years 11 months and 8 days - exactly how much a couple needs to get used to and adapt to each other.

Of course, in order to achieve family well-being, spouses need to constantly communicate. That's the only way...

Love or Addiction?
It happens that we love a person so much, so selflessly that it seems that life without him does not make sense. And he does not respond to us with the same feelings. Or answers, but not in the way we would like. We are constantly not enough of the emotions that he gives in response.

And sometimes, in moments of quiet bitterness, we realize that we depend on him ... But we drive these thoughts away. "Because it can't be. No, it just can't be," we say to ourselves, "Because we love each other. Yes, yes...

Sigmund Freud began by solving the riddle of hysteria. Neurological causes in the form of organic lesions of the nervous system were excluded from a natural scientific point of view. Were these causes not located in the “spiritual” realm? The very posing of this question opened up a completely new field of knowledge, namely, the psychological one, which raised a number of serious theoretical cognitive problems, since mental processes are not amenable to direct observation. They can only be found indirectly, in ...

Charles Darwin: love as a factor of natural selection

1809–1882

“In birds, this rivalry is often of a more peaceful nature. Everyone who has been interested in this subject believes that in many species the males are strong, attracting females with their singing. In the Guiana thrush, the bird of paradise, and some other birds, males and females flock to the same place; the males take turns carefully spreading their brightly colored feathers and making strange gestures in front of the females, who remain spectators until they choose the most attractive partner for themselves. Those who have happened to closely observe the customs of birds in captivity know very well that they often show individual preferences and dislikes; so, Sir R. Heron (R. Heron) reports one motley peacock, which especially attracted all its peacocks.

Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species

Darwin believed that love is an element of sexual selection. This one is for traditional Victorian society, because it said that a woman chooses her partner, and not vice versa. According to Darwin, males compete for the attention of females in every possible way. As a result, in the course of evolution, the signs and traits of character necessary for victory are fixed in them. For example, large antlers on male deer or bushy tails on peacocks are anything that can attract a female. People have about the same thing: love occurs when a partner has, which make him an attractive candidate for a monogamous relationship. In turn, these qualities (like loyalty and kindness) appeared as a result of sexual selection.

Darwin's wife was his cousin Emma Wedgwood. Some aspects of their personal lives were indirectly mentioned in the works of the scientist. For example, Darwin wrote that relationships between close blood relatives can end in sickly and weak offspring. He came to this conclusion as a result of a personal tragedy: three of the Darwin children died at an early age.

Friedrich Engels: love as mutual respect

1820–1895

“Modern sexual love is essentially different from simple sexual desire, from the eros of the ancients. Firstly, it presupposes mutual love in a beloved being, in this respect a woman is on an equal footing with a man, while for ancient eros her consent was by no means always required. Secondly, the strength and duration of sexual love are such that the impossibility of possession and separation appear to both parties as a great, if not the greatest misfortune, they take great risks, even put their lives at stake in order only to belong to each other, which happened in ancient times. except in cases of adultery. And finally, a new moral criterion appears for condemning and justifying sexual intercourse: they ask not only whether it was married or extramarital, but also whether it arose out of mutual love or not.

Friedrich Engels, "The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State"

In his opus magnum, Engels links the origin of monogamous marriage with the emergence of private property, which in turn became the basis of the capitalist state. According to Engels, the love on which marital relations are built in a Catholic or Protestant society is different from real feelings. In this case, she acts as one of the decent reasons for marriage - a transaction for the redistribution of property. The result is another patriarchal family. The future belongs to “individual sexual love”, which is based on true feelings, passion and freedom of choice, and not the commercialism of relatives. Such love presupposes equality of partners and mutual respect, which was a rather bold idea in the era of the beginning of the struggle for equals.

Friedrich Engels himself adhered to the philosophy of freedom of choice. In the 40s of the XIX century, he met the sisters Mary and Lizzy Burns. Mary became his civil partner: Engels lived with her for about 20 years, and they officially got married just a few hours before her death. Relations with the second sister Burns developed according to a similar scenario: 15 years of marriage and registration of marriage before the death of her beloved.

Sigmund Freud: love as sexual desire

1856–1939

“The genitals, together with the whole human body, did not develop towards aesthetic perfection, they remained animals, and therefore love is fundamentally and now just as animal as it has been from time immemorial. Love inclinations are difficult to educate, their education sometimes gives too much, sometimes too little. What culture seeks to make of them is unattainable; those who remain without the use of excitation make themselves felt with active sexual manifestations in the form of dissatisfaction.

Sigmund Freud, Essays on the Psychology of Sexuality

Love, according to Freud, is like a mental illness: a psychiatrist studies it through symptoms and causes. According to Freud, the basis of any relationship and love is "libido" - the unconscious sexual desire of a person, which he seeks to realize. All romantic feelings are just a desire for sexual intimacy. This formed the basis of the theories of psychoanalysis and the psychosexual phases of personality development.

But in life Freud was less categorical. He met his only wife, Martha Bernays, in 1882. Before getting married, the lovers corresponded for four years - during this time Freud sent about 900 love letters. According to his biographers, the psychiatrist's letters could well fit into sentimental novels. However, some researchers believe that Martha was not his only woman. Freud is credited with having an affair with his wife's sister Minna, who often accompanied the couple. Opponents of these rumors believe that the mores of the time would not have allowed a psychiatrist to behave this way.

Erich Fromm: love as work on oneself

1900–1980

“Envy, jealousy, ambition, any kind of greed are passions; love is an action, a realization of human power, which can only be realized in freedom and never in coercion.

Love is an activity, not a passive affect; it is a help, not a passion. In the most general way, the active character of love can be described by the statement that love means first of all to give, and not to take.

Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving

The German sociologist disputes the popular belief that love is just a sentimental feeling, an infatuation resulting from a happy coincidence. According to Fromm, this is pseudo-love, which is imposed by romantic films and books. Pseudo-lovers don't work on their relationships, they end up being destructive and often fail. True love can only be known by a mature person who knows how to love. This feeling cannot appear suddenly, because love requires a long work on oneself.

With his first wife, Frieda Reichmann, Fromm met in courses on the psychoanalysis of marriage. Despite the fact that their relationship was fruitful professionally, the couple lived together for only four years. After the official divorce, Fromm immediately married photojournalist Henny Gurland. The girl suffered from rheumatoid arthritis and, on the advice of doctors, moved to Mexico to undergo treatment with radioactive sources. For her sake, Fromm had to sacrifice his scientific career, but the treatment only extended Henny's life by three years. After the death of his wife, Fromm was very depressed, but still decided on a third marriage. He lived with Annis Freeman for 27 years - until his death.

Hello dear readers! Today we will talk about love again. There are no people in the world who have never experienced it. Agree, if you think about it, it's great that there is a feeling that makes us strive for each other, create something in common, move in the same direction, constantly (or often) be near.

Over the years, thousands of thoughts have gathered about that, and today I would like to bring to your attention the opinions of the main thinkers of the past about this feeling.

I will also tell you how quickly falling in love passes when we forget a person after parting and at what period a real feeling can begin.

Love according to Schopenhauer

One of the greatest philosophers of the past, Arthur Schopenhauer, believed that love is a feeling that is aimed at procreation, but. It is based on such parameters as the ability to produce offspring (age), health (physique, condition of teeth and nails, fullness of the chest), as well as a beautiful face, which, in his opinion, testifies to the mental state of a person.

Women, according to Schopenhauer, are prone to constancy, while men are always, to any girl who is out of reach. They are prone to change and always look "to the left", even when next to them.

A man artificially limits the ability to continue the race, because in theory he is able to fertilize many women. And those, in turn, cannot give birth to more than one child a year, which is why they are characterized by constancy.

Freud's love

Sigmund Freud believed that the basis of love is sexual attraction. It was he who coined the term "libido". This eminent psychologist claimed that we fall in love based on two motivations:

• A person is similar to us, we see in him similar traits of character, appearance, or those that we strive for.
• We believe that a particular partner will be able to protect us, take care of us, support us.

By the way, Freud believed that the first type is inherent mainly in women, and longer feelings of love arise in men even if the choice of a partner occurred along the second path.

Love according to Fromm

One of the most interesting opinions, in my opinion, belongs to Erich Fromm.

He divided love into "true" and "pseudo". In the second case, people replenish their own through another person. This is not true love. They regularly quarrel, make up for the lack of emotions, constantly teach each other the right behavior.

According to Fromm, the main indicator of mature, true love is the opportunity to be alone, to give him the opportunity to live independently, to maintain his individuality.

When does it go and when does it start

The most interesting thing is that although a person strives to be a monogamous creature, but. If we ourselves want it, then over time the object of desire is replaced by another. Why do I say that it depends on our desire?

In my practice, there was a woman who for 10 years could not forget the man who left her. The modern world offers a wide range of opportunities to switch from one object of desire to another after a long previous relationship, not using them indicates that psychologists around the world are successfully working.

10 years is not the limit. In the book How to survive a breakup with a loved one you can read about an old woman who couldn't for 60 years. By the way, if you find it difficult, I highly recommend this book. It talks about how to forgive a person, overcome.

It is difficult to say exactly how quickly you can forget a person if you do not see him. Much depends on the feelings that you experienced before, the level of your rigidity, the specifics of the person and the partner, as well as the relationship in general. Even in the point of view of what love is, scientists disagree, to say nothing of the timing.

You may think that in teenagers, love passes faster. Even this statement does not work in some cases. Everything is strictly individual and depends directly on the circumstances that contributed to the gap, the accumulated resentment, the blow to the psyche that it entailed, and much more.

Another Book I Can Recommend If You Have Recently Separated From Your Loved One “Parting without pain and tears” by Olga Polyanskaya. This is a step-by-step guide that contains 11 techniques that will help you get through a difficult situation.

I say goodbye to you. I hope that we will see you again soon. Subscribe to the newsletter so you don't miss any new posts. Some come out every day. See you again.