Anatomy of Love: A Natural History of Mating, Marriage, and Why We Stray

.w

A LAUREL

50« EDITION

Sigmund Freud Erich

Fromm

Margaret Mead Albert

Camus

Reinhold NIebuhr Robert Briffault Denis de Rougemont D. H. Lawrence

M. C. D'Arcy Tiieodor Reik

and 12 other authorities.

An

original

collection of brilliant

essays,

edited by A.

M. Krich

^c^?i..0l£^C}0l>uu^

What

is

Love?

Malinowski, de Rougemont,

Mead and

the social anthropologists answer:

it

is

sexual love; the troubadours' songs; jeal-

ousy; matrimony, both primitive and civilized.

Freud, Reik,

Homey, Fromm and the psy-

chologists answer:

love

is

neurotic and

normal, productive and destructive.

De

Beauvoir, D'Arcy, Niebuhr and the

philosophers answer: life

of

power

its

men and women, for

good or

ARON KRiCH, practices

it is

is

who Compiled

this

a psychologist

who

psychotherapy

and

New York

City.

counseling in editor of the

the major

ill.

ED.D.,

unique collection,

role differs in the

but

marriage

He is the companion volumes Women

and Men: The Variety and Meaning of Their Sexual Experience; The Homosexuals; and with Emily H. Mudd, Man and Wife: A Sourcebook of Family Attitudes, Sexual Behavior and Marriage Counseling.

Other Dell Books edited by A. M. Krich

men: The

Variety and

Meaning

of Their Sexual Experience (D15, 35c)

women: The

Variety and

Meaning

of Their Sexual Experience (D3, 35c)

A

collection of essays

edited by A,

The Anatomy

A

of

M. Krich

Love

LAUREL EDITION

Published by

DELL PUBLISHING

CO., INC.

750 Third Avenue New York, N.Y.

©

Copyright, 1960, by

Laurel

(§)

TM,

Aron Krich

Dell Publishing Co., Inc.

Acknowledgments

for permissions to use the

selections in this anthology appear at the

end of the

editor's introduction to

each

selection.

Designed and produced by Western Printing & Lithographing Company

Cover design by Seymour Chwast

—February,

First printing

1960

Printed in U.S.A.

dedication:

For Toby and John Colin Krich

1

Contents

7

Preface

PART one: the ways of love 1.

Bronislaw Malinowski

From 2.

Instinct to Sentiment

Robert

Brifiault

From Sex 3.

C.

S.

to

Love

3

47

Floyd Dell

Love 5.

in Religion

Lewis

Courtly Love 4.

13

in the

Margaret

Machine Age

68

Mead

Jealousy: Primitive and Civilized 6.

86

Denis de Rougemont

The

Crisis of the

Modern Couple

103

PART two: the meanings of love 7.

John Bowlby Child Care and the Growth of Love

8.

Therese Benedek

9.

Ives Hendrick

The Psychodynamics Psychosexuality 10.

of

Love

118

128

137

Sigmund Freud The Mdst Prevalent Form 150 Erotic Life

of Degradation in

S 11.

Theodor Reik Love and Sex Are Different

164

12.

Ian Suttie

13.

Karen Horney The Neurotic Need for Affection

The Function and Expression

14.

16.

Love

181

191

Fromm

Erich

Productive Love 15.

of

200

PhUip Q. Roche The Meanings of Love

209

Karl Menninger

Love

against

222

Hate

PART three: the power of love 17.

D. H. Lawrence

Love and Let Love 18.

19.

M.

Love

Mind and Heart

of Love'*

21

Reinhold Niebuhr

Love 22.

260

C. D'Arcy

Preface to "The 21.

250

Pitirim Sorokin Altruistic

20.

245

Simone de Beauvoir The Woman in Love

as a Possibility for the Individual

Albert

Camus

Love and Rebellion Index of

Names

304

318

290

Preface

do not know what people call love," Tolstoy confesses it is what I have read and heard about, then I have never experienced it." But on another page he Had a glimpse of A. very attractive. Have enters: ", waited all these days. Today in the big old wood. I am a fool, a brute. Her bronzed flush and her eyes. I am in love as never before in my life. Have no other thought. Am tor"I

in his Diary. "If

.

—

.

mented."

With

—

moral conclusion, Tolstoy in stirred until an amazing age never did resolve the conflict between sense and spirit. In his posthumously published novelette, The Devil, he is still wrestling with the issue of what love is or ought to be. He cannot decide which of two equally inevitable endings to give his story. Shall the obsessed hero end his torment by murdering the vibrant peasant woman who is the object of his overwhelming passion? Or shall he destroy his desire by destroying himself? Tolstoy wrote two endings and left them both for us to choose. This inward struggle between natural lusts and the social ideal to which man aspires has been a central consideration of those writers who, by unmasking the disguises of love, have done so much to modify the modem sensibility. Despite his protest of ignorance, has anyone written more penetrating and moving love scenes than the author of Anna Karenina and War and Peace? Every lover, impatient

whom,

—

all

his genius for

ironically, the

Old

Adam

with questions that challenge the uniqueness of his love, still asks within himself, like Tolstoy, whether what he is experiencing has that secret quality which gives it something in conmion with what others call love. Reluctantly, feeling that "only another lover with love like my own can understand,** he turns to books. But what books? "Love appears in aU literature,*' Father D'Arcy teUs us later, "not as a passing episode but as the

8

Preface

marrow of it. But with what a bewildering variety of incident and type!" In a complex and often symbolic universe of inevitability, love remains the personal choice, the gesture of self against situation. To the mirror of art we constantly turn, proving La Rochefoucauld's maxim that no one would fall in love unless he had heard about it from someone else. Indeed, there is every reason to concede that romance, without which we now believe the world would slip its orbit, is a rather recent invention of poets. When in the twelfth century unsatisfied desire was placed by the troubadours of Provence in the center of the poetic conception of love, the history of civilization was turned in a new direction. is the place of love in human life, the investinature has, for the most part, been left in the hands of creative writers. Rich as this source is in description, it is poor in explication. In a work of art we must feel our way through its ambiguities, discovering at its heart not answers but further questions to put to ourselves. For, to paraphrase John Dewey, art expresses the meanings which science seeks to state. The "ruder hands" of science have made some beginnings at molding intuition into knowledge. But with a phenomenon described as being "a universe inexhaustible qualitatively and quantitatively," the difficulties involved are understandable. What is puzzling is the taboo which seems to cloak love from the eyes of those sciences which might tell us much if they would approach it. This brief excerpt from a remarkable exchange between Dr. Karl Menninger and the late Professor Alfred Kinsey, taken from a transcript of a round-table discussion ("Psychiatric Implications of Surveys on Sexual Behavior") at a 1954 meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, points up the problem:

Crucial as

gation of

its

Dr. Menninger:

Many

of us psychiatrists consider that not orgasm, or not reproduction, but still a third thing, the acme of some kind of inner personal intimacy between two human beings. I am sorry to use a taboo word which nobody has mentioned yet, but there is such a thing as love! Dr. [O. Spurgeon] Engthe goal of sexuality

is

^

Preface

9

"orgasm" is a taboo word, but if he is going to be courageous enough to introduce it, I will be courageous enough to introduce the word "love" into the discussion. It seems to me that it, too, has something to do with sexual life. Dr. Kinsey will say: "We have no evidence of any such thing as love in the Hymenoptera and Coleoptera and so forth." Maybe not. I do not know about them. I, as a psychiatrist, am of the opinion we have considerable lish said

evidence that there

is

such a thing as love in

human

be-

and this really brings up a philosophical difference which I am not sure can be bridged by any amount of ings,

discussion.

.

.

.

In rebuttal, Professor Kinsey objected that such criticism denied the right of the scientist to confine himself to phenomena which are amenable to the scientific method of observation directly, or indirectly, with human sense organs and reduction to quantifiable units. Prof. Kinsey: But, we are asked, how can one measure love? The question seems to suggest that we are ignorant of the importance of love. In actuality, however, it means that there are persons who object to any scientific study

of the quantifiable aspects of sexual behavior unless, as have already remarked, the scientist is willing to turn

I

philosopher, poet and moralist, and write an essay on the as yet non-quantifiable aspects of such behavior. There are, of course, at least 2,000 treatises on love already in existence. They begin with ancient Sanskrit literature, include the love books of Ovid, and books written by present-day critics of our research. These latter persons compliment us when they imply that the books they have written are so inadequate that we should write

something more on the subject. Professor Kinsey's

comment has

considerable bearing on

the impetus behind the organization of this book. Because of the resistance to the ineffable nature of love which Ian Suttie has

termed "the taboo on tenderness," and

its

rele-

10 'Preface gation to an epistemological limbo of the "impure" and unprecise, we have gone to the "poet, philosopher and moralist" to whom Dr. Kinsey assigns the gift of assessing the

"non-quantifiable" aspects of

human

behavior.

To them we

have added the anthropologist, the sociologist, the historian, the theologian, and particularly, the psychologist and psychiatrist, including

Dr. Menninger himself,

ing our understanding of love as a

who

are enlarg-

dynamic force within

the individual and his society.

For an

anthologist,

Dr. Kinsey's remarks raise again

what books we should open to learn about wonder which of the "2,000 treatises on love" are

the question of love.

We

represented here? Perusing the Kinsey team's otherwise magnificent bibliographies we encounter few significant works on love. Those of recent date appear to be instructional tracts. On the other hand, if we pick up the clue offered by Professor Kinsey's reference to "ancient Sanskrit literature"

in

mind

and Ovid,

it

seems that he must have had

the heritage of "love books," as they are called,

which deal with the vicissitudes, techniques and curiosities of the amatory relations between the sexes. The concern of these mellow tomes with the lustier nuances of the chase

them a ribald tone. Under this rubric a generous sampling from them has already been compiled by the gives

present editor.*

These older works cannot tell us what we want to know because when they were conceived love, as we think of it today, simply did not exist. Plato, whose ideas, of all the ancients, come closest to our own, speaks of a love which does not include women at all! Given the status of woman before the Middle Ages and in some ways well into the modern era this prehistory of love is best understood when juxtaposed against an elaborately structured combination of homosexuality, prostitution and adultery. "The belief in the immense value of the lady," Bertrand Russell

—

—

has noted, "is a psychological effect of the difficulty of obI think it may be laid down that when a man has no difficulty in obtaining a woman, his feeling taining her, and

1 See The Ribald Reader, New York, Dell First Edition. 1954, and The Second Ribald Reader, New York, Dell First Edition, 1956.

1

Preface

1

toward her does not take the form of romantic love. Romantic love, as it appears in the Middle Ages, was not directed at first toward women with whom the lover could have either legitimate or illegitimate sexual relations; it was directed toward women of the highest respectability who were separated from their romantic lovers by insuperable barriers of morality and convention." Where, then, if we have not gone either to the sensualistic, the misogynous or the chivalric "treatises" on love, have we turned for the material which follows? In its infiniteness love leaves its mark on every sphere of human activity. "It is," as Paul TiUich well says, "life itself in its actual unity." We have found it in a novelist's essay on rebellion (Camus); in a scholar's thesis on allegory (Lewis); in a physician's survey of maternal care (Bowlby); in an anthropologist's study of primitive sexual myths (MaUnowski) in a sermon on ethics (Niebuhr) in a woman's protest against her fate (de Beauvoir) in the clinical exploration of the unconscious mind (Freud), and so on. We have ;

;

;

selected considerations of the

on which

phenomena

of love

from the

operates and influences our lives. First, as an inherited tradition and social condition; second, as a need and capacity of the individual; and, third, as a three levels

it

symbol and paradigm of human existence. Of love's many forms, which Pitirim Sorokin subtly

dif-

ferentiates as "religious, ethical, ontological, physical, bio-

psychological and social," the contributors have is, I beUeve, little of import left to say in these prefatory remarks. The content of this volume ranges from the ontological conception of love, in which love is assigned a creative power that makes it the essence of being, uniting separates and unifying the meaningless, to the profound simplicity of an embrace. Between the far reaches of its metaphysical implications and its direct, intimate impact as an individual experience, we have tried to mark a few of the innumerable ways that meet, lose themselves, and branch again to become the road logical,

written so thoughtfully that there

to love.

Our debt to all of the contributors to this volume is, of course, primary. In addition, we should hke to thank the

12

Preface

various

organizations

and

individuals,

particularly

the

Technical Publications Section of the World Health Organization, Mrs. Robert Briffault, and Dr. Margaret Mead, for their generosity in nally, I

making material

available to us. Fi-

wish to acknowledge the special role of

Frank Taylor, in book we have done

my own

editor,

significantly enriching this,

sixth

together.

ARON KRICH,

ED.D.

the

part one

The Ways of Love

l.From

Instinct to

Sentiment

Bronislaw Malinowski

How

our complex customs of courtship, the marriage bond and the continuities of family life anticipate and extend biological tendencies, is traced by Professor Malinowski from the selective mating of apes to the community of interests which unites the human couple. While the taboos and restraints imposed by culture seemingly oppose the natural impulses of sex, Malinowski shows that in the long run they serve the same function of safeguarding the species as do the more automatic release mechanisms of animals. In man sexual strivings are channeled by cultural inducements which, as we shall see in ensuing chapters, vary considerably in each society and historical period. These innumerable ways of love arise out of the plasticity of man's instincts which permits them to be molded into sentiments ^those constantly changing emotional attitudes which gov-

—

ern the universal romance of hfe. pioneer cultural anthropologist, probably the first to apply psychoanalytic theory to the study of primitive life, Dr. Malinowski is most famous for his work with the Trobriand Islanders of New Guinea reported in a number of major works including Crime and Customs in Savage Society, The Sexual Life of Savages, and Magic, Science and

A

Religion.

From Sex and Repression in Savage Society by Bronislaw Malinowski. Reprinted by permission of The Humanities Press, Inc.

From 1.

Instinct to

Rut and Mating

Sentiment in

Animal and

Man

Let us compare the chain of linked instinctive responses which in animals constitute courtship, marriage and famDy with the corresponding human institutions. Let us, point after point, go over each link in the love-making and family Ufe of anthropoid apes and ascertain what in human beings corresponds to each. Among apes the courtship begins with a change in the female organism, determined by physiological factors and automatically releasing the sexual response in, the male. The male then proceeds to court according to the selective type of wooing which prevails in a given species. In this all the individuals who are within the range of influence take part, because they are irresistibly attracted by the condition of the female. Rut provides opportunities for display on the part of the males and for selection on the part of the female. All the factors which define animal behaviour at this stage are

common

to

all

individuals of the species.

They work with such uniformity cies

one

set of data

zoologist, while,

that for each animal speand only one has to be given by the

on the other hand, they vary considerably

from one

new

species to another, so that for each species a description is necessary. But within the species the

whether individual or otherwise, are so small and irrelevant that the zoologist ignores them and is fully

variations,

justified in

doing

so.

Could an anthropologist provide such a formula for the mechanism of courtship and mating in the human species? Obviously not. It is sufficient to open any book referring to the sexual life of humanity, whether it be the classical works of Havelock ElUs, Westermarck, and Frazer or the excellent description in Crawley's Mystic Rose, to find that there are innumerable forms of courtship and marriage,

love-makmg are different, that types of wooing and winning vary with each culture. To the zoologist that seasons of

From the species

is

Instinct to Sentiment

the unit, to the anthropologist the unit

is

15 the

culture. In other words, the zoologist deals with specific instinctive behaviour, the anthropologist with a culturally

fashioned habit-response. Let us examine this in greater detail. In the first place we see that in man there is no season of rut, which means that man is ready to make love at any time and woman to respond to him a condition which, as we all know, does not simplify human intercourse. There is nothing in man which acts with the same sharp determination as does the onset of ovulation in any mammalian female. Does this mean, however, that there is anything approaching indiscriminate mating in any human society? We know that even in the most licentious cultures nothing like "promiscuity" exists or could ever have existed. In every human culture we find, first of all, systems of well-defined taboos which rigidly separate a number of people of opposite sexes and exclude whole categories of potential partners. The most important of these taboos completely excludes from mating those people who are normally and naturally in contact, that is, the members of the same family, parents from children, and brothers from sisters. As an extension of this, we find in a number of primitive societies a wider prohibition of sex intercourse which debars whole groups of people from any sex relations. This is the law of exogamy. Next in importance to the taboo of incest is the prohibition of adultery. While the first serves to guard the family, the second serves for the protection of marriage. But culture does not exercise a merely negative influence upon the sexual impulse. In each community we find also inducements to courtship and to amorous interest besides the prohibitions and exclusions. The various festive seasons, times of dancing and personal display, periods when food is lavishly consumed and stimulants used, are as a rule also the signal for erotic pursuits. At such seasons large numbers of men and women congregate and young men are brought in contact with girls from beyond the circle of the family and of the local group. Very often some of the usual restraints are lifted and boys and girls are allowed to meet unhampered and uncontrolled. Indeed,

—

Bronislaw Malinowski

16

such seasons naturally encourage courtship by means of the stimulants, the artistic pursuits,

Thus the

and the

festive

mood.

signal for courtship, the release of the process

is given not by a mere bodily change but by a combination of cultural influences. In the last instance these influences obviously act upon the human body and stimulate innate reactions in that they provide physical proximity, mental atmosphere, and appropriate suggestions; unless the organism were ready to respond sexually no cultural influences could make man mate. But, instead of an automatic physiological mechanism, we have a complicated arrangement into which artificial elements have been largely introduced. Two points, therefore, must be noted:

of mating,

biological release mechanism in man, but combined psychological and physiological process determined in its temporal, spatial, and formal nature by cultural tradition; associated with it and supplementing it is a system of cultural taboos which limit considerably the working of the sexual impulse. Let us inquire now what is the biological value of rut for an animal species and what are the consequences for

there

is

no purely

instead there

man

of

its

is

a

absence. In

all

animal species mating has to be

must be opportunities for comparison and for choice with either sex. Both male and female must have a chance to display his or her charms, to exercise attractions, to compete for the chosen one. Colour, voice, physical strength, cunning and agility in combat each a symptom of bodily vigour and organic perfection determine the choice. Mating by choice, again, is an indispenselective,

i.e.

there

— —

sable counterpart of natural selection, for without

rangement for

some

ar-

mating the species would degenerate. This necessity increases as we ascend the scale of organic evolution; in the lowest animals there is not even the need for pairing. It is clear, therefore, that in the highest animal, man, the need for selective mating cannot have selective

disappeared. In fact, the opposite assumption, that

most

more

it

is

be true. Rut, however, supplies the animal not only with the opportunities for selection. It also definitely circumscribes and delimits sexual interest Outside the rutting season the stringent,

is

likely to

From

Instinct to Sentiment

17

in abeyance and the competition and strife overpowering absorption in sex are ehminated from the ordinary life of an animal species. Considering the great danger from outside enemies and the disruptive forces within, which are associated with courtship, the elimination of the sex interest from normal times and its concentration on a definite short period is of great importance for the survival of animal species. In the light of all this, what does the absence of rut in man really signify? The sexual impulse is not confined to any season, nor conditioned by any bodily process, and as

sexual interest

is

as well as the

far as

mere physiological forces are concerned, it is there any moment the Hfe of man and woman. It is

to affect at

ready to upset it

all

other interests at

tends constantly to

all

times; left to itself

work upon and loosen

all

existing

bonds. This impulse, absorbing and pervading as it is, would thus interfere with all normal occupations of man, would destroy any budding form of association, would create chaos from within and would invite dangers from without. As we know, this is not a mere phantasy; the sex impulse has been the source of most trouble from Adam and Eve onwards. It is the cause of most tragedies, whether we meet them in present day actualities, in past history, in myth or in Hterary production. And yet the very fact of conflict

shows that there

exist

some

forces

which control

man

does not surrender to his insatiable appetites; that he creates barriers and imposes taboos which become as powerful as the very forces of destiny. It is important to note that these barriers and mechanisms which regulate sex under culture are different from the animal safeguards in the state of nature. With the anithe sexual impulse;

it

proves that

mal instinctive endowment and physiological change throw male and female into a situation out of which they have to extricate themselves by the simple play of natural impulses. With man the control comes, as we know, from culture and tradition. In each society we find rules which make it impossible for men and women to yield freely to the impulse. How these taboos arise, by what forces they work, we shall see presently. For the moment it is enough to realize clearly

Bronislaw Malinowski

18

that a social taboo does not derive

its

force from instinct,

always has to work against some innate impulse. In this we see plainly the difference between human endowment and animal instinct. While man is ready to respond sexually at any moment, he also submits to an artificially imposed check upon this response. Again, while

but that instead

it

no natural bodily process which definitely releases between male and female, a number of inducements towards courtship guide and bring out the

there

is

active sexual interest

impulse.

We

can

now

formulate more precisely what

we mean by

the plasticity of instincts. The modes of behaviour associated with sex interest are determined in man only as re-

gards their ends; man must mate selectively, he cannot mate promiscuously. On the other hand, the release of the impulse, the inducement to courtship, the motives for a definite selection are dictated by cultural arrangements. These arrangements have to follow certain lines parallel to the lines of natural endowment in the animal. There must be an element of selection, there must be safeguards for exclusiveness, above all there must be taboos which prevent sex from constantly interfering in ordinary life. The plasticity of instincts in man is defined by the absence of physiological changes, of automatic release of a biologically determined cause of courtship. It is associated with the effective determination of sexual behaviour by cultural elements. Man is endowed with sexual tendencies but these have to be moulded in addition by systems of cultural rules which vary from one society to another. We shall be able to see with greater precision in the course of our present inquiry how far these norms can differ from each other and diverge from the fundamental animal pattern. 2.

Marital Relations


Let us follow the universal romance of

life and look into us examine the bonds of marriage into which lead the two parallel paths of man and animal, of eolithic cave-dweller and of super-simian ape. Of what its

next stage.

And

let

does marriage really consist in animals, especially in apes?

From Mating occurs

Instinct to Sentiment

as the culminating act of courtship

19

and with

female conceives. With impregnation the rut is over and with its end there ceases the sexual attractiveness of the female to other males. But this is not the case with the male who has won her, whom she has chosen and to whom she has surrendered. It is difficult to affirm from the data at our disposal whether in the state of nature the higher apes still continue to mate sexually after impregnation. The fact, however, that the female ceases to be attractive to other males while her mate remains attached to her conthis the

bond of animal marriage. The specific response of both male and female to the new situation; their mutual attachment; the tendency of the male to remain with his consort, to guard her, to assist her, and to protect and stitutes the

—

nourish her these are the innate elements of which animal marriage is made up. The new phase of life therefore consists of a new type of behaviour; it is dominated by a new link in the chain of instincts. This new link might appropriately be called the matrimonial response in contrast to the sexual impulse. The animal union is based neither upon the uncontrollable passion of rut nor on the sexual jealousy of the male nor on any claims of general appropriation on the part of the male. It is based on a special innate tendency. When we pass to human society the nature of matrimonial bonds is found to be entirely different. The act of sexual union, in the first place, does not constitute marriage. special form of ceremonial sanction is necessary and this type of social act differs from the taboos and inducements of which we spoke in the previous chapter. We have here a special creative act of culture, a sanction or hallmark which establishes a new relation between two individuals. This relationship possesses a force derived not from instincts but from sociological pressure. The new tie is something over and above the biological bond. As long as this creative act has not been performed, as long as marriage has not been concluded in its cultural forms, a man and a woman can mate and cohabit as long and as often as they like, and their relation remains something essentially different from a socially sanctioned marriage. Their

A

Bronislaw Maliaowski

20

is no innate matrimonial arrangement in not biologically safeguarded. Nor is it, since society has not established it, enforced by cultural sanction. As a matter of fact, in every human society a man and a woman who attempt to behave as if they were married without obtaining the appropriate social sanction are made to suffer more or less severe penalties. new force, therefore, a new element, comes into play supplementing the mere instinctive regulation of animals: the actual interference of society. And it need hardly be added that once this sanction has been obtained, once two people have been married, they not only may but must fulfill the numerous obligations, physiological, economic, religious, and domestic which are involved in this human relationship. As we have seen, the conclusion of a human marriage is not the consequence of a mere instinctive drive but of complex cultural inducements. But after matrimony has been sociologically sealed and hallmarked, a number of duties, ties, and reciprocities are imposed, backed up by legal, religious, and moral sanctions. In human societies such a relationship can usually be dissolved and re-entered with another partner but this process is never easy to carry out, and in some cultures the price of divorce makes it al-

tie,

since there

man,

is

A

most prohibitive. Here we see clearly the difference between instinctive regulation on the one hand and cultural determinism on the other. While in animals marriage is induced by selective courtship, concluded by the mere act of impregnation, and maintained by the forces of the innate matrimonial attachment, in man it is induced by cultural elements, concluded by sociological sanction and maintained by the various systems of social pressure. And yet here again it is not difficult to perceive that the cultural apparatus works very

much fers.

same direction as natural instincts and that it same ends though the mechanism entirely dif-

in the

attains the

In the higher animals marriage

is

necessary because

the longer the pregnancy, the more helpless the pregnant female and the new-born infant and the more necessary it is for them to have the protection of the male. The innately determined bond of matrimonial affection by which the

From

Instinct to Sentiment

21

male responds to the pregnancy of his chosen mate fulfills this need of the species, and is, in fact, indispensable for its

continuity.

man

this need for an affectionate and interested propregnancy still remains. That the innate mechanism has disappeared we know from the fact that in most societies on a low as well as on a high level of culture the male refuses to take any responsibility for his offspring unless compelled to do so by society, which enforces the contract of marriage. But each culture develops certain forces and there exist certain arrangements which play the same part as the instinctive drives do in an animal species. The institution of marriage in its fundamental moral, legal and religious aspects must thus be regarded not as the direct outgrowth of the matrimonial tendency in animals but as its cultural substitute. This institution imposes upon man and woman a type of behaviour which corresponds as closely to the needs of the human species as the innate tendencies in animals correspond to theirs. As we shall see, the most powerful means by which culture binds husband and wife to each other consists in the moulding and organizing of their emotions and in the

In

tector of

shaping of their personal attitudes. This process we shall have opportunity to study more fully, and in it we shall find the essential differences between animal and human bonds. While in animals we find a chain of linked instincts succeeding each other and replacing each other, human behaviour is defined by a fully organized emotional attitude, a sentiment, as it is technically called in psychology. While in the animal we have a series of physiological moments, events happening within the organism, each of which determines an innate response, in man we have a continuously developing system of emotions. From the first meeting of the two prospective lovers, through gradual infatua-

and the growth of associated interests and affections, follow a developing and increasingly richer system of emotions in which continuity and consistency are the condition of a happy and harmonious relationship. Into this complex attitude there enter, besides innate responses, social elements, such as moral rules, economic expectations tion

we can

22

Bronislaw Malinowski

and

spiritual interests.

The

latter stages of

matrimonial

af-

by the course of courtship. On the other hand, courtship and the personal interest of two prospective lovers is coloured by the possibilities of future matrimony and by its advantages. In the anticipatory elements, in which the future responses are brought to bear upon present arrangements; in the influence of memories and experiences; in the constant adjustment of past, present, and future, we see why human relationship presents a continuous and homogeneous growth instead of the series of clearly differentiated stages which fection are powerfully determined

we

find in the animal. In all this, again, we meet the same plasticity of instincts already noticed in the earher stages, and we see that though the mechanisms under culture differ considerably from physiological arrangements, the general forms into which society moulds human matrimonial rules follow clearly the lines dictated by natural selection to animal species. 3.

Parental Love

Courtship, mating, and pregnancy lead in animal and man to the same end: the birth of the offspring. To this event there is also a similar mental response in pre-human species as well as in woman and man under culture. In fact at first sight the act of birth might be quoted as the one organic event in which man does not differ at all from the animal. Maternity, indeed, is usually regarded as the one relationship which is bodily carried over from the simian to the human status; which is defined biologically and not culturally. This view, however, is not correct. Human maternity is a relationship determined to a considerable degree by cultural factors. Human paternity, on the other hand, which appears at first as almost completely lacking in biological foundation, can be shown to be deeply rooted in natural endowment and organic need. Thus here again we are forced to compare minutely the animal with the human family, to state the similarities as well as the differences. With the animal, birth changes the relationship between the two mates. new member has arrived into the family.

A

From The mother responds

Instinct to Sentiment

23

immediately. She licks the offspring, watches it constantly, warms it with her body, and feeds it with her breasts. The early maternal cares imply certain anatomical arrangements such as the pouches in the marsupials and the milk-glands in the mammals. There comes a response in the mother to the appearance of the it is, in offspring. There is also a response in the young fact, perhaps the most unquestionable type of instinctive acto

it

—

tivity.

The human mother is endowed with similar anatomical equipment and, in her body, conception, pregnancy, and childbirth entail a series of changes analogous to the gesta-

any other mammal. When the child is bom the bodily status which constitutes animal motherhood is to be found also in the human mother. Her breasts swollen with milk invite the child to suck with an impulse as elementary tion of

and powerful

as the infant's

tail

into the

mother

hunger and

warm, comfortable, and

of the child for a

thirst.

The needs

safe place dove-

extremely strong, passionate desire of the They are correlated to her ten-

to clasp the infant.

derness and solicitude for the child's welfare. Yet in no human society, however high or low it might be in culture, is maternity simply a matter of biological endowment or of innate impulses. Cultural influences analogous to those we found determining relations between lovers and imposing obligations between consorts, are at

work even

in

From

moulding the relation of the mother

to the

moment

of conception this relation becomes a concern of the community. The mother has to observe taboos, she follows certain customs and submits to child.

the

ritual proceedings. In higher societies these are largely but

not completely replaced by hygienic and moral rules; in lower they belong to the domain of magic and religion. But all such customs and precepts aim at the welfare of the unborn child. For its sake the mother has to undergo cere-

monial treatment, suffer privations and discomforts. Thus an obUgation is imposed upon the prospective mother in anticipation of her future instinctive response.

run ahead of her her future attitude.

feelings, culture

dictates

Her

duties

and prepares

Bronislaw Malinowski

24

After birth the scheme of traditional relations is not less powerful and active. Ceremonies of purification, rules which

mother and child from the rest of the commurites and rites of the reception of the newborn infant into the tribe, create one and all a special bond between the two. Such customs exist both in patrilineal and matrilineal societies. In these latter there are, as a rule, even more elaborate arrangements and the mother is

isolate the nity,

baptismal

brought into yet closer contact with the child, not only at the outset but also at a later period. Thus it can be said without exaggeration that culture in its traditional bidding duplicates the instinctive drive.

More

At the same time, amplify, and specialize the natural tendencies, those which bid the mother tenderly to suckle, to protect, and to care for her offspring. If we try to draw the parallel between the relation of precisely

it

anticipates

its

rulings.

cultural influences simply endorse,

all

father to child in animal and

human

we

societies,

find that

easy to discover the cultural elements in humanity but difficult to find out what instinctive endowment could exist. As a matter of fact, in higher cultures at least the necessity for imposing the bond of marriage is practically and theoretically due to the fact that a father has to be made to look after his children. An illegitimate child has, as a rule, no chance of receiving the same care from its natural father as a legitimate one and the latter is cared for to a large extent because it is the father's duty. Does that mean that there are no innate paternal tendencies in man? It will be it is

show that the human endowed with definite impulses

possible for us to

contrary,

establish natural paternity, but powerful as the

father

—not

raw material out of which custom

is,

enough is

on the

sufficient to

to serve

fashioned.

among the higher mammals. indispensable there, because, owing to long pregnancy, lactation, and education of the young, the female and her offspring need a strong and inLet us

first

We know

look

at paternity

that the

male

is

terested protector. Correlated with this need

we

find

what

has been called in the previous chapter the matrimonial response. This response, which induces the male to look after the pregnant female, is not weakened by the act of

From birth, but,

Instinct to Sentimeni

.

on the contrary, it becomes stronger and a tendency on the part of the male to proi

velops into the whole family.

two partners has

The matrimonial attachment between to

i^

be regarded biologically as an interme-

up to paternal attachment. Turning now to human societies, we see that the need, far from abating, becomes even stronger. The pregnant and diate stage leading

lactant

woman

sister,

and

is

this

not

less

but

helplessness

more

helpless than her simian

increases with

culture.

The

children again need not only the ordinary cares of animal infancy, not merely suckling and tending, as well as the

education of certain innate tendencies, but also such inand handicraft as is indispensable even in the simplest human societies. Can we therefore imagine that as humanity was passing from a state of nature into culture the fundamental tendency in the male, which under the new conditions was even more imperative, should be gradually lessened or be led to disappear? Such a state of affairs would run counter to all biological laws. It is, in fact, completely denied by all the facts observed in human societies. For, once a man is made to remain with his wife to guard her pregnancy, to observe the various duties which he usually has to fulfill at birth, there can be not the slightest doubt that his response to the offspring is that of impulsive interest and tender attachment. struction in language, tradition,

Thus we see an interesting difference between the workin the ing of cultural and natural endowment. Culture form of law, morals, and custom forces the male into the

—

—

which he has to submit to the natural situation, he has to keep guard over the pregnant woman. It forces him also, through various means, to share in her anticipatory interest in the child. But once forced into this position, the male responds invariably with strong interests and positive feelings for the offspring. And this brings us to a very interesting point. In all human societies however they might differ in the patterns of sexual morality, in the knowledge of embryology, and there is universally found in their types of courtship what might be called the rule of legitimacy. By this I mean position in that

is,

—

—

Bronislaw Malinowski

26

all human societies a girl is bidden to be married before she becomes pregnant. Pregnancy and childbirth on the part of an unmarried young woman are invariably regarded as a disgrace. Such is the case in the very free communities of Melanesia described in this essay. Such is the case in all human societies concerning which we have any information. I know of no single instance in anthropological literature of a community where illegitimate children, that is children of unmarried girls, would enjoy the same social treatment and have the same social status as legiti-

that in

mate

ones.

The

universal postulate of legitimacy has a great socio-

logical significance,

means

which

is

not yet sufficiently acknowl-

human

societies moral tradiand law decree that the group consisting of a woman and her offspring is not a sociologically complete unit. The

edged.

It

that in all

tion

ruling of culture runs here again on entirely the same lines as natural endowment; it declares that the human family

must

consist of the

And

male

as well as the female.

in this culture finds a ready response in the

tional attitudes of the male.

The

father at

all

emo-

stages of cul-

and this interest, no matmight be rationaUzed in certain patrilineal societies, is exactly the same in matrilineal societies where the child is neither an heir nor successor to his father nor even usually regarded as the offspring of his body. And even when, as in a polyandrous society, there is no possibility at all for any knowledge and interest in the matter of who might be the begetter, the one who is selected to

ture ter

is

interested in his children,

how

it

act as the father responds emotionally to this call. It would be interesting to inquire in what way we could imagine the working of the instinctive tendency of fatherhood. With the mother the response is plainly determined by the bodily facts. It is the "child whom she has created in her womb that she is going to love and be interested in. With the man there can be no such correlation between the seminal cell which fertilizes the female ovum on the one hand and the sentimental attitude on the other. It seems to me that the only factors which determine the sentimental attitude in the male parent are connected with the life led

From

Instinct to Sentiment

27

together with the mother during her pregnancy. If this is correct, we see how the dictates of culture are necessary in order to stimulate and organize emotional attitudes in

man and how

innate

endowment

is

indispensable to cul-

could not impose so many duties on the male, nor without a strong biological endowment could he carry them out with such spontaneous emotional ture. Social forces alone

response.

The

cultural

elements which enter into the father-to-

child relationship are closely parallel to those

which de-

termine maternity. The father usually has a share in the mother's taboos, or, at least, he has to maintain some others side by side with her. special t>^pe of prohibition which is definitely associated with the welfare of the child is the taboo on sexual intercourse with a pregnant wife. At birth there are again duties for the father to perform. The most famous of these is the couvade, a custom in which the husband has to take over the symptoms of postnatal illness and disability while the wife goes about the ordinary business of life. But though this is the most extreme form of afl&rmation of paternity, some analogous arrangement, by which the man shares in certain postnatal burdens of his wife, or, at least, has to carry on actions in sympathy with her, exist in all societies. It is not difficult to place this t>'pe of custom in our scheme. Even the apparently absurd idea of the couvade presents to us a deep meaning and a necessar>' function. If it is of high biological value for the human family to consist of both father and mother; if traditional customs and rules are there to establish a social situation of close moral proximity between father and child; if all such customs aim at drawing the man's attention to his offspring, then the couvade which makes man simulate the birth-pangs and the illness of maternity is of great value and provides the necessary stimulus and expression for paternal tendencies. The couvade and all the customs of its t>'pe serve to accentuate the

A

principle of legitimacy, the child's need of a father.

we have again the two sides of the question. alone never determine human behaviour. Rigid instincts which would prevent man's adaptation to any In

all this

Instincts

28

Bronislaw Malinowski

new

set of conditions are useless to the

plasticity of instinctive tendencies

is

human

species.

The

the condition of cul-

But the tendencies are there and cannot be Although the character of the maternal relation is determined by culture; although the obligations are imposed from outside by tradition, they all correspond to the natural tendency, for they all emphasize the closeness of the bond between father and child, they isolate them and make them dependent upon each other. It is imtural advance.

developed

arbitrarily.

portant to note that many of these social relations are anticipatory: they prepare the father for his future feelings, they dictate to him beforehand certain responses, which he will later develop.

Paternity

we have

seen cannot be regarded as a merely

social arrangement. Social elements simply place

man

into

a situation in which he can respond emotionally, and they dictate to him a series of actions by which the paternal tendencies can find their expression. Thus, while we find that maternity is social as well as biological, we must affirm

determined also by biological elements, make-up it is closely analogous to the maternal bond. In all this culture emphasizes rather than overrides the natural tendencies. It re-makes, with other elements, the family into the same pattern as we find in nature. Culture refuses to run riot. that paternity

is

that therefore in

4.

From

its

Instinct to Sentiment

we summarized the salient points of our comparison between the constitution of the animal and the

In the last chapter

human

family.

Through

the disappearance of the definite

through the increasing cultural there arises a complexity in the human response, a variety which at first seems to introduce nothing but chaos and disorder. This, however, is not really

physiological landmarks, control in

man

the case. In the

first

place

we can

emotional adjustments of mating simplified in one direction. The

see that the varying

human human bonds

in the

family are culminate on their sexual side in marriage, on their parental side in a life-long enduring family. In both cases the emotions

From

Instinct to Sentiment

29

centre around one definite object, whether this be the consort, the child, or the parent. Thus the exclusive domi-

nance of one individual appears as the first characteristic in the growth of human emotional attitudes. As a matter of fact we can see this tendency even as we ascend in the animal kingdom from the lower to the higher species. Among the lower animals the male seed is often scattered broadcast and the fertilizing of the female egg is left entirely

to physical agencies.

The personal

equation,

and adjustment develop gradually and attain their fullest development among the highest animals. In man, however, this tendency is translated and enforced by definite institutions. Mating, for instance, is defined by a number of sociological factors some of which selection

exclude a number of females, while others indicate the suitable partners or stipulate definite unions. In certain forms of marriage the individual bond is completely established

by social elements, such as infant betrothal or socially prearranged marriages. In any case, right through courtship, matrimonial relations and the care of the children, the two individuals gradually establish an exclusive pernumber of interests of economic, sexual, legal, sonal tie. and religious nature are for each partner dominated by the

A

personality of the other.

The

legal

tion of marriage establishes, as cially enforceable

and the religious sanc-

we know,

a lifelong, so-

bond between the two. Thus

in

human

dominated by one object rather than by the situation of the moment. Within the same relationship the emotions and the type of drives and interests vary: they are usually one-sided and discon-

relations the emotional adjustments are

nected at the beginning of the courtship, they gradually ripen into a personal affection during that period, they are immensely enriched and complicated by the common life in marriage, even more so by the arrival of children. Yet throughout this variety of emotional adjustments the permanence of the object, its deep hold on the other individual's life constantly increases. The bond cannot be broken easily and the resistances are usually both psychological and social. Divorce in savage and civilized communities, for instance, or a rupture between parent and child is both a per-

30

Bronislaw Malinowski

sonal tragedy and a sociological mishap. But though the emotions which enter into the human family bond are constantly changing though they depend upon circumstances matrimonial love, for instance, entailing love and sorrow as well as joy, fear, and passionate

—

—

—

though they are always complex and never exclusively dominated by an instinct, yet they are by no means chaotic or disorganized, in fact they are arranged inclinations

into definite systems.

The

general attitude of one consort and vice versa is not

to the other, of a parent to a child

in any way accidental. Each type of relationship must dispose of a number of emotional attitudes which subserve certain sociological ends, and each attitude gradually grows up according to a definite scheme through which the emotions are organized. Thus in the relations between the two consorts the sentiment begins with the gradual awakening of sexual passion. In culture, this, as we know, is never a merely instinctive moment. Various factors, such as selfinterest, economic attraction, social advancement, modify

charm of a girl for a man or vice versa, in low levels of culture as well as in more highly developed civilizations. This interest once aroused, the passionate attitude has to be gradually built up by the traditional, customary course of courtship prevailing in a given society. No sooner has this the

attachment been built up, than the decision to enter marriage introduces a

first

contract, establishes a

sociologically defined relationship.

Through

more or this

less

period a

preparation for matrimonial ties takes place. The legal bond of marriage as a rule changes the relationship in which the sexual elements are still predominate into one of common life, and here the emotional attitudes have to become reorganized. It is important to note that the change to matrimony, which in all societies is the subject of proverbs and jokes, entails a definite and difficult readjustment of attitudes: while in the human relationship

from courtship

the sexual elements are not eliminated nor the memories of

courtship effaced, entirely new interests and new emotions have to be incorporated. The new attitudes are built upon the foundation of the old and personal tolerance and patience in trying situations have to be

formed

at the

expense

From Sex

to

Love

in Religion

31

of sexual attractiveness. The initial charms and the gratitude for the erotic pleasure of earlier life have a definite psychological value and form an integral part of the later find in this an important element of human feelings.

We

sentiments: later

the carrying over of previous

stages.

We

presently

shall

memories

analyze the relation

into

of

mother to child and father to son, and show there that the same system of gradual ripening and organizing the emotions takes place. There is always a dominant emotional attitude associated with the bodily relation. Between husband and wife sexual desire is indispensable, as well as an associated bond of personal attractiveness and compatibility of character. The sentimental elements of courtship, the passionate feelings of first possession must be incorporated into the calmer affection, allowing husband and wife to enjoy each other's company throughout the best part of

These elements must also be harmonized with of work and community of interest which unite the two into the joint managers of the household. It is a well-known fact that each transition between courtship and sexual cohabitation, between that stage and the fuller common life of later matrimony, between married life and their days.

the

community

parental

life,

constitutes a crisis full of difficulties, dangers

and maladjustments. These are the points at which the tude undergoes a special phase of reorganization. .

2.

From Sex

Robert

to

Love

in

.

atti-

.

Religion

Briffault

ineluctable development of primitive magic as a means of control over supernatural forces to religion as an inter-

The

life, carried with it, Briffault says, a psychic residue of sexual rites and symbolism which was spiritualized into the exaltations of sacred love. As the erotic rit-

pretation of

32

Robert Briffault

became inconsistent with the sentiphases of culture, emphasis shifted from the sensual gesture intended to stimulate the beneficence of the gods to ascetic practices which would disarm their envy and malevolence. Out of that identification with self-defilement arose the obsessive denunciation by the Christian Fathers of sex as the essence of sin. These attitudes laid the foundation of sexual morality in Western civilization and by delineating an antithesis between spirit and flesh invested our tradition of love with its creative tensions.

uals of early religion

ments of

Robert is

best

later

Briffault,

known

for his

philosopher,

anthropologist,

novelist,

monumental study of matriarchy, The

Mothers. Reprinted from Sex in Civilization, edited by V. F. Calverton and Samuel Schmalhausen. By courtesy of Herma Briffault.

From Sex

to

Love

in

Religion

In the tradition of modern Western civilization no two spheres stand more sharply opposed than that of religion and that of sex. The manifestations of the latter are in that tradition the type of sin, the head-fount of that evil and impurity with which the religious spirit cannot be brought into touch without defilement and dissolution. Between religion and eroticism the antithesis is scarcely less than between religion and atheism. Yet a glance at the various religions of the world, outside Christianity and one or two closely allied systems, a survey of the religious rites of lower phases of culture, shows that the antithesis does not exist. Those religions and those rites are, on the contrary, shot through and through with riotous sensuality; the manifestations of the sex instinct, instead of being accounted incompatible with the religious spirit, are associated with it in the closest manner; and religion, in those phases, is almost as much concerned with sex as with ethics or theology. The religious art of New Guinea, of Polynesia, of Indonesia, of Africa, of South America is as pornographic as that of the temples of India and of Japan. In earlier

From Sex

to

Love

in Religion

33

phases of culture, from that of primitive hunting tribes to the great agricultural societies out of which our own civilization has sprung, almost every ritual includes licentious dances and songs, the performance, actual or symbolic, of the sexual act, and often orgies of promiscuity. Although the erotic character of religious symbolism and ritual tends in general to become restrained in the highest phases of culture,

it

is

displayed in the fullest

manner

in

those cul-

have immediately preceded them, and is the ancient religions of the most advancei

tural stages that

conspicuous

in

and highly civilized peoples. The elaborate mystic theology of Egypt was replete with sexual symbolism; hierodular prostitution, ritual bestiality were among the observances its cult. The religions of Babylonia, of Asia Minor, of the far-flung Semitic colonies, were notorious for the licentiousness of their rites: their priestesses were sacred

of

and prostitution was incumbent upon every all peoples, except the Egyptians and the Greeks," says Herodotus, "have intercourse with women in the temples." But the exceptions which he mentions are not borne out even by his own testimony. The religion of Greece, though obscenity and Hcense were attenuated in its later phases, presented the same rites and the same features as those of Babylon and Syria; brothels were attached to the temples; phallic emblems, ritual obscenity, the conventionalized celebration of the sexual union remained to the last as features of its most sacred ceremonies. Even the austere and simple religion of Rome was associated in its most venerated native rites with ithyphalHc images of the gods, Fescennine ribaldry, and symbolic coitus.

prostitutes

woman. "Nearly

The early Christian Fathers never wearied of inveighing against "the beastly devices of the heathen," and one of their favorite arguments was that all heathen religions were is, associated with licentiousness and sexual stimulation, and that the supreme merit of Christianity was to have, for the first time, introduced chastity and decency into religious worship. "You are utter unbelievers," said

impure, that

Clement of Alexandria addressing the pagan populations of the Roman empire, "in order that you may indulge your passions. You believe in your idols because you crave after

34

Robert Briffault

No charge brought against paganism was more difficult to rebut. When confronted with the pronounced sexual character of religions throughout most phases of their development, the traditional mind must needs subscribe to the view of the Christian Fathers, and set down the phenomenon to some vicious corruption which has seemingly overtaken in most instances the manifestatheir licentiousness."

tions of the religious spirit.

Such an explanation will not, however, bear consideracan no longer be regarded as isolated in its development from the various rehgions in the midst of which it arose. That development is now recognized to have been continuous, through a long line of religious evolution, with the rites and conceptions of the most uncultured peoples. The sexual character of religious ritual and symbolism, on the other hand, far from exhibiting the attributes of an incidental and adventitious corruption attendant upon luxury and civilization, is an essential and central feature of religious phenomena in their most primitive and rudimentary form. The explanation is not supplied by any theory of adventitious corruption, but by the understanding of the evolutionary process that has given rise to religions. While the highest term of that process is continuous with the most rudimentary, the intended function which religion fulfils has in the course of that development undergone important changes. Without attempting the notoriously invidious task of a definition, the connotation which the term religion calls forth in the modern mind is that of an interpretion. Christianity

tation of existence. Religion, in other words, is primarily thought of as a system of metaphysics. But that conception of the function of religion is not applicable to it in earlier phases. Nothing is more foreign to the psychology of primitive humanity than a desire to answer philosophical questions and to interpret the universe of existence. Such questions do not interest savages and are not understood by them. What to us is the most obvious feature of religion has no place in its more primitive forms. The its

function of primitive religion is much crete, and practical. It is not to interpret

more life,

direct, conbut to obtain

From Sex

to

Love

in Religion

35

those things which are accounted needful for its sustenance. This it attempts to do by the aid of supernatural means employed as adjuvants to practical measures and personal effort. The character of primitive religion does not correspond to the common connotation which the term has

—

much as to that suggested by the term magic a term that has indeed reference etymologically to the functions of priests among the ancient Aryan peoples. The primary needs and desires of primitive humanity, acquired so

and therefore the primary

objects of its magico-religious are to secure the increase and multiplication of the sources of food, animal and vegetable, and of the tribe. The most common form of ritual procedure employed to prorites,

mote those aims

is

that described as imitative magic.

Hunters endeavor to stimulate the multiplication of game animals by dressing up as those animals, male and female,

and imitating the act of procreation. Thus in the buffalodance of the Siouan tribes, the men dressed as buffaloes represented the covering of buffalo cows by the bull, and the phallic appendage with which the latter was provided was, at the end of the ceremony, exhibited to the people by the officiating priestess, who said "she held the power of creation and also the power of life and death over them." In other instances promiscuous intercourse took place, the men exchanging wives. There are many indications that very similar rites were common among the hunting populations of Europe, and the procedure appears to be illustrated in cave-pictures of the Magdalenian Age. The growth of crops is universally promoted by similar ritual means. The behef is found to be general over five continents that the planting of seed, to be effective, must be accompanied by the performance of the sexual act. The ritual coitus is

sometimes, as

among

the Pipeles of Salvador

and the Musquaki Indians, carefully timed so

as to coin-

m

the ground. Peasants cide with the deposition of the seed in Holland and in Germany at the present day avail them-

same measures, and make a point of having intercourse with their wives in the fields after the latter have been sown. The fable of Demeter and lasion, who are described as adopting the same means to secure the fertility selves of the

36

Robert Briffault

of the fields in Crete,

shows that the notion was an old

es-

tablished one in the Hellenic world. Agricultural festivals, and more especially those connected with the planting of

seed and the gathering of the harvest, present in every region of the world and in every age the most conspicuous examples of general sexual license. Thus among all the Bantu races of Africa the agricultural festivals "are akin in character to the feasts of Bacchus. It is impossible to witness

them without being ashamed. Men and women, who in ordinary circumstances are modest in behavior and speech, abandon themselves to licentiousness. Prostitution is freely indulged in, and adultery is not viewed with any sense of heinousness on account of the surroundings." In India "the is the signal for general license, and such looked upon as a matter of absolute necessity. Men set aside all conventions and women all modesty, and complete liberty is given to the girls." That license has a definite ritual purpose, and is sometimes, as among the Dayaks of North Borneo, limited to a short period of time, after which order must be restored. The agricultural populations of Algeria resent any restriction being placed upon the licentiousness of their women upon the ground that any attempt to enforce sexual morality would be prejudicial to the success of their agricultural operations. The Athenian thesmophoria, or sowing-feasts, preserved in attenuated form the original character of the magic of fertility.

harvest festival license

is

The women carried phallic emblems and uttered obscenities. The saturnalia were the Roman feasts of sowing, and have been succeeded by the carnival of southern Europe, in which phallic symbols, differing little from those in vogue among the Sioux and in Dahomey, were down to recent years a conspicuous feature. The primitive ithyphallic deities of Rome were for the most part the agricultural fetishes of the peasant population, who regarded the images of Mutunus or of Fascinus, assimilated later to the Hellespontine

wood, as essenAt Lavinium the ithyphallic god Liber was drawn in a chariot round the land, and his enormous member was crowned with flowers god Priapus, roughly carved out of tial

fig-tree

to securing the fertility of the fields.

by the matrons.

From Sex

to

Love

in Religion

37

Agriculture was regarded as entirely a question of religion. Nothing so astonished the Pueblo Indians when the Spanish padres settled amongst them than to see them grow crops without employing any religious or magical means of securing success. When the direct objects which it is intended to secure by primitive ritual, and the means employed to do so, are considered, the close original association of religion and sexual activity is manifest. But the association is even more intimate and fundamental. The increase of the human population is accounted no less important than that of the means of subsistence. The process of generation, which remains in many respects obscure to the modem biologist, is generally regarded by uncultured people as more supernatural than physiological in character. Some tribes of Australia and of New Guinea are said to be unaware of the relation between the congress of the sexes and conception. Apart from such extreme instances, the physiological act is scarcely ever regarded as constituting the sole efficient cause of generation. From the lowest to the most advanced stages of culture, the male is thought to be Uttle more than the vehicle through which supernatural powers operate. It is the general belief of men in the lower cultures that during sexual excitement, as in the state of inspiration or divine possession, they are for the time being the medium and abode of a god. The view of the Tartars that "each human being is brought into existence by special divine interference" may be said to express the general belief in the matter. It is indeed substantially the view of St. Paul:^ "That seed which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be but God giveth it a body." The Catholic Church teaches that the soul of a human being "is created and united by God to the infant body .

.

.

which union is called passive conception." The Christian Fathers were indeed much perplexed over the question hqw illegitimate children can be bom at all, since

yet unborn,

they are in reality created by God, and

He condemns

forni-

The

idea that the sperm constitutes the actual substance of the Deity, who uses the human male as his mecation.

dium during the condition of sexual excitement, has 1/ Corinthians, xv, 37-38.

sur-

Robert Briffault

38

vived in mystic theological thought down to the present day, and ecclesiastics have expressed the opinion that chastity serves to conserve the divine essence within man. The Manichaeans and other Gnostic sects are said to have been in the habit of administering human sperm to communicants, mingled with the elements of the Eucharistic sacrifice. The ancient Hebrews were wont to administer the most solemn oaths by placing the hand of the testator on their testicles,'* and the very words testify, testament, etc., from testis, a testicle, bear witness to the diffusion of the same ideas. The act of procreation is thus regarded as the occasion when the actual divine presence is most clearly manifested,

and ans,

as the divine act par excellence.

when they have

Orthodox Muhammed-

intercourse with their wives, recite a

short prayer, thus acknowledging the sacred character of

the act. It can therefore cause little surprise that the act of copulation was, in the Mysteries which constituted the

pagan analogue of the Christian Eucharist, associated with the partaking of the sacred substances designed to effect

communion of the faithful with the divinity. The views of most pious persons among ourselves

the closer

do not

thus

from those held by the Australian aborigines; they would account the opinion blasphemous that procreation is an exclusively physiological process, and they are at one with all savage peoples in holding that children are sent by God. Conception is commonly believed to be brought about by countless agencies other than sexual differ essentially

intercourse.

The notion

is

almost universal that other con-

must be complied with before conception can follow. Thus in many parts of Australia, as also among the Eskimo and the Plains Indians, it is thought essential that a woman should be supplied with suitable animal food by a ditions

man

before he can cause her to become pregnant. Among women do not think they could bear children unless they had previously stood naked under a drenching thunder-shower. Many of the observances and rituals which form part of marriage ceremonies are intended to fulfill preliminary conditions which are accounted necesthe Hottentots the

2 Genesis, xxiv, 2-3, xlvii, 29, translated thigh.

where the word

for penis

is

euphemistically

From Sex

to

Love

in Religion

39

sary before pregnancy can take place. In all those beliefs and observances the idea is that human generation is directly dependent upon the operation of

some supernatural power. The sexual rites of early

.

.

.

religion are not confined to

promoting the fertility of food-animals, of the fruits of the earth, and of women. Those primary purposes of primitive magic, frequently combined in rites of fertility, also include the ritual control of the rainfall, that paramount requirement of early cultures. Rain, upon which the ferof the soil depends,

tility

is

generally assimilated to seminal

and the Manichaeans are said to have regarded a downpour of rain as the effect of amatory excitement on the part of the deity. In the same manner Priapus was, among the Romans, the sender of rain. In India the amount of rain is thought to be proportionate to the number of marriages that have taken place during the season. What is regarded as the chief factor upon which depends that geneVal prosperity which it is the primary object of archaic re-

fluid,

ligion to secure, thus presents itself to primitive theology as appertaining no less than the control of the powers of generation to the sexual aspect of religion. The utilitarian effects of sexual activity extend, in early ritual, to practices intended to promote the general welfare of the community and to avert danger and misfortune. Thus when the black-fellows of Australia were panicstricken by a storm or an aurora australis they indulged in general sexual promiscuity, thinking thereby to placate the powers which were thought to threaten their well-being. Ritual prostitution was resorted to by the Amerind tribes as a remedy against every manner of evil^ as in cases of epidemics or on the occasion of the illness of a chief. Similarly the Patagonians when dogged by misfortune send their wives into the forest with a request that they shall yield themselves to the first stranger who presents himself. The ancient Greeks were familiar with the same ideas. When the Lokrians of Magna Grecia were hard pressed by their warlike neighbors, they proposed to avert military disaster by placing their wives for a month in the brothels of

the

city.

The courtesans of Corinth were rewarded by

a

40

Robert Briffault

public memorial for their patriotic conduct in the exercise of their calling when the city was threatened by the Persian invasion.

A

usage which doubtless dates from the times

of the Pharaohs is still carried out in lower Egypt by women of the most respectable families. When they are keenly desirous of obtaining some special grace from heaven, they a solemn vow to attend the holy mulid of Ahmedal-Bedawi, the most popular religious festival of the country, and there to yield their favors to the first man who

make

happens

approach them. observances which are by some peoples re-garded as incumbent upon every woman in the interests of the community, are by others delegated to specially appointed sacred women, priestesses and hierodules, who are regarded as the wives of the god, and fulfill their office either by acting as prostitutes in the temple precincts, or by effecting the divine union with consecrated priests of the god. The sacred marriage is often celebrated, either in actual or symbolic ritual, by the chief priestess or the queen and the supreme hierophant or other representative of the god. That sacred marriage, or hieros gamos, constitutes the central and most solemn act of many religious ceremonials, as in the sun-dance of the Arapahos, in the Vedic rites of ancient India, of Egypt, of Babylon, of Crete, of Athens, and in the Mysteries of Eleusis. The divine generative and creative power is not only thought to be assisted in its activity and diffused throughout nature and mankind by the sexual act, but that power is held to be stimulated by any means calculated to produce erotic excitation. Hence every form of lasciviousness and obscenity of word or deed promotes the aims of religious magic. As the Kochs of Bengal explain, the god "is pleased to see nude women dancing before him and to hear obscene songs, in consideration of which he sends rain and a good harvest." For such reasons, as Porphyry remarks, "phalli are set up to the gods and obscene phrases used." Nudity is universally held to assist the success of all magi-

The

to

ritual

cal operations. It

at

is

a requisite of the practice of witch-

which was but the survival of pagan rituals, and is the present day a feature of the rain-making ceremonies

Craft,

From Sex which

still

among

survive

the

to

Love

in Religion

41

more secluded populations

Europe. The obscenities characteristically attributed Sabbaths of witches were not manifestations of corrupt licentiousness, but of magical efficiency. By such ribaldry and exhibitionism was Baubo, in Attic tradition, reputed to have conciliated the deity of fertihty, and the gesture of Baubo was part of the ritual of Egyptian women at the agricultural festival of Bubastis and at the installation of the sacred Apis bull, the offspring and representative of of

to the

moon. Such obscenity

the

is

a feature of the rites of re-

women from which men

are strictly excluded, in Africa and in Indonesia, no less than of the women's rites of ancient Mediterranean cults. In the same manner as, being regarded as an obligatory and sacred ritual, it imphed no reflection upon the character of the maligious societies of

Rome,

so the boundless obscenity of in Central Africa is, we are assured, consistent with the utmost modesty in their habit-

trons of Athens and the rites performed

by

women

ual conduct.

With the extension of the proprietary sentunents and claims which goes with the conditions of advanced civilization, the tendency is everywhere to restrict sexual religious practices which are opposed to those sentiments. In Greece the grov/th of those sentiments "gradually swept out of recovered with a decent veil, that great mass of rites which was concerned with the food supply and the tribe-supply and aimed at direct stimulation of the generligion, or at least

ative processes. It left only a

few reverent and mystic

ritu-

a few licensed outbursts of riotous indecency in comedy, and the agricultural festivals." ^ Athenian tradition als,

stated

women

that

and

Solon had

"regulated

the

their festivals, forbidding

outgoings

by law

all

of

the

disorder

and excess." * In the phallephoria, the consecrated emblems were replaced by poles adorned with ribbons, and the obscenity of the songs was regulated by official censorship. The Fescennine jests which are loudly chanted by the women in the rituals of Africa and of the East Indies were whispered by the officiating women in the Athenian thesmo3

*

Gilbert Murray. Plutarch, Vit. Sol. xxi.

42

Robert Briffault

Roman cult of Bona Dea. The phalli which were carried in procession in Egypt and in Dahomey and set in motion by operating strings were covered with a cloth in the Attic ritual and hidden in the temple of Vesta at Rome. In Syria women were in later times permitted to compound for the obligation of pre-nuptial prostitution by cutting off their hair, a common marriage rite by which, like Catholic nuns, they became mystically united to the phoria and in the

Divine Bridegroom. Primitive magico-religious ritual consists broadly of two orders of procedures, the one intended to please, attract,

and conciliate the divine powers, the other to avert and harm which they have power to inflict. To the first class belong imitative magic and all those rites which are designed to increase and stimulate the beneficent functions of the gods; to the second belong the rites of aversion and of mourning. As the sexual rites and symexorcise the

bolisms of early religion became inconsistent with the sentiments of more advanced cultural phases, the alternative class of primitive magical measures acquired a corresponding importance, namely, those practices which originally served to avert the envy and jealousy of ghosts and other supernatural beings. These practices consist everywhere in abstention from all forms of gratification which might arouse envious feelings, in self-humiliation, in the mortification of the body, in neglect of personal adornment and cleanliness, in the self-infliction of injuries fasting,

and above

and mutilations,

The two

classes of primitive ritual are very clearly illustrated in Greek religion. The Greeks designated by the same term, agneia, the term which is used by the Christian Fathers to denote chastity and sexual purity, both abstinence, not only from in

all

in

chastity.

sexual intercourse, but also from food, and also the rites of mourning, or rites of aversion. Porphyry "going to the

heart of ancient religion," as Miss Harrison remarks, us that those rites were practiced "not in order that we

tells

may

induce the presence of the gods, but that these wretched things may keep off." Such funereal or ascetic rites are generally regarded, as for instance in India, as imparting, like all magic procedures, a power of control over supernatural

From Sex

to

Love

in Religion

43

agencies which owes nothing to any moral character attaching to them or to the person who carries them out, who may be a malefactor or a daemon. They are supposed to control the gods, not by pleasing them, as sexual rites are

supposed to do, but by disarming their envy and malevoand belong therefore essentially to the element of

lence,

fear in religion.

Among

the Jews,

who drew no

distinction

requirements and ethical virtues, the identification of magic practices and moral quaUties proceeded to a degree which was singular among the nations of antiquity. The conception of ritual defilement, of lack of agneia, became modified with them into that of moral im-

between

ritual

Out of that identification arose the which characterized early Christianity, and

purity or sin. ideals

ascetic in par-

ticular the fierce denunciation of all manifestations of the

sexual instinct as the essence of evil. The uncompromising attitude of the Christian Fathers, which caused many Christian converts to castrate themselves, condemned marriage

with religion, pronounced woman to be and declared the extinction of the human race to be preferable to its propagation through sexual intercourse, has afforded the foundation of those standards of sexual morality which have ever since been current in as

inconsistent

the gate of hell,

the tradition of Western civilization. It is customary to regard those standards as the mature fruit of accumulated human experience, as the temperate conclusions of human wisdom. But it is not so. They are the survival of what, in their original form,

few would hesitate to pronounce

as

being the fanatical ravings of delirious minds. The manifestations of the sex instinct are almost as syn-

development as religion. Because it most potent actuating impulse of living beings, the

cretic in their cultural is

the

reproductive instinct infuses its imperious force into every other form of activity in proportion to the extent of the repression imposed upon its direct operation. In the lowest phases of culture the appeal of sex is, as among animals, almost entirely functional and physical. With the restrictions introduced during the course of social development, forms of sublimation are imposed upon the activity of the instinct

which are

to a large extent

molded by

the environ-

44

Robert Briffault

ing traditional culture.

Man

owes

his exceptional social in-

circumstance that, in a degree without parallel among animals, he develops under the protecting care of maternal love operating over a long period of helpless in-

stincts to the

fancy. That condition of dependence is the most specific character of the psychical constitution of man. The need to which it gives rise is supplied in primitive cultures by the strong social solidarity between members of the same clan or tribal group. Where that original tribal organiza-

and its remarkable solidarity have disappeared, the need of the dependent human individual is supplied by personal affections and friendships. In monogamic societies that need becomes naturally conjomed with the organic

tion

The wife or mistress is not only, as with the savage, an object of sexual desire, she is also the surrogate of the mother. The needs of the sex instinct thus beinstincts of sex.

come intimately blended with the most pronounced specific character of humanity resulting from man's prolonged infancy and dependent development "the love of Love and

—

°

the heart's loneliness." The sentunental development of sexual love acquires likewise a greatly increased importance with reference to religion as this passes

from the stage of primitive magic

to

more philosophic and emotional phases of its development. When rehgion comes to be viewed not as a magic means of satisfying the needs of Ufe by the control of super-

the

natural sources of power, but as an interpretation of the universe and of man's relation to it, the chief emotional aspect of that relation becomes identical with the quality

of man's disposition which has sublimated sexual love. The need for a trust or faith in the existence of a well-disposed and beneficent power governing human destiny, which has sometimes been improperly described as a religious instinct, is of the same nature as the need of the dependent human individual for the equivalent of maternal tenderness in his sexual associate. Schleiermacher, in the discourses which for a long time set the standard of the theme, placed the essence of religion in the feeling of absolute dependence, without attempting to define the object towards which it 6

Rupert Brooke.

From Sex was

directed.

to

Love

That feeling of dependence

in Religion is

45

the source of

the sentiment of love, as it is of all human social instincts. of the Deity has thus been commonly characterized by the declaration that "God is love," and the re-

The function

supreme power to man has come to be remainly parental. The most exalted forms of religious emotion are represented by that "love of God," in which God is faint and love is fierce. The emotionalism of the saint and the ascetic is a manifestation of the same psychic elements which, in other circumstances, will fire the romantic exaltation of the lover. As with the latter, the spiritualized sentiment is insepalation of the

garded

rable

as

from

its

psycho-physiological basis:

when

the religious

emotions surge up, the sexual emotion is never far away. Hence the fierceness of Christian sexophpbia. The obsessive denunciation of sex which fills Patristic literature is the protest of an exasperated sensuality envious of that which it

denies

itself

homage which Jerome, "when

and for which

it

secretly craves. It

virtue pays to vice. I

was

"How

living in the desert

is

the

often," says St.

which

affords to

hermits a savage dwelling-place, parched by a burning sun, did I fancy myself amid the pleasures of Rome! I sought solitude because I was filled with bitterness. ... I, who from the fear of hell had consigned myself to that prison where scorpions and wild beasts were my companions, fancied myself among bevies of young girls. My face was pale and my frame chilled from fasting, yet my mind was burning with the cravings of desire, and the fires of lust flared up from my flesh that was as that of a corpse. I do not

blush to avow my abject misery." The primal function of the primitive religious magic of generation is re-echoed throughout the long line of female votaries of the Divine Bridegroom, in the lascivious ecstasies of a St. Theresa, of a St. Catherine, of a Madame Guvon. In 1925, a Norman Carmelite nun, Therese Martin, was added to the list of Catholic Saints under the title of St. Theresa of Jesus, on account of her transcendent devotion to her spiritual spouse.

"Ah! how sweet

is

the

first kiss

of Jesus!" she exclaims in the collection of devotional thought she has contributed. "Indeed it is a kiss of love. I

46

Robert Briffault

myself beloved by him, and I said to him 'I love you, I give myself to you for ever.' Jesus and myself have for a long time understood each other. Our coming together was My heaven is no other than that a fusion of our being. of Love, I have felt that nothing could detach my ardour from the divine being who has ravished me." The male aspect of the deity is, as an obvious consequence of the conceptions which have been noted, predomfelt

,

.

.

primitive societies of hunters, nomads and But the male god is, as a rule, associated even among these with a female deity, who is not his wife, but his mother. For descent being primitively reckoned through the women, a motherless male presents to the mind of the savage an incongruity. With the development of agriculture as

inant

among

pastoralists.

the chief

means of

subsistence, the

Mother of God, while

remaining invariably a lunar goddess, acquires an enhanced importance from her assimilation to the fruit-bearing earth. In her religion, which attained conspicuous prominence throughout Mediterranean civilizations, the religious emotion of the men was afforded the same opportunity of close approxunation to the sexual emotion as that of the women in the cult of the Divine Bridegroom and Dying God. The goddesses of fertility, the Divine Mothers, Ishtar, Ashtharte, Anaitis, Hathor, Aphrodite, are likewise the Goddesses of Love. Christian theology at first excluded the Mother Goddess from its scheme, substituting the Holy Ghost, whose name, feminine in Hebrew, is neuter in Greek, for Holy Sophia, although Judaic Gnosticism continued to regard the third person of the Trinity as the mother of Christ. The Goddess was, however, before long restored to her time-honored place in the devotion of the peoples of Mediterranean lands, and the Queen of Heaven resumed her pristine position with her ancient attributes, the crescent moon and the serpent. The erotic hymns and sonnets to the Holy Virgin which abound in medieval literature, the exaltations of her worshipers, of which a vivid analysis has been given by Zola in La Faute de I' Abbe Mouret, present the counterpart of the fires and languors of feminine devotion. The psychiatrist and the alienist are well aware that re-

Courtly Love

47

ligious exaltation, like sexual sentiment, readily reverts in its

ity

manifestations to the more direct forms of sexual activand to the crudest perversions and aberrations to which

that activity lation

is

subject under the stress of excessive stimu-

and repression.

3.

C.

Courtly Love

Lewis

S.

the end of the eleventh century there appeared quite suddenly in the south of France a new, a very different kind of love, and lyrical poetry which both celebrated and gave it form. It is diflBcult for us to imagine a world devoid of the motives and ideals generated by the pursuit of romantic love. Yet "love" in its modern sense begins with a state of mind known to us through the literature in which it was and a Religion of Love in which woman, seen expressed in patristic misogyny as the gateway to Hell, becomes an

At

—

—

object of the noblest devotion.

Did the troubadours first become conscious of a newemotion and then invent a new kind of poetry to express it? Or did the hterary convention teach those who practiced it a new feeling? This "fatal dichotomy" cannot be bridged; but the poetry of courtly love signaled, C. S. Lewis writes, "a change which has left no comer of our ethics, our imagination, our daily life untouched.

revolution the Renaissance

is

a

.

.

mere

Compared with

.

ripple

this

on the surface

of literature." Since the origins of our romantic tradition lie in poetry, they lend themselves admirably to the approach of this distinguished literary scholar, who views the allegory of love as a bridge

from myth

to consciousness.

Reprinted from The Allegory of Love by C. permission of The Clarendon Press, Oxford.

S.

Lewis.

By

Courtly Love

The

Middle Ages is apt to form and by its matter. of a struggle between personified

allegorical love poetry of the

repel the

modern reader both by

The form, which

is

that

its

abstractions, can hardly be expected to appeal to an age which holds that "art means what it says" or even that art

—

for it is essential to this form that the literal is meaningless narrative and the significacio should be separable. As for the matter, what have we to do with these medieval lovers

—

"servants" or "prisoners" they called themselves

seem

to be always

weeping and always on

—who

their knees before

The popular erotic literature of our own day tends rather to sheikhs and "Salvage Men" and marriage by capture, while that which is in favour with our intellectuals recommends either frank animalism or the free companionship of the sexes. In every way, if we have not outgrown, we have at least grown away from, the Romance of the Rose. The study of this whole tradition may seem, at first sight, to be but one more example of that itch for "revival," that refusal to leave any corpse ungalvanized, which is among the more distressing accidents of scholarship. But such a view would be superficial. Humanity does not pass through phases as a train passes through stations: being alive, it has the privilege of always moving yet never leaving anything behind. Whatever we have been, in some sort we are still. Neither the form nor the sentiment of this old poetry has passed away without leaving indelible traces on our minds. We shall understand our present, and perhaps even our future, the better if we can succeed, by an eff'ort ladies of inflexible cruelty?

of the historical imagination, in reconstructing that longlost state of mind for which the allegorical love poem was a natural mode of expression. But we shall not be able to do so unless we begin by carrying our attention back to a chapperiod long before that poetry was born. In this ter, I shall trace in turn the rise both of the sentiment .

called "Courtly

.

.

Love" and of the allegorical method. The no doubt, to carry us far from our

discussion will seem,

Courtly Love

49

main subject: but it cannot be avoided. Every one has heard of courtly love, and every one knows that it appears quite suddenly at the end of the eleventh century in Languedoc. The characteristics of the Troubadour poetry have been repeatedly described/ With the form, which is lyrical, and the style, which is sophisticated and often "aureate" or deliberately enigmatic, we

need not concern ourselves. The sentiment, of course, love, but love of a highly specialized sort,

is

whose charac-

may be enumerated as Humility, Courtesy, Aduland the Religion of Love. The lover is always abject. Obedience to his lady's lightest wish, however whimsical, and silent acquiescence m her rebukes, however unjust, are the only virtues he dares to claim. There is a service of love closely modelled on the service which a feudal vassal owes to his lord. The lover is the lady's "man." He addresses her as midons, which etymologically represents not "my lady" but "m.y lord." ^ The whole attitude has been rightly described as "a feudalisation of love." ^ This solemn amatory ritual is felt to be part and parcel of the courtly life. It is teristics

tery,

who are, in the old sense of the word, becomes, from one point of view the flower, from another the seed, of all those noble usages which distinguish the gentle from the vilein: only the courteous can love, but it is love that makes them courteous. Yet this love, though neither playful nor licentious in its expression, is always what the nineteenth century called "dishonourable" love. The poet normally addresses another man's wife, and the situation is so carelessly accepted that he seldom concerns himself much with her husband: his real enemy is the rival.* But if he is ethically careless, he is no light-hearted gallant: his love is represented as a despairing and tragical emotion or almost despairing, for he is saved from complete wanhope by his faith in the God of Love who never betrays his faithful worshippers and who can subjugate the possible only to those polite. It thus

—

See Fauriel. Histoire de la Poesie provenQale, 1846; E. Gorra, Origini della Poesia Amorosa di Provenza (Rendiconti del Istituto Lombardo, 14, xlv. 3), 1910-12; Jeanroy. La Poesie lyrique des TroubaII. xliii. dours, 1934. 2 Jeanroy, op. cit., torn, i, p. 91 n. ,-, , sWechssler, Das Kulturproblem des Minnesangs, 1909, Bnd. I, p. 177. * Jeanroy, op. cit., torn, ii, pp. 109-13. 1

etc &c.

50

C.

S.

Lewis

cruellest beauties.^

The

characteristics of this sentiment,

and

its

systematic

coherence throughout the love poetry of the Troubadours as a whole, are so striking that they easily lead to a fatal misunderstanding. We are tempted to treat "courtly love" as a mere episode in literary history an episode that we have finished with as we have finished with the peculiarities of Skaldic verse or Euphuistic prose. In fact, however, an unmistakable continuity connects the Provengal love song with the love poetry of the later Middle Ages, and thence, through Petrarch and many others, with that of the present day. If the thing at first escapes our notice, this is because we are so familiar with the erotic tradition of modern Europe that we mistake it for some-

—

thing natural and universal and therefore do not inquire into its origins. It seems to us natural that love should

be the commonest theme of serious imaginative literature: but a glance at classical antiquity or at the Dark Ages at once shows us that what we took for "nature" is really a special state of affairs, which will probably have an end, and which certainly had a beginning in eleventh-century or it seemed to us till lately a natural Provence. It seems thing that love (under certain conditions) should be regarded as a noble and ennobling passion: it is only if we imagine ourselves trying to explain this doctrine to Aristotle, Virgil, St. Paul, or the author of Beowulf, that we become aware how far from natural it is. Even our code of etiquette, with its rule that women always have precedence, is a legacy from courtly love, and is felt to be far from natural in modern Japan or India. Many of the features of this sentiment, as it was known to the Troubadours, have indeed disappeared; but this must not blind us to the fact that the most momentoiJS and the most revolutionary elements in -it have made the background of European literature for

—

—

hundred years. French poets, in the eleventh century, discovered or invented, or were the first to express, that romantic species of passion which English poets were still writing about in the nineteenth. They effected a change which has left no corner of our ethics, our imagination, or eight

BIbid., p. 97.

— Courtly Love

51

our daily life untouched, and they erected impassable barriers between us and the classical past or the Oriental present. Compared with this revolution the Renaissance is a

mere ripple on the surface of literature. There can be no mistake about the novelty of romantic love: our only difficulty is to imagine in all its bareness the mental world that existed before its coming to wipe out of our minds, for a moment, nearly all that makes the food both of modern sentimentality and modern cynicism. We must conceive a world emptied of that ideal of "happiness" a happiness grounded on successful romantic love which still supplies the motive of our popular fiction. In ancient literature love seldom rises above the levels of merry sensuality or domestic comfort, except to be treated as a tragic madness, an olttj, which plunges otherwise sane people (usually women) into crime and disgrace. Such is the love of Medea, of Phaedra, of Dido; and such the love from which maidens pray that the gods may protect them.^ At the other end of the scale we find the comfort and utility of a good wife acknowledged: Odysseus loves Penelope as he loves the rest of his home and possessions, and Aristotle rather grudgingly admits that the conjugal relation may now and then rise to the same level as the virtuous friendship between good men.'' But this has plainly very little to do with "love" in the modern or medieval sense; and if we turn to ancient love poetry proper, we shall be even more disappointed. We shall find the poets loud in their praises

—

—

of love, Ti<;

Xs

no doubt, pioq, Ti

"What

is life

But

this is

Xe

TEp-rrvov diTEp xpucrfjc; 'A(|)poXLTr]q;

without love, tra-la-la?" as the later song has to be taken seriously than the countless panegyrics both ancient and modern on the all-consoling virtues of the bottle. If Catullus and Propertius vary the strain with cries of rage and misery, this is not so much because they are romantics as because they are exhibitionists. In their anger or their suffering they care not who knows the pass to which love has brought them. They are in the it.

6

no more

Euripides, Medea, 630; Hippolytus, 529. 1162 a. eln X* av Kai Xi' dpexriv.

' Aristotle, £.thics,

— 52

C. S. Lewis

arrj. They do not expect their obsession to be regarded as a noble sorrow they have no "silks and fine

grip of the

—

array."

Plato will not be reckoned an exception by those who have read him with care. In the Symposium, no doubt, we find the conception of a ladder whereby the soul may ascend from human love to divine. But this is a ladder in the strictest sense; you reach the higher rungs by leaving the lower ones behind. The original object of human love who, incidentally, is not a woman has simply fallen out of

—

sight before the soul arrives at the spiritual object.

The very

upwards would have made a courtly lover blush, since it consists in passing on from the worship of the beloved's beauty to that of the same beauty in others. Those

first

step

call themselves Platonists at the Renaissance may imagine a love which reaches the divine without abandoning the human and becomes spiritual while remaining also carnal; but they do not find this in Plato. If they read it into him, this is because they are living, like ourselves, in the tradition which began in the eleventh century. Perhaps the most characteristic of the ancient writers on love, and certainly the most influential in the Middle Ages, when Julia is Ovid. In the piping times of the early empire was still unbanished and the dark figure of Tiberius had not

who

—

—Ovid

sat down to compose for the which well understood him an ironically didactic poem on the art of seduction. The very design of his Art of Love presupposes an audience to whom love is one of the minor peccadilloes of life, and the joke

yet crossed the stage

amusement of a

society

consists in treating

it

seriously

—

in writing a treatise,

with

and examples en regie for the nice conduct of illicit loves. It is funny, as the ritual solemnity of old gentlemen over their wine is funny. Food, drink, and sex are the oldest jokes in the world; and one familiar form of the joke is to be very serious about them. From this attitude the whole tone of the Ars A materia flows. In the first place Ovid naturally introduces the god Amor with an affectation of religious awe just as he would have introduced Bacchus if he had written an ironic Art of Getting Drunk. Love thus becomes a great and jealous god, his service an arduous millrules

—

— Courtly Love

him who

53

Ovid is his trembling captive. In the second place, being thus mockingly serious about the appetite, he is of necessity mockingly serious about the woman. The real objects of Ovid's "love," no doubt, he would have ordered out of the room before the serious contia:

offend

dares,

versation about books, or politics, or family affairs began. The moralist may treat them seriously, but the man of the worid (such as Ovid) certainly does not. But inside the con-

vention of the poem they are the "demnition charmers," the mistresses of his fancy and the arbitresses of his fate. They rule him with a rod of iron, lead him a slave's life. As a result we find this sort of advice addressed to the 'prentice lover:

Go

early ere th' appointed hour to

meet

The fair, and long await her in the street. Through shouldering crowds on all her errands Though graver business wait the while undone. If she commands your presence on her way

run.

Home

from the ball to lackey her, obey! from rural scenes she bids you, "Come," Drive if you can, if not, then walk, to Rome,

Or

if

And

let

nor Dog-star heats nor drifted load

Of whitening snows

deter

Cowards,

Our

fly

hence!

Your lukewarm

you from

the road.

general. Love, disdains

service in his long campaigns.*

No one who has caught the spirit of the author will misunderstand this. The conduct which Ovid recommends is felt to be shameful and absurd, and that is precisely why he recommends ^

it

—

^partly as a

ii.

223:

Ars Amatoria,

comic confession of the depths

lussus adesse foro, iussa maturius hora Fac semper venias, nee nisi serus abi. Occurras aliquo, tibi dixerit; omnia differ,

Curre, nee inceptum turba moretur iter. domum repetens epulis perfuncta redibit Tunc quoque pro servo, si vocat ilia, veni. Rure eris et dicet, Venias: Amor odit inertes! Si rota defuerit, tu pede carpe viam. Nee grave te tempus siciensve Canicula tardet. Nee via per iactus Candida facta nives.

Nocte

Militiae species

Non

Amor

est:

discedite segnes!

sunt haec timidis signa tuenda

viris.

54

C.

to

which

Lewis

S.

this ridiculous

appetite

may

bring a man, and

partly as a lesson in the art of fooling to the top of her bent the last baggage who has caught your fancy. The whole passage should be taken in conjunction with his other piece of advice "Don't visit her on her birthday: it costs too much." ^ But it will also be noticed and this is a pretty instance of the vast change which occurred during the Midthat the very same conduct which Ovid ironidle Ages cally recommends could be recommended seriously by the courtly tradition. To leap up on errands, to go through heat or cold, at the bidding of one's lady, or even of any lady, would seem but honourable and natural to a gentleman of the thirteenth or even of the seventeenth century; and most of us have gone shopping in the twentieth with ladies who showed no sign of regarding the tradition as a dead letter. The contrast inevitably raises in our minds a question as to how far the whole tone of medieval love poetry can be explained by the formula, "Ovid misunderstood"; and

—

—

—

though we see

at

—

once that this is no solution for if it were still have to ask why the Middle Ages

we should misunderstood him granted,

good one

The

so consistently

to keep in mind.

fall

.

.

—

^yet

the thought

is

a

.

coming of Chrisany deepening or idealizing of the

of the old civilization and the

tianity did not result in

conception of love. The fact

is

important, because

it

refutes

two theories which trace the great change in our sentiments respectively to the Germanic temperament and to the Christian religion

The

—

especially to the cult of the Blessed Virgin.

view touches on a real and very complex relationship; but as its true nature will become apparent in what follows, I will here content myself with a brief and dogmatic statement. That Christianity in a very general sense, by its insistence on compassion and on the sanctity of the human body, had a tendency to soften or abash the more extreme brutalities and flippancies of the ancient world in all departments of human life, and therefore also in sexual matters, may be taken as obvious. But there is no evidence that the quasi-religious tone of medieval love poetry has

^

latter

Ars Amatoria,

i.

403, et seq.;

cf.

417 et seq.

Courtly Love

55

been transferred from the worship of the Blessed Virgin: it is just as likely that the colouring it is even more likely of certain hymns to the Virgin has been borrowed from the love poetry.^" Nor is it true in any unequivocal sense that the medieval church encouraged reverence for women at

—

all:

while

it is

a ludicrous error (as

—

we

shall presently see)

suppose that she regarded sexual passion, under any conditions or after any possible process of refinement, as a noble emotion. The other theory turns on a supposedly innate characteristic in the Germanic races, noted by Tacitus.^ But what Tacitus describes is a primitive awe of women as uncanny and probably prophetic beings, which is as remote from our comprehension as the primitive reverence for lunacy or the primitive horror of twins; and because it is thus remote, we cannot judge how probably it might have developed into the medieval Frauendienst, the to

service of ladies. What is certain is that where a Germanic race reached its maturity untouched by the Latin spirit, as in Iceland, we find nothing at all like courtly love. The position of women in the Sagas is, indeed, higher than that

which they enjoy in classical literature; but it is based on a purely commonsensible and unemphasized respect for the courage or prudence which some women, like some men, happen to possess. The Norsemen, in fact, treat their not primarily as women but as people. It is an attitude which may lead in the fullness of time to an equal franchise or a Married Women's Property Act, but it has very little to do with romantic love. The final answer to

women

both theories, however, lies in the fact that the Christian and Germanic period had existed for several centuries before the new feeling appeared. "Love," in our sense of the word, is as absent from the literature of the Dark Ages as from that of classical antiquity. Their favourite stories were

how a man married, or failed to marry, a woman. They preferred to hear how a holy man went to heaven or how a brave man went to battle. We are mistaken if we think that the poet in the Song of Roland not, like ours, stories of

M See Jeanroy in the Histoire de la langue et de la litterature frangaise, 1896, torn, i, p. 372 n.; also Wechssler, op. cit., Bnd. I, cap. xviii. ^

Germania,

viii.

2.

56

C.

shows

Lewis

S.

restraint in disposing so briefly of Aide, Roland's

by bringing her in at all, he is doing the up chinks, dragging in for our delectation the most marginal interests after those of primary importance have had their due. Roland does not think about Aide on the battle-field: he thinks of his praise betrothed."^ Rather

opposite: he

is

expatiating, filling

France. The figure of the betrothed is shadwith that of the friend, Oliver. The deepest of worldly emotions in this period is the love of man for man, the mutual love of warriors who die together fighting against odds, and the affection between vassal and lord. We shall never understand this last, if we think of it in the light of our own moderated and impersonal loyalties. We must not think of officers drinking the king's health: we must think rather of a small boy's feeling for some hero in the sixth form. There is no harm in the analogy, for the good vassal is to the good citizen very much as boy is to a man. He cannot rise to the great abstraction of a res publica. He loves and reverences only what he can touch and see; but he loves it with an intensity which our tradition is loath to allow except to sexual love. Hence to the old vassal in the English poem, parted from in pleasant

'"^

owy compared

his lord,

him on mode ]?aet he his monndryhten Clyppe and cysse and on cneo lecge Honda ond heafod, swa he hwilum aer J)ynce]?

On geardagum The

feeling

.

.

more passionate and less ideal than our patrimore easily to heroic prodigality of service, breaks more easily and turns into hatred: hence

It rises

and

also

feudal history eries.

.

is

otism. it

giefstoles breac

is

full

Germanic and

and great treachno doubt, had be-

of great loyalties Celtic

legend,

queathed to the barbarians some stories of tragic love between man and woman love "star-crossed" and closely analogous to that of Dido or Phaedra. But the theme claims no pre-eminence, and when it is treated the interest turns

—

^ Chanson de Roland, " Ibid. 1054.

3705 et seq.

Courtly Love at least as

much on

57

the resulting male tragedy, the disturb-

ance of vassalage or sworn brotherhood, as on the female which produced it. Ovid, too, was known to the learned; and there was a plentiful hterature on sexual irregularities for the use of confessors. Of romance, of reverence for women, of the idealizing imagination exercised about sex, there is hardly a hint. The centre of gravity is elsewhere in the hopes and fears of religion, or in the clean and happy fidelities of the feudal hall. But, as we have seen, these male affections though wholly free from the taint that hangs about "friendship" in the ancient world were themselves lover-like; in their intensity, their wilful exclusion of other values, and their uncertainty, they provided an exercise of the spirit not wholly unlike that which later ages have found in "love." The fact is, of course, significant. Like the formula "Ovid misunderstood," it is inadequate to explain the appearance of the new sentiment; but it goes far to explain why that sentiment, having appeared, should influence

—

—

—

make haste to become a "feudalization" of love. What is new usually wins its way by disguising itself as the old. The new thing itself, I do not pretend to explain. Real changes in human sentiment are very rare there are per-

—

—

haps three or four on record but I believe that they occur, and that this is one of them. I am not sure that they have "causes," if by a cause we mean something which would wholly account for the new state of affairs, and so explain away what seemed its novelty. It is, at any rate, certain that the efforts of scholars have so far failed to find an origin for the content of Provencal love poetry. Celtic, Byzantine, and even Arabic influence have been suspected; but it has not been made clear that these, if granted, could account for the results we see. A more promising theory attempts to trace the whole thing to Ovid; " but this view apart from the inadequacy which I suggested above finds itself faced with the fatal difficulty that the evidence points to a much stronger Ovidian influence in the north of France than in the south. Something can be extracted from a study of the social conditions in which the new poetry arose, but not so

—

" By W. in

Schrotter, xxxviii.

Romania,

—

Ovid und die Troubadours, 1908: severely revie%ved

C. S. Lewis

58

as we might hope. We know that the crusading armies thought the Provengals milksops,^ but this will seem relevant only to a very hardened enemy of Frauendienst. We know that this period in the south of France had witnessed what seemed to contemporaries a signal degeneracy from the simplicity of ancient manners and an alarming in-

much

crease of luxury.^* But what age, what land, by the same testimony, has not? Much more important is the fact that knighthood without a place in the landless knighthood seems to have been posterritorial hierarchy of feudalism

—

—

Provence/^ The unattached knight, as we meet him in the romances, respectable only by his own valour, amiable only by his own courtesy, predestined lover of other men's wives, was therefore a reality; but tnis does not explain why he loved in such a new way. If courtly love necessitates adultery, adultery hardly necessitates courtly love. We come much nearer to the secret if we can accept the picture of a typical Provencal court drawn many years ago by an English writer,^ and since approved by the greatest Uving authority on the subject. We must picture a castle which is a little island of comparative leisure and luxury, and therefore at least of possible refinement, in a barbarous country-side. There are many men in it, and very few women the lady, and her damsels. Around these throng the whole male meiny, the inferior nobles, the landless knights, the squires, and the pages haughty creatures enough in relation to the peasantry beyond the walls, but feudally inferior to the lady as to her lord her "men" as feudal language had it. Whatever "courtesy" is in the place flows from her: all female charm from her and her damsels. There is no question of marriage for most of the court. All these circumstances together come very near to being a "cause"; but they do not explain why very similar conditions elsewhere had to wait for Provencal example before they produced like results. Some part of the mystery re-

sible in

—

—

—

mains

inviolate.

Radulfus Cadomensis Gesta Tancredi, 61, ne verum taceam minus bellicosi; also the proverb Franci ad bella, Provinciales ad victualia. (Recueil des Historiens des Croisades, Acad, des Inscriptions, torn, iii, p. 651.) IS

" "

1^

Jeanroy, op. cit., torn, i, pp. 83 et seq. Fauriel, op. cit., torn, i, pp. 515 et seq. "Vernon Lee," Euphorion, vol. ii, pp. 136 et seq.

Courtly Love

59

But if we abandon the attempt to explain the new feeling, we can at least explain indeed we have partly explained already the peculiar form which it first took; the four marks of Humility, Courtesy, Adultery, and the Religion of Love. To account for the humility we need no more than has already been said. Before the coming of courtly love the relation of vassal and lord, in all its intensity and warmth, already existed; it was a mould into which romantic passion would almost certainly be poured. And if the beloved were also the feudal superior the thing becomes entirely natural and inevitable. The emphasis on courtesy results from the

—

—

same

conditions.

arbitress

fore she

It is in

courts that the

new

feeling arises:

by her social and feudal position, is already the of manners and the scourge of "villany" even be-

the lady,

is

association

loved.

The

which has

—

association of love with adultery lasted in continental literature

— an

down

has deeper causes. In part, it can be explained by the picture we have already drawn; but there is much more to be said about it than this. Two things preto our times

vented the men of that age from connecting their ideal of romantic and passionate love with marriage.

The

first is,

of course, the actual practice of feudal so-

Marriages had nothing to do with love, and no "nonsense" about marriage was tolerated.^'' All matches were matches of interest, and, worse still, of an interest that was continually changing. When the alliance which had answered would answer no longer, the husband's object was to get rid of the lady as quickly as possible. Marriages were ciety.

frequently dissolved. The same woman who was the lady and "the dearest dread" of her vassals was often little better than a piece of property to her husband. He was master in his own house. So far from being a natural channel for the of love, marriage was rather the drab background which that love stood out in all the contrast of its new tenderness and dehcacy. The situation is indeed a very simple one, and not peculiar to the Middle Ages. Any idealization of sexual love, in a society where marriage is purely utilitarian, must begin by being an idealization of adultery.

new kind against

1" See Fauriel, op. cit., torn, Chretien's Erec quoted below.

i,

pp. 497 et seq. Cf. the wooing scene in

— C. S. Lewis

60

the medieval theory of marriage modern barbarism, the nineteenth-century "sexology" of the medieval church. Englishman felt that the same passion romantic love

The second

what may be

factor

called,

is

by

a convenient

A

—

could be either virtuous or vicious according as it was directed towards marriage or not. But according to the medieval view passionate love itself was wicked, and did not cease to be wicked if the object of it were your wife. If a man had once yielded to this emotion he had no choice between "guilty" and "innocent" love before him: he had only the choice, either of repentance, or else of different

forms of

guilt.

This subject will delay us for a little, partly because it introduces us to the true relations between courtly love and Christianity, and partly because it has been much misrepresented in the past. From some accounts we should conclude that medieval Christianity was a kind of Manicheeism

seasoned with prurience; from others, that it was a sort of carnival in which all the happier aspects of Paganism took part, after being baptized and yet losing none of their jollity. Neither picture is very faithful. The views of medieval churchmen on the sexual act within marriage (there is no question, of course, about the act outside marriage) are all limited by two complementary agreements. On the one hand, nobody ever asserted that the act was intrinsically sinful. On the other hand, all were agreed that some evil element was present in every concrete instance of this act since the Fall. It was in the effort to determine the precise •^ nature of this concomitant evil that learning and ingenuity were expended. Gregory, at the end of the sixth century, was perfectly clear on this question for him the act is inno- S cent but the desire is morally evil. If we object to the con-D\ ception of an intrinsically wicked impulse towards an intrinsically innocent action, he replies by the example of a righteous rebuke delivered in anger. What we say may be exactly what we ought to have said; but the emotion which is the efficient cause of our saying it, is morally bad.^ But

^

^

:

Augustine apud Bede, Eccles. Hist, i, xxvii (p. 57 in oeen questioned; qu but my authenticity of this letter has been argument does not depend on it. 20

Gregory

to

Pluiner's ed.).

The

%

— Courtly Love

61

the concrete sexual act, that is, the act plus its unavoidable efficient cause, remains guilty. When we come down to the later Middle Ages this view is modified. Hugo of St. Victor agrees with Gregory in thinking the carnal desire an evil.

But he does not think that this makes the concrete act guilty, provided it is "excused" by the good ends of marriage, such as offspring.^ He goes out of his way to combat the rigorous view that a marriage caused by beauty is no marriage: Jacob, as he reminds us, married Rachel for her beauty." On the other hand, he is clear that if we had re-' mained in the state of innocence we should have generated sine carnis incentivo. He differs from Gregory by considering not only the desire but the pleasure. The latter he thinks evil, but not morally evil: it is, he says, not a sin but the punishment of a sin, and thus arrives at the baffling conception of a punishment which consists in a morally innocent pleasure.^ Peter

He

Lombard was much more

coherent.

was not a Thus the act,

located the evil in the desire and said that

it

moral evil, but a punishment for the Fall.^ though not free from evil, may be free from moral evil or sin, but only if it is "excused by the good ends of marriage." He quotes with approval from a supposedly Pythagorean source a sentence which is all-important f oii the historian of courtly love omnis ardentior amator propriae uxoris adulter est, passionate love of a man's own wife is adultery.^ Albertus

He

Magnus

takes a

much more

sweeps away the idea that the pleasure

is

genial view.

evil or a result

of the Fall: on the contrary, pleasure would have been greater if we had remained in Paradise. The real trouble

about fallen man is not the strength of his pleasures but the weakness of his reason: unf alien man could have enjoyed any degree of pleasure without losing sight, for a moment, of the First Good.^ The desire, as we now know it, is an 21 Hugo of St. Victor, Sententiarum Summa, Tract. VII, cap. 2. (The traditional attribution of this work need not, for our purpose, be questioned.) 22 Ibid. cap. 1. 23 Ibid. cap. 3. 2* Pet. Lomb. Sententiarum, iv, Dist. xxxi, Quod non omnis. 25 Ibid., De excusatione coitus. For the real identity of Sextus (or Xystus) Pithagoricus, see Ueberweg, Hist, of Philosophy, vol. i, p. 222: Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. Sixtus II, &c. 2« Alb. Magnus In Pet. Lomb. Sentent., iv, Dist. xxvi. Art. 7.

— C. S. Lewis

62

a punishment for the Fall, but not a sin.'" The conjugal act may therefore be not only innocent but meritorious, if desire of offspring, payment of the it has the right causes marriage debt, and the like. But if desire comes first ("first" in what sense I am not quite sure) it remains a mortal sin.^ Thomas Aquinas, whose thought is always so firm and clear in itself, is a baffling figure for our present purpose. He seems always to take away with one hand what he holds out to us with the other. Thus he has learned from Aristotle 'that marriage is a species of amicitia.^ On the other hand, he proves that sexual life would have existed without the Fall by the argument that God would not have given Adam a woman as a "help" except for this purpose; for any other, a man would obviously have been so much more satisfactory.^'* He is aware that affection between the parties concerned increases sexual pleasure, and that union even among the beasts implies a certain kindliness suavem amicitiam and thus seems to come to the verge of the modern conception of love. But the very passage in which he does so is his explanation of the law against incest: he is arguing that unions between close kinsfolk are bad precisely because kinsfolk have mutual affection, and such affection would increase pleasure.^ His general view deepens and subtilizes that of Albertus. The evil in the sexual act is neither the desire nor the pleasure, but the submergence of the rational faculty which accompanies them and this submergence, again, is not a sin, though it is an evil, a result of the Fall.''^ It will be seen that the medieval theory finds room for innocent sexuality: what it does not find room for is passion, whether romantic or otherwise. It might almost be said that it denies to passion the indulgence which it reluctantly accords to appetite. In its Thomist form the theory acquits the carnal desire and the carnal pleasure, and finds evil,

—

—

:

^

Alb.

Magnus In

28 Ibid.,

^Contra 80

Art. 11. Gentiles,

Pet. iii,

Lomb.

Sentent.,

iv, Dist.

xxvi. Art. 9, Responsio.

123, 124.

Sum. Theol. Prima Pars Quaest., xcviii. Art. 2. iii, 125. (The beasts come in 123.) Theol. Prima Secundae, xxxiv, Art. 1. The foregoing account

'^Contra Gentiles,

^ Sum.

confines itself to medieval authorities: a full explanation of the scholastic view would of course begin with its Dominical, Pauline, Augustinian, and Aristotelian sources.

Courtly Love

63

the evil in the ligamentum rationis, the suspension of intellectual activity. This plicit in so

is

almost the opposite of the view, im-

much romantic

love poetry, that

it

is

precisely

passion which purifies; and the scholastic picture of unfallen sexuality a picture of physical pleasure at the maxi-

—

mum

and emotional disturbance suggest to us something much less

minimum

—may

like the purity of

Adam

at

the

in Paradise than the cold sensuality of Tiberius in Capri. It

must be stated

at

They

once that

this

is

entirely unjust to the

same kind of passion as the romantics. The one party means merely an animal intoxication; the other believes, whether rightly or wrongly, in a "passion" which works a chemical change upon appetite and affection and turns them into a thing different from either. About "passion" in this sense Thomas Aquinas has naturally nothing to say as he has nothing to say about the steam-engine. He had not heard of it. It was only coming into existence in his time, and finding its first expression in the poetry of courtly love. The distinction I have just made is a fine one, even as we make it centuries after the event with all the later expressions of romantic passion in mind. Naturally it could not be made at the time. The general impression left on the medieval mind by its official teachers was that all love at least all such passionate and exalted devotion as a courtly poet thought worthy of the name was more or less wicked. And this impression, combining with the nature of feudal marriage as I have already described it, produced in the poets a certain wilfulness, a readiness to emphasize rather than to conceal the antagonism between their amatory and their religious ideals. Thus if the Church tells them that the ardent lover even of his own wife is in mortal sin, they presently reply with the rule that true love is impossible in marriage. If the Church says that the sexual act can be "excused" only by the desire for offspring, then it becomes the mark of a true lover, like Chauntecleer, that he served Venus scholastics.

are not talking about the

—

—

—

More 33

Cant. Tales,

B

for delyt than world to multiplye.^ 4535.

—

— 64

C.

S.

Lewis

This cleavage between Church and court, or, in Professor Vinaver's fine phrase, between Carbonek and Camelot, which will become more apparent as we proceed, is the most striking feature of medieval sentiment. Finally we come to the fourth mark of courtly love its love religion of the god Amor. This is partly, as we have seen, an inheritance from Ovid. In part it is due to that same law of transference which determined that all the emotion stored in the vassal's relation to his seigneur should attach itself to the new kind of love: the forms of religious emotion would naturally tend to get into the love poetrv, for the same reason. But in part (and this is, perhaps, the most important reason of the three) this erotic religion arises as a rival or a parody of the real religion and emphasizes the antagonism of the two ideals. The quasi-religious tone is not necessarily strongest in the most serious love

—

A

twelfth-century jeu-d'esprit called the Concilium is here illuminating. It purports to describe a chapter of the nuns at Remiremont, held in spring De time, at which the agenda were of a curious nature and whence all men solo negotio Amor is tractatum est save a sprinkling of honesti clerici were excluded. The pro-

poetry. in

Monte Romarici

—

ceedings began like this:

When the Had filled

virgin senate

all

the benches of the hall.

Doctor Ovid's Rule instead Of the evangelists was read. The reader of that gospel gay

Was

Sister Eva,

who

(they say)

Understands the practick part Of the Amatory Art She it was convoked them all, Little sisters, sisters tall.

Sweetly they began to raise Songs in Love's melodious praise. ^*

.** .

.

Alterthum, vii, pp. 150 et seq., lines 24-32: liuromissis oiniiibiis Virginuin agminibus Lecta sunt in medium Quasi cvangelium Precepta Ovidii Doctoris egregii. Lectrix tarn propitii Fuit evangelii

Zeitschrift fiir deutsches

Courtly Love

The

service being ended, a Cardinalis

their midst

domina arose

65 in

and thus announced her business:

Love, the god of every lover, Sent me hither to discover All your life and conversation And conduct a Visitation.^

number of the sisters named) made public confession of their

In obedience to the she-cardinal, a

(two of

whom

are

matter of love. It soon bewas divided into two distinct parties, whereof the one had been scrupulous to admit to their favours no lover who was not a clerk (clericus), while the other, with equal pedantry, had reserved their kindness exclusively for knights (militares). The reader, who has doubtless grasped what kind of author we are dealprinciples

and practice

came apparent

in the

that the convent

ing with, will not be surprised to learn that the Cardinalis

domina pronounces emphatically

in favour of the clerk as

the only proper lover for a nun, and urges the heretical

party to repentance.

The

curses denounced

upon them

case of obstinacy or relapse are very exhilarating:

In reward of their impiety, Terror, Travail, Grief, Anxiety,

Fear and Discord, Let

Strife

attend them as their

Still

all

those

who

Upon laymen

and Gloom,

doom!

in their blindness

waste their kindness

Be

a scorn

To

the clerks of every nation,

and execration

And

let clerks at every meeting Pass them by without a greeting!

^

.

.

Eva de Danubrio Potens in officio Artis amatoriae (Ut affirmant aliae) Convocavit singulas Magnas atque parvulas. Cantus raodulamina Et amoris carmina Cantaverunt pariter. Ibid., lines 51 et seq.:

Amor deus omnium Quotquot sunt amantium Me misit vos visere Et vitam inquirere.

.

in

66

C. S. Lewis

To which malediction we Say Amen, so may it be! ^ The whole poem

Ovid, and by no means an instance of "Ovid misunderstood." The worship of the god Amor had been a mock-religion in Ovid's Art of Love. The French poet has taken over this conception of an erotic religion with a full understanding of its flippancy, and proceeded to elaborate the joke in terms of the only religion he knows medieval Christianity. The result is a close and impudent parody of the practices of the Church, in which Ovid becomes a doctor egregius and the Ars A mat or ia a gospel, erotic heterodoxy and orthodoxy are distinguished, and the god of Love is equipped with cardinals and exercises the power of excommunication. The Ovidian tradition, operated upon by the medieval taste for humorous blasphemy, is apparently quite sufficient to produce a love religion, and even in a sense a Christianized love religion, without any aid from the new seriousness of romantic passion. As against any theory which would derive medieval Frauendienst from Christianity and the worship of the illustrates the influence of

the religion of love, very well; but

it

is

—

we must insist that the love religion often begins as a parody of the real religion. ^^ This does not mean that it may not soon become something more serious than Blessed Virgin,

a parody, nor even that

it

may

not, as in Dante, find a

modus

Vivendi with Christianity and produce a noble fusion of sexual and religious experience. But it does mean that we

must be prepared for a certain ambiguity in all those poems where the attitude of the lover to his lady or to Love looks at first sight most like the attitude of the worshipper to the Blessed Virgin or to God. The distance between the 'Mord of terrible aspect" in the Vita Nuova and the god of lovers 3« Ibid.,

vii,

pp. 160, 166, lines 216 et seq.: Maneat Confusio, Terror et Constricio, Labor, Infeiicitas, Dolor et Auxietas, Timor et Tristitia, Belliim et Discordia, Omnibus horribiles Et abhorainabiles

Semper

Nemo

sitis tleritis

vobis etiam,

Que Ave

.

.

.

favetis laicis.

dicat

obviam

(Ad confirmacionem Omnes dicimus Amen!) For a discussion of its possible connexions with the mystical theology of St. IJcrnard, see E. Gilson, La Theologie Mystique de St. Bernard (Paris

"

1934).

Appendix

IV.

— Courtly Love

Remiremont is a measure of width and complexity. Dante is as serious

67

in the Council of

the tradi-

tion's

as a

man

can be; the French poet is not serious at all. We must be prepared to find other authors dotted about in every sort of intermediate position between these two extremes. And this is not all. The variations are not only between jest and earnest; for the love religion can become more serious without becoming reconciled to the real religion. Where it is not a parody of the Church it may be, in a sense, her rival a temporary escape, a truancy from the ardours of

—

a religion that was believed into the delights of a religion that was merely imagined. To describe it as the revenge of Paganism on her conqueror would be to exaggerate; but to think of it as a direct colouring of human passions by re-

emotion would be a far graver error. It is as if some metaphor when he said "Here is my heaven" in a moment of passionate abandonment were taken up and expanded into a system. Even while he speaks he knows that "here" is not his real heaven; and yet it is a delightful audacity to develop the idea a little further. If you go on to add to that lover's "heaven" its natural accessories, a god and saints and a list of commandments, and if you picture the lover praying, sinning, repenting, and finally admitted to bliss, you will find yourself in the precarious dreamworld of medieval love poetry. An extension of religion, an escape from religion, a rival religion Frauendienst may be any of these, or any combination of them. It may even be as when Aucassin roundly dethe open enemy of rehgion clares that he would rather follow all the sweet ladies and goodly knights to hell than go without them to heaven. The

ligious lover's

—

poems is not what the earliest The more religiously she is ad-

ideal lady of the old love

scholars took her to be. dressed, the

more

irreligious the

poem

usually

is.

I'm no the Queen o' Heavn, Thomas; I never carried my head sae hee, For I am but a lady gay Come out to hunt in my foUee. Before we proceed to examine two important expressions of courtly love, I must put the reader on his guard against

68

Floyd Dell

a necessary abstraction in

my

treatment of the subject.

I

have spoken hitherto as if men first became conscious of a new emotion and then invented a new kind of poetry to express it: as if the Troubadour poetry were necessarily "sincere" in the crudely biographical sense of the word: as if convention played no part in literary history. My excuse for this procedure must be that a full consideration of such problems belongs rather to the theory of literature in general than to the history of one kind of poem: if we admit them, our narrative will be interrupted in every chapter by almost metaphysical digressions. For our purpose it is enough to point out that life and letters are inextricably intermixed. If the feeling came first a Uterary convention would soon arise to express it: if the convention came first it would soon teach those who practised it a new feeling. It does not much matter what view we hold provided we avoid that fatal dichotomy which makes every poem either an autobiographical document or a "literary exercise" as if any poem worth writing were either the one or the other. We may be quite sure that the poetry which initiated all over Europe so great a change of heart was not a "mere" convention: we can be quite as sure that it was not a transcript of fact. It was poetry. ...

—

4.

Love

in

the Machine

Age

Floyd Dell

Just as the industrial revolution slave,

it

was obliged

had

and from emotional

to free the serf

to liberate children

subservience to the authoritarian family. By offering satisfaction of social and sexual ambitions in the framework of the family, modern society integrated romantic courtship and love-choice into marriage. The transition, however, brought with it discontinuities and distortions of which the

Love

in the

Machine Age

69

Victorian ideal of "purity" was characteristic. As a novelist Floyd Dell voiced, in Moon-Calf and other stories such as Love in Greenwich Village, the hopes and conflicts of the "new generation." His avant-garde socio-

Love in the Machine Age remains remarkably pertinent a generation later. Dell demonstrates that manners and morals natural to the patriarchal epoch become neurotic compromises when people trained to adjust

logical treatise

to the abnegations of the old order are called in the "disorder" of experiment

and search for

upon

to live

self-realiza-

tion.

From Love in the Machine Age by Floyd Dell, copyright 1930 by Floyd Dell. Reprinted by permission of Rinehart & Company, Inc., New York, Publishers.

Love

in

the Machine Age

1.

The Transition from

to

Modern Customs

the Patriarchal

We

have already outlined the required emotional compromises of the patriarchal scheme; and we need only recall that in regard to both love and work they were essentially infantile and homosexual, taking for granted prostitution and bastardy, or sacred celibacy, or arranged marriage and and barring out courtship, love-choice, polite adultery social equality of men with women, and instinctive family and parental life, except as provided in a limited way in

—

compromise

institutions;

and

as to

work,

fitting into

the

hereditary caste pattern which similarly barred out free

choice and responsibility. We have also briefly surveyed the economic and social changes brought about by the middle-class development of trade, manufacture and machine power, and have seen to a considerable extent these patriarchal compromises have been found cumbersome to the new social order. Without exaggerating the as yet merely partial destruction of aU these patriarchal institutions that has taken place in

what

70

Floyd DeU

our society, we

may

say that courtship, love-choice, the and instinctive parental and family life have been brought back into the approved marital scheme, and that work-ambition has been set free from hereditary and caste limitations. Work and love are now substantially liberated, legally and socially, from landedproperty and patriarchal-family bondage. The fact, however, that we are in a transition period means that for multitudes of individuals there comes a change from the old order to the new at some time in their that, having been trained to adjust to the old order, lives they are then called upon to live in the new. When individuals have grown to middle-age or beyond before they discover that they are not Hving in the patriarchal era any more, they may refuse to attempt any adjustment to new conditions. If the discovery comes in adolescence, however, they will take the new freedoms for granted and try to live up to what they can understand of these broader opportunities. If, nevertheless, while accepting the new scheme of life and trying to live in accordance with it, they should be confused by the contradictions between the precepts upon which they have been brought up and the mores to which they seek to adjust themselves, they will frequently muddle their behavior. Here we have the typical cases of patriarchal-family neurosis. Once, under the patriarchal-family system, father and son had opposite interests, and a son could not achieve social equality of the sexes,

—

.

.

.

complete economic and social freedom except through the father's death; this artificially hostile relationship had to be elaborately disguised by extravagant filial pieties and rigidly dutiful sentiments. Behind these fine moral trappings were hidden the secret emotional realities of jealousy and hatred. Those dangerous emotions had to be kept out of consciousness, and they were barred out by shame. Children had to be shamed out of all their aspirations toward adulthood, whether in love or work, if the patriarchal system was to be kept going. And now that the patriarchal system has gone, here among its ruins and in our half-built new world, the moral trappings of those old patriarchal jealousies and hatreds are still preserved, the extravagant

Love filial

pieties

The danger

and

—

a real danger once

the protections

would prevent

—no is

Machine Age

—

against

still

71

inculcated.

which these were

longer exists. The crime which they obsolete, one of the

"old,

And

in the

rigidly dutiful sentiments

unhappy,

far-off things,

battles long ago."

But the paraphernalia of early patriarchal education still clutters up the modern home. The time has long gone by when homosexual practices were regarded as the proper solace of masculine youth. The time has barely gone by when the patronage of prostitution was accepted as an inevitable and valuable compromise ^when a father, activity for young male sexual instincts for example, took his son at what was regarded as the proper age to a house of prostitution, there to be initiated into the sort of symbolic and imitation sexual manhood with which he was expected to be dutifully content. Prostitution, indeed, still finds a place in our transition civilization but it is no longer taken for granted. Gone, too, as an ideal, and quite generally in actual practice, is the arranged marriage. Polite adultery has a limited intellectual vogue

—

not generally taken for granted among the classes it was formerly the most nearly normal outlet of the love-emotions. Nor are young people generally devoted at an early age to celibacy. The old set of artificial landedaristocratic compromise ideals has been abandoned. The ideals of the present age are at once more naturalistic and more romantic. They represent a return to the instinctive sexual cycle, within very ancient traditional limitations antedating the patriarchal system, but a return enriched by centuries of cultural experience. Naturalistic as our sexual ideals are, in comparison with those of the patriarchal system, they nevertheless owe much of their emotional variety and beauty to those centuries of desperate adaptation to human danger and poverty. But, having acknowledged this cultural indebtedness to the patriarchal past, we may proceed to discriminate between what bebut

in

it is

which

longs to our age and what accidentally survives

among

us.

72

Floyd Dell

actual ideals, if we have the liberty to construe them, appear to demand that John and Jane shall marry only because they have found out in courtship that they love one another deeply enough to live together for the rest of their lives in domestic intimacy, with the children of their love; that they live together in the normally exclusive sexual intimacy of lovers, which of course applies as much and as completely to John as to Jane; that they continue their relationship because of their love for each other and for their children, because of their wish to fulfill the responsibilities of love but not for property reasons, or social reasons, or fear of punishment, or inability on the part of Jane to make a living otherwise; and if these conditions after prolonged and honest efforts at adjustment cannot be met in their marriage, if the relation proves unable to maintain itself by its own inner emotional strength, but is found to be emotionally intolerable, our ideals permit that it be formally dissolved, with due provision for ex-

Our

—

economic and social responsibihties (particularly as and John and Jane left free insofar as these economic and social responsibilities do leave them free to enter into any other marital relationship which may seem isting

—

to children),

to

promise the inner emotional

former.

stability

—

lacking

in

the

—

—

These ideals if it is agreed that they are such are all of a piece, but they are cherished with different degrees of warmth. The belief in divorce and re-marriage (quite aside from those whose patriarchal religion denies such a right, or grants it only under a different terminology) is held in a more or less shame-faced way, though liberally made use of in practice. This is not only because divorce contravenes the lingering patriarchal emotional prejudices and standards of respectability; it is also, apparently, because divorce implies a public failure for which it is felt that the other partner cannot have been wholly responsible a failure for which the most innocent, injured and well-meaning partner must take some of the responsibility, if only in the matter of the foolish original choice. No such sense of public failure attaches to the mishaps of experimental court-

—

ship,

however

tragic these

may seem

at the time.

That

is

Love

in the

Machine Age

73

because courtship has the privilege of being experimental; it is publicly conceded and privately felt by the young people themselves that they may have learned something from the heartbreaks of a courtship romance which turns out badly, something which should enable them to make a more appropriate love-choice in permanent marriage. All this points to a significant psychological difference between courtship and marriage in our time. Courtship may involve an apparently complete emotional commitment to another person, and even a complete physical com-

—

may

but a complete social commitmay be repudiated upon further experience of the relationship, not without reason, but if with reason then without social censure. Marriage, it is felt, carries with it no such freedom. It is not an experimental love relationship on more realistic sexual and domestic terms. It differs from courtship, which is the private search for and finding of a mate; it is the public fact of being mated. It has a kind of social finality about it, which refers of course to the fact that it is in marriage that children are socially privileged to be born. Courtship, then, is the search for a person with whom one can be deeply and long enough in love to warrant the begetting of children. And divorce, the breaking up of a sexual and domestic intimacy, is thus the confession of a failure or a mistake. It is evidently a makeshift, and psychologically not an ideal at

mitment

it

involve

all

ment; yet such private vows

all.

appears, despite the divorce and re-marriage really want a succession of husbands and wives, a succession of marriages. They claim, rather, the privilege of learning by a previous failure or mistake how

People,

statistics,

it

do not

make now what they feel to be a real marriage. If their wishes could at such a moment reconstruct the past, the former marriage would be transformed into some kind of pre-marital courtship experience, capable of teaching its lessons, but carrying no such social responsibilities as marriage does. Or in its simplest form the wish would run: "I ought to have known then what I know now!" In a word, the educational period of experimental courtship was into

complete.

Floyd DeU

74

A

completer experimental courtship period, and not the makeshift of divorce, represents the wish of those who try marriage again after failure. And if in the light of this wish we should now restate what appear to be the ideals of our time, they would run somewhat as follows: a courtship period in which one could learn what one needs to know about oneself and love, in order to effect a genuine love-choice and then the lifelong marriage made possible by such emotional knowledge. Such a statement of our ideals may be Utopian, but that is the privilege of ideals; and perhaps this ideal is not as impossible as it may seem. It involves no renunciation of the right of divorce to corfect mistakes and liquidate failures, nor any disparagement of its propriety in such circumstances still less any suggestion that it might ever become wholly unnecessary. It is hardly rash, however, to suspect that our present divorce-rate actually represents deficiencies in the preparatory educational period of experimental courtship, due to the fact that the patriarchal system did not provide any such period or desire any such education. When young people are brought up in the patriarchal way, they may (and often do) require a first marriage to teach them what they should have learned about love in premarital courtship. really

—

—

"Purity" as the Victorian Disguise

2.

of Patriarchal Ideals

We will now consider the

bringing up of young people, with reference to their needs of courtship, and the repressive influences of lingering patriarchal idealism. It has been

noted that there

is

no deliberate or conscious intention on

the part of present-day parents to inflict arranged riage,

homosexuality,

prostitution-patronage,

or

mar-

lifelong

upon their children. Nevertheless the early trainyoung people, inherited as it is from the patriarchal regime and designed as it was to prepare young people for celibacy ing of

such childish sexual careers, will be seen still doing its in producing these psychological attitudes and in un-

work

Love

in the

Machine Age

75

fitting young people for the responsibilities of the adult sexual lives which in our society they are to be called upon

to live.

Our age has not

inherited

its

patriarchal morality directly

from the frank Graeco-Roman world which understood its purposes and dared face its familiar facts. "We have hetairai for our delight," said Demosthenes in a public legal plea, "concubines for the daily needs of our bodies, wives

we may beget legitimate children and have housekeepers." Catullus could introduce, into a complimentary marriage poem written to his friend Manlius, humorous jeers at the forsaken boy-"favorite." "Your day is over, boy. You served well enough your master's turn, but playtime's done. Now it's Hymen that he serves. Turned up your nose at dairymaids, did you? Off with you to the barber! And you, scented bridegroom, they think in order that

faithful

such; but just you show them!" and homosexuality, became, indeed, increasingly repugnant to sensitive minds in the patriarchal era; and insofar as people could not persuade themselves that these were trifling faults or follies of youth, they preferred to ignore, forget, or deny their existence. The later Greeks and Romans had already begun to pre-

you The

can't keep

away from

facts of prostitution

tend that such practices didn't exist among really nice was rendered as a tribute by the patriarchal system to the austere maxims of pagan philosophy, and presently of the Christian religion. But the facts of patriarchal life were not altered by such a censorship, even in its most rigid Victorian form. Victorian morality consisted largely in ignoring, forgetting or denying the homosexuality which still existed in the sexually-segregated people. Hypocrisy

schools, the prostitution

which

still

flourished as the solace

of masculine youth, the adultery which was necessary to maintain permanent landed-property marriage. Victorian

morality was thus a compromise by the triumphing middle class with the decaying aristocratic regime. The aristocracy could more or less frankly acknowledge the social mechanisms necessary to its existence. But these were not necessary to middle-class rule and they were formally and ostensibly it was a repudiated; but the repudiation went no further

—

76

Floyd DeU

repudiation in the realm of wishes and not in the realm of facts.

Yet the middle

class did

undertake to extend the pa-

Permanent celibacy was almost as repugnant to the middle class as homosexuality or prostitution; hence its Protestant hostility to celibate religious orders, and its wholesale destruction of their privileges. But celibate chastity could be applied as a stop-gap to replace homosexuality and prostitution before marriage. Such was the Victorian theory a new idea in Europe, at least as applying to men. Various non-religious incentives were provided to encourage youth to the practice of premarital chastity. One, and a sufficiently realistic one, was fear of venereal disease. This negative incentive, as we have plenty of evidence to show, was not generally sufficient to produce results in actual conduct. Another, and a triarchal ideal of celibacy in a special way.

—

highly idealistic incentive, was that of "waiting for one's true love." Since, however, society (still playing the pa-

game) might not recognize the love as "true," and could dismiss the discovery lightly and contemptuously as "calf-love," this attempt at inculcating a temporary and self-determined male celibacy was generally regarded by masculine youth as a shabby cheat. It was dangUng in front of the donkey's nose a bundle of hay which was to be taken triarchal

away from him

at the journey's end.

another ideal incentive consisted in the inculcation of the ideal of "purity" or absence of sexual emotions, hitherto held to be a feminine virtue, as the proper state of all young people. It might seem that this promised little success. Men were socially trained to require such "purity" of their womenfolk, but women were not trained to demand it of men. They did not ever in large numbers demand it as a pre-marital virtue in men; they were more inclined to laugh at it. Moreover, there was no way of punishing young men for pre-marital "impurity." Nevertheless, in the Victorian era, in the middle class, and in Protestant countries, the ideal of youthful "purity" gained a great vogue. It is necessary to point out the geographical and temporal Still

limitations of the "purity" ideal. Its home was Protestant middle-class England. It was in contradiction with the

— Love

in the

Machine Age

77

dogma

of "original sin," and its acceptance on the Continent was not extensive. It was, moreover, of such a nature as to seem silly to the aristocratic classes, and to the poor a beatific state practically impossible of achievement. It thus tended to be restricted to a part of the middle class, chiefly in England. America was still culturally an Enghsh colony in the 19th century. As rapidly as pioneer conditions permitted, English manners and morals were imitatively taken over. The old rural North European courtship custom of "bundling," for example, was preached and mocked out of existence. But pioneer conditions long encouraged early marriage, and thus left little or no room or need for the operation of the "purity" complex as a device for controlling youthful behavior. Gradually, however, this English middle-class ideal was taken over, along with other British manners, and it spread democratically throughout the pop-

The absence of fixed classes or castes in America, the absence of any landed aristocracy to resist middle-class

ulation.

and the later rapid urbanization of rural standgave an unusual degree of uniformity to American manners. So that, at a time in the early 20th century influences, ards,

—

when

the frightful effects of the "purity" complex were

being discovered in English life, it was still uncritically accepted in American homes. In England it was being sub-

and largely aristocratic criticism, moral authority in an overwhelming cynical reaction. In America it has been subjected to a slower skep-

jected to a destructive

and

lost

its

We are in America still too near the pioneer early-marriage period to believe in such prolonged infantility as the "purity" complex provides for youth. Moreover, the middle-class ideal is too definitely attached to normal sexuality to be quite comfortable in the teaching of moral refinements which smack of religious celibacy. Nevertheless, in a half-hearted and almost hypocritical way, because they knew no better method of controlling youth, American parents also have preached "purity" to with disconcerting results which are now their children being dealt with by psychotherapists. Historically the "purtical disintegration.

—

ity" ideal

world

has been of small scope and short duration; the has preferred to control the behavior of

at large

Floyd DeU

78

young people by the cynical older patriarchal methods of sexual segregation and punishment. But the "purity" ideal, so brief and partial in its reign, is important to us because it lies in our immediate social background. It is a late and decadent remnant of patriarchal morals, devastating in its psychological effects upon youth in a non-patriarchal society.

psychologically devastating because

it

involves a

contradiction and a lie. It promises to lead homosexuality and prostitution-patronage, and

away from

It

is

it

leads to

them, without any of the older patriarchal justifications of such modes of sexual life. It promises to lead to the middleclass ideal of a happy and permanent marital life, and it

makes

this impossible

on normal terms. "Purity" is the old and prostitution, ashamed of it-

patriarchal homosexuality self,

denying

its

actual goal, infinitely chagrined

when

it

and struggling forever in a vain pretense of being the opposite of what it is. We must now define the "purity" ideal more precisely. It is an ascription to young people past the age of puberty, clear up to economically adult life, of an infantile lack of arrives there,

erotic interest in the other sex. This prolonged infantilism

makes unnecessary

the troublesome segregations, chaperon-

and punishments of the older patriarchal regime. The young people can be magnificently and quite inexpensively age,

"trusted." It also (in theory only, as we shall see) triumphantly eliminates the offensively ugly patriarchal safetyvalve devices of homosexuality and prostitution for masculine youth. Outwardly it achieves a remarkable success. Some of its apparent successes, however, are due to the fact that its influences are not operating and that other influences are operating. Thus, when the goal of matehood is clearly in sight and the path to it not blocked by insurmountable obstacles, the heterosexual emotions are instinc-

and cautiously

as well as recklessly selective; the of love-choice involve their own delays before a decision which is felt to be final; the sexual union is associated with the responsibilities of permanency and of children, is not lightly or casually entered into, and may without any social coercion be voluntarily postponed until tively

responsibilities

— Love

in the

Machine Age

79

both man and girl are well assured that this is a permanent mating; while the essential and incidental processes of the educational and the early economic career of the young man lend themselves readily to use as a part of the courtship-pattern of display, rivalry, and the love-chase. Our inherited sexual instincts brook a great deal of delay in the attainment of their goal, and take easily to the most elaborate and circuitous roads and efforts, provided that they appear to be and actually are roads and efforts leading to that goal. Thus young people who are not in the least "pure" i.e., not at all lacking in normal adult erotic relater

—

sponse to the attractions of the other sex may neverthebe remarkably "chaste," without any outward compul-

less

sion, if selective courtship is sufficiently interesting and promissory of a not too long delayed marital happiness. This kind of unforced youthful "chastity" (the word put within quotation-marks, because it carries medieval meanings which do not strictly belong to the state here indicated) is not a tribute to the "purity" ideal, but a proof that it has failed to be taken seriously. Such young people are using their normal sexual instincts to secure their happiness. "Pure" young people have no normal sexual instincts to use, and invariably (without exception, so far as the records go) make sad failures of their attempts at love-

lives.

For

this

"purity," or absence in post-pubertal life of

adult heterosexual emotions, though immediately convenient to parents in the

management of

their children,

is

attained without a special kind of repressive education.

not

The

boy and girl are organic mechanisms driven by the power of endocrine influences through the selective courtship pattern of behavior toward mating and family life. These instinctive tendencies are so strong that onlv the most powerful of social influences can counteract

post-pubertal

them.

And

triarchal

Under

the social influence here used

is

the ancient pa-

one of shame. the early patriarchal regime boys were

shamed

but were allowed to have homosexual love-affairs. They were shamed out of the wish to court respectable girls on their own initiative, but were out of being interested in

girls,

80

Floyd Dell

allowed to compete for the favor of prostitutes. It was not assumed that they had no sexuality at all. It was not assumed even of those devoted to religious celibacy. Some of these might feel a "vocation" or call to a celibate life; but others had to scourge and fast sexuality out of ^hemselves.

The newer

"purity" ideal, however, was an assumption young people at least, nice young people did not have any sexuality whatever, up to marriage. They were brought up to believe that right-minded and "clean-minded" boys and girls did not have erotic emotions and desires. When they inevitably found that they themselves had such emotions and desires, they were ashamed. They were ashamed of themselves for having normal sexual emotions, and they repudiated these emotions, denied their existence, pretended to themselves that they were not the horrid little beasts which they seemed in fact to be. And these normal sexual emotions, thus psychologically blocked from any

—

—

that

appropriate fulfillment in action, regressed to a and expressed themselves in a socially permissible exaggerated filial devotion to father or mother, or in exaggerated brotherly and sisterly affections. Bo''^ were, indeed, commonly told to "treat every girl as if she sort of

childish level

were your is

sister."

Innocent homosexual relationships, that young people of the same

to say intense friendships with

sex,

—

without

much

or any physical expression of affection in a more thoroughlv

Greek Platonic love-affairs censored form were encouraged. A the old

—

basis

was

laid in the

emotion by the discouragement and shaming of natural childish curiosities about sex the very tone of the reply in which information was refused indicating that sex was a "nasty" subject. Sex was thus associated with that other "nasty" subject which is a normal matter of great interest in early childhood, the defecatory and urinary functions. Children were shamed out of their interest in that "disgusting" matter, and they were encouraged to put sex in the same "disgusting" category. No wonder, then, that these "purity" teachings had their due effect. These "clean-minded" little boys and girls, ashamed to have "dirty" thoughts, grew up earlier years for the repudiation of heterosexual

—

Love into "clean-minded"

in the

Machine Age

young men and women ashamed

81 to

have normal heterosexual desires. It was not intended, however, that they should remain permanently in this angelic state. They were not devoted to a life-long religious celibacy. They were supposed, at the proper age and in the proper circumstances, to fall in love, get married, have children, and live happily ever after. But it was not easy for angels to become suddenly human. Sex did not cease to be "disgusting" when it was permitted in marriage. Often the later childish discovery that their own parents, actually had such "disgusting" relationships had been a frightful shock. The sexual realities of marriage were, to such a well-brought up young woman often revolting. For the

women

all

as

he did of

young man, trained to "think of mother and sisters," the incest-

his

was unconsciously operating as a barrier between him and his bride. The most thoroughgoing successes of

barrier

the teaching of youthful "purity" thus resulted in sexually frigid wives

and impotent husbands.

The impotence and the

marital

frigidity alike

relationship.

might be restricted to

The unconscious

incest-barrier

only under circumstances of such moral or social respectability as called forth the automatic reflex of "purity in thought and deed"; elsewhere, in non-respectable relationships, the sexual emotions could find expression. Thus for men there was a psychological outlet for the sexual impulse with non-respectable women, who might be prostitutes, or merely not of his own social class, the daughters of the poor, whom he was under no inner compulsion to "treat as if they were his mother and sister." Here we have, as can be seen, kinds of behavior similar to those which were lawful and customary under the old patriarchal regime; but in modem society, in which they do not fit, they are not "manners and customs," but neuroses. Under the old patriarchal regime a similar distaste of refined wives for the sexual embraces of their husbands,

would

exist

often combined with what seemed a strange penchant for

had been commented upon by satirists and moralists. They were especially attracted by professionally "brutal" males gladiators, bullfighters, prize-fighters

lower-class lovers,

—

82

—

Floyd Dell

"rough" and "common" men in general. "Hippia, though wife to a senator, accompanied a gladiator to Pharos and the Nile, and the infamous walls of Lagos," wrote Juvenal; and the poet then remarked, with the effect of a parable, upon the different attitude of wives towards the rough facts of a sea-voyage in the company of their husbands and again in the company of their lovers: "If it is their husband that bids them, it is a great hardship to go on board ship. Then the bilgewater is insufferable! the skies spin round them! She that follows her adulterer, has no qualms. The one is sick all over her husband. The other dines among the sailors and walks the quarter-deck, and delights in handling the hard ropes." And why, asks Juvenal, is your fine lady so excited over her darling Sergius? or

He

is

frightfully ugly

makes him to her "as In modern times,

—"but

a gladiator!"

It

is

this that

beautiful as Hyacinthus." similarly refined wives, disgusted at

known to seek out those of lower-class, non-respectable or "brutal" males, whether chauffeurs, bootleggers, gigolos, or, according to popular humor, icemen. In place, however, of the ancient attitude of moral scandalization, we tend now merely to say "neurotic" of these inwardly compulsory sexual preferences, which, however much brazened out, give much respectable marital embraces, have been

and unhappiness to the women who are afflicted by them. They lack, in our eyes, the dignity of "sin." Under the patriarchal system they may have been the only oppordistress

tunities afforded to wives for satisfactions not to be expected in arranged marriage. But under the modern system of courtship and love-choice, such satisfactions are to be had, in normal and unexaggerated form, in marriage; and not to be able to find them there, to be capable of finding them only in the society of degraded people or those not

entitled to the respect

ridiculous, pitiable

due to a marital partner,

—and hence

is

awkward,

neurotic.

These fruits of "purity," however, are doubtless not so opportune as the corresponding masculine forms of behavior. Wives suffering from this type of neurosis cannot all

be Messalinas in practice and must often content themworks of scandalous fie-

selves with reading those popular

Love

in the

Machine Age

83

tion which offer them rape and other pseudo-masculine brutalities in mere fantasy. Very common, however, according to medical and psychiatric literature, is wifely frigidity, the sexual childishness due to early teachings of "purity" and sex-disgust. There is reason to believe that frigidity was quite common among wives throughout the patriarchal period; but being part and parcel of the sexual psychology of infantiUsm which upheld the patriarchal system, it was regarded as a virtue: it is in our modern times and in the light of our modern demand for adult behavior that it becomes ranked as a pitiable neurosis. Common also and for the same reason is the inwardly compulsory male habit of extra-marital sexual gratification. Prostitution is said to be more patronized by married than by unmarried men. For "purity," having failed miserably in its promise of marital happiness as the reward of an angelic youthful sexlessness, leads ultimately to the

which it was rashly guarback into the patriarchal squir-

irresponsible sexual relationships

anteed to obviate.

It

leads

its symbolic our time, these patriarchal forms of their social validity and have become

rel-cage treadmill, the vain effort to find love in substitutes. Only, in

behavior have

lost

neurotic.

The

its heyday was accused by social ranks of prostitution with middleclass girls, not forced there by poverty but by shame. The respectable Victorian girl, if we may believe the extensive fictional literature dealing with her, was likely to feel that an actual physical surrender to the normal impulses of sexuality, if not sanctioned by marriage, served to exclude her from the company of "pure" women, leaving her no she was "bad," and she had option as to her future life to take up some form of prostitution, vulgar or polite. These cases, while lamentable in fact and touching in fiction, are perhaps of less social importance to us now than

"purity" ideal in

critics of increasing the

—

the spread, among respectable women who retained their "purity," of what was essentially a prostitute psychology

concerning marriage. In a world in which

women were thus at a social disadvantage, and in which a surrender to normal heterosexual

84

Floyd Dell

emotions was likely to prove a fatal error, they learned to use their sexual attractions cold-bloodedly to enhance their social and economic positions. It was, under the socially acceptable guise of "purity," the ancient prostitute trick

which we have seen the experienced hetaira Ampelis teaching the 18-year-old Chrysis, new to her profession: "If you want to make a man wildly in love with you, let him see that you can do without him." It is an instinctive feminine wile, used here in an exaggerated way for economic purposes. The Greek hetaira dared not let her emotions run away with her in a world in which women were so much at men's mercy; no more did the Victorian Miss. The Greek

men to show her indifference; the Victorian Miss showed her indifference still more conclusively by seeming to be an angelic being to whom the idea until of sexual surrender to any man was unthinkable the proper price was paid.. In both cases sex was used as a means to an economic end. That is prostitution psychology. hetaira slept with other

—

It

in a

would be world

misstep

in

blame women for behaving that way which they faced ruin as the penalty of a

idle to

—faced

it

so truly that "ruin"

term for sexual surrender to a It

man

became

the

common

outside of marriage.

was not neurotic for Victorian damsels thus

to

their "purity" as a prostitute uses her charms, to gain

use

some

degree of security. But in a world in which honesty is increasingly required in relations between the sexes, not least of all in the courtship period, the lessons handed down from Victorian grandmothers are increasingly useless and mischievous to young women because they unfit them for making honest and happy marriages. It is not now a socially approved practice for a girl to "capture" a man whom she does not love as a husband; there are now more respectable ways of making a living. It is increasingly felt that what she owes to herself is to find a mate whom she can love and live with happily. She cannot do this without being emotionally honest with herself and with the men among whom she will find her mate. Love has its own instinctive evasions and playful deceits to gain its own ends of increasing attraction and stimulating pursuit its path is not the short and narrow path of in-

—

Love

in the

Machine Age

85

tellectual truth, but a sufficiently devious one; yet love has its own kind of truth to emotional purpose, which it must follow if it is love. The profound and fundamental femi-

nine distrust of is

men

more and more

life.

is

still

a prostitute's necessity; but

a barrier to

women's happiness

in

it

normal

Distrust of the other sex, and of one's own sexual is, however, an essential part of the ideal of

emotions, "purity."

The teaching of

"purity" to girls trains

them only

for a prostitute-like bargaining for social security with their bodies in arranged marriage, a thing no longer respectable.

To

the extent, then, that "purity" is still inculcated in girls to-day by well-meaning but mistaken parents, it trains them to be neurotic prostitutes, gold-diggers, or alimonyhunters; but it unfits them to be happy wives.

We must pause to emphasize once more the difference between neurotic and non-neurotic behavior. The difference is, as Freud has pointed out, "entirely a practical one, which is determined by the available capacity for enjoyment and accomplishment retained by the individual." There is in our discussion no intention to regard any kind of behavior as neurotic in itself, without respect to social background. Homosexuality, prostitution-patronage, and the other kinds of behavior here under review, are not neurotic in their proper patriarchal setting where they involve no mental conflicts. They may be silly, cruel, and otherwise offensive. But the question of whether they are neurotic depends upon whether they are such compromise formations issuing from mental conflicts as are bound to impair social usefulness and personal happiness; and that depends in turn upon the behavior-code of the epoch. Marrying without love, courting prostitutes, keeping misthe

and leaving them to their fate, and indulging in polite adultery, were patriarchal norms are still patriarchal norms of conduct in paof conduct triarchal countries. However preposterous and undesirable they may seem to us, these practices had their suffi-

tresses, scattering bastards

—

cient social justification within the structure of patriarchal society.

That was the way the patriarchal system worked.

86

Margaret

Mead

These practices could only become neurotic as the result of fundamental economic changes, which result in withdrawing social justification and approval from them. They are nowadays neurotic only insofar as they hamper social usefulness and prevent personal happiness. Perpetual celibacy and chastity, for example, are not neurotic insofar as they still find shelter and justification in old patriarchal religious institutions, or in newer socialservice formulas on the same model, which enable the celibate to be comparatively useful and happy. We are entitled, if we wish, to despise such ways of being useful, to smile at such ways of being happy; but we are not entitled to dismiss as neurotic any such usefulness and happiness as may be found to exist. The plain fact of our age, however, is that it does not afford such shelter and such justification to large numbers of celibates. Monasteries and nunneries are no longer centers of learning and art; no longer to any considerable extent avenues to power. So that most celibates are nowadays unable to feel proud of their celibacy. Nor is chastity in our middle-class world a permanent treasure;

it is

in general, in adult life, felt as a disability.

The

which gave an honorable shelter and a real social function to celibacy and chastity have dwindled to a minor scope in modern society. Most of the world's work is now so arranged as to have simple sexual incentives and rewards in monogamic family life. It is increasingly true that the realm of social effort is comparatively meaningless to such people as are not appealed to by late patriarchal institutions

these incentives.

5.

.

.

Jealousy: Primitive and Civilized

Margaret

When

.

this

essay

Mead

first

appeared in an anthology on Woman's

Jealousy

87

Coming

of Age, Dr. Mead, with characteristic forthrightness, prefaced it with the following "demurrer": "At the very start I wish to register a protest against the title of this article and against^ its inclusion in this symposium. The

coincidence of article and symposium suggests, first, that is some special connection, some essential relevancy, between jealousy and women which I deny; and second, although that there is such a thing as 'civilized' jealousy there is no doubt much jealousy among the inhabitants of civilized countries. With these initial demurrers, we can attack the problem." Separating the affects of suspicion, humiliation and shame from their spurious association with romantic love, Dr. there

Mead

—

—

traces, in a variety of cultural settings, the fine line

between zeal in defense of a socially defined position and the threat to self-esteem which precipitates jealousy. She suggests that the least stratified society by offering heterogeneous standards affords the best hope of eliminating morbid doubts arising from individual differences and deviant temperaments. Probably the best-known and most influential of today's anthropologists, Margaret Mead's most recent book, CulManus, 1928-1953, is a "then and tural Transformation now" study of changes wrought by the war in the Pacific

—

on the scene of her tury ago.

first field

research a quarter of a cen-

From Woman's Coming of Age, edited by Samuel Schmalhausen and V. F. Calverton, copyright 1931 by Horace Liveright, Inc. By courtesy of Margaret Mead.

Jealousy: Primitive and Civilized y a dans la jalousie plus d'amour propre que d'amour. La Rochefoycauld, Maximes

II

Some

thinkers have included under the term jealousy all those defensive attitudes of fear, anger, and humiliation which centre about the loss of some object, be that object

Margaret

88

Mead

lands or flocks, spouse or title, position or reputation. Some theorists, like Miiller-Lyer, have, erroneously, I think, insisted that primitive man does not know sexual jealousy be-

cause he often submits with the best grace in the world to situations which would injure the ego of a present-day German citizen. Ernest Jones, claiming that the key to the meaning of sexual jealousy hangs side by side with all the other keys on the key ring of psychoanalysis, attributes sexual jealousy to a suppressed homosexuality which projects upon the suspected mate impulses of which the suspicious one is really guilty. The romantics have claimed that jealousy is the inevitable shadow cast by the perfect contours of real love. Here are contrasts enough: theories which would make jealousy any reaction to threatened selfesteem, set it down as special pathology, or justify it and even endear it to the world by tacking it on like a tail to the kite of romantic love. In this paper I shall adhere to the

more

catholic and less special view foreshadowed

by

Shand: "If it is difficult to define jealousy by its feeling, which sometimes inclines more to fear, sorrow and shame, at others to anger, suspicion and humiliation, we can still define it by its end or function. It is that egoistic side of the system of love which has as its special end the exclusive possession of the loved object, whether this object be a woman, or other person, or power, reputation, or property." I would only amend his definition to expunge the

—

word lege

"exclusive," for

many

people are jealous of a privi-

which they share with others but which they maintain

against outsiders.

Perhaps nothing illustrates more vividly the essentially and selfish nature of sexual jealousy than a comparison of the different cultural conditions under which one man may have first access to another man's wife. There is no evidence for claiming that an intensely proprietary attitude towards one's wife is characteristic of simpler or more complex cultures, for the most uncompromising exclusiveness has been found in all levels of society. Let us then investigate the contrasting attitudes of the French peasantry before the Revolution and the present-day Banaro of the egoistic

Jealousy

89

Sepik River region in New Guinea/ The French peasant resented fiercely the exercise of the jus primce noctis by his seigneur. The proponent of jealousy as the inalienable ornament of the lover's spirit would say that it was outraged love which resented this intrusion of another male that any man subjected to such a trial would be filled with the keenest and most righteous jealousy. But is it not equally plausible that it was outraged dignity which tortured the peasant? He was no party to the scheme; his set of ideas

—

did not include any soothing philosophy that he thought was dignified by the lord's embrace. The exercise

his bride

of the noble's

ous

way

For first

power simply underscored

in the

most vigor-

possible the peasant's social impotence.

legal

arrangements under which another

man

has

access to a man's bride do not necessarily give rise to

Where

the custom, as in Samoa, was daughter should be deflowered by another, the eloping young chief will not approach his bride during the elopement, but, if he intends to marry her, bring her still a virgin to his father's house, where he knows she will submit to the cruel public defloration ceremony. He is more concerned with his reputation for having married a virgin than for the intimate ordeal to which he is subjecting the girl. And among the Banaro it is not only the defloration but a year's enjoyment of his bride, which the young bridegroom must yield to another man. Banaro feelings of jealousy.

merely that the

chief's

divided into two exogamic moieties. Each of these subdivided into two divisions, making four divisions in all. In the other division of his own moiety, each man has a ceremonial friend, and it is the duty of this friend to initiate his friend's son's future wife into sex. society

is

moieties

This

is

is

done most formally

look, care.

and the

"Goblin House" in front upon which no woman may

in the

of the hidden sacred pipes is

then returned to her father-in-law's

The ceremonial

friend has access to her, always ritu-

girl

a child is born, which is known as the "goblin Only then may the young man take his wife. Meanwhile he himself has been initiated by the wife of his ally, until

child."

1

Thurnwald,

cal Association.

R.,

Banaro

Society.

Memoirs

of the

American Anthropologi-

90

Margaret

Mead

ceremonial friend, whom he has been sent to seek out in the forest, carrying a charmed liana as invitation. Later on, on ceremonial occasions, the young bridegroom and his ceremonial friend of the other division will exchange wives, and their wives may even bear children to their husbands' friends, instead of to their husbands. So, in a lifetime, every individual has three goblin spouses in addition to a regular spouse. Analysis will show that this social situation is simply packed with occasions which among us would give rise to jealousy: an old man's jealousy because his wife takes a young lover, an older woman's jealousy of her husband's interest in a fresh young girl, a young man's thwarted desire for his young wife for he has to accept the embraces of a woman of his mother's age while another enjoys his pledged bride's virginity. Yet we have peculiar testimony of the peaceful and satisfactory way in which this apparent set for jealousy really operates. All over New Guinea and the adjoining islands, wherever the white man has gone, recruiting offers an escape to those who are permanently or temporarily at odds with their society. Working for the white man provides a refuge, unknown in the old days, to the disinherited son, the betrayed husband, the discredited magician, the deposed leader. The eagerness with which men come forward to meet the recruiter's tempting offers is a measure of the peace and content within their respective father's

—

And among the Banaro the recruiter has little luck; every one is too contentedly involved in the fantastic cultures.

intricacies of

Or

Banaro

social

life.

us consider another familiar situation which may give rise to the most intense jealousy or to which jealousy may be entirely irrelevant. If a guest seduces his host's wife among us, or indeed, in any society where the crowd are ready to cry "cuckold," the husband betrays the most furious resentment and jealousy. But let us go instead to a society where wife lending is the rule, as among the Eskimo, a society which cries, not "cuckold" but "stingy," "inlet

husband who does not give his wife to his guest. Here the husband will upbraid the wife who is slow to respond to his guest, rather than resent the hospitable," "mean," to a

— Jealousy

91

demands. The most casual survey of primitive literature betrays the numerous ways in which exclusive sexual possession of the spouse is modified and contravened, and demonstrates how the self-interest of husband and wife is identified, not with the exclusive possession of each other, but with the appropriate carrying out, whether it be through wife lending, wife exchange, ceremonial license, or religious ceremony, of these very contraventions. A conspicuous example of this is the attitude of women towards secondary wives in a culture where polygamy is the rule for the rich and influential. There is a case on record of a woman who actually haled her husband into court on the charge that she had been married to him three years and borne him two children, and he had not yet taken another wife. The native court allowed the husband six months in which to take unto himself without fail a second wife. Women urge their husbands to take other wives, which will add to their own prestige by conferring upon them the rank of first wife and also for the practical point of providing labourers and child bearers in the household. The self-esteem of the chief wife is enhanced by their entrance into the menage and there is no occasion for jealousy unless one of them tends to become the favourite and flexible custom permits usurpation of the first wife's dignities. In a society where there is emphasis upon virginity, a father wiH be jealous of his daughter's honour. In dissimilar case is the Maori father who has offered his daughter to an honoured guest, only to have her churlishly refuse the guest her favours. The guest is then entitled by custom to fasten a log by a long vine, and, naming the log after the ungracious girl, to drag it about his host's village, heaping the most definite and vigorous abuse upon this dummy. Such a father, although his daughter's virginity may be preserved, will bow his head in shame. guest's

However varied the social setting, it will be seen to be the threatened self-esteem, the threatened ego which reacts jealously. Situations involving this self-esteem will, however, take widely different forms. One's reputation may be concerned with acquisition of wealth, display of wealth, distribution of wealth, or merely with having exchanged much

92

Margaret

Mead

A

man's personal reputation ma'^^ wealth for value received. be based upon the number of women he has purchased or the number of women he has captured, or, as among the Manus, upon the number of temptations which he has resisted or again in certain parts of Micronesia, he may boast of the honourable scars which he has received from the shark tooth knives of belligerent and unwilling women. woman's reputation may be tied up with absolute chastity, or with the type of pre-marital prodigality of favours

—

A

which was so much admired among the ancient Natchez Indians that they pictured a spirit world entered by means of a bridge which was treacherously slippery beneath the feet of the over-virtuous maiden. There is hardly any limit of performance or apparent deprivation to which the individual may not be pushed by his society's standards. Whatever the social set, however, it will inspire him to zeal for his socially defined position. And if he feels his self-esteem is threatened, if his reputation as a gracious wife lender or as a successful ruler of a harem is in danger, jealousy will be the result. The line between zeal and jealousy is a fine one; a line which the apologists for jealousy usually neglect to draw. An attentive interest in the attainment or the preservation of social or personal status is zeal, a positive attitude; a frightened, angry defence of such status, is jealousy, a negative attitude, always unpleasant in feeling tone. This Can be seen clearly in a polygamous society. zealous man anxious to enhance his own prestige will buy many wives. But the South African king, who, impotent himself, tries to draw a fast line of police about his two hundred wives, instead of winking at their amours as was the custom of over-married monarchs, is no longer merely zealous in carrying out the dictates of social usage, he is simply jeal-

A

ous.

The same distinction can be observed between the behaviour of the zealous suitor and the jealous one. He who is zealous studies his mistress's face to learn her pleasure, seeks out special gifts to please her, tries to arouse her interest and fulfil her slightest wish; all of his behaviour is positive, constructive, directed towards- a goal. But the

Jealousy

93

jealous suitor looks into her face only to read there his

own

dismissal or signs of his rival's triumph; he

is

far too busy

worrying about his fate to be an acceptable tennis partner or dinner companion. Turned in upon himself, his whole duty is not to please the lady but to pity himself and to blame her or his rival for the humiliation which he is suffering. Although his goal is avowedly the same as his rival's, his whole behaviour serves to prevent his attaining it. Compare also the behaviour of the woman, secure in herself, but anxious to please her lover, with the behaviour of her who fears to lose husband or lover. Aldous Huxley has drawn a vivid picture of the tears and tantrums of poor Margery, every one of which served to precipitate her impatient lover into the arms of her rival. The jealous man or woman seldom comes bearing flowers, and if one does so, it is with such a look in the eye as warns the recipient that conquest of the rival and rehabilitation of the injured self-esteem was the prime motive when the bouquet was selected.

So often, conduct which is zeal in one age or in one because it is motivated by an eager and lively appreciation of the social pattern or the customary values in personal relationships, is motivated in another society by feelings of insecurity which lead to fear, doubt, and sussociety,

picion.

The mediaeval crusader who cared

so

little

for his

chatelaine that he neglected to lock the metal girdle about her loins, would have been lacking in zeal and his wife

might have

felt just

grounds for resentment, but the

fif-

who

kept up this practice would have been branded as a jealous monster. The confusion between the two attitudes is increased by the inclusion in the romantic love pattern of certain con-

teenth century husband

ventional manifestations of jealousy.

A

failure to display a

broken engagement with alarm, or a smile to another with glowering hostilities, if a man, with tearful pouts, if a woman, is written down as lack of zeal. But a closer scrutiny will always reveal the point at which the lover no longer acts to reassure his beloved but to reassure himself, from fear of loss or hurt to his self-esteem. Hence the ridiculous comsuitable

amount of

flattering anxiety, to greet a

94

Margaret

ment which

is

Mead so often heard, "She likes

him

to be jealous

of her." No one, not in some way pathological, likes to see another in an acute state of misery and humiliation.

What such

a

to act in a

way

commentator really means is: "She likes him to which others are only impelled by selflove because she knows he is moved to it by love of her." The husband who dances close attendance from jealousy, the wife who goes meticulously over the events of an absence, from jealousy, is not appreciated.

In similar confusion was a woman who remarked to me "Most men expect you to be jealous, and if you're wise you will be." What she meant was simply that most recently:

men were

flattered

by an amount of

flutter

which simu-

lated jealousy. If, then, jealousy be not a matter of a normal man defending his natural rights, but of a frightened man defending himself against the infringement of rights not natural but merely guaranteed to him by his society, we can admit frankly that it is an unfortunate phenomenon with nothing to be said in its favour. Jealousy is not a barometer by which depth of love can be read, it merely records the degree of the lover's insecurity. And jealousy is notably an attitude which arouses no sympathy in others. Yet if its

display is really so strongly associated with true love, why should the world, having taken the lover to its bosom, evict the jealous lover? Is it not because jealousy, hke all other forms of extreme egoism, is repellent, is necessarily of a sort with which others cannot identify themselves? Moreover jealousy defeats its own ends, renders many a lover hors de combat from the start. It is a negative, miserable state of feeling, having its origin in a sense of insecurity

and

inferiority.

In turning to a consideration of the causes of jealousy, as an occasional or chronic state of mind of large numbers of the human race, it is necessary to consider two types of causation, one social, one personal. Any society which places groups of individuals at a disadvantage because of racial,

religious,

or class distinctions, will be laying the

groundwork for many jealous citizens. Furthermore, any society which arranges social or family life so as to pro-

Jealousy

95

vide inevitable clashes of interest of the sort which cannot be avoided will be opening the way to jealousy. Examples of this type of clash are those which arise

from primogeniemphasis on the blood kin at the expense of the marriage tie, or such social rules as that which decrees that the eldest daughter must marry first. In this sense jealousy is directly dependent upon social causes; and in proof of it, some primitive peoples are far more jealous than others. Although every homogeneous culture inures those born within its confining walls to an unquestioning acceptance ture,

most difficult dictates, still some cultures force situawhich produce less pleasant emotions than others. An example of a culture in which jealousy is a conspicuous characteristic of the normal individual, is the Dobuan

of

its

tions

of the D'Entrecastreaux Islands,^ east of New Guinea. Here the stage is set for jealousy and its expression in continual broils and dissension. The people are sorcery ridden and each maternal kin group of some half dozen families live to themselves in little villages where are reeven those married into the group all others garded as strangers, and probable witches and sorcerers. There is complete pre-marital freedom, a freedom the exercise of which the old people insist upon by turning all the boys over twelve or thirteen out of the family huts at night. The boy is then forced to wander about among the various culture

—

—

—for

villages of his locality^

—

the girls of his

own

village are

he finds some girl who will reply affirmatively to his plaintive jews-harp which he sounds hopefully from house to house. Several years' amorous vagabondage assures a youth's having slept with practically every girl in

his "sisters"

until

the locality except those of his Into this habit of

own

village.''

amorous and undiscriminating vaga-

bondage, betrothal intrudes rudely, and not always by mutual consent. It is a fast rule that the boys must be up and away to their own villages by dawn. If a boy oversleeps and the mother of his partner of a night's intrigue, who sleeps in the same hut, considers him a suitable husband for her " Based upon R. F. Fortune's Sorcerers of Dobu. 3 With the additional provision that those with ringworm mate only with others similarly infected.

96

Margaret

Mead

him and sit in the house door. The villagers, early astir, knowing the significance of a woman's being so seated in her doorway, cluster about to daughter, she can rise before

unfortunate youth who must finally engaged. He and his fiancee must rigorously avoid each other during the day and meet only

gape rudely emerge. He

at the

is

now

But meanwhile the engagement sets up a round of economic exchanges for which the boy and his relatives must work hard. He is away for days, fishing and hunting. And no longer may he even speak to the girls who last week were his careless partners in love. The most strict fidelity is enjoined upon the engaged couple, as upon the married couple, in Dobu. And each partner is tortured by the suspicion that the other is returning to the so recently abandoned amorous adventures. clandestinely, as before, at night.

After marriage a new impetus is given to jealousy. In keeping with the general spirit of jealousy, the young couple are not permitted to settle down either in his village or in hers but are required by custom to live alternate seasons in each of the two villages. Here the one who does not belong to the village is treated as a stranger, must walk humbly, avoiding the names of all the "owners of the village." Meanwhile the vigilance of each spouse has been unflagging. A Dobuan husband follows his wife about everywhere, sits idly by while she does woman's work in the garden, counts her footsteps if she leaves the verandah for the bush. She is never allowed to go to another village alone. Such jealous surveillance, coupled with the strain of a marriage where one spouse is always resident among alien and suspicious kin, combined with the pre-marital habits of licence, all combine to produce rather than to prevent infidelity. And here, the man or woman, depending upon which one is resident in their own village, turns to village incest for intrigue a type of intrigue not tasted before marriage. But where there is such close espionage, inter-village intrigues are hard to manage. Furthermore, a man who has been discovered as the seducer of anotheman's wife, is liable to have a spear thrust in his back. But against his wife's intrigue with one of her village "brothers" a man has no such redress. If he protests, his wife'?

—

Jealousy relatives simply

member

throw him out of his wife's village,

of the village.

97

Should he

it would become a him and he might never enter it again. In desperate case indeed is the man whose wife has betrayed him with a village "brother" and in such case also

slay a

"place of blood" to

is

the wife of the latter

who

also

is

only an in-law and a

stranger in the village. In such cases the betrayed spouse

has only one resource, a sort of pseudo-suicide in which poison, which may or may not be fatal, is taken. The kin of the unfaithful spouse, alarmed lest death will follow which will involve them in a blood feud, may then exercise pressure and reunite the pair. But marriages maintained by attempted suicides against odds such as these, do not make for security and happiness, but rather for suspicion

fish

and jealousy. It is worth noting that this jealous attitude which the Dobuan displays, bred from intolerable social arrangements, also characterises his attitudes towards property and trade. He stays up half the night uttering incantations to protect his own yams and to seduce the yams of his neighbour's gardens into his own. If he attains a sudden supply of tobacco as a workboy returning from work for the white man, he will distribute it all, fearful of the jealousy and envy of others should he keep any for himself. He spends his life pitting his magic against the inimical magic of his neighbours, in a state of morbid anxiety and insecurity. Into this house divided against itself, the recruiter steps, perhaps acquiring in one trip a divorced husband who is leaving in furious chagrin and the brother of the former wife who wants to escape the extra work of helping with his divorced sister's

garden.

Samoa

is keyed to a very different note. Here instead of the tiny hostile kin groups of Dobu, are large villages

members of which are united in formal ceremonial and allegiance to a chief. Instead of the limited and unfruitful

the

garden lands of Dobu, where no amount of spells and hard work will produce a really fine crop, there is fertile land, and enough for all. Although there is freedom before marriage, marriage itself is not viewed primarily as sexual, but as a social contract between individuals who are old enough

98

Margaret

Mead

to turn their attention to

more

serious matters. Residence

within that household where the young couple fit most perfectly, in terms of temperament or carefully laid plans. Rank is so arranged that there are titles for all of those capable of holding them. And jealousy, as a widespread social phenomenon, is very rare in Samoa. Where it does occur it centres about those points in the system of rank which result in clashes of interest. So, occasionally, a Sais

wife is violently jealous of another woman who wishes to marry her husband, because as a divorced woman her rank is reduced and she has to sit among the young girls and the wives of untitled men. And in Samoa divorce is far less frequent than in Dobu, where intolerable circumstances breed jealousy, which breeds infidelity and di-

moan

vorce.

When Reo

Fortune was leaving the Dobuans, the

atti-

tude they displayed was characteristic. All other emotions

on the part of the men who had been his sailing and living companions for months were obscured by their jealous rage that he should actually choose to leave them. Sullenness, wounded self-esteem, was written on every face. And this perhaps is one of the chief reasons why sophisticated people should wish to ban jealousy from their lives, because it tends to blur the important issues, to obscure the fundamentals of personal relations, to muffle hurt in sullenness, and to deck separations in rags of bitterness and abuse. But aside from the social causes of jealousy, the sets which decree that a whole people, or a whole class will be ridden by a morbid doubt of keeping their winnings or winning their chosen prizes, there are the special reasons which predispose a given individual to react jealously to one situation after another. Some of these are purely culturally determined also. On the east coast of Africa, where marriageable girls are kept for months in the "Fatting House" and given a daily massage with butter to improve their physical attractiveness, the girl who refuses to put any weight upon her bones is at a social disadvantage which may well give her a haunting fear of failure and desertion.

Among

the

does not

Bush Negroes of Dutch Guiana the man who to carve, who has unfortunately no

know how

Jealousy gift

99

by the maidens who are and be accepted grudgingly by the

for handiwork will be scorned

in a position to scorn,

Whatever .the mode of beauty or bravery, the style of accepted loverly address or premium upon ability, there will be some individuals who deviate strongly from the desirable type. And these, with rare exceptions, jealousy has others.

marked down

for her own. Consider the historic cases of jealous obsession, and one

finds the

two causes for insecurity, cultural discrimination narrow cultural standards of beauty

against groups and

and achievement, as the motivating elements. Othello is perhaps the best example in literature of insecurity born of belonging to a racial group judged inferior by the group from whom he won his wife. Keats is as outstanding an example of the other type of jealousy, as he remarks in the revealing phrase in a letter in which he discusses the local maidens: "But much they care for Mr. John Keats, five feet and a quarter." I do not claim that matter of race or social status on the one hand, of physique or natural aptitudes on the other, are the only causes of the insecurity which has its expression in morbid jealousy, but they are perhaps the strongest contributory causes to its chronic existence. It does not dignify Othello's jealous emotion to have to read it in terms of racial inferiority rather than the fair letters of true love, and the admirers of Keats could suffer more wholeheartedly with him under Fanny's cruelty were it not for the suspicion that he would have suffered with equal violence over others, because his jealousy was not relevant to Fanny but to himself and his selfdoubts.

The only type of

jealousy which can be regarded as

strictly relevant to the personality of the lover

and which

cannot, in final analysis, be reduced to any sort of cultural causes, is the result of bad luck. The individual who has loved unhappily once, then twice, or perhaps oftener, de-

velops a haunting fear of loss which is a comment neither upon an accident of birth nor upon his use of his own endowment, but rather upon forces which are completely out of human control. This same observation applies also to the artist, the scientist, or the business man, who, start-

100

Margaret

Mead

any fundamental attitude of insecurity, is by ill fortune. With pathetic violence, the unlucky cling to any good fortune which must of necessity appear to them as one lonely and unreliable spar salvaged from shipwreck. It is to be presumed that there will always be those who through a grain of unfortunate circumstances become chronically unsure and pitifully anxious to hold that which they have. In deprecating jealousy, one must without beaten into ing

it

include them, for jealousy adds to rather than mitigates their misery, but the revision of social or personal attitudes

which give

rise to jealousy

fortunates for

whose sake

it

can do nothing for these unis

necessary to indict, not cul-

ture, but the nature of the universe.

upon which have been indicted as "the jealous sex." Throughout history, with a few rare exceptions, women have been the insecure sex. Their status, their freedom of action, their very economic existence, their right over their own children, has been dependent upon their preservation of their personal relations with men. Into the field of personal relations have been thrust all these other considerations not germaine to it. The wife threatened with the loss of her husband's affection, fidelity, interest, or loyalty, whichever It is

also revealing to re-examine the terms

women

point her society has defined as the pivot of wifely tenure, sees the very roots of her social existence being cut from

beneath her. She has been in the position in which a man would be if he had to read in his wife's averted shoulder the depreciation of

all

his stocks, a loss of his business rep-

from whatever position he holds, both social and political, as well as the loss of his home and possibly of all control over his children. If women's superior morbid anxiety concerning their relations with the allnecessary male purveyors of economic and social goods be read in these terms, it becomes a truism that women probably always have been "the jealous sex." It is also possible that the inescapable fact that women age earlier than men, and are more handicapped by child bearing and child care, will always render them relatively more insecure than men, and therefore relatively more anxious to keep their lovers and husbands. But the disassociatioh of social, economic, utation,

eviction

Jealousy

from the

101

of personal relations and legal should go a long way towards giving women a security which is as great as that which their culture permits to the security

men born

within

it.

Granting that jealousy every personality so

which

titude

is

field

more

are the possibilities

is

undesirable, a festering spot in

afflicted,

an ineffective negativistic atthan gain any goal, what

likely to lose

if

not of eliminating

it,

at least of ex-

Samoa has taken one road, by eliminating strong emotion, high stakes, emphasis upon personality, interest in competition. Such a cluding

it

more and more from human

life?

many of the attitudes which mankind, and perhaps jealousy most impor-

cultural attitude eliminates

have

afflicted

tantly of

all,

ant serenity.

but

it

High

mystics and great

also pays too high a forfeit for

its

pleas-

which produces great clash from which is born lead-

passion, intensity artists,

all these are lacking also. And only timid and the chronically disillusioned would want to pay so high a price for peace. There is, however, another possibility latent in the very trends which different modern societies are pursuing at the

ership and enterprise,

the

congenitally

present time. Russia perhaps exemplifies the strongest effort to create social conditions in which no inevitable sting will lie in any accident of race, or economic status.* Russia's

prophecy of eventual racial and social tolerance, however, holds no promise of relief from the less explicit and more insidious results which flow from the standards of a homogeneous culture. There is always the possibility of strong se-

upon the basis of physical tvpe the basis of standard temperament. So, for example. Communism does not carry within its inclusive social programme any promise of personal security to

lective mating, for instance, or,

perhaps,

upon

a short man where height is considered the standard of manly beauty, or to the dreaming, introspective man, where activity and social participation happen to be the standards of temperamental fitness. social

programme which,

By

offering a coherent, exacting

if it

succeeds, will tend to pro-

say "effort to create" advisedly, for of course under present conditions the old securities are merely the new insecurities and the son of the despised Nepman is being given the type of background suitable to point the role of an Othello. * I

102

Margaret

Mead

duce a strong homogeneity of attitude, Communism may increase rather than decrease the factors which doom the individual, not by virtue of class or race affihations, but because of physical or temperamental factors, to a life of

morbid anxiety and

jealousy.

The other trend which

offers a guarantee of

munity from accidents which predispose

more im-

to jealousy the

who is short or fat, tongue-tied or undersexed, or deficient in mechanical ability, as the case may be, is the trend towards heterogeneity of culture, such as is found in great cities. The voluptuous prima donna type of beauty has a chance to compete favourably with the boyish form, the slight, small featured youth with he of prize fighting build. And as in matters of physical beauty, so in other matters of personal endowment. variety of reputable professions and acceptable points of view makes it possible for many discrepant types to grow up, live and die, without the cankering sense of insecurity which is at the base of jealousy. Furthermore, because of the variety of national and sectional points of view represented, and because of the possibility of escape into one of these many different groups with sharply contrasting standards, an individual is less handicapped than he or she would be in any smaller or more homogeneous group. Matters like height, or relative blondness, or excitability or instability of temperament, can be adjusted by crossing from one group, which draws on Northern European stock, to another of Jewish or Southern European, or vice versa. The girl who revolts against the warm and exacting intimacy of some types of Jewish home need no longer shrink into herself under a stigma of being cold and unresponsive; she can instead carry her fierce reticences among those who make a virtue cosmopolitan city even offers of meagreness of response. those peculiar groups who welcome any aberrations as original, and so offer soothing refuges to the most bizarre personality types. Even such characteristic sets for jealousy as being undersexed or old may be salved by association with groups who eschew or despise the emphasis upon sexual adjustment and emphasise instead pure intellect or religious ecstasy. In short, the least stratified society, the one individual

A

A

— Crisis of the

Modern Couple

103

which has the fewest social, racial, or religious classes, which has the strongest tendency to stress only humanity, sui generis, offers the greatest refuge for those whose jealousy is like that of Othello. But the type of muddling, heterogeneous, multiple standard, many goaled society of a modem, cosmopolitan city, like Paris or New York, offers the best hope of eliminating those types of jealousy whi result

from individual

differences.

e.The Crisis of the Modern Couple Denis de Rougemont

In the United States where greatest emphasis has been placed on romantic love or, at any rate, on the "saponification" of love, we have some 400,000 divorces a year more than are reported for the rest of the world combined. Since there is no family without a married couple at its source, de Rougemont sees the institution of matrimonv as being more seriously menaced by this silent revolution than by the political and social upheavals which have come and gone without significantly modifying our familial pattern. By basing lasting marriage on ephemeral romance this eminent Swiss theologian and historian feels we are paradoxically destroying contemporary marriage with the very motives that bring it into being. This incompatibility is con-

sidered by the author in the light of the origins of the romantic tradition and the transposition of a way of being in

love to love

itself.

Denis de Rougemont ern World

(U Amour

is

Love in the Westwhich has had impor-

the author of

et I'Occident)

on the thinking of a number of scholars. Itdiscussed by several contributors to this volume, notably

tant influence is

Professor Sorokin and Father D'Arcy.

104

Denis de Rougemont

From The Family: Its Function and Destiny, edited by Ruth Nanda Anshen, copyright 1949 by Harper & Brothers. By permission French by

The

J.

of Harper Robert Loy.

Crisis of the

&

Brothers. Translated

from the

Modern Couple

Western sense of the term, there is no family without a marriage at its source, it is clear that all problems of the family are, practically speaking, subordinate to those of the couple. Everything which touches the relationship of the couple, therefore, touches the family at its very root. Thus it follows that the whole point of view in considering family problems would change radically in a society which would systematically question the causes, the methods, the customs, the aims, and the duration of the union of man and woman into a couple founding a family. Such an eventuality is not purely imaginary; our present society approximates the experience of it. The crisis of the couple, which for centuries has existed at the larval stage in the Western world, in our day reaches a phase so acute that a single statistical analysis suffices to reveal that in 1947, in the United States, two divorces are decreed for every five marriages contracted.^ Thus, for the first time in the Christian era, the family is seen to be seriously menaced. Up to the present time it has escaped all the political upheavals, all the social and economic revolutions. The feudal system, monarchy, class distinction, and capitalism have dissolved in various countries without producing notable modifications in the family status. But in our time a much deeper revolution is silently at work. The consequences are not easy to foresee. In this study we shall Since, in the

limit ourselves to a description of

to an elucidation of

one of

its

some of

causes

—

its

symptoms and

the one most gen-

erally recognized. 1 The present rate of marital disruption seems to be decreasing. In 1951 the rate of divorce for the U. S. was 10.4 per 1,000 married couples, as com1.7 for Canada. A. K.

pared with

Modern Marriage Founded on Love

we

consider the entire question of matrimonial instituand among primitive peoples, we cannot but notice that the modern Western conception of marriage is distinguished from all the others by a very particular primary characteristic: more and more, marriage tends to rest upon free choice, purely individual in its motiIf

tions in great civilizations

vations.

In

other civilizations, and in our

all

own up

to the pres-

depended largely upon collective factors: sacred rites (exogamy, endogamy, levirational or sororal laws, to mention only the most faent day, the mutual choice of mates has

miliar), social rank, race, reUgion, and, later, the level of education and fortune. The margin of purely individual

choice which this ensemble of rules, taboos, and conven-

remained

in

the situation

is

tions permits has gible.

Today

cases, these collective factors

most cases

practically negli-

In a majority of

reversed.

which we have

just

named

not only do not play a deciding role but are no longer capable of playing even the role of obstacle or restraint which could still be attributed to them in the nineteenth century. This evolution seems parallel to the evolution of sex which, with the Christian era, is exfoliated from the collective subconscious, frees itself from religious rites, and, by a process of introspection, tends to become an integral aspect of is to be noted that the expresvery recent, having appeared only in approximately the year 1830. This individual choice, which we can call free to the extent that it is not limited or predetermined by collective rules, upon what shall it now be based? Of all the elements which traditionally contributed to its motivation, one alone

each individual's

logic.

sion "sexual problem"

—

remains

And love

we

isolated

It

is

love.

at that we must ascertain with what sort of are here dealing, and ask ourselves if this feeling,

even

from the complexity

in sacred or religious societies

in

which

it

was

endowed with

to

be found conven-

strict

106

Denis de Rougemont

tions,

has not changed in nature or perhaps even in

its

very

essence.

Romance The type

of love on which a great majority of modern is founded is a fever, generallv light and

Western marriages

considered infinitely interesting to contract. This the Anglo-

Saxons in

the

which

call

romance, from

Romance

a

word

that indicates

its

culture of the South of France

—

origin all

of

be discussed in greater detail. In a conversation with the editor of an Americ^.n magazine about an article intended to describe the extraordi^a'"' inflation of the "love interest" in movies, novels, and advertising, he stopped the author with the following objection: "But, don't you see, old boy, if you didn't get married for, romance well, why the devil get married at all?" This spontaneous naivete sums up the present state of affairs excellently. Modern man, especially in America, simply does not conceive of any other reason for marriage except romance. It never for a minute enters his head that one should or could get married for a dozen different reasons, varied but complementary, in which romance would be but one and perhaps the least important aspect of the marriage. To him all considerations of social level or educasion, of suitability of temperament, background, age, material resources, outlooks on the future, family, career, religious preference, theories of upbringing, and intellectual and spiritual communion have become secondary; the will presently

.

prime mover

is

.

.

romance.

"If they're in love," thinks he, "if

they possess that kind of love, let them get married." For romance has every right, and he acts as if it had every power. Face to face with his excitement, "reasonable reasons" count for little or nothing. Rational marriages, conventional marriages, or mariages de convenance are a thing of the past. We are free, and that means that we can marry the woman or man we love because of that love alone, come what may. The. only important thing is to make sure of the sincerity of that emotion. If love is there, it will conquer all obstacles. In fact, it will be strengthened by

— Crisis of the

those very obstacles; assailed

it

will

Modem

Couple

107

be the more powerful for being

by conventions, which by

tyrannical in love's judgment.

definition are stupid

The mere presence

stacles will constitute for that love a

and

of ob-

promise of endurance

should require such promise. But it is precisely here that we see the weakness of that way of life. Even if we agree with all the novels, popular songs, movies, magazines, advertising, and women's clubs that true love can and ought to conquer obstacles, we are nevertheless forced to admit that there is one all-powerful which is adversary time. And yet it so happens that time to say, lastingness is the basic, common-sense reason for marriage both from the family point of view and from if it

—

—

—

that of social living.

We can therefore declare that in the present state of Western mores, in the moral atmosphere which surrounds the immense majority of our contemporaries, marriage and consequently the family is being visibly sapped and systematically sabotaged by the very motive which calls it

—

into existence.

Such, to the author, is the principal reason (but not necone) for the growing number of divorces. We are in the act of trying out and failing miserably at it one of the most pathological experiments that a civilized society has ever imagined, namely, the basing of marriage, which is lasting, upon romance, which is a passing fancy. Of all the possible motives for the marriage act enumerated above, we are, practically speaking, embracing only the most unstable and ephemeral. No one will deny for a minute that in a healthy social order love and romance must play a certain role. But in this case it should play the minor and final role of a catalyst, which can disappear with no damage ensuing once the combination has essarily the only

—

—

worked by

virtue of

its

presence. Instead, we see a whole magazines attempting to sug-

literature of so-called family

methods for saving romance

in marriage for their an indirect admission that romance and duration are not compatible in a marriage. Instead of wearing ourselves out in vain attempts to resolve this contradiction of nature, should we not do better to face the

gest

women

readers. This

is

Denis de Rougemont

108

and accept from the start the two following theses: 1. Romance is by its very nature incompatible with marriage even if the one has led to the other, for it is the very essence of romance to thrive on obstacles, delays, separations, and dreams, whereas it is the basic function of marriage daily to reduce and obliterate these obstacles, for facts

marriage succeeds only in constant physical proximity to the

monotonous

present.

The logical and normal outcome of marriage founded only on romance is divorce, for marriage kills romance; if romance reappears, it will kill the marriage by its incom2.

patibility

with the very reasons for which the marriage was

contracted.

Eros and Agape It is clear that in speaking of romance we have been thinking not of love in general but of a certain aspect of love

which our era cultivates and which too often is accepted for itself. Romance, love fever, that emotion which most of our "best sellers" and films exalt, represents a very special sort of relationship between man and woman. In order

love

to

show how

little this

type of relation

is

compatible with

we should indicate its origin. Romance comes from the French word roman which

marriage,

means

at once a novel and a story in the Proven9al style of the south of France. It is therefore to the sentimental revolution precipitated by the twelfth-century troubadours that we must return to find the romanesque theme in its pure form. An expression which reappears again and agai*in the poetry of the troubadours will suffice to distinguish /' it amor de lonh, that is, remote love, love separated by great distances, a love which some obstacle precludes from culmination and fulfillment while the imagination enlarges upon it. Jeoffroy Rudel, prince of Blaye, illustrates this love in his poems addressed to the Countess of Tripoli, the remote princess. The romance of Tristan and Isolde at a later date, establishes the model for centuries of Westem love stories: a man and a woman with an obstacle between them, at once forbidding and nourishing the un-

—

Crisis of the

Modern Couple

109

happy reciprocal passion. In the beginning the obstacle is the husband, King Mark, and there is born the famous triangle. Later, the obstacle becomes either feudal and Christian law or is simply symbolized by separation in place; finally it withdraws more intimately into the psychology of love when Tristan places a sword between himself and Isolde as a symbol of chastity at a time when they have fled into the forest and are quite free to abandon themselves to their desires.

What

is

the link between

man and woman

in this type

imaginary one. For there is no real communication from being to being, but rather a double make-believe, a projected complicity in the creation of eternal obstacles and resistances keenly calculated to arouse passion while refusing to permit the culmination which would assuage it. It would seem that the violence of emotion is in direct proportion to the solidity of the obstacles and not at all to the real feelings of the lovers, which are usually indicated in the vaguest conventional manner. Tristan is simply "the strongest," Isolde the "whitest and fairest." Consequently we are justified in saying that Tristan does not love the real Isolde, nor Isolde the true Tristan, but rather that both of them are really in love only the actual pain of that with the love they themselves feel burning feeling in the heart and that all else is but a pretext to nourish the flame. We must enlarge, however, upon the character of the intoxication which that passion entails. The desire to love or, better, to be in love and feel oneself loved— can, if predicated on proper obstacles go so far as to make its victims prefer the "sweet malady" to health, social career, ambition, all forms of earthly happiness, and finally even to life itself. "Hochste Lust" (Joy supreme), cries Isolde as she falls dying upon the body of Tristan; the supreme obstacle has borne their passion to its climax. This remote love is diametrically opposed, point by of passion?

It is

essentially an

—

—

—

point, to the love-thy-neighbor principle of the Gospels.

The remote love

suffers in languishing,

whereas the other,

according to St. Augustine, runs, flies, and rejoices. One thrives -upon absence, dream, and nostalgia; the other on presence, familiarity, and actual exchange of experience

110

Denis de Rougemont

and emotion. One

glories in struggle, pursuit,

and

obstacle;

the other in a daily building for peace. One is desire; the other, gift and possession. One is passion in the literal sense; the other, action.

Love passion (love from Agape.^

suffered) springs

from Eros; love

ac-

tion

We know that the poetry of the troubadours, which disseminated the contagion of the remote love throughout the Western world and from which our love poetry and stories were to emanate for centuries, openly combats marriage. In terms of present-day morality Tristan can be envisaged as glorifying adultery. And we observe that all the elements of passionate love (Eros) tend either to ruin marriage or to disintegrate if the marriage resists dissolution and remains. To

discover the great secret of the modern crisis in marit should be enough for us to point out that romance for modern society is only the popularized by-product of a passion exemplified by Tristan. And, like passion, roriage,

mance

is an intoxicant which inspires its unreluctant vic." But this pastims to say, "It is stronger than I am sion has lost its mortal vigor, for the social and moral obstacles have lost their solidity and terminate in being pushed aside or overcome, so that romance instead of culminating in tragedy is lost in a happy ending. Like passion, romance is more a way of feeling love than of acting it, more being .

.

romance is a image of the other and being, a projection of unconscious and inti-

in love than loving. Just like passion, then, narcissistic love, addressed to the

not to his real

mate

nostalgia, not a real dialogue.

The

and romance is depending upon be overcome. Tristan's

great difference between passion

that the latter passes away,

by

definition,

the quality of the obstacles left to passion established a sort of fidelity to death

dream,

it is

true

—

^fidelity

to his

own

desires

—

fidelity to a

more than

to

2 Compare this distinction, which I have considered only cursorily, with Agape et Eros (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1932), by Anders Nygren, and my own work, L'Amour et I'Occident (English translation. Passion and Society; American translation. Love in the Western World). A thorough discussion of these two books is to be found in Mind and Heart of Love (New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1947), by Father M. C. D'Arcy,

S.J.

Crisis of the

the person

two

traits

Modern Couple

111

who

aroused them, but at least it preserved these of real fidelity, enduring for life and the accept-

ance of fate, come what may. Romance, on the contrary, although very rarely consummated in normal happiness, presents every possibility of expiring. "This dream girl," says Joe, "who looks like my favorite star and from whom all these obstacles separated me, thus making the pursuit so exciting, is suddenly a very real person at my side, spending hours of the day and night changing the baby's diapers. I married as a result of a romance, but no romance could survive in this kitchen smell which fills our three tiny rooms." And as for Sally, she thinks that she deserves a better life than this and that perhaps with Bob she could give her all. So there they are after two years, ripe for new romances (and it will surely surprise them, for they have brought it on by secret, inner wishes) which, if they have preserved the principles on which they were married, will lead them logically to divorce followed by futureless remarriages. Such has become the most common experience of our society, and to such a degree that we are convinced that "life is like that," has been, and always will be a doubly false belief if we consult the history of society. For, first of all, if life is like that it is only because, from the twelfth century on, Western culture has adopted to an ever increasing degree a concept of love more glamorous than the preceding one. Not recognized as new perhaps but more tenaciously adhered to, this changing conception is the sworn enemy of our marital institutions and

—

the beneficiary of constant

and now

propaganda

in

all

literature

cinema. And, second, it is problematic that, if "life is like that," it will always be so, for no society could long endure when the number of divorces which is to say broken families tends to equal the number of marin the

—

—

riages.

Foreseeable Reactions of the anarchy which threatens us, it would be only too easy to enumerate the remedies and therapeutic procedures capable of re-establishing some degree of order

At the threshold

112

—

Denis de Rougemont

meaning of the mardevaluated while other whims and caprices are being extolled as vital; the surrender to reason of its essential primacy over emotion; the reform of divorce legislation; a decree containing measures which would restrain hasty marriages; the restoration among the youth of the in short, the rerecognition of their social responsibility turn to the ancient virtues. Unfortunately, such entreaties would be in vain. One can never retrogress to anything, especially in the field of mores; if ever modern societv appeared to be returning to certain virtues upheld by its forefathers, it would be doing so not because of the entreaty of certain sagacious advisers but because of the irresistible force of defense-reflexes in the social body. Two of these reflexes can be observed as present in the twentieth cenfor example, the restoration of the

riage oath,

now

—

tury: 1. The totalitarian or state reaction. The modern state cannot tolerate the individual anarchy which ruins the basis for its systems of taxation, its armed-force recruitments,

and,

more

generally,

its

disciplines of

communal

education.

Nazis, Fascists, and Stalinists are in agreement on this point the family, a social cell, must not be exposed to at-

—

tack by the most anti-social of emotions, nor must passion or even romance be subjected to such antagonistic forces. We remember the drastic measures taken by Himmler in order to regulate, in the name of the state, first the marriages of members of the S.S. and, later, human reproduction in general. The racial "science" made it a point to eliminate successively all sorts of arbitrary choice and to substitute for the individual sentimental decision, a sort of marriage form established by the party functionaries on the basis of physical qualifications, pedigree, and political certification.

Russia has never gone so far. After having swept away all laws relating to marriage, divorce, and children, she limited herself to setting up a new code which, to the point of mistaking one for the other, resembles that of the bourgeois countries except, of course, that she applies it more strictly. She adheres to it by indefatigable propaganda against romance, sentimental love

under Lenin

—

Crisis of the

Modern Couple

songs, and the concept of individual happiness

—

all

113

consid-

ered decadent. Prizes for large families on- the one hand and obstacles to divorce on the other, together with an over-all general poverty, seem to have stabilized the marital problem of the U.S.S.R. for the present. But, as is characteristic of every totalitarian regime, the chief concern is the permanent mobilization of the nation, and it is difficult to prognosticate what the future contains. Nevertheless, the first totalitarian experiments have rendered exceedingly realistic the possibility of conceiving rules for marriage entirely dependent upon some official science of eugenics, thus permitting the state to limit to the extreme the margin of individual choice. Perhaps we shall witness a reproduction of those social conditions most likely to encourage secret and deathly passions worthy of Tristan, but so rare will they be, so excoriated and branded as shameful, as to be without danger from the collective point of view. 2.

The decadence of romance. In bourgeois and democountries

cratic

can be discerned a different evolution,

more normal in the sense that it operates freely, but at the •same time more deeply revolutionary in its effects. The extreme popularization nay, vulgarization of romantic values is about to prove itself much more dangerous for romance than all the diatribes of the moralists. The

—

—

general weakening of sexual taboos and the emancipation of women act to produce the same end. For real romance, like real passion, must be impeded and combated before

—

must, in a certain measure, be offireprimanded. For lack of serious obstacles, this new movement which sweeps it along arrives too quicklv at reality, where romance is engulfed and disintegrates. "It is not Love which turns toward reality," wrote a troubadour it

bursts into flame

cially

Yet the general evolution of customs in countries where love develops freely turns as early as the twelfth century.

one precisely toward

The

general

reality.

movement of

granting to

and especially economic equality

women

political,

perhaps the chief factor in this evolution. The very fact that a woman has a profession, which is to say a life tangibly her own, obliges legal,

is

Denis de Rougetnont

114

man

and autonomous person he must deal in a practical fashion and whose self-reliance he must respect. Such a being lends herself most unsatisfactorily to the nostalgic picture of the lover's intimate dream. For she is no longer an object to be contemplated, but an agent working for her own good. Actual physical dialogue will thus be substituted for the double narcissistic revery. And in this spoken agreement will reappear considerations of social position, material wealth, education, aptitude, character, aims in life, and so forth, which romance was inclined to underestimate and to neglect out of an excess of enthusiasm. A second factor in the decadence of romance is its commercialization. We have seen that it is the characteristic of passion to glory in the revolt against the pragmatic and tyrannical dogma of society and morality and, more especially, against dogmatic hypotheses of the inner life. But passion loses its intimate urge when it is advertised on every magazine page and at every step along the street. We have arrived at the day when romance, far from being an exception deliciously interesting in its torment, is diminished to the category of the expected and conformistic. The young a

with

to think of her as a real

whom

man who

is

from

not in love

tries to

hide his disturbing pecu-

comrades; he wonders what could be the matter with him that he is not like everyone else, that is to say, like the movies and the short stories which serve as the models for his generation. But even those very models begin to change. The serious and creative literature of the past few decades possesses little significance or none at all so far as the great love story is concerned and more and liarity

his

more delegates that aspect to the so-called best sellers. The Hollywood pattern of requiring love interest at any cost in

—

—

any film even in an atomic-bomb documentation undergoes multiple attacks. A bitter, cynical, or simply realistic conclusion is already replacing in many scripts the necessary happy ending of former days. It is possible that this tendency will assert itself even more forcefully in the years to come a tendency which must inevitably influence our mores. For romance, itself an excellent literary theme (the peaceful couple is without a story and therefore difficult to

—

Crisis of the

Modem

describe), contaminated literature with

its

Couple

115

trick pattern

it unto itself. La Rochefoucauld wondered, "Combien d'hommes seraient amourex s'ils n'avaient jamais entendu paries d'amour?" We, too, can wonder how many men would have the idea of falling in love if they had not heard it spoken about^ Let us insist on this proposition that passion and romance, these two artificial creations of the West, are linked to sex in a solely dialectical and paradoxical manner. Desire is not always synonymous with being in love, and an

long before the film industry arrogated

over-rapid possession of the object of desire often annihi-

romance. "D' amor mou castitaz" (From love is chastity born), sang the troubadour. The reverse is no less true. This is the explanation for the his-

lates all possibility of

torical fact that the

romantic periods of occidental

ature have coincided with puritanical periods

—

liter-

the Victo-

our best example. Nevertheless, it would seem upon a period of easy and relaxed sexual relationships, comparable to that of the early eighteenth century. The Uquidation of Victorian and puritanical taboos under the combined influences of popularized psycho-analysis, life in the Big City, the anti-bourgeois revolt, and the liberation of woman is about to desiccate one of the chief sources of romanticism. Everything is therefore conducive to the diminution of the romantic taste in the very middle of this century and rian novel that

we

is

are entering

moment when romance has diffused itself into the masses and challenged the stability of marriage and thus the basis of family fife. Let us summarize the problem. All is paradoxical when we speak of passion; passion thrives on obstacles and conat the

tinually seeks for them the better to suffer, for it prefers passionate torment to happiness. Passion inspires a man to die for the image of the beloved, whom he is not even

would love if he had to share her actual life. Passion penetrates our history as a flight toward infinite beauty and love, but at the expense of real love itself. It at once exalts and depresses its victims; it has created for civilizacertain he

tion a literature at the cost of a morality; and, today, in its

benignant and saccharine popularized form,

it

brings

116

Denis de Rougemont

about millions of marriages which, by its very nature, it soon destroy. Are we then to deplore its decline or rejoice in it? It would be useless to answer this question will

categorically.

—

by virtue of defense-reflexes in our society menaced by anarchy romance is to ebb in order to make way for realism alone in man-woman relationships, our posIf,

as

it

—

is

terity will in all probability

They

will sense a certain

experience the depths of ennui.

vacuum in their lives, a As for us moderns, let us

certain

emptiness in their hearts. frankly concede that, for people of such paucity of faith and attenuated religion as we possess, the sentimental life still appears inviting as an ideal, as an escape from the necessity of choice, or as the least undesirable approximation of a substitute for the joys and anxieties of the spirit. Among those embracing totalitarian principles, political passion has officially taken the place of erotic passion. To obliterate

romance or what is left of it would be as much a loss as a gain. For only a profound and intense life of the spirit would be capable of compensating for the hollow emptiness left by that delicious torment and of rendering Agape more exalting than Eros. But we must not depend upon a collective miracle

.

.

.

we can act upon this evolution described above only by a prise de conscience, a weighing of As

a matter of fact,

—by

exposing the true nature of passion and human relations that it pre-supposes and favors, which is actually in part the psychoanalytic method. And after that we can suggest some pedagogical aims. To attack romance from the moral standpoint would be an error, since romance attracts precisely because in it lies some ostensible culpability and it disappears when it is universally acclaimed. We should succeed in limiting its dangers much more adequately by simply pointing out to young people that, valuable though it is, romance is nevertheless by its very nature incapable of establishing a durable marriage, and that it is not an act of courage but one of absurdity to marry someone forever because of a fever that endures for two months. We should do well, if we esteem virtue and the abrogation of vice, to be much less conscience

defining the set of

— Crisis of the

Modem

Couple

117

censorious in relation to the novels and films which are indecent and reprehensible from the viewpoint of puritanism than in relation to those which depict romance as the ecstatic, supreme intoxication an open prevarication to which we are astonished to observe even the most cynical of youth give credence. And we should do well also to demand of our writers that they abandon their triangle for a time and depict a modem type of marriage founded not only on love and the dubious reality of two dreams but also on the sworn allegiance of two equal personalities. We can act in the moral field only by changing or reversing certain standards of judgment and by reintroducing into the present moral code styles of "what is done" and "what is not done." Freud did much in authorizing us to speak of the subconscious and of sex. The troubadours offered much in putting joy d'Amor in style. The cinema and mediocre literature are still at work perpetuating the fashion of romance even though it has actually been condemned by a new social realism. So, too, those who write and speak in our day can do equally well by formulating the values which are found to correspond to that new social realism while abrogating the illusion of romanticism. They can help by showing that such values as sworn fidelity, practical alliance, the very adventure of a project undertaken in common and at all risks, a mutual purpose completely apart from what Proust calls the intermittent heart, and apart from the play of emotions which come and go like the clouds are the true pattern of the century; they can portray their excellence and perhaps even their heroic qualities.

—

—

part

two

The Meanings of Love

y.Child Care and the Growth of Love

John Bowlby

In 1951 the World Health Organization assigned the British psychiatrist John Bowlby the task of collating existing studies of the effects of family life disruption on the development of the child's capacity for human relationships. The results of this work were published as Maternal Care and Mental Health. Although there is no exact explanation of how deprivation of a mother's care produces these results, the evidence is fairly clear that lack of continuing, friendly, stimulating contact with a maternal figure in infancy brings about acute

between the need for love and mistrust of the denying environment. Depending upon the phase of development in which the privation occurs, the child responds with subtle to gross deviations ranging from crippling of the ability to give and receive love to impulsive, revengeful behavior disorders or to complete withdrawal from human contact. The view of the mother as the "orconflict

ganizer" of the unformed mind of the child complements and extends the earlier Freudian patriarchal emphasis and has greatly influenced current personality theory. The following section on "Child Care and the Growth of Love" is drawn from a popular version of the Bowlby Report abridged and edited by Margery Fry and published

by Penguin Books Ltd. From Child Care and the Growth of Love by John Bowlby. Reprinted by permission of the Technical Publications Section,

World Health Organization.

Child Care and the Growth of Love develop as personalities and how this developin constant touch with some one person who cares for our nourishment and other needs during the critical time in our early years, whilst our ability to adjust ourselves to the outside world of things and of people is growing, is a very interesting question. The problems raised are very complicated, and as vet bv no means Just

how we

ment depends on our being

clearly understood. Yet our progress in practice will depend very much on our growing insight into theory. As our personality develops we become less and less at the mercy of our immediate surroundings and the wavs in which they affect us, and become more and more able tct* choose and create our surroundings and to plan ahead,

often over long periods of time, for the things

Amongst

other things, this

means

that

we have

we want.

to learn to

think in an abstract way, to exercise our imagination and to consider things other than just our immediate sensations and desires. Only when he has reached this stage is the individual able to control his wish of the moment in the interests of his own more fundamental long-term needs. One expects the child of three, or even five, to run into the road and seek his ball at those ages he is still largely at the

—

situation. As he grows older, howexpected to take more things into account and to think ahead. By ten or eleven he is capable of pursuing

mercy of the immediate ever, he

is

some months distant in time. At sixteen or eighteen more developed boy or girl is able to perform great

goals

the

feats of abstraction in time and space. This is the process whereby the individual frees himself from slaverv to his instincts and the urge for immediate pleasure, and develops mental processes more adapted to the demands of reality.

In the course of this process

we develop

within ourselves

ways of harmonizing our different, and often conflicting, needs and learn to seek their satisfaction in the world outside ourselves: we begin to judge between the things we want in the future, to consider what things we desire most,

120

John Bowlby

to realize that

to give way may have purpose and may

some wishes have

that our actions

to others, so

not clash in

a haphazard way. Because one of our foremost long-term

needs

is

to

remain on friendly and co-operative terms with

we must keep

their requirements firmly in the front of our minds: from this awareness of the things which please and displease the people round us come the rudiments of conscience. In infancy and early childhood we are not able to act in this thoughtful way with regard to getting our own ends or to recognizing the claims of other people. During this time his mother has to act for the child in both these ways. She arranges where he shall be, when he shall feed and sleep and be washed, provides for him in every way, al-

others

lows him to do some things, checks him

in others.

She

is,

were, his personality and his conscience. Gradually he learns these arts for himself, and, as he does so, the skilled parent transfers the roles to him. This is a slow, subtle, and continuous process, beginning when he first learns to walk and feed himself and not ending completely until maturity is reached. But the unfolding of the child's self and conscience can only go on satisfactorily when his first human relationships are continuous and happy. Here we are struck by a similarity between this process and the development of the unborn child during the time while tissues, which do not yet show the characters of the different parts of the future baby, take on these characters under the influence of certain chemicals called organizers. If growth is to proceed smoothly, the tissues must be exposed to the influence of the appropriate organizer at certain critical periods. In the same way, if mental development is to proceed smoothly, it would appear to be necessary for the unformed mentality to be exposed, during certain critical periods, to the influence of the psychic organizer the mother. For this reason, in considering the disorders to which personality and conscience are liable, it is imperative to have regard to the phases of development of the child's capacity for human relationships. These are many and, naturally, merge into one another. In broad outline, the following are the most important: as

it

—

Child Care

The phase during which

121

course of establishing a relation with a clearly identified person his mother; this is normally achieved by five or six months of (a)

the infant

is

in

—

age.

(b) The phase during which he needs her as an everpresent companion; this usually continues until about his third birthday.

The phase during which he

(c)

is

becoming able

to

main-

with her in her absence. During the fourth and fifth years such a relationship can only be maintained in favourable circumstances and for a few days or weeks at a time; after seven or eight the relationship can be maintained, though not without strain, for periods of a year or more. The ages by which these phases are completed no doubt vary greatly from child to child in the same way that the stages of physical maturity vary. For instance, the capacity to walk matures at any time between nine and twenty-four months, and it may well be that psychic growth is equally variable. If this is so, it will be wise in research to reckon age rather by the stage of development reached than by actual length of life, since it seems fairly certain that the kind and degree of psychological disorder following depriva relationship

tain

ation depends on the phase of development the child

forward

is

in

theory well-established principles gained from the study of embryos are again followed. We learn that at the time. In putting

this

abnormalities are produced by attacking, at just the right time, a region in which profound growth activity

way.

.

classes

.

.

Possible abnormalities will tend to

and types corresponding

and regions

in

to the

development. Injuries

most

is

under

fall

into

critical stages

inflicted early will

produce widespread disturbances of growth injuries will tend on the other hand to produce

in general .

.

.

late

local defects.

Furthermore, a given undifferentiated tissue can respond to an or-

— John Bowlby

122

only during a limited period. It must have reached a certain stage of differentiation before it can respond; and later its character becomes fixed, so that it can yield only a more limited type of response. ganizer

In the same way the mother by her mere presence and tenderness can act as an "organizer" on the mind of the child, still in the quite undeveloped stages of ver' early growth. But the time when this action can take place is, as in the case of the chemical "organizer," limited tb the time whilst the child's personality is quite unformed (this, of course, is quite a different matter from the continuing influence of the mother upon the child later). The evi-

dence

is

fairly clear that

if

the

first

phase of development

that of establishing a relation with one particular person

—

recognized as such is not satisfactorily completed during the first twelve months or so, there is the greatest difficulty in making it good: the character of the psychic tissue has become fixed. (The limit for many children may well be a good deal earlier.) Similarly, there appears to be a limit by which the second and third phases must be completed if further development is to proceed. Now it is these vital growth processes which are impaired by the experience of deprivation. Observations of severely deprived children show that their personalities and their consciences are not developed their behaviour is impulsive and uncontrolled and they are unable to pursue long-term goals because they are the victims of the momentary whim. For them, all wishes are born equal and equally to be acted upon. Their power of checking themselves is absent or feeble; and without this people cannot find their way efficiently about the world they are swayed this way and that by every impulse. They are thus ineffective personalities unable to learn from experience, and consequently their own worst enemies. We cannot yet explain exactly how the deprivation of a mother's care produces this result, but two of the observations which have already been noticed may carry us some way towards understanding the problem. These are, first, Dr. William Goldfarb's ^ discovery of the difficulty

—

—

1

In a study of the mental development of institutionalized children. Ed.

Child Care

123

which these patients have in abstract thinking, of dealing with ideas rather than being tied to the objects immediately present to the senses; and second, the observation of doctors trying to help them of their being unable to come out of themselves through affection for other people or interest in things outside themselves. All the institution children studied by Dr. Goldfarb

showed serious and

Now we

have

special incapacity for abstract thinking.

just seen that

such thinking

the action of the self and of the conscience

is

—

necessary to

the baby

must

gradually learn to think before he acts and to give up responding automatically to every happening, a sound, a light, hunger, or pain: only then can he become a full person. So it may well be that where abstract thinking has not developed properly the personality cannot fully unfold. But even so, there remains the puzzle as to why deprivation should injure the power of abstract thinking. The failure of personality development in deprived children is perhaps more easily understood when it is considered that it is the mother who in the child's earliest years acts as his personality and his conscience. The institution children had never had this experience, and so had never had the opportunity of completing the first phase of development that of establishing a relationship with a clearly known mother-figure. All they had had was a succession of makeshift agents each helping them in some limited way, but none providing continuity in time, which is of the essence of personality. It may well be that these grossly deprived infants, never having been the continuous objects of care of a single human being, had never had the opportunity to learn the processes of abstraction and of the organization of behaviour in time and space. Certainly their grave psychical deformities are clear examples of the

—

principle that injuries inflicted early produce widespread

disturbances of growth. In the institutional setting, moreover, there is less opportunity for the child who has learnt how to think to exercise this art. In the family the young child is within limits encouraged to express himself both socially and in play. child of eighteen months or two years has already become

A

124

John Bowlby

a character in the family. It is known that he enjoys certain things and dislikes others, and the family has learnt to respect his wishes. Furthermore, he is getting to know how to induce his parents or his brothers and sisters to do what he wants. In this way he is learning to change his social envito a shape more congenial to him. The same occurs in his play, where in a symbolic way he is creating and recreating new worlds for himself. Here are the exercise grounds for the personality. In any institutional setting much of this is lost; in the less good it mav all be lost. The child is not encouraged to individual activity because it is a nuisance; it is easier if he stays put and does what he is told. Even if he strives to change his environment he fails. Toys are lacking: often the children sit inert or rock themselves for hours together. Above all, the brief intimate games which mother and baby invent to amuse themselves as an accompaniment to getting up and washing, dressing, feeding, bathing, and returning to sleep they are all missing. In these conditions, the child has no opportunity of learning and practising functions which are as basic to living as walking and talking. The case of the child who has a good relation with his mother for a year or two and then suffers deprivation may be rather different. He has passed through the first phase of social development, that of establishing a relationship, and the shock affects the second phase in which, though personality development is proceeding apace, the child's awareness of his relative lack of skill in the art of living is reflected in his limpet-like attachment to his mother, to whom he looks constantly for help. Only if she is with him or near at hand can he manage his environment and manage himself. If he is suddenly removed from her, to hospital or institution, he is faced with tasks which he feels to be impossible. In a terrifying situation of this kind it is usual for such skill as has already been learnt to be lost. In these circumstances children often go back to more babyish ways of thinking and behaving and find it very difficult to grow out of them again. A further principle of the theory of learning is that an individual cannot learn a skill unless he has a friendly feel-

ronment

—

ChHd Care ing towards his teacher, and

125

ready to identify himself with her. Now this positive attitude towards his mother is either lacking in the deprived child, or, if present, is mixed with keen resentment. How early in a child's life deprivais

tion causes a definitely hostile attitude certainly evident for

vation

is

all

to see in the

more common than

is

debatable, but

second year.

No

it is

obser-

that of the child separated for

weeks or months during the second, third, or fourth years failing to recognize his mother on reunion. It seems probable that this is sometimes a true failure to recognize, based on a loss of the capacity to abstract and identify. -At others, it is certain that it is a refusal to a few

recognize, since the children, instead of treating their parents as though they were strangers, are deliberate in their avoidance of them. The parents have become hated people. This hostility is variously expressed. It may take the

violence; in older children it may be expressed in words. All who have treated such children are famiHar with the violence of their fantasies against the parents whom they feel to have deserted them. Such an attitude not only is incompatible with their desire for love and security, and results in acute conflict, anxiety, and depression, but is clearly a hindrance to their future social learning. So far from idolizing their parents and wishing to be-

form of tempers and

come

like them, one side of their nature hates them and wishes to avoid having anything to do with them. This is what brings about aggressively bad or delinquent behaviour; it may also lead ultimately to suicide which is a result of the

same

conflict being

person's

fought out between different parts of a

self.

In other cases the child has suffered so much pain through making relationships and having them interrupted that he is reluctant ever again to give his heart to anyone for fear of its being broken. And not only his own heart: he is afraid, too, to break the heart of new persons whom he might love because he might also vent his anger on them. Older children are sometimes aware of this and

remark to a psychiatrist: "We had better not becom.e too familiar, for I am afraid I shall get hostile with you then." It is feelings such as these which underlie will

126

John Bowlby

a child's shutting into himself.

To withdraw from human

contact is to avoid further frustration and to avoid the intense depression which human beings experience as a result of hating the person whom they most dearly love and need. Withdrawal is thus felt to be the better of two bad alternatives. Unfortunately, it proves to be a blind alley, since no further development is then possible. For progress in human relations the individual must take the other road, in which he learns to tolerate his contradictory feelings and to bear the anxiety and depression which go with them. But experience shows that once a person has taken refuge in the relative painlessness of withdrawal he is reluctant to change course and to risk the turmoil of feeling and miserv which attempting relationships brings with it. As a result he loses his capacity to make affectionate relationships and to identify himself with loved people, and any treatment offered is resisted. Thenceforward he becomes a lone wolf, pursuing his ends irrespective of others. But his desire for love, repressed though it is, persists, resulting in behaviour such as promiscuous sex relations and the stealing of other people's possessions. Feelings of revenge also smoulder on, leading to other anti-social acts, sometimes of a very violent character.

Deprivation after the age of three or four, namely," in the third phase, does not have the same destructive effect

on personality development and on

the ability for abstract

however, in excessive desires for affection and excessive impulses for revenge, which cause acute internal conflict and unhappiness and very unfavourthinking.

It

still

results,

able social attitudes.

In both the second and third phases the child's restricted sense of time and his tendency to misunderstand a situation

add greatly to his difficulties. It is exceedingly difficult for grown-ups to remember that the young child's grasp of time is meagre. The child of three can recall the events of a few days ago and anticipate those of a day or two hence. Notions such as last week or last month, next week or next month are incomprehensible. Even for a child of five or six, weeks are immensely long and months almost timeless. This very restricted time-span has to be understood if the despair

Child Care

which the young child place

is

feels at

to be fully realized.

being

Though

left

127

alone in a strange

to his

mother

it

may

but relatively brief time, to him it is an eternity. It is this inability to imagine a time of deliverance which, together with the sense of his helplessness, accounts for. the overwhelming nature of his anxiety and despair. Perhaps the nearest to it the grown-up can conceive is to imagine being committed to prison on an indetermi-

seem not only a

finite

nate sentence.

This comparison is a good one, since the notion of punishment is itself not far from many a child's mind as the explanation of events. All psychiatrists have come across children who have seriously believed that their being sent away from home was to punish them for being naughty, a misconstruction which is often made even more terrifying and distressing by being unexpressed. At other times children imagine that it has been their fault that the home has been broken up. Commonly there is bewilderment and perplexity regarding the course of events, which leads the child to be unable to accept and respond to his new environment and the new people caring for him. Naturally a' child who has suffered gross privation in early infancy, or who for other reasons cannot make relationships, will not be affected in these ways, but will greet each change with genial indifference. But for the child who has had the opportunity to make relationships it is not so easy to change loyalties. Indeed, very many of the problems which arise as a result of moving an older child to a foster-home are caused by the failure to recognize the deep attachment which a child has for his parents, even if they are exceedingly bad and have given him little affection. Unless these

up and these loyalties respected, the remain anchored in an unsatisfactory past, endlessly trying to find his mother and refusing to adapt to the new situation and make the best of it. This results in a dis-

perplexities are cleared

child will

satisfied restless character

anyone

else

happy.

unable to

make

either himself or

8.

The Psychodynamics

of

Love

Therese Benedek

The dynamics

of love as an experience have, utxtW recentlv, been little investigated. Even psychoanalysis, as Dr. Benedek points out, concentrated on love's function in the development of the individual personality, treating its complications as disturbances in psychosexuality rather than as an impasse in the "emotional dialectic" of risk, surrender and restitution between two interacting egos. The processes which motivate the psychic maturation of the human being first, as a child, through manifold identifiin our culture cations with its parents; then, as an adult, with the ego ideal of the lover; and, finally, as mates, with each other as parents themselves are schematized here as an intuitive strug-

—

—

gle of the individual for individuality. Dr.

Benedek demon-

nor absolute and is often endangered by conflicting intentions which, if happily integrated, bring forward tenderness, gratitude and a mutual respect which replaces receding passion. Therese Benedek, M.D., a leading member of the Institute for Psychoanalysis, Chicago, is the author of Psychosexual Functions in Women. From The Family: Its Function and Destiny, edited by Ruth Nanda Anshen, copyright 1949 by Harper & Brothers. Reprinted by permission of Harper & Brothers, Publishers, New York. strates that love

is

i^either static

The Psychodynamics In a period of

human

history

of

Love

when

a

growing individualism

appears to threaten the family, to shake

its

well-established

The Psychodynamics hierarchy, and to

weaken

of

Love

129

appears promising to look upon the family as an organism and to investigate its physiology. For the biological fact of the long-lasting dependence of the human child is the root its

functional effectiveness,

it

from which grew, in complex interaction between society and the individual, the family as an institution of many tasks.

— —

For a long time nineteenth century

in fact, until the last

decade of the

science did not dare to scrutinize the

ways and means by which the family functions. Sanctioned by religion and tradition, the family, the carrier and transmitter of the culture, could not but be idealized, each of its fulfilling a role entrusted to him by the ideology

members

of the cultural patterns. Since love is the categorical imperative of our culture, love was taken to be the emotion which regulates the interpersonal relations within the family. The emotional structure of the idealized patriarchal family appeared to be set and static: its main representant, the father-husband, was assumed to be strong and active, providing for his wife and children not only the means of livelihood but also love and protection as the means for emotional security; the mother-wife, connected with her husband in a lasting marriage, was assumed to accept this as the prerequisite for her happiness, which in turn enabled her to love her children with tender, unwavering motherliness. Since there are basic biological

needs which regulate

the relationship between the sexes as well as woman's natural tendency toward motherhood and motherliness, it was

easy to maintain that all children were wanted, loved, and cared for and that the children, raised in a spirit of respect toward an authoritative father (who might delegate his authority to the mother), accepted the authority in devotion and gratefulness until they grew up to be parents themselves

and acted in their turn the same way toward their children. Yet the Greek tragedies, conceived at the dawn of individualism and hewn out of the everlasting material of human emotion, demonstrated to an audience which already knew of the pang of conscience that love is not absolute, that even the parent's love of the child and the child's love for the parent are endangered by wishes and desires of

Therese Benedek

130

other intentions, "by conflicting tendencies. From the time of the Greek tragedies until our modern scientific era it remained for the artists for Shakespeare, Dostoievsky, and to grasp intuitively and express indelibly the emoothers tional struggle of the individual for individuality. It was an intellectual revolution when Freud and his followers began to study methodically the boiling cauldron of

—

—

emotions underneath the static-appearing, smooth ideological surface of the patriarchal Victorian family. These investigations led to our present understanding of the psychodynamic processes which motivate the emotional maturation of the individual and also the interpersonal relationships as they unfold in our culture, not only within the family but also from generation to generation. For Freud disclosed the process through which the individual becomes the carrier of our cultural inheritance and relives "the traces left

which the biological and

behind in the Id."

historical fate of

mankind

'

It is regrettable that space permits us here only a most concise presentation of the evolution of the emotional patterns from early infancy until they become established in the course of the individual development as an inner psychic organization which Freud called the superego, the

function of which we experience as conscience. In the beginning there is only the instinct of self-preservation. The total energy of the newborn child is in its service; hunger is the sensation which expresses the need for the material out of which his body is built, and the infant's crying represents the mobilized self-assertion to achieve satisfaction of his need. He will cry until gratification arrives or until he has exhausted his motoric energy. If his hunger is satisfied in such a way that the infant does not have to use up all his energies, there is a positive balance in his energy household; he has a surplus for physical and mental growth. Out of this surplus the infant gains the first pleasurable sensations of his own body as well as the first positive orientation toward the external world: a confident relationship to the mother, who is soon recognized as a 1 Sigmund Freud: "Das Ich und das Es," in Gesammelte Schriften, Volume VI (Vienna: Internationales Psychoanaiytischer Verlag, 1923), pp. 351-405.

The Psychodynamics of Love

131

source of gratification. It depends primarily on the mother on her emotional satisfaction in being a mother and her readiness to nurse, to take care of the baby, and to supply him not only with his physical needs but also with the whether satisfaction and sepleasurable sensation of love curity or frustration and fear will dominate the emotional life of the child. The mother's attitude also will determine

—

—

whether the infant, sheltered by the security of his confidence in the mother, will learn from her easily or whether every step wiU be acquired with mobilization of fear and hostility.

Although the infant very early becomes aware that in his mother (he recognizes his father and also his siblings and responds to them), generally speaking we may state that the mother is the first teacher of the child. Through her he learns to respond to other persons; with her help he learns to talk, to walk, and to master his sphincters. Thus the mother is the one who at first impresses upon the child the cultural patorbit there are other individuals besides the

tern; for infant training reflects, in the mother's behavior,

the hygienic and ideological requirements of a civilization. in our times the mothers begin to train the ego of the

Thus

child early. Almost from the beginning the infant has to learn to be "independent," to be self-assertive, and even to

"make up

his

mind." These individualistic requirements

the infant has not enough resource in fear and overcompensative selfassertion: hostility. It does not take long for the child to begin to know what are the actions for which the mother will like him and those which will increase the expressions mobilize, especially

if

love and security,

much

—

—

and he also will thus enhancing his security soon realize what are the actions which bring about punishment, that is, a reduction of love and thus a reduction of his basic security. This mobilizes the child's fear, which in itself may again increase his need for self-assertion. Every nursery in our society produces frank and often brutal examples of this vicious circle between the two aspects of self-preservation: the need for love, and the need for self-

of her love

assertion.

In the great variety of solutions which the mfant learns

Therese Benedek

132

to find in order to reconcile the struggle for security, one may early observe definite differences in the behavior of

Although an undisturbed confidence in the important for the normal development of infants of both sexes, the emotional security which results from it affects boys and girls differently. It gives the boy permis-

the

sexes.

mother

is

and a sense of courage. Thus he may dependence on the mother in order to start a development in which identification with the father becomes the leading motive. The girl's development sion for self-assertion

free himself

from

his

takes a different course.

A

sense of security gives her the

and most effective impulse for identification with the mother. Thus through manifold identifications with the parent of the same sex the child reaches the oedipal phase of

first

He

is then about three to five years old. the child's identification with the parent of the same sex has evolved strongly enough to motivate his erotically colored demands toward the parent of

his development.

This

is

the age

when

the other sex. This, however,

creates

whose

toward

the crucial conflict. The boy, mother has made him a competitor of his father, feels threatened by his father's revenge: castration. His fear impels the repression of his sexual desire toward his mother. In the girl the conflict has erotic desire

his

The girl, who becomes a competitor of her mother, feels threatened by the realization of her feminine wishes and represses them in order not to be threatened by the loss of her mother's love. In both sexes the fear of punishment forces the child to repress the oedipal tendency and to introject the prohibition of the parent. From this time on the child will know, by the strength of the opposite direction.

the internalized fear of the parent, what is right and what is wrong: he has a conscience. Thus, as a result of love and fear and competitive self-assertion, is raised the inner-psychic institution which

is

the cornerstone of the emotional

structure of the individual and of the family in our culture.' For, whatever were the original causes of sexual prohibition at the origins of our social structures, they are relived or within every normal family of our civilization. This is

—

2

Sigmund Freud, The Ego and

the Id (London:

Hogarth

Press, 1927).

The Psychodynamics of Love

133

—

unta recent decades used to be characterized by the inhibitron and negation of sexuality. It cannot be the task of the present chapter to describe the psychological processes of growing up from the oedipal age level through the period of sexual latency, during which the psychodynamic tendencies which constituted the oedipus complex become absorbed in the total personality. Nor can we afford to discuss the process of maturation during the period of adolescence, when, with the developing hormonal function, heterosexuality becomes an emotional reality and physiological necessity. In primitive societies where puberty rites are celebrated, society takes charge of, and responsibility for, the individual's sexual activity. The adolescents in such societies do not need to overcome so many internal obstacles as exist in our society, where the individual himself is responsible and has to deal with his emerging sexual urge more or less by himself. At puberty the unfolding sexuality is confronted with restrictions and prohibitions, as well as with permissions and emotional structure of the the confusion and insecurity, the longing and suspense, the shyness and the rebellion, all so characteristic of adolescence. In these attitudes the struggle which once was fought between the parents and the child becomes manifest again. The repression had to succeed; now the emotional struggle of the adolescent has the task of diminishing the power of the original sexual prohibition. Yet this does not mean alone a permission for gratifications, incorporated in the

personality since childhood.

Hence

physiological satisfaction of the sexual need.

The

struggle

for a higher goal, for the capacity to form a lasting relationship with an individual of the other sex. There is good reason to discuss here the psychodynamics of love, for our culture tends to make it the sole basis of is

marriage.

Heterosexual love is an attraction between a man and a have reached a specific level of their individual maturation, for the completion of which they need each other. To elaborate this definition we have to go back to the adolescent. Well known is the melancholia, the intro-

woman who

134

Therese Benedek

verted depressive mood, of the adolescent. This mood expresses the conflict between his ego ideal and the realization of the awakening sexual need, which is regarded as "sin," unacceptable to the ego ideal. Love is an emotion which resolves this conflict.

Through it sexuality becomes acceptfrom a state of suspense, feels

able and the ego, liberated

elated. This does not necessarily

occur only in adolescence or with the first love. Everybody who feels the loneliness of unsatisfied sexual tension experiences the same sort of abject mood which keeps the person preoccupied with the desire for -love and compels him to seek a mate and companion. If the individual has the emotional maturity which our culture conveyed to him and requires him to carry on, he has to find the solution with the help and in the framework of his conscience. This accounts for much delay and suspense. For both man and woman that waiting period means an experiencing of doubts which in itself elevates the emotion of love and raises the beloved person to the level of an ideal. Love means the surrendering of what one calls one's personality, and it makes the beloved person the measure of all measures. Romantic love,^ that is, the acute phase of love, is self-effacing. Being loved by one's ego ideal means even if temthat one surrenders one's own personality porarily to another individual. In our society, where men and women are not only mates but also individuals, this appears to be a great risk. Afraid of being hurt by love, many women guard themselves against men who could become their masters in love; in the same way, men may avoid women whom they fear because they may become emotionally dependent upon them. If such intense, acute love is allowed to develop, however, the man or the woman becomes dependent for emotional gratification upon one person exclusively. The aim of sexual passion is to transcend the boundaries of the individuality through unification with the beloved. The need for this is gratified by the sexual act, but it encompasses more than the need for physiological satisfaction it achieves gratification within the total per-

—

—

—

Tlicodor Reik, A Psychologist Looks at Love Rinchart, Inc.. 1944). "

(New York:

Farrar and

The Psychodyn amies of Love

135

sonality of each of the lovers. Fearful as either of

them

might have been before the union, after love is satisfied the ego feels relieved of its insecurity. Each partner feels: I became like you because you, whom I admired, loved me. Each becomes a better and worthier person. Each comes closer to his ego ideal through love. No wonder that an emotional experience of such force appears to be transcendental. It projects itself into the future with optimism; it promises to endure in marriage. So long as society concentrated its ethics and customs on securing stability for the marriage, there was little need to investigate the dynamics of love itself. Even psychoanalysis studied love rather as a force than as an experience. It investigated its function in the development of the personality; it assumed tacitly that, if an individual achieved the capacity to love, the marriage would last and satisfy the if, for example, individual's needs. If complications arose^ psychoneurotic disturbances developed one investigated the individual and found the causes of the maladjustment. But love, like any force, is not static; nor can interpersonal relationships, even if regulated by the purest of love, be static. Up to this point we have discussed the effect of love as an emotional expectation of and a sexual satisfaction for the ego, and we have found that satisfaction in love enhances the ego. Strengthened by the satisfaction of being loved,, the individual becomes more independent of the de-

—

—

mands which

of the love partner. is

lovers, the pair

more

I

For a period, the length of

determined by the personality of each of the

have

—

may

say like Juliet, "The

for both are infinite."

Yet

more

I

give the

after a while

one

or the other, or both, may begin to feel envious of the other who receives so much. The envy, hostility, and rebellion against surrender to another person becomes manifest repeatedly in quarrels between the partners. Nevertheless, if the hostility is not so great that it interrupts the relationship it becomes an important factor in its further development. The guilt resulting from the quarrel creates anew a mood of contrite dependence which can be undone only by passionate love. If the identification between the lovers pro-

Therese Benedek

136

gresses as

it

does in marriage (where

common

interests as-

sociated with their social and economic position also further the identification) the original intensity of the suspense, the ,

original passion, will not be achieved again. This does not indicate a devaluation of the sexual partner; rather it ex-

presses the emotional reality, the balance of the dynamic interrelation between husband and wife. The originally de-

prived ego of the lover dependent for gratification, having received reassurance from being loved, does not again feel insecure. The fulfillment of love has changed the basis of the relationship. It has grown from an exchange of ego ideals to the relationship of individuals who share the same reality; the oneness may be expressed in common ambitions and desires. Yet, if the suspense which initiated passion cannot be continued, the mutual sexual excitability decreases. Lovers know this instinctively and therefore often consciously seek to arouse a limited degree of hostile tensuch a degree as does not interfere with the process sion of enriching the identification but renders new stimulus to

—

it.

Through

the desexualization of the projected ego ideal its next phase. To

(the lover) the love relationship reaches arrive at riage.

it

usually requires the complex intimacy of mar-

The wife who becomes

who becomes

a mother and the husband undergo a metamorphosis in each other; as though both of them

a father slowly

their relationship to

were identifying themselves with the child whom they loVe, they begin to represent for each other the parent as well. Husband and wife often address each other as their children address them call each other "father" and "mother" or "mommy" and "daddy" or in the more modern type of marriage they let the children call them by their first name (as if in that way they could avoid becoming the parents). But all this is more than imitation. It expresses a psychoslogical reality, namely, that the marital partners (as if they were parents for each other) become, as once the parents did, a critical forum, a measure for each other's personality. And, as the individual's development has proved, it is easier to live with a conscience which developed on the basis of gratitude, love, and respect than with one which de-

—

—

Psychosexuality

137

veloped out of fear and punishment. So the love of the husband and wife, though partially desexualized, is not lost in the process of the change. Even if this development only rarely is smooth and the husband or the wife may resent it or rebel against it from time to time, yet, if they stay together as they were forced to do before the era of divorces, they eventually accept this new phase of their common development. The identification between husband and wife, whether it is expressed in cultural or economic aspirations, in their children, or in the thousand details of everyday living, will hold the marriage together even after erotic passion recedes. For this is the emotional dialectic of marriage; each of the partners, stimulated by the other, undergoes a process of maturation which leads to a further integration of his personality. Thus, even if the acuteness of passion recedes, there remains enough of its glow to enrich the relationship with mutual respect, tenderness, and gratitude. Indeed, they who achieve such maturation within their marriage have much for which to be grateful. They represent the rare examples of happy marriage. . . .

9.

Psychosexuality

Ives Hendrick

Among

the sources of an individual's dynamic mental procunknown to him, motivate many of his activi-

esses which, ties

are those rationally incongruous phantasies and striv-

ings associated with sexual

life.

Seemingly inexplicable nu-

ances of love and hate are disclosed under analysis to represent reactions to thoughts and wishes which cannot be consciously accepted by the individual. Thus, the term psychosexuality deals as much with early imprinted components of pleasure and security as it does with the bio-

138

Hendrick

Ives

logical determinants of mating.

"We

life," Freud explained, "all activities which originated in the primitive sexual drives, also those impulses when they were subjected to an ." The flavor of inhibition from their original sexual aim.

include in sex

and tender

feelings

.

the psychoanalytic scrutiny of erotic

life

.

can be experienced

summary of four basic phenomena of unconscious sexuality discovered and elaborated by Freud: bisexuality, ambivalence, sublimation and displacement. Ives Hendrick, M.D., is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School and a past president of the American Psychoanalytic Association. Reprinted from Facts and Theories of Psychoanalysis, Third Edition, Revised, by Ives Hendrick, copyright 1934, 1939, 1958 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. By permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. in Dr. Hendrick's

Psychosexuality

The word "psychosexuality"

(colloquially "sexuality"), as

used by analysts, comprises a wider group of phenomena than the emotions and acts obviously related to union of the genital organs. "Sexuality" includes "genitality" (the term used by analysts for impulses to normal adult intercourse), but also all other aspects of life to which the term "love" is

commonly

—

applied friendship, ideals, parent-child affeclove of abstractions, self-love, etc., and all pleasant bodily sensations. The broadest customary usage of "love" tion,

we love what gives us pleasure, or what is our pleasure, and the universal characteristic of "sexuality," as used in psychoanalysis, is also the pleasalso implies that

essential for

ure afforded the subject. Early in his investigations of psychoneuroses, Freud observed that unconscious wishes and memories which were causal factors in neurotic problems were always closely re-

some frustration of either a sexual wish or a hostile wish, and that love and hate are so closely united as to defy separate consideration. For one hates either the rival, actual lated to

or imaginary, of an object of love, or the loved one

who

Psychosexuality withholds what

is

139

desired.

Though their basic etiology may require months to discover, the concurrence of neurotic problems and sexual dysfunction can usually be established even without analytic Most psychoneurotic patients, if encouraged by sympathetic listening, will themselves describe the travail* of the conscious sexual life. If it is not worry over masturbation, it is impotence, frigidity, imperfect orgasm, lack of confidence with the other sex, excessive shame, inability to find or woo a mate, or failure to satisfy both sensual and tender needs with the same permanent mate. One therapist who, after receiving psychoanalytic training, continued the treatment of a former patient was told: "I tried to tell you these things for two years, and you would not let me!" Psychoneurosis without conscious sexual problems ^ apparently does not exist. Occasionally a patient may at first minimize them, declaring "those are unimportant things," or difladently withhold communication of them for some weeks. Eventually their existence is always revealed to the technique.

therapist.

Freud's contributions to unconscious sexuality concern both adult and childhood phenomena. Before discussing the latter we shall mention four phenomena which are characteristic of unconscious sexuality at any life epoch, and for both normal and abnormal people: bisexuality, ambivalence, subhmation, and displacement. Bisexuality

Freud showed that the sexiial impulses of human beings are notably "bisexual." No man is devoid of some strong wishes of a feminine nature, and there is no woman who has not some masculine tendencies, some wishes to be a man, though such latent "homosexual" inclinations are very generally repudiated by consciousness. ""

Possibly "traumatic neurosis," such as some neuroses of combat soldiers, an exception; but some observations by psychiatrists during the ^^ar made

1 is

this

doubtful.

- Recent documents indicate that the existence of "bisexuality" was actually recognized by Wilhelra Fliess, who wrote Freud abou^ i^ and that Freud suffered an amnesia and forgot his indebtedness to this- source. (Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, Vol. I., p. 314 ff.)

140

Ives

Hendrick

Thus Freud,

as so frequently in his work, demonstrated

that psychologic forces are reflections of basic elements

For students of the development of the human body have long had knowledge that in the early life of an embryo anatomical progenitors of both male and female reproductive organs are present. As bodily characteristics which distinguish the sex eventually appear, the potential organs of the other sex regress instead of growing; but they do not disappear completely. The mature male still possesses a vestigial remnant of the uterus ("uterus masculinus"), though so far as is known it is functionless, just as his body retains vestiges of the gills of the fish he resembled at one stage of embryonic life. And in the human female, anatomical bisexuality is still more obvious. The woman not only possesses a vagina and a uterus, the primary organs of her biological role in reproduction, but also a clitoris, an organ which is literally a little penis, made of the same tissues, provided with the same sensory nerves, and identical in its erectile characteristics with the male's genital. But the clitoris, in contrast to the vestigial uterus of the male, is essential for the full development of female sexual excitement and psychological preparation for the completion of the. mating act! Furthermore, modern biochemistry has demonstrated that the production of female hormones is an essential function of the healthy male, and male hormones are indispensable to normal menstruation and other physiological functions of the woman. Thus Freud's discovery of the importance of the psychological manifestations of bisexuality in both man and woman illustrates again the fundamental identity of the psychological, anatomic, and physiologic manifestations of the determinants of human life. little boy who has observed or learned about his mother's pregnancy will frequently play that he can make a baby too; and many of the most cherished traits of a satisfactory husband, his tenderness for wife and child, are expressions of such phantasies of motherhood. One of the most consistent features of a giri's development, her "tomboy" years preceding puberty, when she plays as if she were a boy and resents implications characteristic of the organic life of the species.

A

Psychosexuality

141

that she is feminine, show equally well the nonnalcy of male phantasies in a woman. Many creative artists are fully conscious of an intensely pleasurable phantasy of "giving in their hours of greatest producnot unlikely indeed that the intensity of the wish of certain men to reproduce is largely responsible for the historical fact that men have created more great works of

birth"

and "reproducing"

tivity. It is

and science than women. But students of conscious psychology alone could scarcely have appreciated the pervasive role of bisexuality in human experience, especially experience determined by the reactions of people to each other. Far more important art

than these conscious manifestations of bisexuality are the unconscious phantasies revealed during psychoanalysis. As happened so often in Freud's work, his demonstration of uninown or under-emphasized aspects of the normal life and development was a consequence of his deep investigation of neurotic problems. The wish, especially if repressed, to be both male and female, is one of the most important determinants of the conflict of opposed wishes which cannot be resolved without symptoms, maladjustment, and suffering. Unconscious bisexuality is often directly responsible for both symptomatic disturbances of the sexual act and of the love relations of a man and woman. Analyses of many women who have no orgasm show that this is the result of the unconscious thought: 'Though I love my husband, I hate him because he has an organ I do not possess." Some cases of impotence in men are cured when adequate conscious expression is given to the unconscious envy of the female function of maternity.

During the analysis of one man for obsessions, he mentioned that he had always been perplexed by two incidents which occurred at fifteen and seventeen years of age respectively. Both times he had suddenly thrown a woman down and examined her sexual organs, and he could not underit because the attacks had been unpremeditated and were not the sequel of intense sexual desire. Though superficially this appeared a manifestation of an abnormally urgent virility, analysis disclosed that the motive of these attacks was not a pathological failure to control erotic lust.

stand

142

Ives

Hendrick

but a reaction to his inability to endure consciousness of the thought: "This woman has no penis." When, under certain circumstances, such as seeing nude paintings during a European tour, this idea could scarcely be excluded from his conscious thoughts, he had been uncontrollably driven by the phantasy of disproving it by examining some woman's organs. This motive was revealed by analysis of dreams in which he saw naked women with penises. Though at three and six he had played with little girls and observed the reality of anatomical differences, he truly believed women had a penis until his tenth year; and even in his twentieth year he still insisted "cock" was the word of schoolboys for the female genitalia. Months after these unconscious phantasies had been disclosed during an analytic hour, it was learned that this irrational anxiety was the result of an unconscious wish to be a woman; for if he consciously thought of himself as the woman he wished to be, he must think of himself as without that organ which he naturally prized as a source of sensory pleasure. For some time he had adopted a ritual during masturbation, wrapping towels aboiit his chest and buttocks. Eventually he recalled during analysis that he had originally done this in imitation of the shawl of a movie actress, whose exposed breasts he had wished were his own. Later he reported a phantasy of himself and the analyst disciplining the elevator boy, and then said: "It was as though I were your secretary, or, better still, your wife." His assaults were, therefore, attempts to disprove the biologic fact he had observed in early childhood, that women have no penis; and the fear of being like them was due to the strong unconscious urge to be a woman himself. Similar unconscious wishes of this man to be a woman were revealed in numerous other ways and shown to be fundamental in behavior which, without analysis of the unconscious phantasies, could only be rationally ascribed to an abnormally excessive heterosexual urge. Its special significance was due to the fact that the phantasies derived from this wish, as well as the early experience which had made it strong, had been entirely unconscious. Even in cases where "bisexuality" is not the decisive problem, its presence in the

143

Psychosexuality

unconscious is always revealed in analysis, and plays an important role in the life of the individual.

Ambivalence contribution of Freud to sexuality is the discovery that impulses of love and hate for the same person often coexist in the unconscious, even when one or the other is consciously denied. For this (as well as bisexuality and some other types of psychological "bipolarity") Freud used the term "ambivalence," as suggested by the Swiss psy-

The second

chiatrist

Eugen

Bleuler.

An

example of ambivalence

is

that

conscious affections for her own sex had seemed greater than normal. During analysis it was disclosed that repeatedly in early childhood, adolescence, and adult life she had for brief periods experienced intense hatred of women; this had always been repressed and consequently forgotten until recovered in. analysis. Her consciously excessive affection for women was due to her natural love of them plus the need of proving she did not also of a

woman whose

hate them.

women

by the inability to fulthey have a pair of lovers, and this is often shown to be an adaptation to an otherwise insoluble ambivalence of feelings for men who are emotionally important. Such a woman is always threatened by the return of this unhappy conflict of love and hate, except when the hatred can be directed at one of the pair while the other is then freely loved. If then the hated one is rejected or retires, the former situation of both loving and hating one man recurs, with a repetition of the former events. Freud pointed out how frequently such fundamental ambivalence explains the lives of women who cannot endure life with the first husband, but, after quarreling constantly with him and procuring a divorce, become contented wives without excessive hatred in their second marriages. Some other immature women who quarrel excessively with a child, in spite of ample conscious evidence of a happy family situation, owe their difficulties to an unconscious desire to be as helpless as the babe, with a resulting unconOther

fill

are deeply troubled

their sexuality except

when

144

Ives

Hendrick

and hatred and reactions to the which seem incomprehensible. Miscarriages, and probably even sterility, are sometimes physiologic consescious ambivalence of love

child

quences of a similar problem. Among men ambivalence is equally decisive. Often an adolescent youth must express this repressed desire to hurt a father, or another older man whom he consciously loves and strives to please, by rebelHous behavior beyond his conscious control; he may express it by smoking forbidden cigarettes, by failure in his work, by delinquency and crime, and yet be quite unconscious of why he needs to cause such trouble.

One young man, twenty-two years of age, with the symptom of dangerously severe and painful rectal bleeding, was especially difficult to analyze at first. His consciously imperturbable and placid character was maintained by an excessive need for logical reasonableness because all strong feelings were so repressed that he could not know he was aggressive. Eventually, to his great surprise, he discovered charged phantasies that he could be Uke an older brother, who had become, in the patient's eyes, a "hero" in the Navy, sailed the seven seas, and most important won high rating as a radio technician. The patient himself, in spite of his disease, had been doing highly competent work as an electrician in the Navy Yard; he had been conscious of feeling admiration for his brother, but had not been con-

—

—

The

patient's symptom, howimmediate cause became conscious through analysis of a dream; he then learned that the pain and bleeding had begun when he had repressed

scious of envy for his career. ever,

was not

relieved until

its

strong fear that a fellow worker, whose skill did not in fact exceed his own, would be made a foreman. In the dream the feared co-worker wore a uniform like the one his brother wore, and later analytic work showed how this unconscious ambivalence for his brother, and men who reminded him of his brother, had been the chief determinant of the patient's life, dating from the age of five when his parents had kept his brother with them at home while sending him for an otherwise happy summer with his uncle in the country.

Psychosexuality

145

Freud regarded the ambivalence of love and hate as deeply rooted in the human constitution, and showed that the development of means to resolve such inevitable conflicts happily is one of the fundamental problems of aU hu-

man lives. Sublimation

A

third important contribution is Freud's exposition of the unconscious relationship of obviously sexual needs to many other activities of life. Repeatedly he observed how drives to accomplish, to create, and to enjoy experiences of an artistic, playful, or useful sort were transformations of erotic impulses. The same unconscious phantasies would be associated with both a love relationship and an artistic or intellectual activity. For example, analysis of the domestic

of a man whose hobby was devising electrical apparatus disclosed the unconscious wish to have his genital regarded by his wife as admiringly as his exhibitionistic urination had been by certain other women and girls in his childhood, and the repression of the pain felt because she did not gratify this vanity. During a period when this was the outstanding emotional feature of his life, there was a marked increment in his interest in the productive elaboration and invention of an ingenious and valuable scientific apparatus. In the analysis of dreams in which this apparatus appeared, the associations showed that it not only had a real rational value in his work, but was also unconsciously associated with tubes which spouted, symbolizing his penis. He often had thought that with his inventions he would "win glory," and the world would be made to acclaim his work. After the disclosure of many hitherto unconscious phantasies of this kind, the intensity of his work became less without diminished productivity, and his domestic irritabilirritability

ity

was markedly attenuated. Another man whose unconhad retained the desire to repeat similar experiences

scious

of exhibiting the act of urination to little girls in early childhood earned his living by extolling the high pressure of the fire-extinguishers which he sold. The relationship of many such activities to erotic emo-

146

Ives

Hendrick

often apparent without analysis of the unconscious Thus it is with the pleasure in social dancing, the rejected lover who writes poetry, the words which vividly describe a great deal of music—passionate, tender, tion

is

phantasies.

climactic, etc.

At other

times, especially

when

the "virtue"

of an activity is very much stressed, the relationship is not apparent except when it is psychoanalyzed. For example, a woman dreamed she was undressing herself before many

and the analyst asked if she would like to be seen unclothed by anyone while awake. For weeks she upbraided the therapist for his "filthy mind," protested the entire absence of any sexual wishes in her own nature, and sermonized about the purity of her own pleasure in "nature." One day she reported her wonderful ecstasy while on a walk. She had experienced such intense happiness in nature that she wanted to run and leap, and she had snatched at an apple on a branch. Then in great confusion she said her pleasure had been inexplicable, it had been something driving her on, until, reaching for the apple, she had very suddenly known that it was to be like Eve and experience the carnal pleasures of Eden that she had craved. Subsequently she told the analyst that prior to her dream ofundressing, she had been much troubled by the obsessive thought that it would be fun to observe a man's reaction if she adjusted her skirts less modestly than was her custom. She had experienced without conscious sexual thoughts her feeling of joy in nature and with no knowledge of their sexuality until analysis revealed her repressed phantasies. Another woman, rejected by a lover, developed strong impulses for aesthetic dancing and, while enthusiastically reporting her pleasure, had the unexpected associations: "It is constantly to have the male organ; I feel like its strength and power and joy when I dance!" Such "coincidences" are so abundant in analysis as to preclude, except by the most arbitrary pedantry, the supposition that making love and doing other pleasant things are unrelated cubicles of human activity. The other alternative is the hypothesis that a certain amount of sexual energy which originally gives rise to the phantasy of a love relationship may be directed into abstract activities from which spectators,

Psychosexuality either

an

147

"aesthetic" or a 'Hiseful" but definite pleasure

derived. This gratification

by

activities

which

is

yield pleasure,

but do not require another human being (in fact or conscious phantasy) has been called sublimation.^ The actual psychological mechanisms by which an unconscious wish which originally requires an erotic act for its gratification becomes one in which "beauty" or "usefulness" are satisfying in themselves are as unknown as those which produce "conversion" of a mental wish to a physical hysterical symptom. There is not even a satisfactory theory to explain the phenomenon. Nor, for that matter, is there a good hypothesis to explain why the pleasure of two individuals with very similar associated phantasies may be the same, and yet one finds it in chopping firewood and the other in creating a beautiful cabinet.* It is somewhat clearer, but inwhat way the unconscious phantasy of

sufficiently so, in

is productive of pleasure, and that of a third leads to a neurotic symptom and suffering. Sublimation, whether as an individual avocation or an artistic act enjoyed by other people, not only yields pleasure, but pleasure which is a consequence of success in resolving a conflict, whereas a neurotic solution is only at best a compromise involving pain. And psychoanalysis leaves' no doubt that all art is an expression of unconscious phantasies which the artist and other human beings have in common. But as yet it has found no clue to the difference between those conscious representations of these common impulses which have emotional significance only to the individual who is activated to create, and those of genius which satisfy the

both these individuals

aesthetic cravings of all

mankind.

8 The layman often misuses "sublimation" to refer not only to these phenomena, but also to love between human beings from which the sensual element is excluded.. Freud called the latter "aim-inhibited love." * Some years after this was wTitten, this author proposed the hypothesis of the work principle, that there is a pleasure-yield in the use of organized mental and physical skills in addition to the pleasure from either direct or sublimated gratification of a wish (Psychoanalytic Quarterly, Vol. XII, pp. 311-29, 1943). According to this hypothesis, the pleasure of either the woodchopper or the cabinet-maker would partly depend on the successful use of a skill he had developed.

Displacement Displacement is the representation in consciousness of a part or whole of the original unconscious phantasy by some associated substitute. It is, therefore, one of the main mechanisms by which an unconscious wish attains representation in consciousness, while the integrity of the unconscious, the preservation of the repression of the original is maintained. When displacement has occurred, we consciously "wish" for something in phantasy, but may not be aware of what was the original nature of the wish. Displacement was first discovered in the investigation of manifest dreams, in whose development from the recollected "latent content" of the sleeping dreamer it plays an outstanding part. For example, in the dreams of Negro boys wrestling, the unconscious phantasy of coitus was "displaced" by the game of wrestling. In the illustrations above of sublimation, the penis was "displaced" in the man's con-

idea,

may

sciousness by scientific apparatus, and the woman's repressed phantasy of a penis by the movement of the dance.

Very soon Freud discovered in regard to the portion of the

ure

is

that displacement also occurs

body where

a potential pleas-

originally desired. In the analysis of a case of hysteria

he found that the origin of a woman's vomiting had been pleasant genital sensations produced by an embrace; this scene had been immediately repressed and replaced in consciousness by unpleasant sensations in the mouth. This phe-

nomenon monplace

of unpleasant oral reactions to sexuality is a comin moral "disgust," even in normal, modest people

who

refer to some reactions to genital stimulation as "leaving a bad taste in the mouth." The source of their sensations has been displaced from the genital to an organ not

sexually taboo. Conversely, some cases of genital frigidity are produced by the repression of the consciously distaste-

phantasy of taking the penis in the mouth. Another type of displacement of very great significance

ful

displacement of object. This occurs when the partial or complete love or hatred for a certain individual is denied by consciousness, and though the source of the feeling remains

is

Psychosexuality

149

unconscious, the emotions are felt and referred to another 'person as stimulus "by proxy." In the quoted dream of Negro boys wrestling, white girls were displaced in consciousness by Negro boys. In [a] man who could not pass his brother's door, the brother was replaced by his door, which then became the "displaced object" of his irrational avoidance. The most complete demonstration of object-displacement is Freud's study of a five-year-old boy who suffered acute terror whenever he encountered a horse. Freud showed that originally the child had feared his father (though without common-sense occasion) but this had become unconscious, and the emotion had been consciously experienced instead for horses, and only for horses. In other words, one may seem to love or hate a person, an animal, or a thing not only for what he or it is, but also because he or it is a "surrogate" for another whom he unconsciously represents. Object displacement may be partial or complete; or it may be divided among several; one person becoming the object of sensual love, another of tenderness, another the ideal, and still another the object of displaced hatred. Such cases illustrate the importance of the mechanism of displacement in solving the problems of ambivalence. Analysis wiU also often disclose that an inexplicable conscious love is due to the fact that the beloved unconsciously represents another because of some consciously insignificant association, such as the possession of a common physical feature or name or mannerism. This is often to be observed in such phenomena as "spite marriages," where a rejected suitor very quickly loves another, and in "infatuations" where there appears to be no adequate reason for the irresistible emotional bond. Displacement is also to be seen in the frequency of very tender feelings of patients for their physician. Analysis discloses this very real affection is not always due to the "nobility" of the doctor or his profession, in whatever degree the individual may or may not realistically justify devotion, but to the peculiar predilections of people to find in physicians, priests, employers, and school-teachers unconscious "surrogates" for those who had given affection, often years before, in childhood. Object displacement in a patient by a ,

150

Sigmund Freud

is called transference, and is one of the most conspicuous and constant observations of psycho-

psychotherapist

if a patient continues to recount his intimate wishes and feelings, he develops an emotional reaction to the physician (or anyone else), regardless of how

analysis. Inevitably,

impersonal and detached the latter's attitude may be. Thus, by the psychoanalytic study of the unconscious correlates of conscious thoughts, erotic and non-erotic, Freud proved the fundamental role of bisexuality, ambivalence, displacement, and sublimation. These are basic attributes of psychosexuality, determining the love relationships of individuals, the pattern of their social lives and pleasure goals. Clear recognition and formulation of their attributes has become indispensable to the understanding of normal

personality development and of emotional conflicts which cannot be resolved by conscious decisions and impel the de-

velopment of neurotic symptoms.

10. The

Most Prevalent Form

of Degradation in Erotic Life

Sigmund Freud

During the period 1910-1918, Freud published three papers which he gave the general title "Contributions to the Psychology of Love." The first, dated 1910, on "A Special Type of Choice of Object Made by Men," was followed in 1912 by the paper reprinted here, and, in 1918 by the third one "The Taboo of Virginity." In The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, Ernest Jones says that Freud had announced his intention of writing an essay or book on the "Love life of man" as early as 1906 and probably then had a more extensive work in mind. Freud felt, Jones tells us, that this "was a field hitherto reserved for creative writers, but they have to mould the knowledge gained from intuito

— Degradation in Erotic Life

151

and experience into a form in accordance with their artistic needs, whereas the ruder hands of science are allowed no such poetic license." These three essays, then, represent Freud's most extention

sive consideration of the subject. For, although there are in

Freud's works innumerable excursions on many aspects of love and his libido theory culminating in the grand polarity of Eros and Thanatos is in itself a theory of love classical psychoanalysis dealt more with vicissitudes of instinct discharge in "aim inhibited sexuality," more with

—

than affection. While there have been extensions in

affect

several directions of the Freudian perspective

on love

—

as

ensuing chapters by Reik, Suttie, Horney and Fromm Freud's clinical expositions of specific neurotic disorders remain masterpieces of insight and revelation. The present paper deals with male impotence traced to the difficulty of fusing sensual urges with those tender feelings which originate in love for the mother. The conclud-

can be seen

—

in

ing section foreshadows a major theme of Civilization and Discontents by opening up the relationship between re-

Its

nunciation of pleasure and the achievements of civilization. It is interesting to note that Jones refers to this paper as "On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love," a title of much broader implication than that given to it by Joan Riviere. From Collected Papers, Volume IV, by Sigmund Freud. Published by The Hogarth Press and The Institute of Psycho-Analysis. By permission of Chatto and Windus Ltd.

The Most Prevalent Form of

Degradation

Chapter If a practising

in Erotic Life''

1

psycho-analyst asks himself what disorder he to remedy, he is obliged to reply

most often called upon

is

1

First

published in Jahrbuch, Bd. IV., 1912; reprinted in Sammlung,

Vierte Folge. [Translated by Joan Riviere.]

152

—

Sigmund Freud

—

from anxiety in all its many forms psychical impotence. This strange disorder affects men of a strongly libidinous nature, and is manifested by a refusal on the part of the sexual organs to execute the sexual act, although both before and after the attempt they can show themselves intact and competent to do so, and although a strong menapart

tal inclination to

carry out the act

is

present.

The man

gets

his first inkling in the direction of understanding his condi-

by discovering that he fails in this way only with cerwomen, whereas it never happens with others. He knows then that the inhibition of his masculine potency is due to some quality in the sexual object, and sometimes he describes having had a sensation of holding back, of having perceived some check within him which interfered successtion

tain

fully with his conscious intention.

What

this inner opposi-

however, he cannot guess, or what quality in the sexual object makes it active. If the failure has been repeated several times he probably concludes, by the familiar erroneous Hne of argument, that a recollection of the first occasion acted as a disturbance by causing anxiety and brought about the subsequent failures; the first occasion itself he refers to some "accidental" occurrence. Psycho-analytic studies of psychical impotence have already been carried out and published by various writers." Every analyst can, from his own experience, confirm the explanations adduced in them. The disorder is in fact due to the inhibiting influence of certain complexes in the mind that are withdrawn from the knowledge of the person in question. As the most universal feature of this pathogenic material an incestuous fixation on mother and sister which has not been surmounted stands out. In addition to this, the influence of accidental impressions of a painful kind contion

is,

nected with infantile sexuality comes into consideration, together with those factors which in general reduce the amount of libido available for the female sexual object.^ When cases of severe psychical impotence are subjected - M. Steiner, Die funktionelle Impotenz des Marines und ihre Behandlung; Stekcl, in Nerx
W.

8

W.

Stekel. loc. cit. p. 191 et seq.

— Degradation in Erotic Life

153

by means of psycho-analysis, the following psycho-sexual processes are found to be operative. Here again as very probably in all neurotic disorders the root of the trouble lies in an arrest occurring during the course of development of the libido to that ultimate form which may be called normal. To ensure a fully normal attitude in love, two currents of feeling have to unite we may describe them as the tender, affectionate feelings and the sensual feelings and this confluence of the two currents has in these cases not been achieved. Of these two currents affection is the older. It springs from the very earliest years of childhood, and was formed on the foundation provided by the interests of the self -preto exhaustive study

—

—

—

servative instinct; it is directed towards the members of the family and those who have care of the child. From the very beginning elements from the sexual instincts are taken up into it component-parts of the erotic interest ^which are more or less clearly visible in childhood and are invariably discovered in the neurotic by psycho-analysis in later years. This tender feeling represents the earliest childish choice of

—

—

first

From this we see that the sexual instincts find their objects along the path laid down by the ego-instincts

and

in

object.

accordance with the value

same way

set

by the

latter

on

their

sexual satisfactions are experienced, i.e. in connection with the bodily functions necessary for self-preservation. The "affection" objects, in just the

that the

first

by its parents and attendants which selbetray its erotic character ("a child is an erotic plaything") does a great deal to increase the erotic contributions to the cathexes that are put forth by the ego-instincts in the child, and to raise them to a level which is bound to leave its mark on future development, especially when certain other circumstances leading to the same result

shown

dom

to the child

fails to

are present.

These

fixations of the child's feelings of affection are

maintained through childhood, continually absorbing erotic elements, v/hich are thus deflected from their sexual aims. Then, when the age of puberty is reached, there supervenes upon this state of things a powerful current of "sensual"

154

Sigmund Freud

feeling the aims of

which can no longer be disguised.

It

apparently, to pursue the earlier paths and to invest the objects of the primary infantile choice with currents of libido that are now far stronger. But in relation to these objects it is confronted by the obstacle of the incest-

never

fails,

barrier that has in the

meanwhile been erected; conse-

seeks as soon as possible to pass on from these objects unsuited for real satisfaction to others in the world outside, with whom a real sexual life may be carried on.

quently

it

These new objects are

still

chosen after the pattern (imago)

of the infantile ones; in time, however, they attract to themselves the tender feeling that had been anchored to those man shall leave father and mother according to others. and cleave to his wife; then are tenthe Biblical precept derness and sensuality united. The greatest intensity of

A

—

—

sensual passion will bring with

it

the highest mental estima-

normal overestimation of the sexual object characteristic of men). Two factors will determine whether this advance in the development of the libido is accomplished successfully or

tion of the object (the

otherwise. First, there

is

the degree of frustration in reality

opposed to the new object-choice and reduces its value for the person concerned. For there is no sense in entering upon a choice of object if one is not to be allowed to choose at all or has no prospect of being able to choose one fit for the part. The second factor is the degree of attraction that may be exercised by the infantile objects which should be relinquished, and this is proportionate to the

which

is

them in childhood. If two factors are sufficiently powerful, the general mechanism leading to the formation of neurosis will come into operation. The libido turns away from reality, and is

erotic cathexis already attaching to

these

absorbed into the creation of phantasy (introversion), strengthens the images of the first sexual objects, and becomes fixated to them. The incest-barrier, however, necessarily has the effect that the libido attaching to these objects should remain in the unconscious. The sensual current of feeling is now attached to unconscious ideas of objects, and discharge of it in onanistic acts contributes to a strengthen-

Degradation in Erotic Life

155

ing of this fixation. It constitutes no change in this state of affairs if the step forward to extraneous objects which miscarried in reahty is now made in phantasy, if in the phantasied situations leading up to onanistic gratification the extraneous objects are but replacements of the original ones. The phantasies become capable of entering consciousness by this replacement, but in the direction of applying the libido externally in the real world no advance has been

made. In this way it may happen that the whole current of sensual feeling in a young man may remain attached in the unconscious to incestuous objects, or, to put it in another

may

be fixated to incestuous phantasies. The result of then total impotence, which is perhaps even reinforced by an actual weakening, developing concurrently, of the organs destined to execute the sexual act. Less severe conditions will suffice to bring about what is usually called psychical impotence. It is not necessary that the whole amount of sensual feeling should be fated to conceal itself behind the tender feelings; it may remain suffi-

way,

this is

ciently strong

and unchecked to secure some

outlet for itself sexual activity of such people shows unmistakable signs, however, that it has not behind it the whole in reality.

The

mental energy belonging to the

instinct.

easily upset, often clumsily carried out,

Above

however,

It

is

capricious,

and not very

pleas-

avoids all association with feelings of tenderness. restriction has thus been laid upon the object-choice. The sensual feeling that has remained active seeks only objects evoking no reminder of the incestuous persons forbidden to it; the impression made by someone who seems deserving of high estimation leads, not to a sensual excitation, but to feelings of tenderness which remain erotically ineffectual. The erotic life of such people remains dissociated, divided between two channels, the same two that are personified in art as heavenly and earthly (or animal) love. Where such men love they have no desire and where they desire they cannot love. In order to keep their sensuality out of contact with the objects they love, they seek out objects whom they need not love; and, in urable.

all,

A

it

Sigmimd Freud

156

accordance with the laws of the "sensitivity of complexes"

and the "return of the repressed," the strange refusal imis made whenever the objects

plied in psychical impotence

selected in order to avoid incest possess

some

trait,

quite inconspicuous, reminiscent of the objects that

often

must be

avoided. principal means of protection used by men against complaint consists in lowering the sexual object in their own estimation, while reserving for the incestuous ob-

The

this

ject

and for those who represent

mally

felt

for the sexual object.

it

the overestimation noras the sexual object

As soon

the condition of being degraded, sensual feeling can have free play, considerable sexual capacity and a high degree of pleasure can be developed. Another factor also contributes to this result. There is usually little refinement in the ways of obtaining erotic pleasure habitual to people in whom the tender and the sensual currents of feeling are not properly merged; they have remained addicted to perverse sexual aims which they feel it a considerable deprivation not to gratify, yet to such men this seems possible only with a sexual object who in their estimate is degraded and worth fulfils

little.

The motives behind

the phantasies mentioned in the pre-

ceding paper,* by which boys degrade the mother to the level of a prostitute, now become intelligible. They represent efforts to bridge the gulf between the two currents of erotic feeling, at least in phantasy: by degrading her, to win the mother as an object for sensual desires.

Chapter 2

So

far

we have pursued our

inquiry into psychical impo-

tence from a medico-psychological angle which is not justified by the title of this paper. It will prove, however, that this introduction was necessary in order to provide an ap

proach to our actual theme. *

C£. p.

199.

[The

reference

psychology of love, "A Special IV of Collected Papers. A. K.]

is

three papers on the of Object Choice," printed in Vol.

to the first of the

Type

Degradation in Erotic Life

157

We

have reduced psychical impotence to a disunion between the tender and sensual currents of erotic feeling, and have explained this inhibition in development itself as an effect of strong fixations in childhood and of frustration in reality later, after the incest-barrier has intervened. There is one principal objection to raise against this doctrine: it does too much, it explains why certain persons suffer from psychical impotence, but it makes it seem puzzling that others can escape the affliction. Since all the factors that appear to be involved, the strong fixation in childhood, the incest-barrier, and the frustration in the years of development after puberty, are demonstrably present in practically all civilized persons, one would be justified in expecting that psychical impotence was universally prevalent in civilized countries and not a disease of particular individuals. It would not be difficult to escape from this conclusion by pointing to the quantitative element in the causation of disease, that greater or lesser amount of each single factor which determines whether or not recognizable disease results. But although this argument is in my opinion sound,

do not myself intend to employ it in refuting the objecadvanced above. I shall, on the contrary, put forward the proposition that psychical impotence is far more widespread than is generally supposed, and that some degree of I

tion

this condition

does in fact characterize the erotic

life

of

civilized peoples. If one enlarges the meaning of the term psychical impotence, and ceases to limit it to failure to perform the act of coitus, although an intention to derive pleasure from it is present and the genital apparatus is intact, it would comprise, to begin with, all those men who are described as psycho-anaesthetic, i.e. who never fail in the act but who perform it without special pleasure a state of things which is commoner than one might think. Psycho-analytic study

—

of such cases has discovered the same aetiological factors in them as those found in psychical impotence, when employed in the narrower sense, without at first discovering

any explanation of the symptomatic difference between the two. By an analogy which is easy to justify, one is led

on from

these anaesthetic

men

to consider the

enormous

Sigmund Freud

158

frigid women, whose attitude to love can in fact not be described or understood better than by equating it with psychical impotence in men, although the latter is more conspicuous.^ If, however, instead of attributing a wide significance to the term psychical impotence, we look about for instances of its peculiar symptomatology in less marked forms, we shall not be able to deny that the behaviour in love of the men of present-day civilization bears in general the character of the psychically impotent type. In only very few people of culture are the two strains of tenderness and sensuality duly fused into one; the man almost always feels

number of

his respect for the woman sexual potency when he finds himself in the presence of a lower type of sexual object; and this again is partly conditioned by the circumstance that his sexual aims include those of perverse sexual components,

his sexual activity

hampered by

and only develops

full

like to gratify with a woman he respects. Full sexual satisfaction only comes when he can give him-

which he does not

up wholeheartedly to enjoyment, which with his wellbrought-up wife, for instance, he does not venture to do. Hence comes his need for a less exalted sexual object, a woman ethically inferior, to whom he need ascribe no aesthetic misgivings, and who does not know the rest of his life and cannot criticize him. It is to such a woman that he prefers to devote his sexual potency, even when

self

all

the tenderness in

It is

him belongs

to

one of

a higher type.

possible, too, that the tendency so often observed in

of the highest rank in society to take a woman of a permanent mistress, or even as a wife, is nothing but a consequence of the need for a lower type of sexual object on which, psychologically, the possibility of

men low

class as a

complete gratification depends. I do not hesitate to lay the responsibility also for this very common condition in the erotic life of civilized men on the two factors operative in absolute psychical impotence, namely, the very strong incestuous fixation of childhood and the frustration by reality suffered during adoles5 At the same time I willingly admit that the frigidity of women is a complicated subject which can also be approached from another angle.

Degradation in Erotic Life

159

has an ugly sound and a paradoxical as well, but nevertheless it must be said that whoever is to be really free and happy in love must have overcome his deference for women and come to terms with the idea of incest with cence.

It

sister. Anyone who in the face of this test subhimself to serious self-examination will indubitably find that at the bottom of his heart he too regards the sexual act as something degrading, which soils and contaminates not only the body. And he will only be able to look for the origin of this attitude, which he will certainly not willingly acknowledge, in that period of his youth in which his sexual passions were already strongly developed but in which gratification of them with an object outside the family was almost as completely prohibited as with an incestuous one.

mother or

jects

The women of our civilized world are similarly affected by their up-bringing and further, too, by the reaction upon them of this attitude in men. Naturally the effect upon a woman is just as unfavourable if the man comes to her without

his^ full

potency as

if,

after overestimating her in

the early stages of falling in love, he then, having successfully possessed himself of her, sets her at naught. Women

show

little need to degrade the sexual object; no doubt has some connection with the circumstance that as a rule they develop little of the sexual overestimation natural to men. The long abstinence from sexuality to which they are forced and the lingering of their sensuality in phantasy have in them, however, another important consequence. It is often not possible for them later on to undo the connection thus formed in their minds between sensual activities and something forbidden, and they turn out to be psychically impotent, i.e. frigid, when at last such activities do become permissible. This is the source of the desire in so many women to keep even legitimate relations secret for a time; and of the appearance of the capacity for normal sensation in others as soon as the condition of prohibition untrue to the husband, they is restored by a secret intrigue can keep a second order of faith with the lover. In my opinion the necessary condition of forbiddenness in the erotic life of women holds the same place as the

this

—

160

Sigmund Freud

man's need to lower his sexual object. Both are the consequence of the long period of delay between sexual maturity and sexual activity which is demanded by education for social reasons. The aim of both is to overcome the psychical impotence resulting from the lack of union between tenderness and sensuality. That the effect of the same causes differs so greatly in men and in women is perhaps due to another difference in the behaviour of the two sexes. Women belonging to the higher levels of civilization do not usually transgress the prohibition against sexual activities during the period of waiting, and thus they acquire this close association between the forbidden and the sexual. Men usually overstep the prohibition under the condition of lowering the standard of object they require, and so carry this condition on into their subsequent erotic life.

In view of the strenuous efforts being made in the civiworld at the present day to reform sexual life, it is not superfluous to remind the reader that psycho-analytic investigations have no more bias in any direction than has any other scientific research. In tracing back to its concealed sources what is manifest, psycho-analysis has no aim but that of disclosing connections. It can but be satisfied if what it has brought to light is of use in effecting reforms by substituting more advantageous for injurious conlized

ditions. It cannot,

even greater,

however, predict whether other, perhaps may not result from other institu-

sacrifices

tions.

Chapter 3

The fact that the restrictions imposed by cultural education upon erotic life involve a general lowering of the sexual

may prompt

us to turn our eyes from the object to The injurious results of the deprivation of sexual enjoyment at the beginning manifest themselves in lack of full satisfaction when sexual desire is later given free rein in marriage. But, on the other hand, unrestrained sexual liberty from the beginning leads- to no better result. It is easy to show that the value the mind sets object

the instincts themselves.

Degradation in Erotic Life

on erotic needs instantly sinks as soon as comes readily obtainable. Some obstacle

161

satisfaction be-

necessary to periods of history,, wherever natural barriers in the way of satisfaction have not sufficed, mankind has erected conventional ones in order to be able to enjoy love. This is true both of individuals and of nations. In times during which no obstacles to sexual satisfaction existed, such as, may be, during the decline of the civilizations of antiquity, love became worthless, life became empty, and strong reaction-formations were necessary before the indispensable emotional value of love could be recovered. In this context it may be stated that the ascetic tendency of Christianity had the effect of raising the psychical value of love in a way that heathen antiquity could never achieve; it developed greatest significance in the lives of the ascetic monks, which were almost entirely occupied with struggles against libidinous temptaswell the tide of the libido to

its

is

height; and at

all

tion.

One's

first

inclination undoubtedly

is

to see in this

diffi-

culty a universal characteristic of our organic instincts. It

way that the importance of an mentally increased by frustration of it. Suppose one made the experiment of exposing a number of utterly different human beings to hunger under the same conditions. As the imperative need for food rose in them all their individual differences would be effaced, and instead the uniform manifestations of one unsatisfied instinct is

certainly true in a general

instinctual desire

is

would appear. But

is it also true, conversely, that the menvalue of an instinct invariably sinks with gratification of it? One thinks, for instance, of the relation of the winedrinker to wine. Is it not a fact that wine always affords the drinker the same toxic satisfaction one that in poetry has so often been likened to the erotic and that science as well may regard as comparable? Has one ever heard of a drinker being forced constantly to change his wine because he soon gets tired of always drinking the same? On the contrary, habit binds a man more and more to the particular kind of wine he drinks. Do we ever find a drinker impelled to go to another country where the wine is dearer or where alcohol is prohibited, in order to stimulate his dwindling

tal

—

Sigmund Freud

162

pleasure in

we

listen to

it by these obstacles? Nothing of the sort. If what our great lovers of alcohol say about their

attitude to wine, for instance, B. Bocklin,^

the most perfect

Why

is

it

sounds

like

harmony, a model of a happy marriage.

the relation of the lover to his sexual object so very

different?

However

strange

it

may

sound,

must be considered that something

I

think the possibility in the nature of the

itself is unfavourable to the achievement of absolute gratification. When we think of the long and difficult evolution the instinct goes through, two factors to which this difficulty might be ascribed at once emerge. First,

sexual instinct

consequence of the two "thrusts" of sexual development impelling towards choice of an object, together with the intervention of the incest-barrier between the two, the ultiin

is never the original one but only a surrogate for it. Psycho-analysis has shown us, however, that when the original object of an instinctual desire becomes lost in consequence of repression, it is often replaced by an endless series of substitute-objects, none of which ever give full satisfaction. This may explain the lack of stability in object-choice, the "craving for stimulus,"

mate object selected

which

is so often a feature of the love of adults. Secondly, we know that at its beginning the sexual inor, stinct is divided into a large number of components not all of which can be rather, it develops from them carried on into its final form; some have to be suppressed

—

—

or turned to other uses before the final form results. Above all, the coprophilic elements in the instinct have proved incompatible with our aesthetic ideas, probably since the time when man developed an upright posture and so removed his organ of smell from the ground; further, a considerable proportion of the sadistic elements belonging to the erotic instinct have to be abandoned. All such develop-

mental processes, however, relate only to the upper layers of the complicated structure. The fundamental processes which promote erotic excitation remain always the same. Excremental things are all too intimately and inseparably

bound up with sexual «

things; the position of the genital

G. Floerke, Zehn Jahre mit Bocklin, 2 Aufl., 1902, p. 16.

—

— Degradation in Erotic Life

163

—

remains the decisive and inter urinas et faeces organs unchangeable factor. One might say, modifying a wellknown saying of the great Napoleon's, "Anatomy is destiny." The genitals themselves have not undergone the de-

velopment of the rest of the human form in the direction of beauty; they have retained their animal cast; and so even to-day love, too, is in essence as animal as it ever was. The erotic instincts are hard to mould; training of them achieves too much, now too httle. What culture tries to make out of them seems attainable only at the cost of a sensible loss of pleasure; the persistence of the impulses that are not enrolled in adult sexual activity makes itself felt in an

now

absence of satisfaction. So perhaps we must make up our minds to the idea that altogether it is not possible for the claims of the sexual instinct to be reconciled with the demands of culture, that in consequence of his cultural development renunciation and suffering, as well as the danger of his extinction at some far future time, are not to be eluded by the race of man. This gloomy prognosis rests, it is true, on the single conjecture that the lack of satisfaction accompanying culture is the necessary consequence of certain pecuharities developed by the sexual instinct under the pressure of culture. This very incapacity in the sexual instinct to yield full satisfaction as soon as it submits to the first demands of culture becomes the source, however, of the grandest cultural achievements, which are brought to birth by ever greater sublimation of the components of the sexual instinct. For what motive would induce man to put his sex.ual energy to other uses if by any disposal of it he could obtain fully satisfying pleasure? He would never let go of this pleasure and would make no further progress. It seems, therefore, that the irreconcilable antagonism between the

demands of have made

the

two

man

instincts

—

the sexual

and the

egoistic

achievements, though, it is true, under the continual menace of danger, such as that of the neuroses to which at the present time the capable

of ever

greater

weaker are succumbing. The purpose of science is neither to alarm nor to reassure. But I myself freely admit that such far-reaching con-

164

Theodor Reik

as those drawn here should be built up on a broader foundation, and that perhaps developments in other directions will enable mankind to remedy the effects of these, which we have here been considering in isolation.

elusions

11.

Love and Sex Are Different

Theodor Reik

In 1944, Theodor Reik, trained by and closely associated with Freud for thirty years, published a provocative book called A Psychologist Looks at Love based on the startling premise that in the libido theory the founder of psychoanalysis had made "a magnificent mistake." While the interpersonal school of psychiatry led by Harry Stack Sullivan had already abandoned libido theory in favor of a set of biologically based dynamisms operating on the self-concept of the individual, Reik's conclusion that love is much more than sex turned away from its original aim was a courageous break with orthodoxy. That the failure to give a distinct identity to the various ego satisfactions found in love leads to an impoverishment of psychological insight has been recognized by an increasingly large group of psychoanalysts. For Dr. Reik the key to the differentiation between love and sex is found in the fact that the sex urge is originally objectless, while love is very definitely an

Me

"emotional relationship between a and a You." It is in the diversities of the mutual discovery and exchange of the lovers'

ego ideals that Reik looks for the answers to the

riddle of love.

Called by Professor psychoanalysis today," of numerous works on He is President of the for Psychoanalysis.

John Dollard "the best writer on Theodor Reik, Ph.D., is the author clinical and applied psychoanalysis. National Psychological Association

Love and Sex Are Different

165

From Of Love and

Lust by Theodor Reik, copyright 1941, 1944, and 1957 by Theodor Reik, copyright 1949 by Farrar, Straus and Company. By permission of the publisher, Farrar,

Straus and Cudahy, Inc.

Love and Sex Are Different Chapter

Love ulary.

1

one of the most overworked words in our vocabThere is hardly a field of human activity in which

is

the word is not worked to death. It is not restricted to expressing an emotion between the sexes, but also expresses

the emotion between

members

of a family.

It signifies

the

your friend, and even for your foe, for the whole of mankind, for the home, social or racial group, nation, for all that is beautiful and good, and for God Himself. It is almost incredible that it can be equal to its many tasks. "L'amour" in French comedies is obviously not the same as "love" in the Holy Scripture. Its diversity of meaning, its adaptability and its capability of quick change are astonishing. It is used to describe the infatuation of a boy and girl, and at the same time the noblest and most spiritualized aims of men. The word is used in psychology and philosophy, in religion, ethics, and education, in social fields of aU kinds. It is indispensable wherever men live together. But time teUs on it and it shows all the signs of the wear and tear to which it has been subjected. The subject which is most talked and written about remains a mystery. It is experienced every hour everywhere on this globe and it is stiU unknown. That everybody has feeling for your neighbor, for

experienced

it

does not

make

its

understanding easier.

What

happens every day often stays unknown, while rare events' and extraordinary experiences disclose their nature more quickly. My contention at the outset of this book, is that love is an unknown psychical power, its origin not yet discovered, and its character not yet understood. If it is true that science is the topography of ignorance, as Oliver Wen-

166 dell

Theodor Reik

Holmes once

said,

then the region of love

is

a vast

white spot on the map.

There

is

no doubt

as to

which science

is

qualified to give

us the desired information and insight, but psychology seems to be extremely reticent on the subject. Why is that? Are the psychologists unwilling or unable to give the necessary knowledge? Can psychologists not tell us of what kind this emotion is, what is its nature, and what determines its power? Is the subject too vague, too elusive and beyond the reach of description? Love is perhaps intangible, but the incessant search and research of intangibles is one of the essential tasks of the new psychology. Where facts and figures are not available there lie the most important problems which psychology has to face. Has psychology to quit the field and hand it back to philosophers and poets and prophets, to Christ and St. Paul, to Plato and Schopenhauer, to Shakespeare and Goethe? Or do psychologists think that the subject is not worthy of their attention? That is impossible. We certainly know that we cannot understand the hidden impulses of human existence until we have solved this problem. Even if we consider is it not our task to examine illusions, what they are and what are their origins and dynamics? Psychologists discuss sex very fully nowa-

love as an illusion, to find out their

is a conspiracy of silence about love. They avoid the subject, they seem to be embarrassed whenever it is mentioned. Nevertheless I do not believe that there is a taboo on this particular theme among psychologists. If they keep us in the dark about the genesis and character of love it must be because they are in the dark themselves. What is this thing called love? Bizet's Carmen declares that it's "a gypsy's child." "L'amour est I'enfant de Boheme, il n'a jamais connu de loi." If there were no rhyme nor reason in love it could not be the object of scientific research. But is it so? There must be a method even in this madness. Love can as little escape the laws of psychology as a table can break away from the law of gravitation and float up to the ceiling. Many phenomena of a seemingly mysterious nature have become understandable when once their concealed laws have been discovered. We have come

days, but there

Love and Sex Are Different

167

to understand the character of the strangest ideas of the insane, the secrets of hysterical and obsessional thoughts and actions, the mysteries of religions long dead, the habits and customs of primitive Australian tribes. And yet psychology is unable to discover the origin and nature of an experience which you and I and all men know. Must love remain a problem child of science and a stranger within

the gates of psychology?

the last serious book which penetrated this domain was De Vamour by Stendhal. It was writ^which is a long ten one hundred and thirty-one years ago time when you consider the psychological import of the I assert that

secret

subject.

—

Since then nothing of real value, revealing the

and nature of love, has been brought home from the numerous voyages of discovery undertaken. But Freud? Did not psychoanalysis deal fully and peneorigin

tratingly with love? It did not. It dealt with sex, but that

something quite different. Freud's great contribution to our knowledge is the discovery of the laws determining psychical processes, the dynamics of unconscious thoughts and impulses, and the psychological method which enables us to discover what happens in the depth of the human mind. Freud's libido theory is a magnificent mistake. There are many such fruitful and productive mistakes in science and life, as there is an abundance of sterile truths. Columbus was mistaken in thinking he had discovered a new route to the Indies and he found America. He believed until his death that the former was the deed for which posterity would be grateful to him. Later research leads to a revaluation and rebuilding of most theoretical and practical parts of the analytical doctrine. This new development differs from psychoanalysis as a colony differs from its mother-country, as Australia from England for instance. It is not psychoanalysis with a difference, but a different kind of psychoanalysis. An essay now is

in preparation will indicate the nature of this

new

scien-

development in order to differentiate and separate this newly created form from the old, as well as from other

tific

schools of thought. I call

it

Neo-Psychoanalysis.

My

last

two or three books mark the transition from the old shape

168

TheodorReik

new

one. This

book

the first not accidental that it attempts to deal with the problem of love and to furnish a new concept of it.

of depth-psychology to the that

shows Neo-Psychoanalysis

in the

making.

is

It is

Chapter 2 Before discussing Freud's view about love I must correct a mistake that is quite common in analytical circles. It should be remembered that his opinion about the subject did not remain the same during forty years of psychoanalysis. There was a remarkable change in his view. At the beginning it was simple and consistent. At that time it was presupposed, although never explicitly formulated, that love was identical with sex. Freud then spoke of the love object when he meant sexual object, and of love choice when he

meant choice of the sexual partner. He came from the study of medicine and he used the expression libido in the original sense of the energy of the sex urge. He assumed, so to speak, that this urge includes affection as well as attracI cannot state when and under what influences he passed on to an intentional enlargement of these two terms. Later on he explained and defended his new use of the

tion.

words frequently; most clearly in his Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. He states there that libido is the quantitative expression for the energy of

all

those tend-

which we sum up as love. Thus the pith of what is called love, is love between the sexes. Freud does not distinguish between this love and that of parents and children, encies

of friends, or of charity.

The

justification for this

is

that

all

of these tendencies

same instincts whose aim is sexual sexes. They have merely been diverted

are the expression of the

union between the

from their sexual goal, or inhibited in reaching it, but have kept enough of their original substance to make their identity easily recognizable. Psychoanalysis aroused a storm of indignation by its enlarged concept of love, although it did not create anything new thereby. The Eros of Plato is exactly the same as the libido, says Freud, and so is the power

Love and Sex Are Different

169

of love which Paul the Apostle praised in his famous epistle to the Corinthians. These love tendencies are in psychoanalysis called sexual instincts, "a potiori and on account of their origin." Freud then adds pointedly: ^ "The majority of cultured people felt this terminology an insult and

found revenge by hurling the epithet of 'pansexualism' at, and blaming it on, psychoanalysis. The person who considers sex to be a shameful and humiliating aspect of hu-

man nature is always free to make use of the more distinguished expressions of eros or erotics. I could have done so myself from the start and spared myself much opposition. But I don't like to make concessions which seem to me to show a lack of courage. You don't know where such a road may lead. At first it is only in words, but in the end you have made concessions in the subject matter itself." In another passage of the same work Freud repeats that the tender feelings which we call love are turned aside from their original sexual aims but keep some of them even then. Even the person who is affectionate, the friend, the admirer, wants the physical nearness and sight of the object loved, only in the sense in which Paul the Apostle uses the term. What we generally call love is a synthesis of those aim-inhibited tendencies and the sexual ones, a coexistence of direct and indirect sexual tendencies. Aim-inhibited love, Freud never tires of emphasizing, was originally utterly sensual love and is the same still in the unconscious life of men." Even when those love tendencies are in contrast to the purely sexual ones, it remains clear that their descent can be traced back to sex. Later on Freud built the great hypothesis of Eros which really has the same meaning as Plato's idea, but is expressed in biological terms: Eros is the great power that creates life, keeps united that which is separated, and secures its renewal against the powers of destruction. At about the same time that Freud developed this concept he wrote in answer to a French magazine asking for his view on love 1 -

Civilization and Compare many

Its Discontents. passages in Introductory

Three Contributions

to the

Lectures on Psychoanalysis; Psychology of Love and so on.

170

Theodor Reik

beyond the realm of sex the following: ^ "Up to the present I have not found the courage to make any broad statements on the essence of love and I think that our knowledge is not sufficient to do so." He never found the courage, and at the end of his life confessed, "We really know very

little

about

love.'*

My

this view, and I grew out of it. critiFreud's opinion is expressed in his own words, which I have just quoted, "At first it is only in words, but in the end you have to make concessions in the subject matter itself." Freud did not deny, indeed he emphasized, the fact that he extended the meaning of the word sex. He considered this the first great step in the foundation of his theory of instincts. In a paper on Wild Psychoanalysis Freud reproaches a physician who, in treating a neurotic widow recommended a lover to her as a cure. This colleague was especially criticized by Freud for misunderstanding the teachings of psychoanalysis and for thinking that sex meant merely sex in the usual sense. "The idea of sex," says Freud in this connection,* "contains in psychoanalysis much more. It surpasses the current meaning on both sides. This extension is justified genetically. We include in 'sex life' all activities and tender feelings which originated in the primitive sexual drives, also those impulses when they are subjected to an inhibition from their origind sexual aim, or when they have exchanged this aim for another one, no longer sexual. Thus we prefer to speak of psychosexuality, emphasizing the fact that the psychical factor of sex life should not be neglected nor misunderstood. We use the word in the same extended sense as the German language I

grew up with

cal estimate of

word 'lieben' (love)." The physician stands corrected and

uses the

justifiably so, but

i"

Freud innocent? Is not he too responsible for the mistake or misjudgment? The young physician was wrong, but only because the word sex means one thing to Freud and some-

man in the street or to the average physician in his consulting room. It is my conviction, although thing else to the

' *

Published in ray book From Thirty Years With Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle.

1940.

Love and Sex Are Different

171

cannot prove it, that at first Freud used the word sex unpretentiously and without premeditation. There was of course the idea that a primitive, sexual urge is the origin of love, but this was a biological prejudice rather than a I

psychological insight.

Then he met the moralistic resistance of his opponents and the pretensions of those who did not want to acknowledge the fact that sex is important. But another fact appeared to him very clearly, one much more serious, and gained by psychological insight and experience. There is at not only sex. There is also love, which is as important least in human relationship. Now he had to prove to himself and to the world that love is only sex turned away from the original sexual aim, an appendage of sex. From that time on, every critic appeared to him a moral hypocrite. Every honest and serious judgment was considered a "resistance." What had been taken for granted before, now had to be argued about. What had appeared obvious to him, now had to be very carefully made clear.

—

The essence of

love was of course sex.

of both seemed to be a fact.

manufactured. Yet in

Now

At

first

the identity

that identity

spite of all assurances there

had to be remained

two really belonged towent deep down, leading at last the concept of Eros on the one side and on the other to

the uncertainty as to whether these gether, an uncertainty that to his

admission,

which came

"We

really

know very

little

about love,"

late in his life.

is the name for the idea approMore deeply seen, the question is whether the idea which this name has been chosen to express, is cor-

Superficially regarded:

priate? itself,

Freud repeatedly stresses the fact that he extends the meaning of the word sex to include affection, friendship, love. Is he justified in using the word this way? I think this use of the word is neither just nor justifiable. The word sex has always meant the urges and activities that spring from the biological need to release a particular tension in the organism, an instinct common to men and beasts. The word libido was applied long before Freud, but only to express the energy of this instinctual need. Freud stretched rect.

Theodor Reik

172

the significance of both

words so that they are overex-

tended. Is

due to a general hypocrisy that people reject its meaning of friendship, love, affection, that they sense the fact that sex and love are dif-

really

it

the term sex in

or is it ferent? Is it really only prudishness that leads them to reject the theory of the identity of these two needs? Or is it not rather the vague but profound feeling that the assumpis wrong? I surmise that they feel somewhere that the thought is not conformable to the facts. I do not shrink from calling a spade a spade, but I am reluctant to call a rake a spade, even if they stand. side by side in the same barn. Freud does just that. It sounds like one of those eccentrics whom Alice encounters on the other side of the looking glass. "When I use a word," says Humpty Dumpty, in rather a scornful tone, "it means

tion of such an essential identity

mean, neither more nor less." But She replies, "The question is, whether you can make words mean so many different things." Exactly! That is the question here. Freud has said that he uses the word sex with the same meaning that Plato used the word Eros. It can be proved that this is not so, and even if it were it would be wrong. If sex were used in this sense it would not have been necessary to conceive the idea of Eros as Freud did later on, and to differentiate it from sex. In a paper written about a year before his death (the summer of 1938) Freud said: * "The best we know about Eros, thus also about its component the libido, is obtained by the study of the sex function which coincides in the current conception, although

just

what

Alice

is

I

choose

somewhat

it

to

skeptical.

not in our theory, with the Eros." Thus Eros is not identical with sex, even in Freud's later view. It dawned upon him late in his life, although he never recognized and clearly acknowledged it, that love is a psychical power in its

own

right.

if Freud had used the word sex with the same meaning as Plato, would it therefore be more justifiable? Plato was a philosopher. Freud was a scientist. We make

But even

s

"Abriss der Psychoanalyse"

1941.

in Schriften aus

dem

Nachlass, London,

— Love and Sex Are Different

173

allowances for Plato who lived twenty-three hundred years ago which we are not willing to make for a psychologist of our own day. The one wanted to solve the riddles of the universe in a broad, metaphysical speculation, while the other wanted to solve very definite, psychological problems in a scientific manner. When an ancient Greek philosopher speculates about the nature of a substance, it is very different from the inquiry made by a modern chemist about the same substance. In Plato's grandiose and beautiful speculations, Eros is in its place; but it cannot have the same place when identified with the sex urge in modem analysis of psychical processes endeavoring to give a scientific picture of what goes on in the deepest region of the human mind. What Plato thought and said is different in its meaning from that which a modern psychologist thinks and says. The one sees in visions and describes images. The other sees analytically and in detail, and describes psychical facts. To sum up: the theory of Freud that sex and love are of the same substance is not only founded on a preconceived idea; it is as fanciful as any poetical concept of love, but more fanciful and less poetic. Simply calling love aim-inhibited sex does not make it sex. I believe that sex and love are different in origin and nature and I shall endeavor to prove it in this book as far as psychological statements of this kind can be proved which is very far. What Freud called sex in the enlarged sense is an alloy of metals of very differing natures and values. Let me here make the provisional statement that it is a mixture of the biological sexual need, of certain ego-drives, and of the yet unknown substance, love. In another book which I am preparing, I shall try to demonstrate the nature of the crude sex drive and how love entered its realm; and which psychological and social conditions have to be fulfilled, in order that sex, the ego-drives and the youngest need, of loving, can meet and melt. I shall restrict myself here to one region, but first the lines of demarcation must be

drawn. Freud's concept of love as sex which has been arresfed or diverted from its aim, but which is essentially the same

— Theodor Reik

174

as the crude sexual desire, gives us the impression that here

and sex are of the amounts to a decisive retrogression when compared with Stendhal's, which already distinguishes various kinds of love between the sexes. These is

a

same

homogeneous

material, that love

kind. Freud's theory here

he called passion, sympathy-love, sensual-love, vanity-love. This part of Freud's theory constitutes one of the few occasions on which he is neither original nor imaginative. The identity of love and sex had already been stated, from Plato to Schopenhauer, from the ancient philosophers to the psychologists of our own day. This identification has been especially stressed in our own time not merely under the influence of Freud and psychoanalysis, but because of an increasing reluctance, I suppose, to admit that no one knows what else love can be than sex. If no one can prove its

and nature, you must consider love an unknown element, an X. But is not the view of both ancient and modem psychologists that love is somehow a changed form of sex sex in disguise, say justified? Does not every passion of a young couple, every infatuation, bear witness to the fact? No. The most convincing cases only prove that sex and origin

—

love are frequently united and directed to the are accustomed to associate love and

We

same sex

object. in

our

thoughts, but that does not demonstrate their identity. It proves only that they are often found together, that they exist together, that they often coincide; but coincidence

is

not evidence of identity. Two emotions can be co-mingled so intimately that they are felt as one, but that does not make them one nor does it bring about the disappearance of their specific qualities. Whisky is usually taken with soda, but the mixture of the two does not change whisky into soda nor soda into whisky. Some people are incapable of imagining soda without whisky, but even they will not deny that both substances have an independent existence, different characters and tastes. Whisky can be enjoyed without soda and soda can be poured into quite a number of different liquids. All kinds of mixtures of both are possible. It is the same with love and sex. There exist different kinds of proportions of both

Love and Sex Are Different in their fusion. (It

when.")

is

a pity that

we

175

are never asked to "say

A

confusion between whisky and soda is unlikely, except of course when you have already had too much of them. Likewise it is possible to confuse love and sex in a state

What astonishes me is that possible in the sober spirit of scientific re-

of intense infatuation.

such a mistake

is

search.

seems that there is no doubt amongst psychoanalysts is sex without love, sex "straight." What they vehemently deny is that there can be love without sex. Their view has never been disproved. It is the same as assuming that a delinquent is guilty until he is proved innocent. No doubt there is a communication between love and sex, a connecting link, as everyday experience shows. The gulf between them is spanned by an arch or bridge, but I believe that there are two separate domains, which must be distinguished. It

that there

Chapter 3

We

return to Freud's assumption that sex includes love, tenderness, charity, and sympathy. This assumption takes in a lot of territory in the psychoanalytical view.

To

say

sweeping statement; indeed it sweeps the truth away. What superficially appears to be of the same kind shows profound differences upon finer analysis. The situation can be compared with that of chemists who for a long time thought a certain substance to be homogeneous, until a new examination showed this not to be so. The substance turned out to be a mixture of two different substances, a fusion of very dissimilar compothat love

is

aim-inhibited sex

is

a

nents.

choose a very simple instance: our common table salt. is not at all inappropriate. Was not salt considered a precious and sacred substance through the ages? It was the symbol of friendship, loyalty and affection. The Arabs say, "There is salt between us," when they mean an affectionate and loyal friendship. The "covenant of salt" which you find in the Bible was recognized as full of sacredness and deep meaning. For almost I

The example

176

Theodor Reik

two thousand years salt was considered a coherent and homogeneous substance. We know now that it is chemically a mixture of sodium and chloride. Any high-school pupil today knows that these two compounds are different, and he would be able to demonstrate to you that salt is a fusion of both. He also knows that these two substances can be isolated and can be used for various purposes separately. What are the facts? We first want to get hold of them. We can put them together later on. We want to discriminate between sex and love as the chemist would isolate the sodium element from chloride in the combination, salt. To make the differences clear and clean-cut it is best to contrast love and sex in their extreme manifestations, where they do not yet appear fused. It is necessary to make this contrast between love and sex because, in Freud's description, sex lacks all the characteristics of love.

Sex is an instinct, a biological need, originating in the organism, bound to the body. It is one of the great drives, like hunger and thirst, conditioned by chemical changes within the organism. The time is not far distant when we shall think of libido in chemical terms, and in chemical terms only. The sex urge is dependent on inner secretions. It can be localized in the genitals and in other erogenic zones. Its aim is the disappearance of a physical tension. It is originally objectless. Later on the sexual object is simply the means by which the tension is eased. None of these characteristics can be found in love. If we do not accept the opinion of the ordinary man and woman that love lives in the heart, we are unable to place it. It certainly is not a biological need, because there are millions of people who do not feel it and many centuries and cultural patterns in which it is unknown. We cannot name any inner secretions or specific glands which are responsible for it. Sex is originally objectless. Love certainly is not. It is a very definite, emotional relationship between a Me and a You. What is the aim of sex? We have already stated it: the disappearance of a physical tension, a discharge, and a release. What is the aim of the desire we call love? Disappearance of a psychical tension, relief. In this contrast be-

Love and Sex Are

Different

177

tween release and relief lies one of the most decisive diJ0[erences. Sex wants satisfaction; love wants happiness. Sex appears as a phenomenon of nature, common to men and beasts. Love is the result of a cultural development and is not even found among all men. We know that the sex urge

is

subject to periodic fluctuations of increase

and decrease. This

is

of course quite obvious

beasts, but survivals of

its

among

the

original nature are easily recog-

nized in men. Nothing of this kind is known about love. Sex can be casual about its object. Love cannot. Love is always a personal relationship. This is not necessarily so with sex.

The object of sex may become of no account, boring, or even hateful immediately after satisfaction is reached and the tension reduced. Not so the love object. Referring to the extreme and crudest cases, the sexual partner can appear as a kind of appendage to the other's sexual parts, as a sexual object only. The object of love is always seen as a person and a personality. The sexual object has to have certain physical qualities which excite or arouse one. If they are lacking, one remains indijfferent. Not so the love object. It has to have certain psychical qualities which are highly valued, the existence of which is not demanded from a mere sexual object. Even when your object is both loved and sexually desired, you can often discriminate between the sex appeal and the appeal of personality, and you know that they are different things. The sex urge hunts for lustful pleasure; love is in search of joy and happiness. Again considering only extreme types, sex is utterly selfish, using the object only in order to get satisfaction. Love is not unselfish, but it is very difficult to name its selfish aims, other than that of being happy in the happiness of the beloved person. In no case can love be only selfish, or as selfish as sex. Then it would not be love. It is always concerned with the welfare or happiness of the other person, regrets the other's absence, wants to be together with the object, feels lonely without it, fears calamity or danger for it. There is nothing of this kind in crude sex. If the individual is not aroused by sexual wishes, the presence of the sex object is not desired and its absence not regretted.

178

Theodor Reik

The same

true after sexual satisfaction is reached. I have say that the only wish they felt after a satisfacalone meaning that tory intercourse was to be left alone the sexual object should leave them. One man said, "Women should be like stars rise late in the evening and

heard

is

men

—

—

disappear early in the morning." No such wish is imaginable toward a loved object. Sex (always considering the crudest types) is undiscriminating. It wants "a woman.'* It is modest in its demands. But love always makes a choice. It is highly discriminating. It insists on "this woman" and no other. There is no such thing as an impersonal love. The sensually desired person and the adored one, the sex object and the love object, can be two different persons. The sex object can become the center ©f all one's wishes under the pressure of sexual needs. It can, for moments, be idolized. It cannot be idealized. Only love can work that. The other day an American girl, disgusted with the rumor that Australian girls exercised a strong fascination upon the American soldiers stationed overseas, wrote to her boy friend, "What have they got that we haven't?" He answered, "Nothing, except one thing. They are here." This answer you certainly would not expect from love, but you would very readily expect it from sex. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. There in normal cases, at least no similar effect of absence is on the sexual partner. Sex gives satisfaction. Love gives comfort. The sex aim is not identical with the love aim. Recently a patient said of her partner, "He is not the person I love, but the person who gives me sexual gratification." Sex is a passionate interest in another body; love a passionate interest in another personality, or in his life. Sex does not feel pain if its object is injured, nor joy when it is happy. It is possible to possess another person in sex, but not in love. In love you cannot possess another person, you can only belong to another person. You can force another person to sexual activity, but not to love. Could you speak of sex partners as "two hearts that beat as one"? Would you not rather be concerned with other parts of the body? Could you, without being ridicu-

—

—

Love and Sex Are

Different

179

say that aim-inhibited sex never ends? Could you swear eternal sex attraction? Jupiter laughs at the oaths of lovers, but at such sex-inspired oaths all gods and mortals would laugh. Would it not sound funny for the young Cherubino in Mozart's opera to ask us, "Say, is it sex now which in me burns?" You might think there would be certain signs that would help a young man to decide the question very easily so that there could be no doubt about it in his mind. The only doubt there could be^and which there is is whether it is merely sex desire that he feels or

lous,

—

love.

Sex is bound up with the time element, with the rh3^hm of the ebb and flow of the urge. After the orgasm, sexual desire sharply or slowly vanishes. There is nothing comparable to that in love. There is need of variety in sex, but not in love. The sex object can be easily replaced, but not the love object. There are many possible sexual objects, but only one who is loved. "The world is full of folks, it's true, but there was only one of you." Its relation to time reveals the nature of sex as a drive, because in it we realize the cyclical character of the tissue here see the results of needs as for hunger and thirst. the activity of internal stimuli which are activated by chemical changes within the body. Hunger is connected with

We

contraction of the muscles of the walls of the stomach. from the dryness of the mucous membrane of the mouth; sex from organic pressures. Where are the organic stimuli for love, where the needs within the organism, the physical tension that drives the organism to remove the painful and unpleasant stimuli? Where is the

Thirst springs

analogy with hunger? When you are hungry the sight and smell of food rouses strong desire. After satiation your appetite disappears for the time being. The sight and smell of the dish you enjoyed a few minutes ago now leaves you cold. In this respect sex

is

distinctly

The urge

comparable to hunger.

disappears after being satisfied. There is a tension, a spasm, a discharge, and an anticlimax, sharply defined in time. Time does not play the same role in love. Lovers become aware of it only in the hour of parting. "It is

the nightingale and not the lark."

180

Theodor Reik

Sex and love are so different that they belong to distinct realms of research fields; sex to the domain of biochemistry and physiology, love to the domain of the psychology of emotions. Sex is an urge, love is a desire. Yet Freud and his followers try to convince us that they are of the same stuff.

But is not love a passion? Yes, of course it is, but do passions originate only in sex? Are there not other passions in us mortals as ardent and powerful as the sex urge? Is it not possible that they can blend with the sexual desires? The fact that all philosophers from Plato to Schopenhauer, all psychologists from Spencer to Havelock Ellis and Freud, have asserted that love is sexual in its origin and nature does not make the statement true. All their views have to face a set of facts and undergo the test for truth or falsity. That love is aim-inhibited sex is more an escape from

than an insight into the problem. Love is not a blurred carbon of sex, unconsciously sexual in its essence, derived from the same organic drive. Love can exist before sexual desire is felt for a person. It can outwear and outlive sex. There are old couples in whom the sex desire has vanished and who still love each other dearly. There are other cases in which sexual satisfaction with a particular partner is no longer desired, but where love continues. There are instances in which the sexual desire remains very vivid, while love has long since died. If love were only aim-inhibited sex its existence would not be imaginable with men and women who have no such inhibitions, who gratify their sexual wishes to the point of orgies. Nor would it be possible if all sex urge had vanished. And why should there be an intense desire for love in addition to the desire for a full

and satisfactory sex life? If love is just a kind of arrested development of sex, how could the wish to love co-exist beside sexual exhaustion, or the fulfillment of every normal and perverted impulse? The peak of sex gratification is ecstasy; the peak of love is beatitude. Let us not be deceived by the logical fallacy that love and sex are so often united. Even where they overlap and are fused, even where sensual urge and tenderness melt into each other, a finer observation will recognize their quali-

Function and Expression of Love ties

as discernible

and

differentiable.

181

Are we not capable

of thinking of love without sex and of sex without love? Even if it were true that there is an element of sex in every affection, it might be so infinitesimal as to be of no importance.

There are basic differences between a person who is sexstarved and one who is love-starved. Love is not a washedout version of sex, not an anemic remnant, but something entirely different. Again and again psychoanalysis returns to the assertion that love is a by-product of sex, as if afraid that

it

might be something

know

else.

meant something other

to Freud than means to most of his students, to whom it signifies sex and nothing more; but the word has proved stronger than I

that sex

it

change its meaning. The result of the confusion has been disastrous. The theory that love is in its origin and nature sexual has no validity and has to be replaced by another concept which corresponds to the psychological facts. What is hidden behind the emotions of love is not the sublimated or arrested sexual drive. When the cat is out of the bag, it will be recognized as a different animal altogether. his will to

12. The Function

and Expression

of

Love

Ian D. Suttie

human development begins with fundamental "need for companionship" out of which a reciprocal maternal love relationship, protective as well as

Ian Suttie's conception of a

sensual, unfolds. This security-giving love relationship

the basis

upon which

—

—and

is

the mental developformed. Unlike the Freudian

social hfe

ment that accompanies it is schema which assigns autonomous instinctuaPforce to both love and aggression, Dr. Suttie regards love as the primal

182

Ian Suttie

factor.

Hate and aggressiveness become the

results of frus-

and ongoing love relationships that Dr. Suttie finds the origins of trated love. It

is

in the disturbances of the early

neuroses.

Working at London's famous Tavistock Clinic but somewhat independently from organized schools of psychotherapy, Dr. Suttie's ideas particularly on the active role of the mother were sharply at variance with the orthodox

—

—

point of view when first revealed in 1933; today they are key concepts in most advanced psychotherapeutic practice. In the following chapter Suttie considers bodily mechanisms involved in the expression of affection to other people. From The Origins of Love and Hate by Ian D. Suttie,

copyright 1952 by The Julian Press, Inc., Publishers. Reprinted by permission of The Julian Press, Inc.

The Function and Expression

of

Love

Besides our own anxiety and the egoism and materialism that develops out of it, there is another thing that hinders our perceiving the reality of love, namely, it appears to have no bodily organs or functions. This is however a misThe larynx is such an organ and, along with the take. complex mechanism of emotional expression and the nerve centres by which these are organized, must be regarded as the organic basis of love, though less definite and conspicuous in the anatomical sense than the reproductive system. The emotions borrow, as it were, the use of organs whose primary function concerns individual survival, and turn them temporarily to purposes that are definitely social, though sociability in turn has its own survival value. The expression of emotion in fact has little or no biological value except as a means of communication of keeping individuals of a group "en rapport" with each other. Even the expression of anger has the general tendency to obviate struggle rather than to aid in the destruction of an opponent. While such expressive mechanisms as phonation (voice) are of use in courtship, they are not necessary to this function. They are, however, of fundamental impor.

.

.

—

Function and Expression of Love

183

and playful associations, and so justify the view that the latter have motives and purposes genetically distinct from reproduction. Thus the tear glands which originally protected the eyes from dust come to be employed in "crying"; the respiratory apparatus in laughter. The facial muscles and those which control blood vessels and hairs are also brought into the service of expression, and none would deny that this is true of the larynx, though it is quite possible that originally this was a mechanism for coughing and, so for protecting the lungs. We must emphasize that expression is essentially a social process, and, though it may serve the interests of

tance in maintaining nurtural, social

the individual,

it

also establishes rapports that are intrinsi-

The baby undoubtedly gets pleasure from larynx and from purely expressive exchanges with its mother. Do we improve our understanding of this pleasure and of its biological origins and functions by saying that the pleasure consists of erotic sensations in eyes and ears (eye erotisms)? I think not, and presently I will argue meaningless in themthat all the elements of expression

cally pleasurable.

using

its

selves like single letters

—

—

are intuitively apprehended to-

gether as one meaningful word. That word is love, and it signifies to the mind, not the anticipation of organic pleasures to come, but a sense of security and companionship which is pleasant in itself, and which certainly plays a part in life from very early days, even if it is not truly instinctual. And it might very well be a true instinct, for the

maintenance of the child-mother rapport

is vital to all nurcould easily be dispensed with so far as the mating function is concerned, and in fact is often unused; but it is of vital importance for nurtural associations with which it is very generally associated. It is therefore not right to overlook the fact that there is an organic basis to non-sexual love, with satisfaction feelings (vague certainly) involving respiration, circulation and digestive functions and investing these with a secondary

turing species.

meaning and

The

larynx,

etc.,

utility. These naturally are most prominent such situations as being-in-love, etc., but are not wholly confined to this. There are bodily mechanisms concerned with feelings of anxiety and affection referring to other

in

184

Ian Suttie

people, and not to the satisfaction of the appetites we share with non-social animals. These feelings and the nervous mechanisms which produce them are located more in the chest than in the abdomen (vagus and sympathetic nerves)

and least of all in the sexual organs, though these also are readily affected in the expression of love. But this is no reason for supposing them to be the centre and origin of the love disposition as Freud implicitly does. Freud indeed deals with the state of being-in-love and with "the oceanic feeling," which, he admits, he himself is "unable to experience" (Civilization and its Discontents,

He feels he advances our knowledge of the former by describing it as a "libidinal cathexis" of the /'object" (i.e. mental image) at the expense of the "ego"! He admits that the lover, from over-valuing the sexual object (i.e. the loved person), goes so far as to lose any clear distinction in his own mind between himself and the beloved. Freud writes "Against all the evidence of his senses the man in love declares that he and his beloved are one" (Ibid., p. 11). A little further on he clearly sees that the "oceanic feeling," wherein the boundaries of the ego seem lost and the subject feels at one with the whole world, repp.

21).

state

resents at least a partial return to the primal state before

from mother. (Freud refers to "detachment of the ego.") The curious limitation of his thinking is however immediately betrayed, for, dealing with this state as a motive for religion, he finds it quite inadequate as a "source of energy" as it does not seem to him to be the "expression" of "a strong need" (p. 21). "The derivation of a need for religion from the child's feeling of helplessness and the longing it evokes for a father seems to me incontrovertible" (my italics). "I could not point to any need in childhood so strong as that for a father's protection. Thus the part played by the 'oceanic' feeling, which I suppose seeks to reinstate limitless narcissism, cannot possibly take the first place. The derivation of the religious attitude can be followed back in clear outline as far as the child's feeling of helplessness. There may be something else behind this, but for the present it is the discrimination of self

this as the

wrapped

in obscurity."

(My

italics.)

— Function and Expression of Love "behind

namely the

185

There is something need for the mother's love; and the "obscurity" to which Freud refers exists only in his own mind. Freud has, for one for reasons to be suggested later,^ two blind spots "the mother" and one for love; and he [was] compelled to admit the existence of the former scotoma. In his paper on "Female Sexuality," 1932, he has to acknowledge to the child-analysts that even for the httle girl "the father is nothing but a troublesome rival," which is a striking contradiction to the passages quoted in my preceding paragraph. The Freudian position at the moment is in a state of flux, full of contradictions and in active though covert retreat from the pan-sexual theory; so we need not hesitate to proceed with our own hypothesis, that in all his social activities man is seeking a resArt, Science and Religion included toration of or substitute for that love for mother which was lost in infancy. We will have the additional advantage, in pursuing this working hypothesis, that it offers us at the same time a prospect of solving the problem of hate which on the Freudian theory is made inexplicable and untreatelse

this,"

child's

—

—

able.

At the same time we wiU have to bring this conception of love into relation with sex, since we deny that the latter is its origin. It seems to me that the complete passion of love integrates genital appetite with that "love" or tenderness which is the descendant or derivative of infantile need. as it were, as a means of restoring the lost sense of union with the mother; for sexual intercourse and suckling are alike and unique in this respect, that in neither should there be any difference or conflict-of-interest between the partners. It is as absurd to consider who gives and

It utilizes it,

who

gets,

would be

or to

who gains and who loses, in the sex act as it propound these questions in regard to suckling.

The

act or rather its culmination, is totally reciprocal, otherwise it becomes associated with anxiety. It restores the free give-and-take of infancy where there is as yet no doubt of "welcome" or "acceptance." Hence its extreme value in allaying morbid anxiety (a value which helped

to mislead 1

Freud himself

Chapters XIII and

XIV

as to the relationship of sex

in Origins of Love and Hate.

and

186

Ian Suttie

anxiety); but hence also the ease with which anxiety in turn hinders its consummation. Here again we are able to explain an admitted Freudian error, namely, the mistaking

of anxiety (morbid) for unsatisfied libido.

It is

of course

unsatisfied love.* 1 cannot of course present here much evidence for this view; but I would call attention to a very significant reversal of our own sex-ethical sentiment which Professor Malinowski reports from the Trobriand Islands. Intercourse between young unmarried people there meets with no disapprobation, provided reasonable decorum and prudence is observed. But the forging of bonds of affection, e.g. by mutual services, conversation, caresses, or eating together, is felt to be justified only by formal marriage. I interpret that (with Professor Malinowski, I think) as showing how separable the sentiment of love is from the genital appetite, since our culture represses the latter while Trobriand culture censors the former in an equally selective manner. Of course "the taboo on tenderness" is not confined to the Trobriand Islanders. Indeed, it is the leading feature of our own culture and the main reason for the substitution of the power-technique for that of love. The substitution however is not complete; a need for love remains, even although many of its manifestations have now acquired an aggressive egoistic character which disguises their true

meaning. We must, in fact, for peace of mind, either feel ourselves loved or in a position to be loved; and we must ask ourselves "How is the comforting conviction of being loved arrived at?" Words will not produce it, though pitch and timbre of voice are important. Quickness of response, readiness of understanding, sympathetic emotional responses, even laughter (not of the malicious-pleasure sort), posture, the width and shape of the palpebral fissure (eye), di-

—

latation of pupil,

amount of

fluid in the eye as well as facial

2 It would be as absurd to regard the sex act as having a selfish "detensioning," evacuatory motive as to say that a woman desires maternity for the drainage of her mammary glands. To Roheim's surprised discovery that "the penis is not a weapon," I would add the observation that the child is not merely a "breast-reliever." It is a failure in the loveresponse-factor in coitus which produces anxiety, not a failure of sensual

satisfaction.

Function and Expression of Love colour and expression,

all

these and other signs

187

which

in-

dividually are meaningless, are intuitively apprehended as a harmonious whole, and so produce in us some reaction which is both pleasant and encouraging. (Notice how words meaning heart or stomach are used in all languages to denote love-feeling.) Not that this reaction must always take the form of reciprocal love; it may be merely an enhanced interest in things or a general feeling that Hfe is worth living.

A ways

deliberate attempt to reproduce the signs of love ineffective.

The

actor

by

"living his part"

is al-

produces

and any self-consciouswould be manifestly artificial.

the genuine article, love-feeling, ness or deliberate simulation

Equally a conscious attention to the individual signs of love or to verbal protestations "leaves us cold," with no conviction of the sincerity of the feeling. Only, as I have

by a subconscious and collective apprehension of the whole and by the automatic response this awakens in us (N.B. cordiality is another significant word as indicating some vagal-autonomic disturbance) do we ever reach that rapport we indicate by the words "I love." The whole mechanism of love-responsiveness is put out of action by attention or deliberation of any kind. This is a very important point of view for theory and for psychotherapy, for love is somewhat incongruous with the scientific interest and it is even incompatible with conscious attention. It cannot be introspected, while objectively it is vague, intangible, silent and with no obvious function as I have just shown. From our own practical point of view the necessarily subconscious and involuntary nature of love has this significance, that if we do not like a patient we are hopelessly handicapped in treating him. No amount of technical skill, theoretical knowledge or conscientiousness will atone for the absence of a sympathetic understanding and the capacity to "put oneself in the patient's place." Here is where the analysts both excel in practice and fall short in theory. By their severe training they remove many imnecessary intolerances and prejudices on their own part; but by their idealization of passive technique and disavowal of all resaid,

signs as a meaningful

—

188

Ian Suttie

sponsibility

—

still

more perhaps by

their pessimistic theory

which idealizes the freest practicable they represent as unhuexpression of sex-drive and hate man, impersonal and purely technical, their relations to

and philosophy of

life,

—

their patients, in striking contradiction to the saying attri-

buted to Ferenczi: "It is the physician's love that heals the One is tempted to ask "What kind of love is to be employed?" Before proceeding with the consideration of the craving for tender relationships and the inhibitions this arouses, a clinical note will illustrate more clearly the significance of tenderness or affection in everyday life or psychotherapeutic relationships and the importance of discovering whether this tenderness is a derivative of sex or not. About two years ago I took on a patient of nineteen years who

patient."

had had systematized delusions of persecution (involving her parents) since the age of seven (Paranoia). Under these circumstances she had formed neither friendships nor interests. There was nothing in her life of interest to her except "people" and of them she saw only the worst side. Her whole existence was an offensive-defensive struggle for power and revenge against everybody "to destroy the world." She loathed and despised "sentimentality"; any-

—

thing but ruthless egoism It

makes her

"sick"

is,

to her, hypocrisy or weakness.

and angry. But for fear (which

attribution to others of her

own

is

an

destructive rage), she

would have been a moral imbecile. When sufficient improvement had been obtained with this unpromising material to secure co-operation, she opened a counter-attack upon me which had some justification. That she had no love in herself, never could love and was (and sometimes with pride); but, she said, with truth, that I had not loved her "well enough to make her well." I had taken her on, she said, partly out of pity that a young girl should spend the rest of her life in a madhouse. (Fifty years she estimated; but she would have fought herself to death by exhaustion in five.) She said I had had a scientific interest in her which was equally useless as a means of satisfying her need of love (whose existence she entirely unlovable, she explicitly allowed

Function and Expression of Love

189

denied). I had, perhaps, done it as a "sporting effort" and kept her on because "I did not like to admit defeat"; I had done it out of "humanity" and a "sense of duty" which she disliked most of all. "I found her a great burden" and "wanted her to break away"; "I was afraid of her" etc. Every imaginable imperfect motive she explored (and most of the above had, as I had to admit, an element of truth in them) to explain my persistent effort to help her; but what she wanted, parental feeling, she could not or would not see in me.

Even when

I

came

to realize

what

life

had meant

to her,

admire the Luciferian struggle she had put up, my genuine sympathy and liking brought her no reassurance apparently, since she had no emotional response of her own. Now and then, with a flash of terrible insight, she realized that this was so, and that it utterly cut her off from people, comfort, security and interest. She would watch my face to catch expressions of love, hate, contempt or boredom; she would weigh my words. Naturally from this conscious, intellectual, scrutiny nothing emerged which satisfied

and

to

Whatever the "radiation" of love on my part, her own "detector" was hopelessly out of order, and, as I have said, conscious attention is unable to read the complex signs of emotions, of liking and interest. They have to "resonate"

her.

by organic sympathy in the subject in order to "get across" at all and her emotions were absolutely blocked by hate. As I have said above, unless a love-response is aroused in ourselves, the love of others cannot be felt. Only the objective fact of my being HI moved her at aU (whereupon she became definitely parental), and she was careful to explain that it was not that she cared in the slightest for me, but that my death would leave her absolutely without anyone to talk to. Nevertheless it became apparent that this unloving attitude was an artifact of her disease and that although her love was as "egoistic" as a baby's, the craving for love was there and in some way this "greed" still seemed to carry the beginnings of liking and consideration. Now and again the envelope of cynicism, contempt for love and for cultural interests, and the glorification of a predatory "Ish-

190

Ian Suttie

maelite" attitude to the world was broken through and revealed a horror of loneliness and a passionate desire to be like and loved by other people and belong to them. The whole paranoid mask in fact was a defence (only slightly, a compensation) against (a) an unloving world (as the child saw it) and (b) against the pain of isolation and against the longing for tenderness and security, and the dread of the rebuff to which "snivelling" or an equivalent

appeal would expose her. The kind of love she needed and her attitude to human relationships is well indicated by her appreciation of the character of Barrett of Wimpole Street. She sympathized with him "as one paranoiac to another"; and she liked his approved of them, in fact. To strength and possessiveness be loved like this, she felt, was to be secure not only from loneliness, but, through his strength and discipline, from her own dangerous impulses. Of course the "Girl's Oedipus Complex" played its part, but the filial attitude was predominantly of an infantile, pregenital character. It became clear to me at the same time that I myself had a positive intolerance to "mawkish" sentiment and "babyish" tenderness, and that in fact my correct, practical, "frozen" attitude had been maintaining her anxiety and paranoid rage. This intolerance of sentimentality (I use the derogatory term to indicate the bias which is embedded in our very language) was no revelation to me. It appeared

—

the most natural, rational and practical attitude possible. The world, our world, could not be carried on upon any

other footing than that of strength and independence. I surprised, however, that any plea for sympathy should occasion me embarrassment and impatience, whereas sexual and excretory interests in the patient leave me undisturbed. Why, if tender feeling is a sublimation of sexuality, should it evoke a more active repulsion than its supposed origin? It is not objectionable to the family or injurious to the group; tenderness could not evoke sex jealousy. The answer is clear: because it is childish and the adult has been compelled to "put away childish things." But surely if we are dealing with children (i.e. irrespective of their calendar age where psychopathy is concerned) we

was

— The Neurotic Need

for Affection

191

should have no intolerance of infantility? We must come to terms with the patient, if not on his own grounds, at least on ground that is attainable by him. I immediately began to study both the patient's and my own defences and came to the conclusion that there is a taboo on tenderness every bit as spontaneous and masterful as the taboo on sex itself. True, the repression of tender feeling and wishes from consciousness is more variable and less radical than the repression of sexuaUty (though Freudians exaggerate the completeness of the latter in normal people). But the insulation from disturbing stimuli which would evoke sympathetic tenderness, and the inhibition upon response to such as do get across, appeared to me extremely strong and significant.

13.

The Neurotic Need

Karen

for Affection

Homey

In a series of books of far-reaching influence The Neurotic Personality of Our Time, Neurosis and Human

—

Growth, Our Inner Conflicts and others Karen Homey has delineated the neurotic process as it shapes character structure. Defenses against self-doubt are seen as alienating the individual

from

his real self

and

setting

up

a false,

idealized self maintained only at great psychic cost as he

"moving toward," "moving "moving away from" people. Dr. Homey held that neuroses are given their particular form by the cultural stage upon which the individual life-drama takes place; and that under favorable conditions man's energies go toward self-realization. Here Dr. Homey considers the dilemma posed by the neurotic use of love as an assurance against anxiety when the very circumstances that create the compulsive need prestruggles against his anxiety in against," or

192

Karen

elude

its

Homey

gratification.

From The Neurotic Personality of Our Time by Karen Homey, copyright 1937 by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. By permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

The Neurotic Need There can be no doubt that

for Affection

in

our culture these four ways

of protecting one's self against anxiety may play a decisive part in the lives of many persons.^ There are those whose

foremost striving is to be loved or approved of, and who go to any length to have this wish gratified; those whose behavior is characterized by a tendency to comply, to give

and take no steps of self-assertion; those whose striving dominated by the wish for success or power or possession; and those whose tendency is to shut themselves off from people and to be independent of them. The question may be raised, however, whether I am right in declaring in

is

that

these strivings represent a protection against some Are they not an expression of drives within

basic anxiety.

human possibilities? The mistake arguing this way is in putting the question in the alternative form. In reality the two points of view are neither contradictory nor mutually exclusive. The wish for love, the tendency to comply, the striving for influence or success, and the tendency to withdraw are present in all of us in various combinations, without being in the least indicative of a neurosis. Moreover, one or another of these tendencies may be a

the normal range of given in

predominant attitude in certain cultures, a fact which would suggest again the possibility of their being normal potentialities in mankind. Attitudes of affection, of mothering care and compliance with the wishes of others are predominant in the Arapesh culture, as described by Margaret Mead; striving for prestige in a rather brutal form is a recognized pattern among the Kwakiutl, as Ruth Benedict 1

The

four

principal

power, withdrawal." Ed.

ways being

through

"afEection,

submissiveness,

The Neurotic Need

for Affection

193

has pointed out; the tendency to withdraw from the world is a dominant trend in the Buddhist religion. My concept is intended not to deny the normal character of these drives, but to maintain that all of them may be put to the service of affording reassurance against some anxiety, and furthermore, that by acquiring this protective function they change their qualities, becoming something entirely different. I can explain this difference best by an analogy. We may climb a tree because we wish to test our strength and skill and see the view from the top, or we may climb it because we are pursued by a wild animal. In both cases we climb the tree, but the motives for our climbing are different. In the first case we do it for the sake of pleasure, in the other case we are driven by fear and have to do it out of a need for safety. In the first case we are free to climb or not, in the other we are compelled to climb by a stringent necessity. In the first case we can look for the tree which is best suited for our purpose, in the other case we have no choice but must take the first tree within reach, and it need not necessarily be a tree; it may be a flag pole or a house

The

if

only

it

serve the purpose of protection.

difference in driving forces also results in a differ-

and behavior. If we are impelled by a diany kind our attitude will have a quality of spontaneity and discrimination. If we are driven by anxiety, however, our feeling and acting will be compulsory and indiscriminate. There are intermediate stages, to be sure. In instinctual drives, like hunger and sex, which are greatly determined by physiological tensions resulting from privation, the physical tension may be piled up to such an extent that satisfaction is sought with a degree of compulsion and indiscriminateness which is otherwise charactertstic of drives determined by anxiety.

ence

in feeling

rect wish for satisfaction of

Furthermore, there is a difference in the satisfaction atin general terms the difference between pleasure and reassurance.' The distinction, however, is less sharp

tained

—

H. S. Sullivan in "A Note on the Implications of Psychiatry, the Study Interpersonal Relations, for Investigation in the Social Sciences" in of Sociology, vol. 43 (1937) has pointed out that the strivings for satisfaction and security present a basic principle regulating 2

of

American Journal life.

194

Karen

Homey

than appears at first sight. The satisfaction of instinctual drives such as hunger or sex is pleasure, but if physical tension has been pent up the satisfaction attained is very similar to that attained in relief from anxiety. In both cases there is relief from an unbearable tension. As to intensity, pleasure and reassurance may be equally strong. A sexual satisfaction, though different in kind, may be equally as strong as the feelings of a person who is suddenly relieved from an intense anxiety; and, generally speaking, the strivings for reassurance not only may be as strong as instinctual drives, but may yield an equally strong satisfaction.

The strivings for reassurance contain also other secondary sources of satisfaction. For example, the feeling of being loved or appreciated, of having success or influence, may be highly satisfactory, quite apart from the gain in security. Furthermore, as we shall see presently, the various approaches to reassurance allow quite a discharge of pent-up hostility and thus afford another kind of .

.

.

from tension. have seen that anxiety can be the driving force behind certain drives, and have surveyed the most important relief

We

drives generated in this way.

I

shall

proceed

now

to a dis-

cussion in greater detail of [one ofl those two drives which factually play the greatest role in neuroses: the craving for affection

and the craving for power and control.

The craving

for affection is so frequent in neuroses, and so easily recognizable by the trained observer, that it may

be considered one of the surest indicators for an existing anxiety and its approximate intensity. In fact if one feels fundamentally helpless toward a world which is invariably menacing and hostile, then the search for affection would appear to be the most logical and direct way of reaching out for any kind of benevolence, help or appreciation. If the psychic conditions of the neurotic person were what they frequently appear to himself to be, it ought to be easy for him to gain affection. If I may verbalize what he often senses only dimly, his impressions are something like this: what he wants is so little, only that people should be kind to him, should give him advice, should appreciate

The Neurotic Need he

for Affection

195

a poor, harmless, lonely soul, anxious to please, anxious not to hurt anyone's feelings. That is all he sees or feels. He does not recognize how much his sensitivities, his latent hostilities, his exacting demands interfere with his own relationships; nor is he able to judge the impression he makes on others or their reaction to him. Consequently he is at a loss to understand why his friendships, marriages, love affairs, professional relations are so often dissatisfactory. He tends to conclude that the others are at fault, that they are inconsiderate, disloyal, abusive, or that for some unfathomable reason he lacks the gift of being popular. Thus he keeps chasing the phantom of love. If the reader [considers] how anxiety is generated by a repressed hostility and how it in turn again generates ho tility, in other words, how anxiety and hostility are inextricably interwoven, he will be able to recognize the self-deception in the neurotic's thinking and the reasons for his failures. Without knowing it the neurotic person is in the dilemma of being incapable of loving and yet being in great need of love from others. We stumble here over one of those questions that seem so simple and are nevertheless so difficult to answer: what is love, or what do we that

is

it in our culture? One may sometimes hear an offhand definition of love as the capacity to give and take

mean by

affection. Although this contains some truth, it is much too sweeping to be helpful in clarifying the difficulties with which we are concerned. Most of us can be affectionate at times, but it is a quality that may go with a thorough incapacity for love. The important consideration is the attitude

from which

is it an expression of a basic toward others, or is it, for example, born of a fear that one will lose the other, or of a wish to get the other person under one's thumb? In other words, we cannot take any manifest attitudes as criteria. Although it is very difficult to say what is love, we can say definitely what is not love, or what elements are alien to it. One may be thoroughly fond of a person, and yet at times be angry with him, deny him certain wishes or want to be left alone. But there is a difference between such circumscribed reactions of wrath or withdrawal and the atti-

affection radiates:

positive attitude

196

Karen

Homey who

tude of a neurotic, others, feels that

any

is

constantly on guard against

interest they take in third persons

is

a neglect of himself, and interprets any demand as an imposition or any criticism as a humiliation. This is not love. So, too, it is not incompatible with love to offer constructive criticism of certain qualities or attitudes, in order,

possible, to help correct them; but

it

is

if

not love to make,

as the neurotic often does, an intolerant demand for perdemand which implies a hostile "woe unto you

fection, a if

you are not perfect!"

We

also consider

it

incompatible with our idea of love

when we find a person using another only as a means for some purpose, that is, only or mainly because he fulfills certain needs. This is clearly the situation when the other person is wanted only for sexual gratification or, in marriage, only for prestige. But here too the issue is very easily blurred, especially if the needs concerned are of a psychic nature. A person may deceive himself into believing that he loves another even if, for example, the other is needed only for the blind admiration that he gives. In such cases, however, the other person is likely to be dropped suddenly or even may be turned against, as soon as he begins to be critical, thereby failing in the function of admiration, for which he was loved. In discussing the contrasts between

what

is

and what

is

we must be watchful, however, not to lean over backward. Though love is incompatible with use of the loved one for some gratification, this does not mean that

not love

love must be completely and exclusively altruistic and sacrificing. Nor does that feeling alone deserve the name of love

which does not demand anything for the self. Persons who express any such convictions betray their own unwillingness to give affection rather than a thoroughly worked out conviction. Of course we want something from the person we are fond of we want gratification, loyalty, help; we may even want a sacrifice, if necessary. And it is in general

—

an indication of mental health to be able to express such wishes or even fight for them. The difference between love and the neurotic need for affection lies in the fact that in love the feeling of affection is primary, whereas in the case

The Neurotic Need

for Affection

197

of the neurotic the primary feeling is the need for reassurance, and the illusion of loving is only secondary. Of course there are all sorts of intermediate conditions. If a person needs another's affection for the sake of reassurance against anxiety, the issue will usually be completely blurred in his conscious mind, because in general he does not know that he is full of anxiety and that he therefore reaches out desperately for any kind of affection for the sake of reassurance. All that he feels is that here is a person whom he likes or trusts, or with whom he feels infatuated. But what he feels as spontaneous love may be nothing but a response of gratitude for some kindness shown him or a response of hope or affection aroused by some person or situation. The person who explicitly or implicitly arouses in him expectations of this kind will automatically be invested with importance, and his feeling will manifest itself in the illusion of love. Such expectations may be aroused by the simple fact that he is treated kindly

by a person who is powerful and influential, or by one who merely gives the impression of standing more securely on his feet. They may be aroused by erotic or sexual advances, although these may have nothing to do with love. They may feed on existing ties of some sort, which implicitly contain a promise of help or emotional support: family, friends, physician. Many such relations are carried on under the camouflage of love, that is, under a subjecattachment, when actually the love is only the person's clinging to others to satisfy his own needs. That this is no reliable feeling of genuine affection is revealed in the ready revulsion that appears when any wishes are not fulfilled. One of the factors essential to our idea of love :reliability and steadiness of feehng is absent in tive conviction of

—

—

these cases.

A

final characteristic

ready been implied, but

of the incapacity for love has alwish to give it special emphasis:

I

disregard of the other's personality, peculiarities, limitations, needs, wishes, development. This disregard is in part a result of the anxiety which prompts the neurotic to cling to the other person. One who is drowning and clings to a

swimmer does not

usually consider the other's willingness

•

198

Karen

Homey

or capacity to carry him along. The disregard is also partly an expression of the basic hostility toward people, the most common contents of which are contempt and envy. It may be covered up by desperate efforts to be considerate, or even sacrificing, but usually these efforts cannot prevent wife may be the emerging of certain unwonted reactions. subjectively convinced, for example, of her deep devotion to her husband, and yet be resentful, complaining or depressed when the husband devotes his time to his work,

A

An over-protective mother may be convinced that she does everything for the sake of her child's happiness, and yet have a fundamental disregard for the child's needs for independent development. The neurotic person whose protective device is a drive for affection is hardly ever aware of his incapacity for love. Most such persons will mistake their need of others for a disposition toward love, whether for individuals or for mankind in general. There is a pressing reason for maintaining and defending such an illusion. Giving it up would mean uncovering the dilemma of feeling at once basically hostile toward people and nevertheless wanting their affection. One cannot despise a person, distrust him, wish to destroy his happiness or independence, and at the same time crave his affection, help and support. In order to achieve both ends, which in reality are incompatible, one has to keep the hostile disposition strictly removed from his interests or his friends.

awareness.

The

illusion of love, in other

words, while

it

is

the result of an understandable confusion between genuine fondness and need, has the definite function of making the pursuit of affection possible.

There is still another basic difficulty which the neurotic encounters in satisfying his hunger for affection. Though he may succeed, at least temporarily, in getting the affection he wants, he is unable really to accept it. One should expect him to welcome any affection offered to him, as eagerly as a thirsty person takes to water. In fact, that does happen, but only temporarily. Every physician knows the effect of kindness and consideration. All physical and psychic troubles may suddenly vanish, even though nothing is being done but giving the patient hospital care and hav-

The Neurotic Need ing

him thoroughly examined.

A

for Afifection

199

situation neurosis, even

though it be a severe one, may disappear altogether when the person feels himself loved. Elizabeth Barrett Browning is a famous example of this kind. Even in character neuroses such attention, whether it is love, interest or medical care, may be sufficient to release anxiety and thereby improve the condition. Any kind of affection may give him a superficial reassurance, or even a feeling of happiness, but deep down it either meets with disbelief or stirs up distrust and fear. He does not believe in it, because he is firmly convinced that no one can possibly love him. And this feeling of being unlovable is often a conscious conviction, unshakable by any factual experiences to the contrary. It can, indeed, be taken so much for granted that it never consciously bothers the person, but even when it is inarticulate it is just as unshakable a conviction as if it had always been conscious. Also, it can be concealed by a "don't care" attitude, usually dictated by pride, and then it is likely to create difficulty in it out. The conviction of being unlovable is closely akin to the incapacity for love; it is, in fact, a conscious reflection of that incapacity. person who can be genuinely fond of others will have no doubts that others can be fond of him. If the anxiety is really deep, any affection offered meets with distrust, and it will immediately be assumed that it is offered from ulterior motives. In psychoanalysis, for example, such patients feel that the analyst wants to help them only for the sake of his own ambition, or that he makes appreciative or encouraging remarks only for therapeutical reasons. One patient of mine considered it a positive humiliation that I offered to see her during the weekend, at a time when she was emotionally upset. Affection shown demonstratively is easily felt as a taunt. If an attractive girl openly shows affection toward a neurotic man he may take it as teasing, or even as a deliberate provocation, since it is beyond his imagination that the girl might be truly fond of him. Affection offered to such a person not only may meet with distrust but may arouse positive anxiety. It is as if

digging

A

200

Erich

Fromm

giving in to an affection meant being caught in a spider's web, or as if believing in an affection meant being taken off one's guard while living among cannibals. A neurotic person may have a feeling of terror when he approaches the realization that some genuine fondness is being offered to him. Finally, evidence of affection may arouse a fear of dependency. Emotional dependency ... is a real danger for anyone who cannot live without the affection of others, and anything faintly resembling it may evoke a desperate struggle against it. Such a person must at all cost avoid any kind of positive emotional/ response of his own, because such a response immediately conjures up the danger of dependency. In order to avoid this he must blindfold himself against the awareness that others are kind or helpful, somehow managing to discard every evidence of affection and insisting, in his own feelings, that the others are unkind, uninterested or even malevolent. The situation created in this way is similar to that of a person who is starving for food yet does not dare to take any for fear that it might be poisoned. In short, then, for a person who is driven by his basic anxiety and consequently, as a means of protection, reaches out for affection, the chances of getting this so much desired affection are anything but favorable. The very situation that creates the need interferes with its gratification.

14. Productive

Erich

How man

Love

Fromm

seeks solutions to the specifically

adaptation

to

nature,

human

situa-

and progress away from passive is a seminal concern of Erich

tion of his individuation

Fromm's humanistic psychoanalysis.

Productive Love

"The

man's birth

201

primarily a negative act," Fromm has written, "that of being thrown out of the original oneness with nature, that he cannot return to where he came from, implies that the process of birth is by no fact that

means an easy one. Each ence

is

is

step into his

new human

exist-

means to give up a secure known, for one which is new,

frightening. It always

state, which was relatively which one has not yet mastered. We are never free from two conflicting tendencies: one to emerge from the womb, from the animal form of existence, from bondage to .

.

.

freedom; another, to return to the womb, to nature, to certainty and security. In the history of the individual, and of the race, the progressive tendency has been stronger, yet the phenomena of mental illness and the regression of

the

human

race to positions apparently relinquished genera-

shows the intense struggle which accompanies each new act of birth." In this struggle, Fromm shows in the following pages, productive love alone permits freedom while allowing the most intense union with humanity. Erich Fromm is recognized as one of today's leading psychoanalysts and social psychologists. Among his best known books are Escape from Freedom, Man for Himself, The Forgotten Language, The Sane Society and The Art of Loving. From The Sane Society by Erich Fromm, copyright 1955 by Erich Fromm. Reprinted by permission of Rinehart & tions ago,

Company,

Inc.,

New

York, Publishers.

Productive Love 1.

—

Man's Needs

as

They Stem from

the Conditions of His Existence

Man's life is determined by the inescapable alternative between regression and progression, between return to animal existence and arrival at human existence. Any attempt to return is painful, it inevitably leads to suffering and mental sickness, to death either physiologically or mentally

sanity).

Every step forward

is

(in-

frightening and painful too.

202

Fromm

Erich

been reached where fear and doubt have only minor proportions. Aside from the psysiologically nourished cravings (hunger, thirst, sex), all essential human cravings are determined by this polarity. Man has to solve a problem, he can never rest in the given situation of a passive adaptation to nature. Even the most complete satisfaction of all his instinctive needs does not solve his human problem; his most intensive passions and needs are not those rooted in his body, but those rooted in the very pe-

until a certain point has

culiarity of his existence.

There lies also the key to humanistic psychoanalysis. Freud, searching for the basic force which motivates human passions and desires believed he had found it in the libido. But powerful as the sexual drive and all its derivations are, they are by no means the most powerful forces within man and their frustration is not the cause of mental disturbance. The most powerful forces motivating man's behavior stem from the condition of his existence, the "hu-

man situation." Man cannot him

tions drive

mony

because his inner contradic-

to seek for an equilibrium, for a

instead of the lost animal

he has

man

live statically

—

his

new

har-

nature. After

is driven by his huhim what to eat and what conscience ought to tell him which needs to

satisfied his

animal needs, he

needs. While his

to avoid

harmony with

body

tells

and satisfy, and which needs to let wither and starve out. But hunger and appetite are functions of the body with which man is born conscience, while potentially present, requires the guidance of men and principles which develop only during the growth of culture. All passions and strivings of man are attempts to find an answer to his existence or, as we may also say, they are cultivate

—

an attempt to avoid insanity. (It may be said in passing problem of mental life is not why some people become insane, but rather why most avoid insanity.) Both the mentally healthy and the neurotic are driven by the need to find an answer, the only difference being that one answer corresponds more to the total needs of man, and hence is more conducive to the unfolding of his powers and to his happiness than the other. All cultures provide that the real

Productive Love

203

for a patterned system in which certain solutions are preand satisfactions. dominant, hence certain strivings

Whether we

deal with primitive religions, with theistic or

all attempts to give an answer to man's existential problem. The finest, as well as the most barbaric cultures have the same function the difference is only whether the answer given is better or worse.

non-theistic religions, they are

—

deviate from the cultural pattern is just as much in search of an answer as his more well-adjusted brother. His answer may be better or worse than the one given by his culture it is always another answer to the same fundamental question raised by human existence. In this sense all cultures are religious and every neurosis is a private form of religion, provided we mean by religion an attempt to answer the problem of human existence. Indeed, the tremendous energy in the forces producing mental illness, as well as those behind art and religion could never be understood as an outcome of frustrated or sublimated physiological needs; they are attempts to solve the problem of being born human. All men are idealists and cannot help being idealists, provided we mean by idealism the striving for the satisfaction of needs which are specifically human and transcend the physiological needs of the organism. The difference is only that one idealism is a good and adequate solution, the other a bad and destructive one. The decision as to what is good and bad has to be made on the basis of our knowledge of man's nature and the laws which govern its growth.

The

—

What

are these needs

existence of 2.

and passions stemming from the

man?

Relatedness

vs.

Narcissism

Man is torn away from the primary union with nature, which characterizes animal existence. Having at the same time reason and imagination, he is aware of his aloneness and separateness; of his powerlessness and ignorance; of the accidentalness of his birth and of his death. He could not face this state of being for a second if he could not find new ties with his fellow man which replace the old

204

Erich

Fromm

ones, regulated by instincts.

Even

if

all his

physiological

he would experience his state of aloneness and individuation as a prison from which he had to break out in order to retain his sanity. In fact, the insane person is the one who has completely failed to establish any kind of union, and is imprisoned, even if he is not behind barred windows. The necessity to unite with other living beings, to be related to them, is an imperative need on the fulfillment of which man's sanity depends. This need is behind all phenomena which constitute the whole gamut needs were

satisfied,

of intimate human relations, of all passions which are called love in the broadest sense of the word. There are several ways in which this union can be sought and achieved. Man can attempt to become one with the world by submission to a person, to a group, to an institution, to God. In this way he transcends the separateness of his individual existence by becoming part of somebody or something bigger than himself, and experiences his identity in connection with the power to which he has submitted. Another possibility of overcoming separateness lies in the opposite direction: man can try to unite himself with the world by having power over it, by making others a part of himself, and thus transcending his individual existence

by domination. The common element in both submission and domination is the symbiotic nature of relatedness. Both persons involved have lost their integrity and freedom; they live on each other and from each other, satisfying their craving for closeness, yet suffering from the lack of inner strength and self-reliance which would require freedom and independence, and furthermore constantly threatened by the conscious or unconscious hostility which is bound to arise from the symbiotic relationship,^ The realization of the submissive (masochistic) or the domineering (sadistic) passion never leads to satisfaction. They have a self-propelling dynamism, and because no amount of submission, or domination (or possession, or fame) is enough to give a sense of identity and union, more and more of it is 1

Cf. the

more detailed

analysis of the symbiotic relatedness in E.

Escape from Freedom, Rinehart 141

ff.

& Company,

Inc.,

New

Fromm,

York, 1941, p.

Productive Love sought.

The

ultimate result of these passions

is

205

defeat. It

cannot be otherwise; while these passions aim at the establishment of a sense of union, they destroy the sense of integrity. The person driven by any one of these passions actually

becomes dependent on

own

others; instead of develop-

is dependent on those to he submits, or whom he dominates. There is only one passion which satisfies man's need to unite himself with the world, and to acquire at the same time a sense of integrity and individuality, and this is love. Love is union with somebody, or something, outside oneself, under the condition of retaining the separateness and integrity of one's own self. It is an experience of sharing, of communion, which permits the full unfolding of one's own inner activity. The experience of love does away with the necessity of illusions. There is no need to inflate the image

ing his

individual being, he

whom

of the other person, or of myself, since the reality of acand loving permits me to transcend my indi-

tive sharing

same time to experience myself as the bearer of the active powers which constitute the act of loving. What matters is the particular quality of loving, not the object. Love is in the experience of human solidarity with our fellow creatures, it is in the erotic love

vidualized existence, and at the

of

man and woman,

and

in the love of the

also in the love for oneself, as a

mother for the

human

being;

child,

it is

the mystical experience of union. In the act of loving, I

in

am

one with All, and yet I am myself, a unique, separate, limited, mortal human being. Indeed out of the very polarity between separateness and union, love is bom and reborn. Love is one aspect of what I have called the productive orientation: the active and creative relatedness of man to his fellow man, to himself and to nature. In the realm of thought, this productive orientation is expressed in the proper grasp of the world by reason. In the realm of action, the productive orientation is expressed in productive work, the prototype of which is art and craftsmanship. In the realm of feeling, the productive orientation is expressed in love, which is the experience of union with another person, with all men, and with nature, under the condition of retaining one's sense of integrity and independence. In the

206

Erich

Fromm

experience of love the paradox happens that two people be-

come

one, and remain two at the

same

time.

Love

in this

sense is never restricted to one person. If I can love only one person, and nobody else, if my love for one person makes me more alienated and distant from my fellow man, I may be attached to this person in any number of ways, yet I do not love. If I can say, "I love you," I say, "I love in you all of humanity, all that is alive; I love in you also

myself." Self-love, in this sense,

The

the opposite of selfish-

is

greedy concern with oneself which springs from and compensates for the lack of genuine love for oneself. Love, paradoxically, makes me more independent because it makes me stronger and happier yet it makes me one with the loved person to the extent that individuality seems to be extinguished for the moment. In loving I experience "I am you," you the loved person, you the stranger, you everything ahve. In the experience of love lies the only answer to being human, lies sanity. Productive love always implies a syndrome of attitudes; that of care, responsibility, respect and knowledge.* If I love, I care that is, I am actively concerned with the other person's growth and happiness; I am not a spectator. I am responsible, that is, I respond to his needs, to those he can express and more so to those he cannot or does not express. I respect him, that is (according to the original meaning of re-spicere) I look at him as he is, objectively and not distorted by my wishes and fears. I know him, I have penetrated through his surface to the core of his being and related myself to him from my core, from the center, as ness.

latter is actually a

—

—

—

—

—

against the periphery, of

Productive love

when

my

being.^

directed toward equals

may

be

(Hebrew: rachamim, from rechem womb) the relationship between the two persons involved is one of inequality; the child is helpless and dependent on the mother. In order to grow, it must become more and more independent, until he does not need mother any more. Thus the mother-child relacalled brotherly love. In motherly love

=

Cf for a more detailed discussion of these concepts my Man for Him' Rinehart & Company, Inc., New York, 1947, p. 96 ff. The identity between "to love" and "to know" is contained in the Hebrew jadoa and in the German meinen and minnen. 2

self, 3

.

Productive Love

207

paradoxical and, in a sense, tragic. It requires the most intense love on the mother's side, and yet this very love must help the child to grow away from the mother, and to become fully independent. It is easy for any mother to love her child before this process of separation has begun but it is the task in which most fail, to and to love the child and at the same time to let it go tionship

is

—

want

to let

it

—

go.

In erotic love (Gr. eros; "to glow"), another drive

Hebrew: ahawa, from the root involved: that for fusion and

is

union with another person. While brotherly love refers to all men and motherly love to the child and all those who are in need of our help, erotic love is directed to one person, normally of the opposite sex, with whom fusion and oneness is desired. Erotic love begins with separateness, and ends in oneness. Motherly love begins with oneness, and leads to separateness. If the need for fusion were realized in motherly love, it would mean destruction of the child as an independent being, since the child needs to emerge from his mother, rather than to remain tied to her. If erotic love lacks brotherly love and is only motivated by the wish for fusion,

it is

love as

we

sexual desire without love, or the perversion of find

it

in the sadistic

and masochistic forms of

"love."

One understands fully man's need to be related only if one considers the outcome of the failure of any kind of relatedness, if one appreciates the meaning of narcissism. The only reality the infant can experience is his own body and his needs, physiological needs and the need for warmth and

He

has not yet the experience of "I" as separate is still in a state of oneness with the world, but a oneness before the awakening of his sense of individuality and reality. The world outside exists only as so much food, or so much warmth to be used for the satisfaction of his own needs, but not as something or somebody who is recognized realistically and objectively. This orientation has been named by Freud that of "primary narcissism." In normal development, this state of narcissism is slowly overcome by a growing awareness of reality outside, and by a correspondingly growing sense of "I" as differenaffection.

from "thou." He

— 208

Erich

Fromm

from "thou." This change occurs at first on the level of sensory perception, when things and people are perceived as different and specific entities, a recognition which tiated

lays the foundation for the possibility of speech; to

name

recognizing them as individual and separate entities.* It takes much longer until the narcissistic state is overcome emotionally; for the child up to the age of seven or eight years, other people still exist mainly as means for the satisfaction of his needs. They are exchangeable inasmuch as they fulfill the function of satisfying these needs, and it is only around the ages of between eight and nine years that another person is experienced in such a way that the child can begin to love, that is to say, in H. S. Sullivan's formulation, to feel that the needs of another person * are as important as his own.^ Primary narcissism is a normal phenomenon, conforming with the normal physiological and mental development of the child. But narcissism exists also in later stages of life ("secondary narcissism," according to Freud), if the growing child fails to develop the capacity for love, or loses it again. Narcissism is the essence of all severe psychic pathology. For the narcissistically involved person, there is only things

presupposes

of his own thought processes, feelings and outside is not experienced or perceived objectively, i.e., as existing in its own terms, conditions and needs. The most extreme form of narcissism is to be seen in all forms of insanity. The insane person has lost contact

one

reality, that

needs.

The world

* Cf. Jean Piaget's discussion of this point in The Child's Conception of the V/orld, Harcourt, Brace & Company, Inc., New York, p. 151. ^ Cf. H. S. Sullivan, The Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry, Norton Co., New York, 1953, p. 49 ff. 8 This love is usually felt at first toward the child's contemporaries, and, not toward the parents. The pleasing idea that children "love" their parents before they love anybody else must be considered as one of the many illusions which stem from wishful thinking. For the child, at this age, father and mother are more objects of dependency or fear than of love, which by its very nature is based on equality and independence. Love for parents, if we differentiate it from affectionate but passive attachment, incestuous fixation, conventional or fearful submission, develops if at all at a later age rather than in childhood, although its beginnings can be found under fortunate circumstances at an earlier age. (The same point has been made, somewhat more sharply, by H. S. Sullivan in his Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry.) Many parents, however are not willing to accept this reality and react to it by resenting the child's first real love attachments either overtly or in the even more effective form of making fun of them. Their conscious or unconscious jealousy is one of the most powerful obstacles to the child's development of the capacity to love.

—

—

—

The Meanings of Love

209

with the world; he has withdrawn into himself; he cannot experience reality, either physical or human reality as it is, but only as formed and determined by his own inner processes. He either does not react to the world outside, or if he does, reacts not in terms of its reality, but only in terms of his own processes of thought and feeling. Narcissism is the opposite pole to objectivity, reason and love. The fact that utter failure to relate oneself to the world is insanity, points to the other fact: that some form of relatedness is the condition for any kind of sane living. But among the various forms of relatedness, only the productive one, love, fulfills the condition of allowing one to retain one's freedom and integrity while being, at the same time, united with one's fellow man.

15.

The Meanings

Philip Q.

of

Love

Roche

An

operational approach, one which links love to shared experience, to conscious and unconscious behavior rather

than the verbal chain which explains one word with another, characterizes Dr. Roche's thoughtful attempt at tracing the continuity of the individual's early emotional preparation as it merges into his symbolic environment. Originally given as part of an orientation course for senior students, initiated at the School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, by the Division of Family Study of the Department of Psychiatry, Dr. Roche's paper examines the phenomenon of love in context of the role of the physician and counselor as relievers of human suffering. It marks the trend toward increasing collaboration between the medical

and

social sciences.

Dr. Roche, President of the Philadelphia Psychoanalytic Society, is Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, School of

210

Philip Q.

Roche

Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. His most recent book is The Criminal Mind. From Man and Wife: A Sourcebook of Family Attitudes, Sexual Behavior and Marriage Counseling, edited by Emily H. Mudd and Aron Krich, copyright 1957 by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. By permission of W. W. Norton & Conapany, Inc.

The Meanings .

.

.

Many

of

Love

have despaired because love has become a sub-

ject of scientific inquiry.

Some

say that love

is

precinct accessible only to poets. Others say that

a sacred if

love

is

placed under the scrutiny of science, it will be shorn of its enchantment and beauty and reduced to what the moralist Chamfort called it: "Nothing but the contact of two epiderms and the exchange of two pale fantasies." These objections invite endless controversy, since the language in which they are framed suggests that love is something identifiable, something elemental, having dimensions and boundaries. We speak of having love and giving it, or taking it back; of falling in and out of it, losing it, and making it. It becomes visible in the light of one person's eyes and audible in the rnurmurings of another. It accompanies us from the cradle to the grave. The language used to describe love is explicit of something akin to a magic fluid or stuff, like the mana of the Polynesians. In our own symbolic world it occupies a pre-eminent place if for no other reason than that it is incessantly talked and sung about. Denis de Rougemont,^ in commenting on what one could regard as Denis de Rougemont, The Devil's Share, (An Essay on the Diabolic Society), Meridian Books, New York, 1956, p. '59. Devil has made us give the name of 'love' to a vague coiuagious obsession whose source in the modern era was romantic literature, and of which novels and films are the distributing agents. This obsession has become the great concern of our civilization in time of peace the religion of those who no longer want religion. Its sway has extended over the most incongruous realms from literary mysticism to the subway billboards. You cannot take two steps in any city without finding some allusion to it. It reigns over the enormous film industry, over publishing, the book trade, over the sale of perfumes, over the activity of millions of lawyers and doctors, over the illustrated magazines, over all the fashion trades. And over much more besides! For it has modified our whole scale of values. The extravagant over-estimation of love I mean, of course, that form of 1

in

Modern

"The

—

—

— The Meanings of Love 211 "No period has spoken

the saponification of love, says:

more of love, and at the same time exacted so little of it." The relentless pursuit of the symbol and appearances of loye has found its fullest development in contemporary culture. It is a love in quest of an object to the neglect of the function. Erich Fromm speaks of this feature of our culture:

Our whole culture is based on the appetite for buying, on the idea of a mutually favorable exchange. Modem man's happiness consists in the thrill of looking at the shop windows, and in buying all that he can afford to buy, either for cash or on installments. He (or she) looks at people in a similar way. For the man an attractive girl and for the woman an attractive man are the prizes they are after. "Attractive" usually means a nice package of qualities which are popular and sought after on the personality market. What specifically makes a person attractive depends on the fashion of the time, physically as well as mentally. During the twenties, a drinking and smoking girl, tough and sexy, was attractive; today the fashion demands more domesticity and coyness. At the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of this century, a man had to be aggressive and ambitious ^today he has to be social and tolerant in order to be an attractive "package." At any rate, the sense of falling in love develops usually only with regard to such human commodities as are within reach of one's own possibilities for exchange. I am out for a bargain; the object should be desirable from the standpoint of its social value, and at the same time should want me, considering my overt and hidden assets and potentialities. Two persons thus fall in love when they feel they have found the best object available on the market, considering the limitations of their own exchange values. Often, as in buying real estate, the hidden potentialities which can be developed

—

—

—

—

obsession which resembles true love as the city of Lyon does a lion has in our epoch progressively contracted the meaning of and the respect for moral behavior, for sacrifice in the common good, for hard, virile virtues. Individual happiness has become our fetish: this is tlie sign of decadence of a civilization."

212

Philip Q.

Roche

play a considerable role in this bargain. In a culture in

which the marketing orientation material success

is

prevails,

and

in

the outstanding value, there

which is

little

reason to be surprised that human love relations follow the same pattern of exchange which governs the commodity and the labor market.^

So far we have conveyed little about love itself; we have only used a word which is one of the most commonplace four-letter English words and one of the most overworked. What can be said of its conventional definition? The word love is derived from the Sanskrit lubhyati, meaning "he desires." Webster defines love as a "feeling of strong personal attachment induced by sympathic understanding, or by ties'' of kinship; ardent affection." Or we may turn to the twelfth century and read in Andreas Capellanus that "Love is a certain inborn suffering derived from sight of an excessive meditation upon the beauty of the opposite sex, which causes each one to wish above all things the embraces of the other and by common desire to carry out all of love's precepts in each other's embrace." ^ Thus Webster tells us that love is a feeling, Capellanus says that it is an inborn sufl^ering, and Chamfort that it is something tactile and pale. These definitions do not bring us close enough to actual experience. They are statements that merely link love to other words which tell us little rriore than the common usage of the words defined. Here we can be reminded of the error that to define something verbally is necessarily to know and understand it. If we are to share experiences, we cannot rely on this kind of definition as a basis for agreement. Agreement is possible only if we employ operational that will relate words to must pay less attention to the talk about love and more to what people do about it, how they actually behave, both consciously and unconsciously. From definitions,

that

definitions

is,

We

human

experience.

2 Erich pp. 3-4.

Fromm, The Art

of Loving,

Harper & Brothers,

New

York, 1956,

Parry, The Art of Courtly Love, Columbia University Press, New York, 1941; from The Portable Medieval Reader, Viking Press, New York, 1955. 3 J,

J.

The Meanings of Love

213

such observations some inferences of meaning can be drawn. We may begin with the general observation that human beings appear to behave as if within them there exist forces or drives tending to bring

them together

in

communal

inter-

dependence. These drives can be placed in the frame [of] the biological capacity for genital union with the opposite sex and as the social capacity for anxiety-free nongenital love relationships. Together these two capacities are descriptive of human love life in all of its dimensions. We speak in terms of a dynamic force within ourselves. This force is a common source of energy for both constructive and destructive behavior, for both loving and hating. Observe how easily love is turned into hate and how close both are to the instinctual life of the individual. Hate is closer to the unlearned animal responses of the primitive, closer to what is reflexive in the eariiest adaptation of the infant and child. Our child-rearing system is devoted to the domestication of this instinctual force; our aim is to modify its purely reflexive character by introducing feed-back control circuits into the reflex arc. These control circuits not only postpone responses but also allow for the introduction and expression of secondary alternate responses which bring new values in the form of social rewards. The measure of this socialization is a measure of the constructive social life which is centered around marriage. In substance we are saying that at best the capacity for loving is potential. We are born to love but cannot do so until we learn to do so. This learning to love is inextricably bound up with the moral life formalized in our legal and religious institutions. Rollo May * points out that the real problem in our (day for people is the preparation to love, that is, learning to be able to love: In the

should be noted that love is actuphenomenon in our society. As everyone knows there are a miUion and one kinds of relationships which are called love: we do not need to list ally

*

a

first

place,

RoUo May, Man's

1953.

it

relatively rare

Search for Himself,

W. W. Norton &

Co.,

New

York,

214

Philip Q.

Roche

of the confusions of "love" with sentimental impulses and every kind of oedipal and "back to mother's arms" motives as they appear in the romantic songs and the all

Our society is the heir to four centuries of movies. competitive individualism, with power over others as a dominant motivation; and our particular generation is the heir of a good deal of anxiety, isolation and personal emptiness. This is scarcely good preparation for learning .

how

.

.

to love.

May warns us against sliding into a mushy sentimentality that "love will solve all." In our marketplace orientation selling. One illustration of parents expect the child to love them as a repayment for their taking care of him. To be sure, a child will learn to pretend to certain acts of love if the parents insist on it; but sooner or later it turns out that a love demanded as a payment is no love at all.

we

this

use love for buying and is

in the fact that

Sorokin

when he

^

comes near

refers to

many

to our operational

"as a

it

dynamic force

meaning of love effectively trans-

figuring individuals, ennobling social institutions, inspiring

making the whole world a warm, friendly, and beautiful cosmos." Yet in this definition of love we do not escape the notion that love is a force existing in the world

culture and

outside of ourselves, something like the air definition refers to

we

breathe.

The

something transitive and taking place,

but it evades the fact that the dynamic force in question is within ourselves. Outside of ourselves it exists only in the communication of our symbolic environment, in the manner of doing, rather than in the substance itself. It is not an element outside of ourselves to which we are passively submissive; on the contrary, it is a potential within ourselves expended in external relationships with people and things.^

The formalization

of love

embraces the concepts of

Pitirim A. Sorokin, Altruistic Love, Beacon Press, Boston, 1950. Krich Fromm, op. cit., p. 21. Erich Fromm speaks of this love potential answer to the problem of human existence as a ligating force in life i)eyond the exclusive erotic love of two people who feel no love for anyone else beyond an egoism a deux. This potential insures "union under 6

«

as the

The Meanings of Love honor, courage,

fidelity,

and other aesthetic and

215

ethical

values that are a part of our symbolic environment. Society's concern here is twofold: the extent to which our child-

makes possible the individual's full potential and the extent to which the deficit in capacity for loving is obscured, if not substituted for by its formalization, the extent to which form gives substance. The physician or counselor may often detect a deficit in the symptoms of his patient, and such symptoms are by no means confined to the clinic. In the wider view of love life, we may outline a general symptomatology related to our childrearing system and to the formalization of love. Children who fail to learn to love because they have been taught to love by precept only will in later life lean heavily on the formalization of love. For them, love will be pursued in symbol and symptom rather than in deed. In A. B. Johnson's ' phrase, they will "deem the identity a hidden proprearing system for loving,

erty of nature, while it is only a property of language." It is through this concept that our inquiry into the meaning of love can be pursued. The general symptomatology of love may be regarded as the manifestations of behavior which express conflict between loving and hating, between the potential for loving and the residue of unmodified instinctual drives. This conflict is called ambivalence and may exist on all levels of psychic operation, unconscious or conscious. Ambivalence may be observed in that most remarkable form of behavior which communicates simultaneously both loving and hating; for example in killing a loved one with kindness or in some compulsive lovers in whom hostility lies behind a facade of philanthropy. Meerloo ^ remarks that "At the one extreme love is liberation from the purely instinctual drive

the condition of preserving one's integrity a power which breaks through the walls fellow man, which unites him with others; ." fence of isolation and separateness ^ A. B. Johnson, "The Individuality of Language," Utica, William Williams, 1832, guage of Wisdom and Folly, Harper and .

... an

active power in man; which separate man from his love makes him overcome the

.

Things and the Generality of After Irving J. Lee, The LanBrothers,

New

York, 1949, p.

191. 8

J.

New

A. M. Meerloo, York, 1954.

Two

Faces of

Man,

International Universities Press,

216

—

it

Philip Q.

may

Roche

be the highest form of sublimation; at the other,

possession by the drive

itself,

often leading to murder and

self-destruction."

Love is a phenomenon of civilized society, and has made a relatively recent appearance in the history of mankind. It is said that it has come into its own only with leisure and luxury. The love stories of early folklore belong to idealization, romance, and unreality; realistic love stories are hardly more than a hundred years old. In antiquity love was probably erotic for the most part. Among the Greeks it was regarded as a "mania" with which a person was afflicted because of the caprice and malevolence of the gods. The notion of one's wife being closest to one is relatively modern and accepted by only a comparatively small part of the human race. The concept of love has been associated -with the status of women. Trevelyan remarks that with the educated medieval man and woman "marriage was one relation love might indeed chance to grow of life, love another ^ out of marriage as doubtless it often did." in eleventh century and conceived the Courtly love was was formalized in the contemporary troubadour poetry. It was modeled on the service of love which a feudal vassal owed his lord. Medieval sex mores conjoined two contradictory ideas about women: women were evil and dangerous, to be shunned; women were lovely and adorable, to be revered and worshiped. Out of the amalgam of these two ideas flowed a hypocritical eroticism. In feudal society marriage had little or nothing to do with love. All matches were those of interest. And "love was not conceived of as existing in the marriage state, but outside the bonds of matrimony." ^° Trevelyan further remarks that "among the poor, it is probable that marriage choice had always been less dogged by mercenary motives. Probably the pattern set by 'good society' was followed on a smaller scale by the poor." The gift of the medieval poets to the Western world was a new concept of the love of man and woman as a spiritual thing, a concept unknown to the ancients or to the early .

.

.

» G. M. Trevelyan, English Social History, Longmans Green & Co., York, 1942. pp. 64-66. 10 C. S. Lewis, Allegory of Love, London, 1936 (Trevelyan),

New

:

The Meanings

of

Love

217

Trevelyan remarks that in England a gradual change occurred in which the element of love in the marriage became more important than the mercenary element, which has culminated in what we observe today of the free church.

choice of love being acceptable as a basis of marriage. In our times, as Sumner " says, it is probably true that matrimony, like conversation, is too readily identified with ritual. This is to say that what is said in the ceremony no longer has much importance; no one pays much attention to it. On the other hand love demands altruism in conjugal affection, good sense, a spirit of accommodation, and the maturity of each partner. J. A. M. Meerioo's ^ book Conversation and Communication contains an instructive chapter, "The Word Tyrannizes Us," in which is demonstrated the semantic confusion of the expression "I love you," a statement that occupies a large part of our symboUc environment. Meerloo states:

Sometimes it means: / desire you or / want you sexumay mean: / hope you love me or / hope that I will be able to love you. Often it means: It may be that a love relationship can develop between us or even / hate you. Often it is a wish for emotional exchange: / want your admiration in exchange for mine or / give my love in exchange for some passion or / want to feel cozy and at home with you or / admire some of your qualities. A declaration of love is mostly a request: / desire you or / want you to gratify me or / want your protection or / want to be intimate with you or / want to exploit your ally. It

loveliness.

Sometimes

it

is

the need for security and tenderness,

It may mean: My self-love goes out to you. But it may also express submissiveness Please take me as I am or / feel guilty about you, I want through you, to correct the mistakes I have made in human relations. It may^be self-sacrifice and a masochistic wish for dependency. However, it may also be a full

for parental treatment.

u Wm. G. Sumner, Folkways, Ginn & 12

J.

A.

Co., Boston, 1940, p. 374.

M. Meerloo, Conversation and Communication, International

Universities Press,

New

York, 1952, p. 83.

218

Philip Q.

Roche

affirmation of the other, taking the responsibility for tual

exchange of

feelings. It

may be

a

weak

mu-

feeling of

friendliness, it may be the scarcely even whispered expression of ecstasy. "I love you," wish, desire, submission, conquest; it is never the word itself that tells the real meaning here. It is evident from these statements that the word love belongs to that category of terms that are multiordinal and as such have no fixed meaning. For those who bring their symptoms of love life to our scrutiny, it is not enough merely to ponder the semantics of the word love; we should discern from its context the underiying meaning of love, less from what the person says than from what he does in his love life. With some grasp of its meaning for him, we may be able to effect some change in the individual. How can the physician or counselor structure his analysis and draw inferences from his data? Philip Solomon set himself to answer this question in his article "Love: Clinical Definition." ^ He systematizes the concept of love utiUzable for clinical application in a frame of dimensional analyses in terms of the degree of abstraction of the love object, that is, primary one-dimensional self-love, two-dimensional love involving unconscious projection of the self externally, three-dimensional love as romantic love for one's ideal self, and four-dimensional love as mature love striving toward an eventual ideal. It is likely that in a professional experience with the symptomatology of love, the physician or counselor will note the preponderance of the one- and two-dimensional love, with their consequent dislocations in marriage. These types of love can be reconciled with Freud's original observation of two types of love: narcissistic and dependent. In the first, the mechanism of projection of the self onto someone else bears an analogy to what one discovers of oneself mirrored in another. Love of this type is exaggerated in homosexual ties, in which the object is a loved facsimile of oneself. In like manner some parents see an extension of

A

13

Philip Solomon, "Love:

of Medicine, 252: 345-351,

A

Clinical Definition," 3, 1955.

New England

Journal

March

Ii

The Meanings of Love

219

themselves in their children. In these dimensions of heterosexual love a man finds in his spouse his own feminine qualities, unconscious to himself, and his wife finds in her husband her unconscious masculine qualities.

Dependent love moves

closer to the external love object

becomes the source of fulbodily and mental needs. One does not have to search far in dependent love relationships to uncover in the loved one a displaced surrogate for a in the sense that the love object

fillment of the lover's

own

mother with whom there persists an Dependent love is often displaced to brother, sister, or near relative, and later displaced to unrelated persons. An unconscious linkage sometimes apparent to the outside observer animates both narcissistic and de-

commonly

the

invisible umbilical

tie.

parent,

pendent .

.

.

love.

An

impedance of the

will find its

child's love for the parents eventually into later love choice. Great

way

abounds

literature

in the stories of lovers

unable to

fall in

someone already married, husband and and in stories of those lovers who require

love except with

wife snatchers,

who

way to be hinwithout having love shrouded in mystery and secrecy; of those whose love is obviously a translation of the rescue fantasy in which the knight rescues the distressed maiden from the monster. In some instances the boy unconsciously despises his mother for preferring the father, and all subsequent women are held in low esteem. In such symptomatic love situations, we may find that the love object has a medieval aspect: an attractive inferior woman, behind whom broods the image of the prostitute, is placed against the other image of the highly respected woman for whom there is no attraction. This is the ancient oedipal dichotomy of sacred and proobstacles in the path of love,

dered;

fane.

of

others

who cannot

The dichotomy may

office: a

husband has

find

esteems but with

The same

men are man who

whom

way into symptoms

its

ill-defined

dilemma of having married

find a

love

a

the consultant's arising

woman whom

from

his

he highly

he can find no libidinal fulfillment.

happen to women. Two kinds of loved by some women: a physically inferior arouses sympathy and tenderness and a morally thing

may

also

220

Philip Q.

Roche

man who arouses sexual desire and with a need for clandestine relationships. The writer once conferred with a woman who had knowingly married a chronic alcoholic and who had led a life of unremitting disappointment and humiliation about which she bitterly complained. It was suggested that separation from her husband would be a remedy for her life of despair. With unconcealed umbrage she refused even to consider such a move. When asked why, she replied: "Because I love him." The physician may discern in his male patient's symptoms the reflections of a latent combination in this case the man's need of prostitute and rescue fantasy and is

socially inferior

associated

—

woman to a some women to

conversely,

we

see

to lead a fallen

better

the need of

try to rehabilitate a drunkard,

life;

ne'er-do-well, or criminal.

Enigma of the Tenderness in Love," "For only when we understand the mysterious mechanism of love and tenderness can we understand the distortions of love with which we are so often confronted in the person seeking divorce, or can we understand why his marriage has failed." Bergler explicates eight outward signs of tender love which every healthy person is capable of experiencing; those incapable he regards as In writing of "The

Bergler"

states:

physically

ill,

so-called neurotics.

The

eight signs are:

Subjective feeling of happiness. Bergler states that the lover finds himself in a state of manic elation. This is close to the classic dictum, amantes amentes, lovers are lunatics. 2. Self-torture. The lover's happiness is not unalloyed; 1.

with it comes doubt and the inevitable anxiety that flows out of his unconscious ambivalence and distrust of his private world, himself, and persons and things. "It's too good to last." 3. Overvaluation of the loved object. What the lover apperceives in the loved one is an image of his own projected self-love. Gertrude Stein put it so: "The loveliness is in the

you

is in me." Undervaluation of reality. This is implied in the overvaluation of the loved object and is reminiscent of the re-

that

4.

" Edmund

Unhappy Marriage and Divorce, International UniYork, 1946, p. 15 et seq., p. 30.

Bergler,

versities Press,

New

i

The Meanings

of

Love

221

vival of long-buried infantile delusions. 5.

"The exclusive interest of explained by his boundless

Exclusiveness. Bergler avers:

the lover for the love object

is

self-love." 6. Psychic dependence on the love object. This is an analogue of exclusiveness comprehensible in the light of the mechanism whereby the lover is bathed in the ecstatic radiations of his projected self, achieved as "an orgy of self-love without the slightest feeling of guilt. The paradisiacal infantile delusions of grandeur seem to be realized." 7. Sentimental behavior. The lover has enshrined himself in the love object, and sentimental behavior appears to be a kind of self-worship. 8. Predominance of fantasy. Bergler contends that the

exfoliation of fantasy, set in relation to

mundane

reality,

supports the concept that projection accounts for the phenomenon of love. He says: "Happy love means that the central infantile wish fantasy has been realized." The lover has reanimated an old hunger to be fondled, praised, and valued by his parents. In sum, according to Bergler, the happiness of love is a psychic state in which there appears to be achieved a materialization of three infantile wish fantasies: "(1) the paradisiacal state of childhood tile

me

omnipotence and of early infan-

delusions of grandeur, (2) the belief my parents love tenderly, and (3) the beUef my parents permit my

behavior, approve

it,

and

I

need therefore

feel

no

guilt."

The physician

or counselor has in the behavior reflected by these elements the clinical phenomenon of manic elation of the lover. In considering the signs of tender love, the physician or counselor might be disposed to regard them as pathological. However, we are dealing with a kind of behavior that is "normal" in our culture, in fact, entirely within the range of conventions that are taken as a matter of course. Behavior that is taken as a matter of course tends to be sur-

rounded by impediments to objective analysis, and there seems to be an uncommon threat implied in the examination

of the

irrational

However, our concern

of conventional behavior. not that these irrational aspects of

aspects is

Karl Menninger

222

love be deplored but rather that so many of the people we are apparently incapable of anxiety-free love at

work with all,

that so

anchored life at

much

in

of "love"

is

in fact a

pseudo

affect

the unresolved narcissistic infantile

the expense of creative living.

It

may be

triving the perpetuation of the species, nature

and

fantasy

that in conis

concerned

only with the goal and cares naught for the means. Even if in our view of the order of the world we come to regard the behavior of falling in love as a kind of psychosis, we nevertheless regard it as something quite human and meaningful and not in a pejorative sense. Love is not a biological necessity for the perpetuation of the species; but it is a necessity in the social life of man. The counselor or physician will meet with many failures of love which he may view in the light of our recently acquired psychologfcal understanding of the workings of mental life. He will observe people in pairs who are unceasingly pursuing in each other the hoped-for fulfillment of an ancient, infantile romance, veneered by the language of conventional love; these loves are actually cases of clinical neuroses and are filled with compulsive jealousy, infidelity, ambition, revenge, and self-destructiveness, not to mention neurotic behavior which is transmitted to the chil-

dren of such pairings.

16.

.

.

.

Love against Hate

Karl Menninger

Here, one of the great American pioneers in preventive psychiatry advances the thesis that a powerful resource for peace between people and nations is available within our own essential natures. Dr. Menninger shows that as we come to understand ourselves better, the power of love can direct aggression to the service of

wisely chosen examples

from the

human

With around us he

happiness.

daily life

Love

against

223

Hate

demonstrates how the same creative energies which generate achievements in art and science, animate our sex Hfe and motivate work and play, can be effective in solving personal and social problems. Unmitigated by love these dynamic energies become a destructive force setting people at war with each other and with themselves. Dr. Menninger is Dean of the Menninger School of Psychiatry, former President of the American Psychoanalytic Association.

The most

recent of his

many books

is

Theory

of Psychoanalytic Technique. From Love against Hate by Karl Menninger, copyright

1942 by Karl Menninger and Jeanetta Lyle Menninger. Reprinted by permission of Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc.

Love against Hate Love transforms the impulse to fight into the impulse to work or play. Love is implicit in our hoping and in our believing. Love can be frustrated but it can also be encouraged, and [here] we shall consider practical ways in which the latter can be done. To attempt more would be vain, since "to enlarge [upon] or illustrate the power and effect .

.

.

of love

is

When

to set a candle in the sun."

^

the scientist begins to talk about love, he

is

be-

tween Scylla and Charybdis. If he adheres rigidly to the conventional language and formulae of science, he will end in that same sterile futility that has long characterized science in its application to human social life. If, on the other hand, he abandons his scientific habits for a greater reliance upon intuitive truth, he risks verging upon the sentimental and the poetic. Sentiment and poetry are not necessarily antithetical to truth, but the scientist who uses poetic terms is likely to be as discredited as a poet who uses scientific ones.

This dilemma gives thing about which

one except the 1

someknowledge. Everysupposed to know something

rise to the illusion that love is

we have no

scientist is

scientific

Robert Burton in The Anatomy of Melancholy.

224

Karl Menninger

about love. Love sickness is the one sickness for which people do not consult a physician, or for v^hich if they do consult him they get little help,* although we speak of "falling in love" as if strong consciousness of affection were an abnormality, a descent into a temporary pathological

—

—

state.

But when Freud investigated, systematically and scienthe development of the sexual life of the human being he put the whole subject of love upon a basis such that it can no longer be considered the exclusive realm of the poet, the novelist, and the philosopher. In this he was helped by the collateral researches of Havelock Ellis, Krafft-Ebing, and others who explored some of the pathological distortions of love which threw light on its normal evolution. What Freud really showed was that one does not "fall" in love: one grows into love and love grows in him; and this starts not in adolescence nor in maturity but in infancy. By now it is fairly well accepted by everyone who reads and thinks and lives his life with his eyes open that the child begins to express its love life in the first days of its existence. Using all the organs of his body, he at-

tifically,

>

taches himself with pleasure to a succession of love objects in response to the satisfactions they offer and afford him.

His mother, his father, later his brothers and sisters, still later his playmates and teachers, and finally his adult companions,

become successive

foci of the direction of his love.

Conflicts and rivalries develop. Certain patterns of solution

are arrived ally,

at,

based on his earliest experiences, which usu-

of course, involve his mother and father.

All this

is

well

known and

I

refer to

it

.

.

.

again here only to

my

statement that there does exist a scientific few have it or make use of it. People go about in pursuance of their troubled love affairs in as bland an ignorance as that of the West Indian natives infected with malaria and yaws before the introduction of scientific medicine. The idea of going to a scientist for adsubstantiate

knowledge of

love, although

2 In the Middle Ages this was not true. Many readers are probably familiar with the pictures of Ter Borch, Van Ostade, Dou, and others among the Dutch and Flemish painters especially, in which a long-robed physician is peering solemnly at a flask of urine to determine %vhether or not a woman patient is in love, or is pregnant. One of the more famous of these pictures is labeled Das Liebenkrank.

Love

against

Hate

225

would still never occur to the vast majority of American citizens. The "libido theory" has been a part of the body of scientific knowledge for nearly fifty years. It was first introduced to science in Freud's celebrated Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex. It is elaborated in many volumes of psychoanalytic and psychiatric literature. In its original form this libido theory traced the natural history of the evolution of the erotic instinct as observed and interpreted before the aggressive instinct was recognized. Numerous phenomena convinced Freud that a monistic interpretation of human motivation is insufficient to explain the observed facts. Consequently, the libido theory was supplemented by a "thanatos theory," just as in physical science it was discovered that the electron theory in its original form required the postulation of neutrons and protons to supplement it. Even now, in some psychiatric literature, authors continue to speak as if the antiquated libido theory had never been modified by Freud or anyone else.^ Thus the scientific theory of love has become the theory of the interaction and fusion of the erotic and destructive instincts ... It is necessary for the ego to make compromises between what our instincts demand and what our intelligence and sense of social reality permit us. Primitive man could kill what he liked and could gratify his love invice about love problems

3 Take, for example, the condition known as paranoia. This is a defiabnormal psychological state in which an individual feels that others are persecuting him. According to the old libido theory, this was explained by a very ingenious shuffling of the cards to the effect that the person who felt himself persecuted was actually attracted homosexually to the alleged persecutor and was defending himself against this by a delusion that effectually made such a seduction impossible. The layman reading these words may not realize how profound this interpretation was in influencing the thinking of medical science; it has been accepted by psychiatrists pretty generally all over the world, in spite of obvious logical fallacies. These fallacies were rectified, however, by the subsequent recognition of the destructive tendencies and the impulses of hate. The man who feels himself persecuted is obviously defending himself not c.gainst his love of someone so much as against his hate for someone, someone whom the {persecutor represents. He defends himself by saying, "It is not I who hate him, but he who hates me." That this is mingled with homosexual attraction is undoubtedly true, but that it is primarily determined by erotic attraction is a misrepresentation of the very nature of love. The original interpretation of paranoid symptoms occurs in Freud's "Psychoanalytic Notes Upon an Account of Paranoia" (Collected Papers, 3:390-470, London, Hogarth Press, 1925, originally published in 1911). For a revision of the theory in the light of Freud's subsequent changes in the instinct theory, see R. P. Knight, "The Relationship of Latent Homosexuality to the Mechanism of Paranoid Delusions" {Bull. Menninger Clinic, 4:149-159, 1940).

nitely

Karl Menninger

226 stinct

man

without reference to any can do neither.

restrictions.

Contemporary

idea of fusion that must be emphasized. Love capable of modifying the hate impulses and bringing them within the range of social acceptability and usefulness. But, on the other hand, the love instinct itself has to be modified and altered. "All the instinctual impulses that we can study are made up of such fusions or alloys of the two kinds of instincts. Naturally, they are to be found mixed in the greatest variety of proportions." * There is, therefore, no such thing as pure love (or pure hate). The expression of the life instinct, then, is to be seen in love, and love in three forms. First of all, it is absorbed in the partial or complete neutralization of the destruction instinct in other words, in the accomplishment of sublimation. Secondly, it is expressed in diffuse extensions of love to nonsexual objects, or to objects that are not sexual in the ordinary sense of the word. I refer here to the love we have for nature, inanimate objects, pets, social friends, and society at large. The energy for such attachments comes from the erotic instinct, but the object selected and the feelings experienced for it are not consciously recognized as perIt is this

...

is

—

is expended directly which must be called "sexual" in any meaning

taining to sexuality. Finally, the love

upon

objects

of the word.

We

.

.

.

devote

chapter to a consideration of the and the possible means of encouraging these. To begin with the more attenuated expressions of love, we might speak first of those investments which become deflected from human beings to inanimate objects. One frequently sees a concentration of affection upon automobiles, watches, garments, books, and many of the other tools of living. These objects become almost a part of the self but are praised, adored, and tenderly cared for with a highly sentimentalized affection. It might be assumed that such affection is entirely denatured of any conscious sexual element, but sometimes this is obviously not the case. Of Napoleon's cannoneers, who dragged their dismembered shall

this

direct expressions of love

*

Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures

1933, p. 144.

in Psychoanalysis,

Norton,

Love

against

Hate

227

guns over the Alps, Abbott wrote: It was now the great glory of these men to take care of their guns. They loved tenderly the merciless monsters. They lavished caresses and terms of endearment

upon

the glittering, polished, death-dealing brass.

heart of

graded

man

is

a strange enigma.

The

Even when most

de-

needs something to love. These blood-stained soldiers, brutalized by vice, amid all the horrors of battle, lovingly fondled the murderous machines of war. The unrelenting gun was the stern cannoneer's lady-love. He kissed it with unwashed, mustached lips. Affectionately he named it Mary, Emma, Lizzie. it

.

.

.

.

.

.

only a step from the love of inanimate objects to the nonhuman objects, such as flowers, trees, birds, and especially domesticated animals and pets.^ The personification of inanimate and nonhuman objects and the bestowal of love upon them is a familiar phenomenon of childhood; dolls, rabbits, dogs, toys of all kinds take on human qualities and are beloved, sometimes even beyond It is

love of animate but

any

human

beings.

.

.

.

The

extent to which these attachments to nonhuman love objects continue in adult life ® with a repression of the personification would probably amaze anyone who has never

—

been introspective about it the loving treatment accorded his flowers by the gardener, the affection for "mother earth" 5 The affection of many people for animal pets and the faculty that some people have of dealing with them successfully is common knowledge. Prehow the interchange of feeling takes place is not very well understood. Certainly love can be expressed by gentleness and in other subtle ways which defy description but which permit it to be perceived and reacted to even by wild animals. This has been reported in some scientific articles as well as in many legends such as that of Androcles and the Lion and such novels as White's Andivius Hedulio. I know of nothing more impressive, however, than the work of Grace Wiley of Minnesota and California who, originally terrified by all kinds of snakes, so completely overcame this fear and so skillfully mastered the technique of gentleness that she feeds and handles hundreds of the most dangerously poisonous and notoriously unpredictable snakes, including mambas and cobras. (Grace O. Wiley, "Taming King Cobras," Natural History Magazine, 39:

cisely

60-63, January 1937, and "With Fangs Withheld," Nature Magazine, 34: 429-432, October 1941.) ^ In our culture, especially. "So far from being possessed by their things and feeling their possessions a burden the Eskimos are careless of them to the point of contempt material possessions hardly enter their scale of values and the giving of presents is regarded as a perversion." (G. de Poncins, Kabloona, Reynal & Hitchcock, 1941.) .

.

.

Karl Menninger

228

of even such characters as Jeeter Lester, to say nothing of many more sophisticated ones, the passionate attachment to

dogs and cats and canaries and even pieces of furniture, the treasuring of collections by the hobbyist, or of his knife and

top by the small boy. These are useful forms of loving that should be cultivated and encouraged. The concentration of affection upon nonhuman objects .

.

.

sometimes described

in technical literature as infantile, or totemistic. The psychological process of substituting a part for the whole and identifying nonhuman objects with human beings, particularly the parents, and is

fetichistic,

them instead may, it is true, be carried to an extreme. They may absorb so much love and become so exaggerated in their relative importance that the expression of love for human objects is seriously impaired. One sees this

loving

in misers, and in persons who are very kind to animals but very unkind to their human associates. But kept within proper proportions the investment of love in nonhuman objects is not a symptom but a form or variety of love. It is a particularly necessary form for those people for whom human objects have been found unsatisfactory or insufficient, especially in childhood. To some extent this is always true; this

is

why

Sometimes

little girls it is

turn to dolls and

more extreme

.

.

little

boys to

trains.

.

In this connection we ought to mention the fact that one frequently sees the totemistic object treated ambivalently; I mean that hate as well as love can be directed toward these patient of mine who was nonhuman parental substitutes. an ardent and proficient duck-hunter did not recognize un-

A

far advanced in psychoanalytic treatment, which he undertook for quite a different reason, that as a child he had thought of his mother as a duck, because of a peculiar waddling gait caused by a bone disease which had led his uncle to refer to her as "an old duck." Unconsciously he had identified his mother with ducks long before he became adept at killing them.

til

Chapter 2 Leaving

now

the

nonhuman

object investment of love, /

am-

Love bivalently tinged with attention to the

little

or

many ways

much

in

against

Hate

229

we shall turn our which human beings attach hate,

themselves to one another in groups, in a supposedly nonsexual way. This has been called gregariousness and described by some, more eloquently than accurately, as due to a "herd instinct" similar to that which impels the flocking of certain birds and beasts into large assemblies. But there is no need to postulate any such special instinct. Men gather together at times for the simple reasons of greater economy or greater safety or greater power. But there are other gatherings that occur daily, in villages and by roadsides and hearthsides, in which the affection of people for each other is the moving spirit. In the custom to which our own country is so particularly given, of organizing clubs, societies, associations, unions, and the like, one can see a spontaneous tendency toward increasing the opportunities for loving and understanding one another. The words ascribed to Jesus, "where two or three are gathered together in my name, there will I be also," are usually interpreted by the Church to refer to the circumstances under which religious services may be considered to have a '

quorum. But these words have a far more profound meaning. Where two or three people are gathered together, there is bound to be an exchange of feelings and the mutual stimis an unusual individual who does not to some extent enjoy meetings and gatherings, and we are all better for them. Freud ' ascribed the cohesiveness of the group to a common devotion to a leader, a devotion in which the hostile elements are kept in abeyance through a kind of tacit recog-

ulation of affection. It

nition that ultimately he

one of the followers,

—

the leader

—

Each follower thus identifies to some extent with all the other followThe successful leader must manage to keep the con-

hostilities.

leader, ers.

and hence

stantly accumulating aggressions of the

by directing them 7

be replaced by all mutual himself with the

will

who meanwhile suspend

W.

to this or that external

Trotter, Instincts of the

Herd

in Peace

group discharged danger or project.

and War, London, Benn,

1916.

Sigmund Freud, Grout) Psychology and don, Int. Psa. Press, 1922.

the Analysis of the Ego,

Lon-

230

Karl Menninger

Such a reinforcement and concentration of emotion is like a Leyden jar: it has an enormous potential and can be exploited by psychopathic leaders to accomplish great harm. Examples of this are to be seen in Adolf Hitler's career, in the lynching bee and other mobs, and even in some "good" organizations which suffer for a time under "bad" leaders. But honest leaders, who will not distort reality to manufacture "enemies" in order to increase internal solidarity, are far more numerous than dishonest and psychopathic

more conspicuous. And in organization and group association, formal and informal, there is an investment of love which is mutually reinforcing, and, hence, highly desirable. Fortunately, almost everyone can belong to some organization. I said "can"; let me say also "should." The value of

leaders; the latter are only

service clubs,

women's

clubs, literary clubs, medical socie-

labor unions, even political organizations and rallies, lies not so much in the practical things these organizations achieve as in the service they perform in uniting their members in a friendlier spirit. Along with many others, I have at various times made fun of the somewhat juvenile sentities,

mentaHsm

of

been wrong

some

of these organizations, but I think I have To the outsider it may seem a bit

in doing so.

ridiculous for a

bunch of grown men

to give a part of their

working hours to the joint singing of "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow." But the words of the song and even the singing of it have a deeper meaning than appears. Hayakawa " gives an illustration which I shall paraphrase. It is a hot, dusty day and you are in a hurry to reach some destination, when you hear the ominous and sinister sounds of a flat tire. In anger and frustration you pull the car to the side of the road, clamber out preparatory to soiling your hands, your clothes, and your disposition by replacing it. At this moment a farmer strolls up and asks the apparently casual question, "Gotta flat tire?" If one takes these words literally, one must conclude that the farmer is a fool or a blind man. But the psychological meaning of such an inquiry is quite different it is an awkward but somewhat conventionalized, way of saying some-

—

» S.

I.

Hayakawa, Language

in Action, Harcourt, Brace, 1941.

Love thing like the following: "Hello

—

I see

against

you are

Hate

231

in trouble.

I'm a stranger to you but I might be your friend now that I have a chance to be if I had any assurance that my friendship would be welcomed. Are you approachable? Are you a decent fellow? Would you appreciate it if I helped you? I would like to do so but I don't want to be rebuffed. This is what my voice sounds like. What does your voice sound like?"

Of course

this could be done in a more direct and busiway; the farmer could say, "I would be glad to help you, stranger." But people are too timid and mutually distrustful to be so direct. They want to hear one another's voices. People need reassurance that others are just like

nesslike

themselves. a good lawyer who does not have much ocupon Mr. Brown, president of the bank, and has a suspicion that Mr. Brown is a very crusty person who had best be let alone. He has no idea that Mr. Brown likes to sing "Sweet Adeline." Mr. Brown, on the other hand,

Mr. Jones

is

casion to call

who

frequently practises "Sweet Adeline" in the bathtub before parading to his very impressive bank, has secret ideas that Mr. Jones, the attorney, is a very intelligent, shrewd, and sophisticated fellow who would be disgusted to learn that the president of the bank sang in the bathtub or anywhere else. Therefore, when Mr. White, president of the Kiwanis Club, calls for a verse of "I Want a Girl Just Like

Dear Old Dad," what Mr. Brown and Mr. Jones learn about each other is not the fact that they were familiar with the same tune, but something a the Girl That Married

more important. Imperfect as clubs and organizations are in relieving individual loneliness, they do give practice in techniques of social intercourse, and they do furnish fellows who by joining the organization have indicated their accessibility to the other members. They offer a kind of reassurance against the fear of not belonging. The inherent danger in the group, the club, the society, the organization, however, seems to be the tendency to become static. The promise of a growth great deal

in friendship

is

often unfulfilled. There

is

rarely a suffi-

ciently strong central interest or unity of purpose to

keep

Karl Menninger

232

the group welded together in a sension, distrust, jealousy,

overwhelm the

common

goal; internal dis-

undue ambitiousness, and envy

erotic bond. Afraid of their

members shrink

own

hostilities,

and smaller units or cliques or compensate for their own hollowness by an overemphasis on the snobbishness and exclusiveness of the group. A typical example is the petty gossiping and mutual the

hostility of the

into

members

smaller

of the proverbial small-town sew-

ing circle.

more homogeneous the club, the greater The tendency of all groups to select members who in some way resemble each other leads to rivalry on the one hand and to staleness on the other. One prophylactic measure against this danger is the periodic infusion of new blood, the addition* of new members. This Naturally, the

the peril in this quarter.

requires a readjustment of the emotional linkages of aU

members and

affords intellectual stimulation as well. If the

differences between the

new members

are as great as their

resemblances, the club is strengthened to the extent that it can absorb the new and continue in a more cosmopolitan unity.

The person who can find resemblances in himself to many widely divergent groups has the chance to seek companionship in many places, and this is often the chief motivation in the person who is continually joining and organizing societies. What we see as a variety of interests in games, sports, hobbies, and study in one individual may actually be an unusually strong desire to know people and to be loved by them, which leads to an assiduousness in learning and doing what others are doing in order to be accepted in their circles.

am aware

som^

readers unfamiliar with psychodifficult to believe that the feelings of positive attraction that bind the members of groups and that bind doctor and patient are identical in nature with those bonds which exist between a lover and his sweetI

that

logical science will find

heart, or a

man and

it

his wife.

They

will fall

back upon the

conventional distinctions between liking and loving. But is no and loving

there

scientific justification for this distinction; liking

differ

only in intensity. If

we

leave aside large

Love against Hate

233

groups of people and think for a moment of those intimacies vyhich spring up between friends, let us say between two friends, there will be less difficulty in accepting the thesis. Whether it is between father and son, or father and daughter, or the fathers of two sons, the essential nature of the positive attraction and feeling is the same. It is true that it will be differently expressed, and this we shall presently discuss further.

The cultivation of friends and of friendships is certainly of more importance than is generally recognized. If friends are merely recreational resources or convenient distractions from the routine of life, the relationship with them is of

minimum

value psychologically; it can scarcely be called The man with no friends has already abandoned himself to the fate of his own self-destructiveness. Psychiatrists realize from clinical experience what poets have proclaimed in inspired verse, that to retreat permanently into the loneliness of one's own soul is to surrender one's claim friendship.

upon

life.

it is hard for human beings to really get tohard for even the best of friends to understand and to feel with one another sufficiently to promote a continuous, peaceful affection. This gives rise to that vague feeling with which we are all familiar of having parted from even our best friend without having fully expressed the affection we feel or fully realized the affection we hope he

But

gether;

at best it is

feels for us.

Observing the timid and conventional approaches which people make toward one another, the forced cordiality, the jovial and often crude "razzing" which they inflict on each other, the necessity many people feel to have a few drinks in order to "break the ice" and to feel closer to one another, the fatigue that sets in so quickly after a social round, one cannot help sensing the tremendous striving for love, appreciation and companionship that all people have, and also the barriers that prevent their receiving these gifts in full measure. Ferenczi said, "They want to love one another but they don't know how." Frustrated and hungry for a word, a touch, a smile, a shared experience that would satisfy this universal hunger, many people try feverishly to

234

Karl Menninger

the void with semblances of love: activity, popularity, there are thousands of ways of exphilanthropy, prestige

fill

—

tracting recognition in lieu of love,

none of them

satisfac-,

tory. less by the feeling that we are not appreby a dread, more or less dimly felt by everyone, lest others see through our masks, the masks of repression that have been forced upon us by convention and culture. It is this that leads us to shun intimacy, to maintain friendships on a superficial level, to underestimate and fail to

Love

is

impaired

ciated than

appreciate others lest they

come

to appreciate us only too

well. initial contact between two persons, each impress the other with a certain presentable front, a mixture of conventional and personal ideals. From this inevitably emerges, however, an expression of needs which either clash or reciprocate. In the latter case a friendship is begun through mutual satisfactions offered and received, with many reservations and concealments in the background. As time goes on and friendship "develops," more and more of this background material is revealed and friends become better "acquainted." Before complete identification in friendship or love can occur there must be some mutual understanding, and for the accomplishment of this we must study one another as well as ourselves. It is amazing how many friends, even marital partners, live out their lives in complete ignorance of one another's natures be-

Hence, in an

tries to

—

yond certain mechanical externals. Love is experienced as a pleasure in proximity, a desire for fuller knowledge of one another, a yearning for mutual identification and personality fusion. This we show to one another by our efforts to be understood, and by indulging

To be understood means, of course, that some of our worst impulses as well as our best ones are recognized by our friend, who knows all about us and likes us, anyway. Once this mutual understanding and identification are established, friendship merges into love. And how is it shown? "They do not love that do not show their love." In the vast majority of instances our love for one another is the less imperious longing to understand.

a

Love against Hate

235

expressed in nonphysical ways, in the interchange of ideas or the common enjoyment of some pleasure. One of the

time-honored forms is the ritual of eating (or drinking) tofood is the first expression of love which

gether. Being given

the child understands;

it is

his introduction to love.

Hence

the symbolic value of being fed remains high throughout

=

Love. It is understandable, In the unconscious Food why the dinner party or the social luncheon, for all its banality, is a perpetual medium of friendship. One of the first impulses of two people attracted to each other is to eat together, and while these occasions are generally thought of as mere expedients opportunities for conversation or a setting for courtship the symbolic meaning of the eating " is deeper than the conscious meaning of the words exchanged. The Christian religion recognizes this in the institution of a service in which an act of eating is actually designated "communion." The sharing of food as an expression of love, going back as it does to the maternal function of nursing, leads directly to the allied form of expressing love the giving of gifts. The child has little to give in return for the food given him, but that little he tries to give. As he grows older his gifts become more substantial, and represent increasingly sacrifice of something prized by him. The gift expresses love because it symbolizes the giver himself or an important part of himself; it may even be his life "greater love hath no man than this." Thus the gift is more than a bribe, a purchase price life.

therefore,

— —

—

—

—

—

we rebel in our minds against the thought "bought" or "earned" or "repaid"; nevertheless, it is a fact that a certain exchange is made and a certain balance is inevitably established. We do measure love and weigh it, even if not accurately. We are most inaccurate when we assume that the balance is in the favor of the recipient rather than the giver. That it is more blessed to give than to receive is psychologically true because giving offered for love; that love

is

that eating has an unconsdous aggressive to the primitive customs of devouring one's Against Himself, pages 40-46 and 122-123.) In the normal individual this meaning is deeply buried, while the erotic meaning is very near the surface of consciousness. 1*^

It

is

also

true,

of course,

meaning which extends back enemies.

(See

Man

236

Karl Menninger

while expressing it. "The mother gives By her giving she creates her love. To create love we must begin by sacrifice. Afterwards it is love that makes the sacrifices. But it is we who must take the first step." " Here then is a practical suggestion for the foslove

stimulates

[milk] to the child.

tering of love. in which love can be fostered is by talking has been said, in various forms and by several writers, that speech was given us for the purpose of disguising our thoughts. We do use it so, no doubt; and yet understanding does come through words finally, through many words and through more than words, for actions speak louder. Especially differences, disagreements, and dissatisor lovers. The factions should be talked out by friends reason that the course of true love never does run smoothly is the fact that true love can endure only if the provocations of anger and resentment which inevitably develop are freely expressed and discussed and readjusted to. I certainly do not mean wrangling; both parties must make some conscientious effort to achieve objectivity and not simply indulge in temper tantrums. "A soft answer turneth away wrath but grievous words stir up [more] anger." It always seemed to me significant that among the Jews, where there is such a noticeable tendency to express aggressions in

Another way

together.

It

—

—

argument and verbal combat, there are so few divorces and little physical violence. It is my idea that, even if the Roman Catholic church did not forbid it, divorce would still be infrequent among the Irish and Italians, because of their so

relatively great facility in expressing their emotions. It

is

often assumed by the silent, dignified, sulky Anglo-Saxon that the avoidance of verbal or even physical conflict be-

tween husband and wife promotes peace and happiness. story of the European peasant woman who wept because her husband had not beaten her for a month seems grotesquely and pathetically amusing, but it is psychologically true. If a woman has to choose between being ignored and being beaten she will certainly choose the latter. Although this might be construed as a recommendation of wife-beating, that is certainly not what I mean; I do mean

The

"Antoine de Saint-Exup^ry,

Flight to Arras, Reynal

&

Hitchcock, 1942.

,

Love against Hate

237

cannot be repressed or diverted, it is better to have them out than to have them in. Women, as a rule, have a greater fondness than men for "talking things over." They have some compulsion to discuss all the aspects of an interpersonal problem which men often shun, sometimes with justification. To such questions as, "Why didn't you remember our anniversary?" or "Why don't you love me more?" the real answer is unknown; the reasons are unconscious, and the man realizes this even if he knows nothing about psychoanalysis; he knows that anything he says is "wrong." His refusal to say anything, however, is frustrating to the woman. If we were to draw practical conclusions, we might say that such problems ought to be talked out more than they generally are and less than that

if

hostilities

some women want them to be. Perhaps more important than believe listening to be one of the

talking

is

just listening. I

most powerful and

influen-

techniques of human intercourse. The principal element uncritical in the technique of psychoanalysis is listening but attentive listening. good many hundreds of pages have been written about this in the technical literature, but I do not recall anything else so eloquent and, at the same time, so sound as an article by Brenda Ueland, published not in the Psychoanalytic Review, not in the American Journal of Psychiatry, not in the Journal of the American Medical Association (where perhaps it should have been) but in The Ladies' Home Journal! In the issue for November 1941 Miss Ueland writes: tial

—

A

Listening force.

.

.

.

is

The

a magnetic and strange thing, a creative friends that listen to us are the ones we

move toward, and we want it

to

sit

in their radius as

did us good, like ultraviolet rays.

.

.

.

though

When we

are

makes us unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life. ... It makes people happy and free when they are lis-

listened to,

it

creates us,

When we listen to people there is an alterto. nating current, and this recharges us so that we never get tired of each other. are constantly being re-created.

tened

.

.

.

We

Now there

are brilliant people

who cannot listen much.

Karl Menninger

238

They have no ingoing wires on

their apparatus.

They

are

because these lecturers, these brilliant performers, by not giving us a chance to talk, do not let us express our thoughts and expand; and it is this expressing and expanding that makes the little creative fountain inside us begin to spring and cast up new thoughts and unexpected laughter and wisentertaining but exhausting too. I think

it is

dom. I

discovered

all this

about three years ago, and truly life. Before that,

made a revolutionary change in my when I went to a party I would think it

anxiously:

"Now

Say bright things. Talk. Don't let down." And when tired, I would have to drink a lot of coffee to keep this up. But now before going to a party, I just tell myself to listen with affection to anyone who talks to me, to be in their shoes when they talk; to try to

try hard.

Be

lively.

know them without my mind

pressing against theirs, or

arguing, or changing the subject.

No.

My

attitude

is:

more. This person is showing me his soul. It is a little dry and meager and full of grinding talk just now, but presently he will begin to think, not just automatically to talk. He will show his true self. Then he will be won"Tell

me

derfully alive."

I

.

.

.

have quoted Miss Ueland's

article

because

it

is

said

more feelingly than I could say it. The technique of listening was not invented by the psychoanalysts; it was only developed by them, and it is clear that Miss Ueland knows about it intuitively. She is discerning enough to recognize that the power of listening derives more

effectively,

from the affection that it represents and the affection that from putting oneself in the other person's place.

springs

This capacity for identification is not given to all people. I confess I cannot decide in my own mind whether love is determined by identification or identification by love. All that I am sure of is that they go together. This does not contradict what I have previously said, that some identifications are unconsciously hostile in intent; I am not speaking now of unconscious identification, the psychological process I am speaking of conscious identification, the

—

i

Love

against

Hate

239

conscious attempt to imagine or to perceive how the other fellow feels. This is an art; perhaps it is the basic art of love. At any rate, it is difficult for love to flourish without it.

Identification leads by extension to a wish for fusion. This fusion may be idealistic, it may be intellectual, it may be social, it may be physical. In a general way, these are the steps in the program of love. In his Symposium, Plato put into the mouth of Aristophanes the following legendary explanation of this striving for fusion:

Human

nature was once quite other than now. Origiwere three sexes, three and not as today two; besides the male and the female there existed a third sex which had an equal share in the first two. ... In these beings everything was double; thus they had four hands and four feet, two faces, two genital parts, and so on. Then Zeus allowed himself to be persuaded to cut these beings in two, as one divides pears to stew them. When all nature was divided in this way, to each human being came the longing for his own other half, and the two halves embraced and entwined their bodies and desired to grow together again. nally, there

.

.

.

To accomplish this fusion is the object To promote it in every known way

pulse.

tion for happier living.

We

of the love imis the prescriphave spoken of the function of

eating together, exchanging gifts, talking and listening to one another for the furtherance of this mutual identifica-

Two more practical devices which can be used in the furtherance of the process are work and play. Working together has been made difficult for husbands and wives by the advance of civilization. On the contrary, the increasing subdivision of labor and the development of co-operative enterprise whereby many people work together on a project has developed other outlets for love, especially for men, which wives frequently feel to be a threat to marital love or a distraction from it. There is no question but that people who work together grow to love one another. But it is a mistake to assume that love is a limited quantity which if expressed in one direction and

tion.

240

Karl Menninger

toward one object is thereby subtracted from another. The capacity for love normally increases with the opportunities and occasions given it for development; the man who is loved and beloved by his fellow workmen is usually the man who loves and is loved by his wife. The real danger in working apart from each other is the separation of interests and the consequent loss of opportunity for sharing experiences

—

the opportunity that provides further identification. that they can work tofeel the necessity of de-

Many husbands and wives find gether fruitfully. But many others

fending themselves against too complete an identification with each other, and these keep their work as a kind of island of separateness, a domain of their own. This is particularly true of the man who feels that his masculine independence is threatened by feminine help, or of the woman who fears that her personality will be submerged in a man's children and a ambitions. And, of course, real obstacles make it impossible lack of similar educational preparation for most couples to work at the same occupation, even if

—

—

they wish to do so. Nevertheless, the more people work together the more tolerance, understanding, and love they tend to have for each other; and wise husbands and wives will find ways to utilize this fact in such projects as

for their

own home,

planting

its

making furniture

grounds, keeping accounts,

and sharing the care of their children. But if working together has been made harder for husbands and wives, playing together has been made easier. The increasing participation of women in sports is one evidence of this, and a salutary sign. The great numbers of people who swim together, hike together, play together, attend football games together, speak for the intuitive recognition of the generation of love by the joint experience of the pleasure of recreation. All this proves that in addition to the harmless discharge of aggressions involved in play there

is

a fostering

and reinforcing of love by the simul-

taneous enjoyment of play. The more people play together the better they like one another. Family outings and vacation trips certainly do far more to promote morality and prevent divorce than the League of Decency.

Chapter 3

There remains to be discussed finally the function of physical union in the expression and cultivation of love. Logical and obvious though this may be, it is a curious fact that until relatively recent times love was not considered an aspect of the sexual life. In discussing this, Havelock Ellis said " that while our concept of love is found, it is true, among some lower races, its development in Occidental civilization was slow.

The Greek

poets, except the latest,

showed

little

recog-

nition of love as an element of marriage. Theognis

com-

pared marriage with cattle-breeding. The Romans of the Republic took much the same view. Greeks and Romans alike regarded breeding as the one recognizable object of marriage; any other object was mere wantonness and had better, they thought, be carried on outside marriage. Religion, which preserves so many ancient and primitive conceptions of life, has consecrated this conception also, and Christianity ... at the outset offered only the choice between celibacy on the one hand and, on the other, marriage for the production of offspring.

Yet, from an early period in human history, a secondary function of sexual intercourse had been slowly growing up to become one of the great objects of marriage. Among animals, it may be said, and even sometimes in man, the sexual impulse, when once aroused, makes but a short and swift circuit through the brain to reach its consummation. But as the brain and its faculties develop, powerfully aided indeed by the very difficulties of the sexual life, the impulse for sexual union has to traverse ever longer, slower, more painful paths before it reaches and sometimes it never reaches its ultimate object. This means that sex gradually becomes intertwined with all the highest and subtlest human emotions and activities, with the refinements of social intercourse, with

— .

—

»

12 Havelock Ellis, On Life City Pub. Co., 1937, 1:64-66.

—

.

.

and Sex: Essays

of

Love and Virtue, Garden

— Karl Menninger

242

high adventure in every sphere, with art, with religion. The primitive animal instinct, having the sole end of procreation, becomes on its way to that end the inspiring stimulus to all those psychic energies which in civilization

we count most

precious. This function

is

we

thus,

by-product. But, as we know, even in our human factories, the by-product is sometimes more valuable than the product. see, a

all that has been said popular attitude towards sexual pleasure is still largely a mixture of salaciousness and shame. Such pleasure is still regarded officially as some-

It is

surely

and done

no

secret that, despite

scientifically, the

thing incidental to the serious business of procreation, and

—apart from am

that

—

sinful, bestial,

and unmentionable.

.

.

.

not such a dreamer as to suppose that any words or, for that matter, anything that a thousand of mine psychiatrists or ten thousand philosophers might say could revolutionize or even considerably alter the prevalent social attitudes. Yet we know that they do change, that they are changing, and this gives us some hope for the future and some encouragement to speak out our thoughts, howI

—

ever feeble their effect may seem to be. That the world does change in its attitudes is hard for us to realize: it seems incredible that less than sixty years ago a book of poems by that most conventional, trite, Victorian poet, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, should have been assailed with fury as "immoral" a fact as incredible as is the fact that the man

—

whom

Miss Wheeler had just become engaged wistfully pleaded with her to withdraw the book from publication.^^ to

Not only

in regard to sex, but in regard to

all

human

been a vast change in social attitudes. In spite of human frailties and errors, we may ultimately achieve a less artificial, more psychologically sound civirights there has

lization. It

is

not impossible to conceive of a time

the expression of love

—

fests itself

"

will

in all the

be as natural, as

Katherine Woods, in a review in the

1940, of Period Piece: Jenny Ballou. 4,

—

The

Life

which spontaneous, and forms

in

New York Times

tnd Times

of Ella

it

as

when mani-

mag-

"Books," Feb. Wheeler Wilcox by

Love nificently organized as

the present

is

against

Hate

243

the expression of rage and hate at

moment. ...

But before that day comes we shall have learned more about ourselves. We shall have conceded the existence of evil within us, of aggressive tendencies that cannot be permitted to find their expression spontaneously, following a course of least resistance. We shall have revised our ways of living to include more play, and our ways of working to insure more joy in work. The study of the child and the threats to his development will have been recognized not as a pretty little hobby for a few earnest missionaries and pedants but as a task equal in importance to the study of the stock-market and the compounding of poisonous gases. We shall have put a higher estimate upon the beautiful as a criterion of creativeness. "When we discern the influence of creation predominating we are moved by something we caU beauty, when we see destruction we recoil at the ugly. Our need for beauty springs from the gloom and pain which we experience from our destructive impulses to our good and loved objects; our wish is to find in art evidence of the triumph of life over death; we recognize the

power of death when we say a thing is ugly."" We shall have gained the courage in that day to hate what is ugly. We shall have accorded to love the pre-eminence which it deserves in our scale of values; we shall seek it and proclaim it as the highest virtue and the greatest boon. We shall not be ashamed to have "suffered much extremity for is the medicine for the sickness of the world, a prescription often given, too rarely taken. shall have realigned our faith in God to

love," in the full realization that love

We

include

more

faith in

tifications to include

and daughters is

human more

in a vastly

and extended our iden-

beings,

brothers,

more

sisters,

more sons

wider family concept. "For love

the desire of the whole, and the pursuit of the whole

is

called love." Plato said this, even before Jesus taught that

"God

is

love,"

which means the same

thing.

This goal is not unattainable in spite of past errors and present vicissitudes. For we have the courage to hope and

" John Rickman, "The Nature

of Ugliness

Int. /. Psa., 21:294-313, July 1930, p. 313.

and the Creative Impulse,"

244

Karl Menninger

power to love. And for all the evil within us, we cannot escape the will to Hve. From that springs our determination to better our lot. By the use of our intelHgence and our knowledge we can use the slave of science for the promotion of human happiness. Speed the dayl the

part three

The Power of Love

17.

Love and Let Love

D. H. Lawrence

Called by the critic F. R. Leavis the greatest creative Lawrence challenged the dehumanizing trends in modem life. recent biographer points out that Lawrence was "very near the centre of a great revolution of sensibility that may be uncompleted yet." The indomitable vitality of Lawrence's ideas resists cynicism and makes him still one of the sharpest analysts of the decay of contemporary ideals. For Lawrence love is the integrating adventure which opens up our vision of reality and gives us strength to struggle against fate. In this essay, originally titled "Do Women Change?", Lawrence exhorts us in his characteristically intimate, ebullient style to stop seeking for the point of love and to flow naturally and unsentimentally into the intermingling stream of feelings that love is. Reprinted from Assorted Articles by D. H. Lawrence, copyright 1928, 1929, 1930 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. By permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. writer in English of our time, D. H.

A

.

.

.

Love and Let Love

They

teU of all the things that are going to happen in the babies bred in bottle, all the love-nonsense cut out,

future

—

women bosh.

indistinguishable

We

Uke

to imagine

from men. But

we

it

seems to

are something very

me

new on

'246

D. H. Lawrence

it seems to me we flatter ourselves. Motor-cars and aeroplanes are something novel, if not something new one could draw a distinction. But the people in them are merely people, and not many steps up, if any, it seems to me, from the people who went in litters or palanquins or chariots, or who walked on foot from Egypt to Jordan, in the days of Moses. Humanity seems that to have an infinite capacity for remaining the same

the face of the earth. But

—

—

is,

human. Of course, there

are all kinds of ways of being human; expect almost every possible kind is alive and kicking to-day. There are Httle Cleopatras and Zenobias and Semiramises and Judiths and Ruths, and even Mother Eves, to-

but

I

day

just the

same

as in all the endless yesterdays.

make them

Circum-

Cleopatras and little Semiramises instead of big ones, because our age goes in for quantity regardless of quality. But sophisticated people are sophisticated people, no matter whether it is Egypt or Atlantis. And sophisticated people are pretty well all alike. All that varies is the proportion of "modern" people to all the other stances

little

unmodern

sorts, the sophisticated to the unsophisticated. to-day there is a huge majority of sophisticated people. And they are probably very little different from all the other sophisticated people of all the other civilisations,

And

man was man. And women are just part

since

of the human show. They aren*t something apart. They aren't something new on the face of the earth, like the loganberry or artificial silk. Women are as sophisticated as men, anyhow, and they were neve anything but women, and they are nothing but women to-day, whatever they may think of themselves. They sa' the modern woman is a new type. But is she? I expect, in fact I am sure, there have been lots of women like ours in the past, and if you'd been married to one of them, you wouldn't have found her any different from your present wife. Women are women. They only have phases. In Rome, in Syracuse, in Athens, in Thebes, more than two or three thousand years ago, there was the bob-haired, painted, perfumed Miss and Mrs. of to-day, and she inspired almost

Love and Let Love and Mrses. inspire I

—

a modern young man modern young woman leaning on an hotel balcony

saw

and

men.

in the

a

a joke in a

German paper

overlooking the sea. He: "See the stars sinking

at night,

down over the dark restless ocean!" She: "Cut room number is 32!" That ''Cut

My

modem: the very modem women in Capri under Tiberias said their Roman and Campanian lovers in just And women in Alexandria in Cleopatra's

believe

I

out" to

it

out!

it

supposed to be very

is

woman. But the

247

perfumed Misses

exactly the feelings that our painted and

same way.

time. Certain phases of history are "modem." As the wheel of history goes round women become "moderai," then they become unmodem again. The Roman women of the late Empire were most decidedly "modem" so were the

—

women

Ptolemaic

of

women. Only

Egypt.

True

modem

cut-it-out

the hotels were run differently.

Modernity or modernism isn't something we've It's something that comes at the end of

vented.

tions. Just as leaves in

the end of every tian, etc.

autumn

known

are yellow, so the

just incivilisa-

women

at

—Roman, Greek, Egyp-

civilisation

—have been modern. They were

chic, they said cut-it-out,

and they did

smart, they were

as they jolly well

pleased.

And then, after all, how woman? You give her

in a

don't give a

woman

cuts

it

it

is

out

deep does modemness go? Even a run for her

her, she takes

it.

The

—

all

the stars

—Come

if

you

modemness

—

in

Oh, cut it out, boy! So the boy and ocean stuff. My room num-

that she says:

ber's thirty-two!

money; and

sign of

—

to the point!

But the point, when you come to

it, is a very bare little very meagre little affair. It's extraordinary how meagre the point is once you've come to it. It's not much better than a full-stop. So the modern girl comes to the point brutally and repeatedly, to find that her life is a series of full-stops, then a mere string of dots. Cut it out, When she comes to dot number one thousand, boy! she's getting about tired of dots, and of the plain point she's come to. The point is all too plain and too obvious. It

place,

a

.

.

.

248 is

D. H. Lawrence

so pointed that

dots

comes

it

a blank

is

—a

Following the series of dead blank. There's nothing left

pointless.

to cut out. Blank-eye!

Then the thoroughly modern girl begins to moan: Oh, boy, do put something in again! And the thoroughly modern boy, having cut it out so thoroughly that it will never grow again, tunes up with: I can't give you anyAnd the thoroughly modern girl thing but love, Baby! accepts it with unction. She knows it's nothing but a most crest-fallen echo from the sentimental past. But when

—

—

you've cut everything out so that it will never grow again, you are thankful even for echoes from a sentimental past. And so the game begins again. Having cut it out, and brought it down to brass tacks, you find brass tacks are Oh, boy, aren't the last thing you want to lie down on. you going to do something about it? And the boy, having cut it all out so that it won't grow again, has no other bright inspiration but to turn the brass tacks round, when lo, they become the brass-headed nails that go around Victorian plush furniture. And there they are, the hypermodern two. No, women don't change. They only go through a rather regular series of phases. They are first the slave; then the obedient helpmeet; then the respected spouse; then the noble matron; then the splendid woman and citizen; then the independent female; then the modern girl, oh, cut-it-out, boy! And when the boy has cut it all out, the mills of God grind on, and having nothing else to grind, they grind

—

the cut-it-out girl down, down,

know where

—but probably

down

—

—back —we to

to the slave once more,

don't

and the

whole cycle starts afresh, on and on, till in the course of a thousand years or two we come once more to the really "modern" girl. Oh, cut it out, boy! A lead-pencil has a point, an argument may have a point, remarks may be pointed, and a man who wants to borrow five pounds from you only comes to the point when he asks you for the fiver. Lots of things have points: especially weapons. But where is the point to life? Where is the point to love? Where, if it comes to the point, is the point to r bunch of violets? There is no point. Life and love are life

Love and Let Love bunch of

249

and to drag in the idea of a point is to ruin everything. Live and let live, love and let love, flower and fade, and follow the natural curve, which flows on, pointless. Now women used to understand this better than men. Men, who were keen on weapons, which all have points, used to insist on putting points to life and love. But women and

love, a

bunch of

violets

is

a

violets,

used to know better. They used to know that life is a flow, a soft curving flow, a flowing together and a flowing apart and a flowing together again, in a long subtle motion that has no full-stops and no points, even if there 'are rough places. Women used to see themselves as a softly flowing stream of attraction and desire and beauty, soft quiet rivers of energy and peace. Then suddenly the idea changes. They see themselves as isolated things, independent females, instruments, instruments for love, instruments for work, instruments for politics, instruments for pleasure, this, that and the other. And as instruments they become pointed and they want everything, even a small child, even love itself, to have a point. When women start coming to the point, they don't hesitate. They pick a daisy, and they say: There must be a point to this daisy, and I'm going to get at it. So they start pulling off the white petals, till there are none left. Then they pull away the yellow bits of the centre, and come to a mere green part, still without having come to the point. Then in disgust they tear the green base

—

of the flower across, and say:

had no point

to

I call

that a fool flower. It

it!

not a question of points, but a question of flow. you come to think of it, a daisy even is like a little river flowing, that never for an instant stops. From the time when the tiny knob of a bud appears down among the leaves, during the slow rising up a stem, the slow swelling and pushing out the white petaltips from the green, to the full round daisy, white and gold and gay, that opens and shuts through a few dawns, a few nights, poised on the summit of her stem, then silently shrivels and mysteriously disappears, there is no stop, no halt, it is a perpetual little streaming of a gay little life out into full radiance and delicate shrivelling, like a perfect litLife

It's

is

the flow that matters. If

—

250 tie

Simone de Beauvoir

fountain that flows and flows, and shoots

into the invisible, even then without

any

away

at last

stop.

and especially with love. There is no nothing you can cut out, except falsity, which isn't love or life. But the love itself is a flow, two little streams of feeling, one from the woman, one from the man, that flow and flow and never stop, and sometimes they twinkle with stars, sometimes they chafe, but still they flow on, intermingling; and if they rise to a floweriness like a daisy, that is part of the flow; and they will inevitably die down again, which is also part of a flow. And one relationship may produce many flowerinesses, as a daisy plant produces many daisies; but they will all die down again as the summer passes, though the green plant itself need not die. If flowers didn't fade they wouldn't be flowers, they'd be artificial things. But there are roots to faded flowers and in the root the flow continues and continues. And only the flow matters; live and let live, love and let love. There is no point to love. So

is

it

point.

with

There

18.

life,

is

The Woman

in

Love

Simone de Beauvoir

The

difference in their existential situations rather than laws of nature accounts for the difference men and women show in their conceptions of love, Simone de Beauvoir says.

Without love the woman is nonexistent. The man possesses and integrates the beloved woman into istence; while she finds her destiny in abdication.

woman loved.

will nt>t fully yield unless she believes she

The

is

his ex-

But a deeply

man woman

esteem, affection and admiration of the

eliminates the sense of abasement by offering the

a

in love

way toward transcendence This, in outline,

is

of her essential dependence. the theme of this chapter drawn from

The

Woman

Love

in

251

Mme. de

Beauvoir's profound and unique study, The Second Sex, which challenges many interpretations and myths of the feminine personality. leading French intellectual, with her Ph.D. from the Sorbonne, Simone de Beauvoir has written plays, essays and novels including The Blood

A

The Mandarins. Reprinted from The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir, translated from the French by H. M. Parshley, copyright 1952 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. By permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. of Others and

The Woman

in

Love

means the same sense for both one cause of the serious misunderstandings that divide them. Byron well said: "Man's love is of man's life a thing apart; 'Tis woman's whole existence." Nietzsche

The word sexes,

and

love has by no

this

expresses the

The

is

same idea

single

things for

in

word love

The Gay Science: in fact signifies

two

man and woman. What woman clear enough:

different

understands

is not only devotion, it is a without reservation, without regard for anything whatever. This unconditional nature of her love is what makes it a faith,^ the only one she ^ has. As for man, if he loves a woman, what he wants is that love from her; he is in consequence far from postulating the same sentiment for himself as for woman; if there should be men who also felt that desire for complete abandonment, upon my word, they would not be

by love

is

total gift of

Men have

body and

found

it

it

soul,

possible to be passionate lovers at cer-

tain times in their lives, but there

could be called "a great lover"; 1 2

Nietzsche's italics. the sense that

In

amoureuse."

—Tr.

a

woman may

^

is

not one of them

in their

most violent

sometimes be called

who

trans-

"une grande

— 252

Simone de Beauvoir

even on their knees before a mistress, what they still want is to take possession of her; at the very heart of their lives they remain sovereign subjects; the beloved woman is only one value among others; they wish to integrate her into their existence and not to squander it entirely on her. For woman, on the contrary, to love is to relinquish everything for the benefit of a master. As Cecile Sauvage puts it: "Woman must forget her own personality when she is in love. It is a law of nawoman is nonexistent v/ithout a master. Without a ture. master, she is a scattered bouquet." The fact is that we have nothing to do here with laws of nature. It is the difference in their situations that is reflected in the difference men' and women show in their conceptions

ports, they never abdicate completely;

A

of love. The individual who is a subject, who is himself, if he has the courageous inclination toward transcendence, endeavors to extend his grasp on the world: he is ambi-

he acts. But an inessential creature is incapable of sensing the absolute at the heart of her subjectivity; a being doomed to immanence cannot find self-realization in acts. Shut up in the sphere of the relative, destined to the

tious,

male from childhood, habituated to seeing in him a superb being whom she cannot possibly equal, the woman who has not repressed her claim to humanity will dream of transcending her being toward one of these superior beings, of amalgamating herself with the sovereign subject. There is no other way out for her than to lose herself, body and soul, in him who is represented to her as the absolute, as the essential. Since she is anyway doomed to dependence, she will prefer to serve a god rather than obey tyrants parents, husband, or protector. She chooses to desire her enslavement so ardently that it will seem to her the expression of her liberty; she will try to rise above her situation as inessential object by fully accepting it; through her flesh, her feelings, her behavior, she will enthrone him as supreme value and reality: she will humble herself to nothingness before him. Love becomes for her a religion. As we have seen, the adolescent girl wishes at first to identify herself with males; when she gives that up, she then seeks to share in their masculinity by having one of

— The them

Woman

in

Love

253

not the individuahty of this one or that one which attracts her; she is in love with man in general.' "And you, the men I shall love, how I await you!" writes Irene Reweliotty. "How I rejoice to think I shall know you soon: especially You, the first." Of course the male is to belong to the same class and race as hers, for sexual privilege is in play only within this frame. If man is to be a demigod, he must first of all be a human being, and to the colonial officer's daughter the native is not a man. If the young girl gives herself to an "inferior," it is for the reason that she wishes to degrade herself because she believes she is unworthy of love; but normally she is looking for a man who represents male superiority. She is soon to ascertain that many individuals of the favored sex are sadly contingent and earthbound, but at first her presumption is favorable to them; they are called on less to prove their worth than to avoid too gross a disproof of it which accounts for many mistakes, some of them serious. naive young girl is caught by the gleam of virility, and in her eyes male worth is shown, according to circumstances, by physical strength, distinction of manner, wealth, cultivation, intelligence, authority, social status, a military uniform; but what she always wants is for her lover to represent the essence of manhood. Familiarity is often sufficient to destroy his prestige; it may collapse at the first kiss, or in daily association, or durin love

with her;

it is

—

A

ing

the

wedding

night.

Love

at

a

distance, however,

is

only a fantasy, not a real experience. The desire for love becomes a passionate love only when it is carnally realized. Inversely, love can arise as a result of physical intercourse; in this case the sexually dominated woman acquires an exalted view of a man who at first seemed to her quite insignificant.

But it often happens that a woman succeeds in deifying none of the men she knows. Love has a smaller place in woman's life than has often been supposed. Husband, children, home, amusements, social duties, vanity, sexuality, career, are much more important. Most women dream of 3

lar

Haenigsen's newspaper comic strip "Penny" gives never flagging popuexpression to this truth. Tr.

254

Simone de Beauvoir

grand amour, a soul-searing love. They have known substitutes, they have been close to it; it has come to them in partial, bruised, ridiculous, imperfect, mendacious forms; but very few have truly dedicated their lives to it. The grandes amoureuses are most often women who have not frittered themselves away in juvenile affairs; they have first accepted the traditional feminine destiny: husband, home, children; or they have known pitiless solitude; or they have banked on some enterprise that has been more or a

And when

they glimpse the opportunity by dedicating it to some superior person, they desperately give themselves up to this d'Agoult were hope. Mile Aisse, Juliette Drouet, and almost thirty when their love-life began, Julie de Lespinasse

less

of a failure.

to salvage a disappointing life

Mme

not far from forty. No other aim in life which seemed worth while was open to them, love was their only way out. Even if they can choose independence, this road seems the most attractive to a majority of women: it is agonizing for a woman to assume responsibility for her life. Even the male, when adolescent, is quite willing to turn to older women for guidance, education, mothering; but customary attitudes, the boy's training, and his own inner imperatives forbid him to content himself in the end with the easy solution of abdication; to him such affairs with older women are only a stage through which he passes. It fortune in adulthood as in early childhood

—

is

—

man's good

to be obliged

most arduous roads, but the surest; it is woman's misfortune to be surrounded by almost irresistible temptations; everything incites her to follow the easy slopes; insead of being invited to fight her own way up, she is told that she has only to let herself slide and she will attain paradises of enchantment. When she perceives that she has been duped by a mirage, it is too late; her strength has been exhausted in a losing venture. The psychoanalysts are wont to assert that woman seeks the father image in her lover; but it is because he is a man, not because he is a father, that he dazzles the girl child, and every man shares in this magical power. Woman does not long to reincarnate one individual in another, but to reconstruct a situation: that which she experienced as a litto take the

The

Woman

in

Love

255

under adult protection. She was deeply integrated with home and family, she knew the peace of quasi-passivity. Love will give her back her mother as well as her father, it will give her back her childhood. What she wants tie girl,

to recover

from

is

a roof over her head, walls that prevent her

feeling her

abandonment

wide world, authority

in the

that protects her against her liberty. This childish

drama

many women;

they are happy to be called "my little girl, my dear child"; men know that the words: "you're just like a little girl," are among those that most surely touch a woman's heart. We have seen that many women suffer in becoming adults; and so a great number remain obstinately "babyish," prolonging their childhood indefinitely in manner and dress. To become like a child again in a man's arms fills their cup with joy. The hackneyed theme: "To feel so little in your arms, my love," recurs again and again in amorous dialogue and in love letters. "Baby mine," croons the lover, the woman calls

haunts the love of

herself "your

"When

little

A

one," and so on.

young woman

will

he come, he who can dominate me?" And when he comes, she will love to sense his manly superiority. A neurotic studied by Janet illustrates this attiwrite:

will

tude quite clearly: All my foolish acts and all the good things I have done have the same cause: an aspiration for a perfect and ideal love in which I can give myself completely, entrust my being to another, God, man, or woman, so superior to me that I will no longer need to think what Someone to to do in life or to watch over myself. who will bear me obey blindly and with confidence up and lead me gently and lovingly toward perfection. How I envy the ideal love of Mary Magdalen and Jesus: to be the ardent disciple of an adored and worthy master; to live and die for him, my idol, to win at last the victory of the Angel over the beast, to rest in his pro.

.

.

.

.

.

arms, so small, so lost in his loving care, so wholly his that I exist no longer.

tecting

Many

examples have already shown us that

this

dream

Simone de Beauvoir

256

of annihilation is in fact an avid will to exist. In all religions the adoration of God is combined with the devotee's concern with personal salvation; when woman gives her-

completely to her idol, she hopes that he will give her once possession of herself and of the universe he represents. In most cases she asks her lover first of all for the justification, the exaltation, of her ego. Many women do self

at

not abandon themselves to love unless they are loved in return; and sometimes the love shown them is enough to arouse their love. The young girl dreamed of herself as seen through men's eyes, and it is in men's eyes that the woman believes she has finally found herself. Cecile Sau-

vage writes:

To walk by your

side, to step

forward with

my

little

them so tiny in their highheeled shoes with felt tops, makes me love all the love you throw around me. The least movements of my hands you

feet that

in

my

voice,

love, to feel

my arms, of with happiness.

muff, of fill

me

my

face, the tones of

my

The woman in love feels endowed with a high and undeniable value; she is at last allowed to idolize herself through the love she inspires. She is overjoyed to find in her lover a witness. This is what Colette's Vagabonde declares

:

I

admit

I

yielded, in permitting this

a friend, but an eager spectator of son.

.

.

.

one day,

One must be to

man

to

him not

the next day, to the desire to keep in

my

terribly old,

life

come back a lover, not

and

Margot

my

said to

per-

me

renounce the vanity of living under some-

one's gaze.

In one of her letters to Middleton Murry, Katherine Mansfield wrote that she had just bought a ravishing mauve corset; she at once added: "Too bad there is no one to see it!" There is nothing more bitter than to feel oneself but the flower, the perfume, the treasure, which is the object of no desire: what kind of wealth is it that does not enrich

The

Woman

in

Love

257

myself and the gift of which no one wants? Love is the developer that brings out in clear, positive detail the dim negative, otherwise as useless as a blank exposure. Through love, woman's face, the curves of her body, her childhood meqiories, her former tears, her gowns, her accustomed ways, her universe, everything she is, all that belongs to her, escape contingency and become essential: she is a wondrous offering at the foot of the altar of her god. This transforming power of love explains why it is that men of prestige who know how to flatter feminine vanity will arouse passionate attachments even if they are quite lacking in physical charm. Because of their lofty positions they embody the Law and the Truth: their perceptive powers disclose an unquestionable reality. The woman who finds favor in their sight feels herself transformed into a priceless treasure. D'Annunzio's success was due to this, as Isadora Duncan explains in the introduction to My Life:

When D'Annunzio loves a woman, he lifts her spirit from this earth to the divine region where Beatrice moves and shines. In turn he transforms each woman to a part of the divine essence, he carries her aloft until she

... He flung over each favorite in turn a shining veil. She rose above the heads of ordinary mortals and walked surrounded by a strange radiance. But when the caprice of the poet ended, this veil vanished, the radiance was eclipsed, and the woman turned again to common clay. ... To hear onebelieves herself really with Beatrice.

with that magic peculiar to D'Annunzio is, imagine, something like the experience of Eve when she heard the voice of the serpent in Paradise. D'Annunzio can make any woman feel that she is the centre of the

self praised I

universe.

^nly

in love

can

woman

icism and her narcissism;

harmoniously reconcile her erotwe have seen that these senti-

in such a manner that it is very difficult to adapt herself to her sexual destiny. To make herself a carnal object, the prey of another, is in contradic-

ments are opposed for a

woman

tion to her self- worship

:

it

seems to her that embraces

— Simone de Beauvoir

258

and sully her body or degrade her soul. Thus it some women take refuge in frigidity, thinking that

blight

that

is

in

way

they can preserve the integrity of the ego. Others and lofty sentiment. In one of Stekel's cases the patient was frigid with her respected and eminent husband and, after his death, with an equally superior man, a great musician, whom she sincerely loved. But in an almost casual encounter with a rough, brutal forester she found complete physical satisfaction, "a wild intoxication followed by indescribable disgust" when she thought of her lover. Stekel remarks that "for many women a descent into animality is the necessary condition for orgasm." Such women see in physical love a debasement incompatible with esteem and affection. But for other women, on the contrary, only the esteem, affection, and admiration of the man can eliminate the sense of abasement. They will not yield to a man unless woman must have a they believe they are deeply loved. considerable amount of cynicism, indifference, or pride to regard physical relations as an exchange of pleasure by which each partner benefits equally. As much as woman this

dissociate animal pleasure

A

and perhaps more

—man

revolts against

anyone who

at-

tempts to exploit him sexually; * but it is woman who generally feels that her partner is using her as an instrument. Nothing but high admiration can compensate for the humiliation of an act that she considers a defeat. We have seen that the act of love requires of woman profound self-abandonment; she bathes in a passive languor; with closed eyes, anonymous, lost, she feels as if borne by waves, swept away in a storm, shrouded in darkness: darkness of the flesh, of the womb, of the grave. Annihilated, she becomes one with the Whole, her ego is abolished. But when the man moves from her, she finds herself back on earth, on a bed, in the light; she again has a name, a face: she is one vanquished, prey, object. This is the moment when love becomes a necessity. As

when *

the child, after weaning, seeks the reassuring gaze of

Lawrence, for example, in Lady Chatterley's Lover, expresses through women who make a man an instrument of pleas-

Mellors his aversion for ure.

The its

parents, so

must a

woman

contemplation, that she

Whole from which her

is,

Woman

in

Love

259

through the man's loving after all, still at one with the feel,

now

painfully detached. She she has felt the orgasm, she is not set completely free from the spell of her flesh; her desire continues in the form of affection. In giving her pleasure, the man increases her attachment, he does not liberate her. As for him, he no longer desires her; but she will not pardon this momentary indifference unless he has dedicated to her a timeless and absolute emotion. Then the immanence of the moment is transcended; hot memories are no regret, but a treasured delight; ebbing pleasure becomes hope and promise; enjoyment is justified; woman can gloriously accept her sexuality because she transcends it; excitement, pleasure, desire are no longer a state, but a benefaction; her body is no longer an object: it is a hymn, is

seldom wholly

flesh is

satisfied

even

if

a flame.

Then she can yield with passion to the magic of eroticism; darkness becomes light; the loving woman can open her eyes, can look upon the man who loves her and whose gaze glorifies her; through him nothingness becomes fullness of being, and being is transmuted into worth; she no longer sinks in a sea of shadows, but is borne up on wings,

the skies. Abandon becomes sacred ecstasy. she receives her beloved, woman is dwelt in, visited, as was the Virgin by the Holy Ghost, as is the believer by the Host. This is what explains the obscene resemblance between pious hymns and erotic songs; it is not that mystical love always has a sexual character, but that the sexuality of the woman in love is tinged with mysticism. "My God, my adored one, my lord and master" the same words fall from the lips of the saint on her knees and the loving woman on her bed; the one offers her flesh to the thunderbolt of Christ, she stretches out her hands to receive the stigmata of the Cross, she calls for the burning presence of divine Love; the other, also, offers and awaits: thunderbolt, dart, arrow, are incarnated in the male sex organ. In both women there is the same dream, the childhood dream, the

exalted to

When

—

mystic dream, the dream of love: to attain supreme exist. ence through losing oneself in the other. .

.

19.Altruistic Love

Pitirim Sorokin

contemporaries have devoted as much thought and energy as has this distinguished Russian-American sociologist to the problem of how to use the power inherent in man's capacity to love to make human beings less

Few

insistent

and more creative. Prof. Sorokin, who directs the Harvard Research Center in Creative Altruism, said in a selfish

recent interview, "I came to the conclusion that if individual human beings, groups and cultural institutions in general did not become notably more creatively altruistic, noth-

Popular prescriptions, such as changes, religious changes, and education as a panacea against war, won't do it. This century, in which science and education have reached unrivalled heights, is the bloodiest of all the twenty-five centuries of Grecoing could save mankind.

political

Roman and European

history."

of Sorokin's central concepts, developed in Man and Society in Calamity, is his law of polarization "which runs contrary to the Freudian claim that calamity and

One

uniformly generate aggression, and contrary by Toynbee, that they lead uniformly to the moral and spiritual ennoblement of human beings." "What the law of polarization holds," Sorokin continues, "is that, depending upon the type of personality, frustrations and misfortunes may be reacted to and overcome by positive polarization, resulting either in an increased creative effort (consider the deafness of Beethoven, the blindness of Milton) or in altruistic transformation (consider St. Francis of Assisi and Ignatius Loyola), or they may induce negative polarization in the shape of suicide, mental disorder, brutalization, increase of selfishfrustration

to the old claim, reiterated recently

Altruistic

Love

261

dumb

submissiveness, or cynical sensualism. This works both individually and collectively." Here Sorokin

ness,

surveys the "manifoldness" of love which lays the basis for the possibilities of altruism. From The Ways and Power of Love by Pitirim Sorokin, copyright 1954 by Beacon Press, Inc. By permission of

Beacon

Press, Inc.

Altruistic Love

Love is like an iceberg: only a small part of it is visible, and even this visible part is little known. Still less known is love's transempirical part, its religious and ontological forms. For the reasons subsequently given, love appears to be a universe inexhaustible qualitatively and quantitatively. Of its many forms of being, the following can be differentiated:

religious,

ontological, physical, biological,

ethical,

psychological, and social.

A. The Religious Aspect of Love

On

the religious plane love is identified with God, the highest value in the Christian and other great religions. "Love is God," and "God is love and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God and God in him," says the New Testament.^ So also say the Bhagavadgita, the Dhammapada, and the Scriptures of practically all the great religions: Taoism

and Confucianism, Hinduism and Buddhism, Jainism and Judaism, Mohammedanism, and the rest. Since God is believed to be the absolute value,. love participates in God's absolute value. Since

God

is

an

Infinite

Manifoldness love

and quantitative infinity. As such it cannot be defined by any words or concepts; at best these can be only symbolic indicators of the infinite cosmos of love.

is

also qualitative

Paul Tillich well expresses this infinity of love when he says: "I have given no definition of love. This is impossible, 1 1

John

4:7, 8,

16.

See:

St.

Francis de Sales, Treatise on the Love of et de Divino

God (Westminster, 1942); E. Swedenborg, De Divine Amove (New York, 1890).

Sapientia

262

Pitirim Sorokin

because there defined. It

structures in structures

is

no higher principle by which in

is life itself

in

its

actual unity.

it

could be

The forms and

which love embodies itself are the forms and which life overcomes its self-destructive

'

forces."

On this religious plane three conceptions of love have run throughout oriental and occidental religious, philosophical, and ethical thought: love as Eros, love as Agape, and love as a synthesis of Eros and Agape. Nygren's delineation of love as Eros and love as Agape serves as an introduction to the problem. He avers that love as Agape is fundamentally different from love as Eros; Agape form

that the

meant by

of love

Jesus, St. Paul,

Eros Eros

is

the

Eros

a desire of

good for

self. is

man's

effort to

ascend.

man's way to God. man's achievement, the endeavor of man to

Eros Eros

is

is

achieve salvation. Eros is egocentric love,

a form of self-assertion of the highest, noblest, and sublimest kind. Eros seeks to gain life divine, immortal.

Eros to

is

a will to have and

possess,

resting

sense of need. primarily is

Eros

love,

and

God

is

on a

human the ob-

given only to those deserve it; hence it is not spontaneous, but is

who 2

p. Tillich,

The

specifically Christian as

Christians.

Agape Agape is self-giving. Agape comes down from above (from God). Agape is God's way to man. Agape is a free gift, a salvation which is the work of Divine Love.

Agape

unselfish

is

love,

which "seeketh not its own," and freely spends itself.

Agape

lives

by God's

and

therefore

"lose

it."

Agape

dares

life,

to

and on God's own richness and freely

spends,

for

gives

it

rests

fullness.

Agape

own

ject of Eros.

Eros

is

and the early

is

primarily God's for God is

love,

Agape.

Agape evil

is poured out on "the and the good"; hence

Protestant Era (Chicago, 1948), p. 160.

Altruistic

"caused," by the value of the object. Eros recognizes value in object, and therefdre loves

it.

its

Love

263

spontaneous, "uncaused," and bestows itself on those who are worthy and not worthy of

it

is

it.

Agape

loves,

value in

its

and

creates

object.

Thus "Eros and Agape stand as direct opposites." Agape like the sun; it shines upon the sinful and the virtuous, redeeming the sinners no less than blessing the virtuous. is

inexhaustible richness spontaneously pours

itself out without any "rational discrimination." In this sense Agape is inscrutable, and incomprehensible by the human rational mind. Eros is love "earned" by the positive efforts of the loved party .^ It discriminates against the

Its

upon

all,

sinful.

Though the historical accuracy of this typology of Eros and Agape may be questionable in regard to Christianity and the oriental, Platonic, Neoplatonic, and Aristotelian conceptions of love; and though several thinkers of the past and of the present give the terms Eros and Agape essentially different meanings,* the typology as such is graphic and logical. Some forms of love -are indeed nearer to the type of Eros, while others are nearer to that of Agape. We can, however, ask: can Eros be separated from Agape or are not these two aspects of love inseparable? Is not Agape the redeeming love, pouring itself out in its inexhaustible richness, especially on those who need it for their redemption, salvation, revival, and reintegration? Is not Agape this aspect of love which is "love for the sake of love"? If love were granted only to those who deserve it the virtuwould not such a love become a mere ous, the "elect" commercial prize-giving to the "good boys" for their good

—

—

3 A. Nygren, Agape and Eros (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1937), Vol. I. pp. 165, 171, et passim. * See among recent writers D. de Rougemont, L' Amour et I' Occident (Paris, 1939), translated into English by Montgomery Belgion under the title Passion and Society; Love in the Western World, American ed.; P. Rousselot, Pour I'Histoire du Probleme del' Amour au Moyen Age (Niiinster, 1908): M. C. D'Arcy, The Mind and Heart of Love (London, 1947); The Bhagavadgita (New York, 1948), pp. 62 £E.; Sri S. Radhakrishnan, Aurobindo, The Life Divine (New York, 1949), pp. 187-189.

264

Pitirim Sorokin

behavior? These remarks show that the Agape form of love is inherent in the very nature of love, in its redeeming, resurrecting,

and all-forgiving functions. Such an Agape far

suum cuique tribuere, remuneration for service done. On the other hand, Agape in no way excludes Eros-Love. Eros-Love is nothing but falling in love vi^ith love and trying to be more perfect in love, with all the mental, moral, aesthetic, and physical ennoblement such a perfection implies. The ultimate point of such an Eros-Love is to reach transcends justice, in the sense of the as well as of a

the inexhaustibility of all-redeeming, all-loving, all-forgiv-

and all-ennobling Agape. A person's Eros-Love, reachbecomes God's Agape. This inseparability of Eros-Agape explains why factually most systems of love ing,

ing this level,

contain both these forms. If the transfiguration is possible only by the way of Nygren's Agape, then evidently one need not do anything; all efforts to achieve the goodness of love are of no avail; it may shine equally upon the virtuous and the sinful. If the transfiguration is possible only by the way of Nygren's Eros, then there is no need to pray for the grace of God or any super-individual power. Any love-seeker would become a sort of Prometheus who achieves his goal exclusively by

own efforts, regardless or even in spite of Zeus or any other force. In the oriental ^ as well as the occidental ethico-religious and philosophical conceptions, the prevailing view has been a combination of Eros and Agape as the way of salvation and achievement of love at its highest and best. Personal effort reinforced by the grace of God is considered the only real way to accomplish the purpose. "God helps those who strive, not those who rest and slumber," says St. Tychon." Either of these forms alone is insufficient by itself: without the grace of God or some super-individual power, man's efforts are inadequate. On the other hand, the love and justice of God are gladly granted those who his

^ is

•

In the Upanishads and the Bhagavadgita, "in Bhakti the grace of God to an extent; in prapatti it is freely bestowed"; S. Radhakrishnan,

earned

op. "

cit.,

p.

62.

G. P. Fedotov,

p. 229.

A

Treasury of Russian Spirituality

(New

York, 1948),

Altruistic

Love

265

earnestly labor for love and salvation. The thought and the practice of salvation in all '^reat religions are based

upon

this postulate.

Otherwise,

all

the calls to be good, to

perform good deeds, to fulfill moral and religious commandments would be senseless. Only a few minor streams of thought and practice, in the Orient and the Occident, * singled out exclusively either the Eros or the Agape way; and even these minor currents now and then had to grant to the other way a subsidiary '

role.

From this standpoint D'Arcy justifiably criticizes the onesidedness of Nygren's, Rousselot's, de Rougemont's, and other conceptions of Eros and Agape. He rightly says that "the two [forms of love] egocentric and theocentric have to live together," that "we must not think of the two loves separate and independent within the one self, even though, in order to bring out their distinct characteristics, we have to treat them as if they were alone." ^ "On the one side, there will be a man with a passion which seeks for deas

from "God, who respects man's

on the

liverance [of his real self

his pseudo-self]";

other,

integrity while lifting

up

new relation of love with himself." To sum up: properly understood, self-centered

an self

him

into a

effort of

and

to

man

love, as

and divine reach union with God, and God-centered love. to liberate in himself his real

"See for instance Sri Aurobindo, Bases of Yoga (Calcutta, 1936) pp. The Life Divine, pp. 874, 892 f., 925 f. ff., et passim; See W. W. Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture (Oxford, 1939), Vol. 1, pp. 34-77, 122, 134-147, 160 fif., 204 ff., 235 ff., 265-282, et passim; also Vols. II and III, passim; S. Ranulf, The Jealousy of the Gods and Criminal Law at Athens (London-Copenhagen, 1933-34), Vol. I, pp. 32-42, 112, 148, et passim; P. Sorokin, Dynamics (New York, 1937-1941), t Vol. II, pp. 490 ff. » M. C. D'Arcy, The Mind and Heart of Love (London, 1947), pp. 255, 312, 320, et passim. Unfortunately all these authors, including even D'Arcy, make several mistakes in their interpretations of these forms of love and 12

*

of various (especially oriental) religions and philosophies from this standpoint. One of these mistakes is the tendency to view oriental philosophies and religions as the epitome of a dark, romantic, passionate Eros in which the ego or self or personality loses itself entirely in the mystic union with Brahma or nirvana and ends in a self-immolation. Such a conception is incorrect. As mentioned, oriental religions and philosophies contain in themselves both forms of love, Eros and Agape, some stressing the Eros type, others the Agape type, but almost always containing both. The same is true of Pythagoreanism, Gnosticism, Neoplatonism, Manichaeanism, and medieval movements like Priscillianism and Catharism, described by de Rougemont as advocating only love as a dark passion irrational, ecstatic, selfeffacing, leading to self-destruction and self-immolation.

—

266

SoroWn

Pitirim

as divine grace helping

practically

all

though some Later on

we

man

in this

endeavor, are given in

true systems of love, oriental and occidental, systems stress the Agape, and others the Eros.

shall

meet

this

problem

in

its

empirical rami-

fications.

B.

The Ethical Aspect of Love

is identified with goodness itself. Love is viewed as the essence of goodness inseparable from truth and beauty. All three are unified aspects of the Absolute Value or God. Real goodness is always true and beautiful; pure truth is always good and beautiful; and genuine beauty is invariably true and good.

Ethically love

C. The Ontological Aspect of Love Ontologically love is, side by side with truth and beauty, one of the highest forms of a unifying, integrating, harmonizing, creative energy or power. Empedocles correctly noted the unifying creativity of love as the ontological es-

sence of this power. As such it is opposite to the functions of strife as "separating apart in enmity" what is united in and by love.^° In accordance with this, subsequent thinkers viewed even the unifying physical forces of gravitation, of the unification of electrons and protons in the atom, of chemical affinity, of magnetism, and so on, as the manifestation of love energy acting in the physical world; the "instincts" of sociality or gregariousness, biological mutual aid and cooperation, as the manifestation of love energy in the organic world; conscious love, sympathy, friendship, solidarity, as its manifestation in the psychosocial world. Everywhere in the inorganic, organic and psychosocial worlds the integrating and uniting role of love functions incessantly. Untiringly, it counteracts the dividing and separating forces of chaos and strife. Without the operation of love energy the physical, the biological, and the sociocul10 H. Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (Berlin. 1912), Vol. I, Emp>edodes, Fragment 17; Vol. II, pp. 1-2, 6-13. "In one movement all things coalesce into a unity in Love; in another they all separate in the enmity of Strife."

Altruistic

Love

267

cosmos would have fallen apart; no harmony, unity, or order would have been possible; universal disorder and enmity would have reigned supreme. As a creative energy of goodness, love unites what is separated, elevates what is base, purifies what is impure, ennobles what is ignoble, creates harmony in the world of enmity, peace in war. Love raises man as a biological organism to the level of divinity, infinitely enriches the human self, and empowers humanity with a mastery over the inorganic, organic, and sociocultural forces, up to the potential rescue of an individual and mankind from even biological death. Dostoievsky well expressed this ontological power, of love in his Brothers Kararnazoff. "Seeing the sins of men, one sometimes wonders whether one should react to them by force or by humble love. Always decide to fight them by humble love. If it is carried through, the whole world can be conquered. Loving humbleness is the most effective force, the most terrific, the most powerful, unequalled by any other force in the world." "^ All great apostles of love unanimously testify to this. Without love, neither the possession of the tongues of tural

gift of prophecy, nor a complete undermysteries and possession of all knowledge amount to anything, says St. Paul, and then magnificently describes the ethico-ontological nature of love:

angels,

nor the

standing of

Love

all

and

kind; love envieth not; not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things; Love never faileth: And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; suffereth long,

love vaunteth not

and the greatest of these

A yield

^ Sri

is

itself, is

is

love.^

person who becomes a real incarnation of love "wiU an influence greater than that of the sceptred mon-

See also Swami Vivekananda, Karma-Yoga (New York, 1945), pp. 10-12; Aurobindo, The Life Divine, passim.

^1

Corinthians 13:4-8, 13.

Pitirim Sorokin

268

arch," testifies Gandhi.^'' "Love is basically not an emotional but an ontological power, it is the essence of life itself, namely, the dynamic reunion of that which is separated": such is the recent reiteration of this ontological power of love."

Among

N. F. Fedorov (a little-known Russian notably influenced Dostoievsky and Leo Tolstoi), and under his influence V. Solovyev, have especially well developed and analyzed this ontological "energy" of love. They have shown that only through love, in cooperation with truth and beauty, can man rise from the level of a mortal biological organism to that of a conqueror of death

thinker

others,

who

and master of inorganic, organic, and sociocultural forces; that only in this way can man realize his truly divine nature and become "God-Man" (Bogotschelovek) that only thus can man fulfill his mission and redeem his historical exist;

ence; that only through such a real immortality are all the other values of humanity preserved, instead of becoming meaningless and perishing in vain.^ In this ontological conception, according to Solovyev,

love

is

the

power

that counteracts the dark evil that per-

meates the world of raw nature. Evil

is

a universal fact because each natural life beand hatred, continues in suffering and

gins with struggle

The first and ends in death and rottenness. law of nature is the struggle for existence. All the life of nature in the raw takes place in an incessant enmity of Every creature in this natural creatures and forces. world beginning with the smallest particle of dust and ending with man tells by its whole natural existence one and the same thing: "I am, and the rest of the world ex-

slavery

.

.

"

.

.

.

.

M. K. Gandhi, Self-Restraint versus Self-indulgence (Ahmedabad, 1928), p. 102. " P. Tillich, op. cit., xxv. 1^ See the cited works of St. Francis de Sales and E. Swedenborg. See also N. F. Fedorov, Filosofia ohschevo dela (The Philosophy of Common Cause) new edition (Kharbin, 1928-30); V. Solovyev, The Meaning of Love (English tr., London, 1945); especially Solovyev's Opravdanyie Dobra (Justification of Good) and Nravstvennya Osnovy Zhizni (The Spiritual Bases of Life) in his Works (Sobranyie Sotchinenyi) (St. Petersburg, 2nd ed., 1913), Vols. VIII and III. Fedorov evolved a comprehensive plan for a reconstruction of humanity in this direction, with the goal of conquering death as the greatest universal evil of humanity. See his work mentioned.

Altruistic

me

Love

269

mere means," and, colliding with you cannot exist, there is no room for you with me." Each creature in brute nature ists

only for

others,

it

as a

says: "If

I exist,

says so, each attempts to fight

and

all

the others, wants to de-

destroyed in turn by the others. In so far as it is based upon egoism, life in brute nature is evil life, and its law is the law of sin. By the same law sin inevitably causes its own retaliation, one evil calling forth another. For if one creature inimically acts against stroy them,

is

the others, these others act as inimically against

an enmity

is

—another form

suffering

it.

of the world

Such evil.

Since everything in nature sins one against another, everything suffers from one another. Owing to this egoism, which separates one creature from all the others, each creature is a stranger living in an inimical environment which presses and attacks it All its natural life consists in a strugfrom all sides. gle with this inimical environment, in self-defense against the rest of the world. But it cannot defend itself against the pressure of all these inimical forces a given creature is one while its enemies are many. They naturally overcome it. This conflict between each and all the rest inevitably leads to the destruction of each creature: the overwhelming inimical forces finally destroy its life, and the struggle ends universally by death and rotting. Death makes only explicit the secret brute of nature's .

.

.

:

life; it

shows that

life in

nature

is

a hidden death. Such

the fiery wheel of natural existence. Such

is the uniforms. Such is the tree of life in disintegrated nature: its root is sin, ^^ its growth is sickness, its fruit is death. is

versal evil, one in

its

nature and triple in

its

Love is the universal creative force that counteracts this Love replaces the struggle for existence by harmonious unity and mutual aid. It tends to make the whole universe one harmonious cosmos in which each particle is not

evil.

fighting

all

the others but harmoniously working with the By the power of love each creature is not

rest of the world.

opposed to 18

all

V. Solovyev,

the others,

The

is

not attacked by

all

the others,

Spiritual Bases of Life, Vol. Ill, pp. 35-52.

270

Pitirim Sorokin

and therefore is not destroyed by the others. For this reason its life need not be ended by death and destruction. Love tends thus to destroy the death itself and to replace it by eternal immortality."

So

far in the natural

ization of this creative

world we have only a partial realof love energy. Only through

work

does the world continue to exist in spite of the all-pervadLove keeps the world going and living. Love prevents the universal death and destrucit

ing destructive forces of evil. tion of the

whole universe.

more and more

—

If

and when love is realized and death are bound

fully, sin, suffering,

and with the full realization of love, to disappear. Such is the ontological role of love as the highest creative power.^* The foregoing gives one of the many variations of the ontological conception of love as the universal creative en-

to decrease

ergy.

D. The Physical Aspect of Love According to Solovyev and others, the physical counterpart of love in the inorganic world is shown in all physical forces that unite, integrate, and maintain the whole inorganic cosmos in endless unities, beginning with the smallest unity of the atom and ending with the whole physical universe as one unified, orderly cosmos.^ E.

The

The Biological Aspect of Love

biological counterpart of love energy manifests itself

and basic processes of life. This energy, known, and often called the "vital energy" that

in the very nature still

little

mysteriously unites various inorganic energies into a starunicellular or multicellular ortling unity of a living ganism, is the first biological manifestation of the Empedoclean energy of love. The generation of practically all

—

—

" Ibid., Vol. Ill, pp. 35-52. Somewhat similar ideas were expressed thirty years later by Sri Aurobindo in his The Life Divine. ^^ Ibid., Vol. Ill, p. 351. et passim. See also Solovyev's other works

some

men-

tioned and Fedorov, op. cit. i» See N. Wiener, Cybernetics (New York, 1948), where the universal form of "communication" is well analyzed.

Altruistic

unicellular organisms

from a parent

parent

four

cell either into

new

cell,

by

Love

271

fission of the

individuals (zoospores) or

into thirty-two or sixty-four microzooids with a subsequent

conjugation of gametes into a new organism, is another manifestation of "biological love energy": "the two are for a time bound together in an interactive association"; "the life of either one or the other is at some time dependent upon the potential or actual being of the other." Without such an interaction without the parent cell's supplying the vital tissues to the new organism, and without metabolic and physiological exchanges between parent and daughter cells the appearance of a new organism is impossible; the very continuity of life itself becomes impossible."* Co-operation of two organisms in sexual reproduction of multicellular organisms, accompanied by the passion of biological attraction between them, is a visible form of this "biological love" necessary for the maintenance of all such species and, through that, of life itself. The parental care of the offspring, during its period of helplessness the care

—

—

—

that in

—

some

species, like

Homo

sapiens,

must

last several

is a still more explicit manifestation of biological love energy. Without it such species would die out. This co-operation is rightly considered a "fundamental charac-

years

teristic of life trait

phenomena,"

as universal

of the "struggle for existence."

and basic

as the

^

The "co-operative forces are biologically the more important and vital [than the antagonizing forces]. The balance between the co-operative, altruistic tendencies and those which are disoperative and egoistic is relatively close [in biological organisms]. In the long run, however, the

Human

2f See Ashley Montagu, On Being (New York, 1950), for an excellent summary of various forms of co-operation and mutual aid as the basic biological processes. See also Ch. Nicolle, Biologie de I'invention (Paris, 1932), pp. 78 (f.; H. S. Jennings, The Beginning of Social Behavior in I'nicelhilar Organism (University of Pennsylvania, 1941). 21 See Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid (London, 1902); W. C. Allee, Animal Aggregations (Chicago, 1931): The Social Life of Animals (New York, 1938); E. F. Darling, Bird Flocks and the Breeding Cycle (Cambridge, 1938); A. E. Emerson, "The Biological Basis of Social Cooperation," Illinois Academy of Science Transactions, Vol. XXXIX, 1946; R. Gerard, •'Higher Level of Integration," in Biological Symposia, Vol. VIIl, 1942: R. (Chicago, 1945); S. Little, General Biology and Philosophy of Organism (New York, 1948); Charles Sherrington, S. J. Holmes, Life and Morals

Man

on His Nature (New York, 1941);

Sri

Aurobindo, The Life Divine.

272

Pitirim Sorokin

more altruistic drives are slightly stronger" a summary of this situation.^ To sum up: without the operation of a biological counterpart of love energy, life itself is not possible, nor its continuity, nor the preservation and survival of species, nor life evolution, nor the emergence and evolution of

group-centered,

—such Homo

is

sapiens,

F.

The Psychological Aspect of Love

Psychologically the experience of love is a complex consisting of emotional, afifective, volitional, and intellectual elements. It has many qualitative forms, covered by such terms as: empathy, sympathy, kindness, devotion, admiration, benevolence, reverence, respect, adoration, friendto single out a few. Each of these "shades" of love ship

—

as psychological experience has

its

own

"color."

experiences are opposite those of hatred, envy, jealousy, antipathy, and other forms genuine psychological experience of love, the loving individual tends to merge with

'^

These

enmity, dislike, of hate. In any the ego or I of

and

to identify

with the loved Thee. The greater the love, the greater the identification. The joy or sorrow of the loved person becomes joy and sorrow to the loving person. Genuine sharing of all the values of life follows. Sacrifice for the loved person becomes a sacrifice for the person himself. In other words, love as psychological experience is "altruistic" by its very nature; whereas the opposite experience of hatred is inherently selfish. In a genuine love the loved person is experienced always as the end value; in the egoistic experience the other person is always only the means value. Aristotle and V. Solovyev have pointed out very clearly this characteristic of love versus the egoistic experience of hatred and pseudo-love. In a real love or friendship a friend is "one who does what is good (or what he itself

22 W. C. Allee, "Where Angels Fear to Tread," Science, Vol. XCVII, 1943, pp. 518-25. See other considerations and facts in Ashley Montagu's and other cited works. 23 See M. Scheler, Das Wesen und die Formen der Sympathie (1929); N. Berdyaev, Solitude and Society (London, 1938), pp. 194 flf.; P. E. Johnson, Christian Love (New York, 1951). For other forma, see my Society, Culture, Personality, Chap. 5.

Altruistic

Love

273

and live for that friend's own one wishes his friend to sake," and not because the friend gives him pleasure or is useful to him. Pseudo-friendship, motivated by pleasure or utility, takes the other person as a means and not as the end value.^ Solovyev stressed this point especially well in his analysis of love and egoism. "True love is that which not only believes to be good) for another for that other's sake, .

.

.

afiirms in subjective feeling the unconditional significance

human

and in oneself, but also unconditional significance in actuality."^ Egoism in its pure form, on the contrary, "afl&rms an unconditional oppositeness, an unbridgeable chasm between one's own ego and the others. The egoist says: I am everywhile the others are just nothing for me and bething come something only as a mere means for me; my life and well-being is an absolute goal, while the life and well-being of others are admitted only insofar as they are instruments for a realization of my goal. ... I am the center, while ^ the whole worid is only a circumference." "Love is the justification and deliverance of individuality through the sacrifice of egoism. It rescues us from the inevitability of death, and fills our existence with an absolute Sacrificing egoism and surrendering ourselves content. to love, we find in it not merely living, but also life-giving power, and we do not forfeit our individuality (personality) with our egoism, but on the contrary make it eterof

.

individuality in another

this

justifies

.

.

.

.

.

nal."

Such a love cosmos is now only at its beginning in the empirical world of man, at about the same stage as is reason in the animal world. Love conquering death "exists in its beginning but not as yet in actual fact." Eventually it will 2*

grow and conquer death on

this planet, in this world.""

The Nicomachean Ethics, Bk. IX, 1166a; Bk. VIII, 1156a; "On Friendship," Everyman's Library Edition, p. 179, et passim. V. Solovyev, The Meaning of Love (London, 1945), pp. 21, 44, et pasAristotle,

Cicero, 25

sim. 2«

V. Solovyev, Justification of Good, Vol. VIII, p. 99; Berdyaev, op.

Chap.

cit..

4.

v. Solovyev, The Meaning of Love, pp. 22, 44, 53, 59, et passim. "Without love there is no self-fulfilment of personality," N. Berdyaev, op. cit., p. 195. See a development of these ideas in Sri Aurobindo's The Life Divine, pp. 187 ff., 874, et passim. 27

274

Pitirim Sorokin

More

concretely, love

individual loneliness;

is

fills

the experience that annuls our

the emptiness of our isolation

with the richest value; breaks and transcends the narrow walls of our little egos; makes us coparticipants in the highest life of humanity and in the whole cosmos; expands our true individuality to the immeasurable boundaries of the universe.

Eliminating our loneliness and binding us by the noblest of bonds to others, love is literally a life-giving force, because, as the studies of suicide show, an empty loneliness is

main cause of suicide, and because altruists live longer than egoists do."^ Making us full-fledged coparticipants in the lives of others, love infinitely enriches our lives by the greatest and noblest values of all humanity. In this sense it fills us with knowledge, because coparticipation and coexperience in the richest experience of all the generations of humanity rather than only in one's pitifully poor individual experience is the most efficient method of learning and the most fruitful way to truth and knowledge. In this sense the love experience leads to a true cognition and the

—

—

love becomes truth (see further on that). Love beautifies our life because the love experience

is

very nature and beautifies the whole universe. To love anything or anybody means literally to immortalize the mortal, to ennoble the ignoble, to uplift the low, to beautify the ugly. Anything that one looks at beautiful

by

its

through loving eyes becomes "lovely," that is, beautiful. By its very nature love is goodness itself; therefore makes our life noble and good. Finally, love experience

means freedom

at

its

it

loftiest.

love anything is to act freely, without compulsion or coercion. And vice versa: to be free means to do what one loves to do. In this sense, love and true freedom are syno-

To

is the loftiest form of freedom. Compulsion and coercion are the negation of love. Where there is love there is no coercion; where there is coercion there is no love. And person who the greater the love the greater the freedom.

nyms; love

A

» See the data and literature in P. Sorokin, Society, Culture, and Personality (New York, 1947), p. 8 ff.; also P. Sorokin, Altruistic Love: A Study of American "Good Neighbors" and Christian Saints (Boston, 1950).

Altruistic

Love

275

humanity is free in this human universe; a person who loves the whole universe is free in the whole world. A person who hates the world is the greatest of slaves subjectively and objectively. Anything or anybody is his enemy, anything or anybody hinders him, opposes him, presses upon him, limits his freedom incessantly, at every loves

all

—

turn, in every action, in every thought, emotion, or volition.

The whole world, from inanimate men, becomes tioners."* St.

objects

his prison filled with

up

to his fellow

innumerable execu-

Paul's quoted statements are perfectly accu-

Freedom is love and love is freedom. is marked further by a "feeling" of fearlessness and power. Love does not fear anything or anybody. It cuts off the very roots of fear. Where there is fear rate in this respect.

The

there

love experience

is

no

love;

where there

is

love there

is

no

fear.

God

through fear are the lowest of human beings. They worship God from fear of punishment. ... So long as there is any fear in the heart, how can there be love also? Love conquers naturally all fear. A loving mother does not hesitate to throw herself against any danger menacing her child; a loving person does not hesisavtate to lay down his life is not afraid even of death ing the loved ones. Fear comes from a selfish idea of cut•'Those that love

—

—

from the universe. The smaller and the more selfish I make myself, the more is my fear." The best and most scientific remedy for fear is love. Without love there is no remedy for this disease. ting one's self off

'^^

A

The fearlessness and freedom of love implies power. person who is not afraid of anything is subjectively (in his own experience) and objectively a powerful person. He cannot be intimidated; cannot be bribed; he cannot be beaten into subjection. All his energies are coiled up into the single power of love "that beareth all things, endureth all things." Nothing in this coiled-up energy is wasted in inner and external friction; the whole of it is directed one great purpose. And often the more it functions, the

conflicts to

greater are the returns of the energies 2»

See E. Swedenborg, op.

cit.,

pp. 96

S..',

it

Swami Vivekananda, Karma-

Yoga, pp. 10-13 »=

Swaml Vivekananda, Bhakti-Yoga, pp.

generates in others;

88-89.

276 the

Pitirim Sorokin

more

expends itself, the greater are the returns that reexpenditure. In this sense it is a form of energy almost inexhaustible (like the energy of intra-atomic

plenish that

is

it

its

an energy that sometimes actually grows through The more love expends itself the stronger it becomes. Herein lies the fact, noted above, of the majestic, gigantic power of love and gentleness, of the power of the great incarnations of love like Buddha and Jesus, St. Francis and Gandhi. Even from a strictly "positivistic" friction), its

expenditure.

standpoint, the influence exerted

upon the whole of human

by these

apostles of love

history far exceeds the influence

of the mighty

conquerors, rulers, empire builders, and seeming controllers of millions of soldiers and subjects. Hence a scientific prescription. The most effective and most .

accessible

power

is

way

to acquire

to love truly

and

apostles of love prove to by hate and coercion,^

the

maximum

.

.

of constructive

The kingdoms built by the be more enduring than those built wisely.

Finally, the love experience is equivalent to the highest peace of mind and happiness. Beginning with the somewhat puny "peace of mind" of Freudians and of our best sellers on "how to stop worrying," and the lollipop happiness of our dime-store hedonists and chamber-of-commerce utilitarians; passing through the short-lived "peace of mind" and "happiness" of contemporary sensual lovers; and ending with the unshakable peace of mind and unutterable bliss of an all-embracing, all-forgiving love: the love experience is the only experience that brings both of these graces of God peace of mind and happiness to their fruition. When love is slight and impure, peace and happiness are

—

—

slight

and

peace of ness 31

fragile. When it is unbounded and pure, it God which passeth all understanding"; ^^

becomes the

See,

on the

life

ineffable

"the happi-

is

summum bonum.

span and longevity of various

social

organizations

business empires, political parties, educational institutions, re(states, ligious organizations, and so on), my Society, Culture, and Personality, Chaps. 34 and 47. Whereas the average duration of business empires is about 28 years, and of empires built hastily through conquest is from a few years to a few centuries, the great religious organizations are the most iong-livcd of practically all social groups and cultural systems. They have already been living for one or several millennia. ^'^ Philippians 4:7. "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it 1m; afraid" John 14:27.

—

.

Altruistic

"Love for

Love

277

the highest happiness." ^ Withneither peace of mind nor any sort of

love's sake

is

out love there is happiness. Hence, the best and most accessible path to real peace of mind and supreme happiness is to love (wisely guided by truth). Such are some of the important characteristics of love as psychological experience. In comparison with these, other psychological traits of the love experience are somewhat insignificant and puny. . .

G. The Social Aspect of Love a meaningful intertwo or more persons where the aspirations and aims of one person are shared and helped in their realization by other persons. A loving

— on

Finally,

action

or

the social plane love

relationship

—between

is

person not only does not hinder the realization of the wise aims of the loved person but positively helps it. So far as he helps, he does not cause pain or sorrow to the loved person, but increases his happiness. It is the joy of giving

and the joy of receiving; it is fulfilling oneself in others and by others. The terms "solidarity," "mutual aid," "co-operation," "unity of good neighbors," "familistic relationship," and the like denote various forms of love as social relationship. Its highest forms are magnificently defined in the Sermon on the Mount.

Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you. Agree with thine adversary quickly. First be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and

to

offer thy gift [to the altar].

«3 Swami Vivekananda. Bhakti-Yoga, p. 104. The ordinary joy of love is by what St. Tychon's companion (Chebotarev) says of him: "On the days when St. Tychon had received the greatest number of poor and distributed the greatest amount of money and other alms, he appeared especially cheerful and joyous. But on the days when he had been solicited only by a few or none at all, he would be sad and depressed. ... He was the eye of the blind and the feet of the lame. His. doors were like Job always open to beggars and wanderers (and even criminals), who found food, drink, and rest under his roof." G. P. Fedotov, op. cit., p. 199.

illustrated

—

M. C. D'Arcy

278

heard that it hath been said, An eye for an and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil but whosover shall smite thee on thy right

Ye have

eye,

:

cheek, turn to

And

if

thy coat,

any let

him

man

the other also. will sue thee at the law,

him have thy cloak

And whosoever

shall

and take away

also.

compel thee to go a mile, go

with him twain.

Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away. These norms outline the social relationships of love and best.

at

their highest

The

religious,

ethical,

ontological, physical, biological,

psychological, and social phases of love do not exhaust

on the contrary, they show the

infinite richness

it;

of this par-

ticipant in the Absolute.

We

mainly on the psychoand sociocultural planes of love love as a "visible" empirical psychosocial phenomenon. Concentrating on these planes, however, we shall always keep in mind the shall concentrate in this study

logical

—

manifoldness of love as a whole, because without its religious, ethical, and ontological aspects we cannot truly understand a "visible" part of this cosmos, its psychosocial empirical aspects.

20. Preface to

M.

"The Mind and Heart

of

Love"

C. D'Arcy

Because the motifs of its argument are stated by several rich voices voices together and in counterpart like a fugue

— —

medieval and modem thought making it impossible to excerpt or summarize, and because of its brilliance as a piece of writing, we are including here the

from

classical,

Preface,

The Mind and Heart of Love

279

Preface to a book which has been called "a great contribution to a noble theme." The theme, of course, is the experience of love as the meaning of human existence; and those readers who wish to pursue the issue of ontology

must go

to the source.

Coming out

of the comprehensive tradition of Christhis study in Eros and Agape analyzes the seeming conflict between the Lion of self-centered love and the Unicorn of self-sacrifice. Within the framework tian

humanism,

of a law of giving and taking wherein "something seems to away into nothingness itself while being at the same

slide

time the provider of what is to come," Father D'Arcy attempts a reconciliation by seeking the source of human passion in the completeness of divine love. Martin Cyril D'Arcy, educated at Oxford University and the Gregorian University in Rome, has been a Jesuit since 1931 and is a former Master of Campion Hall at Oxford. He is the author of The Nature of Belief, Mirage and Truth, Pain and the Providence of God and other works. From The Mind and Heart of Love by M. C. D'Arcy, copyright 1947 by Henry Holt and Company, Inc. By permission of the publishers.

Preface to

"The Mind and Heart

One of the wisest teachers Cook Wilson, used to cut

of

Love"

of philosophy I ever knew, John short the speculations of his pu-

on the nature of knowledge by drily remarking: "You must already know what knowing is, for otherwise you would not be seeking to know what it is; and besides you cannot get outside it in order to criticise it." We do not, perhaps, need love in order to study the nature of love, but we must from experience know so well what love is that it may seem idle to ask questions about it. That does not stop people, however, from asking questions, and the more

pils

questions are asked the

more

difficult

does

maze

it

become

to

the questions reveal. Every lover will tell us that his love is unique; he will listen with impatience to explanations and repeat the old

find a thread to lead us out of the

280

M. C. D'Arcy Da amantem et

sentit quod dico; only another lover, with love like mine, can understand. But as a special quality in all loving need not interfere with there also being something common, I will by-pass this difficulty. It is hard enough to find something common in the variety of descriptions which have been given of it in memoirs, stories, lyrics, and epics. Love appears in all literature, not as a passing episode, but as the marrow of it. But with what a

cry:

bewildering variety of incident and type! We have to take into consideration not only maternal love but the love of the child for its parents, not only the awakening desires of adolescence but the binding affection of a David and Jonathan. Dante's emotions on seeing Beatrice are not the same as the love of Romeo for Juliet or of Tristram for Isolde or Othello for Desdemona. Penelope and Cordelia are both constant, but their love is not alike. The ancients, taking friendship as the natural expression of affection, made a triple division of love. They based this division on the presence or absence of the motive of self-interest. The lowest form was, therefore, selfish; above this came the love which is pure enjoyment, and highest of all was the love of another for his or her own sake. On the same basis they made, also, the still more straightforward distinction of the loves of concupiscence and benevolence. These divisions have lasted down the ages, but they have to some extent been ousted by distinctions drawn from psychological and psychoanalytical theories of the impulses and the sentiments. Christianity has made a special contribution by its doctrine of charity, the new and startling doctrine, that is to say, of God's manner of loving man and man's graced response to that love. No account of the nature of love can afford to leave this out, because it has had a transforming effect on civilization and added a new dimension to our conception of love. The power and novelty of Christian "charity" are best illustrated in the two well-known passages from St. Paul, the one from the letter to the Romans, where St. Paul asks: "Who shall and the second separate us from the love of Christ?" from the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians: "If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and

—

The Mind and Heart of Love

Preface,

have not charity, tinkling cymbal.

I

am become Of

as

281

sounding brass, or a

I hope to what is to follow. To mention now only two authors whose views I outline and criticise in this book, namely. Penis de Rougemont and Anders Nygren, no one can fail to see what a singular and decisive .

.

."

the transforming effect

give plenty of evidence in

importance they attribute to Christian charity, or, as they it. Agape. There are, therefore, many kinds of love, so many, in fact, that any attempt to link them together may seem to be doomed to failure. Let me explain, therefore, how it is I have come to write this book. Like everybody else, I suppose, I took for granted when I was young that in love was to be found all that was most excellent, and as I had the good fortune to be brought up in the belief that a God, call

who was

infinitely loving, existed, I had, as I

the easiest and happiest

way

still

believe,

of approaching the subject.

But soon problems began to multiply, fascinating problems which will occupy thinkers, as well as lovers, to the end of time, and of some of these problems the chapters to follow will treat. But one of the failings of the human mind is to jump to conclusions too quickly, and to make a pattern with insufficient data. Love does not change its face, but it has many expressions, and a lack of experience and too happy a lot led me to interpret it without some of its lines and without its shadows. Discovery depends so much on our having a trained eye and a mature vision, on our being enlightened by our own experience to notice what is there before us. Pieces of evidence and decisive clues are missed through lack of attention, or because the hunt, so to speak, is not up in our own souls. I knew, for instance, when young the stories of Eros and Psyche, of Dante and Beatrice and Tristram and Isolde; they had a secret which stirred more than the imagination, and they were clearly symbols and pointers as much as they were stories; but their bearing on the problems which exercised me was hidden for a long time. What is true of stories holds equally with pregnant sayings. No one can read without a stir of the heart such sayings as: "Our heart is uneasy until it shall rest in Thee"; "I sought what I might love, in love with

282

M. C. D'Arcy

loving,

and safety

"Tu ne me

I hated, and a way' without snares"; chercherais pas, si tu ne me possedais"; or

even: "for each man kills the thing he loves." But having read them and been stirred, we can pass on quite blind to their possible interconnection. But when the hunt is up

and the quarry is in sight, the most unsuspected pieces of evidence leap to the eye. Aristotle, for example, when he is writing on physics or metaphysics, is as dry and remote as a mathematician, and yet, as the idea I now hold about love grew in my mind and spread out, of all unlikely places the chapters of Aristotle on the coming to be and passing away of organic life took on a new colour. They had become no longer remote, but relevant. In the development of the ideas in this book the passages from Aristotle are, then, a landmark. Of books read there are neariy always a few which stand out as landmarks; or rather, when one is in process of producing an idea of one's own, they deserve to be called midwives. So great an effect, indeed, do such books have, that it is difficult at times to be sure what is one's own and what is borrowed from them. What they say has been so assimilated that it seems to be personal

and

original.

Among

such books I will mention those which have most me to agreement or disagreement. The earliest in time is Pierre Roussek)t's Probleme de V Amour au Moyen Age. Rousselot claimed to have discovered a divergence of view about the nature of love among the Scholastics who preceded St. Thomas Aquinas. His discovery has been declared to be a mare's nest by Gilson and other unfriendly critics. It is not my intention to defend Rousselot. But even granted that he was wrong in his main contention, he nevertheless presented a problem which is in no sense imaginary. He did show that it is possible to have a conflict of loves, and that, in fact, there are two tendencies which are not easily reconciled. The first is serene and poised; the second ecstatic and poignant. The first explains adeinfluenced

quately why it is so natural to love oneself and seek one's own happiness and perfection. But as it is so naturally selfcentred, it does not explain so easily how a man can love another, even

God, more than

himself.

The second kind

Preface,

The Mind and Heart of Love

283

of love, with its emphasis on self-sacrifice, did explain the love of one's neighbour and of God and the contempt of self; but it in its turn seemed inadequate to justify selfperfection as an end. Now, as so often happens, reflection on this problem was excited by another book which seemed to dovetail into that of Rousselot. Anders Nygren had written three

volumes on Eros and Agape, and he, too, held that there were two kinds of love, the one egocentric and the other theocentric. His thesis ran counter to that of Rousselot in that he wished to sweep away all vestiges of Greek and Scholastic thought on love from the Christian idea of Agape. He maintained that self-centred love had crept into Christian thinking, been baptized by St. Augustine and as a result had contaminated medieval thought. Criticism of both these authors brought me near to a personal view, which I thought could avoid the weaknesses of both these authors and be far more embracing. It would fit the dance of the atoms and the to-and-fro movement in the inanimate world; it would give meaning to much that was obscure in the relations of animal love and in the evidence from human pathological cases. In the discussion of this view with others I was told that what I said about self-sacrifice and death would find corroboration in what Freud had written on the death-instinct. As, however, I was anxious to keep my thought my own on this delicate matter and could truthfully say that my memory of Freud's view was too dim for it to influence me, I did not look up what he had written until I had completed my own thought. Much more germane to my theme was a book, written by a friend of mine, Hunter Guthrie, and called Introduction au Probleme de VHistoire de la Philosophie, which good fortune, again, put into my hands just at the right time. The title of this book is too general to give a proper idea of its contents. What Hunter Guthrie sets out to do is to overhaul the meaning of a human person as a thinking and willing being. To do this he employs what is known as the phenomenological method. That is to say, he tries to go behind the variety of human experience, determined in part as it is by heredity and education, and detect the

M.

284

C. D'Arcy

faint pulsations of

our

common humanity

as expressed in

examining "the thinker in his purely a priori condition." Like others who use this phenomenological method he brings into play the terms, existence and essence. (Those who have read Kierkegaard, even if they are not well acquainted with metaphysics, will remember the importance that writer attached to the term "existence.") Now those who study philosophy have to learn much about this distinction between essence and existence, but it was not till I had read Hunter Guthrie's

and thought. This he

will

book

that

I

saw the

calls

full significance of these distinctions in

So once again a chance reading of a book enabled me to string together what had hitherto been unconnected in my mind. Lastly and quite recently I came across Passion and So-

relation to the different sorts of love.

by Montgomery Belgion of L' Amour et I'Occident by Denis de Rougemont. I knew of the wayward conception of love entertained by the troubadours in the early Middle Ages through reading the important work

ciety, a translation

S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love; but it was not began reading Passion and Society, which dealt with the same subject, that I caught the connection between this romantic love and what I had discovered in psychology and metaphysics. And so it has come about that various authors, writing on very disparate subjects, Rousselot on a spiritual and moral problem, Nygren on religion, Aristotle on the nature of change. Hunter Guthrie on metaphysics, and Denis de Rougemont on Provengal poetry and troubadour love, shuffled the thoughts in my mind and helped to form them into a pattern. In the following pages I will move through these authors and their views to the conclusions which I wish to establish.

of Mr. C. till

I

Love

is

such a vast subject offering so

many

temptations

new and

beguiling turns and twists of it that a writer would never reach an end if he did not make up his mind to concentrate on one aspect of it. In connecting to delay over

up one great

historical manifestation with a great philo-

sophical tradition and by contrasting what some have called the Greek approach by Eros with the Christian approach

by Agape,

I

hope to make a pattern which may convince

Preface,

The Mind and Heart of Love

285

and serve, if examined, to connect together traits which I have not time to mention. If the word love be used not too loosely I believe that some all-embracing conceptions can be adopted, though when the branches have to be examined in detail, each will need a volume of explanation. Think for a moment of all the strange varieties of love we come across in human conduct, and what a Hmitless expanse any anthology of love opens up to us. I have been glancing at favourite lines of verse: "Odi et amo," "As Lines so Loves oblique may well Themselves in every Angle greet: But ours so truly parallel. Though infinite can never meet," "Out upon it I have loved three whole days together. And am like to love three more, if it prove fair weather," "A well tamed Heart, For whose more noble smart Love may be long choosing a dart." These and countless other passages need a long commentary. The reader, as it is, will find quite enough commentary in what is to follow and as much philosophy as he will be able to stomach. For fear, however, lest in the method which I intend to follow, the thread of the argument be lost, I will put down here a summary, which must, alas, be as deceptive as it may appear simple. To some the simplicity may suggest that I have in mind some kind of hybrid or counterfeit philosophy which uses metaphors and poetic expressions when hard and rigorous analysis is required. Truly there is a way of speaking and writing on deep subjects which can appeal to undisciplined minds but to those who want truth is only exasperating. It gains its effect by ambiguous words and by the use of emotional instead of logical associations. I can only defend myself at the moment by saying that I am fully aware of the danger, and if in this summary I appear to suggest, for instance, that the changes in the physical world can be described in terms of desire and love, or that all desire, as it occurs in the lower orders of living beings, is equivalent in any way to what we know as human love, I beg the reader to wait on what is

to come for a proper explanation. The simplest statement of the law which governs what

highest and lowest in the Universe can be called that of "Give and Take." In the most elementary changes in the is

286

M.

C. D'Arcy

physical world there is gain and loss, the taking on of something and the passing on of what once was and no longer is. Aristotle describes such change in terms of mat-

and form, where there is always something determinable which is made determined and something which actively determines, and gives it form. Something seems to slide away into nothingness itself while being at the same time a provider of what is to come, and something enters into poster

session. This principle

is

seen

more

clearly in the continu-

There is always a duality, of which one aspect is negative as compared with the other: one gives and the other takes. The giving is a surrender and implies a certain passivity, perhaps even unto death and extinction. The desire which is felt by the two parties in this momentary or prolonged union accords with the role played. There is the whoop of triumph, the exultant mastery in the act of possession and on the other side there is a joy in self-surrender even to absorption and total extinction in the being of the other. It may be that this latter desire or emotion is due to a primary urge for the species and its continuation, and since there is in the lower forms of life no true indiation of

life.

viduality in either participant, there

the

owner of the

instinct

is

from rushing

nothing to prevent in joy to

its

death.

The important point to notice is the universal fact of duality. What we meet in the animal world and in human beits analogies in art and literature and science. Science deals with the positive and negative energy and inertia; art with major and minor chords, the rise and fall of the accent and the limiting and controlling power on matter of the form, which Coventry Patmore called "creation's crowning good, wall of infinitude." So ubiquitous, indeed, is this phenomenon of duality that it has found expression even in philosophy, in all those systems which go by the name of "dialectic." The universality of this "dialectic" must not, however, be exaggerated. On closer examination important differences between what are superficially alike usually reveal themselves, and it is all important to emphasize the unique status of man. In so far as he is kin to the animals we can

ings has

Preface,

The Mind and Heart of Love

287

boldly point to analogies between them, but human love has something which animal love never has. The difference can be best expressed in saying that the higher actions of

man have an

and that

intrinsic value

man

has a personal

dignity. This dignity implies a radical difference

human

love and any lower form of love.

the brutal possessiveness which

It

marks the

between

forbids alike

positive,

male

surge of animal passion and the total self-yielding of feminine ecstasy. In creatures which are swayed by animal passion the male instinct is to dominate and take, the fe-

male

to yield

and

give.

They

are unhindered

considerations, by mutual respect.

by any moral

that they should get what they want and that the species should be continued. In taking, therefore, and giving they fulfil and it does not matter whether the lion or their nature the lioness, the actual male or female of the species, lord it so long as the two distinct and complementary loves are present in one way or another. Both are needed and together they suffice, the feminine as the love which surrenders for the sake of the other or the continuation of the It is sufficient

—

species,

and the male as the love which seeks its own and whether it be rampant or, as we shall see later,

possesses, cognitive.

Now, whereas

in nature these instincts

go their

on the human the taking and giving and each

careless often of individual

life,

own way, level

each

must grow in is a sacred life which must be respected. A new cycle begins; the two loves are present and are sublimated if the lower passion is lifted up, as it should be, to the ends of spirit. Every human person has these two loves within him, with one self

usually predominant, but the sacrificial impulse has a new direction. The contrast between animal and human love is admirably described in the lines of Donne:

All other things to their destruction draw.

Only our love hath no decay; This no to-morrow hath nor yesterday, Running it never runs from us away, But truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day.

M.

288

C. D'Arcy

is more than a human love and that say that the sacrificial love has a new direction. In the equality which should exist in true human love it has not its full outlet; there is more to it than a mere equality, for it is now the expression of the secret mark of human

But within the soul

is

why

beings,

I

namely

their

creatureliness,

the frail-as-gossamer

hold on our nature, which we call existence or persistence in being. We are hangers on, courtiers of the Absolute; we can be unmade as qUickly as we are made, and in that dependence is felt dimly the ultimate love of the rivulet for its source. That is why in the mystics' terminology the soul

is

enraptured and

its life is

stolen away,

and

it

is

in

the dark night that the total denuding of self is accomplished. But whereas the primitive impulse was to loss of self, "for I was flax and he was flames of fire," in that region where the self meets the Lord of life, there is communion and not death; "My very ashes in their urn, shall, like a hallowed Lamp, for ever burn." Finally, this law of the two in one, of giving and taking, is to be found in its primordial and perfect expression in God himself, where in the mutual love of the Trinity all is given without loss, and all is taken without change, save that a new Person is

revealed in this wondrous intercommunion

Who

is

Love

itself.

The method I have used may be compared to a fugue, where by fugue is meant the more or less exact reproduction by several voices of the statement of a leading part. If love be composed of two leitmotifs in the way I suggest, the evidence for this hypothesis must be sought in more than one sphere of human activity, and even further afield in the behaviour of other creatures. Each new piece of evidence will repeat the main theme in its own way and make it emerge more clearly, and that is why I have not scrupled to appeal to poets and modern psychologists as well as to philosophers and theologians. The different voices coming in one after another will, I hope, leave the reader at the end with the conviction that the main theme is true. The method involves many repetitions, and if the reader finds these boron one condition, however, ing I beg him to skip them

—

Preface, that he

ment.

I

The Mind and Heart of Love

289

sure that he has grasped the tenor of the arguhave tried to keep the argument Hght by avoiding,

is

who have been may complain belong to any known

so far as possible, technical terms. Those

trained in a certain school of scholarship

what I have written does not genre of scholarly work. I cannot see that this matters so long as the truth is made manifest. The "wissenschaftliche" that

can become a burden instead of a gain, for the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. Towards the end of the book, however, I have been forced, in order to give a solid foundation to my view, to have redistinctions

course to metaphysics.

The reader untrained

may

in the abstrac-

hope have already grasped the general argument of the book by the time he reaches these chapters, the omis-

tions of philosophy

find this hard going, but as I

that he will

sion of

them

will not

be so serious as in other types of

books written on a different method. The advantage of a cumulative argument is that some items in it can be neglected without total loss, however much the artistic unity of the whole may suffer. While writing this book I got my friend, Patrick Pollen, to do a coloured drawing for me, which seemed to contain in it almost everything I wanted to say. My hope was to have it for a frontispiece, but unfortunately that has not proved possible. I mention the drawing because it will explain, what otherwise might seem mysterious, the many' references to the Lion and the Unicom. My original title for this book was the Lion and the Unicom, and the drawing showed these two heraldic beasts supporting, as in the royal arms, a shield shaped like a heart. The Lion symbolizes that noble and ignoble love which is leonine and lordly and asserts itself in pride and self-respect and honour. In other words it stands for self-centred love. The Unicorn, on the other hand, is suited for the Anima. In most of the legends the

Unicom

is

a fierce beast,

but Christianity

fawn which pants for the waters of life and is ready for self-sacrifice. With this clue I hope that the symbols of the Lion and the Unicorn wiU be clear.

has

made

it

gentle and likened

it

to the

290

Reinhold Niebuhr

many books which have been written on human and divine love, I refer to only a few. The omission of names must not be taken to imply that I think slightingly of their treatment of the subject. It is true that I have not used what they have written, but the reason is that I deemed Of

it

the

wiser to decline their help rather than risk being disfrom my own line of thought.

tracted

21.

Love as a Possibility for the Individual

Reinhold Niebuhr

As a pastor and a writer, Dr. Niebuhr has passionately summoned religionists to extend the range of social obligation Here he concerned with the conflict between human limitations and the ideal of unlimited love; affirming the necessity of uncoerced protection, interest and tenderness for others without which political, economic and social justice cannot be guaranteed. Not imposed reason but the natural force of love transmuted by religious tension into moral will makes this ascendance possible for the essentially finite and willful individual. Reinhold Niebuhr is vice-president of the faculty of Union Theological Seminary where he is Professor of Christian Ethics and Philosophy of Religion. Acknowledged to be one of the most penetrating social critics and perhaps the most influential contemporary theologian, he is the author of Moral Man and Immoral Society, The Nature and Destiny of Man, The Self and the Dramas of History and other books. From An Interpretation of Christian Ethics by Reinhold Niebuhr, copyright 1935 by Harper & Brothers. By permission of Harper & Brothers.

to the ultimate reach of the Christian conscience. is

Love as a Possibility for the Individual

No

system of justice established by the political, economic, social coercion in the political order is perfect enough to dispense with the refinements which voluntary and uncoerced human kindness and tenderness between individuals add to it. These refinements are not only necessary, but possible. If the error of the medieval system of politics was to take traditional equilibria of justice for granted without

and

seeking to perfect their basic structure, its virtue was to seek the refinement of this justice by the love of individuals. In spite of the hypocrisies of the traditional medieval "lady bountiful" a genuine humaneness developed within and

which bourgeois sodevotion to the ideals of justice and love, has never achieved. The most grievous mistake of Marxism is its assumption that an adequate above the

injustices of feudal society

ciety, in spite of its sentimental

mechanism of

who

social justice will inevitably 'create individ-

be disciplined enough to "give according to their ability and take according to their need." The highest achievements of social good will and human kindness can be guaranteed by no political system. They are the consequence of moral and religious disciplines which might be more appreciated in our day if the Christian Church had not mistakenly tried to substitute them for the coercive preuals

will

requisites of basic justice.

What

is'necessary in this respect

is

also possible.

The

life

of the individual stands in an ascending scale of freedom and therefore under an ascending scale of moral possibilities. An individual who lives in New York does not have the freedom, and therefore lacks the possibility, of relating

terms of intimate contact and brotherly obligation Tokyo. He is even restrained from that kind of relationship with many people in his own city and his own nation. But there are always areas in which he is free to transcend the mechanisms and the limitations in which all life is involved and to relate his life to other Ufe his life in

to an individual in

292

Reinhold Niebuhr

terms of voluntary and free cooperation. It must, of course, be remembered that he is not free to transcend the total system of nature in which he stands which sets his life in competition with other life. The command to love his neighbor as himself must, therefore, remain an impossibility as well as a possibility. The ultimate reach of the ideal into the realm of the impossible does not, however, restrict the possibilities. On the contrary, it establishes a dimension in which every achievement of human brotherhood suggests both higher and broader possibilities.

in

A moral discipline calculated to increase the intensity and range of man's obligation to other

life

involves two factors:

the extension of the area in which life feels itself obligated to affirm and protect the interest of other life and the provision of an adequate

dynamic

to support this obligation.

Corresponding to these two factors there are two resources in human nature to which this religio-moral discipline must be related: The natural endowments of sympathy, paternal and filial affection, gregarious impulses and the sense of organic cohesion which all human beings possess, and the faculties of reason which tend to extend the range of these impulses beyond the limits set by nature. Unfortunately, the moral systems which have sought to extend the rational range of social obligation have been deficient in dealing with the problem of social and moral dynamics, while the systems which have dealt with the latter have usually neglected to deal adequately with the rational contribution to

On the one side Stole, Kantian, and utilitarian rationalism have neglected or obscured the problem of moral dynamics, while on the other side Romanticism and many morality.

schools of Christian thought have failed to do justice to the contribution of reason to moral conduct. The failure of

both schools of moral thought imparts a tragic aspect to the whole history of morality in Western culture.

The

rationalists

from the

Stoics to

Kant have correctly

assessed the role of reason in morality, but have not been able to relate

it

to the

dynamic aspects of

reason discloses the "moral law." gests, the total field of life in

rational

man

is

It

life. It is

true that

reveals, or at least sug-

which obligation moves. The

thus able to recognize the mutual relation-

Love

as a Possibility

293

and life in America, which the ignorant man does not see and for which he therefore recognizes no obligation. Furthermore, reason discloses how uncontrolled impulses create anarchy both within the self and within the social whole. Against this anarchy it sets the ideal of order. Reason tries to establish a system of coherence and consistency in conduct as well as in the realm of truth. It conceives of its harmonies of life with life not only in ever wider and more inclusive terms, but also works for equal justice within each area of harmony by the simple fact that the special privileges of injustice are brought under rational condemnation for their inconsistency. Under the canons of rational consistency men can claim for themselves only what is genuinely valuable and they cannot claim value for any of their desires if they are not valuable to others beside themselves. Reason thus forces them to share every privilege except those which are necessary to insure the performance of a special funcships between, let us say, life in Africa

tion in the interest of the whole.

A

large percentage of all thereby ruled out by the canons of reason; a fact which persuaded the Enlightenment to expect injustice to vanish with ignorance and has tempted a modern radical rationalist to seek the destruction of social injustice by the simple expedient of puncturing the illusions and prejudices by which social injustice justifies itself in the eyes of both its victims and its beneficiaries.^ Even utilitarian moral rationalism is not altogether wrong; for on certain levels of conduct reason discloses harmonies of life so immediate and so necessary that only the most heedless egoism will destroy them, since their destruction involves the despecial privilege

is

struction of the ego's interests.

Reason,

what

it

in short, discovers that life in its essence is

is

in

much more

its

actual existence, that ideally

it

not

involves

harmonies than actually exist in hiswhat the Stoics, meant by the natural law, though neither the Stoics, nor the Age of Reason after them, were always clear whether natural law was the ideal to which reason pointed or certain universally accepted standards of conduct in actual history, a confusion which tory. This

1

Cf.

Robert

inclusive

is

Briffault, Rational Evolution

and Breakdown.

294

Reinhold Niebuhr

sometimes led to a curious compound of radical and conventional morality in both cases. Romanticism with its undue and uncritical emphasis upon the moral dynamic of the emotions failed to do justice to this critical function of reason in the moral life; and Protestant orthodoxy, allowed its idea of total depravity in which man's rationality was involved, to betray it into contempt for the rational contribution to morality. Furthermore, reason could only project a law and men could be saved not by law, but by grace. The errors of Romanticism were partially corrected, at least at this point, by the Enlightenment; but the error of orthodox Protestantism (particularly Lutheran Protestantism) contributed to is

its

ineptness in the field of social ethics. The fact whole always had to borrow from

that Christianity as a

some scheme of rationalism to complete its ethical structure. The early Church borrowed from Stoicism and Thomasian Catholicism appropriated Aristotelian doctrine to provide a foundation for its more distinctively Christian superstructure.

In spite of these necessary contributions of reason to

moral conduct and of rationalism to moral theory, no rational moral idealism can create moral conduct. It can provide principles of criticism and norms; but such norms do not contain a dynamic for their realization. In both Stoic and Kantian moral theory the conflict in the human psyche is mistakenly defined and virtuous reason is set at variance with the evil impulses. In both cases the social impulses with which men are endowed by nature are placed outside of the moral realm. Thus the Stoics regarded the sentiment of pity as evil and in Kantian ethics only actions which are motivated by reverence for the moral law are good, a criterion which would put the tenderness of a mother for her child outside of the pale of moral action. Rationalism not only suppresses the emotional supports of moral action unduly, but it has no understanding for the problem of moral dynamics and has, therefore, failed dismally in encouraging men toward the realization of the ideals which it has projected. Laws are not automatically obeyed, whether the laws of the state or the higher law of reason. Henri Bergson criticizes the Stoics for their inabil-

Love

as a Possibility

295

ity to produce a morality consistent with their universalistic idealism.- In view of the fact that in every system of moral

thought, achievements

No No

fall

short of ideals, and

deed is all its thought had been, wish but feels the fleshly screen.

may seem

unjust to single out the Stoics for condemnawhen the lives of an Epictetus and a Marcus Aurelius give a luster of moral sincerity to a system of thought which the reputed hypocrisies and dishonesties of a Seneca, Cicero, and Brutus cannot altogether dim. NeverIt

tion, particularly

theless,

it

remains true that Stoicism was unable to arrest

the decay of

whole,

little

Roman

life

and that

more than an

its

idealism was,

on the

affectation of a small intelligent

aristocracy.

The effort of various types of rational idealism to provide an adequate dynamic for their ideal or an adequate theory of dynamics vary greatly; they are similar only in their common inadequacy. Utilitarian rationalism sought to use reason to harness egoistic passion to social goals. It thought that the intellectual demonstration of the ultimate interrelatedness of all life could persuade men to affirm the interests of their neighbors in immediate situations out of selfregarding motives. The theory is absurd because in immediate situations one life may actually live at the expense of another; in such situations egoistic purpose can hardly be beguiled by considerations of what life is and ought to be in its truest and most ultimate essence. According to the naturalistic rationalism of John Dewey, reason cuts the channels into which life will inevitably flow because life is itself dynamic. Reason supplies the direction and the natural power of life-as-impulse insures the movein the direction of the rationally projected goal. The theory presupposes a nonexistent unity of man's impulsive life, a greater degree of rational transcendence over impulse than actually exists and a natural obedience of impulse to the ideal which all history refutes. Nothing in the theory could explain why the nations of the world are still so far

ment

2

Henri Bergson,

Two

Sources of Religion

and Morality,

p. 52.

296

Reinhold Niebuhr

from

realizing the rationally projected

and universally ac-

cepted goal of universal peace.^ The explanation in terms of the theory would probably be that reason had not yet sufficiently corroded the old tribal behavior patterns of the nations; but such an explanation hardly does justice to the non-traditional and immediately vital and spontaneous impulses toward war. If the naturalists among the rationalists think that reason can beguile natural life to extend itself beyond itself, the Kantian idealists can find no effective contact between the real and the ideal world. The intelligible self is the lawgiver and imposes the law of rational consistency: Act so as to make thy action the basis of universal law. But what is to persuade men to obey the law? An inherent force of reverence for law, the sense of obligation. There are two difficulties in this interpretation. One is that the law is only in the realm of essential and not in existential reality. It therefore has no force in the realm of existence to secure its realization. The other error follows naturally from the first: The intelligible self with its sense of obligation is hopelessly cut off from the sensible self of the passions and desires of natural life. The ideal cannot get itself realized; it cannot even enlist the forces of nature in man which inchoately support the ideal. The failure of Kantian ethics and of rationalistic ethics in general gives the most important clue to importance of the Christian doctrine of love and the Christian faith in God which supports it. Faith in God means faith in the transcendent unity of essence and existence, of the ideal and the real world. The cleavage between them in the historical world is not a cleavage between impulse and reason, though it is by reason that the "law of God" is most fully apprehended. The cleavage can only be mythically expressed as one between obedience and sin, between good will and evil will. This cleavage is ultimately overcome by love. Now love implies an uncoerced giving of the self to the object of its devotion. It is thus a fulfillment of the law; for in perfect love all law is transcended and what is and what ought to be are one. The self is coerced neither by a » Cf.

John Dewey,

Human

Nature and Conduct, pp. 79-83.

Love society to

by

conform

to

as a Possibility

minimal standards nor

is

it

297

coerced

other intelligible or rational or ideal self. manifestly this perfect love is, like God, in the realm of transcendence. What relevance does it have, then, to the historical world and what moral action is it able to its

Now

invoke in

human

beings in whom "there is a law in their against the law that is in their minds"?

members which wars The answer is given

paradox of the love commandparadox; for love cannot be love God with all our hearts and all our souls and all our minds means that every cleavage in human existence is overcome. But the fact that such an attitude is commanded proves that the cleavage is not overcome; the command comes from one side of reahty to the other, from essence to existence. in the

To command love is a commanded or demanded. To

ment.

The

ideal of love

which appeals

is

thus

to the will.

first

What

of all a commandment the human will? It is

is

neither the total personality nor yet the rational element in It is the total organized personality moving

personality.

self. The will imbut not a cleavage primarily between reason and impulse. The will is a rational organization of impulse. Consequently, the Christian ideal of a loving will does not exclude the impulses and emotions in nature through which the self is organically related to other life. Jesus therefore relates the love of God to the natural love of parents for their children: "If ye then, being evil,

against the recalcitrant elements in the

plies a cleavage in the self

know how

to give

good

gifts

unto your children,

how much

more will your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?" In its appreciation of every natural emotion of sympathy and

pity, of

solidarity, the ethic of Jesus

is

consanguinity and

distinguished

human

from the

ethics

of rationalism. In this respect there are points of contact

between Christianity and Romanticism, perhaps most fully revealed in such men as St. Francis. The moral will is not a force of reason imposed upon the emotions. It utilizes whatever forces in nature carry Hfe beyond itself. But since the forces of nature carry life beyond itself only to enslave it again to the larger self of family, race, and community, Christian ethics never has, as in Romanticism, an uncritical

298

Reinhold Niebuhr sociality. They all stand under "how much more" and under the

toward impulses of

attitude

the perspective of the

criticism, "If ye love those

who

love you what thanks have

ye."

The "natural man" is not only under the criticism of these absolute perspectives, but under obligation to emulate the love of God, to forgive as God forgives, to love his enemies as God loves them. Love as natural endowment, ergs, is transmuted under this religious tension into agape.* In Henri Bergson's Two Sources of Morality and Religion the religious force which breaks through the "closed morality" of devotion to family and community is called the force of mysticism. The word mysticism to designate what Bergson has in mind is badly chosen because of the tendency toward passivity and contemplation rather than moral creativity in mysticism, a tendency Bergson himself recognizes but seeks to confine to the eastern rather than Christian mystics.^ But his idea is correct. The motive power of a love which transcends the impulses of nature is a combination of obedience to

obedience

is

God and

of the sovereignty (basileus) of the

love of God.

The

idea of

maintained in Jesus' teachings by the concept

"Kingdom

of God."

God, usually

The element

translated as

of obedience, of a

sense of moral obligation, of a willful act of conformity to the divine standard,

good and

evil in the

is

consonant with the division between

human

impossible, because no act

is

makes perfect love which the resistance

soul which possible in

is completely absent. The element of love motive of social love is consonant with the fact

of egoism and sin

of

God

as a

good is actually present in human Both the fact that it is present and challenged by sin is expressed in the paradox of

that the attraction of the life, in

spite of

that

is

it

the love

its sin.

commandment, "Thou

shalt love." In the terms of

* Professor Anders Xygren in his Agape and Eros succinctly states this distinction as developed in Christian theology: "Eros" must always regard the love of man as the love for the good in man. . , . Agape is the precise opposite. God's love is the ground and pattern of all love. It consists in free self-giving and it finds its continuation in God's love for man; for he who has received all for nothing is constrained to pass on to others what he has received." p. 171. 6 Cf. Henri Bergson, op. cit., p. 216.

Love the moral experience of man 'I feel that I ought to love."

The God, tian religion

whom is,

to love

is

it

as a Possibility

299

might be stated in the terms,

commanded in the ChrisGod of mnhical-prophetic

thus

significantly, the

conception, which means that he is both the ground of existence and the essence which transcends existence. In this mythical paradox lies the foundation for an ethic which enables men to give themselves to values actually embodied in persons and existence, but also transcending every actuality; thereby escaping both the glorification of human, temporal, and partial values characteristic of naturalism and also the morally enervating

tendency of mysticism to regard

"love of creatures" as disloyalty to God and to confine the love of God to a rational or mystic contemplation of the divine essence which transcends all finite existence. What-

ever the weaknesses of Christianity in the field of social morality, history attests its fruitfulness in eliciting loving and tender service to men of all sorts and conditions with-

out regard to some obvious merit which might seem to give a moral claim upon their fellow men. The Christian love commandment does not demand love of the fellow man because he is with us equally divine (Stoicism), or because we ought to have "respect for personality" (Christian liberahsm), but because God loves him. The obligation is derived, in other words, not from the obvious unities and affinities of historic existence, but from the transcendent unity of essential reality. The logic of this position is clearly stated by the Quaker saint, John Woolman, in dealing with the question of slavery: "Many slaves on this continent have been oppressed and their cries have reached the ears of the Most High. Such is the purity and certainty of His judgments that he can not be partial to any. In infinite love and goodness he has opened our understanding from time to time, respecting our duty of these people." Naturally such a religious presupposition operates to make men sensitive to the actual underlying unities of human life in historic existence, as expressed, for instance, in the words of St. Paul: "He hath made of one blood all the races of men." But the obligation is derived from a more transcendent unity and

them

''

«

Gummere, Journal

of

John Woolman,

p.

216.

300

Reinhold Niebuhr

purity of value than any historic realities, and

is

therefore

proof against the disappointments and disillusions of naturalistic morality, in which there is always a touch of a romantic exaggeration of the goodness of man and a corresponding cynical reaction. But the insistence upon the Creation as a work of God always saves prophetic religion from contempt for the partial and imperfect values of history and a consequent identification of religion with a passive contemplation of a transcendent ideal beyond existence. Unfortunately, historic Christianity has sometimes been partially beguiled from this prophetic position, as, for instance, in the theology of Thomas Aquinas in which Aristotelian rationalism influences him to regard a rational and mystical contemplation of the divine as religiously superior to ethical action.

The Christian doctrine of love is thus the most adequate metaphysical and psychological framework for the approximation of the ideal of love in human life. It is able to appropriate all the resources of human nature which tend toward the harmony of life with life, without resting in the resources of "natural man." It is able to set moral goals transcending nature without being lost in other-worldliness. The degree of approximation depends upon the extent to which the Christian faith is not merely a theory, but a living and vital presupposition of life and conduct. The long history of Christianity is, in spite of its many failures, not wanting in constant and perennial proofs that love is the fruit of its spirit. Martyrs and saints, missionaries and prophets, apostles and teachers of the faith, have showed forth in their lives the pity and tenderness toward their fel-

low men which

is

the

crown of the Christian

Christianity failed to impart to the ordinary tions of ordinary

men

Nor has human rela-

life.

the virtues of tenderness and consid-

eration.

While every religion, as indeed every human world view, must finally justify itself in terms of its moral fruits, it must be understood that the moral fruits of religion are not the consequence of a conscious effort to achieve them. The love commandment is a demand upon the will, but the human will is not enabled to conform to it because moralistic ap-

Love

made

as a Possibility

301

obey the commandment. Moralistic appeals are in fact indications of the dissipation of primary religious vitality. Men cannot, by taking thought, strengthen peals are

to

their will. If the will

the

is

moment, moving

the total organized personality of recalcitrant impulse, the

against

its

upon the strength of the factors organization. Consequently, the acts and

attitudes of love in

which the ordinary resources of nature

strength of the will depends

which enter

into

are supplemented are partly the consequence of historic

which have become a part of the and partly the result of concatenations of circumstance in which the pressure of events endows the individual with powers not ordinarily his own. and traditional

disciplines

socio-spiritual inheritance of the individual

The soldier's courage, his ability to transcend the inclination of "natural man" to flee death, is the fruit of a great tradition and the spirit of the military community which enforces it. In the same manner the tenderness and graciousness with which men are able to regard the problems of their fellow men, beyond the natural inclinations of human nature, is the fruit of a religio-moral tradition and the loyalty of a religious community to the tradition. Even if we cannot accept St. Paul's Christ-mysticism, bordering as it does on the very edge of the magical, it is nevertheless true that the Church is the body of Christ and that the noble living and the noble dead in her communion help to build up in her the living Christ, a dimension of life which transcends the inclinations of natural man. It is consequently natural and inevitable that the faithful should regard genuine acts of love as proceeding from propulsions which are not their own, and should confess with St. Paul, "I, yet not I, but Christ that dwelleth in me." Sometimes the act of complete self-abnegation, the pouring out of life for other life, is the consequence of pressures of a given moment which endow the individual with resources beyond his natural capacities. The mother who sacrifices her life for her child is enabled to do this by the heightening of the natural impulses of mother love in a moment of crisis. In soberer moments of reflection she could not give herself so completely for another life. The same

302

Reinhold Niebuhr

mother who thus sacrifices herself might conceivably be engaged in more prosaic moments in shrewd unconscious calculations in which mother love is compounded with the will-to-power. Martyrs do not achieve martyrdom by taking thought. Whether a man stands or yields in the hour of crisis is of course determined by commitments made before the crisis arises. Devotion to a cause may be such that it becomes irrevocable and its revocation would result in the complete disintegration of personality. The crisis with its impending martyrdom adds its emotional pressures to the commitment of previous years. Furthermore, a strong devotion to a cause absorbs the individual in the cause so that the entire socio-spiritual impetus of the enterprise sustains him in the hour of crisis and endows him with resources which transcend anything possessed in his own right. The Catholic doctrine that faith, hope, and love are "theological" virtues which are added to the moral possibilities of natural man by an infusion of grace is thus, broadly speaking, true to the facts. Only it is not true that the grace which is added is necessarily infused by the sacraments nor even that the Christian faith is its only possible presupposition. The grace of God is not confined so narrowly as the theological defenders of historic religious instilike to confine it. But there are, nevertheless, which can only be described as the grace of God. What men are able to will depends not upon the strength of their willing, but upon the strength which enters their will and over which their will has little control. All moral action really stands under the paradox: "Work out your salvation in fear and trembling; for it is God who worketh in you both to will and to do his good pleasure." But love is not only a fruit of grace, but also a fruit of faith; which is to say that the total spiritual attitude which informs a life determines to what height a moral action may rise in a given moment. Deeds of love are not the consequence of specific acts of the will. They are the consequence of the religio-moral tension in life which is possible only if

tutions

would

forces in life

the individual consciously lives in the total dimension of life. The real motives of love, according to the Christian gospel, are gratitude

and

contrition. Gratitude

and

contri-

Love

as a Possibility

tion are the fruits of a prophetic faith

which knows

303 life in

its depths. To believe in God is to know essence and not only in its momentary existence. Thus to know it means that what is dark, arbitrary, and contingent in momentary existence can neither be accepted

its

heights and in

life in its

complacently nor tempt to despair. To understand life in its total dimension means contrition because every moral achievement stands under the criticism of a more essential goodness. If fully analyzed the moral achievement is not only convicted of imperfection, but of sin. It is not only wanting in perfect goodness, but there is something of the perversity of evil in it. Such contrition does not destroy selfishness in the human heart. But there is a difference between the man who understands something of the mystery of evil in his own soul and one who comjplacently accepts human egoism as a force which must be skillfully balanced with altruism in order that moral unity may be achieved. To understand life in its total dimension means to accept it with grateful reverence as good. It is good in its ultimate essence even when it seems evil and chaotic in its contingent and momentary reality. Faith in its essence is not an arbitrary faith.

Once

held, actual historic existence verifies

for there are in life as

we know

it

in history

and nature

it;

in-

numerable symbols of its ultimate and essential nature. Grateful reverence toward the goodness of life is a motive force of love in more than one sense. Gratitude for what essence creates a propulsive power to affirm in is truly essential, the harmony of life with life. Furthermore, under the insights of such a faith, the fellow man becomes something more than the creature of time and place, separated from us by the contingencies of nature and geography and set against us by the necessities of animal existence. His life is seen under the aura of the divine and he participates in the glory, dignity and beauty of existence. We do not love him because he is "divine." If that pantheistic note creeps into prophetic faith it leads to disare all imillusion. He is no more divine than we are. bedded in the contingent and arbitrary life of animal existence and we have corrupted the harmless imperfections

life is in its

existence

what

We

304

Albert

Camus

of nature with the corruptions of sin. Yet we are truly "children of God" and something of the transcendent unity, in which we are one in God, shines through both the evil of nature and the evil in man. Our heart goes out to our fellow man, when seen through the eyes of faith, not only because we see him thus under a transcendent perspective but because we see ourselves under it and know that we are sinners just as he is. Awed by the majesty and goodness of God, something of the pretense of our pretentious self is destroyed and the natural cruelty of our self -righteousness is mitigated by emotions of pity and forgiveness. The moral effectiveness of the religious life thus depends upon deeper resources than moral demands upon the will. Whenever the modem pulpit contents itself with the presentation of these demands, however urgent and fervent, it reveals its enslavement to the rationalistic presuppositions of our era. The law of love is not obeyed simply by being

known. Whenever it is obeyed at all, it is because life in its beauty and terror has been more fully revealed to man. The love that cannot be willed may nevertheless grow as a natural fruit upon a tree which has roots deep enough to be nurtured by springs of life beneath the surface and branches reaching up to heaven.

22.

Love and Rebellion

Albert

Camus

In his plays, novels and essays, Albert Camus has tried to discover a way out of the intellectual dead-end of nihilism

with which this generation has been faced. By what values, he asks again and again, can we survive in an era of spiritual devastation? Stripped of illusion, questioning all absolutes, Camus calls, in the name of humanity, on love as a

— Love and Rebellion value which

is

305

not given but grows out of the conditions of

living.

Myth

Camus

considered the imThe Rebel, from whose rhapsodic final pages the larger part of this whether to endure selection is drawn, the issue is murder or not to endure. In Camus's severe doctrine rebellion makes it possible to hope, to have confidence in man and his future. "Camus beHeves that revolt is one of the 'essenIn The

of Sisyphus,

plications of suicide

—

first

to live or not to live. In

—

tial

dimensions' of mankind," Sir Herbert

the Foreword. "It

is

useless to

deny

its

Read

writes in

historical reality

we must seek in it a principle of existence. But the nature of revolt has changed radically in our times. It is no longer the revolt of the slave against the master, nor even the revolt of the poor against the rich; it is a metaphysical revolt, the revolt of man against the conditions of life, rather

against creation

itself.

At

the

same time,

One

it is

an aspiration

—

even, paradoxically,

it

becomes under the

toward clarity and unity of thought toward order. That, at least, is what intellectual guidance of Camus."

of France's leading writers, winner of the

Nobel The

Prize for Literature, Albert Camus's novels include

The Plague and The Fall. Reprinted from the Vintage Books Edition of The Rebel by Albert Camus, translated by Anthony Bower, copyright 1956 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. By special arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Stranger,

Love and Rebellion

What

is

a rebel?

A man who says no, but whose refusal does He

not imply a renunciation.

from the moment he makes slave

who

is

also a

man who

says yes,

his first gesture of rebellion.

A

suddenly decides that command. What does he mean by

has taken orders

all his life

he cannot obey some new saying "no"? He means, for example, that "this has been going on too long," "up to this point yes, beyond it no," "you are going

306

Albert

Camus

too far," or, again, "there is a limit beyond which you shall not go." In other words, his no affirms the existence of a borderline. The same concept is to be found in the rebel's feeling that the other person "is exaggerating," that he is exerting his authority beyond a limit where he begins to infringe on the rights of others. Thus the movement of rebellion is founded simultaneously on the categorical rejection of an intrusion that is considered intolerable and on the confused conviction of an absolute right which, in the rebel's mind, is more precisely the impression that he "has ." Rebellion cannot exist without the feeling the right to .

that,

.

somewhere and somehow, one

is

way

right. It is in this

and no simultaneously. He and affirms that there are limits and also that he suspects wishes to preserve the existence of certain things on this that the rebel slave says yes

—

—

side of the borderline.

He

demonstrates, with obstinacy,

something in him which "is worth while ^ ." and which must be taken into consideration. In a certain way, he confronts an order of things which oppresses him with the insistence on a kind of right not to be oppressed beyond the limit that he can tolerate. that there

is

.

In every act of rebellion, the rebel simultaneously experiences a feeling of revulsion at the infringement of his rights and a complete and spontaneous loyalty to certain aspects of himself. Thus he implicitly brings into play a

standard of values so far from being gratuitous that he is prepared to support it no matter what the risks. Up to this point he has at least remained silent and has abandoned himself to the form of despair in which a condition is accepted even though it is considered unjust. To remain silent is to give the impression that one has no opinions, that one

wants nothing, and in certain cases it really amounts to wanting nothing. Despair, like the absurd, has opinions and desires about everything in general and nothing in particular. Silence expresses this attitude very well. But from the moment that the rebel finds his voice even though he says nothing but "no" he begins to desire and to judge. The rebel, in the etymological sense, does a complete turnabout. He acted under the lash of his master's whip. Suddenly he

—

—

Love and Rebellion

307

turns and faces him. He is not. Not every value entails rebellion, but every act of rebellion tacitly invokes a value. Or is it really a question

opposes what

is

preferable to what

of values?

Awareness, no matter

how

confused

may

it

be, develops

act of rebellion: the sudden, dazzling perception that there is something in man with which he can iden-

from every

only for a moment. Up to now this really experienced. Before he rebelled, the slave accepted all the demands made upon him. Very often he even took orders, without reacting against them, which were far more conducive to insurrection than the one at which he balks. He accepted them patiently, though he may have protested inwardly, but in that he remained silent he was more concerned with his own immediate interests than as yet aware of his own rights. But with with impatience a reaction begins which loss of patience can extend to everything that he previously accepted, and which is almost always retroactive. The very moment the slave refuses to obey the humiliating orders of his master, he simultaneously rejects the condition of slavery. The act of rebellion carries him far beyond the point he had reached by simply refusing. He exceeds the bounds that he fixed for his antagonist, and now demands to be treated as an equal. What was at first the man's obstinate resistance now becomes the whole man, who is identified with and summed up in this resistance. The part of himself that he wanted to be respected he proceeds to place above everything else and tify himself,

identification

even

if

was never

—

proclaims

it

preferable

—

to

even to

everything,

life

it-

becomes for him the supreme good. Having up to now been willing to compromise, the slave suddenly .") an attitude of adopts ("because this is how it must be All or Nothing. With rebellion, awareness is bom. But we can see that the knowledge gained is, at the same time, of an "all" that is still rather obscure and of a "nothself.

It

.

.

ing" that proclaims the possibility of sacrificing the rebel to The rebel himself wants to be "all"— to identify himself completely with this good of which he has suddenly become aware and by which he wants to be personally recthis "All."

308

Albert

Camus

ognized and acknowledged

—or "nothing";

in other words,

to be completely destroyed by the force that dominates him. As a last resort, he is willing to accept the final defeat, is death, rather than be deprived of the personal sacrament that he would call, for example, freedom. Better to die on one's feet than to live on one's knees. Values, according to good authorities, "most often repre-

which

from facts to rights, from what is desired what is desirable (usually through the intermediary of what is generally considered desirable)."^ The transition from facts to rights is manifest, as we have seen, in rebellion. So is the transition from "this must be" to "this is how I should like things to be," and even more so, perhaps, the sent a transition

to

idea of the sublimation of the individual in a henceforth universal good. The sudden appearance of the concept of "All or Nothing" demonstrates that rebellion, contrary to

current opinion, and though

most

is

it

from everything that man, questions the very

springs

strictly individualistic in

idea of the individual. If the individual, in fact, accepts death and happens to die as a consequence of his act of rebellion, he demonstrates by doing so that he is willing to sacrifice himself for the sake of a

considers

more important than

his

common good which he own

destiny. If

he pre-

death to the negation of the rights that he defends, it is because he considers these rights more important than himself. Therefore he is acting in the name of certain values which are still indeterminate but which he feels are common to himself and to all men. We see that the affirmation implicit in every act of rebellion is extended to something that transcends the individual in so far as it withdraws him from his supposed solitude and provides him with a reason to act. But it is already worth noting that this concept of values as pre-existant to any kind of action contradicts the purely historical philosophies, in which values are acquired (if they are ever acquired) after the action has been completed. Analysis of rebellion leads at least to the suspicion that, contrary to the postulates of contemporary thought, a human nature does exist, as the Greeks believed. Why rebel if there is nothing permanent fers the risk of

1

Lalande:

Vocabulaire philosophique.

Love and Rebellion

309

worth preserving? It is for the sake of everyone in the world that the slave asserts himself when he comes to the conclusion that a command has infringed on something in him which does not belong to him alone, but which is common ground where all men even the man who insults and oppresses him have a natural community."

in oneself

—

—

Two observations will support this argument. First, we can see that an act of rebelHon is not, essentially, an egoistic act. Of course, it can have egoistic motives. But one can rebel equally well against lies as against oppression. over, the rebel

the

moment

—once he has accepted

of his greatest impetus

that he risks everything.

More-

the motives and at

—preserves nothing of

He demands

in

respect for himself,

course, but only in so far as he identifies himself with a

natural community.

Then we note that rebellion does not arise only, and among the oppressed, but that it can also be

necessarily,

caused by the mere spectacle of oppression of which someelse is the victim. In such cases there is a feeling of identification with another individual. And it must be pointed out that this is not a question of psychological a mere subterfuge by which the individual identification imagines that it is he himself who has been offended. On the contrary, it can often happen that we cannot bear to see offenses done to others which we ourselves have accepted without rebelling. The suicides of the Russian terrorists in Siberia as a protest against their comrades' being whipped is a case in point. Nor is it a question of the feeling of a

one

—

community of

interests. Injustices

done

to

men whom we

consider enemies can, actually, be profoundly repugnant to us. There is only identification of one's destiny with that of others and a choice of sides. Therefore the individual is not, in himself alone, the

embodiment of

the values he

wishes to defend. It needs all humanity, at least, to comprise them. When he rebels, a man identifies himself with other men and so surpasses himself, and from this point of view human solidarity is metaphysical. But for the moment 2 The community of victims is the same as that which unites victim and executioner. But the executioner does not know this.

310

we

Albert

Camus

are only talking of the kind of solidarity that

is

bom

in

chains. It

would be possible for us

to define the positive aspect of

the values implicit in every act of rebellion by comparing them with a completely negative concept like that of resent-

ment as defined by Scheler. Rebellion is, in fact, much more than pursuit of a claim, in the strongest sense of the word. Resentment intoxication

—

is

very well defined by Scheler as an auto-

the evil secretion, in a sealed vessel, of pro-

longed impotence. Rebellion, on the contrary, breaks the seal and aUows the whole being to come into play. It liberates stagnant waters and turns them into a raging torrent. Scheler himself emphasizes the passive aspect of resentment and remarks on the prominent place it occupies in the psychology 9f women who are dedicated to desire and possession. The fountainhead of rebellion, on the contrary, is the principle of superabundant activity and energy. Scheler is also right in saying that resentment is always highly colored by envy. But one envies what one does not have, while the rebel's aim is to defend what he is. He does not merely claim sorne good that he does not possess or of which he was deprived. His aim is to claim recognition for something which he has and which has already been recognized by him, in almost every case, as more important than anything of which he could be envious. Rebellion is not realistic. According to Scheler, resentment always turns into either unscrupulous ambition or bitterness, depending on whether it is implanted in a strong person or a weak one. But in both cases it is a question of wanting to be something other than what one is. Resentment is always resentment against oneself. The rebel, on the contrary, from his very first step, refuses to allow anyone to touch what he is. He is fighting for the integrity of one part of his being. He does not try, primarily, to conquer, but simply to impose. Finally, it would seem that resentment takes delight, in advance, in the pain that it would like the object of its envy to feel. Nietzsche and Scheler are right in seeing an excellent example of this in the passage where Tertullian informs his readers that one of the greatest sources of happiness

Love and Rebellion

among perors

the blessed will be the spectacle of the

consumed

in the fires of hell. This

311

Roman em-

kind of happiness

by the decent people who go to watch executions. The rebel, on the contrary, limits himself, as a is

also experienced

matter of principle, to refusing to be humiliated without asking that others should be. He will even accept pain provided his integrity is respected. It is therefore hard to understand why Scheler completely identifies the spirit of rebellion with resentment. His criticism of the resentment to be found in humanitarianism (which he treats as the non-Christian form of love for mankind) could perhaps be applied to certain indeterminate forms of humanitarian idealism, or to the techniques of terror.

But

it

rings false in relation to man's rebellion

—

the movement that enlists the individual in the defense of a dignity common to all men. Scheler wants to demonstrate that humanitarian feelings are against his condition

always accompanied by a hatred of the world. Humanity is loved in general in order to avoid having to love anybody in particular. This is correct, in some cases, and it is easier to understand Scheler when we realize that for him humanitarianism is represented by Bentham and Rousseau. But man's love for man can be bom of other things than a mathematical calculation of the resultant rewards or a theoretical confidence in human nature. In face of the utilitarians, and of fimile's preceptor, there is, for example, the kind of logic, embodied by Dostoievsky in Ivan Karamazov, which progresses from an act of rebeUion to metaphysical insurrection. Scheler is aware of this and sums up the concept in the following manner: 'There is not enough love in the world to squander it on anything but human beings." Even if this proposition were true, the appalling despair that it implies would merit anything but contempt. In fact, it misunderstands the tortured character of Kara-

mazov's rebellion. Ivan's drama, on the contrary, arises from the fact that there is too much love without an object. This love finding no outlet and God being denied, it is then decided to lavish it on human beings as a generous act of complicity. Nevertheless, in the act of rebeUion as

we have

envisaged

312

Albert

Camus

now, an abstract ideal is not chosen through lack of feeling and in pursuit of a sterile demand. We insist that the part of man which cannot be reduced to mere ideas should be taken into consideration the passionate side of his nature that serves no other purpose than to be part of the act of living. Does this imply that no rebellion is motivated by resentment? No, and we know it only too well in this age of malice. But we must consider the idea of rebellion in its widest sense on pain of betraying it; and in its widest sense rebellion goes far beyond resentment. When HeathWuthering Heights, says that he puts his love cliff, in above God and would willingly go to hell in order to be reunited with the woman he loves, he is prompted not only by youth and humiliation but by the consuming experience of a whole lifetime. The same emotion causes Eckart, in a surprising fit of heresy, to say that he prefers hell with Jesus to heaven without Him. This is the very essence of love. Contrary to Scheler, it would therefore be impossible to overemphasize the passionate affirmation that underlies the act of rebellion and distinguishes it from resentment. Rebellion, though apparently negative, since it creates nothing, is profoundly positive in that it reveals the part of man which must always be defended. it

up

to

—

Beyond Nihilism There does exist for man, therefore, a way of acting and of thinking which is possible on the level of moderation to which he belongs. Every undertaking that is more ambitious proves to be contradictory. The absolute is not all, created through history. Politics is not religion, or if it is, then it is nothing but the Inquisition. How would society define an absolute? Perhaps everyone is looking for this absolute on behalf of all. But society and politics only have the responsibility of arranging everyone's affairs so that each will have the leisure and the freedom to pursue this common search. History can then no longer be presented as an object of worship. It is only an opportunity that must be rendered fruitful by a vigilant rebellion. "Obsession with the harvest and indifference to history,"

than

this

attained nor, above

Love and Rebellion

313

two extremities of my bow." If the duration of history is not synonymous with the duration of the harvest, then history, in effect, is no more that a fleeting and cruel shadow in which man has no writes

Rene Char admirably, "are

the

He who dedicates himself to this history dedicates himself to nothing and, in his turn, is nothing. But he who dedicates himself to the duration of his life, to the house he builds, to the dignity of mankind, dedicates himself tq the earth and reaps from it the harvest that sows its seed and sustains the world again and again. Finally, it is those who know how to rebel, at the appropriate moment, against his-

part.

tory

who

really

advance

its

interests.

To

rebel against

it

supposes an interminable tension and the agonized serenity of which Rene Char also speaks. But the true life is present in the heart of this dichotomy. Life is this dichotomy itself, the mind soaring over volcanoes of light, the madness of

extenuating intransigence of moderation. The at the confines of this long adventure of rebellion are not formulas for optimism, for which we have no possible use in the extremities of our unhappiness, but words of courage and intelligence which, on the shores of the eternal seas, even have the qualities of

justice, the

words that reverberate for us

virtue.

No possible form of wisdom today can claim to give more. Rebellion indefatigably confronts evil, from which it can only derive a new impetus. Man can master in himself everything that should be mastered. He should rectify in creation everything that can be rectified. And after he has done so, children will still die unjustly even in a perfect society. Even by his greatest effort man can only propose to diminish arithmetically the sufferings of the world. But the injustice and the suffering of the world will remain and, no matter how limited they are, they will not cease to be an outrage. Dimitri Karamazov's cry of "Why?" will continue to resound; art and rebellion will die only with the last man. There is an evil, undoubtedly, which men accumulate in their frantic desire for unity. But yet another evil lies at the roots of this inordinate movement. Confronted with this evil, confronted with death, man from the very depths of his soul cries out for justice. Historical Christianity has only

314

Albert

Camus

replied to this protest against evil by the annunciation of the kingdom and then of eternal life, which demands faith.

But suffering exhausts hope and faith and then is left alone and unexplained. The toiling masses, worn out with suffering and death, are masses without God. Our place is henceforth at their side, far from teachers, old or new. Historical Christianity postpones to a point beyond the span of history the cure of evil and murder, which are nevertheless experienced within the span of history. Contemporary materialism also believes that it can answer all questions. But, as a slave to history, it increases the domain of historic murder and at the same time leaves it without any justification, exwhich again demands faith. In both cept in the future cases one must wait, and meanwhile the innocent continue to die. For twenty centuries the sum total of evil has not diminished in the world. No paradise, whether divine or revolutionary, has been realized. An injustice remains inextricably bound to all suffering, even the most deserved in the eyes of men. The long silence of Prometheus before the powers that overwhelmed him still cries out in protest. But Prometheus, meanwhile, has seen men rail and turn against him. Crushed between human evil and destiny, between terror and the arbitrary, all that remains to him is his power to rebel in order to save from murder him who can still be

—

saved, without surrendering to the arrogance of blasphemy. Then we understand that rebellion cannot exist without

a strange form of love. Those history are

condemned

who

find

no

rest in

who,

God

or in

themfor the humiliated. The most

to live for those

like

selves, cannot live: in fact, pure form of the movement of rebellion is thus crowned with the heart-rending cry of Karamazov: if all are not saved, what good is the salvation of one only? Thus Catholic

communion made it obliga-

prisoners, in the prison cells of Spain, refuse

today because the priests of the regime have

tory in certain prisons. These lonely witnesses to the cruciif it must be paid and oppression. This insane generosity is the generosity of rebellion, which unhesitatingly gives the strength of its love and without a moment's delay refuses injustice. Its merit lies in making no calculations, distribut-

fixion of innocence also refuse salvation

for

by

injustice

Love and Rebellion ing everything

it

possesses to

life

and

thus that it is prodigal in its gifts generosity toward the future lies in giving

Rebellion proves in this

and that

way

that

315

men. It is to men to come. Real to living

it is

all

to the present.

the very

movement

cannot be denied without renouncing life. Its purest outburst, on each occasion, gives birth to existence. Thus it is love and fecundity or it is nothing at all. Revolution without honor, calculated revolution which, in preferring an abstract concept of man to a man of flesh and of

life

it

blood, denies existence as

many

times as

is

necessary, puts

resentment in the place of love. Immediately rebellion, forgetful of its generous origins, allows itself to be contaminated by resentment; it denies life, dashes toward destruction, and raises up the grimacing cohorts of petty rebels, embryo slaves all of them, who end by offering themselves for sale, today, in all the marketplaces of Europe, to no matter what form of servitude. It is no longer either revolution or rebellion but rancor, malice, and tyranny. Then,

name of power and of history bemurderous and immoderate mechanism, a new rebellion is consecrated in the name of moderation and of life. We are at that extremity now. At the end of this tunnel of darkness, however, there is inevitably a light, which we already divine and for which we only have to fight to en-

when

comes

sure

revolution in the a

its

coming. All of us, among the ruins, are preparing

a renaissance

know

beyond the

limits of nihilism.

But few of us

it.

Already, in fact, rebellion, without claiming to solve its problems. From this moment high noon is borne away on the fast-moving stream of history. Around the devouring flames, shadows writhe in mortal combat for an instant of time and then as suddenly disappear, and the blind, fingering their eyelids, cry out that this is history. The men of Europe, abandoned to the shadows, have turned their backs upon the fixed and radiant point of the present. They forget the present for the future, the fate of humanity for the delusion of power, the misery of the slums for the mirage of the eternal city, ordinary justice for an empty promised land. They despair of

everything, can at least confront

316

Albert

Camus

personal freedom and dream of a strange freedom of the species; reject solitary death and give the name of immortality to a vast collective agony. They no longer believe in the things that exist in the world and in living man; the secret of Europe is that it no longer loves life. Its blind men entertain the puerile belief that to love one single day of life amounts to justifying whole centuries of oppression. That is why they wanted to efface joy from the world and to postpone it imtil a much later date. Impatience with limits, the rejection of their double life, despair at being a man, to inhuman excesses. Denying the they have had to stake all on their own excellence. For want of something better to do, they deified themselves and their misfortunes began; these gods have had their eyes put out. Kaliayev, and his brothers throughout the entire world, refuse, on the contrary, to be deified in that they refuse the unlimited power to inflict death. They choose, and give us as an example the only original rule of life today: to learn to live and to die, and, in order to be a man, to refuse to be a god. At this meridian of thought, the rebel thus rejects diVinity in order to share in the struggles and destiny of aU men. We shall choose Ithaca, the faithful land, frugal and audacious thought, lucid action, and the generosity of the man who understands. In the light, the earth remains our first and our last love. Our brothers are breathing under the same sky as we; justice is a living thing. Now is bom that strange joy which helps one live and die, and which we shall never again postpone to a later time. On the sorrowing earth it is the unresting thorn, the bitter brew, the harsh wind off the sea, the old and the new dawn. With this joy, through long struggle, we shall remake the soul of our time, and a Europe which will exclude nothing. Not even that phantom Nietzsche, who for twelve years after his downfall was con-

have real

finally driven

grandeur of

them

life,

by the West as the blasted image of its knowledge and its nihilism; nor the prophet of justice without mercy who lies, by mistake, in the unbelievers' plot at Highgate Cemetery; nor the deified mummy of the man of action in his glass cofl&n; nor any part of what the intelligence and energy of Europe have ceaselessly furnished

tinually invoked loftiest

Love and Rebellion

317

may

indeed live again, side by side with the martyrs of 1905, but on condition that it is understood that they correct one another, and that a limit, under the sun, shall curb them all. Each tells the other that he is not God; this is the end of romanticism. At this moment, when each of us must fit an arrow to his bow and enter the lists anew, to reconquer, within history to the pride of a contemptible period. All

and

in spite of

it,

that

which he owns already, the thin yield

of his fields, the brief love of this earth, at this moment when at last a man is born, it is time to forsake our age and

The bow bends; the wood complains. of supreme tension, there will leap into flight an unswerving arrow, a shaft that is inflexible and its

At

adolescent furies. the

free.

moment

THE ANATOMY OF LOVE is

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