Love: An Attempt At Existential Analysis

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Transcript of the lecture

We can have platonic love sublimated by keeping a distance, we can experience love bodily, on a variety of levels and forms of bodily love. We can love sadistic and masochistic, homosexual and heterosexual. What a variety of forms lies in love! Many of us have one or another question that is related to love.

What question did I come here with? Do I want to know something?

I got up the courage to talk about love. When I realized how difficult it really is today to learn something about love. Where do we learn what love can be? Where did we get our knowledge? The tradition of introducing the topic of love was given by religion, and today such an introduction is given by TV! And such a situation, as it were, casts a person onto himself that he himself must discover for himself what love is, and what it is actually about, what is important in love. But there is also the advantage that it is. Therefore, due to the fact that a person finds something himself, he sharpens his own individual perception and his own individual experience. But maybe we are paying too high a price today for this advantage.

I refer myself to the existential tradition according to V. Frankl, has a certain accent in that anthropology, the picture of a person on which it relies. I decided to say a few thoughts. Maybe these thoughts will help us understand the phenomenon of love and what significance it has in our life. I want to start from the frame or from the bed on which love lies.

Love is an attitude! I think everyone understands this. This is not just a relationship, but a special form of relationship. She is on the one hand a relationship, and on the other hand she is much more than a relationship. Love is a meeting.

Therefore, I want to start with a few descriptions of what there is a relationship, that there is a meeting. Relationship is some kind of connection. Relationships arise the moment I see a person, at this moment I behave differently. I kind of take into account the other, at a completely basic level I have a certain attitude from which I cannot pull myself out of it. I will correlate my behavior with others. If a person is sitting on a chair, I cannot just take and sit on a chair because he is sitting there. If he is standing in the doorway, I will not be able to walk through the door as if he is not there. These are all basic forms of relationships. If there was no man at the door, then I would have taken and passed. There is a law here that we are largely unaware of. I can’t, it doesn’t correlate. If I see a person or an object, then I cannot but relate to it. I take this object into account in my behavior. This is a certain basic form of relationship in which we are by nature and I am not free here. How I build this relationship, how I live with it, this is already a zone of freedom. But the fact that another person is or an object exists is simply given. And when one person sees another person, he seems to have to enter into a relationship.

But relationships have another characteristic, not just theirs. inevitability, but going beyond this, they have a certain durationthat never ends. If I meet with some person, then I already have a history of relationships. Whenever I meet him again, I have already met him. And the history of our relations, it leaves an imprint on future relations, on the forms of relations. If, for example, I went to school with someone, then this will leave an imprint on all our future relationships, even if we get married sometime, the history of this relationship will still be present in the marriage. This subtlety of relations, we are aware of the peculiarities then, if we work with a patient or patient, some kind of private relationship begins to take shape, this is a very complex and difficult relationship. And we, as psychologists, must be very strict in order to remain ethically correct here. Because wounds can happen quickly here. This relationship, as a therapist-client relationship, remains even when we enter into another private relationship. The history of the relationship is stored within the relationship. Everything that happened between us, it remains, every hurt, every wound, every disappointment, every sexuality. Everything is preserved in the history of relationships and leaves an imprint on our joint existence. Therefore, it is very important that we treat relationships responsibly. Because I cannot do, something that did not happen, that once happened, will remain. Relationships, as it were, live or eat through the time that people spend with each other and through intimacy. Time and intimacy are the food for a relationship.

Along with what happens automatically, there is free space, I can either enter into a relationship or refrain from it. On the basic plane, there are relationships, but relationships are not nourished. In order for the relationship to grow, we need to have time for each other. Time allows relationships to grow. When we are in love we want to waste time for each other, and when we do not have time for each other, love dies.

The time for love is the same as water is for flowers and plants.

It's the same with proximity. Closeness strengthens relationships. Who wants to build a relationship is looking for intimacy with another. Is spatial detachment conducive to love or hindering?

Proverb - Distance and gap act on love like wind on fire. If the fire is small, then the wind will blow it out; if it is large, then the wind will fan it.

A meeting is like a point event within the line of life (relationship). The meeting is punctual, punctual, connected with moments. If I and YOU we meet. In a meeting, I see you as a face, a person, I wonder what is important to you, what worries you, and I say what is important to me, this is how a dialogue appears. There is an exchange of what is important, that personally, this is a meeting, then we say goodbye and the meeting ends, it bears the stamp of openness and dialogue. But the relationship changes with every meeting. Good relationships grow out of meetings. If we meet each other on the plane you and me. If we look into each other's eyes. It all fuels the relationship.

People can be separated for many years, and suddenly they meet again. They definitely recognize each other in what they mean one person to another person. For example, a meeting with an old school friend, I tell him "you are the same as I remember you in my youth." The relationship is preserved, but not updated until the moment of the meeting.

I said something about the foundations of love, relationships and meeting.

I want to tell you what we mean by Personal love. I will build this on the basis of our experiences. What is characteristic of love that goes beyond relationships and meetings.

1. We are experiencing Value … We like this person. We feel that he means something to us. We feel that we are connected with him, that we belong to each other. This is love for a person, music, psychology. I like it, it attracts me. Positive emotion, expressed in the form of activity, feeling. What do I do when I feel something? In feeling I am open and give something to act on me, I give this something to do, something to me. I let the music come into me and, as it were, imprint its harmony in me. And I am adopted by the musical harmony, this sound in my heart. To feel means that I give my inner life at the disposal. What I give to something, come to my heart. In feeling, my life moves in me. Feeling leads me to movement inside. Love should be a feeling. Love has to happen at this level, otherwise it is not love. Only if something touches my foundation, my vitality, and it awakens my life. In love, I experience how another person touches me. It is as if he is touching or stroking my heart. It's not sentimental at all. It is a deep acceptance of the relationship to your own life. My life, which thanks to this music, picture, thanks first of all to another person, touches so much that my heart begins to jump. Love is thus an experience of value. This other, this music is experienced by me as something valuable. The experience of value is associated with this emotionality. Only a perceived value that is existentially relevant.

2. The second point, describing our experiences, this moment of touching another to me, experience resonance … Feeling deeply drawn to me. This feeling does not arise from some pressure my needs put on me. It arises from resonance, from flutter. This being is the deepest in me, the innermost, begins to vibrate, due to the fact that it corresponds to the vibration of the other. Because YOU are addressing the I. YOU touch me, you are interesting to me. The relationship between my self and your self resonates. Because somewhere deep down we are related. We do not know how, but we begin to love. Sometimes you can hear that if we get to know someone or love someone, the feeling is as if I have always known this person. In the depths, a kinship to this person is felt. Deep phenomenological vision of the other. Through my being, I see yours. K. Jarspers "Over the years, a woman becomes more and more beautiful, but only the loving one sees it." Love as the maximum femenological possibility of a person, we see in the other the maximum possible value, what lies in him, a sleeping beauty, we see what can become of him, we see a person in his potential.

Gette “Love makes us see in relation to another. To what he could have been. Therefore, it is important to love your children. So that the potential that they contain can grow in them. The lover has a feeling, through the experience of resonance we belong to each other. And if I am with you, I think that I am doing you good. And I worry back. Your presence does me well and has a beneficial effect on my potential. I can be more myself, and you can be more yourself too.

Dostoevsky "To love means to see a person as God intended him to be."

3. On the basis of the experience of value and resonance, the position of the decision “It’s good that you are” arises in me. Lovers experience a deep joy in what they are. Although not everything is perfect. But the other he likes all with its own shortcomings. The lover wants to support another person in his life, his being. On the basis of this, another position arises, one attitude - activity in relation to another. Strive to protect from suffering, wants more good, wants him to develop and the quality of his life to improve, and he wants to make an active contribution to this. "I love and therefore want you to be." This makes love generative, it becomes the basis for a common future.

What do we experience in love? The value of another person, resonance, impulse - so that the other is good and I want to do the other well. Therefore, there is a moment of decision in love. We can together than we can alone.

4. Love wants a future, duration, preservation. She wants to incarnate into soil. It drives us to fulfillment. In partner love, love desires sexuality. Love does not want to remain in dreams, it wants to be in reality. At least in her poems, she wants the truth, she can't stand not the truth, the lie. When we love, it is easier to love another. She does not want what we are experiencing to end tomorrow. Together we give something to arise. And it is quite natural that love wants to have children. As a sign of love.

The psychological basis or background of love. Do we love what we find similar to us? Or do we love the different in us? This dilemma is not resolved in psychology. Both of these cases are valuable. This is familiar to us, we are kind of close, we can lean on it, it helps me to accept myself better, it strengthens me inside, there is an autoerotic component, a narcissistic component in love. And in love to the opposite, different, we experience some kind of replenishment, impulse, growth, from the fact that the other is different.

"Love for your neighbor, he is the same as you" - Christianity. He is different, but similar. Love for your neighbor is openness. It requires openness to myself, to what I have not accepted. If I have accepted myself, I can also accept the other.

Love begins with a gift. Our love for ourselves is revealed only when the others we loved or love. Happiness in love means that someone is sharing me with me. Someone invites me to be with him. The experience of the other is complete. And the other has a desire to outlive me entirely. If I am ready to accept this invitation then I really love. And then love becomes passion. Hasidic wisdom says "The lover feels that he is hurting the other." Thus, love makes a person ready to accept suffering. For example, take on suffering for the sake of children, a loved one.

Love gives rise to suffering, very diverse suffering, it causes longing, which can burn our heart. Out of lack of fulfillment or limitation, we can hurt another without even wanting to. If I suffer, the lover suffers with me. Suffering in love is always shared suffering. Sometimes we can suffer from fire, burning, the desire to merge with another, which can never be fully fulfilled. We suffer from inequality between us. The other cannot fully correspond to me entirely, he experiences, feels differently. And I'm still alone. A person expects from this, maybe he will meet better, but they secretly wait. There are very few people who are perfect for each other. Only in the phase of falling in love.

Falling in love is the remnant of Paradise on Earth. He needs neither sleep nor food. In love, I see a person the way I want him to be. All gaps in the knowledge of the other, I fill your desires, I love with their own ideas. In falling in love, it is about me about my fantasies, it bewitches me in something else. Items that a loved one touches and those enchanted.

About sexuality and love. Homosexual can be similarly as personal heterosexual. Love is an expression of some kind of community and communication, open to the emergence of a third. Child, arts, tasks. Sexuality means that physicality is combined with the mental. In it we have the joy of experiencing the life force. Through the bodily sensory plane.

In sexuality, I can become an object for another. This means that sexuality is possible without love. To receive this joy of life from another or together with another. This can mean a moment of happiness. But it is not the highest form of happiness, if there is no form of personal relationship.

Why does infidelity hurt? We are worried that we are being replaced. For example, at the level of sexuality. It means that it is not me that is important to another, but only my function, and this makes an object out of me.

Love requires integrity from us. See each other as they are. I can experience another with all my senses. Love is something intimate, belongs only to the two of us. She is not public. If I am ready to accept this invitation, it means that I am in love, then love becomes passion. And she makes me ready to suffer. Hasidic wisdom says: "The lover feels that he is hurting the other." Since we love - we feel that another is hurting, love makes a person ready to take on suffering. For example, for the sake of children, for the sake of a loved one. Since I love, I cannot just leave you in trouble, but I want to do you good. Even if it costs me dearly. Love gives rise to suffering, very different suffering, it causes melancholy, which can burn our hearts. We can hurt each other. Without even wanting to. If I suffer, the lovers suffer with me. Suffering in love is always shared suffering. I cannot be good if my beloved is bad. Sometimes we suffer from this burning sensation, the fire of love. From the yearning for unity, the yearning of the desire to merge, which can never be fully fulfilled. We experience Ultimately we are separated even though we are together, but still separated. With all the resonance, sympathy - the other is still not me. He can never match entirely. He is not I. He experiences feelings and often thinks differently. And even in the closest love, I remain a little alone. This can cause such restraint in love that a person cannot completely surrender to another. Because the person is not quite perfect. A person waits and may be looking for something at the same time, but if not, they stay together.