Quotes From Great Psychotherapists About Love

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

Otto Kernberg is one of the leading specialists in the field of severe personality disorders that lie in the "gap" between neurosis and psychosis and became available for psychoanalytic treatment, including through his personal efforts

• Love is more difficult to express than aggression.

• The power of sexual arousal, focus on sexual stimuli, physiological responses to sexual arousal: increased blood flow, swelling and lubrication in the genitals - all these processes are influenced by hormone levels.
• Sex and love are closely related.
• In humans, gender identity, that is, the feeling of being female or male, is determined not by biological nature, but by how a child is brought up up to two or four years old - as a girl or as a boy.
• Sexual arousal occupies a very special place among other affective states. It seems clear that sexual arousal, originating from biological function and belonging to structures serving the biological instinct of reproduction in the animal kingdom, is central to the psychological experience of man. However, sexual arousal develops at a later stage, and its manifestations are more complex than such primitive emotions as anger, joy, sadness, surprise, and disgust. In its cognitive and subjectively experienced components, it is similar to such more complex emotions as pride, shame, guilt and contempt.
• Mature sexual love implies some kind of agreement and commitment in the field of sex, emotions, values.
• Conscious and unconscious concentration on a particular choice of sexual object converts sexual arousal into erotic desire. Erotic desire includes the desire for a sexual relationship with a specific object.
• What are the clinical characteristics of erotic desire that are manifested in the process of psychoanalytic research? First of all, it is a search for pleasure, always directed at another person - an object into which you penetrate, intrude, which you possess or which penetrates, invades you or takes possession of you. This is the desire for intimacy and merging, implying, on the one hand, the forcible overcoming of the barrier and, on the other, unification into one whole with the chosen object. Conscious or unconscious sexual fantasies are expressed in invasion, penetration or possession and involve the connection of bulging parts of the body with natural depressions - the penis, nipples, tongue, fingers of the invading side, penetrating or invading the vagina, mouth, anus of the “receiving” side.
• Erotic desire includes fantasies of active absorption and a passive state when you are penetrated, and at the same time active penetration and a passive state when you are absorbed.
• The second characteristic of sexual desire is identification with a partner's sexual arousal and orgasm in order to enjoy two complementary experiences of fusion. The main thing here is the pleasure from the desire of the other, love, which is expressed in the response of the other to your sexual desire, and the accompanying experience of merging in rapture. At the same time, a sense of belonging to both sexes arises, for a while, eliminating insurmountable barriers between the sexes, as well as a sense of a certain completeness and bliss from both aspects of sexual experience - penetration and penetration, as well as feelings when they penetrate and enclose in themselves.
• The third characteristic feature of erotic desire is the feeling of going beyond what is permitted, overcoming the prohibition that is present in all sexual contacts, the prohibition that originates from the Oedipal structure of sexual life. This feeling takes many forms, and the simplest and most universal of them is the violation of traditional social restrictions imposed by society on the open display of intimate parts of the body and the feeling of sexual arousal.
• Erotic desire transforms genital arousal and orgasm into a feeling of merging with another, which provides an inexplicable feeling of fulfilling desires, overcoming the limitations of the self.
• Sexual “teasing” is usually, though not necessarily, associated with exhibitionism and demonstrates a close connection between exhibitionism and sadism: the desire to excite and frustrate the significant other.
• This brings us to another side of erotic desire - to the oscillation between the desire for secrecy, intimacy and uniqueness in relationships, on the one hand, and the desire to abandon sexual intimacy and suddenly cut off contact - on the other.
• Mature Sexual Love -

(1) sexual arousal, turning into erotic desire, in relation to another person;

(2) tenderness, resulting from the unification of libidinal and aggressively loaded self and object representations, with the predominance of love over aggression and tolerance for the normal ambivalence that characterizes all human relationships

(3) identification with the other, including both reciprocal (responsive) genital identification, and deep empathy for the sexual identity of the partner

(4) a mature form of idealization with obligations towards the partner and towards the relationship

(5) an element of passion in all three aspects: sexual relations, object relations and the role of the super-ego of the couple

• Sexual experience remains a central aspect of the relationship of love and marriage.

Erich Fromm is a German sociologist, philosopher, social psychologist, psychoanalyst, representative of the Frankfurt School, one of the founders of neo-Freudianism

• Love is an activity, not a passive affect, it is a help, not a hobby. In its most general form, the active nature of love can be described by the statement that love means first of all to give, not to take. What does it mean to give? While the answer to this question seems simple, it is full of ambiguity and confusion. The most widespread misconception is that giving means giving up something, becoming deprived of something, sacrificing. This is how the act of giving is perceived by a person whose character has not developed above the level of receptive orientation, orientation towards exploitation or accumulation. The bargaining character is ready to give only in exchange for something. Giving without getting anything in return means for him to be deceived.

• Love is an active interest in the life and development of what we love.

• True love is rooted in fruitfulness, and therefore can actually be called "fruitful love". Its essence is the same, be it the love of a mother for a child, love for people, or erotic love between two individuals.

• Although the objects of love are different, and accordingly the depth and quality of love for them, certain basic elements are present in all forms of fruitful love. These are care, responsibility, respect and knowledge.

• I feel confident, capable of great expenditure of energy, full of life and therefore joyful. Giving is more joyful than taking, not because it is deprivation, but because the expression of my vitality is manifested in this act of giving.