2. Jung on Love
• In The Psychology of the Transference, Carl
Jung states that within the transference dyad
both participants typically experience a variety
of opposites, that in love and in psychological
growth, the key to success is the ability to
endure the tension of the opposites without
abandoning the process, and that this tension
allows one to grow and to transform.
3. Love in Psychology
The traditional psychological view sees love as
being a combination of companionate love and
passionate love.
Passionate love is intense longing, and is often
accompanied by physiological arousal (shortness
of breath, rapid heart rate); companionate love
is affection and a feeling of intimacy not
accompanied by physiological arousal.
4. Love in Biology
Biological models of love tend to see it as a
mammalian drive, similar to hunger or thirst.
Psychology sees love as more of a social and
cultural phenomenon. Certainly love is
influenced by hormones (such as oxytocin),
neurotrophins (such as NGF), and pheromones,
and how people think and behave in love is
influenced by their conceptions of love.
5. Is our idea of romantic love truly our
own?
“Love is first a rumor that whispers in our ears
the most beautiful promises:
We venerate it before we experience it in
actuality, we rehearse this play for years without
understanding it. It is inculcated in us as a code
by our family and by society. “
6. Marriage
In many traditions, marriage used to simply be
an arrangement instituted by families for
practical reasons—child rearing and family
stability.
Later on, as people (women especially) began to
gain autonomy within the family, the arranged
marriage transformed into marriage for love.
7. A little French marriage history:
• September 20th, 1792:
• Civil marriage was established on in
France alongside the right to divorce,
depriving the Church of its
• long-standing control over the
institution of marriage.
8. Marriage & Law
• 1816: Divorce was abolished
• 1884: Divorce was reauthorized
(68 years after.)
9. • June 21st, 1907: Young people able to marry
without their parents consent (thus opening
the way to matrimonial paradise!)
– Formerly stigmatized as a fatal illness (Romeo and
Juliet), passion was now REQUIRED as a basis for a
strong marriage…
Marriage & Law
10. Now we have tons of legal options!
Wooo.
• Civil marriage dissociated from religious
marriage: stopped being a sacrament and is
simply a legal contract
• “Married” couple was dissociated, leading to
legislative authorization of common-law marriage
in the 1970s.
• “Pacte vicil de solidarite” – civil pact of domestic
partnership…but not a marriage, just property-
sharing ;) and more easily undone
• Thus the borderline between being married and
unmarried is increasingly vague.
11. Happy Valentine’s Day
• In the eighteenth century, historians tell us,
“valentinage”, from which Valentine’s Day was
derived, allowed wived in northern France to
make love, on a few days each year and with
the knowledge of their husbands, with a
“valentine” of their choosing.
12. Japan
• Koi describes a longing for a member of the
opposite sex and is typical interpreted as
selfish and wanting. The term's origins come
from the concept of lonely solitude as a result
of separation from a loved one.
• The term ai (愛?), is often associated with
maternal love or selfless love, originally
referred to beauty and was often used in
religious context.
13. Turkish
In Turkish, person can love a god, a person,
parents, or family. But in context the person
"loves" just one special person, which they call
the word "aşk.”
If a Turk says that he is in love (Aşık) with
somebody, it is not a love that a person can feel
for his or her parents; it is just for one person,
and it indicates a huge infatuation.
14. “Love” in China
Two philosophical underpinnings of love exist in
the Chinese tradition, one from Confucianism
which emphasized actions and duty while the
other came from Mohism which championed a
universal love.
15. The modern family that arose between the
seventeenth and twentieth centuries was based
on the growing affection that binds the parents
to their children. This model, shaped by a
middle class in full expansion, made the home a
small sentimental community that isolated itself
from the rest of society.
Worldwide, we are now more alone
without our parents
and with fewer children.
16. Confucian Family
In traditional Chinese
culture, boys stay
with their parents
and the girl moves in
with the boy’s family.
Marriage strove for
the Chinese family
idea—to have “many
generations under
one roof.”
18. “Ai” as Universal Love
The concept of Ai (愛) was developed by the
Chinese philosopher Mozi in the 4th century BC in
reaction to Confucianism's benevolent love. Mozi
tried to replace what he considered to be the long-
entrenched Chinese over-attachment to family and
clan structures with the concept of "universal love"
(jiān'ài, 兼愛). In this, he argued directly against
Confucians who believed that it was natural and
correct for people to care about different people in
different degrees.
19. Chinese slang
Naked marriage (裸婚, luǒhūn)
• Describes the growing number of marriages
between partners who do not yet own any
significant assets. The "Five Nos" involved are:
no ring, no ceremony, no honeymoon, no
home, and no car.
20. Chinese Slang
• Flash or blitz marriage (Chinese: 闪婚,
shǎnhūn): describes a marriage between
partners who've known each less than 7
months.
• The concept of sheng nu or "leftover women"
(pinyin = Shèngnǚ, 剩女）has been created by
the state media and government in order to
pressure women into marrying earlier.
21. Chinese Slang
• Imbalance between sex ratios of men and women
with figures showing that there are over 30
million more men than women in China.
• However since the opening and reform period in
the 1980s, increasing numbers of women hold
college degrees and are now reluctant to be "tied
down" to a married life so soon after their
graduation, with women choosing to be more
career orientated until they reach their 30s
22. Bride Kidnapping
• Also known as marriage by abduction, or
marriage by capture, is a practice in which a
man abducts the woman he wishes to marry.
Bride kidnapping has been practiced
throughout history around the world and
continues to occur in countries in Central Asia,
Caucasus region, and parts of Africa.
23. Bride Kidnapping
In most countries, bride kidnapping is
considered a sex crime, rather than a valid form
of marriage. Some versions of it may also be
seen as falling along the continuum between
forced marriage and arranged marriage.
24. Bride Kidnapping
Some cultures today maintain symbolic bride
kidnapping ritual as part of traditions
surrounding a wedding, in a nod to the practice
of bride kidnapping which may have figured in
that culture's history.
25. India - Santals
Among the Santals, if a boy fancies a girl, he
must keep a branch of a sal tree outside her
house. If there are two or more sisters in the
house and the bride is not known, all the sisters
must be ready.
26. India - Santals
• The next day, preparations for the marriage
are made and relatives called. The girl is then
encircled by all family members and relatives.
Santal Folk Dance
27. India - Santals
The boy must break inside the circle to
get to his bride. If she is willing, they
get married. If she is not, she may run
away. If he catches her and she still
doesn't consent, she may use arms
and weapons against him.
28. Honeymoon
According to some sources, the honeymoon is a
relic of marriage by capture, based on the
practice of the husband going into hiding with
his wife to avoid reprisals from her relatives,
with the intention that the woman would be
pregnant by the end of the month.
29. The Paradox of Love
Pascal Bruckner says about modern Western
Love in “The Paradox of Love”:
“…we now ask everything from love; we ask too
much of it; we ask that it ravish, ravage, and
redeem us. It is assigned such a grandiose
ambition in no culture other than ours.”
30. So now people are saying all kinds of
things:
• “Passion no longer exists, it
was killed by women’s
liberation, the consumerist
hedonism that makes the
universe ‘liquid’ ”
• – Zygmunt Bauman
“We are living in a
hypersentimental period
and today couples die
because they put
themselves under the
jursdiction of a cruel and
merciless god—Love.”
It is not only whims and selfishness that put an end to couples,
but also the quest for a permanent passion as the cement that
will hold them together. It is the mad intransigence of these
lovers or spouses who reject any compromise: either fervor or
flight, no half-measures. No compromise.
31. Love as Oscillation Between
Freedom and Attachment
“I have loved women
to the point of
madness. But I have
always preferred my
liberty.”
-- Giacomo Casanova
“God, how I loved my
freedom before I
began to love you
more than I loved it.
How it weighs on me
today!”
-- Guy de Maupassant
32. Contradictions of Modern Love
Our new freedoms have also brought new burdens and
rules--without, however, wiping out the old rules,
emotions, desires, and arrangements.
• The couple
• Marriage
• Jealousy/demand for fidelity
• The war between constancy and inconstancy.
“It is no wonder that love, sex, and relationships today
are so confusing, so difficult, and so paradoxical.”
33. Love as Oscillation Between
Attachment and Freedom
“Freedom does not release us from responsibilities
but instead increases them. It does not lighten our
burden but weighs it down further. It resolves
problems less than it multiplies paradoxes. If this
world sometimes seems brutal, that is because it is
“emancipated” and each individual’s autonomy
collides with that of others and is injured by them:
never have people had to bear on their shoulders
so many constraints. This burden explains in part
why contemporary romances are so hard.”
34. Marriage
“Each sex now intends to take on the tasks
previously assigned to the other: women work,
manage, study, while fathers care for the children
and in theory do their share of the housework.
Do men excel in these activities? Then they are
reproached for lacking authority and verve.
Do their wives succeed in their professions? Then
they are blamed for neglecting their children.”
35. From outside looking in:
Raja Rao, an Indian writer, returned to India
disappointed by the impatience of Western culture:
“Their desire for a happiness that is as constant
as it is complete. In India, we put a cold soup on
the fire and it warms up little by little. Europeans
put a hot soup in a cold dish and it cools down little
by little. They take affections too seriously to
tolerate the slightest shortcoming.”
36. “I Love You”
Common expressions of love preexist us and
combine affection with an automatic character.
“I love you.” “I love you too.”
“I love you” as a synchronizer:
Adjusts the temporal difference between loves
and puts them in the same time zone
“I love you” as a passport one holds out to allow
the other to enter into their territory.
38. I Will Always Love You
“A good marriage, if such there be, avoids the
company and conditions of love.”
I promise to act as if I love you and were going
to love you forever even if it is not in my power
to control the variation of our feelings.
39. “I Will Always Love You”
Confidence in the Midst of Insecurity
• The oath implies confidence and a wager: by
leaping over doubt and fear, it postulates that
the world is a place in which we can develop
together and take responsibility for ourselves.
• Yet by invoking chance, it also puts the lovers
in the same insecurity, transforms them into
potential murderers of one another.
40. Jealousy
• Jealousy is a fellow traveler of democratic
equality: closely related to the desire for
ubiquity, the wish to be simultaneously
everywhere
• It results from the vertigo that occurs when
we come to realize the opacity of the other.
Complete lack of control. You are not your
lover.
41. It’s not all doom and gloom.
There is so much beauty to be found in attachment:
“You have just turned eighty-two. You have lost 6
cm. in height and you weight only 45 kg, and yet
you are still beautiful, charming, desirable. We
have been living together for fifty-eight years and I
love you more than ever. Recently I fell in love with
you again and once again I am bearing within me an
overflowing life that is fulfilled only when I hold
your body in my arms.”
