Love as a psychological phenomenon. The phenomenon of love in existential psychology and philosophy

The concept of “love” is one of the few words that express almost absolute abstraction. What people mean by the concept of “love” different meaning, there is no doubt, Love is the most alluring of all feelings, but also the most disappointing. It gives the most intense pleasure and the most intense pain, the most acute happiness and the most severe melancholy. Its advantages and contrasts merge into a mass of unique combinations, and which of these combinations a person gets, that’s how he sees love. This feeling is so thousand-faced that no one has yet managed to catch it in the network of conceptual logic.

However, “individual” love has the right to exist, just as various psychophysical substances called humans have the right to life. One feature of love that should be especially emphasized is its universality: every person finds his own love, and everyone is or will eventually become an object of love. The reason for this is simple: love is the main and accessible to everyone way of self-affirmation and rooting in life, which without love is half-blooded and incomplete. It is rare to find an older man who claims that he has never loved or even fallen in love with anyone. Many people want to love, but everyone wants to love them.

Throughout his life, the average person has several milestones that delimit himself into “before” and “after” a meeting with this person, with love, with fate, with life and death. Love, no matter what is hidden behind it, is a significant event, state, process for the people included in its field. According to the descriptions of eyewitnesses and participants, interested and rejecting, love for a person brings, impossible in another place and time, the possibility of both endless bliss and happiness, and never-drying melancholy, inexorable pain and tireless torment. A person strives for love and runs away from it at the same time.

IN real life love is a litmus test of a person's essential qualities. Apparently, love, being one of the key self-expressions of life, reveals to a person his essence, which distinguishes him from others. Thus, apparently, love reveals to a person his essence, which distinguishes him from others. Each person loves in his own way, and perhaps it is the ability to love that makes a person human, and a person different from other people.

Scientific knowledge has long been interested in “love”; You can’t count the pages dedicated to love, but that doesn’t stop it from being a mystery. There is only one love, but there are thousands of counterfeits. Love remains a revelation for every person today, as it was thousands of years ago.

The basis of all types of human love, as if the deep axis of its feelings, is the attitude towards another person as towards oneself: such a state of soul when everything in it is as dear to the subconscious as you yourself.

Romantic love is fickle and unstable because 1) the reasons for excitement in everyday situations quickly disappear; 2) is associated with the constant experience of strong (both positive and negative) emotions, from which one quickly gets tired; 3) is focused on stable idealization of the partner, in which the real person becomes a phantom. The statistically normal outcome of family relationships built on romantic love is disintegration.

In love, in addition to emotional interpretation, the level of self-acceptance is important. In favorable situations, the level of self-acceptance increases, but in case of disintegration it decreases.

An important source of the formation of a person’s image of love is the experience acquired in parental home, the influence of the behavior of the father and mother, since the image of love is not limited to ideas about how to behave during sexual intercourse, but is largely determined by the learned way of communication in life together with other people. A person who grew up in an atmosphere of authoritarianism and despotism will look for sex with precisely these traits that are traumatic for him. On the contrary, excessive parental care will shape future infantile men and women.

What is especially striking about love is the diversity of its types and forms. Attempts to build theoretical models of love are marked by a claim to greater globality, but paradoxically simplify the phenomenon. Researchers talk about love for oneself, love for man and God, love for life and for the homeland, love for truth and goodness, love for freedom and power, etc. There are romantic, chivalrous, platonic, brotherly, erotic, charismatic, etc. love. There is love-passion and love-pity, love-need and love-gift, love for one's neighbor and love for the absent, love of a man and love of a woman.

The differences between models of love are based on the evaluation parameter: optimism-pessimism. The pessimistic model postulates the weakness and imperfection of man, while the optimistic model postulates the constructive power of love.

Pessimistic model. There are three reasons that make a person fall in love: 1) the need for recognition; 2) satisfaction of sexual needs; 3) conformist reaction (as is customary). Love is a fusion of a combination of emotions, among which the leading role is played by the fear of losing the source of satisfaction of one’s needs. Falling in love, constructed by the constant fear of losing him, makes a person unfree, dependent and interferes with personal development. The positive emotional state of a lover is associated with the person’s gratitude for satisfying his needs. Therefore, a free person does not experience love.

Optimistic model. According to this model, love is characterized by the relief of anxiety, a feeling of complete security and psychological comfort, satisfaction with the psychological and sexual side of the relationship, which grows over the years, and interest constantly increases loving people to each other. During their life together, partners get to know each other well; a real appreciation of the spouse is combined with his complete acceptance. The constructive power of love is associated with the connection of the sexual sphere with the emotional, which contributes to the fidelity of partners and the maintenance of equal relationships.

In one of the schemes, power and status are system-forming factors. Power is interpreted as the ability to force someone to do something.

Status is understood as the individual’s desire to meet the partner’s demands through positive emotional relationships.

Depending on whether the level of power and status is high or low, there are seven types of love, which can be presented in the following variants:

1. Option for parent-child relationships. The parent has great power and the child has high status.

2. Option of romantic love. Individuals have great (equal) power over each other and have high status. Both partners strive to meet each other halfway, and at the same time, each of them can deprive the other of manifestations of their love.

3. Love is worship. The individual does not have power over the other, but the status of the other in the eyes of the other is unattainable. This is a variant of the worship of a literary or other hero with whom there is no real contact and who has no power, but high status, and his admirer has neither power nor status.

4. Treason in the Dyad. The 1st partner has a high status and has power over the second, who has lost his real status. This option occurs in a situation of adultery, when both spouses retain power over each other, but one of them no longer arouses the desire to meet the other halfway.

5. Option of unrequited love. One has a high status in the eyes of the other and real power over him. The other has nothing. This state of falling in love occurs in the case of one-sided, unrequited love.

In addition, we can also highlight;

* brotherly love, in which both members of the couple have little power over each other, but willingly meet each other halfway;

* charismatic love, which takes place, for example, in a teacher-student pair.

This interesting typology of love, characterized by simplicity and clarity, is, however, abstract and clearly incomplete; two elementary factors, power and status, are obviously insufficient to identify and delimit all those diverse relationships that are covered by the general word love. The “power - status” pair very roughly characterizes the relationship of love, and sometimes even identifies it with some other relationships between people.

Erich Fromm identifies 5 types of love; brotherly, maternal, erotic, self-love and love of God. He highlights in love: care, responsibility, respect for each other, knowledge of the characteristics of the other, an indispensable feeling of pleasure and joy for love.

R. Hatiss identifies in love respect, positive feelings for a partner, erotic feelings, the need for positive feelings of a partner, a feeling of closeness and intimacy. It also includes a feeling of hostility, which stems from too short a distance between partners and emotional closeness.

According to Z. Rubin, love contains affection, care and intimacy.

A.A. Ivin introduces the concept of nine stages or forms of love. The author presents love in the form of steps or “circles”. Each of the circles includes somewhat similar types of love, and the movement from the core to the periphery is subject to certain principles.

1. In the first “circle” he includes erotic or sexual love and self-love. Human love necessarily begins with selfishness, self-love and carnal love. A person’s love for himself is a prerequisite for his existence as a person and, therefore, a condition for all his love. Self love is Primary School love. Anyone who neglects himself is incapable of loving or appreciating another. You need to learn to understand yourself in order to gain the ability to understand others, and at the same time, without understanding others it is impossible to understand yourself,

2. The second circle of love is love for one's neighbor. It includes love for children, for parents, for brothers and sisters, for family members, etc. The principle of “love your neighbor as yourself” speaks of justice and mutual respect for the rights and interests of loved ones. Love for one's neighbor is the best test of love for a person. In love for one's neighbor, a special place is occupied by parental love and the love of children for their parents. Fromm's idea is interesting that every person has both a father's and a mother's conscience - a voice that commands to fulfill one's duty, and a voice that commands to love and forgive other people and ourselves.

3. The third “circle” of love is love for a person, about which it was said in ancient times that it can only be big, there is no small love. This is love for every other person, regardless of any further definitions. This, in particular, is love for future generations and the associated responsibility towards them. The guiding principle of such love is simple - the needs of future people are just as important as the needs of modern people.

4. In the fourth “circle” of love, Ivin singles out love for the homeland, love for life, love for God, etc.

5. In the fifth “circle” - love for nature, in particular “cosmic love”. Ivin understands cosmic love as a feeling aimed at the world as a whole; it speaks of the unity of man and the world, of their unity and even mutual influence.

6. The sixth circle is love of truth, love of goodness, love of beauty, love of justice.

7. The seventh circle is love of freedom, love of creativity, love of fame, love of power, love of one’s activities, love of wealth.

8. Eighth circle - love of play, love of communication, love of collecting, love of entertainment, and constant novelty.

9. The ninth “circle” is something that is no longer love, but rather an addiction - love for food, alcohol, drugs.

In this movement from the first “circle” of love to its last “circle”, from its center to the periphery, a certain direction is quite clearly revealed. First of all, as you move away from the center, the emotional component of love, the spontaneity and concreteness of this feeling decreases. From “circle” to “circle” the intensity of love and its coverage of the entire human soul also decreases. Erotic love and love for children can fill the entire emotional life of an individual. The love of creativity or the love of fame most often constitutes only part of such a life. The amount of love that many people embrace with it also decreases from “circle” to circle. Erotic love captures everyone, or almost everyone. Not everyone loves God, truth or justice. With the decrease in the spontaneity and concreteness of love, the social component of this feeling grows. It is present both in self-love and in love for children, but it is much more noticeable in the love of power, love of freedom or wealth.

Russian philosopher Frank Semyon Ludvigovich writes about the idea of a certain path of love, for which each specific type of love is only a step. Love is very heterogeneous, it includes not only different types and their subspecies, but also what can be called forms of love and its modes. Types of love are, for example, love for one's neighbor and erotic love. The forms of manifestation of love for one's neighbor are love for children, love for parents, brotherly love, etc. The modes are the love of a man and the love of a woman, the love of a northerner and the love of a southerner, medieval love and modern love.

Questions about the mutual relations of types of love are no simpler than the question about its meaning. Many people tried to answer these questions about the types and essence of love, posed in a clear form back in antiquity. But there are no generally accepted and generally accepted answers, which unites extremely heterogeneous passions, attractions, attachments, etc. into the unity called “love” no.

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Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation

Vladivostok State University economy and service

Institute of Correspondence and Distance Learning

Department of Philosophy and Psychology

TEST

in the discipline: "Family Psychology"

on the topic: "Psychology of emotional relationships. The phenomenon of love"

Completed by: student gr. ZBPS-11-01

EAT. Ibaldinov

Vladivostok - 2015

Introduction

Conclusion

Introduction

Emotional relationships play a huge role in a person's life. Sociological studies conducted in our country and abroad have demonstrated that stable emotional relationships constantly occupy the top places in the hierarchy of values, ahead of such significant ones as, for example, wealth and work.

A common feature of the biographies of people who rate themselves as happy is that they have reliable and satisfying emotional relationships.

It can be assumed that as historical development progresses, people's emotional relationships with each other increasingly act as direct regulators of behavior. This is due to the increasing role of psychological factors in the determination of such important institutions as the institutions of friendship and family. If, for example, in the past it was possible to imagine a family characterized by predominantly negative emotional relationships between spouses or without intra-family emotional ties at all, now such a family will most likely cease to exist.

The problem of the role of emotional relationships in human life is very relevant for psychological science. As noted by A.N. Leontyev, classical theories of emotions “consider their transformation in humans as involution, which gives rise to a false ideal of education, which boils down to the requirement to “subordinate feelings to cold reason.” In reality, according to A.N. Leontyev, “emotional processes and states have man's own positive development."

The regulatory role of stable emotional relationships, in particular love, is seen primarily in their impact on the functioning and especially the creation of a family. The reason for marriage (in any case, the main reason), judging by the data of socio-psychological and sociological studies, for the majority of young people is love. If love were not such a widespread and recognized phenomenon in society, an institution as important for its functioning as marriage could collapse.

But the regulatory role of emotional relationships cannot be fully understood if we limit ourselves to the analysis of only one culture. Cross-cultural comparisons are needed. It turned out, for example, that in many societies love is not included among the common reasons for marriage, and in some, emotional relationships between future spouses are even considered extremely undesirable. The available data make it possible to connect the role of emotional “non-practical” factors with various aspects of life in the societies studied, but above all with the freedom to choose a marriage partner. In those societies in which a spouse is either selected by parents based on their ideas about the benefits of a future union, the first one or must be found among a very narrow circle prescribed by class or the interests of the clan, love does not play a significant role in creating a family.

The influence of love is also reduced by economic coercion into marriage and the material and everyday dependence of spouses on each other. In those cases when young people actually independently choose each other, when their relationships are free from economic calculations, class prejudices and other “practical grounds,” the most important determinant of communication becomes an emotional connection. Thus, one of the functions of love, as it becomes clear from cross-cultural research, is that it is, as it were, an additional guideline in choosing a partner when there are no other, more specific ways of finding one. In addition, it can be assumed that the increasing role of love in the absence of economic and other coercion may mean that only in these more favorable conditions is the ability to establish emotional contacts with others realized. The role of love, however, is not limited to this function.

The mechanism of influence of such global characteristics, such as freedom to choose a marriage partner, on emotional relationships in a couple remains unclear. P. Rosenblatt names two specific ways of such influence. Firstly, these are the norms and ideas on the basis of which an individual bases his behavior. They determine that contacts with this person are prestigious or, conversely, undesirable, that communication with this particular girl cannot go beyond the boundaries of light flirting, etc. Secondly, this is an opportunity for communication. In order for the choice of a partner to be truly free, it is necessary not only the absence of coercive factors. You also need a sufficient number of contacts with potential partners. Society can either facilitate or discourage such contacts. Cultures characterized by little freedom to choose a partner limit or even prohibit them.

If we were talking about any other psychological problem, for example, about the problem of memory or attention, this conclusion would certainly be considered quite reasonable. However, in this case, the substantive aspects are so closely intertwined with the ethical ones that the discrepancy between the conclusion and the moral ones forces one to look for new facts or new explanations.

1. Dynamics of emotional relationships

The patterns of emotional relationships at the first stage of their development can be described, albeit with certain losses, without appealing to the activity of the subject, to the process of interaction between him and the partner. An emotional attitude is formed as an individual, not a dyadic phenomenon, practically independent of the will and actions of the subject.

But the situation changes radically literally in the next moment. In conditions where a person has the opportunity to choose partners, the continuation of the relationship depends on his decision. At each moment of interaction, the subject makes a choice between continuing or terminating the relationship. It is necessary to understand what the patterns of such a choice are, what combinations of external and internal conditions force the relationship to move forward, what determines the preservation or disappearance of feelings of sympathy not at the first, but at subsequent stages of relationship development.

An approach known as filter theory or concept may be helpful here. According to this concept, relationships go through a number of unique filters in their development, psychological content which is determined both by the type of relationship (marital, friendly, etc.) and the stage of development of interaction. If a couple has not passed through any filter, the relationship in it ends or is forced to continue. The positive feelings of partners towards each other either disappear or are replaced by hostility and hostility.

Of course, such a filtration model does not take into account a number of fundamental factors for the phenomenon of communication. Points, first of all, that communication in each couple develops in its own, individual and in many ways unique way. The idea that all pairs, despite the huge differences between them, go through the same path (in particular the same filters) clearly simplifies the real picture. In addition, the fact of changes in the process of any long-term communication in both the relationships themselves and their participants is difficult to fit into the concept of filters. At subsequent stages of relationship development, the people who actually communicate are different from the ones at the beginning. Consequently, the filters themselves must change.

But, on the other hand, any theory is a known simplification of reality, and psychological models, which are always focused on identifying general patterns, do not necessarily have to fully correspond to each specific case. Therefore, the idea of sequential filters or barriers that couples must overcome as they move from superficial acquaintance to deep interpersonal communication is very useful for studying the process of developing emotional relationships.

Let us now try to characterize those filters, the consistent overcoming of which is necessary for the development and continuation of emotional relationships. The first filter is the patterns of determination of attraction on initial stage relationship development - was described by us in the second chapter of this work. In fact, at this stage, the object appears as a stimulus with certain characteristics (appearance, tendency to be cooperative, etc.), which are assessed by the subject depending on their social value, parameters of the situation in which the interaction occurs, the state and properties of the subject himself . With an unfavorable combination of these variables, attraction does not arise and communication does not continue.

The second filter appears to be the requirement of a certain level of similarity between oneself and the partner. We have seen that the principle of similarity also operates in the initial period of acquaintance as a basis for choosing a partner. Here we are talking about one of the most important conditions for maintaining relationships. Thus, in the already mentioned experiment of T. Newcomb with seventeen students, it was discovered that two to three weeks after meeting the “ecological” variables, which played (initially) the leading role, began to lose their significance, and pre-measured similarity of attitudes on various issues. Similar data were obtained by other authors. Let us note that the dominant nature of the similarity of attitudes for the continuation of relationships is a temporary phenomenon. Many studies have shown that, starting from a certain period (usually after several months of communication), the degree of similarity between partners, at least the similarity of attitudes, ceases to have a significant impact on their emotional relationships.

It can be assumed that the main task solved by the subject when passing through the first two filters is the task of providing psychological

technical safety, creating a comfortable and worry-free situation that guarantees him a certain level acceptance from communication partners. The passage of the following filters is motivated by the actualization of other tasks related not simply to ensuring security, but to the achievement of some goals important for the subject. The next filter requires the ability to include members of the couple in joint activities.

At the operational level, this possibility appears in the form of a combination of personal and behavioral characteristics, which B. Murstein, the author of the “Stimulus-Value-Role” theory, which has become widespread in the field of research on the development of emotional relationships, called role conformity. We are talking about both the correspondence between the interpersonal roles assumed by the members of a pair and the presence of a basis for joint interaction with other people, social systems or the objective world. This base is usually seen in a certain combination personal characteristics members of the couple. IN different periods During the development of experimental social psychology, various hypotheses were put forward regarding the combination of personal properties that is a condition for stable and productive communication. Thus, R. Winch put forward the principle of complementarity of needs, according to which the condition for stable interaction is such a combination of the systems of needs of two people in which the satisfaction of the needs of one will simultaneously satisfy the needs of the other. An example of such an addition would be the need for dominance in one of the partners, combined with the need for submission in the other. Winch's assumption was confirmed in his own empirical studies, as well as in a number of works by other authors, in particular in the work of A. Kerkoff and K. Davis, who found that after 18 months of dating, the principle of complementarity does play a significant role in determining relationships. Before this period expires, according to them, the compliance of installation systems is more important.

However, in most works devoted to this issue, the principle of complementarity has not received empirical support. It is possible that this is due to the temporary nature of its action, just like the actions of other determinants of developing emotional relationships. In order to register the effect of any of the determinants, it is necessary to carry out measurements at a strictly defined point in time, at which the effect of this factor is most pronounced. Naturally, it is not always possible to “catch” such a moment when conducting empirical research.

Without stopping to list other models for combining the personal characteristics of couple members, which should ensure the stability of emotional relationships, we note that none of these models has received widespread confirmation in empirical research. In our opinion, the point here is not only in the methodological difficulties that arise when studying this problem, but also in the fact that productive cooperation and participation in joint activities is possible not with one, but with a variety of combinations of personal characteristics of the members of the couple. The idea of “compatibility” not as a result of the process of developing relationships in a couple, but as an automatic consequence of a certain combination of invariant personal properties of two people, often found in popular and, unfortunately, in specialized literature, has no empirical justification.

Thus, the third filter - role conformity - has its own, purely individual character for each couple. The possibilities for predicting its passage are therefore very limited. This reveals the fact that as relationships develop, they become more and more individualized, and there are fewer grounds for formulating patterns common to all couples. Speaking about long-term relationships, we can identify determinants of only the most general order, such as, for example, systems of personal constructs of two people. They not only determine to a significant extent a person’s perception of other people. Their similarity, contributing to the development of not just a common position on certain issues, but a common or similar worldview, not only ensures cooperation within the framework of any specific activity, but facilitates the possibility joint decision major life problems.

So, emotional relationships in their development pass through a system of filters, which are characterized by an increasing “taking into account” of the inner world of another person. Similar to the development of an attitude towards another in ontogenesis, a partner is first perceived as an object, a bearer of certain properties, and only then an attitude towards him is formed as a subject with whom a common (joint) picture of the world is created. As relationships develop, their determination becomes more and more individualized, clear and more or less common connections for all couples give way to dependencies unique to each couple.

2. Psychological analysis of love

Love is an extremely difficult object for psychological analysis. A lot has been said about love - frequency dictionaries of modern languages indicate that this is one of the most common words. Moreover, as J. Cunningham and J. Antil note, “everything said is true at least for someone.” In addition, love, even less than any other aspect of reality, can be described with sufficient completeness within the framework of any one science; its knowledge requires interdisciplinary research, including data and techniques not only from psychology, but also from sociology and biology , ethnography, history, art history and many other disciplines. Without setting ourselves the task of synthesizing all the facts and ideas concerning the phenomenon of love, we will dwell only on some of the results and problems of its psychological research.

First of all, we need to find out whether the concept of “love” reflects some kind of psychological reality, whether the syndrome of feelings and behavioral patterns associated with it differs from those associated with other concepts (for example, friendship, sex, etc.) and whether it has Is this syndrome sufficiently specific? In general, these questions can be answered positively. For example, J. Forgos and P. Dobots showed that the majority of respondents in their own experience distinguish love from sexual relationships, on the one hand, and from friendship, on the other. According to the people interviewed by the authors, each of these phenomena can exist independently of the other, which does not contradict their fairly frequent combination within the same relationship. Experiences of love are associated with very definite sensations, the belonging of which specifically to love is beyond doubt among their bearers. Thus, after analyzing 240 respondents’ descriptions of their feelings, K. Dion and K. Dion came to the conclusion that the set of experiences associated with love includes euphoria, depressive feelings, a tendency to fantasize, sleep disturbance, general arousal and difficulty concentrating. There are also clear behavioral correlates of love that are not typical for other types of feelings and relationships.

During laboratory research this is manifested, for example, in a different structure of communication between lovers in comparison with subjects who are not connected by this feeling - lovers talk to each other twice as much and spend eight times more time looking into each other’s eyes. There are, of course, a lot of differences at the level of “outside the laboratory” behavior.

It is interesting that love experiences and the behavior associated with them have a certain gender specificity, and the direction of the differences does not always correspond to traditional ideas about psychological characteristics men and women. Thus, contrary to prevailing stereotypes, men in general are characterized by a higher level of romanticism than women, they fall in love more easily and quickly, and they share romantic ideas about love to a greater extent. The “desire to fall in love” is a stronger basis for men to start a relationship than for women. For women, love passes faster than for men; they are more likely to initiate a breakup and experience it more easily. At the same time, during the period of steady love relationship women tend to be more self-disclosing about their feelings (which, by the way, are more in line with the romantic canon than men) and tend to evaluate their partner higher than he evaluates them. Love relationships, judging by the results of using the Love and Sympathy Scales, are more specific for women than for men - the correlations between assessments of love and sympathy are significantly lower for them. These differences are the result of great sexual specificity in the development of close relationships in ontogenesis. Girls' friendships, for example, are characterized by greater intimacy and selectivity than boys' friendships; communication in pairs of girls is of a different nature than in pairs of boys, etc. It must be said that the problem of gender differences in love cannot be solved outside the temporal and social context. Thus, the very ideas about sexual differences are changing, which to a large extent support these differences (as people strive to conform to the existing stereotype). For example, in a 1978 survey

900 men and women, it was found that the majority of respondents did not give advantages in romanticism to women, as would be expected based on traditional ideas.

Let us note that in the ideas about love of people not connected with science, there is much more certainty than in psychological laboratories - only 16% of men and 10% of women express doubts about whether they know what love is, the rest in this sense are quite in themselves sure.

It is obvious that the term “love” unites qualitatively different relationships. This is what they call both a mother’s feeling for her child and the relationship of young people. With equal grounds we can talk about marital love and about love for something impersonal, for example, for one’s business. In psychology, there are many attempts to identify qualitatively specific types of love. The most famous of these typologies is the classification proposed by E. Fromm. He identifies five types of love: brotherly, maternal, erotic, self-love and love of God.

The vast majority of philosophical and psychological typologies love are of a purely a priori nature, the mechanism for identifying certain types in them is usually not visible, and the belonging of different types to the same class of love experiences is often lost. All the more interesting are those typologies in which the logic of identifying variants of love is explicit and amenable to at least theoretical verification.

An attempt to create such a typology was made by T. Kemper within the framework of the social-interactive theory of emotions he was developing. In any relationship (not only interpersonal, but also those in which the subjects are entire social systems, for example, states), Kemper identifies two independent factors - power, i.e. the ability to force a partner to do what you want, and status - desire communication partner to meet the subject’s requirements halfway. The desired result in the second case is achieved in this way not by force, but thanks to the positive attitude of the partner.

Based on these two factors, T. Kemper identifies seven types of love relationships in a couple:

1) romantic love, in which both members of the couple have both status and, since each of them can “punish” the other by depriving him of manifestations of his love, power in relation to the partner;

2) brotherly love, based on mutual high status and characterized by low. High power - lack of ability to coerce;

3) charismatic love, in which one partner has both status and power, the other only status. An example of such a relationship in some cases can be the relationship in a teacher-student pair;

4) “betrayal” - one partner has both power and status, the other has only power. An example of such a relationship, which gave its name to this type, could be a situation of adultery, when for a partner who has entered into a new relationship, the spouse retains power, but no longer evokes the desire to meet him halfway, i.e., he loses status. Falling in love - one of the partners has both power and status, the other has neither one nor the other. An illustration of such a relationship may be one-sided, or “unrequited” love;

6) “worship” - one partner has status without having power, the other has neither status nor power. This situation occurs when there is no real interaction between members of a couple, for example, when falling in love with literary hero or an actor known only from films;

7) love between a parent and a small child. One partner here has a high status, but low power (child), the other (parent) has a low status, since love for him has not yet formed, but a high level of power.

This typology seems very useful for analyzing emotional relationships. Specific relationships can be described in accordance with the degree to which they represent the love of each of the seven types identified here (there is no need to explain that we were talking about pure types, any real relationships are complex in nature and are almost never reduced to one type ).

Traditional ideas about love in opposite-sex couples of people close in age are associated primarily with relationships characterized by mutually high status. According to this classification, these are relationships of the first two types: romantic and brotherly love (the third - charismatic love - is usually characterized by significant age and social inequality). The first of them - romantic, associated with the severity of the sexual component and set as the norm of relations between boys and girls in a certain period of development of their interaction, is of particular interest in the context of the problems discussed. In the future, in this paragraph we will talk specifically about the phenomenology and patterns of romantic love.

Romantic love is a very complex formation with a complex and contradictory internal structure. When analyzing it, it is necessary to take into account many variables, both psychological and non-psychological. It is also desirable to distinguish between two similar, but not coinciding circles of phenomena - the subject’s attitudes toward love and love experiences, on the one hand, and the actual phenomenology of love, on the other. Experience shows that attitudes towards love are not simply realized in loving behavior - as in the study of other areas of human behavior, large attitudinal-behavioral discrepancies are found here. Thus, in the graduate research conducted under our supervision by Y.Y. Shiryaeva (1984) showed that ideas about love can exist relatively independently of real relationships, which are classified by the participants themselves as love. At the same time, the degree of closeness of ideas and real behavior turned out to be negatively related to the degree of clarity and structure of behavior in the situations under consideration of the stereotypical “real man” and “ real woman"- where these ideas are quite rigid, attitudes towards love and real behavior turned out to be unrelated. At the same time, as will be shown below, the internalization by the subject of certain ideas about love experiences is a necessary condition for the development of feelings of love.

The question of the internal structure or components of love was resolved, like the question of types of love, at different levels. And here one of the first and most cited structures is the structure proposed by E. Fromm. He identifies the following components of love: care, responsibility, respect and knowledge. Let us note that in later studies this structure was criticized for the absence of the factor of pleasure and joy in it - love, according to E. Fromm, turns out to be a purely rational and ascetic feeling.

At first glance, the knowledge factor also raises doubts. The fact is that in most descriptions of love, one of its characteristics is a tendency to idealize a partner, to overestimate his inherent positive qualities and partially ignore negative ones. The same feature is observed in other emotional relationships, for example, in friendships.

Idealization has long been considered as evidence of a certain deficiency in love relationships. Accordingly, it was assumed that love realized by a mature person does not need to overestimate the qualities of the partner, and, therefore, interpersonal perception in these cases will be more adequate.

In our opinion, it is not enough to consider idealization simply as a violation in the system of interpersonal perception. It is necessary to distinguish between the inadequacy of the perception of certain traits of a partner, on the one hand, and the attitude towards these qualities, i.e., assessing them as important or unimportant in the structure of the partner’s personality, tolerant or intolerant, purely temporary or inherent in him, on the other. A number of empirical studies show that idealization as a violation of perception cannot be considered an essential feature of love relationships, at least stable ones. As for idealization as a different, more positive attitude towards the adequately perceived properties of another person, it plays a significant role in the life of an individual and in the functioning of a couple as a whole.

It can be assumed that treating someone with admiration and attributing various extraordinary virtues to him serves the satisfaction of some important human needs. As T. Rake believed, a person has three possible reactions to the awareness of his imperfections - close his eyes to them, fall in love with the ideal, hate the ideal. The ability to admire another person, which is an important component of the ability to love in general, helps a person to follow the second of these three paths, which is undoubtedly a more productive reaction than the first and third. That is, the ability to idealize is an indispensable condition for personal growth. The words “I need to pray for someone” testify to the personal maturity of the poetic hero B. Okudzhava and cannot in any way be interpreted as his inability to adequately construct the image of another person.

Idealization also contributes to the optimization of relationships in a couple, instilling confidence in partners in the other person’s attitude towards them and increasing their level of self-acceptance. V.S. Soloviev, for example, believed that idealization is not an incorrect, but a different perception, in which a lover sees in the object of his love not only what is there today, but also what will be there or at least could be there. This possibility is also indicated by our empirical results presented in the previous paragraph - close person is assessed in a different coordinate system compared to an unfamiliar one.

It is interesting that in friendships it is precisely the expectation of an inflated assessment of oneself that young people identify as an understanding that distinguishes friendship from other types of relationships. It is no coincidence, apparently, that, as M.A. discovered in her dissertation research. Abalakina, the tendency to idealize a partner is characteristic of people with a higher level of personal development.

Idealization can also be an important factor in the formation of relationships. Increasing the “value” of a partner in the eyes of the subject serves as an additional incentive to overcome difficulties that inevitably arise in the process of communication. Note that, according to M.A. Abalakina, men are more prone to idealize their partners than women. This may be due to the fact that traditionally a man in a love relationship takes a more active position than a woman, must overcome more difficulties and therefore needs to idealize his partner more. emotional attitude psychological love

So, idealization does not contradict knowledge; the lover’s knowledge of the object of his love is indeed a different and, perhaps, more accurate knowledge. Let us remember that historically the meaning of the words “knowledge” and “love” was close in many languages.

Attempts have also been made to empirically study the structure of love. To illustrate, let’s call the thesis research of Yu.E. Aleshina (1980), who identified romantic and rationalistic styles of love, and the work of R. Hattiss, who received six factors as components of love: respect, positive feelings towards a partner, erotic feelings, the need for a positive attitude from a partner, a sense of closeness and intimacy , feeling of hostility.

The last of the factors identified by R. Hattiss deserves special attention. The presence of negative feelings in the syndrome of love experiences, although contrary to the romantic canon, seems quite natural. Love relationships are extremely significant for their participants; they imply close contact between people and their mutual dependence (at least at the everyday level). In this situation, the object of love cannot help but cause negative feelings from time to time, for example, irritation. Many people, as psychocorrectional practice shows, refuse to accept the natural nature of the periodic occurrence of negative experiences and either justify them, attributing to their partner negative manifestations that are not even characteristic of them, and as a result, re-evaluate both the partner and their relationship with him, or repress these feelings , which, naturally, also has destructive consequences for the relationship in a couple. In our opinion, the fact of the natural manifestation of mutual negativism against the background and within the framework of love relationships is worthy of wide popularization.

We should dwell on one more structure, which was proposed by Z. Rubin. He identified affection, care and intimacy in love and created a special questionnaire based on this structure. Further research showed that the intimacy factor has less reason to be included in the structure of love than the factors of attachment and care. The prevalence of 3. Rubin’s method, however, leads to the fact that many authors actually use the structure of love proposed by him.

It turned out that the tendency to an emotional or, in our case, “love” interpretation is even more important than the presence of a state of excitement. Thus, in one of the experiments, male subjects were shown photographs of half-naked girls. During the experiment, subjects received falsified feedback regarding the frequency of their heartbeats - in reality, the frequency of the beats displayed on the metronome was set by the experimenter. In one of the photographs, the “pulse” changed. It turned out that, regardless of the direction of change, it was this photograph that caused, according to subsequent measurements, the maximum attraction.

The ability to interpret one’s state as love is associated both with the presence of certain linguistic constructs in the subject’s thesaurus and with mastery of the rules for their use. A person must know which situations should and should not be interpreted in one way or another. This learning occurs both during early ontogenesis and throughout subsequent life. The most important situations of such training seem to be those named by Yu.A. Schrader ritual. Such in relation to love will be situations of light flirting, in which, on the one hand, the actions of the partners are quite strictly defined by the traditions and norms of their subculture, and on the other hand, there remains sufficient freedom for self-expression and experimentation. An example would be the balls of the last century, which were built, according to Yu.M. Lotman as “a theatrical performance in which each element corresponded to typical emotions,” and at the same time providing the opportunity for fairly free communication between men and women. An important feature of such ritual situations, both in the past and in the present, is their relative psychological safety - direct and sharp rejection of a partner, in these situations is unconventional behavior and therefore quite rare. It also gives partners the opportunity for some sort of training.

Identifying the role of the moment of self-interpretation in the genesis of the feeling of love makes the intimacy noted by many authors more understandable various types love between each other and their mutual conditionality. As A.S. said Makarenko, “love cannot be grown... from the depths of sexual desire. The powers of “love” love can only be found in the experience of non-sexual human sympathy. A young man will never love his bride and wife if he did not love his parents and comrades , friends."

Apparently, this commonality is due to the fact that, although the objects of love change throughout life, the principle itself - explaining to yourself your state as love, and not as, say, selfish interest, remains unchanged. If a person learned such an interpretation in childhood, he will use it in fundamentally different situations.

Most people have experience of love. Thus, the students surveyed by W. Kephart fell in love on average six to seven times, two of them, as the respondents put it, seriously. About half of the subjects were, at least once, in love with two people at the same time. Within this intensity, however, there is great diversity: there are people with extraordinarily great romantic experience, but there are also those who have never experienced the feeling of love. There appear to be certain personality traits that contribute to the fact that, in the language of the two-component model, people are to varying degrees inclined to interpret what happens to them as love.

For a long time, the idea that the tendency to love should be associated with the severity of pathopsychological properties was popular in psychology.

However, the facts refuted such ideas. For example, in the work of W. Kephart it was shown that neither the level of love at the time of the study, nor the number of novels, nor romantic attitudes found any connection in their average values with pathological personality traits. The extreme values of these characteristics, for example, are very big number novels or their complete absence were associated with an insufficient level of emotional maturity.

The presence of such a curvilinear relationship between the intensity of romantic behavior, on the one hand, and the level of emotional maturity, on the other, allows us to conclude that in a number of cases love actually performs a kind of protective function - this is evidenced by the combination of the maximum intensity of the romantic syndrome and low emotional maturity. However, since the lack of love experience in an adult is also accompanied by low emotional maturity, which reaches a maximum only as it increases, it can be assumed that love experiences are not a hindrance, but a necessary condition for high personal development.

We have now looked at the personality correlates of propensity for romantic behavior. The question of personal predisposition to strong and deep love experiences is especially important. There is very little actual data here. The generally accepted point of view is that a high level of self-acceptance provides the opportunity to love another person. As Z. Freud said, “the narcissistic libido, or libido of the ego, seems to us to be a large reservoir from which attachments to objects are expelled and to which they return again.” It is in relation to oneself that the art of love that E. Fromm spoke about is honed.

There is clearly insufficient knowledge of what qualities make a person attractive not in short-term (we discussed this issue in detail earlier), but in long-term love relationships. There is reason to assume that the main determinants here are not the individual personal properties of the object, but its integral characteristics, such as the level of mental health, self-acceptance, competence, etc.

The existing models of love in psychology differ sharply in one more, evaluative, parameter. Some authors talk about love as evidence of human weakness and imperfection, others point to the constructive nature of this feeling.

The models of the first group can include, for example, the theory of L. Kasler. He believes that there are three reasons that make one person fall in love with another. This is, firstly, the need to confirm one’s attitudes and knowledge about the world. A loved one serves as a source of their validation. Secondly, only through love can one regularly satisfy sexual needs without experiencing a feeling of shame. Thirdly, love, according to L. Kasler, is a conformal reaction in relation to the norms of society. Emphasizing that love as an emotion does not have specific physiological manifestations peculiar only to it, L. Kasler explains this by the fact that it is an alloy of various emotions, the dominant role among which is played by fear, in this case, the fear of losing the source of satisfaction of one’s needs. Thus, falling in love with someone makes a person unfree, dependent, anxious, and interferes with his personal development. A person in love is extremely ambivalent towards the object of his love. He simultaneously experiences positive feelings towards him, for example, gratitude as a source of vital benefits, and negative ones - he hates him as someone who has power over him and can stop reinforcement at any time. A truly free person, according to L. Kasler, is a person who does not experience love.

Speaking about love, it is extremely difficult to separate love as a subjective experience, an assessment of one’s relationship with another person, from love as a specific process of relationship with him. The intimate nature of love and its inaccessibility for study inevitably lead to fragmentation of our knowledge about this phenomenon. Nevertheless, we can say that the concept of “love” represents a certain psychological reality for most people and is not confused with other related concepts. Highlighted Various types love and the structure of love experiences. The tendency to experience feelings of love is associated with a number of personal characteristics of the subject, in particular, with a high level of self-acceptance. The experience of love and loving relationships is a necessary condition for high personal development. The inclusion of a cognitive component in the phenomenon of passionate, or romantic, love, the role of verbal structures in love experiences demonstrate the sociocultural conditionality of love.

Conclusion

Psychological analysis of such a significant problem for a person as the problem of emotional relationships cannot be limited to stating the presence of certain facts or patterns - it inevitably faces the question of possibilities and ways to optimize emotional relationships and targeted influence on them. Correction of emotional relationships, especially in their long-term form, constitutes a significant part of the content of any psychotherapeutic process. This reflects both the objective and subjective importance of emotional connections with other people for ensuring mental health, personal maturity and achieving a high level of adaptation. Therefore, it is hardly advisable to single out the therapy of emotional relationships as a separate practical task - the area will be too broad, covering almost all psychological correction. But, understanding the convention of singling out a separate task of influencing emotional relationships, let us still look at how the practice of correcting relationships is connected with scientific psychological knowledge about the patterns of these relationships.

People who believe in the rigidity and predetermination of their relationships, but nevertheless want to improve them, inevitably begin to treat psychotherapy as a miracle, as magic. After all, if in our relationships everything is a function of already existing external and internal conditions, if internal conditions, for example, social origin, cannot be changed, and external ones are not in my power and not in the power of the psychotherapist (requests to help improve external, for example, living conditions, are extremely rare), then an appeal to a psychotherapist can be deciphered as a request to change the result (my relationships with people, in particular), without affecting what, in my opinion, it clearly depends. That is, the psychotherapist must temporarily change the nature of those natural scientific laws that determine this result, or, in other words, perform an act of miracle - after all, a miracle is a temporary change in the laws of nature. Naturally, such an attitude towards psychotherapy as a miracle serves the desire to relieve oneself of responsibility for one’s relationships.

An accurate forecast, however, is most often impossible, psychotherapy has nothing to do with magic, and the nature of the patterns of emotional relationships is such that the leading factor in determining their stabilization and collapse is the free will of a person. Therefore, an appeal to psychology to justify one’s helplessness and fatal predetermination of one’s fate is inadequate.

The results of studies of emotional relationships indicate that despite the presence of an objective and, in the initial period, quite strict determination of their development by various factors, a person always remains in the literal sense of the word the subject of his emotional relationships with other people. He retains the freedom to enter into them, continue or terminate them and, therefore, bears full responsibility for this most important aspect of his life.

List of sources used

1. Kharchev A.G. Marriage and family in the USSR / A.G. Kharchev. - M., 1979.

2. Golod S.I. Family stability: sociological and demographic aspects / S.I. Hunger. - L., 1984.

3. Novikova L.I. Team and personality as a pedagogical problem / L.I. Novikova. - St. Petersburg, 2003.

4. Kon I.S. Friendship / I.S. Con. - M., 1980.

5. Soloviev V.S. The meaning of love / V.S. Soloviev. - Questions of philosophy and psychology. - 1894.

6. Kon I.S. Youth friendship as an object of empirical research / Kon I.S. - Tartu, 1974.

7. Makarenko A.S. Book for parents / A.S. Makarenko. - M., 1957.

8. Freud 3. Essays on the psychology of sexuality / Z. Freud. - M., 1922.

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LOVE AND ITS TYPES

The concept of “love” is one of the few words that express almost absolute abstraction (along with “truth”, “god”, etc.). The fact that people attach different meanings to the concept of “love” is beyond doubt. Many people want to love, but everyone wants to love them.

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Psychology has long been interested in “love”; there are countless pages devoted to love, but this does not stop it from being a mystery. There is only one love, but there are thousands of counterfeits of it. Love remains a revelation for every person today, as it was thousands of years ago.

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Romantic love is fickle and unstable because: the reasons for excitement in everyday situations quickly disappear; 2) is associated with the constant experience of strong (both positive and negative) emotions, from which one quickly gets tired; 3) is focused on stable idealization of the partner, in which the real person becomes a phantom. The statistically normal outcome of family relationships built on romantic love is disintegration. In love, in addition to emotional interpretation, the level of self-acceptance is important. In favorable situations, the level of self-acceptance increases, but in case of breakdown it decreases.

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An important source of the formation of a person’s image of love is the experience acquired in the parental home, the influence of the behavior of the father and mother

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Pessimistic model of building love according to L. Kasler: 1) the need for recognition; 2) satisfaction of sexual needs; 3) conformist reaction (as is customary). According to Kasler, love is a fusion of a combination of emotions, among which the leading role is played by the fear of losing the source of satisfaction of one’s needs. Falling in love, constructed by the constant fear of losing him, makes a person unfree, dependent and interferes with personal development. He associates the positive emotional state of a lover with the person’s gratitude for satisfying his needs. Consequently, L. Kasler comes to the conclusion, a free person does not experience love.

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The optimistic model of love was proposed by A. Maslow. According to this model, love is characterized by the relief of anxiety, a feeling of complete security and psychological comfort, satisfaction with the psychological and sexual side of the relationship, which grows over the years, and the interest of loving people in each other is constantly increasing. During their life together, partners get to know each other well; a real appreciation of the spouse is combined with his complete acceptance. Maslow associates the constructive power of love with the connection of the sexual sphere with the emotional, which contributes to the fidelity of partners and the maintenance of equal relationships.

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Fromm identifies in love: - care, responsibility, respect for each other, knowledge of the characteristics of the other, a feeling of pleasure and joy.

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SOURCES AND STYLES OF LOVE

Love as a reflection of personal inadequacy. S. Freud and W. Reykras viewed “love” as a reflected perception of one’s own unattained ideals in a partner. Peele draws a parallel between drug use and love (dependence on a feeling of satisfaction contributes to low self-esteem). According to Kesler, “love” is a sign of the presence of a need in a healthy person, and according to Freud and Reik, “love” is not a pathology, but characterizes a neurotic personality.

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There are three types of love: Eros – love based on the principle of opposites. It occurs most often, unfortunately, strong point another does not add strength to the weaker side. Love - envy - hatred. Philia is love based on the principle of identity. Soul mates, recognizing each other, ultimately find themselves in front of their reflection in the mirror. Static, boredom. Agape is an evolutionary love that moves partners from opposition to identity. A fruitful, real “formula of love” leads to harmonization of the personalities of lovers.

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Love is a normal feeling of an adequate personality

Conducted research suggests three stages of “love”:

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J. Lee's theory of love (styles and colors of love). John Alan Lee developed his theory of “love,” which, by and large, focused only on sexual relationships. The most important problem for everyone, according to the author, is meeting a partner who would share our ideas, our opinions, our views on life. To do right choice, the author advises studying “love”, its styles and colors. Love styles (each person's views on love) are not like the zodiac; they can change.

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Having determined his style (from the eight given by the author), a person can choose the appropriate style for his partner. Matching styles ensures effective relationships between partners.

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R. J. Sternberg's theory of love (triangular love) Robert J. Sternberg proposed his theory of love - triangular.

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If we analyze all possible combinations of the above components, we get 8 subgroups that form the classification of love according to R.J. Sternberg:  sympathy (intimacy only); one of the partners has only one intimate component with no passion and no decision/commitment; reckless love (passion only); love is an “obsession”, the object of love is, as a rule, idealized; all-consuming love (time, energy, motives are subordinated to passion); “...this love, to a greater extent, is a projection of the needs of the lover, and not genuine interest”; usually asymmetrical; empty love (only a decision/commitment component); the basis of the relationship is the decision to love and commitment to the loved one, in the absence of passion and intimacy; possible in the final stages in long-term relationships and in societies where marriages are ordered by tradition (asymmetry is aggravated by feelings of guilt); romantic love (intimacy and passion); lovers are connected physically and sexual attraction, but there are no obligations to each other (the partners rely on chance); marriage is unlikely; love in marriage (intimacy and decision/commitment); long-term friendship (some spouses look for outside hobbies); meaningless love (passion and commitment); “extremely susceptible to destruction,” passion fades and commitment is shallow; perfect love (intimacy, passion and commitment); “Achieving perfect love may be difficult, but maintaining it is even harder”;  dislike (absence of all components); business relationship.

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R. May's theory of love. R. May points out that in the West there are traditionally 4 types of love:

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REASONS FOR A NEGATIVE ATTITUDE TO YOURSELF AND TO FAMILY LIFE

David Burns gives reasons for a negative attitude towards oneself and life, which are “destroyers” of emotional relationships. The most common among them: 1) thinking in terms of black and white extremes; 2) tendency to high level generalizations (“this always happens”, “you’re always pestering”, “I’ll never be able to do this”); 3) using a negative filter, focusing on failures, mistakes and mistakes, constant criticism; 4) understatement positive factors, discarding any positive; 5) the habit of making hasty conclusions, negatively interpreting events and phenomena on the basis of “mind reading” (“he definitely wanted to say that I’m not suitable for anything...”) and “negative clairvoyance” (“probably nothing of this It won’t work and it will get even worse"); 6) application of the “inverted telescope” method: what is close and accessible is downplayed, and what is unattainable and distant is exaggerated; 7) perception of the world exclusively through emotions; 8) excessive enthusiasm for the words “I must” and “I have to”, which completely replace “I want”, “I need”, “I like”; 9) hanging “labels” as generalized assessments of one’s own or someone else’s behavior, personal qualities, abilities, etc.; 10) the habit of taking blame for events and situations (especially concerning loved ones) that are beyond one’s control.

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Causes of family conflicts

Small, frequently recurring quarrels are extremely dangerous for a marriage. They gradually but steadily lead to mental alienation between spouses, since, as a result of numerous critical remarks hurled at each other, each of them loses self-esteem.

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The well-being of a marriage largely depends on the preparedness of the spouses for it. Readiness should include not so much sex education and housekeeping skills (although both are necessary), but the ability to communicate, show delicacy, a sense of tact, and a desire to listen to the interests and needs of others. Otherwise, family life has an unfavorable prognosis. As you know, a happy family life relies on the mutual love of the spouses. This condition is indeed necessary, but not sufficient.

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Jealousy should be mentioned as one of the causes of family conflict. Although it is considered a relic and is condemned, it can nevertheless greatly poison life.

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An ideal home is a flexible formation, like an organism, which maintains a reasonable balance of isolation from the world and openness to the world and people.

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Preventing conflicts between spouses

For young wives Many sorrows and even suffering in family life are associated with the fact that the husband does not live up to the ideal nurtured in his soul. In accordance with established ideas, most women value reliability in a man, the ability to make decisions in a difficult situation, and independence. These wonderful qualities can be identified and strengthened in any man. A woman’s strength is manifested in dedication and dedication. Be especially careful to maintain in your husband a sense of self-confidence and indispensability in the family and at work during periods of decline and failure. In difficult times, it is harmful to focus on past miscalculations and mistakes. Only the unshakable faith of family members in the success of its head awakens the inner strength he needs to bring his endeavors to a successful conclusion. The feeling of psychological security is determined by constant, stable support from loved ones. Therefore, we must try to courageously and cheerfully face various difficulties, including financial ones, without criticizing the husband for mistakes made and without comparing him with more successful men.

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For young husbands This situation is very typical for men. After breaking up with their first love, they easily fall in love by “ricochet”. When the image of first love is destroyed, their psyche is left with emptiness and a large charge of emotions seeking immediate compensation. Women intuitively consider the main advantages of men to be their intelligence, logic and reliability, and men, also intuitively, are most fascinated by the external beauty of women. Therefore, they say that men and women love differently, men with their eyes, and women with their ears. Speaking about the reasons for misunderstanding in the family, first of all we need to remember the different dominance of men and women. As studies have shown, among men there are more often people with a left dominant hemisphere, and among women - with a right one. Not understanding the behavior of women, men are convinced that “female logic” is the absence of any logic! However, this is simply more the logic of feelings and relationships.

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Useful links Prose: Pierre de Chardin "The Phenomenon of Man" Chekhov A.P. "Darling" Daninos "Mr. Blo" Pezia: Evgeny Baratynsky "Love" Fyodor Tyutchev "I love your eyes, my friend..." Mikhail Lermontov "First Love" Vladimir Benediktov " I love you" Alexey Apukhtin "Love" Innokenty Annensky "Two Loves" Fyodor Sologub "Your love is that magic circle", "The power of love is irresistible..." Zinaida Gippius "Love", "Love is one" Konstantin Balmont "First Love", " She gave herself without reproach” Alexander Blok “Falling in Love” Andrey Belykh “Declaration of Love” Elena Tikhopoy “You deserve my love...”. Painter: Hannah Nagel “Love” Paolo Veronese “Mars and Venus in Love” Marc Chagall “Lovers” Edward Burne-Jones “The Tree of Forgiveness” Edward Henry Corboult “Lovers” Jacques-Louis David “Cupid and Psyche” Francois Boucher “Callisto and Jupiter” , “Hercules and Omphale” John William Howard “Loves, loves not” Andreotti F. “Love Letter” Tulmush O. “Note” Svedomsky P. A. “Messalina”

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Prepared by student Faculty preschool education and practical psychology Department of practical psychology group 3 PP Redko Ksenia Sergeevna G. Slavyansk 2014

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Love is a big topic. This is such a great topic that I have some sacred trepidation to talk about it.

This is a topic we are all familiar with, but the experiences we have are very different.

Most of us know the happiness that can be associated with love. But many of us also know the suffering that can be associated with love. And some may be familiar with the desperation that can be associated with love. Despair, which can reach such an extent that you don’t want to live.

The theme of love covers a lot. We know many areas in which love takes place - love for parents, children, partners, art, nature, animals...

We know that love is a central theme in Christianity. Agape. Love for one's neighbor. What is love for one's neighbor? There are a huge number of ways to love. We can, for example, have platonic love while sublimatedly maintaining distance. We can experience physical love. We can love sadistically and masochistically, homosexually and heterosexually. What a variety of forms lies in love.

And maybe many of us came here with one question or another that is related to love... What question did I come here with today? Is there anything I want to know...

I gained the courage to talk about love when I realized how difficult it is to really know anything about love today. Where do we learn what love can be and how love happens? Where do we get knowledge about love?

Traditionally, religion has provided an introduction to the topic of love. And today it seems that television provides such an introduction. And this situation, as it were, throws the person back onto himself. That he must somehow discover for himself and find what love is. And what is it actually about, what is important in love.

There is also a big advantage in this, because... through the fact that a person finds something for himself, he sharpens his own individual perception and his own individual experience. But perhaps we are paying too high a price for this advantage today?

And since the psychotherapeutic school to which I belong (this is the tradition of existential therapy according to the school of Viktor Frankl) has some emphasis in anthropology, on which it relies, in the picture of the world on which it relies, I decided to say a few thoughts about this anthropology .

(I will summarize this phrase again (trans.): And since the psychotherapeutic school to which I belong is based on some anthropology developed by Frankl, I will allow myself to say a few words about this anthropology in order to consider our topic based on it.)

Maybe these thoughts will help us take a deeper look at this phenomenon of love, and what significance it has in human life.

I want to start from that frame, from that bed on which love lies

Love is a relationship.

I think this is clear to everyone. But this is not a relationship in general, but a special form of relationship. It's much more than just a relationship. Love is an encounter. So I want to start with a few descriptions of what a relationship is and what an encounter is.

Relationships have some connection. Relationships begin the moment I see another person. At this moment I behave differently. It's like I'm taking the other person into account. On absolutely basic level I have a certain relationship from which I cannot simply remove myself, extract it. I relate my behavior, my life to others. If, for example, a person is sitting on a chair, I cannot just sit on the chair, because he is already sitting there. If a person is standing in the doorway, I will not just walk through the door as if he is not there.

These are all basic forms of relationships. If there wasn't a person at the door, I would walk through the door differently than if there was one there.

There is some law here that we are not aware of - I can't help but relate. If I see a person, I can't help but relate to him. Or some object, not a person.

I take this object into account in my behavior. This is some basic form of relationship in which we are simply by nature. And I'm not free here. This is how I build this relationship, how I live with this - this is where there is freedom. But the fact that another person exists and exists is given. And when one person sees another person, it is as if he must enter into a relationship.

But relationships have another characteristic. Not only are they inevitable, but, beyond that, they have a duration that never ceases. If I meet someone, I have some kind of relationship history. Every time I meet him again, it turns out that I have already met him once. And the history of our relations leaves an imprint on our future relations, on the form of relations. If, for example, I went to school with someone, this will leave an imprint on our entire relationship. And even if we later get married, the history of this relationship will still be present in this marriage.

We are aware of this subtlety of relationships especially if we work, for example, with a patient and then we begin to develop some kind of private relationship. This is a very complex and difficult relationship. And we as psychologists must strictly ensure that we remain ethically correct. Because some injuries and other serious consequences can happen here very quickly. Because this relationship between therapist and client, it remains even when we enter into other relationships.

Relationships have such characteristics that relationship history becomes an integral part of the relationship, it is stored inside them. Everything that happened between us is preserved. Every hurt, every joy, every disappointment, every sexuality, everything is stored in the history of the relationship. And leaves an imprint on our life together. Therefore, it is very important to approach relationships responsibly. Because we can't make something not happen. What once happened will remain.
Relationships are nourished through the time people spend with each other and through intimacy.

These things—time and intimacy—are some of the nourishment for a relationship.

The first point I mentioned is that people enter into relationships simply by the fact of their presence in space. Something else about this point. Along with what happens automatically, there is also some free space. I can either enter into this relationship or abstain from it.

I can enter into this relationship if I want this relationship. Then I start talking to this person, tell him something about myself, etc. But if I don't want to be in a relationship, then I try not to get into one. And I close. However, in the basic plane there is a relationship. But these are relationships that we do not nurture, do not cultivate.

To nourish a relationship, we need time, time for each other. This time allows relationships to grow. It takes all this to nurture a relationship - time and intimacy. When we are in love, we want to spend time with each other. When we don't have time, love dies.

Time is for love what the sun and water are for plants. It's the same with intimacy. Intimacy also nourishes relationships. Those who want to build relationships seek intimacy with others.

I am often asked... What to do with separation - does it promote love or hinder it? And I found the best answer in the proverb “Separation and rupture act on love like the wind.” Like wind on fire. If the fire is small, the wind will blow it out. If it’s big, the wind will blow it away. Isn't it a beautiful analogy? Corresponds to my experience.
So, relationships are a certain basis.

A meeting is an event that can be designated as a point event on the time line. Because meetings always take place within relationships. Only where I have contact. But a meeting has a different character than a relationship. The meeting is spot on. It is connected to the moment. If I meet you, in the meeting I see you as a person, a person.

I’m interested in what is important to you, what worries you, I say what worries me. then we are in dialogue. There is some exchange of what is personally important. This is a meeting. Then we say goodbye and this meeting ends. The meeting bears the stamp of openness and dialogue. The relationship is preserved. But relationships change thanks to each meeting. Meetings influence the nature of the relationship.

Good relationships grow from meetings. If we meet each other on the plane of I and You, if we look into the eyes - this all feeds the relationship. If there are few or no meetings in a relationship, then the relationship weakens. If this is a strong relationship, then even with a small number of meetings, the relationship is maintained.

People can be separated for several years (war or some other event) and suddenly they meet again. They immediately recognize in the other what they mean to the other person. Maybe you have had such an experience that you meet a friend after many years.. And maybe you don’t recognize him right away.. but as soon as you start talking, you immediately recognize.. and say “listen, you are the same as before "

Relationships can survive. But they are not updated without the moment of meeting.

Well, I said something about some of the foundations of love, which is in a relationship. Both through renewal and through deepening relationships through meeting.

Now I want to say a few words about what we mean by personal love. But I want to build this on the basis of our experience.

What is characteristic of love that goes beyond just a relationship and an encounter? What do we experience when we love?

The first point is quite clear - we experience value. We worry that we like this person. We feel that this person means something to us, that our heart is attached to this person. That our heart is attached to this person. We feel connected to this person, that we belong to each other.

This applies not only to love for another person, but to love in general - and to love for music, art, psychology... We feel what we like, we are interested, we are attracted to it.

Thus, some specificity of love is some positive emotion. Or expressed in the form of some activity, this feeling.

What does feeling mean? What do I do when I feel something? And what happens to me when I feel. For example, when I listen to music and I understand that this music wants to tell me what it means to me. In feeling I am open and allow something to act on me. I let it do something to me. I let the music come into me. And to capture your harmony, your beauty in me. And I take this sound from musical harmony into my heart.

To feel means that I put my inner life at my disposal. That I let something come to my heart. So in feeling my life begins to move, something moves within me. Feelings set me in motion inside. Feelings awaken my life in me.

Love should be a feeling. Love must take place at this level, otherwise it is not love. Only if something has touched my vital basis, my vitality, if I can experience that this something is awakening life in me, that I am awakening to life, then it is love.

In love, I experience how the other person touches me, as if he is touching my heart and stroking it. This is not sentimentality at all. This is a deep acceptance of one's attitude towards one's own life. My life, which thanks to this music, this painting, thanks to this animal, and, naturally, first of all thanks to another person, it all touches me so much that my heart begins to jump.

Love, then, is an experience of value. This is different, this music is experienced by me as something valuable. The experience of value is associated with this emotionality. Only value that can be felt is existentially relevant.

The second point that describes our experiences is this moment of the value of another touching me, it is the experience of resonance. A feeling of deep affection towards me. This feeling does not arise from some pressure that my needs put on me, but it arises from a resonance, such a flutter.

This being is the deepest in me, the most internal, it begins to vibrate due to the fact that it matches the vibration of another. Because a certain You addresses the I. You touch me. You are interesting to me. This is some kind of kinship between my Self and your Self, it comes into resonance.

Because somewhere in the deepest foundations we are related. We don't know how, but we begin to love. Maybe sometimes you can hear, or we said it ourselves, if we get to know someone or love someone, then the feeling is as if I always knew this person. Because in essence, a person is much closer to that person somewhere in the depths, and feels related to that person.

This experience of resonance with another person is a deep phenomenological vision of the essence of another person. Through my being I see your being. Karl Jasper once said:

“Over the years, a woman becomes more and more beautiful, but only the lover sees it.”

Scheller saw in love the highest form of human phenomenological possibility. He said that we see in another his maximum possible value. Not only that he is, but that he can be, that is still dormant in him. This sleeping beauty who sleeps. We see what can become of it.

In love we see a person in his potential. Goethe had a similar vision. He says that love makes us visible in relation to another, but not only in what he is, but also in what he could be.

Therefore, it is very important that we love our children, this gives them the opportunity to grow to their potential. We see that this child could maybe play an instrument, and the other one is happy when he solves a math problem. We see what lies dormant in children. And if we love them, then we want to contribute to the development of these potentials and awaken them.

A lover, he has a feeling that through this experience of resonance we belong to each other, and if I'm with you, then I think it's good for you that I'm doing you good. That my proximity to you is beneficial to your potential. And I experience the opposite - your closeness to me, your presence does me good and has a beneficial effect on my potential. I can be more myself, and you can be yourself too.

The most beautiful generalization of this point was made by Dostoevsky: “To love means to see a person as God intended him to be.” This means, phenomenologically, what he could potentially be, with all the potentials that lie dormant in him.

What else are we going through?

So we experience value and resonance. And we are also experiencing the third point. This is some position.

There are two positions, two special ways of relating in love. Based on the experience of value and resonance, a position arises in me, a decision that “ it's good that you exist".

Those who love experience deep joy from the fact that you exist. That's how it is. Maybe not everything is perfect, but the lover accepts him all with his shortcomings. And from this position “it’s good that you exist,” the lover wants to support the other person in his life, in his being.

We want to do everything to make the other person feel good in his life, in his being.

And on this basis, another position arises, another form of relationship - the lover is active in this support of the other. A lover wants the best for another. He strives to protect others from suffering. He doesn't want anything evil to happen to others. But he wants him to develop and for his quality of life to improve. And he wants to actively contribute to this.

Augustine described love this way: “I love and therefore I wish that you could be.” I called this thought the central thought about love in general. This makes love generative, productive. Love becomes the basis for a common future.

So, what we experience in love: we experience the value of another person, we experience resonance, we experience an impulse to make the other feel good, and the lover, to put it simply, wants to make the other feel good.

Therefore, love contains a moment of decision. This is also a solution. We can do more together than we can alone.

The next point is that love wants reality. She wants to be embodied in the soil, in reality. Love attracts us to live it, to realize it.

What do we do when we love? For example, we give flowers, gifts, maybe we prepare something for each other. That. all these are forms in which love materializes. A person wants to live for another person. At least in some part of it.

And in partner love, love desires sexuality. (except for the love of children, of course).

Love does not want to remain only in dreams and fantasies. At least if sexuality is impossible, then at least write a poem :)

Love wants truth. She wants to become true. Love cannot tolerate lies, untruth. When we love, we trust another person more easily.

Last point - love wants a future. Duration, preservation.

She doesn’t want tomorrow to end what we experienced today. Because I feel good with you, I want this to continue

Love wants to become productive, to bear fruit. That we do something together, let something arise. And, naturally, love wants to have children. Which we have together and receive as some sign of love.

Swiss psychiatrist... brought love in connection with caring.

Love, that is. is connected with the fact that we can do something for another, take care of him, take something into the future.

Now I want to ask a question about the psychological background of love. Why do we love?

Do we love because we find something similar to us in another? According to “like attracts like”, or do we love, on the contrary, because we are different, according to the thesis “opposites attract”?

As far as I know, psychology has not yet resolved this dilemma. For both of these cases have value. This kind of thing is familiar to us, we can somehow rely on it. It helps me accept myself better. It strengthens and strengthens me in my inner self. There is such an autoerotic component or some narcissistic component in love.

And in love for the opposite, for the excellent, we experience a certain replenishment. The impulse, from the fact that it is different, is some growth.

Christianity has an interesting formulation on this matter. The commandment of love for one’s neighbor, which we all know as the commandment “love your neighbor as yourself.” If we take this phrase in the original, it means: “Love your neighbor, for he is the same as you.”

Different, thus, on the one hand he is different, and on the other hand he is the same, similar.

What seems different to us, at his core, at his core, he is the same as me. Therefore, love for one's neighbor is openness. It requires openness towards yourself. To the fact that I did not accept. If I accepted myself, I can also accept you, the other one. There are much fewer differences between a man and a woman than we think at first glance.

In psychotherapy it is often said that you must first love yourself before you can learn to love others.

This is true? Yes and no. It’s the same here again, both. Yes, in the sense that I need a relationship with myself, and thanks to this access to myself, it gives me access to others. How I treat myself is how I treat others in the future.

But here there is and there is no. Because my love for myself begins with the love of others for me. Other people, for example, parents who love me, kindle in me love for myself.

Love begins with the tarot(?)… and our love for ourselves is revealed only when others have loved us. Through the love of others, I can find the path to loving myself. If my parents love me, then I will know that I am a being who is worthy of love, I can be loved. And then the question arises: can I love myself? And over time I learn.

And because my parents love me no matter what, even if sometimes I behave badly, I am not always perfect, but it makes me realize that there is something so valuable in me that is worthy of love. And this brings me into self-love.

And on the basis of this self-love, through this feeling that in me, in my depths, there is something worthy of love, I gain some sensitivity towards the other. It opens my eyes that I can see that we can love in another.

Happiness in love means that I recognize that someone shares me with me. This means that someone is inviting me to be with him. Worrying about another is complete.

And the other has a desire to experience me entirely. If I'm willing to accept that invitation, and I sort of agree to it, then I'm truly in love. And then love really becomes passion.

And she makes me ready to suffer. Hasidic wisdom says that a lover feels that he is hurting another. Because we love, we feel what hurts another.

Thus, love makes a person ready to accept suffering. For example, for the sake of children, for the sake of a loved one. Because, because I love, I can’t just leave you in trouble, I want to do you good, even if it costs me dearly.

Love creates suffering, very diverse suffering. It causes melancholy that can burn our heart. Out of lack of fulfillment, out of limitation, we can hurt each other. Without even wanting it.

If I suffer, the lover suffers with me. Suffering in love is always shared suffering. I cannot feel good if my loved one feels bad.

Sometimes we can suffer from the fire of love, from this burning, yearning of unity, yearning in the desire to merge, which can never be fully fulfilled.

We worry that we are ultimately divided even though we are together.

We suffer from the fact that there is some inequality between us. With all the resonance and sympathy, the other is still not me, not identical with me. He can never match me in everything and completely, he is not me.

He experiences, thinks and feels often differently. And even in the closest love I remain a little alone.

And this can sometimes cause such reserve in relationships. That a person cannot, as it were, give himself completely in a relationship. Because the other one is not entirely ideal. .The person is waiting, maybe he will meet something better. Well, if he doesn’t meet, then we’ll stay together. But they are secretly waiting, because there is still a feeling there - well, we are not exactly perfect for each other.

There are very few people in the world who are perfect for each other. There are no ideals in life at all, only in the phase of falling in love.
A few words about falling in love.

Falling in love is the remnant of heaven on earth. There are no problems in the phase of falling in love. Man is in heaven and in his hands all the powers of the world. He doesn't need sleep or food.

Love, we said before, is seeing, it sees the being of another. And love, they say, blinds. Why?

When I'm in love, I see a person the way I want to see him. I still know so little about the other, and all those gaps in the knowledge of the other that I have, I fill with my desires.

That. I am, in fact, in love with my own performance. And this is what makes love such a heavenly experience. Because in my mind there are no shadow sides.

Thus, in falling in love we are talking, first of all, about me, about my fantasies and my idealizations. We see in others his charm, attractiveness, eroticism. And all these are just some screws on which I can hang my ideas. It bewitches me in another way. And even those objects that he touches fascinate me, which can even lead to fetishism.

In conclusion, I want to say about the sexuality of love, about the relationship between these two concepts.

Homosexuality can be just as personal as heterosexuality.

Love and sexuality are not only aimed at procreation, but they are some expression of community and communication, which is fundamentally open to the emergence of a third. But this third does not have to be a child. It could be some kind of task, art, a general celebration of life.

Sexuality means that the physical is combined with the mental. In sexuality we have the joy of experiencing life force through the bodily sensual plane. Thanks to this, what we experience from another becomes holistic.

But sexuality has another face. As Merlot Panti describes. Namely, the face that in sexuality I can be (become) an object for another.

This means that sexuality is possible without people loving each other. To receive this joy of life from another or together with another, and this can also mean a moment of happiness. But this, of course, is not the highest form of happiness if there is no level of personal relationship.

Why does infidelity hurt?

In infidelity we experience that we are replaceable. For example, they are replaceable at the level of sexuality. This means that it is not me that is important to another, but only my function. It makes me an object. And what I want, what I strive for, what I desire, that I want to be “I’m with you,” and become more of me, more of myself thanks to you, it crumbles.

Therefore, betrayal needs time so that trust can arise again.
What is important in love? What can I take with me?

Love requires integrity from us. That we see each other as we are, and in partnered love we can bring this to the ground of sexuality. That I can experience another as he is with all my senses. This is the most intense intimacy possible.

Love is a relationship, an encounter, an experience of the value of another that speaks to me in my being, that brings me into resonance with myself. Love is therefore intimate, it belongs only to the two of us, it is not public, its place is under the cover of shame.

And yet, we want it to be able to be carried out in this world. And that it should somehow manifest itself in the public, be lived together.

Therefore, it is so important that we have a sense of this subtlety and value that is associated with love.

Everything in the relationship is preserved. Even when we break off a relationship, everything that we have experienced together remains in the relationship. Therefore, the relationship cannot simply be ended. And if the one who is left continues to love, he can continue to preserve this love on this plane. In the position that I have the feeling that I am doing good to you with my love. But you, in all likelihood, have a feeling that my love is not doing you any good. It is not known which of us is right. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe you're wrong.

But if you think that you are happier with someone else (and there is an opportunity here that may not be available to everyone), then I want, in a certain sense, in the last act of love to give you freedom. as an expression of my love for you, leave you in your new relationship so that you can try, experience what is good for you. Maybe you'll be lucky, maybe you won't, but this is the last thing I can do for you.

And what can I live in, what can my love live in, although you have already left you - that I am leaving you because I love you, and that means that I want the best for you with all my heart, even when it is hurts me.

A.Langle. Love: an attempt at existential analysis.
Summary of a lecture given at the faculty
Psychology MSU 02/29/2008

The concept of “love” is one of the few words that express almost absolute abstraction (along with “truth”, “god”, etc.). A person strives for love and runs away from it at the same time. Thus, apparently, love reveals to a person his essence, which distinguishes him from others.

Each person loves in his own way, and perhaps it is the ability to love that makes a person human and a person different from other people.

The basis of all types of human love, as if the deep axis of its feelings, is the attitude towards another person as to oneself: such a state of the soul when everything in it is as dear to the subconscious as oneself.

Modern concepts that explain the mechanisms of the emergence of love take physiological attraction as the initial one. Romantic love is interpreted as strong excitement, which can be the result of anything, but is often accompanied by danger, death, and fear. The tendency to interpret may be greater than the arousal itself. Romantic love is fickle and unstable because 1) the reasons for excitement in everyday situations quickly disappear; 2) is associated with the constant experience of strong (both positive and negative) emotions, from which one quickly gets tired; 3) is focused on stable idealization of the partner, in which the real person becomes a phantom.

An important source of the formation of a person’s image of love is the experience acquired in the parental home, the influence of the behavior of the father and mother, since the image of love is not limited to ideas about how to behave during sexual intercourse, but is largely determined by the learned way of communicating in life together with others people. A person who grew up in an atmosphere of authoritarianism and despotism will look for sex with precisely these traits that are traumatic for him. On the contrary, excessive parental care will shape future infantile men and women.

The pessimistic model was proposed by L. Kasler. He identifies three reasons that make a person fall in love: 1) the need for recognition; 2) satisfaction of sexual needs; 3) conformist reaction (as is customary). According to Kasler, love is a fusion of a combination of emotions, among which the leading role is played by the fear of losing the source of satisfaction of one’s needs. Falling in love, constructed by the constant fear of losing him, makes a person unfree, dependent and interferes with personal development. He associates the positive emotional state of a lover with the person’s gratitude for satisfying his needs. Consequently, L. Kasler comes to the conclusion, a free person does not experience love.

I. S. Kon cites D. A. Lee’s typology of love, the experimental substantiation of which was carried out by K. Hendrick:

1. eros - passionate love-infatuation;

2. ludus - hedonistic love-game with betrayal;

3. storge -- love-friendship;

4. mania - love-obsession with uncertainty and dependence;

6. agape - selfless love-self-giving.

E. Fromm identifies 5 types of love: brotherly, maternal, erotic, self-love and love of God. He highlights in love: care, responsibility, respect for each other, knowledge of the characteristics of the other, an indispensable feeling of pleasure and joy for love.

According to Z. Rubin, love contains affection, care and intimacy.

V. Solovyov describes downward, upward and equal love. He sees the basis for such a view in the ratio of the contributions of each partner to the emotional relationship. Equal love presupposes equal emotional investment with what is given in return. Sources and styles of love

Love as a reflection of personal inadequacy. So, some authors (Kesler, Freud, Martinson, Reik) tried to describe the need for love as a sign of inadequacy. S. Freud and W. Reik considered “love” as a reflected perception of one’s own unattained ideals in a partner. Peele draws a parallel between drug use and love (dependence on a feeling of satisfaction contributes to low self-esteem). According to Kesler, “love” is a sign of the presence of a need in a healthy person, and according to Freud and Reik, “love” is not a pathology, but characterizes a neurotic personality. Thus, the dependence of psychotherapists’ clients on their partners shows that “inadequate individuals are more dependent on love in order to survive psychologically.”

Theory of love by A. Afanasyev. “Love” is a special state of euphoria caused by the illusion of finding “happiness” in a pair with a subject sufficiently endowed with those mental properties in which the lack is felt. The author substantiated his idea of the internal architecture of a person, consisting of four mental modules or functions: Emotions (“soul”), Logic (“mind”), Physics (“body”) and Will (“spirit”). This set of functions is inherent in all people, but it forms a hierarchy in the individual, which determines the differences between people.

There are three types of love:

Eros is love based on the principle of opposites. Most often, unfortunately, the strong side of the other does not add strength to the weak side. Love - envy - hatred.

Philia is love based on the principle of identity. Soul mates, recognizing each other, eventually find themselves in front of their reflection in the mirror. Static, boredom.

Agape is love-evolution, moving partners from opposition to identity. A fruitful, real “formula of love” leads to harmonization of the personalities of lovers.

Love is a normal feeling of an adequate personality. However, for most psychologists, “love” is a completely normal feeling of an adequate personality. Winch connects this phenomenon with upbringing. Greenfield believes that “love” is “a behavioral complex whose function is to control individuals” in society, to fulfill a certain social role(“husband is father”, “wife is mother”). According to Walster, “love” is explained by strong physiological arousal. Non-sexual stimuli (darkness, danger, etc.) can also be a source of love.

The theory of love by V. I. Mustein. According to V.I. Mustein, the concept of “love” includes many characteristics, such as altruism, intimacy, admiration, respect, participation, trust, consent, pride. Each characteristic can, in addition, be classified according to the way it is expressed: a) feeling, b) attitude, c) behavior, d) common sense. However, none of them is the leading criterion for defining “love.” According to V.I. Mustein, the research conducted speaks of three stages of “love”: a) passionate love; b) romantic; c) conjugal love.

J. Lee's theory of love (styles and colors of love). John Alan Lee developed his theory of “love,” which, by and large, focused only on sexual relationships. The most important problem for everyone, according to the author, is meeting a partner who would share our ideas, our opinions, our views on life. To make the right choice, the author advises studying “love”, its styles and colors. Love styles (each person's views on love) are not like the zodiac; they can change. Let us dwell on the characteristics of each style separately.

Eros. Erotic style always begins with a strong physical attraction. The lover perceives his partner as ideal and does not notice his shortcomings. It is the adherents of this style who fall in love at first sight

Storge. This style of love arises among people living in the same neighborhood, then they sympathize with each other and decide not to separate and start a family. Such lovers do not spend much time looking into each other's eyes, and it is difficult for them to say without embarrassment: “I love you.”

Ludus. Adherents of this style of love do not devote their lives to one partner. They are vagabonds, collectors of love experiences. Ludic love is love without promises.

However, the main styles, combined with each other, give secondary colors of love:

Mania. This is a very contradictory love that is formed as a result of the combination of Eros and Ludus. A lover of this style is more likely to love or demand love from a partner than to love himself. He is often dependent on the object of his affection, lacks self-confidence and therefore has a weak position. Some call this style "mad love."

Pragma. It is rather a conscious love that is formed in the combination of Ludus and Storge. A partner of this style chooses a lover of the same religion, social origin, even taking into account hobbies. The search for such a partner is a kind of sorting. The qualities of a partner are thought out in advance, then the candidate is selected based on these qualities and assessed with incredible care. A pragmatic lover often discusses his choices with parents or friends.

Agape or caritas is the selfless love of a person ready to sacrifice himself. This style is a combination of Eros and Storge. Such a lover feels an obligation to take care of his beloved, but his relationship is similar to that of a person in need of something. If such a lover decides that his or her partner would be better off with someone else, even a rival, he or she renounces love.

Ludic Eros. Lovers of this style are happy with life and confidently cope with problems, do not want love experiences, do not have deep feelings, but are able to help their partner enjoy love and end the relationship if they do not experience pleasure.

Storgic ludus. Lovers of this style consider their lives to be a long list of love stories; usually have a spouse; cautious, reserved, do not express their feelings and emotions, are not dreamy; spend time with a partner without disturbing the normal course of life, if the relationship is mutually convenient; They do not tolerate scenes of jealousy.

R. J. Sternberg's theory of love (triangular love). The three peaks are:

intimate component (having a close relationship): the desire to improve the well-being of a loved one, a feeling of happiness with a loved one, deep respect for a loved one, the ability to count on a loved one when necessary, mutual understanding, the ability to share one’s property with a loved one, receiving and providing spiritual support , sexual relationships, the significance of a loved one in life;