Of Love and Lust  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

Revision as of 20:38, 16 June 2024

Related e

Wikipedia Wiktionary Shop Featured: Rhombicuboctahedron by Leonardo da Vinci

Of Love and Lust (1944) is a book by Theodor Reik.

Table of contents

Publisher's Preface ix

Author's Note: Theme and Variations xi

Part One A Psychologist Looks at Love 1

Part Two Masochism in Modem Man 195

Part Three The Unmarried 367

Part Four The Emotional Differences of the Sexes 405

Publisher’s Preface

Of Love and Lust is the second of a series of volumes of selec- tions from Theodor Reik’s works, of which The Search Within; The Inner Experiences of a Psychoanalyst , was the first. The Search Within was a synthesis of his personal life, his training, practice and the development of his philosophy. In this new volume he is concerned with the love life and the sexual life of men and women. It is not only a discussion of the differences in attitude toward love and sex but toward many aspects of the cultural pattern of today. “Only the brave can struggle to love/* he writes. This particular volume contains only material written since 1943; not more than a third of it has ever been published in book form; much of it was written within the last year and is appearing here for the first time.

Our publishing relation has been close since Dr. Reik arrived in the United States as a refugee in 1938. He did not wish to edit these books himself and has asked me to do so and to explain them briefly.

Part One of this volume is taken from one of his most successful books, A Psychologist Looks at Love, out of print now for some years. It shows his departure from his master, Freud*s, theories and from those of most of his contemporaries in psychology and psychoanalysis. “The sex urge/* he maintains, “hunts for lustful pleasure; love is in search of joy and happiness."

Part Two is from Reik’s great contribution to psychological literature. Masochism in Modern Man. In using less than half the book, I have attempted to keep those parts which have a direct bearing on the subject of this particular book and also the core of Reik’s new contributions to his subject. Much of his com- parison with Freud’s theories has been eliminated as have his chapters on social, religious and cultural aspects of masochism. However, the phenomena and dynamics of masochism are here as well as their relation to femininity. The summing up of Reik’s theory is contained in the chapter Victory Through Defeat.

Part Three, '‘The Unmarried/' consists of two essays, written for the symposium Why Are You Single, edited by Hilda Holland. Reik speaks plainly, as always, of the marriage shyness of the male and the psychological fears and resistances of both men and women to an acceptance of the marriage bond.

Part Four, “The Emotional Differences of the Sexes," is the new and unpublished material. There are some forty-nine sections, some of them are long essays, some trenchant, short, almost anec- dotal ones. He asks, “Why shouldn't we know how the other half of the world feels?" and he adds, “In our civilization, men are afraid that they will not be men enough and women are afraid that they might be considered only women." He tries to probe into the secret ways in which men and women search for happiness. The material is clear, brisk, often startling. It is filled with examples from shrewdly observed case histories. His material varies from frank comments on the emotional mechanisms of the sexual act to studies of the differences between men and women in manifold situations and in their fancied and real characteristics. He is often profound, but often satirical and witty as well. There are essays on Guilt Feelings, on Impotence, Jealousy, The Sexualization of Clothes, Homosexuality, Man and Money, Wit, Children. Fie writes of all this with sympathy and understanding, not hesitating to agree or disagree with other authorities. It is Reik in his mellowest mood, but uncompromis- ing as always.

John Farrar

Author’s Note: Theme and Variations

Mephisto, in Faust’s scholar’s costume, tells the student that all theory is gray while life’s golden tree is green. There is satanic truth in that color-contrast between theory and experi- ence— a seductive half-truth. Only theory that does not grow from the soil of living experience is gray; only theory that originates in speculation is a hot-house plant. Wherever theory does not grow from this soil, it is not able to survive; it shrinks up and withers. Psychoanalytic theory has its deep roots in the mould of clinical practice and retains its earthy color. Freud’s psychoanalytic the- ories are the result of a supreme achievement of synthetic intelli- gence combining the insights obtained through many years of analytic practice. They are, furthermore, in their best parts works of art. Yet there is nothing artificial in them. On the few occa- sions when he left the firm ground of the empirical, he soon be- came aware of his mistake and corrected it. He had learned to control an initial inclination to speculate and theorize. He tested again and again budding theories in his experience in daily an- alytic practice.

It is unforgettable that he admonished us, who were his stu- dents in Vienna, not to trust our theoretical knowledge, not to follow preconceived ideas, but always to approach the material of our practice with a mind open to new impressions and insights* He repeated: “You have to look again and again at things until they themselves begin to speak.” Observation, tested over a long period of time self-critically, was for him— and became for us who are his followers— the most important premise of research. He could then dismiss arguments against the validity of analytic the- ories because he knew how they were built on the firm ground of thousands of individual experiences, I still remember a meeting

xi

Xii OF LOVE AND LUST

of the Viennese Psychoanalytic Society during which he made some remarks about a paper which doubted the scientific charac- ter of psychoanalysis because it cannot be verified by experiment as can other parts of psychology: “If the nature of a science were dependent on such proof through experiments, astronomy would not deserve the name of science. We are told that it is rather diffi- cult to make experiments with the planets/’

The following contributions present continuations of Freud’s research and they follow the methods of his investigation which I learned from him, from his example and his words. The model of his way of working was especially important to me in building the theories on masochism to be found in this book. Material ob- served in many years of analytic practice, patiently passed through the sieve of new experiences, was the foundation on which that theory was built.

The three parts in which the following selections appear are in- dependent of each other and were conceived and written at dif- ferent times. Yet they are connected by an invisible thread. They try to probe into secret ways in which men and women search for happiness.

American colloquialism has the expression “Number One” for “I.” Superficially seen, the pursuit of happiness is contained in reaching the goals of “Number One”— the satisfaction of our in- stinctual drives, the obtaining of power, sexual gratification, riches and so forth. Yet we all know that happiness is not to be found on this road. We all know that what we call happiness is nothing permanent and is restricted to hours or even minutes. The best that can be reached of that evanescent state is tied to one condition: the forgetting of oneself, the necessity for a trans- formation by which “Number One” not only loses this numerical value, but does not count any longer. The small share of happi- ness attainable by man exists only insofar as he is able to cease to think of himself. This happens in love, in enthusiasm, in states of drunkenness, in deep sleep. The self in those states is psychologi- cally almost nonexistent, has vanished or has been absorbed into something else.

The way most passionately sought in reaching for happiness is love— or, more accurately expressed, romantic love. (I regret that I did not add this important adjective frequently enough in the dis- cussion of the psychology of love in this book.) In romantic love, the subject is certainly lost. The self scarcely exists. It is absorbed in the loved object. Yet that feeling of utter emotional surrender has its roots in the dark subsoil of unconscious tendencies which we shy away from. The psychological analysis of romantic love confirms Freud's sentence that what we idealize is intimately con- nected with trends we abhor. I did not probe here into the emo- tional secrecy of another feeling that, akin to love, makes the in- dividual forget himself: enthusiasm, giving oneself to an idea, giving oneself— or the self— up.

The self disappears, or at least seems to disappear, in moments of extreme satisfaction of the senses, for instance at the climax of sexual gratification. The mountain cock during the mating season does not see the hunter. Not love but the sexual urge proves to be stronger than the fear of death. The strangest and most significant sexual perversion in which the deepest pleasure is derived from disgrace and pain is certainly an object of research that, by its paradoxical character alone, deserves the interest of the psychol- ogist. It aroused my scientific interest at the very start of my an- alytic practice, and many cases of sexual and social masochism were carefully observed and studied before I dared to publish a new theory of this deviation. Since Masochism in Modern Man was published in 1941 many psychiatrists and psychologists have referred to the book, added to and modified its essential results that had been founded on many years of analytic experience. It gives me satisfaction that the core of my own theory has been rec- ognized as valid by sharp criticism,

A suggestion from outside is responsible for the fact that I fol- lowed a side track, branching off from the theme of romantic love and masochism. Hilda Holland invited me to contribute two arti- cles to a symposium, “Why Are You Single?”* which she com-

Farrar, Straus Sc Co., 1949.

piled. In studying that vital problem, I tried to determine why men and women do not marry and dealt with the various factors which make women and men bypass marriage and family life.

This special subject heralded a more general theme of research that had preoccupied my thoughts for many years: the emotional diversity of men and women. While all the world knows and ac- knowledges basic differences in the emotional attitudes of the sexes, few observers have concentrated their interest on the less visible and inconspicuous causes responsible for these different at- titudes. Avoiding beaten paths, I tried to find little-known spots commanding a wide view. The observations and experiences pre- sented here will, I hope, contribute to the recognition of the great divergence between men and women and lead us a little farther in its understanding.

It is a small world, they say. We ought to have at least a notion of how the other half of it lives.

New York, April 1957

Theodor Reik