Love and Its Place in Nature

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In this heartfelt and scholarly treatise, Lear, chair of Yale's philosophy department and clinical associate of the Western New England Institute for Psychoanalysis, takes up where Freud left off, following ``connections, insights, consequences of Freudian thoughts that Freud himself did not pursue.'' Sticking close to psychoanalytic structure and language, Lear explores the significance of Freud's attempt to limn a science based on subjectivity, to illuminate the power of archaic thinking and to reveal love as a force of nature. Aligned in viewpoint with but more tightly focused than Reuben Fine's Love and Work (Nonfiction Forecasts, July 6), Lear's impassioned, generous interpretation goes its own way (he argues that the catharsis at the heart of analysis is more truly a matter of unification than a discharge of psychic energy), further developing in psychoanalytic fashion the revolutionary models raised in Freud's writings. (Oct.)

Library Journal

This simply written and accessible book seeks to define and identify love as a force, central to human nature, that is at the root of Freudian theory. To accomplish this aim, the author proceeds to explicate basic psychoanalytic concepts in a lucid and compelling manner, convincingly arguing for a psychological rather than a biological root and correspondingly love rather than sex and aggression as a central motivator in Freudian theory. As a philosopher conversant with analytic theory, the author also advocates a view of humanity as needing to discover its archaic unconscious, an area often neglected by more rationally focused philosophers. Psychological theorists might question the author's neglect of neo-Freudians such as Fromm who have focused on love but have seemed less committed to retaining a Freudian viewpoint. But lay readers as well as scholars will benefit from his clear presentation of psychoanalysis and his unique vantage point.-- Paul Hymowitz, New York Medical Coll.