The scope of literature related to lovemaps

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CHAPTER 3 LOVE, LUST AND PAIRBONDING

Introduction

In the previous chapter, Money’s (1983) conceptualisations of love and lust were brought together in the lovemap cognitive blueprint of the idealised lover. According to his theory, the ability to pairbond is an experience that, ideally, includes both romantic and sexual feelings for the partner. While it is within human nature for the phenomena to operate apart, Money (1986a) considered the co-operation of love and lust, in the process of pairbonding, to be crucial for the development and expression of a healthy lovemap. It is in the mutuality and reconcilability of these criteria that functional human mate selections may occur.
Weinrich (1990) proposes a theory similar to Money’s in that it looks at amorous (limerent) and passionate (lusty) love as distinguishable concepts, and he goes on to detail each as somewhat differently experienced by males and females. Weinrich’s research aimed to put the notion of these two sexual attractions into precise and testable forms, so as to fit them into his earlier gender transposition model. He defines ‘limerent’ sexual attraction as active in eroticising the physical and personality characteristics of a particular Limerent Object. ‘Lusty’ sexual attraction would, instead, be active in producing erotic arousal when encountering a new Lusty Object.
Weinrich (1990) held that both limerence and lustiness are experienced by both men and women, but in different ways. There may be an average difference in the ease with which each one can be elicited in a particular sex. He believed that most women experience limerence as an autonomously arising desire, whereas the lustiness that does occur for them is a reaction to particular stimuli. For most men, however, lustiness would be the autonomously arising desire, whereas their occurring limerence would be a reaction to particular stimuli. This idea matches the (simplistic) lay expectation that women accede to sex in exchange for love, while men give love to obtain sex.
Individuals, irrespective of their sex, may vary in their readiness to respond to the two kinds of attraction (Weinrich, 1990). Some of the basic gender difference can be attributed to socialisation and cultural conditioning. Weinrich adds that, whereas lusty attraction is rarely indifferent to the sex of the Lusty Object, limerent attraction may well be indifferent, or nearly so, to the Limerent Object’s sex. This translates into the suggestion that one may love/infatuate a person of either sex, but will only lust after a person of the sex prescribed by one’s sexual orientation.
Weinrich (1990) does not expressly link limerence and lustiness as accompliced in human pairbonding, however. His theory does purport that the experiences of lust and limerence are universal for men and women, albeit in different modes, and that it is reasonable to expect that, when both do coincide for a man and woman, the two may pair up. This theory could allow that ‘a desired Object, with particular stimuli’ is close enough to Money’s concept of lovemap that pairbonding may be expected to follow.

Love

Rubin noted in 1970 that romantic love, which he understood to refer to the love between opposite-sex peers that might lead to their marrying, had been nearly nonexistent as a topic of psychological research. Discussing liking, or interpersonal attraction, was the closest that most investigators had come to the concept of romantic love. Hazan and Shaver (1994) concur that very little formal research had been done on understanding human love and affection until the last quarter of the previous century. Harlow (1958) lamented that, although assigned the work of analysing all facets of behaviour and their component variables,
So far as love or affection is concerned, psychologists have failed in their mission. The little we know about love does not transcend simple observation and the little that we write about it has been written better by poets and novelists (p. 1).
Gerdes (1988) adds that, for centuries, it has indeed been the writers, poets, artists, composers, and lovers who have attempted to capture the essence of love. The same observation is made by Verhulst (1984), in noting that the phenomenon of love has been explored within the arts, by poets, philosophers, songwriters, and novelists. There has been a reluctance in the scientific community to study love (Godow, 1982). Many people believed that romantic love was a rather frivolous subject and unworthy of scientific pursuit. Love has, furthermore, frequently been viewed as a human emotion that defies prediction. To apply the concepts, and language, of rationality to emotionality, or vice versa, was therefore considered meaningless.
Verhulst (1984) concurs that the scientific investigation of passionate love has been extremely limited. He names Freud’s 1921 dismissal of love as no more than ‘aim-inhibited sex’ as the point after which psychoanalysis paid little attention to romantic love. Psychoanalytic studies have focussed, instead, on the underlying dynamics of partner choice, and gone on to explain feelings of passionate love as the expression of unconscious fixations. General psychological research has frequently focussed on interpersonal and sexual attraction and their determinants, and, similarly, rationalised love as merely an extremely powerful initial feeling of attraction.
Reiss (1960b) observed that the heterosexual love relationship was one of the most vital, and yet one of the most neglected, aspects of courtship behaviour. Tennov (1973), similarly, questioned why the phenomenon of romantic love, and the ensuing heartbreak after the potential end of such a love affair, should be disregarded by a discipline that is looked on as the one to be concerned with important human problems. She adds that love, and our struggles with it, are major themes ‘…of virtually all popular and serious fiction, and sung about in almost every popular song’ (p. 420) in an argument to demonstrate its universal relevance. She concludes that romantic love is a subject worthy of investigation in its own right.
Verhulst (1984) notes that, in spite of its clinical relevance to relationship therapy, ‘…limerence or romantic love is hardly mentioned in the classical handbooks of marital and family therapy’ (p. 118).
The immense importance of love and loving, in life and relationships, has only been met by a response in research and scientific exploration relatively recently. Shaver and Hazan (1988) wrote, roughly sixteen years ago, that their times had witnessed an explosion of interest in, and research on, the topic of romantic love. The major contemporary approaches to love research had offered an astonishingly vital, refined, and diverse set of theories and models to describe the relational state of love. They wished, however, to provoke more speedy and spirited debate amongst researchers, in a move towards a more coherent understanding of romantic love.
Hazan and Shaver (1994) later affirmed that psychology’s more recent years have seen additional progress, and a proliferation of research, such that a new and dedicated sub-discipline on close relationships has emerged within the social sciences. Interestingly, when tracing the ‘poetry of love’ to related brain areas, research has demonstrated that those most implicated in this emotion are the same areas associated with fantasy, and not rationality, after all (Lamanna & Riedmann, 1994). Nonetheless, systematic research into romantic love is now well on its way.

Defining love

Falling in love is, undoubtedly, one of the most powerful and intriguing human experiences (Verhulst, 1984). Most people view love as a positive thing, supporting the expectation that ‘everything’s better with love’ (Lamanna & Riedmann, 1994, p. 86). It is a great concern, especially of young people, to both experience and understand love. The majority of individuals seek love, need love, and are committed to it at least at some point in life. Tennov (1973) confirmed, in her study of sex differences in romantic love and depression, that over 80% of the subjects accepted as true the statement that they enjoyed love, while universally rejecting the statement that sex without love was preferred as well as those statements that indicated a lack of interest in love.
When asked what love is, however, most people find it difficult to define comprehensively. In our attempts to do so, do we toy with mystery? Lamanna and Riedmann (1994) discuss May’s (1969) description of love as a delight in the presence of the other person, and an affirming of his or her value and development as much as one’s own. Reiss (1960b) succinctly describes love as ‘…that relationship between one person and another which is most conducive to the optimal development of both’ (p. 140). A thorough, formal definition conceptualises love as a deep and vital emotion, resulting from a significant need satisfaction, coupled with a caring for and acceptance of the beloved, and resulting in an intimate relationship.
Rubin’s (1973) definition of love relates to the attitudinal manifestations of love, one’s predisposition to think, feel and behave in certain ways towards the loved other, that he measured in his Love Scale instrument. Kelley (1983b) expands on this and proposes that the term love can be applied legitimately to such different categories as actions, processes, states, and dispositions. Love can be an individual process (feeling passion), the actions of an individual, a state (intense physiological arousal), a disposition (attitude towards a particular other), or interactions between individuals.
Furthermore, in reality, some of these categories frequently blur together.
Money (1980) defined love as the ‘…personal experience, and manifest expression, of being attached or bonded to another person’ (p. 289). He reports that it is usually erotosexual in nature, and that it is typically not subject to the individual’s voluntary control. To Money, falling in love would then refer to the personal experience, and manifest expression, of becoming intensely, and possibly suddenly, attached or bonded to another person. It may be reciprocal and a source of great ecstasy, or only one-sided and a source of great agony for the loving person. Numerous lay and professional persons view love with this ambivalence, as either a blessing that makes life worthwhile or a torment to endure or escape, all depending on the circumstances.
Love may, moreover, not always mean the same thing (Sternberg, 1986) and there are a number of ways in which kinds of loves may differ from one another. Sternberg’s tripartite theory allows for the many natures of diverse loves, across various kinds of relationships. Models of love differ in the extent to which they view love as biologically, psychologically, or socially constructed and maintained by people, or some combination of the three. Sternberg comprehensively defines love as ‘…a complex whole that appears to derive in part from genetically transmitted instincts and drives but probably in larger part from socially learned role modeling that, through observation, comes to be defined as love’ (p. 120). He additionally cites Rosch’s organisation of love as largely prototypical, in that certain feelings, drives, thoughts, and behaviours appear as more highly characteristic of love, as it is socially defined, than do others.
The author will examine love as a universal phenomenon, that has been active throughout human history, and that exists as one of our most dominant themes. The opinion of mature love as healthy and necessary for optimal human development, and yet precious and a true feat when achieved, will be visited. The other side of the coin is covered in the examination of the romanticism of all things to do with love, the history of this tradition, and the possible dangers inherent in adopting this discourse to the exclusion of others. The development, functions, and types of love will be presented from a viewpoint of exploration, description, and critical discourse. Numerous alternative theories of love certainly exist, and those important to lovemap-like development and problems will be investigated. In concluding, the author reflects on the meaning that love holds in modern times, or rather the meaning that we give it through language, as love is surely socially co-constructed.

1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 A study of self-defeating lovemaps
1.2 John Money’s contributions
1.3 A thesis of literature and philosophy
1.4 Grounding theories for lovemap
1.5 The scope of literature related to lovemaps
1.6 Theoretical and methodological approaches
1.7 Rationale of the study
1.8 Suggesting implications for psychotherapy
2. LOVEMAP AS DEVELOPED COGNITIVE CONSTRUCT
2.1 Introduction
2.2 The lovemap concept
2.3 Cognitive constructs
2.4 Psychological development
3. LOVE, LUST AND PAIRBONDING
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Love
3.3 Lust, or human sexuality
3.4 Pairbonding
4. THEORETICAL PARADIGMS
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Ecosystemics
4.3 Humanistic approach
4.4 Psychofortology
4.5 Progressive development versus chaotic change
4.6 Conclusion
5. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Research methodologies
5.3 Research aims
5.4 Rationale
5.5 Sampling
5.6 Measuring instruments.
5.7 Data gathering method.
5.8 Interpretation of data
6. RESEARCH FINDINGS
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Participant data
6.3 Vignettes and thematic analysis
6.4 Thematic synthesis
6.5 Therapeutic guidelines
6.6 Conclusion
7. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
7.1 Realisation of research goals
7.2 Shortcoming of this study
7.3 Reacommendations for future research
8. REFERENCE
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