1. Sidney M. Greenfield, “Love and Marriage in Modern America: A Functional Analysis,” The Sociological Quarterly 6 (1965): 365.
2. Sarah Cirese, Quest: A Search for Self (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1977), p. 175.
3. The problem of methodology appeared particularly acute in view of my behaviorist orientation. Although behaviorism is often thought of as a psychology of overt action, my own interpretation of behaviorism stresses the value of objective verification, without implying that the only useful observations that can possibly be made are of nonverbal, molar actions.
4. In “Alternatives to Romantic Love,” a paper presented at the American Psychological Convention, Washington, D.C., September 1971, Margaret Horton noted that the word “love” is not only ill defined, but also used to characterize a variety of interpersonal relationships. J. Richard Udry, in The Social Context of Marriage, 3rd ed. (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1974), termed the various definitions of love given by college students and by writers of, for example, marriage and family texts, [as well as others] a “conglomeration”, p. 133.
5. Denis de Rougemont, Love in the Western World (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1940), p. 310.
6. Nora Budzilek and Lisa Cook. It was gratifying when Charles Ferguson, retired senior editor of Reader’s Digest, wrote on May 19, 1978, in The Patent Trader: “A charming new noun has entered American English. It is ‘limerence,’ and it compresses into three pleasant syllables the stunning experience hitherto covered by the roundabout phrase of being or falling in love.” In addition to his acceptance of the term, which had appeared by then in The New York Times and other places, as he noted, Ferguson clearly recognized the need for scientific study of the phenomenon.
1. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 2nd ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1953), pp. 45–46.
2. Ibid., pp. 26–32.
3. Stendhal, Love, translated by Gilbert and Suzanne Sale (Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1957), p. 107.
4. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 2nd ed., p. 88.
5. Robert Seidenberg, Marriage in Life and Literature (New York: Philosophical Library, 1970), p. 32.
6. Liv Ullmann, “Changing,” McCall’s (February 1977), p. 205.
7. John Money and Anke Ehrhardt, Man and Woman, Boy and Girl (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972), p. 190.
8. Elaine Walster and G. William Walster, New Look at Love (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1978), p. 139. Other authors who have emphasized visual features are Andreas Capellanus, The Art of Courtly Love (New York: W. W. Norton, 1969), p. 9; and Vernon W. Grant, Falling in Love: The Psychology of the Romantic Emotions (New York: Springer Publishing Co., 1976), p. 16. Alvin Pam, Robert Plutchik, and Hope R. Conte (“Love: A Psychometric Approach,” Psychological Reports (37) 1975: 83–88) found attractiveness more important in a “love relationship than in dating and friendship,” according to responses of college students.
9. Stendhal, Love, p. 49. Stendhal, the French writer to whom the present book is dedicated, was writing as a limerent far ahead of his time and knew it. As he himself had feared, for the most part his critics did not forgive him the neologism of “crystallization.”
10. Ibid., p. 48.
11. Sidney Greenfield, “Love and Marriage in Modern America: Functional Analysis,” The Sociological Quarterly, 6 (1965): 364.
12. Morton M. Hunt, The Natural History of Love (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1959), p. 357.
13. Matthew Josephson, Stendhal, or the Pursuit of Happiness (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1946), p. 246.
14. Paul Bohannan, Love, Sex and Being Human (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1969), p. 113.
15. David Norton, “Toward an Epistemology of Romantic Love,” Centennial Review 14 (1970): 442.
16. Llewellyn Gross, “A Belief Pattern Scale for Measuring Attitudes Toward Romanticism,” American Sociological Review 9 (1944): 464.
17. Stendhal, Scarlet and Black, translated with an introduction by Jean Stewart and B. C. J. G. Knight (Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1969).
18. Stendhal, Love, p. 61.
19. Among writers on love who have stressed cognitive prepossession are Vernon W. Grant (in Falling in Love, p. 16), Llewellyn Gross (in “A Belief Pattern Scale,” p. 464), Sidney M. Greenfield (in “Love and Marriage in Modern America,” p. 363), Margaret Horton (in “Alternatives to Romantic Love,” p. 4), Marian G. Kinget (in On Being Human, chapters 8 and 9), David Norton (in “Toward an Epistemology of Romantic Love,” p. 438), and Denis de Rougemont (Love in the Western World, p. 146). The state of prepossession is well described by Mary Wollstonecraft, author of “A Vindication of the Rights of Women,” who said in a letter to William Godwin on September 13, 1776, “You are not only in my heart, but in my veins, this morning. I turn from you half abashed—yet you haunt me, and some look, word, or touch thrills through my whole frame—yes, at the moment when I am laboring to think of something, if not somebody, else. Get ye gone, Intruder! Though I am forced to add dear—which is a call back” (quoted in MS magazine, February 1978, p. 42).
20. William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, act I, scene I, line 132.
21. Psychologists have often used numbers in describing sensations and have found that their experimental subjects could, for example, estimate distances, durations, and even intensity of color using numbers.
22. It is interesting to note that Stendhal was also moved toward quantification of his feelings of love; for example, he often comments about how many hours in succession elapsed without his thinking of Metilde.
23. Stendhal, Love, p. 211.
24. Morton M. Hunt, The Natural History of Love, p. 54.
25. Stendhal, Love, pp. 107–8.
26. Ingrid Bengis, Combat in the Erogenous Zone (New York: Bantam Books, 1973), p. 178.
27. Ibid., p. 179.
28. Stendhal, Love, p. 77.
29. Ellen Bersheid and Elaine Walster, “A Little Bit About Love.” In Foundations of Interpersonal Attractions, ed. T. L. Houston (New York: Academic Press, 1974), p. 365. Bertrand Russell’s quote was taken from The Anatomy of Love, edited by A. M. Kirch (New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1960), pp. 10–11, and given on page 365 of the Bersheid and Walster article.
30. Richard Driscoll, Keith E. Davis, and Milton E. Lipetz, “Parental Interference and Romantic Love: The Romeo and Juliet Effect,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 24 (1972): 1–10.
31. Suzanne Brogger, Deliver Us from Love, trans. Thomas Teal (Copenhagen: Rhodes, 1973; New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1976).
32. Margot Strickland, The Byron Women (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1975) p. 71.
33. Josephson, Stendhal p. 142.
34. Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (New York: Bantam Books, 1961), pp. 620–21. She calls it “paranoia,” not in the psychotic sense, but in the everyday one of dedicating virtually all one’s mental energies to one enterprise, hopefulness. The phenomenon to which she refers had been noted as an aspect of a pathological condition in a French medical treatise under the name of “the de Cléramhoult syndrome.” See G. G. de Cléramboult, Oeuvre, Psychiatrique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1942).
35. Ibid., p. 621.
36. William J. Coode, “The Theoretical Importance of Love,” American Sociological Review 24 (1959): 24, 38.
37. The Jacobean dramatist Phineas Fletcher wrote, “Love’s tongue is in the eyes.” For further discussion of the interpretation of gestures, posture, and other body movements see Introduction to Kinesics, by Ray L. Birdwhistell (Louisville, Ky.: University of Louisville Press, 1952), Body Language, by Julius Fast (Philadelphia: M. Evans and Co., 1970), and Behavior in Public Places, by Irving Goffman (New York: Free Press, 1969).
38. Michael Argvle and Mark Cook, Gaze and Mutual Gaze (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976).
39. Desmond Morris, Intimate Behavior (New York: Bantam Books, 1973), p. 64.
40. Ziek Rubin, “Measurement of Romantic Love,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 16 (1970): 265–73.
41. Beatrice C. Lacey and John 1. Lacey, “Two-Way Communication Between the Heart and the Brain,” American Psychologist 33 (1978): 99–113. Called the “bradycardia of attention,” this reaction is just one among complex relationships between physiological organs that have recently been revealed by research. See also Richard J. Davidson, “Specificity and Patterning in Behavioral Systems: Implication for Behavior Change,” American Psychologist 33 (1978): 430–36.
42. Similar deceptions occur in other forms of human interaction, often deliberately. See Peter Blau, Exchange and Power in Social Life (New York: John Wiley, 1964).
43. According to biographer Joanna Richardson’s Stendhal (New York: Coward McCann and Geoghegan, 1974), p. 88, Stendhal never quite forgave one of his lovers for yielding too soon and thereby preventing full crystallization and achievement of the most intense ecstasy.
44. Josephson, Stendhal, pp. 157–58.
45. Beauvoir, The Second Sex, p. 626.
46. Peter Blau, Exchange and Power in Social Life (New York: John Wiley, 1964), pp. 77, 80.
47. Beauvoir, The Second Sex, p. 619. Speaking of Marcel Proust, Beauvoir observed that “Albertine seems insipid when she is at hand and yielding; at a distance she becomes mysterious again and the jealous Proust reappraises her. But such maneuvers are delicate; if the man sees through them, they can only ridiculously expose the servility of his slave” p. 626.
48. Cited by Morton M. Hunt in The Natural History of Love, p. 80.
49. Andreas Capellanus, The Art of Courtly Love, p. 153.
50. Alfred Stern, Sartre: His Philosophy and Existential Analysis, 1967.
51. Rolf E. Muuss, Theories of Adolescence (New York: Random House, 1962), p. 48.
52. John Money and Anke A. Ehrhardt, Man and Woman, Boy and Girl, pp. 182–84.
53. Hunt, The Natural History of Love p. 304.
54. Evidence for the opinion that sex can be disassociated from romantic attachment or indeed love of any sort can be found in the sexuality textbooks used in college courses. Vernon Grant (Falling in Love, p. 17) notes that while sex begins with an urge or appetite that then seeks an outlet, the “amorous emotion” has a specific person as its object. Sex and limerence also differ in exclusivity. Although this is not the conclusion dictated by the limerence interviews, it is widely contended that simultaneous passion for more than one person is quite possible. See, for example, the discussion by sociologist Kingsley Davis (“Jealousy and Sexual Property,” Social Forces 14 (1936): 395, 405). Probably, sexual interest in several persons has been confused with romantic (i.e., limerent) interests. Dramatic refutation of the idea that love and sex do not differ is contained in G. Legman’s statement found in his voluminous compilation of dirty jokes: “With only the most minor exceptions, dirty jokes involving love have not been encountered. I repeat: DIRTY JOKES ABOUT love HAVE NOT BEEN ENCOUNTERED.” See his Rationale of the Dirty Joke: An Analysis of Sexual Humor (New York: Grove Press, 1968) p. 331.
55. The Letters of Abelard and Heloise, translated with an introduction by Betty Ladice (Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1974), pp. 113 and 133.
56. Eugene J. Kanin and Karen Davidson, “Some Evidence Bearing on the Aim-Inhibition Hypothesis of Love,” Sociological Quarterly (1972) Vol. 13, pp. 210–217.
57. Morris, Intimate Behavior, p. 87.
58. Interference with sexual functioning can also be interpreted to include difficulties in the use of contraceptives. According to Sylvia S. Hacker, high levels of anxiety interfere with the use of birth control measures during the early stages of a relationship. See Behavior Today 8 (1977): 3.
59. Stendhal, Love, pp. 215–16. In “Sex with (and without) Love” (Medical Aspects of Human Sexuality 85, 1974: 32, 42), Arnold A. Lazarus indicated his belief that love is not a necessary requirement for “fulfilling” sex and that it can in fact detract from sexual pleasure. Women reported that their best orgasms were achieved during sex with men with whom they were less involved. They reported that their sexual experiences were more satisfying but less erotic with men for whom love and affection existed.
1. This survey was conducted with the assistance of Meir Hadar
2. André Maurois, Seven Faces of Love (New York: Didier, 1944), p. 56.
3. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, p. 229.
4. Stendhal, Love, p. 112.
5. Fred’s residence in France was inspired by Crosby Hall, Chelsea, London, where the first draft of the manuscript for this book was written.
6. Stendhal, Memoirs of Egotism, trans. Hannah and Matthew Josephson (New York, Lear, 1949).
7. Isadora Duncan, My Life (New York: Liveright, 1955).
8. Edward S. Gifford, Jr., The Charms of Love (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1962), p. 4. Gifford, who finds that romantic love keeps a considerable number of people “in a ferment,” also emphasizes the importance of an exotic setting and an emotionally charged situation. Gifford attributes to philosopher Santayana the idea that in love nine-tenths is need in the lover and only one-tenth the attractions of the love object.
9. Hunt, Morton, The Natural History of Love, p. 369.
10. Martin Bloom, “Toward a Developmental Concept of Love,” Journal of Human Relations 15 (1967): 250.
11. Doris Lessing, The Summer Before the Dark, p. 250.
12. H. E. Krehbiel, essay on the story of the opera, in Richard Wagner, Tristan and Isolde (New York: G. Schirmer, 1934), p. vi.
13. Maurois, p. 197.
1. I must confess to having examined only a limited number—French, German, Latin, Chinese, and Japanese. There are many thousands of human languages, and I often wonder if a synonym for limerence could not be found in at least one of them.
2. These are some of the behaviors listed in the twelfth-century Code of Love by Andreas Capellanus. Of the 31 articles that constitute the code and that fit the limerent pattern, others are: “No One Can Surrender to Two Loves”; “Love Can Always Increase or Diminish”; “True Love Desires Caresses Only from the Beloved”; “Success Too Easily Won Soon Strips Love of Its Charm”; “Obstacles Enhance Its Value”; “New Love Drives Out the Old”; “Waning Love Dies Quickly and Seldom Revives”; “The Lover’s Every Action Ends with the Thought of the Beloved”; “A Person in Love Is Unremittingly and Uninterruptedly Occupied with the Image of the Beloved”; and “Nothing Forbids a Woman to Be Loved by Two Men, or Man by Two Women” (Stendhal, Love, pp. 278–81).
3. Ingrid Bengis, Combat in the Erogenous Zone, p. 180.
4. William J. Goode, “The Theoretical Importance of Love.”
5. Stuart A. Queen and R. W. Haberstein, The Family in Various Cultures, 4th ed. (J. B. Lippincott, 1974), p. 105.
6. Rosemary Haughton, Love (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1970), p. 32.
7. Laurence Veysey, “Communal Sex and Communal Survival: Individualism Busts the Communal Boom,” Psychology Today 8 (1974): 75.
8. This is from Plato’s Phaedrus, cited by David Norton in “Toward an Epistemology of Romantic Love,” p. 442.
9. Nellie Ptaschkina (1903–1920) died at age 17, but not before writing in her diary about love. Her words were reproduced in Mary Jane Moffat and Charlotte Painter’s Revelations: Diaries of Women (New York: Random House, 1974), pp. 65–66.
10. Beauvoir, The Second Sex, p. 625.
11. Desmond Morris, Intimate Behavior (New York: Bantam, 1973), p. 45.
12. Cited by John Jay Parry, ed., in the introduction to Andreas Capellanus, The Art of Courtly Love, pp. 9–10.
13. Josephson, Stendhal, p. 249.
14. Seidenberg, Marriage in Life and Literature, p. 33.
15. David Norton notes that the person in love tends to be in love with the environment of the beloved, not merely the person. This environment includes geographical location, lifestyle, and artistic taste. Cf. “Toward an Epistemology of Romantic Love,” p. 440.
16. Although to have been able to speak to both members of partnerships would have been very desirable from a research point of view, the reasons why this rarely occurred are intrinsic to the very nature of limerence. More often than not, persons interviewed talked about a LO who was not committed to a relationship with the interviewee, who sometimes was merely an acquaintance or a person with whom the interviewee had only a formal relationship.
17. As to whether people can be categorized in terms of general sex drive, opinions vary from that of psychiatrist Hans J. Eysenck, who relates high and low “eroticism” to introversion and extroversion (Invited Opening Address, International Conference on Love and Attraction, September 6, 1977, University College of Swansea, Wales), to Kenneth R. Hardy’s “appetitional” theory of sexual motivation (“An Appetitional Theory of Sexual Motivation,” Psychological Review 71 [1964]: 1–18.)
18. David Norton, “Toward an Epistemology of Romantic Love,” p. 439.
19. According to William N. Kephart, “romantic experiences” occur yearly beginning at “a very early age” and continuing throughout the teens and early twenties (“Evaluation of Romantic Love,” in Medical Aspects of Human Sexuality 7 (1973): 92–93, 98, 100). Money and Ehrhardt indicate that falling in love does not typically occur until after the onset of hormonal puberty (Man and Woman, Boy and Girl, p. 22). When I asked fourteen women who were enrolled in a college class to indicate anonymously age of first limerence, first sexual attraction, and first sexual intercourse, the average ages reported were, respectively, 13.5, 14.8, and 17.1. In other words, limerence preceded sexual intercourse by approximately three and a half years.
20. One-third of 62 women who provided questionnaire data indicated the duration of their romatic love experience in years, with some estimates reaching as long as several decades. The estimates were consistently longer among those who met criteria of limerence in other answers to their questionnaires. That intense passion is of short duration has however, been suggested by many writers (e.g., G. C. Homans, Social Behavior: Its Elementary Forms, New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1961).
21. Writing in the American Sociological Review in 1959, William J. Goode advanced the thesis that although “violent, self-sufficient love” is rare, it is a potentially disruptive force in society which must be controlled because it has the power to estrange individuals from their kinship and lineage groups. Furthermore, mating would be “random” if it depended on love for selection, and such mating is intolerable in societies in which power and property follow kin lines: That includes all known societies to a greater or lesser degree.
22. Nena O’Neill and George O’Neill, Open Marriage, A New Life Style for Couples (New York: M. Evans, 1972)
23. Mirra Komarovsky, Dilemmas of Masculinity (New York: W. W. Norton, 1976), p. 97.
24. Charlotte Wolff, Love Between Women (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), p. 246.
25. Hunt, The Natural History of Love, p. 311.
26. Josephson, Stendhal, p. 248.
27. Stendhal, Memoirs of Egotism (New York: Lear, 1949), pp. 431, 947, 948.
28. For example, see James A. Knight, “Suicide Among Students,” in Suicidal Behaviors: Diagnosis and Management (Boston: Little, Brown, 1968) pp. 228–40.
29. This category was listed, but without further discussion, in Clues to Suicide, edited by Edwin S. Schneidman and Norman L. Farberow (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1957). But the authors stated that “many suicide attempts, especially in young persons, occur after the separation from a spouse or a loved one. . . . Frequently, these suicide attempts are successful as a form of adaptation in that they do serve to bring the loved person back” (p. 262). Although they found a love affair to be the official “indicated” reason in only 2 percent of suicides and 4 percent of attempts, limerence is likely to be a hidden factor in situations categorized as “marital difficulties” and “depression,” both of which are among the reasons most frequently given for suicide.
30. For example, “Dyadic Crisis Suicides in Mental Hospital Patients,” by Norman L. Farberow and David K. Reynolds, in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 78 (1971): 77–85.
31. Although romantic love has tended to be a subject neglected by suicidologists, among others, the trend appears to be changing. See, for example, Suicidology: Contemporary Developments, edited by Edwin S. Schneidman (New York: Grune and Stratton, 1976); James A Knight, “Suicide Among Students.”
32. Morton Hunt, The Natural History of Love.
33. Although such questionnaire responses may differ from actual behavior, evidence of the implication of limerence in accidents comes from many sources. David Phillips of the department of sociology, University of California at San Diego, has noted the rise in national suicides following a front page story of suicide in major newspapers. Working with California motor-vehicle fatality records, Phillips found that the number of “accidental deaths” also rose significantly following “front page suicide” (Behavior Today 8 [1977]: 4). Furthermore, the phenomenon of disguised suicide in the form of accident has been found in other cultures; for example, among the Semai agriculturists of Central Malaysia (Ernestine Friedl, “Society and Sex Roles,” in Human Nature 1 [1978]: 68). My questionnaire was administered at the Conference on Women and Mental Health, April 5–7, Kalamazoo, Michigan.
In addition to suicide and accident, I found unhappy love affairs linked with schizophrenia, amenorrhea, depression, and drug addiction.
34. As Kingsley Davis notes in “Jealousy and Sexual Property,” it is the meaningfulness of situations which determines whether or not jealousy will be aroused.
35. That men are more likely to express anger was also found in a study of “sexual jealousy” conducted by psychologist Jeff B. Bryson. From questionnaire responses by 102 female and 66 male college students, Bryson found that males indicated that when jealous they wanted to go out with others, try to make the partner jealous, become sexually aggressive with other women, make critical remarks about the partner, and get involved in other things besides dating. They felt guilty about being jealous, angry at themselves, and desired to “get even.” Women also reported feeling angry and wanting to get even, but they more often described themselves as “emotionally devastated.” Males were more inclined to want some form of confrontation. These findings are consistent with the fact that 60 percent of the women of The Group reported having felt “depressed about a love affair,” compared with 48 percent of the men. Bryson’s study was reported to the 1976 Convention of the American Psychological Association, and in Behavior Today (September 7, 1976) vol. 7, no. 34, p. 4. Male anger also seemed to be reflected in Melvin Wilkinson’s finding that the word “fool” was high on the list of descriptions of males in popular songs, but missing for women (“Romantic Love: The Great Equalizer? Sexism in Popular Music,” The Family Coordinator, 252 [1976]: 161–66).
36. Newsweek (June 12, 1978) p. 56.
37. Marvin E. Wolfgang reports that 84 percent of all female murderers slay males and 87 percent of all female victims are slain by males (“A Sociological Analysis of Criminal Homicide,” Federal Probation 3 [1961]: 48–55). Psychology Today (“The Murder Boom,” July 1975) reported that seven out of every 100 victims of murder were killed after a “lover’s quarrel,” many by husbands, who killed wives they believed no longer loved them. In a study of African murder and suicide, it was found that most suicides were related to illness, but that among those which were not, approximately 20 percent could have been linked to limerence. The figure for homicides was approximately 19 percent. See Paul Bohannon (ed.), African Homicide and Suicide (Princeton N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1960).
38. Quoted by André Maurois in Seven Faces of Love (New York: Didier Publishing Co. 1944), p. 220.
39. Hunt, The Natural History of Love, p. 342.
40. Among the many writers who have taken this position are Yonina Talmon (“Mate Selection in Collective Settlements”), Suzanne Brogger (Deliver Us From Love) and Hugo G. Beigel (“Romantic Love,” American Sociological Review 16 [1951]: 332).
41. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 2nd ed., p. 168.
42. David Horton analyzed 290 lyrics in four popular periodicals of the 1950s and found 83.4 percent concerned love (“The Dialogue of Courtship in Popular Songs,” American Journal of Sociology 62 [1957]: 569–78). J. T. Carey examined popular songs and found that love portrayed as an emotional involvement decreased and sex became more prominent between the mid 50s and mid 60s (“Changing Courtship Patterns in the Popular Song,” American Journal of Sociology 74 [1959]: 720–31). David H. Knox found no relationship between what he considered to be the “romantic conception of love” and the number of hours that high school students reported that they spent listening to music (“Attitudes Toward Love of High School Seniors” Adolescent 5 [1970]: 89–100). More recently, Melvin Wilkinson analyzed gender roles as depicted in popular songs. He noted that sadness over lost love was the most frequent category for both sexes and even more frequent for males than for females (“Romantic Love: The Great Equalizer? Sexism in Popular Music,” The Family Coordinator 25 [1976]: 161–66). Vernon Grant, who used romantic love as at least partly an aesthetic reaction, has also noted the frequent comparisons of the romantic love experience to the appreciation of music (Falling in Love, p. 69). Although love is a dominant theme in all forms of song popular in the West, the amount of emphasis varies from time to time. William Kilpatrick has noted some recent fluctuations (“The Demythologizing of Love,” Adolescence 9 [1974]: 25–30).
43. Stendhal, Love, p. 65.
44. Twelfth Night, Act 1, Sc. 1, lines 1–3.
1. John Dryden, Epilogue to Mithridates, King of Pontus.
2. Hunt, The Natural History of Love, p. 365.
3. Brogger, Deliver Us From Love, p. 8. The idea that love was invented by the culture is a common one and will be taken up in greater detail in the next section.
4. Francis Bacon, “On Love,” Bacon’s Essays and Advancement of Learning (New York: Macmillan, 1900) p. 22.
5. Maurice Valency, In Praise of Love, p. 174.
6. “The Song of Solomon” 2:5.
7. “Sex Differences in Romantic Love and Depression Among College Students,” Proceedings of the 8lst Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association 8 (1973): 421–22. Stendhal was also criticized for his attempt to analyze “passionate love.” For example, biographer Matthew Josephson (Stendhal, or the Pursuit of Happiness) frequently comments disparagingly about Stendhal’s “scientific approach” and “mathematical” categories.
8. Time magazine (March 24, 1975) quoted Proxmire as follows: “I believe that 200 million other Americans want to leave some things in life a mystery, and right at the top of things we don’t want to know is why a man falls in love with a woman and vice versa. Even if they could give us an answer, we wouldn’t want to hear it.”
9. Ellen Berscheid, University of Minnesota psychologist and researcher in romantic love, noted the possible connections between understanding of infatuation and romantic love and such important social issues as the use of contraceptives with its effects on population control, the divorce rate, and other issues (from an article written for The New York Times by James Reston and quoted in the magazine Psychology Today, for June 1975). An analysis of the Proxmire criticism of the research proposed by Ellen Berscheid and Elaine Walster was recently presented as a “Case Study in Anti-Intellectual Behavior,” by Leigh S. Shaffer of Pennsylvania State University (“The Golden Fleece; Anti-Intellectualism and Social Science,” The American Psychologist 32 [1977]: 814–23).
10. For a time I used evol (love spelled backward). The humorous response to which the topic of love gives rise was also demonstrated in Robert Perloff’s column in the APA Monitor, the newspaper of the American Psychological Association (February 1977), in announcing the International Conference on Love and Attraction of September 1977.
11. Especially that of Kinsey (Alfred C. Kinsey, Wardel B. Pomeroy, and Clyde E. Martin, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders, 1948) and the more recent work of Masters and Johnson (William H. Masters and Virginia E. Johnson, Human Sexual Response, Boston: Little, Brown, 1966). That scientific research on sexuality should antedate that on romantic love provides some confirmation to the proposition that love has been something of a taboo subject in this culture.
12. For example, among the list of writers citing “prepossession” (or intrusive thinking), which may be the most central of identifying characteristics, are Andreas Capellanus, Ingrid Bengis, Paul Bohannan, Suzanne Broggen, Helen A. DeRosis and Victoria Pellegrino, Albert Ellis, Llewellyn Gross, Ronald P. Hattis, Marian Kinget, John Money and Anke Ehrhardt, Ortega y Gasset, Finn Tschudi, and many others (see Bibliography for citations).
13. If human beings are not free and rational, then they are not “responsible,” and the concepts of sin and of the inherent goodness or evil in certain forms of behavior, regardless of personal consequence or consequence to others, become nonsensical.
14. That this issue is still lively within scientific writings is revealed in a review of a book edited by Gordon G. Globus, Grover Maxwell, and Irwin Savodnik, Consciousness and the Brain: A Scientific and Philosophical Inquiry (New York: Plenum Press, 1976). In his review, “Dualism Still Lives!” (in Contemporary Psychology 23: 292–94), Timothy J. Teyler referred to the issue as a “classical battle” without a clear winner. The issue of “inclusive fitness,” that genes from close relatives as well as from the individual are passed on, is considered by some to have dealt an even harsher blow to humanity’s favored conception of itself than did the original Darwinian conception.
15. Among writers on love who have commented on the view held by the ancients, of love as a madness, are Rosemary Haughton (Love), André Maurois (The Seven Faces of Love) and Denis de Rougemont (Love in the Western World).
16. Andreas Capellanus, The Art of Courtly Love, p. 195.
17. Ibid., p. 188.
18. Ibid., p. 190.
19. Ibid., p. 191.
20. Ibid., p. 192.
21. Ibid., p. 196.
22. Ibid., p. 199.
23. Ibid., p. 210. Like Ortega after him, Andreas Capellanus includes, in a major and highly influential work on the subject of love, an attack on the female sex. Are such writers nonlimerents, mystified by the strange and tormented condition of fond friends, a condition produced (in most cases) by a woman? Or are these men themselves limerents, but limerents who do not love, limerents who hate the condition, hate themselves for being in it, and most of all hate women for being, in their eyes, its perpetrators? See chapter V for further discussion of these issues.
24. Hugo Beigel (“Romantic Love”) and Morton Hunt (The Natural History of Love) are among those who assume that romantic love was invented by the culture, Beigel crediting eleventh-century France, while Hunt believes that love was invented by the ancient Greeks. De Rougemont (Love in the Western World) does not go that far, but instead asserts that without romantic-love rhetoric, the emotion would not be “avowed” (p. 174). Many writers clearly agree with the statement of La Rochefoucauld: “Very few people would fall in love if they had never heard of romance.” Graham Spanier has recently emphasized the role of exposure to romantic love content through the mass media (“Romanticism and Marital Adjustment,” in The Journal of Marriage and the Family 34 [1972]: 481–87).
25. Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving, p. 48.
26. Ortega y Gasset, José, On Love, trans. Toby Talbor (New York: Meridian, 1957), pp. 53, 55.
27. Ibid., p. 22.
28. Ibid., p. 36.
29. Ibid., p. 25.
30. Ibid., pp. 28–29. Ortega and Stendhal also disagreed on the subject of women. Ortega, by the end of his book, contributed his own brand of flagrant misogyny.
31. Abraham H. Maslow, Motivation and Personality (New York: Harper, 1954).
32. Robert C. Solomon, The Passion (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1976), p. 339.
33. Paul Bohannan, Love, Sex and Being Human, pp. 112–113.
34. George R. Bach and Ronald M. Deutsch, Pairing (New York: Avon Books, 1971), pp. 14 and 15.
35. Ibid., p. 19.
36. Ibid., p. 27.
37. Robert Rimmer (ed.), Adventures in Loving (New York: Signet Books, 1973).
38. For example, Paul Bohannan (Love, Sex and Being Human, p. 114) speaks of love as “willfully blind.”
39. William Kilpatrick, “The Demythologizing of Love.” In 1956, Erich Fromm expressed the view that love was based on a polarity of the sexes (The Art of Loving). Recently, a similar position was taken by Joseph W. Critelli (“Romantic Attraction As a Function of Sex Role Traditionality,” paper presented at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association, August 1977) and by Marian Kinget (“The Many Splendoured Thing in Transition or: The Agony and the Ecstasy Revisited,” paper presented at the International Conference on Love and Attraction, held at the University College of Swansea, September 8, 1977).
40. Stanton Peele, Love and Addiction (New York: Signet Books, 1976).
41. “Emotional Trends in the Courtship Experience of College Students,” American Sociological Review (1945): 619–26.
42. See, for example, Sidney Greenfield’s “Love and Marriage in Modern America: A Functional Analysis,” (The Sociological Quarterly 6 (1965), no. 4; William J. Goode’s “The Theoretical Importance of Love”; Bernard Ineichen’s “The Social Geography of Marriage” (paper presented at the conference on Love and Attraction, Swansea, Wales, September 6–9, 1977); and Bernard I. Murstein’s Love, Sex, and Marriage Through the Ages (New York: Springer Publishing Co., 1974). Sociologists have also tended to line up for or against marrying for love. Beigel asserts that love is good for marriage (“Romantic Love”, p. 333); and Greenfield believes that the nuclear family which arises through romantic love is needed for economic reasons, that without it the social system would cease to operate (“Love and Marriage in Modern America: A Functional Analysis”). Another writer who believes that marrying for love is preferable to marrying “for convenience or convention” is Desmond Morris (Intimate Behavior, p. 73). But the bulk of the writers tend to view marrying for love the way society has so often viewed it, as hazardous. Goode mentions a number of sociologists who disparage love as a basis for marriage, including Ernest R. Mowrer, Ernest W. Burgess, Mabel A. Elliott, Andrew G. Truxal, Francis E. Merril, and Ernest R. Groves (p. 38).
43. Although Margaret Mead (Growing Up in New Guinea, New York: William Morrow, 1930) found little evidence of love among the natives of New Guinea, Vernon Grant (Falling in Love) says that it is important to recognize that even among peoples in which “amorous fixations” appear to be rare, references to romantic love occur in the folklore and myths (Chapter 8, pp. 155–82). In The Study of Man (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1936) Ralph Linton points out that societies recognize that there are occasional violent attachments between persons of opposite sex (p. 174). In a recent cross-cultural study of 23 societies, Paul C. Rosenblatt found love magic, which he interpreted as a means of communication between lovers (“Communication in the Practice of Love Magic,” Social Forces 49 [1971]: 482–87). Suzanne Lilar, in Aspects of Love in Western Society (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1965) also maintains the view that romantic love is a primitive fact of the human condition.
44. Albert Ellis, The American Sexual Tragedy (New York: Grove Press, 1954), p. 113.
45. Ibid., p. 122.
46. Ibid., p. 128.
47. Ibid., p. 130.
48. Ibid., p. 134.
49. A more recent statement by Ellis on romantic love is “Unhealthy Love: Its Causes and Treatments,” in Symposium on Love, ed., Mary Ellen Curtin (New York: Behavioral Publications, 1973).
50. Abraham H. Maslow, Motivation and Personality (New York: Harper, 1954), p. 235. The same complaint was made by Harry F. Harlow and Margaret Harlow in “Learning to Love” (American Scientist 54, no. 3 [1966]) and by Ellen Berscheid and Elaine Walster (“A Little Bit About Love”). For example, Zick Rubin said, “It is surprising to discover that social psychologists have devoted virtually no attention to love” (“Measurement of Romantic Love,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 16 [1970]: p. 265).
51. Among recent books on love by psychologists are Falling in Love, by Vernon Grant; The Mystery of Love: How the Science of Sexual Attraction Can Work for You, by Glenn Wilson and David Nias (New York: Quadrangle, 1976); and A New Look at Love by Elaine Walster and G. William Walster.
52. For example, “The Effect of Self-Esteem on Romantic Liking,” by Elaine Walster (Journal of Experimental and Social Psychology 1 [1965]: 184–97); and “Self-Esteem and Romantic Love,” by Karen K. Dion and Kenneth L. Dion (Journal of Personality 43 [1975]: 39–57).
53. Joseph W. Critelli, “Romantic Attraction As a Function of Sex Role Traditionality” (paper presented at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association, San Francisco, August 1977).
54. From a report by sociologists David L. Larson, Elmer A. Spreitzer, and Eldon E. Snyder in Human Behavior 5 (1976): 49–50.
55. “Correlates of Romantic Love,” by Kenneth L. Dion and Karen K. Dion, in The Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 41 (1973): 51–56.
56. The coverage of social scientists’ writings is not intended as a comprehensive review but only as a sampling. Although the overwhelming fact is that love has been ignored, there have been restricted references and limited theories. Only those that appear to bear on limerence are mentioned; opinions, comments, and theories that do not have any relevance to limerence or would be basically repetitive of other points made are not included. For example, Winch’s psychoanalytic theory (Mate-Selection [New York: Harper, 1958]) that people in love have “complementary” personalities seems irrelevant here because (1) who falls in love with whom, or how LO is “selected,” is not dealt with in this book and (2) Winch’s theory has not received empirical support.
57. Echoing Karen Horney, Helen A. DeRosis (a supervising analyst at the American Institute for Psychoanalysis of the Karen Horney Psychoanalytic Institute and Center), writing with Victoria Pellegrino in The Book of Hope: How Women Can Overcome Depression (New York: Macmillan, 1976), speaks of the “love-addicted” and “morbidly dependent” person. Dominick A. Barbara in “Masochism in Love and Sex” (American Journal of Psychoanalysis 34 [1974]: 73–79) applies the term “masochism” to “self-induced psychological suffering” and “dependent relationships.” The implication that limerence is masochistic is also found in the writings of Abraham H. Maslow (e.g., in Motivation and Personality).
58. See Dorothy Tennov, Psychotherapy: The Hazardous Cure (New York: Doubleday/Anchor, 1976, pp. 42–44) for a discussion on the tendency among psychotherapists, especially psychoanalytic psychotherapists, to place responsibility upon the patient.
59. Capacity to love as a requisite for mental health is frequently mentioned in the psychological and personality literature. For example, see Morton Beiser, “Poverty, Social Disintegration and Personality” (Journal of Social Issues 21 [1965]: 56–78). Also see “The Origins of Human Bonds,” by Selma Fraiberg (Commentary 44 [1967]: 47–57), in which she refers to “hollow people who lack capacity to love as the result of early childhood experiences.”
60. “Neurosis,” a term bandied about with abandon in the old days, has now gone out of fashion, due mainly to the lack of reliable observable referents.
61. Theodore Reik, A Psychologist Looks at Love (New York: Rinehart, 1944).
62. For example, Helen Berscheid, Karen Dion, Elaine Walster, and G. William Walster (“Physical Attractiveness in Dating Choice: A Test of the Matching Hypothesis,” Journal of Experimental Psychology 7 [1971]: 173–89) did not find personality types related to the matching process between members of couples in which persons of relatively comparable attractiveness will tend to pair off. In 1964, Dwight G. Dean published an article in which he reported that correlations in such matters did not seem to hold (“Romanticism and Emotional Maturity: A Further Exploration,” Social Forces 42 [1964]: 302). David H. Knox (“Attitudes Toward Love of High School Seniors”) did not find romantic love to be positively correlated with immaturity. William M. Kephart (“Evaluation of Romantic Love”) went even further. He found that romantic experiences were actually more common among persons who were best adjusted. Ronald P. Hattis (“Love Feelings in Courtship Couples: An Analysis,” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 5 [1965]: 22–53) reported that dependency was the least important component of love feelings listed by the subjects in the study. Finally, in a study on suicide, Norman L. Farberow and David K. Reynolds (“Dyadic Crisis Suicides in Mental Hospital Patients,” Journal of Abnormal Psychology 78 [1971]: 77–85) showed that persons whose suicides had been precipitated by the breakup of a love relationship or other dyadic events had been less severely ill than were those whose suicides had occurred for other reasons.
63. Some of my informants told how this pragmatic decision, that the woman should seek therapy, was later used against them during the process of divorce.
64. Julie Roy’s story was eventually published in a book written by Lucy Freeman and Julie Roy, Betrayal (New York; Stein & Day, 1976), and called “the true story of the first woman to successfully sue her psychiatrist for using sex in the guise of therapy.”
65. Subsequent to the publication of Psychotherapy: The Hazardous Cure, a number of books appeared for general readership (for example, The Psychological Society by Martin L. Gross [New York: Random House, 1978]). A very good source of documented comments on the deficiencies in psychotherapy can be found in Coping with Psychiatric and Psychological Testimony, 2nd ed. (Beverly Hills: Law and Psychology Press, 1975) by lawyer-psychologist Jay Ziskin.
66. See, for example, A Beginning Manual for Psychotherapists by Ernest Kramer (New York: Grune and Stratton, 1970).
67. See Sigmund Freud, A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1969.
68. For a listing of other ways in which psychotherapy can be harmful, see Psychotherapy: The Hazardous Cure, pp. 87–98. They include an overdependency, egocentric passivity, disturbances in relationships with other persons, including family members, the financial burden, and discouragement of attempts to find real solutions to problems.
69. Edward C. Whitmont and Yoram Kaufman, “Analytical Psychotherapy,” in Raymond Corsini (ed.) Current Psychotherapy (Itasca III.: F. E. Peacock, 1973), p. 107.
70. Albert Ellis, “Rational-Emotive Therapy,” Current Psychotherapy, p. 172.
71. William Glasser and Leonard M. Zunin, “Reality Therapy,” in Current Psychotherapy, p. 293.
72. Psychotherapists Saul I. Harrison and Donald J. Carek, in their 1966 A Guide to Psychotherapy (Boston: Little, Brown) recommended complete termination rather than the more usual tapering off so as not to “keep open the wounds of therapy” (p. 226).
73. Richard D. Chessick, How Psychotherapy Heals (New York: Science House, 1969), p. 50. When the therapist develops limerence (or other emotional reactions) to the patient, it is called “countertransference.” For Chessick, the “glue” consists of both transference and countertransference.
74. I believe that it behooves professionals to hold scientific procedures in higher regard than have psychotherapists as a group. By failing to define terms, and in other ways, they inhibited research that may have led to earlier discovery of the damage that was being done. See Psychotherapy: The Hazardous Cure, Chapter II, for a discussion of research methods and findings on the effectiveness of psychotherapy.
1. Valency, In Praise of Love, p. 154.
2. Beauvoir, The Second Sex, pp. 603–4.
3. Lord Byron, Don Juan, Canto I, Stanza 194. This idea is frequently expressed in one form or another, in poetry, in popular song, and in psychiatry.
4. Beauvoir, The Second Sex, p. 629.
5. Stendhal, Love, p. 57.
6. H. L. Mencken. So called “locker room” humor is frequently based on similar misogynist and nonlimerent ideas.
7. Humberto Nagera stated this theme in “Activity-Passivity; Masculinity-Femininity,” Basic Psychoanalytic Concepts of the Libido Theory, vol. 1 (New York: Basic Books, 1969), pp. 129–45.
8. Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex (New York: Bantam Books, 1970), p. 138.
9. Beauvoir, The Second Sex, pp. 618–621, passim.
10. Ingrid Bengis, Combat in the Erogenous Zone (New York: Bantam Books, 1973), p. 159. A consistent finding in all questionnaires which I administered was that males’ responses tended to fit the nonlimerent pattern more closely than did those of females.
11. As Beauvoir said about women, “No other aim in life which seemed worthwhile was open to them; love was their only way out.” (The Second Sex, p. 606.)
12. This is an example of reality in blatant contradiction to common opinion. It is reported in The Future of Marriage, by Jessie Bernard (New York: World, 1972).
13. Which is why parents traditionally want to see their daughters safely married. Socially and economically independent women are still relatively rare, a fact brought home to me repeatedly while traveling by automobile in France in 1977, when I was waved aside and my eighteen-year-old son asked to sign the hotel registration form.
14. Seemingly trivial changes in the working of questionnaires and instructions can sometimes be associated with discernible shifts in group responses. Textbooks in methodology stress taking great care to keep such effects from obscuring the effects of variables which were supposedly amenable to independent manipulation.
15. Sometimes unfounded opinion finds its way into strange and influential places. For example, the following statement was found in a medical textbook: “Women tend to love in a different way from men. The woman falls in love with the idea of being loved; whereas the man loves an object for the pleasure it will give.” (From Obstetrics and Gynecology by J. Robert Wilson, Clayton T. Beecham, and Elsie Reid Carrington [St. Louis, Mo.: C. Z. Mosby, 1971]). An example of a study that found males to “fall in love” more easily is “A Research Note on Male-Female Differentials in the Experience of Heterosexual Love,” by Eugene J. Kanin, Karen R. Davidson, and Sonia R. Scheck (The Journal of Sex Research 6 [1970]: 64–72).
16. Walster and Walster, A New Look at Love, 1978.
17. See, for example, Derrick Blakeley, “Love in the Executive Suite,” Chicago Tribune, August 20, 1974.
18. Ellen Berscheid, Karen Dion, Elaine Walster, and G. William Walster, in “Physical Attractiveness and Dating Choice: A Test of the Matching Hypothesis,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 7 (1971):’ 173–89.
19. We have already seen how the limerent’s uncertainty and insecurity can be manipulated by commercial interests, for example, in advertisements for clothing and other personal products and in gothic romances. Publishers of these popular novels, in which two people meet, overcome dark obstacles, then unite in marriage, claim that the public wants its gothic heroine to be simperingly feminine.
20. Especially, “Love and Limerence” by Roy Reed, New York Times, Friday, September 16, 1977, Sect. B, p. 10.
21. The nonlimerent, hypersexual pattern of conquest and desertion known as Don Juanism is a male pattern. Also found in a minority of males, and almost exclusively in males, are the so-called sexual “perversions” (e.g., fetishism, transexualism, transvestism, pedophilia, voyeurism, sadism, masochism, necrophilia, urophilia, coprophilia, and the scatological telephone caller) (Money and Ehrhardt, Man and Woman, Boy and Girl, p. 148). Fetishisms almost always involve a garment (underwear, shoes, etc.) of the female used by the male. A fetishist finds it difficult or impossible to obtain an erection in the absence of the object. Fetishism should not be confused with other types of attachments to objects that do not involve sexual arousal. The toddler who constantly clutches a favorite toy or blanket, the girl who collects dolls, the young woman who presses a flower into the pages of her Bible, the fan who collects memorabilia of the idol, the mother (or father) who saves and reveres their infant’s shoes, or the Catholic who wears rosary beads or a religious medal—none of these are instances of fetishism because the objects are not sexually arousing but prized for other reasons.
22. See “Cleared Sex Case Teacher Faints in Dock,” in the London Daily Express, Saturday, September 3, 1977, no. 24007, p. 1. (Also Guardian, Saturday, September 3, 1977). I use the term “molestation” rather than rape because sexual interactions between child and man often do not include intercourse. “Molestation” does not necessarily imply coitus or even penetration. It does imply harmfulness. If the child is not hanned in any way, “molestation” is not the correct term. Whether sex between man and child is always, frequently, or seldom harmful, is a question for the researchers. Reports by adults who were molested as children indicate that, at the very least, harmfulness occurs sometimes.
23. Gabrielle Russier, The Affair of Gabrielle Russier (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971).
24. It has been reported that of 2,500 psychiatrists polled, 52 percent felt that men want sex relations more often than their wives, as compared with only 7 percent who felt that wives’ desires were stronger (Behavior Today 8 [1977]: 6–7).
25. This was suggested by Stanley Schachter and Jerome E. Singer, (“Cognitive, Social and Physiological Determinants of Emotional States,” Psychological Review 69 [1962]: 379–99). A recent study with supportive findings that related to sexual attraction was conducted by Donald G. Dutton and Arthur P. Aron (“Some Evidence for Heightened Sexual Attraction Under Conditions of High Anxiety,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 30 [1974]: 510–17).
26. For example, “Measurement of Romantic Love” by Zick Rubin (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 16 [1970]: 267–73); and “Age and the Experience of Love in Adulthood,” by Margaret Neiswender, James E. Birren, and K. Warner Schaie, paper presented at the 83rd annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, September 1975, Chicago, III. Melvin Wilkinson also reported that for the most part the lyrics to popular songs were the same for both sexes (“Romantic Love: The Great Equalizer? Sexism in Popular Music”). Such findings are important in view of the fact that conditions that would appear to encourage limerence are more likely in women: for example, time to think due to time spent engaged in simple activities that do not require intellect, the fact that men are deemed admirable by the culture even if homely, and the relative absence of distractions or other options. Note that the same conditions also apply to underprivileged males who have also been reported to be more “romantic.”
27. Oscar Wilde, De Profundis, ed. Rupert Hart-Davis (New York: Avon Books, 1962).
28. Tennessee Williams, Memoirs (New York: Doubleday, 1975).
29. Julius Lester, “Being a Boy,” in Men and Masculinity, ed. Joseph H. Pleck and Jack Sawyer (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1974), p. 33.
30. Although a number of writers have put forth similar views, my remarks here on the history of patriarchy and the civilizations that preceded its development are mainly derived from art historian Merlin Stone’s recent book, When God Was a Woman (New York: Dial, 1976). Also, see the works of Elizabeth Gould Davis (The First Sex, Baltimore, Md.: Penguin Books, 1971).
31. Merlin Stone, When God Was a Woman (New York: Dial Press, 1976). There is considerable controversy about whether ancient civilization actually placed power in the hands of women. To many, such an idea is inconceivable, and the absence of contemporary matriarchal societies, even among those few that are matrilineal, is cited as evidence against the possibility of female rulership.
32. See “Witchcraft in Histories of Psychiatry: A Critical Analysis and an Alternative Conceptualization,” by Nicholas P. Spanos (Psychological Bulletin 85 [1978]: 417–39.) for a recent analysis of the witch hunts; also Thomas Szasz, The Manufacture of Madness (New York: Harper and Row, 1970); and Witches, Midwives and Nurses 2nd ed. (Glass Mountain Pamphlet #1, The Feminist Press, Old Westbury, New York, 1978), by Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English.
33. For excellent discussions of misogyny in medieval and theological literature, see Rosemary Radford Ruether’s Religion and Sexism (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974) and Joan M. Ferrante’s Woman as Image in Medieval Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975).
34. Heinrich Kramer and Jakob Sprenger, Malleus Maleficarum, trans. M. Summers (London: Arrow Books, 1971), pp. 114–15.
35. Ibid., p. 133.
36. Ibid., p. 112.
37. Ibid., p. 122.
38. Andreas Capellanus, The Art of Courtly Love, p. 18. The translator, John Jay Parry, notes that the misogyny expressed in Book III is in keeping with an anti-female viewpoint with “plenty of precedents in ecclesiastical tradition to justify his misogyny.”
39. Ibid., pp. 200–201.
40. It should also be remembered that those writings which survive were those favored for selection.
41. Andreas, p. 203.
42. Ortega y Gasset, On Love, pp. 155, 162.
43. Ibid., p. 164.
44. Ibid., pp. 127–128. This view is also reflected in Jean Guitton, Essay on Human Love, 1976 (Salisbury Sq., London, Rockliff, 1951) pp. 95, 97.
45. For an example of contemporary misogyny, see, for example, Wolfgang Lederer’s The Fear of Women (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1968).
46. Maurice Valency, In Praise of Love, p. 20.
47. Ibid., p. 20.
48. For a discussion of medieval attitudes toward women, see Eleanor Commo McLaughlin’s “Equality of Souls, Inequality of Sexes: Women in Medieval Theology,” in Religion and Sexism, edited by Rosemary Radford Ruether (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974), pp. 213–266. McLaughlin considers study of medieval attitudes toward women important because “These attitudes toward the female regarding her sexuality, her role, and her personality characteristics, reflected in medieval popular piety and theology, remain with us today.” She believes that “true liberation from the androcentrism and misogyny of those assumptions can come only when the past is made explicit and clear in its implications” (p. 214).
1. Hunt, Natural History of Love, p. 257.
2. Stendhal, Love, p. 49, 51.
3. Maurois, Seven Faces of Love, p. 220.
4. Greenfield, “Love and Marriage in Modern America,” pp. 363–364.
5. The general attitude is that love is so complicated and so individual that anything said about it is probably true for some people, or under some conditions (e.g. Wilson and Nias, Mystery of Love, p. 48).
6. Alice S. Rossi (“The Biosocial Side of Parenthood,” Human Nature 1 [1978]: 72–79) distinguishes between “biosocial science” and “sociobiology.” The latter stresses cross-species analysis, while biosocial science is concerned with the physiological underpinnings to human behavior or “the impact of social and psychological factors on the body functioning” (page 72). Rossi is particularly concerned about “speculative leaps” across species.
7. David P. Barash, “Behavior as Evolutionary Strategy” (Science 190 [1975]: 1084).
8. Edward O. Wilson, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (Cambridge, Mass. Harvard University Press, 1975), page 587.
9. Ibid., page 152.
10. Stanley Coren and Clare Porac, “Fifty Centuries of Right-handedness: The Historical Record” (Science 198 [1977]: 631–32).
11. P. P. G. Bateson and R. A. Hinde Growing Points in Ethology (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976): see part D, “Human Social Relations,” pp. 425–536.
12. Individual variability within the species is important for adaptation to changing conditions. It is precisely why sexual reproduction, as opposed to simple budding or otherwise dividing of some of the simpler organisms, developed through natural selection. For recent discussions of some of these issues, see François Jacob’s “Evolution and Tinkering” (Science, 196 [1977]: 1161–66) and Steven M. Stanley’s “Clades vs. Clones in Evolution: Why We Have Sex” (Science 190 [1975]: 382–83).
13. For an important discussion of “evolutionary thought,” see George C. Williams, Adaptation and Natural Selection (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1966), p. 87.
14. Michel Treisman, “Motion Sickness: An Evolutionary Hypothesis,” (Science 197 [1977]: 493–95).
15. In all the questionnaire surveys conducted during the course of the research on limerence, the most consistent finding was that limerence was associated with marriage, that is, those who answered questions more consistent with the limerent reaction were more frequently married than unmarried.
16. Money and Ehrhardt, Man and Woman, Boy and Girl, p. 192; Desmond Morris, Intimate Behavior, p. 79; William J. Goode, “The Theoretical Importance of Love,” p. 39.
17. Wolfgang Wickler, The Sexual Code (Garden City, N.J.: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1973), p. 256.
18. Quoted by Michelle Galler Riegel in “Monogamous Mammals: Variations on a Scheme” (Science News 112 [1977]: 76–78).
19. Wolfgang Wickler, The Sexual Code (Garden City, N.J.: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1973), pp. 95–96.
20. W. Sluckin, “Imprinting Reconsidered,” Bulletin of the British Psychological Society 27 (1974): 447–51.
21. Lee Salk, “Mother’s Heartbeat as an Imprinting Stimulus,” Transactions of the New York Academy of Science, 24 (1962): 753–63.
22. Money and Ehrhardt, pp. 22, 191–92.
23. Ibid., p. 190.
24. Yonina Talmon, “Mate Selection in Collective Settlements,” p. 501.
25. Sexual molestation of children is done many times more frequently by men than by women, although actual percentages are difficult to estimate. It might be that an aspect of maternal “instincts” is the tendency not to be disposed toward sexuality involving children. Other theorists might argue that cultural conditions help to produce the effect.
26. Vernon W. Grant, Falling in Love, p. 157.
27. See E. O. Wilson, Sociobiology, for examples.
1. Josephson, Stendhal, page 268.
2. Two recent books that provide somewhat more substantial suggestions are How to Survive the Loss of a Love, by Melba Colgrove, Harold H. Bloomfield, and Peter McWilliams (New York: Leo Press, 1976) and How to Fall Out of Love, by Debora Phillips (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1978). Advice columnists might do well to reconsider the rules for lovers initiated centuries ago in the Courts of Love in England and France by Eleanor of Aquitaine.
3. Letting Go: A Twelve Week Personal Action Program To Overcome a Broken Heart by Zev Wanderer and Tracy Cabot (New York: Putnam, 1978).
4. See, for example, my book Super Self: A Woman’s Guide to Self-Management (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1977; Jove, 1978).
5. As readers of Super Self know, record keeping is often exceedingly important in self-management and in coping. It may also prove valuable in helping to control limerence, but at this point, what sort of records should be kept and how they can be used are uncertain.
6. Stendhal, Love, page 130.
7. Ellis, Albert, The American Sexual Tragedy, page 158.
8. Ellis does not deny a biological basis to the phenomenon, just that the condition is instinctive and involuntary. By “biological basis” Ellis means that the condition develops naturally and easily and is hard to change, but that does not mean it cannot be changed. His techniques are aimed at achieving rationality, even when the irrationality to be changed is rooted in biology. See “The Biological Basis of Human Irrationality” (Journal of Individual Psychology, 1976), pp. 32, 145–68.
9. Dr. Ellis probably saw few of these. Happy limerents tend to be off in the lovenest. I found few wanting to take time off to be interviewed, except when LO was unavailable. In that case they were willing to talk, but primarily of LO’s “perfections,” the activity (talking about LO) rated by happy and unhappy limerents alike as second best to being in the divine presence. It may seem to be a poor second, but it is a consistent one.
10. Marian Kinget was reported by the press to have said in a paper given at the Conference On Love and Attraction that the “sexual revolution” and women’s liberation movement were “killing Cupid.” Dr. Kinget’s paper was in some ways a sensitive treatment of “romantic love,” but she did not realize that free sexuality is not necessarily a threat to limerence since sexual intercourse is not itself the aim of the limerent yearning.
11. As an unnamed book reviewer in The Spokeswoman put it, “It may be a question of facing up to stubborn biological patterns and dealing positively with them” (August 15, 1977, p. 12).
1. I can only attribute the hundreds of thousands of research reports of “significant correlations” in psychology journals to a peculiar type of “wiring” in the psychologist’s brain. It is truly phenomenal how the mind goes all aquiver over the prospect of finding that limerents are more likely to be male than female, young than old, cross-eyed than wall-eyed, introvert rather than extrovert, low in self-esteem rather than high, reared in Nebraska rather than Ohio, European rather than Oriental, or both, in a year ending with an even number rather than odd. The problem is that the information obtained is of very limited usefulness. It can even set things back by leading to the feeling that more is known than is actually the case. Even a seemingly strong relationship between traits may not reflect a causal relationship. For example, liquor sales, the birth rate, and church-going all show a rise in the spring, which suggests little if anything about the probable causes of any of those events.
2. Several of my informants complained that the only role they ever seem able to play is that of (nonlimerent) LO. “What do I do that makes people fall in love with me?” they would ask. Although it’s easy enough to say, as I did, “You give just the right mixture of attractiveness, hope, and uncertainty,” it might be valuable to study such persons closely to determine exactly how they act, since the ability to induce limerence is the ability to control it.
3. Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence (New York: Random House, 1977).
4. The behavior of certain birds, for example, bears resemblance to limerence as we have seen.
5. In Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975), page 543, Edward O. Wilson describes a society always on the brink of starvation in which limerence appeared not to occur.