Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 2.djvu/57

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I NORMAL PSYCHOLOGY 213

world), (2) pleasure-* pain', (3) activity-passivity. These three may

• be regarded as real, economic and biological polarities respectively.


 * ( • The pair of opposites 'love- indifference' corresponds to the real


 * . polarity, while 'to love-to be loved' corresponds to the biological

polarity. The real self which has originally come into being as a

result of objective criteria, is converted into a pleasure self thro ligh

a process of projecting on to the outer world everything* which

gives rise to 'pain'. As a result of these considerations we may

regard /ove as the relation of the self to its sources of pleasure.

Hate is originally the relation of the Self to the strange and stimulus-producing outer world. Here then love-hate corresponds I to the polarity pleasure-* pain '.

The word 'love' as it is used to-day tends to be employed specially in connection with sexual objects in the narrower sense or with objects which owe their pleasure-giving character to a process of sublimation. The use of the word 'hate' has undergone no such limitation, the original hate relationship being connected rather with the struggle for self-preservation. It is only with the establishment of the genital organisation that love and hate begin to transcend the polarity pleasure -'pain'. The ambivalent nature of love is due therefore only in part to actually existing conflicts between the Ego and the love-interests; in part it is due also to the evolutionary history of love and hate.

Scheler (28) is concerned with the psychology of love from the phenomenological standpoint. Love is essentially a movement in the direction of 'an increase of value'. Love is creative, hate on the contrary destructive, since it destroys higher values. Love too is elementary and is not reducible to any other mental state, e, g. sympathy.

Among the naturaUstic' theories of love which— from this phenomenological point of view — are regarded as unsatisfactory, is mentioned the ontogenetic theory of Freud. This theory presupposes the correctness of certain English ethical doctrines, according to which it is not love that is primary but sympathy. The naturalistic theories are blind to the existence of 'spiritual' and 'sacred' love; love of this latter kind cannot be explained on purely biological grounds. The relation between love and instinct may be indicated by the words 'hmitation' and 'selection'. Instinct limits the field within which love can develop; but it is incorrect to say that instinct produces love. The assumption of a transference of