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The Anatomy of Loving: The Story of Man's Quest to Know What Love Is
An extraordinary history of love, from the ancient Sumerians to Freud
Of all human emotions, love is perhaps the most mysterious, and the most decisive in shaping our destiny. Without it we are unfulfilled. But is it one emotion, or a compound of many?
The Anatomy of Loving captures the color and vitality of human experience and thought on the subject of love, beginning with the seduction poetry of ancient Sumer, and moving to the findings of twentieth-century psychoanalysis. In this brilliant, humanistic exploration, psychoanalyst and scholar Martin Bergmann examines the thinking of figures throughout history who have influenced our notions of love to the present Plato and Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe, Chekhov and Stendhal, Madame Bovary and Eliza Doolittle. Medieval courtly love and nineteenth-century romantic love, homosexual and bisexual love—all are examined by Dr. Bergmann as they have been manifested in art and literature.
And, though proponents of psychoanalysis have yet to agree on a single definition of love, Bergmann traces the fine differences made in that discipline between sexuality, narcissism, love and infatuation, sublimated love, and religious love. Above all, Bergmann eloquently delineates how the idea of love serves as a unique crystallization of the longings that suffuse the human heart.
“A learned appreciation . . . The perspectives afforded the reader are at once specialized and rich.”— Partisan Review
Of all human emotions, love is perhaps the most mysterious, and the most decisive in shaping our destiny. Without it we are unfulfilled. But is it one emotion, or a compound of many?
The Anatomy of Loving captures the color and vitality of human experience and thought on the subject of love, beginning with the seduction poetry of ancient Sumer, and moving to the findings of twentieth-century psychoanalysis. In this brilliant, humanistic exploration, psychoanalyst and scholar Martin Bergmann examines the thinking of figures throughout history who have influenced our notions of love to the present Plato and Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe, Chekhov and Stendhal, Madame Bovary and Eliza Doolittle. Medieval courtly love and nineteenth-century romantic love, homosexual and bisexual love—all are examined by Dr. Bergmann as they have been manifested in art and literature.
And, though proponents of psychoanalysis have yet to agree on a single definition of love, Bergmann traces the fine differences made in that discipline between sexuality, narcissism, love and infatuation, sublimated love, and religious love. Above all, Bergmann eloquently delineates how the idea of love serves as a unique crystallization of the longings that suffuse the human heart.
“A learned appreciation . . . The perspectives afforded the reader are at once specialized and rich.”— Partisan Review
- GenresPsychology
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 23, 1987
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Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
March 1, 2024
1. Eye-opening in part one (looking at the history from a psychoanalytic perspective gives new meanings to many things!), and nice survey of the history of psychoanalysis dealing with love in part two. I wonder what readers with a stronger background in psychoanalysis might think; it was quite helpful for me.
2. I caught two mistakes, one minor. p.167 speaks of Poussin's "Dido and Aeneas" painting in the Toledo Museum. Should be Venus and Mars. p.98 discusses Virgil's Discourse on Love in the Divine Comedy, but in the English translations I consulted, the sense almost seems opposite to the meaning Bergmann gives it. Virgil speaks of the lover extracting or discovering the form of the beloved and keeping it in his mind; Bergmann speaks of creating that form. The difference is huge. Just something to keep in mind when reading a well-researched book that nevertheless is geared towards the general audience.
P.S. Bergmann doesn't strike me as someone with a Western bias or with a preference for everything Greece and Rome (like I am), so the fact that he judges the Greeks to have discovered the language to talk deeply and concretely about love seems to me significant. I have never thought of the Greeks in this way (the fact that they have a richer vocabulary of love didn't seem to me to indicate an advantage or superiority in thinking about it over other languages or cultures). Just a random thought that doesn't have much to do with the book's main message...
2. I caught two mistakes, one minor. p.167 speaks of Poussin's "Dido and Aeneas" painting in the Toledo Museum. Should be Venus and Mars. p.98 discusses Virgil's Discourse on Love in the Divine Comedy, but in the English translations I consulted, the sense almost seems opposite to the meaning Bergmann gives it. Virgil speaks of the lover extracting or discovering the form of the beloved and keeping it in his mind; Bergmann speaks of creating that form. The difference is huge. Just something to keep in mind when reading a well-researched book that nevertheless is geared towards the general audience.
P.S. Bergmann doesn't strike me as someone with a Western bias or with a preference for everything Greece and Rome (like I am), so the fact that he judges the Greeks to have discovered the language to talk deeply and concretely about love seems to me significant. I have never thought of the Greeks in this way (the fact that they have a richer vocabulary of love didn't seem to me to indicate an advantage or superiority in thinking about it over other languages or cultures). Just a random thought that doesn't have much to do with the book's main message...
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review