Love in a Time of Loneliness Quotes

“Language is not so much a means of communication, as it is a means of achieving identity. Through language, every person acquires a certain identity, with related rules: you are the mother of, daughter of, father of, son of. Thus the original real division of birth is symbolically consolidated within the Oedipal structure, where everyone is assigned their rightful place through words. At this point we become human, leaving nature behind for good. The rest of this dividing operation is nothing other than desire. It is also the explanation of the continually shifting nature of desire. You ‘desire’ something from another person, either something vague or something specific, but it is never enough, and you continue to desire, beyond this something, the other person’s self, but when this other person gives himself, even that doesn’t really satisfy … So what is it you really want? What you really want is the sense of unity that has been lost forever, the enjoyment of the totality that once existed. This is what keeps people going initially in the primary relationship with the mother and later on in all other relationships. The”
― Paul Verhaeghe, Love in a Time of Loneliness

“A toddler leafing through advertising brochures in the weeks leading up to Christmas is always looking for 'it', trying to make a choice. He/she is actually very little different from the adolescent leafing through forbidden magazines also dreaming of 'it', also hesitating, searching. In each case 'it' can never fulfil the expectation. In the transition from desire to gratification, something is lost that could neither be expressed in the desire nor achieved in its fulfilment.”
― Paul Verhaeghe, Love in a Time of Loneliness

“Therefore the goal of the partial drive is not the other person, the goal is to achieve a particular form of gratification. In this respect, the other person is actually superfluous as a subject and can sometimes even be an obstacle to pleasure. He or she serves as an object—and actually as a partial object—a means of achieving a goal.”
― Paul Verhaeghe, Love in a Time of Loneliness

“From the point of view of the partial drive, this other person is always a means, and he/she never becomes a goal in him/herself. In pragmatic terms, this suggests that the drive does not require a person as a subject in any way. The movement of the partial impulse is that of an arc, a boomerang, that passes over the other person, returns to itself, and closes in on itself, creating a totality, a completed action, self- gratification”
― Paul Verhaeghe, Love in a Time of Loneliness

“group identity essentially means rules, and therefore security. Every group is concerned with regulating jouissance”
― Paul Verhaeghe, Love in a Time of Loneliness

“A traumatised person does not remember the trauma, but experiences it over and over again.”
― Paul Verhaeghe, Love in a Time of Loneliness

“The essence of an orgy is the disappearance of the individual into a greater whole, in a group that has replaced the normal rules by other ones. the limitations of genital orgasm are replaced by the ecstatic enthusiasm of the group, a curious kind of total jouissance that interconnects the individuals and therefore erases them. This is the same experience that may occur with certain gatherings of religious sects.”
― Paul Verhaeghe, Love in a Time of Loneliness

“The essence of an orgy is the disappearance of the individual into a greater whole, in a group that has replaced the normal rules by other ones. The limitations of genital orgasm are replaced by the ecstatic enthusiasm of the group, a curious kind of total jouissance that interconnects the individuals and therefore eases them”
― Paul Verhaeghe, Love in a Time of Loneliness

“The nightmare is the ultimate - and therefore impossible - wish fulfilment that tries to take gratification to the point of no return”
― Paul Verhaeghe, Love in a Time of Loneliness

“Just as a child has to learn the language of the group to which it belongs, a couple must adopt the relationship prescribed by the group. Depending upon the strictness and closed nature of the group, it may or may not be possible to combine this with individual choice. However, just as it is possible to be creative with your mother tongue, you can always make your own contributions. This comparison goes much further: the creation of an individual sexual relationship and the creation of one’s own language come together in poetry as the ultimate attempt to express what is missing.”
― Paul Verhaeghe, Love in a Time of Loneliness

“Lacan’s reinterpretation of Freud on this point identifies the father with language. In nature, there are no fathers, there are only female animals with their nameless young, while cultures have mothers with children who are given names in order to express the way in which kinship relationships are structured. This relationship is always ‘patriarchal’, though this does not necessarily mean that it concerns the western nuclear family and the real father. The structure of relationships is patriarchal in the sense that it entails the symbolic recognition of a relationship, beyond the natural ties of the mother and child. The emphasis is entirely on this aspect of recognition. Even in those societies where the term ‘fatherhood’ is used in the narrow patriarchal sense of the word, biological fatherhood is never sufficient in itself.”
― Paul Verhaeghe, Love in a Time of Loneliness