Love Object Research Articles

Back to the Future

Back to the Future

Love and beloved metaphors in Jordanian Arabic and English songs

AbstractThis study examinesloveandbelovedmetaphors from the cross-cultural perspective of Jordanian Arabic (JA) and English. The conceptual models suggested by Lakoff and Johnson (1980,1999) andKövecses (2014)and force dynamics proposed byTalmy (1988)are adopted as the theoretical frameworks for this study. The data was collected from contemporary songs by Jordanian and English-speaking artists. Unlike previous comparative studies onloveandbelovedmetaphors, this study demonstrates that source domains found in JA songs such aspain/suffering, sadness, weakness, wound, stupid endeavour, crueltyanddeadly forcealso exist in English songs to conceptualiselove.It is argued that while the use of these source domains in JA is expected as they form part of the prototypical cognitive model ofloveor thelovematrix in JA, they could be viewed as nonprototypical in English. The analysis also revealed certain JA culture-specific source domains used to conceptualisethe object of love [beloved], i.e.arabian oryxandbasil. We argued that despite the existence of similar conceptual metaphors in the two languages, geographical, historical and ideological factors may have an effect on the prevailing conceptual frames in a certain speech community creating some differences in the metaphorical conceptualisations ofloveandbeloved.

Loving to death or the pain of the first love breakup

A break-up in love can be understood as a mourning, that of a relationship in which many hopes had been founded. This notion is questioned, more particularly in the light of our clinical experience with adolescents, who were seen in consultation following their first losses of love objects. Each love mourning process is unique, evolving according to its own temporality and trajectory, linked in large part to characteristics inherent to the subject, but also to the context of the loss or the relationship maintained with the object of the loss. Despite this, This work participates in the construction of new affective investments and in the construction of the adult subject.

Psychodynamic Aspects of Love: A Narrative Review.

Love is a delicate experience that delves into the foundations of the psyche, and many sources of the emotional experience of love remain unconscious. The nature of love is twofold and contradictory, regressive and progressive, constructive and destructive, connecting and separating, directed toward the object and the self. The ability to idealize is a precondition for "falling in love". Abrupt disappointments can be traumatizing, but gradual ones include the work of mourning and may lead to a more authentic relationship that is less obscured by narcissistic needs. Some aspects of projective identification, which can be a defense, a primitive form of object relation, and a path for psychological change, may be present in all forms of love. These are the close interaction of self and object, blurred boundaries between them, the need that the other person feels what one feels, and a strong desire to continue the relationship. A therapeutic setting can enable the long-term transformation of love in transference and more mature expressions of love in life. The maturation of narcissism is the hallmark of mature love. One of the prerequisites for mature love is a mature superego, which does not require suffering as a prerequisite for satisfying one's needs. Clear differentiation of the boundaries of the self enables safe (temporary) blurring or disappearing of its boundaries and satisfaction of needs for repetition of lost fusion with the primary object of love. Mature love also means the capacity for tolerating ambivalence, i.e., the capacity to integrate both love and hatred experiences of the same person. One can see love as a "glue" that helps integrate different aspects of the psyche into a harmonious whole.

Suicidal Ideation in a Group of Italian Love Addicts: A Qualitative Research

Love addiction is a debated concept, generally considered as an addiction toward an object of love and can lead to deeply negative consequences, among which are self-harm and suicidal ideation. Our study aims to provide empirical evidences about love addiction etiology and characteristics, and to analyze its relation to suicidality. Our result confirmed the phenomenological depiction of love addiction that so far has mainly been hypothesized in literature, also providing a deeper understanding of its characteristics. An association with suicidal and parasuicidal behaviors has been observed, highlighting the dramatic consequences love addiction can have and the importance of preventing them.

Beauty in the Mirror of Poetics [Book review:] N.Yu. Chalisova. Of Persian Beauty. The Lovers’ Companion by Šaraf ad-Dīn Rāmī. Analysis, translation from Persian, commentary, indices, and appendix. Moscow: Higher School of Economics Publishing House; 2021. 430 с.

The book under review is written by the renowned specialist in Iranian studies, the distinguished Russian scholar Natalia Yurievna Chalisova. She is known as the translator of the most significant and authoritative medieval Iranian treatises on poetics written in Classic Persian. The present book comprises a commented edition and translation of the poetical treatise by Sharaf ad-Din Rami under the title “Interlocutor of Lovers”, compiled in the 14th century. This is a unique work, which combines the features of the ‘ilm al-badi‘ (adornments of poetic speech) with the list of poetical hints and expressions as applied to describe the beauty beloved. The book will obviously not be neglected by a modern lay reader since it comprises a captivating narrative along with a curious list of “motives” used in medieval poetry to describe the object of love and praise ‘de capite ad calcem’. It will also attract a scholar's attention from academics to university teachers and students. Equally, the category of beauty in medieval poetics will earn the attention of medievalists, such as historians of medieval Iran, historians of art, culture and medieval philosophy, etc.

Françoise's Way

Françoise Bazireau, alias ‘Françoise’, the illiterate servant of the Recherche, unable to express her most intimate feelings in good French, nevertheless shows the narrator that she possesses all the codes to survive and even thrive in the Guermantes’ way. Exasperating like Albertine as a love object, she also manages, like Mme Verdurin and the Duchesse de Guermantes, the social and temporal capital of the novel. With this remarkable and underrated character, we move, as readers, from the intratextual level of the narrator — watching her from his point of view — to that of the novel itself, watching the two in a kind of love/hate duet that throws some light on the function of the ‘petit peuple’ in the Recherche.

A brief exposition on the notions of Human Suffering, Theodicy and Theocracy in the Book of Job

It is suggested that in the face of malevolence, such as that faced by Job, God’s omnipotence and also His benevolence can be upheld. This article thus explores the notions of human suffering, theodicy and theocracy and how they are understood in the book of Job from an Old Testament perspective. The exegesis of the Book of Job has vexed people for epochs and it grasps the depths of human despair, the anger of moral outrage, and the anguish of a felt desertion by God on the part of the protagonist. From one man’s agony it reaches out to the mystery of God, beyond all words and explanations. The Scriptures including the book of Job has several distinct ways of reconciling human suffering with the justice of God. In the end, it is only God as King and Ruler, Himself who brings justice, victory and joy to the life of the suffering man. And when all is said and done, the mystery remains that God stands as King and Ruler revealed in His hiddenness, an object of terror, adoration and love. Job’s story shows us the eternal rebels that human beings are, who become bewildered by apparent injustice in things in life and who claim they can be better ordered. We cannot have a prejudiced view of life and be concerned only with what befalls us and then question God based on our intrinsic limited understanding. God is paradoxical in His ways and this is indeed a part of the mystery of human existence. We win when we gain true knowledge of God and understand our place in the scheme of His creation. All pain and suffering are a mystery of divine wisdom and a truly wise person would comprehend that “the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil, that is understanding” (Job 28:28). We should not expect to understand all the whys and wherefores behind what an omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent God does or allows. The definitive answer to the problem of human suffering is that we simply need to trust that God has His motives.

The Ecstasy of Love in the Thought of Thomas Aquinas by Peter A. Kwasniewski

Reviewed by: The Ecstasy of Love in the Thought of Thomas Aquinas by Peter A. Kwasniewski Heather M. Erb KWASNIEWSKI, Peter A. The Ecstasy of Love in the Thought of Thomas Aquinas. Steubenville, Ohio: Emmaus Road Publishing, 2021. 403 pp. Cloth, $49.95 The purpose of this book, which is based on the author's doctoral dissertation, is "to gather together, to explain, and to synthesize Thomas's ideas on the extasis amoris," which he describes as "a bright gem in the crown of his philosophy of love." Assembling and organizing a chronological sequence of texts (from the Commentary on the Sentences through the Summa Theologiae), Kwasniewski charts the metaphysical, ethical, psychological, and theological contexts of the ecstasy of love in Aquinas, noting his interpretations and adaptations of his key influences, in particular, Pseudo-Dionysius, Aristotle, and St. Paul. In an indispensable introduction, the author indicates that he assumes familiarity with the philosophical scaffolding of Thomas's doctrine of love, including the hierarchical structure of human appetites, the [End Page 597] teleological and perfective notion of the good, the distinctions between knowledge, will, and the passions, and the Aristotelian theory of friendship. Modern caricatures of Thomas as a dry, barren, and technical thinker are deflated in the author's description of the principal paradox of amor in Thomas's works as "the lived reality of going out of oneself to the other in a self-forgetful oblation or surrender that is also, and for the same reason, the height of self-perfection." In chapter 1, the author traces the sources of Thomas's doctrine of ecstasy and identifies ambiguities and tensions in the notion within the Neoplatonic tradition. The analogous nature of extasis emerges, as indicated by its biblical uses in the contexts of inspiration, prophecy, and rapture, and its Greek and early Christian uses, spanning Plato's Phaedrus (where it refers to divine possession through various activities, such as poetry, rite, prophecy, and philosophy) and Pseudo-Dionysian metaphysics, where the tension between divine simplicity and unity and the duality of ecstasy (as a "standing out" from oneself) is developed, as well as its negative and privative descriptions by Aristotle. The Patristics' negative connotations contrast with Aquinas's borrowing from the medieval monastic traditions, in which the Victorines, Bernardine Cistercian mysticism, and Maximus the Confessor celebrate the positive cognitive and volitional versions of extasis. Chapter 2 focuses on the definition of love and its various effects in the Commentary on the Sentences, book 3, distinction 27. As a "certain transformation of affection into the thing loved," amor involves taking on a thing's form, in a transformation of the lover by a displacing of self into the beloved. The aspects of "penetration" (which involves piercing and transformation), "separation from self" (in connection to both "burning" and "resting"), "melting" (liquefactio), and the extasis of both Eucharistic conversion (of the eater into spiritual food) and of God himself (as the only perfectly liberal Giver) are treated, highlighting the doctrine of the union of love's robust and experiential quality. Throughout the book, the false dualities associated with self-perfection ("natural" love) and self-oblation ("ecstatic" love) are exposed through a sustained metaphysical analysis. In each chapter, initial attention is given to Aquinas's organization of the material and to the synonymous and related terminology for amor and its effects. In addition, concept map summaries are frequently given alongside Aquinas's textual references. Chapter 3 explores the territory of extasis in the Commentary on the Divine Names of Pseudo-Dionysius. The contrast between cognitive and appetitive extases, the analogous sweep of extasis across creation in the imitation of God, and the well-known contrast of the love of friendship and the love of concupiscence make this chapter a keystone in Kwasniewski's treatment of the phenomenology of the effects of love. The "return to self" involved in the love of concupiscence is in contrast to the selfless extasis in the love of friendship. Persons alone and ultimately God are argued to be objects of ecstatic love, and God's extasis is seen as metaphorical only (in his "four ecstatic acts" of creation, governance, [End Page 598] redemption, and glorification—the "work of God...

니진스키의 <목신의 오후>에 나타난 나르시시즘

The purpose of this study is to re-illuminate Vaslav Nijinsky’s Afternoon of the Faun from the perspective of narcissism and to examine his life and work. Sigmund Freud’s study on narcissism distinguished primary narcissism, which is ego-centered narcissistic love, and secondary narcissism, which is retracted from object love. Homosexuality is the latter case, and falls under the narcissistic type of object choice from identification with the mother or consideration of oneself as a model. Nijinsky showed a narcissistic type by having a sense of loss for his father and a strong attachment to his mother in his childhood, and his fantasies about masturbation may have taken him to his homosexual tendencies. This latter is presumed to be connected to the final scene of Afternoon of the Faun, which reveals the allusion to homosexuality, a secondary narcissism that returns from the frustration of object love to narcissistic love. This study on narcissism is meaningful in that it can explain to some extent the influence and aftermath of this work on various choreographers and works that allow homosexual expression and challenge taboos.

Martha’s Melancholia: Racial and Sexual Trauma in Gertrud Kolmar’s Die Jüdische Mutter (1931)

This essay offers an original reading of Gertrud Kolmar’s 1931 novel Die jüdische Mutter according to trauma and trauma theory. In so doing, it resolves two central puzzles at the heart of the novel: why the protagonist Martha Wolg poisons her sexually abused daughter, and what role Martha’s Jewishness plays in the work. Martha is herself a victim of sexual and racial trauma, and she reads her daughter’s experience in terms of her own suffering and the suffering of others. She comes to see herself and her daughter as enmeshed in a web of vertical (intergenerational) and horizontal (societal) traumas from which there is no possible escape. This explains why she is incapable of a healthy mourning process and instead falls victim to a pathological melancholia: Martha sees the whole world as a mirror of her child’s suffering. Her final act of suicide is a tragic consequence of her melancholic tendency to attach multiple sources of pain and suffering to her lost love object. Martha’s infanticide and suicide are a direct result of how she experiences and reads her own and other people’s trauma.

Сonveying Love: Amor, Caritas, Affectus and Dilectio in the Venerable Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People and Its Old English Version

This article is devoted to the analysis of the semantic and functional features of the words used by the Venerable Bede in Ecclesiastical history of the English people (as well as in his other historical and hagiographic works) to convey the emotional component of the relationship between its characters, namely the concept of love, and the specifics of its translation into Old English. We have identified and analyzed the Latin words used by the author of Ecclesiastical history to express the concept in question. We came to the conclusion that the main term conveying the concept of love in the most general sense was the word amor. It was used most often by the author of Ecclesiastical history and was a neutral word indicating the presence of a certain attitude / commitment / inclination of one person to another, or to an inanimate object. A positive or negative connotation was imparted to it by the object of love or the character love had. Caritas indicated charity as a Christian virtue, which consisted not in experiencing a special attachment to someone or something but in keeping the commandments. Bede used the word affectus to indicate a feeling of love that was experienced more strongly than was customary in a given situation or between certain categories of people. By dilectio, he apparently understood love for God, which was supposed to underlie relations between Christians, love as a Christian virtue. The translator, unlike the Venerable Bede, used only one word to convey the identified nuances of perception of love. He coped with this task by using linguistic and grammatical transformations. We have identified a certain similarity in their perception of the concept under consideration. At the same time, the translator, apparently, perceived love between secular people as existing not only at the level of feelings, but also at the level of actions. This is evidenced by his use of the combination of the Old English verb lufian and the noun lufu. The same feature, in his opinion, was also characteristic of the feeling described by Bede as affectus. He firmly linked caritas with love for Christ. In addition, the translator mentioned love where it was not used in the Latin text of Ecclesiastical history to mitigate Bede's criticism of the representatives of the Celtic Christianity, which was one of the tasks that he faced when creating the translation.

“Generativity versus Stagnation”

This paper discusses midlife crisis as a driving force behind the thought and action of the protagonist of Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day. The whole novel contains a diary written by the English butler Stevens who relates his history of servitude at Darlington Hall and concludes with some revelations about the true nature of his past. Since the butler’s account gives hints of his concern for the extent of his achievement in life, his reassessing act of delving into the past can be taken as an attempt to resolve his midlife crisis. Being the seventh stage of Erik Erikson’s developmental psychology, a midlife crisis is primarily characterized by the binary “generativity versus stagnation” and the subject’s struggle to decide on the meaning of life. Occurring between 40 and 65, midlife crisis is stimulated by the reconsideration of social demands such as career and marriage. Applying this psychoanalytic approach to Stevens’ experience of midlife crisis, the present research investigates the place of Lord Darlington and Miss Kenton, the former Stevens’ employer and the latter his only love object, as embodiments of the social demands of career and marriage that the butler reviews in his midlife stage. Ultimately, this research discusses the butler’s success in resolving his midlife crisis through considering the individuation process, namely self-awareness, self-actualization, and the caring power, which the protagonist goes through.

The Virtue of Husband and Wife: Understanding Marital Friendship in Aquinas (with a Little Help from Homer)

The Virtue of Husband and WifeUnderstanding Marital Friendship in Aquinas (with a Little Help from Homer) Scott G. Hefelfinger (bio) Introduction Thomas Aquinas is well known for drawing on Aristotle’s analysis of friendship in order to understand and to define charity. Less familiar is Aquinas’s approach to marriage in terms of friendship. “Marriage,” writes Aquinas, “is the greatest friendship,”1 and he elaborates this elsewhere by means of Aristotle’s threefold division of friendship: friendship of utility, of pleasure, and of virtue.2 This already contains a great richness to be explored, but Aquinas goes further, adding suggestively: “There is a virtue proper to both husband and wife that renders their friendship delightful to each other.”3 But what exactly is this virtue, and how does it relate to the three kinds of friendship? The Angelic Doctor does not say. Whatever this virtue is, we seem to stand in great need of it. The world today seems a stranger to the delight that Aquinas mentions and is instead overly familiar with serial cohabitation, broken homes, and more recently, what has been termed “sexless marriages,” which result in no small part from the proliferation of pornography. Such sadness, discontentment, and even despair in the arena of marriage renders Aquinas’s provocative remark all the more striking, and so this short article is an attempt to tease out its meaning. [End Page 126] To do this, I will draw from the theory of Aristotle and the poetry of Homer to put meat on the bones of Aquinas’s skeletal remark, namely, that there is a virtue proper to spouses. In a first step, I will argue based on Aristotle and Aquinas that there is an excellence specific to the coordinated and cooperative work of the household. In a second step, I will turn to Homer’s Odyssey, where, I propose, we catch a glimpse of what this mutual work looks like, and in particular the kind of friendship between equals that it entails. Taken all together, Aquinas, Aristotle, and Homer offer resources for a renewed vision of marriage that is strikingly relevant in a world longing for delight and pining for a renewal of culture—a renewal that begins with the friendship, and virtue, of husband and wife. Aristotelian Roots When, in the Summa contra gentiles, Aquinas speaks of marriage as “the greatest friendship,” he offers two reasons to justify the superlative: he holds that husband and wife are “united not only in the act of fleshly union, which produces a certain gentle association even among beasts, but also in the partnership of the whole range of domestic activity [ad totius domesticae conversationis consortium].”4 Admittedly, these reasons might seem a little thin. Indeed, it almost sounds like Aquinas is suggesting that what makes the greatest friendship between husband and wife is that they sleep in the same bed at night and make the bed together in the morning. Understandably, we’re left wanting a little more than that. If we turn to his commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, it helps us to appreciate that, as we expect, there is more going on here. The friendship between husband and wife is a complex, multi-faceted reality. One facet is its usefulness; it is a friendship of utility, Aquinas points out, since it “furnishes a sufficiency [of things] for family life.”5 Another facet of this friendship is that it is pleasant or pleasurable; thus, it is a friendship of pleasure, seen most clearly— but by no means exclusively—in marital intimacy. The last facet is [End Page 127] that related to virtue; Aquinas holds that marital friendship can also be based on virtue and thus it can reach the level of a noble or virtuous friendship.6 What is a virtuous friendship for Aristotle and Aquinas? Friendships are based on love and thus the precise object of love will determine the sort of friendship. Because friendships of utility and of pleasure are based on a love that targets some good other than a person, Aristotle sees them as incomplete or incidental. Complete friendship includes the dimensions of utility and pleasure but also goes beyond them. This...

Psychoanalytic view of neurotic forms of love object choice

The way of building relationships and choosing a partner in life can not be something random between two people who decide to spend part of their lives together. Of course, many of our experiences in life lead us to certain choices. Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, goes further when he says that partner selection is determined by the early relationship between child and parent. Even Freud in his essay “On some neurotic mechanisms in jealousy, paranoia and homosexuality” (1922) says that “these jealousies take root in the depths of the unconscious, take back the earliest movements of infantile affectivity and originate from the Oedipus complex” (p. 217). The roots for this are found in the triangle of the child-mother-father relationship and the phallic stage where the child shows the most pronounced closeness to the parent of the opposite sex (all this a necessary and indispensable process). The way of expressing love between parents and consequently the expression as triumphant in front of the child with the word “I took mom/dad” can affect that in adulthood, the individual develops pathological behavior. Every behavior, from what we explained to the choice of the object of love, has its roots in early relationships.

Games and War in Early Modern English Literature: From Shakespeare to Swift. Ed. Holly Faith Nelson and Jim Daems.

<i>Games and War in Early Modern English Literature: From Shakespeare to Swift</i>. Ed. Holly Faith Nelson and Jim Daems.

클라인적 관점에서 읽은 『제인 에어』

This paper explores how the protagonist, Jane Eyre, forms her identity through maternal connections with other characters within the novel. Jane’s maternal experience can be analysed through Melanie Klein’s theory of maternity. Klein argues that an infant in the “paranoid-schizoid position”(during the first three months of life) splits its mother into both a good mother and a bad mother. When the infant deems the mother to be a persecutor, then it tries to control or harm the mother by projecting its own negative feelings towards her. Klein defines this process as “projective identification.” Jane’s hatred and aggression towards her bad mother, Mrs Reed, resembles Klein’s “projective identification.” According to Klein, the infant in the “depressive position”(after the paranoid-schizoid position) feels guilt and anxiety for the damage inflicted on its mother in the previous position, The infant goes through a mourning process for the loss of its positive object, and restores its mother as “a good and complete object.” At this moment of restoration, the infant successfully overcomes its own depressive position. In this novel, Jane experiences feelings of guilt for doing harm to her bad mother figure, and the normal mourning process then helps her to successfully overcome her depressive position. After restoring Rochester as an object of love and gratitude, Jane comes back to him, whom she sees as a prototype of her own lost mother.

LOVE AND ESSENCE IN SPINOZA'S ETHICS

Several questions regarding Spinoza's concept of essence have been the topic of recent scholarly debate. In this paper, I show that the connection between love, desire and essence is ubiquitous in the Ethics, as well as metaphysically and psychologically coherent; moreover, it provides the key to answer unresolved questions. Analyzing the notion of essence through Spinoza's theory of love shows that essence can be expressed in different ways, and be reflected through different objects of love. These objects of love, in turn, signify the extent to which the affected mind understands itself, God and things in the world. Each object is a different expression of the same single, unique essence of the individual, and therefore of the desire which defines them. This interpretation allows to solve some puzzles about essence, and also to establish the importance of love in Spinoza's philosophy as a whole-especially his epistemology and ethics.

OKTUBRE, the Montage of an Era or “Rock As All Weeping”.

Affectivity makes us play with the syllables that -in a sort of juggling- leads us to elaborate other -sometimes strange- new names that do not always manage to establish themselves in the crowd or last through time, but they -without stopping in their fleetingness- pretend to embrace an object of love. In Carolina Bello's novel oktubre, this is the Platense band Los Redó or Los redondos, as Patricio Rey y sus Redonditos de Ricota (1976-2001) is popularly known, one of the most iconic bands of "Argentine national rock",1 which has unveiled journalism and social sciences2 as it sculpted a cultural phenomenon that has been the axis of an important process of subjectivation among its followers, (self-)ascribed as ricoteros. Before covid, their "misas ricoteras" summoned some one hundred thousand people, who made these "pilgrimages" to attend the "biggest pogo in the world" -which only the Indio,3 the band's vocalist, is capable of unleashing- and which hardly generates indifference among those who are aware of its existence, whether for its recriminations against violence, for the affective waste of those who sing and dance to its songs or for its extremely high level of attendance.

“Generativity versus Stagnation”: Midlife Crisis in Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day

This paper discusses midlife crisis as a driving force behind the thought and action of the protagonist of Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day. The whole novel contains a diary written by the English butler Stevens who relates his history of servitude at Darlington Hall and concludes with some revelations about the true nature of his past. Since the butler’s account gives hints to his concern for the extent of his achievement in life, his reassessing act of delving into the past can be taken as an attempt to resolve midlife crisis. Being the seventh stage of Erik Erikson’s developmental psychology, midlife crisis is primarily characterized by the binary “generativity versus stagnation” and the subject’s struggle to decide on the meaning of life. Occurring between 40 and 65, midlife crisis is stimulated by the reconsideration of social demands such as career and marriage. Applying this psychoanalytic approach to Stevens’ experience of midlife crisis, the present research investigates the place of Lord Darlington and Miss Kenton, the former Stevens’ employer and the latter his only love object, as embodiments of the social demands of career and marriage that the butler reviews in his midlife stage. Ultimately, this research discusses the butler’s success in resolving midlife crisis by considering the individuation process, namely self-awareness, self-actualization, and the caring power the protagonist goes through. Keywords: Ishiguro, Erikson, Midlife Crisis, Generativity, Stagnation, Individuation.