Product Description
What love is, why love is born, why it sometimes grows, and why it sometimes dies.
Have you ever wondered how romantic love evolves? What the difference is between mature and immature love? What role sex plays in romantic love, and whether love necessarily implies sexual exclusivity? And, most important, how can we make love last? Originally published in 1980, this updated edition of The Psychology of Romantic Love explores the nature of romantic love on many levels-the philosophical, the historical, the sociological, and the physiological. Nathaniel Branden explains why so many people say that romantic love is just not possible in today's world and-drawing on his experience with thousands of couples-finds that such love is still a possibility for anyone who understands its essence and is willing to accept its challenges.
Branden sees it as a pathway not only to extraordinary joy but also to profound self-discovery. His vision of love is thoroughly appropriate to our time and grounded in our humanness.
The Psychology of Romantic Love: Romantic Love in an Anti-Romantic Age
Tags: AntiRomantic, humanness, Psychology, sexual exclusivity
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There is loneliness in books which validate some feelings but don’t encompass a consistent philosophy of personality, or provide a frame on which to hang all the delicious details of people: they depopulate the world of variety, filling in one small portion, dismissing the rest. Perhaps self-help books particularly fall prey to this, but it would be unfair to single them out, although almost universally they are “small-souled.” One might wonder what philosophically valid books have ever been written on the concept of romantic love. Nathaniel Branden tries nobly and has many valuable criticisms of immature love, misconceived love, and of the critics of love, thus praising love’s potential when fully realized. His understanding of exclusivity (which gains only a provisional acceptance), jealousy (which he views somewhat as inevitable but dangerous), children (which may stand in the way of love) and secularism and selfishness (both implied by love) are radical and could have been written by a hippie Ayn Rand. Unfortunately, Branden’s attacks on the critics of love finally fails to find any other place for the uncommitted but as resentful and envious, or somehow sick (dependent, living out the lives of parents). How he has failed to step back and view things from a broader perspective, even briefly, is clearly shown in a simplistic history of love in chapter 1, that characterizes whole eras in brief unattributed sound-bites. Alas, if he applied his own proverb, “Take what you want and pay for it,” universally, the “universal compensation that prevails in all things” (Hume), he might realize that this romantic love itself, having the high price it does, is, without sickness or resentment, only one choice.
Rating: 3 / 5
The Psychology of Romantic Love: Romantic Love in an Anti-Romantic Age
Branden was an associate of Ayn Rand for many years; while he can be persuasive at times, he is not a reputable writer or psychologist in the eyes of many experts in his field. He is a pop psychologist who tries to integrate psychological premises with philosophical tenets and fails mightily. Many of his psychological premises are wanting or incorrect, and his mundane writing will put you to sleep.
Rating: 2 / 5
The Psychology of Romantic Love: Romantic Love in an Anti-Romantic Age
This book made a deep impression on me and as a result I started a web site matchmaking forum based on Branden’s concepts outlined in his wonderful book. The concepts are lucidly explained and derived from basic principles.
Rating: 5 / 5
The Psychology of Romantic Love: Romantic Love in an Anti-Romantic Age
This is the paradox – only when we stop fighting the fact of our aloneness are we ready for “romantic” love. Because one’s manner of understanding his partner is only a reflection of his manner of understanding himself. If a human being is always on the run, always engaged in doing something, he has little or no chance to get to know himself.
I think it was fundamentally the most important teaching of this book. After a slow start the book gets a bit better towards the end. But then, in the end, there’s the loathsome claim (in the epilogue), which pretty much sums up the saddening misconception about love – “It is not possible to feel love,” the author states… -So, does it make love just another dead dogma, then? Only some social “illusion??”
Personally, I claim one can pretty concretely FEEL love even when thinking honestly about things, devoid of any conditioned bias. And one should not forget the notion that “God is love.”
(Published 1st in 1980. The reviewed edition: 2008, 9781585426256)
Rating: 3 / 5
The Psychology of Romantic Love: Romantic Love in an Anti-Romantic Age
I’ve recently bought a lot of books, but wanted to write a review about the great service of this dealer.
Rating: 5 / 5
The Psychology of Romantic Love: Romantic Love in an Anti-Romantic Age