Abstract

In this talk, I want to convey some of the psychoanalytic understanding of sexual love—the loving relationship of a couple—that a number of researchers, clinicians, and theoreticians in various countries have achieved regarding what keeps a couple together and what tends to separate them. I've been influenced by my own study of personality disorders and by my work in recent years in treating couples in serious conflict, as well as by the psychoanalytic literature. The subject is so vast that I have to concentrate on just one aspect of it. Ill talk about the dynamics of the love relations of the heterosexual couple. Ill try to highlight what we know by describing how I would apply this knowledge concretely in dealing with a couple, hoping that the general theory will emerge from this description. It's an experiment; I hope it goes well