Speaker: Nikki Karalekas, PhD, LCSW.

Love is both mysterious and a psychoanalytic term of art. Despite worrying that love was beyond the scope of scientific inquiry, Freud developed several different theories of love. Perhaps most famously, in the Three Essays on Sexuality, he writes, “The prototype of every love relationship is the child sucking at his mother’s breast. The finding of the love object is in fact a refinding” (p. 222). More recently, psychoanalysis has drawn on and expanded beyond Freud’s theories of love as a repetition compulsion, a narcissistic projection, or an atonement for loss. Contemporary thinkers have developed theories of yearning and desire; mature and immature love; and love as an achievement. But what are all of those often maddening, explosive, and tingling feelings of falling in love, really? This Valentine’s Day, I invite you to put cynicism aside and join us for a psychoanalytic exploration of falling in love.

Credits: 4.5