LOVE AND THE MENTAL-HEALTH PROFESSIONS - TOWARD UNDERSTANDING ADULT LOVE

This essay explores three aspects of the normal processes of adult-adu lt love: falling in love, being in love, and staying in love. It descr ibes the emotions, defenses, and challenges inherent in each phase. Lo ve is an ordinary but immensely powerful adult aspiration. As a term i t is impossible to define in any singular sense. The attainment of its lofty purposes requires profound intrapsychic adjustments involving c reative acts of imagination, the integration of ideals with reality, e volving adaptations to the partner, the maintenance of a positive inte rnal image of the partner, and ongoing struggles to overcome self-inte rest. These adjustments have not been well characterized by the mental health professions. This is ironic since a large portion of our work involves caring for love's casualties-that is, people whose miseries r elate to their inability to successfully negotiate the phases of love or whose happiness is limited by their partners who cannot. Six argume nts for ending professional avoidance of the topic are offered, the mo st compelling of which are love's relevance to both the pathogenesis o f mental suffering and to the art of psychotherapeutic healing.