“The field of drives that are autoerotic, partial and solely focused on pleasure is a different field from that of love which is total, reciprocal and focused particularly on the other's desire.” LoveDesireRelationshipsDrives Author:Paul Verheage
“As Kierkegaard wrote: 'Repetition is a beloved wife of whom one never tires'. This sentence is misunderstood by almost everyone. On the basis of this misunderstanding, it is either confirmed (by those who are happily married) or criticised (by those who are happily divorced). When you read the expression, it is easy to interpret it as follows: 'The beloved wife/husband is a repetition of whom one never tires/ However, for Freud and Kierkegaard, the repetition is central, the repetition on the basis of which a partner is ascribed a particular place, and not vice versa. At the same time, repetition then had a different meaning. Nowadays, repetition has become almost synonymous with boredom. One only has to think of a children's game that is endlessly repeated and yet gives pleasure every time, in contrast with the blase adult who always wants something new, something different, something that might still rouse him from the lethargy of excess.” LoveRelationshipKierkegaard Author:Paul Verheage
“From the point of view of the partial drive, this other person is always a means, and he/she never becomes a goal in him/herself. In pragmatic terms, this suggests that the drive does not require a person as a subject in any way. The movement of the partial impulse is that of an arc, a boomerang, that passes over the other person, returns to itself, and closes in on itself, creating a totality, a completed action, self- gratification.” PsychologyRelationshipObjectification Author:Paul Verheage
“Therefore the goal of the partial drive is not the other person, the goal is to achieve a particular form of gratification. In this respect, the other person is actually superfluous as a subject and can sometimes even be an obstacle to pleasure. He or she serves as an object—and actually as a partial object—a means of achieving a goal.” PsychologyRelationshipObjectification Author:Paul Verheage
“The most obvious difference between a drive and love concerns the object, which should no longer be referred to as an object. In contrast with the drive where the object can always be exchanged as an unimportant means to an end, in the case of love, everything turns upon this one irreplaceable other.” LovePsychologyRelationshipObjectificationDrives Author:Paul Verheage
“There is barely any room left for the self, and the loved one takes up all the space available. As Freud says: 'A person in love is humble” LovePsychologyRelationship Author:Paul Verheage
“We should not forget that marriage was and is primarily an economic matter focused on the division of property and on inheritance; that is why marriage and the property-owning classes go hand in hand. The have-nots do not and did not need it. Marriage in the first half of the twentieth century was a co-production by Hollywood and the Vatican, that has undergone significant changes, though the economic basis still survives. For example, this is perfectly expressed in the current need for 'cohabitation contracts', which are no more than a modern version of a marriage certificate, and in particular an arrangement about how goods should be divided.” MarriageRelationship Author:Paul Verheage
“In men, there is the familiar distinction between the Madonna on a pedestal and the lowlife whore, in the sense that they elevate the love object to unknown—and, above all, unattainable—heights. These are the super-conventional husbands who respect their wives. They often respect them so much that they become psychologically impotent. The shadow of the for-bidden mother covers the beloved in this cloak of respect, so that any sexual approach becomes impossible. However, this impotence wholly melts away, together with the respect, when such a man goes to a whore, either in his imagination or in reality. The pendulum swings the other way, because in this case the woman, in the figure of the whore, is humiliated just as much as the wife-mother is extolled. The dimension of lust appears here, inevitably accompanied by feelings of guilt. It is in this context that we come across the typical male fantasy, well known to every prostitute, of 'saving' a woman. A large number of her clients want to 'save' her from her ruin. They want to restore to her the status of being an object of love. In other words, they want her to become a wife-mother, which brings them back to respect, and completes the circle. Interestingly, in either case, whether he saves her or humiliates her, the power lies with the man. This in itself is a rewrite of the original mother-child scenario. His position has shifted from passive to active.” SexRelationshipsPsychologyPedestalObjectificationProstituteMale Fantasy Author:Paul Verheage
“Freud expresses this rather laconically: to find sexual pleasure in a relationship you have to conquer the incest prohibition, otherwise it will not work. He adds that this often works only in a second marriage or a second relationship. It seems as though the first catches all the negative weight of the past. Sex can be enjoyed only away from the mother.” SexRelationshipsPsychologyFreud Author:Paul Verheage