Against Understanding, Volume 2 by Fink Bruce

Author:Fink, Bruce
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-134-66397-2
Publisher: Taylor and Francis

Woman:

EL = C, OL = zero

Although the association between women and cats, that are standoffish and wrapped up in themselves, is a longstanding one, there still seem to be plenty of women who feel a need to love and not simply to be loved! (Does Freud restrict women to loving either themselves or children, but not men?) In any case, Freud introduces here a curious facet of love, which would seem to apply not only to men, which is that we human beings are attracted to people (women and children, for example) and animals (cats, for example) that show little or no interest in us. Are we then interested in anything that seems narcissistically wrapped up in itself (its interest in itself pointing the way for our own interest or desire?) or are we interested in these things precisely because they seem inaccessible? Do we pursue them because they shun us and wound our own narcissism? Do we pursue them because they seem the most valuable—valuable precisely because they are so difficult to win—because we suspect that we will never win them? That would seem to be the obsessive’s unwitting goal. He loves them because he can rest assured that they will not love him back, love him in return. He cannot then be overwhelmed by their love, something the obsessive is often likely to be. Since women are defined by Freud as wrapped up in themselves, they can be loved safely by obsessives (anaclitically). Yet, the basis for anaclitic love is object-choice based on a past loving figure. This leads to a paradox: the man who makes an anaclitic choice essentially selects a woman based on her similarity to his mother, but with the important difference that this woman cannot love him, for she simply wants to be loved. The contradiction is that she will not give him the real satisfactions that were supposedly at the basis of his object-choice.

I’ll leave that as an open paradox here, and will confine myself to suggesting that Freud provides us here with something of an obsessive theory of love, allowing us to speculate about what a hysterical theory of love might look like. (Giving what you do not have?)

The more usual Freudian case would seem to be less all or nothing, as follows:

Man:

EL (1/3C) + OL (2/3C) = C (constant)

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