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Love and Its Place in Nature: A Philosophical Interpretation of Freudian Psychoanalysis
"Jonathan Lear has shown us both Freud`s texts and his subject matter from a new angle of vision, one that renders much recent controversy about psychoanalytic theory irrelevant. For any student of those texts this book is indispensable."―Alasdair MacIntyre
"Lear makes one understand how psychoanalysis works not only on the therapist`s couch but also as a condition of being alive. . . . Love and Its Place in Nature not only offers a form of spiritual nutriment for the self, it also defines that self with a clear profundity that few readers will have encountered before."―Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, New York Times
"A brief and engaging philosophical perspective on Freudian psychoanalysis. The book is simply written, but important themes are profoundly investigated. . . . An important philosophic reading of Freud."―Don Browning, Christian Century
In this brilliant book, Jonathan Lear argues that Freud posits love as a basic force in nature, one that makes individuation―the condition for psychological health and development―possible. Love is active not just in the development of the individual but also in individual analysis and indeed in the development of psychoanalysis itself, says Lear. Expanding on philosophical conceptions of love, nature, and mind, Lear shows that love can cure because it is the force that makes us human.
"Lear makes one understand how psychoanalysis works not only on the therapist`s couch but also as a condition of being alive. . . . Love and Its Place in Nature not only offers a form of spiritual nutriment for the self, it also defines that self with a clear profundity that few readers will have encountered before."―Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, New York Times
"A brief and engaging philosophical perspective on Freudian psychoanalysis. The book is simply written, but important themes are profoundly investigated. . . . An important philosophic reading of Freud."―Don Browning, Christian Century
In this brilliant book, Jonathan Lear argues that Freud posits love as a basic force in nature, one that makes individuation―the condition for psychological health and development―possible. Love is active not just in the development of the individual but also in individual analysis and indeed in the development of psychoanalysis itself, says Lear. Expanding on philosophical conceptions of love, nature, and mind, Lear shows that love can cure because it is the force that makes us human.
251 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1990
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274 people want to read
About the author
Jonathan Lear
46 books71 followersJonathan Lear is an American philosopher and psychoanalyst. He is the John U. Nef Distinguished Service Professor in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago and served as the Roman Family Director of the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society from 2014 to 2022.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
November 1, 2022
This is a really great book that I almost gave five stars to. People dismiss Freud and psychoanalysis as a whole as quack pseudoscience. Despite a couple of unsatisfying argumentative detours into the peripatetic school (especially on the matter of form), Lear has proven that there is life to be found (and maybe even love?) in engaging with Freudianism. Am I convinced to abandon all my nihilistic tendencies and embrace a view that calls love an element of meaning invested in the basic structure of the world? Maybe not. But, I have been provoked to interrogate all such beliefs. In doing so I might have even been able to aim at a higher unity (how fun!)
June 23, 2015
An unsatisfactory book that is contradictory and outlandish in places, this is a work that discusses the author's opinion of, and differences with, Freud's work in psychoanalysis far more than making any effort at clarifying love and its place in nature.
While the author claims that "...the aim of this book is to construct a vibrant conceptual history--an interpretation of the psychic life of the analysand--that helps psychoanalysis to live," he goes on to criticize much of the work conducted in psychoanalysis, Freud's therapies in particular, and offers up that love is a force in nature that lends 'individuation' with hardly any derivation or description of how this may be so. He creates a long record of his objections to psychoanalysis rather than any conceptual or empirically verified history, vibrant or otherwise.
At times confusing, for instance, in his query: "Is it possible that the entire debate over individualism, pro and con, proceeds by ignoring the individual?," sweeping: "Since a person is significantly constituted by his subjectivity, one cannot legitimately assume that a biological unit, a member of the human species, is an individual," and unwarranted and unsupported: "Psychoanalysis has discovered that individuals are not part of the basic fabric of the world, not even of the basic fabric of human society," he goes on to claim that Psychoanalysis is the history of a series of battles fought and refought within the human soul. There appears, to me, to be something rather unnatural in the author's opinions and learning: he offers no clarification or opinion of the soul , and yet claims that therapeutic practice comprises (presumably mental) battles within his undefined soul, attributing such a finding to the very process he is critiquing while claiming to help.
The book does reveal the author's bias toward at least one religion, attributing to it a higher ethical standard, while he debates whether psychoanalysis also may be a religion, and ignores wisdom and advancement in philosophy in other regions of the world. He goes so far as to state, "For as long as Philosophy has existed, which, after all, is only twenty five hundred years, ...," revealing inadequacy not only in his research into ancient civilizations, but in his own learning. He conveniently forgets that the history of literature, including the oldest sacred texts, extends more than four millennia into the past.
This is not a book for the lay reader or the erudite researcher. It provides a critique of Freud and the art of psychoanalysis, which, though evidently an inexact science and practice, could be said to have some utility in the world. This work does not, by any stretch of the imagination, help clarify what its title claims; the author nevertheless does approach a glimmer of intuition that love can be a unifying, strengthening aspect that brings about acceptance and harmony among various other attributes that make one human.
While the author claims that "...the aim of this book is to construct a vibrant conceptual history--an interpretation of the psychic life of the analysand--that helps psychoanalysis to live," he goes on to criticize much of the work conducted in psychoanalysis, Freud's therapies in particular, and offers up that love is a force in nature that lends 'individuation' with hardly any derivation or description of how this may be so. He creates a long record of his objections to psychoanalysis rather than any conceptual or empirically verified history, vibrant or otherwise.
At times confusing, for instance, in his query: "Is it possible that the entire debate over individualism, pro and con, proceeds by ignoring the individual?," sweeping: "Since a person is significantly constituted by his subjectivity, one cannot legitimately assume that a biological unit, a member of the human species, is an individual," and unwarranted and unsupported: "Psychoanalysis has discovered that individuals are not part of the basic fabric of the world, not even of the basic fabric of human society," he goes on to claim that Psychoanalysis is the history of a series of battles fought and refought within the human soul. There appears, to me, to be something rather unnatural in the author's opinions and learning: he offers no clarification or opinion of the soul , and yet claims that therapeutic practice comprises (presumably mental) battles within his undefined soul, attributing such a finding to the very process he is critiquing while claiming to help.
The book does reveal the author's bias toward at least one religion, attributing to it a higher ethical standard, while he debates whether psychoanalysis also may be a religion, and ignores wisdom and advancement in philosophy in other regions of the world. He goes so far as to state, "For as long as Philosophy has existed, which, after all, is only twenty five hundred years, ...," revealing inadequacy not only in his research into ancient civilizations, but in his own learning. He conveniently forgets that the history of literature, including the oldest sacred texts, extends more than four millennia into the past.
This is not a book for the lay reader or the erudite researcher. It provides a critique of Freud and the art of psychoanalysis, which, though evidently an inexact science and practice, could be said to have some utility in the world. This work does not, by any stretch of the imagination, help clarify what its title claims; the author nevertheless does approach a glimmer of intuition that love can be a unifying, strengthening aspect that brings about acceptance and harmony among various other attributes that make one human.
May 23, 2024
This is a good, insightful book.
I took a lot of notes from this book. Below are some of the most memorable:
. . . an emotion does more than orient the individual to the world: it comes packaged with its own justification. The little boy is angry because his father frustrates his {Oedipal} wishes. This "because" provides not only a cause of the hostility; it provides for a reason for it. From the perspective of a little boy there could be no good reason to block his wishes: thus the frustration is, for him, an outrageous slight. An emotion, for Aristotle, is a structure that makes a claim for its own rationality. Although emotions may (or may not) be expressed in bodily responses, in subjective experiences such as feelings and awareness of bodily response, in fantasies of all sorts, the emotion has not reached full development until it is able to express an explanation and justification of its own occurrence. It thus tries to bring the bodily responses, subjective feelings and fantasies under a rationalizing concept. It tries to bring the unconscious orientation to the world to consciousness. {pp. 49-50}
An emotion, by its nature, attempts to justify itself. And one can expect archaic expressions of emotion to embody archaic attempts at self-justification. Thus there is a satisfying experience of discharge only when the archaic emotion is directed onto (what from the point of view of archaic mind is) the right object. {p. 51}
. . . a good interpretation both relieves the pressure of an instinctual wish and informs its content. The relief indicates that the interpretation provides a certain satisfaction for the wish—as though this is what the wish has been striving for {all along}. But the interpretation is an expression of the wish itself at a higher level of organization. In this way, the wish strives to acquire form, a form in which it can be understood. (p. 215)
I took a lot of notes from this book. Below are some of the most memorable:
. . . an emotion does more than orient the individual to the world: it comes packaged with its own justification. The little boy is angry because his father frustrates his {Oedipal} wishes. This "because" provides not only a cause of the hostility; it provides for a reason for it. From the perspective of a little boy there could be no good reason to block his wishes: thus the frustration is, for him, an outrageous slight. An emotion, for Aristotle, is a structure that makes a claim for its own rationality. Although emotions may (or may not) be expressed in bodily responses, in subjective experiences such as feelings and awareness of bodily response, in fantasies of all sorts, the emotion has not reached full development until it is able to express an explanation and justification of its own occurrence. It thus tries to bring the bodily responses, subjective feelings and fantasies under a rationalizing concept. It tries to bring the unconscious orientation to the world to consciousness. {pp. 49-50}
An emotion, by its nature, attempts to justify itself. And one can expect archaic expressions of emotion to embody archaic attempts at self-justification. Thus there is a satisfying experience of discharge only when the archaic emotion is directed onto (what from the point of view of archaic mind is) the right object. {p. 51}
. . . a good interpretation both relieves the pressure of an instinctual wish and informs its content. The relief indicates that the interpretation provides a certain satisfaction for the wish—as though this is what the wish has been striving for {all along}. But the interpretation is an expression of the wish itself at a higher level of organization. In this way, the wish strives to acquire form, a form in which it can be understood. (p. 215)
December 28, 2013
This is a surprising book. It has three protagonists - science, philosophy and psychoanalysis. Initially, I did not like it very much because I thought the author's philosophical views were rather too dominated by science (for example, he swallows the recent philosophical orthodoxy that reasons are causes and yet if you accept that point, you have little chance of thinking clearly about the mind). However, his love of Aristotle seems to serve as some kind of bulwark against too scientistic an approach to philosophy and then when it gets to psychoanalysis, he is prepared to throw his worship of science overboard and take a radically unfashionable position. So by the end of the book it has become both passionate and interesting. I am afraid I still think the philosophy is not very impressive, but he does give a really interesting interpretation of Freud and of psychoanalysis and I think that makes this book worth reading. One strange thing about it is that while Winnicott is a significant influence on the book, he gets no mention in the main body of the text or in the index - instead he gets a few mentions in footnotes, some recognition in the bibliography and frequent use of the "good-enough" phrase that he introduced into psychoanalysis. It is not clear why Lear does not want to acknowledge him more generously - I doubt if there is any significant reason for this - it is just a bit odd.
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September 2, 2024Lear's "Love" is a "philosophical interpretation of psychoanalysis" which puts forward the thesis that there is an isomorphism between the "development" of Freud's thought and the development of the individual psyche, in which the life drive, or love, reaches higher and more complex (sublimated) unities. This is clearly driven by a profoundly Aristotelian teleology and a positive reevaluation of psychoanalysis in light of Christianity (this is most evident in Lear's commentary on Freud's interpretation of identification within the Church in "Group Psychology"). It is a rather ambitious interpretation of the whole of Freud's corpus by means of a humanist and holistic account of development in which the "principle of unity" is what Lear calls "love" (I will speak to the basic inadequacies of this reading of Eros later on).
In line with the thesis that Freud "develops" his thought in line with the "natural" trajectory of sublimation-love, the book proceeds chronologically for the most part through Freud's body of work, beginning with Studies in Hysteria and finishing with "Civilization" and "Group Psychology". This clearly follows the path of the "psychological Freud" to the "sociological Freud", an assumption which may or may not be well founded.
In the first chapter, "Catharsis: Fantasy and Reality", Lear argues that Breuer and Freud's theorization of catharsis as the (re)attachment of an affect or emotion to a thought or word is handicapped by an "objective" understanding of the psyche; in other words, he takes it that it this stage in Freud's career, he thought of the emotions as something to be integrated into a rational frame. Contra this assumption, Lear argues that Freud has yet to develop an adequate theory of the way that emotion itself shapes understanding. (If you follow Lear's comments throughout the book, he tends to suggest that Freud never in fact develops an adequate sense of this. Hence his task of supplementing Freud with a (mostly ancient, but at times flirting with German Idealist) philosophical outlook on human purposiveness).
The second chapter, "The Interpretation of Dreams", Lear emphasizes what he sees as Freud's argument for the "indissoluble unity" of the "proto-conceptual" or primary process and conceptual or secondary process in the analysis of the dream-work. This idea of the "proto-conceptual" is where Lear begins to lose his grip. See Lacan's writing on the "prototype" as model of *all* psychic organization. His quick dismissal of Lacan in this chapter is symptomatic. The unconscious cannot be structured like a language, according to Lear, because latent structures do not abide by the normative standards of recognition in spoken language. This betrays a complete lack of familiarity with the structuralist tradition and its insights into the "pre-normative" and foundational (in its active sense) practices of linguistic practice. The consequence of this sort of failure is a functionalist frame for thinking of social recognition which permeates (almost) all attempts at applying "analytic" philosophy of language to fields outside of their comfort-zone. This social functionalism also explains the work's cheery and one-sided assessment of the Freudian legacy, in which psychoanalysis really tells us something we knew "all along" about the fundamental goodness of human nature.
This cheery naïvety becomes even more apparent in chapter four's reading of the Little Hans case. Lear's reading of infantile theories of sexuality is relatively unoffensive, but it is precisely his interpretation of the function of *Freud's intervention in the case* which is basically wrong. Which means he misses the most fundamental piece of the puzzle. He glosses Freud's role as that of the benevolent father, or the representative of the "good enough" nature of the world, as he puts it later. But he does not at all show how Freud stands in the role of the benevolent *God*, the all-knowing father. Though it is quoted, the significance of Freud's statement to the boy that "*All along*, I had known a little Hans would come into this world" is completely missed. That Lear misses Freud's status here as benevolent God-the-father is striking given his proclivity for Christianizing Freud, as we can usually understand as the New Testament God the figure which Freud again and again imposes as cause of sublimation. But Lear could not possibly see this, because he also misses his complement, the punitive God of the Old Testament for whom love reverses into hate. "Hate" is hardly mentioned, if at all, and thus the function of ambivalence (along with the full triadic structure of love-hate-ambivalence) cannot even be commented on.
In chapter five and six, Lear tackles drive and the second topography. It is difficult to comment on these chapters. The general picture isn't terrible. There is no mistaking drive for instinct! The picture which Lear wants to draw up of the developmental model manages to abandon the most harmful tenets of ego-psychology while retaining a teleological view of the stages because of Lear's (quasi-Hegelian) humanist social holism. But the Christian virtue ethics which Lear clearly loves is horribly difficult to stomach -- simply on doctrinal grounds, if one is an hysterical agnostic like myself. Certain points, however, rightfully cut against a crude separation of religious and scientific rationality which rests shakily on that dogmatic secularism which has suicidally decided to cast the oars out of the life-boat during a cruel tempest.
I'm not fully convinced that a fully-secular interpretation of psychoanalytic reason is the correct one -- it’s just that I'm just not certain that Lear's solution is sophisticated enough to meet the challenge of reforming our devastated world.
In line with the thesis that Freud "develops" his thought in line with the "natural" trajectory of sublimation-love, the book proceeds chronologically for the most part through Freud's body of work, beginning with Studies in Hysteria and finishing with "Civilization" and "Group Psychology". This clearly follows the path of the "psychological Freud" to the "sociological Freud", an assumption which may or may not be well founded.
In the first chapter, "Catharsis: Fantasy and Reality", Lear argues that Breuer and Freud's theorization of catharsis as the (re)attachment of an affect or emotion to a thought or word is handicapped by an "objective" understanding of the psyche; in other words, he takes it that it this stage in Freud's career, he thought of the emotions as something to be integrated into a rational frame. Contra this assumption, Lear argues that Freud has yet to develop an adequate theory of the way that emotion itself shapes understanding. (If you follow Lear's comments throughout the book, he tends to suggest that Freud never in fact develops an adequate sense of this. Hence his task of supplementing Freud with a (mostly ancient, but at times flirting with German Idealist) philosophical outlook on human purposiveness).
The second chapter, "The Interpretation of Dreams", Lear emphasizes what he sees as Freud's argument for the "indissoluble unity" of the "proto-conceptual" or primary process and conceptual or secondary process in the analysis of the dream-work. This idea of the "proto-conceptual" is where Lear begins to lose his grip. See Lacan's writing on the "prototype" as model of *all* psychic organization. His quick dismissal of Lacan in this chapter is symptomatic. The unconscious cannot be structured like a language, according to Lear, because latent structures do not abide by the normative standards of recognition in spoken language. This betrays a complete lack of familiarity with the structuralist tradition and its insights into the "pre-normative" and foundational (in its active sense) practices of linguistic practice. The consequence of this sort of failure is a functionalist frame for thinking of social recognition which permeates (almost) all attempts at applying "analytic" philosophy of language to fields outside of their comfort-zone. This social functionalism also explains the work's cheery and one-sided assessment of the Freudian legacy, in which psychoanalysis really tells us something we knew "all along" about the fundamental goodness of human nature.
This cheery naïvety becomes even more apparent in chapter four's reading of the Little Hans case. Lear's reading of infantile theories of sexuality is relatively unoffensive, but it is precisely his interpretation of the function of *Freud's intervention in the case* which is basically wrong. Which means he misses the most fundamental piece of the puzzle. He glosses Freud's role as that of the benevolent father, or the representative of the "good enough" nature of the world, as he puts it later. But he does not at all show how Freud stands in the role of the benevolent *God*, the all-knowing father. Though it is quoted, the significance of Freud's statement to the boy that "*All along*, I had known a little Hans would come into this world" is completely missed. That Lear misses Freud's status here as benevolent God-the-father is striking given his proclivity for Christianizing Freud, as we can usually understand as the New Testament God the figure which Freud again and again imposes as cause of sublimation. But Lear could not possibly see this, because he also misses his complement, the punitive God of the Old Testament for whom love reverses into hate. "Hate" is hardly mentioned, if at all, and thus the function of ambivalence (along with the full triadic structure of love-hate-ambivalence) cannot even be commented on.
In chapter five and six, Lear tackles drive and the second topography. It is difficult to comment on these chapters. The general picture isn't terrible. There is no mistaking drive for instinct! The picture which Lear wants to draw up of the developmental model manages to abandon the most harmful tenets of ego-psychology while retaining a teleological view of the stages because of Lear's (quasi-Hegelian) humanist social holism. But the Christian virtue ethics which Lear clearly loves is horribly difficult to stomach -- simply on doctrinal grounds, if one is an hysterical agnostic like myself. Certain points, however, rightfully cut against a crude separation of religious and scientific rationality which rests shakily on that dogmatic secularism which has suicidally decided to cast the oars out of the life-boat during a cruel tempest.
I'm not fully convinced that a fully-secular interpretation of psychoanalytic reason is the correct one -- it’s just that I'm just not certain that Lear's solution is sophisticated enough to meet the challenge of reforming our devastated world.
May 22, 2023
Extremely thoughtful and clear elaboration and critique of Freudian psychoanalysis. Lear uses philosophy, mostly drawing on Aristotle and a bit of Wittgenstein and occasionally referencing contemporary American philosophers, but through an analysis of the meaning of Freud's work. I think he draws out the main ideas with extreme lucidity and makes important and generally correct amendments and updates and reinterpretations. Super helpful as a clinician and someone interested in philsophy, life and the mind.
July 23, 2025
Don't quite buy the Freud needs Aristotle's theory of emotions argument, but as always with Lear its lucid engaging prose on matters of philosophical importance to any reflective person.
December 11, 2007
If you can get through the philosophical nature of the writing, this is a very powerful book about what our minds are like. How our unconscious minds will always endow our lives and events with secret meanings that have a powerful effect on our lives without our ever knowing it. This is companion book to _Relationality_, and _The Mindbody Prescription_.
August 4, 2014
This book provided insight into Freud's work and the fundamental connection between psychoanalysis and philosophy. I particularly enjoyed the passages on love, but while this book is worthwhile for one interesting read, I don't think I'll find myself picking it up again.
August 25, 2009
What I could understand was awesome.
September 23, 2012
Scholarly but dense; the arguments often get repetitive and convoluted. It would be more elucidating with a slower and more approachable style.
April 29, 2018
Let me say this: I am decidedly not a Freudian. I still loved Lear's take on Freud, even when he was too charitable to Freud as an analyst. Despite being assigned only a couple of chapters for a class, I enjoyed it so much I went ahead and took the whole book out from the library.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews