Women in Love in the '80s

In the foreword to Female Sexuality: New Psychoanalytic Views (Chassequet-Smirgel, 1970), Frederick Wyatt comments that while psychoanalysis has provided us with a systematic theory of sexual development, it has “had less to say about love.” He contends that

there is no principal reason why love cannot be understood within the scope of psychoanalysis. What psychoanalysts will then have to say about it may still not be as uncannily perceptive as poets and writers so often have been: but by proceeding more systematically, psychoanalysis might give us at least a more comprehensive and steady understanding of the subject than we have had so far. (p. v)

Thus it seemed hopeful, even reasonable, to try to write about women in love in the ′80s. This effort has shown me that love remains an elusive topic. What follows are thoughts that came to mind in an effort to present this topic to the West Coast Meeting of the Academy in February of 1988.

Surveys of college students concerning their romantic aspirations suggest that the old gender differences endure—men place a priority on the appearance of a future spouse while women look for intelligence and affection. Men can afford to be romantic; women need to be more practical about mate selection, especially if they intend to raise a family. Peplau and Gordon (1985), in examining these student surveys, found that in mixed-sex friendships women were more likely to reveal their weaknesses, but conceal their strengths, while men were more likely to reveal their strengths, but conceal their weaknesses. So what's new in the ′80s? Certainly not that! In fact, these social psychology surveys find much that confirms Jessie Bernard's (1972) notion that in every marriage, or relationship between a man and a woman, there are