On Falling in Love and Creativity

In his paper entitled, “On Falling in Love and Creativity,” Richard D. Chessick discussed the ego functioning and self-psychological aspects of falling in love and passionate love. He stated that these phenomena are universal and extraordinary. They may be conceptualized as representing the activity of the creative imagination in solving problems related to coping with intense narcissistic and libidinal pressures. He reviewed the works of authors including Freud, Bededek, Viederman, and Landauer and recast their work into a metapsychological framework involving ego and superego contributions to the experience and focusing on self cohesion. Chessick asserted that the phenomenon of falling in love only becomes intelligible when one views it as motivated by libidinal energies and narcissistic disequilibrium and molded into a compromise that is consistent with the historical and cultural horizons of the individual. This is true even if one emphasizes the “oceanic feeling” or altered consciousness in requited passionate love. He cited Werman who argued that such experiences in the adult cannot be simple replays of an infantile experience, but instead represent “a complex phenomenon that derives from all aspects of the psyche, including the subject's value system and the influences of his culture.” Chessick said that with our self-psychological understanding of the problems in maintaining narcissistic equilibrium, the extreme exaltation accompanying requited passionate love is no longer a mysterious or quasi-psychotic phenomenon. It can be interpreted instead using Freud's concept of rapid gratification of long damned-up infantile wishes, or at least the illusion of such gratification. Requited love, in addition, is associated with a joyful sense of self cohesion. Chessick states that the mystery of falling in love lies only in the debate about the relationship between passionate love and death.

In his discussion of Chessick's paper, Carl Rotenberg focused his comments on