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Otto Kernberg is both one of the most creative thinkers in psychoanalysis and one of the most scholarly. In my view all of his written work is of the utmost importance and should be read by every practicing psychoanalyst as soon as it is published. His latest book, Love Relations: Normality and Pathology, is no exception.
Kernberg says in the Preface that his intention has been to address the nature of love (by which he means that of the romantic, erotic variety between adult couples, usually a man and a woman), a topic on which psychoanalysis has been remarkably silent. In the course of doing so, he found himself dealing in depth with aggression as well. Any thoughtful reader of the analytic literature realizes the truth of the observation that our field has had little to say about love, although much has been written about the components of it, such as libido and attachment. Thus, this serious effort to address an area of deficit in psychoanalytic thought is much appreciated.
The book begins with four chapters entitled “The Sexual Experience,” “Sexual Excitement and Erotic Desire,” “Mature Sexual Love,” and “Love, Oedipus and the Couple.” These endeavor to incorporate facts learned about physical aspects of sexual development from embryology with observations made by behaviorists working in the field of sex and gender (such as Money and Ehrhardt) with a psychoanalytic theory of object relations, which has a place for passionate love. Kernberg sees sexual excitement, erotic desire, and mature sexual love as on a developmental continuum of increasing emotional maturity. There are gaps in the theory he presents. For instance, he does not attempt to address passionate love in same-sex couples, nor does he address in much detail the meaning of atypical sexual practices or behaviors in heterosexual couples. From time to time, he accepts as true statements made by Freud (e.g., the universality of bisexual tendencies), which I think still belong in the realm of belief rathe