Two Kinds of Romantic Love

On the subject of romantic love psychologists for the most part have been singularly reticent. Indeed, it may be said that our knowledge of the subject has been contributed by a few pioneers. The assumption is made—though with little basis in fact—that when we approach the subject of love we must defer to the creative writers. The novelists and the poets, especially those in the romantic tradition, are held to be the ultimate authorities. In fact, the great writers, far from being authorities on the subject, have been the creators and perpetuators of a mythology of love. Romantic love as portrayed by them is a spurious semblance with certain clearly defined characteristics which have changed but little since the Middle Ages when the Romance literature first appeared. This specious form of love is always impeded and impassioned, intense and frustrated. The author would have us believe—as he himself believes—that lovers are forever trying to overcome obstacles that prevent their coming together and that were it not for the impediments created by a hostile world, the lovers would freely enjoy the fulfilment of their love. This is the myth that the reader has to accept and to that end the elaboration of the plot, the felicities of the language, the apparent striving of the lovers to be united, serve to disguise the fact that what the lovers seek is suffering for suffering's sake.

In the Christian religion, with its apparent glorification of love, the Passion of the Cross is the central fact; and in the romantic tradition the fact that the passion of the lovers is disguised as thwarted love should not blind us to the deeper truth that it is suffering that is glorified. The first sentence of Tristram and Iseult, for example, announces a 'high tale of love and of death and how at last they died of that love together on one day; she by him and he by her', and the last sentence is