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Anna and Sigmund Freud were both pet owners. And while their respective personal experience with their dogs helped them become aware of what Freud called a “pure love” relationship (Brill, 1943; Heiman, 1956; Levinson, 1969; Rappaport, 1968; Sanford, 1966; Sherick, 1981; Volkan & Kavanaugh, 1978) between a pet and its companion, in the analytic literature, there is a subtle tendency to diminish the importance of human—pet relationships and accent the pathology of pet attachment. In fact, psychoanalytic writing leaves unexplained the quality of shared psychic environment between animals and humans. In this article I investigate some of the fundamentals of that relationship and its adaptive function.
A pet attends to and interacts with its human companion by noncognitive and nondiscursive communication. A pet readily shares the sensorimotor-emotive world of its human companions though its sensory acuity is quite different. It conveys meanings by actions, touches with its body, never matures in a human sense, yet grows old and dies. Pets apprehend and respond to gesture, verbal emotional tone, expressions of emotion, and sense the presence of separation, death, and loss. They often bond to their owners and become emotionally and responsively fixed on their owner/companion through sight, sound, and smell. Historically, pets practically earned their keep and were chosen for particular functions, primarily hunting and guarding. Although complex urbanization and social isolation do limit the choice of a pet, now they are more likely chosen for the satisfaction they may provide for their owners.
Pets are seemingly available for a variety of psychological