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In the first part of his book, Tor-Björn Hägglund examines the genesis and metamorphosis of love in the course of various developments of the human life cycle, the experience of time and timelessness, the depth of psychoanalysis, its fictive language and the psychoanalysis of the adolescent. In the second part, he peruses images of art and science, psychic processes of aging and the background of the essayist.
The author ponders intensively and in detail on the essence of love, and how to define it. He is a seeker who states that “protection against destruction implies opening doors to questioning, doubts and critique”. In this way, discoveries are made possible. The seeker has noticed that “only a thin, transparent veil of culture covers the archaic human being”, and that selfishness looms beyond love, but that we, notwithstanding, pin our hopes on it. He answers the question about the nature of love by maintaining that love is the driving force of life. In love, I exist on my own and the other exists as a person in his or her own right.
“The connecting thought of the book is that “the value of love is weighed in one pan of scales and the social values in the other. Sometimes they counterbalance each other, and sometimes they increase the value of the other”. Hägglund refers to Fenichel who maintains that “we can speak about love only when the consideration of the other prevails to such an extent that it is not possible to fulfil one's own satisfaction without paying attention to the satisfaction of the other”. Hägglund continues: “Although the current psychoanalytical view of love claims that narcissistic love and love for the object are not necessarily in opposition, they can still compete with each other.”
Hägglund states that “life comes into existence through the touch of love. Two partners have been drawn together and revealed themselves to each other”. He underlines that “the multifaceted love has to be approached as a shifting and changing part of the total pe