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Love is a simultaneous attempt to refind something old and to find something totally new. It is the balance between the creation of and bestowal of value upon the object (all love relations involve the attribution, i.e., projection, of qualities to the other that are created by the subject), and appraisal and acknowledgement of “the real, distinct attributes of the object” (Roos 2008, p. 84),
When attempted love leads to a happy result, this integrates the bliss from the much longed-for state of primary love (before separation and individuation), mirrors the self in the beloved, re-finds the early (preoedipal and oedipal) love object, simultaneously with that of later developmental phases, improves old love by finding something new (greatly missed but consciously never met before), and repairs the internal, damaged object by confronting and working through guilt feelings.
This is the answer Esa Roos gives to the ambitious questions posed at the beginning of his paper: “What makes love happy or unhappy?”. Love, in his view, is essentially integrative work, reparation of the object at the same time as it is an opportunity to find and appreciate something totally new.
In his paper, Esa Roos brings up many of the pitfalls related to the past developmental history that stand in the way of the achievement of happy love as well as to problems and dilemmas we observe that our patients struggle with, and which we also know ourselves from our attempts to attain what we call happiness in relation to another person.
Not surprisingly for an analyst, Roos has more to say about what may go wrong than how things may go right, and it seems that even though love can be described as a blissful state, it does involve hard work to succeed. His views are solidly situated in a romantic tradition: consummated love leads to happiness and bliss. The establishment of a relationship based on love and sensuous attraction is, however, relatively new in our history and may in many places in the world