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Chief physician and psychiatrist at Stavanger University Hospital in Norway, Jon Morgan Stokkeland asks some of life’s big questions in his doctoral thesis: “Why are we afraid of love?” and “What makes it difficult to give and receive?” The thesis, accepted for the doctoral degree at the University of Tromsø in 2013, attempts to answer these questions. The author of this review had the privilege of being one of the opponents at the thesis defense – in the company of Uffe Juhl Jensen, Aarhus University, Finn Skårderud, Oslo University, and Asle Hegmo, Tromsø University.
The thesis comprises four sections and a total of 334 pages. Parts 1 and 2 provide a thorough review of and reflection on the psychoanalytic authorship of Bion and Klein. Part 3 is a contribution to a phenomenological anthropology and an effort to position the philosophy of the science of psychoanalysis. Part 4 is about the authorship of psychoanalyst Donald Meltzer. Here Stokkeland assumes the concept of “the aesthetic conflict” as he reflects upon and provides answers to the questions that are the point of departure for his thesis. Thus, it is a thesis that mainly uses psychoanalytical theories to answer the questions “why are we afraid of love?” and “what makes it difficult to give and receive?”, but also relates to the topic on a general level by using phenomenological and hermeneutically oriented philosophers, contrasting them with psychoanalytical thinking.
Stokkeland motivates his choice of method with reference to Aristotle’s claim that in science you have to adjust the method to the object of research rather than the other way around. How do you examine concepts such as “love” and “hate”? The basic theory of the thesis is that empirical research cannot comprehend these phenomena. As Stokkeland expresses it, “They can neither be weighed, measured nor counted.” Only through the psychoanalytical method can you examine the very personal experience of the individual and interpret general human and u