The Psychology of Love1
One of the most important human emotions is love.
However ,there are many different kinds of love.
Romantic love is certainly one of the most interesting kinds of love.
It can be beautiful,wonderful and heartbreaking,sometimes all at the same time.
Romantic love can make our lives full and meaningful,but it can also be an escape from loneliness and suffering.
If romantic love has a purpose,neither psychology nor biology has discovered it.
However,throughout history,philosophers have offered opinions about it.
The Greek philosopher,Plato,said love makes us complete .
He relates a comic story in which humans originally had 4 arms,4 legs and 2 faces.
Then,when they angered the gods,they were cut in half.
Since then,every person has been searching for their soulmate,the other half of his or her self.
Another philosopher believed that love is an illusion.
In his view,people fall in love because they believe the other person can make them happy.
But in fact,this is just an illusion designed to make us have children.
Once we have children,we are right back to where we were,still searching for happiness.
For nature,this is a success,because we have children to maintain our species.
But it leaves us still searching for something more.
(If something is an illusion,it isn't what it seems to be.)
In Buddhism,romantic love is seen as an attempt to satisfy our desires.
These desires are a deffect something we need to overcome.
The way to free ourselves from suffering is to remove desires.
Once free of desires,we can reach a state of peace and wisdom.
This state of being is called nirvana.
(Other kinds of love include the love between a parent and child.)
The psychology of Love2
In one of Chinese greatest classical novles,Dream of the Red chamber,love is presented as a state of foolishness.
A young man falls in love with a beautiful woman who tricks and makes a fool of him.
This results in conflicting emotions of love and hate which tear him apart.
To cure him,a priest gives him a magic mirror.
The priest tells him to look into the reverse side of the mirror but never to look in the front side.
When the young man looks into the mirror,he doesn't like what he sees so he looks into the forbidden side the front side.
There he sees the lovely imge of his love who invites him into the mirror to be with her.
He does this servel times until he is finally dragged away in chains.
He dies while look into the mirror.
Perhaps the point of the story is that all such attachments should be avoided.
(He enters the mirror to be with his love and satisfy his desires.
The way to free ourselves from suffering is to remove desires.
He is dragged away in chains and dies while looking into the mirror.)
A famous French writer,Simone de Beauvoir has another point of view.
For her,love is the desire to integreat with another,like in a great friendship.
However,it is important that lovers not become too dependent on the other person.
Becoming dependent on the another person can lead to boredom or power games.
Lover should support each other in discovering themselves and developing their potentials.
In this way,romantic love can enrich the world.
Falling in love can be exciting and frightening.
Maybe we lose ourselves and maybe we find ourselves.
Will you dare to find out?
