Theodor Reik - Love and Lust: On the Psychoanalysis of Romantic and Sexual Emotions

This book made available by the Internet Archive.

Publisher's Preface

Of Love and Lust is the second of a series of volumes of selections from Theodor Reik's works, of which The Search Within; The Inner Experiences of a Psychoanalyst, was the first. The Search Within was a synthesis of his personal life, his training, practice and the development of his philosophy. In this new volume he is concerned with the love life and the sexual life of men and women. It is not only a discussion of the differences in attitude toward love and sex but toward many aspects of the cultural pattern of today. "Only the brave can struggle to love," he writes. This particular volume contains only material written since 1943; not more than a third of it has ever been published in book form; much of it was written within the last year and is appearing here for the first time.

Our publishing relation has been close since Dr. Reik arrivedl in the United States as a refugee in 1938. He did not wish to edit these books himself and has asked me to do so and to explain them briefly.

Part One of this volume is taken from one of his most successful books, A Psychologist Looks at Love, out of print now for some years. It shows his departure from his master, Freud's, theories and from those of most of his contemporaries in psychology and psychoanalysis. "The sex urge," he maintains, "hunts for Itistful pleasure; love is in search of joy and happiness."

Part Two is from Reik's great contribution to psychological literature. Masochism in Modern Man. In using less than half the book, I have attempted to keep those parts which have a direct bearing on the subject of this particular book and also the core of Reik's new contributions to his subject. Much of his comparison with Freud's theories has been eliminated as have his

chapters on social, religious and cultural aspects of masochism. However, the phenomena and dynamics of masochism are here as well as their relation to femininity. The summing up of Reik's theory is contained in the chapter Victory Through Defeat.

Part Three, "The Unmarried," consists of two essays, written for the symposium Why Are You Single, edited by Hilda Holland. Reik speaks plainly, as always, of the marriage shyness of the male and the psychological fears and resistances of both men and women to an acceptance of the marriage bond.

Part Four, "The Emotional Differences of the Sexes," is the new and unpublished material. There are some forty-nine sections, some of them are long essays, some trenchant, short, almost anecdotal ones. He asks, "Why shouldn't we know how the other half of the world feels?" and he adds, "In our civilization, men are afraid that they will not be men enough and women are afraid that they might be considered only women." He tries to probe into the secret ways in which men and women search for happiness. The material is clear, brisk, often startling. It is filled with examples from shrewdly observed case histories. His material varies from frank comments on the emotional mechanisms of the sexual act to studies of the differences between men and women in manifold situations and in their fancied and real characteristics. He is often profound, but often satirical and witty as well. There are essays on Guilt Feelings, on Impotence, Jealousy, The Sexualization of Clothes, Homosexuality, Man and Money, Wit, Children. He writes of all this with sympathy and understanding, not hesitating to agree or disagree with other authorities. It is Reik in his mellowest mood, but uncompromising as always.

John Farrar

Author's Note: Theme and Variations

MEPHisTO, IN Faust's scholar's costume, tells the student that all theory is gray while life's golden tree is green. There is Satanic truth in that color-contrast between theory and experiencea seductive half-truth. Only theory that does not grow from the soil of living experience is gray; only theory that originates in speculation is a hot-house plant. Wherever theory does not grow from this soil, it is not able to survive; it shrinks up and withers. Psychoanalytic theory has its deep roots in the mould of clinical practice and retains its earthy color. Freud's psychoanalytic theories are the result of a supreme achievement of synthetic intelligence combining the insights obtained through many years of analytic practice. They are, furthermore, in their best parts works of art. Yet there is nothing artificial in them. On the few occasions when he left the firm ground of the empirical, he soon became aware of his mistake and corrected it. He had learned to control an initial inclination to speculate and theorize. He tested again and again budding theories in his experience in daily analytic practice.

It is unforgettable that he admonished us, who were his students in Vienna, not to trust our theoretical knowledge, not to follow preconceived ideas, but always to approach the material of our practice with a mind open to new impressions and insights. He repeated: "You have to look again and again at things until they themselves begin to speak." Observation, tested over a long period of time self-critically, was for himand became for us who are his followersthe most important premise of research. He could then dismiss arguments against the validity of analytic theories because he knew how they were built on the firm ground of thousands of individual experiences. I still remember a meeting

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of the Viennese Psychoanalytic Society during which he made some remarks about a paper which doubted the scientific character of psychoanalysis because it cannot be verified by experiment as can other parts of psychology: "If the nature of a science were dependent on such proof through experiments, astronomy would not deserve the name of science. We are told that it is rather difficult to make experiments with the planets."

The following contributions present continuations of Freud's research and they follow the methods of his investigation which I learned from him, from his example and his words. The model of his way of working was especially important to me in building the theories on masochism to be found in this book. Material observed in many years of analytic practice, patiently passed through the sieve of new experiences, was the foundation on which that theory was built.

The three parts in which the following selections appear are independent of each other and were conceived and written at different times. Yet they are connected by an invisible thread. They try to probe into secret ways in which men and women search for happiness.