The Nature Of Love By Roger Hock

Harry Harlow’s main focus in his research was to understand the human behavior of love and relationships and how it intertwined as a humanistic need. His experiments were performed in his “Primate

Love is unique in its striking ability to be a driving force in dictating interpersonal relationships. It patterns behavior and orients individuals towards their distinct, unique attractions. According to Velleman, love penetrates deeper than one’s qualities; it extends to one’s rational will, or the essence of a person. To him, though love appears to have particularity, it is also a moral emotion. Kolodny subscribes to the relationship theory, asserting that an ongoing, interpersonal, and historical relationship with a relative is a part of the reason for love. In Kolodny’s view, the existence of the true self is irrelevant, as is the morality of love. Both Velleman and Kolodny disprove the quality theory; however, their perceptions of love and its morality differ. I believe that Kolodny is correct in his view that morality is irrelevant to love and that there must be factual reasons for love. Although it is enticing to believe that one is attracted to the essence of another, the essence is not motivation enough for love. The relationship theory takes into account the motivation needed to love a particular person from a historical, interpersonal, and ongoing perspective.

In the movie Casablanca, directed by Michael Curtiz, two different kinds of love are exposed. The love relationship between Ilsa Lund and Rick is a more passionate relationship while the one between Ilsa and Victor Laszlo is more intimate. Love is composed of different feelings and because of that it can be expressed, as seen in Casablanca, in different ways. “The Intimate Relationship Mind”, a text by Garth J. O. Fletcher and Megan Stenswick, helps support that claim providing a scientific background on how love is shaped by those different feelings. It says that “love is composed of three distinct and basic components that each represent evolved adaptations; namely, intimacy, commitment,

In “The Cheater’s Guide to Love”, Junot Díaz presents a story about love that goes sour after the primary character, Yunior’s infidelity is discovered. But beyond just an emotionally bleak story, Díaz also uses the background of a love story gone bad to explore issues of race through Yunior’s narrative style, second-person point of view, and the characterization of the various women Yunior meets.

“Discovering Love” is an article about the definition of love and the different aspects, such as how it works and where you get it. Developmental psychologist Harry Harlow is the main contributor to this study. Harlow was particularly interested in how early life experiences, specifically interaction with one’s mother or primary caregiver, impact an individual’s ability to love and be loved by others later in life.

The human idea of love is quite possibly the most misunderstood in today’s society. Love can be between a man and woman, mother/father and their kids, or even really good friends. However, these relationships of love go through many interactions and stages to start and progress. Many psychological events must occur and be worked through in order to be successful. All relationships must endure the five perspectives of human behavior. These perspectives are biological, learning, social and cultural, cognitive, and psychodynamic influences.

Harry Harlow’s thorough research on the connection between maternal comfort and rhesus monkeys provides information and knowledge to the reader as an insight into our social and emotional development. In this article, Harlow uses experimental observation of mental and emotional associations of the affectionate ties between the child and the mother. As Harlow says, this is “an instinct incapable of analysis”.

Harry Frederick Harlow was probably best known for his experimentations on monkeys to discover the effect of maternal-separation, what exactly were the dependency needs on a living being, and experiments in social isolation for the subject. His research showed the rest of society the importance of companionship and caregiving to social as well as cognitive development. Speculators believe that part of the reason Harlow was so obsessed with these kinds of studies was because he didn’t have a very good childhood himself. Even at an early age, he claimed to struggle with depression. His mother and father weren’t extremely involved in his life as well. This possibly led him to gain so much interest in the study of essentially love and how it effected other people that you may be close with.

Hazan and Shaver (1987) proposed the theory that ”Romantic love is an attachment process.” (Hazan & Shaver, 1987), which the individual will experience differently depending on the attachment history that has been formed by the internal working models based on the social interaction with caretaker as an infant. According to Bowlby, these internal working models are essential for attachment patterns throughout life from childhood till adult love relationships (Fraley, 2010).

By showing the devastating effects of deprivation on young monkeys, Harlow revealed the importance of a caregiver's love for healthy childhood development. Many of the existing theories of love centered on the idea that the earliest attachment between a mother and child was merely a means for the child to obtain food, relieve thirst, and avoid pain. Harlow, however, believed that this behavioral view of mother-child attachments was an inadequate explanation.

While people are often able to identify when they feel the emotion love, love itself seems to defy definition.  In her polemic “Against Love”, Laura Kipnis argues that love cannot exist as traditional expressions of love such as marriage, monogamy, and mutuality.  However, in her argument, she defines love incorrectly by equating love to expressions of love. This definition lacks a component essential to understanding the abstract concept of love: emotion. Recognizing love as emotion helps us realize that, contrary to Kipnis’ argument love by nature transcends all expressions of love. Love is subjective and exists in any and all forms. In her argument that love cannot survive as conventional expressions of love, Kipnis ignores the nature of love as emotion in favor of equating love to different expressions of love. Love is a force which exists above expressions of love; a true understanding of love can only come from an assessment of how individuals, not societies, respond to the emotion.

The primal importance of a child's bond to its mother has captivated people for thousands of years, written about by ancient playwrights like Sophocles, modern day writers like Esther Freud and current day proprietors such as Oprah Winfrey. It is a topic that continues to draw attention with psychologists and researchers devoting time, research and suppositions to understanding it and the importance it holds in the development of offspring. It is well established that children require a consistent and dependable

Finding the Love of Your Life was written by Neil Clark Warren, PH.D., and in this book he explains his ten basic principles of finding the right mate to spend your life with. He teaches people how to understand the two different types of love: passionate love and companionate love. He states that many do not get past the passionate love portion which is why many people go from relationship to relationship when the passion wears off.

Love and affection are crucial components to the growth and development of all children. The feeling of love and affection are important because it fulfills the fundamental emotional needs of human beings. If a minor lacks the essential amount of care, also known as neglect it could hinder the child from his or her full potential; whereas a child given a greater amount of love will evolve more. The aforementioned proves that the amount of parental affection that is given off to their offspring can affect the child’s present and future life, as well as the environment of their potential children.

The research literature in psychology is rich with studies on the effect of parenting styles on the child (Tan, 1989). But with the subject “love” research are very few and countable, and same theories and theorists are always being cited everytime the topic is about love.