Where Do We Fall when We Fall in Love?

Elisabeth Young-Bruehl

Other Press, 2003 - Psychology - 339 pages

Where do we fall when we fall in love? For psychoanalysts this is a difficult question to answer.
What are the differences between narcissistic love and affectionate love? What are the contrasts between sexual instinctual relations and ego relations? Are all human beings by nature bisexual? How did one type of female homosexual end up the only type in psychoanalytic literature?
These are some of the subjects that Elisabeth Young-Bruehl explores in her upcoming collection of essays. She traces the mystery of love to its sources, bringing her expertise as a philosopher and a writer to focus on the subject from a psychoanalytic perspective.
In these new writings, many of them publsihed for the first time in this volume, the author reconceptualizes psychoanalytical theory of instinctual drives and object relations. Among a wide range of issues, she considers sexual identity and gender theory along with character theory.

About the author

Elisabeth Young-Bruehl was born in Elkton, Maryland on March 3, 1946. She received bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in philosophy from the New School for Social Research in New York. She later trained as a psychoanalyst. She taught for many years at Wesleyan University and Haverford College. She wrote numerous books including Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World, Anna Freud: A Biography, Mind and the Body Politic, Why Arendt Matters, The Anatomy of Prejudices, and Childism: Confronting Prejudice Against Children. She died of pulmonary embolism on December 1, 2011 at the age of 65.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Where Do We Fall when We Fall in Love?
• Author: Elisabeth Young-Bruehl
• Publisher: Other Press, 2003
• ISBN: 1590510682, 9781590510681
• Length: 339 pages
• Subjects: Psychology / Developmental / General