It is high time, therefore, that the subject of love be reviewed from an impartial angle, from a purely scientific point of view.
Only one science is qualified to undertake that review, psychoanalysis, for it has effected in the last twenty years a synthesis of all the data which biology, neurology, endocrinology and other sciences have contributed to the knowledge of human psychology and of the human personality.
No scientist is satisfied with his findings unless they can be described in terms of accurate measurements, hence, repeated and checked up by any other scientist having acquired the requisite minimum of technical skill.
The basis for such a study of love was established by the great pioneer in the science of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud of Vienna.
By his masterly analysis of the sex life, to which, however, he has ascribed an undue importance, he has stripped love of many veils which made it look like a scarecrow. His successors, recognizing the importance of other factors in the love life, ego cravings, organic predispositions, etc., have in turn stripped love of other veils which made it look too romantically unreal.
Thus we are gradually reaching the heart of the problem.
Love to-day is no longer animal love, nor is it as yet angelic love. We are no longer beasts, altho the primal beast still disports itself in our unconscious. Nor are we angels, arduous as our striving toward the stars may be. To determine what love should be, could be or might be, seems to be an academic waste of time and little else.
To determine, on the other hand, what love REALLY IS AT THE PRESENT DAY, what actual level it has reached, to explain some of the difficulties it encounters in trying to remain on that level, and finally to suggest to MEN AND WOMEN OF TO-DAY workable modes of adaption at that level, shall be the mission of this book.
In the coming chapters, I will show that our choice of a mate is as completely "determined" as any other biological phenomenon; that the "reasons" for that choice are compelling "habits" acquired in our childhood and infancy within the family circle; that our "standards of beauty" are memories from childhood and infancy; that in our search for a mate we are influenced as powerfully by ego and safety cravings as by sex cravings that the so-called "perversions" are due, at times, to wrong training, at times, to organic disabilities and at times to unrecognized safety cravings; that jealousy is, in the majority of cases, due to ego cravings, not to sex cravings; finally that no perfect adjustment of the married relation can be brought about until democracy obtains in the home, replacing the various forms of autocracy against which bullied wives and henpecked husbands have directed many ineffective, neurotic revolts.
New York City