Can
Love Last? The Fate of Romance Over Time by Stephen
A. Mitchell (2003; W.W. Norton & Company)
Although Stephen Mitchell, the prominent psychoanalyst and
prolific writer who died in 2000, provides no definitive answer
to the question his book raises, Can Love Last? The
Fate of Romance Over Time offers an intriguing, readable
account of the significant tensions (love vs. desire; relationship
vs. passion) inherent in intimate relationships affecting
their quality and ultimate fate.
Tracing the
development of ideas about romantic love, sexuality, and
the search for intimacy from Freud to more contemporary
psychoanalytic theorists, Mitchell portrays the interpersonal
and intrapsychic complexities of erotic connection. For
Mitchell, relationships with others reflect personal fantasies,
“self- and other-constructions” as well as psychic
“narratives” which are repeated, often unwittingly,
again and again. In our search for love, each of us is faced
with numerous idealizations and illusions, both of ourselves
and others, which we must acknowledge in order to overcome.
Mitchell’s
writing is remarkable in its ability to organize complex
dilemmas of erotic love with telescopic clarity; for example,
he writes, “Many men and women of our time experience
both deeply affectionate love and intensely passionate desire,
but often not at the same time, not in relation to the same
other person. Yet romance requires both love and desire;
in fact, romance emerges in the tension generated by the
simultaneity of love and desire” (p. 34).
Mitchell elaborates
on the challenges present in attempting to maintain these
simultaneous experiences when in love. He highlights a range
of paradoxical and often conflictual relational states including
safety/habituation (“what is known”) vs. the wish
for the unknown/unpredictable. Mitchell’s discussion
of how persons often choose new lovers who are viewed as
“antidotes to the problems of prior relationships”
and who may also possess disavowed characteristics of their
own selves is particularly notable.
In the end,
Mitchell never seems to resolve the fundamental “tension
between reality and fantasy” he sees at the core of
the romantic bond. He appears to view this tension as the
necessary circumstance for the occurrence of passion, but
he also acknowledges its potential for becoming passion’s
nemesis. His characterization of these tensions offers individuals
and couples a sympathetic account of the struggles common
in romantic relationships. A “solution” to these
dilemmas seems untenable, but Mitchell has put words to
enduring tensions that may help some more readily accept
and explore the presence of these issues in their own relationships.
