Love: psychology of a phenomenon

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Love: Psychology of a Phenomenon is a non-fiction book by the German psychologist Peter Lauster . The bestseller reached a circulation of more than one million copies and, as a paperback, topped the bestseller lists for 15 years. The first edition was published by Econ Verlag in 1980 . The 39th edition was published in 2009 as a rororo non-fiction book by Rowohlt Verlag . Rowohlt published a new edition in 2006; special editions were also published. In 1995 the Rowohlt paperback edition had a circulation of 750,000. Copies.

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Lauster precedes his book with two quotes, one from Ingeborg Bachmann (" Lieben - Liebe, that 's it. Love is everything ") and a poem by Albert Ehrenstein , which says "The lover dusts the moon / a gentle light / milk mild Sea". In the preface he explains that he has been working on clarifying the phenomenon for more than twenty years. His book is a "declaration of love to love and life". The book is divided into three parts; the first part deals with the “Nine Myths of Love”, part two deals with “What happens to love”, the third part is entitled “The meaning of life lies in the art of loving”.

The nine myths of love

Love is a psychological phenomenon and is therefore extremely difficult to access to the specific scientific research methods known today. It opens up to us through the experience and we should have the courage to stand by our subjective experiences, because the subjective is the basis of our personal experience. The majority of people are inhibited and blocked in the development of their ability to love. The secret of love is mental alertness and freedom. The secret of alertness and freedom is again courage. Therefore we have to be brave to be happy; because love is the way to happiness, contentment, health and wisdom. One cannot investigate love empirically or experimentally. It cannot be measured, tested or quantified and calculated in computers. You have to think about love, you have to experience it and write about it descriptively. Love belongs to the field of soul research. Psychologists are repeatedly forced to deal with the topic of love. As a consulting psychologist, one tries to help others cope better with their psyche. One tries to reduce fears, to convey inner calm, to generate courage to live. All questions from patients revolve around the topic of mental well-being and ultimately the topic of love.

1) "Sexuality makes you free"

Sexuality and love are two processes that belong together, but which must not be confused with one another. Both can be experienced independently of one another. Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, attributed great importance to mental health to the development and liberation of the sexual drive energy. Even a child goes through sexual phases, the oral, anal and genital phases. These phases are important for the later sex life of the adult. Building on Freud, Wilhelm Reich focused on the function of sexuality for the development of mental disorders. According to Reich, the derivation of sexual arousal energy through orgasm is a prerequisite for physical and psychological well-being, whereas the pent-up excitement leads to states of tension, general and specific muscle cramps, emotional tension and frustration reactions. Both Freud and Reich provided important prerequisites for the liberation (recognition) of sexuality, so that after the Second World War the liberalization process could progress steadily. Pornographic images are allowed today. Young couples can find an apartment and live together without a marriage certificate. Homosexuality is no longer punishable. Liberated sexuality also liberates society. Today sexuality has reached a dominance before love, so that the separation between love and sexuality, but also the meaning of their commonality, are no longer properly seen. Sexuality is taken so seriously that it is often confused with love and that it is believed that a sexual experience is the prerequisite for love. The boundaries are often blurred, so that the individual no longer knows whether he loves or not. Sexuality is consumed. The consumer mentality is an inner bondage because it evokes compulsive and addicting behavior. Sexual consumption does not indicate freedom and does not lead to internal liberation, but builds up where physical and mental tension is reduced, elsewhere new mental tension of unfulfilledness and dissatisfaction.

2) "Sex problems solved - all problems solved"

Anyone who has experienced or is experiencing a satisfactory sexual relationship knows that, of course, not all problems are solved. A satisfactory sex life is an important thing, but the psyche and human life are more complicated. In order to solve all problems, love has to be added, but not only love for a special sexual partner, but general love, an unfolding of the entire psychological ability to love. Sexuality is a biological function; it imposes itself. It is an urge that we have to learn to deal with. Sex problems cannot be solved without love. Only love creates the prerequisites for sexuality to gain in beauty, clarity and spiritual joy. Sexuality without love is stale and empty, it tends to make you melancholy and depressive than dynamic and active. Rather, it should read “love problems solved - all problems solved”, then you could agree.

3) "The orgasm is the goal of love"

The orgasm is the discharge of the drive energy. The goal is the biological task of reproduction. The feelings of pleasure are a trick of nature, so that the preservation of your own species is not a chore, but a pleasure. The orgasm experienced with pleasure and satisfaction is the best guarantee that it will be repeated and that the human species will not die out. The orgasm is therefore the goal of sexuality, the task of which is to preserve the species. These physical processes are not tied to love. But if love is added, so much the better, because then the sexual experience becomes more beautiful. Love finds its satisfaction in every form of emotional and physical affection. This creates a feeling of happiness. The overall sexual experience with a partner who is not loved is perceived as less satisfying than with a loved one. But love has a broader function than sexuality. Love is a general principle that can be added to all experience processes. All life processes take place even without love. And most people live functionally in this way in everyday life, without the addition of love for others and themselves. Many even live with the addition of hatred and contempt - to choose these two terms as the opposite of love. A life without love, even with hate, is possible and widespread. Orgasm is also possible if you hate your sexual partner; so surely does sexuality function in the service of species conservation.

With the description of the first three myths about love it became clear that love and sexuality can, but do not have to, connect. The detachment of love from sexuality is the prerequisite for a further understanding of love (as a psychological phenomenon).

4) "Technology is important for a satisfying sexuality"

It is a widespread misconception among men that the mastery of certain position or stimulation techniques to increase pleasure could satisfy the partner in a particularly lasting way. They believe that this would make their wife “sexually bonded”. This "sexual bondage" is actually only a bond to the personality and authority of the partner. It is a form of passionate love combined with a willingness to submit and a belief in authority; a tendency towards masochism also plays a role here. This state of "sexual bondage" is nothing to strive for for either partner, because dependency should not be the goal of a relationship. Addiction always brings suffering, pain, grief, and fear. The dependency of a woman is initially a strengthening sensation for a weak self-esteem, but the interest quickly wanes when the self-esteem deficit has received its flattery units. The built-up bondage then becomes a jaded habit and gradually a nuisance. By learning sexual techniques, sexuality is also degraded to a physical gymnastics exercise. If you concentrate on the technology, the mind sets in and feelings of affection, warmth, love, security, admiration, respect combined with compassion, devotion and self-surrender are pushed away or even switched off. Technology can never maintain or even create love! In addition, the use of such practiced techniques creates routine, habit, banality and boredom. Nothing creative can develop.

The most important thing is to love everything that has to do with one's own body and that of others, to have a spontaneously positive relationship to body sensations and to the other body, naturally combined with love for one's individuality, one's personality, one's uniqueness, then results the creative joy from every single perception and sensation of itself.

5) "Love in youth is different than in old age"

In principle, being in love and love are not linked to any age. Nevertheless, for many people love is different in youth than in old age, because in youth it is new and fresh, the ability to love begins to unfold, and in this time of new experiences love and sexuality are felt particularly strongly. For many, the intensity of the sensations is stronger in adolescence than with age, as most people live in a partnership in which love has become jaded and sexuality has become an uninteresting habit. The ability to love is the ability to positively perceive the outside world and oneself with alert senses. The love for the world, for sunshine and rain develops through the sensual experience. Unfortunately, everyday life dulls the senses more and more, because what counts are performance, objectivity, intellect, success. Feeling and emotions tend to be disturbing and are devalued and suppressed. Everything revolves around one's own status, money, consumption, competition, assets, security, raising children and the future. When the brain is full of this content, which is compulsively repeated every day, the sensitivity and the associated love for the perceptions are neglected and pushed aside. In this dullness, monotony and uniformity, people exhaust themselves, feel stressed and tired. People feel that they are losing their vitality more and more, that they are dying spiritually, that their ability to love is dying, and because of this they become bitter and increasingly hardened. That is why love is different in old age than in youth. The ability to love diminishes with the inability to perceive new and fresh with the senses. This is not a natural, inevitable aging process, but a question of lifestyle. The soul always remains young when it is meditative and sensitive.

6) "Great love lasts forever"

A life is happy when a person manages to develop his ability to love anew every day. With "great love", however, the love for a partner is meant, a particularly strong love which, because of this strength, lasts forever (that is, the whole life until death), can be subject to fluctuations, but can never be destroyed. According to this widespread view, “great love” is a fateful event that encounters people and that lasts forever because of its size and might. This is of course nonsense, because every person is responsible for his own love, both in terms of size (intensity) and duration. Love includes an ability that not everyone automatically possesses, but that is acquired in childhood and adolescence and can then become dull or develop further. To love is the ability to be awake and attentive to sensitive, with an open heart, with openness. Love is only possible when there is complete openness, when the senses are awake, when the soul is ready to feel, when I am vulnerable and receptive to the new of the day. Love is something that arises from the moment. And love cannot be possessed, because as soon as possessiveness is added, love is in the utmost danger. If you want to own, you can no longer look innocently and freely, your gaze is cramped and clouded, your senses lose their impartiality and receptivity. One should not want to own and not worry about the duration of love. If I am satisfied with the moment, then the moment can be repeated without my looking to repeat it. If I am not greedy, possessive, fearful and security-oriented, then love can develop anew every day. Openness, means exposing yourself to uncertainty, is vulnerability and is fresh every day. Anyone who looks at yesterday does not live sensitively in the present, his ability to love is interrupted, it has passed into thoughts of security, adherence, duty, loyalty, etc.

7) "Jealousy is part of love"

“Jealousy is something everyday” and we make life and love with her difficult. We consider jealousy to be a side effect of love with which one has to come to terms. Jealousy is the fear of losing what you love, i.e. not being loved anymore, because another person steps in and takes away my "love object" or even just part of it. One can even be jealous of one's partner’s hobby because it takes up the partner’s thinking and time, happiness that the jealous partner cannot always share. Jealousy is a selfish trait and an extreme fear of not being able to bind the partner to you enough. The partner feels overwhelmed, tied up and restricted in the development of his personality by the other's jealousy. When jealousy is only restricted to people of the opposite sex, it appears more normal because it is so widespread, but it is still a disorder of the ability to love. When I love, I feel a positive feeling of affection, tenderness, attention, mindfulness and also respect. At first I just want to love people, give them my love, so I don't want to own, change or limit them. First of all, love begins with my willingness to give and promote. Then the desire arises to receive and to be promoted oneself. If the wish is fulfilled and both partners give each other to understand that they love each other, most people have the ownership claim: "I love this person, he loves me, now he belongs to me and I to him." This creates jealousy and great emotional suffering for both of them. In our day and age, the possession of consumer goods is a matter of course, and the transfer to the love object also seems understandable, because every love comes down to the decision to marry, and this community is to a large extent an economic community in which common property is acquired and is managed. Love is most beautiful in its pure form when two people meet without thinking about property and only see themselves, i.e. do not consider themselves and the other as a commodity. We are goods on the personality market of love, we make ourselves beautiful, show off with status symbols to demonstrate our financial potential, etc. Jealousy is originally based on the child's fear of losing the love of the parents. It is the first fear that is also linked to material security thinking. Love wants to give love, encourage it, give tenderness, look carefully, have respect. Whoever wants to possess and is afraid will weaken his ability to love and lose everything.

8) "Love is an event of fate"

Belief in fate is closely linked to belief in "one partner". "I am looking for the one person who is meant for me, that is then great love." Love is not something that fatefully breaks in on people as an event that comes from outside, to which one would therefore be subject to no will. Love is always a matter of willingness. I have to be open and open-minded, accept the other person and be ready to possibly love them. If a person is capable of loving and is ready to love, then he can easily fall in love, and every falling in love initially has the same quality. The stage of being in love is always beautiful, heavenly, rose-colored glasses , floating on clouds, gorgeous. The evaluation only takes place later, when the sexual intimacy has taken place and you know more about each other. Then the mind sets in, which thinks about: social status, profession, world view, religion, philosophy of life, education, money, etc. Faithfulness is an irrefutable virtue. A good person has to be loyal - also a prejudice that is not tenable from a psychological point of view. A person who can love remains true to love, but for him it is more important to love than to be faithful. A loving person can love the same person again and again, but he does not understand why he should not be allowed to love other people at the same time. According to Lauster, loyalty is a pathological fixation that is purely economic in nature.

9) "Man can only experience one or at most two great loves"

Love should be something everyday. You can feel love for many people. A person who is capable of loving, i.e. who is open to love others, for whom there are no limits of any kind. Love overcomes all barriers of tradition, because love itself harbors the secret of fulfillment and happiness in life, everything else pales against it and becomes unimportant, of course also the virtue principle of loyalty. A person capable of loving lives to love. If there is only sexuality without love, then the relationship lacks beauty, shine, joy, deeply felt happiness, security, joie de vivre, the release of tension, the feeling of fulfillment and the beauty of life: it lacks meaning. The meaning is not the loyalty, the community, the future, the planning and fixation, but only the experience of love.

Love is ...

1) ... donation

Love is positive affection while hate is negative affection. You are in a state of love when you turn yourself to someone. Attention is attention, mindfulness and alertness towards others, but not a critical alertness in order to discover mistakes, but an interested, positive, understanding alertness. Attention, if it really happens without criticism, hatred or devaluation, is already the entry into a loving attitude. Attitudes towards care also refer to the trees, the weather, the birds, the clouds in the sky, talking to people, music, light and shadow, wind, smells in the air - everything that is happening at the moment. In this respect, the lovable person is not only a lover of people, but loves life in general. Loving affection is positive, life-affirming, it is an attitude that determines the joy of life. Only life-affirming affection leads to love, to love of people and the world. Children are even more capable of loving, over time we lose the ability to be attentive and open for the moment. We give affection without expecting it ourselves. Receiving it is a sequel that is beautiful and gives joy.

2) ... meditation

Meditation is by no means a minor matter, but a central matter that is important for every person who strives for psychological development. Love requires affection, openness, sensual perception, stillness of thought and readiness and ability for contemplation (immersion in oneself) and meditation; the understanding loses its meaning, it submits (without compulsion or pressure) to the moment of feeling, feeling and knowing. Meditation is the perception of one's environment in all beautiful details and in a long felt moment. For example, you can feel the sun on your face and enjoy this feeling. That is the nature of love.

3) ... self-discovery

In a relationship we always expect resonance, namely the reciprocation of our love. The baby is dependent on mother's love, it is dependent on resonance, and it can feel exactly whether it is loved or not. His existence and his entire personality development depend on it. It loves its parents because it has no other choice. It can be manipulated and manipulates itself. The love object therefore has a great influence on inner self-discovery and self-awareness. We feel defined by the other and want to know from him how we are, how he feels about us, what he thinks of us. We are dependent on the partner of the opposite sex because we are looking for sex, protection, security and recognition of ourselves. Have we found ourselves when someone else says who we are? Real self-discovery is something different, it is finding oneself without asking others what they think of how they rate my self. The ability to love another without asking whether one is loved again is the mature love of the autonomous person who does not manipulate anyone else and who cannot and does not want to be manipulated himself. Mature love is based on its own being, it is not insecure and does not ask for resonance, it is unshakably based on my self. She respects the other being and does not ask for anything. Mature love as a process and state is self-discovery.

4) ... mental health

The mentally healthy person is open, he experiences every moment with full alertness and clarity. His perception of reality is not clouded or dulled because he does not ward off anything, but allows everything that happens and meets him in the moment. If he has grief or anger, then he gets angry immediately and does not push his anger off into the subconscious. If he is sad, then he is immediately, and he does not distract himself, but lives his grief in the current moment. The ability to love is directly linked to mental health. If painful experiences of lovelessness and rejection are not processed immediately, which is the rule with most people, but are pushed aside by defense mechanisms, then complexes remain that disturb behavior in the future and cause new pain. But health does not mean not to be afraid anymore, not to be sad anymore. All of this cannot be avoided.

5) ... life

The ability to love is the ability to open up to the outside world, to unlock oneself and to love what flows into me. Those who do not want to choose love have decided against life, from then on their life is only a slow death.

The art of being alone

Most people avoid being alone like an illness. For them, being alone is a torture because they are afraid of being completely on themselves and their own experience. Only when I can be alone without feeling lonely or lost am I really free. Love is separation without fear of the other, a common ground arises that stands above ideologies and does not want to change the other, but respects him, even if he expresses ideologies and one represents other ideologies or is free from any ideology.

The basic requirements for love

  • The social conditions must be ignored.
  • The desire has to go.
  • Self-confidence has to develop and strengthen.
  • The senses have to open.
  • There is sensitivity, meditation.
  • Beauty unfolds regardless of fashion.
  • Thinking becomes still.
  • There is timelessness.
  • Alone is possible without feeling lonely or isolated.
  • Lust is not separate from love.

The five phases of the love relationship

The fear of the other is above all the fear of not being loved by them, of not being accepted in the individuality of myself. Not to be accepted is a great offense, a great hurt, which is all the more severe when the soul already has many scars in this area, scars from childhood and adolescence. Love is the highest form of spiritual vitality.

1.) First phase: attention

Love is a phenomenon that does not go through phases. There are only phases in a relationship with the person we love. The first phase of a relationship is being in love. First there is the attention. We see a person who we like for a variety of reasons. We first become attentive through sensory stimuli. It can be a visual signal, the stimulus of the voice, a smell, a tactile experience. First we become attentive to the other through the senses. Only then do we want to establish a relationship. Body language is an unmistakable indication of whether we have attracted someone else's attention. I have to perceive the other in their existence. Love comes quickly, but a relationship can only develop slowly. Why is it not enough to look attentively and to love the other for who he is, without resonance, without wanting to enter into a relationship? It might be enough if sexuality did not exist. There is then the risk that I will enter into a relationship with someone because of sexuality - and not because of love. I get confused very quickly and don't know exactly whether it is love, is it just sexuality or both in harmony with one another?

2.) Second phase: imagination

A longing for encounter and relationship is formed. The other person haunts his head, lodges himself in the mind. A great deal of spiritual maturity is required to deal with the imagination. It must always be aware that the imagination is a world of its own, a creation of its own and does not correspond to reality. Love should not be a mental illness that develops in the phantasy phase, but should be a healthy self-development, an expression of vitality that lives in reality, from one lived moment to another, in the here and now.

3.) Third phase: self-knowledge and self-realization

The other tells me through the different languages ​​of the body, facial expressions, gestures, sexuality and last but not least the words, how he feels about me, what he thinks of me, who I am for him. It flatters my ego. Every tenderness, every gesture of love, every word of approval flatters my narcissistic need for self-worth and purpose. Even in criticism and rebuke I recognize who I am for the other, but criticism does not flatter my ego. The love of the other gives me strength and confirms the meaning of my existence. The indifference or the devaluation of the other makes me insecure and dissatisfied, gives me a feeling of loneliness and isolation. My love that I give to the other has the same effect on him. It satisfies me to impart strength to the other, to see how he blossoms under my love, how his joy of life grows, because a positive self-knowledge makes him happy. Mature love, however, does not speculate on positive feedback, but primarily wants to give love and has no excessive cravings for receiving something that could develop into a pathological addiction.

4.) Fourth phase: first and only crisis

We cannot find peace and move from one disappointment to another as long as we have not understood the fundamental importance of being alone and togetherness. The crisis is lawfully programmed into the two-person relationship. If a social regulation says that love should bind itself to a person, that "true love" is the one-time love and the final decision for this love, then I go into bondage and confinement, then I have to deal with the crisis of this so understood Suffer love in great emotional distress. Nothing living can be captured without losing its liveliness. Everyone has to radically tolerate the freedom of the other, if he does not, the crisis cannot be avoided.

5.) Fifth phase: detachment or absorption

The fifth phase of a love relationship is the most interesting phase because it is where the fate of a relationship is decided. Maturity is rarely developed for the fifth phase, because in this phase we get unprepared into great loneliness . Each of us strives for a deepening of love, but as soon as one tries to force it, love is in great danger. The deepening can only take place informally.

When love turns into hate

The soul defends itself when it is hindered in its development and it slowly but steadily begins to fight the one who hinders it. Dying is only easy if the development succeeds every day. The person or institution that causes the restriction or rape of liveliness is hated. However, love and hate are not opposites. The hatred is wants to help a reaction that desperately love to break through. The handicap and restriction of liveliness are hated. If I hit another in the face out of hatred, then I try to free myself from the imprisonment of a constriction, then I suffer from the compulsions of that other. Coercion creates hatred. Hate destroys others and it destroys ourselves. Everyone who hates suffers from the hatred and feels deeply insecure because he feels that the hatred is blocked and that the meaning of his own existence is missed. Yet hate is more common than love. An upbringing that is too harsh creates hatred. Each person inflicts small emotional injuries on other people, small reprisals for the unprocessed hatred. Criticism, devaluation, ridicule, arrogance, aggression, exercise of power, oppression, coercion, censure, punishment. Those who are not loved and cannot love suffer severe psychological torments and pain. This deficit in love makes us weak, passive, lacking initiative, lackluster, discouraged. These are symptoms of depression . The psychological pain of a lover who is spurned is the strongest psychological pain we can experience. It hits us so hard that the reaction to it can be hatred, destruction, depression, murder or suicide. Life loses meaning, we feel depressed, useless, worthless, cast out, abandoned, lonely. Disappointed love is disappointed expectation. If there are no expectations, there can be no disappointment. Expectations are the cause of our emotional misery, dissatisfaction, fear, nervousness and lack of contact with reality. The lack of mutual love from others cannot frustrate me if I do not expect mutual love.

Expenses (selection)

  • Love: psychology of a phenomenon. Econ Verlag, Düsseldorf, Vienna 1980, ISBN 3-430-15882-6
  • Love: psychology of a phenomenon. Enclosed: Let the soul grow wings: Ways out of the fear of life Rowohlt-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Reinbek 2003, ISBN 3-499-61589-4
  • Love: psychology of a phenomenon. Rowohlt-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Reinbek 2009, 39th edition 2009, ISBN 978-3-499-17677-7

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Peter Lauster at whoswho.de
  2. ↑ Compare DNB 800515803 in the catalog of the German National Library
  3. ↑ Compare DNB 999507311 in the catalog of the German National Library
  4. ↑ Compare DNB 977187314 in the catalog of the German National Library
  5. ↑ Compare DNB 965724980 in the catalog of the German National Library
  6. ↑ Compare DNB 94401156X in the catalog of the German National Library
  7. ↑ peterlauster.de (PDF; 81 kB)
  8. ↑ Preface (PDF; 81 kB)