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Can Love Last?: The Fate of Romance over Time (Norton Professional Books (Paperback)), by Stephen A. Mitchell
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"A beautiful and brilliant reexamination of love and its perils."—Barbara Fisher, Boston Globe
Common wisdom has it that love is fragile, but leading psychoanalyst Stephen A. Mitchell argues that romance doesn't actually diminish in long-term relationships—it becomes increasingly dangerous. What we regard as the transience of love is really risk management. Mitchell shows that love can endure, if only we become aware of our self-destructive efforts to protect ourselves from its risks. "Those who read this book will love more wisely because of it."—Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon "[A] work on romance that is rich and multi-layered."—Publishers Weekly "Cheerful, open, and humane—you'd definitely have wanted him as your analyst."—Judith Shulevitz, The New York Times Book Review "[T]houghtful, compassionate, and profoundly optimistic."—JoAnn Gutin, Salon.com
- Sales Rank: #239076 in eBooks
- Published on: 2003-02-17
- Released on: 2003-02-17
- Format: Kindle eBook
Amazon.com Review
To delve into the subject of love with relational psychologist Stephen A. Mitchell is to race headfirst into an enormous haystack with a kid who's intent on finding not one, but probably a dozen, needles. In Can Love Last? Mitchell's boyish curiosity and profound intelligence virtually set fire to the subject, both enlightening and challenging his readers. Mitchell's premise is that romance, in its many forms, is key to a life worth living.
Why, then, does the sizzle so often fizzle, especially in committed relationships? More importantly, what forces compel humans to actively douse romantic flames in favor of more "stable" love? Mitchell's probings of these and other questions take him on a fascinating journey through times and topics historical as well as contemporary. From Plato to Freud, Homer to Kris Kristofferson, Mitchell weaves history, philosophy, literature, and (of course) psychology into a surprisingly sensible pattern. Yes, a few loud threads stand out, including his well-supported theory that "stable" love is actually much riskier than romance. But over all, differing theories on love and desire, stability and adventure, or surrender and control find more parallels than crossroads under Mitchell's tender care, making this book an intellectual gift to the masses. --Liane Thomas
From Publishers Weekly
When New York University professor and popular psychoanalysis theorist Mitchell died in December 2000, he left behind a robust body of work that made Freudian theories accessible to all. It's not surprising, then, that this postmortem work should have broad appeal. A combination of clinical case studies, psychoanalytical thought and practical advice, Mitchell's riff on the fragility and necessity of romantic love is written with warmth and intelligence. He manages to simplify some of Freud's most complex theories and give them new significance for those who wonder why love is often a battlefield. Real-life examples, taken from his practice, are an invaluable addition. In a section on guilt, for example, he briefly describes how Freud considered the emotion to be "the linchpin of our ascent from the bestial to the civilized," then brings in the work of Viennese-born analyst Melanie Klein and concludes with the story of "Will," whose tendency toward feeling guilty created havoc with his romantic relationships. By mixing the case study method, so common in self-help books, with scholarly insight, Mitchell creates a work on romance that is rich and multilayered, giving the individual stories more weight and the intellectual commentary more humanity. In his conclusion, Mitchell writes like a loving father penning a wedding day message to his child, gently advising that romance isn't about "a labored struggle to contrive novelty," but instead about tolerance and understanding. It's common advice, but given the rest of the work's depth, humor and rigor, these familiar words take on new, and much welcomed, meaning. (Feb. 14)Forecast: Mitchell was always adept at user-friendly writing, and this work follows in that tradition. Can Love Last? would do well on its own merit, and the Valentine's Day pub date should push sales further.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
This rather dry academic treatise on romantic love was written by a well-regarded clinician and supervising analyst at the William Alanson White Institute. Mitchell, who died in 2000, was the author of several books including Freud and Beyond, which he wrote with his wife Margaret Black. Popular culture would have us believe that the combination of romance and true lasting love is an oxymoron. Mitchell examines the tension between the ideas of love and romance, and shows how sexuality, illusion, aggression, guilt, control, and commitment interact to contribute to this tension. He also describes the different risks involved in both stable and new love. While drawing heavily on Freud, he examines romance and love from many different psychoanalytic viewpoints. Cases from his practice are described to illustrate his discussion. The scenario of the cocktail party toward the end of the book is especially clear in conveying different theories of consciousness. Recommended for academic and large public libraries. Margaret Cardwell, Christian Brothers Univ. Lib., Memphis
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Most helpful customer reviews
95 of 96 people found the following review helpful.
Not fade away
By frumiousb
One of the stressors of my life, and I suspect of many other people's lives is the nagging feeling that somehow we are approaching love wrongly. On the one hand, we want to experience it and we want to believe that the experience is real. On the other hand, our own experience and the experience of others around us inclines us to feel as though it is a little bit foolish past the age of 16 to believe *too* much in the idea of enduring passion.
Does passion always fade? Do we need to choose relationships at the base of the pyramid of needs-- passionless but sustaining, predictable but safe? Can we ever sustain that passion that we feel at the beginning of a relationship?
What Mitchell says (with quiet authority that makes me believe him) is that yes, we can, if we are brave enough to really want that to happen. What he argues is that passion, while desirable, is ultimately quite threatening and that it takes both personal mastery and courage to be willing to let it into your life. Mitchell asserts that it is not romance which is the illusion, it is safety which is the illusion. Romance is the thing which brings the reality of the world to us-- with all its danger and complexity. Safety is a veil which we throw over others potentially close to us to keep them from coming close enough to hurt.
Mitchell created a readable book which should appeal to professionals in the field as well as ordinary folk looking for some answers to complicated problems. He builds his arguments carefully using a combination of prior work and original thinking derived from his practice and patients.
Very impressive, thought provoking, and blessedly free from overly complicated language.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
Wanted more...
By M. Hyman
This book traces, through a variety of case studies from counseling clients, issues relating to love and attachment, and tries to answer, through this path, whether love can last. it addresses various aspects that relate to love and relationships, including romance, sexuality and power, and discusses important issues of how couples through their dynamic can put in place emotional mechanisms that trade away romance for stability or familiarity.
I enjoyed reading the case studies and enjoyed some of the theories about how relationships can go from the early romantic period into a settled period without love or romantic love.
I would have liked the book much more, however, if it provided more depth... from the case studies, what worked and what didn't? what happened to the people? Did they figure things out or not? is there really a way to find the balance, or is it too complex.
In some cases there is just too much repetition or philosophy where i would have preferred more case studies and examples or some science.
some interesting material, but i still walked away without an answer to the line from Born to Run: I want to know if love is wild, i want to know if love is real...
I guess a bit much to ask for from a book
184 of 190 people found the following review helpful.
Lasting Love
By A reader
How can love survive despite the vagaries of hectic schedules, work and parenting pressures, aging, and boredom? That is one of the many questions Stephen Mitchell attempts to answer in Can Love Last? While considering the oft-posed questions about "chemistry," real love, and soul mates, he looks at whether you can determine if you've found "the one"; and how to keep them if you have.
Dr. Mitchell, who died suddenly in 2000 at the age of 54, founded the journal Psychoanalytic Dialogues and was renowned for his work in relational psychoanalysis, which features a more collaborative approach than traditional psychoanalysis. As Mitchell's widow, Margaret Black, C.S.W., points out in her foreword to the book, when it comes to his analysis of relationships, "Freud's formulations have not been particularly helpful, certainly not very optimistic."
A shame, really, since it is love, according to Mitchell, that makes life worth living. But nurturing love is no easy task since, as he points out in his introduction, "Modern life, at all points on the socioeconomic scale, is difficult, draining, and confusing." That's where his book comes in, offering guidance on how to look at the differences between love and desire, and how to have both in a relationship; doing so with prose that is often illuminating and even poetic. Describing the need for both security and adventure in a relationship, Mitchell writes, "Romantic passion emerges from the convergence of these two currents," which are "at once both erotic and sacred."
Based on modern divorce rates, Mitchell argues modern relationships are "based on fantasies of permanence." Although we seek committed relationships for security, in reality, rather than safe, these relationships are actually dangerous. "Love, by its very nature, is not secure;" Mitchell concludes, although "we keep wanting to make it so." The key to Mitchell's approach to making love last lies in acknowledging this danger exists and harnessing its energy to restore desire and passion through spontaneity and romance.
He makes a good point when he argues it is curious how separated couples often resolve to recover their "lost youth" through reckless abandon, when in reality, during their youth they longed for commitment and security. Hence, one's youth was not "lost," but willfully abandoned. And when he takes this premise one step further, it stands to reason that within a relationship, we actually avoid adventure for fear of destabilizing our comfort and security. Subconsciously, it's a Catch-22 situation.
The book can be slow going at times, but only because Mitchell's theories - understandably so, given the complexity of human dynamics - are complicated. But if you take the time to sort through them, the rewards could be significant.
It's a fantasy most of us have shared: the-knight-in-shining-armour boy meets his girl-princess; girl marries boy and they live happily ever after. But in the real world, "back in our imagined castle, both the knight and the damsel, alas, often lose their allure." The most common reaction is to deduce that we have been deceived - that the knight was no knight, or the princess was no princess - which is often the "safest" recourse since blaming the other partner precludes the need to look at oneself.
When a patient not named Carl entered therapy with Dr. Mitchell, he discovered that although he still cherished his wife's many admirable qualities he could no longer tell her so since doing so would leave him vulnerable. To him, it would feel like "begging" because "He had come to feel that his stalwart performance as husband had earned him the right to her love. To approach her appreciatively or seductively would be to renounce those claims."
Coming back to the "danger" in a long-term relationship theme, Mitchell explains "falling out of love" with your partner can be a defense mechanism, and "What is so dangerous about desiring someone you have is that you can lose him or her." Especially revealing is the fact that our "ever-intensifying fascination with celebrities seems to feed our hunger for idealization and our fear of its consequences by glorifying and then exposing and destroying our 'stars.'"
At least one age-old question ("Why do opposites attract?") is finally answered here. According to Mitchell, "Opposites attract because they are inversions of each other, the same thing in different forms." If Harry is attracted to Sally because she is outgoing while he is shy, it could be because Harry also has a desire to be outgoing but has suppressed that desire.
When it comes to other advice, Mitchell says it's okay to be "made for each other" as long as you don't take it too far, for "fantasies of perfect harmony and synchrony can be enormously destructive if taken too seriously, as a steady expectation, rather than a transient, episodic connection." But the answers Mitchell offers to his question, "Can love last?" aren't always altogether romantic; especially his advice that "the capacity to love over time entails the capacity to tolerate and repair hatred."
At last, he suggests that instead of doing something to improve our relationships, "Time might be better spent on reflecting on what one is already doing!" "Spontaneity," he notes, is discovered not through action but through refraining from one's habitual action and discovering what happens next." And although "Desire and passion cannot be contrived," they "occur in contexts, and we have a good deal to do with constructing contexts in which desire and passion are more or less likely to arise."
Many of the case studies in the book - although sometimes perverse - are utterly fascinating, and Mitchell has taken relationship theory to a new level.
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