What is Love: a Multidisciplinary Analysis

Introduction

The concept of love is vast and deep. In relation to the everyday world, it permeates life, sometimes to the point of sacrificing rationality, sublime goals, and material enrichment, enriching it and tearing it down. It is therefore no coincidence that love not only represents the prevalent subject of the performing arts and literature but also a classic thematic repertoire. Philosophers, historians, theologians, and classical scholars have devoted a significant part of their reflection on a complex emotional experience such as love. A good contribution comes from empirical and phenomenological psychology, educational psychology, social psychology, cognitive psychology, and evolutionary psychology.

Although it can be reduced to a cross-sectional pattern, the multifaceted and indefinable quality of this field must be addressed, unearthing the somatic dimensions of the love-hate dialectic in its generic and infinite solitude. In this respect, the flake introduces the internal relation between love and psychotherapy. It is an enthusiastic aspiration to overcome some undetermined confusion and open the way to a more precise understanding.

For love to be defined, it is convenient to explore aspects not only of compatibility with different interdisciplinary points of view but also of interaction between these points, all of which are essential for integrating new disciplines developed focusing on the themes of love into existing multidisciplinary skill systems. From an anthropological point of view, looking for a definition of love, for explanations of its phenomena, drives, and expressions, means shaping a particular conception of identity: love is a system in man, in which various levels of analysis and action are closely interconnected.

Historical and Cultural Perspectives on Love

Throughout history, love has been represented in various ways and, not surprisingly, its role has undergone changes in accordance with the contrasting views different cultural contexts have had of it. The inheritance of philosophical thought dates back to the ancient world, where love was a matter of concern in various texts. Just think of the concept of love, attesting that the idea of love has been discussed at length to convey the extraordinary universalism of this feeling. Words concerning the theme of love have also been conveyed orally between generations. The correlative study of love endeavors encompasses all forms of cultural production and knowledge that have as their main object the exploration of this feeling. Love flourished in diverse literary representations from antiquity to the present day; an emblematic landmark of the exploitation of sentiment is a work that makes love the driving force behind the actions of its characters.

With the advent of modernity, literature has developed genre theories such as sentimental literature in both Anglo-Saxon and Italian culture to describe the artistic and cultural production that revolves around the sentimental theme. Although the relevance of this sentimental subgenre is particularly high, Anglo-Saxon culture and literature have contributed to the development of romantic love theories, thanks to the significant resurgence in the literary field. Ideologies have proposed that the figure of Platonic love, as an affect that educates and uplifts, can also turn into true devoted love, love from life to death. In fact, even today, marriage and the choice of a partner is always a vivid topic of interest, even more so than two centuries ago, when literature rebelled against social norms and, in particular, moral didacticism. The fashion of the world was based on love, sexuality chosen with free will, hymns of bodily beauty, voluptuous sensations, and hymns to friendship and love with a hint of homoerotic presence. The choice of love and the free development of one's passions were the basis of human identity. In the end, it was about the possibility to delve into oneself and not to be content with social and religious conformities. The overturning of this situation, which had not yet been seen in society and which we will still observe in the following economic systems, was given, above all, by the variations of religious centrality, which were considered strong references in people's lives more than 2000 years ago. To give the custom "vogue," we find who helped us to understand the evolution of customs in love.

Psychological Theories and Aspects of Love

Contemporary psychology has thoroughly investigated the motives of affection, as well as the emotional, cognitive, and behavioral components of love. A number of different theories on love, whose aim is to explain the phenomenon of love and its components, can be summed up in five major theoretical paradigms: psychoanalytic perspective, behavioral perspective, humanistic perspective, attachment perspective, and, based on different assumptions, the triangular theory and social exchange theory, as well as prototypes of various forms of love. The results of research provide important information about both the positive and pathogenic aspects of love.

According to the triangular theory, there are three primary components of love: passion, which encompasses sexual and romantic attraction; intimacy, or feelings of closeness and connection; and commitment, which includes the decision to stay with a partner and make the relationship successful. Various combinations of these components lead to different kinds of love: non-love (the absence of all three components), liking (intimacy alone), infatuation (passion alone), empty love (commitment alone), romantic love (intimacy and passion), companionate love (intimacy and commitment), fatuous love (passion and commitment), and consummate love (all three components). Commitment is recognized as the strongest predictor of relationship satisfaction and stability, and combining the three components of love in the form of consummate love is the most desired in a long-lasting relationship. In general, romantic love is characterized by high passion and intimacy but low commitment. Intensely passionate, romantic love can actually last only about 12 to 18 months, as the brain corrects when it discovers that a person may not be as perfect as it once thought, and also because the overlapping influence of other factors in relationships, such as friendship, intimacy, and one’s sense of well-being, are significant influences on feelings of passionate love.

Biological and Evolutionary Perspectives on Love

A large body of research in fields such as psychobiology, neuroendocrinology, and genetics has started to support the view that there is a physiological basis of love. A central component of this view is the argument that a key element of love, feelings of intimacy and mutual understanding, is the result of the way in which our brains secrete endogenous love compounds, such as dopamine and oxytocin. Forming love bonds has been found to be an underlying evolutionary adaptation that allowed humans to create the large societies and social institutions of the twenty-first century. Proponents of the contemporary adaptationist, or Darwinian, approach to the human mind claim that people are the way they are today as a result of evolution taking place over a long time. According to evolutionary theories, one of the primary functions of romantic love is the mate-selection and partner-maintenance process, which normally begins at sexual attraction, peaks in romantic love, and, over time, develops into attachment and bonding, which are important factors in long-term human relationships.

Imaging studies have shown that in people who report they are in love in a romantic sense, the brain produces an increase in the same chemical response as seen in people affected by cocaine. Such excitement, however, is just the first stage of love, which eventually turns into a different set of reactions in the brain. Oxytocin, sometimes called the cuddle hormone or moral molecule, is associated with the feelings of closeness and well-being experienced before, during, and after people engage in warm, affectionate behavior. This hormone can also deepen and strengthen the bonds between parents and their offspring, indicating that biological factors can change the emotional experience of love between two individuals. Moreover, there is evidence that commitment to loving behavior between two adults alike appears to be associated in part with another hormone, vasopressin. Psychologist Morten Kringelbach believes that the biological foundation for love is not only the prime reason we are able to form self-supporting societies, but also has the capability to help us in our individual everyday life by making us more compassionate and empathic. In other words, he says, the obsessionality of early love might be displayed toward potential friends, colleagues, and even places or products, as well as toward romantic partners.

Some people also believe there are neurological similarities between the feelings humans and animals experience during mating and in romantic love. It has been discovered that these feelings—particularly of attachment and bonding—have evolutionary roots. Thus, committing to a long-term mate is a naturally favored strategy in many species. And yet, at the same time as our human behavior can be inevitable responses to the environment, our biological setup enables us to experience flexible behavior that is largely autonomous from the environment. This means that our biology invites us to develop those behaviors—mental as well as physical—that become most likely to see our genes being passed on. As such, the hormonal and genetic processes that are proposed to be rooted in evolution enable the possibility of love. Corroborative evidence for the biological basis for love also has been found in close species comparison. Such observations indicate that while there are undoubtedly societal expectations and norms that are important in determining how people feel or express love, there appears to be a core of universality between different societies in the expression of strong, secure human attachments—namely love.

Contemporary Views and Applications of Love

Technological advancements, liberal rights and freedoms, global migration, and cross-cultural marriages have drastically transformed the treatment and nature of love. By introducing internet-based social communications, technology has affected the ways we search for and maintain our romantic relationships. However, exposure to social media can conceal an individual's true nature by changing people's attitudes and behaviors. Although the treatment of love in contemporary culture reflects the complex interactions of cultural, biological, and psychological factors, technological novelties and cultural transformations have significantly enhanced the diversity of romantic relationships and experiences in recent years. Changes are also witnessed in gender relations because rigid gender roles previously determined the initiation and progress of romantic relationships. Fast-paced lives in contemporary society are affecting sexual and love relationships. The speed of contemporary societies has led to the view of time as a product that is always running out. From a mental health standpoint, love relationships can provide both sources of stress and relief. Therapeutically, intimate relationships can be the cause of the patient's mental health problems. In current wellness practices, especially in the field of mental health, intimate relationships are a common topic. The new approach assumes that love is not so much a psychological state nor a cultural phenomenon. Rather, it is a complex set of changes occurring within the brain across culturally situated and biologically organized processes. New affection theories are built on the combination of ecological and neuroscientific concepts, which explain love from the point of onset of the romantic scene. Also, novel variants of love are available today: polyamory and queer/gay-lesbian love, which involve female–female, male–male, female–male, and trans relationships. The numerous forms of human love are reflected in myths or recognized within the social rules of marriage and may be modest or central in character. What people love is love itself. We accept love diversity today in connection with developmental changes and globalization. In times of globalization, cross-cultural love practices, which are states of being in love, are accepted. The romantic couple, which has been questioned as a universal entity, is viewed as a symbiosis of the affect-developing environment and access to biological brains. Although a universal object of processual entangled self and affect, love is nevertheless conceptualized and experienced in multiple forms. It is suspicious when declared as the deadly and eternal universal passion. If looking at love dynamics, romantic relationships, shapes, and norms from a multidisciplinary standpoint, including archaeology, psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and philosophy, it becomes easy to understand contemporary love through a cultural lens as well. In doing so, it becomes legible as an integral dimension of free or privilege-based social relations that are enmeshed in complex entangled self-social systems and stigma-conscious Western culture contrasts. The neurobiology of love does not contradict an understanding of love as being enmeshed within a powerful socio-economic relational system in human history. Our time also declares love as a gift for the social productive. Only freedom and resources ensure the global entangled self-effective practice of love.

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