Love and Its Place in Nature: A Philosophical Interpretation of Freudian Psychoanalysis

In this heartfelt and scholarly treatise, Lear, chair of Yale's philosophy department and clinical associate of the Western New England Institute for Psychoanalysis, takes up where Freud left off, following ``connections, insights, consequences of Freudian thoughts that Freud himself did not pursue.'' Sticking close to psychoanalytic structure and language, Lear explores the significance of Freud's attempt to limn a science based on subjectivity, to illuminate the power of archaic thinking and to reveal love as a force of nature. Aligned in viewpoint with but more tightly focused than Reuben Fine's Love and Work (Nonfiction Forecasts, July 6), Lear's impassioned, generous interpretation goes its own way (he argues that the catharsis at the heart of analysis is more truly a matter of unification than a discharge of psychic energy), further developing in psychoanalytic fashion the revolutionary models raised in Freud's writings. (Oct.)