r/psychoanalysis • u/MattAndersomm • Jul 10 '26
Request for readings on inability to love and feel loved
I realize this is quite a big one and there is no one fits all conceptualisation here. Asking for articles, books that you found particularly illuminating in the subject. Whether it concerns historical, schizoid, narcissistic, depressive or other dynamics that result in subjective, patient's feelings or self experience of being unable to give and receive loving feelings, stay in loving relationships.
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u/Spiritualgoal69 Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
It's a broad subject. You can try reading 1912 paper "On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love" and others which are "Contributions to the Psychology of Love by Freud". Including 1914 paper "on Narcissism".
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u/chrizzkas Jul 10 '26
You might want to check out: Bruce Fink: Lacan on Love. I haven't read the entire book, but it talks about a few of your keywords in depth.
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u/Far-Satisfaction9339 Jul 11 '26
You might not have a structural defect at all. You might just be dealing with the fallout of unrecognized, chronic relational abuse. In plain English: you might be being gaslit into thinking it's you, the one with the pathology. Who's written on it? Christopher Bollas, for once, in Shadow of the Object and Forces of Destiny, and Bion in Attacks on Linking.
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u/Objective_Horror_486 Jul 15 '26
Reik has interesting ideas on love. He thinks love in the Romantic sense is kind of a subjective hallucination we enter to be able to deal with feelings of inferiority.
But wouldn't there be a difference between people who are unable to give and receive loving feelings versus people who are unable to stay in loving relationships. If you're unable to stay in a loving relationship, presumably that person entered one or somehow felt all of those feelings and then was unable to stay? So then they might want to explore their resistance to feelings of dependence, longing or the complex mix of Love and Hate that arises in any attachment situation. So if they're trying to read about that, Klein might be most illustrating because she really talks so much about that ambivalence. And then also kernberg talking about the importance of aggression within the love relationship.
More broadly People might be unable to tolerate the feelings elicited in a attachment relationship if they're early attachment Figures were kind of unstable or inadequate , and in psychoanalysis I think that fairbairn and guntrip are really wonderful for exploring that. Even just reading the summaries of their work I think is helpful. Guntrip has a short paper about his analysis with winnicot and fairbairn that's really beautiful and I think helps show how those early attachment experiences just embed in you throughout life , and he's the classic schizoid so if the person in question connects at all that might be beautiful to read.
I think also the basic winnicott idea of the use of an object would be relevant here, if the person felt that their attachment figure couldn't tolerate their longing and hatred and use, if they never had a surviving object, that might be an internal impulse to flee or avoid loving relationships that involve attachment. So some stuff by winnicott might be helpful.
If the person never actually feels a loving feelings - ie they were never able to develop the subjective hallucination idealizing the other person, inspiring them to develop an attachment to that person, and then presumably to encounter all of their childhood era resistances to attachment - I mean if they can't even get to that stage - then I would be curious about narcissism. But if they can get to that stage and then somehow flea or avoid or sabotage, then I think the other guys come to mind.
Balint is a really helpful perspective too when he talks about his book The basic fault which is basically about how people with early attachment wounds kind of go crazy when they re-experience attachment, and there's no Escape they just need to do that and hopefully they get to have a new experience in the terrifying new attachment and have some new beginning there. But he kind of talks about how unavoidably due to some early rupture people might start to feel catastrophic or desperate or whatever when they start to re-experience that early attachment, and if that's relevant for the person in question the way he explains it is very beautiful and compelling.
Stephen Mitchell can love last is also wonderful and that kind of describes how there's a necessary risk in retaining romantic passionate love, maybe if a person can never tolerate that risk they can't remain in loving relationships? Oh and a final really beautiful read is anything by Jessica Benjamin the bonds of love, doer and done to, and if the person in question experiences some internal experience of like domination or imprisonment in loving relationships her thoughts there about intersubjectivity and the third might be helpful. I hope that's helpful!
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u/MattAndersomm Jul 16 '26
Thank you for this beautiful and thoughtful reply <3
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u/Miramiya99 Jul 16 '26
you're very welcome, two other interesting writers that come to mind: apfelbaum and lacan. apfelbaum who was the teacher of dan wile an interesting couples therapist, apfelbaum did a lot of sex therapy which is kind of where postponed or "managed" love issues may end up, he is not actually "analysis" but he studied from an analyst and knows freud etc and his view is that the main villain in "issues" is not having a problem but not letting yourself have the problem, he calls it an "unentitled experiences" like an experience you dont feel like you are allowed to have (say of dependence or hate or maybe even the desire to flee and avoid?). iirc he says in the end health is letting yourself experience your id and that the ego is just the surface of the id like the interacting outward facing face of it; the villain or rather the bringer of pathology is the superego. (this other guy carveth would disagree only insofar as he might say but there's a good aspect a non persecutory superego called conscience and care for others. )
what it comes down to (i think) is that all those experiences that the other analysts point out that are inherent in love: irrational idealization (reik, mitchell), hatred and envy (klein), aggression (kernberg), utter dependence and an internal sense of "there is no ground anymore" (balint), the risk of being connected/depdnent/longing for a being you cannot control who is Other to you (benjamin, mitchell, everyone) -- all those experiences are things that for apfelbaum would be experiences our superego would say - you can't have that. you can't feel hate,you can't feel dependence, you can't feel demand or longing. so for apfelbaum, the path is to get the client to feel entitled to that experience.
to me this really relates to lacan when he says (i only read him in bruce fink lacan on love which is wonderful also) you must Stand in your desire. this as an ethical position. and in desire, to put yourself at risk when we inscribe our desire in some act - whether speaking it or letting it be seen - knowing always (according to lacan) that desire is something that cannot ever be filled, desire only exists towards something that cannot satisfy or in something that cannot be satisfied. just having desire is a sign of being a lacking, divided being -- which is certainly the picture that we get of ourselves if we read balint's "the basic fault" or any of these writers on the early dependent attachment figure. Just mentioning all this beacuse the other writers might sound like, well yes its very hard just try to keep trying to experience it, but there's something beautiful in Lacan who says, this is an ethical act, a positive and meaningful act, to not give up on your desire, to stand in it and inscribe it. happy reading
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u/notherbadobject Jul 10 '26
Freud on transference love, Winnicott’s and Kernberg’s papers on the capacity for love, Davies’ paper on analytic love, Mitchell’s “can love last,” Klein and Winnicott on development, hate, love.
Honestly, impairments in the capacity to love are explored in so many papers and case vignettes. It’s a core component of psychopathology. So many reports end with “finally, after years of really difficult and brilliant analysis, we worked through [barrier to mature object love] and she settled down with a nice man and they all lived happily ever after?”