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The Components, Types, Styles, and Objects of Love

A collection of perspectives and commentaries

Gary Stollak
2014

For many thousands of years a multitude of priests, philosophers, poets, playwrights, and
pundits (and more recently, psychologists and other behavioral scientists) have also provided us
with their perspectives about love. One of the most well-known commentaries about love can be
found in 1 Corinthians 13:1-8 written about 55 A.D. Here it is in the New International Version
(©2011):
1
If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a
resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can
fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move
mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor
and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain
nothing.  4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is
not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily
angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices
with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always
perseveres. 8 Love never fails...

In the King James version of the New Testament it is charity (caritas) being referred
to in the text: “Literally, the word 'caritas' means dearness, high price. By extension it may
take on the meaning of affection, esteem, love. But that love is the altruistic kind, of charity
towards others.” (http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_meaning_o_the_word_
%27caritas%27_in Latin).

Here is a description of love by Robert G. Ingersoll:

Love is the only bow on Life's dark cloud. It is the morning and the evening star.
It shines upon the babe, and sheds its radiance on the quiet tomb. It is the mother
of art, inspirer of poet, patriot and philosopher. It is the air and light of every
heart—builder of every home, kindler of every fire on every hearth. It was the
first to dream of immortality. It fills the world with melody—for music is the
voice of love. Love is the magician, the enchanter, that changes worthless things
to Joy, and makes royal kings and queens of common clay. It is the perfume of
that wondrous flower, the heart, and without that sacred passion, that divine
swoon, we are less than beasts; but with it, earth is heaven, and we are gods.
(Ingersoll, 1884; Orthodoxy)

Another view of what love is―and is not―and its power can be found in this Edna
St. Vincent Millay poem Love is not all:

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink

Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; 
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink 
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And rise and sink and rise and sink again; 

Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath, 
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; 
Yet many a man is making friends with death 
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone. 
It well may be that in a difficult hour, 
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release, 
Or nagged by want past resolution's power, 
I might be driven to sell your love for peace, 
Or trade the memory of this night for food. 
It well may be. I do not think I would. 

Billy Collins uses another set of analogies to express love for another in his poem Litany:

You are the bread and the knife,

the crystal goblet and the wine.
You are the dew on the morning grass
and the burning wheel of the sun.
You are the white apron of the baker,
and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.

However, you are not the wind in the orchard,

the plums on the counter, or the house of cards.
And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.
There is just no way that you are the pine-scented air.
It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,
maybe even the pigeon on the general’s head,
but you are not even close to being the field of cornflowers at dusk. 

And a quick look in the mirror will show

that you are neither the boots in the corner
nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.

It might interest you to know,

speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,
that I am the sound of rain on the roof.

I also happen to be the shooting star,

the evening paper blowing down an alley
and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.

I am also the moon in the trees

and the blind woman’s tea cup.
But don’t worry, I’m not the bread and the knife.
You are still the bread and the knife.
You will always be the bread and the knife,
not to mention the crystal goblet and–somehow–the wine.

Many of us are searching for a successful pathway to understanding what love is…and is
not…and experiencing love’s ability to moderate the pains—even the horrors—of life as well as
to enriching it, beyond measure. We are also searching for ways to express it, in word and
deed.
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Love in religious texts

Many of us turn to religious texts for descriptions of who we should be loving and how
love is to be expressed. For example, in the King James version of the New Testament we are
told to obey what many would regard as the most important of all commandments of the Biblical
God. In Matthew 22 we read:

 36Master, which is the great commandment in the law?  37Jesus said unto him,
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and
with all thy mind.  38This is the first and great commandment. 39And the second is
like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.  40On these two
commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

In the King James version of John 13 Jesus says:

A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved
34

you, that ye also love one another.  35By this shall all men know that ye are my
disciples, if ye have love one to another.

Details about what actions express this love and provide the motivation to follow
the “Golden Rule” can be found in Luke 6 in the King James version:
27
But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate
you, 28Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you.
29
And unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other; and him
that taketh away thy cloak forbid not to take thy coat also. 30Give to every man
that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again.
31
And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.

For those who prefer a more contemporary presentation, in the New International
Version (©2011) Luke 6 is:
27
"But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you,
28
bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. 29 If anyone strikes
you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat
do not withhold even your shirt. 30 Give to everyone who begs from you; and if
anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. 31 Do to others as you
would have them do to you.

Preceding these and many other commandments and admonitions is the King James
version of Leviticus 19:

 18 Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but
love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.

And
33
And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him.  34But the
stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and
thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the
LORD your God.

In two other translations Leviticus 19:33-34 are:

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33
When an alien lives with you in your land, do not mistreat him. 34The alien
living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself,
for you were aliens in Egypt. (New International Version (©2011)

33
“Do not mistreat foreigners living in your country, 34 but treat them just as you
treat your own citizens. Love foreigners as you love yourselves, because you
were foreigners one time in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.” (New Century
Version)

In the Qur’an one finds

It may be that Allah will bring about friendship between you and those whom
you hold to be your enemies among them; and Allah is Powerful; and Allah is
Forgiving, Merciful. (60:7)

The promise of our reward can be found in Deuteronomy 30:

To love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways, to keep His commandments,
16

His laws, and His rules, that you may thrive and increase, and that the Lord your
God may bless you.

In the King James version, we read in Matthew 7 the outcome of obeying or not obeying
these and other commandments:
24
Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken
him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock:  25And the rain
descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house;
and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock. 26And every one that heareth these
sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which
built his house upon the sand: 27And the rain descended, and the floods came, and
the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.

For many, the above and other commandments and messages in these and in other
religious texts are authoritative and sufficient to guide their actions when they need to make
moral decisions and to find a more consistently purposeful, altruistic, and peaceful life. The
guidance may also help them facilitate their experiencing and expression of love of all that is
important to them.

And for many there is also an answer to the question, “Must I love God first before I can
love myself and can love others?” Here are two views asserting the primacy of love of the
Biblical God. In the middle of the 15th century the theologian John Calvin wrote:

It is the common habit of mankind that the more closely men are bound together
by the ties of kinship, of acquaintanceship, or of neighborhood, the more
responsibilities for one another they share. This does not offend God; for his
providence, as it were, leads us to it. But I say: we ought to embrace the whole
human race without exception in a single feeling of love; here there is no
distinction between barbarian and Greek, worthy and unworthy, friend and
enemy, since all should be contemplated in God, not in themselves. When we
turn aside from such contemplation, it is no wonder we become entangled in
many errors. Therefore, if we rightly direct our love, we must first turn our eyes
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not to man, the sight of whom would more often engender hate than love, but to
God, who bids us extend to all men the love we bear to him, that this may be an
unchanging principle: Whatever the character of the man, we must yet love him
because we love God.

That it is the primacy of love of God that leads to and becomes inseparable from the love
of others was also noted in Pope Benedict XVI’s 2006 encyclical Deus Caritas Est (translated in
English as Love of God ):

… (love of neighbour) consists in the very fact that, in God and with God, I love
even the person whom I do not like or even know. This can only take place on
the basis of an intimate encounter with God, an encounter which has become a
communion of will, even affecting my feelings. Then I learn to look on this other
person not simply with my eyes and my feelings, but from the perspective of
Jesus Christ. His friend is my friend. Going beyond exterior appearances, I
perceive in others an interior desire for a sign of love, of concern. This I can offer
them not only through the organizations intended for such purposes, accepting it
perhaps as a political necessity. Seeing with the eyes of Christ, I can give to
others much more than their outward necessities; I can give them the look of love
which they crave. Here we see the necessary interplay between love of God and
love of neighbour which the First Letter of John speaks of with such insistence. If
I have no contact whatsoever with God in my life, then I cannot see in the other
anything more than the other, and I am incapable of seeing in him the image of
God. But if in my life I fail completely to heed others, solely out of a desire to be
“devout” and to perform my “religious duties”, then my relationship with God
will also grow arid. It becomes merely “proper”, but loveless. Only my readiness
to encounter my neighbour and to show him love makes me sensitive to God as
well. Only if I serve my neighbour can my eyes be opened to what God does for
me and how much he loves me.
...Love of God and love of neighbour are thus inseparable, they form a single
commandment. But both live from the love of God who has loved us first. No
longer is it a question, then, of a “commandment” imposed from without and
calling for the impossible, but rather of a freely-bestowed experience of love
from within, a love which by its very nature must then be shared with others.
Love grows through love. Love is “divine” because it comes from God and unites
us to God; through this unifying process it makes us a “we” which transcends our
divisions and makes us one, until in the end God is “all in all.”
(1 Cor 15:28).

Critchley (2010; http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/the-rigor-of-love/?

ref=opinion) wrote that the love of God and “the admission of weakness” before such love is
necessary before the possibility exists of loving others or one’s self.

Questions about love

For some, the above quotes may not provide clear enough answers when, in reflection,
we search for answers to questions such as:

“Who will teach me to love God, myself and all others and how will they teach me? How
would they and I know they succeeded?”

“Who will teach me to love the tribe, clan, and the nation in which I am embedded and
how will they teach me? How would they and I know they succeeded?”
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“How will I also know that I sufficiently love God, my family and my children, that I
sufficiently love myself, that I sufficiently love my neighbor, as well as sufficiently love strangers,
aliens, foreigners, and even my enemies with all my heart, and with all my soul, and with all my
mind, and have sufficiently and skillfully expressed that love to each?
In searching for answers to many of the above and other questions, along with turning to
religious texts or to those who know us best for at least their opinions and perspectives, we also
turn—sometimes in desperation—to books, newspaper and magazine articles and columnists, to
plays, to poems, to movies, to TV, internet, and radio experts, and even to fables, fairy, and folk
tales that have been passed down to us. Some of us also look for evidence derived from
empirically-based research to provide us with possible answers or ways to search for answers to
some of them.

Definitions and characteristics of love

Along with the commentaries about love noted above there are many other artists,
scholars, and scientists (including psychologists) who over the millennia have depicted,
described, and studied love in romantic relationships (see, for example, Bloom, 1993; Pope and
associates, 1987; Sternberg & Weis, 2006) and the love of God, family, friends, neighbors, and
nature (see, for example, Cladis, 2000; King, 2004; Pope Benedict XVI, January 2006; Yanming,
2008). Our lives have been illuminated and enhanced by their efforts and productions. We have
also become aware of historical and cultural changes in definitions and different characteristics
and effects of love (see for example, Sternberg, 1998; Sternberg & Weis, 2006).

At the time of this writing I found the following about love on Wikipedia:

Love is the emotion of strong affection and personal attachment. In philosophical

context, love is a virtue representing all of human kindness, compassion, and
affection. In religious context, love is not just a virtue, but the basis for all being
("God is love"), and the foundation for all divine law (Golden Rule).
The word love can refer to a variety of different feelings, states, and attitudes,
ranging from generic pleasure ("I loved that meal") to intense interpersonal
attraction ("I love my wife"). "Love" can also refer specifically to the passionate
desire and intimacy of romantic love, to the sexual love of eros (cf. Greek words
for love), to the emotional closeness of familial love, or to the platonic love that
defines friendship, to the profound oneness or devotion of religious love. This
diversity of uses and meanings, combined with the complexity of the feelings
involved, makes love unusually difficult to consistently define, even compared to
other emotional states.
Love in its various forms acts as a major facilitator of interpersonal
relationships and, owing to its central psychological importance, is one of the
most common themes in the creative arts.
The word "love" can have a variety of related but distinct meanings in
different contexts. Often, other languages use multiple words to express some of
the different concepts that English relies mainly on "love" to encapsulate; one
example is the plurality of Greek words for "love." Cultural differences in
conceptualizing love thus make it doubly difficult to establish any universal
definition.
Although the nature or essence of love is a subject of frequent debate,
different aspects of the word can be clarified by determining what isn't love. As a
general expression of positive sentiment (a stronger form of like), love is
commonly contrasted with hate (or neutral apathy); as a less sexual and more
emotionally intimate form of romantic attachment, love is commonly contrasted
with lust; and as an interpersonal relationship with romantic overtones, love is
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commonly contrasted with friendship, although other definitions of the word love
may be applied to close friendships in certain contexts.

When discussed in the abstract, love usually refers to interpersonal love, an

experience felt by a person for another person. Love often involves caring for or
identifying with a person or thing, including oneself. In addition to cross-cultural
differences in understanding love, ideas about love have also changed greatly
over time. Some historians date modern conceptions of romantic love to courtly
Europe during or after the Middle Ages, although the prior existence of romantic
attachments is attested by ancient love poetry.
Because of the complex and abstract nature of love, discourse on love is
commonly reduced to a thought-terminating cliché, and there are a number of
common proverbs regarding love, from Virgil's "Love conquers all" to the
Beatles' "All you need is love". St. Thomas Aquinas, following Aristotle, defines
love as "to will the good of another." Bertrand Russell describes love as a
condition of "absolute value," as opposed to relative value. Philosopher Gottfried
Leibniz said that love is "to be delighted by the happiness of another." Love is
sometimes referred to as being the "international language", overriding cultural
and linguistic divisions.
A person can be said to love an object, principle, or goal if they value it
greatly and are deeply committed to it. Similarly, compassionate outreach and
volunteer workers' "love" of their cause may sometimes be borne not of
interpersonal love, but impersonal love coupled with altruism and strong political
convictions. People can also "love" material objects, animals, or activities if they
invest themselves in bonding or otherwise identifying with those things. If sexual
passion is also involved, this condition is called paraphilia.
Interpersonal love refers to love between human beings. It is a more potent
sentiment than a simple liking for another. Unrequited love refers to those
feelings of love that are not reciprocated. Interpersonal love is most closely
associated with interpersonal relationships. Such love might exist between family
members, friends, and couples. There are also a number of psychological
disorders related to love, such as erotomania.
Throughout history, philosophy and religion have done the most speculation
on the phenomenon of love. In the last century, the science of psychology has
written a great deal on the subject. In recent years, the sciences of evolutionary
psychology, evolutionary biology, anthropology, neuroscience, and biology have
added to the understanding of the nature and function of love.
Biological models of sex tend to view love as a mammalian drive, much like
hunger or thirst. Helen Fisher, a leading expert in the topic of love, divides the
experience of love into three partly overlapping stages: lust, attraction, and
attachment. Lust exposes people to others; romantic attraction encourages people
to focus their energy on mating; and attachment involves tolerating the spouse (or
indeed the child) long enough to rear a child into infancy.
Lust is the initial passionate sexual desire that promotes mating, and involves
the increased release of chemicals such as testosterone and estrogen. These
effects rarely last more than a few weeks or months. Attraction is the more
individualized and romantic desire for a specific candidate for mating, which
develops out of lust as commitment to an individual mate forms. Recent studies
in neuroscience have indicated that as people fall in love, the brain consistently
releases a certain set of chemicals, including pheromones, dopamine,
norepinephrine, and serotonin, which act in a manner similar to amphetamines,
stimulating the brain's pleasure center and leading to side effects such as
increased heart rate, loss of appetite and sleep, and an intense feeling of
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excitement. Research has indicated that this stage generally lasts from one and a
half to three years.

Since the lust and attraction stages are both considered temporary, a third stage
is needed to account for long-term relationships. Attachment is the bonding that
promotes relationships lasting for many years and even decades. Attachment is
generally based on commitments such as marriage and children, or on mutual
friendship based on things like shared interests. It has been linked to higher levels
of the chemicals oxytocin and vasopressin to a greater degree than short-term
relationships have. Enzo Emanuele and coworkers reported the protein molecule
known as the nerve growth factor (NGF) has high levels when people first fall in
love, but these return to previous levels after one year.

The word love in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary also includes the
following:

The attraction, desire, or affection felt for a person who arouses delight or
admiration or elicits tenderness, sympathetic interest, or benevolence. To feel
affection for; hold dear; cherish… A warm attachment, enthusiasm, or devotion
(as to a pursuit or a concrete or ideal object).

Along with poets and philosophers, behavioral scientists, too, have begun to describe
love’s characteristics, its correlates, causes, contributors and consequences. For example, Robert
Sternberg in his 1998 book Cupid’s Arrow: The Course of Love through Time described three
components of love: passion, intimacy, and decision/commitment. He gave the labels Liking,
Romantic Love, Companionate Love, Infatuation, Fatuous Love, and Empty Love as “types” of
love in close relationships in which only one or only two of the three components are present.

Robert Sternberg gave the label Consummate Love to complete and all encompassing
love.

Consummate, or complete...love results from the combination of the three

components in equal measure. It is a love toward which many of us strive,
especially in romantic relationships… Attaining consummate love is no
guarantee that it will last; one may become aware of the loss only after it is gone.
…Consummate love, like other things of value, must be guarded carefully.
(Sternberg, 1998; p. 22)

Who does not wish to frequently, enduringly, and intensely feel consummate love? It is a
(if not the) most highly valued positive feeling. It may be assumed that the feeling of love and
its positive evaluation may (and should) motivate one to learn words and actions that skillfully
express in word and action the love being experienced. I assume that a major life goal for all of
us is to experience love and to express love skillfully.

Why do we love?
In Plato’s The Symposium written between 385-380 BCE:

Suppose Hephaestus (the craftsman god of Greek mythology), with his

instruments, to come to the pair who are lying side by side and to say to them,
“What do you mortals want of one another?”
They would be unable to explain. And suppose further, that when he saw their
perplexity he said: “Do you desire to be wholly one; always day and night in one
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another's company? for if this is what you desire, I am ready to melt and fuse you
together, so that being two you shall become one, and while you live a common
life as if you were a single man, and after your death in the world below still be
one departed soul, instead of two—I ask whether this is what you lovingly desire
and whether you are satisfied to attain this?”
There is not a man of them who when he heard the proposal would deny or
would not acknowledge that this meeting and melting into one another, this
becoming one instead of two, was the very expression of his ancient need.
And the reason is that human nature was originally one and we were a whole,
and the desire and pursuit of the whole is called love.

The same sentiment was stated more simply in Cameron Crowe’s screenplay for Jerry
Maguire when he has Jerry say to his wife Dorothy: “I love you. You... complete me.”

Jonathan Franzen, provides us with a perspective about love and loving another person in
a commentary (“Liking Is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts”) published in the May 28, 2011
issue of The New York Times:

Love is about bottomless empathy, born out of the heart’s revelation that another
person is every bit as real as you are. And this is why love, as I understand it, is
always specific. Trying to love all of humanity may be a worthy endeavor, but, in
a funny way, it keeps the focus on the self, on the self’s own moral or spiritual
well-being. Whereas, to love a specific person, and to identify with his or her
struggles and joys as if they were your own, you have to surrender some of your
self.

Do you believe that it is necessary to surrender some of your self to love not only a
specific person but also your neighbor, aliens, foreigners, your enemies, your children, and God?
To become whole do you also believe that you have to surrender some of your self to
consummately love your work and the specific activities, beliefs, causes, ideas, and other
symbols that you feel passion for, are intimate with and to which you have made a commitment?

Love components, types, and styles

Jane Austen, in her 1814novel Mansfield Park, wrote that “There are as many forms of
love as there are moments in time.” More recently a variety of behavioral scientists and
personality theorists (see, for example, Fromm, 1956/2000; Sternberg & Weis, 2006) have
described various components and objects of love, more than several “styles,” and more than
several “types” of love, but much, much fewer than “there are moments in time.” These
theorists suggest that the expression of love may be very different and dependent on the style and
type of love we may be experiencing and the words and actions in encounters with whoever and
whatever is valued and important. There are a large variety of possible objects of love. These
include intimate partners, children, neighbors, animal companions, nature, God, beliefs, ideas, an
activity, a stranger, and an enemy.

Components of love
Robert Sternberg provided us with a “Triangular Theory of Love” (see for example,
Sternberg, 1988; 1998; 2006) and lists passion, intimacy and decision/commitment as the most
important components of love in adult-adult relationships with each of them as vertices in a
triangle. With reference to intimate relationships, Sternberg described the passion component of
love:
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The passion component:

The passion component refers to the drives that lead to romance, physical
attraction, sexual consummation, and the like in a loving relationship. Although
sexual needs may form the main part of passion in many relationships, other
needs—such as those for self-esteem, affiliation with others, dominance over
others, submission to others, and self-actualization—may also contribute to the
experience of passion. (Sternberg, 1988; p. 120-121

We use the word passion most often to refer to sexual desire and lust. The term may also
refer to any compelling and intense feeling and any compelling and motivating belief and
conviction. These include an energetic and continuing pursuit of a goal or to devotion in close
relationships and in groups one joins, and also to a belief, cause, proposal, concept, activity,
animal companion, or for any physical or abstract object. At its most intense (or to be so
labeled), passion is a feeling that is deeply stirring, powerful or ungovernable, including the
feelings of joy, interest, and love as well as anger and hate. To say one is feeling passionate also
implies the capacity or susceptibility of being affected by such an intensity of experiencing (see
“Love” in the Wikipedia website noted above). Such desire may or may not lead to the discipline
that leads to knowledge and skills that increase intimacy and a commitment, over time, that
enhances the relationship with any object of love.

Sternberg described a second component of love:

The intimacy component:

Intimacy refers to close, connected and bonded feelings in loving relationships.
It thus includes feelings that create the experience of warmth in a loving
relationship.
…(There are) ten signs of intimacy in a close relationship: (1) desiring to
promote the welfare of the loved one, (2) experiencing happiness with the loved
one, (3) having high regard for the loved one, (4) being able to count on the
loved one in times of need, (5) mutual understanding with the loved one, (6)
sharing one’s self and one’s possessions with the loved one, (7) receiving
emotional support from the loved one, (8) giving emotional support to the loved
one, (9) having intimate communication with the loved one, and (10) valuing the
loved one in one’s life. (Sternberg, 1988; p. 120)

The psychologist Dan McAdams (1992) provides us with a more detailed list of positive
feelings, words, and actions characteristic of intimacy in a close relationship:

1. Joy and mutual delight in the presence of another

The relationship precipitates, facilitates, or is decidedly connected with a positive
affective experience including:
a. Feelings of love (romantic, platonic, or otherwise), warmth, closeness,
affection, caring, trust, tenderness, sympathy, fondness
b. Feelings of friendship, liking, camaraderie, brotherhood, fellowship, special
bonds
c. Feelings of happiness, joy, enjoyment, good cheer, excitement, merriment,
delight, gladness, good spirits, hilarity, exuberance, rejoicing, glee, geniality,
ecstasy, bliss, conviviality, mirth
d. Feelings of peace, contentment, serenity, satisfaction, quietude
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e. Tender behaviors including smiling, caressing, laughing kissing, holding

hands, hugging, making love
f. Feelings of mourning or sadness associated with the separation from or
loss of the other (e.g., grief, unhappiness, depression, melancholy but not anger,
frustration, irritation, disgust, anxiety, fear)

2. Reciprocal and noninstrumental communication

The communication does not serve the purpose of furthering a particular goal or
implementing a particular task. Such “communication for communication’s
sake” implies rapport, reciprocity, give-and-take, listening, and exchange. It may
include phenomena as diverse as chatting about the weather to sharing ideas on
the problems of society.

3. Openness and receptivity leading to psychological growth and coping

The relationship is demonstrably instrumental in facilitating, promoting, or
affording psychological growth, self-fulfillment, adjustment, coping with
problems, self-actualization, self-realization, identity formation, self-esteem,
psychological health, self-knowledge, enlightenment, spiritual salvation,
inspiration, creativity, maturity.

4. Perceived harmony or union

There is a “coming together” (after a short or long separation) with an emphasis
on unity, reunion, togetherness, oneness, reconciliation, synthesis, integration.
There is harmony with one another, being “on the same wavelength,” in
“synchrony,” one “understands” the other, finding something in “common,”
similar views.

5. Concern for the well-being of the other

There is commitment to or concern for the other (others) that is not rooted in
guilt or reluctant and begrudging duty. Commitment includes feeling of loyalty
to and responsibility for another. Concern indicates a felt responsibility for
another’s welfare, usually leading to some kind of helping or humanitarian
behavior, and sometimes personal sacrifice.

6. Surrender of manipulative control

Includes experiences that some aspect of the relationship may be subject to
control that is in someway beyond him or her. He or she surrenders to this
outside force (e.g., luck, fate, chance, society, God’s will, etc.) or, minimally,
does not struggle against the outside control. The absence of personal control
over the vicissitudes of the relationship, however, is not experienced with any
anxiety or consternation. Rather, there is a “going with the flow” of
interpersonal events, acquiescing to the forces that he or she cannot control (e.g.,
being “hopelessly” in love). Can also include similar events and experiences
with nature, the cosmos, animals.

Sternberg described a third component of love:

The decision/commitment component:

The decision/commitment component of love consists of two aspects, one short
term and one long term. The short-term one is the decision that one loves
someone. The long-term aspect is the commitment to maintain that love. These
two aspects of the decision/commitment component of love do not necessarily go
together, for the decision to love does not necessarily imply a commitment to
that love. Nor does commitment necessarily imply decision, oddly enough.
 Stollak – 12

Many people are committed to the love of another person without necessarily
even admitting that they love or are in love with that person. Most often,
however, decision will precede commitment. (Sternberg, 1988, pp. 121)

On the next page are the items he wrote to assess each component. These types, too, may
also be relevant in other relationships and the attitudes and feelings one has in relationships in
various groups that are most important. For example, reflect on “my family,” “my co-workers,”
“my church” or “my nation” in most of the following:
 Stollak – 13

The Sternberg Triangular Love Scale

The blanks represent the person with whom you are in a relationship. Rate each statement twice on a 1-to-9 scale, where 1
= “not at all,” 5 = “moderately,” and 9 = “extremely.”
The first rating should represent the extent to which the statement is characteristic of your relationship. In other words
to what extent would you say that this statement reflects how you feel in your relationship? The second rating should
represent the extent to which the statement is important to your relationship. In other words, to what extent do you feel it is
important that you should feel this way, regardless of how you actually feel?

Intimacy
1. I am actively supportive of _______’s well being.
2. I have a warm relationship with _______.
3. I am able to count on _______ in time of need.
4. _______ Is able to count on me in times of need.
5. I am will to share myself and my possessions with _______.
6. I receive considerable emotional support from _______.
7. I give considerable emotional support to _______.
8. I communicate well with _______.
9. I value _______ greatly in my life.
10. I feel close to _______ .
11. I have a comfortable relationship with _______.
12. I feel that I really understand _______.
13. I feel that _______ really understands me.
14. I feel that I really can trust _______.
15. I share deeply personal information about myself with _______.

Passion
16. Just seeing _______ excites me.
17. I find myself thinking about _______ frequently during the day.
18. My relationship with _______ is very romantic.
19. I find _______to be very personally attractive.
20. I idealize _______.
21. I cannot imagine another person making me as happy as _______ does.
22. I would rather be with ______than with anyone else.
23. There is nothing more important to me that my relationship with ________.
24. I especially like physical contact with _______.
25. There is something almost “magical” about my relationship with ________.
26. I adore ________.
27. I cannot imagine life without ________.
28. My relationship with ________ is passionate.
29. When I see romantic movies and read romantic books I think of ________.
30. I fantasize about _______.

Commitment

31. I know that I care about _______.

32. I am committed to maintaining my relationship with ________.
33. Because of my commitment to ________, I would not let other people come between us.
34. I have confidence in the stability of my relationship with ________.
35. I could not let anything get in my way of my commitment to ________.
36. I expect my love for ________ to last for the rest of my life.
37. I will always feel a strong responsibility for ________.
38. I view my commitment to _______ as a solid one.
39. I cannot imagine ending my relationship with ________.
40. I am certain of my love for ________.
41. I view my relationship with ________ as permanent.
42. I view my relationship with ________ as a good decision.
43. I feel a sense of responsibility toward _______.
44. I play to continue my relationship with ________.
45. Even when _______ is hard to deal with _______ I am committed to our relationship.

From: Hatfield, E. (1988). Passionate and companionate love. In R. J Sternberg, & M. L. Barnes, (Eds.),
The psychology of love. New Haven: Yale University Press, 191-217. The scale items appear in a random order when used in
studies, rather than clustered by component, as they are here).
 Stollak - 14

Sternberg (2006) also noted that

The three components of love interact. For example, greater intimacy may lead
to create passion or commitment, just as greater commitment may lead to greater
intimacy or, with lesser likelihood, greater passion. In general, then, the
components are separable but interactive. Although all three components are
important parts of loving relationships, their importance may differ from one
relationship to another, or over time within a relationship. Indeed, different
kinds of love can be generated by limiting cases of different combinations of the
components. (p. 186)

Love Types
Sternberg (1988, 1998) gave the labels Liking, Romantic Love, Companionate Love,
Infatuation, Fatuous Love, and Empty Love as types of love in relationships in which only one or
only two of the three components are present and vary in intensity and duration. He wrote:

If one takes all possible combinations of the three components of love, one
obtains eight subsets, which form the basis for the classification of love... These
eight types represent extremes, of course. In actuality, one would only
occasionally obtain an instance in which there is passion with no intimacy at all
(perhaps in marriages held together only by the thread of religious sanction
against divorce). Consider now the eight possible types of love generated by the
triangular theory:

The Intimacy Component Alone: Liking

Liking results when one experiences only the intimacy component of love in the
absence of the passion and decision/commitment components. The term liking is
used here in a nontrivial sense, not merely to describe feelings one has toward
casual acquaintances and passers-by in one’s life. Rather, it refers to the set of
feelings and experiences in relationships that are true friendships. One feels
closeness, bondedness, and warmth toward the other, without intense passion or
long-term commitment.

The Passion Component Alone: Infatuated Love

Infatuated love is “love at first sight,” or, in general, love that turns toward
obsession with the partner being loved as an idealized object rather than as
him-or herself. Infatuated love, or simply, infatuation, results from passionate
arousal in the absence of the intimacy and decision/commitment components
of love. Infatuations are usually easy to spot, at least for people other than the
individual who is infatuated. They can arise almost instantaneously and
dissipate as quickly under the right circumstances. They tend to be
characterized by a high degree of mental and physical arousal. Tennov (1979)
has referred to infatuation as “limerence,” and her book is an excellent guide
on the nature and course of infatuations.
Several major problems tend to be associated with infatuated love. The first
is that it is based upon an idealization of an individual rather than upon the
individual as he or she exists in reality. It is thus not surprising that infatuations
tend to last only if a relationship is not consummated, or at least is frustrated in
various ways. The best cure for infatuation is the opportunity to get to know the
object of one’s infatuation very well, so that reality has a chance to compete with
ideality. The other cure, as Tennov (1979) points out, is to become convinced
that one has absolutely no hope of attaining the object of one’s infatuation.
 Stollak - 15

The second problem is that infatuations tend to be obsessive. One can be

devoured or consumed by the love, so that it ends up taking time, energy, and
motivation from other things in one’s life. The obsessive character of the
infatuation also can make the object of the infatuation uncomfortable, as he or
she realizes that the love is more a projection of the lover’s needs than a true
interest in the loved one.
The third problem is that infatuated love relationships are usually
asymmetrical. Our research (Sternberg & Barnes, 1985) indicates that the
greater the degree of asymmetry, the more a relationship is subject to distress.
Because infatuation is usually based upon an idealization of a person, such
relationships are particularly susceptible to distress.

The Decision/Commitment Component Alone: Empty Love

Empty love results from someone’s making a decision that he or she loves
another (a commitment to love) when neither intimacy nor passion is present. It
is the kind of love one sometimes finds in stagnant relationships that have been
going on for years but that have lost the mutual emotional involvement and
physical attraction that once characterized them. Unless the commitment to love
is strong, such love can melt away because commitment is relatively susceptible
to conscious modification.
Although, in our society, empty love most often occurs as the final or near-
final stage of a long-term relationship, in other societies, empty love may occur
as the first stage of a long-term relationship. For example, in societies where
marriages are arranged, the marital partners may start with the commitment to
love each other and have to take things from there. Thus, empty love need not be
terminal in relationships.
…However, when all that is left in a marriage is the commitment, and the
other elements have died away, it is very difficult to restore those other elements
in order to renew the marriage. Often, people wait years for the magic to return,
only to be disappointed to find that it is gone forever: the couple never again is
able to feel either intimate or passionate toward each other.
Empty love, like any other kind of love, can be one-sided. One of the partners
may retain genuine feelings of closeness and bondedness to the other, while the
other feels only commitment to the first. Such asymmetrical relationships can be
particularly difficult because of the added guilt felt by the less involved spouse at
not being able to reciprocate the more involved spouse’s feelings.

The Intimacy + Passion Components: Romantic Love

Romantic love derives from a combination of the intimacy and passion
components of love. In essence, it is liking with an added element of physical or
other attraction. In this view, then, romantic lovers are drawn to one another
both physically and emotionally. Commitment is not a necessary part of
romantic love, however. The lovers may realize that permanence is unlikely,
impossible, or simply an issue to be dealt with at some future time. A summer
love affair, for example, may be highly romantic, but without any real chance of
lasting beyond the summer.
This view of romantic love seems to be similar to that found in classic works
of literature, such as Romeo and Juliet. Two lovers feel strongly passionate
toward one another and feel that they can bare their souls to one another as well.
This view of romantic love differs, however, from that (a view) that romantic
love does not differ from infatuation. I think it is important to distinguish
 Stollak - 16

between the two. Some infatuations never proceed beyond that stage, but others
do. Two partners initially attracted to each other for sheerly physical reasons
may come to realize they have much more in common than just physical
attraction; or conversely, they may come to realize they do not. Moreover,
romantic love need not start off as infatuation. Sometimes, what starts as liking
in a friendship becomes romantic love, as when a couple who admire each other
become drawn to each other passionately.

The Intimacy + Decision/Commitment Components: Companionate Love

Companionate love results from a combination of the intimacy and
decision/commitment components of love. It is essentially a long-term
committed friendship, the kind that frequently occurs in marriages in which the
physical attraction (as a major source of passion) has waned.
Most romantic love relationships that do, in fact, survive eventually turn into
companionate love relationships: the passion begins to melt, but the intimacy
remains. Passion may be replaced over time by long-term and deeply felt
commitment. Individuals and couples differ in the extent to which they are
satisfied with love that is primarily companionate. Some people wish no more
and perhaps never did. Others cannot be happy unless they have some kind of
romance going on in their lives. Such persons will be unhappy or seek outside
affairs “to keep the marriage together” or eventually leave the marriage in order
to start anew, with a fresh romance, the cycle of love. Of course, their new
relationship, too, may eventually become companionate, in which case they will
be back to where they started when they dissolved the former relationship.

The Passion + Commitment Components: Fatuous Love

Fatuous love results from the combination of the passion and
decision/commitment components of love in the absence of the intimacy
component. It is the kind of love we sometimes associate with Hollywood or
with whirlwind courtships: a couple meet one day, become engaged shortly
thereafter, and marry very shortly after that. It is fatuous in the sense that a
commitment is made on the basis of passion without the stabilizing element of
intimate involvement–which takes time to develop.
Fatuous love is highly susceptible to distress. When the passion fades–as it
almost inevitably does–all that is left is the commitment, but it is not likely to be
a commitment that has grown and deepened over a long period of time. Rather,
it is a commitment that is still young and possibly shallow. Occasionally, there
is a chance that intimacy will grow. But the expectations with which the couple
enter into the relationship can hinder rather than help the development of
intimacy. They expect a marriage made in heaven, but do not realize what they
must do truly to maintain such a marriage. They base the relationship on passion
and are disappointed when the passion starts to fade. They feel shortchanged—
they have gotten much less than they bargained for. The problem, of course, is
that they bargained for too much of one thing (passion) and not enough of
another (intimacy).

Lastly, there is Consummate Love:

The Intimacy + Passion + Commitment Components: Consummate Love

Consummate, or complete love, results when all three components are present. It
is a kind of love toward which many of us strive, especially in romantic
relationships. Attaining consummate love can be difficult, but keeping it is even
harder. We do not seek consummate love in all our loving relationships or even
 Stollak - 17

in most of them. Rather, we tend to reserve it for those loves that mean the most
to us and that we want to make as nearly complete as possible. (for all of the
above see Sternberg, 1988; pp. 122-129)

Sternberg concludes that “Most loves are ‘impure’ examples of these various kinds: they
partake of all three vertices of the triangle, but in different amounts” (Sternberg, 2006, p. 186).

Perspectives about love

I provide below a compilation of shorter and longer quotes from psychologists and others
summarizing their various perspectives about romantic love. This will be followed by
commentary about the experiencing and expression of love toward a wide variety of other
objects of love in other areas and aspects of life.

Love styles
After interviewing many people about their past relationships, John Allen Lee (1973,
1988) described six different “love styles” (see also Hendrick & Hendrick, 1986; Hendrick &
Hendrick, 2006; Henrick, Hendrick, & Dicke, 1998). He proposed that the three primary love
styles―Eros, Ludus, and Storge―could be blended together to form three secondary love
styles―Pragma, Mania, and Agape. Lee asserted that each love style was distinct from the
others. He and others have described Eros love as passionate and intense; Ludus love as
generally a game-playing love; Storge love as friendship-based; Pragma love as practical love;
Mania love characterized by a series of high and low emotional experiences; and Agape love as
selfless love.

Stanley Woll (1989) summarized and expanded upon Lee’s descriptions:

… Eros or the erotic style shows the following characteristics and/or attitudes:
(1) a belief in the possibility of “love at first sight” and in the rapid development
of a relationship, both in the sexual arena and in the area of self-disclosure; (2) an
emphasis on physical attraction and on the match between a potential lover and
some ideal physical prototype; (3) an emphasis on and enjoyment of intense
emotions, both inside and outside of relationships’ and (4) an eagerness and
intensity about the relationship but without the demanding, obsessive quality of
(and with a degree of self-confidence that is lacking in) the manic lover.
Ludus or the ludic lover, on the other hand, can be characterized as (1) taking
a detached, uncommitted attitude toward romance and relationships; (2)
remaining relatively fickle and believing in multiple, nonmonogamous
relationships; (3) viewing love and relationships as a kind of game or sport to be
engaged in a playful, relatively uninvolved manner; (4) enjoying the sexual
components of a relationship, but approaching sex in an uninvolved, sometimes
manipulative manner; and (5) insisting on “being in control,” of self and of the
relationship.
Finally Storge or the storgic lover is characterized by (1) a belief that love
and/or intimate relationships should develop in a slow, gradual fashion and
should be grounded in a firm, well-established friendship; (2) an emphasis on
sharing activities and interests with his/her lover, along with a de-emphasis on
sharing of feelings or emotions; (3) a de-emphasis on emotion and “excitement”
in general; and (4) a de-emphasis on intense sexual feelings and/or sexual activity
in particular.

The other three loving styles can be summarized as follows.

 Stollak - 18

Mania or the manic lover (1) is demanding and possessive toward her/his
lover, in terms of both time, attention, and increasing expressions of love and
affection; (2) is characterized by a rich and vivid fantasy life, much of which is
devoted to a preoccupation with his/her lover; (3) has an ambivalent attitude
toward her/his lover in that s/he yearns for that lover, but is at the same time
easily frustrated by the relationship and anticipates pain in that (or any)
relationship; (4) may actually create problems and/or conflicts in the relationship
if they don’t already exist; and (5) has a feeling of being “out of control,” of both
the relationship and also his/her feelings in that relationship.
Pragma or the pragmatic lover, on the other hand is described as (1)
approaching love and relationships in a logical perhaps even calculating manner;
(2) looking for a “shopping list” of qualities in a romantic partner and for clear
compatibility in a relationship; (3) avoiding intense emotions and sexual
intimacy, while opting instead for a form of sexual
compatibility; (4) approaching relationships in a pragmatic fashion, i.e., believing
that relationships are of value if and only if they promote compatibility and are of
benefit to both parties, but also believing that a relationship is not worth a great
deal of pain or sacrifice; and (5) placing less urgency on the need for
relationships in general.
Finally, Agape or the agapic lover is one who (1) is giving, altruistic, selfless,
expecting nothing in return; (2) believes in and practices a form of principled,
dutiful love; and (3) places less emphasis on sexual feelings and may even avoid
sexual relations. (pp. 481-482)

Physiological correlates, causes, and effects of love

Along with descriptions of the love of an object recent advances in technology have
enabled scientists to more complexly explore the neurological and biochemical correlates and
effects of love and other experiences. We are increasing our ability to measure possible
contributors to changes in hormones, brain chemistry, and in analyzing brain activity, for
example, via functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging: fMRI), (see, for example, Aron, Fisher,
Mashek, Strong, Li, & Brown, 2005; Felmlee, & Sprecher, 2006, Fisher, 2004, 2008; Kluger,
2008; Lewis, Amini & Lannon, 2002, Zeki, 2007). Scientists have focused, especially, on
measuring aspects of the physiology of romantic love and of infant caregiving.

For example, Jeffrey Kluger (2008) wrote:

The more scientists look, the more they’re able to tease romance apart into its
individual strands—the visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, neurochemical
processes that make it possible. None of those things may be necessary for
simple procreation, but all of them appear essential for something larger. What
that something is—and how we can achieve it—is only now coming clear. (p. 56)

Natalie Angier, in a November 24, 2009 column (The Biology Behind the Milk of Human
Kindness) in The New York Times, wrote about oxytocin, made by cells in the hypothalamus and
stored in the posterior pituitary:

Oxytocin acts as a hormone, traveling through the bloodstream to affect organs

far from its origin in the brain, and as a kind of neurotransmitter, allowing brain
cells to communicate. Unlike most neurotransmitters, oxytocin seems to deliver
its signal through just one receptor, one protein designed to recognize its shape
and shudder accordingly when clasped; dopamine and serotonin, by contrast,
 Stollak - 19

each have five or more receptors assigned to their care. Yet the precise contours
of oxytocin’s hardworking receptor differ among individuals, to apparently
noticeable effect.
…. be thankful for your brain’s supply of oxytocin, the small, celebrated
peptide hormone that, by the looks of it, helps lubricate our every prosocial
exchange, the thousands of acts of kindness, kind-of kindness and not-as-
nakedly-venal-as-I-could-have-been kindness that make human society possible.
Scientists have long known that the hormone plays essential physiological roles
during birth and lactation, and animal studies have shown that oxytocin can
influence behavior too, prompting voles to cuddle up with their mates, for
example, or to clean and comfort their pups. Now a raft of new research in
humans suggests that oxytocin underlies the twin emotional pillars of civilized
life, our capacity to feel empathy and trust.

Diane Ackerman in a March 24, 2012 column (“The Brain in Love”) in The New York
Times wrote:

When two people become a couple, the brain extends its idea of self to include
the other; instead of the slender pronoun “I,” a plural self emerges who can
borrow some of the other’s assets and strengths. The brain knows who we are.
The immune system knows who we’re not, and it stores pieces of invaders as
memory aids. Through lovemaking, or when we pass along a flu or a cold sore,
we trade bits of identity with loved ones, and in time we become a sort of
chimera. We don’t just get under a mate’s skin, we absorb him or her.
While they were both in the psychology department of Stony Brook
University, Bianca Acevedo and Arthur Aron scanned the brains of long-married
couples who described themselves as still “madly in love.” Staring at a picture of
a spouse lit up their reward centers as expected; the same happened with those
newly in love (and also with cocaine users). But, in contrast to new sweethearts
and cocaine addicts, long-married couples displayed calm in sites associated with
fear and anxiety. Also, in the opiate-rich sites linked to pleasure and pain relief,
and those affiliated with maternal love, the home fires glowed brightly.
…During idylls of safety, when your brain knows you’re with someone you
can trust, it needn’t waste precious resources coping with stressors or menace.
Instead it may spend its lifeblood learning new things or fine-tuning the process
of healing. Its doors of perception swing wide open. The flip side is that, given
how vulnerable one then is, love lessons — sweet or villainous — can make a
deep impression. Wedded hearts change everything, even the brain.
…Brain scans show synchrony between the brains of mother and child; but
what they can’t show is the internal bond that belongs to neither alone, a fusion
in which the self feels so permeable it doesn’t matter whose body is whose.
Wordlessly, relying on the heart’s semaphores, the mother says all an infant
needs to hear, communicating through eyes, face and voice. Thanks to advances
in neuroimaging, we now have evidence that a baby’s first attachments imprint
its brain. The patterns of a lifetime’s behaviors, thoughts, self-regard and choice
of sweethearts all begin in this crucible.

Alison Gopnik, in a column posted on DoubleX.com

(http://www.doublex.com/print/5691) on August 25, 2009, noted an additional finding:
 Stollak - 20

…..the scientific literature shows that the mechanisms behind our love of babies
is remarkably similar to the mechanisms involved in sexual love. There are clear
hormonal and chemical changes that come with pregnancy, labor, and birth,
which affect the way we feel, just as there are with sex. In natural labor and the
period following, the body produces large amounts of both oxytocin and
endorphins (in fact, they use oxytocin to induce labor). It’s too simple to call
oxytocin the “bonding” chemical, but there is a lot of evidence that it plays a role
in close attachment, trust, and love. If you give people a whiff of oxytocin they’re
more likely to cooperate in a game. Endorphins are the natural chemicals that are
mimicked by drugs like opium and morphine. (I remember thinking as I held my
own first newborn and the flood of warmth and happiness overcame me, “Gee, if
this is what opium is like, I’m sure glad I never tried it.”)
But it's important to say, also, that the relationship between the chemicals and
experience is always a two-way street. The chemicals can induce the experience,
but just having the experiences that go along with love—close attachment, trust,
caregiving, kissing, touch— can themselves make the chemicals appear. It’s as
true to say that love leads to oxytocin as to say that oxytocin leads to love. So
nonbiological caregivers, just by close contact and intimacy with babies, can end
up with brain states that are very similar to those of pregnancy and birth.
… An important point, from a feminist perspective, is that the emotions of
closeness and attachment and caregiving aren’t restricted at all to biological
mothers, but are shared by fathers and everyone else—siblings, grandmothers,
babysitters, and neighbors who help take on the big task of human caregiving.
Anthropologist Sarah Hrdy has done exceptional serious work on this that’s
summarized in her new book Mothers and Others.
...Everything about us is the result of the activity in our brains that is shaped
by evolution. My experience of the table in front of me is as much a result of the
chemicals in my brain and the forces of evolution as my experience of intense
maternal or sexual love. But that doesn’t mean that the table itself is an illusion.
Most of the time evolution really does design us so our experience tracks
important and real parts of our condition. Poets and thinkers have long
recognized that the particular chemical, biological, and evolutionary phenomenon
of human sexual love, with all its absurdities, can put us in touch with something
genuinely transcendent and significant. My favorite example is W.H. Auden’s
beautiful poem “Lullaby”:
Soul and body have no bounds:
To lovers as they lie upon
Her tolerant enchanted slope
In their ordinary swoon,
Grave the vision Venus sends
Of supernatural sympathy,
Universal love and hope.
Since so few of history's famous thinkers and poets have been mothers, the
intense ordinary swoon we feel about our babies has been neglected. But I think
that we sing Auden’s lullaby quite as much to our children as to our lovers.

We are gaining increasing knowledge of the physiological correlates, causes, and effects
of “romantic passion,” possibly why some mothers “connect so ferociously to their babies before
they know them as anything more than a squirmy body and a hungry mouth,” and why so many
of us “swoon” over our babies (Kluger, 2008). These physiological events may also be part of
the subjective experience of love in a wide variety of other areas of one’s life and possibly
contribute to one’s enduring passion, enduring wish to acquire knowledge and skills indicative
 Stollak - 21

of intimacy with, and enduring commitment to, any object including neighbors, to God, to
Country, to flora and fauna, to learning, and to skilled expression of the love of what is learned.

Personality types
Helen Fisher (2008) in her book, Why Him? Why Her? describes neural systems that
influence personality development and distinct emerging personality types that she has labeled
the Explorer, the Builder, the Director, and the Negotiator. Each is influenced by the dopamine,
serotonin, testosterone-oxytocin, and estrogen-oxytocin systems and each of these systems
influence who and what we love and how love is expressed. She wrote that

I listed some of the personality traits I knew were associated with specific genes
in the dopamine system: the propensity to seek novelty; the willingness to take
risks; spontaneity; heightened energy; curiosity; creativity; optimism;
enthusiasm; mental flexibility. I decided to call those men and women who
expressed the traits associated with this biology Explorers.
I drew another blank sheet of paper from my desk drawer. What else did I
know about personality?
Well, individuals who have inherited particular genes in the serotonin
system tend to be calm, social, cautious but not fearful, persistent, loyal, fond of
rules and facts and orderly. They are conventional, the guardians of tradition.
And because these men and women are also skilled at building social networks
and managing people in family, business and social situations, I dubbed those
who had inherited this constellation of genetic traits Builders. 
I had also studied testosterone. Although testosterone is often associated
with males, I knew that both men and women are capable of expressing
particularly strong activity in this neural system. Moreover, those who inherit this
chemistry tend to be direct, decisive, focused, analytical, logical, tough-minded,
exacting, emotionally contained and good at strategic thinking. They get to the
point. Many are bold and competitive. They excel at figuring out machines,
mathematical formulas or other rule-based systems. Many are good at
understanding the structure of music, too. I named these people Directors.
Last in my store of biological knowledge were some of the traits linked
with estrogen. Women and men with a great deal of estrogen activity tend to see
the big picture: they connect disparate facts to think contextually and holistically,
expressing what I call web thinking. They are imaginative. They display superior
verbal skills and excel at reading postures, gestures, facial expressions and tones
of voice, known as executive social skills. They are also intuitive, sympathetic,
nurturing, mentally flexible, agreeable, idealistic, altruistic and emotionally
expressive. I christened the people of this broad biological type Negotiators.
Other chemical systems play a role in personality, of course. We may have as
many as a hundred different kinds of neurotransmitters (smaller molecules) and
some fifty types of peptides in the brain. But most keep the heart beating or
orchestrate other basic functions. It is increasingly apparent that these four
chemicals—dopamine, serotonin, testosterone and estrogen—play lead roles in
producing aspects of personality.
Two others should be mentioned, though. Norepinephrine, a chemical closely
related to dopamine, undoubtedly contributes to some of the Explorer’s traits,
especially their energy and impulsivity. And oxytocin—a chemical synthesized,
stored and triggered (in large part) by estrogen—most likely plays a role in the
Negotiator’s compassion, nurturing, trust and intuition. In fact, families of
chemicals produce the Explorer, Builder, Director and Negotiator. The specific
 Stollak - 22

activities of any one chemical are not as significant as the ratios and interactions
among all of them and several other neural systems.
Nevertheless, only dopamine, serotonin, testosterone and estrogen have been
directly associated with a wide range of personality traits. So variations in these
four chemicals most likely form the foundation of these four basic styles of
thinking and behaving.

She believes that

The variations that reproduce differences in personality most likely don’t stem
from the levels of these neurochemicals; but instead from the numbers of receptor
sites and/or where these receptor sites are most prevalent in the brain, and/or the
amount of the substance produced, transported and/or retained in the synapse,
and/or the ratios of these chemical systems with one another, as well as their
interaction with many other systems, etc… (Fisher, 2011; p. 25)

Although I am not aware of any research findings, there may be significant age, sex, and
cultural differences in each adult love styles and personality types across the world. It is also
possible that there would be some and even major changes in personality and love styles
experienced and expressed in close relationship during one’s adolescence and then in one’s adult
life. For example, many of us may have a predominantly Eros or Mania or Ludic style or be an
Explorer in our adolescence and young adulthood and a predominantly Storge or an Agape style
or a Builder in the middle years of our adulthood. Over a lifetime some may reverse these
possible patterns.

Fisher’s different personality types may be related to the different types of love described
by Sternberg. It is also likely, as Sternberg concluded, that “Most loves are ‘impure’ examples
of these various kinds: they partake of all three vertices of the triangle, but in different amounts”
(Sternberg, 2006, p. 186).

Love styles and love types

The phrase love style as used by Lee and others may be most useful when one is
referring, as Woll noted, to “personality characteristics and/or attitudes toward relationships held
by individuals” (1989, p. 481). These are typically assessed by surveys and in individual
interviews conducted by social scientists or counselors. The phrase love type, on the other hand,
noted by Fisher, Sternberg and others may be most useful when one is focusing on the specific
words and actions (even brain and other somatic biological and chemical activities) of a person
within or outside of close relationships. Love types can also be assessed, for example, by
observing the couple in naturalistic and laboratory settings. One may also observe different
types by the naturalistic and laboratory study of a parent and baby or with a young child, the
interactions in three or more person families, or the words and actions of those participating in
small and large group activities, even in the actions of a religious or political leader. The love
style and love type may also be assessed by observing an individual in a work or recreational
activity or in encounters with a physical or abstract object, for example, in the individual’s
writings to or about a specific person or topic.

Although I am not aware of any research findings, there are likely to be relationships
between a specific love style and a specific love type, for example, between a Storge style and
Liking and Companionate types, and between a Mania style and Infatuated and Fatuous love
types. I would guess that problems concerning maintaining the experiencing and expression of
 Stollak - 23

love in a close relationship, even during its first few years, may be related to different love styles
and types brought to and being experienced and expressed in the relationship, as well as
personality types (see, for example, Fisher, 2008).

Different love styles in adult-adult relationships may also be related to variations in the
love experienced by parents for one or more of their children. Although there are many surveys
to assess attitudes about child caregiving, I do not know of any surveys that assess and
categorize adult-child love styles. It may be some of the aspects of the Agape style described by
Lee and others—see Fromm’s thoughts about Motherly Love below—contribute to consummate
love of infants and young children and to positive attributes of a child after birth.

Each of the personality types of parents and other child caregivers described by Fisher
may also contribute positively to child development over time. However, each of these love
styles described by Lee may have different and specific negative consequences for child
development. For example, it is possible that each of the Eros, Ludic, and Mania adult love
styles above in relationships with young and older children may contribute to problems in
providing appropriate and skillful child care over the early years and decades of a child’s life and
would likely contribute to different kinds of maltreatment and cause demonstrable harm to
children.

We may also display aspects of each of the above love styles and personality and love
types in our work lives with each of them having different and specific consequences for the
presence or absence of meaning and satisfaction in one’s daily activities in the workplace. It is
also probable that there may be changes in these styles and types over the years of employment
in different jobs and stages of a career.

It is also possible that a person’s feelings and expressions of love of God may also be
related to the differences in her style and type of loving God. One’s style of love of God may
also change over the life span. A Mania style love of God may, for example, also be related to
hateful words about or in encounters with others and violent actions, even a willingness to
commit suicide during the killing of others.

The existing (but still meager) evidence derived from research suggests that it is possible
that when experiencing any style or expressing any type of love, toward any object in any area of
life, there may be increased activity in the limbic brain areas including the hypothalamus and
prefrontal cortex, the caudate, the nucleus accumbens, and the insula (see, for example, Aron et
al, 2005; Fisher, 2004, 2009; Kluger, 2008). It is also possible that the experiencing of any style
and expression of any type of love in close relationships is a result of and a producer of changes
in the neurochemistry of the brain, including changes in neurotransmitters such as oxytocin,
serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine. There is recent research that suggests this possibility.
Tara Parker-Pope in a June 4, 2010 article (“What Brain Scans Can Tell Us About Marriage”) in
The New York Times wrote that:

…..academic researchers have become increasingly fascinated with the inner

workings of long-married couples, subjecting them to a battery of laboratory tests
and even brain scans to unravel the mystery of lasting love.
Bianca Acevedo, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California,
Santa Barbara, studies the neuroscience of relationships and began a search for
long-married couples who were still madly in love. Through a phone survey, she
 Stollak - 24

collected data on 274 men and women in committed relationships, and used
relationship scales to measure marital happiness and passionate love.
Dr. Acevedo expected to find only a small percentage of long-married couples
still passionately in love. To her surprise, about 40 percent of them continued to
register high on the romance scale. The remaining 60 percent weren’t necessarily
unhappy. Many had high levels of relationship satisfaction and were still in love,
just not so intensely.
In a separate study, 17 men and women who were passionately in love agreed
to undergo scans to determine what lasting romantic love looks like in the brain.
The subjects, who had been married an average of about 21 years, viewed a
picture of their spouse. As a control, they also viewed photos of two friends.
Compared with the reaction when looking at others, seeing the spouse
activated parts of the brain associated with romantic love, much as it did when
couples who had just fallen in love took the same test. But in the older couples,
researchers spotted something extra: parts of the brain associated with deep
attachment were also activated, suggesting that contentment in marriage and
passion in marriage aren’t mutually exclusive.
“They have the feelings of euphoria, but also the feelings of calm and security
that we feel when we’re attached to somebody,” Dr. Acevedo said. “I think it’s
wonderful news.”

For many, passion in the earliest stages in a relationship may focus on sexual desire, lust,
and possibly other intense feelings, even helplessness, despair, and loneliness when separated
from the other. In longer lasting relationships (including an Agape Love style and a
Companionate Love type) passion might increasingly include, as noted earlier:

the attraction, desire, or affection felt for a person who arouses delight or
admiration or elicits tenderness, sympathetic interest, or benevolence. To feel
affection for; hold dear; cherish….A warm attachment, enthusiasm, or devotion
(Webster’s Third New International Dictionary).

An example can be found in C.S. Lewis (1971) The Four Loves in his description of
phileo (friendship).

In a circle of true Friends each man is simply what he is: stands for nothing but
himself. No one cares two-pence about anyone else’s family, profession, class,
income, race, or previous history…That is the kingliness of Friendship. We meet
like sovereign princes of independent states, abroad, on neutral ground, freed
from our contexts. This love (essentially) ignores not only our physical bodies
but that whole embodiment which consists of our family, job, past and
connections. At home, besides being Peter or Jane, we also bear a general
character; husband or wife, brother or sister, chief, colleague, or subordinate. Not
among our Friends. It is an affair of disentangled, or stripped, minds. Eros will
have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities.
Hence (if you will not misunderstand me) the exquisite arbitrariness and
irresponsibility of this love. I have no duty to be anyone’s Friend and no man in
the world has a duty to be mine. No claims, no shadow of necessity. Friendship is
unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not
need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which
gave value to survival.
 Stollak - 25

It is also likely that these aspects of passion change over long periods of time with respect
to any object. These changes may also be found in a person who feels consummate love for one
political figure but such a love my quickly dissipate, or a child may feel consummate love for
one parent but not the other. We may discover significant changes in brain structures and body
chemistry toward any object of love over time.

The objects of love

Erich Fromm (1956/2000) described what many would consider idealistic and eloquent,
valuable, and inspiring descriptions of several objects of love: Brotherly Love, Motherly Love,
Erotic Love, Self-love and Love of God.

Brotherly Love
The most fundamental kind of love, which underlies all types of love, is brotherly
love. By this I mean the sense of responsibility, care, respect, knowledge of any
other human being, the wish to further his love. This is the kind of love the Bible
speaks of when it says: love thy neighbor as thyself. Brotherly love is love for all
human beings; it is characterized by its very lack of exclusiveness. If I have
developed the capacity of love, then I cannot help loving my brothers. In
brotherly love there is the experience of union with all men, of human solidarity,
of human at-onement. Brotherly love is based on the experience that we all are
one. The differences in talents, intelligence, knowledge are negligible in
comparison with the identity of the human core common to all men. (Fromm,
2000; pp. 43-44)

Motherly Love
Motherly love… is unconditional affirmation of the child’s life and his needs. (It)
has two aspects; one is the care and responsibility absolutely necessary for the
preservation of the child’s life and his growth. The other aspect goes further than
mere preservation. It is the attitude which instills in the child a love for living,
which gives him the feeling: it is good to be alive, it is good to be a little boy or
girl, it is good to be on this earth! (Fromm, 2000; p. 45)
…In contrast to brotherly love and erotic love which are love between equals,
the relationship of mother and child is by its very nature one of inequality, where
one needs all the help, and the other gives it. It is for this altruistic, unselfish
character that motherly love and been considered the highest kind of love, and
the most sacred of all emotional bonds. It seems, however, that the real
achievement of motherly love lies not in the mother’s love for the small infant,
but in her love for the growing child.” (Fromm, 2000; p. 46)
…(The child) must grow. It must emerge from mother’s womb, from
mother’s breast; it must eventually become a completely separate human being.
The very essence of motherly love is to care for the child’s growth, and that
means to want the child’s separation from herself. Here lies the basic difference
to erotic love. In erotic love, two people who were one become one. In motherly
love, two people who were one become separate. The mother must not only
tolerate, she must wish and support the child’s separation. It is only at this stage
that motherly love becomes such a difficult task, that it requires unselfishness,
the ability to give everything and to want nothing but the happiness of the loved
one. It is also at this stage that many mothers fail in their task of motherly love.
Motherly love for the growing child, love which wants nothing for oneself, is
perhaps the most difficult form of love to be achieved, and all the more deceptive
because of the ease with which a mother can love her small infant. But just
because of this difficulty, a woman can be a truly loving mother only if she can
 Stollak - 26

love; if she is able to love her husband, other children, strangers, all human
beings. (Fromm, 2000; pp. 48-49)

Sternberg (1998) wrote the following, without referencing the sex of the parent, about the
consummate love of children:

…love for one’s children often carries with it the deep emotional involvement of the
intimacy component, the satisfaction of motivational needs (such as nurturance,
self-esteem, self-actualization) of the passion component, and the firm commitment
of the decision/commitment component. For many but not all parents, formation
and maintenance of this love is not a problem. Perhaps the bonding between parents
and children at birth renders this love relatively easier to maintain, or perhaps
evolutionary forces are at work to ensure that parent-child bonding survives at least
those formative years in which the child must depend heavily on the parent’s love
and support. (Sternberg, 1998; p. 23)

I assume that if he was writing today, instead of during the 1950s, Fromm would also
consider males equally capable of providing Motherly Love. I prefer to give it the label
Caregiver Love. All biological and non-biological parents as well as all others responsible for
the care and education of children including day care providers, preschool and other teachers and
mentors have, as Fromm wrote, the “responsibility absolutely necessary for the preservation of
the child’s life and his growth” and “the attitude which instills in the child a love for living,
which gives him the feeling: it is good to be alive, it is good to be a little boy or girl, it is good to
be on this earth!”

Fromm described other types of love:

Erotic Love
Brotherly love is love among equals; motherly love is love for the helpless.
Different as they are from each other, the have in common that they are by their
very nature not restricted to one person. If I love my brother, I love all my
brothers; if I love my child, I love all my children; no beyond that, I love all
children, all that are in need of my help. In contrast to both types of love, is erotic
love; it is the craving for complete fusion, for union with one other person. It is
by its very nature exclusive and not universal. (Fromm, 1956/2000; p. 49)
…Love can inspire the wish for sexual union; in this case the physical
relationship is lacking in greediness, in a wish to conquer or to be conquered, but
is blended with tenderness. If the desire for physical union in not stimulated by
love, if erotic love is not also brotherly love, it never leads to union in more than
an orgiastic, transitory sense. Sexual attraction creates, for the moment, the
illusion of union, yet without love this “union” leaves strangers as far apart as
they were before. (Fromm, 2000; p. 50)
…Erotic love, if it is love, has one premise. That I love from the essence of
my being—and experience the other person in the essence of his or her being. In
essence, all human beings are identical. We are all part of One; we are One. This
being so, it should not make any difference whom we love. (Fromm, 2000; p. 52)

Self-love
…the logical fallacy in the notion that love for others and love for oneself are
mutually exclusive should be stressed. If it is virtue to love my neighbor as a
human being, it must be a virtue— and not a vice—to love myself, since I am a
human being too. There is no concept of man in which I myself am not included.
 Stollak - 27

A doctrine which proclaims such an exclusion proves itself to be intrinsically

contradictory. The idea expressed in the Biblical “Love thy neighbor as thyself!”
implies that respect for one’s own integrity and uniqueness, love for and
understanding of one’s own self, cannot be separated from respect and love and
understanding for another individual. The love for my own self is inseparable
connected with the love for any other being.
..love of others and love of ourselves are not alternatives. On the contrary, an
attitude of love toward themselves will be found in all those who are capable of
loving others. Love, in principle, is indivisible as far as the connection between
‘objects’ and one’s own self is concerned. Genuine love is an expression of
productiveness and implies care, respect, responsibility and knowledge. It is not
an ‘affect’ in the sense of being affected by somebody, but an active striving for
the growth and happiness of the loved person, rooted in one’s own capacity to
love.
To love somebody is the actualization and concentration of the power to love.
The basic affirmation contained in love is directed toward the beloved persona as
an incarnation of essentially human qualities. Love of one person implies love of
man as such. These ideas on self-love cannot be summarized better than by
quoting Meister Eckhart on this topic:
‘If you love yourself, you love everybody else as you do yourself. As long as
you love another person less than you love yourself, you will not really
succeed in loving yourself, but if you love all alike, including yourself, you
will love them
as one person and that person is both God and man. Thus he is a great and
righteous person who, loving himself, loves all others equally.’” (Fromm,
2000; (pp. 53-55)

Love of God
…the basis for our need to love lies in the experience of separateness and the
resulting need to overcome the anxiety of separateness by the experience of
union. The religious form of love, that which is called the love of God is,
psychologically speaking, not different. It springs from the need to overcome
separateness and to achieve union. In fact, the love of God has as many different
qualities and aspects as the love of man has—and to a large extent we find the
same differences. In all theistic religions, whether they are polytheistic or
monotheistic, God stands for the highest value, the most desirable good. Hence,
the specific meaning of God depends on what is the most desirable good for a
person.
…The truly religious person, if he follows the essence of the monotheistic
idea, does not pray for anything, does not expect anything from God; he does not
love God as a child loves his father or his mother; he has acquired the humility of
sensing his limitations, to the degree of knowing that he knows nothing about
God. God becomes to him a symbol in which man, at an earlier stage of his
evolution, has expressed he totality of that which man is striving for, the realm of
the spiritual world, of love, truth and justice. He has faith in the principles which
‘God’ represents; he thinks truth, lives love and justice, and considers all of his
life only valuable inasmuch as it gives him the chance to arrive at an ever fuller
unfolding of his human powers—as the only reality that matters, as the only
object of ‘ultimate concern’; and eventually he does not speak about God—nor
even mention his name. To love God, if he were going to use this word, would
mean, then, to long for the attainment of the full capacity to love, for the
realization of that which ‘God’ stands for in oneself.’ (Fromm, 2000; p. 66)…
 Stollak - 28

One thing is certain: the nature of (man’s) love for God corresponds to the
nature of his love for man, and furthermore, the real quality of his love for God
and man often is unconscious—covered up and rationalized by a more mature
thought of what his love is. Love for man, furthermore, while directly
embedded in his relations to his family, is in the last analysis determined by the
structure of the society in which he lives. If the social structure is one of
submission to authority—overt authority or the anonymous authority of the
market and public opinion, his concept of God must be infantile and far from the
mature concept, the seeds of which are to be found in the history of monotheistic
religion. (Fromm, 2000; p. 76)

Compare this above view with the one noted earlier that was expressed in the
middle of the 15th century by the theologian John Calvin.

Love as an orientation of character and a single reality

Along with descriptions of several objects of love, Erich Fromm (1956/2000) also
believed that:

Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person; it is an attitude, and

orientation of character which determines the relatedness of a person to the
world as a whole, not toward one ‘object’ of love. If a person loves only one
other person and is indifferent to the rest of his fellow men, his love is not love
but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism… (p. 43)

Pope Benedict XVI (2006) referred to a similar possibility in his question:

Are all these forms of love basically one, so that love, in its many and
varied manifestations, is ultimately a single reality, or are we merely using
the same word to designate totally different realities?

It is possible that it is only consummate love that is “ultimately a single reality” and what
we may need to learn, over the course of our lives, is how to differentiate consummate love from
other kinds of love and learn to express consummate love skillfully toward any object that is
important. Some persons can consummately love their partner, their own and others’ children,
others in their extended family, their nearby and distant neighbors, the flora and fauna that
surrounds them, and the activities, beliefs, causes, ideas, proposals, and symbols that are the core
of their identity. Some of those that Maslow called “self-actualized” could be exemplars of such
persons.

It is also possible that consummate hate, whether experienced and expressed in

encounters with the world including with one individual or to those in collectives, is also
“ultimately a single reality” that includes frequent, enduring, and intense anger, envy, jealousy,
bitterness, and contempt. We do not yet have sufficient knowledge about its causes nor have
developed interventions that prevent its growth and reduces its leading to destructive acts from
childhood through the life span.

Addictive Love versus the Romantic Ideal

Stanton Peele (1988) asserted that “‘addictive love’ and the ‘romantic ideal’ are ‘polar
opposites’ (that) represent ideals that are never fully realized in human behavior” (p. 182). He
 Stollak - 29

described what may be the characteristics of the experiencing and expression of these two kinds
of love. First, his description of the characteristics of Addictive Love:

A. Love as absorption in another person

The idea that lovers cannot look beyond each other strongly suggests the total
focus on a drug in substance addiction.

B. Love as idealization and total acceptance of another

A notion of love predicated on a blindness to a lover’s flaws or a willingness to
ignore them describes the kind of defensive system addicts employ to convince
themselves their drug-induced state is superior to ordinary reality.

C. Love as internal adjustment and a private world

Addiction is a preoccupation with personal needs’ in the case of love addiction,
this means a concern solely that another person fulfill one’s demands and
fantasies. Adjustments required by the addicted lover are designed only to create
a more suitable partner; such adjustments actually make the person less capable
and appealing to others by creating a world whose private standards are
incompatible with those of the outer world. These addicted lovers are notable for
their dominance or their malleability, or…their sadism and masochism.

D. Love as painful or as a refuge from a painful world

(Some) lovers report their relationships to be terribly painful, and songs about
teenage love describe the experience as an incessant ache. Other lovers claim
that they find peace only when they are with their loved one, and that time spend
on their own is unbearable. The literature and music of romantic love is, on the
balance, more about pain than pleasure. The pain in the addicted love is present
from the start. People who are susceptible to addictive love are characterized by
a pained sense of the world. To say one cannot endure without a lover is to say
one cannot tolerate one’s life.

E. Love an incapacitating experience

Addiction harms and depreciates those engaged in it. Addicted lovers…are
constantly hurting each other (and) incapacitated by their love. Even addicted
lovers…who succeed in bonding with another person are unable to function
outside their lover’s presence. Yet they hardly seem concerned about this
diminution; indeed, it signals for them that their feelings are real. Neither are
their lovers concerned that the person has been diminished. Each partner, out of
his or her insecurity, welcomes the incapacity of the other as better guarantee of
fidelity, as a way of making sure a lover cannot escape.

F. Love as accidental and volatile

Addicted lovers are forever doubting that their love has a substantial existence
both because they feel unworthy of love and because they believe the emotion is
not an expression of them or of the conduct of the rest of their lives. This
accidental thing that has happened to them can disappear in a moment; it cannot
be counted on or cannot be planed for. This is why addicted lovers are so
desperate and grasping of the experience.

G. Love as an incommensurable experience

When the addicted love relationship is over, no relationship between the lovers is
possible. In some cases, one partner may have killed the other. Generally, if one
lover finds a better version of addicted love (“I found someone I love more”) he
 Stollak - 30

or she simply abandons the first lover. After these breakups, there is no basis for
further contact between the two, since the “love they had is gone.” That is, the
relationship was defined as a total, all-or-nothing experience that leaves no trace
once a person emerges from it. Like the religious convert or the recovered
alcoholic, this lover rejects all that went before.

H. Love as an uncontrollable urge and unconscious motivation

For addicted lovers, love is something that possesses them and determines their
actions. They don’t know why they love, and they believe they can as easily (it
often seems more easily) love an undeserving person. Love is a justification for
misbehavior including often hurting their lover. In this view, loving a person too
much is a logical defense for killing the lover. The epitome of this approach is
love as a biological or unconscious state inadvertently activated by the irrational
appeal of some casual object.

Aspects of the Mania love style described by Lee and of Peele’s description of the
characteristics of Addictive Love may also be experienced when reading or listening to the words
of a writer or leader who describes (typically with great passion) an ideology that encourages
hate and violent acts against the “other.” Infatuated and Fatuous love types described by
Sternberg, may be observed in individual acts of violence and to participation in groups that limit
the rights and actions of those in other groups and to actions that lead to the death of large
numbers of people. Anger and resentment for the life one leads and hatred of those perceived to
have caused and are contributing to feelings of helplessness and hopelessness are attributes of
consummate hate.

Peele also provides descriptions of the characteristics of the Romantic Ideal opposing
each of the categories descriptive of the Addictive style.

A. Love as an expansive experience:

In its place, love should open the individual to other opportunities in the world
and facets of the self that were not previously available to the person. Love is an
awakening, expansive experience that makes the person more alive, daring, and
exposed.
B. Love as a helping relationship
Love instead is a helping relationship in which people trust each other enough to
offer and accept criticism without feeling that their basic worth is being
undermined. Loving a person is to wish another person will be all that person can
be.

C. Love as an enhanced capacity and outward growth:

Love means valuing a relationship and a lover because they are successful in the
outer world. It is this feeling that one is a valuable person and that a lover is
likewise worthy of admiration, and love, that creates a secure basis for love.
Relationships lacking such existential and worldly validity flounder in
uncertainty, mutual distrust, and jealousy. Certainly everyone is capable of being
jealous, but jealous is not the hallmark of a relationship in which each partner is
confident of himself or herself and of a lover. Neither partner in such a
relationship directs or is directed by the other, since each is already capable and
worthy.

D. Love as an intensification of the pleasure in life

 Stollak - 31

Not only should love be pleasurable, but it should inspire and benefit from the
joy lovers feel toward life. The passion of genuine love is not an escape from
personal desperation, but instead expresses—and intensifies—the passion that a
person brings to all he or she does. Love cannot “save” a miserable person; no
external experience has such power. Only a person in love with life can love
other people.

E. Love as a productive and beneficial experience

Love is rather an enhancing experience, one that improves its participants. It
rewards those in the relationship and the lovers appreciate its rewarding nature.
These rewards are concrete—they endure beyond the time spent in each other’s
presence. … The benefits of love are as varied as the things people have to offer
and gain from one another. But the benefits are real.

F. Love as a natural outgrowth of one’s life and a secure part of oneself

…love…is not accidental but purposeful; it is the fullest and most crystallized
expression of a person. To be a good lover requires one to strive to be a good
person. To be valuable to another is to lead a worthwhile life. To love another
requires knowing another person (as Romeo and Juliet were not able to do) and
having a belief in that person’s value and goodness. Linking one’s life to another
person’s is certainly a risky and perilous enterprise. But people get better at
relationships as they understand who they are and know what they value in
others.

G. Love as an experience continuous with friendship and affection:

…love is not different from—although it may be more intense than—ordinary
affection. This love is practiced and seasoned by friendship. It may vary
gradually: lovers can improve or suffer setback in the relationship without being
pushed to a brink (while successfully understanding that they need to work to
enable the relationship to continue and improve). If their love ceases to be the
primary relationship for two people, they are still capable of respecting,
appreciating, and dealing with each other.
H. Love as a state of heightened awareness and responsibility
Love should stand for a fully aware state of being, one that kindles the most
elements of feeling and moral awakening. It is this responsibility for selecting
and nurturing a love relationship that actually defines our humanity and the
special human ability to love. (1988; pp. 179-182)

Fromm’s descriptions of the experiencing of what I would label characteristics and

outcomes of consummate love for each of the objects he wrote about is consistent with the
description of the effects of the Romantic Ideal described by Peele, noted above, that
focuses on the experiencing within and outside of a specific relationship. These
descriptions are probably equally applicable for the consummate love of almost all objects
in all areas and aspects of life that are important to each of us. Each of these characteristics
may also be descriptive of the experiencing and expression of consummate love between a
caregiver and a child. There are also likely to be similarities and overlaps between the
styles and types of love described by Lee and Sternberg and the Addictive and Romantic
Ideal experiencing described by Peele. For example, Peele’s description of Addictive Love
expands upon Sternberg’s description of Fatuous Love, and his description of the Romantic
Ideal expands upon the possible experiencing and social outcomes in one’s life of
experiencing Sternberg’s Consummate Love.
 Stollak - 32

Objects of love
There are many objects of love that one may have great passion for, become deeply
intimate with, and to which one makes enduring commitments. These objects can include a very
large number of different relationships, ideas, principles, beliefs and activities. Each may be
experienced in different styles and expressed, in different words and action. As examples, each
of the following may be a significant object of love.

love of self
love of another in an intimate relationship
love between an adult and one or more children
love of a child or adult for a parent
love between friends
love of family and between family members
love of neighbors
love of religious, spiritual and figures, symbols, beliefs, and activities
love of state/country/nation
love of learning
love of one or more ideas and areas of knowledge
love of a social activity
love of one or more physical activities/challenges and/or sports
love of sex
love of money
love of work
love of food and drink
love of nature
love of art/music/dance; their creation and performance

Consummate love across areas of life

The different components of love described by Sternberg and the aspects of love Peele
described are likely to be applicable to the characteristics of the experiencing of love for any
objects in any area of life that is central to one’s identity. I slightly revised and combined their
and McAdams’s additional listing of characteristics of intimacy.

The passion component across areas of life:

The passion component refers to the drives that lead to the moderate to intense arousal of
interest, curiosity, affection, a moderate to intense curiosity and desire for a physical and/or
intellectual encounter with the object’s many aspects, and moderate to intense desire to increase
understanding of what is being experienced in encounters with it. Although “libido” (creative—
or “psychic”—energy) may form the main part of passion in many relationships and encounters
with any object, other needs—such as for mastery, for competence, and for the actualization of
one’s human potential—may also contribute to the experience of passion.

The intimacy component across areas of life:

Intimacy refers to close, connected and bonded feelings in encounters with any object of
love. It thus includes feelings and actions that create and promote warmth, caring, trust, and
understanding of the object and in one’s relationship with it. There are multiple signs of
intimacy in the relationship: (1) consistent efforts to communicate and express (for example, in
 Stollak - 33

words, mathematical formula, paint, or dance) what is known about and being experienced in
encounters with the object, (2) joy and mutual delight in the presence of— including even
thinking about—the object, (3) a continuing desire to increase knowledge and understanding of
the many aspects of the object, (4) any increase in knowledge and understanding that leads to
happiness in encounters with, including thinking about, the object, (5) having high regard for and
valuing of investment of one’s time and energy and life with the object, and (6) if the object is
human or non-human (including with one’s animal companions), encounters with the object,
including thinking about and memories of past encounters with it, are experienced as ones in
which emotional support and satisfaction is experienced. The following (derived from
McAdams’ and Peele’s lists) are also indicative of consummate intimacy in encounters with
human and non-human objects: (7) openness and receptivity leading to psychological growth and
coping, and (8) perceived harmony or union.

The decision/commitment component across areas of life:

The decision/commitment component of love consists of two aspects, one short term and
one long term. The short-term one is the decision that one is committed to frequent encounters
with the object in thought or word and action. The long-term aspect is the commitment to an
enduring involvement. These two aspects of the decision/commitment component do not
necessarily go together, for the decision to become moderately to intensely involved in any one
moment in time does not necessarily imply a continued commitment to that involvement (for
example, toward algebra, chess, basketball, a political party or candidate, or a religion or one or
more of its traditions or rituals). Nor does commitment necessarily imply decision. Many people
are committed to the love of an object without necessarily even admitting that they love or are in
love with that object. Most often, however, a conscious decision for moderate to intense and
enduring involvement will precede commitment to it.

Addictive versus Consummate Love

I also only needed to slightly revise Peele’s descriptions of opposing aspects of romantic
love (see Peele, 1988; pp. 179-182) to indicate what may be the experience and outcome of
addictive versus consummate love toward any object or subject including those noted above in
any area of life.

Addictive love as absorption in the object

The person cannot get beyond the love of the object suggesting a total focus similar to a
drug in substance addiction.
versus

Consummate love as an expansive experience:

The consummate love of any object should open the individual to other opportunities in
the world and facets of the self that were not previously available to the person. Consummate
love of, for example, algebra, chess, basketball, singing or playing an instrument, a political
party or candidate, or a religion or one or more of its traditions or rituals is an awakening,
expansive experience that makes the person more alive, daring, and exposed.

Addictive love as idealization and total acceptance of the object

 Stollak - 34

A notion of love predicated on a blindness to the flaws of the object or a willingness to

ignore them describes the kind of defensive system addicts employ to convince themselves this
state of being is superior to ordinary reality.
versus

Consummate love as a helping relationship

Consummate love of an object is a helping relationship in which the person feels trust in
the object enough to criticize aspects of the object and accept criticism of it from others about its
characteristics without feeling that the basic worth of the object is being undermined.

Addictive love as internal adjustment and a private world

Addiction is a preoccupation with personal needs. In the case of love addiction, this
means a concern solely that the object fulfill one’s demands and fantasies. Adjustments required
by the addicted lover are designed only to create a more suitable “object”; such adjustments
actually make the person less capable and appealing to important others by creating a world
whose private standards are incompatible with those of the outer world. These addicted lovers
are notable for their dominance or their malleability, or…their sadism and masochism in their
relationship with the object.

versus

Consummate love as an enhanced capacity and outward growth:

Consummate love means valuing one’s secure attachment and relationship with the object.
It is this feeling that the object is valuable and that the object is likewise worthy of admiration, and
love, that creates a secure basis for love. Relationships lacking such existential and worldly
validity flounder in uncertainty, distrust, and jealousy of another’s involvement with it.

---------------------------------------------

Addictive love as painful or as a refuge from a painful world

The relationship with the object is terribly painful. One claims that they find peace only
when they are involved with the object of love and that time spend on their own or away from
the object is unbearable. The pain in the addicted love is present from the start. People who are
susceptible to addictive love are characterized by a pained sense of the world. To say one cannot
endure without a relationship with the object is to say one cannot tolerate one’s life.

versus

Consummate love as an intensification of the pleasure in life

Not only should love of the object be pleasurable, but it should inspire and benefit from
the joy one feels toward life. The passion of consummate love of an object is not an escape from
personal desperation, but instead expresses—and intensifies—the passion that a person brings to
all she does. Love cannot “save” a miserable person; no external experience has such power. It
is possible that only a person in consummate love with life can consummately love other people
and consummately love multiple objects in multiple areas of life.

---------------------------------------------
 Stollak - 35

Addictive love an incapacitating experience

Addiction harms and depreciates those engaged in it. Addicted lovers of any object are
incapacitated by their love.
versus

Consummate love as a productive and beneficial experience

Consummate love is rather an enhancing experience, one that improves one’s relationship
with the object and with others who are also participants in the relationship. It rewards all those
in the relationship and who appreciate its rewarding nature. These rewards are concrete—they
endure beyond the time spent in the presence of the object. The benefits of love are as varied as
the things people have to offer and gain from one another and for one’s relationship and
encounters with the object. But the benefits are real.

Addictive love as accidental and volatile

Addicted lovers of an object are forever doubting that their love has a substantial
existence both because they feel unworthy of their relationship with the object and because they
believe the love is not an expression of them or of the conduct of the rest of their lives. This
accidental thing that has happened to them can disappear in a moment; it cannot be counted on or
cannot be planed for. This is why addicted lovers of an object are so desperate and grasping of
the experience.
versus

Consummate love as a natural outgrowth of one’s life and a secure part of oneself
Consummate love is not accidental but purposeful; it is the fullest and most crystallized
expression of a person. To be in love with an object requires one to strive to be a good person.
To be valuable to another or toward any other object is to lead a worthwhile life. To
consummately love an object requires knowing and being intimate with the object and having a
belief in that object’s value. Linking one’s life to an object is certainly a risky and perilous
enterprise. But people get better at their relationships with an object as they understand who
they are and know what they value in the object.

---------------------------------------------

Addictive love as an incommensurable experience

When the addicted love in a relationship with an object is over, no relationship with the
object is possible. That is, the relationship was defined as a total, all-or-nothing experience that
leaves no trace once a person emerges from it. Like the religious convert or the recovered
alcoholic, this lover rejects everything about the object that went before. The object could
include, for example, a sports team or figure, God, or one’s country.

versus

Consummate love as an experience continuous with affection

Consummate love is not different from—although it may be more intense than—ordinary
affection for any object, even a symbol or an idea. Consummate love is practiced and seasoned
 Stollak - 36

by affection. It may vary gradually: one can improve or suffer setback in the relationship or
encounter with the object without being pushed to a brink (while successfully understanding that
one needs to work for understanding and mastery to continue and improve). For example, if the
consummate love of a partner ceases to be the primary relationship, one is still capable of being
respectful in their encounters with the other.

----------------------------------------------

Addictive love as an uncontrollable urge and unconscious motivation

For an addicted lover of an object, love is something that possesses them and determines
their actions. They don’t know why they love the object, and they believe they can as easily
(it often seems more easily) love another object. The epitome of this approach is to consider
love as a biological or unconscious state inadvertently activated by the irrational appeal of
some object.
versus

Consummate love as a state of heightened awareness and responsibility

Consummate love should stand for a fully aware state of being, one that kindles the most
elements of feeling and moral awakening. It is this responsibility for selecting and nurturing a
relationship with any object that actually defines our humanity and the special human ability to
love with enduring passion, enduring intimacy, and enduring commitment.

Characteristics of addictive and consummate love in several areas of life.

The perspectives described above and by others including personality theorists such as
Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers and Erik Erikson and family theorists such as David Olson
(1993) and W. Robert Beavers (for example, Beavers & Hampson, 1993) have led me to list, on
the following pages, possible characteristics of addictive and consummate of love in one or more
areas of life. One may also consider that one of the goals and characteristics of consummate love
in any domain is “secure attachment” to the objects in that domain.
 Stollak - 37

Love of self

Addictive Consummate
Narcissism Self-expansion
Self-absorption Transcendence
Vanity Self-awareness
Conceit Self-understanding
Self-acceptance
Pure consciousness

-----------------------------------------------------------

Love between intimate partners

Addictive Consummate
Mania Structured
Fatuous love Flexibly connected
Infatuated love Separated/Individuated
Limerance Securely attached
Empty love Successful negotiations
Exploitation Power over self
Emotional enmeshment: Responsibility for self
Emotional fusion Cooperation plus assertiveness
Confusion of self, others as to goals
and needs
Emotional reactivity (anxiety, mistrust,
hate, shame, guilt, inferiority)
Pursuer/distancer

------------------------------------------------------------

Love between friends

Addictive Consummate
Chaotic Structured
Rigid Flexibly connected
Exploitation Separated/Individuated
Emotional enmeshment: Securely attached
Emotional fusion
Confusion of self, others as to goals
and needs
Emotional reactivity (anxiety, mistrust,
hate, shame, guilt, inferiority)
Pursuer/distancer

----------------------------------------------------
 Stollak - 38

Love between an adult and one or more children

Addictive Consummate
Chaotic Structured
Rigid Flexible
Disengaged Connected
Exploitation Separated/Individuated
Emotional enmeshment: Securely attached
Emotional fusion
Emotional reactivity (anxiety, mistrust,
hate, shame, guilt, inferiority)
Pursuer/distancer
Confusion of self, others as to goals
and needs

-----------------------------------------------------------

Love of family, neighbors, kin, tribe, clan

Addictive Consummate
Chaotic Structured
Rigid Flexibly connected
Disengaged Separated/Individuated
Enmeshed Securely attached
Exploitation Alliances
Coalitions Altruism
Triangulation

------------------------------------------------------------

Love of country/nation

Addictive Consummate
Jingoism Patriotism
Nationalism Admiration
Imperialism Skepticism
Fanaticism
Cynicism
Exclusion

-------------------------------------------------------------
 Stollak - 39

Love of learning and knowledge

Consummate
Addictive Curiosity
Power Mastery
Dominance Care
Coalitions Generativity
Cynicism Competence
Alliances
Skepticism
Doubt
-----------------------------------

Love of sex

Addictive Consummate
Exploitation Sensuality
Greediness Tenderness
Power Union
Dominance Flexibility
A wish to conquer or to be conquered Fusion
Compulsion Goal: One’s own and the other’s
Sadism pleasure and orgasm
Masochism
Goal: Only one’s own pleasure and
orgasm

--------------------------------------------

Love of work

Addictive Consummate
“Workaholism” Care
Greed Generativity
Exploitation Mastery
Compulsion Competence
Obsession Alliances
Power Secure attachment
Dominance
Coalitions
 Stollak - 40

Even “workaholism” could refer to either an addictive or consummate love of a

specific task or activity. Only a study of the person’s life outside of involvement with the
task or activity may allow a determination of what style and type of love it is:

… Although the term workaholic usually has a negative connotation, it

is sometimes used by people wishing to express their devotion to one's
career in positive terms. The "work" in question is usually associated with
a paying job, but it may also refer to independent pursuits such as sports,
music and art. A workaholic in the negative sense is popularly
characterized by a neglect of family and other social relations. (Wikipedia)
Love of money

Addictive Consummate
Greed Anonymous philanthropy
Compulsion Altruism
Obsession Generativity
Exploitation Competence
Power Alliances
Coalitions
--------------------------------------------------------------

Love of food

Addictive Consummate
Gluttony Care
Anorexia Generativity
Bulimia Mastery
Compulsion Competence
Obsession Secure attachment

-------------------------------------------------------------

Love of a deity, spiritual and religious figures, religious/spiritual symbols,

beliefs, and activities

Emotional reactivity (anxiety, mistrust,

Addictive
Narcissism hate, shame, guilt, inferiority)
Self-absorption Pursuer/distancer
Vanity Emotional fusion
Exploitation Emotional enmeshment
Power
Dominance
Mania
Fatuous love
Infatuated love
Empty love
Fanaticism
Coalitions/Exclusion
 Stollak - 41

Consummate
Transcendence
Care
Generativity
Mastery
Competence
Compassion
Secure attachment
Alliances
Philanthropy
Altruism
Possible pathways to consummate love of any object
It is very likely that there are different pathways to consummate and to addictive love.
We do not yet know whether one or more of the above described styles, types, components and
expressions of love develop or change in any typical sequence. For example, it is possible that
as Sternberg noted above: “Greater intimacy may lead to create passion or commitment, just as
greater commitment may lead to greater intimacy or, with lesser likelihood, greater passion.”
Further, if one believes Fromm’s assertion that “Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific
person; it is an attitude, and orientation of character which determines the relatedness of a
person to the world as a whole, not toward one ‘object’ of love’” then it is possible that there
may be a pathway to such an “attitude” and “orientation of character” that begins in infancy. It
may also be that this pathway contributes to the attaining and maintaining consummate love in
relationships with one or more object. Here are some possible pathways to consummate love:

Passion → Intimacy → Commitment

Most of us may believe that it is passion that provides the major stimulus to intimacy and
that the experience of intimacy will then lead to a decision that one loves the object and makes a
commitment to it. The passion component of love in relationships, as Sternberg and the majority
of those who have written about love have noted may, of course, refer “to the drives that lead to
romance, physical attraction, and sexual consummation.” In human relationships, passion may
lead to a decision to marry (or for some, to live together) and is the major indicator of a
commitment to maintain that love in the future. It is probable that it is the diminishing of
physical attraction, infatuation and lust over time and/or to the diminishing of the indicators of
intimacy in daily life that contribute to the decision to end one’s commitment to another in
friendships and close relationships even in childhood. It is likely that the diminishing of passion
for what one is learning in school and in after-school activities in childhood and adolescence that
leads (along with feelings of doubt, shame, and inferiority) to various learning problems.

It is also probable that it is the diminishing of passion for one’s career and the failure to
experience intimacy (or to the diminishing of its experiencing) over time, that leads to
dissatisfaction, disengagement, and avoidance of encounters with the activities and new learning
that may be necessary in a career and with respect to any avocation. In the most extreme cases,
one may experience, for example, a crisis and feel lost, helpless, and hopeless concerning one’s
positive self-concept that was dependent on the career or activity.

Passion → Commitment → Intimacy

Even passion, initially experienced as infatuation (described in Wikipedia as being
“completely carried away by an unreasoning, urgent, extreme, and intense absorption”) with any
object or even lust (“an intense desire or craving and excitement”) can lead to the decision to
commit to learning (formally or informally) as much as possible (over years and even decades)
about an object’s many dimensions, aspects, and characteristics. It is the passion for learning that
provides the motivation that leads to much practice, a search for and the appreciation of the
mentoring and supervision that is received. Using Erik Erikson’s terminology, the experiencing
of hope, the application of will, the planning and purposiveness in encounters with the object and
significant effort and industry in encounters with it can lead to intimacy, and for Erikson fidelity
to it; a contributor to identity and not just a self-concept.
Commitment → Intimacy → Passion
Those involved in arranged marriages based on religious or cultural beliefs, or for
political, economic and other social reasons, may make a commitment to each other—a written
contract or a verbal agreement—that, initially, does not include a decision to love or a
commitment to love. However, as they share time and space together they may experience, over
time, the kinds of intimacy described above by Sternberg and McAdams.

Along with close relationships, as can also be noted in Wikipedia, “passion can be
expressed as a feeling of unusual excitement or enthusiasm” not only about a person but also
“about a subject, idea, or object. (It) is an intense emotion compelling feeling, enthusiasm, or
desire for anything and often requiring action. (It) often applies to lively or eager interest in or
admiration for a proposal, cause, or activity.” The enduring commitment to any object in any
area of life may, over time, lead to the experiencing of intense passion and intimacy. Thus,
intimacy, for example, with an infant and child may lead over time, to a passion for and a
commitment to provide for the needs and protection of his/her rights.

Intimacy → Commitment → Passion

Responsibilities, roles, duties, obligations and even necessity—imposed and demanded
by family, teachers, organizations, and institutions—may lead one slowly (even during
childhood) becoming increasingly intimate with a person, a physical object, a cause, a proposal,
a subject, an idea, or an activity. The experiencing of intimacy may lead to a commitment and
eventually to passion in encounters with it.

Summary
I hope the above presentation of a variety of perspectives about love has been informative
and at least somewhat provocative. These perspectives have led me to revise several of the
questions noted earlier:

How do we learn (and who helps us learn) to recognize and label

what we are feeling, in the moment, is consummate love for one or
more of the multitude of objects that we encounter during our lives
and understand its similarities with and differences from other
feelings we might be experiencing? 

How do we learn (and who helps us to learn) to skillfully express

the consummate love we are experiencing?

How does one learn (and who helps us to learn) to believe and label
what the other is communicating in an encounter with is
consummate love?

It is probable that the consummate outcomes—the ideals that are described above—
are not easily achieved. Existing theory, speculation, and research finding suggest that the
struggle toward the experiencing and expression of consummate love in encounters with
any object in any area of life likely requires, at least:
 a. a sustaining ability to delay gratification,
b. a focus on the future,
c. the turning away from easy solutions to emerging—and inevitable—problems
d. a passion and commitment to develop the skills to survive and thrive,
e. an interest and a passion to confront and become intimate with that
which is unknown,
f. great persistence and great efforts to learn what is needed and desired,
and
g. the highest levels of personal and interpersonal understanding of one’s
own others’ goals and motives.

It may be that only when love is consummate with regard to any object that it
becomes, as Peele, described:

a. an expansive experience
b. a helping relationship
c. an enhanced capacity and outward growth
d. an intensification of the pleasure in life
e. a natural outgrowth of one’s life and a secure part of oneself
f. an experience continuous with affection
g. a state of heightened awareness and responsibility

It may be that it is only the achievement of these outcomes that results in each of us, and
our children, maintaining consummate love of one or more objects over long periods of time, even
a lifetime. These outcomes also are major contributors to our beliefs and actions in small and large
groups including our families and in the communities, institutions, and organizations in which we
are embedded and impacted by their policies and actions. These outcomes also affect our beliefs
about our government’s laws, policies, and actions and influence our actions as citizens.

Love in groups and communities

Our evolutionary history has contributed to our powerful need for connection to another
including mother-infant bonds as well as to adult kinship and other groups that have been
necessary for the survival and the expansion of the social skills of the human species (Wilson,
1975; 2012). Each of us may be asked by significant others or by advertisements on television to
“Make a commitment to something larger than yourself.” In response to this and other appeals
to “Be all you can be” some join an organization (for example, the U.S. Army) that will provide
service protecting a nation’s safety and interests. Thus, consummate and other types of love may
also be observed and studied in the smaller and larger groups and communities that one is born
into (for example, one’s immediate and extended family, clan, tribe, state, or nation), or
voluntarily choose to become a passive observer or as an active participant. Our passion for,
intimacy with, and commitment to one or more national, religious, social, community, sport,
business, scientific, and/or political organizations, may be even greater than to one’s children and
one’s closest adult partners.
 There may be significant disagreements about the label one might give to the love
experienced by each member in different kinds of groups and how each is expressed in a group’s
actions. As an extreme example, was it a consummate or an addictive love of a deity, prophet or
leader whose words people read or listened to that led to them to participate, passively or
actively, in the injury and death of thousands and even millions of others throughout the world
and throughout history, some becoming, through their suicide, martyrs for their causes? We
know that with great passion and commitment the leaders and followers of many groups and
governments believe and act in ways to demand that all persons in their community, country,
even the world, believe in—and even love—the same deity, prophet or leader and to submit to
(sometimes ever-changing) laws and social policies without question or resistance. It is possible
that among the many reasons persons in a group whose leaders encourage actions that injure and
cause the death of others, even of themselves in acts of suicide, is passion for, intimacy with, and
commitment to their beliefs and cause. From their perspective, their love may be experienced
and labeled as consummate. Others, reviewing the styles and types of love described earlier by
Lee, Sternberg, and Steele may describe the love experienced and expressed by those in such
groups as examples of Addictive, Mania or Fatuous love…or experiencing and expressing
consummate hate. Who is the “decider” of the label?

Throughout history, those oppressed (including women and cultural and religious
minorities) have come together and demanded such rights (including the right to vote, to own
property, to marry) through non-violent means. Others have engaged in groups encouraging,
even demanding, violent acts of “revolution” or “terror.” Almost all people in the past and a very
great number of persons in the present have been and continue to be members of smaller and
larger groups of people who feel oppressed, face pervasive persecution and abuse, and lack
essential freedoms and rights. Who is the decider of labeling a group as one motivated by
consummate hate rather than consummate love? Is there a way to differentiate styles and types
of love—and hate—of the groups considered important to one’s self-concept or identity?

I will focus here on the similarities and differences between the goals and actions of
members of smaller and larger groups that have been labeled coalitions and alliances.

Coalitions and alliances

To achieve one or more of our goals in life, we may be members of more than several
coalitions and alliances. We might also encourage and even pay for our children to become
members of one or more different kinds of groups (for example, a soccer team, a school band, or
Girl Scouts) assuming that their participation would advance our goals for them as well as help
them achieve their own goals.
The words coalition and alliance have both been used, mainly, to label groups of nations
in war efforts, constituencies of individual politicians, political parties, and collections of
business and community organizations and the groups that support and lobby for them. These
words have also been used to label those in small groups, for example, two or more person
families and peer and friendship groups beginning in childhood. There are also coaches in sports
or other activities educators, and counselors who attempt to create coalitions or alliances to
facilitate learning and behavior change in these groups. These terms are often used
interchangeably and most of us may consider them synonyms.
 I begin by pointing out some current usage of each. I then describe different purposes
and goals of smaller and larger groups and organizations. These differences, as well as
differences in the words, actions, and motives of their participants and leaders have relevance for
determining when to use each word and their utility in the study of groups, educational
processes, and as guidelines for understanding the kinds of love we experience and express in
groups.

Definitions
Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (1971) includes the following for
coalition: “a temporary alliance of distinct parties, persons or states for joint action or to achieve
a common purpose.” The dictionary includes the following for alliance: “an association or union
formed for the furtherance of the common interests and aims of the members.” There are other
words that are closely related in definition. In Webster’s the word clique is described as “a
narrow exclusive circle of persons; especially one held together by a presumed identity of
interests, views or purposes.” The word family, as noted earlier, also includes, among its many
definitions, “a group of persons in the service of an individual.” The word team includes “a
number of persons associated in work or activity” and persons who “join forces together in a
defensive alliance.” Definitions of community include “any group sharing interests or pursuits or
linked by a common policy” and “a body of individuals organized into a unit or manifesting
usually with awareness of some unifying trait.”

Included and implied in the dictionary definitions of all of the above noted words and in
the description of organizations or groups of persons self-describing themselves members of an
alliance and/or coalition are their

1. “bonding” and “coalescing” together to

2. create a “union,” “association,” and “connection,” in order to
3. engage in “joint actions” to
4. “support” and to “enable” their “mission,” their “common aim,”
“common policy,” “common interest” and “common purpose.”

When and for what purposes do each of us use one or another of these words? Is it there
being only a temporary or a long-term “common interest” leading to a “joint action” to
accomplish a “common purpose” that leads us to call a group one group a coalition or another an
alliance? But how short or long is “temporary”?

Wars
During World Wars I and II the United States and its “allies” attacked German, Japanese,
and Italian armed forces who were members of the then “axes of evil.” At this writing, NATO is
considered the world’s largest defensive “alliance.” It was created in 1949 to counter the
Warsaw Pact nations under the control of the then U.S.S.R. This group of nations was also
called an “alliance.” The Warsaw Pact ended with the end of the “cold war.” Although not
currently a member of NATO (which has expanded to include some countries that were once
members of the Warsaw Pact), Russia is more often than not, considered an “ally” depending, as
always, on the “national interests” of each country. The “missions” of NATO and the United
Nations have also been changing and new threats to our and other nations are always rising and
creating new bonds among nations. These bonds whether long-lasting or relevant only at a
specific time and for a specific reason are called “strategic partnerships”.

We are currently participating in a variety of other kinds of “wars.” For example, will the
“war on poverty” (declared by President Lyndon Johnson in 1964) or the “war on drugs”
(declared by President Richard Nixon in 1971) ever end? Will the more recent “existential” and
“transformational global war on terrorism” and “war of civilizations” (declared by President
George W. Bush late in 2001), and the “war on global warming” (announced on the April 28,
2008 cover of Time magazine) ever end? We have generally concluded that even our longer
“wars” against diseases such as the “war on cancer” (declared by Senator Edward Kennedy in
1971) would be best engaged in by early detection and early intervention. This is the lesson we
have been attempting to apply to all of the above mentioned other “wars.” There seem to have
been some successes, some ability to manage them, but not yet total “victory” in any of them.
There continues to be competing views about the best solutions to end each of them as well as
the more recently declared “war on women” and “war on voting” and, for some, the “war on
Christmas.” There is never-ending competition for political power and funds to “wage” each of
these wars. How would we know when we are able to declare “victory” in any of them? What is
the persuasive evidence and who do we trust when we are told that “victory” has been
accomplished, “around the corner,” or that “great progress is being made” in any of them?
Which groups have you joined and contributed to (through, for example, enlisting in the military,
donations of money, letter writing or petition signing, or participating in picketing, or running for
a political office) to demonstrate your commitment to ending any of the above “wars”?

The joint actions, whether on the battle or football field, on a stage, or in an office are
typically conducted with enthusiasm and, more often than not, with much zeal. Wars against
“extremists” and “rebels” within so many countries of our world are often undertaken with great
passion and commitment. In which of these “wars” are its participants better described as
members of coalitions or of alliances?

Regarding other groups, are the separate states of the United States or the members of the
United Nations or NATO a coalition or an alliance? Are there different conditions or issues
when they are one or the other?

Group labels
I conducted a search for “alliance” and for “coalition” at google.com and found, in the
first several pages of the searches for each, many different kinds of organizations using one of
these words and even organizations that use both words in their title, for example, the “National
Alliance of Urban Literacy Coalitions,” “The National Alliance of State Science and
Mathematics Coalitions,” and the “National Alliance of State Prostate Cancer Coalitions.” None

of them describe themselves as being “temporary.” I could not determine from the descriptions
why one instead of the other word was used. For example, there is the “Community Anti-Drug
Coalitions of America” whose
 mission is to build and strengthen the capacity of community coalitions to create
safe, healthy and drug-free communities. The organization supports its members
with technical assistance and training, public policy, media strategies and
marketing programs, conferences and special events.

and the “Network of Alliances Bridging Race and Ethnicity” whose

mission is to cultivate and nurture race relations and racial justice organizations
committed to building alliances that break down barriers of race and ethnicity in
all sectors of communities and to build relentless momentum toward a more
inclusive and just nation.

Will either of these “missions” ever end?

There are many other related questions. Under what conditions are those involved in a
group arts activity, for example, those in a band, choir, or orchestra, a “family” or a “team,” …or
a coalition or an alliance.

Both Adolph Hitler and Martin Luther King, Jr.—two of the most extreme examples of
charismatic public speakers—were trying to get others to engage in joint actions, to embark on a
mission to achieve, what each believed, were highly valued goals. Both attempted to arouse
great passion, increase intimacy, and make commitments to their “cause” and for those listening
to or reading their words, to take action.

Sarah Vowel wrote in a January 21, 2008 column in the New York Times:

Here’s what Dr. King got out of the Sermon on the Mount. On Nov. 17, 1957, in
Montgomery’s Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, he concluded the learned
discourse that came to be known as the “loving your enemies” sermon this way:
“So this morning, as I look into your eyes and into the eyes of all of my brothers
in Alabama and all over America and over the world, I say to you: ‘I love you. I
would rather die than hate you.’ ”
Go ahead and re-read that. That is hands down the most beautiful, strange,
impossible, but most of all radical thing a human being can say. And it comes
from reading the most beautiful, strange, impossible, but most of all radical civics
lesson ever taught, when Jesus of Nazareth went to a hill in Galilee and told his
disciples, “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that
hate you.”

The actions Hitler and King were encouraging others to engage in could not, of course,
have been more different! What kinds of thoughts and feelings and motives were aroused
among those that heard or read their words and what actions did they take; even today? Was
each attempting, in their spoken and written words and actions, to create an alliance or a
coalition?

Having different definitions of coalitions and alliances may help in understanding how
different styles and types of love are expressed in social behavior in small and large groups.
Purposes and goals of groups
Below is a sampling of the wide variety of purposes of groups.
 To raise a family
 To serve the purposes of a religious organization
 To produce and provide food and other material and social (including medical) services
necessary and desirable for survival, health, comfort, and pleasure
 To protect these material and services from others who would steal, destroy, or prevent
further acquisition of them
 To defeat those in smaller or larger groups who are directly threatening health and survival
 To develop and implement educational programs for children, adolescents and adults
 To work toward laws affecting the building of structures that provide protection to
humans, and sea and land animals
 To build, maintain and repair structures including homes, factories, offices and other
buildings, transportation vehicles, bridges, highways
 To create, build, and supply the material used to build, ship, maintain and repair structures
 To respond to emergencies caused by illness, by injuries caused by accidents, those self-
inflicted, or caused by natural disasters
 To defeat an opponent in group athletic and social contests
 To defeat an opponent in an election
 To terrorize, rape and murder others, to destroy or seize the property of individuals and
groups as “gang” members for “amusement,” as “revenge,” or for money, or as part of
illegal or government sanctioned groups to gain/maintain economic and/or political power
 To arrest and punish those engaged in illegal activities
 To create and implement laws and legal processes and procedures that are just
 To protect the weak against the strong, minorities from the majority
 To protect the innocent until proven guilty
 To protect the rights and opportunities of persons in a self-defined group
 To prevent the obtaining of rights and opportunities of those in one or more other defined groups
 To obtain, maintain and increase financial profit and other business advantages
 To experience euphoria and friendship
 To create and participate in traditions and events that support religious and spiritual experiences
 To create and support a sense of community
 To celebrate success and achievement
 To express collective loss and grief
 To enjoy a structured joint activity (requiring at least some minimum skill) with
expectations for a positive experience and outcome, for example, planning, contributing
to, and participating in a family or communal meal, a parade, folk or square dancing
 To work together in a structured joint activity (demanding moderate to significant talent
and skill and much practice), for example, contributing to a choir, band, dance, orchestra,
theater, movie or television performance, whose goal (along with, when necessary,
earning or raising money) is both pleasure and the creation of a complex aesthetic
experience in an audience.
 In all of the above group tasks, activities and relationships there is likely to be the
experiencing and expression of one or more styles and types of love noted earlier in this Chapter.
It is also likely that each of the personality types described by Fisher would make different
contributions and express their love differently in each of the above activities.

The purposes and goals of coalitions

I assume that there are those who are the leaders and followers of many existing—even
virtual—groups who experience those in another identifiable group, at the very least, as
“opponents.” I recommend using the word coalition to include those collections of persons
who are active or passive members of groups whose goals are to defeat another group in
some contest, competition, or conflict.

The word coalition also refers to those who contribute to and/or work together to defeat
those in other groups who must be defeated in life-threatening battles and wars. In some
instances those in another group are despised enemies. Throughout human history, large groups
of armed combatants have come together and have invaded the homeland of others and
attempted to defeat and control their population and resources. And, of course, throughout
human history, large groups of armed combatants have also come together to repel those who
have invaded their “homeland.” Adolph Hitler and those who supported him were part of a very
large coalition of those whose “common purpose” and goal was the elimination of persons
throughout Europe (and the world) that did not possess the characteristics of those he and others
decided were “Aryan.” Some nations have also preemptively attacked an enemy who is
perceived as “clearly” planning to invade the homeland or the land of an “ally.”

“Us” versus “Them”

Reinhold Niebuhr put it most succinctly: “the chief source of man’s inhumanity to man
seems to be the tribal limits of his sense of obligation to other men.” In almost all coalitions
there is a coming together “against”; there is a “versus.” To categorize and label those belonging
to another group (or any collective) an “enemy” (not just an “opponent) is to label that group,
organization, or institution an “other,” perceived and evaluated as more or less “dangerous” or
“objectionable” and, more often than not, “unworthy” of being treated with respect. This is
accomplished, as Lewis, Amini & Lannon (2000) noted, by leaders who are skillfully

indoctrinating the emotional outlook that creates an Enemy. That psychological

goal is achieved by severing mental bonds between Us and Them while
simultaneously strengthening intragroup ties. The Enemy is not like us, both
sides tell prospective combatants, they are subnormal, inhuman, less than
animals (p. 216).

Similarly, Glenn Greenwald, in a post (“Tribalistic self-absorption”) on Salon.com on

June 12, 2009, wrote that

The most predominant mentality in (some) discourse finds expression in this

form: "I am part of/was born into Group X, and Group X—my group—is better
than all others yet treated so very unfairly" . . . . Here…we find … adolescent
self-absorption:  the group into which I was born and was instructed from
childhood to believe is the best—(my country)—is, objectively, superior.  It is so
 much better than everyone and everything else that even to suggest that we have
flaws comparable to others is to engage in "false moral equivalencies."  To do
anything other than emphatically proclaim my group's objective superiority is to
treat my group unfairly.
The misery and suffering my group inflicts on far less powerful groups is
irrelevant and always justifiable.  (Such views indicate that) They never
advanced beyond the adolescent stage of tribalistic self-absorption and it's
amazing how completely that lies at the core of most of what they believe and
argue. 

Columnist David Brooks (2004) writing in The New York Times noted that,

…if you can give your foes a collective name—liberals, fundamentalists or

neocons—you can rob them of their individual humanity. All inhibitions
are removed. You can say anything about them. You get to feed off their villainy
and luxuriate in your own contrasting virtue.

Marc D. Hauser, in a December 4, 2009 posting on edge.org (“It seems biology [not
religion] equals morality”) expanded upon this view and proposed a path to diminishing its
occurrence and power:

…why are there are so many moral atrocities in the world? The answer comes
from thinking about our emotions, the feelings we recruit to fuel in-group
favouritism, out-group hatred and, ultimately, dehumanisation.
Consider the psychopath, Hollywood's favourite moral monster. Clinical
studies reveal that they feel no remorse, shame, guilt or empathy, and lack the
tools for self-control. Because they lacked these capacities, several experts have
argued that they lack the wherewithal to understand what is right or wrong and,
consequently, to do the wrong thing. New studies show, however, that this
conclusion is at least partially wrong. Psychopaths know full well what is right
and wrong but don't care. Their moral knowledge is intact but their moral
emotions are damaged. They are perfectly normal jurists but perfectly abnormal
moral actors. For the psychopath, other humans are no different from rocks or
artefacts. They are disposable.
Here lies the answer to understanding the dangers of nurture, of education and
partiality. When we fuel in-group biases by elevating and praising members of
the group, we often unconsciously, and sometimes consciously, denigrate the
"other" by feeding the most nefarious of all emotions, the dragon of disgust.
We label the other (the members of the out-group) with a description that
makes them sub-human or even inanimate, often parasitic and vile, and thus
disgusting. When disgust is recruited, those in the in-group have only one way
out: purge the other.
When the Dalai Lama stated that the Chinese were attempting "cultural
genocide" against the Tibetans by attempting to stop protests, he was not only
making a statement about the Chinese per se but about a particular form of moral
education, one that fails to acknowledge autonomy, preaches partiality and feeds
disgust and dehumanisation. The Chinese must stop their attempt to purge the
Tibetans of their cultural heritage and right of cultural expression. And the
nations of the world, and their diverse peoples, must remain vigilant against any
attempts at cultural decimation.
 The good news about the psychology of prejudice, of creating distinctive
classes of individuals who are in the tribe and outside of it, is that it is flexible,
capable of change and—viewed from an evolutionary perspective—as abstract
and content-free as the rules that enter into our moral grammar.
All animals, humans included, have evolved the capacity to create a
distinction between members of the in-group and those in the out-group. But the
features that are selected are not set in the genome. Rather, it is open to
experience.
For example, we know from studies of child development that within the first
year of life, babies prefer to look at faces from their own race to faces of a
different race, prefer to listen to speakers of their native language over foreigners,
and even within their native language prefer to listen to their own dialect. But if
babies watch someone of another race speaking their native language, they are
much more willing to engage with this person than someone of the same race
speaking a different language.
These social categories are created by experience, and some features are more
important than others because they are harder to fake and more indicative of a
shared cultural background. But, importantly, they are plastic. Racial
discrimination is greatly reduced among children of mixed-racial parents. And
adults who have dated individuals of another race are also much less prejudiced.
On this note, moral education can play a more nurturing role by introducing all
children, early in life, to the varieties of religions, political systems, languages,
social organisations and races. Exposure to diversity is perhaps our best option
for reducing, if not eradicating, strong out-group biases.

It is also true that coalitions of nations confronting one or more other threatening nations
and their leaders can lead to negotiations, compromises and treaties that reduce tensions and
avoids, for shorter or longer periods of time, physical attacks and widespread destruction and
death of large numbers of people. This has happened frequently between France and England
over the past several hundred years along with their frequent battles. More recently, the Nobel
Peace Prize has been awarded to those whose efforts led to treaties (for however short or longer
periods of time they are honored) between long term enemies.

Sometimes the “enemy” can also be those asking for equal rights and opportunities. A
goal of many intergroup group conflicts is to protect the “rights” of one group and to deprive
another (or example, women, persons of specific skin colors, social classes, religions, or
ethnicities) of the same rights, for example, voting, employment, possession of property,
freedom to gather, write, and speak, to worship freely, to travel freely, to receive an education,
and even the right to life itself. Throughout American history those in one or more localities
who considered themselves members of one or another geographic, ethnic, or religious group
demeaned, demonized, terrorized, and killed persons in other groups. These groups included
the very large number of those who arrived and lived in this part of the world before those who
arrived from western Europe from the 15th through 19th century and those who arrived in the
United States from western areas of Africa in chains.

There are equally necessary and important coalitions who participate in government and
the civil and criminal justice systems, creating and maintaining the social contract; supporting
or amending existing laws or writing new ones, and providing consequences for civil and
criminal infractions. When there are alleged lawbreakers including smaller and larger
conspiracies (for example, the “mob,” “drug cartels”), there is sometimes a coming together
against the threat of a “breakdown” or “rip” in the “social fabric.” There are coalitions of police
officers, those in the offices of prosecutors, and those participating in a criminal judicial system
whose collective responsibility is to arrest and prosecute alleged lawbreakers. Other citizens
contribute, as members of a jury, to the sentencing and incarceration of lawbreakers or setting
free those they judged not guilty of the charges brought against them. On the other hand, there
also have been and continue to be large numbers of corrupt judicial systems throughout the
world; coalitions of police, prosecutors, and judges who arrest, imprison, exile, or order the
execution of those who only crimes, according to existing laws, may be expressing their
feelings and opinions out loud, writing their thoughts and beliefs on paper and attempting to
have them published, who gather in groups without “permission,” and attempt to publicly
worship and to travel as they wish. Even in the United States, there are cases in which the
police and/or prosecutor illegally withheld exculpatory material, refusing to acknowledge the
existence of evidence of innocence.

Sport, political, and business coalitions

The label coalition can also be applied to those involved, directly or indirectly, in
significantly less (one hopes) life-threatening and, hopefully, law and rule-following sport,
political, and business competitions. At the heart of capitalism are the various coalitions and
teams of executives, managers and blue/gray/white collar workers in very small and very large
businesses that seek victory (more often than not, financial “profit”) in their enterprises. There
are coalitions of “fans” (those on “our” team to which they may feel a deep commitment, an
intense passion, and intimacy with the lives of the individuals on the team) against members of
the other team (and their fans) who are perceived as opponents who must be defeated. The
competition may be an athletic contest where victory is needed to maintain or obtain school,
city, or state “pride,” or to serve “nationalistic” impulses, for example, the “Democracies”
(especially the United States) against the “Communist” states in the Olympics and other athletic
events during most of the last five decades of the 20th century.

We may not just have enemies threatening death to ourselves and the destruction of our
nation but many of us do have sport, political, and business opponents whom we hate, who are
“feared,” who must be dehumanized in more or less ways, described as not worthy of respect,
and deserving of a literal or figurative “crushing,” “thrashing” “whipping,” and “humiliation.”
As in sports, there are also political, business and financial “contests” and conflicts and even
“reality” TV programs (from “Survivor” to “The Apprentice” to “Top Chef”) that create
coalitions between and then within groups with only one member of a group achieving the final
“victory.”

Victory
Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (1971) includes the following for
“victory”:

Victory is the overcoming of an enemy in battle or of an antagonist in a contest;

the gaining of superiority or success in any struggle or endeavor. Although
victory can be used to imply more than the defeat of an opponent in a contest or
struggle, in applying to certain kinds of struggles it often inevitably suggests a
certain satisfaction or praise accruing to the victor.
 It is also true that, for some groups, a negotiated and agreeable compromise, a treaty, and
even a tie is accepted as a sufficient victory. More typically, victory and winning is all; the only
thing, everything! School sport, debate, quiz bowl, and chess teams, and even school musical
organizations may go to district, state, regional, national, and international events for rankings or
prizes. For some school leaders the primary goal of an activity is the achievement of “victory”;
being “number one” in the city, region or state. Many consider that second place “sucks” and is
for “losers” Similarly, college and university sport teams compete to be “champions” (for
example, in NCAA “tournaments”); being “co-champions” is “like kissing your sister.” Failure
to achieve the desired ranking or gold medal produces a sense of loss, disappointment and
sometimes rage in the “fans” of the teams and verbal attacks (or worse) on the perceived “bias”
of the referees or umpires. Prior to the competition, leaders may spend more than a minimum
amount of time demeaning the “opponent” (which may be a cross-town or cross-state “rival”)
and exhorting their “troops” to “give their all” (in fact, not just 100% but 110%) in the upcoming
“struggle.” Some leaders often gather their team members together to pray for “strength” and to
request divine intervention in the forthcoming “battle.”

Sport Fans
One may also note differences among athletes and those who engage in sport activities
as well as between sports “fans” and those who many may consider sports “fanatics” that are
related to one belonging, actively or passively, to sports alliances or coalitions. Peter Singer, in
an August 19, 2007 posting in The Japan Times Online
(http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/eo20070819a2.html) noted that there are people who

play sports to socialize, for exercise, to keep fit, to earn money, to become
famous, to prevent boredom, to find love, and for the sheer fun of it. They may
strive to improve their performance, but often they do so for its own sake, for the
sense of achievement.

Few of the above reasons relate to the goal of “humiliating” the “other” or cheating in
order to achieve “victory.” One may hope that those who are actively involved in competitive
sport activities agree with the words of Grantland Rice who, in his 1923 poem Alumnus Football,
wrote:

For when the One Great Scorer comes to mark against your name,
He writes— not that you won or lost—but how you played the Game.

I wonder how many athletes and coaches recite the following Athlete’s Prayer by
Gregg Easterbrook (or a similar one) just before they take the field?

God (or Adonai or Allah), let me play well but fairly.

Let competition make me strong but never hostile.
In this and in all things, guide me to the virtuous path.
If I know victory, grant me happiness;
If I am denied, keep me from envy.
See me not when I am cheered, but when I bend to help my opponent up.
Seal it in my heart that everyone who takes the field with me becomes my brother.
 Remind me that sports are just games.
Teach me something that will matter once the games are over.
And if through athletics I set an example–let it be a good one.

As fans, the most idealistic goal is to be a participant in or observer of the game itself and
enjoying skillful (and even beautiful) performances from all those participating. How many of
us feel this way? How many of those who have children engaging in competitive sports
activities communicates this perspective to their children? It is probable that more than a few of
us, even our children, only feel great passion during and after a game is when the other is being
humbled and humiliated. There are others who threaten and sometimes attack (and cause injury
and even, however infrequently, the death of) others in fields and stadiums that are rooting for
(and wearing the colors or outfits of) the other team. Sometimes even their children’s coaches, a
child on another team, or a referee or umpire are verbally assaulted and sometimes even
physically attacked or damage their cars if they contain identifying information. Such persons
may perceive themselves as consummately loving the sport and the team to which they feel
passion for and have made a sometimes life-long commitment.

Loss in business, political, sports, and other (even musical) competitions may result in the
loss of the leader’s job or position or a pay raise. More than a few parents have become enraged
with a high school’s orchestra conductor who didn’t let their child be the soloist or be the first
chair of the violin section. Some parents have been prosecuted for their attacks on their
children’s coaches and teachers, for attacks on the parents of children on their own or the other
team, and for attacks on a child competing with theirs to be a member of the team.

From this perspective, mottos that indicate that a group is a coalition include “He who is
not with us is against us,” “My country right or wrong,” and, for however temporary the
coalition, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Even the phrase “We are family” can be
applied to groups who are coalitions, especially in sports or politics. Stanley Fish, in a February
18, 2008 commentary in The New York Times, reflected on what may contribute to voting for one
or another candidate for political office.

If there’s anything everyone is against in these election times, it’s “identity

politics,” a phrase that covers a multitude of sins. Let me start with a definition.
(It may not be yours, but it will at least allow the discussion to be framed.)
You’re practicing identity politics when you vote for or against someone because
of his or her skin color, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or any
other marker that leads you to say yes or no independently of a candidate’s ideas
or policies. In essence identity politics is an affirmation of the tribe against the
claims of ideology, and by ideology I do not mean something bad (a mistake
frequently made), but any agenda informed by a vision of what the world should
be like.
An identity politics voter says, in effect, I don’t care what views he holds, or
even what bad things he may have done, or what lack of ability he may display;
he’s my brother, or he’s my kinsman, or he’s my landsman, or he comes from the
neighborhood, or he’s a Southerner, or (and here the tribe is really big) my
country right or wrong. “My country right or wrong” is particularly useful in
making clear how identity politics differs from politics as many Americans
would prefer to see it practiced. Rather than saying she’s right on immigration or
 he’s wrong on the war, the identity-politics voter says he looks like me or she and
I belong to the same church.
Identity politics is illiberal. That is, it is particularist whereas liberalism is
universalist. The history of liberalism is a history of extending the franchise to
those who were once excluded from it by their race, gender or national origin.
Although these marks of identification were retained (by the census and other
forms of governmental classification) and could still be celebrated in private
associations like the church and the social club, they were not supposed to be the
basis of decisions one might make “as a citizen,” decisions about who might best
lead the country or what laws should be enacted or voted down. Deciding as a
citizen means deciding not as a man or a woman or a Jew or an African
American or a Caucasian or a heterosexual, but as a human being.

We are surrounded by no end of coalitions and are likely, ourselves, to be active or

passive members of more than several over a lifetime, some of them temporary, some life-long.
As we go through our days, how many times do we think about our “opponents” (friendly or
frightening) who are challenging us in one or more, sometimes only in friendly and teasing ways
but sometimes in what we label harassing and threatening ways, thus becoming “enemies”?
How often do we turn to one or more groups (for example, unions, a political party, a lobbying
group), some of which we may have recently joined and to which we provide financial support,
for help not just against an individual but against another group, for example, one’s employers
and managers…or employees, a school’s teachers and administration, a school’s parent group …
or groups of students including “nerds,” “geeks” or “elites”? How often do we wish a group we
support would act against those “others” who must be defeated for personal gain or for the
“good” of the group? How often do we wish a specific group (including the “silent majority” or
“real Americans from the heartland”) will support and protect our “beliefs” and “rights,” to
serve the “interests” and “purposes” that we value and consider necessary. Further, most of the
coalitions we support and belong to are not temporary organizations; our commitments may be
decades-long. Different styles and types of love are being experienced and expressed in each of
the coalitions we support.

To summarize, it is likely that those involved in every coalition would label their
experiencing and expression as characteristics of their consummate love; intense passion for,
total commitment to, and intimacy with the group’s values, goals, and motives.

The purposes and goals of alliances

I recommend using the label alliance to refer to temporary or long-lasting groups
whose purposes, common interests and actions do not include responses to any real or
hypothetical “opponent” or “enemy.” For example, I recommend the use of the label
alliance for those groups of two or more persons who come together wanting nothing more
than to “be” together, to be intimate as the most important or only goal, to celebrate
together, to grieve together, to arouse and maintain joy and good spirits together (for
example, via dancing, family and communal meals, and community festivals and parades),
to engage in an activity for itself rather than to engage in a competition to determine a
“winner.” For many of us, our relationships with those in our immediate and extended
families, friendship groups, and nearby neighbors are often decades-long and even lifetime
alliances.
 I would also apply the label of alliance to those groups that respond to the effects of
accidents, illnesses, and disasters (for example, tornados, hurricanes, droughts, storms, floods,
earthquakes or fires) as well as to threats to the environment and to the lives and habitats of the
world’s non-human species. There are voluntary and paid groups of persons who work together
to provide food and medical supplies and services to those who are needy or disabled, to protect
life and property, and to help others survive confrontations with an existing or predicted threat of
famine and starvation (sometimes just hunger), and extreme heat and cold weather. These
include members of rescue services and human and animal shelters, the Red Cross, Red
Crescent, World Health Organization, UNICEF, Salvation Army, America’s Second Harvest,
and Doctors without Borders. Others come together to build and rebuild structures after disasters
and accidents (for example, Engineers without Borders). “Victory” is sometimes nothing more
than helping others to survive for at least another day.

Some come together, not just for economic reasons, but to plan for, build, and maintain
structures (for example, community playgrounds) and devise activities (for example, art fairs,
folk festivals, parades) that bring individuals together in ever-larger communities. Other groups,
centered in churches, temples, synagogues, mosques, and meeting halls support the religious and
spiritual experience via tradition, ritual, and ceremony. Some come together, in religious and
private settings, to support and participate in the grieving process and celebration of joyful
events.

Cooperation and uniting of individual skills are often critical for a group, even in many
coalitions, whether they are members of a basketball team, armed force, or political campaign, to
achieve and experience the thrill of victory. However, in alliances, such as those noted above,
the cooperation is directed toward the achievement of different kinds of outcomes, different
kinds of victories. One kind of goal is solely existential and another is the experience of
consummate Brotherly Love described above by Fromm. The sense of family and community
may be achieved by nothing more than participation in bantering, gossiping, verbal play, and the
pleasure of humorous and more serious discourse especially, for me, around a table of delicious
food. At their best, religious and civic celebrations as well as those celebrating marriages,
birthdays, and anniversaries, or traditions engaged in after the death of someone, create a
temporary community, a time of reflection on the meaning of the events and people in one’s life,
reminiscing about the good times, and expressing joy, thankfulness, or grief. There is only the
present to be celebrated in song and sometimes in dance, verbal and other gifts to be given, or
tributes and memories shared. At their best, there is no focus on enemies and opponents defeated
and no recriminations about past slights and rebukes. These are alliances.

The purposes and goals of other groups are to strive, in smaller (for example, a string or
barbershop quartet, a rock band or jazz trio) or larger groups (for example, a school, church, or
community choir, a symphony orchestra, a theater or dance company) to create an aesthetic
experience, to arouse a wide variety of emotions, images and thoughts in an audience, especially
to create pleasure (and sometimes exhilaration, sorrow, or awe) through stimulation of the
senses. In every case, there is no experiencing of threat, there are no real or imagined human
enemies or opponents, no “versus,” no “against,” no focus on dominance and control of an
“other,” no experiencing or need to specify and demean the “different,” no need to defeat
“them.”
 There are many parades that celebrate an historic event or individual or group
achievement (for example, the end of a war or winning a sporting event) and bring a community
together. These can be contrasted with parades consisting of large armies marching in step in
military uniforms, children or adults in folk costumes, and displays of armaments organized by
heads of governments waving to the saluting throngs below from the high balconies of a
coliseum or palace, attempting to impress and instill awe or fear in their populations and in their
real or imagined internal and external enemies.

Many may wish for the recognition that all of us are—literally—brothers and sisters.
Many of us believe that all of us are children of an attentive and caring God. If there is a motto
that best describes an alliance, it is “We are family” but only when it is making note that other
families and other groups are not competitors, not opponents, not inferior in any way, not an
enemy. Similarly, the motto, “We are all in the same boat” refers to an alliance only when the
word “We” means everyone is to be included in the safety of the boat. Some may believe that
“A rising tide lifts all boats” but are not necessarily concerned about those in less seaworthy
ones.

I hope that each of us is part of a large number of alliances (and recipients of our
consummate love in them) as we go through the days of our lives. How many of the smaller and
larger groups we freely join are ones in which we feel intimate and safe, authentic and
vulnerable, in communion and secure with, and in which the activities result in the creation of
joy and beauty? How many alliances do our children belong to? What specific school or after-
school activities that they are involved in are directed to creating and maintaining alliances?
It is also possible that in comparisons with some of the coalitions we belong to and support, for
many of us, our involvement in alliances may last even longer.

It is also likely that most of those involved in the above groups and activities would also
label their experiencing and expression as characteristics of their consummate love.

Coalitions, alliances and the internet

The internet has become increasingly relevant and even necessary in business, politics,
science and health-related activities, and in our personal and social lives. There are “virtual”
coalitions and alliances existing there too. Visiting various website chat rooms, blogging, and
involvement in text- and video-messaging are examples of social networking and is a daily part
of the lives of larger and larger numbers of older children, adolescents and adults. Some
websites and text messaging services now serve as locations that permit and encourage on-line,
person-to-person encounters, with or without photos or video. These include Facebook, Twitter,
and dating sites that may result in two or more person group meetings (even “flash mobs”) where
all parties are physically present.

All political parties, possibly every person in an elected office, and every candidate for
office, has a website and uses it to be in constant communication with those interested in his or
her candidacy and positions about issues…and to raise money. It is much cheaper than phone
calls, television advertisements, and direct mailing and allows immediate response to attacks
from others including other politicians and commentators. Further, a very great number of dead
or living public figures including actors, and musical and other artists (even fictional characters
such as Sherlock Holmes) and college/university or professional sports team have websites
created by public relation firms, devoted admirers, or for those still living, themselves, where
they, too, can communicate with their fans and with each other. Material and messages on some
websites can also support and encourage hate and provide information that could be used for
individual or group actions that can lead to destructive and violent acts, and to the death of
others.

There is no doubt that using the internet and video-, photo-, and text-messaging services
will be an increasingly important means to create and maintain both virtual and face-to-face
personal, national, and international coalitions and alliances that will be affecting our own and
our children’s lives in the coming decades and even centuries.

Coalitions and alliances in families

We know that rigidly enmeshed coalitions may exist between two or more members
within the same household or between one or more members in a household and one or more
family members who live elsewhere. For example, in a family with one or more children one
parent may be very unhappy in the relationship with spouse or partner and conclude that the
other parent is an “enemy,” the cause of the parent’s misery and other problems in living and
unworthy of the child’s love. Criticism and expressions of contempt for one parent by another or
by both for each other in front of the child or overheard by the child late at night, at the kitchen
table or in a car, may result in the child fearing injury to one of the parents. The child may
choose one parent as the “innocent” one, form a coalition with one parent against the other
parent in daily life and, has been much reported, during the parents’ separation and even for
years and decades after their divorce. Even a child as young as three or four might be told that
she must only love and be on the side of the parent who then communicates to the child
(sometimes more than infrequently) the experience of being neglected and/or physically or
psychologically abused. Some parents may claim—in the home and/or in court—that the child is
being “brainwashed” by the other parent. Younger and older children, of course, may see one
parent repeatedly physically and verbally attack the other and create a helpful coalition with the
abused parent, including being the one who calls the police for help.

One child, often the older of two, may perceive and conclude that one or both of the
parents love the sibling more than he or she. This was part of the Smothers Brothers comedy
routine—“Mom loved you best.” The story of Cain and Abel, characters in many novels (for
example, Ordinary People by Judith Guest), plays, and movies, concern a sibling who was
intensely jealous and/or who felt profoundly inadequate by the other sibling receiving, from his
or her perspective, greater amounts of parental (or even God’s) appreciation or love.

In the field of child and family psychology and psychopathology, there are many articles
and research studies about when, in family life, interaction among family members, or between
individual family members and those outside the most immediate family (for example, in-laws,
stepparents), are best considered an alliance or a coalition. A theme in family comedy has been
in-law as well as sibling relationships. Think of the family dynamics on “Everybody Loves
Raymond.” Marie, Ray’s mother, continually communicated her superiority—especially in
cooking—compared to Debra, Ray’s wife. We are much amused by Ray’s tortured but amusing
attempts to support Debra (who is often begging for his help) and to placate both. Ray also had
to frequently respond to his older brother, Robert, who believed he was the less successful and
underappreciated sibling. Both Ray and Marie had to placate him, too. This show is one of
many plays, novels, movies and television programs about coalitions, including such family
tragedies as Shakespeare’s Hamlet and King Lear.

Further, ways have been described for psychotherapists to create an alliance or a coalition
with the whole family, sometimes with only one member, and sometimes between two or more
members of the family they are attempting to help. There are also techniques to create a
coalition among the family members against the therapist in attempts to bring disengaged family
members together with the longer term goal of creating family alliances (see, for example,
Minuchin & Fishman, 1981).

One hopes that when coalitions are formed between family members they are temporary
and do not result in significant problems in living for one or more family members. One also
hopes that all of us will experience alliances between one’s parents, among siblings, and among
those in the extended families. Here’s one (very atypical) example of an alliance across families
in a letter to advice columnist Amy Dickinson:

Dear Amy:
My daughter’s father has been married five times—once before me and three
times after me.
At her wedding, my daughter had one stepfather (my husband), one
stepmother (her dad’s current wife), one ex-stepmother, one stepgrandmother,
two stepaunts, two half-sisters, two stepsisters and two stepbrothers.
We all had a ball, and my ex-husband’s fourth wife and I even joked with his
current wife that she was not a member of our “ex-wives club” yet
My daughter has never considered any of her relatives as anything but
brothers, sisters, other mothers, aunts, uncles, and grandparent, no matter who
they are related to by blood, and she would never have considered excluding any
of them from her special day.
She was an incredible child and has turned into a remarkable woman
—Proud Mother (and Stepmother)

It is likely that the style and type of love that is being experienced and expressed in each
of the alliances we are part of and support are likely to be different from the style and type of
love we experience and express in many family and other group coalitions we are part of and
support.

Other kinds of alliances and coalitions

Patriotism
There are many songs that children and adults in the United States sing to express their
love for the history, hopes, and land of their country; including the Star Spangled Banner and
America The Beautiful. I include two others here with additional lyrics (often not sung) for each
of them that I found at Wikepedia. I recommend slowly reading (not singing) all the stanzas of
each out loud as if it was for the first time and reflect on what thoughts and feelings they arouse.
The following poem was written by Samuel Francis Smith in 1831:

My country, 'tis of thee,

Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing;
Land where my fathers died,
Land of the pilgrims' pride,
From every mountainside
Let freedom ring.
My native country, thee,
Land of the noble free,
Thy name I love;
I love thy rocks and rills,
Thy woods and templed hills;
My heart with rapture thrills,
Like that above.
Let music swell the breeze,
And ring from all the trees
Sweet freedom's song;
Let mortal tongues awake;
Let all that breathe partake;
Let rocks their silence break,
The sound prolong.
Our fathers' God to Thee,
Author of liberty,
To Thee we sing.
Long may our land be bright,
With freedom's holy light,
Protect us by Thy might,
Great God our King.

To celebrate George Washington’s Centennial in 1889 the following was added:

Our joyful hearts today,

Their grateful tribute pay,
Happy and free,
After our toils and fears,
After our blood and tears,
Strong with our hundred years,
O God, to Thee.

Poet Henry van Dyke added the following verses in March 1906:

We love thine inland seas,

Thy groves and giant trees,
Thy rolling plains;
Thy rivers' mighty sweep,
Thy mystic canyons deep,
Thy mountains wild and steep,--
All thy domains.
 Thy silver Eastern strands,
Thy Golden Gate that stands
Fronting the West;
Thy flowery Southland fair,
Thy North's sweet, crystal air:
O Land beyond compare,
We love thee best!

The following song, echoing this theme, was written by Woody Guthrie in 1940:

This land is your land, this land is my land

From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.
As I went walking that ribbon of highway
I saw above me that endless skyway
I saw below me that golden valley
This land was made for you and me.
I roamed and I rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
While all around me a voice was sounding
Saying this land was made for you and me.
When the sun came shining, and I was strolling
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling
A voice was chanting, As the fog was lifting,
This land was made for you and me.
This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.

In 1944, for its first recording, Guthrie added new lyrics:

Nobody living can ever stop me,

As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.
In the squares of the city, In the shadow of a steeple;
By the relief office, I'd seen my people.
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking,
Is this land made for you and me?

These poems express many values (especially freedom) and attributes (especially the
beauty of the land) of one’s consummate love of country. Guthrie’s last lines shock us with their
expression of concern and compassion for its people and future. These, too, are expressions of
his consummate love.

In a 1952 speech to the American Legion convention in New York City (as quoted in
"Democratic Candidate Adlai Stevenson Defines the Nature of Patriotism" in Lend Me Your
Ears: Great Speeches In History (2004) by William Safire, p. 81–82), Stevenson noted that
 It was always accounted a virtue in a man to love his country. With us it is now
something more than a virtue. It is a necessity. When an American says that he
loves his country, he means not only that he loves the New England hills, the
prairies glistening in the sun, the wide and rising plains, the great mountains, and
the sea. He means that he loves an inner air, an inner light in which freedom lives
and in which a man can draw the breath of self-respect.
Men who have offered their lives for their country know that patriotism is not
the fear of something; it is the love of something.

John McCain, Senator from Arizona and candidate for President in 2008, in an
article in Parade magazine on July 3, 2008 wrote that

Patriotism is deeper than its symbolic expressions, than sentiments about place
and kinship that move us to hold our hands over our hearts during the national
anthem. It is putting the country first, before party or personal ambition, before
anything. It is the willing acceptance of Americans, both those whose roots here
extend back over generations and those who arrived only yesterday, to try to
make a nation in which all people share in the promise and responsibilities of
freedom.

Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer (2008) wrote that “true patriots” “believe that freedom from
responsibility is selfishness; freedom from sacrifice is cowardice; freedom from tolerance is
prejudice; freedom from stewardship is exploitation; and freedom from compassion is cruelty.”

Stephen Richardson, in a letter to the May 19th 2008 issue of Time, defined patriotism
(differentiating it from what he described as being “infatuated” with one’s country) as including
“an unjaundiced assessment of our nation’s moral standing along with a willingness to call it
stridently to account” as well as including a “simultaneous call to good citizenship and a grateful
acknowledgment of our country’s wonderful opportunities.”

Patriotism is one of the most positive of all “isms.” Most persons of every country would
consider a patriot to be a person who consummately loves his or her country by experiencing
great passion for, feeling much intimacy with its traditions and symbols, contributing to its
defense when it is endangered and, hopefully, also sharing “in the promise and responsibilities of
freedom.” I am using the word “patriotism” here, as did Stevenson and McCain above, as
describing a person’s experiencing of a consummate love of one’s country without any reference
to it as being superior to any other country and its citizens. One could be passionate, intimate
with, and committed to many aspects of their country without believing that those in other
countries are inferior or enemies. Consummate love for one’s country would not include the
demeaning of anyone who consummately loves their own country. Those in a world-wide
“Good Society” would have no need, nor any impulse, to demean others. All would be members
of a world-wide alliance.

Race
In Wikepedia I found:
 Race is a classification system used to categorize humans into large and distinct
populations or groups by anatomical, cultural, ethnic, genetic, geographical,
historical, linguistic, religious, or social affiliation.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_%28human_classification%29)

The specific characteristics used to categorize an individual as being a member of a

specific “race” are socially constructed by an individual or members of a group in a specific
society, for example, a community, culture, clan, tribe, sect, or family, during a specific
historical period, and may change over time. The characteristics may greatly influence the style
and types of love and the frequency, duration, intensity, pervasiveness and chronicity of other
feelings and their expression toward an individual member of a “race” or toward the collective of
individuals considered to be members of that “race.”

Racism and other “isms”

I also found:

Racism is usually defined as views, practices and actions reflecting the belief that
humanity is divided into distinct biological groups called races and that members
of a certain race share certain attributes which make that group as a whole less
desirable, more desirable, inferior, or superior.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism)

The Oxford English Dictionary includes the following for racism:

racism is a belief or ideology that all members of each racial group possess
characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially to distinguish it
as being either superior or inferior to another racial group or racial groups.

I use the above Oxford definition as a basis to assert a general definition of any set
of beliefs or ideologies that lead to a view of personal or group (including national)
superiority:

Any individual and members of a small or large group may perceive themselves
as possessing one or more characteristics or attributes that are highly valued and
that guide beliefs or ideologies. Based on the importance given them a judgment
of superiority may result in the labeling of another or those in another group as

being inferior to one’s self or reference group. The other person or members of a
group are inferior because of, for example, “anatomical, cultural, ethnic, genetic,
geographical, historical, linguistic, religious, or social affiliation.” These include
specific characteristics such as sex, age, wealth, education, sexual orientation, the
country they live in or their country of origin, social class or station,
characteristics of one or more of their possessions, one or more of their physical
characteristics and appearances such as their height, weight, and skin color, head,
face and body adornment such as clothing, tattoos, and hair styles, or their
possessing specific abilities or disabilities.
Mitch Dimond who was commenting on an article in the September 30, 2009 issue of The
New York Times wrote:
 Extremists are those who are convinced that they are in possession of the
absolute truth, that they know the mind of God and that they have the right to
eliminate and destroy all others. This is a pernicious trait which has shown up all
through history and all over the world. As you sense, it has reemerged, in the
middle east, in Ireland, in Pakistan, in Africa, in France and in the US. It is often,
but not always, rooted in religion. It is not subject to logical discourse or
negotiation. The internet enhances it by allowing individuals to easily find other
like-minded persons elsewhere while weakening the power of local community
standards.

The possession of the above highly valued beliefs does not mean that a person or a group
of persons ever or always engages in words and/or actions that prevent or diminish the rights and
opportunities of others. However, more than infrequently, persons with passion for, intimacy
with, and commitment to a specific belief or ideology will gather together in groups to engage in
actions that have the effect of maintaining or increasing limitations on the rights and
opportunities of a person or groups of person, based on a specified difference. Throughout
history, such beliefs have led to the passing of laws and engaging in actions that, at the most
extreme, leads to the imprisonment, exile, or death of as many as possible of those who are
“different” and “unworthy.”

Dimond also noted that it is

Only the power and determination of logical, sensible, compassionate but strong
willed people everywhere can defeat these dark forces. If we are tolerant, even a
little, of irrational bigotry, extreme prejudices, irrational and intolerant religious
practice and violent means of expression, then the age of enlightenment will end
and a new dark age will descend upon us— everywhere.

Tribalism, Sectarianism, Jingoism, Nationalism, Imperialism, and Colonialism

Members of one’s tribe (defined in Wikipedia as “a social group of humans connected by
a shared system of values and organized for mutual care, defense, and survival beyond that
which could be attained by a lone individual or family”), or clan (defined in Wikipedia as “ a
group of people united by kinship and descent, which is defined by actual or perceived descent
from a common ancestor”) or sect (defined in Wikipedia as “…attaching importance to perceived
differences between subdivisions within a group, such as between different denominations of a
religion or factions of a political movement”) may or may not engage in any actions to gain
social or political power and control the resources of others. Those involved in their tribes,
clans, or sects may also feel great passion for, intimacy with, and commitment to their own
collectives without demeaning those in other tribes, clans, or sects. In such cases they are
alliances.

There are other “isms” that describe the motivation of a self-defined group to engage in
actions including threats and destructive actions against other groups and collectives:
sectarianism, tribalism, jingoism, nationalism, imperialism, and colonialism. I use the words
sectarianism and tribalism to describe the beliefs and judgments accompanied by actions
indicative of contempt, “bigotry, discrimination or hatred” (Wikipedia) of leaders and their
followers, especially within a geographical area based on a perceived superiority of their own
traditions, beliefs, symbols, and practices.
 The ideological underpinnings of attitudes and behaviors labeled as sectarian are
extraordinarily varied. Members of a religious or political group may believe that
their own salvation, or the success of their particular objectives, requires
aggressively seeking converts from other groups; adherents of a given faction
may believe that for the achievement of their own political or religious project
their internal opponents must be purged.
Sometimes a group that is under economic or political pressure will kill or
attack members of another group which it regards as responsible for its own
decline. It may also more rigidly define the definition of "orthodox" belief within
its particular group or organisation, and expel or excommunicate those who do
not support this newfound clarified definition of political or religious 'orthodoxy.'
In other cases, dissenters from this orthodoxy will secede from the orthodox
organisation and proclaim themselves as practitioners of a reformed belief
system, or holders of a perceived former orthodoxy. At other times, sectarianism
may be the expression of a group's nationalistic or cultural ambitions, or
exploited by demagogues (Wikipedia).

Collections of tribes, clans, or sects in a geographical area may, over time, believe in
nationalism—a belief that the attitudes, values, and beliefs, of one’s own “nation” (which may or
not be a “melting pot,” “salad,” or “stew” of multiple tribes, clans, and sects) are superior to
those of others in nearby lands especially those across (often disputed) borders. Over time,
nationalism, which may have begun solely as beliefs concerning superiority may lead to jingoism
that is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as “extreme patriotism in the form of an
aggressive foreign policy.” In Wikipedia, we find:

In practice, it refers to the advocation of the use of threats or actual force against
other countries in order to safe guard what they perceive as their country's
national interests, and colloquially to excessive bias in judging one's own country
as superior to others—an extreme type of nationalism.

Jingoism was the label given to the belief in “manifest destiny” by those who
arrived in the “New World,” as immigrants and even refugees, some of whom, over time,
labeled themselves as “Americans” and rightful “owners” of the land (for them and their
descendants) that was occupied by those who arrived before them.

Such beliefs, more than infrequently, can also lead to imperialism (“Belief in the
desirability of acquiring colonies and dependencies or extending a country's influence though
means such as trade, diplomacy, military conquest”;
john.curtin.edu.au/society/glossary/index.html) and colonialism (“Exploitation by a stronger
country of weaker one; the use of the weaker country's resources to strengthen and enrich the
stronger country”; wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn). Historians have provided us with
detailed descriptions of the actions of the leaders and armies of ancient Persia, China, Rome, and
Greece and the colonization of eighty-five percent of the earth, between the sixteenth and the
twentieth century by citizens of the European nations.
In Following the Equator, Mark Twain (1897) commented on these matters in his
unique way,
 All the territorial possessions of all the political establishments in the earth—
including America, of course—consist of pilferings from other people's wash. No
tribe, however insignificant, and no nation, howsoever mighty, occupies a foot of
land that was not stolen. When the English, the French, and the Spaniards
reached America, the Indian tribes had been raiding each other's territorial
clothes-lines for ages, and every acre of ground in the continent had been stolen
and restolen 500 times.

Extremism can be found, as well, in the proponents of such political and economic
ideologies as capitalism, socialism, collectivism, and libertarianism; see a list of 234 “isms” at
http://phrontistery.info/isms.html. These and other “isms” may lead to the participation in
coalitions rather than alliances, and supported by contempt and possibly even consummate hate
of specific individuals and other groups. These include, at different times in history, barbarism,
communism, fundamentalism, spiritualism, mysticism, and scientism.

Passion for and commitment to racism and one or more of the above “isms,” more often
than not and at the very least, leads to disagreement among competing philosophies and
ideologies (even, for example, between liberal humanism and tragic liberalism; Eagleton, 2009)
as to what are the indisputable “facts,” the empirical “evidence,” and the self-evident “truth” that
supports the axioms and theorems about the matter under discussion. We are constantly made
aware how proponents of liberalism and conservatism in the political and social realms in the
United States can result in discord and conflict and proposals for very different government
actions and policies that affect the daily living of millions of people.

Treaties and pacts, for however long agreed to, have led to coalitions within any nation or
among nations against one or another group of nations to control the expansion, if not
elimination of extremists and imperialists. It is possible and I hope (and I assume the reader
hopes too) that planet-wide sufficient resources for surviving and thriving, for functioning
economies, laws and policies of, by, and for the people, and information technologies, will
someday contribute to the diminishing of most of these kinds of coalitions. Of course, for those
who remember “Star Trek,” the television show and movies, even the “United Federation of
Planets” of the 23rd century was in constant battles with the “Klingon” and “Romulan” empires,
and the “Borg.” It may take not just hundreds but many thousands of years to end coalitions,
threatening and attempting the annihilation of others in ever-enlarging collectives.

Motivated by their belief of what is necessary to express racial, sexual, gender, religious
and other values indicating a belief in superiority (and for some, an accompanying need for
revenge) many leaders and their followers have contributed to divisiveness throughout history
and throughout the world, that has more than infrequently resulted (and continues to result) in the
loss of another’s civil rights, imprisonment, execution, and to the slaughter of the innocent. At
the very least, some perceive the beliefs of others to be those of threatening enemies. I consider
all those involved in these activities to be members of coalitions and not experiencing and
expressing consummate love but possibly experiencing consummate hate.

Coalitions and alliances in the intersection between religious and political domains
Peter Berger, a sociologist of religion, is concerned with “finding a middle ground in
religious belief between ‘fundamentalism’ on the one hand and ‘relativism’ on the other.” In the
Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life on March 4, 2008 (see http://pewforum.org/events/?
EventID=172), he broadened the discussion of these perspectives beyond religion.

Relativism and fundamentalism seem, at first sight, to be direct opposites. Rather,

I think, they are two sides of the same coin. Both are rooted in the same distinctly
modern phenomenon. Modernization progressively undermines the closed
communities in which human beings lived through most of history, communities
in which there was a very high degree of consensus about the basic cognitive and
normative definitions of reality. Such consensus brings about a situation in which
these definitions have the status of taken-for-granted, self-evident truth. Under
modern conditions, where almost everyone lives in communities in which
diversity has taken the place of consensus, certainty is much more difficult to
come by.
Relativism can be described as a world view that not only acknowledges but
celebrates the absence of consensus. So-called post-modernist theorists like to
speak of narratives and, in principle, every narrative is as valued as any other.
The moral end result of this world view can be captured by imagining a
television interview with a cannibal. “You believe that people should be cooked
and eaten. I certainly don’t want to be judgmental, but the audience will be
interested. Tell us more.” This is not all that fictitious.
Fundamentalists respond to the same situation of certainty-scarcity by
seeking to regain absolute certainty about every aspect of their world view. No
doubt is permitted. Whoever disagrees is an enemy to be converted, shunned or,
in the extreme case, removed. The last two centuries of history have made it very
clear that there are secular as well as religious fundamentalisms. Both relativism
and fundamentalism threaten the basic moral order without which no society,
least of all a liberal democracy, can exist: relativism because it makes morality a
capricious game, fundamentalism because it balkanizes society into mutually
hostile camps that cannot communicate with each other.
There are a number of moral judgments I am certain about, even if it can be
shown I would not make them if I lived in a different period or even today in a
different society. Example: Slavery is totally unacceptable. Of course, this
proposition has not been accepted everywhere. Through much of history, some
people enslaved others with no compunction whatsoever. However, in the course
of history, there emerges a perception of what it means to be human. That
perception makes it impossible to accept slavery.
I deliberately use the word “perception.” In other words, unlike the
propositions of religion, which are not empirically accessible, this moral
judgment does not require an act of faith. It only requires an act of attention:
“Look at this. It must not be.” A masterful description in literature is the growing
certainty of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn that he must not return the fugitive
slave to his owner. And, of course, this perception had enormous political
consequences not only in America, but throughout the world.
The great Rabbi Hillel was once asked whether one could explain the meaning
of the Torah while standing on one leg. He replied that one could and then stated
what I think was the first version of the Golden Rule, adding, “The rest is
commentary.” I think that the core value of liberal democracy can also be stated
while standing on one leg. It is a sentence at the beginning of the constitution of
the Federal Republic of Germany: “Human dignity shall be inviolable.” The rest
is commentary.
 Now, obviously, the application of this core value to any practical or political
problem is often quite complicated. Commentary can be a strenuous business.
The centuries of rabbinical disputations since Hillel proved this very clearly. Yet,
there are moments when the application becomes crystal clear, as when the
British army was ordered to stop the slave trade, or when Abraham Lincoln
issued the Proclamation of Emancipation or, for that matter, when the above
lapidary sentence was inserted into the post-war German constitution in the
passionate certainty that the horrendous assaults on human dignity by the Nazi
regime must never be repeated.

If one does not believe that “Human dignity shall be inviolable” and that “The rest is
commentary” then both Fundamentalists and Relativists may both be more likely to be found
within coalitions rather than alliances. Both may act in ways that do not indicate consummate
Brotherly Love. It is such a love that contributes to successful negotiations and compromises
that affect social policies and laws that are experienced as fair and just.

I am also aware that the conflicts between those who are Fundamentalists or Relativists
regarding the rules of living together may also take place within any adult-adult, adult-child, and
teacher-student relationship, other small (for example, neighborhood), large (for example,
business) and very large (for example, states and nations) group activities and enterprises. These
conflicts contribute to problematic coalitions and problems in living.

The role of religions in keeping hope alive

Differing interpretations of one or more of the directives and passages found in religious
texts have led to differing values and the determination of what would be considered vices,
virtues, and the goals of one’s life. These interpretations have also led to varying principles,
laws, and goals of a nation’s government. They have, especially, often led to creation of
alliances and social advances. Jonathan Glover (2001), among many, has noted that “It is
striking how many protests against and acts of resistance to atrocity have come from principled
religious commitment.”

Michael D’Antonio in his 2013 book Mortal Sins noted that

Historically, Catholicism and the rest of Christianity have made more vital
contributions to humanity than can be counted. Much of the morality,
conscience, and selfless social perspective felt by people in all walks of life
can be traced to the Church. Entire traditions of service, charity,
community, and sacrifice were born in the faith. (p. 342)

It is likely that it is consummate love of neighbor noted in so many religious texts that
finally ends the demeaning and exploitation of others. This may only be possible when survival,
physical safety, and psychological safety needs are no longer salient and dominate individual and
group life. Many Christians and of those of other faith traditions have experienced what Erich
Fromm called Brotherly Love. As noted earlier in this paper, he wrote that

The most fundamental kind of love, which underlies all types of love, is brotherly
love. By this I mean the sense of responsibility, care, respect, knowledge of any
other human being, the wish to further his love. …Brotherly love is based on the
 experience that we all are one. The differences in talents, intelligence, knowledge
are negligible in comparison with the identity of the human core common to all
men. (Fromm, 2000; pp. 43-44)

Those inspired by religious commandments and consummately loving their neighbors as

themselves, have led to an ever-expanding awareness, understanding, and acceptance of their
nearby and distant neighbors as kin. They have also led many to participate in groups supporting
the writing of laws that provide for and protect the civil rights of others in their communities and
nation and even those in other countries. Such beliefs have also resulted in United Nations
documents describing the rights of all humans (The Universal Declaration of Human Rights;
1948), children (Convention on the Rights of the Child; 1989), and women (Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women). Some of the social movements and
laws throughout the world that provide and protect the rights of the disadvantaged and helpless
would likely not have succeeded without the help of individuals and organizations moved by
their religious beliefs. For example, such passion and commitment to liberty and civil rights (at
least, at that time, for Caucasian males) led many of America’s late 18th century’s “Founding
Fathers” (with varying views of the words and works of “Nature’s God,” the “Creator,” “Divine
Providence,” “Prime Mover,” the “Maker,” the “Supreme Judge,” and the “Grand Architect”) to
the writing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, the United States Constitution in 1787,
and the Bill of Rights in 1791; three of the most humane political documents ever written. I also
believe the “Good Persons” working to create a “Good Society” will work together to provide
equal rights and opportunities for all, including for all women and children throughout the world.

Such beliefs and kind of love of others have been the most significant contributors to the
additional amending of the United States Constitution to increase, over the 19th and 20th
centuries, the rights and freedoms of ever-greater numbers of its citizens, including:

 the ending of (at least) legalized slavery via the ratification of the 13th amendment
in 1865 (“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for
crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the
United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction”),

 the 14th amendment in 1868 (“Section One: All persons born or naturalized in the
United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United
States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law
which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor
shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process
of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the
laws”),

 the 15th amendment in 1870 (“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall
not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race,
color, or previous condition of servitude”),

 the granting to women the right to vote via the ratification of the 19th amendment in
1920 (“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or
abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex”),
  the Civil Rights Act of 1964,

 the Voting Rights Act of 1965,

 the Fair Housing Act of 1968, and

 the 26th amendment in 1971 (“The right of citizens of the United States, who are 18
years of age or older, to vote, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or
any state on account of age”).

There will likely be many more Federal acts and amendments to the Constitution
that expand and protect the rights of an individual and of groups of citizens in the United
States in the decades and centuries ahead.

Final note
I end this chapter by indicating my awareness that egocentrism and ethnocentrism
are unavoidable and provide the lens through which each of us views the world around
us…including one’s perspective about love. I accept that my own lens cannot provide an
undeniably “true” view outside of the family, community, and culture I have been
embedded within.

I still believe that those whose views I have quoted above and many of the most
eloquent artists throughout history and throughout the world would agree that experiencing
consummate love is one of the most important life goals. When it is skillfully expressed in
as many of life’s domains as possible there is an increase in the likelihood of each one of us
having a life filled with purpose, meaning, and fulfillment.