Different Types of Love: A Detailed Analysis
Different Types of Love
Of Love and Other Good Things
- Freudian Love: Love intimately connected with sexuality. Freud considered this the basic form of love (for him, friendship was a derivative of erotic love, and benevolence, a transformation of Eros).
- Christian Love: This concept differs from Eros, emphasizing benevolence and a more natural expression.
- Caritas (Christian) / Agape (Greek): Characterized by natural generosity and empathy.
- Love of Friendship (Philia): A Socratic love, where the love of ideals or ideas is paralleled, by analogy, with romantic attraction.
- Eros: Love as joy, a love that embraces the other and delights in their beauty.
- Mudita: Joy in the joy of others, distinct from compassionate benevolence, as it does not focus on the suffering of others.
- Memetics: Analogous to genetics, viewing individuals as means of transmitting genes, similar to how chickens perpetuate eggs.
- Love Desire: A self-centered love.
- Maternal Love: Unconditional and nurturing.
- Transpersonal Love: Love of the ideal or divine; a relationship with the divine.
- Valorizing Love: Intellectual love.
- Loving-Kindness: More emotional, with a maternal character.
- Erotic Love: Instinctive love.
Brain Regions and Love
- Emotional brain or midbrain (mammalian brain) is associated with loving-kindness.
- Instinctive brain is associated with Eros.
- Human cerebrum or neocortex is associated with valorizing love.
Problematic Forms of Love
- Super-ego: The result of internalized cultural mandates that dictate goodness through compulsory compassion, often accompanied by a threat (e.g., “…and if not, you go to hell”).
- Parasitic Loves: Loves disguised as deficiencies. These are ways to fill a personal void, attempting to address personal shortcomings with the love of others.
- People seeking love through sexual or romantic relationships, representing an unrecognized search for love through sex.
- People seeking protection due to a lack of care, navigating life as if orphaned, seeking missing care and trying to inspire compassion.
- People seeking respect, not necessarily love in the common sense, but recognition and admiration, dedicating much of their life and energy to being important.
Philosophical and Religious Perspectives
- Christian Love: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
- Nietzsche: A great critic of compassion.
- Midbrain (limbic or emotional brain): The brain of love itself; its virtue is often underdeveloped in human life.
- Neocortex: Associated with the cerebral cortex, the most recently evolved part of the human brain. It often works in isolation, disconnected from the other two brains.
- Instinctive Brain (Arquencefalo): The archaic brain.
- Bodhisattvas: Beings that appear only with spiritual development.
- Loving-kindness: Related to maternal behavior and the midbrain.
- Erotic or Instinctive Love: In the Christian world, this has often been a forbidden love, associated with pleasure and not solely related to the instinctive brain.
- St. Augustine: Theologian and psychologist, prone to feelings of guilt.
- Benevolent Love: Often forbidden and frowned upon by our culture, similar to erotic love.
- Asceticism: A spiritual technique rather than a philosophy.
- Love of Friendship: Related to appreciation, admiration, respect, and ideals.
- Philia: What one seeks in friendship: acceptance, esteem, respect, admiration, and ultimately, worship.
- Interested Friends: Those who use each other, where one serves the other.
- Manipulative Friends: Those who, in the name of friendship, seek to achieve other goals.
- Worship Love: Perception of the other as divine.
- Intellectual Brain: The most specifically human brain, but also with archaic origins, such as in the imitation of birds’ sounds.
- Parasitic Love: Love that is not love, but an addiction.
- Gurdjieff: Advocated for a balance between the instinctive, emotional, and intellectual brain centers.