Love in Psychoanalysis

This book presents the theme of love in psychoanalytic theory. The theme is traced back to the main reference literature of Freud and Lacan. The emergence of the subject in the course of these authors, its relevance to the context of the psychoanalytic clinic and its articulation with other areas of knowledge and art, such as philosophy and cinema, are exposed. Love is associated with the idea of a lack and production to be discovered in the encounter with the beloved and chosen other. Plato’s The Banquet is discussed, as well as Lacan’s comments on this text in order to support the thesis of love as a lack. Based on these, the concepts of the metaphor of love, the positions of lover (érastès) and beloved (érôménos) and the object agalma are analyzed. The last part of this book analyzes Luis Buñuel’s film Tristana (1970). This work was selected and discussed because it is a relevant and thought-provoking script, in which the questions of love are posed to the title character. The author invites the reader to reflect on the theme and to produce new questions.