Love and Its Place in Nature

Mainstream media

Love and Its Place in Nature received positive reviews from Genevieve Stuttaford in Publishers Weekly,^[4] Paul Hymowitz in Library Journal,^[5] and Don Browning in The Christian Century,^[6] and a negative review from Robert Brown in The Times Literary Supplement.^[7] The book was also reviewed by Michael Kott in The New Leader,^[8] and listed in The Chronicle of Higher Education.^[9]

Stuttaford described the book as a "heartfelt and scholarly treatise" that provided an "impassioned, generous interpretation" of psychoanalysis and further develops "the revolutionary models raised in Freud's writings." She compared it to the psychoanalyst Reuben Fine's Love and Work: The Value System of Psychoanalysis (1990), but found it "more tightly focused".^[4] Hymowitz described Lear's book as "simply written and accessible". He credited Lear with being conversant with psychoanalytic theory, explaining psychoanalytic concepts in a "lucid and compelling manner", and convincingly arguing that they have a psychological rather than a biological root, and that "love rather than sex and aggression" is a central motivator in Freudian theory. He wrote that psychological theorists might question Hymowitz's neglect of the psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, and other authors who have focused on love without being committed to Freudian orthodoxy, but concluded that both lay readers and scholars would benefit from Lear's discussion of psychoanalysis.^[5]

Browning credited Lear with providing an "engaging philosophical perspective on Freudian psychoanalysis", "an important philosophic reading of Freud", and profoundly investigating important themes. He predicted that the themes of Love and Its Place in Nature would appeal to religious readers, despite the fact that the book itself was not religious, and compared it to the philosopher Paul Ricœur's Freud and Philosophy (1965), though he commented that it was more accessible to the average reader.^[6]

Brown wrote that Lear sometimes seems to favor the view that psychoanalytic claims "are in practice untestable but nevertheless true" adding that, "If that is his claim, it will be enthusiastically received by seers, gurus, and oracles everywhere."^[7]

Scientific and academic journals

Love and Its Place in Nature received a positive review from the philosopher Elijah Millgram in Mind and a negative review from Carl Goldberg in the American Journal of Psychotherapy.^[3][10]

Millgram wrote that the book had "received less attention from the philosophical community than its deserves" due to negative views of Freud held by analytic philosophers. He praised Lear's discussion of Freud for its lack of orthodoxy, writing that "Freud provides Lear with a way of raising and thinking through a range of important but generally neglected issues" and that Lear's work remained valuable and "of great philosophical interest" even if one rejected many Freudian views. He endorsed Lear's view that "propositional attitudes" and "applying concepts" are "psychological achievements" and that "to have a mind is always to be generating new proto-mental material". However, he considered it open to question how far Lear's "description of the way a mind emerges from the field of archaic thought, and of what is going on in psychoanalysis" should be accepted.^[3]

Goldberg described the book as "provocative". He wrote that Lear argues that Freud's therapeutic methods are "efforts to enable the patient to change the type of responsibility for he characterologically assumes for his emotions", a view Goldberg criticized because of Lear's failure "to notice the unfortunate counterpoint to psychoanalysis' concern with individuation—social irrelevance and a lack of attention to moral responsibility." He argued that Lear's view that "analytic inquiry" is an "act of generosity and compassion" misrepresents Freud, and avoids what Freud actually wrote about love. He also disputed Lear's view that "Freud was committed to science", writing that it was more likely that Freud was "quite ambivalent" about the subject, and found Lear's attempt to reconcile Freud's determinism with personal responsibility unconvincing. He concluded that the book provided a "thoughtful account of what Lear believes psychoanalysis should be about", but that readers should not assume that Lear's views follow logically from Freud's.^[10]

Evaluations in books

The historian Paul Robinson, writing in Freud and His Critics (1993), suggested that Love and Its Place in Nature represented a revival of Freud's reputation. He compared the book in this respect to Mark Edmundson's Towards Reading Freud (1990).^[11]

Footnotes

Bibliography

Books

Journals