A Psychosocial Exploration of Love and Intimacy [Hardcover]

Organised around a single question: is love possible?, Brown's book provides conceptualisations of love and its possibility from sociological, philosophical and psychoanalytic viewpoints. She argues for the importance of a psychosocial understanding of love and provides a critical discussion of the philosophy and methods of Psychosocial Studies.Acknowledgements PART 1: INTRODUCTION The Demise of Romantic Love A Psychosocial Approach to Emotional Life PART 2: LOVE IDEALS Modern Love: Sociological Approaches Love as Bad Faith: Philosophical Approaches Transference Love: A Freudian Approach Reparative Love: A Kleinian Approach Reflexive Love Sociological and Psychoanalytic Insights PART 3: METHODS AND FINDINGS A Psychosocial Approach to Biographical Studies and Reflexive Research Personal Accounts of Love: Details of Method Love and War: Eighty Something Reflections on Romance Love and Peace: Thirty Something Reflections on Romance PART 4: CONCLUSION Conclusion Notes References Index

Brown...provide[s] insightful reflections on the phenomenology of love...and offers a helpful reflection on the links between ethnography and psychoanalysis. Overall, Brown's foray into the chaotic and poetic sources of love and its role in society serves as a valuable contrast to currently fashionable quantatative and neurological reductionism. - C.J. Churchill, St. Thomas Aquinas College, Choice Magazine

JOANNE BROWN is a Lecturer in Mental Health at Southampton University, UK. She taught for many years in the Psychosocial Studies subject area at the University of East London. Her research interests and publications are informed by a disciplinary approach that combines socio-cultural theory and methods with psychoanalytic theory.