We used to believe that the definition of love is impossible to give. Indeed, being in love - this is impossible, because we are overwhelmed by too many-sided gamut of feelings to be able to understand them. But serious scientists, concerned with this uncertainty, started to create love theories 24 centuries ago. The first was Plato.
Plato's love theory
The theory of love of Plato is set forth in the dialogues "Feast". The basis of love for Plato - the desire for beauty. On the other hand, the idealist Plato does not deny the duality of love - this is both a craving for beauty, and an awareness of its inferiority.
He believed that this could be explained by our origin. Our souls brought with them love from the disembodied, ideal world, and the earthly feeling can not completely fill the gamut of heavenly love, becoming its faded resemblance. Therefore, according to Plato, love is both harm and good. All the good that is in love, has an unearthly origin, all bad - material.
This position of Plato is often called the theory of free love. In order to disclose the meaning of the term, it is necessary to quote from his "Feast":
"... rising for the sake of the most beautiful upwards - from one beautiful body to two, from two to all, and then from beautiful bodies to beautiful customs ...".
He was sure that when we truly love, we rise above our vices.
Theory of Freud
The theory of Sigmund Freud about love is traditionally based on childhood experiences, which, although forgotten, can affect our behavior in every possible way. They (children's memories) - are deep in the brain of every person, from there they lead and lead to a variety of manifestations.
First of all, Freud created, in practice, a "dictionary" of replacing the early desires of childhood with more adults. That is, he gave the definition and meaning of many of our adult activities.
Freud begins his theory of love in psychology with the fact that from childhood we are constantly banned from what we love. A 2-month-old baby likes to send out his needs when he likes, but then he is forced to accustom himself to the pot. A child in 4 years likes to protest,
So, the child gets used to that if he wants to preserve the love of his mother, his parents, he must give up what he loves himself. And the force of influence of these despaired desires in the memories of desires, which adults do not even remember, depends on how favorable the life of a person is. Therefore, some grow into a psychologically mature personality , others are looking for a way to make up for their childhood desires all their lives.