Interdisciplinary books on love?

April 2, 2009 5:22 PM

What are some (at least mildly scholarly) books taking an actively interdisciplinary approach to the study of love, particularly romantic love? I'm particularly interested in books linking psychology and literature, and also very interested in books that report interviews with people about their experiences of love.
posted by shivohum to human relations (18 comments total)

Does Leo Buscaglia's work help?
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 5:26 PM on April 2

This would fit. Looks interesting.
posted by sweetkid at 6:38 PM on April 2

Ortega y Gasset's On Love?
posted by Kylio at 7:09 PM on April 2

Diane Ackerman - A Natural History of Love
posted by junkbox at 7:19 PM on April 2 [1 favorite]

Have a look at the published works of John Gottman, a UW psych professor who studies love in a clinical setting (also see his CV). His books include "The Mathematics of Marriage."
posted by MonkeyToes at 7:24 PM on April 2

Roland Barthes' fantastic meditation on love: A Lover's Discourse.
posted by media_itoku at 7:30 PM on April 2 [1 favorite]

I absolutely love Shere Hite's Women and Love: A Cultural Revolution in Progress -- but it's entirely from the female perspective. I wish she had something broader. She did write a Hite Report on Male Sexuality, but that's quite different from what you're looking for.

Another great book (again from a feminist perspective, clearly you can see where my interests lie) is bell hooks' Communion: The Female Search For Love. I thought of this one in particular because she talks specifically about the lack of academic (from a feminist perspective) discussion and study of romantic love.
posted by pazazygeek at 8:10 PM on April 2 [1 favorite]

Love in the Western World, by Denis de Rougemont, is the classic mid-20th century work on the topic.

Love and Limerence, by Dorothy Tennov, is the classic late-20th century work on the topic.

Love: Emotion, Myth, and Metaphor, by Robert C. Solomon, brings together philosophy, psychology, and literary history.

Love: An Unromantic Discussion by Mary Evans might be worth a look.

Love Sick: Love as a Mental Illness, by Frank Tallis, offers a psychologist's perspective on obsessive love in life and literature (including a very smart dissection of The Sorrows of Young Werther).

If you don't mind some heavy going in terms of philosophical terminology and concepts, Martha Nussbaum's books Upheavals of Thought and Love's Knowledge are pretty amazing works of interdisciplinary cultural critique.
posted by Sidhedevil at 8:30 PM on April 2 [1 favorite]

Adam Phillips.

his other books too, but those might be the best to start. he's a psychoanalyst and a very good literary critic. oh. the book he wrote with Leo Bersani was also very good and quite possibly relevant.

and this entirely other thing may not be the sort of thing you are looking for, but I will dangle it provocatively just the same.
posted by object-a at 9:23 PM on April 2

Helen Fisher is an anthropologist who studies romantic love, among other things. "Why We Love," if I'm remembering correctly, was very accessible, and included interviews and mentions of literature.
posted by bluestocking at 9:34 PM on April 2

Maybe American Couples by sociologists Pepper Schwartz and coauthor (Andrew Bloom? Bloomstein? maybe?) Bonus: They profile same-sex partners as well as heterosexual couples.
posted by Sublimity at 10:16 PM on April 2

Seconding Denis de Rougemont as indispensable.

[and Proust and Stendhal ...]
posted by rudster at 3:10 AM on April 3

All About Love: New Visions, by Bell Hooks.
posted by orange swan at 6:46 AM on April 3 [2 favorites]

I can vouch for sweetkid's recommendation of A General Theory of Love (Lewis/Amini/Lannon). Hands down one of the more fascinating pop science books I've ever read, and I love pop science.
posted by libraryhead at 7:21 AM on April 3 [1 favorite]

Seconding Barthes, the most readable of the French semioticians.

This is maybe not what you're looking for, but romantic love is just a small fraction of a huge spectrum that most literary and social theoreticians map out from reverence to rape. Not terribly romantic I guess, but wanting to only read about romance will probably circumscribe your query. If you're really only interested in romance, check out Anne Carson's Eros the Bittersweet, a meditation on lacking and loss in Greek lyric poetry that extends all the way to current American representations of eroticism.

If you're feeling particularly spry, get Bataille's Eroticism: Death and Sensuality.
posted by zoomorphic at 7:21 AM on April 3

Seconding bell hooks' All About Love. It is everything you are looking for.
posted by lunit at 8:28 AM on April 3

Love at First Sight reports on research and interviews about the science behind love at first sight.

The authors of Why Men Marry Some Women and Not Others report on marketing-type research they did on couples coming from getting their marriage license, with statistics, etc.
posted by thebazilist at 1:08 PM on April 3

Dreams of Love and Fateful Encounters by Ethel Person, a psychoanalyst.
On Love, by Alain De Botton. (a super novel)
Can Love Last? by Stephen Mitchell, psychoanalyst
posted by madstop1 at 3:10 PM on April 3