Psychology of Sex Relations

Witty and fascinating look at Love and the Sex-Drive from world-renowned expert psychoanalysist Theodor Reik.

“This book was first published in 1943 and will have been read long ago by all senior psychoanalysts and most students of psychopathology…Even the most obdurate opponents of psychodynamic theory must be disarmed by the high quality of the writing and lost in admiration for the erudition of the author, whose copious quotations, allusions and aphorisms are nearly always apt and frequently both witty and illuminating. They cover a wide field of learning in several languages and range from philosophy and psychology to Lewis Carroll, Punch and the popular press. Too often the ponderous jargon and turgid style of psychoanalytical papers bring back at least one reader to the schoolroom, where he is trying ineffectively to construe the more involved passages of Livy or Thucydides. It is, therefore, refreshing to find a serious work from a psychoanalyst written in clear and impeccable English and leavened on every page with natural sincerity and effortless humour.

The main objective of the book is to demonstrate that love, affection and tenderness are not the product of aim-inhibited sex and to controvert the Freudian doctrine that all forms of love are exclusively of sexual origin. Although the author remains a warm and generous admirer of his original teacher, Freud, and of his genius and achievements, he demolishes his libido theory with criticisms, barbed with ironic wit. "His libido system, however, will, I am afraid, have the sad destiny which Herbert Spencer once bemoaned in speaking of 'a beautiful theory that was murdered by a gang of brutal facts"'-British Journal of Psychiatry.