Schelokova, Yu. V. The Search for Love in the Love-Free World

Abstract: The subject matter of the present research article is the nature of human love as expressed in Plato’s philosophy. Plato viewed love as one’s desire to restore his integrity and become complete. The same idea was raised again by the followers of humanistic psychology such as Erich Fromm, Gordon Allport, Karen Horney, Harry Sullivan and others. The author of the present article describes different forms of love and touches upon the issue of emotional ‘poverty’ of a modern human compared to, for example, an ancient Greek. The author also underlines that new forms of neurotic love have been appearing lately. According to the author, this is the result of the invasion of market relations into the most intimate spheres of human life. In her research, depending on a set goal, the author uses general scientific methods of research such as the method of comparative analysis, synthesis, structured method and systems method. The scientific novelty of this research article is the discussion of Plato’s concept of love developed by neo-Freudianism which allowed to see the phenomenon of love in the ‘humanistic’ dimension. The author also emphasizes the fact that the representatives of humanistic psychology made a significant contribution to the studies of the phenomenon of love apart from their contribution to the development of the concepts of personality, individuality and value of human. Love exists in different forms so we can say it may have different expressions depending on the historical epoch, but the main motive of love has always been the longing for the lost integrity and the desire to overcome the feeling of existential loneliness and feel completed again in the union with the other person. However, a modern human has rather poor emotions and this leads to creation of new neurotic expressions of love where true feelings are replaced with the importance of market relations. For the first time in a long period of humanistic psychology the author attracts our attention to the topic of love again and restores the concept of love as the way to overcome the main problem of human existence based on the experience of the modern society.

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