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"Platonic love" is limerence?

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Plato's idea of "platonic love" from The Symposium  was a complicated idea, involving ascending mental states. It's a modern thing (a semantic drift) that the word "platonic" came to mean "friendship" or "nonsexual" love. Plato's writing is often interpreted as a philosophy of love (ascending toward perfection), but other parts of his writing make it sound like he's talking about limerence between men, or men and boys, as in a story about Alcibiades' love for Socrates . (The Greeks did not view this as "gay"; rather, it was a cultural element endemic to Greek society.) Plato's ideas are complicated because they are given in the form of a dialog, as an argument between several viewpoints. Later, Plato's ideas indirectly influenced courtly love (the medieval conception of limerence), through Arab poetry and philosophy. Sharon Brehm ( Intimate Relationships , 1985) interprets platonic love this way, as being es...
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Development of romantic fantasy

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Excerpts from the following. Brehm, S. S. (1988). Passionate Love. In R. J. Sternberg & M. L. Barnes (Eds.), The Psychology of Love (pp. 232–263). Yale University Press. Singer, J. L. (1980). Romantic Fantasy in Personality Development. In K. S. Pope and Associates. On Love and Loving (pp. 172–194). Jossey-Bass Publishers. Friedlander, S. & Morrison, D. C. (1980). Childhood. In K. S. Pope and Associates. On Love and Loving (pp. 27–43). Jossey-Bass Publishers. The Psychology of Love  is a classic book with many useful chapters (by J. A. Lee, Hatfield, Shaver & Hazan, Peele, and others). On Love and Loving is available to view on archive.org , with account creation. I obtained a copy of this book some time ago after finding Sternberg refers to it in his discussion of intermittent reinforcement [comparing Tennov and the chapter by Livingston], but it has other useful writings. One funny thing is that the authors in this book don't entirely agree on what "romantic lo...
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Unmet needs theory and readiness

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"Unmet needs" theory of limerence originates from the psychoanalysts, especially Theodor Reik, and some (mainstream) authors have written about it. Verhulst (1984) on limerence defines "readiness" this way:  Before limerence begins, a person may be in a state of readiness and heightened susceptibility for limerence (Tennov, 1979; Money, 1981). Biological factors, such as the surge in hormone levels during adolescence or the level of general arousal and energy, undoubtedly play a role. However, several authors have emphasized the importance of psychological factors such as preceding loneliness, discontent, and alienation (Reik, 1941; Fromm, 1956; Shor and Sanville, 1979). Note that Reik is mentioned here, linking him to limerence directly. Hatfield & Walster (1985, pp. 59–60; originally 1978, a source also referred to by Tennov) explain Reik this way: THE GREATER OUR NEED, THE MORE GRANDIOSE OUR FANTASIES Sigmund Freud claimed that "happy people never make f...
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Defining limerence: harmonious, passionate and obsessive love

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Note: this is a draft, and an excerpt of a larger article that I'm currently writing. Actual descriptions of limerence Following are descriptions of limerence from actual scholars and professionals who do in fact understand what the term is supposed to mean: a kind of intense romantic love which can be debilitating, but is in fact normal. "Tennov (1979) used the term limerence to refer to a kind of infatuated, all-absorbing passion — the kind of love that Dante felt for Beatrice, or that Juliet and Romeo [nb. who both die] felt for each other. Tennov argued that an important feature of limerence is that it should be unrequited, or at least unfulfilled. It consists of a state of intense longing for the other person, in which the individual becomes more or less obsessed by that person and spends much of their time fantasising about them." ( Hayes, 2000 , p. 457) "[Tennov] discovered that many who considered themselves "madly in love" had similar descr...
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