If love is an emotion it is probably the most complex of all. If it is some state of being that includes various emotions, some of them decidedly positive, then it is a very complex state of being.
Love has a distinct place in Izard's (1991) scheme of things, but he does not characterize it as a discrete emotion. He views love as basic to the human condition, as involving strong, affectionately based social attachments, to be full of interest and joy but also to ". . . run the full gamut of emotions" (1991, p. 407). Like many psychologists who have written about love, Izard distinguishes between various types: love for parents, love for siblings and love in a romantic sense, for example. He views all types of love as having certain elements in common; he lists attachment, loyalty, devotion, protectiveness and nurturance.
However, romantic love is special because it involves sexual expression, whereas the other types normally do not. In recent years, psychologists have turned their attention to love rather than putting it aside as too hard or regarding it as better left to the poets. Among the most interesting of these expositions has been Sternberg's (1986, 1987), who reviews theories of love and then attempts to provide his own. He suggests a triangular model of liking and loving, the three aspects being intimacy, passion and decision-commitment.
Lazarus (1991a) makes the interesting point that it appears to be treating love as social relationships rather than as an emotion. He further points out that love can also be a momentary state.
Shaver, Morgan and Wu (1996) ask the basic question, "is love a basic emotion?" They point out that, although it is clearly recognized as a basic emotion in everyday life, it rarely, if ever, appears in psychologists' lists. The reasons that psychologists give for this is that love has too much social context to be regarded as a basic emotion, it is too long-lasting (and thus more like an attitude or a sentiment than an emotion) or it is a mixture of basic emotions.
Shaver et al. argue that love is universal, both throughout history and across cultures, and agree with Lazarus (1991a) that it can take the form of a social relationship or of a momentary state. They view love as being attachment, care giving or sexual attraction, again making the point also made by many others: that there is more than one form of love.
From a philosophical perspective, in a most stimulating book, Solomon (1994) has produced a genuine theory rather than a model of love. His account is simultaneously hard-headed and sympathetic and begins with the view that a theory of love is essentially a theory of self; however, it emphasizes a shared self. With this theory he is harking back to the platonic view of love as a joining of two souls. This notion began with Aristophanes, who suggested that love is an attempt to find the other half of the self. Bringing this to the present in Solomon's terms, love becomes a matter of defining oneself in terms of another person. He makes the point that romantic love is a very modern notion, indicating a set of relationships that have only existed for a relatively short time. It is a notion that is based on the idea of two separate and autonomous persons who are free to make choices. A further core aspect of this theory is that any of the concepts involved in love only work when they are in tension with their opposite.
To make this clear, the seeking for union with someone else in these terms is exciting because it is in tension with the notion of the autonomous self. So, and most importantly, Solomon is here describing love as a process and not a state: it comes from movement. As already mentioned, Solomon is a philosopher rather than a psychologist, but rests his theory of love not just on both these disciplines but also on history, literature and anthropology, and especially on personal experience. A theory of love has to make sense personally as well as within more rarefied academic discourse, a point that might be made about emotions in general. All these complexities suggest to Solomon that love is something that should be seen as taking time rather than being instant and it is something that develops and grows. In the end, he argues with this deceptively simple theory that it is time to "reinvent" love along the lines that he describes, but within the framework of the contemporary world.
Although Solomon's theory of love has been given pride of place in this brief account, it remains to be seen whether or not it generates empirical research. It looks likely to, as well as having obvious heuristic value. It has particular importance in that it deals with the topic of love irrespective of disciplinary boundaries. It is becomingly increasingly evident that to understand emotion in general this should be the approach of first choice
