Reuben Fine on Love and the Human Experience

Love is basic to the well-being of every person, reports Reuben Fine in his profound The Meaning of Love in Human Experience (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1985), in which he delves into the many cultural impediments for individuals to achieve this most desirable goal. He explores love because “much of the unhappiness in the world stems from the lack of love.” This he does by going into an exhaustive study of the societal problems that serve to frustrate love by taking an in-depth encyclopaedic psychoanalytic and historical approach, supported by literature, philosophy, anthro-

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pology, sociology, economics, and man’s artistic expressions. Dr. Fine’s lengthy work is a tour de force.

Fine, who took his doctorate in psychology, acknowledges his enormous debt to Freud, but as he says, “my goal has been to round out his theories, to correct his errors, to review the evidence that has accumulated since he worked, and to present a more comprehensive view of the field than he did.” He amply accomplishes this goal.

Rueben Fine was born in New York City in 1914 and died in 1993 after an unusually distinguished career. He was an outstanding chess player of international standing, rising to the rank of chess grandmaster. He wrote numerous articles and books on chess, including the widely respected The Psychology of the Chess Player (Dover Publications, 1967), thereby combining his passions. Fine had such a stellar career in chess that he himself became the subject of an excellent fine biography: Reuben Fine: A Comprehensive Record of an American Chess Career, 1929-1951 by Aidan Woodger (McFarland & Company, 2004). Ultimately, he became a psychoanalyst, with a large practice, and he founded and directed an institute for lay psychoanalysts, The New York Center for Psychoanalytic Training (NYCPT). NYCPT was a thriving school for well over 30 years. Fine published so widely that only a few of his books can be mentioned here. Among his many publications are The Development of Freud’s Thought (Jason Aronson, 1973), A History of Psychoanalysis (Columbia University Press, 1979), and The Psychoanalytic Vision (The Free Press, 1981). Reuben Fine was also a Visiting Professor at CCNY, the University of Amsterdam, the Lowell Institute of Technology, the University of Florence, and Adelphi University. For a period of about 40 years, he was one of the most eminent scholars and leaders in the field of psychoanalysis.

Dr. Fine examined various cultures in a global perspective, searching for those that are “love cultures” in comparison to those that are “hate cultures.” The love cultures are relatively few and small. A love culture is characterized by affection and cooperation,

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and by a general feeling of harmony. Hate cultures are harsh and paranoid, and exhibit antagonisms. Fine, as a Freudian, recognizes the universality of aggression and the inclination to project hostile or negative motives onto another group. In support of these views, there is an extensive use of anthropological studies, where he differentiates between shame versus guilt cultures. This is in line with a recent work by Dr. Mary Coleman, a neurologist, who specifically examines guilt societies and shame societies in her psychohistorically informed book Blood of the Beloved (iUniverse, 2007), and finds that groups such as the Amish and Mennonites not only are pacifists, but that there are virtually no murders within their societies.

Reuben Fine advances the notion that love cultures, such as the Arapesh and the Ifaluk, leave people free of hostility and violence. In a love culture, such as the Mangaians, everyone has a love partner, while frigidity in women is unknown. For men, impotence is rare until old age. Dr. Fine ranges far and wide in his presentation of varied groups, including the Tahitians, noted for being nonviolent and gentle.

Alternatively, hate cultures abound. The Aztecs appeared around 1400, and their warrior civilization was marked by enormous cruelty in their subjugating other peoples. They staged countless human sacrifices of up to over 100,000 people, with a standard method of killing being to cut out the heart of the victim. Dr. Fine posits that in such a culture there was little love, brutality abounded, and children were prepared for combat by being forced to submit to corporal punishment and exposed to severe cold.

Another society designated as a hate culture is Nazi Germany, which Fine also labels as a paranoid state. Despite its being aggressive and threatening to its neighbours, Germany rationalized its behavior by proclaiming that all other peoples were victimizing Germany. The Nazis sought to destroy the family and with it Germany’s humanistic and cultural traditions. In line with other hate cultures, women were subordinated and degraded, a characteristic of repressive societies. Germany went to the extent of establishing

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“stud farms” where unmarried young girls were to be available to German soldiers, in order to be impregnated by them and have racially “pure” children for the German army. Obviously, in these sexual encounters, there were no deep affectionate feelings between the men and the women.

With regard to religion, Dr. Fine pays close attention to the historical influence and role of organized religion in contributing to hate cultures. Islam and Christianity are considered to be “warrior religions,” and their attacks on each other were a form of channelling and displacing anger within their societies toward others, making theological rationalizations for going to war, as noted above with the Aztecs. What the author notes about Islamic aggression has a contemporary quality, although this work was published in 1985, before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks; Muslim extremism has been common throughout the 20^th century. According to Fine, its founder, Mohammed, spent much of his life at war, fighting other Arabs and Jews, and brutally expanding his empire. He was merciless, conniving in assassinations, and ruthless toward his enemies. Fine writes that Mohammed “appears to be a grandiose opportunist,” who married numerous times for money or political advantage, or to advance his conquest. Women were cruelly subordinated, which continues to this day. He wrote this book when the Ayatollah Khomeini was in power in Iran. He describes the ghastly practices of this regime, including the stoning to death of women and many other punishments for perceived offenses. Reuben Fine comments, “Love is certainly not one of the virtues promoted by Islam.”

Initially, Christians were pacifistic and persecuted by the Romans. However, during the reign of Theodosius I, Christianity became the established church, and views on killing and warfare changed. Theologians such as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas justified war, and in time Pope Urban called for a holy war to defend Christianity. The Crusades channelled aggression outside of Europe. In effect, Roman Catholicism did not ameliorate Roman hate culture. Over time this gave rise to attacking infidels and here-

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tics in Europe itself, and led to the Spanish Inquisition. Nevertheless, there remained the ideal of love, which was tied in to the love of God. A dilemma which existed for “Christianity is the revulsion against sexuality.” When celibacy was established in the 13^th century for the Catholic clergy, with its prohibition on sexuality and marriage, it also meant that they “could not have any strong ties to any other human beings.” Despite the widespread, periodic repression, reform movements were nevertheless quite common, and eventually gave rise to the Protestant Reformation.

In Fine’s view, Martin Luther, who inspired the Reformation by denouncing Catholicism, was himself a hateful person, as demonstrated by his vehement opposition to the rebellious German peasants and numerous religious groups that arose in the wake of the Reformation, which plunged Germany and much of Europe into protracted civil wars. The widespread atrocities that eventually occurred amidst the religious conflict led to some intellectuals advocating the need for religious toleration, in effect advancing a kinder disposition toward people of other faiths.Dr. Fine writes notably about the American and French Revolutions. He considers the French Revolution of 1789, about which he is quite knowledgeable, to have failed although it did serve to ultimately advance the rights of the individual, democracy, and religious freedom. He has high praise for the Founding Fathers of the American Revolution because “one of the wisest of all measures adopted” by them was to separate church from state, as established in the laws of the new Constitution. Pertinently, the Founding Fathers all had a Protestant background.

Dr. Fine examines the dominant cultures in Western civilization, dividing more than 2,000 years into six periods. The first is that of ancient Greece, noting that it is characterized by bisexuality; the second is Rome, characterized by cruelty; the third is Christianity, noted for its asceticism; the 12^th century, gave rise to romantic love; the 16^th century, which sparked religious and social movements; and the sixth period, starting in the 18^th century, which led to the making of the modern family.

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This work has covered the evolution of love and hate in various cultures over the millennia, culminating with the contemporary world. Globally, hate cultures are still widespread, but there are positive developments, certainly in the Western world. One distinctive and pivotal advance to creating a more loving culture is the revolutionary theory of psychoanalysis. In our time, countless people have been helped by therapy. Psychoanalysis and the mental health fields generally are vehicles of social reform to give people a better life. Therapists help in many ways, but ultimately they teach the patient how to be more loving and to have more satisfying sex in their lives. As Dr. Fine notes, not being able to love is a serious disorder.

In sum, The Meaning of Love in Human Experience is a thoughtful work, impressive in its range, its intellectual rigor, and its candor. It is a major contribution, and a triumph of the field of psychoanalysis as it elucidates the damage caused by the cultures of hate in contrast with the benefits derived from the cultures of love.

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