The adolescent questions and tests the relationship with desire and passion. For him as for the adult, the quest for the object of love fits in with the continuity of the infantile development, including its earliest vicissitudes. The loving state, feed-back to the imaginary original unity and seat of pre-genital and cedipal stakes, testifies to the importance of the narcissist component of love. In the extreme, this component can lead to a real narcissist perversion, that has to be distinguished from the « affective perversion » inherent in the humanization of the drives. The author illustrates the affective perversion with the platonie love and with the « virtual » love, and the narcissist perversion with the behaviour of the « Zebra » in the novel of Alexandre Jardin. Love can also pass beyond its narcissist feature and catalyse positive psychic transformations in the bosom of a creative affectivity.
Jadoulle, V. (2004). Quelques enjeux inconscients de l’état amoureux. Cliniques méditerranéennes - psychanalyse et psychopathologie freudiennes, 69(1), 127-138. https://doi.org/10.3917/cm.069.0127 (Original work published 2004)