Passionate Love and Sexual Desire - Elaine Hatfield

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10positive—although hardly uniform and unchanging during these epochs. Medical textsdating back to 168 BCE make it clear that the ancients assumed that love and sexualpleasure were two of the great joys of life. In the Late Empire (1,000 years ago), duringthe Sung dynasty, the Neo-Confucianists gained political and religious power, andChinese attitudes began to alter, gradually becoming more and more negative andrepressive concerning sex. Displays of love outside marriage were forbidden, and eroticart and literature were often burned.When the People’s Republic of China was established in 1949, Communistofficials imposed even tighter controls on love and “inappropriate” sexual activity. On avisit to Beijing, Money (1977) reported: “I came across a slogan: ‘Making love is amental disease that wastes time and energy.’”Gil (1992) noted:A puritanical, if not heavy-handed, sexual “primness” became firmlyestablished. . . This included a denial of romantic love, the affirmationof the absolute role of the collective over the individual as a basictenet toward which one should direct any affections. The Great LeapForward demanded, in Communist parlance, the “renunciation of theheart.” Party policy deliberately constructed an altruism whichsought (for every man and woman) hard work during the day, withoutbeing “deflected or confused” by love, sexual desire, or any strivingsfor private happiness (p. 571).Today, of course, in China as throughout much of the rest of the world, the windsof change are wafting. Young people—perhaps as a consequence of globalization (as
11evidenced in the availability of international cinema, the Web, world travel, MTV)—are adopting more “liberal” or “worldly” views of passionate love, sexual desire,marriage for love (rather than arranged marriages,) and romantic and sexual diversity.In China, then, things appear to have come full circle.Historical research, then, reminds us that, throughout time, people have embracedvery different attitudes toward romantic and passionate love, have ascribed verydifferent meanings to “love,” have desired very different traits in romantic partners, andhave differed markedly in whether such feelings were to be proclaimed to the world orhidden in the deepest recesses of the heart. In the real world, human sexual attitudesand behavior seem forever in flux.D. Culture and Passionate LoveAmericans are preoccupied with love—or so cross-cultural observers onceclaimed. In a famous quip, Linton (1936) once mocked Americans for their naïveidealization of romantic love and their assumption that romantic love was a prerequisiteto marriage:All societies recognize that there are occasional violent, emotionalattachments between persons of opposite sex, but our present Americanculture is practically the only one which has attempted to capitalize these,and make them the basis for marriage. . . . The hero of the modernAmerican movie is always a romantic lover, just as the hero of the oldArab epic is always an epileptic. A cynic may suspect that in any ordinarypopulation the percentage of individuals with a capacity for romantic love
Page 1 and 2: 78. Hatfield, E., Rapson, R. L.. &
Page 3 and 4: 3of neural activation (see Bartels
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Page 9: 9mutability of human behavior. They
Page 13 and 14: 13Chu (1985; Chu & Ju, 1993), too,
Page 15 and 16: 15To test the notion that passionat
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Page 21 and 22: 211980). Families might also consul
Page 23 and 24: 23fact they do not. Joseph and Jose
Page 25 and 26: 25To test this notion, Sprecher and
Page 28 and 29: 28jealousy's pangs. She observed:
Page 30 and 31: 30cuckold should fail to detect the
Page 32 and 33: 32sure, but stories none-the-less.
Page 34 and 35: 34The Toda of Southern India, who w
Page 36 and 37: 36extreme jealousy) and the Toda tr
Page 38 and 39: 38women were “supposed” to resp
Page 40 and 41: 40This treatment of an unfaithful w
Page 42 and 43: 42Naturally, cultural differences s
Page 44 and 45: 44Bringle, R. G., & Buunk, B. (1986
Page 46 and 47: 46Dion, K. K. & Dion, K. L. (1993).
Page 48 and 49: 48Hatfield, E. & Rapson, R. L. (198
Page 50 and 51: 50Kitayama, S. (2002.) Culture and
Page 52 and 53: 52Prakasa, V. V., & Rao, V. N. (197
Page 54 and 55: 54Sternberg, R. J. (1988). Triangul

Passionate Love and Sexual Desire - Elaine Hatfield

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