Theme Pack 10 - Love and Marriage: "Love is a Recent Invention" and Three Other Articles, by Alfred Adler.
According to Adler, the ideal of modern love did not exist until women were emancipated from their social and economic shackles; it is a dyad of equal partners. From this perspective, many of the early writings of poets and philosophers about love are for the most part "nonsense." If the early impulses of affection in a child are accompanied by a felt weakness, later in adulthood, mature love will be incompatible with a striving for personal power. The decision to marry, from both partners, ought to spring from a mutual striving for humaneness.
Love and Marriage, by Alfred Adler, may be ordered at
http://go.ourworld.nu/hstein/theme.htm