Lisa Appignanesi on Alles over de liefde, VPRO-boeken, 7 november 2011

Life histories about love.

Lisa’s parents were from Poland, she lived in Canada and now in the City of London, which she very much likes. She is director of the Freud museum. Earlier she wrote a book about madness.

Wim Brands asks her if Freud is still of importance. Lisa tells him he is, as Tolstoj and Balzac are. Freud showed that the first experiences of a child are defining for its life. An adult is shaped by his or her childhood. Freud also focused on the libido, the sexual energy. Love can be a cure, better than a psycho-analysis.

Brands asks Lisa when she started with her new book, All about love, Anatomy of an Unruly Emotion as it is called in English.

Lisa looked in the handbook of psychiatric diseases, when she was writing her book about madness and found out that love, as deviant behaviour, was not in it. One can still be mad in love. That was one of the reasons to start this book.

Why is so much behaviour labeled as madness? Brands wants to know.

Lisa starts about our chemical world, allthough I expected a more sociological answer in the way of Norbert Elias or Michel Foucault who both wrote about controlling undesirable behaviour in the human development. Lisa speaks about pills that raise our lows and give us highs. Love itself isn’t high or low. There is also ordinary love, like love for children of a partner. The way we treat our dear ones shaped and shapes us.

Why are we so obsessed by love?

We are vulnerable when we are in love. It causes a lot of pain when love ends. To be in love is a state comparable with being paranoia. It is a good thing to loose yourself, to come out of yourself. You learn to know yourself.

Lisa asked fifty persons about their life. She was interested in their stories. Meanings are attachted to experiences. An old man for instance wanted to leave his wife and son when the last one was discovering his sexuality. Her book is a life history about love.

Brands asks her about the difference between an English and a continental novel.

In an English novel, like in the books of Jane Austen, a boy meets a girl and after a lot of problems they get married, while a continental novel, like madame Bovary, starts with a marriage and ends up in trouble. 

Her first love was at fourteen years of age in Canada. It was very important for her. She says that in a first love is a lot of imagery. One better lets it go by. A second love is healthier.

Brands wants to hear why couples that watch porn are like religious persons who go to Lourdes.

Lisa says that for Freud sex was an act of liberation. Now it is in supermarkets. We want more and more of it, but we are not satisfied. There is a switch of positions. Sex is like the superego now, demanding for more and better, while sex itself doesn’t mean more than sipping from this glass of water. Lisa takes a sip. 

It can be my lack of understanding, but I found it all quite ordinary.