What Is Love?

"The infant must come to accept the ontological fact of dependency, neediness, and incompleteness in relation to his or her mother, father and siblings (family) and must learn to accept the humility of dependency and incompleteness as a fact of nature. Along with this recognition infants must learn to appreciate what they receive from their nurturing. They then introject, not the object, but the legacy of their experience with the object, the experience designating the appreciation. It may take us a lifetime to learn that we are unable to posess or really 'introject' a loved one. All we can hope for is continuingly meaningful experiences with the object, really the ineffable, unpossessable other. As we then incorporate the legacy of the object that has been appreciated, the appreciated object experience 'appreciates' within us, filling us with gratitude, the feeling of being profoundly loved and cared for. The infant grows, develops and matures, fed on the milk of loving kindness, the foundation for a sense of being real, alive, vital".

- James Grotstein in What Is Love?, a preface to Judith Pickering's book Being In Love: Therapeutic Pathways Through Psychological Obstacles to Love.