The Nature of Love

Crimes and Misdemeanors and the nature of love

The following quote is from Woody Allen’s fascinating film Crimes and Misdemeanors. It is one of the most interesting, and perhaps apt, theories on the nature of love that I have ever heard. The character who makes this striking comment is a (fictional) philosopher, Prof. Louis Levy, about whom Woody Allen’s character, Cliff Stern, is making a documentary.

“You will notice that what we are aiming at when we fall in love is a very strange paradox. The paradox consists of the fact that when we fall in love we are seeking to re-find all or some of the people to whom we were attached as children. On the other hand we ask of our beloved to correct all of the wrongs that these early parents or siblings inflicted on us. So that love contains in it a contradiction, the attempt to return to the past and the attempt to undo the past.”