[Sexual partners: a psychoanalytic study]

Love means the ability to combine idealization and erotic fulfillment and to establish a profound object relation. The author examines the clinical features of erotic desire, its ecstatic and aggressive aspects and the way they are bound up with transcending the limits of the self, its genetic roots and the unconscious object relations underlying the sexual couple. In Kernberg's view, embarking on the adventure of a love relationship involves both identifying with and overcoming the oedipal parent-couple at one and the same time. He sees breaches in love relationship as stemming from the discontinuity of the relation between mother and child. A mature super-ego, developing from a transformation of primitive constraints and guilt feelings as a result of aggression, is conducive to love and emotional commitment to the love object, while a sound ego-ideal is a fundamental requirement for the ability to fall in love. The article concludes with a discussion of the relationship between couples and groups.