Primary Love : The Elemental Nature of Human Love, Intimacy, and Attachment

In Primary Love, Dr. Klein describes love and intimacy as they evolve in the context of family relations from birth to maturity in adulthood. Once the original attachment and the loving, intimate bond between a mother and her infant-child are established, primary love is founded and secured. Every relationship of love and intimacy formed thereafter has - as its foundation, nature, and design - the original, pristine, loving relationship encountered in the very earliest period of life. When two adults form a mature, intimate relationship, it is the unconscious wish of both partners to recapture and claim the bliss and the ecstasy of primary love, nestled securely in a mother's loving and ministering arms. Dr. Klein's view of love and intimacy is that which is found in the ideal marriage and family, fully acknowledging that the pure and "perfect" marriage and family does not exist. Yet, the "perfectly" described nature of marriage and the family serves as an ideal toward which to strive, for the ideal provides the ultimate of pleasure and reward in the human encounter of love.