A Psychoanalytic Reading on Sonnet 151

Love—the Amalgamation of Reason and Affection

“Penis erectus non habet conscientiam” (An erect penis has no conscience)
~ Archer Taylor [The Proverbs]

Love is the consolidated product between affection and reason; that is, unless affection is produced by, or agrees with our rationality—only then it would be logically called love. For many today, people have different relative conceptions of what love is. Some have thought of it as a bizarre ‘electrifying’ feeling that produces bent to smile and sometimes with an element of sexual urge. All of these notions nonetheless are simply guesswork and are deficient of grasp as to the nature of love. 

As is true, most people in this postmodern era, where ‘relativism’ thrives as an epistemological philosophy—i.e. truth is seen as something that is dependent upon one’s point of view or subjective opinion. In effect, our conventional knowledge of love becomes arbitrary, to say the least; and its significant meaning becomes contingent upon how people thought of it, to say the worst.

William Shakespeare’s sonnets especially 151th Chapter, though presents ‘naked’ and ‘vulgar’ elements that may be unsuitable for young readers, it nevertheless provides an objective cogent understanding of what love is. To illustrate his point: at the very outset of that chapter, he says “Loue is too young to know what conscience is,”—first, we have to bear in mind that the term “loue” is elsewhere used by Shakespeare to mean as “babe” and not necessarily “love” in a conventional sense of the word (See also, Sonnet 115.13 where he says that “Loue is a babe”; and Sonnet 154, where it is used also as Little God ‘Cupid’); second, as far as the immediate context is concerned, that is apparently what is being meant by Shakespeare. In this way, it is shown that affection in its undeveloped stage has to reached its maturity phase—the stage of reason—in order, for it become evolved into a full-blown form of love. Just as a caterpillar cannot be properly called a butterfly unless it evolves, the same holds true with our pre-mature feelings—this cannot be called ‘love’ any more than an unevolved caterpillar be even called a butterfly. In fact, this idea is supported by the Psychosexual Theory of Sigmund Freud where it is stated that human nature consists of three compartments, as it were, namely—Id, Ego, and Superego. The Id is said to be the repertoire of libido or instinctual drives (which of course includes lust, human desires and appetite), the other one is the Ego which is the driver of the Id and the conformer of it into the norm of society—the Superego.

With this being said, it is imperative for such writing of Shakespeare to be read through the hermeneutical lens of Psychosexual framework. The main reason here is that both Shakespeare and Freud have the same viewpoint as to the nature of man. I would strongly agree with the notion that our premature feeling namely the “Id” (in Freudian terminology) is something that can function apart from our cognitive faculty. In reality, there are myriads of cases where rapes abound in many places in the globe. The question would then arise, have people forgotten the moral codes in which all of us have to abide thereby? Assuredly, everyone knows what is moral and what is not. It is implanted within the fabric of our cognitive faculty the knowledge of absolute moral laws. But why still violate? The reason is because the other part of our nature, namely the Id is permitted by the Ego to overpower itself. Another instance is that, kids of their young age have already an experience of having “crushes” or “admiration” towards the opposite sex. This kind of ‘love,’ as they even dubbed it, is certainly an obvious manifestation of the Id. This cannot be called love in its absolute sense because it is neither navigated, let alone informed by the aid of reason. Moreover, there are numerous amounts of instances where most students stop their studies and marry right away the wrong person apart from the approval of their parents. They would say that they are just following the dictates of their heart. But what they actually feel is not love; they are merely impelled by the strong instinctual drives that operate within their nature. Even if they know that to follow their parents’ advice is right and moral, and that they are looking after the well-being of their children; still, all of these things are disregarded. Sadly, this is how human lust operates. It negates conscience and dismisses reason and morality in order to satisfy its own ‘fleshly’ demands. So the question goes, when can we basically say that love has already occurred within us? I contend that only when our feeling is guarded and navigated by rationality would love then be properly called “love”. In contrast, if it goes at odds of what is right and moral, it is therefore not love, but merely an overt manifestation of the desires of the flesh. Love must be reasonable because it is not something manufactured by human desire but a byproduct of affection filtered through the formality of reason and ethics. 

To put things into summary, our affection in its premature state is more of a manifestation of our libidic instinctual drives. It is irrational and it follows the course of a conscienceless impulse. While love is something that is beyond albeit governed by reason, on the one hand; it is also shaped by conforming to social norms, on the other.