Love and Self-Change

Abstract

In The Normal Chaos of Love (1995), the Becks advance the thesis that in an era of pervasive, generalized individualization,¹ men and women no longer meet one another as status incumbents and role-players, each with a set of culturally handed-down scripts to play — he as man she as woman, he as a member of one social class or ethnic group she of another, he of this age she of that, etc. Instead, they now seek out and meet one another as sheer individuals, that is, as more or less thoroughly individualized individuals, each engaged in and committed to a life-long project of self-discovery and self-actualization. This project does not cease when two such individuals fall in love and decide to become a couple. On the contrary, a ménage à deux presents them with yet another opportunity, indeed a most significant opportunity, to further discover and realize themselves, whether through each other, or together with one another, or separately but with the wholehearted support of the other. This being the case, the Becks claim, it is understandable why the overall societal picture of contemporary couples and families has become so very variegated, and why in the foreseeable future it is likely to become even more variegated. Thus, just as individualization has been producing a practically infinite variety of individuals, so it is now producing a correspondingly infinite variety of arrangements among such individuals. Whence the wholly normal chaos of love.

For Rosa and Francesco Alberoni

My thanks to the following who have taken the time and the trouble to comment on earlier versions of this paper: Francesco Alberoni, Edith Astric, Daniel Breslau, Murray Davis, Kornelia Hahn, Aziza Khazzoom, John Markoff, Michèle richman, Mathan (Nussi) Sznayder, Oleg Vetlugin, Norbert Wiley, Yves Winkin, als well as the members of two seminars at Tel-Aviv University’s Dept. of Sociology-Anthropology: The Social Bondes seminar and the Theory and Culture workshop.