A Preliminary Study of the Emotion of Love between the Sexes

This work tackles a surprisingly neglected corner of human psychology: the ordinary experience of love between the sexes. Drawing on a wide range of earlier studies—from Ribot’s brief forays to Havelick Ellis’s extensive surveys—it argues that a solid scientific foundation is essential for understanding both healthy affection and its more extreme distortions. By treating love as a natural outgrowth of the sex instinct, the author sets the stage for a clearer, data‑driven picture of what most people simply assume they already know.

The book surveys the scattered literature, highlighting how many classic texts skim over the topic while novelists dwell on its drama. It then turns its focus to adolescence, the period when love first emerges in earnest, and points out the scarcity of rigorous analysis for this crucial stage. Readers will come away with a fresh appreciation of how normal sexual emotions vary, why they matter to medicine and psychology, and what questions still await systematic study.