Marriage and Family Among Negroes

• Date: 01 March 1969
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1545-5300.1969.138_5.x
• Author: Lloyd A. Johnson
• Published date: 01 March 1969

Fam Proc 8:138-147, 1969

BOOK REVIEWS

In the last issue I took the position that modern communication and systems theory supported the Leavis side of the Two

Culture debate in asserting that a literary sensibility is probably a more fundamental judgment than anything that science

can produce. If nothing else it acts as a gyroscope to keep scientific ventures on course. The most recent book to carry the

late Don D. Jackson's name (Lederer and Jackson, Mirages of Marriage1 reminds the reader of, perhaps, the most

important case: romantic love. Although the book itself appears to be intended for the intelligent layman and is a nice

addition to the biblio-therapy bookshelf, it is really the professional, particularly the family therapist or marriage counselor,

who would benefit most from a thorough familiarity with the major critical point made in the book: that the notion of

romantic love is the source of a great many of our most disastrous experiments in livingthe hippie movement

notwithstanding.

There is a good chapter in Hunt's The Natural History of Love2 on the historic background, better written than the same

material in Lederer and Jackson, but omitting their important and hardhitting application to the family. As Hunt points out,

toward the end of the eleventh century A.D. a playful bit of aristocratic nonsense, somewhat akin to flattery, got entirely out

of hand, escalating into an ideological force that created an entirely new notion of the relationship between men and

women. Courtly love might have done its damage exclusively to the aristocracy had it not changed from a sport, in the

literal sense, for feudal lords and ladies, to the serious ideal of the middle classes. The sport was apparently playful. The

probable model for Don Quixote, one Ulrich von Lichtenstein, in order to win no more than a smile from his nameless love,

travelled from Venice to Vienna on horseback dressed in a preposterous costume as the goddess Venus in a well-advertised

procession which included a dozen squires in white, two maids-in-waiting, and a dozen musicians. He proposed to break

lances with every knight along the way and by his own count fought 307 combats in five weeks. Much later he wrote a book

about it. His life was not too disturbed by it all. He had married earlier for entirely different reasons and died rich and

happy. In fact, during the Venus-ride he stopped off to visit his wife and children for three days.(He was very fond of his

wife and family. He only loved the other lady.)

Denis de Rougemont's Love in the Western World3 is intended for a much more serious audience of literary criticism. Its

advantage lies in its brilliant and frightening analysis of romance in literature. The object of the whole thing, argues de

Rougemont, is to die. Passion as defined in romantic love means suffering, and suffering is "linked with death." The point is

hard to dismiss as de Rougemont mentions famous lovers: Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde, and so forth.

741 years after Ulrich made his ridiculous journey, Jackson and Lederer take a look at where he has finally led us. In the

opening chapters they ask some direct questions: Do people get married for love? do they stay married for love? should we

look for some other basic logic to marriage? What is more, in four additional sections of the book they suggest alternatives

to the romantic concept that stem out of systems theory, communication theory, Bateson's symmetrical versus

complementary relationships, Jackson's marital quid pro quo (this for that), and so forth. Although a great deal of this

approach has been available to the family therapist before in technical terms, it is of great value to see it as it might be

presented to the layman and the student.

Several other cases of the romantic influence come to mind that are not directly related to marriage but to which family

therapists, working as they frequently do in the community setting, might apply their knowledge. Drug usage, or as it is

called these days, substance abuse, is a case in point. To my knowledge there is no book for the intelligent layman on "the

mirages of drugs" which approaches the subject as Lederer and Jackson approached marriage. For those attempting to

survey the literature I recommend the Addiction Research Foundation Bibliographic Series which may be obtained free by

writing to the Research Division, Addiction Research Foundation, 344 Bloor Street West, Toronto 4, Canada. The

Cannabis (Marihuana) and alcohol bibliographies are out already with separate annotated bibliographies in preparation for

Mescaline, L.S.D., Amphetamines, and others. The connection between drug usage and romantic influence is made clear by

reference to the many subjective and influential descriptions of the drug experience by writers and poets of the last century:

Dumas, De Quincey, Baudelaire, and so forth. As the bibliography points out, The Paradis Artificiels of the last century

rival in romantic appreciation of marihuana and other drugs the romantic condemnation of this century. To call marihuana

"messenger of a false happiness," "panderer to a treacherous love," "weed of the brutal crime and of the burning hell,"

"diabolic resin," and so forth is just as absurd as to recommend it with similar intensity. Both effects are derived largely

from romance. The hippie with his predominantly placebo pharmacology might be suffering from the same problem as the

girl who says, "I know he's no good for me, but we are in love."

Drive theory is another area in which romantic love has had an influence of no small proportions. As Beach put it, "The

quasi-romantic concept of the rutting stag actively seeking a mate is quite misleading."4 The stag sounds like Ulrich when

described by drive theorists who have fallen under Cupid's arrow. Beach suggests an alternative: "When he encounters a

receptive female, the male animal may or may not become sexually excited, but it is most unlikely that in the absence of

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