David A. Winter, Judy Duncan, and Emma Summerfield LOVE HURTS: EXPLORATIONS OF LOVE, VALIDATION, AND CONFLICT David A. Winter*, Judy Duncan**, and Emma Summerfield* *University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, UK, **Hertfordshire Partnership Foundation Trust, UK This paper considers how love may be conceptualised from a personal construct theory perspective, particu- larly in relation to experiences of validation and invalidation. This model is applied to writings about love, and the findings of a repertory grid and interview exploration of love, indicating differences in students’ con- struing of romantically and platonically loved figures and relationships between grid scores and a measure of love styles, are presented. Illustrations are provided from the clinical setting indicating how clients’ relation- ship problems may be explained in terms of their constructions concerning love. Keywords: love, conflict, validation, invalidation I hate and love. You may ask why I do so. The course of true love never did run I do not know, but I feel it and am in tor- smooth. ment! (William Shakespeare) (Catullus) As the above quotes, and the title of this paper, Fair is my love, and cruel as she’s fair, indicate, a favourite topic of literature and popu- Her brow shades frowns, although her lar songs from time immemorial is that love is eyes are sunny. not an easy ride. We shall consider how this con- (Samuel Daniel) flictual nature of the experience of love may be viewed in terms of personal construct theory, For even as love crowns you so shall he and report the findings of two research studies crucify you. Even as he is for your growth conducted from this perspective. Love has not so is he for your pruning. previously received much attention in the per- Even as he ascends to your height and ca- sonal construct literature, as is also the case in resses your tenderest branches that quiver the psychology literature generally (Tallis, in the sun, 2005). Butt and Burr (2004) suggest that this So shall he descend to your roots and may be because not only do psychologists shy shake them in their clinging to the earth. away from areas that cannot be easily measured (Kahlil Gibran) but also because love is something of a taboo subject. Love’s pleasure lasts but a moment; love’s Although Kelly (1955) did not include love in sorrow lasts all through life. his original list of common emotional terms that (Celestine) he defined as constructs relating to transition, he did acknowledge in his later work that ‘“Love” Friendship is a disinterested commerce … may hold an ever so important position in between equals; love, an abject inter- one’s construct system – as I, for one, believe it course between tyrants and slaves. should’ (Kelly, 1977, p. 3). He also raised, and (Oliver Goldsmith) answered, three questions about love, namely: There is no love without hate! …is love actually rational? The answer to (Wilhelm Stekel) this question must, I believe, remain un- known in our generation. Yet our psychol- 86 Personal Construct Theory & Practice, 5, 2008 Love hurts: Explorations of love, validation, and conflict ogy must enable us to cope with such un- tionships in an attempt to defend their core struc- knowns. If we are careful to distinguish ture. between love as an experience, on the one The importance of mutual validation in rela- hand, and our rational construction of it, tionships of friendship and love has been indi- on the other, the question need not arise. cated by a number of research studies. Amongst Whatever it will turn out to be in the end, their findings are that: we should not be inhibited in examining it through the spectacles of rationality. As 1. people seek out others with similar con- long as we remember what spectacles we structs (Duck, 1973); are wearing, love, itself, need not be dis- 2. advanced friendships are associated with torted by such inspection. greater commonality in less superficial areas of construing (Duck, 1973; Neimeyer & …Can love be completely understood if it Neimeyer, 1981); is regarded in rational terms only? 3. friends and partners are more satisfied with Probably not; we have not yet developed a each other when they use constructs more completely rational understanding of similarly (Neimeyer & Hudson, 1985; much of anything, even things that seem Neimeyer & Neimeyer, 1981, 1985); much less complex than love… 4. low similarity in construct use characterises deteriorating relationships (Duck & Allison, …Is not the understanding of love implicit 1978; Neimeyer & Neimeyer, 1982); in the experience of love? If you can fall in 5. similarity in intimate partners’ construing love, does that not mean that you under- involves not only the content but also the stand it? The experience does provide a structure of their construct systems (Adams- kind of understanding but being in love Webber, 2001; Neimeyer & Neimeyer, with someone does not always carry with 1983). it a certain understanding of the love that another feels. And that is the root of many In the view of Neimeyer and Neimeyer (1985), a tragedy (Kelly, 1977, pp. 3-4). close relationships may be regarded as ‘forms of intimate colleagueship in which two or more Although in this passage Kelly provided an ar- personal scientists collaborate in supporting and gument for the psychological examination of extending one another’s critical life investments’ love, he did not attempt such an examination (p. 197). As these workers have indicated, how- himself. Let us now accept Kelly’s invitation and ever, validation in a relationship may not only be consider how the experience of love may be achieved by commonality in partners’ construing viewed in terms of personal construct processes. but also, in what they term ‘negative relation- ships’, by each individual contrasting their ideal self with their view of their partner. A personal VALIDATION AND INVALIDATION construct perspective such as this can indicate why a seemingly unsatisfying relationship can be McCoy (1977, 1981) initially took up the chal- very resistant to change. lenge of providing a personal construct under- As Bannister and Fransella (1986) have standing of love when she extended Kelly’s list pointed out, the role relationship of love pro- of emotional terms defined from a personal con- vides not only the possibility of validation and struct perspective. Her definition of love was aggressive elaboration of core role structures that it is ‘a state of awareness of the validation of (Bannister, 1977) but also of invalidation of such one’s core structure’ (McCoy, 1977, p. 109). It structures. They consider that it is therefore the follows that ‘The loved one is everything needed relationship in which a person is likely to take to be one’s whole and true self’ (p.109). McCoy their ‘greatest personal risk’. In Epting’s (1977) was thus able to explain the behaviour of clients view it is both the validation and the invalidation who persisted in apparently unsatisfying rela- that are provided in a loving relationship that enable us to experiment and to elaborate our 87 Personal Construct Theory & Practice, 5, 2008 David A. Winter, Judy Duncan, and Emma Summerfield self-construing. Therefore, invalidation in such a likelihood of engaging in rational, pragmatic relationship need not necessarily be destructive. love relationships. Indeed, a relationship which solely offered vali- dation might be experienced as exceedingly bor- ing. As Hatfield (1988) has indicated, this is the Hostility ‘maximally rewarding relationship’ described by some behaviourists, in which couples are ‘locked One of the strategies that may be used by the in total agreement , smiling and nodding at one person who is faced with core role invalidation another, avoiding all stress’ (p. 207). That a rela- in a love relationship is hostility, the extorting of tionship of this type may be associated with psy- evidence for invalidated constructions. For ex- chological disorder rather than optimal function- ample, Bannister and Fransella (1986) described ing has been indicated by research on people how the invalidated person may terminate the diagnosed as agoraphobic (Winter & Gournay, relationship in such a way that “the authenticity 1987). This demonstrated a very high common- of the other person as a source of evidence” is ality in their and their partners’ construing, and denied (p. 25). These workers also indicated that that the greater this commonality the less likely a love affair can be developed in a hostile way was the agoraphobic to go out of the house. by each partner bullying or bribing the other to A similar argument may be applied to thera- validate their core construing. Kelly (1977) him- peutic relationships, which optimally, if they are self had previously suggested that in some in- to lead to any change, must involve not merely stances what one person regards as love might validation but also experiences of invalidation better be construed as dependency or hostility. (Walker & Winter, 2005). He illustrated “loving” hostility by describing a parent who construes and treats her child as be- ing like a doll (Kelly, 1955). Terror The contrasting experiences of core role valida- Constriction tion and invalidation have been most clearly de- scribed by Leitner (1985). While the former ex- A further strategy of construing that is often ap- perience may be one of love, the latter is likely parent in situations of passionate love is constric- to be characterised by the conglomeration of tion, in that the world of the person who is in negative emotions that Leitner describes as ter- love appears to be limited to the love object, who ror. For some individuals, this may lead them to becomes ‘the source of all meaning in the lover’s view role relationships as too dangerous to con- life’ (Brehm, 1988, p.