(No) time for love: Reflecting on relationships in psychotherapy

This paper presents a response to the six papers comprising this special issue on Love, Sex and Psychotherapy in a Postromantic Era. The theme of temporality is explored in reading the papers: specifically, time in terms of self-other development and the capacity to relate to others as a separate subjectivity, the social and cultural context in which we are situated, and temporality in psychotherapy. In responding to the papers, it is argued that psychoanalysis perhaps never was a ‘romantic’ endeavour, recognising as it does the fantasies and fictions involved in the idea of unconditional, and everlasting love. Rather, it recognises the role of being able to tolerate love and hatred in the experience of intimate relationships, whatever its forms.