Prunesquallor’s

By Oliver Twit

“I spent the first part of my life studing female persona- lity and neurosis,. and now along comes love,” Dr. Prunesquallor says.

Prunesquallor, the leading

authority on female persona- lity, has made a name for him- self as one of the foremost theoreticians and researchers in the field of human relations but in recent years he has turned a good deal of his at- tention to the study of love. He analyzed various love rela- tions and proposed a revolu- tionary tetrahedral theory of love. According to Prune- squallor’s new theory, love has four components: biological, emotional, cognitive, and motivational. Different aspects of love can be explained in term of four faces of tetra- hedron.

Prunesquallor calls the bio- logical aspect of love tetra- hedron passion. The emotional face of the tetrahedron is intimacy. The cognitive face is commitment. The motivational face is self-preservation. Self- preservation includes such things as having kids, making money, feeding the family, and staying out of trouble. These four faces, however, only exist in the imaginary world. He calls this the virtual tetrahedron. The volume of this tetrahedron corresponds to the amount of love; the shape corresponds to the style.

The virtual tetrahedron, however, is a figment of one’s imagination; in reality, it is just a perceptual mirage of the real tetrahedron. In the real world, according to Prune- squallor, the biological face of

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Theory

the real love tetrahedron is neurosis. This, Prunesquallor says, explains why the passion- ate people are mostly neurotic. The emotional face is power. “Power,”’ says Prunesquallor, “attracts intimacy. Let’s face it — it’s sexy.’ The cognitive face is stupidity. “‘Only stupid people make commitments and keep them.”’ Finally, the motivational face is repre- sented by money. ‘Making money is what makes life meaningful. To survive in this world, you need a lot of money.’’ This is the real tetra- hedron, which exists in the real world. ‘Again, the volume of the real tetrahedron represents the amount of love; its shape, the style of love.

The virtual love tetrahedron is really the image of the real love tetrahedron as _ seen through the plane of percep- tion. As one watches more soap Operas or one is dumped by dates, the virtual love tetra- hedron just vanishes, allowing one to clearly observe the four faces of the real love tetra- hedron. But, not all four faces of the tetrahedron are equally important. The base of the love tetrahedron is the cogni- tive face, which appears in the form of either commitment or stupidity. The superstructure of the love tetrahedron is made up of the other three faces. Even if the superstruc- ture collapses, the base remains.

Prunesquallor has even as- signed colors to the faces of his love tetrahedrons. For the real love tetrahedron, all four faces are green, which prob- ably is related to the color of American dollar bills. How-

of Love

ever, emtional, cognitive, and motivational faces of the virtual love tetrahedron re- spectively. When asked why his’ love tetrahedrons have colors, Prunesequallor replied “Tt makes my theory of love more colorful and interesting. If you don’t like my colors, you can pick your own favo- tite colors.””

“‘However, there has been a dramatic change in the real world, requiring a quantum leap in all the theories of love,’? says Prunesquallor. “Since AIDS was discovered to be transmitted through the AIDS virus, all the past theories of love have simply collapsed.” It was like a tornado, blowing away the entire superstructure. Prune- squallor’s love tetrahedrons collapsed into their bases, leaving only the cognitive face behind. In the imaginery world, what remains is com- mitment, which is really just stupidity in the real world. Prunesequallor admits his theory of love in the post- AIDS era is too barren and empty. ‘‘I may be wrong. But, it’s not my fault.’’ It the cure for AIDS is found, it will re- build the superstructure and restore the love tetrahedron to its former glory.

Prunesequallor, with a solemn face, told me to advise young men and women not to fall in love at the present time in this post-AIDS era. ‘‘Every time you fall in love, you are risking your life. Without life, even the greatest of loves can die.”

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The Three Faces of Love

The following is a summary of an article by Robert J. Trotter about Sternberg’s three-side theory of love, which appeared in the Sept. issue of Psychology Today.

Dr. Robert J. Sternberg, IBM Professor of Psychology and Education at Yale Univer- sity has made a name for

sity has made a name for him- self as one of the foremost theoriticans and researchers in the field of human intelligence but in recent years he has turned a good deal of his at- tention to the study of love. He has earned the appellation “love professor’ out of this study.

He analyzed various rela- tionships to figure out what differentiates romantic love from companionate love, from liking, from infatuation and from various other types of love. According to Stern- berg’s new triangular theory of love, love has emotional, motivational, and cognitive components. And different aspects of love can be explained in terms of these components.

Sternberg calls the emtional

aspect of his love triangle intimacy. It includes such things as closeness, sharing, communication, and support. Intimacy increases _ rather steadily at first, then at a slower rate until it eventually levels off and goes beneath the surface. The motivational side of the triangle is passion, which leads to the physiological arousal and an intense desire to be united with the loved one. Un- like intimacy, passion deve- lops quickly. Passion is like an addiction, Sternberg says. Ad- diction can be rapid, but once habituation sets in, even an in- creased amount of exposure to the person or substance no longer stimulates the movtiva- tional arousal that was once possible.

The cognitive side of Stern- berg’s love triangle is com- mitment, both with a short- term decision to love another

person and a long-term com- mitment to maintain that love. Essentially, commitment starts at zero when you first meet the other person and grows as you get to know each other. As the relationship continues, the amount of commitment will generally level off.

Levels of intimacy, passion, and commitment change over time, and so do relationships. You can visualize this, says Sternberg, by considering how the love triangle changes in size and shape as the three components of love increase and decrease. The triangle’s area represents the amount of love and its shape and style. Large amounts of intimacy, passion, and commitment, for example, yield a large triangle. And in general, Sternberg says the larger the triangle, the more the love. Changing the length of the individual sides yield four differently shaped triangles, or styles of love. A triangle with three equal sides represents what Sternberg calls a ‘‘balanced’’ love in which all three components are equally matched.

Sternberg admits that this love triangle is a simplification of a complex and subtle phe- monenon. Beyond that, he says, every relationship in- volves several triangles. In addition to their own triangles both people ahve an ideal tri- angle and a perceived triangle. He found that satisfaction is closely related to the similarity between these real, ideal, and perceived triangles. In general, the closer they are in shape and size, the more satisfying the relationship.

If you decide to take steps to improve a_ relationship, Sternbery offers a final tri- angle, the action triangle. The way we act shapes the way we feel and think, possibly as much as the way we think and feel shapes the way we act.

“The point,” Sternberg concludes, ‘‘is that it is neces- sary to take into account the

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September 25, 1986 => Z