In this brilliant book, Jonathan Lear argues that Freud posits love as a basic force in nature, one that makes individuation -- the condition for psychological health and development -- possible. Love is active not just in the development of the individual but also in individual analysis and indeed in the development of psychoanalysis itself, says Lear. Expanding on philosophical conceptions of love, nature, and mind, Lear shows that love can cure because it is the force that makes us human.