This paper discusses the difficulty of amorous encounters nowadays. It starts from a psychoanalytic reading of the origins of types of love within the psychosexual development phase known as primary narcissism. In this, the self and the other are constructed within a cultural context. Over the course of life, identity continues to be shaped by the interaction between the self and the surrounding world. From studying some aspects of the present-day world, the idea developed is that contemporary culture has values and models that do not support interpersonal relationships because they stimulate a narcissistic manner of subjectivation. Values such as individualism, consumerism and cult of the body and image produce behavior that demonstrates the supremacy of the self. In the present-day world, everyone is engrossed in himself or herself, and the other, as somebody different from the self, is undesirable. This subjective position impedes authentic amorous encounters and their survival.
Love; Narcissism; Subjectivity; Psychoanalysis; Culture