"What do we, any of us, all of us - really want? The perfect man; the perfect woman; the perfect relationship? And, if men and women want the same things, then why is the central meaning of their lives so elusive? Are the ecstasies and lusts of sex and desire compatible with the stability and domesticity required for relationships?".

"It is these questions that occupy psychoanalyst Paul Verhaeghe in his best-selling book on the travails of human sex and desire. In Paul Verhaeghe's hands, personal and cultural desires and longings are infused with familiar triangulation points: the Simpsons, Monty Python and even South Park share a cultural landscape with Plato and the ancient Greek tragedians.

Freud may have famously posed the question, 'What does woman want?', but Paul Verhaeghe extends it: Love In A Time Of Loneliness tackles the fundamentals of issues behind sex and desire. Love In A Time of Loneliness is a polemic whose very informality belies its serious intent. In three essays, Professor Verhaeghe leaves the ordinary paths of thinking and sets out to discover what drives us in sex and love."--BOOK JACKET.