The article seeks to explain how the gradual legitimation of romantic relationships over the course of the last century - advocated by socials reformers and propagated by the mass media - have met with resistance from a discourse in favour of amorous intimacy among followers of therapeutic rationalism. The text argues that this reaction comprises a defensive protection against the negative effects potentially generated by the belief in a certain type of romanticism and its promises of happiness within a individualistic social order lacking in the traditional safeguards.
Love and society; Romanticism and culture; Intimacy and therapeutic rationality