Ok, so its a Beatle title I stole for this post... there is a reason. Yeah, there is psychobabble here.

Vito understood the concept of love on many levels... his mother, his children, Tom, his previous consigliere....and others. He was not a touchy feely guy, but he understood the difference betewen loving people vs. loyalty and/or trustworthiness. He had the ability, for instance to allow Michael to tell tom he was OUT before the killings in the first movie, but he handled tom in a way that showed how much he cared.

For whatever reason none of his sons were capable of love. Santino was in love, but only with himself. Fredo.......well......Fredo was...........and Michael lost his capacity to love after he ditched Kay and then saw Appolinia blow up in a car.

That incapacity handcuffed Michael as he went forward, confusing loving his family and protecting them, and had a large hand in making him what he becam.

I tend to agree with your analysis DT. Almost adopting Tom is a showcase (apparently) of his caring as you describe it. However, Vito was willing to induct two of his sons into the sordid life of underworld murder and mayhem. That he wanted something different for Michael illustrates his recognition of how insidious was his underworld business. Thus, I am not willing to credit Vito too much. As we've characterized his view of legitimate as unlike most peoples, perhaps his concept of love was just as different.

I think both Vito and Michael were capable of love--but only insofar as it advanced their own personal agendas. Vito loved his sons, but they were always to be instruments of his will. Even Michael, who he wanted to be "Senator Corleone...Governor Corleone..." would have been an instrument to fulfill Vito's dream of "legitimizing" the Corleone rackets--gambling and labor.

Michael did love Kay in his own way. But I think a big part of his love was for what she represented--a pureblood WASP lineage to advance his own obsession with being regarded as "legitimate." Michael's wooing of Kay in New Hampshire was an exercise in coldness and calculation.

Yes TB, as you point out, Michael loved Kay, but was not in love with her. Kay was a means to Michael's ends.

On the other hand, I think that Vito was in love with his wife.

"Love means never having to say you're sorry." Not that a Corleone every would. After all, this Sicilian thing has been going on for .... how many years, Kay?

Start with Vito. What a wonderful childhood; his father is killed by the mob, his older brother, then his mother. He is smuggled out of Sicily, shipped off to America, quarantined with smallpox and then somehow ends up working in a Groceria. The formative years are a bit f'd up. Where does he get any consistent, nurturing love? He's fortunate to marry a wholesome, warm-hearted woman. I think he learns a form of love, but deep inside is that insecurity, hatred, and distrust. Those damn pezzanovante! Now he raises 3 sons in a crime family. They have a nice mama, but are exposed to vice and corruption. It's not going to fix itself. I think they have desires, affectations, raging hormones, but no love.