We certainly look for love. Sometimes it is reciprocated at other times you are doubly stabbed, one with the rejection and still more cruelly by being misunderstood. Getting over such rejections is as important as loving itself. And some may even be able to sublimate oneself and the whole idea of love itself by letting the loved one grow....and wishing the whole world well... accepting life in its entirety with negatives and setbacks as well as the positives...essentially life as reality....which is the agape end of true love.
Here is a good reading from a psychology perspective.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evil-deeds/201109/essential-secrets-psychotherapy-whats-love-got-do-it-part-one
While Fromm may have overstated his case, the fact is that psychotherapy
patients, like all of us, whether single, coupled or married, are
constantly looking for love: either from
parents, peers, prospective mates during dating, boyfriends and girlfriends, spouses or, sometimes, from extramarital affairs. (See my
prior post.)
We all seek love in other ways as well, like wanting to be admired,
noticed, valued, understood, appreciated and recognized by others, or
even idolized by the public, as in the extreme case of certain
celebrities. Often, psychotherapy patients (and those not in therapy)
unconsciously persist in seeking the love they never fully received from
their father and/or mother in their adult relationships, in their
careers, through their relationships with friends, co-workers or even
their own children. (See my
prior post.) Real love is a precious and rare commodity.As
children, we are all born deserving of love, and desperately need it
for our very survival. But, sadly, sometimes tragically, we don't all
get the kind of real love we deserve. Indeed, few of us do. Not because
we don't deserve it. Rather, because our parents or caretakers--for
reasons that vary from death or
divorce to
substance abuse to neurosis to
personality disorders to
traumatic
circumstance--are unable or unwilling to consistently provide it. At
least, not enough of it. Such parents fall short--frequently far
short--of being what D. W. Winnicott called "good enough" mothers or
fathers as regards the ability to express and provide real love to their
children. By "real love," here I mean three essential things:
Unconditional acceptance: not of every behavior, but of who we
basically, temperamentally and uniquely are. Appropriate limit-setting,
boundaries and
discipline,
all of which are indispensable expressions of such "real love" on the
part of parents and caretakers. And, thirdly, this "real love" consists
also of a deep capacity for concern, constancy, stability, respect,
empathy, warmth, compassion and the maturity to place, when appropriate,
one's own personal needs and desires secondary to those of one's
children and what is in their best interest. Without receiving such real
love regularly from at least one parent, developing into a
fully-functioning, loving adult is much more difficult. But certainly
not impossible. Indeed, this is one of the most ubiquitous issues
psychotherapists see: what we might term
intimacy inhibition.
Intimacy inhibition has to do mainly with the marked
fear
and avoidance of emotional intimacy. Specifically, the vulnerability,
insecurity, anxiety, passionate emotions, loss of control, dread of
being engulfed, devoured, penetrated, castrated, suffocated, overpowered
or abandoned, as well as vast potential for rejection true intimacy
inevitably entails. Fear--especially fear of "the feminine" or fear of
"the masculine"--frequently informs intimacy inhibition. (See my
prior post.) As can the primal fear of the
unconscious
in general. Interpersonal trauma of some type is almost always
historically present. Paradoxically, true intimacy requires a strong
sense of self, good personal boundaries, and healthy
self-esteem. When these qualities are not present, typically as a result of having never received sufficient real love during
childhood,
true intimacy is just too threatening to accept or allow. Consciously,
we may seek it. But unconsciously, sometimes very subtly, we sabotage it
or run at real intimacy's first appearance. This is why so many
psychotherapy patients (and non-patients) have such difficulty dealing
with dating and
romantic relationships. They are afraid to love and often don't feel worthy of being loved.
This "love phobia" or intimacy inhibition is frequently what brings
people into treatment, whether explicitly or implicitly. For example, if
one doesn't believe deep down in his or her own inherent lovability,
how can real love ever be accepted from another when freely offered?
Even from one's own offspring? And how can we reasonably expect
something from someone we are incapable of giving either to them or
ourselves? As Fromm put it, "People believe that to love is simple but
that to be loved is most difficult. . . . They do not know that the real
problem is not the difficulty of being loved but the difficulty of
loving; that one is loved only if one can love. . . ." So this is a
different type of
love-ability, having to do with one's
receptivity and openness to another and the ability to lovingly accept
someone for whom he or she truly is. Without this capacity, a loving
relationship cannot fully be entered into or cultivated, since demanding
love and acceptance from a partner without being able to reciprocate in
kind is doomed to disaster.
This issue of psychological readiness for real love and relationship is central to both the Grimm's story of
Briar Rose (
Sleeping Beauty)
and the difficulties underlying forming and sustaining intimate
romantic relationships, particularly with the opposite (or sometimes
same)
sex. (See my
prior post.) We all still unconsciously carry around the hurt,
humiliation and
anger
of our old childhood wounds, bringing this highly charged emotional
baggage with us into our adult relationships. To the extent we stay
oblivious of such baggage, we continue this compulsive defensiveness
against closeness despite consciously longing for it so. We
unconsciously seek the love we never received during childhood from
significant others rather than taking responsibility for learning to
provide that love to ourselves in the present. Much as in the fairy tale
of
Briar Rose, we grow prickly or thorny when it comes to
intimacy, insofar as we remain unconscious (asleep) of our anger, rage,
resentment and bitterness about prior rejections, disappointments,
abandonments and other narcissistic injuries. This neurotic state of
unconsciousness causes us to act out defensively, avoiding, undermining
and prematurely scuttling the very relationships we consciously seek. In
such a state of mind, any real relatedness or true emotional intimacy
is impossible, or at least, limited. Sex, of course, may be another
matter entirely.
Paradoxically, sex can be used to avoid
psychological intimacy and exert power and control over potential
partners to bind or escape the anxiety of authentic relationship. Yet,
as with any phobia, it is precisely this anxiety that must be
confronted, understood and tolerated (as opposed to defensively acted
out) during the treatment of love phobia. As with overcoming any
deep-seated fear, true intimacy or real love calls for great courage. It
requires courage to create and maintain intimate relationships, since
we all have our fair share of protective prickliness to penetrate and
get past. (We definitely need
courage,
but also, good timing or luck to successfully connect deeply with
another, since both participants must be more or less simultaneously
ready to relinquish their hostile, narcissistic defenses if real love is
to flower rather than be nipped in the bud.) Fromm's emphasis on the
ability to love is certainly to the point here. Almost anyone can start a
relationship. But making it intimate and maintaining it over time
demands the capacity for real (rather than merely romantic) love. (See
my
prior post on Jung's notions of
anima and
animus. )
Still,
how accurate is Fromm's bold and sweeping assertion that psychotherapy
is all about being able to love? I would say only partially. Sometimes
yes. But not always. Not for everybody. If it were the case, those
individuals with close, supportive, loving relationships in their lives
would theoretically not need or seek psychotherapy. But, clearly, they
do. For example, there may be patients perfectly capable of
interpersonal love, but chronically blocked in their creative capacity.
Or those suffering from some traumatic experience or persistently
painful physical condition. Unemployment. Loss.
Grief.
Discouragement. Despair. Anxiety. Anger. Rage. Resentment. Paranoia.
Mania. Psychosis. What happens in psychotherapy cannot necessarily be
reduced to "helping the patient gain or regain his capacity for love."
That is, at least, not in the strictly romantic or interpersonal sense
suggested by Fromm.
Sigmund
Freud
himself identified love and work as the two supporting pillars of life.
Another of Freud's students, Theodor Reik, wrote: "Work and love; these
are the basics. Without them there is neurosis." The clear implication
is that healing
neurosis (and
possibly psychosis) requires restoring the patient's capacity for both
love and work. Yet this too seems overly simplistic. There is more to
life than love and work. For what happens when one cannot find
satisfactory companionship or employment? Today, almost 10% of people in
America are out of work, and millions more are underemployed. Or unable
to work. Many Americans are single, divorced or widowed and without a
significant other. Of course, loss of work or love can be emotionally
devastating, wreaking havoc with one's sense of
identity,
security and self-esteem. Yet somehow most survive, and some even
thrive. What enables them to do so? Something beyond the "work and love"
which, in Freud's psychology, provide life's sole meaning. Something
underlying or perhaps transcending these vital capacities and
activities. Some alternate pathway to finding or creating meaning. How
about the power of religion or
spirituality, for instance? Or of
creativity itself ?
In
the deepest sense, psychotherapy (and life) is not, as Freud, Fromm,
Reik and most modern psychotherapists assume, mainly about intimate
relationships. Nor the capacity for work per se. For, in most cases,
these are but secondary benefits. Consequences rather than causes.
Neurosis can, and commonly does, run rampant in both the work and love
life. Having work and relationships cannot protect us fully from the
existential facts of life. Nor does it inoculate us against suffering.
Moreover, such exclusive emphasis on the outer rather than inner
life--what we do out in the world and with whom we do it--stems in part
from a more
extraverted rather than
introverted perspective, and may not be fitting for all patients. (See my
prior post
on extraversion and introversion.) For instance, in some cases,
relationships or work serve the compulsive purpose of escaping from
one's self, one's existential aloneness and anxiety, and the fact of
one's mortality. So, existentially speaking, these cannot be considered
the
sine qua non of mental health, nor of therapeutic treatment.
Psychotherapy, in my view, is more soundly focused on what
C.G. Jung termed
individuation: the unpredictable, lengthy, labyrinthine process of becoming more whole. Psychotherapy is about
finding and fulfilling our destiny: While for most this may include romantic love,
marriage, parenthood,
career, etc., there are others for whom fate or destiny has something quite different in store. (See my
prior post on the difference between
fate and
destiny.) Psychotherapy is about
creativity:
courageously claiming the personal freedom to express ourselves
constructively in the world to our fullest potential. Finally,
psychotherapy is fundamentally about
acceptance: learning to accept ourselves and others, our fate, our responsibility, our existential aloneness, the unconscious,
evil, the
daimonic, and life on its own terms. (See my
prior post.)
Surely, this is a sort of love. Love of reality. Love of the world as
it is. Love of all humanity. Love even of the dark and tragic, seemingly
sometimes senseless side of life. And this is, for want of a better
term, a
spiritual love. Psychotherapy is, for these reasons, an essentially
spiritual process.
But it is precisely this reawakening, rekindling or stirring of
spiritual love, this gradual opening up, this growing willingness to
tolerate ambiguity and
loneliness,
this deepening receptivity to life, oneself and others during the
psychotherapy process that can ready us for interpersonal love and
intimacy, and which--when lacking, undeveloped or resisted--resides at
the root of most mental disorders. For existential analyst Ludwig
Binswanger, this is "the fundamental power that makes any therapy
work--the power to liberate a person from the blind isolation, the
idios kosmos of Heraclitus, from a mere vegetating in his body, his
dreams, his private wishes, his conceit and his presumptions, and to ready him for a life of
koinonia, of genuine community."
And
what exactly is the mysterious, potent, transformative power that
serves to awaken this newfound or renewed capacity to love in the
psychotherapy patient? Freud, Jung and others since observed that the
alchemical catalyst occurs in the dynamic and uniquely intimate
relationship between patient and therapist, and very much
resembles--yes, you guessed it--love. As psychotherapists, we try to
provide some of what was missed out on during childhood, in the form of
an accepting, supportive, attuned, nurturing, caring, consistent
relationship upon which the patient can temporarily depend and draw
sustenance, self-esteem and strength from. But even that falls short of
substituting for what was withheld or unavailable during infancy,
childhood and
adolescence
by one's parents or primary caretakers. Psychotherapy can't erase the
painful reality of past deprivations. But it can provide the
encouragement, compassion and, yes, love needed by the patient to accept
the past without destructive embitterment. And to learn or re-learn to
give real love to one's self and others now. But a broader discussion of
this clinical utilization--and inexcusable occasional misuse--of the
healing power of love in psychotherapy is best saved for
Part Two of this post.
