Love and hate as co-existing forces have been thoroughly explored within the literature of
psychoanalysis
PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might b ...
, building on awareness of their co-existence in Western culture reaching back to the “odi et amo” of
Catullus
Gaius Valerius Catullus (; 84 - 54 BCE), often referred to simply as Catullus (, ), was a Latin poet of the late Roman Republic who wrote chiefly in the neoteric style of poetry, focusing on personal life rather than classical heroes. His s ...
, and
Plato
Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...
's ''Symposium''.
Love and hate in Freud’s work
Ambivalence Ambivalence is a state of having simultaneous conflicting reactions, beliefs, or feelings towards some object. Stated another way, ambivalence is the experience of having an attitude towards someone or something that contains both positively and neg ...
was the term borrowed by
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies explained as originatin ...
to indicate the simultaneous presence of
love
Love encompasses a range of strong and positive emotional and mental states, from the most sublime virtue or good habit, the deepest Interpersonal relationship, interpersonal affection, to the simplest pleasure. An example of this range of ...
and
hate
Hatred is an intense negative emotional response towards certain people, things or ideas, usually related to opposition or revulsion toward something. Hatred is often associated with intense feelings of anger, contempt, and disgust. Hatred is s ...
towards the same object. While the roots of ambivalence can be traced back to breast-feeding in the
oral stage
In Freudian psychoanalysis, the term oral stage or hemitaxia denotes the first psychosexual development stage wherein the mouth of the infant is their primary erogenous zone. Spanning the life period from birth to the age of 18 months, the oral s ...
, it was re-inforced during toilet-training as well. Freudian followers such as
Karl Abraham
Karl Abraham (; 3 May 1877 – 25 December 1925) was an influential German psychoanalyst, and a collaborator of Sigmund Freud, who called him his 'best pupil'.
Life
Abraham was born in Bremen, Germany. His parents were Nathan Abraham, a Jewish ...
and
Erik H. Erikson
Erik Homburger Erikson (born Erik Salomonsen; 15 June 1902 – 12 May 1994) was a German-American developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst known for his theory on psychological development of human beings. He coined the phrase identity c ...
distinguished between an early sub-stage with no ambivalence at all towards the mother's breast, and a later oral-sadistic sub-phase where the biting activity emerges and the phenomenon of ambivalence appears for the first time. The child is interested in both libidinal and aggressive gratifications, and the mother's breast is at the same time loved and hated.
While during the
pre-oedipal
The Oedipus complex (also spelled Œdipus complex) is an idea in psychoanalytic theory. The Complex (psychology), complex is an ostensibly universal phase in the life of a young boy in which, to try to immediately satisfy basic desires, he Uncons ...
stages ambivalent feelings are expressed in a dyadic relationship between the mother and the child, during the
oedipal conflict
The Oedipus complex (also spelled Œdipus complex) is an idea in psychoanalytic theory. The Complex (psychology), complex is an ostensibly universal phase in the life of a young boy in which, to try to immediately satisfy basic desires, he Uncons ...
ambivalence is experienced for the first time within a triangular context which involves the child, the mother and the father. In this stage, both the boy and the girl develop negative feelings of jealousy, hostility and rivalry toward the parent of the same sex, but with different mechanisms for the two sexes. The boy's attachment to his mother becomes stronger, and he starts developing negative feelings of rivalry and hostility toward the father. The boy wishes to destroy the father so that he can become his mother's unique love object. On the other hand, the girl starts a love relationship with her father. The mother is seen by the girl as a competitor for the father's love and so the girl starts feeling hostility and jealousy towards her. The negative feelings which arise in this phase coexist with love and affection toward the parent of the same sex and result in an ambivalence which is expressed in feelings, behavior and fantasies. The negative feelings are a source of
anxiety
Anxiety is an emotion which is characterized by an unpleasant state of inner turmoil and includes feelings of dread over anticipated events. Anxiety is different than fear in that the former is defined as the anticipation of a future threat wh ...
for the child who is afraid that the parent of the same sex would take revenge on him/her. In order to lessen the anxiety, the child activates the
defense mechanism
In psychoanalytic theory, a defence mechanism (American English: defense mechanism), is an unconscious psychological operation that functions to protect a person from anxiety-producing thoughts and feelings related to internal conflicts and o ...
of
identification, and identifies with the parent of the same sex. This process leads to the formation of the Super-Ego.
According to Freud, ambivalence is the precondition for melancholia, together with loss of a loved object, oral regression and discharge of the aggression toward the self. In this condition, the ambivalently loved object is introjected, and the libido is withdrawn into the self in order to establish identification with the loved object. The object loss then turns into an ego loss and the conflict between the
Ego and the Super-Ego becomes manifested. The same ambivalence occurs in the obsessional neurosis, but there it remains related to the outside object.
In the work of Melanie Klein
The
object relations theory
Object relations theory is a school of thought in psychoanalytic theory centered around theories of stages of ego development. Its concerns include the relation of the psyche to others in childhood and the exploration of relationships between ...
of
Melanie Klein
Melanie Klein (née Reizes; 30 March 1882 – 22 September 1960) was an Austrian-British author and psychoanalyst known for her work in child analysis. She was the primary figure in the development of object relations theory. Klein suggested tha ...
pivoted around the importance of love and hate, concern for and destruction of others, from infancy onwards. Klein stressed the importance of inborn
aggression
Aggression is overt or covert, often harmful, social interaction with the intention of inflicting damage or other harm upon another individual; although it can be channeled into creative and practical outlets for some. It may occur either reacti ...
as a reflection of the
death drive
In classical Freudian psychoanalytic theory, the death drive (german: Todestrieb) is the drive toward death and destruction, often expressed through behaviors such as aggression, repetition compulsion, and self-destructiveness.Eric Berne, ''Wha ...
and talked about the battle of love and hatred throughout the life span. As life begins, the first object for the infant to relate with the external world is the mother. It is there that both good and bad aspects of the self are split and projected as love and hatred to the mother and the others around her later on: as analyst, she would find herself split similarly into a “nice” and a “bad” Mrs Klein.
During the
paranoid-schizoid position In development psychology, Melanie Klein proposed a "(psychic) position theory" instead of a " (psychic) stage theory".
Paranoid-schizoid position
In object relations theory, the paranoid-schizoid position is a state of mind of children, from bir ...
, the infant sees objects around it either as good or bad, according to his/her experiences with them. They are felt to be loving and good when the infant's wishes are gratified and happy feelings prevail. On the other hand, objects are seen as bad when the infant's wishes are not met adequately and frustration prevails. In the child's world there is not yet a distinction between fantasy and reality; loving and hating experiences towards the good and bad objects are believed to have an actual impact on the surrounding objects. Therefore, the infant must keep these loving and hating emotions as distinct as possible, because of the
paranoid anxiety Paranoid anxiety is a term used in object relations theory, particularity in discussions about the Paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions. The term was frequently used by Melanie Klein, especially to refer to a pre-depressive and persecutory sen ...
that the destructive force of the bad object will destroy the loving object from which the infant gains refuge against the bad objects. The mother must be either good or bad and the feeling experienced is either love or hate.
Emotions become integrated as a part of the development process. As the infant's potential to tolerate ambivalent feelings with the
depressive position In development psychology, Melanie Klein proposed a "(psychic) position theory" instead of a " (psychic) stage theory".
Paranoid-schizoid position
In object relations theory, the paranoid-schizoid position is a state of mind of children, from bir ...
, the infant starts forming a perception of the objects around it as both good and bad, thus tolerating the coexistence of these two opposite feelings for the same object where experience had previously been either idealised or dismissed as bad, the good object can be accepted as frustrating without losing its acceptable status. When this takes place, the previous paranoid anxiety (that the bad object will destroy everything) transforms into a
depressive anxiety
Depressive anxiety is a term developed in relation to the depressive position by Melanie Klein, building on Freud's seminal article on object relations of 1917, 'Mourning and Melancholia'. Depressive anxiety revolved around a felt state of inner d ...
; this is the intense fear that the child's own destructiveness (hate) will damage the beloved others. Subsequently, for the coexistence of love and hate to be attainable, the child must believe in her ability to contain hate, without letting it destroy the loving objects. He/she must believe in the prevalence of the loving feelings over his/her aggressiveness. Since this ambivalent state is hard to preserve, under difficult circumstances it is lost, and the person returns to the previous manner keeping love and hate distinct for a period of time until he/she is able to regain the capacity for ambivalence.
See also ''The Life and Death Instincts in Kleinian Object Relations Theory.''
In the work of Ian Suttie
Ian Dishart Suttie Ian Dishart Suttie (1889-1935) was a Scottish psychiatrist perhaps best known for his writings on the taboo in families on expressing tenderness.
His influential book ''The Origins of Love and Hate'' was posthumously published in 1935.
Life and c ...
(1898-1935) wrote the book ''
The Origins of Love and Hate
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the m ...
'', which was first published in 1935, a few days after his death. He was born in Glasgow and was the third of four children. His father was a general practitioner, and Ian Suttie and both of his brothers and his sister became doctors as well. He qualified from Glasgow University in 1914. After a year he went into psychiatry.
Although his work has been out of print in England for some years, it is still relevant today. It has been often cited and makes a contribution towards understanding the more difficult aspects of family relationships and friendships. He can be seen as one of the first significant
object relations theorists
Object may refer to:
General meanings
* Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept
** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place
** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter
* Goal, an ai ...
and his ideas anticipated the concepts put forward by modern self psychologists.
Although Ian Suttie was working within the tradition set by Freud, there were a lot of concepts of Freud's theory he disagreed with. First of all, Suttie saw sociability, the craving for companionship, the need to love and be loved, to exchange and to participate, to be as primary as sexuality itself. And in contrast with Freud he didn't see sociability and love simply as a derivative from sexuality. Secondly, Ian Suttie explained anxiety and neurotic maladjustment, as a reaction on the failure of finding a response for this sociability; when primary social love and tenderness fails to find the response it seeks, the arisen frustration will produce a kind of
separation anxiety
Separation anxiety disorder (SAD) is an anxiety disorder in which an individual experiences excessive anxiety regarding separation from home and/or from people to whom the individual has a strong emotional attachment (e.g., a parent, caregiver ...
. This view is more clearly illustrated by a piece of writing of Suttie himself: ‘Instead of an armament of instincts, latent or otherwise, the child is born with a simple attachment-to-mother who is the sole source of food and protection… the need for a mother is primarily presented to the child mind as a need for company and as a discomfort in isolation’.
Ian
Suttie Suttie is a surname of Scottish origin. It came from either Suddie in Black Isle or Suthie in Perthshire. The surname was derived from the Old English 'suth' meaning 'south', or the Old Norse 'suthr', southern, plus the Scandinavian 'ey', an islan ...
saw the infant as striving from the first to relate to his mother, and future mental health would depend on the success or failure of this first relationship (
object relations
Object relations theory is a school of thought in psychoanalytic theory centered around theories of stages of ego development. Its concerns include the relation of the psyche to others in childhood and the exploration of relationships between e ...
). Another advocate of the object relations paradigm is
Melanie Klein
Melanie Klein (née Reizes; 30 March 1882 – 22 September 1960) was an Austrian-British author and psychoanalyst known for her work in child analysis. She was the primary figure in the development of object relations theory. Klein suggested tha ...
. Object relations was in contrast with Freud's
psychoanalysis
PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might b ...
. The advocates of this object relations paradigm all, in exception of Melanie Klein, held the opinion that most differences in individual development that are of importance for mental health could be traced to differences in the way children were treated by their parents or to the loss or separation of parent-figures. In the explanation of the love and hate relationship by Ian Suttie, the focus, not surprisingly, lies in relations and the social environment. According to Suttie, Freud saw love and hate as two distinct instincts. Hate had to be overcome with love, and because both terms are seen as two different instincts, this means
repression. In Suttie's view however, this is incompatible with the other Freudian view that life is a struggle to attain peace by the release of the impulse. These inconsistencies would be caused by leaving out the social situations and motives. Suttie saw hate as the frustration aspect of love. “The greater the love, the greater the hate or jealousy caused by its frustration and the greater the ambivalence or guilt that may arise in relation to it.” Hate has to be overcome with love by the child removing the cause of the anxiety and hate by restoring harmonious relationships. The feeling of anxiety and hate can then change back into the feeling of love and security. This counts for the situation between mother and child and later for following relationships.
In Suttie's view, the beginning of the relationship between mother and child is a happy and symbiotic one as well. This happy symbiotic relationship between mother and baby can be disrupted by for example a second baby or the mother returning to work. This makes the infant feel irritable, insecure and anxious. This would be the start of the feeling of
ambivalence Ambivalence is a state of having simultaneous conflicting reactions, beliefs, or feelings towards some object. Stated another way, ambivalence is the experience of having an attitude towards someone or something that contains both positively and neg ...
: feelings of
love
Love encompasses a range of strong and positive emotional and mental states, from the most sublime virtue or good habit, the deepest Interpersonal relationship, interpersonal affection, to the simplest pleasure. An example of this range of ...
and
hate
Hatred is an intense negative emotional response towards certain people, things or ideas, usually related to opposition or revulsion toward something. Hatred is often associated with intense feelings of anger, contempt, and disgust. Hatred is s ...
towards the mother. The child attempts to remove the cause of the anxiety and hate to restore the relationship (retransforming). This retransforming is necessary, because hate of a loved object (
ambivalence Ambivalence is a state of having simultaneous conflicting reactions, beliefs, or feelings towards some object. Stated another way, ambivalence is the experience of having an attitude towards someone or something that contains both positively and neg ...
) is intolerable.
In the work of Edith Jacobson
The newborn baby is not able to distinguish the self from others and the relationship with the mother is symbiotic, with the two individuals forming a unique object. In this period, the child generates two different images of the mother. On one hand there is the loving mother, whose image derives from experiences of love and satisfaction in the relationship with her. On the other hand, there is the bad mother, whose image derives from frustrating and upsetting experiences in the relationship. Since the child at this stage is unable to distinguish the self from the other, those two opposite images are often fused and confused, rather than distinguished. At about six months of age, the child becomes able to distinguish the self from the others. He now understands that his mother can be both gratifying and frustrating, and he starts experiencing himself as being able to feel both love and anger. This ambivalence results in a vacillation between attitudes of passive dependency on the omnipotent mother and aggressive strivings for self expansion and control over the love object. The passive-submissive and active-aggressive behaviour of the child during the
pre-oedipal
The Oedipus complex (also spelled Œdipus complex) is an idea in psychoanalytic theory. The Complex (psychology), complex is an ostensibly universal phase in the life of a young boy in which, to try to immediately satisfy basic desires, he Uncons ...
and the early
oedipal period is determined by his ambivalent emotional fluctuations between loving and trusting admirations of his parents and disappointed depreciation of the loved objects. The
ego can use this ambivalence conflicts to distinguish between the self and the object. At the beginning, the child tends to turn aggression toward the frustrating objects and libido towards the self. Hence, frustration, demands and restrictions imposed by parents within normal bounds, reinforce the process of discovery and distinction of the object and the self. When early experiences of severe disappointment and abandonment have prevented the building up of un-ambivalent object relations and stable identifications and weakened the child's self-esteem, they may result in ambivalence conflict in adulthood, which in turn causes depressive states.
See also
*Obsessional neurosis in:
**
Purely Obsessional OCD
**
Rat Man
"Rat Man" was the nickname given by Sigmund Freud to a patient whose "case history" was published as ''Bemerkungen über einen Fall von Zwangsneurose'' Notes Upon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis"(1909). This was the second of six case histories ...
section 'Notes Upon A Case Of Obsessional Neurosis'
**
Hysteria (play)
''Hysteria: Or Fragments of an Analysis of an Obsessional Neurosis'' is a two-hour comedy play, by British dramatist Terry Johnson, fictionalising a real-life 1938 meeting between Salvador Dalí and Sigmund Freud a year before the latter's deat ...
Hysteria: Or Fragments of an Analysis of an Obsessional Neurosis
**
Freud's seduction theory
Freud's seduction theory (german: Verführungstheorie) was a hypothesis posited in the mid-1890s by Sigmund Freud that he believed provided the solution to the problem of the origins of hysteria and obsessional neurosis. According to the theory, ...
Notes
References
*Burness E. Moore & D. Bernard (1995). Psychoanalysis: the major concepts. New Heaven & London: Yale University Press.
*Eidelberg L., M.D. (1968). Encyclopedia of Psychoanalysis. New York: The Free Press.
*Elliott, A. (2002). Psychoanalytic theory: an introduction. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
*Hughes, J., M. (1989). Reshaping the psychoanalytic domain : the work of Melanie Klein, W.R.D. Fairbairn, and D.W. Winnicott. University of California Press, Berkeley.
*
Jacobson, E. (1965). The self and the object world. London: The Hogarth Press.
*Jones E. (1974). Sigmund Freud. Life and Work: Vol. 2. Years of Maturity 1901–1919. London: The Hogarth Press.
*Klein, M., Heimann, P., Money-Kyrle, R.E. (1955). New directions in psycho-analysis : the significance of infant conflict in the pattern of adult behaviour. London : Tavistock Publications.
*Munroe, R.L. (1955). Schools of Psychoanalytic thought. An Exposition, Critique and Attempt at Integration New York: The Dryden Press.
*Person, E. S., Cooper, A. M. and Gabbard, G. O. (2005). The American Psychiatric Publishing textbook of psychoanalysis. American Psychiatric Publishing, Washington, DC.
*Stephen A. Mitchell and Margaret J. Black. (1995). Freud and Beyond: A History of Modern Psychoanalytic Thought. New York: Basic Books.
*Suttie, I. D. (1988). The origins of love and hate.
Free Association Books
Free Association Books is a project started in London in the 1980s. Bob Young and colleagues began a search using psychoanalysis to understand the problems of liberation. Other people became involved in the movement such as Andrew Samuels and B ...
: London.
{{Refend
Love
Psychoanalytic terminology
Psychoanalytic theory
Dichotomies
Hatred