The Origins Of Love And Hate

Ian D Suttie

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317853848
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Health Care Delivery

First published in 1999. The author presents a passionate argument for a therapeutic practice based on the physician's love for the deeply deprived patient. Ian Suttie, a psychiatrist of the Tavistock clinic in the 1930s, advocates a more optimistic view of human nature than traditional Freudian psychology. Hadfield describes the importance of this title by stating that where the reader does not agree with the author they will, nevertheless, have their own thoughts stimulated and their own views clarified.

CHAPTER I

THE BIOLOGY OF LOVE AND INTEREST, ETC.

MODERN Psychology is concerned with the motives of human conduct and the sources of enjoyment, happiness and misery. This contrasts rather sharply with what is called Academic Psychology which affords us rather a description of the adult self-conscious mind, and gives us little assistance in predicting or influencing behaviour and still less in the understanding of mental development and its aberrations. For all practical purposes we are dependent upon this modern “dynamic” and genetic psychology, which, broadly speaking, we owe to the pioneer work of Freud. Indeed twenty years ago we could have said with substantial truth that the only useful psychology was Freud’s. Since then, however, there have been important developments and divergences of opinion. Other schools of thought have developed their own systems with independence more or less artificial. Even within the Freudian movement itself important dissensions have recently arisen, largely through the work of the child psychologists. Many vital tenets and conceptions, confidently held ten or fifteen years ago, are now formally abandoned. Freud himself has said, “We shall have to abandon the universality of the dictum that the Oedipus Complex is the nucleus of the Neurosis.”

Everyday life and mental illness alike are now regarded as an attempt to “master anxiety”, and this anxiety itself is no longer considered to be merely frustrated sexual desire but is regarded as largely due to hatred and aggressive wishes. The task of healthy development is even described by Dr Brierly as “overcoming hatred with love”, and in many devious ways Psycho-analytic Theory is recognizing more clearly the social nature of man, and is no longer presenting his psychology as that of a self-contained entity independent of his fellows except in so far as his bodily appetites and gratifications demand their services. Psychoanalysis in fact is losing much that made it obnoxious to European philosophy, good sense and good feeling, but it still fails to take a wide enough view of its subject matter. This statement may seem outrageous to many who are acquainted with Psycho-analytic studies of Art, Biography, Primitive Custom, etc., but it must be remembered that psycho-analytic ideas are merely applied in these fields; they are developed and tested almost exclusively in the consulting room.

From the widest scientific and philosophic standpoint we must consider the human mind as the product of evolution—that is to say as having had its definite function to serve in the survival of our species and in the attainment of our present dominant position. Later we shall find it necessary to consider mind from two other points of view also—namely as the result of the child’s contact with members of its own family, and as the result of its parents’ social and cultural relationships. The evolution of cultures and civilizations cannot be explained in terms of the individual minds which are its members. Nor should mind be considered in isolation from its social contacts. Psychologists are prone to describe a Mind as if it were an independent self-contained but standardized entity, a number of which, grouped together in some mysterious way, constitutes a Society. Anthropologists frequently make the opposite mistake and describe social organizations and behaviour with little reference to the minds which produce and are moulded by these institutions. The separation of the science of Mind from that of Society is arbitrary and was originally dictated by practical convenience and the tastes and fancy of the student. The two sciences must be pursued in relation to each other, for mind is social and society is mental. Finally the whole study of human behaviour must be correlated with that of the social animals both on the grounds of the evolutionary relationship of species and of the common purposes in life and the different means of attaining these.

We must first, then, direct our study to the relationship between the Human Mind and those of animals which might be similar to those of our remote ancestors. Formerly, Comparative Psychology was the playground of the Victorian Arm-chair Theorists who cheerfully attributed much of their own ill-understood mentality to the higher animals and even the social insects. Mind in those days was regarded as mainly concerned with the intelligent pursuit of rational purposes and/or with the instinctive performance of some biological task satisfying some need or condition of survival. Worse still, these old psychologists reconstructed the mind of the infant in terms of this false conception of animal mind. The child and primitive adults, they supposed, were alike and but a stage removed from our pre-human ancestors who in turn were regarded as very similar to the higher animals, although, as we shall see, the very opposite is the case. Accordingly the infant’s “disposition” was regarded as a bundle of instincts some of which, like sex, remained latent till adult life (!), while others had to be disciplined and held in control by education and civilization.

If ever a doubt arose as to the forces which brought about this supposed subjection of animal impulses, one or other of three different explanations was offered.

(1) Religion and the Will of God was cited, though it did not well explain animal society or the fact that primitive peoples conform far more closely and rigorously to tribal custom and moral codes than civilized Christians do

(2) “Reason and Utility” were popular as an alternative explanation; though here again it was difficult to understand how a species of animals like our pre-social ancestors could foresee the advantage of social co-operation without culture or experience, could negotiate such a social contract without language, and could adhere to the bargain without moral impulses.

A third type of explanation of man’s social character suggested that a change had occurred in his inherited constitution; in other words a chemical change in the germ plasm. According to this “herd instinct” theory, man is different from birth from non-social animals. The theory however really explains nothing and has been utterly useless, adding nothing to our knowledge and presenting an illusory solution to the problem. Further it presents the difficulty of forcing us to suppose that the same variation has occurred in at least twenty-five different species of insect and in a very great number of species of birds and mammals; whereas man, the most social of all, has the greatest difficulty in maintaining his adjustment to social life.

It will be no matter for surprise that, with such conceptions of the infant mind and of the forces moulding upbringing, no progress was made in the understanding either of the child or of society. Such conclusions as these early speculators arrived at were wrong in every material respect and wholly useless as working hypotheses for further investigation. When we actually study the facts of social life comparatively, in order to see if social differ from “solitary” animals in any respect other than this habit, the important fact emerges that social animals as a rule nurture their young and conversely that nurtured animals tend to be more or less social. The social disposition seems to be a modified continuance of the infant’s need for the nurtural parent’s presence (even when the material need is outgrown). Into it enters also nurtural or parental impulses, but there is no need to postulate a special social instinct.

We need in fact only suppose the child is born with a mind and instincts adapted to infancy; or, in other words, so disposed as to profit by parental nurture. This is not an unreasonable supposition, but it implies the conclusion that the child mind is less like that of primitive animals than is the adult mind. It is less like animal mind since it is adapted to a milieu and mode of behaving vastly different from that of free-living, self-supporting animals. Instead of an armament of instincts—latent or otherwise—which would lead it to attempt on its own account things impossible to its powers or even undesirable—it is born with a simple attachment-to-mother who is the sole source of fcod and protection. Instincts of self-preservation such as would be appropriate in an animal which has to fend for itself would be positively destructive to the dependent infant, whose impulses must be adapted to its mode of livelihood, namely a pseudo-parasitism.

We can reject therefore once and for all the notion of the infant mind being a bundle of co-operating or competing instincts, and suppose instead that it is dominated from the beginning by the need to retain the mother—a need which, if thwarted, must produce the utmost extreme of terror and rage, since the loss of mother is, under natural conditions, but the precursor of death itself. We have now to consider whether this attachment-to-mother is merely the sum of the infantile bodily needs and satisfactions which refer to her, or whether the need for a mother is primarily presented to the child mind as a need for company and as a discomfort in isolation. I can see no way of settling this question conclusively, but the fact is indisputable that a need for company, moral encouragement, attention, protectiveness, leadership, etc., remains after all the sensory gratifications connected with the mother’s body have become superfluous and have been surrendered. In my view this is a direct development of the primal attachment-to-mother, and, further, I think that play, co-operation, competition and culture-interests generally are substitutes for the mutually caressing relationship of child and mother. By these substitutes we put the whole social environment in the place once occupied by mother—maintaining with it a mental or cultural rapport in lieu of the bodily relationship of caresses, etc., formerly enjoyed with the mother. A joint interest in things has replaced the reciprocal interest in persons; friendship has developed out of love. True, the personal love and sympathy is preserved in friendship; but this differs from love in so far as it comes about by the direction of attention upon the same things (rather than upon each other), or by the pursuit of the same activities even if these are not intrinsically useful and gratifying, as is the case with much ritual and dance, etc. The interest is intensified even if it is not entirely created (artificial) by being shared; while the fact of sharing interest deepens the appreciation of the other person’s presence even while it deprives it of sensual (or better of sensorial) qualities.

This is my view of the process of sublimation; but it differs very greatly from that of Freud and his enormous “team” of expert specialists. As far as anyone can tell, Freud considers that all the infant’s desires for the mother, and the gratification it receives from her, are of a sexual nature. Indeed it is probable that a strict Freudian would define all pleasure or satisfaction as “sexual”. These longings and urges are called “skin”, “eye”, “mouth”, and other “erotisms” to indicate their essentially sexual nature. At a certain age, Freud tells us, they become organized under the supremacy of “the genital zone”. That is to say they become “sexual” in the “proper” and popular meaning of the word. Having become sexual—according to Freud—they have also become incestuous (directed towards other members of the same family) and hence lead to jealousy. The Oedipus Complex is thereby established. Undergoing repression next from fear of the rival’s displeasure and revenge, these sexual wishes (for the parent of opposite sex) become goal-inhibited; that is to say become a de-sexualized love. Or they may be deflected to the parent of the same sex, thereby constituting homo-sexuality, and then sublimated as friendship. The wishes themselves may be altered, distorted or symbolized beyond recognition and this “displacement” from the original biological objective is imagined as the basis of culture-interest in the race and (presumably) of sublimation in the individual. (Freud, Introductory Lectures, p. 290.)

Freud’s view seems to me inadequate to explain the mechanism of the development of interest or its very early appearance in childhood, that is to say, its appearance before the maturation, repression ana sublimation of sexuality can be imagined to have taken place. Further it is certain that the Freudian ideas in these matters cannot explain the constitution of society. Society in fact never was instituted by an aggregation of independent adult individuals, nor even by the growth of a single family by polygamy, group marriage, exogamy or otherwise. Society exists already in the group of the children of the same mother and develops by the addition of others to this original love-group. Neither does culture arise by the thwarting of sex-impulse and its deflection to symbolic ends. (Freudian Sublimation.) Still less does it arise through rational co-operation in the pursuit of the material necessities of life. Necessity is not “the mother of invention”; Play is.

Play is a necessity, not merely to develop the bodily and mental faculties, but to give to the individual that reassuring contact with his fellows which he has lost when the mother’s nurtural services are no longer required or offered. Conversation is mental play, but it is long before the child completely outgrows the need for bodily contact. Even many adults retain the need for caresses apart from sexual intentions and gratifications. Nevertheless cultural interests do ultimately form a powerful antidote to loneliness even where there is no participator present in person; that is to say, cultural pursuits have a social value even where “the other person” is imagined or left unspecified.

We can now clearly understand why man has become virtually the only cultural animal and hence by far the most sociable. We can also understand from the same considerations why Man has developed an aggressiveness, a competitiveness and a complex morality in which also he is unique. The neo-Freudians, approaching this point of view, no longer refer to human life as a struggle for pleasure, sense-gratification or self-expression (detensioning) as formerly. They see the master-motive of humanity as the “struggle to master anxiety” and further recognize this dread to be one of “separation”. Still, they endeavour to retain a materialistic, individualistic interpretation of separation-anxiety; but, more and more, psychologists are convinced that it is really a dread of loneliness which is the conscious expression of the human form of the instinct of self-preservation which originally attached the infant to its mother.

It is as if the process of evolution had taken back with one hand a portion of the benefits conferred by the other. Man has to be thankful for,

(1) his prolonged and sheltered immaturity which provides leisure and a respite from the struggle for existence, in which to experiment with development and with behaviour;

(2) he has to thank the extreme plasticity of his instinct of self-preservation, not only for his adaptation to infancy, but for his capacity to deflect interest from the satisfaction of appetite and from the procuring of defence and the means of existence, to activities we call cultural, which in turn have incidentally procured for him a tremendous mastery over all nature except his own. Against these benefits (of the opportunity to develop and to learn and the interest-disposition to do so) we must set the very equivocal power to love and the need for love. While this provides the incentive and conditions for learning by experience and for accumulating knowledge from generation to generation and so of building up an immortal tradition, at the same time it drives man so hard as to make him anxious, aggressive and inhibited. Man is the only anxious animal. When nature produced him she found herself with an “explosive” on her hands which she did not know how to handle. For all our language, cultural achievements and our family life, our love-need is still seeking new techniques of social relationship. In this search for the security and satisfaction of social integration (fellowship) we are constantly driven into false channels which we will have to study presently.

To sum up the evolutionary antecedents of man, we may say the principal features that distinguish him from other (even social) animals are:

(a) The extreme degree to which the definite, stereotyped, specific, instincts of “self-preservation” of his pre-human ancestors are “melted down” or unfocussed into a dependent love-for-mother, which in turn becomes need for others and finally parental “love” and interest, social feeling, etc.

(b) The prolongation of the period of immaturity between organically nurtured infancy and matehood and parenthood. This, as I said, along with the social need, affords both the opportunity and the incentive to co-operative activities not concerned with the material necessities of existence, and which may therefore develop indefinitely on free playful and experimental lines. The organic bodily relationships of infancy, matehood and parenthood can be imagined as affording security and satiety to this social need, and in them, moreover, the interest of each party is absorbed in the other person rather than directed upon “things” and joint pursuits. Further, adulthood has its practical, material cares that demand close attention to business and the rigorous adherence to well-tried customary methods of getting things done. The practical man is notoriously stereotyped—a creature of habit and opposed to all innovation. Practical shipbuilders told us a century ago that iron ships could not float. We can therefore conclude that the period of youth is not only that of mental development in the individual, but is the reason for the development of that distinctively human product, Culture.

(c) The fact (mentioned in (a)) that in man a collectio...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• PREFACE BY DR J. A. HADFIELD
• INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER I BIOLOGY OF LOVE AND INTEREST
• CHAPTER II A SCIENTIFIC CONCEPTION OF LOVE, HATE AND INTEREST
• CHAPTER III BENEVOLENCE, ALTRUISM AND HEDONISM
• CHAPTER IV PSYCHOLOGY OF LOVE AND ITS VARIANTS
• CHAPTER V THE FUNCTION AND EXPRESSION OF LOVE
• CHAPTER VI THE “TABOO” ON TENDERNESS
• CHAPTER VII REPRESSION AND THE JEALOUSIES
• CHAPTER VIII ORIGIN AND NATURE OF SOCIETY
• CHAPTER IX RELIGION, IS IT A DISEASE OR A CURE?
• CHAPTER X HEALING CULTS AND PRACTICES
• CHAPTER XI PSYCHOPATHOLOGY
• CHAPTER XII PSYCHOTHERAPY
• CHAPTER XIII FREUDIAN THEORY IS ITSELF A DISEASE
• CHAPTER XIV FREUDIAN PRACTICE IS A “CURE” BY LOVE
• CONCLUSIONS
• INDEX