The Origins of Love & Hate

Ian Suttie

from:

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The justification (or otherwise) for inflicting such a tissue of hypotheses upon the public lies in the present need in psychology for new ideas which have been adequately tested in all the fields of the science of mind. It is not pretended that this testing has been done here; this book offers merely a preliminary view, a 'prospecting' exploration. Such results as emerge from these applications do, however, suggest that, if valid, the hypotheses here put forward will compel an extensive reorientation and supplementation of Psycho-analytic Theory. Their validity (or otherwise) can be judged on such grounds as these:

  (1) By their capacity to furnish solutions to problems - biological, psychological,  pathological, and social - which have hitherto defied analytic interpretation.

  (2) By their general applicability to all these kinds of psychological phenomena and power to suggest further lines of study.

  (3) By their internal, logical coherence, provided  this  has arisen (as I maintained in the Introduction) from the convergence of independent lines of inductive research and not as the result of an unconscious deductive process in my own mind.

It seems to me that on each of these three grounds the theories  here  propounded  offer distinct  advantages  over Psycho-analysis and that without the over-elaboration of hypothesis and without the over-simplification (by selection) of fact which still characterizes the Psychology and Sociology of Freud.

To me the most striking results that emerge from this preliminary review are these:

  (1) A greatly clarified view of the contrasts and similarities between human and animal mind and of the causes and mechanisms concerned in the production of our distinctive mind and culture.

  (2) A new theory of the nature, origin, and functions of 'love' and 'interest', and an enlarged understanding of the   jealousies and other conflicts that hinder individual development and mar social harmony.

  (3) A new conception of the mind of the infant and of the factors and obstacles  concerned in the initial  direction of   character-formation. We also have a suggestion re the mental differentiation of the sexes which may be worth pursuing.

  (4) A positive conception of the social bond and of the process of social-ization both in the child and in the race. The mechanism and functions of Repression appear also in a new light.

  (5) A coherent interpretation of mental disease and of psychotherapy.

  (6) A conception of the function of Religion as being a psycho-social therapy rather than as being a social disease.

  (7) A Theory accounting for the inter-relationship of Culture and racial Character, and for the diversity of Peoples in these respects. This suggests also lines of research into such subjects as cultural antipathies and the degeneration of civilizations.

   (8) A systematic explanation of the Freudian Failures and Successes.

Obviously the issues raised are numerous and of the very highest theoretical and practical importance, and this can be pleaded in further extenuation of the hasty, disjointed, and often dogmatic and conjectural presentation of my interpretations of fact. The bulk of evidence, and argument (particularly psychopathological) must be reserved for reasons of space and time. I therefore claim that these hypotheses are worth consideration on heuristic grounds, particularly as they are not in themselves complex or onerous. Indeed the principles upon which I base the whole theory might be stated very briefly and simply thus:

  (1) That the mind of the infant is adapted to its nurtured role in life, and is not a bundle of instinct impulses like that of e.g. the chick.

  (2) That it must therefore be re-adapted during development to an independent, responsible, adult role, and that the surrender of the sheltered role entails emotional stresses.

   (3) The initial (self-preservative) dependency upon others is never completely outgrown, but persists as a need for companionship, apart from the organic satisfactions that may be derived therefrom (i.e. persists in the form of 'play' and 'interest').

   (4) The renunciation or repression of the various wishes constituting infantile dependency can be effected thoroughly only by the loved object (mother) herself, and not by external interference.

  (5) The mother's will and capacity to enforce the renunciation ('psychic weaning') will vary directly, (a) with the quality  of her own character and personality and (b) with her own domestic status and dignity in the child's eyes and inversely with the importance of the child in her own emotional life relative to other attachments and interests (i.e. her dependency on the child).                                     '

  Any social factors therefore which stunt the character development of woman, contract her interests, or lower her prestige with her children will interfere with her function of promoting the maturation other children and their independence of herself.

  (6) Disturbances of this maternal function are the causes of 'fixations', 'regressions', 'depressions', jealousies, and antagonisms which in turn are the root cause of mental illness.

  (7) Psychotherapy is an attempt to 'reduce these dislocations' of the lovelife and to free interest for social purposes.

  (8) Religions deal with these buried misconceptions of the parent's nature and relationship to the child. Their practices aim at the 'institutional' expression (in ritual or other 'innocuous' form) and control of the particular anti-social, anti-hygienic forces which are most prevalent in the individual culture concerned. 'Matriarchal' and 'Patriarchal' Cults, Cultures, and

Character vary fundamentally in the latter respect.

  (9) Love should be regarded as something more than the sum of its expressions and the variety of its manifestations. Not indeed as an 'essence' or "force', but rather as an 'x' analogous to the physical concept of 'energy' or ether. This is a heuristically justifiable formula, particularly since love can turn into hatred, which is merely its negative or frustration aspect. From this it follows that 'cure' of psycho-social ills (into which hate always enters) is theoretically easier than could be believed from the Freudian standpoint, which regards hate as proceeding from a 'Primal, independent, instinct of destruction', and hence as ineradicable.

It will then be seen that the primary assumptions I have put forward are not open to methodological objection. They are neither 'ad hoc' nor transcendent, nor are they numerous and unrelated to each other, yet they afford us a considerable facility of interpretation over the whole field of behaviour. In fact it seems to me (in moments of enthusiasm) that they re-introduce common sense into the science of psychology.

CONCLUSIONS

Suttie's Legacy

Ian Suttie

Revivalist4