In the most universal sense possible, the motivating energy that makes self-transformation possible is love, through its many manifestations and transformations. Spiritual teachings throughout the world and history hold that neither knowledge nor will power are as fundamental in nature or potency as is love. The importance of love in human psychology is therefore obvious, it is paramount. Love in one or another form of expression is so fundamental to the growth of body and mind, of personality and character, that no psychology can reasonably ignore the subject. The degree of harmony in all the forms of human relation that affect everyone for better or worse can well be seen to depend largely on the relative presence or adequacy of love.

Nonetheless, still only a relative (but growing) minority of books in social 'science' generally discuss the role of love in any such way, notable among which are a few books on psychology by Erich Fromm, Abraham Maslow, Rollo May and Carl Rogers. Extraordinarily, still fewer make any serious attempt at an explicit account of the multiple nature or meanings of love. The tendency is to assume that the word is well understood, which seems to be an unfounded assumption indeed.

CONFUSIONS AS TO WHAT LOVE MEANS

There is today very widespread confusion about the nature of genuine love, as any reader of magazines and books or watcher of TV and films with an observant mind cannot avoid noticing. In much of the world today, the word 'love' is simply used to refer to sexual eroticism. Otherwise the idea is seldom applied to much beyond personal love relationships between couples, between parent and child or even love of one's pets. Psychology has an obvious duty towards its clients and potential patients, as well as towards young people seeking guidance in it in one or another way, to be a balancing influence in this topsy-turvy world situation. Today even the educated seem to have lost sight of the great poetic or spiritual truth that love is a sublime value with universal dimensions.

It was above all Freud and the subsequent psychoanalytically influenced thinkers whose ideas set the stage for the present-day fixation on love as an erotic-libidinal instinct or need that supercedes all other aspects of love. Modern thinking about love is over-influenced by psychoanalysis, which saw love as being fundamentally a biologically-conditioned sex urge, an instinct. Besides this, love was also regarded as a matter of affection and attachment necessary to the 'ego', which is to say the (mutual) fulfilment of self-oriented desires. Thus Freudian psychology rejected a spiritual understanding of universal love and saw it only as the expression of diverted and frustrated personal love. Love is to be seen, however, basically as a non-attached or selfless care, concern and appreciation for all and everything... as also comes to expression in the belief in the sublimity of human love for God and God's love for humanity and the individual.

The word 'love' cannot easily be defined. The reality behind the word is so encompassing that it cannot be limited to a few distinct forms of expression. This fact is obvious to anyone even from the briefest of glances at the history of culture, art, music, literature, religion and so on. To hold otherwise would be to ignore the huge variety of both ordinary and extraordinary ways in which mankind has perceived and expressed love in thought, emotion, word and action. In short, love expresses one of the most universal of all experiences - and so also of ideas - known to humankind. Evidence of the universality often accorded to it is seen in the well-known dictum "God is Love". All this does not, however, mean that we cannot outline and examine some of the most important expressions of love in their relevance to particular aspects of life and to general psychology in theory and practice.

As briefly indicated when considering values, love can express itself in many connections, towards any or every possible object and in various ways and means. What is an appropriate means of expression in one connection may not be so in another. Love for a child and love of adult friends are different in form, though both have the same essence in common. Much has been said and written about the essence of love and it would be futile to attempt to encompass even a proportion of that here and not least because, at the most universal level, love is evidently ultimately indefinable. It can thus only be determined at a general level. In terms of synonyms and antonyms love can be characterised generally as selflessness, not selfishness; altruistic, not egoistic; acceptance, not rejection; affirmation, not negation.

Love expresses itself in personal relationships and also towards other beings and entities such as mankind, animals, Nature and God. It comes to expression in many ways, according to different individuals and cultural forms, the various stages of life and of social relationship. Love in itself is not to be confused with any particular form of love. It is recognisable in that it always moves towards understanding, integration, unity or union.

All experience love in different ways. The most common level is love in the shape of care for one's own good, extending this to one's family or others upon whom one's own happiness or comfort depends. This is self-love, which often represents, at least partly, an extended form of self-interest. Beyond this is the level where one cares about others purely for their own sake, whether these be family, friends, acquaintances or other unrelated people. Such love manifests in thoughts, then words and eventually deeds. Some even 'love' criticism and satire more than honesty and truth, or to ridicule good people. Tolerance of those who are against us and those who behave as enemies is a higher step, and forgiveness, compassion for one's tormentors and even love of them is obviously yet more so. The most universal and inclusive level of love is for God, expressed as love of the divinity in all beings and all that is.

The same name 'love' is given to love of parents, siblings and other relations, of the marriage partner, one's children, friends, helpless or needy persons and so on. It is also meaningful to speak of love of one's society and country, love of humanity and much else. The love that vitalises or informs all the many forms love takes, can be called universal care and concern for all beings. It has been called the love of God for and/or though creation. The growth of understanding by and through the heart is claimed in many spiritual traditions to lead to a strongly experienced sense of the complete unity of all beings as an expression of love. In all this, the essentially unifying nature of love is present.

Psychology must obviously be concerned to be aware of what is considered adequate or even appropriate forms of love in different types of relationship in varying societies and cultures. It is not sufficient simply to describe what sort of human relationships factually pertain here or there but also to recognise and, as far as is feasible, to understand the validity of these as love, not ignoring the invalidity of other relations that either falsely appear as love or contrary to it. In other words, psychology must strive both to understand and assert the value of love, not merely be a neutral spectator of love and lovelessness.

The universality of love in all ancient scriptural teachings, whether Christian or Judaic, Buddhist or Vedic, was rejected by Freud's theory by making love of humanity, love of Creation, love of the Creator etc. seem to be derived and secondary impulses (by so-called 'mechanisms' of transference, projection and sublimation). These tended to be regarded as substitutes for the erotic urge wherever it had been hindered or repressed - supposedly most often through traumatic childhood sexual phantasy (or actual encounters)! Some progressive psycholoanalysts, however, tended rather towards the Grecian idea of Eros (eg. Plato's Symposium), a primal urge that began through erotic physical love but subsequently rose to higher levels and expanded in scope towards the incorporeal realm of ideas until love of wisdom and of the ultimate good were reached. This Socratic/Platonic view of love intelligently makes discovery of its universal nature dependent on a long prior educational and maturing process.

As a universal value, however, care or love is regarded as inherent to human nature and as forming a fundament of life for all peoples. This is so even where it has been partially converted - or rather perverted - into anger, hate or other unloving emotions and thoughts. Clearly, hate cannot form the same basis as love for any sustained or constructive activities or human relations and, though its is real enough in the world, it lacks the same fulfilment as does love... it is an absence of care and respect for whatever it is directed against.

Love as 'human care and concern' is expressed and becomes observable in many genuine ways. Caring for others, tolerance of their differences and their various actions, sympathy with others' in their losses, pain and sufferings as well as the ability to understand and appreciate their joys and successes are all valid and equally relevant forms of love, especially when they lead to helpful action. Similarly, circumspection for the sake of society and nature, the love of truth and knowledge and of goodness in the world are valid expressions of love. The love of humanity, if genuinely practised, is a much more powerful agency of human transformation towards the good than any erotic relationship. This is evident from considering the works of great self-sacrificing persons in recent history like Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Schweitzer, Mother Theresa and countless other lesser known individuals like them.

ROMANTIC LOVE & PARTNERSHIPS

The Western ideal of romantic love as the basis for partnership or marriage has come to be the dominant notion of what love is in much of the industrialised world. However, to love and to express it fully does not necessarily imply any personal relationship. The idea of romantic couple love is in fact far from being universal in world culture and history. It has forerunners as a cultural tradition in Ancient Greece, as can be seen from Plato's Symposium, and became a distinct movement in Europe, along with its own tradition of poetry and song, only from the later middle Ages onward.

Romantic love as the basis for marriage only became accepted widely as the basis of the social institution of marriage in comparatively recent times, and remains predominantly a Western conception. The social institution of loving partnership as it is exemplified in the 'nuclear family' or in informal couple can thus by no means be claimed to set the only natural and universally-right standard. Bearing this in mind, psychology must consider the role of personal love in influencing the break-up of family relationships through separation and divorce. This break-up is widely agreed as being a most important source of psychological instability both for adults, children and all whom this affects in various ways in modern industrialised society.

The mind's projective nature, as already examined, causes us to approach most situations with certain anticipations. If this were not so we would live somewhere between the hyper-caution of a vulnerable wild animal and the state of a constant nervous wreck. It is psychologically normal to have a certain 'natural faith' in the stable nature of things and human relations, a trust that enables us normally to take many ordinary matters for granted. In many kinds of human relation, however, our anticipations do not meet with fulfilment. Our expectations as regards love, or the lack of it, in all kinds of relationships or roles can easily be 'unrealistic' and lead to disappointments. The same applies to many persons' feelings about society and humanity in general; one may be disillusioned and thus have a 'negative mind-set' towards new experiences, or else be optimistic with a 'positive mind-set'.

These affirmative mind-sets can sometimes, though not always, be expressive of love, its quantity and quality. This can obviously often affect the very experiences we anticipate. Where we approach the world with expectations of more or less selfish sort, love will generally be lacking in us to the same degree. Over time, such mind-sets will evidently sooner or later 'rebound' upon us somehow from our surroundings. Where the expectations are of an unselfish sort, the human environment will tend to respond well in the long run, one way or another, to the spirit of love we engendered by this.

The proverb 'love is blind' expresses how lovers very frequently fail to see the loved one as he or she really is. What hinders clear vision is almost invariably some form of projection of romantic and idealised images onto the loved one, which is evidently done more or less unawarely (i.e 'unconsciously'). The 'old, old story' of confounded or disaffected love comes about typically when the projected model can no longer be upheld, for one reason or another and expectations and fantasies as to how it should have become are broken by the blows of what is felt as 'hard reality'.

The ideals and expectations, along with their emotional underpinning, that are part and parcel of 'love projection' can of course vary so greatly with individuals and their family, social and other backgrounds that any attempt to characterise or classify them here would be futile.

SELF-LOVE AND INAUTHENTICITY

Self-love can mean everything from natural pride in oneself to the most selfish and exclusive narcissism. In the highest sense it is the inclusive loving embrace of everything in existence as being One. Without self-esteem we easily fail to function well and can become an undue burden to others, to society or the State, in addition to ourselves. Self-esteem is founded properly upon the sense of being of worth. This is to say our heritage as humans to flourish and blossom - not as an isolated self-admiring ego - but as a fully worthy member of mankind. In short, a human being made in the image of divinity. Self-esteem is founded on the extent to which we can identify ourselves with what is good and positive, which presumes that we recognise our heritage and act, as far as we at any time can, in accordance with it. Genuine self-esteem springs from our inherent goodness, and is developed as it becomes reflected in our characters and personalities.

The Armenian spiritual teacher, Gurdjieff talked about how he pretended in youth to be of a better and higher background than he was, and he put this down to wounded self-love. There is a valid reason for self-love, which is that we are all essentially of the highest (divine) origin and we all at some level of the personality wish to be, realise and love that Selfhood. Anyone or anything that belittles us makes us feel belittled because smallness of nature and limited potential is not our true, timeless identity and is therefore not what we can ultimately identify ourselves with. Not consciously knowing that he is divine, humans look for other ways to justify self-respect, and in this ignorance can also fall for self-deceptive means of doing so.

The lack of love leaves room for its opposites. The presence of strong feelings of hate can come of denial of our capacity to love through fear, ignorance or through habitual practice of unloving attitudes that have become as if 'natural' to oneself. When we deny loving thoughts or feelings towards others and instead generate suspicion, loathing, jealousy, disrespect and so forth, this affects us at least as much as those at whom it may be directed. In so far as our mind and feelings become unloving, we are always losers, whereas the object of our antipathy may never be affected by it at all.

Suppression of all those feelings and ideas that can be said to be an expression of universal love, as in friendship, respect, trust, the desire to give or help, compassion, sympathy etc., can lead to a lovelessness that weakens and gradually destroys all of our own happiness. We also cease to love ourselves, for guilt and self-blame usually follow eventually from lack of love. This can lead to misguided attempts to make amends through self-destructivity, mental disorder or even suicide.

To blame others for one's own lovelessness is a common attitude. To blame parents or other who have maltreated us is to define the problem as one beyond solution. It is not a matter of blaming oneself, but of realising that love does not come from being loved but from being loving. Caring and loving feelings only arise when one cares and loves of ones own autonomy.

Child developmental psychology has come to recognise widely the importance of parental love in the harmonious growth of the personality and natural self-acceptance. Among the more influential modern case-studies and similar researches we find a number which trace serious adult psychological disturbance back to either lack of love in childhood or to the more insidious pretence of love. In trying to identify and support the real thing, various common forms of inauthentic love are met. These can cause much damage to self-understanding and natural trust.

Unfortunately the variety of ways in which inauthentic love comes about or simply masquerades as the real thing, are many. Love can be misplaced - or perhaps simply misnamed - such as in spoiling children or unfairly sharing it between siblings. It can be made conditional, which is not genuine love at all and amounts to bargaining or threatening. Love is often only a subjective state-of-mind, romantically-imagined and over-idealised, or a selfish 'projected' illusion of loving, which the well-known adage 'love is blind' bears out. It is well-known how love can, especially when frustrated or (felt to be) unreciprocated, degenerate into antipathy, self-pity, self-righteousness, depression, aggression and eventually outright hate of the 'loved-one'. Love may be feigned for the sake of outward appearances and for a range of social and material reasons or because of guilt-feelings, such as towards an unwanted baby or because of promises or marriage vows etc.

In much of Western industrialised society, perhaps the main unselfish expression of compassion for one's fellowmen in practice is, for very many people, simply the putting of money in a collector's box or otherwise giving donations to charity (usually not much). The modern welfare state has led to social habits which are very largely an alienated form of compassion. Many regard 'compassion' as something appropriately carried out by their Government when it allots their tax money to a worthy cause, whether at home or abroad. This abstract and dry-hearted form of love - our less fortunate neighbours kept at a safe distance through bureaucracy and institutional apartheid, may be better than none at all, but it has nothing to do with the open-hearted outflow of what is the most majestic capacity in the human being.

It is not itself necessarily so many hours of charitable work or other forms of self-sacrifice, though these are also aspects of love. The alienation of the individual in bureaucratic society and modern ways of life from expressions of love - other than in the nuclear family, maritial and erotic senses - is probably the chief contributing factor to all non-organic kinds of mental illness.

EXCLUSION AND INCLUSION

Because love is an inner quality and is not identifiable as any given outward form or expression, there can be limitless love in the heart while the social or physical activities that express it can at the same time be limited in various respects. There are no prescribed acts or forms of behaviour that are required of people to prove that they are loving. Love is a quality of heart, of intentions and hopes and not any measurable physical entity whatever. For this reason, the many and varied expressions of love that are possible are not to be expressed everywhere and for everyone, but only where appropriate and desirable according to the involved persons.

In short, no-one can prescribe what is the mark of a loving act. Love cannot be an obligatory exercise to impose on others. Any obligation to love or express it is strictly personal; it is only valid within one's own self-examination or self-discovery. One's intentions are known in truth and with certainty only to oneself. For this reason, no psychologist or sociologist can set out in any way to measure or 'quantify' people's love. Indirect indicators of a loving act may actually be only the result of feigned love or of naive projections etc. No-one, however intuitive and gifted a person or psychologist, can claim to know another person's heart.

The psychologist is, of course, as much subject to the above as anyone else. The moral demands on the professional psychiatrist are no more or less than on anyone else. In other words, there is also a 'limit to love' in the amount of outward expression even the most sympathetic psychologist can give and can be expected to give. A 'burnt-out therapist' is a term for one who is not capable of giving more and, presumably, who has exceeded the limits of how much he or she can effectively do. The outward expression of love in helpful acts must be made if love is to be a reality, but it also has and must have certain limits. The inner quality and intention of love is another matter.

Universal care or love is a process of expansion of mind and heart, not necessarily of increased physical activity, whatever its kind. There are no limits to that expansion. It can come to include every person, every being, everything in creation and all that is behind creation too, whether or not that is called the Overself, God or any other name.

People generally tend to accept and like whoever is like themselves, as the proverb 'birds of a feather flock together' observes. While to 'be alike is often to like', people unfortunately quite often tend to relate to those unlike themselves with anything from suspicion, dislike and rejection to hate. These tendencies, taken together, amount to what is known as 'the herd instinct'. Most animals that live in herds mostly reject those not of its own herd, and that this instinct has not been eliminated in the human race can easily be seen in conflicts between majority and minority groups or between nationalities.

Exclusion of a person from a group - or persecution within it - is motivated on many grounds, virtually always depending on some kind of difference... whether on obvious differences of appearance or more subtle differences, such as those of taste, opinion or belief. While the reaction of individuals to exclusion or being made to feel outsiders vary with their own desires and expectations, it can still often lead to psychological damage on the individual. Harassment of others unlike oneself is a poison to society. Exclusion of all kinds and degrees is frequently at the root of social and even international conflicts, from colour discrimination to genocide.

Reactions can be straightforward anger or aggression, followed either by group acceptance or by the individual's rejection of the group. In the latter case, rejection is not a problem so long as the individual has other support or is very independent. But if circumstances compel the individual to remain in a group while being rejected, the damage can be serious. Anger and aggression that cannot yield results often explodes or else turns inwards and destroys peace of mind. If the person is cowed and pacified, self esteem and normal personal initiative suffers. There are other kinds of reaction which strike a compromise between the conditions facing the individual, such as adopting a kind of social camouflage to get by with or by working to undermine the group or its leaders etc. In any case, disunity between an individual and a group caused by a sense of difference and exclusivity are clearly most often deleterious to personal harmony.

The general psychological truth to be drawn from such facts is that exclusivity is a negative psychic influence that tends to disrupt harmonious personal development. Yet an attitude of inclusivity and acceptance, being one kind of expression of love, can only be a positive influence. This is not to imply, of course, that anyone can be accepted in any group or organisation, but that the attitude of inclusivity or human unity is a psychological optimum in all human relations. A weak person can become inwardly strong through practicing this, rather than reverting to snobbery or social camouflage, which bear witness to an inner weakness and a vain compensatory attempt at outward egoic self-enhancement.

'THE SHORT CUT'

There are many persons in modern times who speak of love as a short cut to the solution of all problems, whether personal or up to the level of world events. The Beatles' song "Love is all you need" is probably the best-known expression of this. This is psychology at the level of the slogan into which one can read many things. The developmetn of a loving heart and mind is doubtless not a matter of a short cut, but a long way round, certainly for the vast majority of us. It implies progressively mastering one's lower instincts and impulses and overcoming one's own ego, but not before the development of one's own personality, followed by the growth of spiritual character through heartfelt and truly selfless service and the gradual recognition of divinity - firstly through some form or other and subsequently throughout the cosmos. There are no other sudden techniques or quick fixes. Though deep flashes of insights and revelatory experiences may be achieved on a temporary basis through numerous and extremely varied methods ranging from the ingestion of psychedelics to sustained meditation, tantric techniques and even the touch of a holy person, all these are passing phenomena, with only temporary effect on one's future development. Many practices that lead to visions, voices and other paranormal effects are known also to magnify every weakness, ignorance, impurity and imbalance still unresolved in a person, so that the dangers of mental disorder, madness and serious misdemeanours are greatly increased. Until the mind and soul are well prepared through purifying action - which means uninterrupted detachment from all selfish and worldly ends, love of God and fellow men in thought, word and deed - it cannot be the receptacle of the spiritual consciousness of unchanging truth, of realised being. Ritual devotion is a common religious form of love, but it too easily freezes at the level of repetitious tedium and remains limited to images, relics, churches, temples, places of pilgrimage and so forth, even though it can represent a powerful impetus.

Ultimately, to ask whether there are higher or lower forms of love is to ask whether there are degrees of spiritual attainment or not. Each separate form of love can be a valid expression of this universal force, just as each physical object is an expression of an underlying quantum of energy. That energy is itself the equivalent of universal love in a physical form. Yet each limited expression of love is experienced as incomplete, not giving lasting or complete satisfaction. That is because all limited forms of love point towards the unlimited experience of universality.

(The text of 'The Human Whole' revised ed. on this website is copyright of Robert Priddy. 1999)