Book Review: On the Origins of Love and Hate

First published in 1935, The Origins of Love and Hate has been out of print in Britain for some years. It is now available again with a new foreword by John Bowlby and an informative introduction by Dorothy Heard – a psychiatrist, and Suttie's niece.

The book is an impassioned critique of Freud's dual instinct theory which Suttie replaces with an object relations perspective. In 1935 his views were provocative for he postulated a love independent of genital appetite, arising from self-preservative instincts and seeking any state of responsiveness with others as its goal, thereby rejecting the primacy of the Freudian libido.

The starting point of Suttie's conception of human life is a need for companionship. An understanding of the nature, origins and relationship of love and hate is considered necessary by Suttie, not only to understand psychopathological manifestations and the development of individual character, but also to understand the development of culture. Indeed, he devotes a number of chapters to the exploration of what he considers to be society's 'taboo on tenderness' and the social and therapeutic functions of religion. Such explorations lead him to suggest that the pessimism inherent in Freudian theory is the result of Freud's misdistribution of the products of modes of upbringing to human nature itself. Thus, for Suttie, aggressiveness, selfishness and hate are not fundamental to human nature but are understood as a response to the frustration of the human need for love and companionship. We find such ideas invoked by Bowlby (A Secure Base, Routledge, London, 1988), for instance, to understand violence in families viewing the latter as distorted and exaggerated versions of behaviour that is potentially functional, especially attachment and caregiving behaviour.

With regards to the healing power of psychotherapy, Suttie explicitly espouses Ferenczi's dictum that 'it is the physician's love that heals the patient' and sees the process of psychotherapy as the "overcoming of the barriers to loving and feeling oneself loved" (p. 53).

This is an important book and the views it espouses are as relevant today as they were in 1935. Suttie's style is engaging, if at times repetitive. He expresses his views with passion, revealing himself a committed advocate of those individuals deprived of love. The book is essential reading for anyone interested in the development of Bowlby's ideas and the clinical implications and applications of attachment theory.

Alessandra Lemma