What's Love Got to do With It
Thinking About Love in the Therapeutic Relationship from a Philosophical and Existential Perspective
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.65828/wvtdwk19Abstract
Love is an often bandied-about word. Lost either somewhere in the forests of romantic fantasy and sexual desire, or the in the nurseries of parental devotion, it has become one-dimensional and an easy ingredient to throw into the recipes of films, television programmes and novels. Lost to us has been the long tradition which reflects on love philosophically, as well as the understanding that there are different types of love appropriate to different situations and relationships. Love grows out of natural attraction (not necessarily sexual) between human beings, and out of shared experiences. It is fundamental to human experience, fundamental to what it means to be a human beings at all. This being true, then we would be foolish to think that it does enter into the sphere of the therapeutic relationship, or worse that it has no place there. The real question is discerning its appropriate place, and the helpful contribution it can make. By drawing on some 'lost' traditions of love, but also by exploring of the definitions of love beyond our present limited borders, the present work hopes to go some way towards doing this.
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