Thursday 15 July 2010

The nature of giving and receiving love

     From the first as infants we look to be lovingly cherished. The paediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, suggested that a human being could not give love to another if she or he had not received love. From birth most of us receive good enough love from parenting figures.
     
     For many reasons some infants are not given sufficient devotion. A parent's unresolved difficulties from her or his own infancy and childhood may obstruct, to one extent or another, his or her capacity to offer genuine love.  One of the most despairing of experiences for a child is to receive attention that is given grudgingly from someone whom he or she might reasonably expect wholehearted love, (for instance a principal parenting figure). Such a parent shows no satisfaction in the infant's pleasure, and by refusing to acknowledge the infant's attempts to give back loving responses the parent manifestly demonstrates a refusal to love.  The probable and natural outcome for an infant experiencing this is the development within the infant of a mistrust of the promise of mutuality in loving relationships. In turn a tendency may develop in the infant which is represented by unreasonable demands for love. "Love me and me alone or you will be dismissed from my life." Those who have looked after troubled children and young people in group care settings will recognise this cry. 

    In my view if this tendency is not interrupted, as an infant grows through childhood, youth and then into adulthood, she or he may look for self-sacrifice in others as the only evidence of love.


     To have a care for someone naturally, willingly, lovingly without having to think about it is as pleasant for the giver as it is for the receiver and so it brings its own internal rewards. This is not to suggest an impossible idyll. What is important is as psychoanalyst and paediatrician, Donald Winnicott suggested, is that the love given  is 'good enough.'

    
      When someone - who has previously only experienced attention that is reluctantly given - receives good enough love and care, may find it difficult to receive because they are suspicious of it. Is it authentic or is it just like previous false promise?  It comes as a surprise for it is a new experience and has not been an element in the child's earlier life. The child, in not knowing how to receive it, not knowing how to internalise it or reciprocate it, resists it.  The gift of willingly given love has no value for him as a source of warmth and security. He does not trust it. Its secondary material value may stay with him but he cannot accept its spontaneity and its invitation to reciprocality because he can only demand that others should enjoy loving him to the exclusion of all else. For survival reasons a newborn infant naturally demands this but a fault has developed over the period of a person's life if he or she is still demanding absolute attention.

     This is not to say restorative efforts should not be made but they will take time what has developed over years cannot be 'fixed' by  time limited scripted guides. We are we dealing with deep primitive feelings from our pre-verbal experience. It is my own belief that psychodynamic therapy as a group practice or as a one-to-one exercise can, over time, help those who have been deprived of love and help them to develop a feeling of their own real intrinsic value as they experience the determined care and concern another or others have for them in the face of their resistance. In this way they can begin to love themselves. Reparation becomes possible as does the capacity to have a care for others.



Updated 25.3.13 and 27.5.20

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