Mental health

We use the word “love” to describe a number of different emotional experiences. A closer look at those uses can shed light on the varieties of love and how much actual regard they entail for a separate person.

Love in the face of hatred is what good parents give to their children, and what therapists in some way must feel for their most troubled patients.

A fantasy that life should be perfect and goals achieved without effort often lies behind procrastination, the inability to set goals, and different forms of artistic inhibition such as writer’s block.

A raging child-like part of ourselves may lie at the root of depression and other difficulties.

Depression may reflect a basic hopelessness about one’s internal damage, where the only “solution” is felt to be a magical one. This dynamic is characteristic of bipolar disorder.