ABSTRACT
Both Freud and Klein understood psychological development as grounded in the interweaving of love and hate, life and death instincts, involving both the body and the mind. In health, in the context of a benign parental environment, the normal development of the infant’s instincts results in the strengthening of the life instincts and hence the lessening in the power of destructive impulses. The aggressive element of hate is contained and comes under the influence of the capacity for concern for the other and therefore of love. Aggression may then be recruited in the service of passion and creativity and thus contribute towards the possibility of healthy relationships. As a result, true intimacy, which requires both the recognition of and respect for a separate other, becomes possible (Ruszczynski & Fisher 1995). Sex and, in particular, intercourse are experienced as reparative and potentially creative, arousing little or no guilt.
