ABSTRACT
The Coleridge's Mariner had no practical use for the serpents; he was not aware of needing them; there is no question of them loving him back. It is the selflessness of that moment that is the crucial element in one kind of love worth exploring in the language of psychotherapy, unselfish love. Much has been made of the psychotherapists' hate for their patients; because recognition of its existence ensures that we do not omit to work constructively with those aspects of our patients that evoke hate in others. There are ample case-histories in the literature of psychotherapy, and particularly of child psychotherapy, to illustrate all of these reactions and their consequences. The history of psychoanalytic ideas on love between adults has had its vicissitude. The idea that the much needed and passionately loved breast might be destroyed alongside the needed but hatefully absent breast gives rise to concern, another possible start for unselfish love.
