ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors focus on love and hate. They explore the multi-faceted nature of love and hate from different transcultural perspectives and themes. The authors examine the critical importance of love and attachment within all human relationships. There is an array of literature, film, art, and poetry that depicts "love" and "hate" and concurs that they have many different forms. From a transcultural perspective, there is a classic difference between cultures that promote the independent self and those that promote the interdependent self. There generally appears to be less written about hate in the psychotherapy literature. The chapter provides some further insights into its complexity, particularly within transcultural therapy settings. The evidence of such cross-cultural differences from an attachment perspective developed in childhood influences some of our curiosity and writing about how culture influences attachment styles and perceptions of love and hate as an adult.
