You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
The love commandment is well known to those familiar with the Judeo-Christian religious tradition. It is one of the most general and fundamental principles of the Judeo-Christian belief system. As such it has been the object of multiple and divergent questions and interpretations over the millennia of its existence. Psychoanalysis has also tried its hand at probing the meaning of the love commandment; it even became the object of a skeptical and rejecting critique by Freud. That fact, in itself, has made the love commandment a worthy object of analytic reflection, beyond the inherent complexity of the idea itself. But it is also of interest insofar as it draws together many of the divergent and conflictual aspects of analytic thinking about narcissism and love and in addition may have relevance for thinking about the analytic relationship. If there is love in the analytic relationship, as I have suggested elsewhere (Meissner, 2003) along with others (Loewald, 1960; Lear, 1990; Novick and Novick, 2000), I suggest that the love commandment offers a potential template for understanding the nature of therapeutic love, especially as manifested in the therapeutic alliance. I propose to explore some of the background for the commandment and its meaning in an attempt to bring some greater analytic clarity to its understanding and perhaps to draw some conclusions of relevance to its implications for analytic praxis.
The love commandment, often called the Golden Rule, draws into a common focus many of the tensions between narcissistic self-love and altruistic concern for others. The love commandment pervades the history of the Judeo-Christian tradition as the great commandment of the law. It was placed by the evangelists of the New Testament on the lips of Christ but actually was derived from Old Testament sources.