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Dear Dr Hayley,
I should like to have an opportunity to reply to the highly inaccurate and biased The Meaning of Love in Human Experience by Dr Brian Robertson, which appeared in Volume 13, Part 4 of the Review, not because I wish to quarrel with him (every reviewer is entitled to his own opinion) but because the topics involved are so fundamental to the theory and practice of psychoanalysis that they deserve a fairer hearing.
The chapters on history were designed to give the reader a better background for understanding the terrible quarrels that have erupted in the course of time, including the bitter battles within our own profession. Most people, as I did, receive a watered-down version of history in school that fails to enlighten them about what really happened; my purpose was to correct this watered-down version. Nowhere do I 'condemn a whole civilization' as he claims.
In his zeal to refute what he considers to be my thesis (the condemnation of a civilization) he makes a number of gratuitous errors. It is not true that western civilization is the only major civilization to have abolished slavery within its own borders (Patterson, 1982). According to Patterson, the leading authority on the subject, slavery has been known in virtually all civilizations, and has eventually been abolished in all of them but a few. It is equally untrue that Socrates chose death 'voluntarily'; whatever the social circumstances were Socrates was condemned to death and executed. It is to be noted that I meticulously quoted adequate authorities for every historical statement made, while Robertson quotes no one (except Arendt at one point, whose statement is questionable—the idea of forgiveness is found in many societies, and is not exclusively Christian).
Robertson's denial that loving parents tend to produce loving children is incomprehensible to me, coming from a psychoanalyst. That after all represents an essential aspect of all our therapeutic and educational efforts. He fals