This article presents a history of ideas about the origins of love as a universal human experience, beginning with Freud's formulations and expanding concepts in the light of findings about the role of attachment and love in the earliest relationship between mother and baby. Conceptualisations based on the work of Klein, Winnicott, and Bion are linked to recent findings from neuroscience to arrive at a more complex conceptualisation of the origins and role of love for mothers, fathers, children and adults.