What's Love Got to Do With It?

Abstract

From the first moment I was introduced to humanistic psychology in graduate school, I fell in love with the idea that love really mattered, for my own personal growth as a mental health professional, and as a critical learning edge in psychotherapy, itself guiding the client toward love for and appreciation of him- or herself. We can be quite harsh with ourselves in our internal dialogue and that is not healthy. That is why as a key component of my presidential year, I've chosen to emphasize love and its various contributions to health, well-being and the skillset involved in thriving, or at least, attempting to thrive. When the rest of the world is telling us "no" in the multiple ways that it does, love for our very selves can propel us toward growth, learning, development and adopting self-actualization as a lifelong philosophy. Where Western society and mass media over the years have portrayed self-love and self-care as selfishness and selfindulgence, humanistic psychology and mindfulness interventions promoted in Eastern cultures instead encourage self-care, framing it as self-nourishment, where at the end of the day, we have more "good stuff" left over to give others, rather than less. Through humanistic psychology and mindfulness, we learn how to cultivate such inner reserves.

Full text

What’s Love Got to Do With It?
Donna Rockwell
Saybrook University
From the first moment I was introduced to humanistic psychology in graduate school, I fell in love
with the idea that love really mattered, for my own personal growth as a mental health
professional, and as a critical learning edge in psychotherapy, itself guiding the client toward love
for and appreciation of him- or herself. We can be quite harsh with ourselves in our internal
dialogue and that is not healthy. That is why as a key component of my presidential year, I’ve
chosen to emphasize love and its various contributions to health, well-being and the skillset
involved in thriving, or at least, attempting to thrive. When the rest of the world is telling us “no”
in the multiple ways that it does, love for our very selves can propel us toward growth, learning,
development and adopting self-actualization as a lifelong philosophy. Where Western society and
mass media over the years have portrayed self-love and self-care as selfishness and self-
indulgence, humanistic psychology and mindfulness interventions promoted in Eastern cultures
instead encourage self-care, framing it as self-nourishment, where at the end of the day, we have
more “good stuff” left over to give others, rather than less. Through humanistic psychology and
mindfulness, we learn how to cultivate such inner reserves.
Keywords: humanistic psychology, existential psychology, multiculturalism, love, qualitative
research, self-actualization
Before the beginning, was love. Everything came to be through love,
and without love, nothing of what has existed since the beginning or is
now or will be forever would have come to be. In the very beginning
was love; the basis of the universe—its law and regulations—is love.
When all ends, only love will remain; all that is outside love will pass.
—St. Charbel Makhlouf
From the first moment I was introduced to humanistic psychology in graduate school,
I fell in love with the idea that love really mattered, for my own personal growth as a
mental health professional, and as a critical learning edge in psychotherapy, itself guiding
the client toward love for and appreciation of himself or herself. We can be quite harsh
with ourselves in our internal dialogue, and that is not healthy.
This article was published Online First March 4, 2019.
A version of this Division 32 President’s column was published in the Society for Humanistic
Psychology Newsletter in April 2018.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Donna Rockwell, College of
Integrative Medicine and Health Sciences, Saybrook University, 32463 Scottsdale Road, Franklin,
MI 48025. E-mail: drdonnarockwell@gmail.com
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
The Humanistic Psychologist
© 2019 American Psychological Association 2019, Vol. 47, No. 4, 335–338
0887-3267/19/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/hum0000128
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