The Research of Love and Hate in a Psychotherapeutic Setting

This final qualifying work is devoted to the study of the manifestations of love and hatred in the psychotherapeutic relationship between the patient and the psychotherapist. In their work, the authors made an attempt to understand the very concepts of love and hate, as well as to highlight complex relationships and conflict from the point of view of psychoanalysis and therapeutic relationships, within the framework of which this conflict is revealed in its entirety, to show what is behind these complex experiences and the way they are closely related to each other. The hypothesis of this work is that love and hate are two integral parts of each other. And one does not exist without the other. Love is not only libidinal, and does not always bring pleasure and satisfaction, and hatred does not always want to destroy its object. Hatred can be a defense against love, and pronounced feelings of love may well conceal hatred and envy behind them. By exploring hatred in the therapeutic process, giving it space, experiencing the destructive impulses of patients, we are able to discover the feelings of love hidden behind the hatred. And the discovery of feelings of love, in turn, will gradually soften manifestations of hatred and destructiveness, and cultivate the capacity for mature, genuine love. This work will be valuable for beginning specialists in the field of analytical therapy, as well as specialists in related fields. It contains an understanding of the complex feeling of love, and an integral part of this complex feeling is hatred. It shows ways to protect against feelings of love and why patients are forced to defend themselves from it, and also shows that the conflict of love and hate can increase destructiveness, and cause patients to attack and even break off those, sometimes the only relationships in which he can be accepted, heard, understood. The empirical part illustrates how this conflict manifests itself during the therapeutic process.