There Ain't No Cure for Love

Ian Suttie, M.D. a psychiatrist, challenged the theories of Freud and Adler in the early 30’s, saying that love is the fundamental motivator in every human life. He discovered that the so-called sex drive, the so-called death drive, the so-called aggression drive, the so-called power drive, the so-called pleasure principle, are all derivative reactions to frustrated love and to the tenderness taboo resulting from this frustrated love. When love is frustrated, it is experienced as anxiety, anger, guilt or grief. When love is threatened, it becomes anxiety; when love is denied, it becomes hate; when love is interfered with, it switches into jealousy; when love is rejected, it becomes despair or guilt or shame; when it is lost, it becomes grief; and when it suffers it becomes pity.

Rather than assuming that we are dealing with many primary feelings, it is “… better to suppose that we are dealing with a single “fund” of love energy capable of endless transformations of quality or aim, even into the apparent opposite of love—hate.” (p. 61) It is Suttie’s studied opinion that love remains the affair of poets, romances and the religious, and not of the scientists, because the disposition of love is the center of all the bitterness of human nature and this leads directly to the denial of the existence of love. Hate owes all of its meaning to a need or demand for love. (p.23) Suttie argues that love is social rather than sexual in its biological function. Psychiatrists and theologians have treated human misbehavior as due to egotism and aggression rather than as a loss of the security of love and a sense of unconditional love. We seek power as a means to love, rather than seeking love as a means to power. (p.49)

Although Christianity is primarily a system of psychotherapy, it has often fallen into the hands of neurotics who turn a fellowship event back into an authoritarian event. Many churches have focused upon fear and guilt while others have focused upon the good news. The main concern of Christian teachings, maintains Suttie, is the cultivation of love as the basis of happiness, mental stability and social harmony. Psychopathy is a disturbance in the love life and psychotherapy deals with frustrations to love (p.203) In this instance, hate is not overcome by love, but cure means that frustrated love, having no more reason for its existence, is reconverted into love. (P.208) Love is the effective agent in psychotherapy. (215) Freudian theory itself is a disease, concludes Suttie. (p. 218), although Freudian practice is often a form of love.

(The Origins of Love and Hate, 1935. Ian Suttie. New York: Julian Press)


There Ain’t No Cure for Love, by Leonard Cohen

I loved you for a long long time
I know my love is real
It don’t matter that I was always wrong
It don’t change how I feel

And I can’t believe that time will heal
this wound I’m speaking of

There ain’t no cure, there ain’t no cure,
There ain’t no cure for love

I’m aching for you, baby,
I can’t pretend I’m not
I need to see you naked,
in your body and your thought
I’ve got you like a habit and I’ll never get enough

There ain’t no cure, there ain’t no cure
There ain’t no cure for love

All the rock ships a’climbing through the sky
All the holy books are open wide
All the doctors working day and night
But they’ll never find that cure for love

There ain’t no drink, no drug
Nothing is pure enough to be a cure for love

I see you on the subway, I see you on the bus
I see you lying down with me, I see you waking up
I see your hands, I see your hair
Your bracelets and berets
I call to you, I call to you,
but I don’t call soft enough

There ain’t no cure, there ain’t no cure
There ain’t no cure for love

I walked into this empty church, I had nowhere else to go
When I heard the sweetest voice I ever heard
Whispered to my soul:
I don’t need to be forgiven for loving you so much
It is written in the scriptures, it is written there in blood
I even heard the angels declare it from above:

There ain’t no cure, there ain’t no cure,
There ain’t no cure for love!

There ain’t no cure for it. There ain’t no cure for love. There ain’t no cure for
its absence or for any of its reflections, shadows or perversions, except to realize Love’s all-pervading presence and reality. Love is not absent. Love is not perverted. It is all in our attitude and opinions. Everything is made of Love.

Of course, we can say that Cohen sings about codependency or that he is a dirty old man or that he is having a mid-life crisis. We can say that he is grieving, or that he is guilty for ignoring or mistreating his lover. But in his attempt to express his pain and longing, he expresses a universal truth about being human. He reaches through and beyond his own dilemma and points us to the fundamental fact of human existence: that love cannot be cured, that love is irreducible to anything else. We are incurable lovers. And if we do not love in healthy ways, we will love in unhealthy ways. And when we love in unhealthy ways, there is no medicine except healthy love that will cure our condition, whether it be mental, physical or emotional.

Sebastian Temple wrote a very profound song for children which was published by G.I.A. Music Corporation back in 1969. I was so impressed by the ideas in this little jingle that I kept it for years tucked away in my heart and mind as a fundamental truth.

Everything is Made of Love, Sebastian Temple

Everything is made of Love
Everything we’re thinking of
Sticks and stones, frogs and bones
Candy, rice and telephones
Skipping ropes and ice cream cones
Everything is made of Love

Every person that we see
Is made out of this Mystery
Mom and Dad and brother John
Sister Jane and Grandpa Don
Auntie Mame and Uncle Ron
Everything is made of Love

It doesn’t matter if its blue
Red or white, me or you
A book, a cat, a bird or tree
A mountain, river or the sea
A planet, moon or galaxy
Everything is made of Love

You can call it by any name
It will always be the same
It has no color, race or creed
It is the fruit tree and the seed
The grain, the flower and the weed
Everything is made of Love
Everything is made of Love!

If God is love, then how could creation be made of anything else? If love is the fundamental and perhaps only reality, at the deepest level of awareness, we can understand its many mis-expressions.