Love is one of the most energising, expansive, and transformative human experiences. Across history, philosophers, poets, religious teachers, psychologists, and scientists have described love as central to the meaning of life, and in many traditions, as the highest expression of what it means to be human.
For me, love is not an emotion or a “nice to have” – it is the core purpose of life and the core of health. It’s the core of my job as a doctor. I advocate for healthy love in my patients’ lives as a human right.
I hope that all my patients are able to experience safe, caring, and nourishing love across all of their relationships.
This article explores how influential thinkers across human history have understood love. A companion article [insert hyperlink here] shares my own clinical and philosophical definition of love.
Summary
- Love is central to wellbeing. Across history, philosophers, religious leaders, and modern science consistently show that health, happiness, and resilience depend on the quality of our relationships and capacity for love.
- Modern psychology, including Jungian thought and Internal Family Systems, sees love as a healing force that integrates psychological wounds and supports greater inner wholeness, self-compassion, and emotional integration.
- Many religious traditions describe humans as carrying the divine within, with love as the experience that connects this divinity between people. Love is therefore both relational and spiritual, often experienced as connection to God or ultimate reality.
- A central idea in love is the vulnerability of “being seen” – cultivating psychological safety so that wounded parts of us can be seen and healed
Classical Antiquity
Plato (c. 428–348 BCE)
Plato described love (eros) as a powerful force that draws the human soul toward beauty, truth, and ultimately the good. In The Symposium, love begins as attraction to another person but can mature into a broader recognition of universal beauty and meaning. Love is not static in Plato’s view; it is a developmental process that expands perception and consciousness.
Medieval Period
Jesus Christ (c. 4 BCE–30/33 CE)
Jesus Christ places love at the centre of moral and spiritual life. He teaches that the greatest commandments are to love God fully and to love one’s neighbour as oneself. His teachings extend love beyond reciprocity and transaction into forgiveness, compassion for enemies, and radical care for others. Love is presented as an active, lived practice rather than a feeling. In this tradition, love is also deeply unconditional—offered without requirement of worthiness, status, or performance—and it includes a special emphasis on children, vulnerability, and those who are marginalised or suffering. It is a form of love that seeks to accept the whole person, not only the parts that are easy to love.
This understanding of love profoundly influenced later spiritual and social movements, including the work of Martin Luther King Jr.. King drew directly on the teachings of Jesus, particularly the idea of unconditional, non-violent love (agape), as the moral foundation for the Civil Rights Movement. For King, agape was not emotional affection but a disciplined commitment to the wellbeing and dignity of all people, including those who perpetrate injustice. This form of love became the ethical engine of non-violent resistance, shaping protests, speeches, and civil disobedience strategies grounded in dignity, restraint, and moral courage. Through this lens, love becomes not only personal or spiritual, but also a powerful force for social transformation and justice.
Islamic Tradition
Jalaluddin Rumi (1207–1273)
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
Rumi wrote of love as the central force of existence and the deepest purpose of human life. In his poetry, love is not something we acquire from outside, but something already present within us. Love, for Rumi, is the process of remembering what we already are. It is not external achievement, but inner awakening. In Rumi’s philosophy, we are already loved and have all the love we need within us.
In Rumi’s mystical worldview, love is also the force that dissolves the ego. The ego—built on separation, fear, pride, and control—creates the illusion that we are isolated from others and from the divine. Love softens and ultimately transcends this separation. Through love, the boundaries of the ego become more permeable, allowing a deeper sense of unity, humility, and connection to emerge.
Love of other human beings, in Rumi’s teaching, is therefore not separate from love of the divine. To truly see another person with compassion and presence is to move beyond surface identity and see the divine piece of God within another human being. In this sense, human love becomes a pathway to experiencing God, because it reveals the underlying unity of all existence. Love is the bridge between the human and the divine.
Rumi’s poetry reflects how there is a divine connection with God within every single human being. God completely and unconditionally loves all of us.
Early Modern Philosophy
Khalil Gibran (1883–1931)
In The Prophet, Gibran describes love as both unifying and liberating. Love gives freely without possession. It deepens connection while preserving individuality and freedom. Love is both closeness and space, attachment and release.
When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his
pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams
as the north wind lays waste the garden.
For even as love crowns you so shall he
crucify you. Even as he is for your growth
so is he for your pruning.
Depth Psychology and Psychoanalytic Thought
Carl Jung (1875–1961)
In Jungian psychology, love is closely tied to the process of individuation—the lifelong journey toward psychological wholeness. Love relationships are not only emotional bonds, but also psychologically active spaces where unconscious material becomes visible. Within intimate relationships, attachment wounds, unmet developmental needs, and early relational patterns are often reactivated. In this sense, love brings what is hidden in the psyche into conscious awareness, making relationships one of the most powerful contexts for psychological growth, self-understanding, and integration.
A central concept in Jung’s understanding of love is the anima and animus—the unconscious inner feminine in men and inner masculine in women (as classically described in his framework). In early relationships, we often project these inner figures onto our partners, experiencing them as if they possess qualities of wholeness, fascination, or destiny. This projection creates the intensity of romantic attraction, but it is ultimately rooted in the psyche rather than the external person alone. As love matures, part of the individuation process involves withdrawing these projections and beginning to relate to the partner more realistically, while integrating these disowned inner qualities within the self.
From this perspective, love becomes a key pathway through which the ego complex is transcended. The ego—our conscious sense of “I”—tends to organise experience around control, identity, and separation. In intimate relationships, however, the ego is repeatedly challenged by emotional vulnerability, difference, conflict, and unconscious activation. When approached consciously, these tensions soften rigid ego structures and open access to a deeper layer of the psyche that Jung called the Self—the organising totality of the personality. Love, therefore, is not only a relational experience but also a transformative psychological force that expands consciousness beyond the limits of the ego toward greater wholeness.
Martin Buber (1878 – 1965)
Martin Buber, a Jewish philosopher and theologian, is one of the most influential modern thinkers on relationship and love. In his philosophy of dialogue, particularly in I and Thou, Buber describes two fundamental ways of encountering the world: the “I–It” relationship, in which we relate to others as objects, and the “I–Thou” relationship, in which we meet the other as a whole, living presence. In the “I–Thou” mode, there is no objectification or control—only presence, mutuality, and genuine encounter. Buber’s thought is deeply rooted in Jewish theological ideas, especially the Shema, which expresses the unity of God. For Buber, this divine unity is reflected in the interconnectedness of all human beings: if God is One, then reality itself is fundamentally relational, and every authentic encounter between people becomes a meeting point of the divine. In this way, love is not merely interpersonal affection, but a sacred mode of relating that reveals unity beneath separation and restores the wholeness of human connection.
Buber’s ideas echo those of Jalaluddin Rumi.
Contemporary Psychology and Relational Science
Erich Fromm (1900–1980)
Fromm described love in The Art of Loving as an active skill involving care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge. He argued that love is not something we fall into, but something we practice and develop over time.
Daniel Siegel (born 1957)
Daniel Siegel describes interconnectedness as a core principle of brain development and human wellbeing, arguing through interpersonal neurobiology that the mind is both relationally shaped and fundamentally relational in function. From this perspective, love is not limited to romance but is expressed as the presence of attuned, caring, and responsive relationships that support neural integration across the lifespan. The brain develops through repeated relational experiences, and secure connection helps integrate different neural systems involved in emotion, thinking, bodily regulation, and memory. When this integration is strong, individuals experience greater emotional balance, empathy, resilience, and coherence of self; when it is disrupted by trauma or relational disconnection, the mind can become fragmented or rigid. Siegel links love to this process of integration: experiences of being seen, soothed, and understood by others directly shape the nervous system toward regulation and coherence, while also cultivating the capacity to offer the same attunement to others. In this way, love—whether within families, friendships, caregiving, or community—becomes a biological and psychological force that strengthens both internal integration (within the self) and interpersonal connection (between people), forming the foundation for mental health and human flourishing.
Richard Schwartz (born 1949)
Schwartz’s Internal Family Systems model describes love as the healing presence of the “Self”—a core state characterised by compassion, curiosity, calm, and connectedness. From this perspective, healing occurs when parts of the psyche are met with non-judgemental internal love and acceptance.
I practice Internal Family Systems therapy and have witnessed the incredible healing potential of this modality.
Contemporary Ethics and Cultural Thought
Bell Hooks (1952–2021)
Hooks defines love as an active ethical practice involving care, commitment, trust, responsibility, respect, and knowledge. In All About Love, she challenges the idea that love is only a feeling, arguing that it must be learned, practised, and chosen. Love is a conscious commitment to another person’s wellbeing and growth.
Brené Brown (born 1965)
Brown describes love as a practice of vulnerability, courage, and emotional honesty. Love requires being fully seen while fully seeing another person. It is sustained through trust, respect, accountability, and emotional safety, and is deeply connected to self-worth and belonging.
Love is the most essential ingredient for human wellbeing
Across time, cultures, and disciplines, a shared understanding emerges: Love consistently appears as one of the most essential forces shaping human wellbeing and meaning.