"Of all the trivialized concepts in this so-called New Age, perhaps the greatest involves love. Books pour from the pens of well-meaning patients and doctors alike, attesting to its phenomenal power in healing. Love melts away tumors, cures addictions, banishes fear, catalyzes miracles, transforms lives — all this we are told ad infinitum. If we could only learn to love and forgive ourselves and others and let go of all our fears, grudges, and hatreds, our health would be better. Paracelsus's dictum, 'The main reason for healing is love,' frequently becomes distorted into 'The only reason for healing is love.' The frenzied enthusiasm surrounding love has led to one of the greatest ironies of the New Age, namely, that significant numbers of sick people are made to feel guilty in the name of love for not being well.
"About ten years ago, a patient of mine developed a breast lump and had a mammogram and breast biopsy, which revealed cancer. Considerably shaken, she sought help from a psychological counselor well known for dealing with newly diagnosed cancer patients. This man was deeply convinced that all physical ailments reflected emotional and spiritual shortcomings. On my patient's first visit, the counselor, without bothering to inquire deeply about her history and psychological makeup, stated abruptly 'There are only three possibilities for why you have cancer. You either don't love yourselves enough, you have some deep seated fear you're not in touch with, or you are not trusting enough of yourself and others!' Deeply introspective, my patient felt the counselor's observations were simply wrong. 'Having cancer is difficult enough without the guilt trip,' she said. She rejected his analysis and found help elsewhere. Ten years later, after using orthodox cancer therapy as well as continued inner psychological work, she has no trace of illness.
"This is not to suggest that I do not believe in the role of love in healing. As I have explained, I believe it is vastly important, particularly in prayer-based healing. I only want to point out that love should not be enshrined as some magical, monolithic principle in health and healing. When it is, the sick person often pays.
"At some point one wants to stand up and demand of all the love merchants, what do you mean by love? There is a tendency in holistic health circles to regard it simply as an emotion that has something to do with unconditional caring, compassion, and empathy. This is fine as far as it goes, but it is only a partial picture. The ancient Greeks, for example, believed that love was the domain of Eros — and Eros was, above all, mysterious and paradoxical. As Jung explained, 'In classical times, when such things were properly understood, Eros was considered a god whose divinity transcended our human limits, and who therefore could neither be comprehended nor represented in any way.' In contrast to most New Agers, the Greeks recognized that many of Ero's qualities were decidedly not nice. Jung agreed. As a result of observing the actions of Eros in the lives and dreams of thousands of his patients, he concluded that Eros was a 'daimon, whose range of activity extends from the endless spaces of the heavens to the dark abysses of hell . . .[and which contains] . . .incalcuable paradoxes . . .'
"A lot of New Age literature has stripped love of its complexity and sanitized it into something nice that can be made into a simplified formula everybody can understand. Love's mysterious, darker qualities are relegated to the shadows or completely ignored.
"The Old Testament story of Job is about the shadow side of love, and how one can be victimized by a loving God. Job's story should be required reading for those who today insist of linking spiritual perfection and health, for it shows that horrible things can happen to blameless people, and that the currently popular love formulas for health are sadly incomplete.
"We are told at the outset that Job was 'perfect and upright' (Job 1:1). In other words he did nothing to deserve his fate. But in spite of Job's perfection, God allowed terrible things to be done to him — his ten children were killed, his wealth destroyed, his health replaced by a disfiguring, painful disease. If we believe that 'God is love,' then we are forced to conclude that love must be an extremely complex phenomenon — Jung's 'daimon' in action.
"Things haven't changed much since Job's time: people who are highly spiritual, God-realized, and 'enlightened' still become ill. In order to 'keep God's skirts clean,' as Alan Watts once put it, we hear various rationales for these troubling events. Some say that the sick person only appears loving, trusting, and free of fear, but deep down, real problems exist that he or she isn't 'in touch' with. Or that the sick are living out their karma and 'paying back' for transgressions in past lives, or that they 'chose' this illness in a previous life, and so on. One gets the feeling that these are desperate, ad hoc attempts to preserve the love-model of health rather than confront the obvious: the model is flawed; love is no guarantee of health, longevity, or anything else but paradox and deep mystery.
"What do we really know about the place of love in healing? What can we say without undue fear of contradiction? We can demonstrate experimentally that love, compassion, caring, and empathy catalyze healing events, and that this power operates at a distance and outside of time. But we know also that love is compatible with illness — in the same sense in which Jesus said, 'Love your enemies,' not 'Don't have any.'
"Love occupies a majestic place in healing. Lying outside space and time, it is a living tissue of reality, a bond that unites us all."