"When the satisfaction or the security of another person becomes as significant to one as one's own satisfaction or security, then the state of love exists. Under no other circumstances is a state of love present, regardless of the popular usage of the term"
About this Quote
The subtext is a quiet indictment of the culture of romantic self-interest: the way desire, companionship, status, and even caretaking can masquerade as love while remaining fundamentally self-referential. Sullivan is also drawing a clinical line between love and need. Need says: I want you to stabilize me. Love says: your stability matters even when it costs me. That s a moral claim disguised as a diagnostic criterion.
Context matters: mid-century psychiatry was wrestling with how to talk about intimacy without drowning in Victorian euphemism or Freudian mythmaking. Sullivan, a pioneer of interpersonal theory, frames love as a relational state with measurable consequences, not a private essence hidden in the psyche. His closing swipe at "popular usage" is a corrective to the way language gets captured by convenience. We call lots of things love because it feels good to do so; Sullivan insists the word should be earned by the hard fact of shared vulnerability and mutual regard.
Quote Details
| Topic | Love |
|---|---|
| Source | Verified source: Psychiatry: Conceptions of Modern Psychiatry (lecture/art... (Harry Stack Sullivan, 1940)
Evidence:
When the satisfaction or the security of another person becomes as significant to one as one's own satisfaction or security, then the state of love exists. Under no other circumstances is a state of love present, regardless of the popular usage of the term. Best evidence I could verify points to Sullivan’s own work "Conceptions of Modern Psychiatry" as the primary source. Open Library’s catalog notes that "Conceptions of modern psychiatry" was reprinted from the journal *Psychiatry* (volume 3, no. 1, February 1940; and volume 8, no. 2, May 1945), implying the earliest publication context is the Feb 1940 *Psychiatry* printing, later reissued as a standalone lecture/booklet and later as a Norton book. I could not access a full, scan-backed copy of the 1940 journal issue (or the 1947/1948 printing) within the web results to extract a verifiable page number from the primary text; a secondary-but-specific reference (LibreTexts/Pressbooks) claims the quote appears in the 1953 Norton edition on pp. 42–43, but that page claim itself is not a primary scan. If you need ‘FIRST published’ with high confidence (including the exact page), the next step is to consult a scanned/physical copy of *Psychiatry* Vol. 3 No. 1 (Feb 1940) or the 1947/1948 William Alanson White Psychiatric Foundation printing and locate the sentence there. |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Sullivan, Harry Stack. (2026, February 21). When the satisfaction or the security of another person becomes as significant to one as one's own satisfaction or security, then the state of love exists. Under no other circumstances is a state of love present, regardless of the popular usage of the term. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/when-the-satisfaction-or-the-security-of-another-125384/
Chicago Style
Sullivan, Harry Stack. "When the satisfaction or the security of another person becomes as significant to one as one's own satisfaction or security, then the state of love exists. Under no other circumstances is a state of love present, regardless of the popular usage of the term." FixQuotes. February 21, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/when-the-satisfaction-or-the-security-of-another-125384/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"When the satisfaction or the security of another person becomes as significant to one as one's own satisfaction or security, then the state of love exists. Under no other circumstances is a state of love present, regardless of the popular usage of the term." FixQuotes, 21 Feb. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/when-the-satisfaction-or-the-security-of-another-125384/. Accessed 7 Mar. 2026.
