Love: Bondage or Liberation?

Much has been written about the function of falling in love in the course of therapy itself. This book has a much broader aim. The author, a Jungian analyst and psychotherapy trainer, uses her teaching and clinical experience to illuminate the whole range of this near universal human experience. How, and why, does falling in love affect us so profoundly? How can it enhance who we are, or must it ultimately fade without lasting value? The author argues that the many valuable studies by psychoanalysts, relational psychologists, anthropologists, neuroscientists, and philosophers have all made valuable contributions, and uses these to highlight and explore the many values and dangers inherent in passionate love. However, she claims that a more holistic approach is required to show how these various accounts can be seen as complementary rather than competing, and can be accommodated within an overarching view of the integration of the human being in its heights and depths.

Deirdre Johnson

Preface , Introduction , A Quest for Meaning: The Different Narratives to Describe the Phenomenon of Falling in Love , (A) What we have been: the first love affair , The psychoanalytic discourse: emphasizing the intrapersonal , The relational psychologies discourse: including the interpersonal , (B) What we are: embodied beings , The scientific discourse , (C) What we may be: individuation , The teleological discourse , The religious discourse , Love's Alchemy: Putting It All Together , Various dualisms and their synthesis , Holistic love: what difference does all of this make?