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X. PSYCHOLOGY OF LOVE

By Stephen Palmquist (stevepq@hkbu.edu.hk)

28. The Art of Unifying Opposites

We discovered in Stage Three that the "Self" functions as a higher power within each of us, directing our personal (i.e., psychological and spiritual) growth through a balancing of psychological types and an integration of the positive side of evil tendencies. The further discovery that both of these aim at the same goal-namely, the cultivation of the "whole person"-enables us to see how they function in much the same way as a caterpillar's cocoon, as a transition from a dark, self-enclosed, earthbound and rather ugly creature to a free and beautiful new creation.

This week we shall explore what happens when the "butterfly" of our true individuality opens its wings and begins to enjoy the wonders of love. Before we begin, I'll give you one last opportunity to ask questions about anything relating to the "cocoon" we wrapped ourselves in for Stage Three, or about its transition to the fully matured butterfly this week. While you're thinking of some questions, here's a little poem I wrote, just for your enjoyment:

Covered in the slimy residue of life's distress,

Am I this worm?

Who emerges from the white woven straitjacket that

Bound me so long?

Why should I quit this cold, dark pit-why exchange it for

A world of light?

With colors blazing, powd'ry shades truer than the sun,

Whence come these wings?

"Fly! Leap to the unknown!" To journey's end? No, the joy

Has just begun!

A transition like the one alluded to in this poem should be taking place within you as you near the end of your dream diary project. By now, you should have a wealth of dream material to work with, and you should be adept at identifying certain key archetypes and other symbols that characterize the unconscious side of your personality. But before you can see the butterfly emerging from your dreams, you may need to fulfill one more task. At this point in the course you should take a few hours to read through your entire dream diary. Look for minor improvements you can make to the dream texts, checking their accuracy and clarity, in line with the guidelines specified in Lecture 2. Also look for additional interpretations you might have missed the first time around. Most importantly, look for connections between your dreams. Make a note of any patterns you find, and try to locate one or more series of dreams, as explained in Lecture 15. Then choose one dream that is most representative of your work, and write it up separately as your "sample dream" (see above, p.v). This text will serve as the introduction to your dream diary. With this in mind, you might wish to expand and/or rewrite the Interpretation section to make it as accurate and detailed as possible.

Now, any questions?

Student U. Could you give us more details about what should be included in the sample dream?

Yes and no. I can't tell you the details of what should be included, because that, of course, will be different for each dreamer. If you are asking whether the sample dream needs to contain any new methods of interpretation-ones I have not yet introduced-the answer is also "no". You should simply apply as many as possible of the theories we discussed from Week III to Week IX. If you're asking for a summary of these, then yes, I can give that to you right now. Ideally, your sample dream should present a complete text, neatly divided into parts. At some point (e.g., in a Glossary) you should identify and briefly describe the main characters. The Interpretation section should include both personal and collective associations-i.e., dream symbols should be clearly explained in relation both to your daily life and to their archetypal roots. Any archetypes should be identified and if possible named. Explain how wish-fulfillment and/or compensation operate in your dream. Relate all of this to your own "life story", explaining how your own individuation is progressing. In other words, include everything we've discussed!

Are there any questions about what we learned in Stage Three?

Student V. Why do psychological types have to come in opposites? For example, couldn't thinking be my strongest conscious type and feeling be secondary, with both sensation and intuition being unconscious?

These pairs and the way they interact are part of the logical structure of Jung's system. Other systems, like the Enneagram, do not assume such strict oppositions. But Jungian types come in opposites for the same reason the Chinese t'ai chi symbol is divided into the two opposite halves of "yin" and "yang" (see TP, Figure 12.1). The division helps us draw clear distinctions between different aspects of life that have a genuine influence over who we are and how we adapt to life. Your suggestion would require a completely different way of defining the four terms involved. Either that, or else people with such a psychological type would be very sick: their perception of the world would be totally unconscious and their conscious life would be an unpredictable chaos of conflicting thoughts and feelings. This psychological state may be a type of psychosis!

Keep in mind, though, that the ultimate goal of the Taoist interpretation of the yin-yang distinction is to convey the insight that opposites merge: they transform themselves into each other in the on-going process of synthesis and change. Jung was quite familiar with this Chinese (or "synthetic") logic and intended his division of types to be interpreted and applied in this way. Eventually, as a person approaches wholeness, the opposites (thinking-feeling and sensation-intuition, as well as extraversion-introversion and judging-perceiving) should begin to blend into each other as integrated aspects of a balanced organism. But the process will only be hindered if our initial distinctions are not clear, or if we misunderstand the compensatory relationship between the conscious and the unconscious.

Student W. To me Jung's theory of types seems very similar to a superstitious model of what causes human behavior, such as astrology and horoscopes.

In some ways they are indeed similar. Both systems provide us with a set of labels that can be used to distinguish between different people's character-traits. And those who like to read horoscopes tend to say things like "That's something only a Leo would do!" in much the same way that some people might say "I'm an extravert thinking type, what else could I do?" But psychological types should not be used in this way to label people (including yourself) or as an excuse for certain shortcomings. Such uses can be counter-productive to personal growth, feeding the ego's pride instead of inducing a higher level of self-awareness.

We must always keep in mind Jung's two main reasons for asking us to identify our types: to become more aware of our own areas of weakness, so we can work on strengthening them; and to become aware of tendencies we may have to judge other people unfairly due to differences in type. The first puts us on a path that requires us to face up to the evil within us, as we saw last week. The second, as we shall see this week, puts us on a path that enables us to discover and enjoy love. Some more sophisticated interpretations of astrology attempt to use its insights in much the same way Jung uses his theory of types, to encourage personal growth. But one key difference makes astrology a more problematic system than Jungian types: astrology makes assumptions about how the stars (or at least a person's birthtime) have a causal influence on one's character. Such superstitions are likely to inhibit personal growth; so Jung's theory is not like astrology in these respects.

Any questions about the psychology of evil presented in Week IX?

Student X. Isn't Peck going too far when he makes evil a psychological category? Does he really want therapists to label people as "evil"?

Yes and no. He seems quite serious about this new label in his book. But the word "evil" has far too many moral and religious connotations to be well received by a wide spectrum of therapists. So Peck's idea has to a large extent been ignored. Peck probably expected this. Indeed, his purpose in making such a suggestion may have been more along the lines of naming a problem that most psychotherapists encounter in certain patients, but had never pinned down. Personally, I think the religious connotations of the term "evil" make it a very good name for the problem of those who are unable to be self-reflective or self-critical. For our entire course is based on the assumption that psychology and religion are two sides of the same coin: the phenomenon of personal/spiritual growth.

Student Y. I don't understand why you think names are so important. Isn't it just a myth to say that knowing a person's name gives us power over them?

Student Z!

Student Z. Yes?

How did you feel just now when I called your name?

Student Z. I felt nervous and afraid. I thought I must have done something wrong.

So you felt guilty?

Student Z. Yes. I suppose so.

Why?

Student Z. I'm not sure. Maybe because I'm the only student in the class who has not yet asked a question.

Are you? Well, I hadn't noticed that. Actually, I didn't intend to make you feel guilty or afraid about anything you've done (or not done). Rather, I only wanted to illustrate how powerful a name is. By calling out your name, I was able to control both your attention and your emotions for a short period of time. But your response reveals another insight: a person's attitude to (or way of coping with) guilt determines their psychological state. By redefining Figure IX.1 in terms of guilt, we could say a "sick" person is the one who is not able to cope with guilt, while a "healthy" person feels the guilt but finds ways of coping. An "evil" person, by contrast, has no genuine sense of guilt and so refuses to admit his or her character weaknesses.

The presence of guilt in us all is a key factor in what gives names their power; an equal and opposite factor, however, is love. Let us therefore turn our attention now to this important topic. First, let me remind you that Chapter 25 of The Tree examines the mystery of love from a philosophical point of view. Focusing on Paul Tillich's book, Love, Power, and Justice, it defines love ontologically as "the drive towards the unity of the separated." This definition applies to all types of love, as exemplified by the four main types Tillich discusses (epithymia, eros, philia, and agape [see Figure 25.2]), and encourages us to think of love not as an ideal unification between two persons, but as the energy that drives us toward that goal. Viewed in this way (as the drive toward unity, rather than as the experience of unity itself), love is the power that overcomes the estrangement that keeps us separate from other people (see Figure 25.1). This week we'll be looking at the psychological characteristics of this power, in an attempt to understand how it performs an essential function in the process of individuation: whereas evil is the power of estrangement, causing opposites to arise out of what was once unified, love empowers us to reunify those opposites.

Tillich's philosophy of love is applied directly to psychology by a neo-Freudian named Erich Fromm. His popular little book, The Art of Loving, begins by exposing four mistaken beliefs about love that western culture tends to encourage. In the first chapter he explains how each mistake can be overcome if we view love as an art (i.e., as a skill that can be learned). First, people often assume the main problem concerning love is how to make oneself more lovable. People make excuses for having a miserable love life, such as "I'm too fat" or "I'm always shy around the opposite sex" or "My face is ugly", then try to solve the problem by improving these personal qualities. But making yourself more attractive will not guarantee a fulfilling and meaningful love life. On the contrary, this narcissistic approach prevents people from recognizing that love is more than simple physical (or even psychological) attraction. To rectify this mistake, Fromm encourages us to regard the main problem as how to learn to be more loving.

The second mistake is that people tend to think love will happen only when they find the right person. This causes many people to go around with a checklist, comparing all the eligible "love-objects", hoping "Mr. Perfect" or "Miss Right" will eventually show up. I'll talk more about this tendency in the next lecture. For now it is enough merely to point out that this totally ignores the fact that genuine love can happen only when we find the right skills and put them into practice. The checklist approach wrongly encourages people to neglect their own responsibility and puts far too much weight on their ability to judge other people's character. Instead we should be using all our relationships to learn more and more about how to be more loving.

Third on Fromm's list of mistakes is the common tendency to identify true love with the experience of falling in love. Yet this romantic ideal (especially in the form of mere "infatuation") is often bitterly disappointing. When it goes wrong, the pain can be so intense that it causes a person to give up the desire for love completely. Fromm's alternative suggestion is that we should think of true love as being or standing in love. The difference here is that "falling" is a passive experience that happens accidentally and is beyond our control, whereas "standing" is an active experience that requires our constant cooperation. The former encourages us to focus our attention on what we can receive from others, while the latter requires us to focus on what we can give.

The final mistake on Fromm's list is the tendency to expect love to be easy, once we've succeeded in making ourselves attractive enough to cause someone to fall in love with us. Hollywood films and "escape" novels often encourage this belief, by giving us the impression that everyone lives "happily ever after" once the obstacles to love are finally overcome. Genuine love, by contrast, must face the fact that love will always be difficult. Fromm recommends that anyone who wishes to take up the challenge to learn the art of loving should first master the theory of love (so that we know what to expect), then practice loving at every opportunity, and finally, make learning to love our ultimate concern. "Ultimate concern" is the term Tillich uses to define religious faith. Fromm's point, then, is that love should not be viewed simply as a part-time job or a pleasant pastime, but must enter into every aspect of our life; for the God in whom "we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28) "is love" (John 4:16).

The remainder of The Art of Loving lays out the basic points in Fromm's theory of love. Without giving a detailed summary here, I'll simply highlight a few significant points. Following Tillich, Fromm regards love as an interpersonal relationship whereby two persons become one (AL 20). But the "equality" implied in such "oneness" must not be confused with "sameness". The differences between two people do not disappear when they begin loving each other; rather their two distinct personalities form one new personality. Though there may be other ways of unifying opposites (e.g., through various forms of artistic creativity), loving is the most profound. As such, its importance for the individuation process can hardly be underestimated. Moreover, it has the potential to solve the central problem of human existence: love counteracts the anxiety of being separate or "estranged" from our fellow human beings. Overcoming our separateness through love is "[t]he deepest need of man" (14). The main ingredients in a genuine love relationship, according to Fromm are: "care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge" (25). Without discussing each of these in detail, let me recommend Fromm's book for anyone who wishes to become more aware of what it means to practice loving.

The overall lesson of Fromm's book is that genuine love can take place only when a person has become sufficiently self-aware, has progressed far enough on the path of individuation to be capable of giving himself or herself to another. For if we approach any relationship by looking mainly at ourselves, then we are unlikely to experience the move toward oneness that can properly be called "love". The ancient Greek myth of Narcissus is instructive here. Narcissus (a name usually given to slaves in ancient Greece) was a youth who one day saw his own reflection in a pond. Not realizing he was seeing himself, he instantly "fell in love". He was so enamored with this lovely face-in-the-pond that he couldn't move. Eventually he died and was turned into a flower. From this myth we derive not only the name of the beautiful "Narcissus" flower, but also the term "narcissism" as a reference to overly indulgent self-love.

This myth illustrates the close interaction between evil and love. That Narcissus' misuse of reflection amounts to evil is evident from the fact that his love ends in an unnatural death: the transformation of a young man into a plant signifies a reversal of personal growth. But it also provides us with a profound picture of the way many lovers view each other: they think they are gazing at the beauty of the beloved, when in fact they are merely overpowered by the projection of their own anima or animus. The role of projection in love will be one of our themes in the next lecture. The point here is simply that a person who is totally unaware of such projections will be unable to love because he or she will invariably be drawn to a false image of the other person. Any "oneness" that develops between people who are not yet well-developed individuals is likely to be an imbalanced, and therefore unstable, form of love.

If the deepest forms of love cannot happen until the individual-the "butterfly" in the guiding myth of our course-emerges from the "cocoon" of personal growth, then what role (if any) does the community play in our love relationships? In philosophy, the "individualistic" and "communitarian" approaches are often contrasted, usually by those who wish to argue that one is somehow truer or more authentic than the other. western scholars tend to favor individualism, whereas Eastern scholars usually prefer communitarianism. But the truth is that both "isms"-the notion that the individual is primary and the notion that the community is primary-are based on a rationalistic perversion of the reality of the human soul. For in truth, the community exists primarily to produce individuals; if it fails in this, its highest task, then it is not true community. And individuals exist solely in order to foster the highest value needed to develop community: love. The individual without love has, quite simply, not yet realized what it means to be an individual Self. For to be an individual is to love. And love cannot exist in its purest and most genuine form except between individuals in a community.

29. The Ideal Lover: An Impossible Dream?

Why is love such a difficult, paradoxical phenomenon? People often nurture a hidden hope of some day finding the "ideal lover", someone who is "just right", a "perfect match"; yet soon after that wonderful person shows up, he or she turns out to be as imperfect as the rest. In the previous lecture we saw that love can be regarded as the art of unifying opposites and that genuine love should be an expression of two well-developed individuals (two "whole persons") creating a new person out of their separate natures. Yet these two statements, taken together, create a paradox. For if a person actually succeeds in becoming "whole" (i.e., in unifying all opposites), then Tillich's definition would imply that there is no longer any need for love (i.e., no opposites left to unify). Before suggesting a way out of this paradox, I would like to supplement Fromm's account of the main differences between what I shall call "romantic love" and "genuine love". This will prepare us, once the paradox is resolved, to consider three specific questions: (1) whether (and if so, how) love can exist if we do not project our anima/animus archetype onto the one we love; (2) whether (and if so, how) an "ideal lover" is possible; and (3) whether love should be inclusive or exclusive.

The distinction between romantic love and genuine love is closely related to Fromm's distinction between the common but "mistaken" approach to love and the more appropriate, "artistic" approach. In addition to the four differences noted by Fromm (see Lecture 28), consider these important characteristics, listed in two columns for easy comparison:

Romantic love...	Genuine love...
1. Requires obstacles.	1. Enjoys freedom within bounds.
2. Views love as a feeling.	2. Views love as a commitment.
3. Depends on mutual projection.	3. Withdraws projections.
4. Tends to be short-term.	4. Tends to be long-term.
5. Believes it is mature.	5. Knows it is immature.
6. Says "I love you because ...".	6. Says "I love you although ...".

Let's discuss each of these contrasting characteristics in more detail.

A person never "falls in love" with someone who is easily accessible; an obstacle of some sort must exist in order for infatuation to occur. The bigger the obstacle, the more romantic the love is. The lovers might belong to different social classes, have different religious beliefs, be very different in age, speak different languages, or be married (to someone else). I'm sure you can think of many examples of such obstacles from the love stories you've heard. The intensity of the love relationship comes from the desire to overcome these obstacles. What the lovers don't realize is that when these obstacles disappear, so does the romantic feeling, because romance paradoxically depends on the very obstacles it seeks to overcome. Genuine love, by contrast, encourages freedom, in the sense that the unity between the lovers does not depend on the elimination (or preservation) of any particular obstacle. Instead, the intensity of the love is derived from a deeply satisfying communion that develops within a mutually agreed boundary. (You may recall that Part Three of The Tree associates boundaries with the basic principles that determine a distinct perspective. Although it is possible to break through a boundary, wisdom consists in learning to live happily on the boundary.)

The selection of an appropriate boundary for a genuine love relationship is a matter of the will. Love is therefore experienced as a deep form of commitment, freely chosen by both persons. Romance, by contrast, regards love as an uncontrollable feeling. The latter encourages the lovers to project their unintegrated anima/animus onto each other, whereas the former encourages the lovers to withdraw their projections in order to obtain a more accurate awareness both of themselves and of each other. As we have seen, the humility required to form this kind of commitment with another person requires an ego that is submitted to a higher power (variously called Self, God or love itself). Such humility always encourages wholeness. Lovers who are merely infatuated are likely to be so overpowered by their inclinations that they will have little interest in seeking mutual self-awareness and personal growth.

Because feelings fluctuate and projections are unpredictable, romance is nearly always short-term. In most cases, a purely romantic relationship (i.e., an infatuation) lasts no more than nine months-the length of a normal pregnancy. Relationships that last longer than this are likely to be based on some degree of commitment, at least as a supplement to the romantic inclinations. Pregnancy always changes the dynamics of a love-relationship in ways that make pure feeling a very unreliable foundation. Only in Hollywood films and romantic novels are we given the (quite false) impression that the passion accompanying the experience of "falling in love" can last a lifetime. In real life, a pregnancy that arises out of infatuation-based sex will end in tragedy (either abortion or a single mother), because romantic love alone cannot endure the thought of a new obstacle that will never go away (i.e., the child). As we shall see, there is an element of truth in the passion of romantic love; but it can be extremely dangerous if the crucial role of commitment is neglected. For only genuine love can be long-term, or indeed, life-long. With its devotion to encouraging personal growth in the lover, genuine love will last as long as the individuation process itself.

Finally, one of the best ways to determine whether a particular love relationship is genuine is to ask whether the lovers regard their love as mature. Paradoxically, infatuation usually "feels" completely mature, whereas genuine love will always be keenly aware of how far it still has to go before complete wholeness is reached. Lovers of the former type, being engrossed in mutual projections, usually see many wonderful qualities in each other. Thus, they are likely to tell each other "I love you because ...", where the checklist might include statements relating to the lover's beauty, kindness or other positive qualities. Lovers of the latter type, however, are more likely to see the genuine weaknesses and defects in the lover. But, instead of this being a reason to end the relationship, genuine lovers learn to tolerate such problems. By saying "I love you although ...", they are able to help each other work through such weaknesses on the road to wholeness.

This comparison suggests a way of resolving the initial paradox, concerning how a "whole person" could love, if all opposites are already unified. As long as a person is still alive in human form, "whole" must mean "progressing well on the path to wholeness". This would mean the whole person is the one whose ability to love is more highly developed, in contrast to the one whose personal growth is somehow being blocked. On a deeper level, the humility that accompanies wholeness encourages us to realize that both romantic love and genuine love can be expressions of mature love, because love itself has these two irreducible aspects. Whereas genuine love is committed, steady, and sure of itself, romantic love is passionate, sudden, and unpredictable. Our foregoing comparison has treated these as if they are neatly separable; but in real life, either without the other is incomplete.

The highest form of human love aims to balance the passionate, romantic impulse with a more dispassionate, wiser approach to loving. In terms of the hand symbolism briefly mentioned in Lecture 23, romantic feeling corresponds to the "ring" finger (the weakest of the five), whereas the commitment of genuine love corresponds to the thumb (the strongest), thus providing a stabilizing factor that can balance all four psychological functions. When romance and genuine love work properly together, love fulfills an integrating function in a person's personality. But if they try to work separately, the inevitable result is that love dies. This raises an interesting question: which of love's two movements-the earthly, "horizontal" movement of romance, or the heavenly, "vertical" movement of genuine love-should develop first in a relationship?

To answer this question, let's recall Tillich's distinction between the four Greek words for love (see TP, Figure 25.2): epithymia (sexual attraction), philia (friendship), eros (desire for something valuable), and agape (self-sacrifice for something lacking in value). I believe these four types of love represent mutually interdependent levels of love's manifestation in human life that correspond in pairs to the romantic-genuine distinction (see the axes on Figure X.1). In one sense the levels move from the most basic form of love (sexual attraction) to the most advanced (self-sacrifice). Yet each of the four kinds of love can be either shallow and immature or deep and mature, depending on whether they are isolated from or integrated with the other forms.

Figure X.1: Two Versions of Love's Maturation Cycle

Romantic love normally begins with a primarily physical attraction or sexual passion; it matures as it moves from there to friendship (philia), transforming eventually into a purer love of beauty (or some other form of eros), and finally learns to accept even what is unlovable (agape). Love that begins at the opposite end, by contrast, can develop and mature from a naive agape into a more mature expression that also includes the other types; but it can also remain isolated and immature just as easily as romantic love can. Whereas immature romance results in infatuation; immature agape results in fanaticism. Note that these two patterns of development are pictured in Figure X.1 as being cyclical, with romance corresponding to the outer cycle, and genuine love to the inner. This implies that genuine love does not end with sexual union, but moves on to a deeper commitment to self-sacrifice, just as the sexual side of romance is enriched once it is expanded to include agape. Unfortunately, the fourth step in each of these cycles is often extraordinarily difficult to take. In any case, these examples illustrate that love matures (and grows deeper) the more we expand to new levels, regardless of which point marks the initial stage of a love relationship.

Turning now to the first of the three questions mentioned at the outset of this lecture, let us consider whether (and if so, how) it is possible to love someone of the opposite sex without projecting our anima/animus onto that person. As we have seen, romantic love always involves projecting an incomplete or imbalanced part of oneself (what Jung calls the anima/animus archetype) onto one's lover. This means a person who falls in love is actually admiring his or her own self, more than the other person. Some of the positive qualities lovers see in each other may not be present at all. This is why a person can look so different as soon as the infatuation ceases: withdrawing the projection often causes people to "fall out of love". As we saw in Week VI, projection not only keeps us from deepening our own self-awareness, but also prevents us from developing a real relationship with the other person.

In order for genuine love to develop, projections must be withdrawn. Yet how can love survive without projections? They are, after all, what give love its passionate, enticing flavor. How can our "drive towards unity" continue, if we do not project part of ourselves onto the other person? An important clue to answering this question can be derived from the notion that "living in a myth" can be good, if we are aware that it is a myth (see Lecture 11 and TP, Ch.2). Like myths, projection is not always negative, provided we are aware of it when it happens. For example, when lecturing, I often intentionally project aspects of myself onto the students. This helps me be more enthusiastic, more interesting, and more challenging in my lectures. If at these times I were not aware of the projection, I might form all kinds of wrong opinions about my students' abilities or personalities. But because I know what is happening, I can withdraw the projection when necessary (for example, when determining students' grades) and see them more objectively. In other words, forming an ideal image of my students can have clear benefits, as long as I do not expect them to live up to that image. Like all myths, projection is only unhealthy when we mistakenly interpret it as the true reality.

Projections can sometimes serve an important purpose in the economy of the soul (see SM 220-221). Our foregoing discussion of the manifold nature of love suggests that projection may sometimes be needed to balance other types of love in the process of becoming mature. If we ruthlessly cut off any projection we come across, we shall cause more harm than good in the long run, killing the opportunity for genuine love to develop in the very act of trying to force it into existence. A healthier approach is to allow our projections to continue as long as our soul gives them life, but to do so with a full awareness of what is happening. This awareness should enable us to guard against the danger of misjudging another person as actually possessing the characteristics we are projecting. It can help us recognize that there is another, truer person there, behind the anima/animus we have projected onto their persona. It will also prepare us for the insight to "drop" when we realize what part of ourselves we are projecting and seek to integrate it into our personality.

This happened to me, for instance, when I became aware of a strange tendency to be attracted to girls with crooked teeth. This struck me as a profound insight when I first realized this common factor in the girls who tend to excite my anima-projection. Objectively, crooked teeth should make a girl less attractive, so why does it tend to stimulate my anima? Apparently, I have repressed some quality that such girls tend to possess. One possibility is that having crooked teeth is likely to make a girl more discrete in how she speaks, not wanting to show her teeth too much. I, on the other hand, sometimes talk too much or at inappropriate times. Recognizing this characteristic of my anima has prompted me to pay more attention to when and how I should speak-especially when it comes to "sinking my teeth" into someone by criticizing how they are doing something I think could be done better. Knowing I am the one with "crooked teeth" not only helps me be more cautious in such situations (lest my own "crookedness" come to the surface), it also helps me understand and cope with the otherwise irrational attractions I might have to certain kinds of people.

An important point to note here is that projection can play strange tricks on lovers who are unaware of their projections. First, the mutual projection is likely to fade away after the lovers are married, for as Plato points out in his classic dialogue on love, Symposium, we love something (in the sense of eros) only as long as we do not possess it. Once all obstacles have been cleared away and replaced by a sense of "having" the other person, the feeling of passion the couple had previously identified as "love" falls away. This is why so many people believe their lover "changed" after the wedding. What changed is that the main obstacle to their unity was removed, so the projection no longer became as exciting.

The problem is that marriage does not magically remove a person's psychological need to project. For this reason, anyone whose love is based solely on a romantic anima/animus projection is not likely to remain married for very long. After the wedding, the tendency to project is naturally transferred to someone else. The high divorce rate in western countries is surely a symptom of the tendency to equate such projection with "true love". When "Mr. Perfect" or "Miss Right" turns out not to be so flawless after all, the person inevitably thinks he or she sees someone else who really would be an "ideal lover".

This brings us to the second of our three questions: is this hope for an ideal lover just an impossible dream, or is there something genuine about it? Is it good to look for a "perfect partner"? I believe the best answer to such questions is (once again) yes and no. Figure X.2 shows how this question can be answered from four perspectives that arise out of the four types of love specified in Figure X.1:

Figure X.2: Is There an Exclusive "Ideal Lover"?

These four perspectives on the search for an ideal lover arise out of the two oppositions between oneself and others and between an internal and an external ideal. Each perspective not only provides us with a distinct way of looking at the possibility of an ideal lover, but also suggests a unique response to the third question, regarding the exclusivity of love.

From a religious perspective, an ideal lover does exist in one very important sense: God is the true and proper object of all our projections of ideal love. The whole Bible, for example, could be interpreted as the story of the love affair between God and humanity. As the perfect "Other" who lives within us, God personifies all the best possible qualities a lover could have. God's love is the highest and purest form of self-sacrifice, known as agape. In one sense, this love is exclusive, for God is portrayed as being "jealous" of any competitors: "You shall have no other gods before me" (Ex. 20:3,5). Yet in another sense, God's love is all-inclusive, encompassing the whole world (see e.g., John 3:16-17) and encouraging people to share self-sacrificial love as widely as possible (1 John 4:7-8).

In this way religious (agape) love points to and makes possible a humanistic perspective on love that includes everyone: "altruism" is the name sometimes given to the view that every human being should be accorded an equal right to our love. Of the four types of love described by Tillich, philia (friendship) is the one closest to altruism. Ideally, we should be willing (though perhaps not able) to befriend any and every human being. What this means, however, is that we can never expect to find one person who will be "the ideal friend". Such a hope would go against the humanistic perspective's aim of encouraging us to love everyone more or less equally. Together with the religious perspective, this humanistic perspective constitutes the vertical axis on Figure X.2 and corresponds to what I have been calling "genuine love".

The horizontal axis, corresponding to "romantic love", is composed of a similar pair of interacting perspectives: the psychological and the sexual. As we have seen, an ideal lover does exist psychologically, in the sense that every time you fall in love with another person, you are actually loving your own anima/animus projection. Like God, this ideal is exclusive, inasmuch as the only solution to the problem of projection is to learn to love yourself as you are-i.e., to have enough self-esteem (eros) to see all values as residing within your Self. This is what "personal growth" is all about! Love is painful only when we fail to understand that there is no ideal value (nothing worthy of our eros) outside of the Self. All too often, the pain of trying to overcome difficulties in relating to someone to whom we feel sexually attracted causes us to retract from the relationship and give up all hope of expressing our love. Yet this pain can be a good thing, if, instead of blaming the other person for whatever went wrong, we take it as a sign that we need to reflect more deeply on our own character (especially our anima/animus).

Sexual love (epithymia) is essentially an inclusive form of love. This might sound shocking at first, since we normally think of sex as the most intimate possible expression of love between two and only two people. And such it is. But what we tend to forget (thanks to modern developments in contraception) is that the primary biological purpose of sex is to have children. Sex therefore implicitly includes at least one other person: the potential child. But because of the close connection between sexual love and psychological projection, there is also a sense in which any person is a potential lover. Perhaps the fundamental paradox of all love is that romantic love seeks sexual fulfillment, yet does not provide us with the commitment needed to perform the sex act in a responsible way; genuine love, by contrast, is highly committed, but on its own has no desire for sexual fulfillment. This is why, as we have seen, the two ways of thinking about love (i.e., "romance" vs. "genuine") should not be regarded as totally opposing each other, but as complementary aspects of the most complete approach to love.

All human relationships have a sexual aspect (see SM 170). In primitive cultures, this fact is usually not denied, as it tends to be in most modern cultures. After noting that in many primitive societies sexual promiscuity outside of marriage "is nothing-everyone knows that every [spouse] has done that", so nobody keeps their affairs a secret, Jung comments on our modern tendency to hide the fact that being in love with and/or married to one person does not stop us from being attracted to someone else (DA 23): "This hiding away from friends destroys society; secrecy is anti-social, destructive, a cancer in our society." Later he adds (27): "And I am disconnected from society when I am disconnected from those I love." The solution to this is not to practice "free sex", as the failed experiment of the 1960s showed. Rather, as I shall suggest in Lecture 30, something like free chastity between a selection of close friends would be a far more effective means of acknowledging our sexuality without neglecting personal growth.

30. Therapeutic Friendship

"Love is the most powerful spiritual force in the universe." Many (if not most) people would say they support this statement (quoted from EP 19). But how many really believe it? For those who do, it should have a profound impact on how we go about trying to solve problems-both our own and the larger problems of society. If the modern tendency to solve problems by seeking "professional help" is part of the disease, as seems apparent from our discussion of psychotherapy in Lecture 27, then perhaps we need to take seriously the possibility that a deeper faith in the healing power of love shared between family and friends will do more for us than having easy access to a whole army of well-trained therapists!

If healing takes place through a course of psychotherapy, if a person is helped to unify the opposites that are causing some distress, then surely the power of love must somehow have been tapped. Many psychologists from Freud onwards have made this observation (see e.g., LIPN 27,179-180; RLT 174-175). But instead of encouraging us to put more emphasis on the need for therapy (which Peck regards as "a legitimate shortcut to personal growth" [56]), this insight-that psychotherapy is a form of friendship on demand-should awaken us to the profound therapeutic value of all friendship. Friendship heals. Therapy as an expression of friendship (i.e., as love in the form of philia) works only because friendship itself is naturally therapeutic. Peck recognizes this connection in his best-selling book, The Road Less Traveled, when he says (178): "Any genuinely loving relationship is one of mutual psychotherapy." Whether or not professional therapists are perverting genuine love by accepting money for their services (as suggested in Lecture 27), we can learn from them important guidelines for loving our family and friends.

Peck's book makes a significant contribution to our understanding of love, defining it (RLT 81) as: "The will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth." As such, love is hard work (130) that transcends feelings (118-119) in a self-disciplined attempt to face the suffering that life puts on our path (18). Peck points out (133) that "the attempt to avoid legitimate suffering lies at the root of all emotional illness." A neurotic will do this by "assum[ing] too much responsibility", while "the person with a character disorder"-i.e., a psychotic or an "evil" person-assumes "not enough" responsibility (35). Love empowers us to practice four distinct techniques of self-discipline that will enable us to overcome such problems (77). In logical order (using the symbols defined in TP, Ch.11) they are: delaying gratification (--), assuming responsibility (+-), dedication to truth/reality (-+), and balanced living (++). "Balance" here includes the need for "discipline itself [to] be disciplined" through acts of spontaneity (64).

Putting a religious twist on his psychology of love, Peck argues that "sin" is essentially the human tendency to be too lazy to conduct an "internal debate" before acting (272-273). Laziness, as a lack of interest in personal growth, is "nonlove"; it becomes evil, or "antilove", only when a person actively seeks to avoid growth (278). Spiritual growth is a difficult, uphill struggle on "the road less traveled", against the forces of laziness and evil that tend to weigh us down. It requires us to stop and think before we act, to broaden our conscious self-awareness by learning how "to know with our unconscious"-i.e., to be guided by the God within us (280-281). Once we learn to see "God's side of the issue", we usually find ourselves taking "the more difficult path" (273). Hence, the more we grow, the harder our decisions become (287): "To participate in God's omniscience is also to share in His agony."

The pain and agony that accompany all personal growth is not incompatible with friendship, but is (paradoxically) an essential feature of what makes friendship so enjoyable. For friendship is the most healthy (and perhaps the only proper) context for the psychopoesis (i.e., "soul-making") that is necessarily involved in overcoming evil (see Lectures 11 and 26). The therapist's job can be legitimized by regarding therapy not as the occasion for genuine love and friendship, but as a training ground in the skills of friendship. Along these lines, Peck suggests we view therapy as "a process of map-revising" (49), whereby the patient is empowered to become his or her own therapist (179). One of the key features of most people's "map" of life that needs to be revised is the idea that suffering is to be avoided at all costs. Therapists who understand this and are willing to be a temporary cauldron-a cooking-pot, for the patient's evil-should always aim to reeducate the patient into the virtues of friendship that have been largely forgotten or neglected in modern culture. The therapeutic relationship itself, however, lacks the mutuality necessary for friendship (see SM 94,207).

Friendship that neglects the wisdom of alchemy (i.e., the need to "stay with" a problem or an emotion until its transforming purpose comes to the surface [see Lecture 21]) tends to encourage one of two extreme (and illegitimate) responses to suffering: to cut off the love completely once a problem develops, or to give in to some obsessive desire (e.g., anger or sex) before the love has matured to the point where this level of intimacy becomes appropriate. To remain at the point of tension instead of forcing a resolution is certainly not the most comfortable option available to us in such situations, but it is the one that best promotes personal growth, and so, best nurtures the soul of any relationship (i.e., the "new person" emerging from the union of the two persons involved in the friendship). Along these lines, Merton quotes St. John of the Cross on the "living flame of love": "the office of love is to wound, that it may enkindle with love and cause delight" (CP 86).

Friends who are not willing to wound each other when necessary are not genuine friends. For as we have seen, genuine love begins only when the "old self" (the caterpillar) has died, and a new, spiritually-whole person (the butterfly) has been freed to take its place (cf. 88). This wounded aspect of all genuine love, with its source in the dread created by our experience of the soul's dark side, is what prevents love from being mere sentimentality (108). Dread purifies us by turning a person "completely inside out, so that he no longer has a self to defend" (109). This defeats the spirit of individualism that threatens to destroy the potential for the communion of true love. "The way that leads through dread goes not to despair but to perfect joy" (110).

A love that transcends the boundaries of our individuality wounds us; yet in so doing it creates a New Being. Freud acknowledges this point with characteristic skepticism in Civilization and Its Discontents:

At the height of being in love the boundary between ego and object threatens to melt away. (CID 13)

... we are never so defenceless against suffering as when we love, never so helplessly unhappy as when we have lost our love object or its love. (29)

A small minority are enabled by their constitution to find happiness, in spite of everything, along the path of love. (48)

What Freud misses is the fact that happiness is not the same as joy. The former requires pleasure and self-gratification, whereas the latter can thrive in the midst of great suffering, provided there is an atmosphere of spiritual growth toward wholeness.

The merging of persons that Freud interprets as a "threat" can, of course, be a negative sign of infatuation or fanaticism; but it can also be a good and proper sign of maturity. For as Dwight Small says (HSLY 149): "Love at its highest is a communion of spirits." Let me illustrate this by referring back to the theory of human nature I introduced in Lecture 4 (see Figure II.2). When two human beings come together to form a spiritual unity, neither their bodies nor their minds are literally united (except perhaps for brief moments, as in sexual intercourse or telepathic communication). Instead, the source of their unity is in their spirits. If each person is represented by a circle, then the New Being that arises out of their love can be pictured as two interlocking circles, linked together on the dividing line of their united spirit. Such "communion" is

a transcending of individuality that produces synergy (a wholeness that is greater than the sum of the parts). For the two persons are no longer merely "circles". Each now adds a new dimension to the other (see Figure X.3): their negative spirits form the outline of a sphere.

Metz and Burchill promote the use of the term "kithing" to refer to what friends do when they share their hearts together in intimacy (EP 107-110). Two important

Figure X.3: Love as a

Communion of Spirits

qualities in such a friendship, they claim, are an openness to receive from the other person and a thankful heart. (See John 14:23 and 17:21 for good examples of how Jesus exemplifies these by praying for his friends just before his death.) A common religious commitment is invaluable in such situations, because the friends can then jointly submit their spirits to a higher power in prayer. The best "kithing partner" (so we are told) is likely to be someone whose Enneagram type is "in your good space" (109; but cf. SM 95)-i.e., the type with an arrow pointing toward your type (see Figure VIII.8).

One of the best recent portrayals of the joy of friendship comes in Thomas Moore's book, Soul Mates. "A soul mate", he explains (SM xvii), "is someone to whom we feel profoundly connected, as though the communicating and communing that take place between us were not the product of intentional efforts, but rather a divine grace." Throughout his extensive discussion of this "rare form of intimacy" that is "not limited to one person or to one form", Moore emphasizes its paradoxical nature. Thus he contrasts the "soul" and the "spirit" in a way that closely corresponds to the distinction I made in Lecture 4 between positive and negative spirit. The opposition between these two is what produces psychic energy: the negative spirit defines the soul and hence preserves the individual, while the positive spirit transcends earthly "soulish" life and has its life in God alone (see Figure X.3). "Soul" is the dark, "valley" part of a person that prefers attachment to earthly things and persons, while "spirit" is the light, "peak" aspect that prefers detachment (SM 4-5). When problems arise, "soul asks that we live through our attachments", whereas spirit prefers "swift, clean breaks" (6-7). A truly "soulful" life is one lived in the tension between these two natural human drives (18), and a "soul mate" is a person who "honor[s] the mysteries" of a relationship, staying with it despite the changes that occur as it develops.

As a quasi-Jungian analyst, Moore sees the roots of soul-relationships in the unconscious; they therefore tend to be imaginative, messy, irrational, and bound not by "simple judgments of good and bad" (xiv), so much as by "what is nutritious and what isn't" (79). He compares the process of working on a relationship to alchemy's patient willingness to repeat the same processes, the same mistakes, over and over again until the long-awaited transformation finally occurs (see xv,68,249-258). Soul mates do not expect each other to be perfect; rather, their intimacy deepens the more they are willing to tolerate the soul's "unreasonable demands" (32), the more they are able "to bring the endless fertility of imagination to whatever is under consideration" (35). For "true change takes place in the imagination" (42). Hence the transformation to a joyful way of life, characterized by love, is in the end a dream (rather than a concrete realization) of wholeness-but a dream to be cherished.

Moore's book is filled with insights and suggestions on how to develop soulful relationships. For instance, he shows how letter-writing can have the same role in friendship as dream-interpretation (or any dialogue with the unconscious) has for our personal individuation (115-134; cf. Lecture 2). He also explores the paradoxical character of "community": the two "tests" of true "conviviality" ("living together") are the allowance of genuine individuality (rather than just "hold[ing] to a party line") and an affectionate relationship of "working together" (106). On this topic, Ivan Illich's Tools of Conviviality offers a radical critique of numerous friendship-destroying trends in modern society. He defines "conviviality" as "autonomous and creative intercourse among persons" (TC 11). This works best in a society where the tools are "least controlled by others. People feel joy, as opposed to mere pleasure, to the extent that their activities are creative" (20). "People must learn to live within bounds.... It is impossible to teach joyful renunciation in a world totally structured for higher output" (65). The joy here is the joy of agape. The closer future societies come to realizing Illich's ideal of preventing unlimited economic growth and replacing it with a more sensitive, loving approach to political and economic issues, the less "need" there will be for psychotherapy; people will be able to grow toward wholeness once again through their friendships at work.

Moore also emphasizes the importance of honoring the family (SM 83), noting "a parallel between the human experience of family and the very nature of divinity: we are most divine when we are sexual couples and when we have a family." As we have seen, this is partly because having sex produces, or is meant to produce, a third member of the love relationship: "procreation" is thereby "the greatest mystery of human life" (83). If it comes as part of a proper and healthy exchange of sexual intimacy, between two people who share a genuine love for each other, and not merely as an "accident" that happens as a result of a mutual desire for self-gratification through sensual pleasure, the birth of a child can deepen and strengthen the love bond far beyond its previous bounds. Perhaps this is part of the symbolism intended by the biblical maxim that "a cord of three strands is not quickly broken" (Eccl. 4:12).

A good marriage relationship, Moore tells us, must go far deeper than mere conscious choice (SM 46); it must acknowledge the "mystery" of marriage as "a sacred symbolic act." Like dreams, marriage "is as devilish as it is angelic" (51). After discussing how marriage is portrayed in various myths, Moore recommends that spouses make full use of the imagination by protecting and feeding each other's fantasies of love with "small acts" that evoke the eternal (52-53,84). Being itself a form of individuation, marriage also has its dark side (55-56): "marriage is as much about division as it is union." It is "a vessel in which soul-making can be accomplished" (57), "an invitation to open the Pandora's box of soul's graces and perversities" (59). In myths (as in dreams) this dark side is often represented by animals, symbolizing the animal side of human nature. True intimacy in marriage requires each spouse to slay the dragon of their original ideals regarding the nature of marriage, in the recognition that the soul's logic (i.e., "psycho-logy") often seems irrational and unpredictable. A marriage founded in the deep mysteries of fate and synchronicity will be far more stable than one based merely on the analysis of choices (61). The former, soulful approach to marriage can be regarded as a culturally-sanctioned "dream of wholeness".

Sadly, as Jung points out (DA 27), "absence of communion is a general social problem which becomes evident in almost every marriage." This happens when the proper oneness of a marriage relationship is reduced to sameness (i.e., unity without diversity); this not only makes true intimacy impossible (cf. SM 60), but is also used as an excuse for the partners to stop growing as individuals:

[The] marital relation is not what people expect of it-an individual relationship, and it is exceedingly difficult to create one in marriage.... You live with [your spouse] and after a while you assimilate each other and grow alike. Everything that lives together is influenced one by the other, there is a participation mystique ... This identity, this clinging together, is a great hindrance to individual relationship. If identical, no relationship is possible ... Perhaps the two hide their secrets from each other; if they admitted them they might be able to establish a relationship. Or perhaps they have no secrets to share ... (DA 63).

Unfortunately, most western (individualistic) methods of psychotherapy do little to remedy this problem. Torrey points out that non-western psychotherapists, by contrast, "almost always have family members" participate in the healing process (WP 104). As a result (105), "therapists in other cultures become deeply involved with the social stresses of their community." This model seems far healthier as a way of validating the profession of psychotherapy than the model that sees therapists on their own as charged with the task of loving individual patients.

Although friendship has the potential to reach its greatest depth within a family setting, the family must not be regarded as the sole context for therapeutic friendship. As Moore puts it, "when we idealize the family, we also demonize it" (SM 76). In one sense, the whole human race is our family. This is why (as we saw in Lecture 29) the question of exclusivity in love relationships is so important. Instead of worrying about whether I am the only person my friend or family member loves, my first concern should be with whether or not our relationship is pure, or "chaste". Chastity is often taken to refer solely to sexual abstention; but at a deeper level it refers to "a form of loving, a way of letting others into your life" such that sexual impurity or political power-games do not prevent us from enjoying "the sheer, erotic pleasure of another's company" (108-109). The insistence that a friendship be exclusive is all too often evidence of a desire to dominate the other person's life in a way that inhibits, rather than promotes, personal growth.

Interestingly, our family is where our dark side shows most frequently and most easily. A person who gives everyone "on the outside" the impression of never being angry can be a raging tyrant at home. A "good listener" may have an extremely difficult time holding a conversation with a spouse or child. The most generous of your classmates may be extraordinarily stingy with his or her siblings. In one sense this is natural, because home, if anywhere, is the place where we ought to be able to "be ourselves". But what we must recognize is that both of any two conflicting personality traits you may notice in yourself are genuine, and need to be given their proper place. The reason for this should become more clear if we picture the soul as being like a giant vat containing both love and hate, both feeling and commitment, as well as innumerable other opposites. In order to let anything out of the vat, we must open the lid, thus risking that the opposite will also emerge.

Friendship and family (kith and kin) are crucial to psychological health because these relationships are the ones where we ought to be free to leave the "lid" of our psychic "vat" wide open, in the hope that oppositions such as feeling and commitment can be balanced. If we stop viewing the family as a place that is supposed to exhibit "perfect peace and harmony", and instead view it as a crucible where all the dross of our life can be burnt away in the purifying fire of openness to ourselves and to each other, then and only then will our family serve to bring us closer to the goal of wholeness. Strange though it may sound, we must learn to enjoy the struggles experienced at home, knowing they can and will lead in the end to the personal growth of all those concerned, if we let them.

As you finalize your dream diary project in preparation for submitting it next week, you may wish to take note of the fact that nearly all my examples in this course have been taken from my own dreams, as illustrations of my personal growth. The purpose of this is to encourage the two virtues that together can help us overcome the problem of lovelessness in our society (to which psychotherapy is a response): openness and respect for the privacy of others. Most psychology books have few if any examples from the therapist/author about his or her own personal growth, but normally take their examples from other people's stories. This is itself a manifestation of the misuse of love that tends to be fostered by our modern love affair with psychotherapy. Even Jung's works have precious little insight into his own personal growth. Only at the end of his life, in his autobiography, does he tell his own story-a fact that makes Memories, Dreams, Reflections the best of all his books, the only one that shows us the four stages of his "butterfly" as they developed.

In conclusion, it's worth noting that friendship-in-conversation is actually the essence of good philosophy. This, and not merely the logical rigor of his reasoning, is the primary lesson to be learned from the profound influence of Socrates on western thought (see TP, Ch.4). Plato's Dialogues changed the face of philosophy because they arose out of the insights obtained by groups of friends talking with each other about life's most important issues, and risking in the process the transformation of their entire worldview. Here, with a philopsychic recognition of the supreme value of therapeutic friendship, the "butterfly" of our psyche and the "tree" of philosophy become one!

QUESTIONS/TOPICS FOR GROUP DISCUSSION

1. What's the difference between 'happiness" and "joy"?

2. Is love eternal?

3. Describe your idea of a "perfect match" (i.e., your ideal partner).

4. Tell your favorite love story, and explain why it is meaningful to you.