LITMIR.BIZ

      Transformation of the Self in love: new intense internal processes, a new perception of the external world, going beyond of the Self, being in the image of the Self-ideal, interaction with the ideal image of a partner.

      Passion

      Passion or an irresistible desire to get closer to the object of love has a sexual and romantic component. In psychology, sexuality is associated with erotic arousal, attraction, and behavior towards people of the opposite sex. These physiological and behavioral reactions are well studied, and the center of their attraction is the so-called human sexual response cycle.

      The characteristic stages of the cycle of sexual pleasure are the arousal phase for certain erotic stimuli, plateau phase, orgasm, and relief. Average cycle times are 3 to 7 minutes. After reading these medical details of sexual intercourse, anyone who has experienced love will feel that something most important has been missed, perhaps because it is difficult to express in words, much less to measure. But what certainly raises suspicion is the adequacy of the scale of psychological stopwatches. The fact is that erotic caresses and the plateau phase in sexual intercourse can be felt as endless pleasure, and physiological cycles can stretch immensely in time or immediately resume. Lovers can involuntarily plunge into a state of subtle vibrations, an analog of which is purposefully achieved in tantric practices. We will return to the discussion of these and other features of the sexual element of passion in the section Sexual Activity, but now we will turn our attention to the romantic component of passion.

      The romantic ingredient in passionate attraction is associated with an increased intensity of emotional reactions and a stormy activation of the imagination of partners, inspired by love.

      The content of fantasies embracing lovers is filled with the idealization of everything that surrounds them, with heroic images, adventure plots, and sometimes with mystical insights. It is no coincidence that lovers are so susceptible to fortune-telling, omens, and other mysterious rituals. The underlying basis of these processes can be described in terms of the concept of archetypes proposed by the founder of analytical psychology, Carl Gustav Jung.

      Hidden layers of our psyche, which are formed by the collective unconscious, open before the inspired Self of the lover. These experiences are reflected in consciousness by certain archetypal images and symbols (seeker, warrior, magician, sage, jester, creator, ruler, Don Juan, etc.), which push its usual boundaries and stimulate the expansion of the lover’s personality. Hence follows the various romantic obsessions of lovers: creative inspiration, ardent affection, willingness to eliminate any rival or offender, actions involving unjustified risks, wanderings, and other unusual states and deeds. Stormy mental processes in a state of romantic attraction in the recent past were mistaken for mania, insanity, mental disorder. This terminology, albeit in a somewhat simplified sense, is still used today to describe falling in love in both fiction and scientific literature.

      In psychology, the romance of being in love is traditionally viewed within the framework of attachment theory, which relies on patterns of mother-child relationships. In 1979, psychologist Dorothy Tennov expanded attachment theory with the concept of limerence to characterize a special romantic state that suddenly fills the minds of lovers and is experienced by them, as a rule, prior to the implementation of sexual intercourse. In the process of forming attachment to a limerent object, emotions of adoration and admiration involuntarily arise, accompanied by uninvited “obsessive thoughts, feelings and behaviors from euphoria to despair contingent on perceived emotional reciprocation.” The state of limerence can be quite long, but it is unstable and turns into a caringly tender relationship of partners or spouses. However, its irreversible sad extinction is also possible.

      Such a case about two centuries ago was vividly described by Nikolai Karamzin in Poor Liza: “Their dates continued; but how everything has changed! Erast could no longer be content with only the innocent caresses of his Lisa – her glances filled with love – one touch of the hand, one kiss, one pure embrace. He wished for more, more, and, finally, could not desire anything – and whoever knows his heart, who has contemplated the nature of his most tender pleasures, will certainly agree with me that the fulfillment of all desires is the most dangerous temptation of love. Liza was no longer for Erast this angel of purity, which had previously inflamed his imagination and delighted his soul.”

      This love story is also significant in that other horizons were opening up for Erast, and he conceived a noble transformation of his Self: “All the brilliant fun of the great world seemed to him insignificant in comparison with the pleasures that this passionate friendship of an innocent soul nourished his heart. With disgust, he thought of contemptuous voluptuousness, which used to be his pleasure before. ‘I will live with Liza, like brother and sister,’ he thought, ‘I will not use her love for evil, and I will always be happy!’”

      Perhaps the case of Erast can be declared a common noun for all those cases when the impulses of a soul in love are noble, but the mind and will of love for the transformation of the personality are too weak. Observing the cases of Erast, one can only lament after Nikolai Karamzin: “Reckless young man! Do you know your heart? Can you always be responsible for your movements? Is reason always the king of your feelings?”

      The question of understanding oneself and the ability of self-interpretation is more acute than ever in a state of love, and perhaps here either a big step is being taken towards the ancient call “Know thyself”, or our Self becomes even more fragmented and settles in the dark corners of consciousness.

      Not long before Karamzin, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe asked the question of “what is the human heart” in his famous novel The Sorrows of Young Werther.

      Perfectly aware of the devilish power of fantasies that “people would suffer much less if they did not develop the power of imagination in themselves so diligently,” Werther nevertheless becomes a victim of his own irresistible passion. He is forced to admit: “A man will always remain a man, and that grain of reason, which he, perhaps, possesses, almost or does not matter at all when passion rages and he becomes cramped within the framework of human nature.” Goethe paints a heartfelt picture of a pure passion, as Napoleon put it, “great passion”, which almost entirely grows only from the hero’s romantic fantasies, but this does not become less suicidal. It is no coincidence that Werther feels a kindred spirit in children and is touched by their “innocent persistence of desires.”

      What could be the reason for such an exceptional destructive passion? If we assume, as Werther’s beloved does, that the reason for this is the very fact of her inaccessibility, then the whole point is in the manic obsession of desire. However, Werther’s incurable suffering is different. He finds himself in a double trap: passion deprives him of reason and thus of human nature, but the belittling of passion will mean the loss of his own unique human appearance. Werther’s sensitive heart knows that high passion subjugates the soul, and when “nature cannot find a way out of the tangled labyrinth of contradictory forces”, man dies.

      Another extreme manifestation of passion is its overwhelming preoccupation with sexual arousal. However, as exciting as the sexual experience is, something tells lovers that the sexual component

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