We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love by Robert A. Johnson

The reason why I chose to read this book was because I wanted to understand, or perhaps the correct verb here is "acquire" a new perspective of romantic love, a psychological perspective that is. Although Robert A. Johnson is influenced and associated with Jungian Analysis (which I am not a fan of due to the mystical nature of some of his prepositions), this book did indeed enriched me with an additional perspective of romantic love.

I was a “prisoner” of romantic love once, a beautiful feeling and emotion you know, but as the noun describes it, I was nonetheless a prisoner of a subjective idealization of my romantic partner, which is quite dangerous as ideals most often do not reflect reality, especially adolescent premature subjective ones. This book refined my comprehension of anima, but also gave me a set of lenses to look at the past and reflect on the perspective I had upon my romantic partner, which ultimately influences my present perspective of love, romance, and interpersonal sexual partners positively.

Before starting with the review, I want to quote Eric Fromm and his piece “The Art of Loving” to empathize why romantic love is a feeling to enjoy and experience genuinely with, as it is one of the best feelings a human can feel (in my opinion), but nevertheless treat with prudence: “To be shown love is to feel ourselves the object of concern: our presence is noted, our name is registered, our views are listened to, our failings are treated with indulgence and our needs are ministered to. And under such care, we flourish.” -Erich Fromm

Now, the review:

Romantic life is the single greatest energy system in the Western psyche. In our culture it has supplanted religion as the arena in which men and women seek meaning, transcendence, wholeness, and ecstasy.

I absolutely agree with this. Besides poverty and the rocks it vehemently throws at you, Love is the second (sometimes even the first) most powerful impetus in humans. People do things for the people they love, whether it is family, friends, romantic partners, sexual partners, and even pets. Depending on the idiosyncrasy of each culture, humans tend to even sacrifice their own life and time, whether instantly or periodically, for the people they love. We take risks for the people we love, and sometimes vouch blindly for them.

For romantic love doesn’t just mean loving someone; it means being “in love”. This is a psychological phenomenon that is very specific. When we are “in love” we believe we have found the ultimate meaning of life, revealed in another human being. We feel we are finally completed, that we have found the missing parts of ourselves. Life suddenly seems to have a wholeness, a super-human intensity that lifts us high above the ordinary plain of existence. For us, these are the sure signs of “true love”. The psychological package includes an unconscious demand that our lover or spouse always provide us with this feeling of ecstasy and intensity.

Couldn’t say it better myself. This is exactly why the impetus of Love compels us to act irrationally vehemently in order to maintain such feeling, such drug.

A myth is true : it is not true in the outer, physical sense, but it is an accurate expression of a psychological situation, of the inner condition of the psyche. Though a dream expresses the dynamics within an individual, a myth expresses the dynamics within the collective mind of a society, culture, or race.

I just like this definition of “myth”, never say it that way. Basically, myths are collective freudian slips?

We eat and drink too much, we get captured by moods, we have headaches. If we learned to live the Feminine in a more conscious way, the sales of aspirin would fall drastically. We need to learn to take a walk in the sunshine and see the colors of the earth, to respect our physical bodies, to wake up to the music in life, to listen to our dreams, to show affection to the people we love. Then we can make peace; we will no longer find the Morholt at our doors, no longer find the sword at our throats.

Basically, what I gather as the crux of this quote is the ability to understand that we are human creatures simpler than what we think, but abstract in our idiosyncrasy, which gives us our beauty.

There comes a time in life when a man’s ego doesn’t have the answers. He doesn’t know enough; he doesn’t have the resources needed to resolve an impossible situation. Wherever Tristan searched, no one in Cornwall could heal his sickness. At such times a man must relinquish control. He needs to remember Tristan’s words: “I would like to try the sea that brings all chances… To what land no matter, so that it heal me of my wound.” He needs to give himself over to the unconscious and drift with its tides until he finds an island of new consciousness for that era of his life.

Sometimes our Id demands actions that might halt progress, but in such moments one has to really analyze not only the reasoning behind such demands, because trust me, there are reasons for such demands, but also the ramifications, and perhaps availability of such actions in one’s time. The positive result of these moments are that they reveal or show you slightly the correct path by showing you the incorrect one.

"Only what is separated may be properly joined." When two things are muddled together they need to be separated, distinguished, and untangled so that they may later be rejoined in a workable synthesis. This is the correct meaning of “analysis “ in psychology; to analyze is to separate out the entangled threads of one’s inner life-the confused values, ideals, loyalties, and feelings-so that they may be synthesized in a new way. Analysis must always serve synthesis in order to serve life; what is taken apart must be put back together again.

Compartmentalization, that’s the word I’m looking for that best applies here. When you compartmentalize, you inevitably acknowledge and locate the attributes that make that thing different from the others within a system, which is the first step of learning about such a system. You can go further and compartmentalize each attribute of the system, such action gives the power to control it as you possess a map of the system, you know what to modify, add, remove, alter, enhance, extend, etc. This happens quite often in life; we are unaware of the systematic procedures of a system, the first step to escape such an oblivious situation (powerless) is to compartmentalize.

He sees, not Iseult, but a vision.

This statement is interesting to think about when one thinks of the ideal world, or perhaps one’s ideal situation in life. One can imagine such a situation, among other things, accompanied by someone one already is acquainted with. This person is included in this perfect world amongst oneself. She/he is included in the “vision”. This is quite romantic since we are unconsciously and indirectly saying that our perfect world, among other things, includes that person by our side. Imagine yourself attaining your dreams, who is celebrating alongside you?

In the Mexican love song quoted at the beginning of this chapter, we find all this condensed into a few lines. In the forthrightness of naive poetry the singer tells us what we don’t often acknowledge: “Always you were the reason for my existence; To adore you for me was religion.” When a human being becomes the object of this adoration, when the beloved has the power to “give light to our lives” or extinguish that light, then we have adopted the beloved as the image and symbol of God.

Learned this the pragmatic way…

Myths are filled with paradox because reality is inherently paradoxical. In Greek, paradox means literally “against opinion”; that is, a paradox rubs against our accepted notions of reality. We like to believe that we already know everything, that we have everything figured out; this is why true paradox is always painful. Paradox conflicts with our prejudices, challenges, our assumptions, and flies in the face of our collective “truths.”

This shows the vitality of being different, idiosyncratic, paradoxical. Becoming a paradox yourself challenges reality, public consensus, perception of yourself, you break expectations, rules, concepts, you divert from standards, from principles, and by doing all this, you express your true unique idiosyncratic self into the world. You cease being the sheep, and become the shepherd. A good agent to materialize such idiosyncrasy in the real world is the act of creating.

Symbols do not flow from the unconscious to tell us what we already know but to show us what we have yet to learn.

Have you ever thought about the functionality of a real-life phenomena, that at first glance, seems abstract, but as you continue to think and ruminate upon it, it starts to make sense? This act is what I associate with this quote. When one acquires an eureka moment, or an abstraction of the possible mappable functionality of a system, or phenomena, it is the moment to start learning the topics that orbit such phenomena in order to materialize such functionality in the real world.

A man is committed to a woman only when he can inwardly affirm that he binds himself to her as an individual and that he will be with her even when he is no longer “in love,” even when he and she are no longer afire with passion and he no longer sees in her his ideal of perfection or the reflection of his soul. When a man can say this inwardly, and mean it, then he has touched the essence of commitment. But he should know that he has an inner battle ahead of him.

This can apply to any type of passion, not only romantic passion, perhaps they (your significant other, and other types of passions) are quite similar in the sense of enjoyment and being “in love” with them. Just as with your significant other, your passion is something you are in love with at the beginning, however, after a while, it becomes monotonous, and this is where one ought to innovate within the passion in question, just as with your significant other, new experiences will ignite the light of that vestige of passion once existed, which although is not constant, it is necessary for the devotion to remain continuously. Bodies will deteriorate, topics will become boring, and new people will be encountered. One has to innovate to keep a passion interesting, creative, and functional.

Let us remember that the question is not whether we should praise romantic love or condemn it, keep it or throw it away. Our task is to make it a path to consciousness, to live the paradox honestly, to learn how to honor both of the worlds contained in romantic love: the divine world of Iseult of the White hands he rejects.

As soon as one understands that, there is zero idealism in love, and understand that Love is a simple ephemeral emotion but nevertheless can turn into a life alsting loyalty and fondness towards another human. One must blindly accept our romantic partners once committed. We ought to love and “blindly” accept our partner based on the communication and cognitive reliance we have on them. The trust. Each person involved in the bond has to relate to one another as individually humanly possible in order for the relationship to work.

For a man to love in the human way of the earth feminine means for him to direct his love to a mortal human being, not at the idealized image that he projects. It means for him to be related to the actual human being, to value her, to identify with her, to affirm her value and her sacredness as she is, in her totality-with her shadow side, her imperfections, and all that makes her an ordinary mortal.

This is how one should love another human being romantically. The bond, trust, and reliance that derives from this type of love makes you and your partner (if reciprocated) unstoppable.

I stopped reading the book after page 172 since Robert started to talk about souls, energies, and mystical characteristics of humans, which I blatantly repudiate.

To my significant other, which I assume to believe that I already know her, you are going to experience the best love experience a human can ever feel. I will make sure of that.

First Read: December 28, 2024