Love: Bondage or Liberation?: A Psychological Exploration of the Meaning, Values and Dangers of Falling in Love

This book explores how, and why, falling love affects us so profoundly? How can it produce such a broad spectrum of feelings, from hatred to altruism, from ecstasy to despair? Can it enlarge who we are or must it ultimately fade without lasting value? Deirdre Johnson is an experienced Jungian Analyst and draws on thirty years of teaching and giving workshops to trainee and professional counsellors and psychotherapists. She argues that the theories from psychoanalysts, relational psychologists, ethologists, neuroscientists, analytical psychologists, and philosophers all make valuable contributions to the theme, and she uses all of these approaches to highlight and explore the many values and dangers inherent in falling in love. She demonstrates how only a pluralistic approach can do justice to an understanding of passionate love in all its richness and complexity and she shows how this richer understanding can actively help a person on the journey of individuation. In this process, she claims, there can be no lasting happiness that does not also involve the happiness of those objective others within and outside of the psyche, and that falling in love can further both inner and out love relationships.