Eros' Trap

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

James Hillman, in his lectures on Feeling Function, writes

“Eros is an attribute of union, attraction, affection, connection, relationship, passion, connecting people with each other. It has its roots in desire and such specific affects as irresistible attraction, burning passion, soaring, dying; its specific symbols: wings, arrows, child, fire, ladder.,.."

“The erotic principle is active and purposeful; to preach, teach, wander, lead souls to redemption, and heroes and men to fateful trials, hit the flesh with arrows, Eros affects the world and the soul. Regardless of the direction in which the movement takes place: whether grace descends from above or the soul strives upward from imperfection to perfection, eros in every context, Christian or any other, remains a spiritual creative motor, a primary driving force."

I would like to highlight the influence of Eros at different age stages of personality.

At different ages, a person's Ego is in the field of one or another Archetype. So, in infancy and children, the archetype of the divine child rules and the energy of eros is aimed at playing, knowing the world, meeting this world, building object relationships and everything that is passed and assimilated by the child's personality at this stage. By puberty, we already have a more formed personality and Puer and Puella come into force, the time of maximum achievements, but not yet achievements, the search for self-determination, the choice of relationships and a partner, a riot of energy comes. Eros turns on like a battery, everything seems to be categorical, sharp, unambiguous. Then comes the stage of maturity and the Ego enters the Anima-Animus field. The time has come to evaluate what has been achieved, to fulfill the promises made to ourselves, to realize dreams and what is important to build deep emotional attachments in the form of relationships with loved ones, and learn to accept a partner as a different person. Eros receives a heteroerotic orientation. Further, in my opinion, in late maturity, Senec should come as a sage observing and accepting the world as it is. Without the desire to interfere with the world and change it. At the same time, the experience gained at each of the ages and in the field of each of the archetypes will not sink into oblivion, it remains an assimilated space, energy in the internal psychic structure of the personality.

This is how it develops in theory, and in this case the energy of eros flows and develops from a violent force that changes and cognizes the world into a calm receiving space that observes the world. Eros is reborn from fire to light.

In my report, I would like to touch upon the issue of current trends in the rejection of the transition from fire to light. The trap of Eros, for me, is to loop the energy of Eros on itself, without transitioning to new identities. More often, in my opinion, this happens at the stage where the puer rules. Eros is in full swing, the ideas of idealization, maximolism and a very critical attitude to the world are preserved in a person. It turns out movement for the sake of movement, a kind of rat race in a wheel, and eros serves only to increase speed. There are no stops and dying in it. A person gets stuck in one identity, and with a homoerotic orientation. Where there is a fear of accepting something different from myself and without change, and with a constant desire to do something, then the world of the immaterial loses its meaning.

We can observe this in different branches of a person's life. In a partnership, this turns into an endless search for a partner, combined with the fear of meeting someone other than me. As an example, I would like to cite the film "Novelty" dir. Drake Dorimus. It illustrates modern relationships, where a partner can be found via an Internet application in a couple of clicks, no effort is needed, everything is quick and simple. This is always a kind of roulette; in life, a partner may turn out to be completely different. In the picture, you can observe the story of a young couple who, despite the emergence of emotional attachment to each other, has a constant need for novelty, new and short-term relationships that do not entail deep feelings, and, accordingly, responsibility for them. Fear of becoming addicted, makes you run away from intimacy and affection. Eros's obsession around himself gives rise to a homoerotic and narcissistic admiration for himself. while in the shadows remains the collision with the other, the other. Such a looping builds the palisade of narcissistic defenses in such a way that Tonatos is not able to bring down the puerto identity through a collision with other people, Eros is trapped and he himself becomes a trap, not allowing something new to be born in the personality either. Relationships are formed by codependency of constant novelty and fascination. But at a certain moment, a healing disappointment may come, it may be possible to dispel the fog of illusions about oneself and a partner, see each other as real, without embellishment of primary love and not follow the search for the same primary feeling. And to stand up to a deep emotional attachment with the acceptance of differences and the imperfection of each other. This is how the puerral Persephonane does not part with innocent naivety surrounded by Dimetra's narcissism. And only when faced with a tough Animus in the person of Hades, he gets the opportunity to give birth to a new identity, not a puela, but a feminine Anima.

Another pole of Eros's looping on itself can be the rejection of relationships, where Eros turns into a whirlpool of worries, fears associated with relationships. Basically, relationships as such can be dangerous. A man is perceived in the history of a woman as someone who can simply help her solve a problem with a child. Like Zeus for Dimetra, who came, took possession of her by force, and that's it, then the relationship is again with a similar one. And the patient develops a fantasy that she must give birth to a girl. "for myself". And again we can observe homoeritism in a relationship where there is only me and any other is repressed and remains not accepted. Can identity change in this story?

Speaking about the relationship between Persephone and Dimetra, I would like to touch upon the topic of motherhood from the point of view of the aborted Eros. Such a process excludes the desire for death, which is natural for any living organism and psyche, as for the nullification and transformation of identity. Here only the striving for eternal life, eternal youth appears. Which is what happens to Dimetra while Persephone is near. The world blooms forever, and the newly acquired maternal identity becomes the only meaning and banner in relations with the whole world. And this does not allow a growing child to change the field of his identities, and he is imprisoned in the grip of an eternal baby. Puer, Animus and Senex did not rub in him, since the grandiose parental Imago defies disappointing comparisons. Here the mother tries to be born again and again through the child and to be reflected in him endlessly, excluding the child himself, his normal narcissism and desire for separation. He only exists as a mother projection. Any attempts to get out of this projection are blocked by wild maternal anxiety. So the mother steals the child's personal achievements, everything he does is not just hers, it is her, her narcissistic expansion. The child is offered endless developmental activities so that the mother feels like a good or even an ideal mother, he must be able to do everything at once, be able to and be her undivided property. Then she is good, but the child is not. Separation and maternal loneliness remain in the shadows, the ability to simply come with the child and then, when he grows up and separation, come with his own life. And again the trap of maternal eros lies in the impossibility of accepting something else in your child, and the partner is also excluded from such a relationship, there is simply no place for him. Moreover, if the child remains an eternal child, the mother is forever young and beautiful. What can be the frustration when faced with reality, loneliness and devastated personal life.

However, the other pole of relations with the child can also be engaged, where he is completely abandoned and unnecessary, where attachments are not formed and the mother's fear leaves her only in one role of a puella, motherhood is completely excluded.

But if you abandon the idea of maternal omnipotence and narcissism, it is possible to build relationships with the child as with a separate person, while the mother's own life outside of her motherhood will have value and fulfillment.

In a relationship with himself, Eros's imprisonment in a homoerotic and narcissistic trap ultimately brings the personality to the only pole of the pleasure principle. Like a baby, man only recognizes pleasure. If we conventionally call the pleasure principle “I want”, and the reality principle put forward by Freud in his work “Beyond the Pleasure Principle,” we must conditionally call it, in the personality, during their interaction, a transcendental I can be born! By displacing the principle of reality into the shadow, the Ego is not capable of assimilating reality and the mogu is not born. It turns out that the person lives with the attitude, I can’t do anything, but I want everything. Staying from the worlds external and internal, in such cases, cannot be filled with eros in its primordial nature, it becomes such a deceptive mirror shell of the energy of life.

For a long time, one can observe a huge increase in personal development trainings or even cooler magicians, sorcerers who promise to live forever happily and harmoniously, get quick and magical results, you just need to want and the world will give you everything! This is straightforward to become the slogan of modern relations with the world. But at the exit from such work on oneself, there remains unbearable frustration and bitterness of everyday, real days. In which there is no endless holiday, magic deliverance from suffering and human nature, driven by the principle of pleasure, attracts back to the holiday, to the eternal want. The ego is not strengthened, but becomes dependent, and just as an insatiable alcoholic seeks a new opportunity to get a magical result, so the personality again and again all its resources, moral and material, refers to magicians and sorcerers. The experience of frustration is perceived as something purely negative and superfluous in a person's life. But it is precisely the periods of suffering that allow one to rethink and transform. Analytical work should be aimed at helping the patient to distinguish between infantile ego desires and more mature aspirations that require effort and diligence in the real world, while bringing genuine satisfaction. Experiencing optimal frustration, not destructive, but strong enough, you can learn to take active steps to achieve what you want, while not excluding reality.

I would like to end with a quote from Maria Louise von Franz.

If a person can wait patiently, over time, the deepest motives and needs gradually become clearer, and from the very center of the psyche, an impulsive obsession with affect is replaced by some calmness and confidence, which make a responsible step or decision possible..