Towards An Erotics of the Psyche

Every mythic figure suggests a unique mode of self-awareness. The work of Carl Jung and Thomas Mann helps us understand how a psychology imagined from the perspective of Eros differs from one visioned in relation to another divinity such as Zeus or Aphrodite. A study of their writing suggests an erotics of the psyche, different from the logics of the psyche with which we are more familiar and also from an aesthetics of the psyche. As Nietzsche helped us recognize the continued liveliness of Apollo and Dionysos, so they recall us to an appreciation of the full range of Eros' significance as it was known in ancient Greece. We appreciate why for the Greeks to tell the story of Psyche is to tell a story which necessarily includes Eros. Because Eros is the god of transformative love, there is not only an erotics of the psyche but a psychotics of eros. Eros implies encounter with the dark but not abandonment to it, release from narcissism and from single vision.