by: Natalia Garrido – Psychoanalyst

“How does something like that hurt so much? Does it take care of my whole being?” Alexandre Pires has already questioned us about love. To understand love relationships, we need to go back in the history of humanity, one of the pillars that formed the collective unconscious, which archetypically presents us with a certain model of experience to be

Eros (or also Cupid) is the result of the relationship between Aphrodite (the Goddess of Love) and Ares (the God of War) and represents, through mythology, the essence of what we consider, as a collectivity, love. Is love synonymous with suffering? Could it be that loving is directly linked to the search for the other half that we lack?

In Greek mythology, the story between Eros and Psyche is permeated by a dispute that the goddess Aphrodite unlocked because she felt eclipsed by the beauty of a mortal woman (Psyche). The task fell to Eros, who should hit Psyche with his arrow so that she would fall in love with the first creature she found. However, Eros was taken by a certain pity and ended up injuring himself with his own arrow, falling in love with Psyche.

The unfolding of the plot takes place between the marriage of the immortal Eros with the mortal Psyqué, whose only “obligation” was never to see her husband, just to feel him. However, Psyche's curiosity prevailed and on a given night, Psyche approached Eros with a candle to see his face, he woke up scared and ran away. From then on, Psyche goes through the trials that Aphrodite imposes on her to regain Eros' love.

Taken by unconditional love, Eros resorts to Zeus so that Psyche becomes immortal. Upon Aphrodite's approval, Zeus grants Eros' request and thus Psyche enters the realm of the immortals.

From the love between Eros and Psyche, the daughter called Pleasure is born.

This brief mythological account opens up some interesting points to be presented. Psyche, in Greek, means soul; it can be represented as our human soul that goes through trials to be purified and prepared to enjoy love (Bulfinch, 2014) and experience pleasure. And at this point, the dichotomous situation of love and pain is present as something inevitable.

But it is the duality of emotions we experience when we love that makes us experience the real complexity of inhabiting a living body, capable of feeling and experiencing love in its intensity, depth and challenges.

Plato, in The Symposium, discusses Eros and states: “in the old days, as I said, we were one, and our intemperance led the god to separate us (…). Our race would become happy if we fully realized love and if each one of us found his loved one, resuming his primitive nature” (p.33/34). This incompleteness that Plato reports is what Lacan presents as the lack that human beings carry, that is, it could be translated as the half of the orange (sung by Fábio Júnior) that is projected in the idea of ​​perfect love, where the object of desire becomes idealized as something that is incapable of disappointing.

It is worth noting that affective relationships demand dialogue, listening and maintenance of agreements, which means taking the time to listen to the Other (understood as individuals in the relationship, regardless of gender), which goes beyond the state of passion, requires dedication,

Gary Chapman, in the book The 5 languages ​​of love presents forms of expression that each person can present in the relationship, they are: words of affirmation, gifts, acts of service, quality time and touch. To understand the Other, you need to understand yourself; knowing how to identify what one's own language is could help not to project any kind of lack that may be in oneself onto the Other, that is, for Psychoanalysis, love is directly related to desire. “The human psychic constitution is marked by a radical lack that makes it eternally desiring” (Viana, 2019), we are desiring beings and idealized love enters to fill this void that we carry. And it is through relationships that we can see our shadow and our light, like a reflection in a mirror, which means that through the gaze of the Other we are able to see, understand and know ourselves.

Loving is a verb and demands action, Bauman, in Amor Líquido says “in all love there are at least two beings, each one the great unknown in the equation of the other. (...). Loving means opening oneself to destiny, the most sublime of all human conditions, in which fear merges with joy in an irreversible amalgam. Opening up to destiny means, ultimately, admitting freedom in being: that freedom that is incorporated in the Other, the partner in love” (p.21). Respecting individual spaces, understanding the demands of the components of the relationship, allowing the dialogue between those involved to take place in an equitable manner, is part of maintaining a more balanced and lasting relationship.

The analysis process helps to disidentify ideal and perfectionist love, from the moment it reverses the look at oneself and, consequently, frees the Other from our own demands, without projections, making love something unique where each individual is capable of expressing herself in her completeness, breaking the triad of love – pain – pleasure, so that we can delve into the issues of love without ideals or expectations, just feeling it, just as Psyche should have done.

Natalia Garrido – Psychoanalyst

Bibliographic reference:

BAUMAN, Zygmunt. Amor líquido: on the fragility of human bonds. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 2004.

BULFINCH, Thomas. The Golden Book of Mythology: Stories of Gods and Heroes. Rio de Janeiro: Agir, 2014.

CHAPMAN, Gary. The 5 Love Languages. World Christian Publisher, 2013.

PLATO. The banquet. Sao Paulo: Principis, 2020.

VIANA, Ezequiel F.C. Love in a Historical and Psychoanalytic Perspective. Annals of the XV Scientific Initiation Meeting of UNI7, v.9, n.1, 2019.