ABSTRACT
I begin this chapter with a recent poem of mine (Akhtar, 2016, p. 17) about the delicious and mad passivity of falling in love. It is titled “Defenses”: I want a giraffe with a goat’s neck, and a dog that flies in air. I want a mountain of water, and a lake filled with steel. I want a soundless song, and a grave that whistles. A tree that walks and a train that goes nowhere. I want a four year old grandmother, and a twelve feet tall son. Only having all this can stop me from falling in love with you. This poem is about the magic that pervades the air—due to the ego’s joyous surrender to an idealized object (Freud, 1917e)—at the time of falling in love. The poem’s surrealism is understandably manic. 50Its perspectival transcendence is the result of a fusion between the ego and the ego ideal. Compare this excitement of love’s beginning with the sober self-awareness and gratitude towards the beloved once love has become deeply ensconced in the heart; this is evident in the following poem of mine, titled “Through You” (Akhtar, 1985, p. 7).
