ABSTRACT
Some versions of religious narrative can fall into the error of employing dualistic language when describing the love of one human being for another: they stress that when a person falls in love, it is not the object of one’s love that one loves; it is the divine. The psychoanalytic version of dualistic thinking is to say that the lover is simply transferring love due to parents on to the love object; the equivalent in analytical psychology might be to say the person is simply projecting their Animus or Anima on to the loved one. There are a range of possible pairs of opposites which are constellated in falling in love; indeed, this seems to be one of the most striking symptoms, and various different narratives might risk overemphasizing one or the other pole. Carotenuto describes how love, having profoundly transformative potential, confronts society as something dangerous.
