ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author suggests that falling in love might sometimes be a person’s way of incarnating the archetype of the Self. It might possibly occur most intensely in those people who have both a strong yearning for the transcendent and a history of the Self archetype not having been sufficiently incarnated by the parents. Traditionally, the internal figure of the Lover, which is projected on to a person’s outer lovers, has been taken to be of the opposite gender to them. The author explores two-way relationship between the inner world and the outer, whereby the outer love relationship influences the inner one and the inner one the outer. Falling in love can be a stage in blossoming of either one of these or both. But the teleological narrative also allows us to give value to some key processes in falling in love that can bring results of great benefit and which might otherwise be dismissed as being simply defensive.
