ABSTRACT
Romantic love is a refinding, a reedition of old wishes and feelings. As visions and fantasies of wondrous harmony are evoked with romantic love, so, too, are the earliest memories and fears of loss and disappointment, the dread of aloneness and the nightmare of abandonment. All great poets and authors of great literature have recognized that the state of being in love is a fragile one. The story begins, as do many tales of romantic love, with a desire born from destructive hate. The love between Eros and Psyche is a love that is nurtured in darkness. Psyche, like all of us who fall in love, is content, initially, to allow her love to be blind. Romantic love, as well as being fueled by feelings of fear, is also stimulated by the feeling of frustration. When original sexual yearning of a child for the parent is stimulated, there is potential for tremendous destructiveness.
