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The underlying idea of the psyche proves to be a half bodily, half spiritual substance, an
anima media natura, as the alchemists call it, an hermaphroditic being capable of uniting the opposites, but who is never complete in the individual unless related to another individual. The unrelated human being lacks wholeness, for he can achieve wholeness only through soul, and the soul cannot exist without its other side, which is always found in a “You.” Wholeness is a combination of I and You, and these show themselves to be parts of a transcendent unity whose nature can only be grasped symbolically.
-- Carl Jung, The Psychology of the Transference
Love is the emotional attention by which we take one another seriously and bring soul to presence between us. Soul is not a “substance,” as the alchemists believed, but the essence of relatedness itself, the greater reality in which my
I and your you meet, find one another, and discover their reciprocity. The soul that comes into being when we are bound in love is our
we-ness, the third partner within every erotic temenos. It alone makes us whole….
Soul draws us out of our isolation and completes us in stages. Each step of the way requires a new utilization of
empathy, the active love which recognizes, clarifies, and articulates a self that moves from coherence through dissolution in a we into new coherent and resilient syntheses…..
Love, wherever it brings soul to presence and is attentive to soul, unfolds self, leaving us more adequate to
be ourselves, to become ourselves, and to negotiate the world.
-- John Ryan Haule, The Love Cure
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