The Daimonic of Love

In discussing theories on Personality, one of the most engaging concepts is that of Rollo May, a theorist and proponent of existential psychology/psychoanalysis. He identified the goal that all human beings have, that of integration. This integration allows us to unify the self and to confront the potential for the daimonic, which is any natural function that can take over the whole person. One daimonic that May discussed was that of Love and Sex. This excerpt is taken from my text book: Personality Theories, 7th ed. Barbara Engler, p. 388-9.

Love used to be seen as the answer to human problems. Now love itself has become the problem. The real problem is being able to love. Our world is schizoid, out of touch, unable to feel or to enter into a close relationship. Affectlessness and apathy are predominant attitudes toward life, forms of protection against the tremendous overstimulation of modern society.

May believed that our highly vaunted sexual freedom has turned out to be a new form of puritanism in which emotion is separated from reason and the body is used as a machine. Pornography and commercialization have also turned sex into a vehicle for power. We have set sex against eros, the drive to relate to another person and create new forms of life. It is now socially sanctioned to repress eros, and we rush to the sensation of sex in order to avoid the passion and responsibility that eros commands. The sexual freedom established during the 1960s and 1970 has not led to the increase in happiness that many thought would follow a freeing of sexual mores. The premature awakening of sex so prevalent in our time can lead us to dodge awakening at other levels. In the midst of wide availability of information and birth control, unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases continue. Why? The real issue is not on the level of conscious rational intentions but in the deeper realm of intentionality, where a deep defiance mocks our withdrawal of feeling.

May suggested that only the experience and rediscovery of care, the opposite of apathy, will enable us to stand against the cynicism that characterizes our day. The mythos of care points to the need to develop a new morality of authenticity in human relations.