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We : Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love
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Published January 1, 1984
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Robert A. Johnson
94 books826 followersRobert A. Johnson is a noted lecturer and Jungian analyst in private practice in San Diego, California. He has studied at the Jung Institute in Switzerland and at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in India.
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November 14, 2025
THE THIRD OF JOHNSON’S ‘TRILOGY’ OF JUNGIAN INTERPRETATIONS
Robert Alex Johnson (1921-2018) was a Jungian analyst. This 1983 book follows up his 1974 book, ‘He: Understanding Masculine Psychology,’ and his 1976 book ‘She: Understanding Feminine Psychology.’
He explains in the introductory section, “This work is a Jungian interpretation of ‘Tristan and Iseult’ that focuses on the symbols in the myth as sources of psychological insight. It is not intended to be a scholarly study of the myth as literature.” (Pg. vii) [He intersperses the narrative of this myth in separate chapters alternating with his own writings.]
He continues, “Women will find, in the story of Tristan and Iseult, a vivid symbolic picture of the huge forces at work in all of us, both men and women, when we are caught up in the experience of romantic love. The myth not only records the dynamics of romantic love in the male psyche, it also reflects the fate of the feminine in our culture; it shows how the feminine values of feeling, relatedness, and soul consciousness have been virtually driven out of our culture by our patriarchal mentality. One of the most important insights in the myth for women is that degree to which most men unconsciously search for their lost feminine side, for the feminine values in life, and attempt to find their unlived feminine side through woman.” (Pg. ix)
He continues, “But it is not only men who have accepted the patriarchal version of reality. Women also have been taught to idealize masculine values at the expense of the feminine side of life. Many women have spent their lives in a constant feeling of inferiority because they felt that to be feminine was ‘second best.’ Women have been trained that only masculine activities, thinking, power, and achieving have any real value. Thus Western woman finds herself in the same psychological dilemma as Western man: developing a one-sided, competitive mastery of the masculine qualities at the expense of her feminine side.” (Pg. ix)
He goes on, “The psychological makeups of men and women are distinct. If we tried fully to explain a woman’s psychology through a ‘man’s myth,’ it would inevitably give a distorted view of her structure. This is especially true in romantic love, for a woman’s feeling side develops differently than a man’s and her experience of relationship has subtle nuances that men do not experience in the same way. Most women spend a tremendous part of their energy in efforts to make a loving relationship with a man and to deal with his seeming incomprehensible feelings, ideas, and reactions. By making her own journey with Tristan and Iseult, she will understand better the ‘Tristan’ in her life, and how to draw out the best in him. But also, and of equal importance, she will have a clearer view of her own unknown self.” (Pg. x)
He states in the Introduction, “Despite our ecstasy when we are ‘in love,’ we spend much of our time with a deep sense of loneliness, alienation, and frustration over our inability to make genuinely loving and committed relationships. Usually we blame other people for failing us; it doesn’t occur to us that perhaps it is we who need to change own unconscious attitudes---the expectations and demands we impose on our relationships and on other people. This the great wound in the Western psyche. It is the primary psychological problem of our Western culture. Carl Jung said that if you find the psychic wound in an individual or a people, there you also find their path to consciousness. For it is in the healing of our psychic wounds that we come to know ourselves. Romantic love, if we truly undertake the task of understanding it, becomes such a path to consciousness.” (Pg. xii)
He explains in Chapter 1, “A myth is the collective ‘dream’ of an entire people at a certain point in their history. It is as though the entire population dreamed together, and that ‘dream,’ the myth, burst forth through its poetry, songs, and stories. But a myth… [also] immediately finds its way into the behavior and attitudes of the culture---into the practical daily lives of the people.” (Pg. 2)
He suggests, “One of the great strengths of the inner feminine is the ability to let go, to give up ego control, to stop trying to control the people and the situation, to turn the situation over to fate and wait on the natural flow of the universe.” (Pg. 33)
He argues, “The fact that we can ‘romance’ when we mean ‘love’ shows us that underneath our language there is a psychological muddle… we have lost the consciousness of what love is, what romance is, and what the differences are between them… It is hard for us to imagine that there could be any love, at least any worthwhile love, still alive for a couple after romance departs.” (Pg. 44)
He asserts, “What we see, constantly in romantic love is not human love or human relationship alone; we seek a religious experience, a vision of wholeness… It is the realm of the psyche, the realm of the unconscious. It is there that our souls and our spirits live, for unknown to our conscious Western minds, our souls and spirits are psychological realities, and they live on in our psyches without our knowledge. And it is there, in the unconscious, that God lives, whoever God may be for us as individuals.” (Pg. 53)
He observes, “romantic love is a mystery. It is an energy system that surges out of the unknown and uncharted depths of the unconscious, out of a part of ourselves that we don’t see, don’t understand, and can’t reduce to common sense.” (Pg. 57)
He states, “The feminine principle within a man is above all a principle of relatedness; but anima delivers a man over to a special kind of relatedness. She personifies a man’s capacity to relate to his own inner self, to the interior realm of his own psyche and to the unconscious… Women have an equivalent psychological structure within, which Jung called the ‘animus.’ … Animus usually personifies himself as a masculine force and appears in women’s dreams as a masculine figure…. When a woman falls in love it is the animus that she sees projected onto the mortal man before her. When a man drinks of the love potion it is anima, his soul, that he sees superimposed on a woman.” (Pg. 63)
He says, “When a man’s projections on a woman unexpectedly evaporate, he will often announce that he is ‘disenchanted with her’; he is disappointed that she is a human being rather than an embodiment of his fantasy. He acts as though she had done something wrong. If he would open his eyes, he would see that the breaking of the spell opens a golden opportunity to discover the real person who is there. It is equally the chance to discover the unknown parts of himself that he has been projecting on her and trying to live through her.” (Pg. 108)
He argues, “Romantic love is an unholy muddle of two holy loves. One is ‘divine’ love… It is our natural urge toward the inner world, the soul’s love of God, or the gods. The other is ‘human’ love, which is our love for people---flesh-and-blood human beings. Both of these loves are valid; both are necessary. But by some trick of psychological evolution our culture has muddled the two loves in the potion of romantic love and nearly lost them both.” (Pg. 131)
He contends, “Suffering is the inevitable path that must be trod on the way to consciousness, the inevitable price for the transformation we seek… this is why romance often seems to be a meaningless cycle: we fall in love, we set up our idea of perfection, and in time, we are bitterly disappointed. We suffer. We follow our projections about, always searching for the one who will match the impossible ideal and will magically give us our transformation. And when we don’t find the divine world where we search---in a human being---we suffer; we fall into despair.” (Pg. 155)
He argues, “If there is such a thing as psychological blasphemy, it is to take what is sacred and try to convert it to something else; it is to try to make the sacred into grist for the ego’s mill. Psychological sin does not consist in sex nor in being physical nor in ‘immorality’ but rather in calling a thing other than what it really is, pretending to do one thing while doing another. This is the sin against consciousness, the refusal to take life consciously.” (Pg. 177)
He explains, “Therefore, when I say that ‘I love,’ it is not I who love, but in reality, Love who acts through me. Love is not so much something I do as something that I am. Love is not a doing but a state of being---a relatedness, a connectedness to another mortal, an identification with her or him that simply flows within me and through me, independently of my intentions or my efforts.” (Pg. 189-190)
He concludes, “We can learn that human relationship is inseparable from friendship and commitment. We can learn that the essence of love is not to use the other to make us happy but to serve and affirm the one we love. And we can discover, to our surprise, that what we have needed more than anything was not so much to be loved, as to love.” (Pg. 201)
This book may appeal to Jungians, or to those who enjoyed his earlier ‘He’ and ‘She’ books.
Robert Alex Johnson (1921-2018) was a Jungian analyst. This 1983 book follows up his 1974 book, ‘He: Understanding Masculine Psychology,’ and his 1976 book ‘She: Understanding Feminine Psychology.’
He explains in the introductory section, “This work is a Jungian interpretation of ‘Tristan and Iseult’ that focuses on the symbols in the myth as sources of psychological insight. It is not intended to be a scholarly study of the myth as literature.” (Pg. vii) [He intersperses the narrative of this myth in separate chapters alternating with his own writings.]
He continues, “Women will find, in the story of Tristan and Iseult, a vivid symbolic picture of the huge forces at work in all of us, both men and women, when we are caught up in the experience of romantic love. The myth not only records the dynamics of romantic love in the male psyche, it also reflects the fate of the feminine in our culture; it shows how the feminine values of feeling, relatedness, and soul consciousness have been virtually driven out of our culture by our patriarchal mentality. One of the most important insights in the myth for women is that degree to which most men unconsciously search for their lost feminine side, for the feminine values in life, and attempt to find their unlived feminine side through woman.” (Pg. ix)
He continues, “But it is not only men who have accepted the patriarchal version of reality. Women also have been taught to idealize masculine values at the expense of the feminine side of life. Many women have spent their lives in a constant feeling of inferiority because they felt that to be feminine was ‘second best.’ Women have been trained that only masculine activities, thinking, power, and achieving have any real value. Thus Western woman finds herself in the same psychological dilemma as Western man: developing a one-sided, competitive mastery of the masculine qualities at the expense of her feminine side.” (Pg. ix)
He goes on, “The psychological makeups of men and women are distinct. If we tried fully to explain a woman’s psychology through a ‘man’s myth,’ it would inevitably give a distorted view of her structure. This is especially true in romantic love, for a woman’s feeling side develops differently than a man’s and her experience of relationship has subtle nuances that men do not experience in the same way. Most women spend a tremendous part of their energy in efforts to make a loving relationship with a man and to deal with his seeming incomprehensible feelings, ideas, and reactions. By making her own journey with Tristan and Iseult, she will understand better the ‘Tristan’ in her life, and how to draw out the best in him. But also, and of equal importance, she will have a clearer view of her own unknown self.” (Pg. x)
He states in the Introduction, “Despite our ecstasy when we are ‘in love,’ we spend much of our time with a deep sense of loneliness, alienation, and frustration over our inability to make genuinely loving and committed relationships. Usually we blame other people for failing us; it doesn’t occur to us that perhaps it is we who need to change own unconscious attitudes---the expectations and demands we impose on our relationships and on other people. This the great wound in the Western psyche. It is the primary psychological problem of our Western culture. Carl Jung said that if you find the psychic wound in an individual or a people, there you also find their path to consciousness. For it is in the healing of our psychic wounds that we come to know ourselves. Romantic love, if we truly undertake the task of understanding it, becomes such a path to consciousness.” (Pg. xii)
He explains in Chapter 1, “A myth is the collective ‘dream’ of an entire people at a certain point in their history. It is as though the entire population dreamed together, and that ‘dream,’ the myth, burst forth through its poetry, songs, and stories. But a myth… [also] immediately finds its way into the behavior and attitudes of the culture---into the practical daily lives of the people.” (Pg. 2)
He suggests, “One of the great strengths of the inner feminine is the ability to let go, to give up ego control, to stop trying to control the people and the situation, to turn the situation over to fate and wait on the natural flow of the universe.” (Pg. 33)
He argues, “The fact that we can ‘romance’ when we mean ‘love’ shows us that underneath our language there is a psychological muddle… we have lost the consciousness of what love is, what romance is, and what the differences are between them… It is hard for us to imagine that there could be any love, at least any worthwhile love, still alive for a couple after romance departs.” (Pg. 44)
He asserts, “What we see, constantly in romantic love is not human love or human relationship alone; we seek a religious experience, a vision of wholeness… It is the realm of the psyche, the realm of the unconscious. It is there that our souls and our spirits live, for unknown to our conscious Western minds, our souls and spirits are psychological realities, and they live on in our psyches without our knowledge. And it is there, in the unconscious, that God lives, whoever God may be for us as individuals.” (Pg. 53)
He observes, “romantic love is a mystery. It is an energy system that surges out of the unknown and uncharted depths of the unconscious, out of a part of ourselves that we don’t see, don’t understand, and can’t reduce to common sense.” (Pg. 57)
He states, “The feminine principle within a man is above all a principle of relatedness; but anima delivers a man over to a special kind of relatedness. She personifies a man’s capacity to relate to his own inner self, to the interior realm of his own psyche and to the unconscious… Women have an equivalent psychological structure within, which Jung called the ‘animus.’ … Animus usually personifies himself as a masculine force and appears in women’s dreams as a masculine figure…. When a woman falls in love it is the animus that she sees projected onto the mortal man before her. When a man drinks of the love potion it is anima, his soul, that he sees superimposed on a woman.” (Pg. 63)
He says, “When a man’s projections on a woman unexpectedly evaporate, he will often announce that he is ‘disenchanted with her’; he is disappointed that she is a human being rather than an embodiment of his fantasy. He acts as though she had done something wrong. If he would open his eyes, he would see that the breaking of the spell opens a golden opportunity to discover the real person who is there. It is equally the chance to discover the unknown parts of himself that he has been projecting on her and trying to live through her.” (Pg. 108)
He argues, “Romantic love is an unholy muddle of two holy loves. One is ‘divine’ love… It is our natural urge toward the inner world, the soul’s love of God, or the gods. The other is ‘human’ love, which is our love for people---flesh-and-blood human beings. Both of these loves are valid; both are necessary. But by some trick of psychological evolution our culture has muddled the two loves in the potion of romantic love and nearly lost them both.” (Pg. 131)
He contends, “Suffering is the inevitable path that must be trod on the way to consciousness, the inevitable price for the transformation we seek… this is why romance often seems to be a meaningless cycle: we fall in love, we set up our idea of perfection, and in time, we are bitterly disappointed. We suffer. We follow our projections about, always searching for the one who will match the impossible ideal and will magically give us our transformation. And when we don’t find the divine world where we search---in a human being---we suffer; we fall into despair.” (Pg. 155)
He argues, “If there is such a thing as psychological blasphemy, it is to take what is sacred and try to convert it to something else; it is to try to make the sacred into grist for the ego’s mill. Psychological sin does not consist in sex nor in being physical nor in ‘immorality’ but rather in calling a thing other than what it really is, pretending to do one thing while doing another. This is the sin against consciousness, the refusal to take life consciously.” (Pg. 177)
He explains, “Therefore, when I say that ‘I love,’ it is not I who love, but in reality, Love who acts through me. Love is not so much something I do as something that I am. Love is not a doing but a state of being---a relatedness, a connectedness to another mortal, an identification with her or him that simply flows within me and through me, independently of my intentions or my efforts.” (Pg. 189-190)
He concludes, “We can learn that human relationship is inseparable from friendship and commitment. We can learn that the essence of love is not to use the other to make us happy but to serve and affirm the one we love. And we can discover, to our surprise, that what we have needed more than anything was not so much to be loved, as to love.” (Pg. 201)
This book may appeal to Jungians, or to those who enjoyed his earlier ‘He’ and ‘She’ books.
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