Divine Madness: Archetypes of Romantic Love

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Fisher King Press, 2010 - Family & Relationships - 292 pages

'Divine Madness: Archetypes of Romantic Love' examines the transforming experience of romantic love in literature, myth, religion, and everyday life. A series of psychological meditations on the nature of romantic love and human relationship, Divine Madness takes the perspective that human love is a species of divine love and that our experience of romantic love both conceals and reveals the ultimate Lover and Beloved. John Haule draws on depth psychology, the mystical traditions of the world, and literature from Virgil to Milan Kundera to lead the reader inside the mind and heart of the lover. 

Each chapter explores a characteristic aspect of relationship, such as seduction and love play, the rapture of union, the agony of separation, madness, woundedness, and transcendence. Focusing on the soulful and spiritual meaning of these experiences, Divine Madness sheds light on our elations, obsessions, and broken hearts, but it also reconnects us with the wisdom of time immemorial. As a practicing Jungian analyst and former professor of religious studies, John Haule masterfully guides his readers through the labyrinth of everyday experience, and the often hidden layers of archetypal realities, sketching a philosophy of romantic love through the stories of the world's literature and mythology.

 

Contents

Opportunity for Loves Transformation
22
Metaphors of Depth
38
Locus of Agony and Rapture
57
Obsessions Heart
76
Obsessions Soul
95
Intimacys Chambers
115
Enabling Transcendence
136
Fight for Renewal
155
Loves Refinement
174
The Creative Third
190
Following the Relationship
208
Ordinary Time
223
Loves Phoenix
241
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About the author (2010)

John Ryan Haule holds a doctorate in religious studies from Temple University. He is a Jungian analyst trained in Zurich and is a faculty member of the C.G. Jung Institute-Boston. 

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