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This book, written by two Harvard-trained Eriksonian psychoanalysts, explores the psychodyamics of romantic love and passion as expressed in the great love stories of Western and Hindu culture. The authors' premise is that the primary secrets of erotic love lie at the juncture of two primary developmental issues: the impossibility of oedipal possession and the preoedipal, partly desired birth of the self. They posit that the height of romantic passion is located in the simultaneous experience of two early developmental issues: longing—the desire to merge with and penetrate the mother; and danger—the enforced separation from the mother and the frustration of the desire to fulfill incestuous wishes.
The book is divided into three parts. The first, entitled “Pure Cultures of Love,” explores myths of young love, including Romeo and Juliet, Radha and Krishna, and others. These are the myths that shape a culture's image of erotic passion. The second part of the book, entitled “Eros Adulterated,” explores myths of adult passion beset by conflict and ambivalence, such as Hamlet, Tristan and Isolde, Phaedra, and Oedipus in Western culture, and Vis and Ramin in Hindu culture.
The last part of the book is a discussion of the theory of romantic love. The authors discuss love's phenomenology: the joining of danger and longing. It is the phenomenon of joining love's aggressive elements, which include the desire to conquer and possess,