Eros as transformation

pp. 35-70

in: Ralph Ellis, Eros in a narcissistic culture, Berlin, Springer, 1996

Abstract

If conscious beings are sometimes motivated to intensify their consciousness through expressive activity, rather than merely to reduce homeostatic drives, then the prevalent assumption that erotic love is ultimately derivative from a reductive sexual drive is far from self-evident. For this reason, our inquiry here will begin not with sexuality per se, but with a question that has proven much more difficult to even formulate, let alone answer, in terms of traditional psychological theories: Why do people experience the intense, turbulent, and all-consuming passion which I designated above as a feeling of "erotic love,' or "eros in the full sense,' rather than merely feeling sexually attracted to each other?