Limerence, self-expansion and the shadow
For a recent review of self-expansion theory, see Emery et al. (2025).
Emery et al. (2025): Relationships ... are one of the key routes through which people can experience self-expansion. Most directly, people can expand their sense of self to include aspects of their romantic partner in their own self-concept (typically referred to as inclusion of other in the self, or IOS).
Aron & Aron (1986, pp. 42, 45): 'In general, reward approaches simply point out that we will be attracted to persons who provide rewards or from whom we expect to receive them (Byrne, 1971), or even to persons accidentally associated with rewarding experiences (Aron, 1970; Lott & Lott, 1974). [...] We would suggest that a "reward" is whatever creates expansion of the self.'
For context on limerence/Jung connection by other authors:
What is stated by those authors is in fact stated plainly by the Arons in their original book on self-expansion theory, along with a lengthy scientific theory situating it inside the reward theory of attraction.
Following are quotes from Love and the Expansion of Self (1986), by Arthur & Elaine Aron, pages 58–63. The book can be read in its entirety, if you create an account at the internet archive: https://archive.org/details/loveexpansionofs0000aron.
The Arons have many interesting theories in this book. This connection to Carl Jung is only clipped out as an example.
Note that the Arons use a "correct" definition of limerence here, their use of "romantic love" only pertains to limerence & mania, the references to "popular novels, movies", "clinicians", "even debilitating absorption", and so on. They are in fact talking about limerence here (a lovesickness or love addiction), not confusing it as a term for "being in love".
Lee (1976, 1977) has actually described six "styles" or "colors" of what people mean when they say "I love you":
- Eros—fascination with beauty
- Storge—friendship love
- Ludus—game playing, flirtatious love
- Mania—extreme romantic love
- Pragma—practical, realistic-oriented love
- Agape—giving, saintly love
Whether only much more intense, or qualitatively different, Lee's "mania" and Hatfield and Walster's "passionate love" both correspond fairly well to the notion of romantic love described by clinicians and popularizers (and by Berscheid & Walster, 1974). But while romantic love has been the subject of tremendous popular interest (evident in popular novels, movies, etc.), social scientists have typically considered it to be somewhat frivolous. Indeed, Linton wrote:
"All societies recognize that there are occasional violent emotional attachments between persons of the opposite sex, but our present American culture is practically the only one which has attempted to capitalize on these and make them the basis for marriage. The hero of the modern American movie is always a romantic lover, just as the hero of the old Arab epic is always an epileptic." (1936, p. 175)
Whatever serious work has been done on romantic love usually involves either its social history, its clinical indicators (e.g. Casler, 1973), or the extent to which its presence as a personality trait in marital partners affects subsequent success (e.g., Rubin, 1974).
Recently, however, Tennov (1979) presented an extensive collection of subjects' interview descriptions of an intense romantic love she labeled "limerence." Limerence involves constant, overwhelming, and even debilitating absorption in the unrequited desire for reciprocation of equally intense feelings from a love object. In addition to giving a strong sense of the phenomenon, Tennov also suggests that her interviews show that some people ("limerents") have this experience or are prone to it and others ("non-limerents") are not. (She does not give percentages.)
nb. Tennov does actually give percentages on pages 209–210 of Love and Limerence: 50% (women) & 35% (men).
[...]
Intensity, then, is simply the rate of expansion—on the figures, the steepness of the slope. If expansion from a relationship is very rapid (a) one would expect the characteristic experiences attributed to "mania," "romantic," "limerent," or "passionate" love. In this case, the rate of expansion from a relationship may approach the maximum total possible for that person from all sources. "Fascination," "exclusiveness," and "idealization" are both a cause and result of this steep slope. Similarly, because such expansion may occur at a rate beyond what can be easily integrated (the definition of stress), Berscheid and Walster's "ambivalence" and Davis and Todd's lack of "stability" are no surprise.
[...]
Many cases of strong attractions, of course, are simply especially strong instances of the general attraction processes—that is, they are caused by especially occurrences of some of the five "preconditions," plus a large dose of one or more of the opposites of these. (However, the more different, distant, etc. O is, the stronger the preconditions must be in order to help P believe that a relationship is possible. Therefore, to produce a strong attraction, both precondition and expansion variables must be very strongly present.)
Other strong attractions, however, seem to be the results of additional, special mechanisms. At least four are described in the literature: (1) P's idiosyncratic responsiveness to highly special characteristics of O; (2) P's arousal or affect when meeting O, or the unusualness of the situation; (3) P associating O with relief from punishment (or presumably, though we are not aware of any such research, P associating O with strong pleasure); and (4) P's "readiness" for strong attractions.
[...]
[T]he most prominent inherited-predisposition approach is C. G. Jung's (e.g., 1925/1959) archetype theory. Jung held that all men have an image of their ideal woman (anima) and all women an image of their ideal man (animus) in their unconscious. The anima archetype, for example, is the man's composite of all his personal experience with women, the ideas of women held by the various cultures and subcultures to which he belongs, and an inherited image based on all women of all times. It is by virtue of this anime or animus archetype that P is attracted to an O of the opposite sex.
Above all, the anima or animus archetype represents an unexpressed part of oneself (if a female, the unexpressed male qualities present in the genes by inhibited by sexual differentiation; if a male the unexpressed female qualities present in the genes but inhibited by sexual differentiation). Thus P seeks vicariously to express the unexpressed and to attain wholeness by forming a relationship with an O who represents that archetype. Jung feels that this drive for wholeness through the projection of the anima/animus archetypes "upon the person of the beloved" is "one of the chief reasons for passionate attraction" (1925/1959, p. 540).
Likewise, the shadow archetype (Jung, 1951/1959; Hall & Nordby, 1973) is said to represent the unexpressed, rejected parts of one's self, which are sometimes sought in or projected unto a same-sex friend. Again because of the motivation for wholeness that Jung describes, one may then feel intensely attracted to the person in whom these shadow characteristics have been found or on whom they have been projected.
Also see The psychology of Tristan and Iseult, for another author talking about "romantic love" and Jung.
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