Romantic Love: A Treatment Approach

In this article the author describes his understanding of the phenomenon of romantic love as it appears in the consulting room. From this description he then suggests taking a phenomenological approach to romantic love in the treatment process. By phenomenological he means maintaining a nonjudgmental outlook towards the lover's ever-changing subjective feelings about each occurrence of a love experience, as reported in a variety of ways by the same person over a period of time. In this sense he is using the term phenomenological as the opposite of categorical. Corbin translated the Farsi/Arabic word Kashf-al-mahjub, which means unveiling or discovering that which has been hidden, into phenomenology. Approached alchemically, the hidden essence of the individual can begin to be unveiled by the work on the phenomenon of romantic love. Ultimately, this "unveiling" may serve the process of transforming romantic love into universal love.