u/KoreHetaira

I’ve been thinking about Jung’s idea of Eros, and I’m curious how people here understand it within his broader psychology of the psyche.

A lot of the time people reduce Eros to sexuality, but Jung seems to use it in a wider sense. It feels closer to relation, connection, and the way the psyche binds itself to other people, images, and values. In that sense, Eros seems different from simple instinct.

What I’m trying to understand is whether Jung meant Eros mainly as a function of relatedness, something close to feeling, or whether he saw it as a deeper principle operating between consciousness and the unconscious.

It also seems connected to some of his larger ideas — especially the tension between Eros and Logos, and the role of relationship in individuation. I wonder whether Eros is part of what allows a person to come into a more living relation with the shadow.

I feel like Eros is the expression of life energy, and I see that in Jung's writing and how he even talks about things like the animus/anima. I read a really great short blog about the integration of Medusa and Athena, as Medusa was like the impulse, and Athena was like the mental. I feel like that is what Jung keeps pointing to, the integration of the entire body, and letting your deeper desires guide you towards yourself.

What do you think about what Jung says about Eros? And what he is trying to imply by how it works, also in regards to Logos, and the shadow?

In Eros and Civilization, Eros becomes part of a larger argument against surplus repression, instrumental rationality, and the organization of life around domination, productivity, and managed need.

From what I understand, Marcuse wants to restore Eros to its proper place alongside Logos, and argues that liberation means freeing up the pleasure principle from forms of social domination. He distinguishes between “basic repression,” which may be necessary for civilization, and “surplus repression,” which comes from domination. He also imagines a fusion of Logos and Eros — a “rationality of gratification” built around cooperation and the free development of human needs. 

What I keep wondering is whether Marcuse really sees Eros as an actual emancipatory force, or whether it functions more as a critical counter-principle — a way of exposing what civilization has deformed.

In other words:

Is Eros in Marcuse something that could genuinely organize life otherwise?
Or is it mostly a theoretical and utopian pressure against the existing order?

I’m also curious how people here read the connection between Eros and politics in Marcuse.

Does he really think liberation would involve a transformed erotic relation to life, labor, and the body?
Or is “Eros” doing more metaphorical work than practical work in the text?