We Quotes

“Animus is the soul in woman just as anima is the soul in man. Animus usually personifies himself as a masculine force and appears in women’s dreams as a masculine figure. Women relate to their animus side differently than men relate to anima, but there is one thing that men and women have in common: Romantic love always consists in the projection of the soul-image. When a woman falls in love it is animus that she sees projected onto the mortal man before her. When a man drinks of the love potion, it is anima, his soul, that he sees superimposed on a woman.”
― Robert A. Johnson, We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love

“If a direct, uncomplicated, simple relationship offers us happiness, we won’t accept it. It is “too simple,” “too dull.” We are trained to respect only what is inflated, hyperintense, high-pressured, big and complicated.”
― Robert A. Johnson, We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love

“We don’t like anything that is “simple”: To us “simple” means dull or dense or stupid. We have forgotten that simplicity is a need in human life: It is the human art of finding meaning and joy in the small, natural, and less dramatic things.”
― Robert A. Johnson, We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love

“One of the great paradoxes in romantic love is that it never produces human relationship as long as it stays romantic. It produces drama, daring adventures, wondrous, intense love scenes, jealousies, and betrayals; but people never seem to settle into relationship with each other as flesh-and-blood human beings until they are out of the romantic love stage, until they love each other instead of being “in love.”
― Robert A. Johnson, We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love

“The beginning of wisdom is a firm grasp of the obvious.”
― Robert A. Johnson, We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love

“Clement of Alexandria says in the Paedagogus: “Therefore, as it seems, it is the greatest of all disciplines to know oneself; for when a man knows himself, he knows God.”
― Robert A. Johnson, We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love

“Romantic love always consists in the projection of the soul-image. When a woman falls in love it is animus that she sees projected onto the mortal man before her. When a man drinks of the love potion, it is anima, his soul, that he sees superimposed on a woman.”
― Robert A. Johnson, We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love

“Jung once quoted a medieval alchemist who said, “Only what is separated may be properly joined.” When two things are muddled together they need to be separated, distinguished, and untangled so that they may later be rejoined in a workable synthesis. This is the correct meaning of “analysis” in psychology; to analyze is to separate out the entangled threads of one’s inner life—the confused values, ideals, loyalties, and feelings—so that they may be synthesized in a new way. We analyze romantic love, not to destroy it, but to understand what it is and where it belongs in our lives. Analysis must always serve synthesis in order to serve life; what is taken apart must be put back together again.”
― Robert A. Johnson, We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love

“No aspect of the human psyche can live in a healthy state unless it is balanced by its complementary opposite. If the masculine mind tries to live without its “other half,” the feminine soul, then the masculine becomes unbalanced, sick, and finally monstrous. Power without love becomes brutality. Feeling without masculine strength becomes woolly sentimentality. When one side of human nature grows out of balance with the other, it becomes a tyranny in the soul.”
― Robert A. Johnson, We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love

“Carl Jung said that if you find the psychic wound in an individual or a people, there you also find their path to consciousness.”
― Robert A. Johnson, We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love

“Özverinin kanunu şudur: Eğer bir erkek yanlış düzeyde sahip olduğu şeyden vazgeçerse, bu ona doğru düzeyde iade edilir.”
― Robert A. Johnson, Biz Romantik Aşkın Psikolojisi

“To give up living anima by projection means to pull most of the artificial intensity out of relationships; it means that things will seem quieter and less exciting. To put his soul in the cathedral and stop trying to live it though a woman means that a man removes an entire dimension of his life from his human relationship and re-establishes it elsewhere, on another level of himself—a level that he can’t live outwardly, that he must live by himself. To his ego it feels as though he is impoverishing his human relationship or cheating himself. At first he feels that half the thrills, excitement, fun, and intensity is taken out of human relationship. With time he learns that his soul-life never really belonged there and that his human relationship is actually thriving better without it; but for a time, it feels dismal.”
― Robert A. Johnson, We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love

“We haven’t evolved much further in our own century. Our religion is romance: We locate the divine world in physical people—the people with whom we fall in love.”
― Robert A. Johnson, We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love

“This, whether we admit it or not, is what romantic love is. In Tristan and Iseult the egotism, the use of each other to create the passion for its own sake, is so blatant, so naive, and so childlike that it is unmistakable. But our own versions of this are scarcely more subtle. It simply never enters our romantic heads that there is something strange about seeking a so-called “love” for the sake of my fulfillment, my thrills, my dreams coming true, my fantasy, my “need to be loved,” my ideal of the perfect love, my security, my entertainment.”
― Robert A. Johnson, We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love

“Romantic love has always been inextricably tied to spiritual aspiration.”
― Robert A. Johnson, We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love

“We see this in some men at certain stages of life. A man who has always been tough, an aggressive go-getter, will suddenly be attacked by his bottled-up feminine side. It may take the form of an illness, a depression, a loss of interest in life. Suddenly he is moody, hyperemotional, indecisive. His wife has to make his decisions for him while he retreats into moods and hypochondria.”
― Robert A. Johnson, We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love