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Venus and Mercury
Edited by Lidia Fassio
It is an adolescent archetype that represents the first stages of love and loving seduction: stages in which to try the sensation to be able and to seduce are very important; more important than the relationship. Think of Mercury and of the fact that we must learn to perceive our impact on the world, including how actions and behaviour influence others. The relationship mode is Air. The subject is in full development, wish to impress the other and thus loves to "flirt", to seduce, to try the abilities of impact that it has on another. He is very light hearted, amusing; it is a coquettish approach.
This love reminds us that in the condition of love something in our psyche moves, takes energy and can be led to the light. It is still nevertheless a loving game: there is a humour, intelligence, a little intensity, little commitment in the long time term, little depth at an emotional level, little passion and, especially, little stability. His qualities are light-heartedness, a desire to know someone, of novelty, excitement, curiosity, at times also a bit morbid, but it reflects one of the most underestimated sides of the archetypal gods who join up: Aphrodite and Hermes. Both in fact had a great need for knowledge and of being reflected by the surrounding world, and therefore this way of loving has much to do with the extroverted phase of adolescence, in which the most important thing is openness towards the world that allows intellectual growth and the development of the personality, and it is better if it is done in a couple because this offers a greater certainty, nevertheless remaining inserted in a pattern of great vulnerability and fragility.
It is a love with strong narcissist connotations. The physical part and the erotic dimension become secondary; here eroticism is cerebral and the seduction is represented by managing to see a reflection in the other's eyes. In this situation love is still distant from choice, but it is already necessary to reveal one’s own identity even if there is still no truth in appearances: often the externals are dynamic, they activate, enterprisingly, while the inwardness is still completely hidden and unconscious. In this relationship the point of view of the other involves an image that is still a little personal, there is a search for confirmation of self-esteem that initially adds to the pleasure of being liked by the other. of winning the other over.
It is a love that wants and does not want; it is allowed and is denied. It needs exchange, dialogue, and through this dialogue the person tries to discover who he is. Also here there is a lot of mutability and it wants to develop through ideas, thoughts, different kinds of experiences, and therefore stimulation is needed; this love gets bored if nothing changes, and needs an intellectual relationship at the same time, however, avoiding, emotions that are too strong.
sexuality is also experienced through curiosity and experimentation, never by intensity; usually this love regards thinking and looking rather than doing. It is a love that it is possible to have on holiday, on a journey, often in another city, and then the dimension of moving and communication over distance assumes great importance; today it might be about a "virtual" love.
The reasoning for this love is that of completing decisive passes for our own psychic autonomy through encountering and reflecting the other. The dark part of this archetype is fleetingness, the incapacity in the end to meet up and participate emotionally, and this can end up in insensitivity and cruelty. The Air dimension can become completely elusive and unreliable because it is still too much based on the construction of an image, of the ability to perceive that comes from the perception of others.
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