Order the book

Listen to an audio interview with
Ken Kimmel on Depth Insights radio (32 mins)

Read Book Reviews about the book

Eros and the Shattering Gaze reveals a culturally and historically embedded narcissism underlying men's endlessly driven romantic projections and erotic fantasies, that has appropriated their understanding of what love truly is. Men enveloped in narcissism fear their interiority and all relationships with emotional depth that prove too overwhelming to bear--so much so that the lover must either be colonized or devalued. 

Over this month the group will focus on three major themes arising from the book--men's narcissism beneath romantic fusion and their underlying fixation with the mother complex; denial of love through negation of the other and destructive narcissism; and transcendence of narcissistic defenses and the awakening of capacities to love. "Psyche and Amor," the ancient Roman tale of love, provides the template that introduces these three major themes.

The book is rich with stories--clinical vignettes, dreams, literature, film,  myth, legend, and fairy tale--that balance the theoretical. It illuminates many areas of common ground that Jung's Analytical psychology shares with contemporary schools of depth psychology and psychoanalysis. The introduction of Emmanuel Levinas' philosophy of the Other offers us a new theory for the transcendence of narcissism.