Page 13 - May 2025

Eventually, and inevitably (for the sake of
our psychological growth), the initial
honeymoon phase gives way to
polarization. The idealized projection
fades. We begin to see each other’s all-
too-human flaws. Some major conflict
arises, and in that friction, a turning point
emerges: a crisis that forces us to
differentiate. What we call “falling out of
love” is often the dissolution of the
idealized projections. This disillusionment
— though painful — is crucial. It creates
the space for differentiation, the
psychological process by which we come
to know ourselves as distinct from the
other. Without it, we remain in a state of
fusion, unable to fully individuate.
To differentiate means to discover
who we are as separate individuals.
At first, this realization can be jarring. The
infatuation felt so real, so consuming. The
other person occupied our thoughts
constantly. Yes, in the beginning, it feels
like destiny. “I’ve known you forever,” we
say. And in a way, that’s true. We have
known them before — only not as them,
but as lost or disowned aspects of
ourselves. They become the carrier of our
unintegrated Shadow, our inner feminine
or masculine, our longing for wholeness.
That’s why it feels so intense, so
magnetic, so familiar.
Yet projections are slippery. They feel
external, but they originate within.As long
as these unconscious forces remain
unexamined, we may continue to attract
— and repel — the same patterns in
different people. The more intensely we
idealize or vilify someone, the more likely we
are caught in the web of projection. And
here’s the difficult truth: we often cannot
see or accept our Shadow until we actively
dislike it in someone else. This moment of
irritation, judgment, or even outright
aversion is a clue that a part of our psyche is
being externalized. It frequently happens
with those closest to us — partners, parents,
siblings, friends — where emotional intensity
is high and boundaries are porous.
Differentiation requires us to recognize the
other person not as an extension of
ourselves, but as a whole, separate being —
with their own flaws, wounds, and depth. It is
through this stage of discomfort and
disillusionment that true intimacy can
emerge: not from fantasy, but from mutual
recognition.
As Edward F. Edinger notes in Anatomy of
the Psyche, “To the extent that the opposites
remain unconscious and unseparated, one
lives in a state of participation mystique,
which means that one identifies with one
side of a pair of opposites and projects its
contrary as an enemy. Space for
consciousness to exist appears between the
opposites, which means one becomes
conscious as one is able to contain and
endure the opposites within.”
Carl Jung echoes this in Civilization in
Transition, The Undiscovered Self, stating:
“If the same unconscious complex is
constellated in two people at the same time,
it produces a remarkable emotional effect, a
projection, which causes either a mutual
attraction or a mutual repulsion.”
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