On Love and Awareness

In this paper, I will discuss some aspects of a humanistic perspective on love which includes both idealistic as well as realistic elements of love. I will argue that any experience of love is directly affected by the level of self-awareness in an individual, that enables him to recognize the origins of his feelings and allows him to act upon them in an intentional manner. I use the term "awareness" in a similar way as, for example, the Jungian psychologist Arnold Mindell. He describes awareness as the capacity of a living human system which is connected to other minds to discover and to use the perception modality. There is a common element to all feelings which is directly related to the self-awareness of an individual. It is the truism that feelings or emotions accentuate a clear picture of an individual's traits of character. Emotionality without self-awareness is a rather burdensome experience for the transmitter as well as it is for the recipient of an emotion. With this I do not refer to rational control of emotionality. Rather, I refer to an existential human condition, in which the consequences of an individual's action must be realized and accepted by oneself.