Anteros

Anteros — ἀντέρως — names, in the classical anatomy of eros, “answering love” (Hillman, A Blue Fire, p. 286). It is the second of the three classically differentiated portions of Eros, between himeros and pothos. Where himeros moves toward an object that need not respond, and pothos moves toward what cannot respond at all, anteros requires that the love be returned to constitute itself. Its structure is dialogic.

For ratio-desiderii, the diagnostic value of anteros is that it locates the suffering of unanswered love precisely. A longing that grieves being unseen is anteros-shaped, and the ratio’s account of it is not “this person is wrong” but “the soul wants to be answered and is not, and the failure of the answer is the wound to be read.” The anteros longing is genuine; what it requires is genuine; what its frustration teaches is genuine.

james-hillman embeds anteros within his account of triangulated love (The Myth of Analysis, p. 97), where the third figure is often the answer the dyad cannot give itself; the mutual-unconscious-couple in analytic literature names a closely related structure. The ratio reads anteros by asking: who is the answer this longing requires, and what does the soul learn when the answer does not come?

Relationships

• three-faces-of-eros
• eros
• himeros
• pothos
• mutual-unconscious-couple
• ratio-desiderii

Primary sources

• hillman-blue-fire (Hillman 1989)
• hillman-myth-of-analysis (Hillman 1972)