Although feeling can be considered to be a manifestation of eros within consciousness and the feeling function to be rooted archetypally in eros, the principle yet differs distinctly from feeling in the essential respect that feeling is human. Feeling is an individual attribute of consciousness, limited by a spatial and temporal situation. Eros is, as the writings tell us, always universal and impersonal-even inhuman and demonic. Whether as sexual compulsion or as cosmogonic eros holding the universe together, it remains impersonal, a force, not a feeling function. Therefore, it is quite legitimate to speak of people with much eros and little feeling, or differentiated feeling and little eros. If we remember eros as a vital force that throws us into life and turmoil, messing things up, involving the psyche in matters beyond its comprehension, then we can grasp how little it has to do with a differentiated feeling function. Lovers can unite without any feeling; eros is enough to spawn all sorts of progeny, bring together all sorts of opposites into symbolic unities. On the other hand; the charming "feeler," or the introverted "deep feeler," may be far from being moved by the archetype of eros. When considering hysteria, sociopathy, and schizoid withdrawal, it might be well to differentiate eros and feeling. Feeling may function quite adaptedly in the psychopathic aspect of the complex, with charm and all the manifestations of interested relatedness, yet underneath is power and self-gain, not eros. Many sins of the lack of eros are covered over by the words "introversion" or "feeling type," so that the introverted deep-feeler may live a life where the heated confusions of eros and its aspiring dynamics never move the personality at all. In his seminars, Jung makes some distinctions among the feeling function, love and eros. He points out that any of the functions can be under the influence of eros and not only the feeling function. Yet he does tend to consider the highest development of the feeling function to be manifested by a quality of loving. The difficulty in the distinction of these terms reflects prior difficulties within our feeling, loving and eros. Eros is a god, and having lost touch with him, we are in a mess, and we quarrel over agape and philia and caritas and amicus. No wonder: after all, who knows what love is?
— James Hillman Marie-Louise von Franz
Hillman is writing the section on the feeling function here — this is Part Two of the volume, his territory, not von Franz's — and the distinction he draws cuts against one of the more comfortable conflations in depth psychology. We tend to assume that deep feelers are, by virtue of their sensitivity, people in whom eros is active. The introverted type who processes everything slowly, who tends relationships carefully, who registers nuance — surely eros lives there? Not necessarily. Eros is not refinement. It is the force that throws you into what you cannot manage, that generates entanglement before comprehension, that moves a personality whether or not that personality wants to be moved. The careful feeler, the one whose emotional life runs well-maintained and relationally skilled, may have substituted tact for contact — a fully functional feeling apparatus operating in the psychopathic service of keeping eros at bay.
This is where the distinction sharpens to something diagnostic. The longing to be loved — to be held, received, understood by another — is not itself eros, even when it feels overwhelming. It may be the soul organizing against eros, seeking the safety of the mother-ratio rather than enduring the unmasterable god. Eros does not offer safety. It offers involvement beyond one's comprehension, which is why losing touch with him, as Hillman puts it, leaves us arguing about terminology — agape versus philia, caritas versus amicus — as if precision in the word could substitute for proximity to the force.
James Hillman Marie-Louise von Franz·Lectures on Jung's Typology·2013