Glossary: Eros

The psychological function of connectedness, relationship, and feeling; associated with the feminine whether in women or in the anima of men. When unconscious it expresses itself as a will to power. Eros is the feminine Yin: the moon, darkness, water, matter, intuition, emotion, the body, soft, curving, uniting, and Earth. Eros is concerned with the individual person and relationships. As everyone contains contrasexual traits anyone, male or female, can be characterized by eros. The psychological function associated with eros is the Feeling function. It's opposite is logos.

Woman's consciousness is characterized more by the connective quality of Eros than by the discrimination and cognition associated with Logos. In men, Eros… is usually less developed than Logos. In women, on the other hand, Eros is an expression of their true nature, while their Logos is often only a regrettable accident.

- "The Syzygy: Anima and Animus," CW 9ii, par. 29

Where love reigns, there is no will to power; and where the will to power is paramount, love is lacking. The one is but the shadow of the other: the man who adopts the standpoint of Eros finds his compensatory opposite in the will to power, and that of the man who puts the accent on power is Eros.

- "The Problem of the Attitude-Type," par. 78

Eros is a questionable fellow and will always remain so… He belongs on one side to man's primordial animal nature which will endure as long as man has an animal body. On the other side he is related to the highest forms of the spirit. But he thrives only when spirit and instinct are in right harmony.

- "The Eros Theory," CW 7, par. 32