i

Owning Power in Love Addiction:

Dismantling the False Self and Recovering Authenticity from the Shadow

by
Amy E. Bourne

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of

Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology

Pacifica Graduate Institute

4 March 2024
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© 2024 Amy Bourne

All rights reserved
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I certify that I have read this paper and that in my opinion it conforms to acceptable
standards of scholarly presentation and is fully adequate, in scope and quality, as a
product for the degree of Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology.

____________________________________
Maura Tousignant, M.A., L.M.F.T.
Portfolio Thesis Advisor

On behalf of the thesis committee, I accept this paper as partial fulfillment of the
requirements for Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology.

____________________________________
Joanna Walling, M.A., L.M.F.T.
Research Associate

On behalf of the Counseling Psychology program, I accept this paper as partial

fulfillment of the requirements for Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology.

____________________________________
Gioia Jacobson, M.A., L.M.F.T.
Director of Research
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Abstract

Owning Power in Love Addiction:

Dismantling the False Self and Recovering Authenticity from the Shadow

by Amy E. Bourne

The current literature on love addiction has covered its potential neurobiological markers

and its probable connection to specific attachment styles. However, further depth

psychological investigations into the nature of love addiction—examining its etiology

and mechanisms from a psychoanalytical or Jungian perspective, for instance—are

almost nonexistent. This thesis utilizes a hermeneutic and heuristic lens to conduct a

depth-based inquiry into the role of early experiences of ego development and attachment

in the etiology of love addiction. It explores how the development of a Winnicottian false

self likely led to the sequestering of contents of the true self in the Jungian shadow.

Drawing from psychoanalytical and Jungian theorists from Donald Winnicott and Carl

Jung to Stephen Mitchell and Connie Zweig, this thesis asks how unconscious material

can be recovered through depth-oriented clinical approaches to weaken the addiction and

support the individual’s journey toward wholeness.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to acknowledge my compassionate and encouraging thesis advisor,

Maura Tousignant; Caeli, Katherine, and Sophie, for talking it through; Lenhart, for your

open mind; my dear family, for providing a puzzle for me to whet my soul on; and the

often miraculous work of my unconscious.

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Dedication

To Raili and Fiona, and their bright futures.

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Table of Contents

Chapter I Introduction ..................................................................................................1

Area of Interest ........................................................................................................1
Guiding Purpose and Rationale ...............................................................................2
Methodology ............................................................................................................5
Ethical Concerns ......................................................................................................6
Overview of Thesis ..................................................................................................7

Chapter II Literature Review.........................................................................................8

Attachment and Love Addiction ..............................................................................8
Definition of Attachment Styles ................................................................10
Codependency Versus Love Addiction .................................................................13
Definitions of Codependency in the Field .................................................13
Obsession, Alexithymia, and Love Addiction .......................................................15
Ethical Treatment of Love Addiction ....................................................................18
A Depth View on Love and Relationships ............................................................19
Treatment of Love Addiction from a Depth Perspective ...........................21

Chapter III Findings and Clinical Applications ............................................................23

The False Self and Her Vulnerabilities ..................................................................24
Definitions of the True and False Self .......................................................25
Anxious Attachment and False Self in Adulthood ................................................28
Definition of Jungian Shadow ...................................................................32
Summary of Findings .............................................................................................33
Clinical Applications .............................................................................................34
Overidentification with the Child Archetype .............................................35
Covert Narcissism in the Shadow ..............................................................37
Untapped Power in the Shadow .................................................................40
Summary ................................................................................................................43

Chapter IV Summary and Conclusions ........................................................................45

Conclusion .............................................................................................................47
Clinical Implications ..................................................................................49
A Social Justice Perspective ...............................................................51
Areas of Future Research ....................................................................51

References ..........................................................................................................................53
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Chapter I
Introduction

I cannot swear I love you not at all.

For there is that about you in this light—

A yellow darkness, sinister of rain—

Which sturdily recalls my stubborn sight

To dwell on you, and dwell on you again.

—Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Loving You Less Than Life, A Little Less”

Area of Interest

Love addiction merits further exploration in psychological research, because it

cuts to the vulnerable core of individuals and their attachment issues (Salani et al., 2022);

can exact a large toll professionally, socially, and even physically (Earp et al., 2017;

Sussman, 2010); and often cooccurs dangerously with other addictions (Griffin-Shelley,

2009). My personal struggles—as well as a possible causal relationship between certain

maladaptive ego developments as viewed through a depth psychological lens and love

addiction—inspired this exploration of the disorder. This thesis considers the etiology of

love addiction as it relates to Winnicottian and Jungian models of psychic growth (Jung,

1939/1969, p. 275; Winnicott, 1965), while examining the unconscious traits that may be

vying for recognition in the countless individuals bound by obsessive and self-destructive

relationship-related thoughts and behaviors.

This thesis applies a hybrid hermeneutic and heuristic framework, buttressing its

hypotheses with personal anecdotes that allow for a dynamic dialog between other
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researchers’ findings and my own analysis. After passing through a long series of

unfulfilling, triggering, and toxic relationships, I finally found my way to Sex and Love

Addicts Anonymous (SLAA) because the strictly co-dependent focus of Al-Anon felt off

the mark for me. Co-dependency, defined as a focus on helping others and wanting to

control them to the detriment of one’s development (Lyon & Greenberg, 1991), was not

my primary issue. I experienced other compulsive behaviors and thought patterns that

accompanied sharp highs and lows within intimate relationships or spurred by unrequited

romantic fantasies. For over a year, I dedicated myself to personal growth within SLAA.

Gradually, I discovered more resources related to love addiction and came to see that it is

an intractable and often destructive problem affecting many people. Additionally, I have

now learned that the theories on the etiology of love addiction as well as treatment

proposals are scant in the field’s existing literature.

Guiding Purpose and Rationale

Women and men who seem only to find partnerships or engage in relationships

that consume them with obsessive thoughts or inspire detrimental, life-altering behaviors

may face a two-fold problem of addiction and tragic loneliness. It seems human

connection—a primary source of psychological comfort and fulfillment from infancy to

death—can be perverted into something harmful when filtered through an insecure

attachment system (Feeney & Noller, 1990; Levine & Heller, 2010) or other

developmental twists. Put another way, addiction to pathological love serves as its own

ironic barrier to genuine love and connection—and leaves a trail of heartbreaks that can

result in depression and even suicide (Bolshakova et al., 2020; Sussman, 2010).
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Founder of analytical psychology Carl G. Jung (1954/1969) opined that every

psyche is striving toward wholeness (pp. 99–102). In his early work Psychological Types,

Jung (1921/1971) defined the psyche as “the totality of all psychic processes, both

conscious and unconscious” (pp. 463–464). He described psychic wholeness as an

integration of the various parts of the Self: a transcendent entity comprising the psyche

and all its potential, including that which exists in consciousness—the ego and persona—

along with the psyche’s unconscious contents, such as the shadow material that the ego

has pushed out of conscious awareness (Stein, 1998). British psychoanalyst and child

psychologist Donald Winnicott (1965), who followed in the footsteps of compatriot and

pioneering child psychoanalyst Melanie Klein and her infant-focused object relations

theory, developed a theory of ego development in babies based on whether the mothering

they receive is “good-enough” or “not-good-enough” (p. 145–147, 177). Winnicott

suggested that infants with not-good-enough mothers receive insufficient attunement to

and accommodation of their needs in a crucial phase and instead learn to accommodate

their mothers through compliance and hiding of the true self. Finally, British psychiatrist

John Bowlby’s (1969) attachment theory regarding the infant–mother dyad established

that purely relational needs exist. Canadian psychologist Mary Ainsworth and colleagues

(1979) furthered Bowlby’s theory by observing that infants who suffer from unattuned

mothers develop either avoidant or anxious attachment styles. Others have shown that

these styles shape one’s relationships for life (Feeney & Noller, 1990; Salani et al., 2022).

Gently surfacing repressed aspects of the love-addicted personality in a clinical setting

and respectfully cooperating with clients (Griffin-Shelley, 2009; Smaldino, 1991) to

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integrate those contents into consciousness is key to self-knowledge and Jung’s

(1961/1963) concept of the “psychic development of the self” (p. 196).

This thesis examines how summoning from the darkness a client’s unconscious,

long-denied traits might help them achieve healthier relationships through increased self-

knowledge. A heightened understanding of themselves will allow those individuals to

reclaim personal power, and to feel more authentically autonomous in relationships and

capable of accepting their own and others’ realistic limitations. Assisting a person

suffering from love addiction in exploring the roots of their overly accommodating

behavior and anxious vigilance might help alleviate their shame (Griffin-Shelley, 2009)

while elucidating and ideally reducing the potency of addictive patterns.

Given the likelihood of early trauma in the lives of love-addicted individuals

(Griffin-Shelley, 2009), this thesis touches on the sensitivity required in helping a client

peel away from addiction—and the vitalness of a supportive container in which to build

ego strength (Mitchell, 1987; Smaldino, 1991) as they begin to see their relational

motives more clearly. It also uses the author’s personal experiences as a jumping-off

point in exploring the etiology of love addiction.

This depth inquiry into love addiction could provide important information to the

field of psychology, as the maladaptive effort to secure closeness and avoid abandonment

at greater and greater costs is a common behavior, likely affecting at least 10% of the

population (Temmrick, 1990). The research makes an important distinction between the

concepts of codependency and love addiction, and highlights the trials and dangers of this

widespread behavioral disorder that has no place in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual

of Mental Illness (DSM-5) to date (American Psychiatric Association [APA], 2013).

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Examining love addiction’s roots through a wide depth psychological lens also sheds

light on the significant overlap between certain key psychodynamic and Jungian

concepts.

Methodology

Statement of Research Problem and Research Question

Love addiction has undergone examination on a neurobiological level (Earp

et al., 2017; Fisher et al., 2016; Redcay & Simonetti, 2018), but outside of correlations

made to attachment style (Feeney & Noller, 1990; Salani et al., 2022), there have been

few examinations of love addiction from a psychoanalytic (Smaldino, 1991) or Jungian

perspective. The central inquiry of this thesis is as follows: What results of early

attachment experiences precipitate the development of love addiction? How can

unconscious material that was banished by the love addict early on be gently unearthed

and reconfigured through depth-based clinical approaches to weaken the addictive cycle

and serve the individual in becoming more self-aware and whole?

Definition of Depth Psychology

Depth psychology is a term coined by father of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud’s

mentor Joseph Breuer (Meridien University, 2023). It refers to a branch of psychology

that believes in the importance of the unconscious in shaping an individual, a point of

view embraced by both Freud and Jung (Stein, 1998).

Research Methodology

Hermeneutic research inquiries are grounded in discovering what the research

says that discredits preconceived notions, from which arises the development of more

prejudgments for which confirmation or refutation is then sought. The key to hermeneutic
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investigations is seeking answers in the research and allowing those to lead to a more

refined understanding (Moustakas, 1994, p. 10). Using a hermeneutic approach, this

thesis looks carefully at what researchers have proposed for the associated traits and

etiology of love addiction, comparing and contrasting their viewpoints and layering their

conclusions with a depth perspective to arrive at a new hypothesis. At the same time,

given my personal struggles with love addiction, a heuristic lens enables personal

responses to and learning from the ideas encountered. It also allows for rich, first-hand

material to echo and inform the hermeneutic inquiry.

According to heuristic research pioneer Clark Moustakas (1990), this

methodology involves an internal search that provides an initial sense of meaning and

context for the research inquiry, after which the research is allowed to cast new light on

the self of the researcher (pp. 9–11). Moustakas described heuristic research as “a way of

being informed, a way of knowing” (p. 10). He continued, “Whatever presents itself in

the consciousness of the investigator as perception, sense, intuition, or knowledge

represents an invitation for further elucidation” (p. 10).

The challenge of these approaches might be to offer an equitable, nonjudgmental

platform for both the author’s personal experience and the exploration of theoretical

explanations and clinical applicability. However, this challenge is hardly insurmountable,

and the tension therein should make for more vital, compelling work.

Ethical Concerns

Due to the history of trauma and strong sense of shame that many people with

love addiction share, ethical treatment relies on a clinician’s use of trauma-informed care

and the recovery model (Yeager et al., 2013, pp. 388–391) and attention to transference
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and countertransference dynamics (Griffin-Shelley, 2009). Respecting boundaries and

following ethical guidelines are also crucial to preventing re-traumatization.

The heuristic nature of this inquiry allows for the inevitable introduction of

personal bias, especially without an explicit focus on the influence of cultural identity on

the authors’ findings. It should be noted that the author protects others’ privacy by only

including her own personal perspectives and experiences in the autobiographical

material, and excluding any references to specific individuals from her past or present.

The risk also exists of ignoring socioeconomic and sociocultural influences on the

relational behavior now defined by many as “love addiction.” It is essential for

practitioners to remain aware of differing cultural concepts of toxic, abusive, negligent,

or over-sexualized relationships. This thesis includes a critical perspective on twelve-step

programs for love addiction (Saulnier, 1996).

Overview of Thesis

Chapter II reviews the literature related to love addiction, attachment, and shadow

work. Chapter III explores findings that illuminate the relationship of love addiction with

shadow material and clinical applications related to the integration of the shadow in the

treatment of love addiction. Chapter IV provides a summary and conclusion as well as

suggestions for further research.

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Chapter II
Literature Review

As I burn up in your presence

And I know now how it feels

To be weakened like Achilles

With you always at my heels

—The Indigo Girls, “Ghost”

Love Addiction, Anxious Attachment, and a Depth Psychological Perspective

The field of psychology is still formulating a consensus on the definition of love

addiction, which is not included in the DSM-5 (APA, 2013) as a disorder. Recent

researchers have joined in the field’s ongoing debate regarding the definition of addiction

as inclusive of compulsive behaviors like gambling, eating, and shopping versus strictly

substance addictions. They have compared and contrasted love addiction with drug

addiction and with the non-pathogenic highs and lows associated with new romance to

determine its parameters (Earp et al., 2017; Fisher et al., 2016; Redcay & Simonetti,

2018).

Social psychologist Stanton Peele and psychiatrist Archie Brodsky (1975) coined

the term in their seminal work Love and Addiction, defining love addiction as “a sterile,

ingrown dependency relationship, with another person serving as the object of our need

for security” (p. 13). Later, they discussed the ways that love addiction, as analogous to

substance addiction, takes hold:

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The activity is reinforced in two ways—first, by a comforting sensation of well-

being induced by the drug or other addictive object; second, by the atrophy of the

addict’s other interests and abilities and the general deterioration of his life

situation while he is preoccupied with the addiction. (p. 27)

Peele and Brodsky’s conception of love addiction was broader than most today, as they

included any relationship that consumes the two parties and reduces their life options

(p. 22), whereas most current definitions stipulate that the addiction manifests in unhappy

relationships that have a significantly deleterious effect on one’s life (Earp et al., 2017,

p. 77). Psychologist Steve Sussman (2010) wrote that love is addictive when it is “(a)

permeating one’s daily life, (b) involving repeated out-of-control behavior, and (c)

resulting in negative life consequences” (p. 32). Italian psychologist Alice Salani (2022)

and colleagues defined love addiction as “a behavioral pattern characterized by a

maladaptive and excessive interest toward a romantic partner, resulting in lack of control,

the renouncing of other interests and behaviors, and other negative consequences” (p. 2).

Psychologist Brian D. Earp and colleagues (2017) considered contrasting theories

of love addiction: the narrow theory posits that love addiction consists of abnormal,

extreme love-related behaviors with correspondingly abnormal brain processes beyond

the neurochemical reactions that normal love incites, and acquiescence to negative

consequences; the broad view asserts that all forms of social attachment are addictive in

driving us toward the reward of connection, but only require treatment when negative

consequences arise (pp. 77–78). The authors did not favor one viewpoint, but asserted

that with either perspective, treating the individual with a focus on their humanity and

relationality rather than their potential love addiction is the most effective route (p. 89).
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Attachment and Love Addiction

Following on the heels of initial theories of love addiction, researchers began

inspecting the framework established by attachment theory (Ainsworth et al., 1978;

Bowlby, 1969)—which asserts that all humans seek social connection for relational

desires unnecessary to physical survival—and applying it to adult attachments.

Psychologists Cindy Hazan and Philip Shaver (1987) inquired into the attachment

systems of adults, concluding that a continuous thread connects infant attachment style—

established by Ainsworth (1979) and colleagues—to later childhood attachment behavior,

and adult forms of romantic attachment (Hazen & Shaver, 1987, pp. 512–513). Further,

Hazan and Shaver collected data that supported their hypotheses regarding the quality

and outcomes of securely versus insecurely-attached adults’ romantic relationships based

on factors like happiness, jealousy, trust, desire for reciprocation, and obsessive

preoccupation (p. 515).

Definition of Attachment Styles

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Ainsworth (1970) conducted research based on

Bowlby’s attachment theory that culminated in her Strange Situation Procedure. In that

experiment, infants between 10 and 12 months old were observed being separated from

their mothers and then reunited, with and without a strange adult present. Ainsworth

(Tracy & Ainsworth, 1981) distilled the results to establish three primary attachment

types among infants: secure, anxious/avoidant, and anxious/resistant—known more

popularly now as secure, avoidant, and anxious-ambivalent (Feeney & Noller, 1990).

Building on prior research, psychologists Judith A. Feeney and Patricia Noller

(1990) explored the connection between attachment styles and specific types of love.
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Feeney and Noller attempted to bridge the gap between adult attachment styles and love

addiction by investigating whether romantic love styles that feature love addiction

behavior might be associated with a specific attachment style (p. 281). One of their

hypotheses was that secure, avoidant, and anxious-ambivalent attachment styles would

correspond with different love styles (“eros” or romantic, “ludus” or game-playing, and

“mania” or possessive and dependent, respectively). They asked, “Can love addiction . . .

be equated with anxious-ambivalent attachment?” (p. 282).

Whereas their study results did not confirm a clear correspondence between one

attachment style and the mania or love addiction inventories utilized, Feeney and Noller

(1990) did surface several findings regarding the anxiously-attached group. These

subjects exhibited the lowest self-esteem, and the highest “intensity of love” experiences,

of the three attachment styles (pp. 287–288). Their findings also showed that whereas

avoidant and anxiously-attached individuals scored similarly on certain measures—

including unfulfilled hopes, self-conscious anxiety, and personal and social self-esteem—

the anxiously attached group showed the greatest dependence and desire for commitment;

this was despite having the least enduring relationships (p. 287). Anxious subjects also

stood apart in their clear endorsement of neurotic version of love involving

preoccupation, emotional dependence, idealization, and possessiveness, over circumspect

or companionate love (p. 289).

In studies, securely attached adults described their most important love

relationship as “happy, friendly, and trusting” (Hazan and Shaver, 1987, p. 515) and

reported accepting and supporting a partner regardless of their faults. By contrast,

anxiously attached adults are prone to overtures that aim to keep their partners close at
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the hint of separation called “protest behaviors” (Levine & Heller, 2010, pp. 88–89)—a

term coined by Bowlby (1969) to denote a child’s responses to separation from its

primary caregiver (p. 26). They are also prone to fretting over a partner’s flaws that might

drive a wedge between the two, frequently fearing but also anticipating abandonment,

and overreacting somatically and relationally to the slightest sense of rejection (Gander &

Buchheim, 2015; Hazan & Shaver, 1987; Levine & Heller, 2010).

In Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How it Can Help You

Find—and Keep—Love, psychiatrist Amir Levine and psychologist Rachel S. F. Heller

(2010) discussed the seeming frequency of anxiously-attached and avoidant pairings. The

authors cited studies showing that avoidant people actually seek partners who are

anxiously attached. In addition, they posited that avoidant people are likely single and

available more often than securely attached people, leaving the anxiously attached little

choice but to couple up with avoidants. They warned that adults with anxious attachment

risk becoming accustomed to, if not dependent on, the “emotional roller coaster” (p. 92)

they experience with avoidant individuals: “After living like this for a while, you start to

do something interesting. You start to equate the anxiety, the preoccupation, the

obsession, and those ever-so-short bursts of joy with love” (p. 92).

Various surveys have been used to measure love addiction outside of attachment

categories (Costa et al., 2021, p. 653). Italian Psychologist Sebastiano Costa and

colleagues (2021) recently created an updated Love Addiction Inventory (LAI) with

empirically established reliability. The LAI features four metrics for each of the six

existing dimensions in the components model for behavioral addiction: salience,

tolerance, mood modification, relapse, withdrawal, and conflict (p. 654). The 24
 13

questions all begin with “How often do you,” and include “How often do you feel

abandoned when you’re not with your partner?”, “feel the need to increase the amount of

time spent with your partner to experience pleasure?”, and “leave your recreational and

social activities to be in relationship with your partner?” (p. 656). Costa and his

colleagues declared they based the LAI on the behavioral addiction components model

and tailored it to love addiction to create “a useful assessment tool” (p. 666) containing

reliable psychometrics characteristics.

Codependency Versus Love Addiction

Some discussion has appeared in the literature about the overlap between

codependency and love addiction (Bolshakova et al., 2020; Sussman, 2010). Whereas

some authors and researchers have simply noted the likely cooccurrence of the two

maladaptive behavioral patterns as discussed by research scientist Maria Bolshakova and

colleagues (2020), others have insisted that the connection is still unknown (Sussman,

2010) or that love addiction is a subset of codependency (Mellody, 2002).

Definitions of Codependency in the Field

Codependency was conceived in the 1980s as a corollary to the disease model of

alcoholism (Hogg & Frank, 1992, p. 371) and signified a learned behavioral system of

psychological defenses and survival patterns in the family members of individuals with

alcohol use disorders (Lyon & Greenberg, 1991, p. 435). Over a decade, the term became

ubiquitous in popular psychological literature, and, according to some, the definition

bloated to include anyone who is now or once was in a dysfunctional relationship

(p. 435). However, University of Arizona psychologists Deborah Lyon and Jeff

Greenberg (1991) argued that it was not a late-20th-century concept but in fact was
 14

derived from what psychoanalyst Karen Horney in 1942 termed morbid dependency,

which they describe as “the necessity of obtaining and preserving affection, even at the

expense of engaging in a dependent, exploitive relationship” (p. 436).

Psychologists James Andrew Hogg and Mary Louise Frank (1992) noted that

codependency has been defined frequently as encompassing the following characteristics:

martyrdom, or sacrificing one’s own needs for those of others; fusion, or giving up one’s

own identity in intimate relationships; intrusion, or control of other’s behavior through

manipulation, exploitation, or caretaking; perfectionism, or unrealistically high

expectations of one’s self and others; and addiction, or reliance on compulsive behaviors

to regulate one’s emotions (p. 371). In the major bestseller Codependent No More: How

to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself, self-help author Melody Beattie

(1986) wrote of her experience organizing support groups for the spouses of people with

alcohol and substance use disorders: “I worked with women who were experts at taking

care of everyone around them, yet these women doubted their ability to take care of

themselves” (p. 2). Beattie described codependents’ compulsion to help others whose

lives were affected by substances, and even arrogance about their ability to do so:

Most codependents were obsessed with other people. With great precision and

detail, they could recite long lists of the addict’s deeds and misdeeds. . . .The

codependents knew what the alcoholic or addict should and shouldn’t do. And

they wondered extensively why he or she didn’t do it. (p. 2)

Popular addiction author and clinic founder Pia Mellody (2003) depicted love

addiction as a subset of codependency in her work Facing Love Addiction: Giving

Yourself the Power to Change the Way You Love. Mellody defined love addiction as
 15

being “dependent on, enmeshed with, and compulsively focused on taking care of another

person” (p. 3). Regarding its relationship to codependency, Mellody added:

While many assume that a codependent is someone who is dependent on,

enmeshed with, and takes too much care of someone else, this condition is

actually more properly called love addiction. Not all codependents make other

people their Higher Power [like love addicts do]. Some wall themselves off from

people; others offend and control without trying to be intimate. (p. 13)

Mellody described making someone else your “Higher Power”—a term used for the

spiritual entity to which members surrender their control in twelve-step programs—as

idealizing that person, or believing they have more power than you and will save you

from the pain of life; she characterized this overvaluation of the other as the core issue of

love addiction (p. 13).

Some love addiction theorists (Bolshakava et al., 2020) have asserted that

different types of love addicts exist, with one of the types—more often female than

male—particularly prone to co-dependency. This point conflicts with Mellody’s (2003)

argument that love addiction is a subset of co-dependency, and instead supports the

theory that they are simply overlapping but separate disorders.

Obsession, Alexithymia, and Love Addiction

Some studies of harmful relationship-related thinking and behavior have focused

on the obsessive preoccupation with relationships to which some lovers tend to succumb,

refraining from considering a perhaps more controversial label of love addiction. Israeli

psychologist Guy Doron and his colleagues (2013) investigated whether the confluence

of attachment anxiety and over-reliance on romantic relationships for self-worth—which

 16

they called “double relationship-vulnerability”—predicts relationship-centered

obsessions and obsessive-compulsive tendencies (p. 433). Their findings showed that

attachment anxiety had a significant effect on relationship-oriented obsessive-compulsive

symptoms, and that the effect was compounded when controlled for over-reliance on

relationship for self-worth (p. 436). Topics causing preoccupation fell into three

categories: feelings about one’s partner, perceptions about a partner’s feelings, and

“appraisal of the ‘rightness’ of the relationship” (p. 435).

In a study of 344 Italian women, Salani and her research team (2022) examined

the relationships between love addiction, emotional dysregulation, alexithymia, and child

and adulthood attachment (p. 3). Their findings supported a theory that love addiction is a

risk of childhood attachment failures; clinical subjects were more likely to identify their

parents as only intermittently present and lacking an “empathic and affectionate parental

attitude” (p. 16). They found that the women in love-addiction treatment reported a

significantly higher incidence of preoccupied attachment, which in a four-factor

attachment model advocated by social psychologists Kim Bartholomew and Leonard

Horowitz “is characterized by negative models of oneself and high attachment anxiety,

and positive models of the others and low avoidance” (Salani et al., 2022, p. 16). For

these women, Salani et al. noted that “their sense of unworthiness fuels their deep need

for closeness” (p. 16).

Salani and colleagues’ (2022) examination of emotional dysregulation in love

addiction revealed that “love addiction is characterized by . . . strong difficulties in

coping with negative feelings like depression, loneliness, guilt, shame, [and] anxiety”

(p. 12). Their theory on alexithymia held up in clinical results, proving that “love
 17

addiction … could be associated with alexithymic aspects, implying a lack of awareness

of one’s emotions and difficulties in identifying and communicating them” (p. 14).

In discussing obsessive–compulsive personality organization as distinguished

from obsessive–compulsive disorder (APA, 2013), psychoanalytic author Nancy

McWilliams (2011) wrote that obsessive–compulsive personality types “idealize

cognition and mentation” (p. 294). She observed:

What especially strikes those of us who work with [obsessive-compulsive

personalities] is that affect is unformulated, muted, suppressed, unavailable, or

rationalized and moralized (MacKinnon et al., 2006). Many contemporary writers

construe the obsessive allergy to affect as a type of dissociation. (p. 293)

Regarding their sense of self, McWilliams (2011) stated: “They are apt to be . . . hard-

working, self-critical, and dependable . . . [Obsessive-compulsive individuals] worry a

lot, especially in situations in which they have to make a choice” (p. 300). She went on,

“They may be equally nervous about giving in to lust, greed, vanity, sloth, or envy”;

further, “both obsessive and compulsive people may be so saturated with irrational guilt

and/or shame that they cannot absorb any more of these feelings” (p. 301).

In a chapter from The Cambridge Handbook of Substance and Behavioral

Addictions entitled “Passionate Love Addiction: An Evolutionary Survival Mechanism

That Can Go Terribly Wrong,” Bolshakova, biological anthropologist Helen Fisher, and

team (2020) stated that “those expressing an anxious-ambivalent attachment style were

the most prone to obsessive love; that is, love addiction [emphasis added]” (p. 264). The

authors also put forth a hypothesis about broad biologically-based styles of behavior and

cognition triggered in part by neural systems that could lead to four different love
 18

addiction profiles: the “Explorer,” fueled by dopamine, who is always looking for new

experiences and excitement levels and has difficulty remaining in one relationship; the

serotonin-fueled “Builder” who is overly concerned with safety and security; the

testosterone-driven “Director” who uses aggression and violence to control a partner; and

the estrogen-fueled “Negotiator” who is a strong empath, wants to nurture and understand

others, has a heightened memory for emotional experiences, and is engaged by “theory of

mind” (p. 264). The authors described typical Negotiators as “co-dependence junkies”

who “obsessively analyze the partnership, as well as possess increased susceptibility to

clinical depression and attempted suicide in response to romantic rejection”

(pp. 264–265).

Notably, the fourth thinking style is the one that aligns with anxious attachment,

which is most commonly linked to love addiction in the literature. This unique correlation

begs the question of whether the other “biologically-based temperament dimensions”

(Bolshakova et al., 2020, p. 265) are more often seen in men, who are underrepresented

in love addiction literature due to the predominantly female study subjects.

Ethical Treatment of Love Addiction

In his essay “Ethical Issues in Sex and Love Addiction Treatment” published in

the journal Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity, psychologist Eric Griffin-Shelley (2009)

noted the unanimous view among his colleagues that “recovery from sex and love

addiction is the most complex addiction recovery” (p. 34). He attributed this idea to the

multiple addictions that sex and love addicts often maintain, and to the widespread

history of trauma among sex and love addicts (p. 35). Griffin-Shelley wrote:
 19

Understanding a client’s reenactment scenario is important in decoding

[addictive] acting out . . . Recovery from other addictions focuses on more

concrete triggers for relapse prevention, but, because sex and love addiction is an

intimacy disorder, long-term recovery involves trauma resolution. (p. 35)

He stressed the imperative of a therapist’s monitoring transference-countertransference

dynamics, encouraging the discussion of feelings that arise within the therapeutic

relationship, as well as maintaining awareness of one’s own personal needs that may

interfere with treatment (pp. 35–36). Griffin-Shelley contended that therapists should

expect issues with authority among sex or love addictions (p. 36), and should handle

boundary issues with the utmost care:

[Sex and love addicts] tend to come from families that are either too distant, or

detached, or too close or enmeshed (Carnes, 1991). Coming from families that are

too rigid or too loose sets up the therapy relationship for conflicts around

expectations, suggestions, and direction. . . . Clients’ verbalizing these thoughts

and feelings will help strengthen the therapeutic alliance. (2009, p. 38)

A Depth View on Love and Relationships

Although few have examined love addiction in the literature, depth theorists have

written about romantic or intimate relationships in general as prime territory for

projection: the association of one’s disowned and often unconscious qualities with

another person (Desteian, 1989; Mitchell, 2002; Zweig & Wolf, 1997). In Coming

Together–Coming Apart: The Union of Opposites in Love Relationships, Jungian analyst

John A. Desteian (1989) defined romantic infatuation as a “finite period of passion” in

which “we love our projections” as opposed to the “reality-oriented” state of love, in
 20

which we “love the person on whom we have projected” (p. 24). He identified the

primary purpose of infatuation experiences as the rousing from slumber “of dormant parts

of one’s personality” (p. 23).

Desteian (1989) elaborated on this concept of infatuation and early love

constituting an “awakening,” a time when one’s “essential spirit” constellates in the

relationship and in one’s views of the other, as opposed to being stifled by the “prevailing

spirit” to which we all adapt, as dictated by our families and the culture (p. 35). In his

view, these adaptations are made fundamentally out of fear of abandonment (p. 37).

However, Desteian contended that one’s essential spirit is brought out in romantic love,

even—or especially—in the stage of infatuation. “Essential spirit, the expression of a

person’s most intimate needs and desires, has a moving and transformative effect on

lovers” (p. 37). Indeed, Desteian believed the primary function of our infatuations is to

“begin the painful and arduous task of reintegrating” our essential spirit (p. 57).

Jungian analysts Connie Zweig and Steve Wolf (1997) shared Desteian’s view of

shadow projection as a driver of infatuation and romantic love. They wrote: “When we

begin dating, as a natural part of development the shadow goes in search of its lost traits

in others in an effort to recover the full range of our personality—the gold in the dark

side” (p. 148). They saw this process as an unconscious compensatory effort. “Without

our knowing it, the shadow is at work attempting to recreate early childhood relationship

patterns with a secret mission—to heal old wounds and feel loved” (p. 148). It is to “the

shadow’s aim of completion” that Zweig and Wolf attributed the cliché “opposites

attract”: “optimists and pessimists, pursuers and distancers, extroverts and introverts”
 21

(p. 149). They argued that without awareness of these undercurrents, lovers become

repulsed or enmeshed in the unclaimed parts of themselves they find in the other (p. 150).

Treatment of Love Addiction from a Depth Perspective

Clinical social worker Carol Smaldino (1991) drew from depth perspectives such

as object relations theory to account for the “dreaded emptiness and dead-endedness” that

often afflicts a love-addicted individual, and from which they look to the loved one as the

sole escape route (p. 80). She attributed the dead-endedness to inadequate or disruptive

childhood experiences:

The steps of growth that pave the way for self-confidence and engagement with

the outside world do not unfold but are instead thwarted. It is as though a sense of

wonder is not returned by the parent, leaving an emptiness and despair. The

wonder, here, is particularly connected to the capacity for self-discovery, personal

feelings, and personal capabilities . . . But sometimes the parent is wonderful . . .

The parent in this instant is in great need of being worshipped. (p. 82)

Smaldino (1991) emphasized the potent nature of the child’s resultant love

addiction, the “threat of breakdown revealed by a movement away from the addiction,”

and “the potential health in that breakdown” (p. 80). She described love addiction as

an urgency of perception that the substance craved (in this instance a person) will

obliterate the pain which otherwise remains. . . .The urgency of the feelings of

need and craving returns again and again . . . [I]t can be consuming. At its most

extreme, it can dominate all functioning. (p. 81)

Recent literature on love addiction has revealed connections between anxious

attachment, with its associated low self-esteem, and love addiction (Feeney & Noller,
 22

1990). A possible etiology of love addiction, therefore, is materializing on the surface of

a formerly murky lake of inquiry: this behavioral problem could stem from a lack of

parental attunement that has led to an anemic sense of self-worth, spurring one to idealize

others by comparison and to seek their closeness as reassurance when one feels lonely

and inadequate (Doron et al., 2013; Smaldino, 1991). Another dimension of love

addiction that has arisen repeatedly in the literature is its correlation with obsessive

preoccupation and concomitant alexithymia (Salani et al., 2022). When affects are not

mirrored or are dismissed or rejected, one loses not only one’s sense of entitlement to

feelings but also basic awareness of them. Hence, alexithymia and preoccupied thinking

are key components of both anxious attachment and love addiction.

Bolshakova et al. (2020) and Sussman (2010) offered many possible approaches

to treating love addiction: twelve-step groups, cognitive-behavioral therapy,

psychodynamic therapy, psychodrama group therapy, couples therapy, motivational

interviewing, and pharmacotherapy. Sussman (2010) mentioned prevention techniques

such as fostering a more secure attachment style through role play, direct instruction, or

building into a school curriculum education about healthy relationships (pp. 38–39).

But why have feelings become so inaccessible to many love-addicted individuals?

McWilliams (2011) suggested that when working with an obsessive–compulsive

personality, “one way to bring a more affective dimension into the work is through

imagery, symbolism, and artistic communication” (p. 306). A depth psychological view

of love addiction might shed light on why an obsessively preoccupied lover has buried

her feelings. It would likely point toward accessing a client’s unconscious—which may

house the feelings which have heretofore been inaccessible or hidden.

 23

Chapter III
Findings and Clinical Applications

So whilst our infant loves did grow,/

Disguises did, and shadows, flow/

From us, and our cares

—John Donne, “A Lecture upon the Shadow”

The False Self and the Shadow in Love Addiction

Much of the existing literature on the etiology of love addiction centers on

justifying its inclusion under the addiction umbrella based on neurobiological evidence

(Earp et al., 2017; Fisher et al., 2016; Redcay & Simonetti, 2018), and establishing its

affective and behavioral patterns (Bolshakova et al., 2020; Costa et al., 2021; Sussman,

2010). Aside from a select few studies on the correlation between love addiction and

attachment systems (Salani et al., 2022; see also Feeney & Noller, 1990), psychodynamic

or depth psychological examinations of love addiction (Smaldino, 1991)—such as

inquiries into the unconscious machinations of love addiction, or the value of

incorporating the client’s unconscious in love addiction treatment—are next to

nonexistent. Hence, this thesis aims to investigate how reactions to early developmental

experiences create vulnerability to love addiction, and how psychic material interred in

the love addict’s unconscious early in life can be reclaimed and integrated through depth

psychological approaches to weaken the addictive cycle while supporting wholeness.

Building on literature connecting love addiction to anxious attachment,

codependence, and maladaptive behaviors like impulsivity and obsessive thinking, this
 24

thesis applies psychoanalytic and Jungian theory to examine how ego distortions

resulting from a love addict’s unconsciousness of fundamental personality components

creates the ideal psychic landscape for love addiction to flourish. This chapter considers

how the development of an overly compliant or codependent persona (defined below) in

individuals with anxious attachment and love addiction obscures the true self. It looks at

their tendency to cling to pseudo-innocence or pseudo-power (May, 1972) while

remaining unaware of unconscious propensities such as childishness and covert

narcissism, as well as assertiveness and personal power.

In its combined hermeneutic and heuristic approach to the analysis, this thesis

allows the author to reference some of the relevant personal experience that lent an initial

sense of meaning and context to this research. First-hand experience has remained

relevant with my deepening inquiry into the topic—allowing for a dialog between

research findings and personal history, and further elucidating the constellation of inter-

and intrapersonal dynamics and psychic distortions that can foster love addiction.

The False Self and Her Vulnerabilities

In The Maturational Process and the Facilitating Environment: Studies in the

Theory of Emotional Development, Winnicott (1965) claimed that a prerequisite of

emotional maturity at any age is a person’s ability to inhabit their relaxed, uncensored

self in the presence of another person (pp. 29–31). He argued that this ability rests on the

person’s early experience of a primary caregiver’s capacity to resonate with the infant

and to adequately mirror, contain, and respond to their expressions of need. Winnicott

theorized that for ideal psychic development, infants must feel at ease resting in self-

absorption in the presence of their mothers. He discussed the capacity of the individual to
 25

be “alone in the presence of someone” (p. 32) as the critical factor which allows an infant

to access its core self:

It is only when alone (that is to say, in the presence of someone) that the infant

can discover his own personal life. The pathological alternative is a false life built

on reactions to external stimuli [emphasis added]. When alone in the sense that I

am using the term, and only when alone, the infant is able to . . . exist for a time

without being either a reactor to an external impingement or an active person with

a direction of interest or movement. (pp. 33–34)

In this state, according to Winnicott, the infant can then express a spontaneous desire

based on a physiological impulse. When her mother responds appropriately, she learns

that being relaxed and genuine in the presence of another is safe (p. 34). On the other

hand, if the mother fails at being mostly empathetic and responsive to the baby’s needs

and shifts in mood, the infant cannot trust her own impact on the external world or her

efficacy in getting her needs met. A natural reaction to this “not-good-enough”

mothering, Winnicott opined, is for the infant to adopt an accommodating stance toward

impingements from her primary caregiver—in other words, to develop a “false self”

designed to elicit the best possible response from the mother they have (p. 145).

Definitions of the True and False Self

Winnicott (1965) defined a child’s true self as an inherited potential that,

specifically in the time of maximum dependency in the infant’s life, “experienc[es] a

continuity of being, and acquir[es] in its own way and at its own speed a personal psychic

reality and a personal body-scheme” (p. 46). He wrote that “only the true self can feel

real, but the true self must never be affected by external reality, must never comply”
 26

(p. 133). By contrast, he described a false self as an entity focused on compliance,

developed in part to protect the true self (p. 58). Winnicott conceived the worst possible

outcome thusly: “When the false self becomes exploited and treated as real there is a

growing sense in the individual of futility and despair . . . suicide can then be a

reassertion of the true self” (p. 133). However, he was careful to establish that varying

degrees of pathology might be found in the manifestation of a false self (pp. 133,

142–143).

I believe that early on I crafted a false self that was both compliant and overly

autonomous, a seeming irony in light of my history of love addiction. As a child I spent

much of my free time reading, drawing, and writing alone in my room, and as a young

adult I chose solitary hobbies and often isolated myself, often opting not to reach out to

others to avoid becoming a nuisance or being met with rejection. From adolescence

onward, I was always striving toward independence in relationships. On a deeper level, I

craved total acceptance through friendship or romantic connection, but I was sure that

few could be trusted with my vulnerability. Revealing my dependence on another person

was anathema to me and a sure source of shame. I wonder if this shame was rooted in a

degree of unavailability of the adults around me, or their dismissal of certain of my

complaints, emotions, and needs. In photos, I am always a smiling, sunshine-y baby. I

recall being told at least once in my early childhood that I was unrecognizable when in a

bad mood. I understood that I was a docile and sweet child who should not have—or

express—difficult emotions. This seed of my Winnicottian false self would grow into a

spirit-leeching ground cover that stymied my emotional development.

 27

I tried to avoid making an unwelcome demand. I put on a happy face even when

bored, angry, or hurt, allowing others a large margin of error. I did have needs, but I felt

shame around them; I would have preferred to be alone than need something from

another. My overarching goal in my first romantic forays—although I never achieved it

for more than moments at a time—was to prove that I could maintain my grounding and

autonomy in relationship with others, that I could become absorbed in my own thoughts

or activities in another’s presence. For me, it boiled down to optics: it was about making

the other believe I was confident and unafraid of abandonment, regardless of the truth.

My secret hope was that if I proved these things, I would secure their admiration and

affection. I was exploiting myself, or my false self, in hopes of winning love. In “Ethical

Issues in Sex and Love Addiction Treatment,” Griffin-Shelley (2009) wrote:

Unlike other trauma victims who tend to be overly needy, sex and love addicts act

in a counter-dependent way hiding their intense need for love and approval

[emphasis added]. This makes them hard to engage, isolative, avoidant, and

preferring fantasy to real relationships (Leedes, 2001). With high levels of shame,

these clients present with . . . denial, minimization, and projection. (p. 35)

Despite my identification with a false self—the always-smiling, slightly inhibited,

never bored, needy, or insistent little girl—my underlying demands and cravings for love

were vulnerable parts of my true self trying to push up through the soil. But a passionate,

occasionally needful, fearful, or angry version of me had never felt safe above-ground, so

I was not certain she really existed. Instead, I chose partners who exhibited these

qualities, perhaps to a fault.

 28

Anxious Attachment and False Self in Adulthood

Other theorists in Winnicott’s time saw the clear influence that closeness with—

and bonding capacity of—a primary caregiver has on an infant’s behavior and

development. Bowlby (1969) introduced his paradigm-shifting attachment theory to the

psychoanalytic world based on observations of human and animal infants. Bowlby’s

theory held that a variety of behaviors on an infant’s part are primarily social, with the

goal of maintaining proximity to their mother figure, rather than simply fulfilling

secondary drives for food or shelter (pp. 178–179). In Volume I of his groundbreaking

work Attachment and Loss, Bowlby described “behavioral systems [that are] activated”

(p. 179) by separation from the primary caregiver—activation which ideally dies down

with the sight, sound, or touch of the mother. Bowlby observed that this attachment

behavior is less readily triggered after age three, as cognitive developments make a child

less needful of her mother’s actual physical presence. However, he believed attachment

behavior evolves over the years, and begins seeking new targets: “During adolescent and

adult life yet further changes occur, including change of the figures towards whom the

behaviour is directed” (p. 179).

Grounded in Bowlby’s theories, Ainsworth’s body of research (Van Rosmalen et

al., 2015) revealed that securely attached babies feel great enough safety to stray from

their mothers and explore while she is in the room, show distress when she leaves but

happily reunite with her on her return (Ainsworth, 1979). By contrast,

anxious/ambivalent infants seek proximity with their mother, anticipate her departure

with distress, show acute anxiety while she is gone yet are ambivalent toward her upon

her return, possibly displaying some anger. Unlike both other groups, infants with
 29

avoidant attachment style do not react when their mother leaves or returns—perhaps a

defensive strategy to avoid painful feelings of rejection, given their elevated heart rates

observed in later research (Van Rosmalen et al., 2015, p. 4)—and exhibit overt anger

when she tries to pick them up or show physical affection (Ainsworth, 1979).

Again, key strategies associated with the false self are complying with the

caregiver’s wants and needs and hiding the true self (Winnicott, 1965, p. 9). If an infant

with secure attachment style has a well-developed true self he or she is comfortable

exposing to others, those with anxious and avoidant attachment styles utilize various

“secondary strategies to regulate the attachment system” (Gander & Buchheim, 2015,

p. 4). These adaptations are reactions to the primary caregiver’s own attachment style and

level of responsiveness and affection, and thereby limit the infant’s ability to be authentic

among others. This jibes with Winnicott’s (1965) description of false-self behavior:

[W]here the mother cannot adapt well enough, the infant gets seduced into

compliance, and a compliant False Self reacts to environmental demands and the

infant seems to accept them. Through this False Self the infant builds up a false

set of relationships. . . . [T]he child may grow to be just like mother, nurse, aunt,

brother, or whoever at the time dominates the scene. The False Self has one

positive and very important function: to hide the True Self. (pp. 146–147)

Winnicott’s image of the false self is of a child who has relinquished her selfhood and

begun to outwardly exist for others in order to satisfy the demands of her attachment

system (Bowlby, 1969, pp. 372–73). In the face of impingement in the first years of life,

an insecurely-attached infant finds relief when her compliant behavior elicits something

like love. I propose that attempts to cope with the pain and low self-esteem of an
 30

underdeveloped true self prime the false self for codependence (Bolshakova et al., 2020)

and addiction to a substance or person (Mellody, 2003).

Addiction is often the darker, more defended face of a compliant false self.

Psychoanalytic psychiatrist and addiction specialist Frederic M. Baurer (2021) described

a false self as an ideal host for addiction: “The true self is often buried beneath addiction,

inaccessible. The addicted person is cut off from internal life, psychophobic, walled off

within the false self persona . . . Addictive false self protects against [one’s] vulnerability

by offering pseudo-control” (p. 413). Baurer wrote of working with a substance-addicted

client: “While out of control and destructive, she could live in this persona, this false self,

and feel powerful in not caring. She could defeat her oppressors by passivity” (p. 415).

Passivity is likely to manifest in an anxious, overly compliant love addict, as well.

People with love addiction occasionally act out by using protest behaviors—those

common expressions of anxious attachment—such as drunk texting, reneging on

important obligations to pursue or stalk lovers or exes, and other impulsive acts

(Bolshakova et al., 2020; Sussman, 2010). However, they just as often turn to obsessive

thinking. Obsessive thinking and rumination are considered marks of both anxious

attachment and love addiction (Bolshakova et al., 2020; Hazan & Shaver, 1987; Fisher et

al., 2016). Additionally, Winnicott (1965) wrote about a specific brand of false self “in

which the intellectual process becomes the seat of the False Self. A dissociation between

mind and psyche-soma develops” (p. 134). More apt to develop when caregivers are

receptive to a child’s non-emotional queries than their feeling states, this obsessive-

compulsive false-self likely exhibits discomfort and avoidance around feelings and uses

intellectualization as a coping mechanism. It is no surprise that some researchers have

 31

drawn a link between alexithymia (Salani et al., 2022)—the inability to identify one’s

own emotions—and love addiction.

In my own experience, my low self-esteem led me to fear presenting anything

outside my false self to others, particularly in that most vulnerable and rejection-rife

arena of romantic love. I would adjust my behavior to the sought-after love object,

constantly trying to ease their difficult emotions at the expense of a full awareness of my

own. When I managed to win a lover’s affection with my pseudo-confident, easygoing

false-self persona, I counted it as a victory and felt superficially gratified; I experienced a

kind of high from the conquest. I was an obsessive thinker and fantasizer with a robust

fear of rejection—making those first few and fleeting victories taste all the sweeter. I

think I experienced each conquest as a reclamation of power after a markedly compliant

childhood, ignoring the falsity of myself and of the power. The false self was a persona

that I identified with and used to these ends; my true self remained shadowed.

My false self’s conquests always failed as soon as the avoidant love object felt too

hemmed in by my subtle but inevitable protest behaviors, yet I was convinced I would

eventually learn the right formula for hanging onto an avoidant other. This conviction,

along with the intellectualization of my primal abandonment fears, seem to be markers of

an intellectualizing false-self type and of many anxiously-attached love addicts. The

question remains of where my primal fears of abandonment hid—along with my anger,

and my true self’s other contents—when a false self formed. Jung’s (1946/1966)

conception of the psyche’s shadow as a storeroom or junk yard for parts of the individual

that have been semi-consciously severed is apropos here (p. 239).

 32

Definition of Jungian Shadow

Jung’s (1946/1966) most succinct definition of an individual’s shadow was “the

thing he has no wish to be” (p. 262). At times, Jung (1951/1971) described the personal

shadow as housing the “dark,” “negative” side of the personality, or the evil inside every

individual (pp. 8–11). However, he viewed the shadow’s contents as mixed. Jung

(1940/1969) wrote, “The shadow is merely somewhat inferior, primitive, unadaptive, and

awkward; not wholly bad. It even contains childish or primitive qualities which

would…vitalize and embellish human existence, but—convention forbids!” (p. 78). Stein

(1998) underscored this viewpoint: “Frequently shadow material is not evil. It is only felt

to be so because of the shame attached to it due to its nonconformity with the persona”

(p. 122). The false self could be seen as a kind of rigid or opaque persona, a front created

by the ego for interfacing with others (Stein, 1998). One is aware of their false self, even

if they do not realize it is false, or understand that other parts of themselves—including

their true self—are in shadow.

Desteian (1989) believed that the contents of our unconscious that begin to come

to light in this consummation of the marriage of our essential spirit with another’s in

infatuation may be born from our shadow. “The term ‘shadow’ refers to those repressed

personality traits that are part of one’s personal unconscious . . . if we think of the ego as

living in the full sunlight of consciousness, then the shadow lives in the ego’s shade”

(p. 55). Their residence in the ego’s shade does not make these traits evil; in fact, they are

part of our essential spirit, which is the expression of our most intimate needs and desires.

So how does a person begin to uproot or dismantle a false self persona, or reveal

it for what it is? How can one resuscitate, rehydrate, and revive the true self so that it may
 33

re-start its stunted growth in adulthood? Additionally, what qualities or tendencies might

commonly lie in the shadows of love-addicted individuals? The answers could reveal the

most effective, empowering, and life-affirming approach to treating love addiction.

Summary of Findings

Winnicott (1965) held that in each person there exists the innate capacity to act

organically and spontaneously without impingements. There is no prima facie moral

value on this; it is simply freedom to access the true self, with whom a false-self persona

has no real contact. Indeed, the same circumstances that have engendered a false-self

profile have created an environment in which love addiction—like a cancerous growth—

can take hold and thrive. These circumstances, according to my analysis, center on the

lack of good-enough mothering that that would allow an infant to relax in the presence of

another. Instead, the not-good-enough mothering creates anxiety about the mother’s

availability and compliance with a primary caregiver’s needs rather than recognition and

expression of the infant’s own. The adult profile is of a codependent obsessive thinker

who feels insecure around intimacy. They unconsciously seek the most emotionally

bipolar intimate partnerships as those provide euphoric relief when non-forthcoming

affection is delivered—and, in their painful times, hint at the chance of psychic healing.

The love addict becomes addicted to the euphoric relief as well as to the hope of healing,

and uses her well-worn skills of pretending and complying to maintain her addictive ties.

Jung (1921/1971) saw a person’s psyche as encompassing a vast expanse of

material and potential, including much that is outside of awareness. In The Archetypes

and the Collective Unconscious, Jung (1954/1969) described the psyche as “a boiling

cauldron of contradictory impulses, inhibitions, and affects” (p. 104). Wrote Jungian
 34

scholar Murray Stein (1998), “Some contents are reflected by the ego and held in

consciousness. . . . while other psychic contents lie outside of consciousness, for

whatever reason or whatever duration [emphasis added]” (pp.15–16). Development of a

false self would mean rejecting some of psyche’s potential as shameful or simply “not-

me.” Jung (1946/1966) would say such rejected traits or tendencies have been driven into

the unconscious personal shadow (p. 59).

The goal of every human being, Jung (1939/1969) contended, is to achieve

“individuation” (p. 275). He used this term “to denote the process by which a person

becomes a psychological ‘in-dividual,’ that is, a separate indivisible unity or ‘whole’” (p.

275):

Knowledge of the phenomena that can only be explained on the hypothesis of

unconscious psychic processes makes it doubtful whether the ego and its contents

are in fact identical with the “whole.” If unconscious processes exist at all, they

must surely belong to the totality of the individual, even though they are not

components of the conscious ego. (p. 275)

It is my contention that shadow material must be coaxed into the light of consciousness,

and accepted in a nurturing context, for an individual to move forward on a journey of

individuation. This may be the essential first step in knowing one’s true self.

Clinical Applications

The compulsivity that comprises addiction—including love addiction’s

obsessions and exploits—often resides in the dark and shadowy, unconscious part of the

psyche (Walker, 1994, pp. 35–36). As Baurer (2021) wrote, “Addictive process is

malignant . . . seeking external solutions to powerlessness and loss of control” (p. 407).
 35

Whereas a person’s outward social behavior in service of the addiction might arise from

their false self, the addiction’s underpinnings—such as impulsivity or insatiability—may

reside in their shadow. If so, these tendencies share space with all other true-self

characteristics the individual is hiding or defended against, due to shame and a clash with

their persona. A clinical depth psychotherapist could help a client who has presented and

used a false self in addiction in identifying and then integrating their shadow

characteristics to further individuation. This process would support rediscovery of a

precious and potent true self from which they were alienated early on, and of which they

may have lost all concept. Shadow contents that may cost love-addicted individuals while

hidden under the veil of denial include inflation of the child archetype (puer or puella) as

well as covert narcissism and healthy personal power.

Overidentification with the Child Archetype

Jung (1951/1969) described archetypes as ineffable symbols whose images appear

repeatedly across unrelated, disconnected peoples. He believed these symbols arise from

an unconscious commons that he called the “collective unconscious” (p. 155). He argued

that archetypes have potency in human psychology, even if their specific meanings are

diffuse and ultimately elusive (pp. 152–153). Jung (1951/1971) also contended that

projection, or the tendency of individuals with or without pathologies to see their own

unwanted or hidden qualities in their significant others (pp. 9–10), is a method of

identifying one’s shadow material if the projection can be recognized for what it is.

Jungian scholars have described projection of archetypal shadow material as common in

close relationships, especially romantic pairings (Desteian, 1989; Zweig & Wolf, 1997).
 36

According to Jung (1951/1969), the child archetype in the form of a young savior

figure has surfaced time and again in humanity’s collective unconscious (p. 157). “The

child motif represents the precious, childhood aspect of the collective psyche,” he wrote

(p. 161). Jung conceded that a psyche’s archetypal child may also represent forgotten bits

of childhood that are nevertheless connected to a collective whole.

An individual who has complied with primary caregivers—for instance, by acting

as a small husband or wife to their mother or father—may be harboring an overly-

innocent child archetype in their shadow. As an adult, they may find that when under

emotional duress they identify with an exaggerated sense of innocence and goodness,

nurse guilt when angry, and feel rejected by anything short of unconditional love. And

although their false-self persona is mature, flexible, and understanding, a child archetype

hidden in their shadow might lead them to project their fear of responsibility and

commitment onto a partner. Again, individuals with anxious attachment have the shortest

love relationships (Feeney & Noller, 1990), and people who tend toward obsessive-

compulsive anxiety about relationships question the goodness and suitability of their

partners constantly (Doron et al., 2013). This points to the illusions of perfection in love

as well as the aversion to decisions and commitment of the child archetype.

My overidentification with the child or puella archetype has been, in my view,

both an unconscious attempt at reclaiming something from the past that had been papered

over or buried—both a playful innocence and unaffectedness that ideally would be met

with unconditional love and an eternal grasping for a fantasy future defined by potential

that escapes the confines of specificity, and is not anchored in reality (Jung, 1951/1969,

p. 165). Nevertheless, for much of my adult life I would have denied or felt confused by
 37

an assessment that I was noncommittal, allergic to adult responsibility, or prone to

dependency on others. These were the by turns attractive and repugnant qualities I saw in

my partners. I believe that, had I understood my unconscious tendencies around this

archetype, I might have fought to turn my rudder and right my ship sooner. Supporting

the revelation of puer or puella overidentification in a love addict through a therapist-

patient practice Jung (1958/1969) called “active imagination” (p. 68)— the use of such

unconscious creations as “deceptions and lapses of memory” (p. 77), waking dreams, and

“spontaneous fantasies” (p. 78) to elicit the revelation of unconscious contents—as well

as dream analysis and Socratic questioning could help them to identify and integrate this

part of their shadow, reeling in their projections onto their addictive partner.

Covert Narcissism in the Shadow

In Ego & Archetype: Individuation and The Religious Function of the Psyche,

analytical psychologist Edward F. Edinger (1972) discussed the ego inflation that

accompanies an eternal childlike state—the puer aeternus—that some adults inhabit.

Viewing themselves as forever in progress, they are unwilling or unable to reduce their

options and commit to a specific—and finite—path in life. On some level this individual

feels inflated and god-like, as if he should be able to do or have everything. Wrote

Edinger: “He must give up his identification with original unconscious wholeness and

voluntarily accept being a real fragment instead of an unreal whole. To be something in

reality, he must give up everything in potentia” (p. 14).

The etiology of an individual’s identification with a puer aeternus archetype may

be a failure to transcend a primary narcissistic state, due to lack of parental mirroring and

attunement. Psychodynamic psychologist Stephen Mitchell (1986) wrote about primary

 38

narcissism as viewed by psychoanalysts across time in his paper “The Wings of Icarus—

Illusion and the Problem of Narcissism.” Freud and his successors considered narcissism

to be a natural state infants inhabit when they perceive themselves to be the center of the

universe, prior to understanding their separation as well as their fallibility (Mitchell,

1986, p. 108). In the primary narcissistic state, infantile illusions about one’s self and

others prevail. “Narcissism entails the attribution of illusory value,” Mitchell wrote (p.

108), whether to one’s self, another, or both. He elaborated:

In Freud’s view, withdrawal from reality is always perilous, the ultimate threat

being the total loss of connection with the real world . . . and the less devastating

threat posed by the vulnerable loss of self suffered by the unrequited lover, whose

narcissism is transferred to the beloved and never returned. (p. 108)

It seems as if love addicts commonly project their own narcissistic shadow content onto

real or fantasy partners, only to feel injured by the others’ apparent self-absorption.

Mitchell (1986) discussed Winnicott’s position on the necessity of a primary

narcissistic state as revealed in his writings about infant omnipotence (p. 111). Winnicott

(1965) tied omnipotence to the mother’s facilitating environment, which allows babies

the freedom to feel all-powerful or omnipotent and to view others subjectively, after

which they gradually learn to accept the reality principle of perceiving others, or objects,

objectively (p. 180). Winnicott considered this progression key to mature relations

(Mitchell, 1986, p. 111), and saw subjective omnipotence as a crucial foundation to

which older children and adults return in the act of creativity. Winnitcott (1965) argued

that with a good-enough mother and a facilitating environment, an infant can eventually
 39

“abrogate omnipotence” (p. 146). Without good-enough mothering, a child might cling to

magical omnipotence, or the overvaluation of self or others.

Mitchell (1986) noted that the “healthy narcissism” or subjective omnipotence

that an adult can return to for generative activity reflects a “subtle dialectical balance

between illusion and reality” (p. 120) in which illusions concerning oneself and others

can be created, enjoyed, and relinquished when disappointments occur. In pathological

narcissism, illusions are

actively and consciously maintained; reality is sacrificed in order to perpetuate an

addictive devotion to self-enobling, idealizing, or symbiotic fictions . . . In some

narcissistic disturbances, narcissistic illusions are harbored secretly or repressed;

the preoccupation with the limitations and risks of reality lead to an absence of

joyfulness or liveliness (1986, p. 120).

The last narcissistic type, more recently labeled “vulnerable” or “covert” narcissism

(Rohmann et al., 2012), seems to track with the overthinker, the under-actor, the

fantasizer: one who would rather vault herself onto a pedestal only in hidden or

unconscious fantasies, yet would readily project her grandiosity onto her reciprocating or

unrequited love object. A love-addicted individual believes in her own innocence and

impotence to a great extent—or has become reliant upon the meager rewards his or her

compliant persona gleans from relationships with avoidant or perhaps grandiose partners.

In a study on narcissism in relationship, covert narcissists showed “preoccupation with

grandiose fantasies, oscillation between feelings of superiority and inferiority, and fragile

self-confidence” (p. 279).

 40

An individual with love addiction must be helped to gradually uncover the

narcissism in their shadow, and the illusions it creates about their own or another’s

infinitude—to shed light on their distorted views of themselves and their beloved, and

also to release them from victimhood and addictive inclinations that owning such a

shadow trait affords. As Zweig and Wolf (1997) stated in their popular work Romancing

the Shadow: A Guide to Soul Work for a Vital Authentic Life:

Denial is entrenched because the shadow does not want to come out of its hiding

place. Its nature is to hide, to remain outside of awareness. So the shadow acts out

indirectly…[or] it sneaks out compulsively, concealed in an addictive behavior.

(p. 5)

Those with love addiction have entertained illusion to fight painful feelings of

rejection and powerlessness (Smaldino, 1991). Hence, it is advisable to allow for some

vacillation between reality and magical omnipotence within a safe and accepting

therapeutic container before forcing a love-addicted person to adopt a more realistic lens.

Untapped Power in the Shadow

Zweig and Wolf (1997) wrote of a young woman who persisted in seeking

relationships regardless of serially failed romances, maintaining the belief that if she

could just correct some flaw in herself and become perfect, she would find love

(pp. 116-117). In their view, such a psyche’s eternal flame of hope “pretends to be an

authentic voice . . . but uses shields to defend against the appearance of the authentic Self,

which lies hidden beneath the shadow” (p. 119). They proposed two questions to those

with this pattern with the intention to uncover shadow material: “If you are single and

ever hopeful, what loss do you defend against? What do you need to grieve?” (p. 119) I
 41

would add the following queries: “If you feel angry or disappointed, what do you do?

How would you describe your love object in comparison with yourself? What is your

experience of personal power?”

In his seminal work Power and Innocence, existential psychologist Rollo May

(1972) wrote, “The cooperative, loving side of existence goes hand in hand with coping

and power, but neither one nor the other can be neglected if life is to be gratifying”

(pp. 19–20). A love-addicted person has not yet enjoyed the maturity that comes with

basic awareness of the shadow, whose contents, if made conscious, could both foster

humility and cultivate self-efficacy and power.

It is common in dominant American culture that for women, personal power is

equated with something ugly, dark, or negative (Rein, 2019), and relegate it to the

shadow. In this sense, it is not only individual women’s but also Western culture’s

collective unconscious that needs healing. Hence, a clinician’s acknowledgment of the

cultural constraints female clients have internalized—with a view toward

intersectionality, or the sensitive consideration of multiple overlapping minority

statuses—is imperative. Women may feel that embracing their personal power will make

them unattractive and dominating or, worse, evil. As May (1972) put forth, there exists in

every human life the potential for the power to be, for self-affirmation, and for self-

assertion (pp. 40–41), and power is neither good nor evil (p. 122). Owning and asserting

the power to be who they are may present the best opportunity for Western women to

realize their individual potentials.

May (1972) also discussed the concept of “pseudoinnocence,” (p. 49): in a word,

a refusal to acknowledge one’s own power and capacity for aggression:

 42

[American psychoanalyst Harry Stack Sullivan] believed that the feeling of power

in the sense of having influence in interpersonal relations with significant others is

crucial for the maintenance of self-esteem and for the process of maturity. When

the sense of significance is lost, the individual shifts his attention to different, and

often perverted or neurotic, forms of power. (p. 36)

In May’s view, one needs to claim one’s own power to live fully and healthily.

Paradoxically, this also means acknowledging one’s vulnerability and powerlessness over

other people, and one’s addictions. Baurer (2022) asserted that addictive false self:

protects against this vulnerability [resulting from early trauma] by offering

pseudo-control, whereas the therapeutic relationship aiming for self-discovery

threatens to expose emotional vulnerability, loss of control, and shame. We can

expect countertherapeutic behavior as we uncover deep-seated shame, self-hatred,

and fear of being known, but we proceed with empathy . . . We scan the

therapeutic space for the often-faint voice of the true self as we aim to nurture this

into consciousness. (p. 413)

Zweig and Wolf (1997) described collaborating with clients to uncover various

powerful and mythical figures who dwell in their shadows, and can sometimes be seen

only in what these clients project onto their love interests: a hidden but powerful Artemis

who in her staunch self-reliance wants to roam free and hunt without responsibility or

commitment, or Hera, the devoted and committed wife whose life revolves around her

mate. They also addressed men who might unconsciously identify with Haephestus,

Aphrodite’s deformed husband who she banished from Olympus and who sought revenge

in various ways, or Apollo, the god of dream and illusion, who while playing frolicking
 43

game with his male lover accidentally kills the partner off and then memorializes his loss,

perhaps wanting the longing more than the satisfaction of a real lover.

The adult-child of the love addict must be nurtured by her therapist but also

ushered onto a maturation path, by encouraging an authentic adult self to burst through

the false self’s confines. This might mean passing through an openly fiery, rebellious, and

spontaneous puer or puella stage on the way to maturing; however, this stage need not

comprise addiction or self-destruction. Rather than allowing the puer or puella fire to fuel

a dark, all-consuming fire of passion, it needs a balance of earth and water: strength, re-

birth, and spirituality. Hence, the puer or puella love addict begins to develop a

grounding in power, responsibility and maturity: characteristics that have long been

stowed in her shadow. She can then integrate the projections she has made on her lovers,

using the reclaimed energy to burst forth as a genuine self who is primed for

individuation.

Summary

Many of the primary psychic characteristics exhibited by love-addicted

individuals—low self-esteem, anxious attachment, overly-accommodating or

codependent personalities, obsessiveness, and alexithymia—are the identical qualities

that appear when a false self develops in reaction to a lack of responsive resonance and

accurate mirroring by an infant’s primary caregivers. A false self has generally abdicated

her personal power and sense of relational authenticity and autonomy in order to comply

with the emotional needs and limitations of the caregiver, as the best hope for having her

own needs met. The Winnicottian true self, those portions of the personality that felt
 44

shameful or unsafe in early attachment experiences, have not ceased to exist, but instead

have been relegated to their Jungian shadow.

I posit that such a trajectory describes the etiology of love addiction in its most

common presentation. Jung (1951/1971) asserted that integrating shadow material is

more than just a way to know oneself better but is requisite to a fully-realized, fulfilling

life (p. 8). Drawing a love-addicted client’s shadow material out through various forms of

Jungian active imagination to uncover personality traits such as childishness, narcissism,

and personal assertiveness will be by turns both humbling and empowering. Still, this

work is likely to connect them more closely to reality, dismantling their projections onto

idealizing and painful addictive relationships and clearing a path for true intimacy with

others—including that “reality-oriented commitment and deep-rooted devotion”

(Desteian, 1989, pp. 23–24) of real love.

 45

Chapter IV
Summary and Conclusions

Despite its absence from the DSM-5 (APA, 2013), there has been some consensus

that love addiction is a legitimate disorder (Bolshakova et al., 2020; Earp et al., 2017;)

that bears some relation to attachment styles (Feeney & Noller, 1990; Salani et al., 2022)

and may create abnormal neurobiological effects in the vein of substance addiction

disorders (Earp et al., 2017; Fisher et al., 2016; Redcay & Simonetti, 2018). Given the

paucity of depth psychological voices in the literature on love addiction (Smaldino,

1991), this thesis investigated why conscious and unconscious effects of certain kinds of

early ego experiences seem to precipitate love addiction. Additionally, it considered how

the love addict’s true self—obscured in the unconscious early in life—can be surfaced

and integrated in the therapy room to increase self-esteem, weaken the potency of

addiction, and support the individuation process.

Initial love addiction theorists Peele and Brodsky (1975) broadly defined the

disorder as the effort to objectify another for one’s own dependency and security needs.

They aptly assessed that love addiction means allowing other areas of life to “atrophy”

(p. 13) while focusing on the addictive relationship. Interestingly, they also described an

individual who becomes lost in the security that their relationship provides, although

more recent understandings do not associate love addiction with a sense of security.

Attachment researchers Hazan and Shaver (1987) discovered that anxiously-attached

individuals are prone to adult romantic relationships marked by obsessive preoccupation.

 46

Feeney and Noller (1990) found that insecure attachment styles—anxious and avoidant—

endorsed the behaviors and thinking of love addiction. Anxiously attached individuals

had the shortest relationships despite the greatest desire for commitment, and endorsed

neurotic love involving preoccupation, emotional dependence, and idealization (Feeney

& Noller, 1990). Bolshakova and colleagues (2020) have hypothesized that love addicts

encompass avoidant types who perpetually seek the excitement of new lovers, aggressive

and controlling types, and codependent types who have a tendency to focus on others’

needs and problems and to struggle with asserting personal power in a healthy manner.

A spate of publications (Earp et al., 2017; Fisher et al., 2016) has attempted to

circumscribe love addiction within the established definitions of substance and behavioral

addictions, as well as to develop a more precise emotional, cognitive, and behavioral

inventory for measuring love addiction (Costa et al., 2019). Doron (2013) showed that the

correlation between obsessive-compulsive relationship rumination and attachment

anxiety becomes stronger when combined with reliance on partnerships for self-worth.

Alexithymia and love addiction have also been connected (Salani et al., 2022).

Discussions by depth psychologists of addiction—and love addiction in

particular—have appeared in the literature, although rarely. Baurer (2021) wrote about

substance addiction and the false-self persona that supports the addiction by finding

pseudo-power in addictive behaviors. Smaldino (1991) described the urgent and all-

consuming nature of love addiction, given the high stakes of seeking one’s self-worth in

another. She also highlighted the strategic choice of partners in the love-addicted

individual’s “attempts to capture a sense of wholeness and healing that seem lacking

anywhere else” (p. 81). Smaldino attributed this apparent lack to a failure in the infant’s
 47

early development (pp. 82–83), when it is entranced by its own abilities and the greatness

of its world. According to Smaldino, if the infant is not sufficiently supported in her

delusions about self and others and their dismantling, he or she is left with a sense of

abandonment, a constant fear of loss, and a vulnerability to shame (pp. 82–83).

Following the lead of the aforementioned depth-based queries, this thesis inquired

into the traumatic ramifications of inadequate responsiveness from primary caregivers

and the resultant false self. This thesis addressed the infancy stage of omnipotence

(Winnicott, 1965, pp. 37, 57), when Winnicott believed the hiding of the true self occurs

if the infant does not feel safe in self-expression. Alongside a heuristic examination of

my experience, I also considered what role the hiding of the true self might play in

feelings of impotence and low self-worth, covert narcissism, and over-valuation of others

in relationships, all precursors to love addiction—and how the true self might be

recovered. Finally, the thesis discussed how a clinician might help an individual reclaim

from their Jungian shadow the contents of their true self lost in childhood as a crucial step

in moving away from addiction and toward individuation.

Conclusion

Love addiction is a natural risk of the development of a Winnicottian false self

who was forced to comply with primary caregivers, an adaptation that severed access to

the true self. Once a false self with anxious attachment develops, what should have

blossomed into the capacity for grounding and composure in the presence of others,

expression of genuine feelings, and creativity becomes in love addiction the archetypal

childishness and covert narcissism that projects its grandiosity onto love objects—while

the person’s true self lies estranged in shadow.

 48

The projection of desired or shadow characteristics onto close relations or

romantic partners is not unique to love addicts (Jung 1951/1971, pp. 9–10; see also

Desteian, 1989), and may occur in veritably all intimate attachments. Depth theorists

Zweig and Wolf (1997) declared that the stage of a relationship in which the couple

embraces those projections is an immature stage in which the two coexist in an eggshell,

until the shell cracks and they are able to see each other for who they are (p. 148).

Such a projection is likely more potent in love addiction, because the love-

addicted person has lost so much of their true self—and capacity for genuine

expression—so early on. Such an individual’s emotional growth and ability to inhabit

reality was stunted during Winnicott’s omnipotence phase of development, and a false

self was created for protection, sowing the seeds of codependency as well as covert

narcissism. As love-addicted individuals often exhibit an anxious attachment style (Salani

et al., 2022), they are extra-sensitive to rejection by significant others, and find

themselves both drawn to and spurned by the lost characteristics of their true selves they

have sought and projected onto a partner, such as autonomy, creativity, self-efficacy, and

expression of strong affects such as anger or sadness.

Uncovering her true self from the unconscious’s shadowy territory would be

invaluable to the love addict in recovery. By beginning to encounter their authenticity,

love-addicted persons can start to relinquish false-self qualities like compliance,

perfectionism, and moral superiority. Seeing with a clear eye the childishness and covert

narcissism they harbor in their shadows will help to demystify and humanize the other.

Also present in the thesis was the use of a heuristic lens, which allowed me to

explore from a personal perspective love addiction’s psychological underpinnings. While

 49

writing, I began to consciously and unconsciously peer into my own shadow. To

acknowledge my short-temperedness and criticalness within a relationship—and to not

run from the truer intimacy that this entails—has afforded me tremendous growth.

Clinical Implications

Popular literature on attachment and relationships (Levine & Heller, 2010) depicts

the anxiously attached individual as characterized by hypersensitivity, and laments their

mostly haphazard but painful couplings with avoidantly attached types who flee from

commitment. Similarly, codependents are depicted (Lyon & Greenberg, 1991) as simply

continuing a pattern of supporting and seeking esteem from unreliable partners that was

learned in childhood.

However, I would assert that the dangers of addiction can be camouflaged within

this seemingly just unfortunate phenomenon of anxious-avoidant pairings (Levine &

Heller, 2010) in which one person puts forth more effort into loving connection, and the

other distances. A surface analysis of this “opposites attract” dynamic belies possibly

malignant issues: When an individual with a false-self persona and codependent

tendencies attracts and chooses an avoidant or narcissistic partner, the false self projects

their unconscious shadow traits, leading to toxic inflation of the other along with

addiction to the highs and lows of their hard-won affection.

Along with other personality components that felt unacceptable in their infantile

development, many love-addicted people carry narcissism in their shadow as a result of

their primary caregivers’ failure to deliver them safely and with care into awareness of

reality’s limitations. Covert narcissism demands a different treatment approach than what

is oversimplified as anxiety around love attachments. It will be important to correct this

 50

blind spot in the field of psychology with regard to toxic relationships must be in order to

properly treat individuals with love addiction. Individuals who find themselves in

addictive relationships often have not landed there haphazardly: a two-way dance is in

play, and the more passive partner has his or her own methods of exploiting both herself

and others while covert narcissism creates a barrier to her capacity for genuine, limited,

and imperfect connection. True expansion of the self can be achieved only by helping the

individual begin to unearth and examine hidden or unconscious aspects of themselves

through the use of night or daydreams, free writing, mythology, and art.

Along with delivering a dose of reality, practitioners should take care to honor the

dysphoria that may be both a symptom and a compulsion in love addiction. A lyric in the

popular song “Somebody That I Used to Know” (Gotye & Kimbra, 2011) observes that

one can become addicted to a certain kind of sadness, which seems all too true in love

addiction. It is possible that with love addiction one has less control over the proliferation

of triggers and associations. Social Worker Alex Redcay and psychotherapist Christina

Simonetti (2018) observed, “All components of [the partner] and the relationship become

triggers for the individual” (p. 84). This includes events, objects, songs and places you

have been with that person (Bolshakova, 2020). Memories fuel fantasy, which provides a

stable addictive supply even when comingled with the pain of heartbreak. As with other

addictions, a focus on building ego strength by recognizing the individual’s unrelated

achievements and encouraging healthy thinking and activities (Baurer, 2021) in keeping

with the recovery model (Yeager et al., 2013, pp. 388–391) is much more effective than

just elimination of addictive behavior.

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A Social Justice Perspective

Select studies (Saulnier, 1996) have highlighted the problematic potential of some

12-step addiction recovery tenets—for example, the promotion of the acceptance of

powerlessness over “persons, places, and things” (p. 95)—when the audience includes

minority groups, such as women of color. In her qualitative study on Black women

identified as sex and love addicts, social worker Christine Saulnier (1996) asserted that

promoting powerlessness among the white, heterosexual men who created Alcoholics

Anonymous, the original 12-step group is appropriate, but could further marginalize and

disempower groups who have experienced little sociocultural agency. Saulnier (1996)

also argued that the 12-step model of attributing addiction to personal pathology is often

limiting or even inaccurate when such problems “might preferably be described in

political, or better yet, multidimensional terms” (p. 96). Twelve-step programs need not

be championed by all counselors or recommended for every client. Feminist therapy,

which embraces incorporating social marginalization in discussion of their presenting

problems (Gehart, 2016, p. 415), or narrative therapy, which emphasizes externalizing a

problem and considering its sociopolitical contexts (Nichols & Davis, 2021, p. 240),

could be useful primary frameworks for all who struggle with addictive or abusive

relationships, but particularly when considerations of intersectionality apply.

Areas of Future Research

Many potential facets of love addiction have yet to be explored in the literature.

Repetition compulsion as an impetus for seeking out emotionally unstable or

codependent relationships should be investigated in relation to love addiction. The role of

love addiction in abusive relationships needs to be investigated further. Equally important

 52

to explore is the development of obsessive relational orientation among adolescents.

Qualitative or quantitative research should be done on the mechanisms of healing found

through participation in 12-step groups such as SLAA for love addiction treatment.

Within that fellowship, members refer to alternative iterations of love addiction,

including addiction to non-romantic others for self-validation, which some literature has

touched on (Smaldino, 1991); however, these potentially-related maladaptive behaviors

could be explored further. Finally, the efficacy of varying modalities in the treatment of

love addiction—including narrative therapy, dreamwork, and grief and ritual therapy—

should be investigated.

In Jung’s view, bringing one’s unconscious contents to consciousness is a large

part of individuation (Stein, 1998, pp. 175–177), and integrating the shadow is key to this

process (p. 122). Jung (1951/1971) wrote of the shadow’s importance to psychic growth:

The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no

one can become conscious of the shadow without conscious moral effort. To

become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as

present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-

knowledge. (p. 8)

While assisting love-addicted clients in separating them from the other’s gravitational

pull, shadow work may help the love addict shed the constricts of Winnicottian

compliance and grow beyond the bounds of their own anxiously-attached, codependent

persona. In this way, such clients may begin to finally enjoy the richness of their own

personality and the satisfaction found in presenting this genuine face to the world.
 53

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