From The Roadless Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional
Values and Spiritual Growth by Morgan Scott Peck M.D. Chapter 3,
"Love," sections 2 and 4 "Falling in Love" and "More About Ego
Boundaries;" pages 84-90 and 94-97.

Falling in "Love"

	To understand the nature of the phenomenon of falling in love
and the inevitability of its ending, it is necessary to examine the
nature of what psychiatrists call ego boundaries. From what we can
ascertain by certain evidence, it appears that the newborn infant
during the first few months of its life does not distinguish between
itself and the rest of the universe. When it moves its arms and legs
the world is moving. When it is hungry the world is hungry. When it
sees its mother move, it is as if it is moving. When its mother sings,
the baby does not know the it is itself not making the sound. It
cannot distinguish itself from the crib, the room and its parents. The
animate and the inanimate are the same. There is no distinction yet
between I and thou. It and the world are one. There are no boundaries,
no separations. There is no identity.
	But with experience the child beings to experience
itself-namely, as an entity separate from the rest of the world. When
it is hungry, mother doesn't always appear to feed it. When it is
playful, mother doesn't always want to play. The child then has the
experience of its wishes not being its mother's command. Its will is
experienced as something separate from its mother's behavior. A sense
of "me" begins to develop. This interaction between the infant and the
mother is believed to be the ground out of which the child's sense of
identity begins to grow. It has been observed that when the
interaction between the infant and its mother is grossly disturbed-for
example, when there is no mother, no satisfactory mother substitute or
when because of her own mental illness the mother is totally uncaring
or uninterested-then the infant grows into a child whose sense of
identity is grossly defective in the most basic ways.
	As the infant recognizes its will to be its own and not that
of the universe, it begins to make other distinctions between itself
and the world. When it wills movement, its arm waves before its eyes,
but neither the crib nor the ceiling move. Thus the child learns that
its arm and its will are connected, and therefore its arm is its and
not something or someone else's. In this manner, during the first year
of life, we learn the fundamentals of who we are and who we are not.
By the end of our first year we know that this is my arm, my foot, my
head, my tongue, my eyes, and even my viewpoint, my voice, my
thoughts, my stomachache, and my feelings. We know our size and our
physical limits. These limits are our boundaries. The knowledge of
these limits inside our minds is what is meant by ego boundaries.
	The development of ego boundaries is a process that continues
through childhood into adolescence and even into adulthood, but the
boundaries established later are more psychic than physical. For
instance, the age between two and three is typically a time when the
child comes to terms with the limits of its power. While before this
time the child has learned that its wish is not necessarily its
mother's command, it still clings to the possibility that its wish
might be its mother's command and the feelings that its wish should be
its mother's command. It is because of this hope and feeling that the
two-year-old usually attempts to act like a tyrant and autocrat,
trying to give orders to its parents, siblings and family pets as if
they were menials in its private army, and responds with regal fury
when they won't be dictated to. Thus parents speak of this age as "the
terrible twos." By the age of three the child has usually become more
tractable mellow as a result of an acceptance of the reality of its
own relative powerlessness. Still, the possibility of omnipotence is
such a sweet, sweet dream that it cannot be completely given up even
after several years of painful confrontation with one's own impotence.
Although the child of three has come to accept the reality of the
boundaries of its power, it will continue to escape occasionally for
some years to come into a world of fantasy in which the possibility of
omnipotence (particularly its own) still exists. This is the world of
Superman and Captain Marvel. Yet gradually even the superheroes are
given up, and by the time of mid-adolescence, young people know that
they are individuals, confined to the boundaries of their flesh and
the limits of their power, each one a relatively frail and impotent
organism, existing only by cooperation within a group of fellow
organisms called society. Within this group they are not particularly
distinguished, yet they are isolated from others by their individual
identities, boundaries and limits.
	It is lonely behind these boundaries. Some people-particularly
those who psychiatrists call schizoid-because of unpleasant,
traumatizing experiences in childhood, perceive the world outside of
themselves as unredeemably dangerous, hostile, confusing and
unnurturing. Some people feel their boundaries to be protecting and
comforting and find a sense of safety in their loneliness. But most of
us find our loneliness to be painful and yearn to escape from the
walls of our individual identities to a condition in which we can be
more unified with the world outside of ourselves. The experience of
falling in love allows us this escape-temporarily. The essence of the
phenomenon of falling in love is a sudden collapse of a section of an
individual's ego boundaries, permitting one to merge his or her
identity with that of another person. The sudden release of oneself
from oneself, the explosive pouring out of oneself into the beloved,
and the dramatic surcease of loneliness accompanying this collapse of
ego boundaries is experienced by most of us as ecstatic. We and our
beloved are one! Loneliness is no more!
	In some respects (but certainly not all) the act of falling in
love is an act of regression. The experience of merging with the loved
one has in it echoes from the time when we were merged with our
mothers in infancy. Along with the merging we also reexperience the
sense of omnipotence which we had to give up in our journey out of
childhood. All things seem possible! United with our beloved we feel
we can conquer all obstacles. We believe that the strength of our love
will cause the forces of opposition to bow down in submission and melt
away into darkness. All problems will be overcome. The future will be
all light. The unreality of these feelings when we have fallen in love
is essentially the unreality of the two-year-old who feels itself to
be king of the family and the world with power unlimited.
	Just as reality intrudes upon the two-year-old's fantasy of
omnipotence so does reality intrude upon the fantastic unity of the
couple who have fallen in love. Sooner or later, in response to the
problems of daily living, individual will reasserts itself. He wants
to have sex; she doesn't. She wants to go to the movies; he doesn't.
He wants to put her money in the bank; she wants a dishwasher. She
wants to talk about her job; he wants to talk about his. She doesn't
like his friends; he doesn't like hers. So both of them, in the
privacy of their hearts, begin to come to the sickening realization
that they are not one with the beloved, that the beloved has and will
continue to have his or her own desires, tastes, prejudices and timing
different from the other's. One by one, gradually or suddenly, the ego
boundaries snap back into place; gradually or suddenly, they fall out
of love. Once again they are two separate individuals. At this point
they either begin to dissolve the ties of their relationship or to
initiate the work of real loving.
	

More About Ego Boundaries

	Having proclaimed the experience of "falling in love" is a
sort of illusion which in no way constitutes real love, let me
conclude by shifting into reverse and pointing out that falling in
love is in fact very, very close to real love. Indeed, the
misconception that falling in love is a type of real love is so potent
precisely because it contains a grain of truth.
	The experience of real love also has to do with ego
boundaries, since it involves an extension of one's limits. One's
limits are one's ego boundaries. When we extend our limits through
love, we do so by reaching out, so to speak, toward the beloved, whose
growth we wish to nurture. For us to be able to do this, the beloved
object must first become beloved to us; in other words, we must be
attracted toward, invested in, and committed to an object outside of
ourselves, beyond the boundaries of the self. Psychiatrists call this
process of attraction, investment  and commitment "cathexis" and say
that we "cathect" the beloved object. But when we cathect an object
outside of ourselves we also psychologically incorporate a
representation of that object into ourselves. For example, let us
consider a man who gardens for a hobby. It is a satisfying and
consuming hobby. He "loves" gardening. His garden means a lot to him.
This man has cathected his garden. He finds it attractive, he has
invested himself in it-so much so that he may jump out of bed early
Sunday morning to get back to it, he may refuse to travel away from
it, and he may even neglect his wife for it. In the process of his
cathexis and in order to nurture his flowers and shrubs he learns a
great deal. He comes to know much about gardening-about soils and
fertilizers, rooting and pruning. And he knows his particular
garden-its history, the types of flowers and plants in it, its layout,
its problems and even its future. Despite the fact that the garden
exists outside of him, through his cathexis it has also come to exist
within him. His knowledge if it and the meaning it has for him are
part of him, part of his identity, part of his history, part of his
wisdom. By loving and cathecting his garden he has in a quite real way
incorporated the garden within him, and by this incorporation his self
has become enlarged and his ego boundaries expanded.
	What transpires then in the course of many years of loving, of
extending our limits for our cathexes, is a gradual but progressive
enlargement of the self, an incorporation within of the world without,
and a growth, a stretching and thinning of our ego boundaries. In this
way the more and longer we extend ourselves, the more we love, the
more blurred becomes the distinction between the self and the world.
We become identified with the world. And as our ego boundaries become
blurred and thinned, we begin more and more to experience the same
sort of feeling of ecstasy that we have when our ego boundaries
partially collapse and we "fall in love." Only, instead of having
merged temporarily and unrealistically with a single beloved object,
we have merged realistically and more permanently with much of the
world. A "mystical union" with the entire world may be established.
The feeling of ecstasy or bliss associated with this union, while
perhaps more gentle and less dramatic than that associated with
falling in love, is nonetheless much more stable and lasting and
ultimately satisfying. It is the difference between the peak
experience, typified by falling in love, and what Abraham Maslow has
referred to as the "plateau experience." The heights are not glimpsed
and lost again; they are attained forever.
	It is obvious and generally understood that sexual activity
and love, while they may occur simultaneously, are often dissociated,
because they are basically separate phenomena. In itself, making love
is not an act of love. Nonetheless the experience of sexual
intercourse, and particularly of orgasm (even in masturbation), is an
experience associated with a greater of lesser degree of collapse of
ego boundaries and attendant ecstasy. It is because of this collapse
of ego boundaries that we may shout at the moment of climax "I love
you" or "Oh, God" to a prostitute for whom moments later, after the
ego boundaries have snapped back into place, we may feel no shred of
affection, liking or investment. This is not to say that the ecstasy
of the orgasmic experience cannot be heightened by sharing it with one
who is beloved; it can. But even without a beloved partner or any
partner the collapse of ego boundaries occurring in conjunction with
orgasm may be total; for a second we may totally forget who we are,
lose track of self, be lost in time and space, be outside of ourself,
be transported. We may become one with the universe. But only for a
second.
	In describing the prolonged "oneness with the universe"
associated with real love as compared to the momentary oneness of
orgasm, I used the words "mystical union." Mysticism is essentially a
belief that reality is oneness. The most literal of mystics believe
that our common perception of the universe as containing multitudes of
discrete objects-starts, planets, trees, birds, houses, ourselves-all
separated from one another by boundaries in a misperception, an
illusion. To this consensual misperception, this world of illusion
which most of us mistakenly believe to be real, Hindus and Buddhists
apply the word "Maya." They and other mystics hold that the true
reality can be known only through a giving up of ego boundaries. It is
impossible to really see the unity of the universe as long as one
continues to see oneself as a discrete object, separate and
distinguishable from the rest of the universe in any way, shape or
form. Hindus and Buddhists frequently hold, therefore, that the infant
before the development of ego boundaries knows reality, while adults
do not. Some even suggest the path toward enlightenment or knowledge
of the oneness of reality requires that we regress or make ourselves
like infants. This can be a dangerously tempting doctrine for certain
adolescents or young adults who are not prepared to assume adult
responsibilities, which seem frightening and overwhelming and
demanding beyond their capacities. "I do not have to go through all
this," such a person may think. "I can give up  trying to be an adult
and retreat from adult demands into sainthood." Schizophrenia,
however, rather than sainthood, is achieved by acting on this
supposition.
	Most mystics understand the truth that was elaborated at the
end of the discussion of discipline: namely, that me must posses or
achieve something before we can give it up and still maintain our
competence and viability. The infant without its ego boundaries may be
closer in touch with reality than its parents, but it is incapable of
surviving without the care of these parents and incapable of
communicating its wisdom. The path to sainthood goes through
adulthood. There are no quick and easy shortcuts. Ego boundaries must
be hardened before they can be softened. An identity must be
established before it can be transcended. One must find one's self
before one can lose it. The temporary release from ego boundaries
associated with falling in love, sexual intercourse or certain
psychoactive drugs may provide us with a glimpse of Nirvana, but not
with Nirvana itself. It is a thesis of this book that Nirvana or
lasting enlightenment or true spiritual growth can be achieved only
through the exercise of real love.
	In summary, then, the temporary loss of ego boundaries
involved in falling in love and in sexual intercourse not only leads
us to make commitments to other people from which real love may begin
but also gives us a foretaste of (and therefore an incentive for) the
more lasting mystical ecstasy that can be ours after a lifetime of
love. As such, therefore, while falling in love is not itself love, it
is part of the great and mysterious scheme of love.