In Platonism, there are three divisions of personality:
Epithumia, the bodily desire (the Freudian ID, animal instincts)
Thumos, pride and passion (the Freudian EGO, money and family)
Logos, the rational and universal (Freudian SUPEREGO, morality)
Most romantic relationships begin with an epithumotic connection. Not just the static appearance of the body, but its dynamic expression — the sound of the voice, movement of the lips, posture and stance, bodily confidence. This is a necessary component of sexual attraction.
Beyond this physical or energetic attraction, there are a host of egoic and superegoic concerns which generate conflict between partners.
The tragedy of romance is that it is very easy to form a strong or extreme but partial and conflicting egoic connection with a partner. Over weeks or months, this develops into a love-hate relationship.
One way to prevent this is to initial a conversation over values at the beginning of the relationship, rather than randomly discovering these values after the attachment has already formed (which blinds and distorts the truth of the matter).
I developed this questionnaire with the following 12 categories and 132 questions:1
