The Mystery of the Triangular Constellation

The softening of the legislation does not exempt us from a fundamental question: what are the real motives which have led Judeo-Christian society to consider adultery as a capital sin? Is the equivalent found in other companies? A historical and ethnological analysis would remain purely descriptive. It is absolutely necessary to double it with a psychoanalytic analysis, even metapsycanalytic, in order to understand the unconscious origin of the forces which cross these primitive reactions against a millennial drive. Evolutionary psychology could see in this a paradox between what the laws of evolution would suggest in terms of the harmony of the living and the persistence of clearly unfavorable trends to the durability of the couple, therefore to the family and to the reproduction of the human species.

First question: does the set of drives which leads one of the partners of a couple to fall in love with a third party belong to our natural drive structures, or is it the consequence of an unnatural psychical structuring ? Is it natural to feel a sometimes unstoppable love for a foreign person, at the risk of destroying the couple and the family? Or should this be seen as a kind of return to the animal, for which the quest for the best spermatozoa is the main stake in the reproductive process? When we do not know how to decide, we must consider the two branches of the alternative and examine the ins and outs.

If we consider adultery as an anomaly: it is indeed detrimental to the family balance, the differences between the parents harm the psychological balance of the children and often leave indelible traces. The vast majority of couples go through this kind of crisis and only recover at the cost of renouncing and accumulating reproaches incompatible with true love. The presence of suffering would therefore lean, in the name of the heuristic of non-suffering, for the hypothesis of a cause linked to culture and giving rise to impulses foreign to human nature. However, this contradicts the universal and transcultural character of the adulterous drive which would suggest that it belongs to human nature. This branch of the alternative therefore leads us to a contradiction, unless an explanation allows us to understand why the same anomaly occurs systematically in different cultures.

Conversely, the adulterous drive could be seen as a natural given of the human psyche. It would then be preferable to speak rather of “centrifugal impulse” or of “third impulse”, in order to avoid the weight of a thousand-year-old morality not very favorable to reasoning. It then remains to find a function for it, knowing that every instinct has in principle a purpose useful to the individual or the species. It could be a characteristic inherited from the animal world, favoring the diffusion of the best sperm. No spouse should therefore fall in love with a genetically disadvantaged third party. There is indeed a fascination of women for a powerful and well-muscled male body, and the man himself is sensitive to the curves of the female buttocks and thighs, a reserve of proteins useful for the development of the fetus. This explanation, however, comes up against a major obstacle: in animals, the mating drives which enter into play in this type of situation quickly vanish after transmission of spermatozoa, while in humans, they manifest themselves as a lasting attachment and highly charged with emotion.

The two explanations remain unsatisfactory and send us back to another hypothesis: rather than speculating on the natural or cultural character of the adulterous drive, we could ask ourselves whether our representation of the things of love is not in itself defective. The comparison that we tend to make between human sexuality and animal sexuality, justified by the hypothesis of a filiation leading from animal to man and condensed in the equation <sex = procreation> is not necessarily relevant. It seems true in animals, which only have strong sexual urges during rutting season, but clearly does not apply in humans. According to Frans de Waal, the sexual behaviors of bonobos, the primates genetically closest to us, are not aimed at reproduction, but at reconciliation in the event of conflict.

The Old Testament teaches us that Moses punished adultery with the supreme penalty. Today, he is still punishable by stoning or other abuse in many Third World countries. Are these visceral reactions related to the murderous impulses often manifested by deceived spouses? The relativity of morality appears in the light of the current position of Western jurisdictions, more inclined to protect the co-makers than the cuckolders … The softening of the legislation does not exempt us from a fundamental question: what are the real motives which have led Judeo-Christian society to consider adultery as a capital sin? Is the equivalent found in other companies?

A historical and ethnological analysis would remain purely descriptive. It is absolutely necessary to double it with a psychoanalytic analysis, even metapsycanalytic, in order to understand the unconscious origin of the forces which cross these primitive reactions against a millennial drive. Evolutionary psychology could see in this a paradox between what the laws of evolution would suggest in terms of the harmony of the living and the persistence of clearly unfavorable trends to the durability of the couple, therefore to the family and to the reproduction of the human species.

First question: does the set of drives which leads one of the partners of a couple to fall in love with a third party belong to our natural drive structures, or is it the consequence of a psychic structuring against nature ? Is it natural to feel a sometimes unstoppable love for a foreign person, at the risk of destroying the couple and the family? Or should this be seen as a kind of return to the animal, for which the quest for the best spermatozoa is the main stake in the reproductive process? When we do not know how to decide, we must consider the two branches of the alternative and examine the ins and outs.

It could be, in human beings, that the centrifugal drive forms part of an erotic function independent of reproduction and goes far beyond the reconciliation or the simple unification of the couple or the group (just as human language goes far beyond the cries of our furry cousins). However, ten years of observation of group life, under specific operating conditions of the organism ensured by a diet as close as possible to the primitive diet, made it possible to formulate a rather unexpected postulate: the postulate “metasexual”, according to which the non-reproductive impulses are aimed at the development of extrasensory perception.

The adulterous drive could then belong either to the reproductive function and would then belong to this non-reproductive function and would be explained by the need felt to find an external source of metapsychic energy at the moment when the couple is beating their wings. The aggressive drives that it generates under ordinary conditions would come from the fact that instead of living it on the subtle plane of this form of love, it “slips” at the reproductive level, exacerbating the drives of rivalry and possessiveness belonging to animal sexuality and causing an explosion of excalibur impulses. This shift explains not only the conflicting nature of centrifugal drives, but of many sexual behaviors, as the transpulsional analysis tries to describe it, exposed in the pamphlet “Essay on metapsychanalysis with regard to Freud, Jung, Reich et al. Lacan “.

It remains to be seen how the different amorous drives are organized in the triangular constellation. What are the natural laws that allow this type of complex relationship to unfold in harmony, a necessary condition if it is to fulfill its subtle function as a source of metapsychic energy? The biggest surprise that my own experience had in store for me was the ability of the jealousy drive to swing into what can be seen as its opposite: the love of love. The first reaction, when a loved one falls in love with a third party, is of course a dire pain in the chest, made of fear of losing them, feelings of injustice, mistrust of the third party, even fantasies. of murder aimed at eliminating the rival. There are few pains as pervasive as that of jealousy, and this is part of the panoply of feelings deemed human. The legalization of crimes of passion testifies to its durability in Judeo-Christian cultures. It was normal until recently, and it is still the case in some Islamic countries, to stone the adulterous woman.

However, experience, now verified many times and on many individuals, has shown that jealousy is a kind of tilting drive, ready to be reversed, subject to the following conditions: absence of attachment, that is to say the natural level of excitability of the various impulses, as can be found by avoiding the exciting substances present in traditional food and its side effects. me normally constituted, not parasitized by the hypertrophies of the ego characteristic of our type of culture. natural capacity for empathy, allowing you to spontaneously put yourself in other people’s shoes lived in love rich enough to avoid any latent feeling of frustration and any form of compulsion natural access to psychology ensuring on the one hand a sufficiently high level of sexual life and the availability of extrasensory faculties (possibly through the intermediary of an external sensory). respect for the old relationship and patience with the physical realization in the new relationship, so that the “injured third party” manages to carry it, that is to say to feel it as both a gift and a source of energy.

When these conditions are fulfilled, the pain inherent in jealousy is quite easily commuted into “love of love”, that is to say into a feeling of immeasurable happiness in the face of the new relationship, characteristic of the non-sexual function. reproductive (or PIM). Most often, especially in the period of discovery, a certain interior work is required in order to overcome feelings of abandonment, frustration, rivalry, aggressiveness. We must free ourselves from the patterns of behavior specific to our culture and find the natural expressions of innate impulses. When this happens, the partner who might feel abandoned ends up feeling love for the third party, then discovers that this love is not for a new person, but for the love flowing between the other two protagonists. The third party feels the same for the one of whom he could feel the rival, and finally, the three partners “love each other”, they are transported by the love which circulates inside the triangular constellation and ends up radiating outside.

The facts show that it is perfectly possible, at least in a food context avoiding an excess of excitability of the “inferior” impulses, such as possessiveness, rivalry, hatred. These give way to a kind of bliss linked to the love of the neighbor. Instead of loving the other as a person and investing in attachment, with its corollaries of injury and potential suffering, love is seen as a form of access to a transcendent dimension. Everything happens as if it constituted a source of metapsychic energy allowing to transform the being in depth and to overcome the egotistical contingencies linked to the demands of the ordinary material and social context. The third party is therefore felt as an additional source of energy, so that the very notion of jealousy loses its substance.

The psychic energy hypothesis has been confirmed by numerous observations: extrasensory faculties most often develop within or in contact with well-developed triangular constellations, sometimes when certain difficulties arise that need to be overcome. The archetypes that are then made available make it possible to go beyond the ego, to understand the causes of potential suffering and to avoid crystallizing irreversible wounds. Ultimately, it seems that the triangular constellation can be seen as the key to this transcendent form of love, or metasexual function, the natural pathway to psychic development and authentic spiritual fulfillment.