Transgressive eroticism and the making and unmaking of the self beyond the object body

Abstract

Purpose

This paper examines transgressive eroticism—specifically the phenomenon of “Overlove”—as an experiential field that both constructs and dissolves embodied selfhood. It asks how hyper-intense erotic practices function not merely as psychopathological symptoms but as existential strategies that disrupt normative consciousness and enable novel forms of self–other relations.

Methods

Through phenomenological and conceptual analysis, the study draws on Georges Bataille’s writings, clinical literature on psychopathology, and interpretive readings of literary and case-study material to map the experiential structures and effects of transgressive eroticism on bodily consciousness.

Results

Transgressive eroticism acts as an “anti-moral” force that dismantles subject–object binaries, revealing an elemental layer of being; it dissolves self-boundaries via dissipation and ecstatic union with others. These practices operate as existential praxis rather than mere pathological symptoms. The phenomenology of transgressive eroticism uncovers utopian potentials for new collective intimacies.

Conclusions

By reframing overlove as a dialectical engagement with the boundaries of selfhood, this study challenges entrenched psychiatric binaries and advocates for a clinical ethos attentive to both its hazards and its generative potential. Future research should investigate how the understanding of transgressive erotic practices can enrich therapeutic strategies, ethical frameworks, and theoretical models of identity, agency, and relationality.

Level of evidence

Level V: Opinions of respected authorities, based on descriptive studies, narrative reviews, clinical experience, or reports of expert committees.

Introduction

Eroticism as a site of self-construction and self-disruption

In current psychopathological literature, the analysis of psychopathological phenomena is often focused on visible signs, for example, in the case of eating disorders, the appearance of the body, body measures and eating behavior [1]. We find a similar focus on “objective” phenomena that overshadows the patients’ subjective experiences in other psychopathological conditions, such as borderline personality disorder and so-called gender dysphoria. These psychopathological conditions represent increasingly frequent forms of suffering and are often found ‘mixed’ with each other [2]. Many studies focus on dangerous social conducts, self-harm, suicidal behavior, gender non-conforming and avoidant behavior and seeking gender affirming interventions—rather than on these persons’ subjective experiences, e.g., the way they experience their own erotic desire.

The body is at the forefront in all these conditions, yet it is not merely the visible or the object body—it is first and foremost the lived body, the body as lived by the patient in the first-person perspective, which includes desire, passion, drives, and sexuality. Recently, the link between anomalies of the Self—particularly the bodily Self—and these psychopathological conditions has been emphasized. Numerous authors have explored how, in these disorders, disconnections emerge between the person and their lived body, leading to distortions in bodily awareness and in the sense of identity [3–5]. The bodily Self is often experienced as alien or threatening, dissociative experiences (such as depersonalization or derealization) are observed, along with a compromised ability to integrate bodily perceptions with the global identity of the Self. The relationship between anomalies of bodily self-awareness, a history of sexual abuse, the desire for hyper-intense erotic experiences, loneliness, and the search for connection through the sexualization of social interactions is also well-known—not only the subject of psychopathological research, but also of artistic creation [6]. With rare, albeit appreciable exceptions [7], the erotic and sexual life of these patients remains little explored, since the assessment of these phenomena is nonetheless studied in a framework that is poorly equipped to address questions concerning the nature of the experience of love and its relation to the construction and deconstruction of the Self.

This paper aims to explore the themes of transgressive eroticism, love experience, and sexuality, seeking to offer insights that may contribute to the understanding of these phenomena especially in the context of psychopathological forms of human existence. The connection between some peculiar forms of eroticism—especially as it appears in certain psychopathological structures, such as personality disorders—and disruptions in self-consciousness is acknowledged [8, 9]. However, what is the nature of this connection?

An emblematic case study is borderline personality disorder. This condition often involves unstable and tumultuous sexual and romantic relationships, temporal discontinuity of the self and instability in self-narrative and identity. One standard view is the following: erotic dysregulation is caused by identity disturbance. The hypothesis I would like to explore is that this connection is not merely causal or sequential (e.g., disorders of self-consciousness and narrative identity cause instability of erotic relationships, or vice versa), but rather dialectical and phenomenological. That is to say: the erotic, in its most intense or transgressive forms, is not simply an expression of a disrupted Self—it is one of the very places, where the self is formed, tested, and potentially dismantled. Eroticism is a site, where the self is done and undone. There is a phenomenological link between eroticism and loss of self-boundaries, erotic desire and the desire for mystical fusion with the other, and eroticism and identity rupture. This bond is expressed in a particularly high degree of intensity in those forms of psychopathological existence characterized by the valorization of authenticity [10]. Authenticity expresses the importance of a kind of absolute emotional fusion with the other. It implies the execration of socially shared rules and roles as restrictions to being oneself and the affirmation of the logic of spontaneity. In certain forms of existence, to accomplish authenticity standard social conventions must be transgressed.

Eroticism, especially when experienced as excess—overlove, in its ecstatic, unbounded dimension—becomes a liminal zone, where subjectivity encounters its boundaries. Overlove describes an erotic drive that seeks to dissolve the boundaries of the Self, aiming for mystical union with the other and ecstatic transformation. Far from being merely pathological, it can serve as an existential technique for transcending normative consciousness and disrupting fixed identity. Overlove is something more that a meeting of bodies, where the physical attraction sparks something more than just the body as it is studied in biomedicine or as it is seen as a pornographic image. The transgressive erotic encounter destabilizes the continuity of the Self: it can interrupt its temporal coherence, dissolve the boundary between self and other, and suspend the narrative that normally sustains one’s identity. However, at the same time, it is precisely in erotic relationships, i.e., in the close confrontation with Otherness that they entail, that the Self undergoes its development and deepest evolutions. These dynamics, I will argue, are not just bodily, relational—they are ontological. The other becomes both the site of development of the Self and the threat of its dissolution. This ecstatic form of love challenges conventional notions of selfhood, exposing a sacred zone, where the lines blur between self and other, life and death. Rather than signifying breakdown, erotic excess may represent a path toward deeper understanding of being. In this perspective, erotic life is not a mere symptom of disordered selfhood but an experiential field, where selfhood is enacted, endangered, and possibly unmade. For persons diagnosed with borderline conditions this is dramatically evident in the oscillation between idealizing fusion and annihilating rejection of the other.

The erotic thus emerges as a privileged phenomenon through which one can observe—and perhaps rethink—the very form of self-consciousness. Its disorienting temporality, its ecstatic suspensions, its proximity to both vitality and death, suggest that erotic experience is not peripheral to psychopathological conditions, but central: a kind of existential laboratory in which the fragility, the fragmentation, and the excesses of the Self are vividly at play.

Aims and methodology

The aim of this paper is the valorization of eroticism for the purpose of enhancing clinicians’ engagement and improve outcomes of treatment of patients presenting with certain psychopathological forms of existence. To this end, I will begin by offering a definition of the phenomenon of love. I will provide a definition per partes—that is, one capable of capturing the multiple facets of love that a monodimensional definition fails to grasp. This definition encompasses sexuality, intimacy, and tenderness, but also those aspects of love that, alongside their positive qualities, carry more problematic dimensions, such as need, possession, admiration, excitement, fantasy, complementarity, and, finally, ecstasy. I will build on and extend opinions of respected authorities, based on descriptive studies, and my own clinical experience.

This articulation of the phenomenon of love will serve as a conceptual backdrop for exploring the connection between eroticism, ecstasy, and the construction or dissolution of the Self and identity. I will, therefore, aim to offer an analysis of eroticism grounded primarily in the thought of Georges Bataille, who devoted much of his intellectual life to this subject. In particular, I will focus on five key aspects: expenditure, nudity, obscenity, dissolution and the sacred.

A paragraph will then be dedicated to the relationship between eroticism and the attempt to overcome the limits of the human condition: loneliness, isolation, lack of freedom, with a view to authentic relationships and for the purpose of creating a humanity founded on the ideal of brotherhood. Referring to the work of the psychologist and historian of psychology Aleksander Etkind, I will call this aspiration to transcend the limits of the human "impossible eros”.

A dialectical analysis of love: toward a definition per parts

I believe there is little doubt about the centrality of the phenomenon of love in human existence [11, 12]. In addition, therefore, of its centrality in conditions of psychic vulnerability. It is for guidance only that I offer below a series of thoughts to orient us in this complex phenomenon. My hope is to be able to define at least the outlines of a conceptual map for use by clinicians in their therapeutic conversations. I ask for forgiveness in advance for the schematic and crude nature of this map. However, I think it is appropriate to provide some points of reference to place the discourse on eroticism and its excesses in their proper places.

Is it possible to provide a unified definition of love? One contemporary attempt, generated by an artificial intelligence (Copilot), proposes the following: “Love is a deep and lasting emotional bond characterized by intense affection, care, and compassion for someone or something, which generates a sense of connection, belonging, and mutual support.”

While this definition is conceptually cohesive, it is also markedly insufficient. It captures certain affective dimensions of love but neglects its complexity—particularly its ambivalence, contradictions, and potential for harm. Notably, it reflects a popularized view of love, not necessarily grounded in lived experience or critical scholarship. Even so, similar oversimplifications are echoed in mainstream psychological discourse.

I agree with French philosopher Jean-Luc Marion [12] that every concept of love is weakened and compromised as soon as one allows oneself to distinguish divergent, or indeed irreconcilable, meanings. A serious concept of love distinguishes itself by its power to keep together multiple significations. Thus, a robust account may be developed by adopting a partitive, but not divisive, approach—that is, one that respects the unity of the phenomenon of love while at the same time seeking its components for a better understanding. Let us begin with a well-established tripartite framework from classical antiquity.

Eros (ἔρως): Romantic and passionate love, primarily associated with physical attraction and sexual desire. This profile of love initiates intense physical connection and is often represented as an overwhelming or even irrational force.

Philia (φιλία): Affectionate love, typically associated with friendship. It is grounded in mutual respect, shared values, and deep interpersonal loyalty. This bond characterizes close friendships and familial relationships.

Agape (ἀγάπη): Selfless love, marked by altruism, compassion, and empathy. It transcends self-interest and emphasizes unconditional concern for the well-being of the other.

While this tripartite model introduces valuable distinctions, it remains incomplete. It largely omits what might be termed the “negative ingredients” of love—the vulnerabilities, dependencies, and ethical risks it entails. Love hurts because of its power to be an event in our life that forces us to reconsider our habits and jeopardizes our narcissistic identity. Love is a feeling, whereby we feel displaced. It forces us to see ourselves and the others from another perspective [13]. To address this gap, the following expanded taxonomy is proposed. Each dimension is presented as an “ingredient” of love, conceived as both a phenomenological experience and an existential orientation. Each also contains a potential precipice—a threshold at which love may become distorted, pathological, or ethically compromised. I hope that this partitive framework may offer a more comprehensive, phenomenological and dialectical account of love—one that integrates its generative capacities with its potential pathologies. Such an approach may help illuminate love not merely as an affective state but as an ethically and existentially charged phenomenon. This is not, of course, the outline of a sort of “structured interview” intended to measure our patients’ love experiences and desires. However, it can serve as a useful guide for unfolding, extensively and in depth, the nuances of the erotic phenomenon in their lives.

• 1.1.1.Sexuality

Love includes a dimension of physical passion—manifested in sensual desire, tactile engagement, and bodily exploration. These express themselves in acts, such as touching, kissing, smelling, and penetration—yet these acts serve not merely a reproductive or recreational function but represent attempts to go beyond the limits of my understanding of the other and to transcend self-other separateness. Coitus, in this context, becomes a metaphysical gesture: a “probe of the void,” an entry into the liminal space between visibility and invisibility, the concrete, sensual response to the desire to overcome one's limits and get to know the Other in their innermost secrets. The Latin word secretum, which denotes both what is secret and bodily secretions, serves as the emblem of this entanglement. It can be summed up by saying that sex has a sensual component and a spiritual component linked to the desire to know the other, closely related to each other.

• 2. Intimacy

Intimacy involves the silent sharing of private aspects of the Self, such as secrets or personal fears. It can be sensorial or atmospheric—no need for verbal expression or explication—and involves reciprocal recognition. Intimacy represents a form of immediate, intuitive contact between the Self and the other—a kind of emotional attunement or affective reciprocal presence. The paradigmatic phenomenon is the experience of “aloneness-togetherness” [14]—i.e., experiencing the paradox of being-alone-together. No longer feeling alone in one's loneliness if one shares that loneliness with another lonely person encapsulates this intersection of existential solitude and relational presence.

• 3. Tenderness

Tenderness is the recognition of shared vulnerability. Whereas intimacy is centered on mutual exposure, tenderness is grounded in the recognition of a common human fragility. What is shared in the phenomenon of tenderness is not my own fragility but a fragile aspect that belongs to the entire human race. Paradigmatically, we feel tenderness toward a child, because we see him as the emblem of the condicio humana—both vulnerable and full of vitality to be protected and enhanced. Tenderness entails an effective response to the fragility of the other as something that “concerns” the Self—evoking sympathy, caring, mercy, compassion, and a profound sense of ethical solidarity [15].

So far, positivity outweighs negativity. From this point on, the risks (for both the lover and the beloved) increase progressively. Love stands on the edge of ethical and psychological precipices: the other may become an object, a property, a trophy, a means, a prosthesis of the Self—may become dematerialized and reduced to mere representation easy to manipulate. The Self can become a master, or a slave, lose its identity, be deprived of its will, can depend entirely on the other, lose contact with reality.

• 4. Need

Love often entails a recognition of one’s own incompleteness, a longing for the other as a source of fulfillment or protection. This dynamic may result in dependency, particularly when the other is perceived primarily as a means to compensate for internal lack. The frequently cited declaration “I can’t live without you” is less an expression of love than of existential insufficiency.

Precipice: Dependence. Dependence is an intrinsic characteristic of love relationships. Its paradigm is the love relationship between a child and his parents. Yet, let us imagine this kind of relationship between two adult lovers. Expecting a partner to behave like a parent undoubtedly marks a condition of psychic distress. It is one thing if there is reciprocity and thus alternation in requesting and offering help [16]. It is quite another if the roles needy-requesting help and generous-offering help remain the same over time.

• 5. Possession

Undoubtedly, in love jealousy and a quantum of possess is also included, because it is not at all easy to accept sharing the love of the loved one with another person who contends for it. Yet, desire for exclusivity and control can transform love into possession. Possession imposes itself when one forgets that each one belongs only to him/herself no one else. Here, the other is not only desired but claimed, and the lover seeks to become the sole object of the beloved’s desire. This often results in a denial of the Other’s autonomy and agency.

Precipice: Love is not an estate, but a landscape that cannot be appropriated [13]. Jealousy becomes morbid when the legitimate desire to be the partner's only loved one extends to the partner's past relationships, or to his non-loving relationships, or when it seeks clues to the partner's infidelity and finds its satisfaction in having its suspicion confirmed [17]. Another example of degenerate possession is seduction, that is, the use of one's persuasive skills to attract and entice the other person.

• 6. Admiration

Feeling respect, esteem, appreciation for the loved person is obviously a good thing. A share of idealization is also part of the love feeling. In some cases, the beloved is valued not only for their intrinsic qualities but also for the prestige they confer upon the lover. This may result in the other being reduced to a symbolic figure of success or desirability, often divorced from their evolving, real Self.

Precipices: A typical example of a degenerate form of admiration is the enthronement of the other. The other is posited on a throne: enthroned. In the lover’s eyes, the other must be powerful, that is, beautiful, intelligent, cultured, successful, placed at the top of social hierarchies. The other must be so powerful to be almost unattainable. This enthronement of the loved other goes hand in hand with the weakening of the identity of the loving Self. If the other is an essential condition for the lover’s existence, since the lover has to stabilize and shore up their identity through the other, it will not be possible to establish with the loved other an authentic encounter. Another degenerate form of admiration is the idealization of the other. To idealize the other is to transform them into an image (eidos). Literally, the Other becomes an image fixed in time, a frozen image, never updated, separated from becoming and from the reciprocity of the Self-Other encounter [18]. Love can be idolatrous when a phantasm is the object of love. Love is a dangerous mirror, a flat reflecting surface that merely returns the desire of the lover. A further corrupt form of admiration is the trophyization of the other, i.e., the loved other is reduced to its positive qualities and achievements, like beauty or success, to be displayed like a trophy to arouse envy [19].

• 7. Excitement

Love may generate states of heightened arousal and vitality [20]. The lover may experience the other (and be experienced) as a sensual stimulant—the switch button of an intense and electrifying bodily stated or state of consciousness. This normally happens, even in the most naive forms of love, such as teenage love, where you feel “butterflies in your stomach”. However, this dynamic is not neutral: the thrill of excitement may easily tip into domination or submission. The desire to be exciting or excited can take over every other component of love, and especially intimacy or tenderness.

Precipices: Masochism—i.e., being excited by relinquishing oneself to the sensory chaos induced by the other—is a potential precipice. Sadism—i.e., being excited by exerting power over the other by manipulating their sensual and affective responses and by ritualistic deferral of pleasure—is another degenerate form of love. Deleuze [21] describes three types of women. These women represent psychic positions with respect to erotic excitement. Each represents a different relationship to the law, to desire, and to the image. The first woman is the Hetaira—the generator of excitement, that is, disorder. She is animated by a pagan, warm, and fervent sensuality; she lives for love and beauty, in the present moment; she invokes independence and spontaneity. The second woman is excited by the infliction of suffering. She is apathetic, and her apathy is directed above all against emotion. She is driven by a man who demands to be tortured, but the dynamic always risks being reversed—she may become the victim herself. The third woman is also apathetic, but in a more rigid, severe, and glacial way. Her excitement is cruel: she replaces sensuality with a suprasensual sentimentalism; warmth and fire are extinguished by icy coldness; disorder gives way to a strict and unforgiving order.

This triad reflects Deleuze’s idea that the precipices of excitement involve complex roles and symbolic inversions—not merely erotic pain. Each woman represents a distinct mythic function in the erotic fantasy: the Hetaira introduces chaos and desire; the torturer becomes a paradoxical agent—both active and, ultimately, vulnerable; the cold dominatrix is the purest embodiment of the masochistic contract: emotionally distant, law-giving, and bound to ritual.

• 8. Dream

Love, as it is known, often induces a dream-like state, characterized by detachment from mundane reality and an experience of transcendence. In this domain, the imaginary mixes with the real, and love may become an aesthetic or quasi-visionary experience. Love may lead to the dissolution of a clear distinction between imagination and reality so that the lover lives in a pleasant dream-like state.

Precipice: Erotomania—the pathological belief that one is loved in return, based on imaginary or unverifiable signs—is one of the most nefarious examples of mixing reality and dreams in the field of love [22]. The erotomanic person believes that another person has loving feelings toward them. Typically, the supposed lover is a famous person. The belief that someone loves them is often accompanied by a system of secondary experiences that make up a small imaginary world, e.g., the erotomanic person may be convinced that his alleged lover communicates with them with hidden messages, such as particular body gestures. It is not uncommon for an erotomanic person to turn into a stalker.

• 9. Complementarity

In the experience of love, the other often emerges as that which completes the Self—a being whose alterity resonates with one's own sense of lack, and whose presence is felt as integrative. The beloved is cherished not merely for their singular essence, but also for the qualities one perceives as absent in oneself, and whose incorporation seems to promise existential wholeness. The loved other is seen as the partner in the dialectical becoming of one's own Self, a necessary moment in its unfolding. This process of the Self’s unfolding is conceived as dialectically intertwined with the parallel becoming of the Other—a co-constitutive dynamic in which each subject’s realization is mediated by the recognition and formative presence of the other.

Precipice: This dialectics harbors a latent danger: prostheticization. This is the reduction of the loved other to a mere function within the economy of the Self. The other becomes prosthetic—no longer encountered as a sovereign subjectivity, but merely as an appended utility in the realization of one's own project. In this collapse of alterity, we witness a prostheticization of love, where the beloved is no longer loved for-themselves, but for-oneself—as a necessary component in the construction of identity and meaning. This is also described as the “erosion of Eros” [23]. Eros is no longer an impulse or an embrace that fosters the becoming of the loving Self by placing it in a dialectical relationship with the loved other. The Self no longer looks unhesitatingly toward the other, setting in motion a voluntary transcendence of the Ego. On the contrary, the Self fills itself with the other, turning the other into fuel for its own self-realization [9].

The opposite of prostheticization may also happen: the Self may be teared away from itself while projecting itself toward the loved other. Self-abnegation is the act in which the loving Self sinks and annihilates itself by laying down its arms in the face of the overwhelming power of the other. It is a deliberate negation of itself, a decisive act of self-emptying, leading to a unilateral dissolution of one’s own Self. At its most extreme, love seeks the dissolution of the Self in the other. This entails surrender. French writer Roland Barthes refers to this as “s’abîmer”—to lose oneself [24].

• 10. Ecstasy

The word "ecstasy" comes from the Greek ekstasis (ἔκστασις), combining ek (out) + stasis (standing), literally meaning "standing outside oneself." It implies a state in which the person feels removed from their ordinary Self and projected toward a process of becoming. Love—through ecstasy, i.e., a state of intense and overwhelming sensual, emotional and spiritual exaltation—is the principal agent of this experience of profound transformation, where one's ordinary Self is suspended. The beloved triggers in the lover a state of amorous ecstasy, involving a fusion of the self-accompanied by an experience of fusion with the other—a kind of death of the self and rebirth of a Self-expanded-through-the-Other. At its most extreme, love seeks the dissolution of the boundaries between the Self and the other. The desire to liquefy as the other in turn liquefies, to mingle with the other, to become one flesh, is the apotheosis of love desire. It is no coincidence that the main metaphors of love contemplate the ardour that melts [25] and the flow of amorous liquids and secretions [26].

Precipice: It is precisely this precipice that we will explore in the next two paragraphs of this paper. Outstanding examples are eroticism sensu Bataille [27] and the eros of the impossible, where love becomes a desire for annihilation or a sacrificial merging with the other [28]. These are, paradoxically, the desire for a shared embrace of impotence, of being overwhelmed, together; a yearning for communion in disgrace, ruin, and vulnerability; but also an assertion of power and the use of the other to reach a higher state of consciousness.

What is eroticism and how is it related to ecstatic love?

"One could say that eroticism is the approval of life even into death." [27]. This is how French philosopher, novelist and art critic Georges Bataille (1897–1962) begins his essay on eroticism. Bataille explored the ecstatic dimension of eroticism and its connections to transgression, mysticism and in the framework of surrealist art. What is at stake in eroticism is a dissolution of consciousness—a disintegration of established forms, of those structures of disciplined social life that ground the discontinuous order of defined individualities. In the erotic act, the individualities of beings and the rigid dichotomies that sustain our familiar image of the world are dissolved.

Eroticism is not merely a sexual act but a philosophical and mystical confrontation with the limits of being. Through waste, nakedness, obscenity, and dissolution, it disrupts the Self and reveals the possibility of continuity with others, with death, with chaos. It is not moral or immoral—it is anti-moral, a sacred fire that burns through the structures of identity to reveal something more elemental, even divine in its destructiveness.

Bataille explores eroticism as an experience that challenges the boundaries of Self, morality, and traditional consciousness. He uses five key concepts to develop this idea [29]:

1. Expenditure: In the moment of sexual fever, I expend my energies without measure; in the violence of passion, I squander considerable resources without profit. Erotic passion involves an unrestrained outpouring of energy and desire—a deliberate waste that mirrors the destructive pleasure of orgasm ("little death"). This waste undermines the foundations of the Self, opening a path to a higher state of consciousness (ultraconsciousness).

2. Nudity: Nudity has the decisive function of revealing what traditional consciousness—the foundation of the "social edifice"—conceals. Nudity is, first of all, an unmasking that lays bare what conventional consciousness cannot tolerate and represses: the life of the flesh—the rawness of being, and the potential collapse of the self into the Other. It is exposure, the display of what I usually keep hidden. Undressing is symbolic and literal—the undressing of the visible body and beyond the visible body—an act of exposure and vulnerability that dismantles social and personal defenses.

3. Obscenity: Obscenity disrupts a state of consciousness rooted in self-possession. Obscenity breaks apart the illusion of a stable, controlled self. Derived from the Latin verb obscaevare (ob + scaevus = sinister), one of its meaning is “to bring omen”. Another meaning sees it deriving from Latin ob or obs + coenum = mud, slime, dirty, and signifying in a broad sense shameless. It represents the eruption of chaos into the well-ordered moral subject, destroying the internal "director" of our respectable Selves. It paves the way for the total breakdown of distinction between impulse and self-control.

4. Dissolution: The term dissolution recalls the expression dissolute life, that is, immorality. However, at the same time, and inseparably, what is at stake is the melting of my Self. Dissolvo in Latin means "to dissolve", "to melt", "to dissipate", "to decompose", "to untie", "to undo". Eroticism leads to the disintegration of moral and individual identity. The boundaries between self and other, subject and object, dissolve. This collapse opens the way for fusion, chaos, and the loss of separateness—undoing the illusion of a coherent “I”. Expenditure, nudity, and obscenity aim to abolish the constituted forms that underlie the discontinuous order of defined individualities that we are—or believe we are. Dissolution aims to prepare for the fusion of two beings who ultimately encounter each other in a shared dissolution. The chaos of my flesh continues in the chaos of the Other’s flesh. This unleashing leads to the loss of traditional consciousness—meaning the elimination of every distinction between subject and object.

5. Sacred: The sacredness of the erotic experience lies in its separation from the community of men, from their laws and their language; and in its placement in a sphere beyond both divine and human law. Lovers are "sacred" not because they are consecrated to the gods, but because they have reached a non-place where no distinctions apply, where they have been led by the practice of expenditure, nudity, obscenity, and dissolution. The erotic becomes sacred not in a religious sense, but in its separation from law, order, and language. Lovers enter a space beyond human rules—a zone of indistinction where life and death, Self and Other merge. Sacredness here means transgression, intensity, and the annihilation of ordinary consciousness.

Across many thinkers and traditions, eroticism is framed as a transgression of boundaries, an embrace of the abject and collapse of subjectivity and a ritual encounter with the sacred through symbolic death (mystical tradition). What unites them is the idea that eroticism is not pleasure alone, but a philosophical and existential threshold: a moment where the Self is undone and something beyond ordinary experience is revealed.

French philosopher Michel Foucault (1926–1984) never wrote systematically on erotic mysticism, but many of his ideas resonate deeply with Bataille’s. Foucault aligns with Bataille in viewing eroticism as an act that transgresses boundaries—not just of morality, but of the Self. This transgression does not aim at liberation but at illuminating limits, especially those of language, law, and identity. In The History of Sexuality [30], Foucault argues that power operates through the regulation of bodies and desires. Eroticism becomes dangerous not because it is illicit, but because it disrupts the entire structure that holds the subject together. Eroticism, then, is not a return to nature or authenticity, but a technique of subject destabilization—akin to madness, silence, or mysticism.

Bulgarian–French philosopher Julia Kristeva (born 1941) follows the same line in Powers of Horror [31], which can be seen as a feminist-psychoanalytic response to this terrain. She argues that abjection in eroticism is what threatens identity. In eroticism, we embrace the abject: bodily fluids, death, messiness, obscenity. This is precisely what dissolves the boundary between self and other. Intense eroticism entails a regression into a space of pre-linguistic drives and rhythm, where the subject becomes fragmented. This aligns with the idea of ultraconsciousness—a loss of structured, symbolic self. Erotic mysticism, in Kristeva’s terms, is both terrifying and ecstatic experience, an encounter with what threatens the subject’s clean boundaries.

Also, in liminal rituals and rites of passage the participants are stripped of body shape, status, identity, and structure. This is the case with Christian mysticism eroticism [32]. Teresa of Ávila and John of the Cross describe eroticized, bodily unions with the divine, often involving imagery of penetration, ecstasy, and annihilation. Erotic mysticism dissolves the Self, becomes a ritualized death of the Self and a revelation of continuity with chaos, the Divine, death, or Otherness.

Eroticism, then, has two main purposes.

• First, it is ultraconsciousness, a kind of disorientation that illuminates the limits of traditional consciousness and undermines the socially constructed Self and body image and its dependence on the gaze of the other. Eroticism opposes not so much the fool or the hypocrite, but the honest man, the normal man, the man that all of us are. It brings about a kind of disorientation that illuminates the limits of traditional consciousness. Eroticism is what calls into question the form of my being. It is a practice which brings to light what traditional consciousness cannot see or tolerate. It is a revelatory operation, a heuristic device. It is a “technique” to shed light on the “accursed share” [33] of the human condition, to achieve a clear awareness of it. These practices aim to reveal what consciousness, at the foundation of the "social edifice," hides. Eroticism is what dissolves my tranquil yet illusory life as a subject. Eroticism is the illumination of the illusory forms of consciousness, and the endpoint of eroticism is the unveiling of the indistinct, the confusion of distinct objects.

• The second purpose is de-subjectivation, the need to escape one’s own embodied selfhood; its essence and aim is the fusion of two individuals—it is a transcendence of the limits of beings. Eroticism is the pivot of a philosophical project aimed at surpassing traditional forms of subjectivity, opening the possibility of overcoming individuality, separation, and limitation. We will explore this profile of eroticism in the next paragraph.

The question is: is eroticism a gateway to the Other? Or merely an expenditure of the Self, a dissolution and stripping bare? In the carnal act, is the other a means, or an end? To mingle with the Other, to dirty and be dirtied, as Bataille says—is that an opening to the Other and a forgetting of myself, a transcendence of my narcissism in favor of the Other, their recognition, their pleasure, their Good? Or is this contamination with the Other a prolongation of my narcissism, the most extreme assertion of myself—my power being such that I can allow myself to merge with you, and even to be defiled by you? These questions obviously concern both philosophers and psychopathologists.

In this mystical experiment, is the other merely the means—since what I seek concerns myself, an intense intimacy with myself, a probing and surpassing of my own limit? And is intimacy with the other merely the vehicle through which this intransitive and fundamentally solipsistic experience is realized? Is the Other merely the occasion for a struggle with myself, little more than a pretext, the means by which I achieve the end of losing myself within myself, of shattering the crystal of my identity, and thus, in the end, of affirming myself as subject?

If so, then eroticism and perversion would be one and the same.

Eros of the impossible: ecstatic love and the trespassing of self-other boundaries

The ideas expressed by Bataille (and later developed by Foucault, Kristeva and others) resonate with similar concepts formulated in a different political and social context. What I will illustrate in this paragraph will show the trust and hopes placed in eroticism for political purposes, that is, for the creation of a new and more fraternal humanity.

Among the spiritual outbursts and extremisms that, in human history, have opposed old-fashioned common sense political ideals, there is one that holds a prominent place in the Pantheon, where the most daring utopias and hopes are represented. Aleksandr Etkind (born 1955), a Russian historian and psychologist, tells us about it in a work dedicated to the development of psychoanalysis in Russia (and then in the Soviet Union) in the early twentieth century. The title of the book—Eros of the Impossible—sums up the mood of an era marked by military defeats, political mistakes by the Tsar, disillusionment with the hope of changing the course of things, and the premonition of an impending catastrophe [34].

The phrase "eros of the impossible" comes from the work of one of the main figures of Russian symbolism, the poet, playwright, and philosopher Vyacheslav Ivanov (1866–1949), and it describes a cultural climate stormy enough that, during this period, "thought turned to the boundary problems of existence, skipping over the concrete aspects of life. Life and death became the fundamental forms of existence, almost exclusive, and the study of them became the primary means of understanding existence itself; and in becoming such, life and death fused into a certain supernatural unity."

The intention of the ideologues of the eros of the impossible seem to transcend Bataille's eroticism, because they see in eroticism the foundation of a political project and not only the starting point of the unmasking of the accursed share [33] and of the constitution of authentic relationships between individuals. These extracts from Ivanov’ s Following the Stars. Papers and Aphorisms represent the connection between the eros of the impossible, frenzy, the dismantling of common sense, chaos, and the rebirth to a more authentic existence:

“We are the chaos of the soul. Come down and look/ The eyes of night in the empty darkness!/ Give us mortal thy earthly breast -/Your imprisonment will be unlocked and dispersed! (…).

The chaotic revealed in the psychological category of frenzy is impersonal. It completely abolishes all boundaries. This realm knows no boundaries or limits. All forms are destroyed edges are removed faces ripple and disappear there is no personality. (…) Only the white foam covers the life-destroying waters. (…) The same eternal Eros of the impossible is the divine inheritance and seal of the human spirit. All our construction is only a reconstruction of boundaries. All boundaries become false. However, there is no limit to life. Chaos is free, chaos is fair!" [35].

Before proceeding, let us open a parenthesis: who (or what) is Eros?

Eros for the Greeks, Cupid for the Romans, in pagan myth and its associated iconography is depicted as a beautiful, naked youth, typically with a mischievous gaze, armed with a bow. Personifying the force that drives humans toward one another, and at the same time the archer who shoots infallible arrows from which the pain of love emerges. According to Hesiod, he was the first god to emerge from the primordial chaos; some suggest that he was born from an egg laid by Night, hatched by a bat, or from the union of Mars and Venus, or Zephyr with Iris—which is like saying he was born of discord.

Plato, who tells the story of his birth from Poros, the god of wealth, and Penia, the goddess of poverty, sees in Eros the function of connecting the human to the divine, the only moment when the two natures of man unite: the physiological impulse of sex and the dynamic impulse that drives one to seek a satisfaction that transcends earthly experiences. In his discourse in The Symposium, Aristophanes assigns to Eros the power that drives the two halves of the androgynous being to seek each other and reunite, symbolically recreating the original unity.

Eric R. Dodds (1893–1879), the Oxford philologist who explored the irrational depths of both the ancient and modern world, writes that the Eros spoken of by Plato "embraces the entire circle of the human personality, representing the only empirical bridge between the man who is and the man who could be." [36].

To embrace, to build a bridge, to unite. This seems to be the expressive gesture—the "pathic form"—that characterizes Eros. Which, as Freud writes, "tends to agglomerate all that exists into ever-larger units." [37]. Eros is an impulse and an embrace. From Eros comes an impulse that pulls the individual out of themselves and projects them toward the other. Eros looks without hesitation toward the other, refusing to resolve itself within the regime of the Ego. It sets in motion a voluntary overcoming of the Ego, a voluntary denial of it, an absolute emptying of it. Eros empties the Self to welcome the other.

Yet, Eros has a complex relationship—and not simply antithetical—with its alter ego: Thanatos, or death. Those who love are well aware of that peculiar weakening, that fainting, accompanied by a symmetrical feeling of power. The intuition of the unity between life and death was—this is Etkind’s thesis—the constant of Russian culture in the early twentieth century, from philosophy to literature, to poetry, to theater—and finally to psychoanalysis. Something similar we have just seen in French culture in those same years, and in particular about Bataille and Surrealism.

As reported by Etkind, Nietzsche's idea of the Übermensch, his contempt for everyday life, and his call to contest the system of common values, including the natural or traditional order, formed the basis for this eros of the impossible, whose height, which proved disproportionate, was faith (political) in the idea that man was no longer an end and an absolute, but only a means to build a future creature. Nietzsche had preached that man was something to be overcome, and the Russian intellectuals of the early decades of the century adopted this idea, which was not only dangerous but also “misanthropic.” Few had doubts about the necessity of changing human nature. Decadent writers, Orthodox theosophists, high-ranking Freemasons, and ideologues of terrorism discussed how to achieve this "transhumanism" (to use Pasolini's term), this radical transformation of real human beings and all of humanity.

The philosophers of Orthodox religion (such as Vladimir Solovyov) urged the construction of Divine Humanity on Earth through the transformation of the material part of man. The Bolshevik psychiatrist Aleksandr Bogdanov (1873–1928), in a prophetically titled book, The New World, announced that the greatness of man is to be a bridge toward the Superman, and that the silhouette of this figure was already becoming visible on the horizon.

What for most European readers of Nietzsche, and (according to Etkind) for Nietzsche himself, was merely a flight of the spirit, which only a barbarian could take literally, for Russian intellectuals became the basis for social practice, political action, and new art—the art of living, of which psychoanalysis would be the inspiring muse. It is not enough to conceive of the Superman; one must create it. To create the new man by modifying the nature of real human beings. Under the banner of this interpretation of Nietzsche's thought, the varied and seemingly incompatible ideologies of the Orthodox Church and socialist extremism took on an unexpected coherence. The victorious Bolsheviks, concludes Etkind, in their programs of human transformation embodied this idea: it was a process of barbarism inspired and guided by this suicidal and murderous ideology, and by the eros of the impossible.

There is a close relationship between this barbarism and the eros of the impossible: the disdain for reality and an uncontrollable pathos for its transcendence. The Swiss psychiatrist and philosopher Ludwig Binswanger (1881–1966) would have spoken, in this regard, of "fixed exaltation," the way of being "unfortunate" characterized by disproportionate expansion toward the heights, ascent, and the "beyond" in relation to reality and the human community [38]. Quoting Nietzsche's Human, All Too Human, Binswanger says that in this immense and dizzying ascent, man detaches from the "navigation of the world," from the horizon of concrete earthly experience, from the communio and communicatio with other human beings, to let himself be carried away, so "uprooted," by the wings of enthusiasm, optimism, and euphoria; only to finally get lost in the bewilderment and loneliness of the limitless void. At this aerial height, love and friendship have lost their strength in rooting the world and moderating individual impulses. Fixed exaltation is the disastrous result of the disproportion between horizontality and verticality, to the detriment of the former and the total dominance of the latter—the "absolute prevalence of the height of decision over the breadth of experience." Disproportion, that is, between horizontality as discursivity, the experience of reality, and the "deepening" of the particular situation, all to the advantage of verticality as fascination for the absolute. This applies, writes Binswanger, both to "mass manifestations" and to individual (psychopathological) manifestations of fixed exaltation.

However, the connection between the exaltation of the eros of the impossible and human drives must not be overlooked. The erotic one, obviously, but also the will to power and the death drive. This is a complex intertwining, a knot that, as we have seen, is destined to become a true noose. It has been said that the phrase "eros of the impossible" comes from Vyacheslav Ivanov. Ivanov lived in a tower in a building in Petersburg, and his eagle's nest became, at the beginning of the century, the ideal place for building a myth. Inspired by Dionysus (and, obviously, by at least an original interpretation of Nietzsche), the "religion" of this seer centered on the figure of the god who dies and then resurrects, on the mystical ecstasy as much as on the enlightening power of sexual orgies. Its cornerstones were distrust of the Ego, rejection of the physical and psychic boundaries of the human Self, and the obsessive desire to destroy these barriers: "The horror of falling into chaos calls us with the most powerful of calls, with the most imperious of warnings: it calls us to lose ourselves." (Ivanov, quoted in [34]). Any means is considered legitimate to alter consciousness, including sex, drugs, meditation, mystical practices, etc.

The Übermensch takes on the traits of "ecumenism," that is, the primitive religious communion (and this should make one reflect on the analogies with other "experiments" of communal life, at the boundary between utopia and dystopia). According to Etkind, the imperative to lose the boundaries of the Ego—that is, to dissolve the implicit and fundamental presupposition of individual constitution in Western culture—is the prelude to religious community, which in turn is the direct predecessor of Bolshevik "collectivism." This is what concerns the intertwining between the "transhumanism" hoped for by the *eros of the impossible* and the erotic drive understood narrowly as sexual drive: not an end, but a means to build a new humanity without boundaries between individual and individual.

On the other hand, from this peak that identifies sex as a tool for altering individual consciousness, one sees the intertwining with the will to power: a state of communion between individuals, in contrast to human nature and its most established conventions, cannot be achieved without violently transforming nature and overthrowing those conventions themselves. In addition, all this cannot be left to the spontaneity of individuals—to a spontaneous revolt, and later to the freedom of self-regulating individuals, as hoped by another utopia, the anarchic one—but requires (sooner or later) the exercise of power.

The ideas that guided revolutionaries, the goal they aimed at, completely vanish in the new social reality, the one that arises after the revolution, which, by unleashing chaos, has broken the fictions of the pre-existing social order. Thus, the fate produced by the revolution is a dictatorship, a tyrannical society, a military despotism. The idea of the revolution liberating humanity from fictions maybe fundamentally flawed: once the fictions of an oppressive system are removed, new fictions will inevitably arise in their place, and in the process, a new kind of oppression emerges.

This thought resonates deeply with the themes of the eros of the impossible, where ideals of transcendence, the destruction of boundaries, and the pursuit of new human identities often result in a paradoxical return to authoritarianism and coercion. The adherents and followers of eros of the impossible believe that the destruction of social fictions will lead to a better world, those in the thrall of this expect that the liberation of the individual from the boundaries of the Self will bring about a utopia. However, as history has shown, these dreams of transformation and transcendence often lead to dystopian outcomes—where the desire to create the "new man" or the "superman" ends up imposing a new form of totalitarian control.

In this context, the eros of the impossible is a driving force that, despite its noble origins, always seems to lead humanity to the abyss of chaos and suffering. Whether through radical political upheavals, like the Bolshevik revolution, or through spiritual and intellectual experiments, this yearning for transcendence, for the destruction of all limits, often culminates in the ultimate destruction of freedom itself. It becomes a cycle, a constant tension between the impulse toward liberation and the inevitability of authoritarianism, between the desire for the impossible and the reality of human nature.

So, as Etkind suggests in his study, the great paradox of the eros of the impossible lies in the fact that in striving for a greater freedom or a higher state of being, one often ends up reinforcing the very limitations and oppressions one sought to overthrow. This tension between the transcendent and the earthly, between idealism and the tragic realities of human existence, is what makes the story of the eros of the impossible so profoundly significant. It is a lesson about the limits of human ambition and the complex interplay between desire, power, and the human condition.

Case study 1: the glorification of a thrilled flesh

The clinical case that follows seems emblematic of the relationship between eroticism, transgression of social norms and the absolute, and ultimately self-destructive, passion for a life that focuses on emotions.

Ilse is a good-looking, well-read woman in her late forties. Something childish and tender transpires through her sullen behavior—as someone who has suffered several injustices. Restless youth, dysphoric mood traits punctuated with angry outbursts. A preference for clandestine relationships “as married men give their best out of their marriage”, and for “dirty souls”, “as soul and dirt go hand in hand”. Marriage is not the right place to meet a man. Passionate and insightful, she divides her life between erotic passion and the attempt at self-recognition. Emotions are the epicenter of both these passions. “All that counts in life are emotions. Nothing else. Only emotions keep me alive. I know they can destroy me, but it is worth taking this risk. Without emotions I would be simply dead. I mean the emotions that I only find in my way of being totally in love with someone.” Experienced, but not unfaithful or promiscuous: “I can give myself entirely. I’ve never been unfaithful. You’re right, I seem to jump from one partner to another. However, I never had two partners at the same time. I literally fall in love. This is the only way I am able to love. I sense the desire of the other with whom I’m in love. I plunge into it.” “This is my way to love. In this, I do not lose myself—rather I find my true Self. I live from this emotion. I live from recognizing their desire. My life without emotions is not worth living.”. “And now you tell me I should renounce my emotions to survive! You can’t understand. I don’t want to become as you want me to become. A corpse. You’d better kill me! I’d rather die!” [13].

Case study 2: the blurred boundaries between purity and corruption

Bataille explores eroticism as a gateway to experiencing a mystic and ecstatic state in which opposing forces, such as beauty and filth, purity and corruption, blend into one another and open the gates to the dissolution of consciousness. One striking example comes from a passage in The Blue of Heaven [39] set in a squalid London tavern.

The narrator describes Dirty, a woman both extraordinarily beautiful and deeply inebriated. She’s depicted in a raw and almost sacred light, her decadence evoking a paradoxical sense of purity. As she convulses and weeps uncontrollably, surrounded by sordidness and dismal onlookers, her anguish becomes an expression of openness and vulnerability. The narrator is mesmerized—deeply respectful, even reverent—because of how completely she surrenders to vice, embodying a luminous fragility. Their shared transgressions blur boundaries between degradation and sublime intimacy, whether in a lavish hotel room or the dingiest tavern:

“Her blonde hair, under the light that poured from the ceiling, had a radiance that was unbearable to me, and yet it conveyed a sense of purity. Dirty is the only being in the world who ever compelled me to admire. There was, in her state of degradation, such innocence that I wanted to prostrate myself at her feet. Only with Dirty did I feel that desire. I respected her deeply—precisely because she was consumed by vice.”

Conclusions

In this paper, I have explored the ecstatic dimension of the phenomenon of love, and in particular the interplay between eroticism and the processes of structuring and de-structuring of the Self, with the aim of shedding some light on the erotic practices of our patients—being careful not to stigmatize their thoughts and behaviors but, on the contrary, to seek meaning and logic in what a more barren perspective sees only as nonsense, irrationality, and pathology. I do not mean to imply, or even cautiously suggest, that this is the explicit philosophy of erotic practices in use by persons affected by certain psychopathological conditions such as the so-called borderline personality disorder. Or to imply that borderline people are theorists of eroticism, or that they are united by a utopian and revolutionary political project. Nor that utopians and revolutionaries suffer from borderline personality disorder. At the same time, it would be reductive to consider intellectuals such as Bataille and Ivanov as somewhat perverse or “borderline” people who sought to transform, justify and support their sexual desire, sui generis or deviant, by making it a philosophy.

My intention is different: I suggest that the phenomenology of eroticism set forth here—especially with that profile that I called ecstatic—and its connections with the dissolution of ordinary consciousness and the utopian constitution of types of social relations other than the ordinary, may represent a key to making sense of the otherwise nonsensical and incomprehensible conduct of certain people. What I am proposing is the presence in the culture of the twentieth century, at least in the West and in Russia, of a set of concepts and principles explicitly enunciated that we find at work in certain psychopathological forms—albeit only rarely explicitly enunciated by them.

Whenever we make something implicit explicit, this favors the establishment of a dialog between the parties involved. For people chronically in search of recognition, struggling to establish and cross boundaries between self and others and, rightly or wrongly, hurt by feeling misunderstood and stigmatized, the effort we make to make sense of their conduct can be the starting point of a fruitful clinical dialog. Understanding the Other, or at least the effort made in attempting to understand the Other, is the basis for any healing practice.

In this vein, I highlighted the link between eroticism and the disruption of self-consciousness, arguing that “disordered” sexual and romantic relationships in people with a psychopathological condition, temporal discontinuity of the Self and instability in self-narrative and identity share a common phenomenological core. Erotic “dysregulation” is not simply caused by identity disturbance. I asked myself “How do erotic excess and the disruption of the Self go together?”. I proposed that erotic experience is not merely symptomatic, rather that eroticism can be an ontological experiment of self-unmaking, and, at the same time, a desperate attempt to search for one's most authentic Self, since eroticism is a site, where the Self is done and undone.

Sexuality can be a source of identity rupture, erotic desire can be characterized by the wish for loss of self-boundaries and metaphysical fusion. I called this phenomenon “overlove” and saw in it, inspired by Bataille, Ivanov and others, a technique of the Self—i.e., an existential practice, a bodily strategy to interrupt ordinary selfhood, exceed normative consciousness, access sacred or ecstatic states, and produce new and more authentic forms of Self-Other relations. Overlove is not just a psychopathological symptom, a kind of hypersexuality (by the way: the scientific literature did not find any agreement in the definition of hypersexuality, given the lack of any efficacious phenomenological support), hyper-intensive sexual behavior/practices, the excess of sexual desire, or a kind of libidinal unbalance—but a sacred technique of disintegration of the Self and of ordinary social schemes.

Overlove is part of the ecstatic dimension of love. It can also be a technique to transform the Self, a means to jeopardize its sovereignty, a way to access the ultraconscious which may reveal the “unform” beyond the threshold of experience, in the sacred zone of indistinction between Self and Other, life and death. Rethinking the link between eroticism and psychopathological conditions shows that erotic excess is not just breakdown—but also ontological inquiry. Overlove may be a pathological excess, but also a spiritual strategy to be studied as a philosophical phenomenon.

In conclusion: overlove is both the symptom and the site of a deeper ontological instability. It is hardly surprising that certain psychopathological conditions share with the entire human kind the existential knot of love. An existential knot is a limit situation in which the becoming of existence comes to a halt. Existential knots are “basic concerns” that characterize the human existence in which the humanity we all share is revealed [40]. The existential knot of love, rather than connecting two people in a relationship made up of sexuality but also intimacy, tenderness and so on, can instead bind them and cling to their bodies like a slipknot. In the conscious or unconscious, voluntary or involuntary search for a deeper and more authentic relationship, the love knot can strangle one, or the other, or both lovers.

Author contributions

G.S. is the only author of this manuscript.

Funding

The authors declare that no funds, grants, or other support were received during the preparation of this manuscript.

Data availability

No data sets were generated or analysed during the current study.

Declarations

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Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.