Some love affairs mark our lives forever. Whether we call them la grande passion, tragic romance, or l'amour fou, they remain indelible because they are impossible. Why do we fall in love at the wrong time, in the wrong place, and with the wrong person? Why do we put up with the anxiety, the pain, the shame, and the longing never fulfilled?

This brilliant book explores the nature of these "marvelous disasters" and finds a deeper necessity in the betrayals, taboos, and excesses of impossible love. Using perhaps the greatest of all tragic romances-the passion between Héloise and Abelard-as a psychological scaffold, Jan Bauer examines the erotic structures of irresistible attraction with love stories from the lives of men and women today. This is an exceptional study of love's chaotic mystery.

Jan Bauer, author of Women and Alcoholism, is a Jungian analyst in private practice in Montreal. She holds degrees from Zürich, Boston, and Paris and has taught in Tunisia as well as the University of Montreal. She has served as chair of Admissions as well as Training Director for the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts. Bauer is currently President of the Association of Jungian Psychoanalysts of Quebec.