ON ROMANTIC SPACE

The concept of romantic space is offered as a means for understanding enduring love. Starting from Ogden's (1986, 1989) synthesis of Klein, Bion, and Winnicott, romantic space is mapped out in the intermediate area between the lover and the beloved, unchallenged with respect to i ts belonging to inner or external (shared) reality. It is both an intr apsychic and an interpersonal experience evolving between the lover an d the beloved that involves the paradoxical coexistence of depressive and paranoid-schizoid modes of relatedness within each partner. The pa ranoid-schizoid mode brings a sense of freshness, idealization, and re ceptivity to the relationship and involves coercion of the beloved, th rough projective identification, to pay a particular role needed by th e lover. The depressive mode provides the relationship with a joint na rrative, the capacity for concern, and freedom to think one's own thou ghts. The interplay between these two modes of experience allows the l over and the beloved to offer each other a relatedness that is reassur ingly familiar as well as abruptly fresh. Inflexibility in either part ner leads to pathology of romantic space characterized by rigid adhere nce to the mode of relatedness. Dialogue from the play Shadowlands is cited to exemplify the multitextured experience inherent in our unders tanding of romantic space.