Money Wisdom #31

"For Caldwell the order of Chaos, Earth, Tartarus [the lowest region of the world - Jon], Eros is psychoanalytically significant. Just as the earliest psychic state of the child is symbiotic, of 'undifferentiation, fusion with the mother', so the mythical world begins with undifferentiated oneness. And just as the infantile sense of self then develops by a separation (from the mother) which is also a loss, so in the myth the undifferentiated state is ended by the perception of the mother (Gaia) as separate; but she is only known at the price of being lost. And it on the basis of loss that desire (Eros) comes into being."

(Bold highlighting is my own - Jon )

Caldwell 1989 p.132-142

quoted in Richard Seaford Money and the Early Greek Mind 2004 p.220