Norman Brown to me is intensely post-Romantic, and the power of his speech comes, more often than not, from his erudition in the classics, including those key literature of Christianity.
Already in mid-20th c. he writes against those who preach "the crisis of identity" the following little pep-talk kind of passage. I like it very much:
But the breakdown is to be made into a breakthrough; as Conrad said, in the destructive element immerse. The soul that we can call our own is not a real one. The solution to the problem of identity is, get lost. Or as it says in the New Testament: "He that findeth his own psyche shall lose it, and he that loseth his psyche for my sake shall find it." (Brown, Love's Body)
The only remaining question is this "my sake."
