Aldo Carotenuto's analysis falls within the theoretical framework of the psychology of the unconscious, specifically the Jungian movement.

He approaches the phenomenology of the erotic experience with sensitivity and delicacy, attempting to understand the often subconscious causes and identifying the primary experiences on which they are based.

He pays great attention to the dimensions of individuality, interiority, fantasy, and the emotions that such an experience evokes, in which the material and psychological aspects of each person are intensely involved.

Carotenuto emphasizes the ambivalence and structural contradictions of the erotic experience: the subtitle of the book, the boundaries of love and pain, does not imply two different experiences, but rather two fundamental and inseparable dimensions of the same experience.