“Anyone who wants to know the human
psyche will learn next to nothing from experimental psychology. He
would be better advised to abandon exact science, put away his scholar's gown,
bid farewell to his study, and wander with human heart through the world.
There, in the horrors of prisons, lunatic asylums and hospitals, in drab suburban
pubs, in brothels and gambling-hells, in the salons of the elegant, the Stock
Exchanges, socialist meetings, churches, revivalist gatherings and ecstatic
sects, through love and hate, through the experience of passion in every form
in his own body, he would reap richer stores of knowledge than text-books a
foot thick could give him, and he will know how to doctor the sick with a real
knowledge of the human soul.”. Kung CW v
5 p 309 1958
Jung writes: ‘By
psyche I understand the totality of all psychic processes, conscious as well as
unconscious’, (CW6 para 797) so we use the term ‘psyche’ rather than ‘mind’,
since mind is used in common parlance to refer to the aspects of mental
functioning which are conscious. Jung maintained that the psyche is a
self-regulating system (like the body). The psyche strives to maintain a
balance between opposing qualities while at the same time actively seeking its
own development or as he called it, individuation. For Jung, the psyche is
inherently separable into component parts with complexes and archetypal
contents personified and functioning autonomously as complete secondary selves,
not just as drives and processes.
It is important to think of Jung’s model as a
metaphor not as concrete reality, or as something which is not subject to
change. The ego Jung saw the ego as the centre of the field of consciousness
which contains our conscious awareness of existing and a continuing sense of
personal identity. It is the organiser of our thoughts and intuitions,
feelings, and sensations, and has access to memories which are not repressed.
The ego is the bearer of personality and stands at the junction between the
inner and outer worlds. The way in which people relate to inner and outer
worlds is determined by their attitude type: an extroverted individual being
orientated to the outer world, and an introverted one primarily to the inner
world. Jung also noted that people differ in the conscious use they make of
four functions which he termed, thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuition. In
any individual, one of these functions is superior and is therefore more highly
developed than other functions, since greater use is made of it, but each
attitude operates in relation to the introversion or extroversion of the
person, as well as in conjunction with other less dominant functions, giving a
number of different theoretical possibilities.
The ego arises out of the Self during the
course of early development. It has an executive function, it perceives meaning
and assesses value, so that it not only promotes survival but makes life worth
living. It is an expression of the Self, though by no means identical with it,
and the Self is much greater than it. Jung compared the nature of consciousness
to the eye: only a limited number of things can be held in vision at any one
time, and in the same way the activity of consciousness is selective.
Selection, he says, demands direction and other things are excluded as
irrelevant. This is bound to make conscious orientation one sided. The contents
which are excluded sink into the unconscious where they form a counterweight to
the conscious orientation. Thus an increasing tension is created and eventually
the unconscious will break through in the form of dreams or images. So the
unconscious complex is a balancing or supplementing of the conscious
orientation.
The personal unconscious is a product of the
interaction between the collective unconscious and the development of the
individual during life. Jung’s definition of the personal unconscious is as
follows: Everything of which I know, but of which I am not at the moment
thinking; everything of which I was once conscious but have now forgotten;
everything perceived by my senses, but not noted by my conscious mind;
everything which, involuntarily and without paying attention to it, I feel,
think, remember, want, and do; all the future things which are taking shape in
me and will sometime come to consciousness; all this is the content of the
unconscious’ (CW8, para 382). ‘Besides these we must include all more or less
intentional repressions of painful thought and feelings. I call the sum of
these contents the “personal unconscious”’. (CW8, para 270). 1 One can see that
there is more here than the repressed contents of the unconscious as envisaged
by Freud, for while it does include repression, Jung also sees the personal
unconscious as having within it potential for future development, and thus is
very much in line with his thinking about the psyche. Complexes Jung considered
that the personal unconscious is composed of functional units called complexes,
and he reached the concept of the complex through some important and
ground-breaking work he did as a young man on word association. He found that
there were internal distractions which interfered with the association of the
subjects to the test words, so that their reaction time was longer for some
words than others. These responses tended to form groups of ideas which were
affectively toned and which he named complexes or ‘feeling-toned complexes’.
The word association test suggested the presence of many types of complex not
merely, as Freud claimed, a core sexual complex, or Oedipus complex.
Complexes are determined by experience but
also by the individual’s way of reacting to that experience. A complex is in
the main unconscious and has a tendency to behave independently or autonomously
so that the individual may feel that his behaviour is out of his control. We
probably have all said at one time or another when we have done something
seemingly out of character: ‘I don’t know what came over me’. This sense of
autonomy is perhaps most marked in abnormal states of mind, and can be seen
most clearly in people who are ill; whom we sometimes think of as possessed,
but complexes are parts of the psyche of us all. Complexes have their roots in
the collective unconscious and are tinged with archetypal contents.
The problem for the individual is not the
existence of the complexes per se, but the breakdown of the psyche’s capacity
to regulate itself. Jung held that the psyche has the ability to bring into
awareness dissociated complexes and archetypal material in order to provide a
balance or compensation to conscious life. He thought that the ego was prone to
making inappropriate choices or to one-sidedness, and that material arising
from the unconscious could help to bring a better balance to the individual and
enable further development to take place. The further development tends to take
place in a situation of conflict, which Jung saw as a creative and inevitable
part of human life. When unconscious contents break through into consciousness
it can lead to increased development in the individual. However, complexes can
easily manifest themselves without the ego being strong enough to reflect on
them and enable them to be made use of, and it is then that they cause us (and
other people) difficulties. Jung was more concerned with the present and with future
development than with delving into the past, emphasising a teleological
approach and being concerned with the meaning of symptoms and their purpose.
The theory of the collective unconscious is
one of the distinctive features of Jung’s psychology. He took the view that the
whole personality is present in potential from birth and that personality is
not solely a function of the environment, as was thought at the time when he
was developing his ideas, but merely brings out what is already there. The role
of the environment is to emphasise and develop aspects already within the
individual. Every infant is born with an intact blueprint for life, both
physically and mentally, and while these ideas were very controversial at the
time, there is much more agreement now that each animal species is uniquely
equipped with a repertoire of behaviours adapted to the environment in which it
has evolved. This repertoire is dependent on what ethologists call ‘innate
releasing mechanisms’ which the animal inherits in its central nervous system
and which become activated when appropriate stimuli are encountered in the
environment.
These ideas are very close indeed to the
theory of archetypes He wrote:‘the term
archetype is not meant to denote an inherited idea, but rather an inherited
mode of functioning, corresponding to the inborn way in which the chick emerges
from the egg, the bird builds its nest, a certain kind of wasp stings the motor
ganglion of the caterpillar, and eels find their way to the Bermudas. In other
words, it is a “pattern of behaviour”. This aspect of the archetype, the purely
biological one, is the proper concern of scientific psychology’. (CW18, para
1228). The archetypes predispose us to approach life and to experience it in
certain ways, according to patterns laid down in the psyche. There are
archetypal figures, such as mother, father, child, archetypal events, such as
birth, death, separation, and archetypal objects such as water, the sun, the
moon, snakes, and so on.
These images find expression in the psyche,
in behaviour and in myths. It is only archetypal images that are capable of
being known and coming to consciousness, the archetypes themselves are deeply
unconscious and knowledgable. I have mentioned the biological, instinctual pole
of the archetype, but Jung perceived the concept as a spectrum, there being an
opposing, spiritual pole which also has an enormous impact on behaviour.
Archetypes have a fascinating, numinous quality to them which makes them
difficult to ignore, and attracts people to venerate or worship archetypal
images.
The Self
The Self for Jung comprises the whole of the
psyche, including all its potential. It is the organising genius behind the
personality, and is responsible for bringing about the best adjustment in each
stage of life that circumstances can allow. Crucially, it has a teleological
function: it is forward looking, seeking fulfilment. The goal of the Self is
wholeness, and Jung called this search for wholeness the process of
individuation, the purpose being to develop the organism’s fullest potential.
It is a distinguishing feature of Jungian psychology that the theory is
organised from the point of view of the Self, not from that of the ego, as
early Freudian theory was, and the teleological perspective of Jung is also
distinctive. The ego, along with other structures, develops out of the Self
which exists from the beginning of life. The Self is rooted in biology but also
has access to an infinitely wider range of experience, including the whole
wealth of the cultural and religious realms, and the depths of which all human
beings are capable. It is therefore capable of being projected on to figures or
institutions which carry power: God, the sun, kings and queens and so on.
This is a part of the personality which
comes into existence ‘for reasons of adaptation or personal convenience’. The
origin of the term comes from the mask worn by Greek actors in antiquity and
denotes the part of the personality which we show to the world. The persona has
been called ‘the packaging of the ego’ or the ego’s public relations person,
and is a necessary part of our everyday functioning. One might say that one’s
social success depends on having a reasonably well-functioning persona, one
which is flexible enough to adapt to different situations, and which is a good
reflection of the ego qualities which lie behind it. However trouble comes when
a person is identified with their persona, and everyone will have come across
people who cannot leave behind their work persona, such as a teacher who treats
everyone as though they were still in primary school, or bossily tells people
what to do. Although this is annoying to be with, the more serious part of it
is that it may leave major aspects of the personality unrealised, and the
individual therefore significantly impoverished. The persona grows out of the
need in childhood to adapt to the expectations of parents, teachers and peers,
and this may well mean that the persona carries traits of personality which are
desirable, leaving the opposite, undesirable traits to form part of the shadow.
The Shadow
This carries all the things we do not want to
know about ourselves or do not like. The shadow is a complex in the personal
unconscious with its roots in the collective unconscious and is the complex
most easily accessible to the conscious mind. It often possesses qualities
which are opposite from those in the persona, and therefore opposite from those
of which we are conscious. Here is the Jungian idea of one aspect of the
personality compensating for another: where there is light, there must also be
shadow. If the compensatory relationship breaks down, it can result in a
shallow personality with little depth and with excessive concern for what other
people think about him or her. So while it can be troublesome, and may remain
largely unconscious, the shadow is an important aspect of our psyche and part
of what gives depth to our personalities. The fascination which the differing,
contrasting, or opposing aspects of personality hold for us, is illustrated in
such novels as Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, or The Picture of Dorian Gray. The way in
which we most immediately experience the shadow is as we project it on to other
people, so that we can be fairly sure that traits which we cannot stand in
other people really belong to ourselves and that we are trying to disown them.
While difficult and painful, it is important that we work at owning our shadow
to bring it into relationship with our persona, and so provide some integration
of these two complexes within or personality.
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=ego+self+shadowhttps://www.google.co.uk/%3Fgws_rd%3Dssl&client=firefox-b-ab&so
The Personal
unconscious
The next two
complexes in the personal unconscious are perhaps the most difficult to
understand and the most contentious. Jung conceived of there being at another
psychic level a contra-sexual archetype, designated as anima in the man and
animus in the woman. These figures are derived in part from the archetypes of
the feminine and masculine, and in part from the individual’s own life
experience with members of the opposite sex beginning with mother and father.
They inhabit the unconscious depths as a compensation for the one-sided
attitude of consciousness and a way of rounding out the experience of belonging
to one sex or the other. Just as happens with the shadow, these archetypes are
met with firstly in projected form. They carry with them the numinous quality
which accounts for falling in love at first sight, which one can think of as a
projection in a man on to an unknown woman of an archetypal image and the woman
then becomes fascinating and immensely appealing. While he was influenced by
the gender-based thinking of his time, Jung recognised that the “masculine”
aspects of the psyche such as autonomy, separateness, and aggression were not
superior to the “feminine” aspects such as nurturimg , relatedness, and
empathy. Rather, they form two halves of a whole, both of which belong to every
individual, and neither of which is superior to the other. One can see this as
a development of the emphasis on the masculine psyche in Freud’s work. These
complexes need to be related to in their “otherness”, and connect the ego to
the objective psyche. Individuation Jung called the search for wholeness within
the human psyche, the process of individuation.
It may be described as a process of
circumlocution around the Self as the centre of personality. The person aims to
become conscious of him or herself as a unique human being, but at the same
time, no more nor less than any other human being. For Jung, conflict is not
only inherent in human psychology, but is necessary for growth. In order to
become more conscious, one must be able to bear conflict. There are many
internal opposites, as well as those experienced in the outside world. If the
tension between the opposites can be borne, then out of this clash something
new and creative can grow. In Jung’s view, this ‘something’ is a symbol which
will contribute to a new direction which does justice to both sides of a
conflict and which is a product of the unconscious rather than of rational thought.
For Jung the symbol is something which cannot be fully explained or understood
but has the quality of both conscious and unconscious worlds. The symbol may be
the agent of transformation which brings about the development which was so
important an aspect of his thinking, and which leads towards individuation as
the goal towards which humans strive.
Jung and number
as Symbols;
Jung thought of numbers as
archetypes[25] and, as such, they were “pre-existent to
consciousness.”[26] That is, they
were not something humans invented, but were more something we “found
or discovered.”[27] In a footnote
in an essay “On the Nature of the Psyche,” Jung noted that “A mathematician
once remarked that everything in science was man-made except numbers, which had
been created by God himself.”[28]
Archetypes are autonomous and “condition consciousness,”[29] i.e. they
spontaneously give rise to certain behaviors or reactions, independent of our
ego desires, and they can pattern daily living. Hypothesizing that numbers are
archetypes, Jung ventured to suggest that numbers, like other archetypes, are
“spontaneously produced by the unconscious,”[30] and “show a
tendency to behave in a special way.”[31]
Continuing the theme of number-as-archetype, Jung felt numbers “…
possess numinosity and mystery… and all numbers from 1 to 9 are sacred,…”[32] By saying
numbers have numinosity, Jung implied that numbers can link us to something
larger than ourselves: the Divine, the Universe, cosmic reality. Being
mysterious symbols, numbers can never be fully understood or boxed up with a
simple definition.[33] Number will
always elude the complete grasp of our logical minds.
Like other types of archetypes, numbers “… have existed from eternity,”[34] and “belong to
both worlds, the real and the imaginary; it [number] is visible as well as
invisible, quantitative as well as qualitative.”[35] While we in
modern culture tend to think of numbers as simple devices to quantify reality,
calculate budgets, balance the checkbook and perform various engineering and
scientific endeavors, or as a way to label the days of the week, month and
year, Jung saw numbers very differently: as “peculiar entities with irreducible
properties.”[36] These entities
have functions that go far beyond our common uses of numbers.
From decades of work with patients Jung came to see that numbers play
an “exceedingly important role in dreaming,”[37]—a role that
subsequent Jungian analysts have also recognized.[38] Numbers
symbolize “characteristic stages of the inborn healing process that Jung
discovered early in his career,…”[39]
“Dreams are
impartial, spontaneous products of the unconscious psyche,
outside the control of the will. They are pure nature; they show us the
unvarnished, natural truth, and are therefore fitted, as nothing else is, to
give us back an attitude that accords with our basic human nature when our
consciousness has strayed too far from its foundations and run into an
impasse.”
[Collected
Works Volume 10, paragraph 317
Jung saw the mind/body/feelings (or what he
called ‘the psyche’) as all working together. Even negative symptoms could be
potentially helpful in drawing attention to an imbalance; for example,
depression could result from an individual suppressing particular feelings or
not following a path that is natural and true to their particular personality.
In this way he saw the psyche as a self-regulating system with all psychic
contents – thoughts, feelings, dreams, intuitions etc. – having a purpose; he
thought the psyche was ‘purposive’.
Jung saw dreams as the psyche’s attempt to
communicate important things to the individual, and he valued them highly,
perhaps above all else, as a way of knowing what was really going on. Dreams
are also an important part of the development of the personality – a process
that he called individuation. Whilst Freud thought that dreams expressed
forbidden wishes that had to be disguised (he differentiated the manifest
content of a dream – what was on the surface, from the latent content – what
was hidden), Jung saw dreams as expressing things openly; he wrote:
“They
do not deceive, they do not lie, they do not distort or disguise … They are
invariably seeking to express something that the ego does not know and does not
understand.” [CW 17, para. 189]
If dreams are sometimes difficult to
comprehend it is because we need to understand that dreams express themselves
through the use of symbols. Of symbols Jung wrote:
“A symbol is the
best possible formulation of a relatively unknown psychic content”.
He also wrote, the dream is “a spontaneous
self-portrayal, in symbolic form, of the actual situation in the unconscious”
[CW 8, para. 505]. A symbol doesn’t just tell us about what the dream may
appear to be about on the surface, but has meaning and resonance above and
beyond the particular situation.
In expressing what is not known,
particularly related to an imbalance, Jung thought that dreams were a form of
compensation. One of Jung’s own dreams gives a good example of compensation;
the dream concerned one of his patients. She was an intelligent woman but Jung
noticed that increasingly in their sessions there was a shallowness entering
into their dialogue. He determined to speak to her about this, but the night
before the session he had the following dream:
He was walking down a highway through a
valley in late-afternoon sunlight. To his right was a steep hill. At its top
stood a castle, and on the highest tower was a woman sitting on a kind of
balustrade. In order to see her properly he had to bend his head far back. He
awoke with a crick in his neck. Even in the dream he had recognised the woman
as his patient. [Memories, Dreams
and Reflections, p. 155]
Jung said that the interpretation was
immediately apparent to him. If, in the dream, he had had to look up to the
patient in this fashion, in reality he had probably been looking down on her –
the dream had been a compensation for his attitude toward her.
Jung wrote:
“I
have noticed that dreams are as simple or as complicated as the dreamer is
himself, only they are always a little bit ahead of the dreamer’s
consciousness. I do not understand my own dreams any better than any of you,
for they are always somewhat beyond my grasp and I have the same trouble with
them as anyone who knows nothing about dream interpretation. Knowledge is no advantage
when it is a matter of one’s own dreams.” [CW 18, para. 244
In
Memories, Dreams, Reflections Jung reports a seminal dream in his discovery of
the collective unconscious.
I was in a house I did not
know, which had two storeys.
It
was “my house”.
I
found myself in the upper storey, where there was a kind of salon furnished
with fine old furnished with fine old pieces in Rococo style. On the walls hung a number of precious, old
paintings.
I
wondered that this should be my house and thought, “Not bad”. But then it occurred to me that I did not know
what the lower floor looked like.
Descending
the stairs, I reached the ground floor. There everything was much older. I realised that this part of the house must date
from about the fifteenth or sixteenth century. The furnishings were medieval, the floors were
of red brick.
Everywhere
it was rather dark.
I
went from one room to another, thinking, “Now I really must explore the whole
house.” I came upon a heavy door
and opened it.
Beyond
it, I discovered a stone stairway that led down into a cellar. Descending again, I found myself in a
beautifully vaulted room which looked exceedingly ancient. Examining the walls, I discovered layers of
brick among the ordinary stone blocks, and chips of brick in the mortar. As soon as I saw this, I knew that the walls
dated from Roman times.
My
interest by now was intense.
I
looked more closely at the floor.
It
was of stone slabs and in one of these I discovered a ring. When I pulled it, the stone slab lifted and
again I saw a stairway of narrow stone steps leading down to the depths. These, too, I descended and entered a low cave
cut into rock.
Thick
dust lay on the floor and in the dust were scattered bones and broken pottery,
like remains of a primitive culture. I discovered two human skulls, obviously very
old, and half disintegrated.
Then
I awoke.[1]
Jung
presented the dream to Freud, who he was working very closely with at the time,
but dissatisfied with his (Freud’s) reading of it[2] Jung independently interpreted the dream along the
following lines: the house was a symbol of his psyche or psychology. Our homes
being amongst the most primal of our collective symbols. The home is where the
heart is, as the old saying goes. Our homes are our castles (irrespective of
how modest they may be), our sanctuaries. They are sacred ground. The border of
the home constitutes a boundary between me and mine and “the world”, “the
others”. Its boundaries are designed to keep the unwelcome out and admit the
welcome by my invitation. In my home (ideally) I feel contained, safe, held.
The home symbolically is an extended psychic body, a manifestation of my soul
in the world. And inasmuch as it holds me it is also a symbol of the mother.
This symbolic significance explains much of the cultural rituals and protocols
around our homes and their status in our society. Once you become a guest in my
home there is a subtle but significant shift in your status from
someone-out-there to someone-one-in-here. The beliefs and cultural norms of the
Bedouin tribes are particularly telling in this regard. This also goes some way
to explaining the lasting psychological trauma of a home invasion and the
frequent need to relocate.
And
in the dream Jung is clear that it is not just any house but his house, “my
house”. Once one is armed with the concept of the collective unconscious the
rest follows fairly organically. Of course Jung himself wasn’t, so the reading
he birthed is a testament to his genius. As he descends the various layers of
his house, he is descending the layers of his own psychology, psyche or soul.
What he discovers is that each successive layer connects him with an earlier
time in man’s history and the history of his ancestral line and also casts an
increasingly wide net so that his interconnectedness to his fellow man is
increased. Or perhaps it is better stated to say he is increasingly connected
to an ever wider group of fellow human beings who share, at the various levels,
his ancestry. Such that he begins in his personal living space on the upper
floor and ends in the shared prehistoric roots of all mankind.
Jungian psychology places a heavy emphasis on
dream interpretation and the contents of the unconscious mind. During the
process of active imagination, Jungian analysts encourage clients to translate
the contents of dreams without adding any analysis from the conscious mind. For
example, a woman who had a dream about her father might be encouraged to write
down all of the contents of the dream without filling in any gaps, explaining
any incongruities or offering any analysis. The goal of this process is to
understand the workings of the unconscious mind.
Carl Jung argued that dreams and other unconscious images can
be particularly vivid when these images attempt to make their way to the
unconscious mind. Through the process of active imagination, these images may
become less vivid and allow the contents of the unconscious mind to healthily
integrate with the conscious mind. Jung cautioned that the process of active
imagination had to be done carefully because it could cause a disconnect with
reality.
Active imagination is
intended to bring about a state of hypnagogia. This is the state in between
sleep and wakefulness, where people may be partially aware that they are
dreaming. Jung argued that active imagination can be achieved naturally during
intense states of relaxation such as when listening to a story or drifting off
to sleep.
([30], pp. 1–2J
Jung had a much more positive view of the
human psyche and unconscious than Freud.For Jung, the unconscious is not only
full of wild and destructive drives; it is
a source of creativity, spirituality and the capacity for relationships.
Similarly, dreaanotheuntrustworthy "texts" that Freud deciphered.
Rather, they tell tdreameexactly what is going on in their psyche. In Jung's
idea of "individuation"wesemapping of the relations between an individual
and the group ocollective (and Jucoined the term "collective
unconscious" to indicate what all humans have in common from a
psychological point of vie
Today there is a collective agonising over
what is meant by "the west". Easy to define in contradistinction to a
supposedly fanatical Islam (itself a political and media concoction), what it
means to be western is a much more complicated topic that cries out for a
Jungian input. Jung saw himself as a sort of therapist for western culture and,
if his criticisms of it do resonate with what many Muslims are saying, then
that strikes me as all the more significant.
What Jung saw in western culture is very
familiar to what its contemporary critics perceive. He despaired of the
over-rational one-sidedness of western culture, the way it has got cut off from
nature (Jung is the pioneer of what is now calledecopsychology). He hit out at the materialism and loss of
individuality in our world, focused on the mind-body split, on mechanical
approaches to sex, and the west's loss of a sense of existential and spiritual
purpose and meaning. He even, in a characteristic moment of imaginative genius,
tried to be the therapist of the Judeo-Christian God, in his iconoclastic
book Answer to Job.
Yet as far as Jung's
reputation is concerned, it would be wrong to end on an upbeat note. As a
Jungian analyst I have always insisted that Jungian analysts and scholars acknowledge and
apologise for his antisemitism in
the 1930s and try to fix those parts of the theories that are misguided or
plain wrong: for instance using the word "parasite" in connection
with the Jews, to refer to an alleged lack of a culture of their own and their
supposed need to use the forms of other "host" cultures.
Jung defended
himself against the accusation that his ideas chimed with Nazi ideology, but to
some his expression of regret seemed inadequate and insincere. He helped
numerous Jewish psychoanalysts to flee Nazi Germany – yet he was also an
ambitious man and saw an opportunity to become the leading psychologist in
central Europe in the 1930s: distinguishing Jews from "Aryans" chimed
with the politics of Germany and Austria. He was not a crude antisemite. He was
an intuitive person and, though his writings on what he called "Jewish
psychology" (ie psychoanalysis) are often deeply offensive, there are some
nuggets therein that give one pause for thought.
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In his clinical work with patients he
anticipated the "relational turn" in psychotherapy: writing that the
therapist was as much in the treatment process as the patient, and stressing
the importance of the "therapeutic personality" as opposed to the
mechanical application of the technical procedures. He was an alert and
compassionate therapist – another reason we should avoid only concentrating on
his personal life.
Addendum
For my own outlook
the implications are that a holistic
universe is necessarily a mystical system. Scientific theories, which claim
that all things and people are interconnected in a non-empirical realm of the
world, are necessarily mystical theories. Jaffé has described the same
conclusion in the following way: share essential aspects with ancient practices
in an evolved way. In her appealing book, “Was C. G. Jung a Mystic?”, Aniela Jaffé [30] has described fascinating aspects of Jung’s mysticism,
which confirm our view:
“If
the concept ‘mystic’ suggests the immediate experience of the numinous or the
perceiving of an originally hidden transcendent reality, the ‘other side’, then
it involves an experience which also plays a central role in Jung’s approach to
analytical psychology; that is, the consideration of images and contents which
enter into consciousness from the hidden background of the psyche, the
collective unconscious. (…) [which] must be conceived of as a realm with
neither space nor time that eludes any objective knowledge. What we perceive
are its effects.”.
([30], pp. 1–2)
At this
point I might ask: Does it all matter?
Why should I care? Our answer is the belief that happiness in this life can be
found only by understanding the spiritual background of the universe, and by
living in accordance with it. Carl Gustav Jung has shown that, living in
accordance with the order of the universe is a prerequisite for a wholesome
life. This means that we have to recognize the invisible background of reality
and accept the importance of spirit in our life ([41], p. 8)
The state of being
innate upholds a Cosmic Order that lets us think that we are part of it, that
we are born in it and that we are it, but we don’t know it. In agreement with
Jung’s Weltanschauung, Quantum physics confirms William James’ thesis, that modern science can no longer deny the non-empirical:
“[The]
unseen region in question is not merely ideal, for it produces effects in this
world. When we commune with it, work is actually done upon our finite
personality, for we are turned into new men, and consequences in the way of
conduct follow in the natural world upon our regenerative charge. But that
which produces effects within another reality must be termed a reality itself,
so I feel as if we had no philosophical excuse for calling the unseen or mystical
world unreal.”.
([42], p. 516)
The
view that reality has a non-empirical background can be found at various times
in the history of philosophy. We find it, for example, in the theses of the
Greek Pythagorean philosopher Timaeus of Locri (420–380 BCE). “God is a
circle”, he wrote, “whose centre is everywhere and circumference nowhere”.
([43], p. 581)
Bibliograhy
Jung and Analytical
Psychology: A Comprehensive Bibliography. Vincie, J.F. and Rathbauer-Vincie, New York: Garland, 1977
Abstracts of the Collected
Works of C.G. Jung. (C.L. Rothgeb,
et al., eds.) Rockville, MD: National Institute of Mental Health, 1978
Autobiography
Memories, Dreams, Reflections. C.G. Jung. Vintage Books, USA, 1989
Anthologies
The Portable Jung. Campbell, J. (ed.) R.F.C. Hull, (trans.)
Viking, 1971
The Essential Jung. Storr, A. Princeton University Press, 1983
General
Jungian Psychology in
Perspective. Mattoon, M.A.
Macmillan/ Free Press, 1985
Cross-Currents of Jungian
Thought. Dyer, D. Shambala,
2001
Guided Tour of the Collected
Works of C.G. Jung. Hopcke, R.
Shambala, 1999.
Jung and the Post-Jungians. Samuels, A. Routledge, Kegan & Paul, 1986
Boundaries of the Soul. Singer, J. Anchor Books/ Doubleday, 1994
Jung: A Biography. Wehr, Gerhard. Shambala, 2001.
Jung: His Life and Work. Hannah, B. Perigee, 1976
A Primer of Jungian
Psychology. Hall & Nordby.
Plume Books, 1999
The Discovery of the
Unconscious. Ellenberger, H.F.
Basic Books, 1970
From Freud to Jung: A
comparative study of the psychology of the unconscious. Frey-Rohn, L. Shambala, 2001
The Psychology of C.G. Jung.
Jacobi, J. Yale University Press, Eng. Edition, 1973
The Symbolic Quest. Whitmont, E Princeton University Press, 1969
The Origins & History of
Consciousness. Neumann, E.
Princeton University Press/ Bollingen Series,
1954
Jung, A Biography. Bair, Diedre. Little, Brown, 2003
The Power of Myth. Campbell, Joseph. Anchor, 1991
Was C.G.Jung a Mystic?: And Other Essays Paperback – 1 Jan 1989
Platonis Opera: Timaeus. Timaei Locri De Anima Mundi. Critias. Parmenides.
Symposion... (Greek) Paperback – 9 Apr 2012
Jung
and the Dream Bibliography
Edinger, Edward (1995), The Mysterium Lectures.
Toronto: Inner City Books.
Hannah, Barbara (1976), Jung: His Life and Work, A
Biographical Memoir. New York: G.P. Putnam.
Jung, C.G. (1960), “The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche,”
CW 8. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1959), “The Archetypes and the Collective
Unconscious,” CW 9i. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1959), “Aion,” CW 9ii. Princeton: Princeton
University Press.
________ (1970), “Civilization in Transition,” CW 10.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1969), “Psychology and Religion: East and West,” CW
11. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
________ (1953),
“Psychology and Alchemy,” CW 12. Princeton: Princeton University
Press.
________ (1976), “The
Symbolic Life,” CW 18. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Meier, C.A. ed. (2001), Atom and Archetype: The Pauli/Jung
Letters 1932-1958. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Pauli, Wolfgang (1955), “The Influence of Archetypal Ideas on
the Scientific Theories of Kepler,” The Interpretation of Nature and the
Psyche. New York: Pantheon Books.
Rudhyar, Dane (1973), An Astrological Mandala. New
York: Vintage Books.
Sparks, Gary (2010), Valley of Diamonds: Adventures in Number
and Time with Marie-Louise von Franz. Toronto: Inner City Books.
von Franz, Marie-Louise (1980), On Divination and
Synchronicity. Toronto: Inner City Books.
Zabriskie, Beverley (2001), “Jung and Pauli: A Meeting of Rare
Minds,” in Meier, Atom and Archetype. Princeton: Princeton University
Press.
References for Jung and the dream
[1]Collected Works 8, ¶356, note 24.
Hereafter Collected Works will be abbreviated CW.
[2] Ibid., ¶870.
[3] CW 18, ¶461.
[4] Sparks (2010), 15.
[5] Hannah (1976), 41.
[6] Sparks (2010), 13-14.
[7] Ibid., 14.
[8] World Book Encyclopedia Dictionary
II, 1328.
[9] CW 8, ¶356.
[10] Ibid., ¶871.
[11] Ibid., ¶965.
[12] Ibid., ¶870.
[13] CW 18, ¶461.
[14] CW 8, ¶870.
[15] Jung described himself as an empiricist;
for more on this, see the blog essay “The Psyche is Real: Materialism,
Scientism and Jung’s Empiricism,” archived on this blog site.
[16] Sparks (2010), 61.
[17] Ibid., 61-62.
[18] CW 9i, ¶679.
[19] Ibid. By “incorporeal intelligences,” Jung
might have been referring to the vix mediatrix naturae, the healing
force of nature that lies within each of us that knows how to heal us.
[20] CW 11, ¶180.
[21] CW 9i, ¶679.
[22] Ibid.
[23] CW 10, ¶692.
[24] CW 12, ¶313.
[25] CW 8, ¶870.
[26] Ibid., ¶871.
[27] Ibid.
[28] Ibid., ¶356, note 24.
[29] Ibid., ¶871.
[30] Ibid., ¶870.
[31] I.e. in symbolic, non-rational or mysterious
ways that the logical ego mind cannot always grasp. Ibid.
[32] Ibid., ¶870.
[33] Symbols, in Jung’s definition, can never be
fully grasped or defined; for more on Jung and symbols, see the essay “A Way
into Mystery,” archived on this blog site.
[34] CW 8, ¶965.
[35] CW 10, ¶778.
[36] CW 8, ¶356.
[37] Sparks (2010), 15.
[38] E.g. von Franz (1980) and Edinger (1995).
[39] Sparks (2010), 15.
[40] Rudhyar (1973). My students tell me this is
now out of print.
[41] CW 8, ¶870.
[42] Ibid.
[43] Ibid.
[44] CW 10, ¶778.
[45] Sparks (2010), 15.
[46] CW 8, ¶870.
[47] Quoted by Jung, CW 8, ¶943.
[48] CW 10, ¶778.
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