In his "Psychology of the Transference," Jung uses a set of alchemical pictures to describe the transference relationship between doctor and patient. In these pictures from the Rosarium Philosophorum, there is an alchemical image that Jung titles "The Naked Truth." This image represents the archetypal theme of "getting naked." It is the archetypal theme in the individuation drama involving the stripping away of the false self and encountering onself as he or she really is. This kind of stripping also occurs in the myth of Innana's descent. Innana is a Summerian goddesss of sexual love, fertility and warfare. The story of Innana includes her well known descent into the underworld. "Innana's reason for visiting the underworld is unclear. The reason she gives to the gatekeeper of the underworld is that she wants to attend her brother-in-law's funeral rites. However, this may be a ruse; Innana may have been intending to conquer the underworld. Erishkigal, queen of the underworld and Innana's sister, may have suspected this, which could explain her treatment of Innana.
Innana dresses elaborately for the visit, with a turban, a wig, a lapis lazulli necklace, beads upon her breast, the 'pala dress' (the ladyship garmet), mascara, pectoral, a golden ring on her hand, and she held a lapis lazuli measuring rod. Perhaps Innana's garments, unsuitable for a funeral, along with Innana's haughty behavior make Erishkigal suspicious. Following Erishkigal's instructions, the gatekeeper tells Innana she may enter the first gate of the underworld, but she must hand over her lapis lazuli measuring rod. She asks why and is told 'It is just the ways of the Underworld.' She obliges and passes through.
Innana passes through a total of seven gates, each removing a piece of clothing or jewelry she had been wearing at the start of her journey. When she arrives in front of her sister she is naked. After she had crouched down and had her clothes removed, they were carried away. Then she made her sister Erec-ki-gala rise from her throne, and instead she sat on her throne. The Anna, the seven judges, rendered their decision against her. They looked at her--it was the look of death. They spoke to her--it was the speech of anger. They shouted at her--it was the shout of heavy guilt. The afflicted woman was turned into a corpse. And the corpse was hung on a hook."
Here is an image of this archetypal theme of nakedness in an Alanis Morrisette video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zp_wtj879ak
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Saturday, October 11, 2008
The Devil Made Me Do It, An Intro To Jung's Theory of Complexes
I am posting today my notes for the October 13, 2008 lecture of this class. I realize that some of you could not make it in today because of a time conflict and thank you in advance for your flexibility in getting through the interruption due to Hurricane Ike.
REVIEW: Last week we explored the concept of “Identity.” We said that a state of identity with a complex was a “lack of differentiation.” When there is a state of identity there is no “I-thou” relationship between ego-complex and what Whitmont described as “driving elements,” i.e. our complexes. The ego is our Archimedean point, the subject of consciousness, our I-complex with which we identify, and when we speak of identity with a complex, we are describing a situation when the ego is “identical with a drive” and unaware of what is driving it.
We looked at a passage from Jung’s autobiography where he says that the “essential thing (in working with your complexes) is to differentiate oneself from unconscious contents by personifying them, and at the same time bringing them into relationship with consciousness.” (MDR, page 187) We confront the complex as a “thou” as something “not I.” Only then can an inner dialogue begin.
TODAY we explore the mechanism of projection. The basic definition of projection: “An automatic process whereby contents of one’s own unconscious are perceived to be in others.” (Sharp, page 104) We meet our complexes through projection, as though they came from the other person.
Let me offer an example of this mechanism from a popular movie: AMERICAN BEAUTY.
American Beauty won five Academy awards in 1999 including best picture. One of the characters in that movie is a Colonel Fitz, a military man who has just moved into the neighborhood with his wife and son. There are several instances in the movie in which we witness the Colonel’s reaction to his gay neighbors. In one instance after he sees his neighbors out jogging in the street, he says sardonically, “What is this, the gay pride parade?”
He is expressing a strong feeling, disgust, revulsion perhaps, hatred. It is not a neutral dispassionate statement about the presence of gay neighbors in his neighborhood. This strong emotional response is telling. Something is up with Colonel Fitz and his relationship to homosexuality.
Later in the film, Colonel Fitz sees his son interacting with a neighbor he suspects of homosexual relationships. When his son returns home, his father, the Colonel is waiting for him in his room. The son has been dealing drugs and the father sees the boy come in with money. Instead of suspecting that his son has been dealing drugs as would have been a good assumption due to his past behavior, he accuses his son of selling his body for money. The father says, “I saw you with him. I won’t watch my son become a cocksucker. I’d rather you be dead than be a fucking faggot.” The son at first denies it but in an act of defiance tells his father that he is selling his body out for money. The Colonel strikes his son, knocking him to the ground. What is interesting here is that although the Colonel was keeping tabs on his son for drug use, instead of reaching the right conclusion that this son was selling drugs, he jumps to a different conclusion, that his son was engaged in homosexual relations with the neighbor. He was seeing through the lens of his complex and came to the wrong conclusion. His strong emotional reaction is another clue that his complex around homosexuality is constellated.
And then we have the about face…Towards the end of the movie, we see the Colonel coming out of the rain outside his neighbor’s garage where Lester Burham, his neighbor, is working out. He approaches Lester, and at one point kisses him. It is at this point that one understands the meaning of his hatred earlier in the movie. It was a reaction to his own inner desires, it was a hatred towards his own homosexual desires that he is now giving room to…and anticipating class comments, his earlier hatred was an expression of shadow material—repressed and hated aspects of oneself.
An important POINT: The “emotional coloring” in the Colonel, the strong emotional reaction to his gay neighbors is the essential piece in recognizing a complex. We cannot get away from our subjectivity and in one sense everything we experience in the world of objects has an element of our subjectivity. We speak of the mechanism of projection, however, when there is a strong emotional coloring. When we can’t just take it or leave it but find what we are experiencing somewhat compelling and sometimes when we are compulsively drawn to it. With the Colonel, we can see his strong emotional reaction, as well as his fascination with his neighbors including Lester Burham who he suspects, despite being married of engaging in sexual relations with other men.
PROJECTIONS CAN BE POSITIVE: Whitmont makes a point in your reading for this class that “complexes are not necessarily only negative; they cause attraction as well as repulsion. We are involved in a positive projection when what gets under our skin attracts us, fascinates us, arouses our admiration—when we ‘fall in love’ with a person or idea.” (page 61).
I have used scenes from American Beauty once again to demonstrate the concept of projection. I have provided two links to the scenes I am showing in class:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RilaxU045Nw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okaWTEnU4j0
In these scenes, Lester Burnham initially doesn’t want to go to his daughters cheerleading debut, he says “I’m missing the James Bond marathon on TNT, we can leave right after this right.” He isn’t showing much interest…but then he sees Angela, the cheerleader. His face changes, something has been constellated in him, he is taken into an inner experience, we can’t say that the things he is seeing are really happening in the exterior. He is projecting something into this young woman and he has fallen in love
The point here is that Lester doesn’t really know the young woman. She hasn’t done anything to him or for him at this point, they haven’t even met, yet he is obviously affected. Something is causing his attraction, what might that be?
A clue perhaps that his own psychological renewal begins with this experience in the movie. In the dream sequence in which the young woman is bathed in red rose petals, he says “I feel like I’ve been in a coma for 20 years, and I’m just waking up.” In keeping with our focus on the mechanism of projection, what aspect of himself is he projecting?
REVIEW: Last week we explored the concept of “Identity.” We said that a state of identity with a complex was a “lack of differentiation.” When there is a state of identity there is no “I-thou” relationship between ego-complex and what Whitmont described as “driving elements,” i.e. our complexes. The ego is our Archimedean point, the subject of consciousness, our I-complex with which we identify, and when we speak of identity with a complex, we are describing a situation when the ego is “identical with a drive” and unaware of what is driving it.
We looked at a passage from Jung’s autobiography where he says that the “essential thing (in working with your complexes) is to differentiate oneself from unconscious contents by personifying them, and at the same time bringing them into relationship with consciousness.” (MDR, page 187) We confront the complex as a “thou” as something “not I.” Only then can an inner dialogue begin.
TODAY we explore the mechanism of projection. The basic definition of projection: “An automatic process whereby contents of one’s own unconscious are perceived to be in others.” (Sharp, page 104) We meet our complexes through projection, as though they came from the other person.
Let me offer an example of this mechanism from a popular movie: AMERICAN BEAUTY.
American Beauty won five Academy awards in 1999 including best picture. One of the characters in that movie is a Colonel Fitz, a military man who has just moved into the neighborhood with his wife and son. There are several instances in the movie in which we witness the Colonel’s reaction to his gay neighbors. In one instance after he sees his neighbors out jogging in the street, he says sardonically, “What is this, the gay pride parade?”
He is expressing a strong feeling, disgust, revulsion perhaps, hatred. It is not a neutral dispassionate statement about the presence of gay neighbors in his neighborhood. This strong emotional response is telling. Something is up with Colonel Fitz and his relationship to homosexuality.
Later in the film, Colonel Fitz sees his son interacting with a neighbor he suspects of homosexual relationships. When his son returns home, his father, the Colonel is waiting for him in his room. The son has been dealing drugs and the father sees the boy come in with money. Instead of suspecting that his son has been dealing drugs as would have been a good assumption due to his past behavior, he accuses his son of selling his body for money. The father says, “I saw you with him. I won’t watch my son become a cocksucker. I’d rather you be dead than be a fucking faggot.” The son at first denies it but in an act of defiance tells his father that he is selling his body out for money. The Colonel strikes his son, knocking him to the ground. What is interesting here is that although the Colonel was keeping tabs on his son for drug use, instead of reaching the right conclusion that this son was selling drugs, he jumps to a different conclusion, that his son was engaged in homosexual relations with the neighbor. He was seeing through the lens of his complex and came to the wrong conclusion. His strong emotional reaction is another clue that his complex around homosexuality is constellated.
And then we have the about face…Towards the end of the movie, we see the Colonel coming out of the rain outside his neighbor’s garage where Lester Burham, his neighbor, is working out. He approaches Lester, and at one point kisses him. It is at this point that one understands the meaning of his hatred earlier in the movie. It was a reaction to his own inner desires, it was a hatred towards his own homosexual desires that he is now giving room to…and anticipating class comments, his earlier hatred was an expression of shadow material—repressed and hated aspects of oneself.
An important POINT: The “emotional coloring” in the Colonel, the strong emotional reaction to his gay neighbors is the essential piece in recognizing a complex. We cannot get away from our subjectivity and in one sense everything we experience in the world of objects has an element of our subjectivity. We speak of the mechanism of projection, however, when there is a strong emotional coloring. When we can’t just take it or leave it but find what we are experiencing somewhat compelling and sometimes when we are compulsively drawn to it. With the Colonel, we can see his strong emotional reaction, as well as his fascination with his neighbors including Lester Burham who he suspects, despite being married of engaging in sexual relations with other men.
PROJECTIONS CAN BE POSITIVE: Whitmont makes a point in your reading for this class that “complexes are not necessarily only negative; they cause attraction as well as repulsion. We are involved in a positive projection when what gets under our skin attracts us, fascinates us, arouses our admiration—when we ‘fall in love’ with a person or idea.” (page 61).
I have used scenes from American Beauty once again to demonstrate the concept of projection. I have provided two links to the scenes I am showing in class:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RilaxU045Nw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okaWTEnU4j0
In these scenes, Lester Burnham initially doesn’t want to go to his daughters cheerleading debut, he says “I’m missing the James Bond marathon on TNT, we can leave right after this right.” He isn’t showing much interest…but then he sees Angela, the cheerleader. His face changes, something has been constellated in him, he is taken into an inner experience, we can’t say that the things he is seeing are really happening in the exterior. He is projecting something into this young woman and he has fallen in love
The point here is that Lester doesn’t really know the young woman. She hasn’t done anything to him or for him at this point, they haven’t even met, yet he is obviously affected. Something is causing his attraction, what might that be?
A clue perhaps that his own psychological renewal begins with this experience in the movie. In the dream sequence in which the young woman is bathed in red rose petals, he says “I feel like I’ve been in a coma for 20 years, and I’m just waking up.” In keeping with our focus on the mechanism of projection, what aspect of himself is he projecting?
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Twenty Mattresses and Twenty Eider-down Beds
This drawing was rendered by a young and promising artist entering the High School for the Performing Arts this coming fall semester, and is an image of the princess of the Princess and Pea story as she lays unknowingly atop a pea placed among the many mattresses and eider down bedding by the old queen:
The old queen upon the arrival of princess, “went into the bed-chamber, took all the bedding off, and put a pea on the flooring of the bedstead; then she took twenty mattresses and laid them upon the pea, and then twenty eider-down beds upon the mattress.”
Continuing with the interpretation of Andersen’s Princess and the Pea, what happens when we find ourselves laying on “twenty mattresses and twenty eider-down beds?” Usually, we fall asleep. There are two things at work in this aspect of the fairy tale, the height of the mattresses on which the princess is placed, and also the comfort of the eider-down: the height shows the distancing from the little irritant, and the eider down, the soporific state of regressed comfort.
The many layered bedding, and the soft sleep-inducing comfort of the eider down, is an image of a powerful psychological defense. Sleep, don’t notice those things that bother you, place them as far away from consciousness as possible, stay high above it, or sleep through it, ignore…this is the image of the bedding defense…and is the reason why such a delicate princess is needed: only a true princess will notice and be effected by the seemingly insignificant irritants that might prove themselves not so insignificant.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
The Princess and The Pea
The Princess and the Pea is a Hans Christian Andersen tale. There is a parallel myth found in Grimm’s called “The Pea Test.” In both tales, there is a test designed to ferret out if the princess that appears in the kingdom is a “true” or “genuine” princess. It is her “sensitivity” and “delicacy” that will prove her true:
The old queen upon the arrival of princess, “went into the bed-chamber, took all the bedding off, and put a pea on the flooring of the bedstead; then she took twenty mattresses and laid them upon the pea, and then twenty eider-down beds upon the mattress. On this the princess had to lie all night. In the morning she was asked how she had slept.
‘Oh miserably!’ said the princess. ‘I scarcely closed my eyes all night long. Goodness knows what was in my bed. I lay upon something hard, so that I am black and blue all over! It is quite dreadful.’
Now they saw that she was a real princess; for through the twenty mattresses and the twenty eider down beds she had felt the pea. No one but a real princess could be so delicate.”
If we take the kingdom as a metaphor for our psychological landscape, what is needed in this kingdom? What is the delicate princess that is being sought? And why an image of delicacy that is so exaggerated, i.e. that the princess would turn “black and blue” because of a pea underneath so many mattresses and down beds?
The particular psyche represented by this kingdom is one missing delicacy or sensitivity. The word delicate is defined as “keenly sensitive as to feeling,” or “pleasing to the senses in a subtle way.” Sensitive as “a capacity of the organism or sense organ to respond to stimulation, irritability; the degree to which a radio receiving set responds to incoming waves, the capacity to be easily hurt…”
What is missing is responsiveness to stimuli including feelings, both one’s own and other’s feelings. The sensitive princess is perhaps the antidote to Rapunzel in the tower who is locked up in a sort of schizoid encapsulation. With this sensitive princess, you have entering the psychological landscape a princess who can respond to stimulation.
This particular princess however, is not only sensitive, she is hyper-sensitive. Her hyper-sensitivity is compensatory. To have this kind of sensitivity in reality might not me very desirable but what the image is doing is exaggerating to bring into focus the missing element in the kingdom, i.e. its compensating for an inability to be responsive to either inner or outer stimuli and feelings.
This particular psyche is someone who has difficulty registering their own reactions, they are not reactive enough to know when something either stimulates them or irritates them. Perhaps they sleep-enticed by that wonderful eider bedding, and don’t notice those little irritants that are full of meaning.
The old queen upon the arrival of princess, “went into the bed-chamber, took all the bedding off, and put a pea on the flooring of the bedstead; then she took twenty mattresses and laid them upon the pea, and then twenty eider-down beds upon the mattress. On this the princess had to lie all night. In the morning she was asked how she had slept.
‘Oh miserably!’ said the princess. ‘I scarcely closed my eyes all night long. Goodness knows what was in my bed. I lay upon something hard, so that I am black and blue all over! It is quite dreadful.’
Now they saw that she was a real princess; for through the twenty mattresses and the twenty eider down beds she had felt the pea. No one but a real princess could be so delicate.”
If we take the kingdom as a metaphor for our psychological landscape, what is needed in this kingdom? What is the delicate princess that is being sought? And why an image of delicacy that is so exaggerated, i.e. that the princess would turn “black and blue” because of a pea underneath so many mattresses and down beds?
The particular psyche represented by this kingdom is one missing delicacy or sensitivity. The word delicate is defined as “keenly sensitive as to feeling,” or “pleasing to the senses in a subtle way.” Sensitive as “a capacity of the organism or sense organ to respond to stimulation, irritability; the degree to which a radio receiving set responds to incoming waves, the capacity to be easily hurt…”
What is missing is responsiveness to stimuli including feelings, both one’s own and other’s feelings. The sensitive princess is perhaps the antidote to Rapunzel in the tower who is locked up in a sort of schizoid encapsulation. With this sensitive princess, you have entering the psychological landscape a princess who can respond to stimulation.
This particular princess however, is not only sensitive, she is hyper-sensitive. Her hyper-sensitivity is compensatory. To have this kind of sensitivity in reality might not me very desirable but what the image is doing is exaggerating to bring into focus the missing element in the kingdom, i.e. its compensating for an inability to be responsive to either inner or outer stimuli and feelings.
This particular psyche is someone who has difficulty registering their own reactions, they are not reactive enough to know when something either stimulates them or irritates them. Perhaps they sleep-enticed by that wonderful eider bedding, and don’t notice those little irritants that are full of meaning.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Slaying the dragon
I snapped this picture in Basel and this image lies directly across the entrance of Jung's Gymnasium, into which and from which he would have entered and exited daily during his school days.Jung often wrote of the struggle with "regression" and the desire to fall back into the "bosom of the family" especially the "mother's bosom." Its the falling back into the comfort of the known, which at some point comes in conflict with the desire to break from the past and move into new and unknown territories. This impulse emerges from some internal place and creates a psychological imperative to break free of the old comfortable order.
Jung quotes Nietzsche at length: "We must suppose that a mind in which the ideal of the 'free spirit' can grow to maturity and perfection has had its decisive crisis in some great act of emancipation, and that before this it was a spirit bound and apparently chained for ever to its corner and pillar. What binds it most tightly?...it is the ties of duty: the reverence that befits youth, respect and tenderness for all the time-honoured and valued things, feelings of gratitude for the soil whence they grew, for the hand that guided them, for the shrine where they learned to pray--their highest moments are the very ones that bind them most firmly, that put them under the most enduring obligations. The great emancipation comes suddenly for those who are so bound...A sudden horror and mistrust of what is loved, a flash of contempt for its so-called 'duty,' a rebellious, wilful, volcanically impelling desire for travel, strangeness, estrangement, coldness...a hatred of love, perhaps a sacrilegious grasp and glance backwards to everything it had worshiped and loved till then..."
Emancipation into new ways of being, new perspectives, new insights, and new psychological vistas, if we follow Nietzsche here, are accompanied by irreverance, contempt, rebelliousness, wanderlust, mistrust, coldness, and a hatred of old love ties. What about this?
Saturday, July 12, 2008
The Grace of Desire and Suffering
I continue with Rapunzel’s story…the barren couple wish for a child, and then at some point there is another desire. “One day when the wife was standing at the window and looking down at the garden (the one surrounded by a high wall and belonging to a sorceress), she noticed a bed of the finest rapunzel lettuce. The lettuce looked so fresh and green that her mouth watered, and she had a great craving to eat some. Day by day the craving increased, and since she knew she could not get any, she began to waste away and look pale and miserable.”
There are two aspects to the story here I want to focus in on, the first is that the wife “notices” and then that she “desires.” The state of barren-ness in whatever form that takes (spiritual poverty, emotional poverty, schizoid encapsulation), is not always noticed: compulsions that keep one encapsulated go unabated, or one lives within a state of perpetual boredom and ennui.
To “notice” that one is in a state of barren-ness and stagnation requires an act of grace because the state of being encapsulated is not an easy one to break through. A clue in how the “noticing” may occur, comes from examining where the craved for lettuce sits. It is in a garden behind a high wall. This high wall is a division and perhaps psychologically, this division is the partition between consciousness and unconsciousness. The garden thus is part of the unconscious life of the individual. For the lettuce to sit in the unconscious, is to say that new life emerges from this part of the psyche. It is the soil from which new possibilities grow. The act of grace that I often observe in psychological growth, is the emergence from unconsciousness of new possibilities, including those things previously repressed and forgotten.
When these acts of grace occur, when those green things from the inner garden are “noticed,” desire emerges: now I want, now I crave, and perhaps now I suffer. What was previously encapsulated and locked away, now I see and now I crave. This is sometimes first experienced as a real suffering for what was previously not seen, and this is often the first step in moving closer to what was previously encapsulated. It is then with this kind of craving, that action begins. Amyemilia wrote “if wishing is all we do then nothing changes, action is required.” Action begins after what is missing is noticed, and when the craving becomes a matter of staving off “wasting away,” in other words, it becomes a matter of psychological survival.
There are two aspects to the story here I want to focus in on, the first is that the wife “notices” and then that she “desires.” The state of barren-ness in whatever form that takes (spiritual poverty, emotional poverty, schizoid encapsulation), is not always noticed: compulsions that keep one encapsulated go unabated, or one lives within a state of perpetual boredom and ennui.
To “notice” that one is in a state of barren-ness and stagnation requires an act of grace because the state of being encapsulated is not an easy one to break through. A clue in how the “noticing” may occur, comes from examining where the craved for lettuce sits. It is in a garden behind a high wall. This high wall is a division and perhaps psychologically, this division is the partition between consciousness and unconsciousness. The garden thus is part of the unconscious life of the individual. For the lettuce to sit in the unconscious, is to say that new life emerges from this part of the psyche. It is the soil from which new possibilities grow. The act of grace that I often observe in psychological growth, is the emergence from unconsciousness of new possibilities, including those things previously repressed and forgotten.
When these acts of grace occur, when those green things from the inner garden are “noticed,” desire emerges: now I want, now I crave, and perhaps now I suffer. What was previously encapsulated and locked away, now I see and now I crave. This is sometimes first experienced as a real suffering for what was previously not seen, and this is often the first step in moving closer to what was previously encapsulated. It is then with this kind of craving, that action begins. Amyemilia wrote “if wishing is all we do then nothing changes, action is required.” Action begins after what is missing is noticed, and when the craving becomes a matter of staving off “wasting away,” in other words, it becomes a matter of psychological survival.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
The High Wall
Let’s continue with Rapunzel's story by going back to the beginning of the tale. The story begins with a barren couple, they have “been wishing in vain for a child.” The couple’s fertility is in question. There is a sense of stagnation where new life is wished for, but is wished for “in vain.”
This is a common human experience: “I’m bored.” “Nothing is happening.” “Nothing ever changes.” At some point in everyone’s life, we meet this psychological space of stagnation.
At this point in the story, we hear of the beautiful garden that is “filled with the most beautiful flowers and herbs. The garden, however, was surrounded by a high wall, and nobody dared enter it because it belonged to a sorceress who was very powerful and feared by all.”
What is this “high wall” that keeps our dear couple from the fertile energies of nature, the garden experience? What does that look like in us as a psychological experience?
This is a common human experience: “I’m bored.” “Nothing is happening.” “Nothing ever changes.” At some point in everyone’s life, we meet this psychological space of stagnation.
At this point in the story, we hear of the beautiful garden that is “filled with the most beautiful flowers and herbs. The garden, however, was surrounded by a high wall, and nobody dared enter it because it belonged to a sorceress who was very powerful and feared by all.”
What is this “high wall” that keeps our dear couple from the fertile energies of nature, the garden experience? What does that look like in us as a psychological experience?
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