Punctum Saliens

As I paused in my computer programming to take a break after finally getting the regression test to give me the right answer, I spotted one of Anais Nin’s diaries on the floor of my office. It was volume 4: 1944-1947.

I picked it up and opened to a random page and read:

There is an analogy between the bombardment of the atom and the bombardment of the personality by the method of analysis, the dismemberment, separation of the elements of the psyche which may release new energies. I believe scientific principles can be applied to the life of the psyche. . . . The time has come to give the psyche a concrete symbolism.

Another random page led me to:

The personal, if it is deep enough, becomes universal, mythical, symbolic; I never generalize, intellectualize. I see, I hear, I feel. These are my primitive instruments of discovery. . . . The primitive and the poet never parted company. . . . Intellectual knowledge is not enough. Music, the dance, poetry and painting are the channels for emotion. It is through them that experience penetrates our blood stream. Ideas do not. . . . There is a prejudice against subjectivity, because it is believed subjectivity is a narrowing of the vision. But this is no more true than to say objectivity leads to a larger form of life. Nothing leads to a vaster form of life but the capacity to move deeply inward as well as outward. . . . The most important problem for the novelist is that each generation must create its own reality and its own language, its own images. Each one of us must re-create the world.

Wow, I thought, this sounds a lot like Carl Jung! So, I did a quick search and found out that Nin actually underwent therapy with Jung! Talk about synchronicity!

The second quote is very meaningful today. In this age of science, many people think that “intellectual knowledge” is enough but it’s not. Objectivity is sought in everything and expected everywhere and it’s thought that this leads to a more complete picture of our reality but it doesn’t.

I would emphasis the “its own images” part of the second to last sentence. Symbols and images are extremely important as they are the mediators between us and the archetypes or collective unconscious. They are how we deal with our “inner world” which is there whether we believe in it or not. We need symbols and myths for our age of science and science itself is not giving them to us. Trying to use the symbols from yesteryear is not working either — simply look at the rejection of all the “old time religions” that is going on. This is not to say that religion is wrong or bad; on the contrary religion is exactly what supplies the symbols and images we need. But we need symbols that are meaningful to us today in this age of science and not the symbols from earlier generations.