Tag Archive for 'carl jung'

Individuation: Inner Work by Murray Stein

Published
by
Ken
on April 30, 2009
in carl jung and depth psychology
. 0 Comments

A few quotes from this excellent paper [Stein. Individuation: Inner Work. JOURNAL OF JUNGIAN THEORY AND PRACTICE (2005) vol. 7 (2) pp. 1-13. Available online here]

The principle of individuation defines the essence of the human. It is
absolutely fundamental to human beings to distinguish themselves from their
surroundings. This is the essential nature of individual consciousness: to be itself,
it must create distinctions and separateness. It is in accord with human nature,
therefore, to seek individuation. Individuation is not optional, not conditional, not
subject to vagaries of cultural differences. It is essential.

The opus of individuation, therefore, requires careful analysis on two fronts:
on the persona side, to differentiate the subject from the social collective all
around and to dissolve the identifications that have built up over time in one’s
personal history, and on the anima/animus side, to differentiate from the collec-
tive unconscious as the fantasies and archetypal images emerge and invite
grandiose identification with them as a compensation for what has been lost
through the analysis of the persona.

Let’s understand Christian mythology symbolically, for once

Published
by
Ken
on April 15, 2009
in carl jung, faith and quotes
. 0 Comments

I’ve finally found a quote from C.G. Jung that backs up what I’ve been saying for a while now [e.g. here, here, and here]:

The Churches stand for traditional and collective convictions which in the case of many of their adherents are no longer based on their own inner experience but on unreflecting belief, which is notoriously apt to disappear as soon as one begins thinking about it. The content of belief then comes into collision with knowledge, and it often turns out that the irrationality of the former is no match for the ratiocinations of the latter. Belief is no adequate substitute for inner experience, and where this is absent even a strong faith which came miraculously as a gift of grace may depart equally miraculously. People call faith the true religious experience, but they do not  stop to consider that actually it is a secondary phenomenon arising form the fact that something happened to us in the first place which instilled pistis into us — that is, trust and loyalty. This experience has a definite content that can be interpreted in terms of one or other of the denominational creeds. But the more this is so, the more the possibilities of these conflicts with knowledge mount up, which in themselves are quite pointless. That is to say, the standpoint of the creeds is archaic; they are full of impressive mythological symbolism which, if taken literally, comes into insufferable conflict with knowledge. But if, for instance, the statement that Christ rose form the dead is to be understood not literally but symbolically, then it is capable of various interpretations that do not conflict with knowledge and do not impair the meaning of the statement. The objection that understanding it symbolically puts an end to the Christian’s hope of immortality is invalid, because long before the coming of Christianity mankind believed in a life after death and therefore had no need of the Easter event as a guarantee of immortality. The danger that a mythology understood too literally, and as taught by the Church, will suddenly be repudiated lock, stock and barrel is today greater than ever. Is it not time that the Christian mythology, instead of being wiped out, was understood symbolically for once? [Jung, C.G., "The Undiscovered Self," CW vol. 10, par. 521.]

God and the Self in depth psychology

Published
by
Ken
on April 15, 2009
in carl jung, depth psychology and god
. 0 Comments

In depth psychology, the Self is the regulating center of the psyche as opposed to the ego which is the center of consciousness. The Self is also “the central archetype or archetype of wholeness.” [1] There are many themes and images that refer to the Self: wholeness, union of opposites, the world navel, the transformation of energy, &c. The Self is “the central source of life energy, the fountain of our being which is most simply described as God. Indeed, the richest sources for the phenomenological study of the Self are in the innumerable representations that man has made of the deity.” [2]

The question is: Is the Self equal to God, thereby placing God inside man’s psyche, or is there a God outside of man’s psyche of which the Self is a symbol or reflection? I shall look at how Jung and several Jungian analysts answer this question.

Jung’s answer is the former but with a qualification. “What one could almost call a systematic blindness is simply the effect of the prejudice that God is outside man. … It would be a regrettable mistake if anybody should take my observations as a kind of proof of the existence of God. They probe only the existence of an archetypal God-image, which to my mind is the most we can assert about God psychologically.” [3] In other words: “[T]he [S]elf cannot be distinguished from an archetypal God-image” [4]

Edward F. Edinger agrees but with a slightly different argument: “According to the psychological standpoint man cannot get outside his own psyche. All experience is therefore psychic experience. This means that it is impossible, experientially, to distinguish between God and the God-image in the psyche. My use of the term ‘God’ in this chapter, therefore, always refers to the God-image in the psyche, i.e., the Self.” [5]

Lionel Corbett is also inconclusive: “[N]uminous experience arises from an autonomous level of the psyche that is either the source of, or the medium for, the transmission of religious experience: empirically we cannot say which.” [6]

John Dourely [7], however, taking up Corbett’s argument, does come to a conclusion. In a nutshell, his argument is the following: a) If the psyche is the source of the religious experience then there is no need for a God outside the psyche. b) If the psyche is the medium of the religious experience then the question is, given a God outside the psyche, why would this God resort to “such an ambivalent medium as the unconscious to make his presence and project known to humanity.” [p. 46] If God creates the unconscious as a mediator, Occam’s razor would surely do away with this superfluous entity in favor of the conclusion that the unconscious is the source. “The option for the unconscious as the source of the numinous would lead to the sparse yet organic conception of a wholly intrapsychic transcendence, one that would affirm that the unconscious infinitely transcends ego consciousness but that nothing transcends the total psyche.” [p. 46]

Ann Ulanov [8] urges caution with these lines of arguments but does so presupposing a God that transcends the psyche. “The fear that meets a psychological approach to theological symbols is that we thereby reduce them to psychological factors. God the Father really comes down to our oedipal complex, writ large. … We talk of ego relating to Self instead of soul to God. God, who transcends creatures and all creation, shrinks to a factor in the human consciousness. The Self may transcend the ego, but does it transcend the psyche?” [p. 63] The upshot of Ulanov’s argument seems to be a hesitation in equating the Self with God because the Self may not transcend the psyche but God certainly does. Furthermore, Edinger’s approach, says Ulanov, of removing the religious traditions from the symbols and looking at them psychologically without the need for doctrines and the religious community leads to a “lonely journey and one in danger of intellectualizing.” [p. 63] Ulanov’s answer also seems to be inconclusive in that she suggests we “look into our own God complex and discern its roots in personal biography, in collective containers, and in core archetypal imagery. Then, and only then, do we come face to face with the big questions, such as: Does this power to create and find images for the center of reality exist within us, or outside us, or both?” [p. 64] However, Ulanov seems to answer this question as she describes the Self’s role as imago Dei and collector of all parts of the psyche, the ego included, into dialogue. In this role, images of the Self “carry into consciousness the Deus absconditus, the God hidden in the unconscious.” [p. 66] God is, therefore, within us. But she also says, “God reaches us through the psyche, that it, too, is part of the flesh in which the Holy incarnates, manifests.” [p. 66] The implication here is that God is also outside us and incarnates within our psyche — were God totally within, there would be no need to incarnate in our psyche as he is already there.

Personally, and at the present moment, what makes sense to me is the approach of Jung/Edinger/Dourley in that I am not positing a God outside the psyche.

I am not, however, addressing myself to the happy possessors of faith, but to those many people for whom the light has gone out, the mystery has faded, and God is dead. For most of them there is no going back, and one does not know either whether going back is always the better way, To gain an understanding of religious matters, probably all that is left us today is the psychological approach. That is why I take these thought-forms that have become historically fixed, try to melt them down again and pour them into moulds of immediate experience. It is certainly a difficult undertaking to discover connecting links between dogma and immediate experience of psychological archetypes, but a study of the natural symbols of the unconscious gives us the necessary raw material. [9]

Perhaps I have not yet come to the point of asking the “big questions” Ulanov proposes and at that point I may well find that God is outside the psyche as well as within. But, for now, I am exactly as Jung describes: I am not a “happy possessor of faith” and, to me, the God of my youth is dead. The journey I have embarked upon — albeit of no choice of my own — is, indeed, a lonely one as Ulanov suggests, and there is great danger in intellectualizing. The key, I think, is to retain the “experience of psychological archetypes” as the counterbalance to the intellectualizing and to maintain a grounding with another person who can understand the journey as the counterbalance to the danger of becoming identified with the archetypal energies.

References:

[1] Edinger, E.F., Ego and Archetype, p. 3.
[2] Edinger, E.F., Ego and Archetype, p. 4.
[3] Jung, Psychology and Religion, CW 11, par. 100, 102.
[4] Jung, A Psychological Approach to the Trinity, CW 11, par. 238.
[5] Edinger, E.F., The Creation of Consciousness, p. 91.
[6] Corbett, Lionel, The religious function of the psyche, p. 8.
[7] Dourley, John, “Jung and the Recall of the Gods,” Journal of Jungian Theory and Practice, vol. 8 no. 1 (2006) pp. 43-53.
[8] Ulanov, Ann, “Theology after Jung,” Journal of Jungian Theory and Practice, vol. 8 no. 1 (2006) pp. 61-68.
[9] Jung, Psychology and Religion, CW 11, par. 148.

Dream as psychopomp

Published
by
Ken
on April 13, 2009
in bible, bible commentary, carl jung and depth psychology
. 0 Comments

Psychopomp: Psy”cho*pomp\, n. [Gr. ?; psychh` the soul + ? to send: cf. F. psychopompe.] (Myth.) A leader or guide of souls . –J. Fiske. [Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.]

Jung … describe[s] the dynamic of humanity and divinity as functions of each other in some detail. Basically this dynamic takes on the form of a never-to-be-completed psychic cycle. In the first moment the soul regresses to an immersion in and identity with the energies of the divine. In the second moment the soul then mediates these energies to consciousness. When the cycle is taken in its totality, Jung is found to be saying that the moment of the soul’s identity with God is the necessary prelude to the birthing of the divine in human consciousness. His Answer to Job describes the same process in terms of a baptism, the baptism of consciousness into and from the pleroma, the creative and formless source of all form and consciousness. In every analysis reliant on dreams this process is at work as the dreams take the soul into the depths of the psyche and then speak directly to consciousness through the soul from her immersion in these depths. This process makes of the analyst both the observer and the catalyst in the baptism of the individual into the life of the individual’s evolving myth as that individual’s greatest contribution to the emerging societal myth. [Dourley, John, “Jung and the Recall of the Gods,” Journal of Jungian Theory and Practice (2006) vol. 8 (1) pp. 43-53. Emphasis added]

Dourley’s description of the dream resonates with me like nothing I’ve read by Jung. There are moments when Jung waxes poetic as when he describes the dream as “a little hidden door in the innermost and secret recesses of the soul, opening into that cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego-consciousness, and which will remain psyche no matter how far our ego-consciousness extends.” [Jung, CW 10, par. 304.] But most of what I’ve read by Jung concerning dreams has been more clinical: “impartial, spontaneous products of the unconscious psyche,” [Jung, CW 10, par. 317.] “autonomous psychic complexes which form themselves out of their own material,” [Jung, CW 8, par. 580.] “a highly objective, natural product of the psyche,” [Jung, CW 7, par. 210.] “a psychological adjustment, a compensation absolutely necessary for properly balanced action.” [Jung, CW 8, par. 469.] While these characterizations offer invaluable insight into the mechanisms, causes, and purposes of dreams, Dourley’s one-line commentary provides a palpable connection for me. It undoubtedly has to do with my current life-path coordinates which place me in the domain and under the strong, seemingly autonomous influence of reevaluating my connection with Christianity.

For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. [Galatians 3:27]

The symbolism of the soul being immersed in the psyche which has the Self (the imago Dei, of which the Christ is a symbol) at the center is a very powerful, personal statement of the role of the dream. It evokes Paul’s words of being “baptized into Christ” with the dream initiating the baptism. In the Greek, “put on” has the meaning of donning clothes but with the idea of “sinking into” the garment. Could there be a better descriptor for our soul, under the influence and following the urging of the dream, falling down into the depths of the psyche to be immersed, clothed, as it were, in the psyche as the Self is? As we are immersed, “baptized into Christ” each night, we “put on Christ” both inwardly, as our soul is enveloped in the unconscious, and outwardly, as we integrate the dream contents – the direct communication of the dream with our consciousness through our soul – into our waking, outer life. The dream, then, is the psychopomp, the conduit between us – the “outer world” us – and the numinous. It brings the soul face to face with the Self, our imago Dei, the Christ, and it then brings to consciousness the words, ideas, concepts, from the Self, from the Christ. In both extremes – deep in the unconscious and in consciousness – the dream allows us to be in the presence of the numinous.

Richard Smoley interview

Published
by
Ken
on January 8, 2009
in carl jung, inner christianity and richard smoley
. 0 Comments

My friend, Patrick Neas of KXTR here in Kansas City interviewed Richard Smoley (Conscious Love, Inner Christianity and Hidden Wisdom) and you can listen to it here. Richard will be in Kansas City next week (January 16 & 17) for a Friday night lecture and Saturday workshop sponsored by the Kansas City Friends of Jung.

Inadequate infantile attitude

Published
by
Ken
on December 10, 2008
in carl jung, christianity and god
. 0 Comments

I’ve written elsewhere about the anthropomorphism of God but another parallel with Jung’s psychology has suggested itself. This time, it is the concept of transference. Again, from The Theory of Psychoanalysis: Nervous and Mental Disease Monograph Series, No. 19:

Freud calls this process transference, owing to the fact that the images of the parents are henceforth transferred to the physician, along with the infantile attitude of mind adopted towards the parents. The transference does not arise solely in the intellectual sphere, but the libido bound up with the phantasy is transferred, together with the phantasy itself, to the personality of the physician, so that the physician replaces the parents to a certain extent. (p. 102)

A little later, Jung discusses the role of transference:

Through the transference to the physician, a bridge is built, across which the patient can get away from his family, into reality. In other words, he can emerge from his infantile environment into the world of grown-up people, for here the physician stands for a part of the extra-familial world.

Now, I would like to suggest an analogy where the “patient” is us and the “physician” is Jehovah, the God of the Old Testament. The transference was initiated by Jesus when he taught his disciples to pray, “Our Father who art in heaven.” We now view Jehovah as a father figure, i.e. we have transferred to Jehovah the image of a parent. What this transference provides us is a way to “grow-up”; to shed the “infantile environment” of the Old Testament and enter a more mature world with a more mature view of God. However, there can be a downside to transference:

But on the other hand, this transference is a powerful hindrance to the progress of treatment, for the patient assimilates the personality of the physician as if he did stand for father or mother, and not for a part of the extra-familial world. If the patent could acquire the image of the physician as a part of the non-infantile world, he would gain a considerable advantage. But transference has the opposite effect; hence the whole advantage of the new acquisition is neutralized.

How often have you seen this exact symptom? Someone, or a group of people, “assimilat[ing] the personality of the physician.” Think of all those Christians filled with “righteous anger” who condemn (or worse) sinners “in the name of God.”

There are two end results of transference:

The more the patient succeeds in regarding his doctor as he does any other individual, the more he is able to consider himself objectively, the greater becomes the advantage of transference. The less he is able to consider his doctor in this way, the more the physician is assimilated with the father, the less is the advantage of the transference and the greater will be its harm. The familial environment of the patent has only become increased by an additional personality assimilated to his parents. The patient himself is, as before, still in his childish surroundings, and therefore maintains his infantile attitude of mind. In this manner, all the advantages of transference can be lost.

Transference can lead to either greater maturity or a continued infantile attitude. In the latter case, Jehovah maintains a strongly human father image and we continue to take on the personality of the Old Testament God, the only result of which is a wallowing in our childhood and immaturity.

This explains a lot

Published
by
Ken
on December 9, 2008
in carl jung and christian fundamentalism
. 0 Comments

Typical of neurotic people is their attitude of disharmony towards reality, that is their diminished capacity for adaptation.

– C.G. Jung, The Theory of Psychoanalysis:
Nervous and Mental Disease Monograph Series, No. 19, p. 102

When I read this, I immediately thought about Fred Phelps. Pat Robertson, George Bush, the Kansas State School Board, &c., &c., &c. That is, everyone who vehemently defends that “old time religion” but doesn’t realize the “old time” for which they are nostalgic was populated by people vehemently defending that “old time religion” but didn’t realize their “old time” was populated by people vehemently defending …

Christian Fundamentalism, fundamentalism in general, is a prolific source of neuroses. Regression is one of the central dynamics in any neurosis. When confronted with an obstacle or conflict, the neurotic reverts to pathways that are old and outdated, hence infantile. These old pathways have nothing to do with the current obstacle and offer no effective means of resolution but the neurotic’s energy gets “backed up” due to the obstacle and spills over into these infantile, regressive pathways or thought processes. That is why they seem so irrational and downright childish — their current ideas, actions, and conclusions are being motivated and rationalized by ideas and thought processes that are irrelevant to the conflict at hand and are outdated. It is impossible for them to adapt to a changing world because they are still living in the past.

Experiencing the experience

Published
by
Ken
on December 5, 2008
in bible and vedanta
. 0 Comments

In thinking about my recent post on ritual, it occurred to me that my problem with ritual is that I’m intellectualizing it too much. I am trying to force onto the ritual a meaning which, when absent, leaves me empty. Instead, perhaps, I should be just experiencing the ritual experience — as I said in my post: Just for the hell of it.

Intellectual knowledge and experiential knowledge are two very different beasts. Carl Jung, when talking about using amplification in dream analysis (the process of pulling in collective symbols — mythology, religious, &c.) says that it cannot be done by head-knowledge but only by someone with long experience.

When I was a child, I had all the head knowledge about Christianity. I was the best at Bible drills, could memorize scripture, had all the right answers. But, I had no experience — my personal Christian life was in shambles. My intellectual knowledge allowed me to fool everyone but there was nothing really there.

In The Eight Upanishads it says:

Of these, the lower [knowledge] comprises the Rig Veda, Yajur Veda, Sama Veda, Atharva Veda, the science of pronunciation, &c., the code of rituals, grammar, etymology, metre, and astrology. Then there is the higher [knowledge] by which is realized the Immutable.

(What a great word to describe God: The Immutable.)

With the Bible as with the Upanishads, the real, higher meaning is not learnt from reading, studying the texts, memorizing, &c. The real meaning is learnt by practice, by experiencing God and not by reading about God. The intellectual part is all too simple and all too public and allows us to deceive others all too easily.

Consciousness IS the goal

Published
by
Ken
on December 4, 2008
in carl jung, ram dass and the creation of consciousness
. 0 Comments

Some day I’ll get back to my series on Edinger’s The Creation of Consciousness, but until then I’ll just leave you with this thought:

Ram Dass agrees with Jung and Edinger that the creation of consciousness is our goal (or should be, at least). From The Only Dance There Is:

Consciousness does not mean attachment to polarity, at any level. It means freedom from attachment. And once you see that the highest mother is the most conscious mother, the highest student, the highest therapist, the highest lover, the highest anything is the most conscious one, you begin to see that the way you serve another human being is by freeing him from the particular attachment he’s stuck in that turn him off to life.

Non-attachment to polarity is Jung’s “tension of the opposites.” Dealing with polarity, paradox, incongruency and not flip-flopping from one side to the other is the process of creating consciousness. “Freedom from attachment” is the middle way that leads to conscious living and an increase in the sum total of consciousness in the universe.

Faith V

Published
by
Ken
on November 26, 2008
in carl jung, edward edinger, faith and the creation of consciousness
. 0 Comments

There is still something, nevertheless, that strikes me as very odd about these statements by Jesus and that is the purely gratuitous nature of the exemplary acts he cites as the result of having faith. Of what conceivable purpose could moving a mountain into the sea be? And what kind of God tempts man with such power when the meek are to inherit the earth? These statements are diametrically opposed to Jesus’ main message of humility and servitude and they make me wonder why he made them at all. Would it not be just as powerful yet more in agreement with Jesus’ teachings and life to give examples of faith like bringing rain during a drought or causing crops to grow in infertile soil?

But, Jesus used the words he used. There is no profit in second guessing his motives; only in understanding him do we gain anything. The simplest way to understand is to take him literally and then qualify his statements to make them comfortable. To this end, some will, as The Ryrie Study Bible does and with what seems to be not a little unease in attributing such power to mere mortals, put limits on the conditions under which Jesus’ statements are valid. Others will take Jesus’ words just as literally but then proceed to point out the obvious absence of literal mountain-moving men and consign Jesus’ statements to the dung heap along with all notions of a faith worth more than a single mustard seed.

Indeed, we have no record of Jesus, his disciples, nor the apostles moving either mountains or trees into the sea and there is no other evidence that he was speaking literally. So what would it mean to take his words metaphorically or symbolically? A mountain and the sea can be viewed as opposites on several different levels. Aside from the physical opposites of solid/liquid and high/low, mountains symbolize constancy, stillness, firmness while the waters of the sea are chaotic, continually in flux. Mountains represent the state of full consciousness, full differentiation, the place of renunciation and highest aspirations; water symbolizes the undifferentiated, our material existence. Casting a mountain into the sea can then be viewed as merging contrary or contradictory viewpoints and no longer seeing them as separate entities; it is to transcend dualistic thinking by not seeing a mountain here and a separate sea over there but both, together. It is to not apprehend either/or but both/and.

But, of what use is the ability to transcend dualism? How does it help me in my everyday life? Lisa Alther, American author and novelist, writes: “I happen to feel that the degree of a person’s intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting attitudes she can bring to bear on the same topic.” This goes right to the heart of the matter. Dualism says, “This is good and that is evil or that is good and this evil.” But when you cast the mountain into the sea, this ceases to be either good or evil and becomes both good and evil. It is seeing both sides of the coin at the same time, it is the middle way, it is embracing paradox. We think of opposites as mutually exclusive. A thing cannot possibly have two opposite characteristics at the same time; it is either right or wrong, good or evil, left or right, black or white. But the world of paradox is not a world of white or black but a world of grayscale.

Holding all sides of an argument in the mind instead of identifying with one to the exclusion of all the others inevitably produces a tension—the tension of the opposites, as Carl Jung phrased it. Edward F. Edinger discusses this tension of the opposites and describes its effect as consciousness-creating:

[I]n the process of creating consciousness we shall at first be thrown back and forth between opposing moods and attitudes. Each time the ego identifies with one side of a pair of opposites the unconscious will confront one with its contrary. Gradually, the individual becomes able to experience opposite viewpoints simultaneously. With this capacity, alchemically speaking, the Philosophers’ Stone is born, i.e., consciousness is created.

This description of the initial stages of dealing with paradox cannot but bring to mind a similar passage in Ephesians 4:13-15:

[U]ntil we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fulness of Christ. As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves, and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects unto Him, who is the head, even Christ …

Paul describes the mature person as one who is not tossed and carried about by ideas and opinions, first clinging to one thing then another to the exclusion of all others. Notice that he places no value judgement on the “waves” and “doctrine” as he does on the latter two; it is not only untrue or false ideas that cause us to keep the mountain and sea separate. The goal of “the unity of the faith” and “grow[ing] up in all aspects” as described by Paul is reiterated by Edinger who describes the mature individual as one “able to experience opposite viewpoints simultaneously.”

[ Parts I, II, III, IV ]