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Taking a few
seconds to chart a general course before plunging in, I started somewhat hesitatingly. I
hadn't thought about this particular aspect of Jungian theory for some time.
"Maybe,
the place to begin is with Jung's belief that, broadly speaking, in order for an
individual's personality to develop properly one must deal with certain kinds of
psychological challenge during the course of one's life. Moreover, according to Jung, the
challenges with which the individual is confronted during the first part of life - say, up
until about young adulthood - are quite different from the sort of challenges faced by a
person during the second half of life.
"In
many ways, Jung agreed with Freud that the task of the first half of life was to establish
the sort of strong sense of ego identity and self-sufficiency that would permit the
individual to operate independently and which would equip that person to find a productive
place in society. In order to accomplish this, a person had to break free of, and make
peace with, the instinctually charged character of the relationships that arise in
conjunction with one's parents and which shape many, if not most, of the events of the
first half of life.
"For
Jung, however, and unlike Freud, an individual's psychological work did not end with a
successful, neurosis-free navigation of the troubled waters of early development. To be a
fully functioning person, one also had to revisit the unconscious during the second half
of life in order to bring into balance and integrate certain aspects of personality that
had been, for whatever reasons, not properly attended to or separated off from conscious
functioning while dealing with the earlier psychological crises of life.
"On the
basis of his own harrowing encounters with the tremendous forces of the unconscious -
encounters which almost overwhelmed and destroyed him, Jung believed that, at a minimum,
two conditions were necessary to undertake the psychologically perilous journey of the
second half of life. The first requirement, outlined earlier, was for the individual to
have achieved healthy ego functioning unencumbered by lingering residues of the problems
characteristic of the first half of life.
"The
second condition was that an individual should not undertake the process of revisiting the
unconscious without help, preferably in the form of a therapist who was familiar with the
territory. Although therapy sessions could be used to help individuals to negotiate
unresolved issues left over from the first half of life, Jungian therapy really tends to
come into its own with respect to assisting people to meet the psychological challenges
associated with the journey back to the unconscious that characterizes the second half of
life.
"One
needed a strong ego in order to resist the temptation to surrender to, become lost in, and
be overwhelmed by, the forces of the unconscious. Similarly, one needed an enlightened
guide or therapist to help one learn how to enter into dialogue with, as well as interpret
the symbols of, the unconscious so that the situation, if properly handled, would allow
the individual to take advantage of the benefits which the unconscious had to offer in the
way of an expanded, more balanced, more integrated sense of self than could be
accomplished by the establishment of a strong, healthy ego as a result of successfully
meeting the psychological challenges of the early stages of development.
"Jung
looked at the unconscious in a very different manner than did Freud. The latter conceived
of the unconscious as the well-spring of instinctual, primary processes, as well as the
repository of repressed material that was produced while trying to contain instinctual
energies from being expressed directly. Jung, on the other hand, considered the
unconscious to be a door-way of sorts that linked human beings to a realm far beyond
instincts and primary processes.
For Jung,
the unconscious was a treasure-house of psychological wisdom which, among other things
could help one solve many of the problems that arose during the process of psychological
development. Jung claimed this store-house of knowledge and wisdom had been accumulating
since the times of primitive man, maybe even earlier.
"According
to Freud, the unconscious was- in many, but not in all, ways- an entity created by the
individual through repression of experiential components drawn from everyday life. At the
same time, Freud believed the ego, which was the home of the reality principle and
secondary processes of rationality, must become the master regulator of which aspects, and
to what extent and in what ways, the irrational processes and contents of the unconscious
were to be given expression in any given set of social circumstances. Thus, his famous
dictum: 'Where id is, there shall ego be'.
"For
Jung, however, everyday experiences were merely the stimuli for eliciting various
dimensions of an inherited, not created, unconscious that contains much more than
repressed material. Furthermore, although Jung believed the unconscious could never be
mastered or even tamed, the individual could derive psychological benefit by limited,
controlled excursions into the super rational realm of the unconscious.
"Nonetheless,
because the unconscious had the capacity to mislead the individual, as well as destroy the
individual, the process of bringing certain facets of the unconscious to some degree of
conscious realization was a tricky business. The task had to be undertaken in measured,
carefully analyzed, and properly interpreted steps, or the individual risked having his or
her sense of self become fused with, and dissolved by, the forces of the unconscious.
"By
venturing into the realm of the unconscious through a series of limited excursions, the
individual comes to realize that the everyday world is not the only reality. Rather, the
objects of the everyday world are understood as 'a' reality instead of 'the' reality.
"In
fact, the objects of the everyday world were able to assume symbolic significance by
pointing in the direction of unconscious processes, as well as to serve as loci of
projection for these same unconscious forces. This is where myths enter the picture."
Shortly
after I had sat down and been asked to talk about Jung, one of the members of the group,
whose name tag read 'Art Carmichael', had excused himself and disappeared somewhere.
Presumably, he needed to attend to personal business of one sort or another.
Now, he had
returned, bearing a tray filled with an assortment of soft drinks and juices for the
members of the group. While he quietly busied himself with distributing the drinks, I
continued to speak.
"Returning,
once again, to Freud, for purposes of comparison, he construed myth to be an externalized
symptom of the repressed contents of various kinds of libidinous striving, especially
those associated with the incest wishes of children concerning their opposite sexed
parent. Indeed, all of civilization was a sublimated containment response to the attempt
of the forbidden inclinations of the id to seek public expression, and, considered from
this perspective, myths constituted just one aspect of this process of sublimation.
"Jung,
on the other hand, didn't consider myths to be public signs of an underlying pathological
trade-off with the unconscious. He maintained that myths- along with dreams, art, and the
active imagination- were clues or tools which could be used to unlock different secrets of
the unconscious during the constructive, life-affirming process of individuation.
"Myths,
dreams, the active imagination and art, formed part of the running dialogue with the
unconscious that Jung believed was essential to the process of working toward a healthy
resolution of the psychological challenges of the second half of life. Quite simply put,
myths were concrete, symbolic encapsulations of the unconscious wisdom and powers that
were beckoning us to return to the hidden dimensions of the inner life in order to have a
shot at winning the ultimate prize: a deeper, richer, more harmonious and integrated sense
of the meaning of the self as a distinct individual identity and personality formed
against the backdrop of both society and the history of the species.
"According
to Jung, running through the myths of different societies were a set of commonalities
which he considered to be a reflection of the underlying archetypes that formed the
collective unconscious. The collective unconscious was the inherited repository of
psychological forms, dynamics, themes, and meanings that constituted a deep reservoir of
wisdom - although this repository was, in many respects, not available to so-called
"normal" awareness - from which we could draw to complete the process of self
individuation.
"As far
as Freud was concerned, the similarities among the myths of different societies were a
reflection of the libidinous drives that were part of our common biological inheritance
which differentially manifested themselves through a set of biological and psychological
stages of development. Yet, each person underwent this encounter and struggle with the
species-wide biological inheritance of libidinous drives in a fashion that uniquely
reflected the individual's interaction with his or her family and the surrounding
community.
"Jung
believed myths came into being when a given society created a symbol-laden story that was
anchored in, and animated by, different archetypal motifs of the collective unconscious.
The symbols of the myth were intended to elicit the active participation of those who
heard or read the myth by helping to remind people of the forceful shaping presence of
archetypes in our lives and, through this means, entice individuals to follow the symbolic
clues of the myth back to their source through the process of therapy.
"The
thematic contents, or archetypal forms, of myths came with the psychological inheritance
which accompanied but, unlike in Freud's theory, were not reducible to our biological
inheritance. As such, the thematic contents of myths rather than their particular symbols
were psychological givens in the lives of all individuals.
"The
particularized details of any given myth were drawn, according to Jung, from the social,
cultural and historical character of the lived experience of a people. Therefore, the way
in which these particularized details symbolize, and give expression to, the underlying
archetypal themes is peculiar to the circumstances of the people out of which a certain
myth arises, and, for this reason, Jung disapproved of the tendency of some people in the
West to adopt the myths of various Eastern cultures and try to incorporate the symbols of
those myths into a Western context.
"For
Freud, the purpose of myth is to serve as a sublimated, disguised medium for emotional
release that is intended to serve as a compensation, albeit inadequate, for the direct
expression of libidinous energies and drives. The individual inherits a set of
biologically-rooted, libidinous drives instead of experiential themes.
"For
Jung, the purpose of myth is to provide the individual with an opportunity, through a
return to the unconscious, to seek a deeper understanding of the nature of self,
personality, meaning and identity. The individual inherits a common set of psychological
themes that are crystallisations of certain aspects of the experiences of one's ancestors
carrying ramifications for the process of self-fulfilment and self-realization.
"The
Freudian approach to myth is to consider the myth as a symbol of something which is hidden
and, in reality, different from the character of the myth. If the myth were not
substantially different from that which remains hidden, it would not have been permitted
to be given public expression.
"With
Jung, the myth is not something different from the underlying archetype. The symbols of
the myth are intended to lead toward, or elicit, the reality of the archetypes giving
expression to different facets of the collective unconscious.
"However,
once the archetype or archetypes that are present in a myth have been properly identified,
one must undergo a further process of interpretation by means of therapeutic guidance.
According to Jung, one cannot understand the meaning of a myth in the context of one's
life until one has insight into how the archetypes being symbolized through that myth fit
into the concrete and particularized character of one's life circumstances and
developmental history.
"Jung
distinguishes between mythology and myth by pointing out that, unlike a complete mythology
such as a religious tradition, no one myth can contain all of the archetypal themes which
exist in the collective unconscious of human beings. Therefore, no one myth- again, unlike
any given mythology, provides all of the material that is necessary for working toward
either a proper balancing of one's personality or a realization of the deep riches which
are inherent, at least potentially, in the nature of the self.
"Individual
myths call one to particular aspects of identity, meaning, self and personality through
the specific archetypes to which our attention is being drawn by the symbols of the myth.
A mythology, on the other hand, calls one to the full spectrum of psychological
possibilities that are inherent in the archetypes of the collective unconscious to which
one's attention is being directed through the complex symbolism of such a mythology.
"When
individuals concentrated on only certain myths, Jung believed these people cannot help but
leave substantial dimensions of their selves unexplored, undeveloped, unbalanced and
unintegrated. Consequently, at best, the process of individuation will be woefully
incomplete, and, at worst, such people risk becoming overly-identified with the archetypal
underpinnings of particular myths and, as a result, render themselves vulnerable to a
mental breakdown through loss of identity and sense of self as individuals with a
potential that carries beyond any given archetype."
I sort of
shrugged my shoulders and raised my hands in a way that indicated this was all I had to
say. I had held center court for long enough and now was the time, I hoped, for me to slip
into my preferred place amongst the peripheral shadows of a discussion.
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