Insights while Dreaming

Does the above picture make you want to smoke? Yes, I know, Mr. Donald Draper is a particularly evocative individual, so it might be a trick question, but swagger or no swagger, I wonder if seeing someone smoke suggests the desire to smoke in you as well. If you saw a man on the street smoking, would you have any conscious response? Unconscious?

I was not thinking at all about this topic, nor watching Mad Men, last week when I awoke with the memory of a dream in which I had had what seemed like a profound revelation. In the dream, something had occurred to me that I was sure was going to revolutionize everything: Just as society now readily accepts that second hand smoke kills people and states are passing laws to ban smoking in public places, it occurred to me that with the greater understanding of mirror neurons, just seeing someone enjoy a smoke can neurologically provoke a desire to smoke and, therefore, lead to death. I thought, in my dream, that the sight of someone smoking is paramount to the inhaling of second hand smoke, now that we understand the neurological response it evokes in us. Furthermore, it occurred to me (while dreaming), our increasing knowledge of mirror neurons can revolutionize cases against corporations and advertising, with scientific proof of unconscious manipulation that does not require study after study of the effects of advertising.

Now, I am not writing this to make a case for or against smoking. Nor is this a blog about neurology -- despite my interest in it, I am ill-equipped to say much on the topic. This is about dreaming, and the clarity of insight that can come when we are unconscious. My insight, which arrived while I was in a deep sleep and was utterly unrelated to anything I had consciously been contemplating, is actually quite sound. (Perhaps not earth shattering, but certainly it has basis in reality.) But where does such an insight come from? If I was unconscious, if my thinking mind was theoretically in off-mode, what was it that was thinking?

There are endless theories about dreams. Most individuals today still discredit the psychic activity of sleep as amalgamations of daily activity, feelings, and nonsensical images. Without even exploring the vast reaches of dream interpretation (which could certainly be applied to my dream above), one has to question how individuals can wake-up with whole poems composed, dresses designed, or ideas for a new story or book largely developed. We hear these kinds of stories all the time from artists and authors, yet few people seem to then question how these insights are possible while we are unconscious, not engaging with the reverence of psyche nor seeking to understand what is happening in the dream world. If dreams are simply daily residue or wish fulfillment, how do we awake with original insights and ideas?

As Jung wrote,

The view that dreams are merely the imaginary fulfillments of repressed wishes is hopelessly out of date. There are, it is true, dreams which manifestly represent wishes or fears, but what about all the other things? Dreams may contain ineluctable truths, philosophical pronouncements, illusions, wild fantasies, memories, plans, anticipations, irrational experiences, even telepathic visions, and heaven knows what besides. One thing we ought never to forget: almost half of our life is passed in a more or less unconscious state. The dream is specifically the utterance of the unconscious. Just as the psyche has a diurnal side which we call consciousness, so also it has a nocturnal side: the unconscious psychic activity which we apprehend as dreamlike fantasy. . . . it is highly probable that our dream psyche possesses a wealth of contents and living forms equal to or even greater than those of the conscious mind, which is characterized by concentration, limitation, and exclusion.
(The Essential Jung, p. 176, from The Practical Use of Dream-Analysis).

Have you had insights while dreaming? Do share. (Or. . .are you headed out to have a smoke?)

Jung on Saving the World

I realize it does not go without saying that, as an activist and student of social justice, non-violence, wars and revolutions, my interest in and dedication to Jung's work is not an intellectual divergence, but a natural progression.

Whatever people may know about Jung, be it his contribution to the our lexicon with concepts such as archetypes and complexes, introversion and extroversion, the collective unconscious, and advances in dream interpretation, they may not know that his work was rooted in his belief that advances in the world's path towards peace will only come through the work of each individual, one by one.

For Jung, as for me, psychology is not simply intellectualizing about the human condition, nor is the clinical application intended only to heal psychic wounds. The work, at its best, may be the only work that can help us to understand the insanity of which we are all capable of perpetrating, or unconsciously accepting and signing-on to. We forget that we are like ants, a super-organism in an interconnected human community, capable of destroying ourselves and each other with little effort. It is not only the Hitlers of the world to whom we can point and claim insanity. It is the millions who followed him, in large or small ways, drawn-in psychologically themselves to the cruelty and unconsciousness that he preached. He who thinks he is immune to these movements of viral insanity is one of whom all others should be wary.

As Jung wrote in his autobiography regarding the situation in WWII,

Today we need psychology for reasons that involve our very existence. We stand perplexed and stupefied before the phenomenon of Nazism and Bolshevism because we know nothing about man, or at any rate have only a lopsided and distorted picture of him. If we had self-knowledge, that would not be the case. We stand face to face with the terrible question of evil and do not even know what it is before us, let alone what to pit against it. (1961/1963, p. 331)

The situation is, of course, no less dire today than it was in his time. The work, therefore, is to make our understanding of our own unconsciousness, conscious work.
As Jung wrote in 1958 in The Undiscovered Self,

The spiritual transformation of mankind follows the slow tread of the centuries and cannot be hurried or held up by any rational process of reflection, let alone brought to fruition in one generation. What does lie within our reach, however, is the change in individuals who have, or create for themselves, an opportunity to influence others of like mind. I do not mean by persuading or preaching—I am thinking, rather, of the well-known fact that anyone who has insight into his own actions, and has thus found access to the unconscious, involuntarily exercises an influence on his environment. The deepening and broadening of his consciousness produce. . . .an unintentional influence on the unconscious of others, a sort of unconscious prestige. (par. 583)

Or, as analyst David Hart wrote in an essay in The Cambridge Companion to Jung, “it is only in the individual that the growth of consciousness can occur, and thus only there that a promise exists of improving the lot of mankind” (1997, p. 95).

Dr. Siegel's "Mindsight", a Non-Jungian Presentation of a Very Jungian Concept

I've been reading Mindsight (2010) by Dr. Daniel Siegel, a psychiatrist at UCLA. After seeing him speak at the Evolution of Psychotherapy conference last December, during which I could barely sit in my seat listening to him talk, I have been awaiting the release of this new book. Upon reading, my suspicians are further confirmed: He's a Jungian and he doesn't even know it!

According to Dr. Siegel, "Mindsight is the ability to see the internal world, to notice what is going on inside of yourself, and inside of other people."

This new concept which he presents in his book offers a way to support healing mental illness. Dr. Siegel suggests that all mental illness can be seen as categorized as either problems of Rigidity or of Chaos (p. 67), whereas mental health would look like Integration (p. 69). Dr. Siegel's definition of terms seem to state that integration is the goal result of using the tools of mindsight.

The presentation of his ideas is strongly correlated with the Jungian concept of the ego-Self axis, the active link between the ego -- the conscious aspect of ourselves with which we navigate the world -- and the Self -- the imaginal, physical, sensory, spiritual, relational everything else in which we live. Like Dr. Siegel's suggestion that all mental illness can be seen as either too much rigidity or too much chaos, Jungian psychology holds that the strength of the ego-Self relationship indicates either Alienation or Inflation, too much distance from Self or too much immersion in it. What is necessary, like Dr. Siegel's concept of integration, is a healthy working relationship between the two. Perhaps analogous to couples' relationships, two people can either be too distant from one another (rigidity / alienation) resulting in a cold, distant feeling between them, or they can be too enmeshed (chaotic / inflated), identifying too closely with each other and resulting in chaotic, over-blown emotional reactions. Neither of these states is ideal. Mental health, like relationship health, suggests a proper differentiation of both the ego and Self (Jungian language) or of both partners, while also allowing for clarity of communication and feeling between them. This is, I think, similar to what Dr. Siegel is saying regarding integration.

Dr. Siegel suggests that once patients have done the work of mindsight, strengthening the ability to see the inner world, or what I would call the work of strengthening the ego-Self axis,

Their identity expands: they become aware that they are part of a much larger whole. In various research explorations of happiness and wisdom, this sense of interconnection seems to be at the heart of living a life of meaning and purpose. This is the promise of mindsight and integration. (p. 76)

What I cannot help but write in bold letters in my book (in pencil of course!) is that it is also the promise and concept of Individution! While Dr. Siegel claims that no field can define mental health or a concept of integration, I argue that this was the central premise of all of Jung's work.

The work of Jungian psychology is centered around first creating a strong ego that can be out in the world, and then an ego that is in dialogue and live relationship with Self. (A concept that can also perhaps be seen physiologically as an active bridge between the left and right sides of the brain). Indeed, this is the very reason that I cannot subscribe to any other modality of mental health in its entirety, because, as Siegel states, no other field knows exactly what they are working towards in terms of health other than simple symptom alleviation.

There is far more in this area of the correlation between Dr. Siegel's work and that of Jung's that I hope to explore. (In addition to the quarterlife crisis and consequent path towards individuation that Dr. Siegel himself seems to have taken mid-career in medical school, p. 47).

As I will blog about another day, for the last two years, I have been thinking about a possible physiological correlate to the ego-Self axis in our bodies and in the world. I am astounded that Dr. Siegel's work seems to offer me a clear suggestion that the hypothesis I have been working on is sound. I hope to someday be able to talk with Dr. Siegel about this work and explore how my theories are enhanced by his work, and his by Jung's.

The Orientational Approach to Psyche

I had the great good fortune of meeting David Rottman last weekend, the President and Chairman of the board at the CG Jung Foundation in NY. I sat in the beautiful Jung Foundation bookstore with four friends as Rottman gave us a wonderful introduction to analyst Yoram Kaufmann's book The Way of the Image (2009) and the Orientational approach to working with the images from psyche.

For a similar introduction to this approach to working with psyche, here is a recent interview with David Rottman on Dr. Kaufmann's work that you can stream online.

As a clinician, Yoram Kaufmann was adamant that there is a correct way to work with images that a client presents in analysis/psychotherapy, and many incorrect (or less optimal) ways of doing so. This objective approach is, however, tailor made to each individual client and moment, which is why his technique may be so hard to understand: it is both precisely objective (a determined technique) and decidedly subjective (dependent on the lexicon of images for the individual patient).

This is how Dr. Kaufmann explained how some ways of working with a client's image can be right, and others wrong, no matter how empathetic.

Most every one has had the following experience--you have a problem, something that you don't understand. You discuss the issue with various friends, all of whom give reasonable, plausible solutions and explanations. But you find them all unsatisfactory. Then someone puts the answer in such a way that you react, "Yes, that's it!" This particular answer might not substantially differ from all the other responses, but, somehow, in the way it was formulated, the emphases placed, it led to an instantaneous recognition of its rightness. (p. 29)

In using his technique, Dr. Kaufmann takes his cues from the images from psyche to make clinical decisions. The presentation of these ideas is extremely refreshing. Rather than intellectualize images, he gives them a respectful nod and responds appropriately. This, to me, is an indication of a strong, authentic relationship between the ego, the actor in the world, and the Self, rather than a contrived one. I encourage others to explore this approach, perhaps the one most strongly related to Jung's own way of working with dreams, in their own personal and clinical work with psyche.

Visiting the Red Book in NYC

I returned home late last night from a trip to New York City to see Jung's Red Book at the Rubin Museum, a spot which should really not be missed on any trip to the city.

After running into a professor in the cafe (also having flown-in from California), my four classmates, my mother and four other family members, perused the Jung exhibit. I walked into the basement room a bit short of breath. There, in that room, is Jung's magnum opus, out of hiding for the first time in 50 years. I stood in front of the book in awe, the book open to a brilliant painting and his words written in beautiful calligraphy. Along the sides of the wall were his original sketches for many of his mandalas in the book, as well as his "black books," the books in which he recorded the original explorations of his psyche before documenting them so carefully in the Red Book.

Later in the afternoon, I attended a conversation between a poet and an analyst-in-training. I enjoyed the simple, free exploration of the image (seen above from page 55), but found myself thinking about how much is lost by focusing on the images instead of Jung's written word.

Throughout most of the discussion of the Red Book in the media, the focus has been on the exquisite look and feel of the book. The images are captivating, but they cannot be separated from Jung's writing. In fact, while it might be somewhat heretical to say, I would undoubtedly choose the text over the paintings if I had to make a choice. Perhaps this says something about my typology more than anything else, but the story that Jung tells, the journey he takes us on, may rival anything else he ever wrote and should absolutely not go unacknowledged by those who find themselves captivated by the beauty of the book itself. I long for a smaller version of just the translation that I can carry with me to the coffee shop or the couch to read with ease.

As I posted earlier, I want to record this wonderful quote here again. The Red Book's translator and introducer, Sonu Shamadasani, expressed succinctly the importance of the book for all of us.

The overall narrative of the book is how Jung recovers his soul, recovers meaning in his life through enabling the rebirth of the image of God in his soul.

In so doing, he created a psychology that created a vehicle for others to regain meaning in theirs.

The Red Book is an exploration towards understanding how to recover soul, in our own lives and in the world. A book that was well worth the journey to the other side of the country to see.

Arianna Huffington on Sleeping and Dreaming . . .

Arianna Huffington has been writing lately on her "sleep challenge," a challenge (to women in particular) to get at least 8 hours of sleep for 30 days. A big fan of sleep myself, I have been intrigued to see her frequent updates and the insights she has had since sleeping; insights such as that her exercise is easier when her body's not exhausted. It's an indication of how little Americans are sleeping when it comes as a surprise that one's body is happier when it's able to recharge in the most natural way.

Throughout her articles on sleeping, I have been thinking about Jung (inevitably); pondering how relevant sleep is to his psychology on the balance of psyche. Without sleep, there is essentially no time set-aside to reengage with the unconscious mind. No time to recharge and gain balance and allow the conscious mind to relinquish control for a time.

Today's post was no exception, though throughout Ms. Huffington's discussion on her reinvigorated dream life I was even more intrigued. Aha! A popular, primarily political writer, writing about the importance of a vibrant dream life and even the importance of writing her dreams down for further mental clarity!

And then . . . the long-awaited mention of Jung and the time she once spent with his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, one of Ms. Huffington's "all-time favorite books"! Enjoy her article here.

The Quarterlife Crisis and Individuation

As I explored Twitter last night (yes, for the first time), I came across this article entitled Welcome to Your Quarterlife Crisis by Kate Carraway. I am impressed by how accurately Kate captures the Quarterlife crisis that I too have been observing in myself and my peers for years. I am also impressed with myself that, having finally completed my thesis on the quarterlife crisis and individuation, I seem to have captured just about all the major points without Kate's journalistic support.

You can read, or scan, the above mentioned article to get a sense of the quarterlife crisis, but the basics come down to malaise about one's vocation and direction in life, and a deep and somewhat terrifying recognition that life is not in fact a vertical path that will ultimately lead to success and happiness if you work hard enough. It is a perhaps existential recognition that the years are passing and that success, one's own sense of what that would look like, is still far away; that in fact, inherent to being alive, is having to acknowledge total uncertainty. The quarterlife attempts at palliating the terror that comes with this recognition, or the less existential depression around simply not having fulfilling work, is to either reach for stability (marriage, corporate job, graduate school), or medication (alcohol, promiscuity, Prozac).

Incredibly, the mental health community has not taken much note of this crisis yet. More and more, the term "quarterlife crisis" seems to pop-up, but it still carries with it a pejorative tilt that doesn't acknowledge the genuine discomfort, depression, anxiety and empty void that people experience in this crisis. A "joylessness" in life. Overwhelmed by thought and worry and disconnected to the essence of life and the joy of it.

What this has to do with Jungian philosophy is the subject of my thesis and continued work. The quarterlife crisis is not simply a crisis, but an opportunity to engage in the path of individuation, greater consciousness (for oneself and for the world), earlier in life than previously pursued.

The abstract of my thesis is as follows:

Quarterlife today resembles the period of midlife half a century ago. With the widespread changes in demographics of education and marriage, the stages of life, as outlined by Carl G. Jung, no longer abide by the paradigm of stability in the first half of life and the search for meaning in the second. Afforded the time for self-exploration, individuals in the first half of life are increasingly placing their attention on uncovering their life’s purpose and making meaning. The path of individuation, a life influenced and shaped by ego’s relationship with Self, is available much earlier in life; but the journey of individuation requires an often painful initiation of ego to bring it into contact with Self. Such an undertaking cradles the potential for a transformative life for each individual, just as it once did at midlife, but now not after life decisions have been firmly rooted for years, but at the start of adult life, when primary decisions about career, community and family are still being made. For individuals in the first half of life who have the ego-strength necessary for the transforming journey, the path of individuation beckons.

Since Jung, midlife has been considered the point in life of transition towards the journey of individuation. Throughout my thesis, I argue that this is no longer the case, and I lay out a developmental map of the ego-Self axis that I propose charts our journey at quarterlife towards individuation.

"The future stands still, but we move in infinite space."

I am desperately trying to finalize my thesis to get it in the mail by tomorrow evening. I'm having to make peace with not getting everything into the paper that I want in there. This beautiful quote never had a hope of making it in because it's way too long, but I have to include it somewhere! This is why blogs are wonderful inventions.

A wonderful quote by the wonderful Rilke, in his counsel to a 19 year old hopeful poet in the throws of a quarterlife crisis. (From Letters to a Young Poet, what should be required reading these days for anyone in the first half of life, teens to mid thirties.)

It seems to me that almost all our sadnesses are moments of tension which we feel as paralysis because we no longer hear our astonished emotions living. Because we are alone with the unfamiliar presence that has entered us; because everything we trust and are used to is for a moment taken away from us; because we stand in the midst of a transition where we cannot remain standing. That is why the sadness passes; the new presence inside us, the presence that has been added, has entered our heart, has gone into its innermost chamber and is no longer even there;—is already in our bloodstream. And we don’t know what it was. We could easily be made to believe that nothing happened, and yet we have changed…We can’t say who has come, perhaps we will never know, but many signs indicate that the future enters us in this way in order to be transformed in us, long before it happens. And that is why it is so important to be solitary and attentive when one is sad: because the seemingly uneventful and motionless moment when our future steps into us is so much closer to life than that other loud and accidental point of time when it happens to us as if from outside. The quieter we are, the more patient and open we are in our sadnesses, the more deeply and serenely the new presence can enter us, and the more we can make it our own, the more it becomes our fate; and later on, when it “happens” (that is, steps forth out of us to other people), we will feel related and close to it in our innermost being. And that is necessary. It is necessary—and toward this point our development will move, little by little—that nothing alien happen to us, but only what has long been our own. People have already had to rethink so many concepts of motion; and they will gradually come to realize that what we call fate does not come into us from the outside, but emerges from us. It is only because so many people have not absorbed and transformed their fates while they were living in them that they have not realized what was emerging from them; it was so alien to them that, in their confusion and fear, they thought it must have entered them at the very moment they became aware of it, for they swore they had never before found anything like that inside of them. Just as people for a long time had the wrong idea about the sun’s motion, they are even now wrong about the motion of what is to come. The future stands still. . . but we move in infinite space. (1929/1984, pp. 83-86)

Globalization of the American Psyche

This article from the New York Times Magazine this weekend should be required reading for just about anyone, but certainly for mental health practitioners.

The Americanization of Mental Illness, by Ethan Watters

Don't read the following if you plan to read the whole article, I don't want to ruin the ending for you. But just in case the article is too long for you to commit to (it *is* long) here's the final paragraph:

If our rising need for mental-health services does indeed spring from a breakdown of meaning, our insistence that the rest of the world think like us may be all the more problematic. Offering the latest Western mental-health theories, treatments and categories in an attempt to ameliorate the psychological stress sparked by modernization and globalization is not a solution; it may be part of the problem. When we undermine local conceptions of the self and modes of healing, we may be speeding along the disorienting changes that are at the very heart of much of the world’s mental distress.

A wonderful exploration into the psychic expression of symptoms in different cultures, and the psychic lexicon that is used in different regions. The DSM, the article points out, could at best be considered a compilation of American (maybe Western) mental ailments, but certainly doesn't accurately describe the various distresses of psyche internationally. The dissemination of Western scientific ailments to other cultures we may actually be destroying mental health as well as undermining the standard cultural cures.

Rilke's Advice on Facing the Terrors in the World

Rainer Maria Rilke's compilation of his Letters to a Young Poet, originally written as true correspondence to the 19-year-old Franz Xaver Kappus in 1903-1904, are . . . well, wonderful. I can barely hold back from using each line from his letters in my thesis on understanding the quarterlife crisis. Rilke was just 27 when he wrote these letters, undoubtedly still in (or just out of) a quarterlife crisis himself. Perhaps I'll share several of his quotes here. To start with, is this one, on understanding that the work of healing the world is our own work of healing ourselves.

We have no reason to harbor any mistrust against our world, for it is not against us. If it has terrors, they are our terrors; if it has abysses, these abysses belong to us; if there are dangers, we must try to love them. And if only we arrange our life in accordance with the principle which tells us that we must always trust in the difficult, then what now appears to us as the most alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience. How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love. (1984, pp. 91-92)

If you have a monster or person chasing you in your dreams, it's worth asking that individual what it wants.

Rethinking Diagnosis

I woke up this morning thinking about diagnosis for some reason. It's something I've given a lot of thought to in the past after training in the use of the DSM, the psychological bible for diagnosing just about any mental/psychic ailment that one can suffer from. The only problem is that the book is all mixed-up. While some of the diagnoses are paramount to cancer or even the common cold, others are simply the translation of symptoms into "disorders" -- like calling a runny nose that might result from a cold an illness unto itself and then treating it as such.

The Jungian approach to psychology, like the Chinese medicine approach to treating the body, brings the question of balance to the forefront. Implicit in all explorations of psyche from a Jungian standpoint is "what is out of balance in your psyche?", "what needs more or less attention?" Certainly, questions of Major Depressive Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, Bipolar Disorder etc. are woven into the work and typically treated with standard forms of treatment (by law and ethics, they need to be). But in general, symptoms are seen as indicating that something is out of balance, not that something is implicitly wrong. Chinese (and Tibetan) medicine does the same thing with the body: stomach problems, skin problems, pain, things that would be treated directly in Western medicine are seen instead as indications of something being out of balance so that the root cause can be treated, instead of the symptom.

I hope someday to be able to explore common diagnoses in regards to the relationship between aspects of psyche to seek to understand what, in each case, is out of balance. The base line for this exploration would be what is known as the Ego-Self axis, the relationship between the ego complex in psyche and the Self, the archetype of wholeness, the sort of catch-all name for the expanse of everything else in psyche out of which our individual personality (ego) is born. This developmental relationship can get thrown-off throughout growth (or due to biological causes) and can produce narcissistic (ego too distant from Self), psychotic (ego too immersed in Self), or borderline traits (ego mixed-up a little in between). The ideal is for a strong, independent ego that can take cues from Self and accept that it is not the single actor in the landscape of psyche. This is the core component of the inner space of a healthy psyche. A diagram of healthy ego-Self axis development (albeit rather simple) is here, in addition to some further discussion on this topic.

Introductions to the Red Book

Here are links to two great media introductions to the Red Book. The first, a radio clip, makes reference to the second, a video "trailer" about the preparation of the book for publishing after decades in hiding.

NPR radio story, November 11, 2009

The video trailer for the Red Book's release

From the NPR radio story, the Red Book's editor Sonu Shamdasani offers the following summary of the story and importance of the Red Book:

The overall narrative of the book is how Jung recovers his soul, recovers meaning in his life through enabling the rebirth of the image of God in his soul. In so doing, he created a psychology that created a vehicle for others to regain meaning in theirs.

Yes, all of Jungian psychology as we know it today came from the inner explorations recorded in this tome.

Liber Novus . . .

In person, it's truly inexplicable. I've been told this before, I have read about it in the New York Times, but in person it is so much larger, heavier, more amazing and more unbearably captivating than I realized.

I received The Red Book as a gift for Christmas but did not have it in my hands until the morning of January 1st. Upon opening its cardboard box and then the plastic covering, I sat with it for hours as my first act of 2010.

What is amazing about this book is not only that it is an illuminated manuscript of the kind that no one creates anymore, nor that the art alone is incredible, but the story, the translation, the journey that the book charts is truly remarkable. Captivated, all I could think was that this book is truly going to change the world. Certainly, there are those who cannot understand how "psychology" can hope to genuinely change the world, but those individuals put Jung in the wrong category. His genius was spiritual, religious, psychological, scientific, literary and artistic. This work, the Red Book, also known as Liber Novus, The New Book, is a contribution for any and all scholars of analytic psychology as it expresses Jung's thinking and concepts in entirely different language, language inherently imbued with soul, and not so academic. I wish the translation itself were in a more story book form, however, because it should be read by the masses, not as an incredible historical document, but as The New Book, a story about how to bring soul back into the world, a world that Jung knew in the fiber of his being needs soul more than anything else.

There are endless gems to be shared from this book, each line may rival that of any book ever published. I'll begin with one. Though . . . as I begin to transcribe it, it's clear that anything removed from the whole loses the energy with which it captivates when it is part of the flow. . .

Here, for just a few lines, is a section in which Jung seems to have seen, experienced, our time -- or a time that lies in our future. Terrified, overwhelmed, he writes, as if to us:

I felt the burden of the most terrible work of the times ahead. I saw where and how, but no word can grasp it, no will can conquer it. I could not do otherwise. I let it sink again into the depths.
I cannot give it to you, and I can speak only of the way of what is to come. Little good will come to you from outside. What will come to you lies within yourself. But what lies there! I would like to avert my eyes, close my ears and deny all my senses; I would like to be someone among you, who knows nothing and who never saw anything. It is too much and too unexpected. But I saw it and my memory will not leave me alone. (p. 306)

I am drawn to Jung's work because I believe truly that his insights into the human soul offer us a way to heal suffering and ameliorate the world completely, not in small pieces here or there, but totally if we can grasp what he learned. This is not just elite academia. One of his insights, perhaps his most core, is implicit in the same section from which the above quote was pulled. I will write more on that next time.

Avatar and the ego-Self axis

I just returned from the movie Avatar. I have to admit that I went knowing very little about the plot, save the little bits of trailers I had seen. I expect Jungians and Joseph Campbell fans all over will be writing about this movie in coming weeks (I'm sure many have already started), but I'm throwing in my two cents here.

Albeit fantastical in every way, and likely too corny for some or too violent for others, this movie remarkably illustrates the worlds in which we can live connected, or disconnected, from Self. This argument could be seriously misunderstood though, if I'm not careful. Let me start here.

Campbell's book, The Hero With a Thousand Faces (1949), outlines the "monomyth", a singular theme, that he saw depicted in myth after myth throughout world cultures. The monomyth is what he called the hero's journey, an archetypal theme that George Lucas, a friend of Campbell's, built on in the making of Star Wars-- a key element in its appeal to viewers and overwhelming success. James Cameron has undoubtedly borrowed from this same theme in Avatar, a film about a young, crippled Marine who steadily moves into another world and another body and is personally transformed as a result.

What the hero's journey also depicts in the language of analytic psychology, is the path of individuation. It is a story of the ego's journey from a position of presumed dominance in psyche to a position of conscious relationship with Self, a place of recognition that it is only one aspect of psyche, and certainly not the one ultimately in charge. So Avatar, while clearly a political film indicating the mess of the world we've made and the disaster that comes when militarism and capitalism are in bed together, also of course has a strong mythical layer. And beyond the mythical, the hero's journey, there is the psychological. A well-illustrated, fantastical depiction of what life is like when ego is fully in charge, and what it is like when ego is in relationship with Self, the archetype of wholeness, the great mother, the tree of life, the interconnected web.

When I try to explain the ego-Self axis, I forget the importance of the feeling tone of life with or without it. In this film, the bad guy is ego disconnected from Self. He is the militant, bull-headed soldier who is determined, no matter what, to achieve the goal he set out to accomplish. This is an individual who lives his or her life with a goal that they must achieve, no matter what illness, tragedy or pain comes in their way -- no matter what other components of life are right in front of their eyes to indicate that the path they're on is the wrong one. (I am not speaking of the people who are often referred to as "the fighters", who rise out of tragedy, but those who are typically after money or a title that is a purely ego-centered goal).

The person who is connected to Self, truly connected, is the princess character from "the people." The literal connection point that she shows the film's hero how to use is a perfect image of the ego-Self axis. The connection, which you'll have to watch the film to see, allows the individual human to tap into the larger web of interconnected life and intelligence for guidance, transportation, or life-giving support. By respecting that connection, their people are protected and thrive on what could be an extremely threatening planet.

Of course, like all hero's journey myths, this film provides a sense of how to save the world. One ventures out of a dying land, journeys into tragedy, battles against all odds, and as a result of his (or her) battles, brings life back to his people. In this case, the twist was that the hero, through a kind of dream world, found his true people and fought against the old.

Through our total disconnection from Self in our current world, we are successfully going about destroying the planet, not understanding viscerally that we are destroying ourselves. If this connection were strong, as it is with "the people" in Avatar, we would know immediately the effect of the destruction of our world and seek to stop it. We would individually, personally, feel the pain.

Finally, just as those who listen to the animals in fairy tales succeed in the end (while those who do not, do not), there is a lesson in this film for what happens when you respect and listen to the web of life. She gives back and supports you in the end. Despite how much it kicks and screams about it, in the end, the relationship with Self is for ego's own good.

Yoga, Breathing, and the Unconscious

For at least a couple of years, I was attending a yoga class at least once a week. It was a type of yoga called "Shadow yoga", a technique based in the ancient Hatha texts, ha meaning sun and tha meaning moon, the union of the opposites. As analyst Judith Harris wrote in her book, Jung and Yoga (2001), "The union is desired in order to awaken higher consciousness" (p. 53). The focus on the spine in the shadow yoga method brought me into a deep state of balance after each class. The connection made with the earth, with the breathing, with my own inner structure, was crucial to allowing me to root into the world in what was otherwise a very chaotic period.

Like observing the unconscious, accepting what arises in images, dreams, fantasies, thoughts, words, gestures without judgment, Harris writes that the same non-judgmental observation of one's breathing allows a heightened consciousness to develop as well.

At the beginning of a breathing practice it is only necessary to observe what is happening with the breath, what is happening in the body. It is here that consciousness begins. With only the simple act of observation, the breath is able to change, to transform into a breath that not only quietens but also can go deeper, gradually penetrating the cells of the body where healing can take place. (p. 59)

By observing breath, a primary focus in any Eastern tradition, we come into greater consciousness (or mindfulness) about our own selves. Not only do we become more aware of what is happening within us and around us in the moment, but it is a manner of working with the unconscious through the physical, versus intellectual, realm. We come to connect psyche and matter, a union of the highest importance for our psychic and physical health.

Embodiment as Enlightenment

I am in the middle of packing tonight for my Christmas trip to Montana, but I didn't want to miss a post today. To carry-on from the theme of yesterday's post, I wanted to write a little more about the importance of being grounded, embodied, for those raised in our culture. There is so much about this topic that fascinates me personally, observing in my own psyche and in my peers the tendency of us to be caught-up in perfectionism, spirituality and intellectualism. We are stuck in our heads or up in the clouds, disengaged from the rhythms of the earth and of our bodies. Our bodies ache, we have migraines, back pain, injuries; we are addicted to exercise or terrified of it. Versus balance, we compete with others and with ourselves for greater heights: better grades, better scores, more money, a better body.

Analyst Marion Woodman has focused her career on this work after healing from her symptom of perfectionist heights, anorexia. In her book Dancing in the Flames (1996), Woodman and co-author Elinor Dickson wrote:

Often individuals get caught up in trying to express that state of perfection in their own lives. The perfect body, the perfect wife/husband, the perfect teacher, all become disembodied images of the ideal, in whose light they inevitably fall short. Sons and daughters of patriarchy are very susceptible to this light. Women trapped in anorexia love and dread this light. They are in real danger of being swept off the earth by their perfectionist ideals and demands for perfect order. . . .Men, too, are vulnerable to being carried out of reality by the light. Their ideals, their hopes and dreams and artistic endeavors, can carry them right out of home, children, wife, and bills to be paid. Fantasy is one of the most dangerous addictions in our society. What is missing is embodiment. (p. 65)

The archetype of the Puer Aeturnus (the eternal boy) for men and what I have come to call the Spinning Girl for women are manifestations of living a life led by the fantasy that a "better" or "perfect" life is to be found elsewhere. Both are attempting to achieve the impossible or find the impossible, either in yet another partner (the puer) or in yet more impossible demands on themselves (Spinning girl). These are common archetypes evoked in our culture, as Woodman and Dickson wrote. We all carry aspects of them within us, ingrained predispositions to addictions from growing-up in a culture that attempts to avoid the darker realities of life (death, depressions, failures, disappointments) through medication, surgery, advertising, the sale of the perfect image in media. What is healing for us is to notice our addictions that keep us reaching higher versus pulling us into our bodies, into the moment. Coming into balance means staying still, feeling our emotions, running less, eating healthily, feeling our bodies, acknowledging and exploring our aches and pains, slowing down, responding to the moment, to the now, to what is true in the present moment versus planning and awaiting the future. And Breathing. Breathing. That's what I'll write about next time. . .

(Image from: http://bristollifedrawing.files.wordpress.com/2007/07/jitka-palmer-lifedrawing2.jpg)

Enlightenment for Westerners

I was raised by parents steeped in the Buddhist tradition, was given a Hindu name, and spent a considerable part of my childhood, adolescence and young adulthood reading about Buddhism, studying it and meditating. More and more, however, I question the Buddhist path for Westerners. The ancient philosophy is impeccable. The traditions extremely close to my heart, but I wonder about what neuroses Westerners are simply perpetuating by taking to the cushion instead of going to their depths. I know for myself that attempting to follow the tradition only increased my neurosis. Letting it go and engaging in depth psychological traditions instead, the path towards individuation instead of enlightenment, has brought me towards growth and peace in a way that attempting to fit myself into a Buddhist box (that feels karmically appropriate but generally confusing) could not. I've given this a lot of thought, more so than I'm expressing in this paragraph, but re-reading Judith Harris's book Jung and Yoga: The psyche-body connection (2001) today, I read again a paragraph that sums-up why Jung's writings resonate in the same way that the Buddha's do, but are overall more fitting for me. In the following quote, she's referring to the necessity to balance the opposites, to tether the sky to the earth, the spirit to the body, the up with the down.

Jung writes in The Visions Seminars that consciousness in the East is already "down," that is, connected to the earth. It is logical, therefore, that in the East the goal is to connect to what is above, thereby compensating what is lacking; a clear awareness of consciousness does not exist in those who live closer to the unconscious. Jung says it is a mistake for those who live in the West to try to get higher and higher, as we are already living on too high a level, yearning only for the spirit world. We must seek rather to establish a relationship to our roots and to the unconscious. He further says that what is really needed is to establish the connection between above and below. This is the task of the yogin in the Western world. (p. 47)

Harris then includes an alchemical drawing depicting this balance, alchemy being the ancient correlate to the search for individuation, the search for making gold out of raw material, pure consciousness out of the muck of the unconscious.

The verse associated with this drawing that Harris includes is: "Connect the earthly toad with the flying eagle and thou shalt understand the secret to our art." (p. 48) This is the alchemical depiction of yin and yang, the balance of energies that every ancient art is seeking to achieve. The depth psychological tradition is no different. For those who are seeking the spiritual heights through the goal of enlightenment, the true antidote may be coming deeper into their bodies, into the unconscious, the feminine, the earthly, and not indulging in the path of spirit at all. I can say this has been true for me, and I don't think I'm the only one.

A Definition of Archetypes

After all the coursework for my Masters program at Pacifica Graduate Institute, I'm not sure if any one of my classmates (including myself) could have offered a reasonable definition of archetypes. This is not the fault of the school, simply that this is a tricky thing to really get! But God bless her, Marie-Louise von Franz offered a wonderful definition of archetypes in her unbelievably good book (a collection of her writings), Psyche & Matter (1988).

Jung's great discovery lay in not seeing the complex as something purely pathological, as the psychiatry of his time was inclined to do and as Freudian psychology did as well. Rather he assumed the existence of normal complexes. In other words, our psychic system is composed of various complexes, of which the ego complex is only one among various others, and this is normal. Every human being has complexes, and these are not in themselves the cause of psychological illness--only under certain circumstances. They are part of the normal psychic makeup. These normal complexes that everyone has are what Jung called archetypes. The archetypes are more or less the inborn normal complexes that we all have. (p. 5)

This definition is succinct, but incomplete without her very rich example of how archetypes manifest throughout different cultures. How the same feeling, the same human experience, is translated in psyche depending on the culture and social situation in which one is immersed.

Archetypes are in themselves completely unobservable structures; only when they are stimulated by some inner or outer state of need. . .do they, at crucial moments, produce an archetypal image, an archetypal fantasy, a though, an intuition, or an emotion. These can be recognized as archetypal, because they are similar in all cultures and among all peoples. . . .There is no doubt that the archetypal structures are inherited; this is not, however, the case with the images. . . .When an inborn archetypal structure passes into the manifest form of an archetypal fantasy or image, the psyche makes use of impressions from the external surroundings for its means of expression; therefore, the individual images are not entirely identical but only similar in structure. For example, an African child, when an image of something overwhelmingly terrifying needs to take shape in him, will perhaps fantasize about a crocodile or a lion, and a European child in the same situation will imagine a truck that is barreling toward him, threatening to run him over. Only the structure of something overpoweringly threatening will be the same in this case. The image is of course enriched by impressions from the external world. (pp. 6-7)

Okay, so that's a lot of quote, but hopefully it's clear. It has given me a lot to chew-on as I continue to understand the concept. As I read this book, I'm sure I'll be posting more about what I discover. I had borrowed it from the library but bought it online after reading the first fifteen pages. I cannot believe how good it is. The essays explore everything around the relationship between psyche and matter, including discussions on quantum physics, colors, numbers, and mathematical diagrams, themes that continue to be underexplored within depth psychology. M.-L. von Franz was a genius, I can't wait to learn more.

The Case of Henry

The last four months of my life have been devoted to the exploration of the first half of life (ages approx. 15 - 35), to understand this neglected stage of life from a Jungian perspective. Most Jungians perceive the first half of life as a stage of ego development, neglecting to explore an inherent crisis (like in midlife) and the potential for individuation in those years. My thesis, The Quarterlife Crisis and the Path of Individuation in the First Half of Life, suggests that the relationship between ego and Self absolutely must be emphasized today for individuals in quarterlife, for our individual sanity and that of the world.

I have not yet decided if I will be including, as part of my argument in the paper, aspects from the report by Jung's contemporary, Jolande Jacobi, of an individual analysis with a 25 year-old patient--what I call The case of Henry, but which is officially titled "Symbols in an Individual Analysis" in Man and His Symbols (1964).

In this case, Jacobi's classical interpretation of the stages of life mean that she cannot perceive of the 25 year-old in front of her as an individual who is seeking individuation. Throughout the case, she does not give credence to his need to engage with psyche on an ongoing basis, but only with the use of such work for the sake of his developing the ego strength necessary for his stage in life. (The two do not seem to me to be mutually exclusive.)

Jacobi reported what Henry said, regarding his desire for analysis.

He did not think that a neurosis. . .had brought him to me, but rather an inner urge to work on his psyche. . ."It appears to me," he wrote in a letter asking for an interview, "that this phase of my life is particularly important and meaningful. I must decide either to remain unconscious in a well-protected security, or else to venture on a yet unknown way of which I have great hopes.” (p. 326)

Jacobi's bias around the ability of individuals prior to age 35 to engage in individuation meant that she disregarded Henry's clear proclamation and encouraged him instead towards simply committing to his fiance and settling down into marriage. This was the goal of the work as she saw it. The choice confronting him, she wrote, “was whether to remain a lonely, vacillating, and unrealistic youth or to become a self-sufficient and responsible adult" (p. 326). She does not question how a man of his age is to engage in the deeper aspects of his self when neither society nor family encourages or allows it.

Is it possible that Henry was not a neurotic youth but an individual simply seeking individuation earlier in life? Is it possible that the transition of psyche towards a relationship between ego and Self can take place at any time and is not inherent to midlife? The case of Henry evokes such questions for me, questions that I do not think clinicians are wrestling with enough these days given the growing number of individuals in the first half of life seeking analysis of Jungian psychotherapy.

In Cold Storage

About ten days ago, just prior to what I expected would be a very difficult week -- a re-immersion in a painful situation -- I woke up remembering an image: a tiny bird flying out of a freezer in which it had been trapped. In the dream, I walked into the living room where it had flown after being released with frost on its wings and saw it puffed-up, warming itself, relieved to be out of the cold. This image immediately reminded me of a line from Donald Kalsched's book The Inner World of Trauma (1996) and I knew that I was free from the stress of the past, not walking into more of it.

Kalsched wrote,

Rarely discussed by clinicians is... [the] animating spirit at the center of all healthy living. This spirit, which we have described as the transcendent essence of the self seems to be compromised in severe trauma. It is never annihilated completely because, presumably, this would be the literal death of the person. But it may be "killed" in the sense that it cannot continue living in the embodied ego. Or it may be put in "cold storage" in the unconscious psyche. (p. 37)

The bird is a classic symbol of spirit, a symbol I won't explore at this point as it can almost be intuitively grasped why that's the case, but the idea of "cold storage" is extremely fascinating to me. I was extremely intrigued by this line when I read it for the first time last year, recalling immediately dreams I had had for a long stretch in my childhood in which I would discover with enormous grief little mice or cats curled-up, usually in plastic containers like closed petri dishes, in the refrigerator. I would only quibble with Kalsched's statement that the spirit goes into "cold storage" in times of "severe trauma." The concept of what is severe to the inner life of an individual versus what is observably traumatic to others is a discussion for another time, but I would suggest that trauma to psyche of any kind -- like I experienced for periods in childhood and several months ago -- can cause spirit to retract, a kind of depression or lack of animation to take over, and evoke an inner image of spirit being shut away and put in the cold.