Some reflections on Carl Gustav Jung

Vision by Cornelia Kopp via Flickr

I cherish the anxious hope that meaning will… win the battle — C. G. Jung

I’ve been thinking about the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) for about three decades. Quite a few biographies have been written about Jung. Some writers are keen on recon-structing his early childhood, family influences, and so on. But as I grow older I’m becoming less interested in Jung’s personal life. I know enough of the backdrop – outlandish parties, extramarital infidelities, kissing up to the Nazi bureaucracy – to keep everything in context.

I’m more interested in Jung’s intellectual legacy. So when I talk about Jung its usually to introduce some of my own ideas about psychology, spirituality, and the journey to everlasting life.

Once a close friend and colleague of Sigmund Freud, in the early days of his remarkable career Jung found in Freud something of a kindly father figure. The elder Jew regarded the younger gentile as his star pupil among several luminaries in the emerging school of psychoanalysis. As a non-Jew, Jung was in a better position to help spread Freud’s psychoanalytic movement within a central Europe marked by anti-Semitism. But the two intellectual titans split in 1914 over a number of personal and professional differences, most notably, Jung’s rejection of Freud’s increasingly dogmatic insistence on the primacy of the libido.

What the critics say

Jung, himself, has been criticized on many counts. Conservative Christians see him as a dangerous, demonic threat, citing select quotations of his work which apparently support their arguments while ignoring, as extremists usually do, those aspects which would refute them.¹ Despite this conservative backlash, Jungian ideas continue to be taken seriously in popular Catholic literature, just as some of Luther’s ideas are said to agree with core Catholic teaching. Meanwhile, parapsychologists and spiritualists, usually scorned by traditional Christians, often say that Jung’s theory is limiting.²

Until recently, the major figures in Western cultural studies and rationalism largely ignored Jung in favor of Freud. Freud’s emphasis on sexuality, sublimation and the idea of the phallus resonated with neo-Marxist and postmodern interests.

As for those who took the time to actually read Jung, his work was often dismissed as a kind of fuzzy mysticism riddled with modernist stereotypes and elements of racism. Accordingly, a body of historical reconstruction emerged, claiming that Jung kowtowed to Hitler and the Nazi Party.³

Philosophers of logic tend to wince at the very thought of Jung. Most philosophers say that his arguments contain far too many assumptions to merit any kind of serious consideration. Not only philosophers, but many in religious studies say that Jung’s analogical use of mythological and religious ideas is weak because his data is removed from historical contexts. In disconnecting religious ideas from their originally intended meanings, Jung has been heavily criticized for distorting data to make it fit his own theory.⁴ Moreover, feminist and women’s studies analyses suggest that his views are sexist.⁵

Alchemical Images Courtesy The Alchemy Web Site

Another way to understand Jung’s work looks at the big picture. By appreciating his lasting contribution to the history of ideas, value is found not so much in Jung’s theoretical particulars but rather, in his spirit of innovation and genuine concern to synthesize depth psychology, empirical observation and rationality. Writing about Jung, Naomi Goldenberg says that Jung apparently was happy to be “Jung and not a Jungian.” As a Jungian one might slavishly follow the Grand Master without thinking for him or herself. But Jung, himself, was free to revise his theories according to his ongoing thoughts and observations.⁶

Among Jung’s wide ranging interests, his work on projection, the shadow, inflation, symbols, numinosity, synchronicity and the collective unconscious seem most useful.⁷ Not unlike Gandhi who said “be the change you want to see in the world,” Jung advocated self-knowledge as an essential component for personal and societal transformation. To make this happen, Jung believed that we had actively master the unconscious. For Jung, no amount of abstract talk without doing the real work of inner change would have any kind of lasting effect on outer change.

Jung also believed that a failure to control the powerful impulses of the unconscious could result in a kind of Dorian Gray scenario where the unconscious gradually comes to control the individual and society as a whole.

The collective unconscious: Is Freud so different?

Freud and Jung’s views about the unconscious differ, but not so much as most believe. Some pop psychologists and New Age gurus quickly dismiss Freud’s ideas, unaware that his model of the unconscious contains collective elements. They prefer Jung’s notion of the archetypes, which borrows from ideas previously found in anthropology, sociology, philosophy, religion and theology (the term archetype is actually traceable to St. Augustine, 354-430 CE).

Jung describes the archetype as a component of mankind’s psychological substratum—the collective unconscious. Freud similarly spoke of phylogenetic “schemata” and “prototypes.” And borrowing from ancient Greek and Jewish literature, Freud also devised the “Oedipus complex,” a “primal father” and likened the shadowy contents of the unconscious to archaeological ruins.

In addition, late in his career Freud revised his libido theory to include the general ideas of eros (life instinct) and thanatos (death instinct). Because Freud maintained that the fundamental aspects of the unconscious are universal, aspects of his theory of the self, like Jung’s, point to a collective unconscious.⁸ And not only that. Freud himself said that Jung introduced nothing new with the idea of the collective unconscious, for the “content of the unconscious is collective anyhow.”⁹

C. G. Jung at Küsnacht

Archetypes and the Unconscious

But Jung and Freud differ in that Jung’s archetypal theory elaborates on the unconscious to a greater degree than Freud’s rather basic schema of id, ego and superego.¹⁰ Jung’s archetypes, however, have themselves been criticized as ambiguous, simplistic constructs. On the charge of ambiguity, Jungians reply that archetypes are necessarily mysterious since they consist of matter/energy and a wide range of numinous potentials. Grounded in human experience, the archetypes transcend our conventional understanding of space and time. They are categories which to some extent explode contemporary assumptions about categories.

The archetypes point to essential mysteries or, in Jung’s way of speaking, they invite and sometimes demand an extraordinary encounter with the numinous. As for the apparent simplicity of the archetypes, Jungians reply that the archetypes, proper, are relatively few but their cultural expression as archetypal images are limitless.

Depth psychologist James Hillman notes that the archetypes are just another construct and should not be taken as realities in themselves. This may surprise some but Jung, himself, knew full well that his apparently ‘scientific’ work was just another myth that he believed was more appropriate for moderns times. The pseudoscientific nature of Jung’s work did not deter him. He believed his new myth was necessary. And his growing popularity seems to confirm that belief.¹¹

Along these lines, Jung said the master archetype is that of the self, which directly or indirectly involves all lesser archetypes. As we journey through certain stages in life, the self strives to unify apparent contradictions. For Jung this process of becoming whole, called individuation, involves a multidimensional union of opposites and by implication, the experience of synchronicity and numinosity. And these two ideas of synchronicity and numinosity arguably raised Western psychology to a new plateau only hinted at by researchers such as Abraham Maslow, Alfred Alder and William James.¹²

Like his old mentor Freud, Jung sought to devise a fresh, meaningful map of the psyche. He sincerely tried to integrate the personal, social and spiritual dimensions of the self. A brilliant innovator, Jung anticipated the limitations that would inevitably compromise his working model. But despite these limitations, his ideas still inspire half a century after his passing.

Notes

¹ Fundamentalist Christian attacks against Jung seem to abstractly echo a frightening past of Inquisitions and the torture of so-called witches, a kind of mindset where it’s easier to demonize people on the basis of incomplete data instead of carefully assessing what they have to say. See, for instance, Marsha West’s: Carl Jung: Psychologist or Sorcerer?. Jung himself says that as a practicing psychiatrist he never tried to change his clients’ religious beliefs if they were happy with them. He did critique Christian churches, but his critique was intended to help those receiving no spiritual comfort within those traditions. And his critiques were not one-sided diatribes. For instance, the Protestant Jung commended the dogma of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary as declared by Pope Pius XII in 1950 because he felt that it solidified an important feminine element within Christian belief and practice. And because Catholicism now highlights the importance of freedom of religious belief, Catholic pogroms against those interested in Jung’s model arguably come from those Catholics unable to appreciate the fullness of Catholic thought.

² Ram Dass, for instance, said in The Only Dance There Is that Jung is afraid to go beyond identifying with the role of the famous psychologist. Dass says Jung fears taking the next step into mysticism.

³ The best example being Maidenbaum and Martin’s Lingering Shadows: Jungians, Freudians, and anti-Semitism.

⁴ See my papers Integration and the Orient and Ego, Archetype and Self.

⁵ Naomi Goldenberg, “Looking at Jung Looking at Himself,” Soundings, 73/2-3 (Summer/Fall 1990).

⁶ Ibid. Several recent Jungians claim to explore the psyche in the spirit of Jung, not being bound by any kind of Jungian dogma. To what extent they succeed arguably varies from theorist to theorist.

⁷ These concepts are accurately defined in Daryl Sharp’s Jung Lexicon.

⁸ Michael V. Adams illustrates this point in The Cambridge Companion to Jung, (ed.) Polly Young-Eisendrath and Terence Dawson, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, p. 101.

⁹ Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism, p. 209, cited in R. J. Lifton with Eric Olson (eds.), Explorations in Psychohistory: The Wellfleet Papers, New York: Simon and Shuster, 1974 p. 90.

¹⁰ Some of Jung’s archetypes are listed here.

¹¹ Some old school Jungians, being tied to their tidy Jungian teachings, are unwilling to further develop Jung’s concepts or, perhaps, see them in the postmodern sense of the “three C’s,” where context and connotation are taken as an important part of content.

¹² More recently, Stanislav Grof and a handful of others have built on Jung’s thought with a holotropic model of the self.

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• Brief History of Carl Jung (socyberty.com)
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• On Meeting Carl Gustav Jung (psychologytoday.com)
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Some reflections on Carl Gustav Jung Copyright © Michael Clark.

Numinosity – Another kind of light

Is this the Region, this the Soil, the Clime,
Said then the lost Arch Angel, this the seat
That we must change for Heav’n, this mournful gloom
For that celestial light?

—John Milton, Paradise Lost

The term numinosity isn’t too well-known beyond the academic world of religious studies and anthropology. In a sense numinosity is like the more familiar term luminosity. But numinosity refers to a subtle, spiritual light instead of an outwardly visible light like the luminosity of the moon.

While numinosity and luminosity may coexist, they remain somehow different. The term first appears, perhaps, in 1647 when Nathaniel Ward wrote in The simple cobler of Aggawam in America:

The Will of a King is very numinous; it hath a kinde of vast universality in it.¹

Rudolf Otto

In his groundbreaking work The Idea of the Holy (1923), the Lutheran theologian Rudolf Otto uses the term numinous to describe a personal experience of spiritual power. Otto borrows from the ancient Latin, numen, usually translated as “the presence of a god or goddess,” or more precisely, “the power or nod of a deity.”

For Otto, numinosity originates from outside the self but is perceived within. And as a higher process than the magical, the numinous takes many forms. Otto says the numinous has primitive, daemonic and dark as well as elevated, noble and pure aspects.² He calls the absolute and purest experience of the numen “the Holy.” Sometimes Otto implies that the numinous is identical among all religions. Other times he reveals a definite Christian bias, suggesting that the numinosity experienced through the Bible and by various Christian mystics is absolute and pure.

From today’s standards, Otto’s definition of numinosity seems a bit vague and unsystematic. But his work is regarded as a milestone and continues to have a profound influence within depth psychology and comparative religion.

C. G. Jung

The Swiss psychiatrist C. G. Jung’s view of numinosity builds on Otto’s. For Jung, numinosity is an alteration of consciousness involving an experience of spiritual power. Like Otto, Jung differentiates types or qualities of numinosity. But Jung’s work is arguably more detailed and systematic than Otto’s.

According to Jung, numinosity may be healing or destructive, this depending on the strength and attitude of the conscious ego along with the particular character of a given numinous power. Psychologically speaking, healing numinosity involves personal humility while destructive numinosity may lead to neurotic self-dabasement or, alternately, self-aggrandizement.

But this just scratches the surface. In actual fact, the relation between the character of the psyche and type of numinosity experienced is as complicated as life, itself.

Jung also says the light of the numinous passes through the lens of the personal unconscious. A traumatized person, for instance, may distort the numinous, turning what could be positive spiritual experiences into paranoia. Accordingly, an unhealthy psyche may distort some forms of the numinous into something frightening and demonic. Meanwhile, a healthy psyche may be able to distance itself from a dark numinous trigger, thus converting the whole experience into a positive—e.g. enjoying a scary Batman movie.

But it’s not quite that simple because Jung says the experience of the numinous is really the experience of an archetype. And not all archetypes are created equally.

Through years of professional practice Jung observed different types of archetypal energies. Specific types of numinosity are often attracted by the psyche. And the type of power attracted depends, in large part, on the health of the psyche. Imbalanced, immature and grandiose personalities, for instance, may invite and come to identify with archetypal forces reinforcing an imbalanced, grandiose outlook on life.

On the other hand, Jung says that the psyche is on a natural trajectory towards health and balance, which he calls wholeness. This natural tendency to become whole involves the experience of positive, healing instances of numinosity which may heal psychological wounds lingering in the personal unconscious.

Mircea Eliade

Many suggest that the numinous is identical among all spiritual and religious paths. Some say that visiting a Mosque or a Hindu temple is just the same as entering into a Catholic cathedral or Jewish temple. The Romanian scholar, Mircea Eliade, however, builds on Otto and Jung’s work by noting that numinosity exhibits diverse intensities, qualities and effects.³

Never trying to place religious experience into some kind of forced, politically correct homogeneity, Eliade is just as interested in difference as he is in similarity. And he does an admirable job of outlining these differences by examining a staggering amount of religious data (something that many mediocre scholars fail to do).

Freud, Marx, Weber and Beyond

While the experience of the numinous may be influenced by the unconscious, it seems superficial to reduce so many diverse accounts of numinosity to mere regression. And that’s pretty much what Sigmund Freud did.

Freud saw the numinous in terms of remembering a unified “oceanic bliss” which everyone apparently basked in within the mother’s womb. Perhaps Freud’s greatest flaw was his inability to appreciate the upper reaches of the spiritual life. A genius no doubt, Freud nonetheless reduced all things spiritual to all things psychological.

For centuries, saints, seers, gurus and shamans have claimed to work in numinous realms. The idea of the numinous is found in virtually all spiritual traditions. This emphasis on the numinous arguably separates religion from mere social movements such as Marxism and the often reductive claims of postmodernism. Some say, however, that Max Weber’s sociological term charisma might act as a bridge between spirit and society.⁴

The scholar of religion, Ninian Smart, suggests that people using the term numinous tend to view the Godhead as something other—that is, beyond self and cosmos. Those using the term mysticism, Smart says, tend to see self and Godhead as one.

Although riddled with generalities and, arguably, errors, I quote Smart at length because he provides some thought-provoking contrasts:

If you stress the numinous, you stress that our salvation or liberation (our becoming holy) must flow from God or the Other…though his grace. You also stress the supreme power and dynamism of God as creator of this cosmos. If on the other hand, you stress the mystical and the non-dual, you tend to stress how we attain salvation or liberation through our own efforts at meditation… There is another way in which we may look at the distinction between the numinous and the mystical. In the numinous, the Eternal lies, so to speak, beyond the cosmos and outside the human being. In the mystical, the Eternal somehow lies within us. In the first case we need to be dependent on the Other, in the second case we may rely on our own powers. The numinous, in encouraging worship, encourages a loving dependence on the Other. The mystical, in encouraging meditation, encourages a sense of self-emptying…The two can go together. But there are differing accents.⁵

Again, this is an oversimplification beset with difficulties. But in his defense, Smart attempts to differentiate various modalities of religious experience.

Joseph Campbell in The Masks of God also differentiates several types of religious experience. For our purposes we’ll break these down into two Weberian ideal types:

1. Those who see themselves as perfectly holy and equal to God—i.e. a pure manifestation of God on Earth.
2. Those who see God as holy, regarding themselves as imperfect, individual creatures created by God.

While these are ideal types, the differences they suggest are observable. Like Jung, Campbell says the first type usually leads to self-aggrandizement as the ego identifies with a spiritual power or powers which are less than God. The second type often leads to humility and the experience of God’s grace, a grace which originates from beyond the self.

Great historical figures have spoken about the numinous as a spiritual realm pervading the visible world. The Bengali Nobel Prize laureate, Rabindranath Tagore, for instance, termed this subtle presence the surplus. But it’s important to remember that this ‘surplus’ is described differently among world traditions. And even within a single tradition, individual difference seems to be the norm.

One could spend a lifetime experiencing and reflecting on the complexities of the numinous. And even then, its diversity and subtle interpersonal dynamics most likely would not fully be understood.⁶

In my Father’s house there are many mansions

- John 14:2

Notes

1. Oxford English Dictionary

2. a) Otto says a morally evil action is “self-depreciating” and “pollutes,” leading toward imagery that suggests the need for “washing and cleansing.” Otto, Rudolf. The Idea of the Holy, second edition, trans. John W. Harvey, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973 [1923], p. 55.

b) See my outline of Otto’s The Idea of the Holy.

3. See for instance, Yoga: Immortality and Freedom.

4. The issue of Weber’s term charisma as a bridge between sociology and spirituality is elaborated upon by George Hansen in The Trickster and the Paranormal.

5. Ninian Smart, Worldviews: Crosscultural Explorations of Human Beliefs (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1983), pp. 71-72. Many use the term mysticism in the I-Thou sense as outlined by Martin Buber.

6. The interpenetration of numinosity from one living being to another is hinted at in many traditions, to include C. G. Jung’s psychological treatment of alchemy. The psychoanalytic terms transference and countertransference arguably point in a similar direction—especially the idea of syntonic countertransference. As for the transfer and intermingling of numinosity from an object to a person, here we have the much misunderstood anthropological term, fetish.

Numinosity – Another kind of light Copyright © Michael Clark. All rights reserved.

The meanings of myth

By Michael Clark

The word myth has a lot of different meanings, depending on who’s speaking. Myths can be ordinary (like a popular idea), sublime and heavenly or, possibly, something horrible and scary.

Perhaps all contemporary usages share the idea that myth points to something beyond the scientific method. But in reality it’s not quite that simple. Many postmodern thinkers critique science as a modern myth. And scholars like the Indologist, Wendy Doniger, say that most myths contain an inner structure and rationality.

To further complicate things, the pioneering mythographer Sir James. G. Frazer believed that, underneath their colorful imagery, myths are a kind of protoscience.

Literary and artistic types tend to see myth as an artform. But others say that myth is more sacred than the arts because at different points in history myth connects with ritual. To counter that notion, others observe that ritual, itself, doesn’t guarantee the presence of the sacred. And the definition of ritual, itself, is also open to debate. Could getting together with your pals every Wednesday night to watch your favorite Sci-Fi TV show be considered a ritual? This isn’t too far-fetched. Not a few academics see Star Trek as a religion or, perhaps, a mythology. Another point to consider here is that many artists see their practice as a kind of spiritual discipline. So who can really say that myth is more sacred than art?

Myths and Fairy Tales

According to professor T. Henighan,¹ the Freudian child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim says that myth:

• Contains particular heroes with unique names
• Tells of heroes that are ‘larger than life’
• Involves majestic and ‘spiritual’ divine beings
• Relates an often tragic and pessimistic story²
• Reveals conflict between the superego (i.e. internalized social conscience) and id (i.e. instinctual drives of love and death that seek gratification)
• Sets unrealistic demands that normal human beings can never fully achieve

Whereas fairy tales are a type of folk tale in which:

• The names of heroes and heroines are absent or ordinary³
• Supernatural but not divine beings are mentioned
• Positive outcomes are the norm
• Childhood and adolescence figure prominently
• The actual content (i.e. Oedipal material) is obscured through elaborate symbolism

This, of course, is just one point of view. Specialists hardly agree as to whether myths and folk tales are basically the same or different. Moreover, some contend that myth precedes the folk tale, others, the reverse.

True and False Stories

In Myth and Reality Mircea Eliade maintains that “societies in which myth is—or was until very recently—’living,’” distinguish true from false stories.⁴

Eliade gives examples from two American Indian groups, the Pawne and the Cherokee. And from Africa he cites the Herero and the inhabitants of Togo. As any good sociologist or anthropologist will observe, however, Eliade seems to naively take existing ethnological research at face value. He says these cultures believe their myths are true stories, while folk tales apparently are seen as morally instructive but false stories.

However, he rightly notes that mythic stories were not universally accepted as truth in ancient societies where different beliefs and philosophical schools competed for legitimacy.⁵ Eliade is not referring, for example, to ancient Greek, Roman and Egyptian myths.

But the idea that all members of a given “living” society privately regard hegemonic myths as true stories is open to question. It would be unwise to assume that mythic beliefs are universally accepted in any culture or, for that matter, subculture. As with the ancient world, external displays of acceptance – among both leaders and community members – very likely could be feigned out of prudence or political expedience.⁶

Hard to Define

As to a defintion of myth, Eliade says:

It would be hard to find a definition of myth that would be acceptable to all scholars and at the same time intelligible to nonspecialists. Then, too, is it even possible to find one definition that will cover all the types and functions of myths in all traditional and archaic societies? Myth is an extremely complex cultural reality, which can be approached and interpreted from various and complementary viewpoints.⁷

While there’s no unanimous agreement as to the meaning of myth, this multiplicity speaks to its richness and importance. The following point form list summarizes some of the leading and interrelated theories on mythology. It’s far from exhaustive but hopefully illustrates, among other things, the contemporary relevance of myth.

Psychological

• Conceals our instinctual and repressed unconscious desires and tendencies (Sigmund Freud)
• Reveals our “personal infantile history,” particularly with regard to the creators and followers of hero myths (Otto Rank)
• Reflects transpersonal, elementary ideas (Adolf Bastien) or a collective unconscious revealing through mythic images a deeper meaning in life (Carl Jung)
• Provides imaginal signposts along an inner and outer journey, helping heroic individuals gain enhanced wisdom (Carl Jung, James Hillman, Joseph Campbell)
• Mythic thinking may be a survival mechanism for painful ritual abuse but in the negative unresolved instance, mythic thinking may culminate in sociopathic behavior-e.g. the ethical insanity of a Hitler (Chrystine Oksana)

Sociological

• Codifies, legitimizes and strengthens dominant beliefs, practices and relationships based on power in a given society (Antonio Gramsci, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault)
• Fosters social cohesion, functioning, development or chaos (Talcott Parsons, Robert Merton, Emile Durkheim);
• Contributes to egoism, altruism, alienation and anomie (Emile Durkheim)

Cultural

• Reading myths affords aesthetic charm to the, at times, “stale, flat and unprofitable” task of living (C. S. Lewis, [quotation: William Shakespeare])
• Provides religious or heroic legends that the audience knows are fictional (Robert Graves)
• Helps us to meaningfully interpret and transform our world (Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung)

Anthropological

• A non-scientific attempt to explain natural phenomena (E. B. Tylor)
• Archaic source of oral stories, history and cultural identity (Micea Eliade, Clifford Geertz)
• The second stage in mankind’s evolutionary sequence of symbolical, mythical and logical modes of thought (J. J. Bachofen)
• Directs individuals through important stages of life, in many cultures marked by solemn or sacred “rites of passage” (Karl Kerenyi, Mircea Eliade, Joseph Campbell)
• Provides communal meaning about ancestors and the afterlife (Carl Jung)
• Myth is best understood as the sum total of its variants and is a tool that can help solve cultural problems, paradoxes and contradictions (Claude Lévi-Strauss)
• Offers a grid defined by its own rules of construction. This grid doesn’t explain the meaning of myth in itself but creates a “matrix of intelligibility” which facilitates understanding of the world by revealing structural laws of human thought, communication, interaction and behavior (Claude Lévi-Strauss)
• Legitimizes beliefs in magic, which for so-called primitives is a kind of protoscience that may be used for practical purposes, such as regulating the harvest (Sir James. G. Frazer)
• Magic is recognized a kind of myth by so-called primitives, used symbolically to relieve natural anxiety and express their hopes for positive outcomes–e.g. while hunting or fishing in dangerous places (Bronislaw Malinowski)

Historical

• Provides information about historical conditions, especially about those with the power to create myths (John Noss)

Political

• May be used as global propaganda (e.g. Marxist Theory of History) and for political agendas–e.g. glorifying oneself and demonizing opponents, as in election-time TV ads (Michel Foucault, Jean Baudrillard, Roland Barthes)

Ethical

• Outlines right and wrong, and inevitable punishments and rewards for dishonorable and praiseworthy acts (Mircea Eliade, Joseph Campbell)

Pedagogical

• Teaches individuals how to conform and advance in society, especially in archaic cultures (Mircea Eliade, Joseph Campbell)

Cosmological

• Provides a working “map” of the conceivable universe (S. H. Hooke)
• Relates to a Creation of the World and the subsequent interaction of gods, goddesses, semi-divine beings, human beings, animals, vegetation and the geographical landscape (Donna Rosenberg)

Magical

• A story designed to evoke magical powers (Jane Harrison)

Spiritual

• Symbolizes and possibly leads to an awareness of dimensions and beings beyond the mundane world (Mircea Eliade, Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung)
• Mythic rites and rituals bring forth a ‘sacred history’ within the context of human life (Mircea Eliade, Joseph Campbell)

Philosophical and Theological

• Myth arises from incorrect insights, that is, intuitions about ultimate reality (or specific situations) which have not been questioned nor empirically investigated “until no further relevant questions arise” (Bernard Lonergan)
• A symbolic means of expression through which mankind attempts to answer existential questions-i.e. achieve self-understanding in a world where the transcendental is often seen as immanent (Rudolf Bultmann)

Transformational

• Recent figures like Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer, Carl Jung, Melanie Klein, Joseph Campbell, Mary Daly and Barbara Walker implicitly or explicitly say that their own modern myths (i.e. theories about myth and related cosmologies) contribute to the betterment of self and society

Economic and Entertainment

• Film, music, videos, literature, TV, advertising, video games and most other forms of popular culture belong here (and in some of the above categories). To mention a few: Kyle XY, X-Men, Harry Potter, Star Trek, Star Wars, The Matrix, BattleStar Galactica, Stargate Atlantis, Rocky Horror Picture Show, Batman, Superman, Spiderman, The Flintstones, Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse, The Incredible Hulk, Xena the Warrior Princess, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the TV Hercules, KISS, Marilyn Manson, Michael Jackson, HALO 3, Super Mario, Avatar (the movie)

Notes

1. Tom Henighan. ITV lecture for English 18.208 (Myth and Symbol) televised at Carleton University, Ottawa: January 29, 1998.

2. This is debatable, particularly with regard to Hindu myth.

3. Cinderella might seem an exception but as ’Microglyphic’ pointed out at the former Askme.com, she’s renamed as such by her step-sisters. See, for instance the Brothers Grimm variant of the tale.

4. Mircea Eliade, Myth and Reality. Trans. Willard R. Trask. New York: Harper & Row, 1963, pp. 8-10.

5. (a) Anaximander (611-547 BCE) and Xenophanes (570-480 BCE) for instance, directly challenged the anthropomorhpic gods of ancient Greece. And doubts most likely existed among the historically invisible (the vast majority of people who were never famous enough for the history books). Also, in ancient Egypt crudely made statues apparently mocked Akhenaten and his wife Nefertiti, likely carved by dissenters.
(b) Military conquerors and occupying powers also influenced local myths in the ancient world. Conquerors would sometimes replace indigenous myths with their own. Other times they would import myths yet tolerate those of the subjugated. Military victors also synthesized their own myths with those of the defeated populations, as in India and Rome.

6. (a) John Noss in Man’s Religions (1957: 45-96) outlines some of the political and socially stratified aspects of pagan worship in ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome.
(b) A contemporary example might be found within the Roman Catholic Church, where penalties can be harsh for disobedience among the clergy and also among wayward believers (e.g. women ordained as priests).

7. Eliade, Myth and Reality, p. 5.

The meanings of myth © Michael Clark. All rights reserved.

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The Mystery of Matter – Rupert Sheldrake’s Formative Causation

Organized nature

Copyright © 1996, 2012 James Arraj.
All rights reserved.

This excerpt from The Mystery of Matter: Nonlocality, Morphic Resonance, Synchro-nicity and the Philosophy of Nature of St. Thomas Aquinas has been posted with kind permission from the author.

Read or purchase entire book at innerexplorations.com

While it is not necessary to set the historical stage as we did with quantum theory in order to understand Rupert Sheldrake’s work, we should realize that it is part of a non-mechanistic current in biology that has always existed, although in recent times as a minority. Sheldrake is an English biologist who first came to public notice in 1981 with the controversies that surrounded the publication of his A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Formative Causation. Sheldrake’s work will give us another opportunity to see important philosophical issues begin to emerge from the careful consideration of scientific problems.

Sheldrake had shared the view of most biologists that “living organisms are nothing but complex machines governed only by the known laws of physics and chemistry.” (1) But pondering unsolved problems in biology led him to give up this mechanistic viewpoint. One of these problems was biological morphogenesis, or the coming into being of the form of an organism. This development is what biologists describe as epigenetic: “New structures appear which cannot be explained in terms of the unfolding or growth of structures which are already present In the egg at the beginning of development.” (2) Other issues, intractable to a purely mechanistic approach, include regulation, regeneration and reproduction. Regulation is the ability of the living being to overcome the loss of one of its parts, and still develop into a complete organism. What guides it to that goal? In regeneration, the organism replaces a part that is destroyed. And in reproduction the organism creates a completely independent form. In all these cases what is observed goes beyond what can be understood by the model of a machine.

The difficulty of explaining these morphological issues is matched by a series of behavioral problems: instinct, behavioral regulation, learning, and intelligent behavior. Neither can mechanism create an adequate explanation for psychological views like that of the unconscious proposed by C.G. Jung. Even the explanatory power of DNA has its limits. Chimpanzees and humans share almost 99% of their non-repeated DNA sequences, and yet show enormous behavioral differences.

Once Sheldrake realized the limitations of the mechanistic approach, he saw two alternative possibilities. On the one hand there was vitalism, and on the other, some kind of organismic or wholistic approach. Vitalism says there is another causal factor involved in living organisms. One of its most forceful modern proponents was the German embryologist, Hans Driesch. Driesch, who had himself started off as an adherent to mechanism, had conducted a series of experiments on the embryos of sea urchins in which one of their original cells was destroyed, yet the embryos regulated themselves, and reached the goal of normal adult development. No machine, Driesch reasoned, could survive the arbitrary removal of some of its parts and still retain this kind of wholeness. He therefore hypothesized the existence of a non-physical, non-spatial causal factor in living beings which, with a nod to Aristotle, he called entelechy. This entelechy directed the physical and chemical processes during the organism’s development. The word entelechy came from Greek and meant ‘bearing the goal within itself,’ and Driesch thought of it as an “intensive manifoldness.” It was, in his mind, a natural factor but not a form of matter or energy.

Despite the merits of Driesch’s position, Sheldrake was unhappy with the fact that the entelechy was non-physical, and thus led to a dualistic conception of the organism, for how could it act on physical and chemical processes if it, itself, was not physical? “The physical world and the non-physical entelechy could never be explained or understood in terms of each other.” (3) Then Sheldrake turned to organicism, which tried to solve the problems of morphological development by proposing that the wholeness exhibited came from embryonic or developmental or morphogenetic fields. But as potentially fertile as this idea was, it had remained more of a description of morphogenesis than an explanation of it.

Sheldrake took the best in Driesch’s vitalism and of these field theories, and created a new hypothesis he called formative causation. Forms are all around us, and they cannot be completely comprehended in purely quantitative terms. Biologists recognize forms like flowers and butterflies directly, and classify them. “As forms they are simply themselves; they cannot be reduced to anything else… If the forms of things are to be understood, they need not be explained in terms of numbers, but in terms of more fundamental forms.” (4) These kinds of reflections brought to mind the doctrine of Plato in which the things of daily experience were reflections of the archetypal forms, but this didn’t explain how these eternal forms were related to our earthly ones.

“Aristotle believed this problem could be overcome by regarding the forms of things as immanent rather than transcendent: specific forms were not only inherent in objects, but actually caused them to take up their characteristic forms.” (5)

Sheldrake realized that physics dealt with energy as a principle of change, but not really with form, and so he proposed a new type of causation. “The hypothesis of formative causation proposes that morphogenetic fields play a causal role in the development and maintenance of the forms of systems at all levels of complexity. In this context, the word ‘form’ is taken to include not only the shape of the outer surface or boundary of a system, but also its internal structure.” (6) He recognized that the energetic cause in physics was like Aristotle’s efficient cause, while his formative causation resembled Aristotle’s formal cause, and he uses the analogy of building a house to illustrate this kind of causality. In order to build a house we need the raw materials, the carpenters who do the actual building, but also a plan “which determines the form of the house.” And this plan, too, is a cause. (7)

Morphogenetic fields are not kinds of energy, but they play a causal role in determining the forms of the systems with which they are associated.” (8) They are ” spatial structures detectable only through their morphogenetic effects on material systems.. Thus there must be one kind of morphogenetic field for protons; another for nitrogen atoms; another for water molecules; another for sodium chloride crystals; another for the muscle cells of earthworms; another for the kidneys of sheep; another for elephants; another for beech trees; and so on.” (9)

In morphogenesis a morphogenetic field surrounds an already organized system which becomes the germ of the higher level system to come, and the field is probably associated with this germ because of their similarities in form. This germ develops under the direction of the field which is not yet filled out or completed, but contains the final goal in virtual form, and directs the activities of the seed system so it realizes that goal. “(M)orphogenetic fields differ radically from electromagnetic fields in that the latter depend on the actual state of the system – on the distribution and movement of charged particles whereas morphogenetic fields correspond to the potential state of a developing system and are already present before it takes up its final form.” (10)

There is a certain constancy to form. This is readily understandable if forms are a result of changeless physical laws like a mechanistic approach supposes. But Sheldrake is trying to break out of that framework, and he comes up with what he considers a radically different approach: “Chemical and biological forms are repeated not because they are determined by changeless laws or eternal Forms, but because of a causal influence from previous similar forms. This influence would require an action across space and time unlike any known type of physical action.” (11)

The question immediately occurs to him about the origin of the first forms which will, according to this hypothesis, then begin to influence subsequent ones. He feels that no scientific answer is possible because the origination of forms is a unique event, while science deals with repeatable events. “The initial choice of a particular form could be ascribed to chance, or to a creativity inherent in matter; or to a transcendent creative agency.” (12)

A form influences subsequent forms by a kind of morphic resonance, and since this resonance is non-energetic like the morphogenetic fields themselves it need not be limited by space and time. It is the morphic resonance aspect of the idea of formative causation that gives rise to testable predictions, and this is, no doubt, an important reason why it recommended itself to Sheldrake, and he goes on to suggest various ways in which it could be tested. These include the speed of formation of new crystals and experiments in plant breeding, and their basic principle is simply that if a form or behavior has been repeated in the past, then it will be more readily repeatable in the present, for the past form and behavior resonate with and influence the present. The interaction between the physical and chemical processes of the organism and morphogenetic fields and their power of resonance can be compared to a radio playing music. The physical structure of the radio and its power source are essential to its functioning, but it receives radio waves without which there would be no music. “In terms of the hypothesis of formative causation, the ‘transmission’ would come from previous similar systems, and its ‘reception’ would depend on the detailed structure and organization of the receiving system.” (13)

Sheldrake then goes on to apply this hypothesis to a wealth of biological problems ranging from inheritance, to the evolution of biological forms, the movement of plants and animals, instinct, and behavior.

In The Presence of the Past: Morphic Resonance and the Habits of Nature which appeared in 1988, Sheldrake takes up the same theme of formative causation but with a different emphasis. He is going to place it “in its broad historical, philosophical, and scientific context.” (14)

“Things are as they are because they were as they were.” (15) There is a memory inherent in nature that is passed on from one generation to another by means of morphic resonance. Memory does not have to be conceived as something engraved on our brains, but rather, might be directly present to us. The morphic fields of past organisms might somehow continue to be present to us. Sheldrake feels that immutable laws of nature are tied to a view of the universe as an eternal machine, and both these perspectives are not in harmony with what we now know about evolution. “Rather than being governed by eternal laws, the nature of things may be habitual.” (16)

In the past the laws of nature were presented as if they had an objective existence which somehow transcended space and time, and were even imagined by scientists to have existed before the creation of the universe. To this Sheldrake responds: “How could we possibly know that the laws of nature existed before the universe came into being? We could not ever hope to prove it by experiment. This is surely no more than a metaphysical assumption.” (17)

“Eternal laws made sense when they were ideas within the mind of God, as they were for the founding fathers of modern science. They still seem to make sense when they govern an eternal universe from which God’s mind had been dissolved. But do they any longer make sense in the context of the Big Bang and an evolving universe?” (18) Sheldrake feels that these eternal laws should be replaced by the notion of habits, but if we do so, we are still left with the question of how these habits originated and sustained themselves. Somehow habits arise within nature and influence subsequent events.

The idea of eternal laws is deeply rooted in Western tradition and goes back much further than the rise of modern science. Here he again summarizes some of that philosophical tradition in which the eternal forms of Plato were seen by Aristotle to be immanent in things. For Aristotle all living beings had souls that directed their development and activities toward a goal. But Sheldrake feels that these souls, or natures, were also conceived by Aristotle as fixed and changeless. Another problem with Aristotle’s conception is that “the forms of all kinds of organisms arise from non-material organizing principles inherent in the organisms themselves.” (19) This, as we remember, gave rise to the dualism that Sheldrake objected to in Driesch’s work. Aristotle’s viewpoint was highly influential in later theories of vitalism and organismic philosophies, and Sheldrake is making himself heir to this tradition, but trying to put it in an evolutionary context.

There is something so fundamental about the idea of form in biology that it keeps on reappearing. “All attempts to force the organizing principles of life into material objects such as genes have failed: they keep bursting out again. The concept of purposive organizing principles which are non-material in nature have been reinvented again and again.” (20) Even the idea of the universe as a machine implies a plan of organization. Whether we look to the laws of nature or information theory, we return to the fundamental idea of form. “Information is what informs; it plays an informative role…” (21) “Is the information Platonic, somehow transcending time and space? Or is it immanent within organisms?” (22) For Sheldrake this kind of biological information, or morphogenetic fields are immanent in organisms and “inherited in a non-material manner.” (23) These morphogenetic fields are physically real fields with their own spatio-temporal organization. Past fields influence present ones by “a non-energetic transfer of Information.” (24) Therefore, while physically real they are not like the fields physics knows, and involve “a kind of action at a distance in both space and time” which doesn’t decline with distance in space and time. (25)

As a scientist the idea of testing this hypothesis by experiment was central to Sheldrake’s thinking, and he suggested various ingenious experiments that could be carried out. One that was actually done was the result of a competition held to develop ways to test the idea of formative causation. In the actual experiment non-Japanese speaking participants are asked to chant three different Japanese rhymes. One was a traditional Japanese nursery rhyme, another was a similarly structured Japanese rhyme created for comparison, and a third was a chant that made no sense in Japanese. The theory, of course, was that the traditional rhyme, established by millions of repetitions would have a stronger field which would influence the learning of these non-Japanese speaking participants. In actual fact they did, Indeed, find learning the Japanese nursery rhyme easier than the other two, but as Sheldrake pointed out, it is difficult to demonstrate that the original nursery rhyme was identical in learning difficulty to the others.

Sheldrake felt that morphogenetic, or morphic fields, might also help us to understand the mysterious nature of memory, and he goes into a wealth of detail of how these fields could shed light on this whole realm. Not only will an organism tune into its own past by a kind of self-resonance, it will also tune into the collective memory of past fields. Something like telepathy could be explained as a tuning into the fields of other people. Even belief in reincarnation could be related not to one person having lived a former life, but having tuned in to the morphic field and the associated memory of the person who lived before.

Societies of animals and insects often act as if they have a morphic field common to them. How else can we explain the elaborate behavior of a hive of bees, or the coordinated movements of schools of fish and flocks of birds? Sheldrake recounts the work of the South African naturalist, Eugene Marais, who drove a large steel plate through the center of a termite mound in such a way that it was divided into two separate parts. Marais concluded: “The builders on one side of the breach know nothing of those on the other side. In spite of this the termites build a similar arch or tower on each side of the plate. When eventually you withdraw the plate, the two halves match perfectly after the dividing cut has been repaired. We cannot escape the ultimate conclusion that somewhere there exists a preconceived plan which the termites merely execute.” (26)

Of particular interest to us is the link that Sheldrake forges with Jung’s idea of the collective unconscious. Jung found similar patterns in the myths and dreams of people from all over the world and from different periods of time, and concluded to the existence of a collective unconscious, “a kind of inherited collective memory.” (27) “Even if it were to be assumed that the myths of, say, a Yoruba tribe could somehow become coded in their genes and their archetypal structure be inherited by subsequent members of the tribe, this would not explain how a Swiss person could have a dream that seemed to arise from the same archetype. (28) But the idea of morphic resonance makes it a lot easier, in Sheldrake’s mind, to understand how such a thing could take place. For Jung, the contents of the collective unconscious is made up of archetypes which are innate psychic structures, and Sheldrake likens these archetypes to morphic fields that contain “the average forms of previous experience.” (29)

Sheldrake’s remarks on Jung form a bridge to chapter three where we will look at Jung’s synchronicity, but he also has some interesting comments on the work of David Bohm. The nature of life and consciousness have not yet been integrated into the theories of modern physics. “There is a need for a new natural philosophy that goes further than physics alone can go but remains in harmony with it.” (30) And it is David Bohm’s ideas on the implicate order that Sheldrake sees as one of the best candidates for this natural philosophy.

“Bohm emphasizes the importance for physics, biology, and psychology of the notion of formative causation as ‘an ordered and structured inner movement that is essential to what things are.’ Any formative cause must evidently have an end or goal which is at least implicit – what Aristotle called a final cause. Thus, for example, it is not possible to refer to the inner movement from the acorn giving rise to the oak tree without simultaneously referring to the oak tree that is going to result from this movement. Bohm points out that in the ancient view, ‘the notion of formative cause was considered to be of essentially the same nature for the mind as it was for life and for the cosmos as a whole.’” (31)

“Bohm’s theory of the implicate order is more fundamental than the hypothesis of formative causation, but the two approaches appear to be quite compatible.” (32) Sheldrake and Bohm discussed their relationship, and Bohm considered that the movement from the explicate back to the implicate order and back again, if repeated enough, could give rise to a fixed disposition. “The point is that, via this process, past forms would tend to be repeated or replicated in the present, and that is very similar to what Sheldrake calls a morphogenetic field and morphic resonance. Moreover, such a field would not be located anywhere. When it projects back into the totality (the implicate order), since no space and time are relevant there, all things of a similar nature might get connected together or resonate in totality.” (33)

We certainly have not exhausted the richness of Sheldrake’s thought, but I believe that once again we have seen how the notion of formal cause appears in the midst of deep scientific reflection and points to the need for a dialogue between science and a philosophy of nature. We will continue to make this point in the chapter that follows.

—

This excerpt from The Mystery of Matter: Nonlocality, Morphic Resonance, Synchronicity and the Philosophy of Nature of St. Thomas Aquinas has been posted with kind permission from the author » read or purchase entire book at innerexplorations.com

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A Tale Most Strange?

Under the surface - Earthpages.org

Copyright © Terry Stokes, 2012. All rights reserved

Many alternative medical clinics now have a practitioner of psychic skills among their staff, and Sigmund Freud, Hans Eysenck and Carl Jung saw the day when all counseling would be intuitively based. Yet once in a while a story happens that defies the putting into any category, normal or paranormal. Such an event occurred when a guy came into the clinic and told me the following tale.

This guy, a powerfully built and articulate surfboarder with a London accent, said he took his sport very seriously and he was listed as among the very best at his craft which took him to venues and events all over the world. His face, voice and mannerisms told me that something must have very seriously shattered the even tenor of his thought patterning and disrupted his auric energy flow…

He said that although surfing the waves was his life and that it gave him an incredible high, he had this deep fear that he would be eaten by a huge shark which on occasion over the years he would see in his dreams watching him, and stalking him before the dreaded attack.

On a recent visit to a popular surfing spot overseas, he had got up early one morning walked the short distance to the seashore from the small hotel with his surfboard, when as he reached the beach he could see perhaps eight or ten guys scattered across the sands, just sitting watching him with their boards, he nodded to one chap who was holding a bar of abrasive soap and rubbing along the base of his board, he thought; “conditions are just right why is no one in the water”? And enthusiastically in he went.

He was out some way when on looking down he could see the sand on the sea bottom, when a large dark shape glided between the sea bottom and his surf board, and a large eye looked up coldly at him, he started to make for the shore as quick as he could, then he said he saw it all as if watching a film, the creature again swam by under him, this time as the water had got shallower, very close to him indeed, and the large eye was so close he could see it very plainly, and fear overwhelmed him, when the creature came up under him a third time filling him with a deep peculiar horror, throwing him and the board high into the air, he grabbed the board thinking he may be able to help fend it of with it when, he realized he had been thrown onto a small submerged coral reef and he ran along it with water up to his belly button, he saw the creature swimming slowly alongside and it seemed to be smiling at him, and again the huge eye watched him, when the dreadful thought occurred that the ragged coral which was tearing his feet as he ran on it would be putting blood in the water ensuring his awful fate.

The blind panic as he saw the guys on the beach calmly watching him splashing madly for shore as the beast was alongside him watching him with the very eye he knew so well from his dreams. He was suddenly conscious that this may be his last few heart beats, his last terrified breaths, his last exhausted thoughts, and he would never be able to tell his new girl friend how much he loved her or thank his mum for loaning him the money for the holiday. Everything became silent and in slow motion. He no longer heard the seagulls above, the wind went calm, and he waited for the worst.

His next thought as he came round was that he had momentarily lost consciousness in the panic and was now breathing heavily and trembling badly on the sand with his board, his feet were blood spattered from running on the sharp coral, but he was alive and although scared witless the attack had not happened.

He looked around at the guys on the beach, the camaraderie which all surf boarders usually shared was definitely missing here, as he looked round at the guy still slowly using the abrasive soap on the board, and the awful thought occurred to him that they had not gone into the water in these perfect conditions because they knew a shark was out there, and by allowing him to go out and become a meal for the beast to slake its hunger, it would then be safe for them to surf.

He could not get his head round all this and did not go in the water again. He told me the scenario was so similar to the warnings in his dream, but he had survived when the shark could so easily have got him, and what did it all mean?

There are many explanations here, I would like to hear yours.

—Terry Stokes, Lecturer in Paranormal Studies

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Deciphering dreams – different perspectives

Dreaming Girls Head by Elfleda via Flickr

No one really knows exactly what dreams are or where they come from. People who see our world through a materialistic lens usually say that dreams are a random product of memory, based on the brain’s acquisition and interpretation of sensory input. Others say that dreams help to release physio-logical, sensory and psychological data that we pick up through waking and sleeping hours.

Followers of Sigmund Freud, who was an atheist for much of his life, try to decipher the meaning of dreams according to Freud’s psychoanalytic theory. For Freudians, understanding is all about deciphering the dreamer’s real and imagined world through the often baffling language of dreams.

Carl Jung, who was once Freud’s brightest student, arguably takes a more comprehensive approach. Jungians try to decode dreams by looking at the biological, psychological, cultural, transpersonal, and spiritual aspects of the self, also taking into account the dreamer’s total life situation.

A Quick Look at Dream Theory

Human beings have interpreted dreams for centuries. The ancient Greeks practiced so-called dream incubation to try to cure illnesses often associated with a deity’s displeasure. The afflicted would enter a sacred chamber, allowing visionary or incubated dreams to guide them towards health. This ancient practice was based on the belief that angry deities made people unwell but divine mercy could heal them.

Joseph of the Bible’s Old Testament became a powerful figure in Egypt because he was a gifted dream interpreter. But dream interpretation was by no means unique to the ancient Israelites. Most ancient cultures studied dreams to prophesize, predict, assist and inspire.

The early Christian Tertullian (155-230 CE) believed that dreams came from God, Satan, or were produced by the individual soul in connection with nature. And the early Roman writer Macrobius (395-423 CE) was one of the first dream theorists to look seriously at nightmares.

In medieval times the cruel and paranoid side of humanity was, perhaps, most prevalent with the Christian Inquisitions, irrational witch hunts and the burning of heretics. And dream theory within the Church reflected that disturbing paranoia.

By the 16th and 17th centuries Father Gracian, St. Theresa’s confessor, wrote that “it is a sin to believe in dreams.”¹ Gracian and other notables of the day placed much emphasis on Satan, linking the devil to the sexual content of dreams.

A few centuries later, Freud said that dream analysis is the “royal road” to the unconscious, making a distinction between the manifest and latent content of dreams. The manifest content is the dream remembered by the conscious mind, usually a condensed, displaced or symbolic version of the latent content. The latent content consists of the dreamer’s unconscious feelings, perceptions and desires, to be deciphered through psychoanalysis.

Freud believed that upsetting and sleep-disturbing latent content is psychologically censored, just as a newspaper editor censors articles that would be too disruptive if published. Freud also felt that environmental stimuli, such as traffic sounds outside the dreamer’s window, could influence the manifest content.

Alfred Adler once belonged to Freud’s inner circle but eventually broke with Freud over professional differences. Adler argued that Freud placed too much emphasis on sex. Adler also regarded conscious intent as equally, if not more, important than unconscious impulses.

Adler believed that dreams help to identify and overcome daytime problems. Life wasn’t about accepting “normal human unhappiness,” as Freud once put it. Alder saw life as an opportunity to overcome unrealistic feelings of inferiority and superiority. Through a process of self-improvement individuals gain an increased sense of mastery and, so it follows, happiness.

Like Adler, Freud’s prodigy Jung once followed but ultimately spoke out against Freudian theory. When Jung couldn’t toe the line any longer, he openly questioned Freud’s ideas, suggesting they were reductive and unscientific. This caused a permanent rift in their once very close relationship.

Jung went on to outline two main types of dreams, unpretentiously called big dreams and little dreams. Big dreams contain archetypal material originating from the collective unconscious. They may be visionary, involve grand themes (such as the mythic journey of the hero) and usually compel the dreamer to make significant life changes. Little dreams are more of the Freudian sort. They involve the personal unconscious and upper layers of the collective unconscious (such as the archetype of the shadow), and point to the need for smaller psychological adjustments instead of dramatic life changes.

The Gestalt theorist Fritz Perls believed that every aspect of the dream points toward some unconscious aspect of the dreamer’s total personality.

Contemporary parapsychologists take things a step further by saying that dreams may be predictive and involve the spirit world.

Jung also believed in the paranormal aspects of dreams but was careful to integrate the physiological, psychological and spiritual dimensions as he understood them.

How Can Dreams Help?

Upstairs at BMV Books, Toronto by MC

Dogmatic materialists and skeptics aside, most people agree that the primary purpose of dreams is to integrate unconscious and conscious attitudes, this hopefully leading to a better, more realistic approach to life.

The following builds on several leading perspectives and includes some original ideas of my own.² These categories aren’t watertight nor exhaustive. But hopefully they’ll illustrate some of the value and complexity of dream interpretation.

Compensation

Compensation is when the (unconscious) dreaming self attempts to restore or achieve balance within the (conscious) daytime attitude. A daytime racist, for instance, might dream of an enchanted encounter with someone of another color. Or a daytime bully who victimizes gays and lesbians might dream about an enjoyable same sex liaison.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that the dreamer should act out their dream content in daily life. Rather, the dream merely opens doors to new possibilities, encouraging a more comprehensive, less judgmental worldview.

Wish-fulfillment

An example of wish-fulfillment would be when someone wants a romantic getaway vacation to the Barbados but can’t afford the time or perhaps money to get there. If the desire and need for this kind of diversion are strong enough, chances are they’ll dream about it.

The same applies to lonely people in search of a soul mate. They may never find them during the day. But their dreams can be rich and satisfying to the point where it’s upsetting to awake. On this, the Japanese poet Ohtomo Yakamochi wrote:

[These] meetings in dreams,
How sad they are!
When, waking up startled
One gropes about,–
And there is no contact to the hand.

—From the Manyo Shu, compiled 760 CE

Purging

In a purging dream, one gets rid of their negative feelings for another person or situation. Typically, someone will dream of screaming and shouting (maybe even cursing) at someone else whom they consciously or unconsciously resent during the daytime. On waking they feel better.

Residual

Residual dreams illustrate leftover conscious or unconscious feelings from daytime. They can involve the purging of negative emotions (as above) but also celebrating positive feelings.

Getting in touch | Seeing where it hurts

Here we dream about people or situations that have or still do upset us in daytime reality. We don’t wake up feeling better. In fact, we usually wake up feeling hurt. But this helps us to learn about and feel our hidden pain in order to better deal with it.

This type of dream differs from purging and residual dreams because on waking we may still be upset, even shaken. But this can be therapeutic. For to not know ourselves is usually a recipe for disaster. In psychoanalytic terms, this is a kind of abreaction.

Abreaction is a release and re-experiencing of painful or traumatic events or emotions. In many dreams it is obvious that the process underlying dreams is attempting to trigger an abreaction.³

Feeling Tone

The content of feeling tone dreams are generally forgotten but on waking the dream instills an emotional climate appropriate for the day.† The waking self is emotionally prepared to “get up and go.” An example would be a traveler who wakes up in a foreign country, eager to explore various architectural landmarks.

Feeling tone dreams can also be more subtle. A typically grouchy person, for example, might wake up feeling more favorably disposed toward his or her family and friends.

Problem Solving

Problem solving dreams provide solutions to vexing issues and practical problems encountered by the waking self. The answer may be cloaked in symbolism but usually some kind of direct statement is given in the dream.

A lost ring, for instance, might be located through a dream in which a voice simply says, “look under the mat.” This might seem trite but it points to the idea that, in many instances, the dreaming self is more knowledgeable than the waking.

Transformational

These are similar to wish-fulfillment (see above), but transformational dreams signify general motifs or trends as opposed to specific objects of desire. For instance, we dream of flying around the neighborhood or to distant countries. The weightlessness is sheer joy. This could symbolize “taking off” in life, socially or professionally.

Creative and Inspirational

Creative and Inspirational dreams contain specific content that a person may apply to their daytime work. Music composers, for instance, sometimes dream about melodies and arrangements. And history records not a few inventors who dreamed of devices and innovations before manufacturing them.

Nightmares

Nightmares are generally viewed as warning dreams. The nightmare is trying to jolt us into recognizing and readjusting an inappropriate conscious attitude or situation. A recurring nightmare points toward something in ourselves (or in life) that urgently needs change.

Visionary

Here we have wonderful or perhaps horrific dreams of things to come—that is, the future of humanity. It seems that visionary dreams and their interpretation are almost always colored by personal and cultural filters. Some visionaries recognize this, while others tend to habitually mistake their vague predictions for precise ones. If left unchecked, the misguided visionary might go insane in some rare instances. But usually they just go on fooling themselves and anyone gullible enough to follow their half-baked predictions.

Precognitive

Precognitive dreams are similar to visionary dreams but not as momentous. Here one simply dreams of something which, in fact, occurs later in waking reality. These could come about by (a) God letting the person know what will happen (b) the person sensing things through time (which as we now know, is a relative construct) or (c) a combination of (a) and (b), that is, God allowing a person to sort of psychologically “time travel,” as it were.† This latter view upsets some traditional theologians who just can’t get their head around the idea that space-time is not linear.

Controlled

Also called conscious or lucid dreaming, controlled dreaming is a controversial technique based on shamanic traditions where one actively creates or has a conscious effect on the dream content. Some control their dreams for pleasure. Others strive to improve conditions in the everyday world, this based on the belief (and perhaps observation) that dreaming and waking realities are intimately (if mysteriously) connected.

Empathetic

Here the dreamer experiences another person’s problems, concerns or situation. During the empathetic dream the dreamer fully believes that he or she is confronted with issues that, in actuality, pertain to somebody else.† An extreme example would be a law abiding person dreaming they are a desperate criminal, always worried that he or she will get caught by the authorities.

The value of this type of dream is that the dreamer, upon waking, gains insight and can be sympathetic to the plight of others without actually doing the bad thing.† Of course, a similar effect can come through the arts (Elton John’s “Have Mercy on the Criminal” song comes to mind). But the impact of an empathetic dream is more powerful and immediate, making the innocent dreamer feel he or she really understands what it’s like to be a desperate crook.

Although empathetic dreams differ from intercession dreams (below), the empathetic dream can be an explanatory companion to intercession dreams—i.e. the dreamer better understands why they must spend time in contemplative or vocal prayer for another person.†

No surprise then, that the empathetic dream is especially valuable for contemplative saints (or saints in the making) who apparently take the sins (or karma) for others less able to understand and, therefore, appreciate the subtler points of religious experience.†

Intercession

Intercession is a theological term. It points to the idea that souls mediate God’s graces to one another. In the context of dreaming, intercession may or may not take place in real time. That is, one may dream of and intercede for a bad situation that could take place in the future. In the dream state the dreamer mediates graces to another soul so as to engender healing or to encourage that person to avoid making a bad choice.†

This kind of dreaming exhibits aspects of precognitive and controlled dreaming. But it differs in the sense that, within the context of the dream, one prays in a contemplative way for another person.† As with daytime intercessory prayers, the ultimate source of healing and positive redirection is God, not the dreamer.

It’s conceivable that intercession dreams are effective in real time and, given the relativity of space-time, also with past events. Here, dreamers would intercede in a positive way, for example, for victims of past wars and other atrocities.†

Intercession dreams may also be related to Empathetic Dreams (see above).†

Paranormal

The terms paranormal and normal seem somewhat arbitrary. They’re perhaps more reflections of the status quo than absolute categories, so they’re used here mostly for convenience.

With paranormal dreams, believers claim the psyche accesses information normally restricted by conscious and unconscious attitudes and also by the selective attention that is required for daytime activities. These dreams range from contacting the dead, traveling through time, and taking astral journeys to faraway countries, distant galaxies, exotic realms and other alleged dimensions. They can also involve communing with aliens and perceiving other people’s thoughts, emotions and inclinations.

While some report seeing or, perhaps, contacting themselves in past lives (i.e. reincarnation) during a dream, it’s important to realize that this is not necessarily fact. As a rule of thumb, paranormal dreams must be carefully interpreted and assessed. To take paranormal dreams at face value without informed analysis seems unwise because there’s no guarantee that the dream information is trustworthy or interpreted correctly.†

Hellish

Hellish dreams are different from usual nightmares. On waking the dreamer feels as if they have had an actual glimpse or personally experienced an actual hell. The experience is far more profound than a mere frightening series of events, characteristic of most nightmares. Hellish dreams arguably aren’t just imaginal representations but, rather, ontological encounters occurring during the sleep state. This is about the very real feeling of being damned and tormented for all time.

Due to the immediacy and intensity of the hellish experience, on waking the dreamer usually feels they’ve received a dire warning to change some attitude or behavior for the better.

Heavenly and Blissful

Many spiritually minded folk don’t like to differentiate the heavenly from astral realms (along with their respective numinous qualities). But one could reply that these people, for whatever reasons, just haven’t matured enough in their spiritual formation to understand and appreciate the difference.† By way of analogy, try telling a 3 year-old the difference between pi, infinity, and the speed of light—or, for that matter, between whiskey, vodka and wine. In both cases, the child just isn’t there yet to get it. And so it may be with many adults, who for all intents and purposes, seem more like kids (or maybe teens) when it comes to understanding matters spiritual.†

By way of contrast, many say on the basis of personal experience that heaven is of an entirely different order and beauty than the astral realms or the energy of the cosmos.

At any rate, in this kind of dream one experiences heavenly realms and all the contentment, love, grace and profound peace that accompany them. And heavenly bliss is often distinguished from the following “lesser” paths of natural and aesthetic beauty, vital pleasures (e.g. sex and eating), endorphin and adrenaline rushes, alcoholic merriment, drug-induced altered states, and forms of intuitive or extroverted pseudo-spirituality characterized by immaturity, egoism and an absence of genuine love.

To what degree heavenly bliss might coexist with other, lesser pleasures remains a matter open to debate. But even if heavenly graces did coexist with lesser pleasures, we can still discern the different components of a given experience.† By way of analogy, water may be combined with coffee, sugar and cream but these various elements remain different.

This notion of a hierarchy of pleasures, from vulgar to heavenly, isn’t terribly new. The idea appears in ancient Indian and Greek philosophies. As noted above, Tertullian wrote that some dreams are an ecstatic, purely spiritual experience, in contrast to those generated by the soul and nature.

More recently, the Indian mystic Sri Aurobindo had much to say about different levels of spiritual experience. Aurobindo also warned against the deceptive influences of astral realms. However, Aurobindo didn’t have too much to say about dreams per se because for him, sleep was something to be overcome. Aurobindo claims he eventually overcame “The Sleep,” as he put it, replacing sleep and dreaming with the preferable state of meditation.

Final Word

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of dreams is their tendency to synthesize a great deal of information. Assuming that one has a feel for dream interpretation, it seems that past, present and future possibilities as well as feelings, attitudes and suggestions for improvement are combined in a brief production often reminiscent of an Oscar winning movie. Because most “dream movies” exhibit such a high degree of intellectual and artistic excellence, it seems improbable that the dreamer is the sole creator and director. Indeed, most of us could never hope to write a novel or screenplay containing the wisdom and brilliance of dreams.

This synthetic aspect of dreams suggests that some unknown agency beyond the body, brain and soul is at least partly responsible for dream production. And all we have to do is sleep!

—

¹Father Gracian cited in Robert L. Van de Castle, Our Dreaming Mind. New York: Ballantine Books, 1994, p. 83.

² My own ideas are indicated with the † symbol.

³ Tony Crisp http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/abreaction/

Further Reading

Castaneda, Carlos. The Art of Dreaming. New York: HarperCollins, 1993. Nobody knows whether Castaneda was writing fiction, fact or some combination of the two. But he does a good job illustrating a shamanistic perspective through his account of Don Juan.

Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams. Penguin Freud Library Volume 4. Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1976.

Hall, James A. Jungian Dream Interpretation: A Handbook of Theory and Practice. Toronto: Inner City Books, 1983.

Jung, C. G. Dreams, trans. R. F. C. Hull. Princeton, New Jersey: Bollingen Series XX Princeton University Press, 1954. This is a good collection of Jung’s work on dreams from different sources.

Lewis, James, R. The Dream Encyclopedia. Detroit: Visible Ink Press, 1995. This isn’t just another “10,000 Dreams Interpreted” type book. It contains referenced and insightful comments throughout.

Pliskin, Marcia. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Interpreting Your Dreams. New York: Alpha Books, 1999. Don’t be biased against the fact that this is an Idiots Guide. It’s a good introduction.

Telesco, Patricia. The Language of Dreams. Freedom, California: The Crossing Press, 1997. I found Part One of this book, ‘A Time to Dream,’ most useful.

Van de Castle, Robert L. Our Dreaming Mind. New York: Ballantine Books, 1994. An excellent survey and resource book for further study by Dr. Van de Castle.

Some Interesting Dream Quotes » http://www.quotegarden.com/dreams.html

Disclaimer: This article does not possess any kind of medical, legal or religious authority. Those with physical, mental or spiritual health issues are advised to consult an appropriate and licensed professional.

“Deciphering dreams – different perspectives” © Michael W. Clark, Ph.D. All rights reserved.

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Parapraxes, Accidents and Necessary Mistakes

A life spent making mistakes is better than a life spent doing nothing: sara b. via Flickr

Copyright © Michael Clark. All rights reserved.

Parapraxes is an unusual word that might sound odd to those unfamiliar with psychoanalytic theory. But it’s a fairly simple idea.

In the Psychopathology of Everyday Life Freud says that parapraxes are unintentional acts resulting from an unconscious wish, desire, attitude or thought (London: Penguin, 2002 [1901]).

Parapraxes could involve forgetting names and sequences of words, but classic examples are slips of the pen or tongue.

Imagine someone at a cocktail party accidentally saying “I love your horse” instead of “I love your house.”

For Freud, the hidden meaning of a parapraxis can be found in the person making the slip. In the above example, the speaker could be an avid equestrian or possibly an intensely sexual person, the horse being a well-known symbol for virility. On that score, Freud attributed tremendous psychological significance to the libido.

Carl Jung was, at one time, Freud’s protege and attempted to develop the idea of parapraxes via the concept of the shadow. For Jung, the shadow contains both personal and collective aspects. An irruption of shadow contents into daytime consciousness could stem from an unresolved personal complex, the larger forces of the collective unconscious^,1 or some combination of the two.

Unlike Freud, Jung believed that unintended slips don’t always refer back to the person making them. Parapraxes can point to an entire interactive situation among several or, perhaps, many people.

Charles Brenner M.D. believes that parapraxes have profound implications. Although we may dismiss accidents and mistakes as mere flukes brought on by stress, distraction, sleep deprivation or malnutrition, Brenner says “in the mind, as in physical nature around us, nothing happens by chance, or in a random way” (Elementary Textbook of Psychoanalysis, New York: Anchor Books, 1957, p.2).

The difference between a healthy or unhealthy attitude about parapraxes hinges on whether we learn from them.² If an accident or mistake isn’t too serious, a person with a positive attitude would devote a reasonable amount of reflection to figure out why they goofed and how they might avoid similar scenarios in the future.

An unhealthy attitude, however, could be something along the lines of “I’m no good. Why do I always keep messing up? Life sucks and so do I.”

Another unhealthy attitude would be aggressive denial: “I don’t have time for this. I don’t give a damn, anyhow.” Or perhaps childish self-aggrandizement, “He’s just an idiot. I’m superior to him so I can do whatever I please.”

In short, how we respond to our mistakes is crucial.

Jung believed the self is on a natural trajectory toward wholeness. Nature heals and corrects; and since mankind sprung from nature, Jung maintained that increased awareness enhances our mastery over the environment. For Jungians, then, self-knowledge brings more confidence, vitality and sense of purpose and meaning.

However, Jung’s perspective seems to minimize the theological ideas of grace, spirit and providence. Jung does use the word “grace” in his Memories, Dreams, Reflections (New York: Vintage, 1965, p. 40) and he also says that numinosity may play a key role in psychological development. But we can’t know if the types of numinosity Jung alludes to are of the same quality as bona fide grace.

On this point some Christian fundamentalists have gone whole hog and utterly demonized Jung.

Even Satan, so Christian theologians say, comes as an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14).³ But instead of demonizing Jung, it seems more sensible to carefully discern spiritual experiences and stay open to the possibility that something better might be just around the corner (Jacques Guillet et al., The Discernment of Spirits, Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1970, p. 110; Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism, New York: New American Library, 1955, p. 361; William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, London: Penguin, 1985, p. 423).

Along these lines Jung wrote that numinosity isn’t a single type of experience. It’s manifold. And some forms of numinosity are apparently healing while others are destructive.

But, again, we can’t be sure just what Jung is talking about because the personal experience of numinosity seems nearly impossible to compare among individuals and, by its very nature, hard to publicly verify.

The Romanian scholar of religion Mircea Eliade recognized this problem while comparing a dazzling array of world religions and their respective mystics, yogis, saints and shamans. Eliade felt that it was far too simplistic to assume that all seekers experience the same kind of inner light (Yoga: Immortality and Freedom, New Jersey: Bollingen, 1969, p. 339).

Eliade also questioned whether Jungian theory was accurate to the data studied or, especially with regard to alchemy, a superimposition of Jung’s way of thinking onto ancient manuscripts, myths and religious ideas (The Forge and the Crucible, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978, p. 196).

Assuming Jung is right by saying that psychological development may entail parapraxes, accidents, mistakes and even numinosity^,4 why, one might ask, would mistakes be necessary?

The answer to this question could come from several different angles.

Jung, himself, believed that psychological complexes have a life of their own. Just as marine life is easy to forget about from the surface, the moment we swim in the ocean the charms and potential dangers of underwater creatures become quite real.

Remember Jaws? So it is, Jung says, with the contents of the unconscious—particularly the collective unconscious. Ignore or repress it and it returns full-force.

In trying to answer why mistakes might, in some bizarre way, be necessary, a believer in reincarnation might speak to the alleged truth and related effects of karma theory and reincarnation.⁵

Catholics, on the other hand, believe that God permits parapraxes, accidents and mistakes for some good reason, such as the restoration of humility, which is essential to true spirituality.

Jung too speaks of deflating the bubble of excessive egoism. But for Jung this is a natural process directed toward psychological integration – a union of opposites – instead of something permitted by God for personal humility (and for the purity required for heavenly life).

Jung notes this theological difference, suggesting, especially with Protestant Christianity, that its Trinitarian symbols are upwardly skewed and overly masculine. He also suggests that Protestantism ignores the fourth element of the shadow, as well as an ‘eternally feminine’ (anima) part of the self, the latter being expressed in Catholicism with Papal dogmas about the Virgin Mary.

Regardless of how we try to explain mistakes, it seems they’re almost inevitable. Inferior psychological contents eventually express themselves. If not recognized, integrated and articulated in a healthy way, these inferior elements usually force their way out. ⁶ And these eruptions can occur during moments of solitude or within the complicated dynamics of relationship.

As imperfect beings living in a world tarnished by hypocrisy, exploitation and tragic violence, it seems we’re bound to feel the collective stress at some level. This stress can lead to parapraxes, accidents and mistakes. Whether or not we learn from these mistakes makes all the difference. It might even play a role in humanity’s survival into the 22nd century.

Notes

1. Daryl Sharp’s Jung Lexicon defines this and many other concepts with excerpts from Jung’s work.

2. Some say that even tragedies may ultimately be viewed in a positive light. For examples of this perspective, see There Are No Accidents: In All Things Trust in God (Fr. Benedict J. Groeschel, C.F.R. with John Bishop, 2004) and A Step Further: Growing Closer to God Through Hurt and Hardship (Joni Eareckson Tada, 1980).

3. “Satan Comes as an Angel of Light.” Statements like this often push a few buttons. Some get upset perhaps because unresolved complexes are activated. Meanwhile, some Christians self-righteously dismiss all things perceived as non-Christian. Surely both extremes are to be avoided or possibly redirected. But redirection usually takes time. It also requires a degree of psychological maturity and a great deal of patience. And sometimes we just have to move on until things hopefully sort themselves out.

4. Jung says it also involves synchronicity but this is beyond the scope of this article.

5. I find this limiting. In my view far too many believers in reincarnation have a few (or many) unusual experiences and don’t stop to consider that their interpretation of inner events may be unduly colored by underlying assumptions, desires and beliefs. For alternatives to the theory of reincarnation, see Farewell to Karma and Reincarnation: A New Look at an Old Idea.

6. Philosophically speaking, we’re touching on the idea of teleology and in theology, soteriology. Teleology refers to the belief that creation moves or is directed toward some logical endpoint. Soteriology has to do with the belief in a divine plan, the afterlife and personal salvation.

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Throwing Light on the Shadow: Carl Jung’s Answer to Evil

Sea Monster and Churches by Sev St. Martin on Flickr

The higher the sun rises, the less shadow it casts

–Lao Tzu

The Shadow Defined

Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and former disciple of Freud who tried to bridge the gap between psychology and spirituality.

One of Jung’s most compelling ideas is the shadow. Jung describes the shadow as those inferior aspects of the psyche that we’re not too proud of. The shadow might be a desire frowned on by our conscience or peers. It could be a bizarre or unhealthy interest that the powers of civilization have apparently quelled.

Shadow contents involve known and unknown aspects of the self, making the ego, the unconscious and the environment all play a role in its expression or repression. When confronted by the ego, the largely unconscious shadow can be integrated into consciousness. But, for the most part, the shadow lies beyond the threshold of awareness.

Jung explains the shadow through his concept of the archetype:

When it [shadow] appears as an archetype…it is quite within the possibility for a man to recognize the relative evil of his nature, but it is a rare and shattering experience for him to gaze into the face of absolute evil.¹

The Shadow in Art and Popular Culture

Jung also stresses the importance of externalizing shadow material through socially acceptable channels to bring its inherent darkness to light.

Tentacle Monster Working by Don't Worry / Ian on Flickr

Through representation, the ego is able to integrate rather than represses unpleasant unconscious impulses. When merely repressed, the shadow finds a way through the cracks of the psyche and jumps out in disturbing ways.

This dynamic might account for a Catholic nun’s cruel treatment of children or the horrifying outbreak of pedophile priests and brothers. On the other hand, an instance of positive shadow integration is the inventive artist who deals with dramatic or foreboding themes, such as the Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch.

Jung says the shadow also has amusing aspects, as in Halloween costumes or comic book characters. The first few seasons of the TV show Smallville delights in the shadow, particularly in the character of Lionel Luther, an unscrupulous tycoon and megalomaniac. Here we find a twisted man who, nonetheless, is so campy and clever that we’re compelled to laugh. By satirizing the unseemly, Smallville removes evil from reality and delivers it to the level of farce.

Jung apparently had a good sense of humor and would probably have enjoyed TV shows like Smallville. He believed that the unexamined part of the shadow is potentially dangerous to self and society. By integrating our dark impulses, we gain some degree of mastery over them. At least, that’s Jung’s theory. His critics say that excessively sinister ideas in the arts and media desensitize and negatively influence both kids and adults.

picasso by teadrinker on Flickr

This kind of critique is often heard among religious fundamentalists and, in the extreme scenario, tyrants like Adolf Hitler.

Indeed, Hitler believed that art should be censored for the greater social good and drew up a hate list of so-called degenerate art (Entartete Kunst) created by artists whom he didn’t like.

Picasso’s work was on his list, along with that of Gaughin, Van Gogh, Chagall, Klee, Kandinsky and some 20,000 other artworks. Ironically, this was the very same Hitler who brutally tortured and murdered innocent civilians and who apparently was a coprophiliac—an infantile condition where one becomes sexually aroused when defecated and urinated on.

The Shadow and Projection

One could argue that Hitler despised innovative art because it pushed his own buttons. The distorted and fragmented subjects portrayed in modern art probably threatened his own deranged mind.

The shadow gripped Hitler’s personality but he wasn’t even dimly aware of its hold on him. His perverse impulses were all righteousness and truth for him. In his mind he was the grand chief of a supposed master race and everything “other” was to be eradicated.

God Hates Sin by Danny Hammontree on Flickr

From a Jungian view, the alleged evils that Hitler saw in the Jewish people were none other than his own shadow impulses. Hitler mediated the power of the shadow with a disturbed charisma that swayed a great number of otherwise ordinary people into committing unspeakable atrocities.

Jung speaks at length on Hitler and the Nazis, arguing that this particular instance of the shadow is traceable to the presence of the Wotan archetype. Looking back, one has to wonder how the 20th century might have unfolded had Hitler not been rejected admission by the Vienna Academy of Art.

In any case, whenever self-righteousness, intolerance and hate combine, Jung says the shadow is being projected by the hater onto the hated.

The Shadow and Parapraxis

Another way the shadow expresses itself is through parapraxes. Parapraxes are commonly known as Freudian slips of the pen and tongue brought about by the intrusion of an unconscious desire, conflict or thought. Usually socially embarrassing, these slips can nevertheless point to aspects of the unconscious that require further exploration and expression. Alternately, they may remind us of necessary tasks and duties that we’ve been putting off.

Colorful Shadows by Chrissy Wainwright on Flickr

Children’s shadows are often far more transparent than adults’. At social gatherings kids often blurt out the unmasked truth about parents’ attitudes and behavior. The ensuing embarrassment suggests that our civilized, adult self may be but a thin veneer covering the unflattering impulses of the unconscious.

But Jung says the shadow also plays a positive, compensatory role. Provided that parents are quick-witted and funny, a child’s candor can be a good icebreaker. And a goofy Freudian slip can lead to laughter, better discussions, increased insight and group understanding.

Again, the shadow isn’t necessarily negative if it leads to some kind of big picture gain.

The Shadow and Spirituality

Jung says the shadow must be confronted. When repressed the shadow lurks like an angry dragon locked up in a dungeon. If not sublimated, the shadow’s sheer power can break free of its chains, causing severe psychological and possibly physical injury.

Medical psychology has recognized today that it is a therapeutic necessity… for consciousness to confront the shadow. In the end this must lead to some kind of union, even though the union consists at first in an open conflict.²

Jung isn’t talking about forever playing the devil’s advocate. We’ve all met irritating people who routinely point out other people’s shortcomings and generally harp on the negative. In confronting the shadow Jung isn’t promoting being a jerk or negative attention seeking. Instead, he encourages awareness and mastery over the powers of darkness.

The Shadow and Theology

Pages by crumpart / Leonie on Flickr

The concept of the shadow has been both championed and critiqued among opposing perspectives.

Most theologians say we cannot solely rely on ourselves and the limited power of the ego to deal with the shadow. Instead, we must call on the power of God to overcome evil.

“You can’t do it alone… lean on the Lord!” the religious person exclaims.

Meanwhile Jungians warn of a ‘projection trap’ that some traditional religious persons seem to fall into. Jungians tend to say that sanctimonious individuals and related religious organizations project their own dark impulses onto others instead of facing the evil within themselves. This ugly dynamic may result in scapegoating. Luckily, we have laws in the civilized world to protect people from this kind of primitive, bullying mentality.

Jung’s followers also tend to imply that the spirituality of organized religion only goes as deep as the persona,³ where individuals play a superficial role of holiness for the sake of appearances and to feel good about themselves. To this charge, however, some traditional religious persons reply that it’s the Jungian who is superficially locked up in Jung’s theories, arrogantly judging from outward appearances with little or no appreciation for the inner life of the religious person.

Rather than getting lost in an endless game of finger-pointing as to who’s projecting onto whom, it seems more helpful to say that both Jungian and traditional theological outlooks could learn from one another. Funnily enough, there’s not only difference but a great deal of overlap among the two camps. Jung, for instance, often speaks of God and mentions the idea of grace, whereas some pastors and religious try to integrate Jungian ideas within their organizational beliefs and practices.

The Shadow and Global Society

Monster Attack 1 by Alberto Cerriteño on Flickr

Because the shadow involves mankind’s collective unconscious, it’s both a personal and global idea. Wherever we happen to live, the shadow has potential for good or evil, and what matters is how we deal with it. Even highly upsetting or embarrassing events may bring about a positive change, providing we respond appropriately.

Along these lines, most theologians believe that evil is permitted for a good reason—i.e. there’s an ultimate Good in the good and bad of daily life and, on a larger scale, human history.

But it would be wrong to attribute more wisdom to the shadow than it rightly deserves. And if left unchecked the shadow becomes more fiend than friend. Again, the shadow must be harnessed and redirected like an untamed beast.

On the personal level, this redirection is probably best achieved through some combination of piety, prayer, creativity and conscious choice.

In politics, US President Obama seems to hope that the shadow can be effectively redirected by openly discussing the issues as they arise. One of the great strengths of liberal democracies is their willingness to examine rather than cover up social warts and blemishes. And if that well-intentioned openness is ever lost, democracies around the world might become just as dictatorial as the ‘terrible other’ against whom they routinely define and defend themselves.

Notes

1. C. G. Jung, Aion in The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, ed. William McGuire et al., trans. R. F. C. Hull, Bollingen Series XX (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1954-79) Vol. 9/2, p. 10.

2. C. G. Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis in The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, ed. William McGuire et al., trans. R. F. C. Hull, Bollingen Series XX (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1954-79) Vol. 14, p. 365.

3. Daryl Sharp outlines Jung’s concepts in the Jung Lexicon.

Copyright © Michael Clark. All rights reserved

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Review – Strange is Normal: The Amazing Life of Colin Wilson (DVD)

Title: Strange Is Normal: The Amazing Life of Colin Wilson
Genre: Documentary, Biography
Production Company: Reality Films

Most of us have heard of the British author Colin Wilson. While not quite a household name, those who haunt bookstores and love fringe topics will know that he writes about the occult and other esoterica.

So when Strange is Normal: The Amazing Life of Colin Wilson came in the mail, I almost knew in advance that I’d enjoy learning more about this fascinating, well-rounded character.

And that I did. This DVD interview gives an entertaining account of Wilson’s life and ideas, as told by the author himself.

Wilson is a prolific writer. And his accumulated work explores an eclectic mix of topics—from murder, magic and science, to literature and science fiction, to name a few.

I first encountered Wilson or, rather, wrote about him while studying Carl Jung’s concept of synchronicity. In his book, C.G. Jung: Lord of the Underworld, Wilson says that a healthy mind, not a sick one, should regularly encounter synchronicity.

Wilson’s emphasis on the link between the paranormal and psychological health is a refreshing and much needed antidote to a society that, for the most part, shuns intelligent discourse about anything that can’t be bought, seen or sold.

For example, once while talking with a mental health worker, I was told that those deemed mentally ill often go into religion, as if to imply that the religious impulse is rightly associated with illness. This approach seemed to regard spirituality as a symptom instead of a solution to psychological disorders and social deviance.

Now, Wilson is no great supporter of organized religion. In fact, he trashes both the Church of England and Catholicism. But in my view, religion and spirituality need not be separate, and Wilson is to be commended for emphasizing the positive aspects of spirituality.

In addition, he provides a delightful analogy by likening right and left brain integration to a good tennis match. Here, he stands in direct opposition to the arguably more pessimistic Arthur Koestler, who believed that the human brain is naturally contradictory.

If I were to find a weakness in Wilson’s approach, it might have something to do with his already mentioned bias against organized religion. On this score, his firm convictions possibly limit his inner experience. This seems evident in his discussion of Abraham Maslow’s concept of the “peak experience.”

Wilson talks about the peak experience without really delving into its philosophical and theological complexities. On the social level, he does say that those who’ve had peak experiences tend re-experience them when talking about the phenomenon among themselves in a group.

Be that as it may, no mention is given to the fact that numerous mystics – within organized religion – write about varying levels, qualities, and degrees of numinous experience (numinous is a more nuanced term that accounts for the peak experience, and is used by Rudolf Otto and C. G. Jung, among others, to describe spiritual phenomena).

Possibly Wilson is dumbing things down for a general audience. And if so, that’s fine. But I think some passing mention could have been given to the potential intricacies of the inner life.

On second thought, maybe I’m being a bit too tough. After all, Wilson does note the sinister possibility of mind control. And this darker side of interpersonal affairs could involve numinosity or, at least, some weird kind of charisma.

These subtle and hard to prove dynamics aside, Strange is Normal definitely is a great interview. Wilson tells his life story from his own home, and in the process we discover a candid, articulate, and immensely colorful personality—certainly not the dry British intellectual that some might expect.

Anyone even vaguely interested in parapsychology and the supernatural should see this film. Wilson’s unconventional life experience and witty ways help to make the unusual usual, which surely is a good thing.

The DVD also features an interview with Wilson’s wife, Joy, who epitomizes the charming and insightful lady standing alongside her better known husband.

—MC

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Psi, Intercession and the Flat Earth

Window to Heaven by Michael Clark

Anyone with intelligence, I said, would remember that the eyes may be confused in two ways and from two causes, coming from light into darkness as well as from darkness into light

–Plato’s Republic

True Stories

In the final year of my Hon. B.A. I lived near a Greek restaurant called The Shish-Kabob Hut that was a favorite spot for students and faculty.

One night I was dining at The Hut with an acquaintance, Sarah (not her real name). Suddenly Sarah got a faraway look in her eyes and laughed at some joke that I wasn’t party to. Feeling a bit uncomfortable, I nevertheless smiled faintly.

A few minutes later, Sarah said she had a psychic connection with her boyfriend in South America. She explained that she’d been laughing because she’d just made some kind of long distance call on an invisible ‘psi phone.’

It sounded pretty far fetched and, for a moment, I wondered if she was all there, psychologically speaking. But I gave her the benefit of the doubt and, in retrospect, it’s probably best that I did.

A year later while studying in India, unconventional phenomena like this became almost commonplace. In the surrounding area of the town where I was taking my M.A., several people openly discussed and seemed to live lives compatible with the idea of psi.

But it wasn’t all good.

One strange fellow claimed to be an important wizard and tried to persuade me to be his apprentice. He said he was going to rule the world with his psychic powers and I was could be his helper. All he needed was a Western stooge to pave the way for his grand takeover.

However, most of the unusual incidents in India that seemed to involve the paranormal weren’t quite so ridiculous.

One day, for instance, a man at a yogurt counter plunked my precise order (before I ordered it) on the counter the moment I walked through the shop door. As I paid he gave a knowing smile, as if to say “I knew what you wanted.”

I couldn’t imagine how he’d anticipated my order. Did he read my thoughts or was it merely coincidence? Did God beam him with the knowledge of what I wanted? Would God care about such tiny, seemingly insignificant details?

And then there was the Indian professor who, for all intents and purposes, appeared to know what I’d been doing without even asking. A fellow student and I would often sense a strong presence radiating from this person—a kind of disorienting numinosity that I knew wouldn’t cut the mustard back in the fast-paced, rationalized and high tech world of Canadian society. It was just too spacey.

Even a world renowned Indian scholar, Sisir Kumar Ghose,¹ was quite forthcoming when discussing psi. I interviewed this gracious, near-blind intellectual at the twilight of his life. In the course of our interview he implied that consciousness could transfer among not only human beings but also among animals, as if psi transcended the boundaries of species.²

The unusual was becoming usual and the usual unusual. Jung said that parapsychology is “hedged about with prejudice” and that most people are afraid to disclose any extraordinary experiences they may have encountered.

Strange days were afoot and I was intrigued. After all, this wasn’t just an isolated incident at a local Greek restaurant. In India the unusual was becoming usual and the usual unusual.

Home Again

After frying through my last Indian summer (I was supposed to leave before the heat but my exit papers were delayed), I flew back to Canada and began a doctorate. With all this real, lived experience behind me, I hoped to develop some kind of meaningful theory about possible connections between psychology and parapsychology.

I wrote my Ph.D on C. G. Jung’s idea of synchronicity. During this time at least two Canadian professors of religion spoke freely about psi, parapsychology and mysticism. Others, however, were reluctant to discuss psi and got nervous or evasive when I pressed them on the topic.

The Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung saw a similar situation in his own day. Jung said that parapsychology is “hedged about with prejudice”³ and that most people are afraid to disclose any extraordinary experiences they might have had.

Why afraid?

The answer is probably simple. Most people fear the repercussions, as Jesus wisely cautioned in Matthew 7:6.

Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and then turn and tear you to pieces (NIV).

Intercession

My interests evolved during my Ph.D. and the spirituality of Catholicism, if not its political aspect, began to feel like the everlasting home I’d been seeking for so long. So I eventually converted to Catholicism, which lead to a new awareness about the idea of intercession, although the concept is found in many other religions.

Among most religions, intercession is a prayer directed to a deity for the benefit of another person or group.

Within Catholicism, intercessory prayer may also be directed toward the salvation of souls still in purgatory. And a saint, living or risen, may act as an intermediary between God and souls (both living and in purgatory).

Essentially, Catholic intercessory prayer takes two main forms: Vocal and mental prayer.

Vocal prayers are petitions spoken in private or public, whereas mental prayer is an inner prayer. The words of mental prayer may be inwardly pronounced but not vocalized. Mental prayer also includes meditation and higher forms of contemplation where the mind is set directly on God or some aspect of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Meditation is a type of mental prayer, providing it’s ultimately focused on God and not on worldly or satanic influences. The terms meditation and contemplation are often used interchangeably but generally meditation is seen as a slightly lower form of mental prayer than contemplation.

In Catholicism both types of prayer, vocal and mental, are addressed to God, the angels or saints. It’s believed that angels and saints (living and dead) mediate spiritual powers between God and mankind (living and in purgatory), hence the term intercession. And prayer directed toward anything else is negatively described as paganism, superstition or idolatry.⁴

Many Protestant, Fundamentalist and non-Christian religions view the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox belief in mediating saints as seriously misguided.

Critics say one should pray only to God and asking the deceased for help is wrong, no matter how holy their earthly lives may have been.

Meanwhile Gnostics, Pagans, Jungians and many New Age enthusiasts tend to see organized Christianity as half-baked or entirely hypocritical. By the same token, traditional Catholics usually denounce Gnostics, Pagans and New Agers, in toto, as a “poison” that threatens the Church.⁵

More liberal Catholics, however, try to integrate ideas found in other religions—this especially so within the world of Catholic publishing. Needless to say, the Catholic laity disagrees on many issues. And countless other religions each take a unique view on how to be right with God and, in so doing, overcome evil.

The Freedom to Choose

Religious controversy is nothing new. The earliest Christians squabbled over key points and theologians during the Middle Ages locked horns over issues which today seem downright silly. Books were banned and many people were excommunicated, arrested, tortured and killed by decree of the Church.

This hideous barbarism came about mostly because one powerful group didn’t like another group’ s beliefs about God, evil and salvation, although some maintain that greed was also an important factor.

Although things have obviously changed in the 21st century, we’re compelled to ask if the global situation is really all that different today. Civilized countries may not be quite as officially barbaric but there’s still a dynamic of economic and cultural power that tends to marginalize those who don’t fit in so easily.

In the world of parapsychology, official churches may recognize some limited forms of the supernatural but generally are skeptical when an individual claims to have unconventional experiences. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Some people might be way off, mentally ill, and so on. But it can be a problem for those who are genuinely spiritual but have a hard time fitting in to existing ecclesiastical structures.

Amid all the uncertainty surrounding the topic of parapsychology, it seems safe to say that our universe remains a mystery and traditional understandings of ideas like matter, energy, space and time are in need of cultural revision.

Visionaries were once ridiculed for maintaining that the Earth isn’t flat, but round. And we could be making the same kind of mistakes today when it comes to appreciating the importance of parapsychology.

A paradigm shift might be in the offing. But it will only take place when spirituality is openly discussed and subjected to critical debate and scientific scrutiny.

Some would rather shy away or slink into the shadows instead of talking about the inner life. Maybe these people are afraid, or maybe they’re hiding something. But unlike robots⁶ locked into their programming, human beings are always free to choose.⁷

Notes

¹ Ghose contributed to the Encyclopedia Britannica with an entry on mysticism. Before Wikipedia, this was a huge honor.

² The Cambridge scientist Rupert Sheldrake has empirically demonstrated that dogs seem to know when their owners are coming home.

³ C. G. Jung, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche in The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, ed. William McGuire et al., trans. R. F. C. Hull, Bollingen Series XX.  Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1954-79, Vol. 8, p. 419.

⁴ See http://www.culturewars.com/2004/DaVinci.html and The Da Vinci Hoax pp. 45-72. It should be noted that Gnostics, Pagans and New Age groups have their own complexities and disagreements, not unlike any human group. For an excellent survey, see Graham Harvey, Contemporary Paganism: Listening People, Speaking Earth.

⁵ Graham Harvey, Contemporary Paganism, p. vii.

⁶ The word “robot” was coined by the Czech, Josef Čapek, brother and one-time collaborator of playwright Karel Čapek. “Robot” first appears in Karel’s R.U.R (Rossum’s Universal Robots), a somber statement about humanity at its worst. Čapek also wrote an article, Why I am not a Communist, where he says “The climate of communism is ghastly and inhuman.”

⁷ (a) Some recent software now includes self-learning and the appearance of choice, so the picture is far from simple. (b) For a contemporary epic about moral ambiguity within the mankind vs. machine motif, see the re-imagined TV series Battlestar Galactica.

Copyright © Michael Clark. All rights reserved.

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