Dear members of the depth psychology community,
Like many of you, I was stunned by the outcome of the U.S. Presidential election yesterday, November 8, and have spent the day mourning for so many things that feel like they have been lost. As a woman, I am keenly aware that the moment for electing our first woman president has evaporated, but on a much deeper level, I am also profoundly distressed by the election of someone who is so clearly disrepectful of women and lacks compassion and understanding for so many who are marginalized, including other minorities, other species, and planet itself. I wonder how all these deep feelings, including anger, are going to be manifest in coming weeks, months, and years.
Like some of you, also, I seem to bounce between feeling numb and being distraught, even questioning on some level what role I play in all of this, and whether the calling I feel to make depth psychology more accessible in the world actually does a bit of good on some many levels. And yet, I know I must have hope: hope for our future, for our young people and generations to come; for everyone who is suffering and will continue to suffer in the face of a political system that favors certain groups over others.
We live in a world that is as challenged as it has ever been, and yet I maintain a powerful faith in the patterns at work in a world where change is the only constant. I know there is something bigger at work. I am certain I see only a narrow slice of what's at work. I believe in the idea that nature is constantly reaching out to us to pull us back from the brink of extinction (an idea I first encountered in Jerome Bernstein's groundbreaking work, Living in the Borderland.) Some part of me wonders if Donald Trump had to be elected because it will serve as a catalyst to something new; because people will be more innovative in creating change, be inspired to action in a different way, collaborate together with those they may not have engaged with before.
Ten years ago I experienced a profound awakening of my own—so powerful it sent me into what Stan Grof aptly terms "spiritual emergency"—basically, when something spiritual happens that sends one spiraling into emergency. Somehow, at that time, I believe I managed to tap into something bigger than me, a pattern at work in which I play a part and which is playing out not only for the good of each of us individually, but for us as a collective, a species which is resilient, conscious, and able to evolve and learn and love one another. What I experienced then was a taste of what we truly are as divine souls, and the stunning realization that as earthly beings caught up in human bodies and conditioned by culture outside our control, we have truly "settled" for something we can't begin to grasp. Each of us is different, and perceives our lives on earth in different ways, and we each must find our way to carry the torch for new beginnings, for hope in humanity, for belief that we can truly evolve as a species. I think being willing to participate in community is one of the ways these things can manifest. I hope you believe that too.
If anyone feels moved to share your own thoughts and feelings about all of this, please feel free to respond below. If you have criticisms or comments on political parties or policies, maybe your forum is elsewhere. If you wish to provide a depth psychological response or lens, or simply an authentic contribution (it could even be in the form of art or poetry), please respond below, and let us each hold one another in love, compassion, and a willingness to hold the tension as much as we possibly can.
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However I believe that people who are conscious of the numinous and the perils related to it with the increasingly complex and threatening situation in the planet , those who carry the weight of this consciousness need to work very hard to achieve for themselves and the community inner and externalised areas where they experience trust peace and
This I understand as our only possibility for the moment, and maybe out of our perplexity and concern we might be able to trust and nourish the trust for the positive, as well as for its possibilities and strengths.
Such a conscious engagement wouldn't be allucination I guess despite the convincing severe messages of concern the context send to each of us.
Bonnie,
I would like to add that after the election results I found this in-time article in the New Yorker and I wept in relief. Why? Because ten years ago a journalist writing in the collective would never have broached the truth of coming out of denial that "america is great." He also touched on the subject that man is not all good, not all decent. I found this to be a validation of not only Jung's efforts but our own indepth awareness to bring the evil and good together within the individual.
I feel a bit hesitant for posting here Jung's depth psychology as understood by the suffering of one individual but what the hell. And what the Heaven.
xxxp
Bonnie, thank you for your courage of expressing your depth feelings.
Pre-election results I admitted, after 3 months of tension headache, that I had indeed become caught into the UNCONSCIOUS outer conflict and hysteria of the world and lost the truth that is my own insoluble conflict. That is the root. After reading passages from the Red Book (below) I imagined making a pamphlet of and dispensing it from a plane in the sky to the earth below -- if there were eyes to see and ears to hear, but I think not.
Jung: “…At that time, the loving light was annihilated, and blood began to pour out. This was the great war. But the spirit of the depths wants this struggle to be understood as a conflict in every man's own nature. Forethinking (ideas) is singleness, love is togetherness. Both need one another, and yet they kill one another. Since men do not know that the conflict occurs inside themselves, they go mad, and one lays the blame on the other. If one-half of mankind is at fault, then every man is half at fault. But he does not see the conflict in his own soul, which is however the source of the outer disaster. If you are aggravated against your brother, think that you are aggravated against the brother in you, that is, against what in you is similar to your brother. As a man you are part of mankind, and therefore you have a share in the whole of mankind, as if you were the whole of mankind. If you overpower and kill your fellow man who is contrary to you, then you also kill that person in yourself and have murdered a part of your life. The spirit of this dead man follows you and does not let your life become joyful. You need your wholeness to live onward.”
"Therefore they all say that they are fighting for the good and for peace, but one cannot fight one another over the good. But since men don't know that the conflict lies within themselves, the Germans thus believe that the English and the Russians are wrong; but the English and the Russians say that the Germans are wrong. But no one can judge history in terms of right and wrong. Because one-half of mankind is wrong, every man is half wrong. Therefore a conflict
resides in his own soul. But man is blind and always knows only his half. The German has in him the English and the Russian whom he fights outside of himself. Likewise, the English and the Russian has in him the German whom he fights. But man appears to see the outer quarrel, not the one within, which alone is the wellspring of the great war. But before man can ascend to light and love, the great battle is needed"
“In December I9I6, in his preface to The Psychology of the Unconscious Processess, Jung wrote: "The psychological processes, which accompany the present war, above all the incredible brutalization of public opinion, the mutual slanderings, the unprecedented fury of destruction, the monstrous flood of lies, and man's incapacity to call a halt to the bloody demon—are suited like nothing else to powerfully push in front of the eyes of thinking men the problem of the restlessly slumbering chaotic unconscious under the ordered world of consciousness. This war has pitilessly revealed to civilized man that he is still a barbarian ... But the psychology of the individual corresponds to the psychology of the nation. What the nation does is done also by each individual, and so long as the individual does it, the nation also does it. Only the change in the attitude of the individual is the beginning of the change in the psychology of the nation"
Today I woke up with the headache, the need to cry, the need to mourn. And a letter from a friend in England, “Dear Pamela, Yes, I was shaking in shock...However, we know the deeper reality so nothing needs to change in our lives. We reach into the unchanging Love, feel into and relate to others from there. Everything, even the greatest trauma or danger, is another chance to go even deeper into the Heart of the matter and blossom. At times like this, blossoming hearts are even more needed...love your offering, it's all we have, let yourself open to the Beauty and be well my dear”
I suppose what my friend says here (and she is not Jungian) is that the new born from holding the tension of the opposites Is The “Heart of the Matter.”
Pamela
Donald Trump has become the trickster unleashed. As I reflect on my shock and disappointment that he was elected as our next president I am reminded of the trickster and how he is both a mythical figure and an inner psychic experience. Trickster, an accomplished messenger and shape-shifter, stole the election and in doing so has reminded us of our shadow. Now that our collective addiction to greed, racism, hatred, narcissism, and misogyny is out in the open, in the form of Trump, we have the opportunity to better examine and understand this part of us. I am sure that over the months ahead I will want to turn my head away and pretend that he has nothing to do with me. However, I am planning to fight this urge by reminding myself that only by facing our addictions can he hope to heal and grow.
Thank you Bonnie for your words and creating this forum and thread. I too am "waiting to exhale."
We know that as complexity increases, a desire for simplicity and certainty often grows. That may be a simplistic partial answer to the question I am being asked, and ask myself; "What happened on Nov. 8?" Another answer for me is the shadow side of complacency and not evolving.
I grew up in the South and began to detect an all too familiar underbelly current as the election rhetoric progressed. No one has captured the energy of that stream of consciousness better that W.J. Cash in his 1941 classic, The Mind of the South. In that seminal book, Cash outlined a then pervasive worldview that had gone underground (but had not disappeared and had silently spread) by the time I read the book in the early 1970's.
Louis Rabin, in a 1991 journal article in VQR, W.J. Cash After Fifty Years constellates it this way:
"[Cash] sees them as self-satisfied, complacent. They will not be diverted from their smugness, their unwillingness to look critically at what they are, with the result that throughout their history anyone who has attempted to point out to them the extent to which they are being used and manipulated for the benefit of those in power has been unable to get anywhere. Conversely, those who have flattered their self-esteem and confirmed them in their prejudices have been able to manipulate them to vote and act contrary to their own economic and political interests." (Please know that I am attempting here to expose a powerful stream of consciousness - not denigrate anyone, nor any group.)
Like all shadows, we must bring them to the "light" and then stand and face them. First, though I must grieve my heartsick sadness.
That's very interesting. I've often wondered if southern whites have unconsciously done the "heavy lifting" for the white American culture at large.
Thank you Bonnie for this opportunity.
America's shadow is Donald Trump. The rules, norms and mores of the American Confederate south as risen again. He is white male power that is supported by the majority of white women at the expense of the marginalized. Why did the majority of white american women vote for Trump? My white feminist friend calls it "internalized misogyny", and I think she has point.
The fact that Trump's candidacy wasn't derailed by his birther position or his attitudes towards Mexicans was telling. As the voting results indicated, America People of Color heard his and his followers intents loud and clear...but to White Americans this wasn't important enough to "hold their noses" and vote for competence. The discussion is about Hillary's likeability, white rural rage, or Bernie would be a better candidate.....the larger environment is full of theories why she lost. What I find interesting is that she won the informal (popular vote) while the formal (the systemic electorial college) crushed her.
As a Black American woman I am enraged. Many are holding this.... I feel Trump is indeed a catalyst....to what I'm not sure. What I believe to be happening based upon my conversations with friends and being a participant in "black twitter" the rules of the game has changed and marginalized folks are giving the work back to White people to fix their own racism. It's going to be interesting how this shows up.
Some very accurate, heart-felt observations in your post Janedra. You are so right, the game has changed, but not just in/for the US, but for the entire world community. As Branson said this morning, the president of the US is also the unofficial president of other parts of the world due to US Imperial power- and we didn't even get a chance to vote! All strength and wisdom to you and your community as you face this very real threat to communal and personal wellbeing, yet again in your country's history. Kind regards, Ian Irvine (Hobson)
Janedra, I hear you (see my post reply). I too am disgusted and almost beyond consolation. Thank you for your courageous words of truth.
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