The unconscious source of the creative spirit

Replies

Leslie Birleson January 26, 2012 at 3:17pm

I just read your article The Complementarian Self, Wow! utterly fascinating and enlightening! your quantum physics model is extraordinarily elegant, but I believe it's somehow paradoxical and Akbar and Uriah can manifest simultaneously in one's consciousness, 3 & 4. when Abraham Lincoln was once asked how he would deal with the Mormons and their religion he replied" sometimes when you're plowing a field there's a big tree stump and it's just easier to plow around it" I confess that is often how ideal with some of Jung's contradictions. Your insights into alchemy were extremely helpful and enlightening. I'm not a physicist so this might sound utterly stupid, but in your example of the imaginary fairytale garden when I entered from the east wouldn't the whole tree become a pear tree and vice versa, when entering from the west the whole tree become an apple tree? doesn't observing one side change the other side? thanks Les.
- Mats Winther > Leslie Birleson January 26, 2012 at 10:47pm
  
  Leslie, thanks. True, if it has manifested as an apple tree it will be an apple tree also to the person who enters from the other direction. However, in this fairytale garden the tree goes back to its potential state after the visitors have left the garden, by analogy with a return to an unconscious condition of the self. Likewise, it should be possible for an observed electron to go back to its potential state as electron-wave.
  
  In this model, Akbar and Uriah are complementary opposites and are therefore mutually exclusive. This means that a real person cannot have both the personality traits of Akbar and Uriah. That's unthinkable. One cannot construct such a personality, not even in fiction. It is evident that Jung underestimated Uriah. That's why Uriah is emphasized in the dream, and Jung has to look up to him. Jung was correct when he realized that the ideal of completeness is incompatible with the ideal of perfection, which he criticized. But, in this dream, Jung's one-sided view of the self is compensated. The self is portrayed as complementary, consisting of two incompatible elements: Akbar and Uriah.
  (In the reply to Laura, I used the word wholeness. The term completeness is correct in this context, although the terms overlap.)
  
  Mats Winther
Mats Winther January 25, 2012 at 11:48pm

Of course, that's my point, Jungians risk being poisoned by the idea of 'wholeness' in the form of "mercury balls". The wholeness ideal just isn't good enough. I have suggested a 'complementarian' self-ideal instead: The Complementarian Self. The notion of the self as wholeness is correct, it only needs to be complemented. Jung tells the truth, but it's not the whole truth.

The ritual self-mortification that the Buddha refers to is self-starvation and diverse forms of self-punishment. A modern view of self-mortification would be to shed all your attachments in life, because these are what keeps you artificially alive. Of course, this would mean that the mystical path is for the élite, and this rhymes badly with New Age and popular Jungianism. My argument is that you cannot follow the mystical path without doing a great sacrifice. Jungians, who keep to the wholeness ideal, think that one can fit the mystical path into the wholeness of life, as an integral part of everything else, because they believe in 'integration' and 'wholeness'. Arguably, this gives rise to religious sentiments, ritualism, and the New Age form of spirituality.

However, I want to emphasize that there is nothing essentially wrong in this. I am not against religiosity, or the fact that the Jungian form of spirituality takes on a ritualistic form. But this just isn't the mystical path because the devotees have only found new objects for their libido. Active imagination is easily corrupted. For instance, M-L von Franz criticized Pauli's text involving a piano teacher. She said that this is not true active imagination because the unconscious isn't involved in the formulation of the images, but, rather, are metaphors of consciousness.

Concerning yoga. Jung persistently warned against the practice of yoga by Westerners. I don't know whether he was correct in his misgivings about yoga, but Christian mysticists have also persistently rejected what they term as 'quietism', the technique of emptying the soul of all content. In Western mysticism, contemplation is a form of prayer whereby one directs one's arrows of longing to the other shore and persistently beats the dark cloud in which God is hiding (cf. The Dark Cloud of Unknowing). One's heart is not emptied, but burning with love of God. From a Jungian perspective, specific practices and disciplines cannot replace a moral commitment, and Eastern practices of meditation and yoga seem to have been anathema to Jung.

I am likely to project my own psychological philosophy on your dream. The "negative wholeness", in the form of mercury balls, could alternatively signify your commitment to Eastern meditation practices. Actually, in International Journal of Jungian Studies, Issue 1, 2010, there is an article about Jung's negative view of yoga: Revisiting Jung's dialogue with yoga. I have a Christian bias, so I tend to side with Jung in this issue, but I am not certain. I maintain that your dream is about becoming smaller, lessening the intense light of consciousness.

Mats Winther
Leslie Birleson January 9, 2012 at 1:54pm

welcome to the group, I read your article, interesting to say the least! I have been grappling with this idea for 25 years. I have for most of my life made my living from producing art. I understand exactly the point you're making, after 3 1/2 years of dream analysis with a very well-known Jungian who was quite old and who also painted, I finally came to the conclusion that part of what was happening was generational, by that I mean abstraction or modern Art are really quite new and I'm guessing quite a shock to the system for the first generation of Jungians. It was clear after a time this person view themselves as an artist, but never understood the abstract aspects of modern, postmodern, or contemporary art. This sadly limited our dialogue about art to a point, but not our dream work or there creativity. I came to understand it as more of a generational aspect. Clearly figurative painting or art is or was better suited to illustrate Jungian ideas. Abstraction can be a rarefied language and not necessarily the best language for people undergoing spiritual or psychic crisis. There are plenty of contemporary Jungian analyst who get it.The people who have taken the time and energy required to understand modern and contemporary art are a small percentage in any group, and it turns out jungians are no exception.There is a giant amount of great modern and contemporary artist who started out painting abstract and ended up figurative, rather than the classic figurative to abstraction. Creativity seems to be more of a rotating door, coming in or going out, not necessarily this door or that door, but you certainly have articulated what I felt from time to time. Les

Ed Koffenberger In the Art and Psyche group had some interesting observations about this.
- Mats Winther > Leslie Birleson January 21, 2012 at 11:36am
  
  Laura, Kandinsky's famous book is public domain and can be downloaded from Gutenberg:
  
  http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5321
  
  If the lawyer is understood as the animus then the different floors might denote different layers of consciousness. You go down to a lower floor, i.e. to a lower level of consciousness, to a more "comfortable" environment which you appreciate, although it is not connected with worldly success in the fine arts, etc. (such art is produced on the upper, more energetic, floors). To go down signifies to gear down. This symbol is further emphasized when the animus leads you on to a more narrow area. You must get "smaller", and your head, the abode of consciousness, must try to squeeze through. Your world is narrowed down which signifies becoming thoroughly unconscious. Unconscious people have a narrow horizon, their world is just a couple of hundred meters in every direction. You suffer from "mercury poisoning" and must detoxify yourself, sqeezing the mercurial consciousness out of your head. It could mean that the high energetic level of the Jungian coloured consciousness has poisoned you. To become unconscious, and then go even further into a quite narrow existence, is the method by which the mercury is removed. The other couple (an unconscious complex) wishes to enter consciousness (the higher floors), but decide to return back to the collective unconscious. The animus (the gatekeeper) is not anxious to achieve conscious increase, but the opposite is the right direction right now, thus compensating your conscious expansive standpoint that aims at success.
  
  This fits so well into my notion of 'the dark night' that I fear that this interpretation is a projection. I have taken the view that the mystical path demands self-sacrifice, and even self-mortifying practices, rather than one heroic deed after another in a continual fight against the "dragons" of the unconscious. The ideal of "completeness" isn't good enough. It is a worldly ideal that pertains only to half of reality. Arguably, it causes a drift toward New Age ideas, "childish" occupations, and superstitions. The notion of "active imagination" is easily corrupted by the aesthetic person. It becomes a product of fantasy and takes off in the tangential direction.
  
  Mats Winther
- Mats Winther > Mats Winther January 21, 2012 at 12:11pm
  
  Moreover, concerning the symbol of "pink yarn". M-L von Franz says that knitting and crochet work is coupled with a benevolent form of unconsciousness which represents a meditative relief from the rush of life, a function which you seem to underestimate in the dream:
  
  "Everybody who has knitted or done weaving or embroidery knows what an agreeable effect this can have, for you can be quiet and lazy and also spin your own thoughts while working. You can relax and follow your fantasy and then get up and say you have done something! Also the work exercises patience...Only those who have done such work know of all the catastrophes which can happen - such as losing a row of stitches just when you are decreasing! It is a very self-educative activity and brings out feminine nature. It is immensely important for women to do such work and not give it up in the modern rush." (The Feminine in Fairy Tales, p. 40)
  
  Mats
- Mats Winther > Leslie Birleson January 10, 2012 at 12:23am
  
  Thanks. Are there Jungians who paint abstractly, really? However, the demarcation line isn't really between abstract and figurative painting. Rather, it is the instinctual versus the romantic standpoint which is the critical issue. I submit that Jungians and New Agers are poisoned with the romantic spirit. The premises of "archetypal psychology" are similar to those of the Romantic movement of the 19th century. Paul Roubiczek, in the Misinterpretation of Man (1947), points out that romanticism and materialism is a destructive brother pair. See this excerpt, The Romantic Flight from Reality:
  
  http://home7.swipnet.se/~w-73784/roubiczek.htm
  
  Mats Winther
- Leslie Birleson > Mats Winther January 10, 2012 at 11:25am
  
  You're welcome,I was speaking more to your personal experience of painting that you go into in some depth, and seems to be where you've drawn some of your conclusions from. It's hard to speak to and over simplification of terms like "instinctual versus the romantic standpoint" in relationship to painting or art in general. Ironically the most romantic standpoint there could be in painting would be abstract Expressionism which is why artist finally became fed up and disgusted with its sticky, gooey, romantic spiritual standpoint. It became a dead end. Painting might not be the best way to amplify your point. you could easily draw parallel between minimalism or the Washington school of field painting and Romantic movement of the 19th century. There is some merit to your observation and I really enjoyed reading your paper thank you. Les

Art and Psyche

Replies