Among the many threads to this discussion, one in particular concerns the ”push” to get the word out about DP (depth psychology) into the larger public arena. I think I heard tones of enthusiasm, even urgency, along with felt difficulties (e.g. many “out there” have not even heard the term DP). I want to elaborate a little the post I made during the discussion regarding the complexities involved in getting the larger public to develop an ear for DP. 

First of all our modern culture does not lack its own understanding of depth, just like any other age did. In what way is DEPTH commonly understood today? In what way is depth counted as real knowledge, taught in our institutions, around which cultural practices are formed and maintained, with big money supporting them? In two ways:

1. SPATIALLY: we talk of and accept the reality of the depth of space—Outer space and inner space. Billions of dollars are being spent in support of the search for our origins in outer space (e.g. comets, now seen as a sort of seed pods for earth, depositing water, etc). Likewise Billions of dollars are opening up the mysteries of inner space, conceived as genes in biology and subatomic particles in physics etc. There is no end of excitement for these projects and no end of public money either, it seems.

1. TEMPORALLY: we easily talk of the reality of the depth of history, or archeological time (pre-history). Again we eagerly seek our origins in the depths of our past, right back to the Big Bang and again, no end of the money supply, showing that on the public level, that is where the exploration of depth is felt to have high stakes, something worth committing our money to, something to do with truth!

These modern notions of spatial and temporal depth are determined by the time we are born into. None of us chose to have these concepts of space and time. Our language, the governing narratives all spring form these fundamental structures of experience today.

As individuals, certain people can have an “initiatory” experience that can only be understood outside these fundamental modern categories that structure our everyday experiences. Such an individual immediately drops out of the mainstream in her quest to understand the disturbing experience in terms of concepts that no longer are shared by the greater community e.g. depth as soul depth—meaning infinite depth of meaning, for example, or history as soul history—meaning the past as a living presence, for example. These categories also structure experience and can bring profound understanding to an individual’s experience but they remain outside the categories that we are all born into today. Thus such individuals often end up quite socially isolated.

 So, the difficulty is not that we lack an understanding and knowledge of depth today. The difficulty is that our current understanding of depth is a purely positivistic (literal) interpretation. The difficulty is that this particular interpretation cannot see or allow any other understandings of depth, It locks us in to an ONLY positivistic understanding of reality. It shuts out, for example, a psychological understanding of depth.

Why are other perspectives of depth shut out or not allowed? Hillman puts it this way: Our modern perspective is the only one that takes itself literally, as the only perspective to be had, and that includes its perspective of depth. Campbell’s story of Indra and the Ants (The Parade of Ants in Zimmer’s book, Myths of India) is very relevant to this modern problem. Or as Heidegger says, the only interpretation that obtains today is that of various “world pictures”, based on calculation and measurement. All else slides into oblivion (which is why he bent to the enormous task of languaging a reality (Being) that is prior to our “world pictures”, which we take to be the ultimate reality).

So given this argument, to simply try to get the word out, would be to enter and compete in the market of ideas, the growing circus of voices each with its ideological “world picture”. Good luck with that one!

There is another, powerful way …. Begin with Russ Lockhart and Paco Mitchell’s book, Dreams Bones and the Future, featured here on DP Alliance.