Elizabeth Clark-Stern's Posts (6)

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THE SACRED CHILD

             If someone had a dream of the massacre of children; a mother slain by the son’s own hand who then takes his life, what would it mean?

            As the world searches for answers – and perhaps new questions – in the wake of the slaughter in Connecticut, I struggle to imagine what I would do if I were sitting with the author of this dream.

            “But this is no dream,” you cry. “This is a horrible reality.”

            Yes, but as we search for meaning, exploring multiple dimensions of reality, including images from the unconscious mind, may be instructive.

            If the dreamer of such a horrible nightmare came to me, I would begin by listening to the story, in every detail, simply honoring the level of horror.  A Greek tragedy of such epic proportions, Sophocles could never have conceived of it, even in a culture that enslaved and exploited children.

            Is this a possible theme: something is not being honored in the sacred child, in American culture, and in other cultures around the world. To honor the sacred in  a child is not to “spoil” her, but to cherish her. 

Perhaps I should use the pronoun “him”, since the perpetrators of recent massacres have all been young males. This begs the question:

is there a wound in the infantile masculine that runs so deep, and echoes of such rage, it finds expression in these heinous acts?

            And, what do we mean by “the masculine”? Is it about gender, or about the spirit, the animus, the creative drive in all human beings that to flourish, requires the nourishment of the inner life.

            Return to the dreamer. Was he or she “assaulted” as a child?  Are the bullets in the dream symbolic of emotional attacks? Does this express the genesis of the dreamer’s profound self-hatred? If so, where does this hatred of the self come from? A boy who could never “fit in”, in a culture where not fitting in feels like emotional death?

            Does the inner child of the dreamer still suffer from an undernourished soul? If so, how do we bring more of this nourishment into our relationships, our families, our schools, our art, games and communities?

            Can we replace video violence and aggressive games with a new spirit of adventure that truly nourishes the soul? What would look like? It could take many forms, including creative art, rituals, journeys into nature, discovering new or your own neighborhood in the spirit of a life-long odyssey to redeem the Sacred, for our children, and for the child within every adult.

            “Naïve”, you say. “Children growing up in poverty don’t have access to these enrichments.” True. But, the massacres did not take place in the inner city. They took place in the community forums of middle-class America: shopping malls, movie theaters, universities, high schools, elementary schools…

And, I may not be a question of shifting the form, ie, children can still play baseball, climb trees and have imaginal play. It is the motivation, the goal, and the content that needs to change, from a focus on prevailing, conquering, or getting esteem at all costs, to nourishing, honoring, and cherishing the growth of inner creative being.

            Ironically, at least one of the young victims of the Connecticut massacre, the little girl called Emily, was, according to her Dad,  “a wonderful artist; the kindest person I had ever known.” 

            Can we take full advantage of this global grief, to take action that goes to the archetypal roots of this slaughter? Yes, enact strict gun control laws! Yes, please, dear God, improve the mental health system!! And yes, address the other level, of reality, moving with power and conviction, to nourish the sacred child soul in us all.

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IMAGINAL MEDITATION

             As we enter the month of October, it is a marvelous time to reap the bounties of the harvest, in our outer world, and within.  As we head off to the pumpkin patch or the apple-pressing party, we can reflect on the approaching winter as an invitation to hibernate, to reflect, to stoke the fires of our inner being.

            A tool that can ignite this process is one that I call “Imaginal Meditation”. Paying homage to the meditation tradition of Buddhism and the Active Imagination of Carl Jung, it provides an opportunity to shape an image that meets the unique needs of the individual on any given morning,  at any given moment in time.

            How to begin?

            Attend to the breath. Ideally, this would be a private, silent place,  far from the distractions of modern life. Practically, this is not only un- achievable, it is often in the chaotic moments in life that we most need to take a moment to connect with powerful, supportive voices within.  These “voices” come from a cast of archetypal energies that can often be more accessible to us if we imagine them as distinct personalities who can provide us with support, strength, or emotional nourishment, permission to retreat and reflect before making a difficult decision: whatever you need at the time.

            Say you are standing in line at the grocery store, snarled in traffic, waiting to go into a job interview – take a moment. Attend to your breath. Feel your lungs expand. Feel your rib cage relax as the breath moves out.

            Allow a few moments, being aware of your body, breathing in, breathing out..

            Become aware of your inner state: tensions, feelings, questions, hopes, apprehensions, fears, doubts...

            Ask yourself: What do I need in this moment, and who do I need it from?

            Open your imagination. Do you need support and comfort from your inner Wise Mother? Strength to accomplish a difficult task from your inner Body Builder? Inspiration from an inner Mozart? The possibilities are as expansive as your imagination.

            Recently I had to deliver a lecture on IMAGINATION AND THE SOUL. It was a new experience for me, and I was nervous as I could be. A perfect time for me to practice what I was about to preach! I took a moment in my car, the parking lot of the lecture hall, noticed my breath, and pictured a closed door. I asked, “Who do I need to come through that door, to get me through this evening?”

            I continued to monitor my breath. I imagined the door opening. Out came a tall, slender, strong woman, a long bow in her hand, a quiver of arrows on her back, thick dread-locks that snarled like snakes! But she was no Medusa, though I thought I could see a serpent’s tale! She had a face of ultimate serenity, and a warrior’s readiness to deal with whatever came. The reptilian quality seemed to promote the feeling of a steely confidence, a cold-bloodedness, no room for a little furry mammal’s whining and insecurity.

            She “followed” me into the lecture hall, and I felt her energy sinking into my bones, as I prepared to deal with whatever came that night.

            I also realized that my new Amazonian companion emerged to help with a challenge much deeper than lecture night jitters. I have a close family member newly diagnosed with cancer. I need to call on an emotional strength to walk with him through the darkest times, while holding hope and energy for joy,  I am grateful to the image-maker in my mind for awakening this new archetypal dimension when I need Her the most.

            Also, I have learned that when you open your imagination, you never know what form it will take. It can be scary. The imaginal world of our unconscious is far from predictable. If a dark image emerges, it can be like a nightmare that comes in a dream: an invitation to turn and face the fear, to call forth an archetypal warrior to stand down the “monster”, and work through the complexity it presents. Often it is through confronting the darkness in ourselves that we own all the split off, unattractive, weak, flawed parts, and become more whole, more alive, more deeply human.

            I invite you to engage in Imaginal Meditation, as we celebrate the harvest, and look forward to the warm hearth of a creative winter.

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I saw it from a distance: lavender buds shimmering in the misty Seattle rain. My heart felt warm, and light. How eager we are to emerge from the grey! Our longing for Spring is as ancient as humankind.

The Greeks conceived a myth to explain the reunion of soul that comes with new life bursting out of the soil. Persephone, maiden goddess of the Spring, is abducted by Hades, Lord of the Underworld. He carries her down to his dark realm, a prisoner-bride. Her mother, Demeter, goddess of the earth, is thrown into the depths of mourning. So epic is her despair, all plants on earth die as she withdraws her nourishment from the land.  Famine takes the lives of thousands of mortals. Zeus, locked away in his sanctuary on Olympus, takes note of this suffering at last, and appeals to his brother, Hades, to release Persephone. Hades reluctantly agrees, but in his cunning, begs his reluctant bride to eat a pomegranite seed. She has been holding out, sensing the symbolism in taking the seed into her body, but the promise of freedom loosens her resolve. She eats the seed, consummating her marriage to the Dark Lord, and is fated to spend four months of each year with her husband in the Underworld.

The parallels to our modern day abound. One could argue that Georgetown law student, Susan Fluke, was “carried to the Underworld” by the slanderous comments of Rush Limbaugh. And we only have to glance at the photos of war-ravaged Africa,  to see the ancient violence against women in full horrific form. This time, it is not a grieving Demeter that brings starvation to the land, but the ancient tribal violence of a patriarcal lords.

We rage at what some have called, “The New Assault on Women”. We are hungry for meaning and wholeness in our relationships, and in or world.

The myth points the way. When Persephone is released from Hell, she rejoices to put her feet upon the earth, and run to her mother. But she is no longer a child. Her story echoes the journey we all must take, from the innocence and entitlement of youth, to the Underworld of loss, and, ultimately, a confrontation with the dark aspect of our nature. Hades is not only the Lord of the dead. He protects and honors the Unconscious, the part of us that lives in Shadow. We are called to descend the shallow perch of the unexamined ego, down into our fears, frailties, and the host of nasty qualities flesh is heir to. The question for every mother and daughter – indeed for every relationship – is whether or not each person can own, tend, and transform shadow into a new state of being. If not, the split off shadow will be projected into the other person.

What would this look like in a non-mythic scenario? Imagine a modern Demeter who is an alcoholic. Persephone goes off to college, struggles to adjust to all the new pressures, joins a support group, has a painful love affair, does some therapy: sees patterns universal to a child of an alcoholic. She returns home in the Spring, having confronted her demons.

What if her mom used these same precious months to enter treatment, join AA, embrace sobriety? She can now greet her daughter and explain how she has wronged her, abused her, and abandoned her emotionally.  Then Persephone can express her pain and anger, knowing how important this is for her own healing. She could also own the times when she withheld her love from her mom, the only way she knew to express her rage, as she watched her mother slip further into addiction.

Shadow exists in many subtle and devious forms. I can only speculate about Rush Limbaugh’s shadow. What must his mother be like, for him to attack Susan Fluke with such venom?  Mary Poppins might have been less wooden if she could have owned the down side of being “practically perfect in every way”. Shadow can emerge when a loved one is ill and you cannot summon the courage to visit or call. It can emerge when you unconsciously work too much, ignore your needs too much. It can emerge any time you act from a false self.

This Spring, the beauty of the earth is calling to each of us to descend into the rich soil of our own Underworld. Like Demeter and Persephone, we must return again and again to our psychological winters. Only then can we greet the Spring, seeing ourselves, and  all human creatures as fragile wonders in a world ever in need of transformation.

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THE HEALING GRACE OF GRATITUDE

                           THE HEALING GRACE OF GRATITUDE

Copyright Nov. 2011 by Elizabeth Clark-Stern

In America, we are preparing for the feast of Thanksgiving, a celebration that carries plenty of shadow from our history of receiving many gifts of the new world from the Native Americans, even as we ultimately conquered, colonized, and displaced them. This reality is so typically brushed aside in the flurry of shopping and meal preparation. And yet, it surfaces, as shadow always does. Satirist Stan Freeberg penned the lyrics, “Take an Indian to lunch, pretend we’re a regular bunch.”

If we can drop the pretense, perhaps we can see the wisdom in inviting our shadow to share our Thanksgiving meal. Even as we order the turkey and boil the cranberries, we can consider a descent into the archetypal roots of gratitude, by definition an inner measurement of light and dark. We are grateful for good fortune, aware that there are others who do not have it. As we shop for our feast, the clerk asks if we want to donate to the local food bank, and we pause, aware of the less fortunate.

To be grateful is to hold consciousness of the opposites: success/ failure; peace/ turmoil; a loving family/loneliness. If we are grateful for love, arguably most of us have known what it is to not have it.

Gratitude is an opportunity to honor wholeness. We are grateful at a moment in time, knowing darkness returns, as the night follows the day. And if we are to the world soul, we can partner our gratitude with a commitment to stay conscious, and to transform our gratitude into action.

What could this look like? Something as simple as giving to the local food bank, inviting a friend to dinner who represents qualities you like to repress in yourself. I had an Aunt was always preaching at me, a sweet but insufferable soul. I wish she were still here, so I could invite her to Thanksgiving, a way of acknowledging the part of myself that can get on her high horse. Sitting down together would be a way of forgiving both of us, and loving each other anyway.

Another way of honoring wholeness could be to spend time in quiet reflection. Being with your inner soul story, opens you to connect to the souls of others. The tending of your own soul, is inseparable from tending the world soul. For many of us, this involves remembering to take the time to touch our own soul-awareness, and touch the world soul. How do we build a practice into our daily lives, that makes time and space, for this to occur?

In his lovely book, A Pebble for Your Pocket, Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh wrote of an ancient Buddhist practice to touch the earth. Imagine it: each morning, before breakfast, coffee, or firing up the computer, simply go outside, rain or shine, and place you hand upon the earth.

The cynic in me rears her head: of what use is this? -- Like the Earth knows you are touching her, thanking Her for sustaining life? What a pointless exercise!

The Wise Old Woman in me will not hear of it.

“Try it,” she tells me, and so I do.

The air is crisp this morning in Seattle, a light wind bringing down big leaf maple leaves the size of dinner plates. Gratitude is ebullient in my heart, for the abundance of color: deep reds, brilliant gold, rusty orange, maroon, and, most splendidly, the soft chartreuse of the ginko leaf. I survey the trees up and down the street, with reverence and wonder. In this frame of mind, I place a hand upon the cold, moist earth. I shift my weight impatiently. The cynic snickers, “Are you waiting for something to happen? Like the Earth is going to say, ‘thanks for noticing me’?”

“Stay awhile, “ whispers the Wise Old Woman. She knows well my habit of leaping from task to task, never quite touching all the bases. I recall the famous quote from Babe Ruth, immortalized on the Good Earth tea bags: “I have only one superstition. I touch all the bases when I hit a home run.”

I take a deeper breath and touch the earth, with both hands, feeling the dark wet grit of the soil, smelling the musty green all around me.

An image opens in my mind: the Earth Herself, home to all seven billion of us, rotating on her axis, even as she makes her journey around the sun.

I breathe deeper still, aware of my gratitude that I exist in this moment, on this celestial sphere. As I stay with this, something unusual happens. The anticipated anxieties of the day float away. What weight do these trivial worries have beside the connection I feel, in this moment, with something both deeply personal, and as large as life itself?

No wonder ancient people made a goddess of the Earth. She is Mother of us all, and gratitude in her presence is about the bounty we ourselves experience. She is not a vain goddess, and does not need us, to know Her value. Our Earth simply is, and following the wise counsel of Thich Nhat Hanh, we touch Her, and take our own moment to just be.

I feel the warm smile of the Wise Old Woman. I am always humbled when I follow her guidance. She confronts the side of me that wants to judge and partition, to walk past my soul, on the pretext that there is something else more important to do.

As James Hillman reminded us, in his call to go to the archetypal source of the repression of the world soul, nothing is more important.

On this Thanksgiving, I invite you to join me in sitting at the table with the totality of light and shadow. Be grateful for the bounty, and honor the reality of want. Make the time to be with your soul, and to nourish the anima mundi, the world soul.

And touch the Earth.

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ELIZABETH CLARK-STERN'S BLOG

News, Reviews, Opinions and Comments by the Therapist/Author


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 TENDING THE SOUL

 

TENDING THE SOUL: THE LEGACY OF JAMES HILLMAN

Copyright © Elizabeth Clark-Stern, November, 2011

I was deeply moved by the recent passing of James Hillman, author, Jungian analyst, and an icon in the Depth Psychology movement. Oddly strange to think of a world in which he no longer walks, taking with
him the power of his epic imagination,
and his ability to hold the larger reality of our psyches and our world.

But, of course, he did not take it with him. It is still here. He would undoubtedly
point out that his gift was in observing and expressing what is here right
under our noses, if we can only learn to see deeply into ourselves and the
world.

Of all the quotes that have circulated in the wake of his death, I keep returning to this one: “Ecology movements, futurism, feminism, urbanism, protest and disarmament, personal individuation cannot alone
save the world from the catastrophe inherent in our
very idea of the world. They require a cosmological vision that saves the phenomenon
‘world’ itself, a move in soul that goes beyond measures of expediency to the
archetypal source of our world’s continuing peril: the fateful neglect, the
repression, of the anima mundi.”

I read this as a call, from him, to those of us left in this fragile, bold, temporal world,
to wrestle with the challenge. What is the
“anima mundi”, the world soul, and how do we redeem her from the depths
of repression and neglect? How do we achieve a mending of the split
implied in Hillman’s conception of “the catastrophe inherent in our
very idea of the world.”? As long as we cling to the concept of power,
as a separate reality
from the world of human compassion, war and genocide will reoccur, tragically,
predictably, maddeningly.

James Hillman is not here to be interviewed on the subject, but if he were, my suspicion is that he would say the anima mundi includes all the archetypal forces, all the conflicts,
projections, and human characteristics, but is larger still,
incorporating the fabric of the mystical cosmos that is both Creator
and Created.

The latter concept resonates in the Jewish mystical tradition, the Kabbalah. Every
thought, action, word and deed performed by man or woman kind creates the
divine, a fluid dynamic reality that is always in the process of being born,
dying, and being recreated. It witnesses us, and vice-versa.

Even for those who would view this metaphysical view as “supernatural”, what it really
comes down to is Tolstoy’s lament when he walked among the slums of Moscow:
“What then must we do?” –for it is the human soul that is at risk, in each
individual, and by multiplication, the 7 billion of us on this once and future
planet.

Hillman challenges us that the redemption of anima mundi will require more than demonstrations, writing our congress people, or even, the psychological process of what Jung called “individuation”. This is
no less that the integration of all parts of
ourselves, conscious and unconscious, into conscious beings with integrity of
the soul. The root of the word integrity is “integer”, one, an indivisible,
united self. This does not imply perfection, far from it. Individuation
requires a spiritual marriage between one’s personal power (often extremely
hard-won), and loving compassion for all the imperfections in ourselves, and
others. Thus, an individuated soul has no need to judge or condemn others for
failings that exist so blatantly in herself.

Does this mean evil does not exist, or that we don’t have to fight it? No, it is a real
force, and must be reckoned with. But more often than not, the most grievous
demons are found in the lesser angels of our own hearts.

So, if individuation is such a daunting process, requiring at least a lifetime of most
of us to even begin to achieve, what is this “cosmological vision that saves
the phenomenon of ‘world’ itself?” How do we even begin to
conceptualize this, when we are so engaged in wrestling with the force
of the archetypal in our own lives, arguably as profound as the
gravitational pull that keeps our bodies planted on the earth?

An example of an archetype of this gravity is found in the myths of every world culture.
The ancient Greeks portrayed the warring triangles of Oedipus, Electra,
Antigone, Odysseus.: mortals and gods caught in a struggle for power and love,
and acting out the split between the two, driven by powerful unconscious
forces. This takes many forms in our life on the ground. When a child does not
feel sufficiently loved, she can search for this love throughout life, often
choosing people who will reject her, even as she was rejected by her parents,
but in her conscious mind, she thinks each new love will be the man who finally
loves her best of all.

Yet, it would seem Hillman is asking us to go beyond the pull of the personal story?
How do we do that? What does it really mean?

I decided to go to my own Oracle of Delphi, a personification in my imagination of the
Wise Old Woman. At many crossroads in my life I have turned to her, and she
always surprises me with insight and judgment that eluded my conscious mind.

I come upon her, sitting on a porch, in an old white wooden swing, her eyes surveying the begonias as she moves gently back and forth. She is glad to see me.

“It has been awhile,” she says.

I blush. “Sorry. I’ve been busy.”

“No doubt.”

“I have a question.”

“Should I be offended that you only come to me when you want something,” she says,
looking at me over her Ben Franklin glasses.

“You should be mad with me,” I say, looking away at the begonias.

“Come. Sit next to me, “ she says, patting the worn wooden swing.

I sit. We swing together for awhile. I ask her what she thinks James Hillman meant by
this cosmological vision that goes to the archetypal source of the world’s
soul.

She keeps swinging, tapping one finger on her knee. I have learned that this means she is lost in thought.

At last she stops, planting her feet on the concrete porch. She takes off her sandals, and stands, barefoot, on the smooth surface. I take off my shoes and stand beside her, feeling the blunt impenetrable
texture of the concrete.

“It feels so solid,” I say.

She smiles wryly. “That is the good news. Solid, substantial, yet, in order for us to get
down in there, to access this archetypal source, something must come along and
bust it up.”

“Well, if that’s good news, then it is surely happening, in our world. Everything seems
to be falling apart.”

“No,” she whispered, “I don’t mean on the surface of things, that is the ‘catastrophe
inherent in our very idea of world’. I mean something must break through our
rigid ideas about how things are, who we are, the very fabric and nature of our
world as we have dreamed her. That’s what Hillman saw, God rest his soul.”

I get dizzy. I tell her I can’t imagine how to achieve this psychological bulldozing.

She says, “Are you asking me, what then must you do?”

I nod, queasy, giddy, lost.

“For starters, come back more often!”

I look on her with gratitude, feeling every bit the hypocrite. Daily I counsel people to
access the higher self, to meditate, to work with and respect the wise person
within. A friend recently told me that she sees no separation between the world
soul and the personal soul. They are one. If I am to make any sense of James
Hillman’s call to the universe, I must stay here. My soul and I will wonder
about its meaning, and what to do about it, together.

I make a camp below the porch, in the black soil of the begonias. The earth feels moist,
fertile, possible.

I invite all of you, however you conceive of the wise inner person, the Higher
Power, the Kingdom of God within, to make camp, and feel the power of your
soul’s presence, and her love.

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WRESTLING WITH THE SHADOW:
A playwright’s journey into the heart of C.G. Jung
by Elizabeth Clark-Stern

I wrote the following essay after returning from the premiere performance of my play, OUT OF THE SHADOWS: A STORY OF TONI WOLFF AND EMMA JUNG, at the International Jungian Congress in Cape town in 2007.
The play has just been published, in may, 2010, a beautiful edition available at www.fisherkingpress.com, or on Amazon.

“And he rose up that night, and took his two wives, and his two women servants..and sent them over a brook...and Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day....And he said “Let me go, for the day breaketh”. And He said, “I will not let thee go, except thou bless me”...And Jacob blessed Him there, and called the name of the place Peniel: “for I have seen God face to face and my life is preserved.”
---Genesis 32:22-30 King James version

“Yahweh remembered a feminine being who is no less agreeable to him than to man, a friend
and playmate from the beginning of the world, the first-born of all God’s creatures, a stainless reflection of his glory and a master workman, nearer and dearer to his heart than the last descendants of the imaginal man, who was but a secondary product stamped in his image. There must be some dire necessity responsible for this anamnesis of Sophia: things simply could not go on as before, the “just” God could not go on committing injustices, and the “Omniscient” could not behave any longer like a clueless and thoughtless human being. Self-reflection becomes an imperative necessity, and for this Wisdom is needed.”
--C.G. Jung, ANSWER TO JOB




“I’m struggling with the anger I feel toward Jung”.

This statement hung in the air, as several of us gathered at the foot of the stage

following a Seattle performance of my play, OUT OF THE SHADOWS: A STORY OF TONI

WOLFF AND EMMA JUNG.

The woman sharing her feelings was a candidate in the Seattle-based Jungian analyst training

program, “My whole life is consumed with the study of Jung and his work”, she added, “and I don’t

know what to do with this anger toward Jung, the man.”

Her voice expressed confusion, outrage, betrayal. I had felt all of this myself, and certainly

heard it from many dedicated, passionately intellectual women: the struggle to reconcile the

luminous genius of this man with his behavior toward women.

Throughout his career women flocked to him, sensing in his work an invitation to the

Feminine - not only the archetypal one, but flesh and blood women searching for meaning and

depth. In ANSWER TO JOB Jung wrote of the reappearance of the goddess Sophia, the feminine

pneuma, Wisdom, beloved partner of God. Jung’s work calls women to enter a safe, sacred

place. It seemed inevitable that women students of Jungian analysis would feel betrayed, even

violated to learn of his relationship with some of the women in his life, as portrayed in the

documentary on Sabina Spielrein, the biography JUNG by Diedre Bair, now this production in which

the intellectual/love triangle between Jung, Emma, and Toni is given creative voice.

There was also the question of his actions in Germany during World War II. One of my

Jewish friends confronted me with documents from the Internet about Jung and the Third Reich. Even

if his blundering into Berlin was motivated by naiveté, it was troubling.

Now, with the play on its way the International Jungian Congress in Cape Town, I

looked at the faces of these women standing next to me at the foot of the stage. What did I feel

about Jung now? How had the creative process of writing the play and acting the role of Toni Wolff

impacted my conscious - and unconscious relationship to this man and his work?

If I go back to the beginning of my journey, the first character I encountered with contradictory

virtues and vices was not Jung, but Toni Wolff. Eighteen years ago when I wrote the first draft as an

independent study project at Antioch University, I played the role of Emma. Toni was portrayed by a

talented actor, also a fellow psychology student. The characters mirrored some facets of our own

lives. I was older, a mother raising a family. She had not yet married, and, like the young Toni Wolff,

was enamored of ideas, launching herself in the world as a therapist. It was easy for me to nestle

in Emma’s wifely virtue, to write the early draft, titled THE OTHER WOMAN, as a conflict centered

on Toni’s “selfish” usurping of the role of Jung’s intellectual muse, and lover.

Happily the young woman who first played Toni saw through my moral superiority, asserting

a vision of Toni as a bold, avant-garde woman ahead of her time. Her wisdom brought dimension

and vitality to the work, still resonant in the present version.

Some critics of THE OTHER WOMAN found the play unsatisfying because Toni was not a

“sympathetic” character. Sadly, back then, I valued others’ opinions above my own creative

authority, seeing this as a writer’s flaw. If I had been a better writer, I reasoned, I could have

portrayed this “unsympathetic” woman “sympathetically”. But how could I ? Look at what Toni had done: decades of a relationship with a married man, in defiance of the pain it caused his wife.
I was stymied. I see now that the flaw was not in my ability to put words on paper, it was in my pin

headed one dimensional way of seeing human character: good woman/ bad woman.

Unable to make Toni “sympathetic”, I put the play in a drawer, for the next 16 years.

A series of synchronous events found me in the second half of life, empty-nested, awakening to

a new creative yearning, and with it, Jungian analysis. Another woman, psychoanalyst/actor, Rikki

Ricard, returned to my life. I realized she would make a fabulous Emma Jung, and asked if she would

be interested in doing a reading of this two-woman play. Happily, she was. I began to revise the work,

pouring over Diedre Bair’s JUNG, which yielded much more solid information about Toni and

Emma.

I reached for other sources, thrilled that I could now see ways to flesh out the play as never before. It also became clear I would take the role of Toni this time. No accident. It was time for me to wrestle first hand with all the brilliant light and the “unsympathetic” shadow of this woman.
It was illuminating to read the old draft with fresh eyes. “Not bad” I thought, “but there is so

much more to it...”I could see through to my own younger self, crafting the bones of the drama

between these women, but sidestepping the depth of complexity and tension that occurred when Toni

and Jung transcended conventional morality. This begs the question: to achieve psychological

wholeness is transgression of moral convention sometimes required? How do we navigate an

ethical boundary between self actualization and the principle, “First do no harm”?

And then there was Jung. I knew this new draft, now titled OUT OF THE SHADOWS,

had to include not only what made him fascinating, but the dark reality of some of his behavior. A

voice inside of me screamed, “sacrilege!’ I had just begun a two-year seminar program for prospective

Jungian analytic candidates. Wasn’t it the height of hypocrisy for me to be so in love with the

man’s ideas while waving his dirtiest laundry in public? What was I doing? But, whose story was this?

Wasn’t my fear playing into the very patriarchal paranoia women have been subjected to for years? I

realized it wasn't my job as the playwright of a creative work to protect the public image of C.G.

Jung. My job was to get out of the way and let Emma and Toni speak from the fullness of their lives.

I told myself not to worry about being sacrilegious, but to immerse myself in the characters.

Through the women I began to experience Jung as a very different person from the likable old

magician of MEMORIES DREAMS AND REFLECTIONS. The Jung that emerged in relationship

to Toni and Emma was brilliant, inspiring, brutal, selfish, inflated. I was enacting my own duel

reality, writing a play evoking a ruthless, flawed Jung, while in my professional Jungian seminars, I

relished presentations from dynamic Seattle analysts of his luminous ideas. We shared our cases, our

dreams, held lively debates, enacted fairy tales-- all of this possible because years ago Carl Jung sat

down to write about the visions emerging from his bounteously creative mind. Inspired by Jung the

thinker, I would go home and write a scene about Jung, the man, in which Emma poured out pain

and outrage to her husband, for his many transgressions against her.

Both “Jung’s” were real and valid. One side of Jung in my psyche seemed to be feeding the

other, as the women came forth with their own strong voices. The tension between the women

dramatized the tension of opposites; tradition versus the exigencies of intellectual passion; the striving

to define themselves in their own right, and in relation to the creative masculine. Jung came to

embody the patriarchy: its power to shape the modern world, to dominate, to idealize women,

to vilify them.

Toni, the “selfish” woman of the earlier draft, became a father’s daughter, suffering from

depression following his death. She had been raised as his intellectual air, allowed access to his study,

tutored in philosophy, literature, and the arts. (“What future is there besides, marriage to some

dreary man I will despise”?) Of course there would be a strong mutual attraction between her and this

older man, a father figure, a scholar, a doctor, innovating a philosophic/artistic science of treating the

wounds of the soul. Now that I was thunderstruck with my own dream analysis, and immersing

myself in the evolving complexity of Jungian psychology in my seminars, I understood completely

why Toni initiated the relationship with Jung with all the passion of her 24 years. It would have been

Was she “selfish”, “unsympathetic”? That seemed the wrong question. I recalled that Somerset

Maughm once said, “the job of the writer is not to judge, but to know.” But in this “knowing”, every

artist must also be as conscious as possible of the implications of their work. In my heart I felt I was

“channeling” the voice of these historical women, but clearly doing so from my own frame of

experience, values, and feelings.

As for Emma, she became multi-dimensional: a mother who enjoyed making mud cakes and

picking berries with her children; a wife who clearly understood her husband’s genius, yet longed for an

intellectual life of her own. She chose to stay married to her husband, despite the many ways in which

he was not responsive to her needs and desires. Why? What did it mean for her to be forced by Carl to

coexist with this “other woman” who usurped so much of his life. She tells Toni, “I would give my

soul to have what you have: his heart, his mind, his loins, on a platter.”

What did it mean for Toni Wolff to be an intellectual woman living in turn of the Century

Switzerland, a country that restricted women’s access to reproductive rights, property, higher

education, even the right to vote. It must have felt like life or death for Toni to seize the opportunity

to form an intellectual/spiritual/ sexual relationship with Jung, prioritizing her happiness over moral

dictates of her time.

In the fall of 2005, we did an informal reading of the revised version of the play. The response

was essentially positive, with many ideas for improving the work. We began rehearsals and performed

a staged reading in May, 2006, at the annual Forum of the Northwest Alliance for Psychoanalytic

Study in Seattle. In this version I had written Jung in as a character, a suggestion from a theater

director outside the Jungian community. She made the case to me that an audience needed to see the

actual man, as opposed to an off stage character referred to in monologues. I thought this might be

an important step in bringing the characters fully into being. The play still focused on the women and

their relationship, but there he was, in flesh and blood, holding forth his theories, loving both women,

championing Toni’s intellect over his wife’s, wrangling with Emma over his visits to Berlin during the

Nazi’s rise to power. No hiding the man and all the bold dimensions of his whole being.

After the premiere performance, I sat on the edge of the stage facing the audience, in the hair

and makeup of Toni Wolff, but now I was the playwright, accountable for what I had crafted.

A man asked, “Why did you choose to write about this, when you could write about anything you

wanted to?” I answered “ on behalf of Emma and Toni and all women: “This story seemed

compelling, and to reflect the struggle of women, throughout history--” I looked at him, feeling the

warm flow of guilt in my stomach, for “outing” the dark side of Carl Jung.

Another man asked, “Do you think Carl Gustave was a bad man?” “No, “ I said,

remembering my Jewish friend, who dismissed Jung as a Nazi sympathizer, “I think he was flawed

man, not a bad one”. What a liberating thing to say. “Bad” implied a one-dimensional condemnation

of the man. I thought of the demonizing rage many people have expressed against George Bush, a

sentiment mirroring his condemnation of the terrorists in the Middle East as evil incarnate. A man

who is ‘bad” becomes an object, not a man. Jung ultimately redeemed himself, in the play, and in

history, by finally renouncing Hitler and achieving a place on the Nazi black list. “Bad” is neither

black, nor white. The shadow comes in many shades of gray.

Watching the character of Jung in the play was a necessary step in its evolution. Even more

significant was my decision to take the scenes in which he appeared onstage, and rewrite them as

monologues. I borrowed a technique used in plays like THE BELLE OF AMHERST, the one-

woman play about Emily Dickinson, who speaks to unseen characters, placing Jung “out there” as a

presence sitting somewhere on the third row. This gave the play back to the women, where it

belonged. Paradoxically, Jung was more “outed” than ever, because now the audience received the

rage, indignation, confrontation of both Emma and Toni.

In playing Toni’s monologues to Jung I felt the full power of her rage. This man “who held my

darkness in his hands” deals harshly with her when he discovers another woman of intellect he deems

more appropriate to serve as his “lieutenant”. Toni characterizes his rejection of her as his

“Exterminator”, unleashing the full range of her emotions, from shock to alienation, depression, rage.

But the shift in her status with Jung opens new possibilities in her relationship with Emma, an unlikely

source of solace and womanly support. It becomes clear these two women share an emotional and

intellectual bond, by virtue of their mutual intimacy with Jung. What does it mean for both of them to

confront the prospect of “taking down the veils so thick between us”? What does it mean when

enemies can peer through the glass darkly to the essence of being of the “other”?

As for Jung, I took my cue from the women analytic candidate who expressed her anger at

him that night at the foot of the stage. There was a piece left hanging in the play that would provide,

if not resolution, at least an articulation of what I had learned on my journey. I knew that the real

authority on the subject was Toni Wolff. I had read that as soon as Jung heard of Toni’s death, he

burned all of her letters, so we have no record of the intimate correspondence between them. What if

Toni had written a final letter to him. What would she say?

I felt she would not use the word “forgiveness”. She writes to Jung not of forgiveness, but of

regret that when she was a young woman attempting to help him through his darkest hours, she did

not have the experience, or maturity of vision to guide him in confronting his “Inner Exterminator”.

She sees the split in his psyche, and chides herself for not having been “ a giantess of an analyst”. She

then laughs at herself, “A giantess of an analyst, what inflation!” But surely it is a hope of our

profession, that in looking at our darkness within and owning all the ugliness, all the light, we can

help to heal the world. I think of Alice Miller’s portrayal of all murderers on death row as victims of

abuse, the child Adolph Hitler almost beaten to death by his father. Don’t we love to think that if

Dora Kolf, the Jungian analyst who innovated Sand Play therapy, had been able to serve little Adolph

in her clinic, it would have made a difference in the history of the Twentieth Century?

Toni concludes her letter with emotion flowing from a woman’s heart, writing of her love

for his face, his “body so large it blocks out the sun”, his wild laughter. She sees the shadow, the

split, and still loves the man. After writing that letter, on Toni’s behalf, I realized I could no longer

separate “me” from the voices of Emma and Toni in my head. I’m not angry with Jung any longer.

The creative process opened doors for me into the minds of the women, and through their

eyes I see Carl Gustav Jung in all his brilliance, in all his darkness.

I embrace the wisdom of wrestling with the shadow. When Jacob did hand-to-hand combat

with the stranger through the night, the only way to save his life was to bless his enemy, who then

revealed himself as the image of God. When Jung evoked the recall to consciousness of the much-

beloved Sophia, he envisioned that She would inspire a multidimensional concept of God, part angel,

part devil, capable of advanced consciousness. Only through relationship with human beings, can

God experience the completeness his nature.

By “becoming” Emma Jung and Toni Wolff, I learned that that through the power of our

creative imagination, we can journey to the full dimension of our humanity.

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