You need to be a member of Depth Psychology Alliance to add comments!
Comments are closed.
"Though the ego is only one complex of associations in the psyche, it has evolved as a coordinator: what it is drawn to as an object of attention will be where and how its energy is applied. These motives are based on unconscious processes, and only by turning conscious attention to them can we find deeper meaning and purpose beyond the preconceptions of ego and its one-sided, paradoxical intentions." -- …
"The underlying tension of the individual's relation to culture... is a fundamental conflict of psychic life, a catalyst for development from infancy to old age. If the individual cannot discern him/herself apart from these impersonal forces, he/she is unconsciously carried along by them, and this herding effect only magnifies the dangerous potential of mass movements. All unconscious conflicts have a dual nature: subjective and objective, personal and social, creative and destructive.…
"Beneath our scientific preoccupations, we remain in the stage of psychological awareness reflected in our religious heritage. Behind the curtain of moral judgment lurk the split figures of good and evil: a model of how we relate to our unconscious natures. Jung has described how those ideas reflect the positive and negative poles necessary to produce psychic energy: the sliding scale along which consciousness fluctuates in its on-going efforts to define itself. Just as it forms the path…
"The individual is the only real carrier of life." -- Carl Jung
The undeniable fact that the body is regulated by nature, along with the absurd idea that humans had otherwise freed themselves from the bondage of instinct, dominated psychology throughout most of the last century. That view loosely fit together certain facts while ignoring others. Such self-inflated notions were not seen as projections of a split condition -- nor are they much more acknowledged…
"The emotional confusion generated by... a major shift in values is only enhanced today by a profound lack of introspection. The “suprapersonal factors” embodied in religious images are intended to orient us inwardly; to center and protect us from being swept away by mass contagion. Our ideas of religion are changing, and there is no return to the old ways. Deep in the throes of unseen psychic forces, consciousness is being pushed in a new direction. The possibilities for…
"I tried to give expression to the process as it formed in me. I followed the unconscious directives without preconception as to where they might lead, allowing them as far as possible to create their own picture. The result was both a story and an example, an analogy, of Jung's model: a description of how psychic energy flows toward unconscious aims through the elaboration of ideas." -- …
"Overwhelming evidence found by an international team of scientists have shown that humans have altered the Earth to the point that the Earth has entered a new geological time period, a press release by the Australian National University (ANU) said on Friday... The exact starting date of the Anthropocene remains uncertain, although it is likely to be around the middle of the 20th century, at the start of the nuclear age and a time of accelerating population growth and rapid…
“It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all... to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.” -- Joseph Heller, Catch-22
(I owe the …
“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” -- Genesis
This post concludes the main themes of A Mid-Life Perspective: Conversations With The Unconscious. Jung noted the above quote as a reference to the original bisexuality of the …
“Everything psychic is pregnant with the future.” -- Carl Jung
"Ego and Intellect
The identification of ego with intellect contributes to this problematic conception of nature. It long slumbered in Christian theology as identification with an otherworldly God and a disdain for natural life: an image of self-rejection – one of the reasons guilt weighs so…
Comments
Hi Evan,
It has been a while since our last contact, but I am still a reader of your interesting articles and this publication, “Ego in Fast Forward”, dated April 26 – 2017, in particular.
It reminds me of what Jung wrote in order to investigate what is coming from the conscious and what is coming from the unconscious – when one is following the path of individuation to become self aware.
According to Jung, as soon as we (are able) notice that we in any form are exaggerating, we can be sure that it is the influence of the unconscious.
Your article (by others) gives a view of the American politicians, but I think that this is a world wide happening and infecting society as a epidemic, as a lot of people are looking at the behavior of the leading elite and adapting their behavior, as consequence : if the leading elite allowing themselves to behave like this to the world, well, I even can do better (worse) then they do !
And so as you wrote, we tend to end up in a downward spiral of psychic destruction.
Greeting from Ric.(from Holland).
Hi Evan,
My before dinner response.
Your paper (Mysticism Re-examined) resonated with me on a number of levels.
You see the most bazaar aberrations manifest today in such destructive ways by the collective, it would seem were in the midst of a real storm.
“Otherworldly (conscious) fixations, along with our self-appointed stewardship of the earth reflected in the above quote, have become crimes against nature of cosmic proportion. Today, we're contending with everything and everyone but ourselves.”
Perhaps an example would be the conservative religious right wing interpretation of (natural law)
“The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased.” Alexander Hamilton: This along with the biblical, having dominion over all living things on earth is darned scary!
In painting the Pentimento effect, is when one can see the underpainting, translucent layers reveal previous image that lies below the surface, certain layers only revealed after centuries. The layers become more and more translucent with time to show the thought process and elements edited and added layer by layer.
Sometimes political dialogue is predicated on obscure obtuse documents, like a painting. Layered one on top of the other. We all add our own projection of image on the painting, and then wonder why others don’t see the same thing.
The ironic paradoxical twists and turns seem to call for endless possibilities and conclusions. But it’s much like standing in an alley with a rubber ball thinking if I throw this rubber ball there are an infinite amount of possibilities of where it might land, but the thing you don’t know is.
The gutter is slightly tilted as is the street slightly tilted, so every time you throw the ball it rolls to the same exact spot.
How could Alexander Hamilton possibly know that his sun beam of divinity would be subject to the ironic laws of physics and the human condition.
"light as wave and light has particle, physicist have facilitated an explanation the complementarity principal. conversely people are trying to use this principle to explain aspects of the self and mysticism.
(Two independent descriptions are necessary, and wholly sufficient, to describe the phenomenon of light being both particle and wave).
( but of course Alexander Hamilton wasn’t talking about those beans of sunlight) and I have a hard time extrapolating and importing theories involving quantum mechanics, or disciplines outside of my limited intellect to create a coherent model of the mysterious self.
This is the paradoxical nature, of nature itself. Like the feather that is random and floating softly to earth, is so different than the one cut to fit an arrow, both designs perfect in their way.
Two things can be simultaneously true at the same time.
An event happens! as we move through time and grow older with multiple perspectives and experiences a historical event actually changes with our multiple and new perspectives constantly moving away from the event, its history is changing as our history changes but only if we are observing.
keeping these things in mind when one looks at a historical painting or religious document, “moment in time” it is in flux and has many multiple truths that are happening simultaneously. But like a featherless arrow our collective dialogue doesn’t seem to be able to hit the target, I accept both viewpoints can be true simultaneously, be it particle, wave, or historical sunbeam, both descriptions are needed to sustain the
Hi Evan. Welcome to the Alliance. It's great you've found us. I've seen your blog--tweeted from before, and am so glad you're doing the work you are. Thanks so much for sharing ti here as well!
Meanwhile, I hope as you explore the community a bit you find a dynamic group of (over 1400 now!) like-minded people who are all deeply drawn by the field of depth psychology. While there are many Jungian analysts and clinical psychologists here, our members come from many walks of life--artists, writers, doctors, healing professionals, counselors, students, business people, etc--so there is much cross-disciplinary knowledge and experience here to be shared.
On that note, there are many opportunities to engage as you browse the site. When you're ready to jump in, please feel free to post a topic for discussion in the forum, respond to someone else's post, or share a link to an article or web site you like.
Also, if you have time, you may want to consider joining the online book club—There's a new author each month, and you can jump in at anytime and participate at whatever level you wish. The Book Club is all done via writing in an open forum, so you can read all the comments that have gone on so far. In June we are featuring an anthology with an ecopsychological bent: "ReBearths: Conversations with a World Ensouled" with Dr. Craig Chalquist and you can join at anytime. Even if you don't have the book, you may benefit from the discussion.
In case you need detailed help getting started and navigating the site, you can use the following link-- http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/page/navigating-the-site--and please don't hesitate to ask if you have any questions at all! I look forward to seeing you around the community. ~Bonnie Bright, Founder