|
Post by Admin on Jul 21, 2020 14:36:38 GMT
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Jul 24, 2020 0:05:26 GMT
How Carl Jung Inspired the Creation of Alcoholics Anonymous in Health, Letters, Psychology | May 27th, 2019 6 Comments www.openculture.com/2019/05/how-carl-jung-inspired-the-creation-of-alcoholics-anonymous.htmlThere may be as many doors into Alcoholics Anonymous in the 21st century as there are people who walk through them—from every world religion to no religion. The “international mutual-aid fellowship” has had “a significant and long-term effect on the culture of the United States,” writes Worcester State University professor of psychology Charles Fox at Aeon. Indeed, its influence is global. From its inception in 1935, A.A. has represented an “enormously popular therapy, and a testament to the interdisciplinary nature of health and wellness.” A.A. has also represented, at least culturally, a remarkable synthesis of behavioral science and spirituality that translates into scores of different languages, beliefs, and practices. Or at least that’s the way it can appear from browsing the scores of books on A.A.’s 12-Steps and Buddhism, Yoga, Catholicism, Judaism, Indigenous faith traditions, shamanist practices, Stoicism, secular humanism, and, of course, psychology.
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Jul 24, 2020 11:15:48 GMT
Jung's Red Book for Our Time: Searching for Soul Under Postmodern Conditions Volume 4 by Murray Stein (Author), Thomas Arzt (Author) chironpublications.com/shop/jungs-red-book-for-our-time-series/The spiritual malaise regnant in today’s disenchanted world presents a picture of “a polar night of icy darkness,” as Max Weber wrote already a century ago. This collective dark night of the soul is driven by climate change-related disasters, rapid technological innovations, and opaque geostrategic realignments. In the wake of what policy analysts refer to as “Westlessness,” the postmodern age is characterized by incessant distractions, urgent calls to responsibility, and in-humanly short deadlines, which result in a general state of exhaustion and burnout. The hovering sense of living in a time frame that is post-histoire induces states of confusion on a personal level as well as in the realm of politics. Totally missing is a grand narrative to guide humanity’s vision. Thinkers, scholars, and Jungian analysts are increasingly looking to C.G. Jung’s monumental oeuvre, The Red Book, as a source for guidance to re-enchant the world and to find a new and deeper understanding of the homo religiosus. The essays in this series on Jung’s Red Book for Our Time: Searching for Soul under Postmodern Conditions circle around this objective and offer countless points of entry into this inspiring work. This is the fourth volume of a multi-volume series set up on a global and multicultural level and includes essays from the following distinguished Jungian analysts and scholars: Murray Stein and Thomas Arzt: Introduction Robert M. Mercurio: The Red Book and our Contemporary Crises: Active Imagination, Mass Migration and Climate Change Heike Weis Hyder: The Burning Urgency of Psychodynamic Discoveries in The Red Book for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy: A Key for Healing-Resonance of Soul, Love and Life Maria Helena R. Mandacarú Guerra: Jung’s Red Book as a Healing Symbol for Our Time Thomas Moore: A Book of Magic: Jung’s Red Book and the Tradition of Natural Magic Bruce MacLennan: Liber Novus sed non Ultimus: Neoplatonic Theurgy for Our Time Gary Clark: Integrating the Archaic and the Modern: The Red Book, Visual Cognitive Modalities and the Neuroscience of Altered States of Consciousness John Merchant: The Red Book as Jung’s Asclepiadean John Ryan Haule: Jung comes back to Himself Henning Weyerstrass: C.G. Jung and the Creative Unconscious Becca Tarnas: The Participatory Imagination Dale Kushner: In Extremis: Jung’s Descent into the Language of the Self Karin Jironet: On the Divine and Eternal Solitude of the Star: Jung’s Seven Sermons Mirrored to Sufi Mysticism Katie Givens Kime: “So Long As We Are Not Mystics”: What the Personal Art of William James and C.G. Jung Give Us Now Christian Gaillard: The Red Book in Venice Kiley Q. Laughlin: The Red Book: A Premodern Graphic Novelty Mark Winborn: Liber Novus and the Metaphorical Psyche: Revisioning The Red Book
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Jul 26, 2020 18:00:32 GMT
Atom, Archetype, and the Invention of Synchronicity: How Iconic Psychiatrist Carl Jung and Nobel-Winning Physicist Wolfgang Pauli Bridged Mind and Matter Two of humanity’s greatest minds explore the parallels between spacetime and the psyche, the atomic nucleus and the self. www.brainpickings.org/2017/03/09/atom-and-archetype-pauli-jung/“Every true theorist is a kind of tamed metaphysicist,” Einstein wrote as he contemplated the human passion for comprehension in the final years of his life. He may well have been thinking about the great Austrian-Swiss theoretical physicist Wolfgang Pauli (April 25, 1900–December 15, 1958), who first postulated the neutrino and was awarded the Nobel Prize for his discovery of the Pauli exclusion principle — a monumental leap in our understanding of the structure of matter. Decades earlier, 21-year-old Pauli had published a critique of Einstein’s groundbreaking theory of general relativity. It greatly impressed the elder physicist, who wrote in astonishment: No one studying this mature, grandly conceived work could believe that the author is a man of 21. One wonders what to admire most, the psychological understanding for the development of ideas, the sureness of mathematical deduction, the profound physical insight, the capacity for lucid systematic presentation, the complete treatment of the subject matter, or the sureness of critical appraisal. Indeed, this uncommon fusion of psychological acumen and scientific rigor only intensified as Pauli grew older. Around the time he wrote the paper that spurred Einstein’s praise, Pauli became enchanted with the work of pioneering psychologist William James. After a three-decade immersion in it, and several years after he won the Nobel Prize in Physics, Pauli met the great psychiatrist Carl Jung (July 26, 1875–June 6, 1961), who in turn was deeply influenced by Einstein’s ideas about space and time.
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Jul 30, 2020 15:39:30 GMT
Treasure Hunting: A Hermeneutical Inquiry into the Final Painting of Liber Novus This dissertation employs a hermeneutic methodology via deductive and imaginal approaches which chiefly rely on Liber Novus and Jung’s Collected Works to examine image 169 and critically situate the work in a hermeneutic framework. The purpose of this study is to explore the likely relationship between image 169 and Jung’s personal myth and his individual cosmology. I also consider how image 169 may shed light on the meaning of Jung’s psychology and analyze the figures depicted in image 169. Jung did not realize his personal myth until around 1930, which coincides with the probable year he began painting image 169. From the earliest moments of Jung’s childhood, he experienced elaborate fantasies, which culminated in his confrontation with the unconscious. Between 1913 and 1916, Jung documented his fantasies in a series of black notebooks, which he later transcribed into Liber Novus: The Red Book. Jung’s experiences during this time period compelled him to consider the relationship between the living personality and the community of the dead. Image 169 suggests a pictorial formulation of Jung’s psychology and what I have termed as the apocatastasis of the dead. Both Western and Eastern sources seem to have influenced Jung’s rendering of the image, as evidenced by his study of Zimmer’s Artistic Form and Yoga in the Sacred Images of India, the Shri-Chakra-Sambhara Tantra, and the fantasies of Kristine Mann. Key words: liber novus, personal myth, apocatastasis, the dead, individuation, mandala, self www.academia.edu/37006729/Treasure_Hunting_A_Hermeneutical_Inquiry_into_the_Final_Painting_of_Liber_NovusKiley Laughlin I am a Jungian scholar specializing in the implications of C. G. Jung's psychology and theories, as well as their applicability and relevance to the findings of twenty-first century science. independent.academia.edu/LaughlinKiley
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Aug 3, 2020 15:38:29 GMT
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Aug 6, 2020 19:17:02 GMT
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Aug 12, 2020 21:06:57 GMT
„The stronger and more independent our consciousness becomes, and with it the conscious will, the more the unconscious is thrust into the background, and the easier it is for the evolving consciousness to emancipate itself from the unconscious, archetypal pattern. Gaining in freedom, it bursts the bonds of mere instinctuality and finally reaches a condition of instinctual atrophy. This uprooted consciousness can no longer appeal to the authority of the primordial images; it has Promethean freedom, but it also suffers from godless hybris. It soars above the earth and above mankind, but the danger of its sudden collapse is there, not of course in the case of every individual, but for the weaker members of the community, who then, again like Prometheus, are chained to the Caucasus of the unconscious. The wise Chinese would say in the words of the I Ching: When yang has reached its greatest strength, the dark power of yin is born within its depths, for night begins at midday when yang breaks up and begins to change into yin.
The doctor is in a position to see this cycle of changes translated literally into life. He sees, for instance, a successful businessman attaining all his desires regardless of death and the devil, and then, having retired at the height of his success, speedily falling into a neurosis, which turns him into a querulous old woman, fastens him to his bed, and finally destroys him. The picture is complete even to the change from masculine to feminine. An exact parallel to this is the story of Nebuchadnezzar in the Book of Daniel, and Caesarean madness in general. Similar cases of onesided exaggeration of the conscious standpoint, and the resultant yin-reaction from the unconscious, form no small part of the psychiatrist’s clientele in our time, which so overvalues the conscious will as to believe that “where there’s a will there’s a way.” Not that I wish to detract in the least from the high moral value of the will. Consciousness and the will may well continue to be considered the highest cultural achievements of humanity. But of what use is a morality that destroys the man? To bring the will and the capacity to achieve it into harmony seems to me to require more than morality. Morality à tout prix can be a sign of barbarism—more often wisdom is better. But perhaps I look at this with the eyes of a physician who has to mend the ills following in the wake of one-sided cultural achievements.
Be that as it may, the fact remains that a consciousness heightened by an inevitable one-sidedness gets so far out of touch with the primordial images that a breakdown ensues. Long before the actual catastrophe, the signs of error announce themselves in atrophy of instinct, nervousness, disorientation, entanglement in impossible situations and problems. Medical investigation then discovers an unconscious that is in full revolt against the conscious values, and that therefore cannot possibly be assimilated to consciousness, while the reverse is altogether out of the question. We are confronted with an apparently irreconcilable conflict before which human reason stands helpless, with nothing to offer except sham solutions or dubious compromises. If these evasions are rejected, we are faced with the question as to what has become of the much needed unity of the personality, and with the necessity of seeking it. At this point begins the path travelled by the East since the beginning of things. Quite obviously, the Chinese were able to follow this path because they never succeeded in forcing the opposites in man’s nature so far apart that all conscious connection between them was lost. The Chinese owe this all-inclusive consciousness to the fact that, as in the case of the primitive mentality, the yea and the nay have remained in their original proximity. Nonetheless, it was impossible not to feel the clash of opposites, so they sought a way of life in which they would be what the Indians call nirdvandva, free of opposites.
Our text is concerned with this way, and the same problem comes up with my patients also. There could be no greater mistake than for a Westerner to take up the direct practice of Chinese yoga, for that would merely strengthen his will and consciousness against the unconscious and bring about the very effect to be avoided. The neurosis would then simply be intensified. It cannot be emphasized enough that we are not Orientals, and that we have an entirely different point of departure in these matters. It would also be a great mistake to suppose that this is the path every neurotic must travel, or that it is the solution at every stage of the neurotic problem. It is appropriate only in those cases where consciousness has reached an abnormal degree of development and has diverged too far from the unconscious. This is the *sine qua non of the process. Nothing would be more wrong than to open this way to neurotics who are ill on account of an excessive predominance of the unconscious. For the same reason, this way of development has scarcely any meaning before the middle of life (normally between the ages of thirty-five and forty), and if entered upon too soon can be decidedly injurious.
As I have said, the essential reason which prompted me to look for a new way was the fact that the fundamental problem of the patient seemed to me insoluble unless violence was done to one or the other side of his nature. I had always worked with the temperamental conviction that at bottom there are no insoluble problems, and experience justified me in so far as I have often seen patients simply outgrow a problem that had destroyed others. This “outgrowing,” as I formerly called it, proved on further investigation to be a new level of consciousness. Some higher or wider interest appeared on the patient’s horizon, and through this broadening of his outlook the insoluble problem lost its urgency. It was not solved logically in its own terms, but faded out when confronted with a new and stronger life urge. It was not repressed and made unconscious, but merely appeared in a different light, and so really did become different. What, on a lower level, had led to the wildest conflicts and to panicky outbursts of emotion, from the higher level of personality now looked like a storm in the valley seen from the mountain top. This does not mean that the storm is robbed of its reality, but instead of being in it one is above it. But since, in a psychic sense, we are both valley and mountain, it might seem a vain illusion to deem oneself beyond what is human. One certainly does feel the affect and is shaken and tormented by it, yet at the same time one is aware of a higher consciousness looking on which prevents one from becoming identical with the affect, a consciousness which regards the affect as an object, and can say, “I know that I suffer.” What our text says of indolence, “Indolence of which a man is conscious, and indolence of which he is unconscious, are a thousand miles apart,” 1 holds true in the highest degree of affect.
~Carl Jung, Commentary on “The Secret of the Golden Flower”, CW 13: Alchemical Studies, pars. 13-17
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Sept 3, 2020 10:24:13 GMT
Developing Jung's "Imagination for Evil" is the Doorway to Our Light www.awakeninthedream.com/articles/carl-jung-imagination-evilWe live in a time of the emergence of great darkness in our world. The great doctor of the soul C. G. Jung, who came up with the idea of the existence of the shadow within the human psyche, had deeply valuable insights into the nature of the psychological situation in the world today, particularly the role that the darkness of the shadow plays in our modern world. Jung felt that the catastrophic evil that is manifesting in our world today is an archetypical expression of the process of humanity’s transition from one epoch—and state of consciousness—to another. He was of the opinion that the fate of the world literally depended upon the recognition of the shadow elements within us and their assimilation into a more expanded sense of self that includes both our light and dark aspects. What we don’t accept in ourselves, but rather, exclude from our self-image and push into the shadows of netherworld of the unconscious—thereby depriving it of light—becomes toxic. These repressed shadowy contents build up a charge in the unconscious, becoming contaminated with archaic archetypal energies from the collective unconscious. It is truly frightening how many of us are so out of touch with our own shadow that we can easily become unconscious instruments through which archetypal evil, which lies hidden within the dark side of the human psyche, can act itself out through us into the world. We still go on thinking that we are "simplex and not duplex," to use Jung's words. We thus imagine ourselves to be "innocuous, reasonable and humane." We don’t deny that terrible things are happening, but since we regard ourselves as harmless, Jung points out, “it is always ‘the others’ who do them.” When we are not in touch with the potential evil that dwells within us, we project it outside of ourselves in a futile attempt to disown it, thereby falling prey to and unknowingly acting out in the external world the very evil that we are turning away from within ourselves. Evil thrives on our turning a blind eye towards it. To quote Jung, “Evil today has become a visible Great Power…. We stand face to face with the terrible question of evil and do not even know what is before us, let alone what to pit against it.” Most ordinary, psychologically and/or spiritually under-developed people have trouble even imagining the utter depravity of the evil that can potentially play itself out through individuals or groups (not to mention through themselves) who are taken over by the will-to-power of the shadow. In order to develop a sense of how to deal with evil, however, we first have to try and understand the nature of the beast with which we are dealing. The first principle of psychological method is that any phenomenon to be understood must be sympathetically imagined. No syndrome can be truly dislodged from its cursed condition until we first move imagination into its heart. One of the most crucially important steps in dealing with evil is, according to Jung, to develop what he calls an “imagination for evil.” If we can’t imagine the evil that human beings are potentially capable of—and of which we ourselves, under the right circumstances, could also be capable of—in our naivety, we offer ourselves into evil’s hands. If evil escapes the reach of our imagination, it will dictate, enforce and establish dominion over us, both within our imagination and in our concrete lives. Because our imagination can help us get a handle on evil, evil tries to stifle and ultimately destroy the imagination, which is why mobilizing the creative imagination is crucial in dealing with the powers of darkness. If we don’t develop an imagination for evil, we can lose touch with our shadow and identify with what Jung calls a “fictive personality,” which is to say, in splitting off from our darkness, we conceive of ourselves as being someone who we’re not – a “lite” version of our selves. We all have a darker half, but to the extent we are overly identified with our lighter side at the expense of the darkness within us, we wind up being unable to imagine the depths of darkness of which we are capable. Jung pulls no punches in making this exact point when he writes, “we are always, thanks to our human nature, potential criminals. In reality we merely lacked a suitable opportunity to be drawn into the infernal melee.” We are all inseparably interconnected and partake of the shared collective (darker) unconscious of humanity—the shadow side of being a human being—which is why Jung wrote, “None of us stands outside humanity’s black collective shadow.” Paul Levy
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Sept 12, 2020 6:51:24 GMT
Most people will entertain any mental/emotional distraction in order to avoid spending one moment facing their own inner darkness... “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”
~ Carl Jung
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Sept 14, 2020 9:46:39 GMT
Taking the devil seriously does not mean going over to his side, or else one becomes the devil.
Rather it means coming to an understanding.
Thereby you accept your other standpoint.
With that the devil fundamentally loses ground, and so do you. And that may be well and good.
Although the devil very much abhors religion for its particular solemnity and candor, it has become apparent,
however, that it is precisely through religion that the devil can be brought to an understanding. What I said about
dancing struck him because
I spoke about something that belonged in his own domain.
He fails to take seriously only what concerns others because that is the peculiarity of all devils.
In such a manner, I arrive at his seriousness, and with this we reach common / ground where understanding
is possible.
The devil is convinced that dancing is neither lust nor madness, but an expression of joy, which is something
proper to neither one nor the other. In this I agree with the devil. Therefore he humanizes himself before my eyes.
But I turn green like a tree in spring.
Yet that joy is the devil, or that the devil is joy, has got to worry you. I pondered this for over a week, and I
fear that it has not been enough.
You dispute the fact that your joy is your devil.
But it seems as if there is always something devilish about joy.
If your joy is no devil for you, then possibly it is for your neighbors, since joy is the most supreme flowering
and greening of life.
This knocks you down, and you must grope for a new path, since the light in that joyful fire has completely
gone out for you.
Or your joy tears your neighbor away and throws him off course, since life is like a great fire that torches everything
in its vicinity.
But fire is the element of the devil.
When I saw that the devil is joy, surely I would have wanted to make a pact with him.
But you can make no pact with joy, because it immediately disappears.
Therefore you cannot capture the devil either.
Yes, it belongs to his essence that he cannot be captured.
He is stupid if he lets himself be caught, and you gain nothing from having yet one more stupid devil.
The devil always seeks to saw off the branch on which you sit.
That is useful and protects you from falling asleep and from the vices that go along with it.
The devil is an evil element.
But joy?
If you run after it, you see that joy also has evil in it, since then you arrive at pleasure and from pleasure go
straight to Hell, your own particular Hell, which turns out differently for everyone.
Through my coming to terms with the devil, he accepted some of my seriousness, and I accepted some of his
joy.
This gave me courage.
But if the devil has gotten more earnest, one must brace oneself.
It is always a risky thing to accept joy, but it leads us to life and its disappointment, from which the wholeness
of our life becomes. [The Red Book; Page 260-261]
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Sept 30, 2020 0:45:50 GMT
"The thesis here presented is that in many cases the first acute psychotic episode should not be considered one of the schizophrenias. If properly received in relationship this experience may even be seen as carrying the capacity to further the growth of the personality. Indeed, in this light the episode appears as nature's way of healing a restricted emotional development and of liberating certain vitally needed functions—in short, a spiritual awakening.
It is natural for the psyche to undergo periods of turmoil, since in order to outgrow a phase of insufficient development and enter a revitalized one, the deep psyche is roused into highly dynamic activity. To remain on an even course, always unshaken by such disruptions, may hold one within the bounds of the statistically normal but it is sure to hold one back from achieving one's full potential, and thus for certain persons is not normal. Some individuals are, by their innate endowment, called upon to escape the bounds of the average and to venture free. If they hold back, the psyche may become so activated as to overwhelm consciousness.
When it does so, the state is pronounced abnormal by our culture and moves are made to correct this "decompensation." The psyche, however, has its own aims to pursue in order to fashion a new orientation. The process should not be arrested but allowed to fulfill its own requirements. Such a cooperation with nature's needs, though, requires a new array of attitudes and procedures more nearly aligned with the nature of the psyche's own processes."
~John Weir Perry, Trials of the Visionary Mind: Spiritual Emergency and the Renewal Process
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Oct 1, 2020 15:41:03 GMT
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Oct 9, 2020 16:20:44 GMT
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Oct 11, 2020 21:53:17 GMT
Any attempt to determine the nature of the unconscious state runs up against the same difficulties as atomic physics: the very act of observation alters the object observed. Consequently, there is at present no way of objectively determining the real nature of the unconscious.
-C.G. Jung
|
|