Tag Archives: jung

Man’s Despair (and Repair?)

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Another friend of mine took his life last month. I resonate with his despair. It seems to be that there is an issue for men in our sixties. What comes to me is that society asks a few individuals to adopt the guilt and weight of the wrongs of previous generations; and that this burden can be unbearable. It seems to me that men of my generation and background (I am 68 and middle-class British) are also coping with 1,000 years of female oppression.

James Hollis – insightful Jungian analyst – wrote “Under Saturn’s Shadow”, a book in which he surfaces the ways in which the patriarchy also oppressed men.

James Hollis who wrote …

”Under Saturn’s Shadow”

In it he describes men’s isolation from each other and their feminine side – as we were expected to labour, fight and often die. Feminism releases men from this; however the role-expectation was crystallised in those of us brought up in the 1950’s and 1960’s. We feel the need still to fulfil a role (breadwinner, protector etc) that is no longer appropriate. It’s like having an appendix. Unnecessary, but it’s still there but without a role.

On top of this there is a projection of the wrongs of all those generations of patriarchy onto these role-less shoulders. This is our work; but some middle aged men find this too difficult to cope with.

James Hollis puts it like; this referring to the patriarchy which had an interest..

”not in the individuation of the person, but in the integration of the unformed person into the collective definition of tribal masculinity. Still, take away such psychically charged images of identity, take away the wisdom of the elders, take away the community of men, and one has the modern world”.

.. and again..

”Surely the greatest tragedy for men in regard to the feminine principle is that their fear alienates them from their own anima, the principle of relatedness, feeling and connection to the life force. This alienation from self obliges alienation from other men as well. Often their only connection with each other comes through superficial talk about outer events, such as sports and politics”

And our repair? It’s in the work..to live with vulnerability, to find our feminine and thus a different masculinity. To attempt to become gentle men.

Carl Jung, balance and individuation

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One of Jung’s (many!) insights was the drive to find balance from which to individuate; to grow fully into our potential. Balance is dynamic, and between different dimensions within each of us, and between us. Three of these dimensions have been popularised by Katherine Briggs and her daughter Isobel Myers with the Myers-Briggs Personality Test and Typology. These are , Thinking-Feeling and Sensing-Intuition.

Carl Jung. Dynamic Balance and Individuation
These are discussed in Jung’s book – “Psychological Types”. However Jung saw these as fluid states rather than ways of categorising people. He did not agree with Briggs and Myers. Rather weare, each of us, a complex of each of the 16 MBTI typologies.

It is balance between these states that we should seek as we change and grow. If we express too much of one aspect, this sets up a force pulling us toward the other. For instance if we spend too much time extroverted then we develop a need to spend time alone ( and vice versa). As Jung says:

”Identification with one particular function at once produces a tension of opposites. The more compulsive the one-sidedness, and the more untamed the libido which streams off to one side, the more daemonic it becomes” Carl Jung on Psychological Types

It is not that we all should aim for some kind of grey average at the centre of each of the dimensions. Rather, the opposite. Jung saw our whole purpose as what he called “individuation”; within which there is a search for increasingly anuthentic expression of our true Self. This involves bringing to consciousness knowledge of that which is within us, and its connection to the transpersonal. This is anything but some kind of dumbing down. Indeed..

“A conscious capacity for one-sidedness is a sign of the highest culture, but involuntary one-sidedness, i.e., the inability to be anything but one-sided, is a sign of barbarism” Carl Jung, Collected Works

Eric Berne and Transaction Analysis

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Eric Berne brought Freudian thinking into everyday use; much as Myers and Briggs did for Carl Jung’s typology. He observed that we can understand our own and other people’s ego-states through our interactions with each other. He liked our interplay to a series of “transactions”, which we can then think about. His seminal book was “The Games People Play”, and it is extremely accessible.

His ideas have some overlap with Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT), in that he made a “contract” with patients about how they wanted to change and then worked to effect that.

He represented our internal ego-states as Parent, Adult and Child. Since each of us has these states within us we can then analysis our interactions with others in these terms. So that, for instance, a “transaction” between my Child and your Child is very different from that between my Child and your Parent.

These internal states are – for Eric Berne – each a part of our ego. They don’t for instance translate across to Sigmund Freud’s Superego, Ego and I’d.

Transaction Analysis (TA) can be extremely effective; for good or ill. It is used in sales training by some very large companies. For instance an initial Child-Child interaction – “come out to play” – can create an immediate bond, which then is translated into Adult-Adult (typically by asking open questions), from which the needs of a client can be ascertained. However the power of TA can be used to manipulate as well as to break ice or to understand one’s own internal ego-states and from that understanding to effect change.

Berne’s thinking has been taken forward for instance by Thomas Harris in his books “I’m OK, You’re OK” and “Staying OK”, and James Redfield’s “Celestine Prophecy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Berne

Collective Unconsciousness

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Carl Jung first wrote about the “collective unconscious”. This lies below and as a foundation of our own individual unconscious. It is a pooling between us, now and in the past. It is also one gateway (I believe) to the shared life beyond the fragility of our mind in the life – our material consciousness – the Brahman of Hinduism or Nirvana of Buddhism, that can be glimpsed through meditation.


The collective unconscious speaks in a language both of archetypes and mandalas. Archetypes are the powerful shared images which make so many movies effective for instance the monster in the dark of horror films and the ecstasy of union and community of Avatar. Mandalas reflect perfection in images and seem, at least to me to be linked to the beautiful fractals of chaos theory that underlay existence. (look at free fractal apps on your iPhone for a direct view of reality!).

It is only our mind, this particular consciousness that dies, this is anyway an illusion. If we can connect to the shared stream of unconsciousness now , then we already experience our immortality. Through prayer, meditation, connection with our loved ones or nature – even the cinema. After all, the movies are right, forget what people call it.

May the Force be with us.

I am cockleshell

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I am a little boat; tossed or rather carried by The creative force (that which I was brought up to name God). When I am in this flow then ideas reach out – poignant, powerful, present. This is not so when I am too much in my mind – working, trying – everything I touch turns out as a childish daub. Beached.

A few days ago, whilst waiting for my wife outside a shop, I saw a glorious sky, and it was just obvious that all is love and beauty; just waiting to be seen and to come in from the immense outside to which we belong.

Death ? This the beginning. The enforced pyre of our limited ego and mind which is co-created with our body’s growth. This ego, as Jung says, which is a time-limited fragment of our true self. The self wherein we are infinitely part of each other.

The BBC show – Strictly Come Dancing – was won by the deaf actress – Rose Ayling-Ellis. Her dancing with Giovanni, was efflorescent with divine love and beauty. This flow or force is – I believe – the true “thing-in-itself”; and most clearly felt and seen in flashes and in relationship. When my ego and body die, I will be released back into that ocean again.

Fire, Energy and Love

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.. these are, I think different expressions or facets of the same thing (thing because as Einstein tells us matter is simply condensed energy)

“In the beginning was Power, intelligent, loving, energising. In the beginning was the Word, supremely capable of mastering and moulding whatever might come into being in the world of matter. In the beginning there were not coldness and darkness: there was Fire.”

The Mass on the World, 1923 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

“The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre-
To be redeemed from fire by fire.”

Little Gidding, 1942 TS Eliot

“Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another.”

Albert Einstein


“Love is the real power. It’s the energy that cherishes. The more you work with that energy, the more you will see how people respond naturally to it, and the more you will want to use it. It brings out your creativity, and helps everyone around you flower.”

Marion Woodman

“But what is passion, what are emotions? There is the source of fire, there is the fullness of energy. A man who is not on fire is nothing: he is ridiculous, he is two-dimensional. He must be on fire even if he does make a fool of himself. A flame must burn somewhere, otherwise no light shines; there is no warmth, nothing.”

Psychology of Kundalini Yoga Carl Jung

Climbing the number ladder…

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Nought, Omphalos, Nothing Eternity and the void.

One is appearance. Miraculous number. The world is born with the appearance of 1. The archetypal change from nothing to all. But, one is one and all alone and ever more shall be so.

Two, and consciousness is possible. Granularity and separation. We can understand existence because we have edge. A within and without. Quantum mechanics shows that everything exists only as a cloud of possibility – until observed. It is the act of knowing that crystallises out reality from potential. Deliberately to mix language – it is witness that causes wavefunction collapse. It is consciousness that creates reality, and that is only possible when edge is born with the advent of the number 2. Duality appears to be a fundamental property of existence. Energy is the flip side of matter (e=mc2), everything is wave and particle simultaneously. Yin is nothing without Yang. Ich and Du embrace and the world unfolds.

Three, is unbalanced materialism. The 3 dimensions of space, but static – going nowhere without time. The trinity – all male of course! A way point en-route to…

Four, the mystic number,Jung’s number. The sacred number of alchemy. The four points of the compass and of course the description of all – space-time (the fourth dimension not separate as imagined until Einstein, but integrated). The alchemists believed that moving from 1 to 2 to 3 and then finally adding one to reach 4, integrating back to one was the route to perfection. Jung worked with Wolfgang Pauli to tease out an interrelationship between quantum mechanics and psychology. What synchronicity then that Pauli’s best know contribution was to discover through the exclusion principle that a fourth dimension is needed to describe reality. The three intuitive dimensions of space plus spin.

…

Creativity and the Collective Unconscious

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There is an upward bubbling pressure from the unconscious that directs our outward activity. If we are aware of this, through analysis, reflection or meditation – we are able to separate this white noise out from the real “me” which exists of course as the “see” to the “saw” of all else that is…

But the pressure from the upward currents from the unconscious has another purpose, which is an impulse to seek, find and play – in other words to interact – which is the basis of existence itself. Possibly this drive to connect comes from Jung’s “collective unconcious” – a place where we are already in a state of flow together.

Without this impulse and force we would spin out of orbit as directionless ego-planets in a void of emotional space. The strong emotional impulses of our unconscious are in fact akin to a gravitational force to pull us together into a state of re-integration.