Frith Luton PDF

Frith Luton ‘Hearing the call’ is a numinous experience. Such events always have a deep emotional resonance. Hitherto unconscious contents have become conscious. What was previously unknown is now known. That automatically results in an enlargement of the personality. Cults, sudden ‘born again’ con...

Frith Luton ‘Hearing the call’ is a numinous experience. Such events always have a deep emotional resonance. Hitherto unconscious contents have become conscious. What was previously unknown is now known. That automatically results in an enlargement of the personality. Cults, sudden ‘born again’ conversions and other far-reaching changes of mind—like Paul on the road to Damascus—have their origin in such experiences. Whether for good or ill, only time will tell. Consciousness is temporarily disoriented, life as one has known it is disrupted, and when the ego is particularly weak the entire personality may disintegrate. The extreme possibility is schizophrenia, a splitting of the mind—multiple personalities with no central control, a free-for-all among the complexes. But the more common danger is inflation, an unavoidable concomitant of realising new things about oneself. Here are two passages by Jung on inflation: “Knowledge puffeth up,” Paul writes to the Corinthians, for the new knowledge had turned the heads of many, as indeed constantly happens. The inflation has nothing to do with the kind of knowledge, but simply and solely with the fact that any new knowledge can so seize hold of a weak head that he no longer sees and hears anything else. He is hypnotised by it, and instantly believes he has solved the riddle of the universe. But that is equivalent to almighty self-conceit. Paradoxically enough, inflation is a regression of consciousness into unconsciousness. This always happens when consciousness takes too many unconscious contents upon itself and loses the faculty of discrimination, the sine qua non of all consciousness. Regression. The backward movement of libido to an earlier mode of adaptation, often accompanied by infantile fantasies and wishes. Regarded causally, regression is determined, say, by a “mother fixation.” But from the final standpoint the libido regresses to the imago of the mother in order to find there the memory associations by means of which further development can take place. “It is precisely the strongest and best among men, the heroes, who give way to their regressive longing and purposely expose themselves to the danger of being devoured by the monster of the maternal abyss. But if a man is a hero, he is a hero because, in the final reckoning, he did not let the monster devour him, but subdued it, not once but many times. Victory over the collective psyche alone yields the true value – the capture of the hoard, the invincible weapon, the magic talisman, or whatever it be that the myth deems most desirable. “ [Left untreated, neuroses’ symptoms worsen into what Jung called a “vicious circle,” in which “retreat from life leads to regression, and regression heightens resistance to life.” Jung had some patients whose resistance grew to the point where an “unconscious urge to suicide then engineered all kinds of dangerous accidents.”Sue Mehrtens ] Depression. A psychological state characterized by lack of energy. Energy not available to consciousness does not simply vanish. It regresses and stirs up unconscious contents (fantasies, memories, wishes, etc.) that for the sake of psychological health need to be brought to light and examined. Depression should therefore be regarded as an unconscious compensation whose content must be made conscious if it is to be fully effective. This can only be done by consciously regressing along with the depressive tendency and integrating the memories so activated into the conscious mind – which was what the depression was aiming at in the first place. [“The Sacrifice,”] Regression can proceed along two lines: either as a retreat from the outside world (introversion), or as a flight into extravagant experience of the outside world (extraversion). Failure in the first case drives a man into a state of dull brooding, and in the second case into leading the life of a wastrel. [“On Psychic Energy,” ] Progression refers simply to the continuous flow or current of life. It is commonly interrupted by a conflict or the inability to adapt to changing circumstances. During the progression of libido the pairs of opposites are united in the coordinated flow of psychic processes. … But in the stoppage of libido that occurs when progression has become impossible, positive and negative can no longer unite in coordinated action, because both have attained an equal value which keeps the scales balanced. [“On Psychic Energy,” ] Jung believed that laws governing the physical conservation of energy applied equally to the psyche. Psychologically, this means that where there is an overabundance of energy in one place, some other psychic function has been deprived; conversely, when libido “disappears,” as it seems to do in a depression, it must appear in another form, for instance as a symptom. Every time we come across a person who has a “bee in his bonnet,” or a morbid conviction, or some extreme attitude, we know that there is too much libido, and that the excess must have been taken from somewhere else where, consequently, there is too little. … Thus the symptoms of a neurosis must be regarded as exaggerated functions over-invested with libido. … The question has to be reversed in the case of those syndromes characterized mainly by lack of libido, for instance apathetic states. Here we have to ask, where did the libido go? … The libido is there, but it is not visible and is inaccessible to the patient himself. … It is the task of psychoanalysis to search out that hidden place where the libido dwells. [“The Theory of Psychoanalysis,”] Personal growth therefore becomes the process of taking responsibility for one's own life and to express one's will creatively in life situations. To achieve this an individual needs to face [his or her] own guilt and fear, which has resulted in a negative pattern of behavior, and break loose from this pattern and risk the courage to create" (Mitchell). This idea is parallel to Campbell's view of the monomyth as the individual's search for bliss. There is also a social dimension to Otto Rank's View of the Artist. Rank views the artist's as engaged in an evolving relationship with society, from being controlled and conformed to social rules (adapted) to being conflicted about his/her own choices and the demands of society (which can be related to the id/superego conflict of Freud) to the character finally realizing his or her place in society (confident), being true to his or her identity and, in doing so, providing a service to society. In Jungian psychology, the term ‘puer aeternus’ is used to describe an adult man whose emotional life has remained at an adolescent level, usually coupled with too great a dependence on the mother. The term ‘puella’ is used for a woman, though one also speaks of a woman with a puer animus—a father’s daughter. The puer/puella syndrome is not an issue in one’s early years, because the symptoms then are age-appropriate, but many psychological crises in later life arise from the inner need to grow out of this stage. The typical puer does not look his age and is proud of it. Who would not be, in a culture where youth is valued more than old age? Any man would be shocked at the suggestion that his youthful appearance derives from emotional immaturity; ditto women. Puers and puellas live a provisional life. There is always the fear of being caught in a situation from which it might not be possible to escape. Their lot is seldom what they really want; they are always ‘about to’ do something, to make a change; one day they will do what is necessary—but not just yet. They are awash in a world of “maybe”: “Maybe I’ll do this … maybe I’ll do that …” Plans for the future come to nothing. Life slips away in fantasies of what will be, what could be, while no decisive action is taken to change the here and now. The provisional life is a kind of prison. The bars are the parental complexes, unconscious ties to early life, the boundless irresponsibility of the child. Thus the dreams of puers and puellas are full of prison imagery: chains, bars, cages, entrapment, bondage. Life itself, reality as they find it, is experienced as imprisonment. They yearn for independence and long for freedom, but they are powerless to pull it off. The puer’s opposite number, or shadow, is the senex (Latin, ‘old man’): disciplined, conscientious, organised. Similarly, the shadow of the senex is the puer: unbounded instinct, disordered, intoxicated, whimsical. The puer’s mythological counterpart is the Greek god Dionysus, whose frenzied female followers—puella acolytes, so to speak—ripped men to pieces. Senex psychology is appropriately characterised by Saturn and the god Apollo: staid, rational, responsible. At any stage of life one must make a place for both puer and senex. In fact, whoever lives one pattern exclusively risks constellating the opposite. Enantiodromia is waiting in the wings: the more one-sided we are, the more likely it is that the opposite will break through to spin our lives around. A healthy, well-balanced personality is capable of functioning according to what is appropriate at the time. That is the ideal, seldom attained without conscious effort and a psychological crisis. Hence analysis quite as often involves the need for a well-controlled person to reconnect with the spontaneous, instinctual life as it does the puella’s or puer’s need to grow up. Campbell’s hero's journey, or the monomyth, is the common template of stories that involve a hero who goes on an adventure, is victorious in a decisive crisis, and comes home changed or transformed, ​with the power to bestow boons (reward, elixir, treasure etc) on his fellow man. Mythologically, the hero’s goal is to find the treasure, the princess, the ring, the golden egg, elixir of life, etc. Psychologically these are metaphors for one’s true feelings and unique potential. In the process of individuation, the heroic task is to assimilate unconscious contents as opposed to being overwhelmed by them. The potential result is the release of energy that has been tied up with unconscious complexes. In myth and legend, the hero typically travels by ship, fights a sea monster, is swallowed, struggles against being bitten or crushed to death, and having arrived inside the belly of the whale, like Jonah, seeks the vital organ and cuts it off, thereby winning release. Eventually he must return to his beginnings and bear witness. [El héroe en el vientre de la ballena El los mitos, aparece como continuación del cruce del umbral. En ella, se remarca la muerte simbólica del héroe, no porque muera, sino porque parece que ha sido tragado por lo desconocido. Por lo tanto, parece que hubiera desaparecido o muerto, al igual que Jonás cuando se lo tragó la ballena. En definitiva, la aventura absorbe al héroe, de forma que está muy lejos de nuestro mundo, pero luchando dentro de otro mundo completamente diferente.] In terms of a man’s individuation, the whale-dragon is the mother or the mother-bound anima. In a woman’s psychology, the hero’s journey is lived out through the worldly exploits of the animus, The vital organ that must be severed is the umbilical cord. [This healing journey requires slaying the monsters and tyrants (one’s ill attachments) of the past and present so that one can move forward with renewed life.] Whatever the conscious attitude may be, the opposite is in the unconscious. There is no way to haul this out by force. If we try, it will refuse to come. That is why the process of analysis is seldom productive unless there is an active conflict. Indeed, as long as outer life proceeds relatively smoothly, there is no need to deal with the unconscious. But when we are troubled, it is wise to take it into consideration. Jung believed that the potential resolution of a conflict is activated by holding the tension between the opposites. When every motive has an equally strong counter-motive—that is, when the conflict between the ego and the unconscious is at its peak—there is a damming up of vital energy. But life cannot tolerate a standstill. If the ego can hold the tension, something quite unexpected emerges, an irrational “third” that effectively resolves the situation. This irrational “third” is what Jung called the transcendent function, which typically manifests as a symbol. Tertium non datur – The reconciling “third,” not logically foreseeable, characteristic of a resolution in a conflict situation when the tension between opposites has been held in consciousness. As a rule it occurs when the analysis has constellated the opposites so powerfully that a union or synthesis of the personality becomes an imperative necessity. … [This situation] requires a real solution and necessitates a third thing in which the opposites can unite. Here the logic of the intellect usually fails, for in a logical antithesis there is no third. The “solvent” can only be of an irrational nature. In nature the resolution of opposites is always an energic process: she acts symbolically in the truest sense of the word, doing something that expresses both sides, just as a waterfall visibly mediates between above and below. “The Conjunction” The repressed content must be made conscious so as to produce a tension of opposites, without which no forward movement is possible. The conscious mind is on top, the shadow underneath, and just as high always longs for low and hot for cold, so all consciousness, perhaps without being aware of it, seeks its unconscious opposite, lacking which it is doomed to stagnation, congestion, and ossification. Life is born only of the spark of opposites. “The Problem of the Attitude-Type” Psychologically, we can see this process at work in the development of a lasting and relatively unchanging attitude. After violent oscillations at the beginning the opposites equalize one another, and gradually a new attitude develops, the final stability of which is the greater in proportion to the magnitude of the initial differences. The greater the tension between the pairs of opposites, the greater will be the energy that comes from them … [and] the less chance is there of subsequent disturbances which might arise from friction with material not previously constellated. “On Psychic Energy” The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate. That is to say, when the individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of his inner opposite, the world must per force act out the conflict and be torn into opposing halves. “Christ, A Symbol of the Self” Synchronicity – A phenomenon where an event in the outside world coincides meaningfully with a psychological state of mind (especially in relation to the subconscious processes) - Daryl Sharp, Jung Lexicon Consciousness and the unconscious seldom agree as to their contents and their tendencies. The self-regulating activities of the psyche, manifest in dreams, fantasies and synchronistic experiences, attempt to correct any significant imbalance. According to Jung, this is necessary for several reasons: (1) Consciousness possesses a threshold intensity which its contents must have attained, so that all elements that are too weak remain in the unconscious. (2) Consciousness, because of its directed functions, exercises an inhibition (which Freud calls censorship) on all incompatible material, with the result that it sinks into the unconscious. (3) Consciousness constitutes the momentary process of adaptation, whereas the unconscious contains not only all the forgotten material of the individual’s own past, but all the inherited behaviour traces constituting the structure of the mind [i.e., archetypes]. (4) The unconscious contains all the fantasy combinations which have not yet attained the threshold intensity, but which in the course of time and under suitable conditions will enter the light of consciousness. “The Transcendent Function” When there is full parity of the opposites, attested by the ego’s absolute participation in both, this necessarily leads to a suspension of the will, for the will can no longer operate when every motive has an equally strong countermotive. Since life cannot tolerate a standstill, a damming up of vital energy results, and this would lead to an insupportable condition did not the tension of opposites produce a new, uniting function that transcends them. This function arises quite naturally from the regression of libido caused by the blockage. “Definitions” This process requires patience and an ego strong enough to bend but not break, otherwise a decision will be made out of desperation, just to escape the tension. But when a decision is made prematurely—when the tension has not been held long enough—then the other side, the option that was not chosen, will be constellated even more strongly and we’re right back in the fire. There is no consciousness without discrimination of opposites. This is the paternal principle, the Logos, which eternally struggles to extricate itself from the primal warmth and primal darkness of the maternal womb; in a word, from unconsciousness. “Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype” Individuation cuts one off from personal conformity and hence from collectivity. That is the guilt which the individual leaves behind him for the world, that is the guilt he must endeavor to redeem. He must offer a ransom in place of himself, that is, he must bring forth values which are an equivalent substitute for his absence in the collective personal sphere. Without this production of values, final individuation is immoral and – more than that – suicidal. [Proust escribe: “Todo el bien que artistas, escritores, científicos han hecho sobre la tierra lo han hecho, si no de un modo propiamente egoísta (porque su objetivo no era la satisfacción de unos deseos personales, sino el esclarecimiento de una verdad interior entrevista), sin ocuparse de los demás. El altruismo, para Pascal, para Lavoisier, para Wagner, no ha consistido en interrumpir o en desnaturalizar un trabajo solitario para ocuparse de obras de beneficencia. Han producido su miel como las abejas, y de esta miel se han aprovechado los demás (…): pero sólo han podido producirla a condición de no pensar en los otros mientras estaban pendientes de la obra”. No es que el escritor (o el artista, o el científico) se desentienda de su tiempo y sus semejantes; es que asume que lo mejor que puede hacer para serles de utilidad es centrarse en su trabajo y, al menos temporalmente, inhibirse de su tiempo y sus semejantes. Se trata de la paradoja esencial de la creación, que consiste en encerrarse para abrirse, en separarse para unirse a los demás: la soledad solidaria del poeta, la llamó Savater. Javier Cercas] We like to think we are masters in our own house, but clearly we are not. We are renters at best. Psychologically we live in a boarding house of saints and knaves, nobles and villains, run by a landlord who for all we know is indifferent to the lot. We fancy we can do what we want, but when it comes to a showdown our will is hampered by fellow boarders with a mind of their own. In the jargon of Jungian psychology, these “fellow boarders” are known as complexes. We cannot get rid of our complexes, simply because they are deeply rooted in our personal history. Complexes are part and parcel of who we are. The most we can do is become aware of how we are influenced by them and how they interfere with our conscious intentions. As long as we are unconscious of our complexes, we are prone to being overwhelmed or driven by them. When we understand them, they lose their power to affect us. They do not disappear, but over time their grip on us can loosen. A psychological complex is a bundle of associations, sometimes painful, sometimes joyful, always accompanied by affect (marked by physical symptoms and disturbances in thinking; like in hysteria). It has energy and a life of its own. It can upset digestion, breathing and the rate at which the heart beats. It behaves like a partial personality. When we want to say or do something and a complex interferes, we find ourselves saying or doing something quite different from what we intended. Like neurosis, a psychotic condition is due to the activity of unconscious complexes and the phenomenon of splitting. In neurosis, the complexes are only relatively autonomous. In psychosis, they are completely disconnected from consciousness. [In schizophrenia] the split-off figures assume banal, grotesque, or highly exaggerated names and characters, and are often objectionable in many other ways. They do not, moreover, cooperate with the patient’s consciousness. They are not tactful and they have no respect for sentimental values. On the contrary, they break in and make a disturbance at any time, they torment the ego in a hundred ways; all are objectionable and shocking, either in their noisy and impertinent behaviour or in their grotesque cruelty and obscenity. There is an apparent chaos of incoherent visions, voices, and characters, all of an overwhelmingly strange and incomprehensible nature. “On the Psychogenesis of Schizophrenia” Jung believed that many psychoses, and particularly schizophrenia, were psychogenic, resulting from an abaissement du niveau mental and an ego too weak to resist the onslaught of unconscious contents. He reserved judgment on whether biological factors were a contributing cause. In neurosis, where consciousness is one-sided to an extreme, the aim of analytic therapy is the realization and assimilation of unconscious contents so that compensation may be reestablished. This can often be accomplished by paying close attention to dreams, emotions and behavior patterns, and through active imagination. Any incompatibility of character can cause dissociation, and too great a split between the thinking and the feeling function, for instance, is already a slight neurosis. When you are not quite at one with yourself … you are approaching a neurotic condition. “The Tavistock Lectures” Every neurosis is characterized by dissociation and conflict, contains complexes, and shows traces of regression and abaissement. “Analytical Psychology and Education” I myself have known more than one person who owed his entire usefulness and reason for existence to a neurosis, which prevented all the worst follies in his life and forced him to a mode of living that developed his valuable potentialities. These might have been stifled had not the neurosis, with iron grip, held him to the place where he belonged. “The Problem of the Attitude-Type” Neuroses, like all illnesses, are symptoms of maladjustment. Because of some obstacle – a constitutional weakness or defect, wrong education, bad experiences, an unsuitable attitude, etc. – one shrinks from the difficulties which life brings and thus finds oneself back in the world of the infant. “The Philosophical Tree” In psychic disturbances it is by no means sufficient in all cases merely to bring the supposed or real causes to consciousness. The treatment involves the integration of contents that have become dissociated from consciousness. [“The Philosophical Tree,” In Jung’s model of typology, the inferior or fourth function is opposite to the superior or primary function. Whether it operates in an introverted or extraverted way, it behaves like an autonomous complex; its activation is marked by affect and it resists integration. To the extent that a person functions too one-sidedly, the inferior function becomes correspondingly primitive and troublesome. The overly dominant primary function takes energy away from the inferior function, which falls into the unconscious. There it is prone to be activated in an unnatural way, giving rise to infantile desires and other symptoms of imbalance. This is the situation in neurosis. Experience shows that it is practically impossible, owing to adverse circumstances in general, for anyone to develop all his psychological functions simultaneously. The demands of society compel a man to apply himself first and foremost to the differentiation of the function with which he is best equipped by nature, or which will secure him the greatest social success. Very frequently, indeed as a general rule, a man identifies more or less completely with the most favoured and hence the most developed function. It is this that gives rise to the various psychological types. [“Definitions,” In deciding which of the four functions – thinking, feeling, sensation or intuition – is primary, one must closely observe which function is more or less completely under conscious control, and which functions have a haphazard or random character. Whatever attitude exists in the conscious mind, and whichever psychological function is dominant, the opposite is in the unconscious. This situation seldom precipitates a crisis in the first half of life. But for older people who reach an impasse, characterized by a one-sided conscious attitude and the blockage of energy, it is necessary to bring to light psychic contents that have been repressed.