Side - by – Side:Interview with Toshio Kawai................Nancy Robinson-Kime Book Review: The Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious (CW9i)...Nancy Robinson-Kime
Cover picture is used with the permission of the Bildrchives . Copyright by C. G. Jung Institute Zürich
Editor's Notes…
In our second issue of the Newsletter, we explore the archetype of choice. A call for essays was sent out to our members with some suggestions on how to approach the theme of “choice." What was received was a triad of stories that interweave the experiences of life with the expressions of choices, decisions, and wishes. The articles we received represent a particular perspective on choice that connects to its inner longings, impulses, and fantasies.
Ian McCabe explores mindfulness when confronting the trickster of addiction in his “Moment of Clarity." Dominique Marguerite embodies choice by comparing it with “taste” and the Emperor in the story, The Golden Tree, when he experiences the sweet and sour of unconscious choices. In Pia McMahon’s essay we are reminded of childhood wishes and the deep interior from which they arise and the ways they interact with the longings and wounds we carry into adulthood.
We present thoughtful and innovative thesis summaries from two recent graduates, Pia McMahon and Cheryle Van Scoy. Ms. McMahon creatively conjoins Schema Therapy with Analytical Psychology and explores where they may intersect in treatment. Schema therapy provides the outward behavioral and cognitive reactions for the innermost complex. Ms. Van Scoy undertook a remarkable research project to explore the unconscious symbolism active in individuals living with diabetes.
The Side-by Side interview with Toshio Kawai is a thoughtful and deep exploration of some aspects of East and West approaches to psyche, the praxis of analysis, and of Postmodernism in Japanese culture.
A book review from Nancy Robinson-Kime takes a new look at Jung’s Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious (CW9i), specifically the trickster and spirit archetypes and the positive and negative mother complex.
In conclusion, we offer the poem, "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost (1874 – 1963). Frost’s poetry is known for romantically evoking the metaphors of nature and life. This poem is chosen because it touches the core of choice within the individual life.
There is a new feature to the Newsletter that may make for easier reading. If you see an essay in the Table of Contents that you want to expressly go to, you may click on the title and voilà are taken there.
I am interested in talking with you about your ideas for articles for the Newsletter and its themes. You may contact me at firstvp@junginstitut-alumni.ch.
--Maureen O'Donnell--
Announcements
IAAP Application
Several alumni have inquired about the process for the Zurich Institute's application to join the IAAP. Below is a summary of the process:
The application process is divided into 3 years, which correspond to the three years between Congresses. Year one is the first year following a Congress.
YEAR ONE:
The applying group must submit the application by July 15. For the Zurich Institute, this means that the application had to be received by the IAAP by July 15, 2014. The Zurich Institute submitted the application by July 15, and it was received by the IAAP. The applying group must also inform other member groups in the region that they have submitted an application for membership. In the case of the Zurich Institute, the member groups SGAP and AGAP were informed of the application.
If there are not other member groups of the IAAP in the region or country, then the application may be submitted by July 15 of year two, however this does not apply in the case of the Zurich Institute, because there are two other member groups locally: AGAP and SGAP.
Upon receiving the application, the IAAP puts out a call for formal Letters of Opinion from any existing IAAP Group Members or Individual Members in the country or region. When a Letter of Opinion is written, the author of said letter must grant permission for the IAAP to send the formal Letter of Opinion to the applicant group.
YEAR TWO:
Letters of Opinion must be submitted within 6 months of the call for Letters of Opinion: mid-January of 2015, for the Zurich Institute application.
Depending on the content of the Letters of Opinion, at the February meeting of the IAAP Executive Committee, the president may offer or delegate a mediation process, which may include the establishment of a Committee of Inquiry.
Year two is also the time when the IAAP Sub-committee verifies all information in the application and reviews the purpose of the group member that is applying for membership.
YEAR THREE (The year of the next Congress)
By mid-January of Year Three, the IAAP sub-committee must present its report to the IAAP President. This report is also given at the meeting of the Executive Committee and includes recommendations regarding the application. The committee must vote whether to accept, modify or reject the report.
The application is voted on by the Delegates at the IAAP Meeting during the Congress that year. A two-thirds majority of votes is required for the applying group to be accepted into IAAP membership. For the Zurich Institute, the application will be voted on at the 2016 Congress in Kyoto, Japan.
Hopefully this short summary helps provide clarification regarding the application process.
Newsletter Submissions
Please consider writing for the Newsletter! We want book reviews, poems, thematic articles, and thesis summaries. For thematic articles, the theme for the Summer Newsletter is "the Thread." We welcome your original essays on this theme. If you have given a lecture or seminar at the Jung Institute, think about creating an article for the Newsletter using your notes. For a copy of our Author's Guidelines, click here.
P R E S I D E N T ' SM E S S A G E Kim Arndt
Greetings! In July 2014, I attended the graduation of thirteen new analysts at the C.G. Jung Institute, Zürich. Go to our website to see photos from the ceremony. Click on the photo at the end of the page to see all of them.
Witnessing the evolution of the Institute’s graduation ceremony over the last several years brought to mind the developments of our new Alumni Association. Efforts to establish the Alumni Association first started in April of 2013. To begin, we constructed a Constitution, a Swiss bank account, and our Board of Officers was organized. Since November 2013, the Alumni Association created the following:
i. A website to serve the Alumni of the C.G. Jung Institute, Zurich as well as members of the public seeking analysts.
The Alumni Only Section emphasizes a more personal as well as professional sharing of information: Memories and Stories of training at the Institute, Personal News, and professional Profile.
The Public Section provides Current News as well as a Calendar of upcoming events in the Jungian world. Analyst Information provides two things: an Analyst Directory for locating analysts worldwide, and a list of all graduates of the Institute and their thesis topics to identify areas of research and interest.
ii. Our first newsletter appeared in summer 2014. The newsletter features articles, research, and book reviews by analysts. The Side-by-Side interview series of C.G. Jung Institute, Zurich alumni was launched. We published our first in-depth interview of Alumna, Pat Berry, who graciously agreed to be interviewed for the debut of this project.
iii. To welcome new graduates into our community, the Alumni Association gave each a beautiful graduation card and keepsake featuring an image from the Picture Archives to honor and celebrate their completion of the rigorous training process.
iv. We hosted our first "Thesis Conversations" event the week before graduation. A new tradition, all the graduates are invited to give a summary of his or her thesis to their colleagues, analysts, family, and friends. It was a lovely prelude to the culminating graduation.
v. Meaningful gift-giving opportunities have been created in cooperation with the Institute. Whether you are a member or not, you may make donations to support our various projects. Contact us for more information.
We have decided to keep the membership fees low in consideration of the number of membership organizations analysts have to join.
A complimentary membership is offered to analysts who are 80 years of age and older.
Student scholarship or other gifts of 200chf or over give the donor this year’s membership dues free.
The depth and breadth of our membership, in terms of cultural and professional background, experience, and interests is truly tremendous and evokes pride of membership.
We welcome your participation!
On behalf of the Board of the Alumni Association of the C.G. Jung Institute Zürich,
Kim Arndt, President
Thesis Summaries...
Cheryle Van Scoy
Pia McMahon
Diabetes andSoul
Symbolic Expression Of Individuals Living with Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus:
A Pilot Investigation Utilizing Therapeutic Process in the Tradition of
C. G. Jung
February 2014
This thesis is an articulation of a psychological research trial I initiated and conducted in collaboration with the Sansum Diabetes Research Institute in Santa Barbara, California, with partial funding from the Susan Bach Foundation Zürich. The study explores the inter-relationship of body and psyche, and specifically, attempts to unveil the spontaneous, unconscious symbolism evidenced by a sample of eleven individuals living with type 1 Diabetes Mellitus (T1DM). It is a prospective, observational pilot project, designed to determine both the body-psyche symbolic expressions of the individuals with T1DM as well as the similarities among the group.
The results of the study reveal a potently alive psychic field among the participants, evidencing activated archetypal phenomena...
The investigation contributes to the existing attempts toward bridging the disciplines of psychology and medicine, with a specific desire to communicate to medical professionals the value of the integrating the unconscious in the healing process. The research is driven by curious inquiry regarding:
What symbols manifest in the reality of living with T1DM?
Are there symbols shared among the group, perhaps evidence of this form of diabetes as a living psychic entity?
What is the impact of the trial therapeutic process (Jungian analytic) on the subjects’ perceived Quality of Life?
The Research Design utilizes classic Jungian and Kalffian Sandplay therapeutic engagement for 24 consecutive sessions and follow-up at 3 months. Data is collected from Dreams, Sandplay pictures, Koch’s Tree Test, The World Health Organization Quality of Life Assessment – Brief (WHOQOL-Bref), Medical History, and Hemoglobin A1c measurements.
The results of the study reveal a potently alive psychic field among the participants, evidencing activated archetypal phenomena that positively impact adaptation and perceived quality of life. Significantly, despite a highly individual therapeutic experience, the research demonstrates shared symbolic material among the group.
Editor's Note: Ms. Van Scoy will be teaching at the Jung Institute this Summer. She will present her thesis in a 2-part lecture: PSYCHE AND SOMA, on July 2.
AComparison of theComplexTheory According to C.G. Jung and the Schema Model from Jeffrey Young
July 2014
by Pia McMahon, Diplom Psychologist, Jungian Analyst
(Thesis available in German only: Summary translation by Pia McMahon)
Thesis Advisers: Dr. sc. nat. Mario Schlegel, Prof. Dr. phil. Verena Kast, Dr. med. Christoph Fuhrhans (Institiute of Schema Therapy Ostschweiz)
Analytical Psychology (AP) and Schema Therapy (ST) explain how dysfunctional relationship patterns could result in mental disorders and symptoms. These patterns appear as difficult, generalized, relationship episodes in which two internal figures, one in the form of a child (the primal intensive emotional state), and the other in the form of an attachment figure (the internalized negative judgements), are pitted against each other. In this regard, ST calls them “maladaptive schemas” and provides a unique model of 18 detailed schema domains, while AP speaks about them as a “complex episode," an image or atmosphere of a complex.
The goal of both approaches is to modify the primarily negative cognitive judgements of the parent-mode in ST and the adult pole in AP, as described by Kast (2008). Another important goal is to make the primary experience of the infantile emotional states conscious and to satisfy related basic needs by some means or other, depending on the practical approach. However, defence, compensating, and coping behaviours all protect the person from these predominantly painful infantile emotional states, thus rendering them difficult to access.
In my thesis, the basic aspects of the complex theory and the core elements of the Schema Model are described. Differences and parallels are illustrated. Within the AP the focus is upon the inner psychic energetic and collective processes and their underlying psychodynamics. An example of this would include the origin and development of complexes and their impact on mental and emotional processes. These of course influence behaviours. The Schema Model focuses more on underlying, observable aspects of behaviour. One example includes more specific coping reactions and states, and the Schema Model utilizes these more specific reactions and states to draw conclusions about the origin and development of inner psychic processes.
Despite the opposite nature of their theoretical focus and their differences in practical application, both approaches complement one another. This complementarity permits a more holistic view of both schemas and complexes. An example would be AP emphasizes self-regulation mechanisms of the unconscious and supports telos, even in pathological complexes.
References
Kast, V. (2008). Konflikte anders sehen. Freiburg: Herder Verlag.
Knox, J. (1999). The relevance of attachment theory to a contemporary Jungian view of the internal world: internal working models, implicit memory and internal objects. Journal of Analytical Psychology, 44, S. 511-530. Oxford/ Malden: Blackwell Publishers Limited.
Knox, J. (2004). Developmental aspects of analytical psychology: New perspectives from cognitive neuroscience and attachment theory. In: Cambray, J., Carter, L. Analytical Psychology. New York: Brunner-Routledge.
In ST, created primarily to address character disorders, maladaptive schemas correspond to pathological complex episodes as described by Verena Kast. When viewed in this relationship, the Schema Model is able to differentiate behaviours and cognitive judgements based upon specific schemas within any one person’s mother and / or father complex in more detailed clinical descriptions. This detail can be extraordinarily helpful for the clinician. Within the thesis a closer look is given to the coping mechanisms individuals adopt to deal with these lifelong, mostly unconscious relationship patterns. Kast refers to compensation and defence mechanisms in the manner described by Psychoanalysis to explain these coping mechanisms.
This complementarity permits a more holistic view of both schemas and complexes.
ST describes coping styles such as surrender, avoidance, and overcompensation and compares them to observable patterns of reactions in conflicts between animals. This comparison provides an instinctual basis for these coping styles that can be linked to the biological view on archetypes as described by Mario Schlegel (2009, 2011). Specific behavioural reactions and emotional, cognitive, and physical states can be related to these coping styles as well and in this manner provide a more robust theoretical framework concerning how “stereotype behaviours,” meaning complex reactions in Jungian terms, appear in clinical practice.
Furthermore ST borrows from Bowlby’s Attachment Theory to provide a theoretical foundation for these coping styles and to explain psychodynamic consequences (as inner working models) of these early experiences. Within AP, Jean Knox (1999, 2004) refers to Attachment Theory, as well, to explain defences that protect individuals from intense emotional pain of primal infantile emotional states and are an underlying root cause for complex development. In addition to the influence on behavioural habits and self-narration as described by ST, Knox focuses on beliefs, imaginations, desires and ideas which can be influenced by these inner patterns and their defences.
Editor's Note: A longer article about Frau McMahon’s findings and their practical use is titled “Fairy Tales as a Resource for Working with Maladaptive Schemas and Pathological Complex Episodes” and will be published in 2015 by Psychotherapie-Wissenschaft (http://www.psychotherapie-wissenschaft.info).
Teaching at the Jung Institute this summer, Frau McMahon will give a lecture titled, "Complexes and Schemas" based on her thesis.
References
Schlegel, M., Kast, V. (2009). Der Emotionsbegriff in der Jungschen Psycho-therapie. In: Schönbächler, G., Schulthess, P. (Hrsg.). Der Emotionsbegriff in den psychotherapeutischen Schulen. Collegium Helveticum Hefte. Zürich: Collegium Helveticum.
Schlegel, M. (2011). Eine biologische Begründung der archetypischen Bilder. Vortrag gehalten an der Drei-Ländertagung
ReflectionsonChoices Authors: Dominique Marguerite Pia McMahon
Ian McCabe
Rêverie on "Choice" by Dominique Marguerite
The word "choice" comes from the same Indo-European root (Geus-)as does the word to "taste." Somehow "taste" is closer to the deep meaning of "choice" than "choice" is. When I taste, I value, it is not a neutral experience: if I like what I taste, all is well and I am in harmony with who I am (those who know me know this is true). I am guided from within. Of course, I can be guided from within and be bewitched or possessed by a demon in the choice I made and what I "taste" can be bitter or sour or even poisonous. Remember the story of The Golden Tree? The wives of one of the Emperors of India were jealous of his youngest and most beloved wife and, seeking her destruction, they convinced the emperor to send her away. When a choice "tastes" bad, it is is against soul, fueled by emotion, and is born of a strong and unreflective urge or desire to act. In the end the envious wives will be banished.
At the beginning of story of The Golden Tree*, the emperor banished his youngest wife because she had not born him a son. He made the wrong choice of sending her away before he could realize his deep love for her. He then dreamt of her and of an exquisitely beautiful golden tree and was filled with grief at the loss of his queen. He longed to find her and the golden tree. He eventually decided that he must undertake the quest himself. Through a series of unconscious choices and their consequences, he came to the right choice, his self-involvement, the choice with the deeper value.
With self-involvement and conscious participation, the Self emerges when we are able to choose according to soul which guides choice with a felt benevolence. It is a similar benevolence that can guide choice when synchronicity happens. When two unrelated events are brought together in awareness by unexpected meaning, we can be quickened to conscious choice. In the story of The Golden Tree, it was when the banished wife joyfully gave birth that the Emperor dreamt of the golden tree and of his lost wife and came to understand his loss. We can accept the gift of synchronicity as an amulet of the golden tree with leaves of the thinnest gold and clusters of diamonds. And, at times, like the emperor of our story, we experience a strange certainty and trust the intuition that seems to come from nowhere and reach for the golden tree.
*Schwartz, H. and Heller, L. (1994). Elijah’s Violin and Other Jewish Fairy Tales. Oxford University Press
Wobbly Tooth, Mermaid, or Magical Rainbow? -- About the Realization of Paradise after Banishment by Pia McMahon
As the mother of a young child,I was recently drawn to the question, "What would you choose to wish for if you were given three wishes from your own magic fairy?". This question was prompted by what is called a "friendship book." It is a book that a child between five and seven years of age passes to all of his or her friends in kindergarten so that they, when asked by the book’s magic fairy, may articulate their wishes. I wondered, what would I answer now — what would you or I choose to wish for? Would I remember my own childhood wishes? I wondered if or how those wishes were granted in my life.
Reading through the children’s responses reminded me of how close children are to the archetypal world, particularly recalled in Jung’s wonderful book Children’s Dreams*. Here Jung relates the magic fairy to Hermes, the initiator and guide to the Underworld (p. 196). The wishes of my child’s classmates were many and fascinating: toys, friends, and gold. There were wishes for luck, joy, and for three big brothers. One child wished to become a mermaid, and another to have a dolphin friend. Poignantly, others wished for health, along with lots of friends, and one child wished for no diabetes.There were wishes for a horse or pony, a wobbly tooth, lots of sweets, a unicorn, a chocolate tree, and a bird that sings everyday. One wished for lots of omelets, and one wish that particularly drew me was to walk on a rainbow and to see how big the sun is.
Granted the children’s mothers wrote the answers down for them, however, I thought how are we still like the children? As adults, would our wishes be so different? If we could permit ourselves to leave the rational adult world for a moment, would our three wishes be a reverie or a hint to our unfulfilled needs? Might they be related to situations where we are still emotionally affected — to an appropriate degree or not? For example, would they be related to our complexes or to our Shadow? Or, would we be invited into an imaginary inner world possibly recollecting forgotten childhood wishes?
Perhaps as an analyst we asked ourselves these questions during our own analysis — and perhaps even now we ask them, years or even years and years later? Would we ask them of a patient, the timing being appropriate?
Would I choose to ask them of myself again? How would they be phrased, given that they come from the back-then and this is the here-and-now? For example, did I have enough friends and do I still? What is the name of my "dolphin friend," my playful, strong underwater swimmer, who may yet help me dive into my unconscious and my dreams? When we ask who are our three big brothers, have they emerged as inner animi, or did we find them in the Brothers Grimms’ fairy tales, or have we found them in the outer world as well? What did our "plush dragon" or our first wobbly tooth mean to us? What in my life represents "our own pony or horse," that symbolic carrier of instinct, capacity, and speed? Do we recall how it felt to yearn to become a "mermaid," the alluring underwater fish and feminine being who emerges in literature to converse with people or to play tricks on them? Can I remember how I learned to find peace or work symbolically with my health condition, for example with "my diabetes"? How did I walk on a rainbow in my life, and in doing so, did it feel as though a tremendous bridge symbolically entered my life? The magical rainbow holds the tension between reality and the fantasy world (p. 127). In connection to the size of the sun, a question arises. How are we challenging our mind and self awareness to better understand this magic world of the unconscious? Have we started to trust and rely on it based on the strengthening of our bridge between consciousness and unconsciousness, symbolized by the rainbow?
The silken threads of these long ago wishes connect me again to childhood, recollected in my child’s book. Reconnecting and looking at them more consciously in relation to choices in my life has helped me comprehend how much influence they’ve had in my life. I recalled that I once lived in a land of fantasy and wishes, and I ask myself, how can I still?
*Jung, C.G. (2008). Children’s Dreams. Princeton University Press, Princeton/Oxford.
Moment of Clarity by Ian McCabe
Twenty years ago, I was a student in a Buddhist Psychologyclass at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in San Francisco, California. My teacher, Steve Goodman, Professor of Asian and Comparative Studies and specialist in Buddhist Psychology, had explained that in Buddhism there is the concept of a “moment of choice," occurring before we make a decision. He elaborated that decisions cannot be impulsive or instinctual. There is a moment of choice before action is taken. This concept can also be applied to addiction: to drink or not to drink, to use or not to use. In Buddhist Psychology, that moment, perhaps only a nanosecond, gives us time to pull back and reflect. That decisive moment, lying in between the thought and the action, is called respect, and the longer the time between making and acting on the decision, the more self-respect grows.
In Christian terms, that moment can be called “grace." This divine favor is available for every decision and the more we tune into it the more we can be guided by it. Carl Jung wrote to Bill Wilson, the co-founder of A.A., advising him that ordinary mortals need "protection from above" to resist the power of Evil in the world*.
Back in Ireland while facilitating a group session for addicts, I explained the Buddhist concept of choice -- having a moment of clarity before making a decision. The group members entered into a quiet reflective mood. They began to voice their understanding of that moment of choice they had all experienced: “Like being in two minds”; “There’s a battle going on inside of meself”; “Like I know I shouldn’t but I still do, can’t help meself”; and “Sometimes I even think of me daughter but still do ....” They were encouraged, that it wasn't an uncontrollable instinct or impulse to use, but that they had some power over it. There was a sober silence in the air as the group digested their possibility of choice.
Ireturned to CIIS for the autumn semester and rejoined the next part of Steve’s class. On that first day, students were relating why they had come back to Buddhist Psychology, Part 2. As was usual, there was light-hearted banter. I remember one student saying comically that his Probation Officer had mandated him to attend. When my turn came, I was more sombre and told them about the group members back in Ireland — Steve quieted the class and said, “This is what my teaching is about, applying it to the outside.”
Twenty years later, as part of my personal journey, I traveled to Akron, Ohio to visit the home of Dr. Bob, an original founder of Alcoholics Anonymous**. On the tour, the guide asked if anyone knew what the peculiar black stick was in Dr. Bob's bedroom. I explained it is a blackthorn shillelagh (pronounced “shi-lay-lee”-- a wooden walking stick associated with Irish folklore) given to Bill Wilson as a present for Dr. Bob when the former visited Ireland. The guide was grateful to have a name for this odd object.
Before leaving Akron on that trip, I visited the foyer of the Mayflower Hotel where Bill Wilson made his renowned decision in 1934 about whether to drink in the bar or make a phone call to ask for help to remain sober. Having failed in a grandiose business deal, he was deflated, down to his last ten dollars and in the depths of despair. He had been sober three months. He stood in the middle of the hotel lobby, pacing back and forth between the “gaiety” of the bar and the phone, and debating. He made a monumental decision. Instead of going into the bar, he made a call to one of the Ministers listed beside the phone in the lobby. He then went to his room. He made eleven more phone calls and eventually connected to Dr. Bob who became the co-founder of A.A.
Standing there in the same foyer some 80 years after Bill Wilson made his choice, I felt the hairs rise up on the back of my neck as I immersed myself in his moment of decision — to drink or not to drink. I was and am so grateful that he made the right choice for the almost two million alcoholics and their families and the numerous fellowships that base their format on the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous***.
From Akron, Ohio, I went to San Francisco to revisit CIIS. It was deserted on that Saturday afternoon. However, at the end of a long corridor I saw a figure, a sprightly man bouncing along with his grey hair in a long pony-tail. It was none other than Steve Goodman. I approached him and was about to introduce myself, but he stopped me, nodding with a sharp look of recognition in his incisive eyes. I relayed how his Buddhist Psychology lecture on the moment of choice related to decision making had sustained me over twenty years in my work with people in addiction. In reply Steve touched me on the shoulder, nodded, and quietly said, "Not a year goes by when I don't tell my class that story.”
[*] “An ordinary man, not protected by an action from above and isolated in society, cannot resist the power of evil, which is called very aptly the Devil. But the use of such words arouses so many mistakes that one can only keep aloof from them as much as possible.” (Carl Jung’s Letter to Bill Wilson, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.), 30th January, 1961). Wilson always recognized Jung’s synchronistic role in the formation of A.A. Earlier that month he had written to Jung, “Please be certain that your place in the affection, and in the history, of our Fellowship is like no other.”
[**] Dr. Robert Holbrook Smith (Dr. Bob) was Alcoholics Anonymous’ (A.A.) co-founder. Jung encouraged a mutual student of his and Wilson's, a woman named Margarita Luttichau, to apply the format of A.A. to groups of “general Neurotics”. In 1947, Margarita wrote to Bill about “a long talk” she had had with Jung during a conference in Ascona, Switzerland: “As well I knew he is interested in the forming of an individual not in group work—but after hearing the whole thing he was very interested and gave me extraordinarily complete instructions how it might be managed.” A month later, Wilson replied to Margarita, “I was delighted with your account of your meeting with Dr. Jung and am encouraged that he thinks there might be something to the group method with neurotics—though the contrary opinion seems still to prevail.”
[***] Today the foyer of the Mayflower Hotel is a U.S. national monument. It is open to members of the public. It is as though it represents a symbolic, enantiodromiac rise and fall. The hotel itself, which was once the grandest Five Star hotel in Akron, is now fittingly a half-way house. The bar is gone but a replica of the famous phone remains in the foyer.
“…so the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing…”
T. S. Eliot . East Coker III Nancy Robinson-Kime
Toshio Kawai has written deeply and extensively on both Postmodernism and Jungian psychology in Japan. In speaking together, however, I wanted to begin by discussing the basic tenets of traditional Japanese culture that laid the foundation for both Postmodernism and way in which Jungian psychology is practiced in Japan today. These traditional tenets are important for two reasons. They continue to influence Japanese culture and the current clinical culture in Japan today. They are also opposites of and thus complements to Jung’s Western emphasis on discrimination and differentiation. Toshio Kawai mentions one such tenet in the concept of Amae, defined as “a need to be united with the object” (Jung in Japanese Academy, p. 7). An essential example of this is seen in social interactions in which giving one’s own opinion is predicated on knowing the other person’s opinion first (Postmodern Consciousness in Psychotherapy, p. 438). One could describe traditional Japanese culture as relational; one’s experience of the world occurs through an unspoken relationship to the other. Use of the term “relationship,” however, is not entirely correct since a distinction between subject and object is not clearly made. As Toshio notes, “Object is not the right word. It’s not an object. Object already implies subject…[but] there’s no clear subject that observes and differentiates the object.
From a Western analytic view, this undifferentiated ego position allows for a closer relationship to the unconscious, seen in the traditional belief in animism that continues to influence Japanese culture. Objects (flowers, chopsticks, food) have soul. As Toshio notes, “In the Japanese psyche, I am embedded in or in-souled in things. I am somehow represented in it: so you could say, this is me.”
In this sense, one is united with the object and its soul represents an aspect of oneself. This belief influences language, cultural practices, and the relative value of personal analysis, individual and group supervision, as well as the goals of therapy. “In the case of the Western work it’s important to find relation, find a way to the other somehow… in the case of Japan it is more important to have differentiation” Toshio Kawai From the West, the East learns the value of differentiation; from the East, the West learns the value of unconscious relatedness, that a lack of differentiation and nothingness are at the same time a state of potentiality and fullness.
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The Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious
CW9i
Jung, C.G.
By Nancy Robinson-Kime
A review of a volume, specifically Sections II-V of the CW9i on archetypes, can at first glance appear superfluous. Jungian theory has been summarized, evaluated, and expanded upon by numerous works over the years. However, in the context of training new analysts, we take up a volume afresh and ask how does material, in this case written from 1934 to 1954, work today? From this perspective, different chapters illustrate both the strengths and potential limitations not only of Jung’s work but also within the field of Analytical psychology itself.
Interpersonal vs. Intrapsychic. The chapter on the Mother archetype in part focuses on the positive and negative mother complex through various mother-daughter relationships. A useful if not necessary addition to this description is, however, increasingly being taken up by the Jungian world. Writings on early infant-child development facilitate an expansion of an interpersonal-relational definition of “mother” to an intra-psychic, psychological one. The outer, concrete mother’s capacity to contain and digest primitive, inchoate affect, for example, represents an intrapsychic capacity to process unconscious affect and content (its lack, conversely, subjecting the individual to an experience of being overwhelmed and devoured by these same primitive, unconscious forces).
Splitting The Field.Jung’s chapter on the Trickster archetype was written as a psychological commentary for Paul Radin’s book on The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology. Jung’s emphasizes the compensatory function of the trickster who in opposing the ruling principle relativizes traditional authority and order. Psychologically, the trickster represents the “counter tendencies in the unconscious” which stand in a complementary or compensatory relationship to consciousness (CW9i §468-9). Jung’s later writing, however, takes an important further step in seeing the fairy tale trickster and giant as forming two halves of an unconscious whole; as Jung notes, little tom thumb, has a “dangerous double nature … he is also the ogre himself” (CW12 §84). Uniting seemingly opposing tendencies (parallel to seeing the “co-dependent” as the functional half of the alcoholic) requires an expansion of our view of what we are treating. In this context, the unconscious material has a specific quality of primitivity (represented by the giant) that must be taken into account if it is to be transformed and integrated.
Personification and Concretization.Jung’s chapter on the archetype of the Spirit illustrates not only a danger in his own writing but in subsequent generations of Jungians’ interpretation of Jung and his work. The concept of archetypes itself is a concretization, our best effort at understanding something inherently process oriented, something psychological. But because these processes are abstract and difficult to define, they are often initially seen through their projection onto the interpersonal field. The image of Spirit as wise old man is easily accessible. The difficulty rests in the next step, the movement to a psychological, analytical, point of view: spirit as an objectification or psychological understanding of the events in our lives and aspects of ourselves.
CW9i Sections II-V on the various archetypes is a provocative approach to material that is inherently more complicated (as Jung himself knew). Our responsibility as instructors (to our trainees) and as analysts is to take this initial work and think further about its implications and meaning so that our own understanding of this material does not become mired in oversimplification and misunderstanding.
Editor's Note: Dr. Robinson-Kime is currently teaching a reading seminar at the Jung Inst. on CW5, and previously a reading seminar on CW9i. REFERENCES
Jung, C.G. (1981). The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (CW9i). Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Jung, C.G. (1980). Psychology and Alchemy (CW12). Princeton: Princeton University Press.
The Road Not Taken
by Robert Frost (Frost:Poems, 1997)
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.
Ishall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Contributors
Dominique Marguerite, PhD is an analyst on the West coast of the USA, in Lake Oswego, Oregon. She is a training analyst with the Pacific Northwest Society of Jungian Analysts and vice-president of Pacific Northwest Society of Jungian Analysts.
Ian McCabe, H. Dip.Ed., Ph.D., Psy.D. is a Child and Adolescent Jungian Analyst. Clinical Director, Psychologists in Primary Schools Ltd. ( PIPS), Dublin, Ireland.
Pia McMahon, Diplom Psychologin Eidg. anerkanntePsychotherapeutin Analytikerin nach C.G. Jung. Zurich Canton, Switzerland.
Nancy Robinson-Kime, PhD, is a Clinical Psychologist and Certified Jungian Analyst at the C.G. Jung Institute in Zürich. She has a private practice in Zurich.
Cheryle Van Scoy is a Jungian Analyst in private practice in Santa Barbara, CA. She is a Sandplay Therapist, Registered Nurse - Clinical Nurse Specialist, professional photographer/artist, and earned a master’s degree in Mythology.
