Jung's Ideas Research Articles

The perversions in analysis.

The perversions are initially defined as sexual behaviours which in our culture are generally regarded as corrupt, fearful, and forbidden. The effect of this attitude upon the way they are handled in analysis is considered, and the work of the late German psychoanalyst, Fritz Morgenthaler, is cited as presenting a way of integrating the perversions into analytic treatment. Two cases are cited from the literature which demonstrate both the validity of Morgenthaler's approach and the necessity of moving beyond it. Jungian psychological concepts provide the machinery for doing this. The combination of Morgenthaler's and Jung's ideas suggests a way of dealing with perversions in analysis, of which the author is currently making use in several cases, which are then summarised.

Schizophrenia, Genetics and Analytical Psychology

ABSTRACT.A brief summary of genetic research into schizophrenia is followed by a résumé of Jung's ideas regarding the psychology of schizophrenia. The latter is then discussed in the light of recent biological findings followed by a discussion of the tendency to see psychological factors as causative. Finally, a model incorporating biological and psychological factors based on Jung's hypothesis is proposed.

Patrick White: fiction and the unconscious

This remarkable work demolishes long-held beliefs about Australia's leading literary figure, Patrick White. It has also been heralded as an exiting and extremely creative insight into the Australian unconscious. Put simply, David Tacey's argument is that White's fiction is dominated by the workings of his unconscious mind and that its symbolic patterns are those of a mother complex. (In the most recent novel, Memoirs of Many in One , the mother figure is in fact the author and Patrick White merely the editor.) In the earlier novels, this is manifest in the hero's obsessional search for mystic unity with Nature, which in psychological terms corresponds to the dissolution of the ego into the maternal source - self-immolation, not self-realization as many have claimed. After The Solid Mandala the novels focus on the symbolic mother figure rather than the son and for a time she grows in power and fulfilment. Eventually the mother figure loses integrity ( The Twyborn Affair ) and descends into pornography ( Memoirs of Many in One ). For Patrick White an analysis such as this, based on Jungian ideas about archetypal patterns of the psyche, is peculiarly appropriate. White has himself remarked that his fiction seems to well up from the unconscious, to the point where he feels invaded, inundated. Often the fictional material is at odds with the constructs of his conscious mind, for instance the Christian overlay in some of his novels. Tacey's analysis is persuasive, illuminating things that otherwise are puzzling, such as the ubiquitous teeth-sucking women and the split personalities, and demonstrating a pattern for White's work that is most convincing. Moreover, he advances some stimulating ideas about the nature of Australian cultural life and Patrick White's place in it.

Society, spirit & ritual Morphic resonance and the collective unconscious part II

Abstract Rupert Sheldrake i s a theoretical biologist whose book, A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Formative Causation, continues to evoke a storm of controversy. Following i s the second i n a series of articles wherein Sheldrake presents his ideas for amplifying Jung's concept of the collective unconscious and archetypal psychology. He concluded his first article with these words: The approach I am putting forward is very similar to Jung's idea of the collective unconscious. The main difference i s that Jung's idea was applied primarily to human experience and human collective memory. What I am suggesting i s that a very similar principle operates throughout the entire universe, not just in human beings. If the kind of radical paradigm shift I am talking about goes on within biology - if the hypothesis of morphic resonance i s even approximately correct - then Jung's idea of the collective unconscious would become a mainstream idea. Morphogenic fields and the concept of the collective unconsciou...

Primitivism and the Modern

Expressionism. He begins by describing kind of national anxiety of influence, as New York painters in 1940's felt need to distance themselves from their immediate European predecessors. The sort of re-writing of dominant artistic discourse which they set out to accomplish is suggested by this statement of Adolph Gottlieb: While modern art got its first impetus through discovering forms of primitive art, we feel that its true significance lies not merely in formal arrangement, but in spiritual meaning underlying all archaic works (p. 616). Moving gradually away from Freud and toward Jung's language of collective unconscious, these artists re-defined primitive in more elevated, spiritual terms. In Varnedoe's words, Jung's ideas suggested a solemn spirituality with which Americans felt more comfortable (p. 618). What is particularly interesting here is way in which this analysis extends and reinforces similar attempts in literary studies to delineate ideological pressures of post-war American culture. Consider Varnedoe's assertions that the new 'regres-

El triunfo de Hunahpue Ixbalanque: paradigma del renacimiento en la religión de los mayas

The Popol Vuh is a famous example of K´ichean indigenous literature. The main part of the most famous version of this texts recounts the story of two heroes, The Heavenly Twins called Hunahpu and Ixbalanque. Murawski's 1984 study tries to summarize and understand the role and symbolism in the K'iche Maya indigenous ideology. The Popol Vuh is analyzed and compared with complementary Maya ethno-historic sources. In the search of meaning of these two figures, their characteristics and actions are compared to the practice of self-sacrifice, which is also discussed from the perspective of Carl Jung's ideas.
 Abstract by Editorial Team.

Transactional Analysis: An Enlightened Expansion for the Future

Proposes to expand the scope of transactional analysis by incorporating theoretical concepts developed in other psychological approaches. Discusses C. Jung's ideas of the unconscious and of intuition as examples which would enable TA to reach beyond the limits derived from E. Berne's formulations. Psychic conversations with Jung and S. Freud are reported, and a personal meditation experience of a conversation with Berne is described.

Imago Dei: A Study of C. G. Jung's Psychology of Religion

This book contains a comprehensive account of what Jung had to say about the God-image between 1902 and 1961. The author traces the development of Jungian ideas and challenges the popular view that Jung's thought took shape after his break with Freud. He shows the gradual evolution of Jung's ideas and demonstrates the strengths and inconsistencies inherent in Jung's methodology.

The Concept of Narcissism and Freud’s Misrepresentation of his Theory of Instincts

Freud’s later writings (from 1920 onwards) present us with a rather misleading picture of the development of his theory of instincts. He tries to create the impression that the distinction between the self-preservative and the sexual instincts ceased to exist in 1914, as a result of the introduction of the theory of narcissism. Actually, the distinction was only dropped in 1920 in Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Probably Freud was driven to this misrepresentation by his disagreement with Jung. When the concept of narcissism was introduced, Jung suggested right away that Freud drop the distinction between the two sets of instincts. But this put Freud in a very awkward position: either he had to reduce the self-preservative instincts to sexuality in which case his theory became pansexualistic. or he had to accept Jung's idea of a general, non-sexual psychical energy, in which case his hard-begotten insights into the special etiological role of sexuality lost all value. There was no solution but to cling stubbornly to the existing classification. In 1920, however, a new instinctual category (the death instinct) was introduced which saved Freud from the former dilemma. Now the self-preservative instincts could be reduced to sexuality without falling into the trap of a pansexual theory. Yet it would have been very unpleasant to recall that for six years Freud had argued with Jung against this reduction. So Freud chose to ‘simplify’ the story and to create the impression that the distinction between the self-preservative and the sexual instincts had been dropped in 1914.

Death’s Ecstasies: Transformation and Rebirth in George Macdonald’s Phantastes

D E A T H 'S E C S T A S IE S : T R A N SF O R M A T IO N AN D R E B IR T H IN G E O R G E M A C D O N A L D 'S PHANTASTES JOSEPH SIGMAN McMaster University (je o r g e MacDonald, one of the most hauntingly imaginative of Victorian writers, published Phantastes, A Faerie Romance For Men and Women in 1858. His first prose work, it seems to have attracted little attention except for a review in The Athenaeum, which dismissed it as a "second-hand symbol shop" whose author had "lost all hold on reality." However the fact that MacDonald's fantasy has never been long out of print indicates that through the years it has cast its spell over more than a few readers. Four further editions of Phantastes appeared in the nineteenth century and two more in the early twentieth. In 19 15 it became a title in Everyman's Library, and in recent years two paperback editions have been available. In spite of this limited but enduring popularity and, perhaps, some literary influence as well,1 this strange and complex work has attracted little critical attention. The only serious study of it is a chapter in Robert Lee Wolff's The Golden Key, a book that surveys all of MacDonald's fiction.2 In Wolff's judgment Phantastes is an "entirely episodic" work, whose only structure is provided by recurring Oedipal fantasies and by some allegorizations of events in MacDonald's life.3 In this essay I shall take issue with this concept of Phantastes and argue instead that its unity and coherence become apparent if it is seen as a depiction of a psychological crisis and the resulting process of transformation and rebirth. As the basis for this discussion I shall use the work of C.G. Jung and his disciple Erich Neumann, a choice governed by pragmatic rather than ideological considerations. The case simply seems to be that Jungian ideas "fit" MacDonald's fantasy. One possible reason for this may be that the roots of Jung's work, like those of MacDonald's, lie deep in German Romanticism. The psychology of MacDonald's young narrator (who, for reasons that will be explained shortly, is called "Anodos") is described through curiously illogi­ cal metaphors of inheritance and family history. The basic situation is this: Anodos's parents are dead, and he seems oddly uninformed about them and about his family's history generally. To begin with, his father's "personal history" is "unknown" to him,4 and he appears to be unable to remember anything about his mother, who died when he was a baby. This is clear enough and not necessarily unbelievable, but when MacDonald turns from the parents E n g l is h S t u d ie s in C a n a d a , i i , 2, Summer 1976 204 English Studies in Canada to the more distant ancestors, he does a strange and significant thing. Instead of discussing them in terms of different family lines, as would be most natural, he simply categorizes them according to whether they are male or female. This tends to assimilate the mother and father into a general division between male and female predecessors, and we find that Anodos has the same relative lack of knowledge about these two groups as he does about his parents. His male ancestors, he tells us, are "strange men" about whom he knows "little or nothing" (16), but we later learn that, in fact, he knows more about these male ancestors, his "great-grandfathers," than he does about his female ancestors, his "great-grandmothers on either side" (18). One important thing he does not know about his great-grandmothers is that they came from Fairy Land (23). Because of these fairy great-grandmothers the two groups - the male ancestors and the female ancestors - are very different, and Anodos appears to have received a different inheritance from each of them. The patriarchal inheritance consists of "lands and moneys" (16), and Anodos seems to take little interest in it...

Psychic energy; its source and its transformation

This presentation of Jungian psychology first appeared in 1947 and now has been reissued with several changes and additions. The typography has been altered, the bibliography extended to include the more recent works of C. G. Jung that have appeared in English translation, and a more detailed index prepared. However, the content of the work remains essentially the same. Jungian psychology is a strange yet fascinating amalgam of philosophy, psychopathology, mythology, oriental religion, symbolism, and alchemy. Dr. Harding is able to synthesize a number of Jung's ideas without falling into her teacher's patterns of abstruse scholarship and obscurantism. However, many of these concepts continue to be vague and difficult to formulate in a more meaningful and scientific language. For example, the meaning of psychic energy itself is never really clarified, and one must admit that this remains a confusing concept as stated in Freudian and Jungian hypotheses. Certainly there is

Analytic work with LSD 25.

In this paper, work with LSD 25 as an aid to analysis has been described. Of particular interest, has been theseeming unpredict-ability and arbitrariness of experiences elicited by the drug, and an attempt has been made at finding the determining factor in emerging material. This appears to be the “selection” of complementary and compensatory unconscious contents; selected in accordance with Jung's idea of the psyche as a self-regulating system, “striving” toward “wholeness.”