Journal of Jungian Scholarly Studies
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Masculine Initiation in the Henriad
Full text linkThis essay studies masculine initiation in the Henriad, in the light of James Hillman\u27s conception of the archetypes of puer and senex. The plays presents basically two modes o initiation in the persons of Hal, the senex and Falstaff, the trickster, the shadow of puer. While the former develops his masculinity in the usual heroic mode, the latter develops in a way that suits the puer\u27s development. And the essay argues that Falstaff\u27s initiation through betrayal is a serious parody of Christ\u27s initiation on the cross. The senex-puer polarity as dramatizedin these characters is shown to have significant ethical and political implications as well. The contexts of the plays raise the issue of puer senilis, but here the puer senilis remains only as an ideal, bringing up the question of inevitable loss of soul in an exclusively senex-driven initiatory senex structure, a disturbing culturalproblem we continue to face today
Last Year at Marienbad: A scenarist, a director and a protagonist walk into some archetypes
Full text linkAs the 65th anniversary of the modernist masterpiece L’année Dernière À Marienbad (Last Year at Marienbad) (1961) approaches, we are reminded that this film demands a straightforward retelling. Because, in fact, nothing about this film is straightforward. The director, Alain Resnais (cited in Wilson, 2006:70), explains, ‘In an international palace, a stranger meets a young woman and tells her the love story they lived the previous year. The woman denies this, the man confirms it and persists. Who is right?’. The film sees three characters inextricably linked together in a love triangle, nameless but for the knowledge of the script that describes them as A (Delphine Seyrig), the woman, M (Sacha Pitoëff), perhaps her husband or lover or guardian, and X (Giorgio Albertazzi), the man who is trying to win A for himself (Van Wert, 1977). The film remains one of the most talked about, owning to its many formal and narrative uncertainties. What actually did happen? What is the film even about?
Because the audiovisual essay is now an established form of scholarship (McWhirter, 2015), perhaps this form of analysis afforded by the digital age can shed fresh light on a complex piece of cinema history. This audiovisual essay pieces together the evidence to demonstrate that the film can be seen as a swim of images in the conscious and unconscious mind of the protagonist, X. These take place only in the pro-filmic time as the film unfolds. X has suffered some great tragedy – perhaps the death of the real A – but inhabits a stasis or purgatory and a physical space the spectator does not see. In what the audience does see, various archetypes adopt image representations (Anima as A; Trickster as guests; Shadow as M) with the purpose of having X heal and resolve his part in the tragedy and to move on with his life. The work is a battle between the memories and repressions of a conscious psyche versus the power of the unconscious seeking wholeness and unification. Who will win?
References
Last Year at Marienbad (1961) Directed by Alain Resnais. [Feature film]. France/Italy: Conicor.
McWhirter, Andrew (2015) ‘Film criticism, film scholarship and the video essay’, Screen, Volume 56, Issue 3, Autumn, pp. 369-377, https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/hjv044
Van Wert, William F. (1977) The Film Career of Alain Robbe-Grillet, London: George Prior Publishers.
Wilson, Emma (2006) Alain Resnais, Manchester: Manchester University Press
Antonio Tabucchi and the Journey of Self-Discovery: : A Jungian Reading
Full text linkThe article centers on two novels by Italian writer Antonio Tabucchi—Requiem: A hallucination and For Isabel: A mandala. It analyzes the polysemic elements that constitute the symbolic construction of both works, supported by the main tenets of Jungian psychology and in particular the notions of coniunctio oppositorum, individuation, and journey of self-discovery. The investigation explores the relationship of Tabucchi’s narrative with works by Ferdinando Pessoa and Herman Hesse. Homologies between the author’s view of the self, cognition, human reality, and the formal structure of the novels are examined through the Bakhtinian notion of dialogical narrative and through his metaliterary and self-reflexive mode of writing
Poetry’s “shimmering robes”: Carl Jung and Romantic Mythology of Intuitive Creativity
Full text linkDespite the many essays that provide instructive tracing of Carl Jung’s archetypes in Romantic literature (and elsewhere), critics have declined to examine the important implications and consequences of parallels between Jung’s theory of artistic awareness and Romantic aesthetic ideology. This ideology finds expression in the language of Blake, Percy Shelley, Emerson, Coleridge, Wordsworth and others regarding artistic creativity, specifically its origins and aims, but especially the creative process itself. In this essay, I examine the way Jung samples Romantic ideas and imagery in his characterization of art and in his conception of the religious experience of the artist in the act of creation. In doing so, I suggest that attachment to popular (not always accurate) Jungian ideas about art has reinforced the continued acceptance of compelling Romantic myths about unconscious creativity. I argue that, in his essay “On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry” and other essays, as part of an effort to liberate modern conceptions of art from reliance on mechanistic views of the human mind, Jung impeaches the merits of the Freudian model tied to medical forensics and installs in its place a Romantic theory of art rooted in the idea of intuitive creativity
Between Stereotypes and Hermeneutic Quest: C. G. Jung’s Approach to “Primitive Psychology”
Full text linkG. Jung’s alleged racism with regard to indigenous populations and, by extension, people of color and, specifically, Africans and native Americans, is much debated. The present contribution is based largely on Jung’s writings, some of which are unpublished. Jung’s considerationsoften deriving from his travels in North Africa and New Mexicoseem sometimes to imply the psychic inferiority of certain populations in comparison with the alleged civilized “white man.” To establish context, the essay cites passages from Jung’s published works (including his fear of “going black”), the discussion of the “racial question” among his contemporaries, and secondary literature. It then turns to statements from Jung’s unpublished manuscript “African Journey” (ca. 1925–26) for fresh insights into his views on his “primitive psychology.” On the one hand, Jung’s psychological approach failed to fully account for the social, economic, and historical aspects inherent to cultural differences. Moreover, he followed the widespread notion equating the primitive, the child, and the mentally ill. On the other hand, Jung’s understanding of “primitiveness” appears to be intrinsically linked to a critical approach to the alleged superiority of the “civilized man.” I argue that some passages from his unpublished manuscript “African Journey” demonstrate Jung’s conviction that the Western white man must recover a sense of the sacred and the experience of the numinosum, which the so-called primitive still retains. I discuss this complex and somewhat paradoxical view alongside an epistemologically problematic connotation inherent both to Jung’s empirical approach and his conception of the collective unconscious
Imaginal Practices in Dialogue:: Tibetan Self-Generation and Active Imagination
Full text linkJungian psychology considers image to be the basis of psyche, and its principal technique is active imagination. While the importance of image is appreciated in Jungian circles, it is not shared outside the field, where the imagination is generally seen as “not real.” The unreality of the imagination contradicts the assertion of French philosopher Corbin who insisted that the imaginal realm is not only real but also a crucial bridge between the spirit and material realms, whose split has been diagnosed as the root cause of many modern problems. The reality of the imaginal provides the ontological foundation to place Jung’s active imagination in dialogue with the imaginal practice of self-generation from the Tibetan school of Tantric Buddhism, highlighting key tensions between the approaches. By applying the principle of Jung’s transcendent function, it seeks a third path from that tension, providing modern psychological and spiritual adepts with insight to cultivate the power of the imaginal realm in their own lives
Field Theory, Intercorporeality, and the Sámi Underworld
Full text linkField theory as a concept entered scientific discourse in the mid-nineteenth century. Yet the essential features of a field long predate discoveries about the physical properties and behavior of matter. The paper briefly describes ancient esoteric precursors to scientific field theory, including the Hermetic tradition and archetypal astrology, before turning to twentieth-century sociological field theories and their elemental idea of subjectivity and intersubjectivity. Jungian psychology is a field theory, expanding the limits of sociology in important ways. The paper adopts a somatic archetypal perspective to argue that intersubjectivity, the basis of sociological and psychological field theories, is inadequate. Instead, depth psychologists should embrace intercorporeality, the more embodied, holistic field theory originating in the work of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty. The paper concludes with a discussion of nekyia to illustrate how an intercorporeal field theory can include the underworld in world mythologies. The inverted cosmic geography of one tradition, the Sámi, gives new meaning to numinous encounters with one’s ancestors and spirit guides. Such encounters intertwine the subtle energy bodies of the personal and transpersonal worlds, a meeting one can imagine as soul to sole, not just soul to soul
“We Are All Haunted Houses”: The Rector in Lindsay Clarke’s The Chymical Wedding
Full text linkDetails regarding Edwin Frere, the Victorian pastor in Lindsay Clarke’s The Chymical Wedding, yield new meaning in light of C. G. Jung’s alchemical writings, which are mentioned in the novel’s concluding acknowledgements. Although Frere’s union with Louisa Agnew has been considered a proper coniunctio, his relationship with her and his subsequent self-castration require a darker interpretation than some critics—and the narrator—propose. Other significant events under examination include Frere’s disastrous experience in India, his reaction to the sheela-na-gig Gypsy May, two fine moments (helping a young outcast and ice skating with friends), and his life after the novel closes. Relevant statements by Jung about the psychology of the Christian faith, particularly the role of repression, persona, and projection, are applied to Frere’s experiences in order to argue that he does not achieve a fruitful or lasting coniunctio with Louisa and that his self-castration is problematic because it participates in the materialism that alchemy seeks to counter.  
Mythopoesis and the Awakening of the Ecological Unconscious in Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance
Full text linkThe ecological, spiritual, and psychological challenges threatening the survival of humanity are so formidable that nothing short of a transition in both our psychological lives and public policy will suffice. This article proposes that mythopoesis, the creation of imaginative worlds using the arts and mythology, can help guide us in the imagining of new ecological and psychological worldviews that can inspire us to work through the current-day ecological crisis of the Anthropocene. By examining one of the great works of children’s fantasy television, Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, we will illustrate how the series thoughtfully integrates principles of Depth Psychology such as alchemy, personal and collective shadow, the Great Turning, the ecological unconscious, earth dreaming, and the imaginal realm, with mythopoesis into a remarkably creative vision that provides a metaphorical blueprint for content that can be useful in the current era of crises
Spirits, Ghosts, and Mediumship:: Navigating the Spiritual in Research
Full text linkEncounters with spirits are inherently numinous since they fill us with awe and a sense of connecting with something greater or other. The term spirits can refer to a wide variety of typically unseen beings including deities, spirit animals, nature spirits, and deceased persons. Jung thought that spirits were autonomous complexes separate from the ego, writing “Spirits, therefore, viewed from the psychological angle, are unconscious autonomous complexes which appear as projections because they have no direct association with the ego” (Jung, 1969, p. 309). The idea of spirits appearing as projections is often problematic for many spiritual practitioners because it can lead one to assume that spirits are imagined and therefore not real. For these spiritual practitioners spirits are very real and exist in the world alongside people