Journal of Jungian Scholarly Studies
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Psyche, Santa Fe, and the Earth
Full text linkSanta Fe, New Mexico, is a unique city with an indigenous and multicultural history that serves as a case study for earth-psyche relationships, but it is also an image that encompasses many of the problems and complexes of Western Civilization. This article explores the many underground aspects of the image of “Santa Fe,” including the attraction so many people feel for its mythos and the way it represents a new type of relationship to psyche and earth. At the same time, the paper reveals the projections and complexes that outsiders bring to Santa Fe with often toxic results
The Salt Daemon
Full text linkJung’s inquiry into the interconnectivity of psyche and matter and body and soul included alchemical studies and his psychoid theory, which was loosely based on the dynamics of the electromagnetic field. Using Jung’s presentational methodology in which psyche and physis are held evenly, this study presents salt as a liminal, psychophysical substance animating body and soul, world and anima mundi. Salts dissociate in the solutions of the body and sea, creating the electrolytic spark of life, just as alchemical sal in solutio signals a dissociative, incoherent yet psychoactive state, which seeks recrystallization—coagulatio or coherence. The rhythmic movement between incoherence and coherence is self-organized by a fieldlike guiding force of the psychoid that I call the salt daemon, which is entangled with other such salt spirits. The salt daemon’s alternation between uneasiness and calm—the sensate conscience—works toward increasingly differentiated body-soul coherence: the alchemical sal sapientiae, embodied wisdom
A Psychology of Place (Cornwall)
Full text linkThis article asks if there is a psychology or a spirit of place and, if so, how we might begin to form a contemporary understanding of a concept that has been accepted in earlier times and in cultures across the world. It cites an example of how elements of vocabulary and certain psychological issues can survive in an institutional environment despite a complete change of personnel. With specific reference to the English county of Cornwall it looks at how some typical psychological issues may arise in connection with the history, geography, and mythology of this particular place. It then cites two examples of symbolic and meaningful synchronicities that have occurred in connection with some of Cornwall’s ancient monuments. Itconcludes that the very question of examining our relationship to place may overlook the fact that the questioners are themselves a part of the environment that they are questioning
How Do We Transform our Large-Group Identities?
Full text linkWhile Jung was particularly critical of groups, he also had a vision of humans as a selfaware, problem-solving being. In this paper I explore his interest in and critique of, or prejudice against, groups. I raise the issue of whether it is possible to transform consciously our large-group identities, thus making them more morally responsive to the conditions they find themselves in. I focus specifically on recent social science research regarding the psychocultural function of emotion and group theory and practice that could be used by a new generation of “psychocultural practitioners” to develop the theory and practices of large-group transformation that would aid in the moral development of a group’s conscience. I also propose that the Jungian communities could participate in the founding of such a distinctive vocation, which would formalize numerous informal and innovative practices that many are already engaged in
Care for the Earth as Archetypal Emergence in the Christian Tradition
Full text linkThis paper explores the renewed emphasis of care for the Earth in the Christian tradition as an emerging archetypal shift toward Earth-centered psyche. Jung proposed that the Christian psyche would continue to evolve toward greater psychic wholeness. The current trends toward environmental awareness in religious communities offer compelling parallels to Jung’s ideas about the evolution of religious consciousness.
“If faith (God) is said to be able to move mountains (Job 9.5; 1 Cor. 13.2), scholars need to explore how belief systems could ‘move’ climates” (Gerten & Bergmann, 2012, p. 13)
C. G. Jung’s Memories, Dreams, Reflections as a Source for Doris Lessing’s Briefing for a Descent into Hell
Full text linkDoris Lessing was conversant in Jungian psychology, and her novel Briefing for a Descent into Hell includes more Jungian elements than previous critics have identified. In particular, it is likely that she borrowed from Jung’s Memories, Dreams, Reflections when crafting her protagonist Charles Watkins’s descent into madness and return to sanity. This essay argues that the autobiography’s chapter 6, “Confrontation with the Unconscious,” and chapter 10, “Visions”—Jung’s encounter with madness and his near-death experience—provided Lessing with not only a successful nekyia by which to evaluate Watkins’s less successful inner journey but also a series of images that she reworked in the novel. Considered in light of MDR, Briefing conveys a sense of lost potential: Watkins regains his memory but, unlike Jung, forgets his vision of the collective unconscious
Embodying Persephone’s Desire: Authentic Movement and Underworld Transformation
Full text linkJungian interpretations of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter that address the theme of woundedness focus primarily on the abduction/rape of the maiden and the inconsolable rage of Demeter. Another subtler wound implicit in the Hymn frequently goes unmentioned: Kore’s initial status as a nameless offshoot of the mother goddess. This essay shows how the author explores emotional implications of the myth through a ritualized enactment of the central Eleusinian mysteries using the principles of authentic movement, a process that generated a fresh interpretation of the Hymn to Demeter. The thesis is that an interpretive variation of the myth focusing on the mutual vulnerability and strength of Hades and Persephone—their willingness to recognize and be recognized, to penetrate and be penetrated—makes possible a shared healing, in turn contributing to the fertility of the underworld. It is through the coniunctio of Persephone and Hades that the underworld becomes a place of abundance
Guest Editor\u27s Introduction to Volume 11
No full textLast year we successfully introduced the Kindle and other portable devices to the Journal of Jungian Scholarly Studies. This year\u27s Journal continues those formatting choices. As guest editor of this year’s journal I have the pleasure of introducing the four essays included in this volume.
This year we have many good contributions building off of the 2015 JSSS conference on Nature and the Feminine: Psychological and Cultural Reflections that was held in Edmonton, Canada.
The first paper in this year\u27s Journal is by Elizabeth Nelson in which she connects a Jungian interpretation of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter with “a ritualized enactment of the central Eleusinian mysteries using the principles of authentic movement.” Through this practice she is able to approach Homer’s writing with a fresh perspective that interprets the reciprocal relationship between Hades and Persephone as generative, leading to the abundance of the underworld. What is particularly important about Elizabeth\u27s paper is her effort to discuss movement as a means of interpreting myth. While necessarily approached experimentally, the use of movement in this manner offers room for future innovation.
The second paper in this year’s journal is by Matthew Fike who explores Jungian themes in Doris Lessing’s novel Briefing for a Descent into Hell. He begins by describing what is known about Lessing’s modest appreciation of Jung and then suggests that she drew more on Jungian elements than has been previously recognized. Fike focuses on the extent to which Lessing likely was well versed in Jung’s Memories, Dreams, Reflections, which she used to portray her character “Charles Watkins’s descent into madness and return to sanity.” In his analysis Fike compares Jung’s actual experience of encountering the unconscious to Lessing’s description of Watkins’s. And, as you will see, the comparison is detailed and convincing.
The third paper in the journal is by Inez Martinez who explores the way in which Isak Dinesen, in her short story “Blue Stones,” is able to reanimate the material world. Martinez connects these efforts to Jung’s interest in literature as a compensatory force for what a culture denies. She also traces the unintended consequences of Jung’s use of “deformed rather than perceived images,” in how they diminish “the material aspects of synchronicities.” Martinez encourages us to reconsider these aspects as a way of helping to heal an illness of our time, that is, the way in which our loss of the liveliness of matter has led to our being possessed by materialism. By connecting us to Dinesen’s writing, Martinez offers an example of literature as healing, as activating a reanimating power of the objective psyche.
I’m pleased to introduce the fourth paper that has been written by Halide Aral from the University of Çankaya in Turkey. She analyzes “how heroic masculinity and Christianity, due to their negative attitude toward the feminine, problematize masculine individuation.” Using Jungian thought to guide the development of this thesis, Aral examines the characters of Romeo and Mercutio in Shakespear’s Romeo and Juliet. In this paper Aral makes a good case for the difficulties of masculine individuation, the necessity for it to include an integration of the feminine, and the lost opportunities when the femine is not integrated.
Peter T. DunlapGuest Edito
Earth Dead or Alive: The Matter in Synchronicities, and Dinesen’s “Blue Stones” as Paradigmatic Example of Literature’s Reanimating Power
Full text linkIn his effort to establish the existence of the objective psyche, Jung privileges deformed rather than perceived images, a practice that unintentionally devalues the material aspects of synchronicities. Jungians and post-Jungians focusing on the material aspects of synchronicities can help heal what von Franz has identified as an illness. She proposes that as the collective lost its sense of matter and earth as animate, humans became possessed by matter in the form of materialism. This illness is a cause of human irrational degradation of the earth. Reanimating the earth in the collective psyche requires experiencing it as alive. Literature, according to Jung a way the creative unconscious counterbalances a culture’s limitations, is a realm where imaginative experience of the earth as alive can occur. Isak Dinesen’s “Blue Stones” is a paradigmatic example of this reanimating power
Male Friendship As Masculine Individuation in Romeo and Juliet
Full text linkThe purpose of this essay is to analyse from a Jungian perspective how heroic masculinity and Christianity, due to their negative attitude toward the feminine, problematize masculine individuation and cause tragedy in Romeo and Juliet. Although all male characters in Verona fall short of the mature masculinity that could come with developing a relation to the feminine, I focus on Romeo and Mercutio whose problematic development clarifies man’s difficulty with integrating the feminine without forgoing the masculine structure. Romeo, the puer, who represents the spirit, suffers from a positive mother complex. Mercutio, the trickster, the dark side of the puer, represents the body which is considered evil by Christianity, and has a disturbed relation to the feminine. Hence he compensates for, completes, and gives body to Romeo who is otherwise nothing but the spirit. Being the evil component, Mercutio is essential to the individuation process, and with his simultaneous resistance to and what seems to be an unconscious identification with the feminine, Mercutio serves as a medium through which Shakespeare presents what we may now call, following Eugene Monick’s model, bisexual androgyny as an alternative to heroic masculinity. But this potential as embodied in Mercutio is wasted tragically by the heroic masculinity in Verona