October 2, 2013 · 6:17 pm

Archetypes, Dreams, And Numbers

A while back I posted a few ideas on archetypal images and animals. I mentioned the death of a close friend which precipitated my experiences. I’d like to share those events, as they were important in later connecting me with Jung’s studies on symbols. They show how archetypal ideas are expressed through personal circumstances.

My friend and I had traveled and worked together for years before he died in a car accident at twenty-six. He hit a telephone pole late one night while driving home alone.

For months before, I’d had such oppressive feelings of death, I interpreted them as portents of my own. That I was unable to make sense of them was a mystery afterward. I had two dreams in those months which attempted to clarify what was going on in both of us.

In the first dream, I was in a desolate country looking up at an old run-down house on a hill. I knew there was something foreboding in it, and I ran up the hill in a panic and through the front door. Lying on the floor was a dead man. Though I didn’t recognize him, I ran to his body and knelt over him with a sense of urgency. As I leaned over, he suddenly sprang up to my face, eyes wide open, leering:  “April fool!” he shouted. I woke up with a start.

In the second dream, my friend and I were in an old van we’d traveled around in years before. He was driving as we passed over a bridge and lost control of the steering wheel. The van began to jerk erratically from side to side. I was hanging onto the open passenger door and jumped off. Again, I woke with a start.

In retrospect, some of what the dreams expressed was self-evident, though I was unable to relate them to his impending death. Instead, they found me somehow trying to prepare for my own, even up to the dream I had the night he died.

That night I dreamed I was sitting in a clearing in a forest. Dozens of small, furry animals approached from the surrounding trees, and suddenly they were upon me. Rabbits, squirrels, puppies, all licking me with excitement. I was so ecstatic, I was shaking and trembling, half trying to fend off their swarming affections. I cried out in my excitement, “God is coming!“

I went back to sleep, only to be awakened by a loud bang which seemed to come from the corner of the ceiling behind me — early in the morning. Well before dawn, I heard an urgent knock on the door, and the police informed me that my friend was dead. It was March 29, and he was buried on April 1, April fool’s day.

Later, I looked at the empty six-pack he’d brought over the afternoon before, when we’d watched a ball-game together. My eyes were drawn to the serial numbers on it. They were all elevens and thirteens. I thought about other numbers: phone numbers, addresses — all added up to thirteen. My friend was born on June 11, and I somehow associated thirteen with his death and eleven with his life. Some of the numbers had been in place as long as a year before.

My wife and I drove to his mother’s house in Virginia to be with his family for the funeral. We slept in his old room that night.  Though I wasn’t religious, I was inexplicably consumed with the three days between the death of Christ and his resurrection. I just couldn’t get it out of my mind. I thought of the dream I’d had about April fool’s.

I was convinced I needed to see my friend in the funeral home at ‘four’ in the morning, ‘exactly’ three days after he’d died; to be alone with him before the service. I called the funeral home. They were gracious enough to consent to it at that very inconvenient hour.

As my wife and I prepared for bed, I went to set my friend’s alarm clock to be at the funeral home at four. It was 10:30. The clock was one of those old ones with the numbers that flipped over on four separate cogs, before the modern digital ones. When I picked up the clock to set the alarm, the numbers suddenly flipped to 11:56. I saw the five and the six as eleven, though I didn’t know why, and it half appeared as 11:11. It flipped back to 10:31. I thought something was wrong with the clock.

I said to my wife: “Look at this…” and I picked up the clock without touching any controls. It suddenly flipped to 11:58, which I saw as 11:13, five and eight adding up to thirteen. It flipped back to 10:32 as I set it back down, and we both looked at it. Suddenly, the cogs (which kind of resemble eyes, for those of you who remember them) flipped to 12:01, tilted half-down. I saw thirteen as the “eyes” seemed to stare at the floor. 

We both thought how curious it was as the clock flipped back to 10:33. We even watched it intently, but it seemed to be working again as it flipped the minutes. We went to sleep, and I had a dream:

It was dark and raining as I approached the railroad tracks near the funeral home in my friend’s small town. The arm came down, and the red light flashed — a train was coming. It flashed the number two (a symbol of opposition, division), and I felt panicky and woke up. I thought about the clock, and it suddenly dawned on me that my friend was telling me that he was here in his old room: the eyes of the clock at 12:01, staring down. He’d passed over the midnight hour. I called the funeral home and told them I wouldn’t be there.

The emotions I experienced that night needed no clarification. There was much more to the numbers than I’ve related. They appeared again at crucial times in my life long afterward. But, one experience my wife had later put them into perspective.

My friend’s name was Bill. My wife had a dream in which a voice said: “13/11 is Bill.” The next day, doodling on a piece of paper, she happened onto the configuration, “13- 1-11”. When you put the one and three together, they form a “B”.

2 Comments

Filed under Psychology

Tagged as , , , , , ,

December 15, 2011 · 9:17 pm

I’ve Got a Hold on You

Just how subtly we’re influenced by unconscious emotions is readily apparent in the effects of commercial advertising. Their images are plainly designed to evoke pleasurable feelings and associate them with material things — like Pavlov’s dog. In fact, the modern cult of media deception sprang from the studies of Ivan Pavlov.

They fit so neatly into the Communist objectives of the twentieth century, they were supported by the Soviet government for the opportunities they offered for the manipulation of its citizens.

Commercial manipulation since has been more arduously developed — indeed, today it’s a science — carefully contrived to lure us into a fantasy world. Though the most obvious examples are plainly seen through, even laughed at in their transparency, their influence runs deep and attracts consumers to things like the famine-stricken to the baker’s door.

There’s a reality behind it, but the facade is, like everything else, an image. Few admit to being fooled, even as we’re aware of it. Everyone knows it, and yet it works beyond all reason: a potent lesson in how unconscious images and feelings influence thought.

Vance Packard’s book, The Hidden Persuaders, documented the exciting new advantages psychology promised for the dawning world of commercial media in 1960. The appeal to industry was prompted by a letter from Sigmund Freud’s grandson to an advertising firm in New York. In it, he wrote of the possibilities psychology offered to exploit the emotions of consumers and sell them the most banal products.

Packard’s book recounted study after study on the unconscious suggestibility of consumers and how they could be influenced to buy products regardless of need or quality. One such venture gave three “different” laundry detergents to test groups to sample and compare how they worked. The first sample was in a blue box, the second was in a yellow one, and the third was in a gaily-colored blue box with yellow splashes. They didn’t know all the detergent was the same.

When the results were in, the majority felt the detergent in the blue box was too harsh; some complained it ruined their garments. The detergent in the yellow box, the majority pronounced too weak and didn’t remove stains adequately. The preponderance of approval rested with the gaily-colored blue box with yellow splashes. Not only images, but suggestion, too, outweighed conscious perception.

Over fifty years have passed since Packard wrote his book. Advertising appeal through the psychology of mass media has been stitched into the fabric of our culture. It’s a world of images designed to conceal and disguise. Whether the product is a politician, a pediatrician, a prescription, or a pen — to write with or keep your toddlers in — no form of deception is beyond this de-humanizing market mentality. It’s so subtle, complex and all-consuming, even those who profit from it are themselves victims.

What began as a clumsy new field of exploitation in the fifties is so ingrained in culture today that the cycle of promise and empty disappointment is accepted and even expected. Today’s individual is increasingly disoriented and dependent on external influences. The new generation is so conditioned, so unconscious of inner reality, it not only accepts it but eagerly pursues it as the only offering for a dissociated sense of self.

Commercial deception is so much a part of modern reality, so taken for granted, that all are unconsciously conditioned by the inadequacies and inferiorities it cultivates. It’s effects go far beyond selfish, egotistical, and contradictory.

Its intent is not to advance awareness but to impede it. It’s not only turned back the spiritual development of millennia, it’s made the very idea obsolete. Its paradoxical purpose fills the empty void created by it.

The business end of science and technology is intended to create associations to hidden ideologies; but, that’s just the surface — the problem goes deeper. The exploitation of the human spirit once exercised by the church has shifted to a secular political and financial few no less intent on power and profit than those of the Middle Ages.

The history of Christianity is a testament to the difficult inner work of separating ego from soul. But, the mask has changed. It now exposes the cultivation of inner values as too strenuous to accomplish; the conflict so unfathomable, it’s discarded altogether by a science-driven culture as not worth the effort. But, what lies beneath the changing mask?

Erich Neumann, in The Origins And History Of Consciousness, discussed the psychology of the collapse of an old value-system such as this shift represents today:

“Typical and symptomatic of this transitional phenomenon is the state of affairs in America, though the same holds good for practically the whole Western hemisphere… The grotesque fact that murderers, brigands, thieves, forgers, tyrants, and swindlers, in a guise that deceives nobody, have seized control of collective life is characteristic of our time. Their unscrupulousness and double-dealing are recognized — and admired… The dynamism of a possessed personality is accordingly very great, because in its one-track primitivity, it suffers none of the differentiations which make men human.”

Neumann published his book in 1954, even before Packard’s, in the wake of WWII, when humanity was deeply concerned about its future: “Worship of the “beast” is not confined to Germany; it prevails wherever one-sidedness, push, and moral blindness are applauded, i.e., wherever the aggravating complexities of civilized behavior are swept away by bestial rapacity. One has only to look at the educative ideals current in the West.

“The possessed character of our financial and industrial magnates, for instance, is psychologically evident from the very fact that they are at the mercy of a suprapersonal factor — “work,” “power,” “money,” or whatever they like to call it — which, in the telling phrase, “consumes” them and leaves little or no room as private persons. Coupled with a nihilistic attitude towards civilization and humanity there goes a puffing up of the ego-sphere which expresses itself with brutish egotism in a total disregard for the common good…

“Not only power, money, and lust, but religion, art, and politics as exclusive determinants in the form of parties, sects, movements, and “isms” of every description take possession of the masses and destroy the individual.”

Since Neumann’s time, one might add media and technology to the list of “exclusive determinants,” as well as the Eastern hemisphere, which is now as actively engaged in commercialism as the West.

Comments Off on I’ve Got a Hold on You

Filed under Psychology

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

November 30, 2011 · 12:10 pm

Jung’s Definitions of Rational and Irrational

Webster defines rational as: “having or exercising the ability to reason.” Reason is defined as: “An underlying fact or motive that provides logical sense for a premise or occurrence.” Logical is: “reasonable on the basis of previous events or statements.” Webster defines irrational as contrary to reason. Moving from definition to concept, Jung wrote in Psychological Types:  

“I conceive reason as an attitude whose principle it is to conform thought, feeling, and action to objective values. Objective values are established by the everyday experience of external facts on the one hand, and of inner, psychological facts on the other. Such experiences, however, could not represent objective “values” if they were valued as such by the subject, for that would already amount to an act of reason. The rational attitude which permits us to declare objective values as valid at all is not the work of the individual subject, but the product of human history.”

He went on to explain that reason is “…nothing other than the expression of man’s adaptability to average occurrences, which have gradually become deposited in firmly established complexes of ideas that constitute our objective values. Thus the laws of reason are the laws that designate and govern the average…“

Jung defined irrational “not as denoting something contrary to reason, but something beyond reason, something therefore, not grounded on reason. Elementary facts come into this category; the fact, for example that the earth has a moon, that chlorine is an element, that water reaches its greatest density at four degrees centigrade, etc… The irrational is an existential factor which, though it may be pushed further and further out of sight by an increasingly elaborate rational explanation, finally makes the explanation so complicated that it passes our powers of comprehension…

“A completely rational explanation of an object that actually exists (not one that is merely posited) is a Utopian ideal. Only an object that is posited can be completely explained on rational grounds, since it does not contain anything beyond what has been posited by rational thinking. Empirical science, too, posits objects that are confined within rational bounds, because by deliberately excluding the accidental it does not consider the actual object as a whole, but only that part of it which has been singled out for rational observation.”

So far, the range of experience falling under the category of irrational and accidental includes all elementary facts of existence, known or not: given properties of the world and how we perceive them. It also includes all objects to the extent they’re unique and individual, as well as all chance events occurring in the relations between individual “objects.” It includes the unconscious psyche, which by definition is unknown and so unlimited. Aspects of these irrational factors have been “singled out for rational observation” as Jung noted; yet they remain, in fact and basis, irrational.

Whatever is “singled out for rational observation” is further restricted to what is accepted as an objective value, though that knowledge is partial by definition. Outside those boundaries, life is irrational.

Jung’s description of rational is the basis for most psychologies today. Since they have no conception of the irrational beyond speculation (and projection), the unconscious psyche can’t be described but in physical terms. Unable to address subjective conflicts (being irrational and accidental by definition) therapists often treat psychic problems physiologically — with drugs. The rational view has no approach to this paradox; the contradictions lie beyond the realm of medical opinion — in the unconscious psyche.

When the explanation is “so complicated that it passes our powers of comprehension” and ceases to be rational, Jung attributed the contradictions to the projections of conscious psychology. Though exceeding explanation, these “existential factors” are objective. The contradictions are subjective. They have nothing to do with accepted standards in the way we’re conditioned to think. The subjective factor dictates that they must be viewed in terms of relative values. Since these can’t be “objective”, they have validity only for the individual.

The failure of psychiatry and psychology to acknowledge materialistic projections has resulted in a paradox so pervasive that “mental illness” has actually increased since its inception. Part of it is due to diagnostic methods which can in no way be fitted to the medical model — an indication that psychology has overreached itself to an extent that, were it not for our fascination with ego and intellect, it would surely be seen through by a serious thinker…

And so it was — Jung’s model was comprehensive enough to conceive such projections. Rational thinkers have taken little notice. This is one of the crucial reasons why psychology has no means of evaluating religious ideas, though their profound effects have been proven to be most important for psychic health. One of the goals of religion is to move ego into a subordinate position, to recognize a thing greater than itself. This has been a fundamental tenet of objective values for over five thousand years…

2 Comments

Filed under Psychology

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

November 29, 2011 · 6:46 pm

The Psychology of C.G. Jung: It’s All In How You Look At It

Confusion and misunderstanding are almost similes for Jung’s psychology. Is it a science? If so, what kind is it? To understand his ideas, an overview of the unconscious psyche and natural law is helpful. Because they’re synonymous and function in a counter-intuitive way, Jung’s approach was not causal or rational from the common perspective. I would like to share some of my understanding of his method.

Because consciousness is under the influence of unseen forces, their effects can only be inferred. Just as physicists infer the existence of unseen bodies in space by their effects on visible ones, when considering unconscious effects Jung employed an indirect method called the phenomenological approach. The products of the mind comprise its study and consist of observable phenomena which are the result of unconscious effects on our thinking.

Since the basic qualities of consciousness are focus and direction, it excludes information not relevant to its attention at a given time. Jung compared it to a searchlight in a forest and the illumination of a small area in the darkness. What is beyond it still exists, though not until the light moves can it be seen. When it moves, what was formerly lit fades back into darkness. Just as in a forest, what is outside its beam works according to natural processes.

Biology has proven that all natural processes are purposeful. Despite what ego tells us, the human animal is no less the product of purposive nature than any other observable phenomenon. Jung’s method began with natural science, and he worked honestly to make it consistent with its discoveries.

His model differs from the causal approach, because psychology is the study of the psyche observing itself. It doesn’t have the luxury of an objective standpoint outside itself as natural science does. Since the unconscious organizes ideas differently than consciousness, its language is not directly accessible.

To work round the problem, to achieve a perspective beyond a subjective one, Jung used a comparative approach. As comparative anatomy studies differences and similarities in the structures of animals to arrive at common heritage and form a concept of evolution, Jung used the vantage-point of history to lend an “outside” perspective to psychic development.

To bridge the difficulty of direct measurement in natural science, he adapted its laws by formulating them in a way particular to the individual. By viewing it as a “relatively closed system” he showed the general laws of energy to apply to the psyche also.

Psychic energy could be measured in terms of value. A value represents a sum of psychic energy, and estimates of its relative importance in the individual could be determined by the frequency and intensity with which certain unconscious complexes of ideas intruded into the conscious “field.” These ideas are “feeling-toned”, emotionally charged, and their intensity and frequency measures their value.

His association tests validated the phenomena, and he found that the complexes revolved around instinctive functions. Like comparative anatomy discovered, they conform to the general laws of nature. The estimates of value provided an objective assessment, though relative to the individual.

In the course of Jung’s broad analytic experience he observed patterns in the ideas and dreams of his patients. They conformed in a remarkable way to those in religion, myth, philosophy, and literature which comprised his comparative material. They emerged as forms of thought which could be reduced to a fundamental few in comparison with the swarming, chaotic buzz (think statistics) of qualitative description. These forms are perceptible through recurring themes which reflect instinctive, pre-determined modes of perception and experience and their unconscious organization — the mind’s structure.

Jung compared his patients’ dreams with his historical studies of ideas. These included direct observations of primitive African cultures as well as American Indians in the western United States. Something emerged which was completely outside the bounds of what science regarded as material for research: the psyche had a religious function; he found that the value (the intensity and frequency of the intrusion of that complex of ideas) was one of such significance in the constitution of the mind, it required investigation.

His experience with his patients confirmed his research. This historical aspect of the psyche, developed through religious and philosophical ideas, conditions consciousness as powerfully as the objective outer world; indeed, it was the objective inner world.

Owing to his intellectual integrity, Jung allowed the material he compared and collated to “shape itself” according to the conformities reflected in it. He didn’t begin with a theory and adapt his own ideas to it. He may have begun with certain intuitive ones, but he strove to make them compatible with the material. This is the way of natural science. He wrote that a “mode of observation” had “reality-significance” if it produced results.

His method differs from statistical evaluation for reasons I hope are evident. Recent developments in neuroscience, which relies on instruments to record the data of brain processes, are just now beginning to discover “facts” which Jung observed over a century ago. Is his method too complicated for them? I doubt that. It’s more likely attributable to their focus. Is it working? Their own statistics suggest otherwise.

How many “scientific” studies only reinforce what intuition and common sense tell us? We’re so focused on the material value of  the “scientific method,” so in awe of our intellects for having conceived it, we can’t see around it. These unseen influences are psychic phenomenon: material for the psychological empiricist.

The comparative method enabled Jung to see around the facade of modern ego, peer into the history of the mind, and allow consciousness to observe its own development. It lent an important perspective to subjective value and historical conditioning — as well as the important role of religious and philosophical ideas in our development.

 

Comments Off on The Psychology of C.G. Jung: It’s All In How You Look At It

Filed under Psychology

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

October 28, 2011 · 12:52 pm

Brother Dave — Pinned Down and Crystallized

Brother Dave Gardner was a southern comedian at his height in the sixties. What I liked about him was his ability to introduce different ideas to his audience. He majored in philosophy at the University of Mississippi — a reflection of his natural grasp of a wide range of viewpoints. He had one of those minds that looks at the world in a unique way, and his inner conversations were translated through different voices in his routines.

Southern audiences in the sixties were not exactly acclaimed for their open-mindedness, and Brother Dave was subtle and inventive in expressing his philosophy. During a show in Texas, he began talking about the Hindu reverence for cows — in obvious opposition to the interests of the cattle and beef industry represented in his audience.

A spectator shouted, “Be careful!”, and Brother Dave replied, “If you’re careful, then you might break it!” The man shouted back, “Break what?” Brother Dave laughed, “Anything! It don’t matter!” Unperturbed, he continued:

“They say that for every cow you kill, you will spend that many years in that dark abyss as there is hairs on a cow’s body…wouldn’t that make folks think twice about slewin’ a bovine?” He ended the piece by saying, “I gotta go along with them Hindus on that.”

If his audience began to murmur discontentedly over the breadth of his ideas, he simply steam-rolled them into another story with such a mix of hilarious voices and off-beat speech, they were soon laughing uncontrollably. He knew his audience, and he knew how to make them laugh — even when introducing ideas which provoked hostility.

His addition of the word “Brother” to his stage-name was a direct satire of the southern, Bible-belt perspective comprising most of his audience. In one show he explained the idea of “dualities” (the one behind his reply to the man in Texas) like “hot and cold — heaven and hell”, and then he paused: “I never thought I’d ever say that word, unless I became a preacher.” and then he added, “Actually, I am, you know. The only difference is that I’m preachin’ for it.”

He parodied race relations in the south by using a black vernacular and tone in his voices, even when obviously referring to his white counterparts. He philosophized often on stage with a blend of varying styles of speech from beatnik or hip, to redneck, to African-American.

His philosophy was as unique as his style, which brings me to the real point of this post: the introduction of new ideas. I received my first Brother Dave album from my sister for my eleventh birthday. I had little notion of philosophy then, and as I listened to his album through my teen years, certain things he said stuck in my mind. One of his on-stage discussions with himself centered around his own version of epistemology:

“Them that don’t know are better off than them that think they know, because by them that think they know, that pins it down and crystallizes it to the point where it’s all hung up in limitations.” and then, in a different voice he questioned the statement, “Said, if it’s all pinned down and crystallized, then what’s all that around it?” I thought about it for many years, wondering what he could have meant.

What Brother Dave had hit upon was an intuitive idea of the difference between rational and irrational (or symbolic) thinking; the difference in the organization of conscious and unconscious experience.

Goethe sounded the same idea in Faust: “To what the mind most gloriously conceives/An alien, more alien substance cleaves.” These two ideas from such widely divergent times and cultures are analogies of a symbolic language and how it differs from conscious thought.

What all that is “around it” in Brother Dave’s reference to knowledge is the creative process of unconscious association — the same “alien substance” to which Goethe referred.

Jung explained these ideas in his discussion on two types of thinking. Directed thinking is that rational, conscious thought which requires concentration. The more intense and focused it is, the more it’s expressed in language. Ideas are organized and clarified through speech or writing.

Directed thinking requires much effort and can’t be maintained but for relatively brief periods. When directed thinking stops (observe it in yourself), fantasy-thinking immediately begins. Thought is less focused, lapses into reverie or stream of consciousness as associations gather around vague ideas.

The connections aren’t readily apparent because of the undirected form of unconscious fantasy. That they’re the foundations of thought, however, can be observed by anyone who makes the effort. How fantasy works is documented by Jung in the many examples he supplied in his, Symbols of Transformation.

“Them that think they know” remain imprisoned in a logical structure of thought which is unable to see the hidden web of unconscious idea-formation. The loose associations must be linked together consciously to grasp the unconscious information they convey. It’s opposed to the way we normally think.

To get outside this fence of false pretense and certainty, to connect with the mystery of unconscious ideas, requires a recognition of fantasy and the role it plays in the development of thought. It requires studying those associations and their relation to ideas, translating and reconciling them to what and how we think. We then find ourselves beyond the boundaries of science and what is known. We’ve moved outside statistics and collective opinion and toward the uniqueness of our own personalities.

This dark, uncertain world requires effort to illuminate, but before that can begin it must be reflected. Again, Goethe had it “pinned down and crystallized” over two centuries ago: “Formation, transformation / Eternal mind’s eternal recreation.”

Comments Off on Brother Dave — Pinned Down and Crystallized

Filed under Psychology

Tagged as , , , , , , ,