Jung’s cartography of the psyche

James P. Driscoll

Description

Carl Jung was a great explorer and mapper of the unconscious realm that Sigmund Freud had discovered. Jung created a copious vocabulary of psychological terms and concepts that help us understand features of the psyche that were previously overlooked or difficult to define. Taken together, his terms and concepts offer a basic cartography of the human psyche. In contrast to clinically oriented Jungian glossaries, this work delineates the complex interrelationships of his ideas showing how they intermesh within a coherent system. It carries Jung’s seminal insights to an array of subjects that have unfolded in surprising directions, including, for example, revolutionary ideas on the self, time, and the Godhead. The commentaries James P. Driscoll offers in Jung’s Cartography of the Psyche are helpful for applying Jung to literature, philosophy, religion, the political domain, and other aspects of the human experience. They comprise an introduction and guide that demonstrates Jung’s scope and depth as well as the rewards of studying him further.

Sujets

• Political Science
• Religión
• Psychiatry
• Literature
• Philosophy
• Carl Jung
• Psychology
• Mythology
• Existentialism
• Religion
• Myth
• Carl Gustav Jung
• Sigmund Freud

Informations

• Publié par: Academica Press
• Date de parution: 01 septembre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 3
• EAN13: 9781680539790
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Jung s Cartography of the Psyche:
A Guide to Terms, Concepts, and Insights
James P. Driscoll, Ph.D.
Jung s Cartography of the Psyche:
A Guide to Terms, Concepts, and Insights
James P. Driscoll, Ph.D.
Academica Press Washington~London
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Driscoll, James, author. |
Title: Jung s cartography of the psyche : a guide to terms, concepts, and insights / James Driscoll
Description: Washington : Academica Press, 2020. | Includes references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020946096 | ISBN 9781680531411 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781680539790
Copyright 2020 James Driscoll
Contents
INTRODUCTION
JUNG S TERMS, CONCEPTS, AND PERSPECTIVES
EPILOGUE
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
INTRODUCTION
Carl Jung created a rich vocabulary of psychological terms and an array of concepts that allow us to more readily explore, discuss, and understand features of the psyche that previously were difficult to identify, articulate, and grasp. These terms and concepts taken together form a basic cartography of the human psyche. Unlike other glossaries and lexicons of Jungian terms, which are more clinically oriented, this work attempts to expand Jung s insights beyond psychotherapy in order to broaden the range of implication for his ideas and explore their philosophical basis. Toward that end, it introduces heuristic terms and concepts from other seminal modern thinkers: for example, those of A.N. Whitehead, Henri Bergson, and Martin Heidegger, as well as feminist and LGBT scholars. Thereby, it attempts to place Jung in the context of major modern thinkers and thought trends. We can often understand Jung s ideas better if we step outside to view them from the Archimedean points of other exceptional thinkers.
Specifically, this guide is tailored to serve those approaching Jung from literary and art criticism, theology, and philosophy. Some clinical terms, like neurosis, have been omitted while other non-Jungian theological, literary, and philosophical terms are included. Following paths blazed by Erich Neumann, Joseph Campbell, James Hillman, Edward Edinger, Andrew Samuels, Murray Stein, Marie-Louise von Franz and many others, I have attempted to take Jung s ideas in new, sometimes radically novel, directions, particularly with his ideas on the self, theology, and the Godhead. Many of my definition/commentaries reflect this ambition. The reader will notice that examples of Jungian archetypal functions and dynamics are frequently drawn from Shakespeare rather than the folklore and alchemy Jung relied on. Ironically perhaps, since the Bard was neglected by Jung himself, a disproportionate number of the most compelling illustrations in Western literature for Jung s ideas are in Shakespeare. Many of the entries herein are brief summaries of vast subjects, like tiny windows giving a glimpse of an immense vista. I hope that the reader will be moved to explore these subjects further; if so, the Bibliography at this work s close can be helpful.
Other excellent dictionaries and lexicons of Jungian terms, such as the works by Andrew Samuels, Daryl Sharp, and Robert Hopcke, are written from a clinician s point of view. This guide is less technical than theirs and written more for laymen approaching Jung from backgrounds outside clinical psychology. The choice of the term guide , rather than lexicon, dictionary or glossary, is somewhat arbitrary, but seems more descriptive than those alternatives. My hope is that for readers who are not Jung specialists my short accounts will prove useful and heuristic toward application of Jung to literature, philosophy, the political realm, and religion. Jung always wanted his ideas to spread into these other fields. Indeed, our understanding of them will be sadly restricted if we refuse to utilize Jung s formidable expansion of our knowledge of the complexities of the human personality and psyche.
Let us suppose that Carl Jung had explored previously uncharted geographic regions, like a Vasco da Gama or Captain James Cook, and that he brought back a wealth of findings including rough maps. These would be of great interest, but we would not confine our investigations to his findings. We would use them to guide further, deeper explorations of our own. Although there is still much to be learned from Jung s own writings on the self, ego, persona, shadow, anima, animus and other major psychic structures, much can also be gained from approaching the structures he discovered with new or different cultural perspectives and conceptual tools that can offer fresh information and novel insights. For example, if, as I propose to do, we treat the self, anima and other personified archetypes as real structures in the psyche, rather than as theories of Jung s, we will approach them differently.
This is not to say that Jung himself or Jungian scholars have become old hat, far from it. Indeed, Jung would want us to use his methods as navigation tools, and his discoveries as jumping off points, for our own deeper explorations of the structures and processes he discovered in the psyche. He encouraged creative followers, like Erich Neumann and Marie Louise von Franz, who did this. Notwithstanding, this approach repudiates those positivistic and Marxist critics who, imputing inaccuracies to Jung s descriptions of psychic phenomena take these as proof that the phenomena themselves do not exist. Their dismissal of Jung s discoveries makes no more sense than citing the differences between Cezanne s painting of Mount St. Victoire and a photograph of the geological structure as proof that Cezanne s mountain does not exist. Jung, the great explorer of the psyche discovered or identified new structures and processes: the task of posterity is to further explore, describe, and define them more thoroughly and accurately.
However, the revolutionary impact of Jung s findings for the entirety of humanity has yet to be grasped let alone digested. The required paradigm change has been slow and remains only in its initial stages. Most educated people still operate on a model of the human mind as outdated as Ptolemaic astronomy. Most are still grappling to get their arms around Freud s discovery that there actually is an unconscious psyche that surrounds and can powerfully influence the ego s conscious life. Few are ready to examine that unconscious in detail, to explore, with Jung, its specific structures, patterns, processes, and laws. Most are content to remain silent on a peak in Darien. Fewer still are prepared to grapple with the vast implications of Jung s discovery of an oceanic collective unconscious whose currents and tides profoundly shape our conscious lives and all our dealing with the world along with the evolution of entire societies and civilizations.
The expansion of man s inner world beyond the tiny spot lighted island of our conscious egos is paralleled by a far vaster expansion of humanity s grand context, the known universe itself. Astronomers believe there are four trillion (4,000,000,000,000) galaxies in the known universe. Our own Milky Way, a typical spiral galaxy somewhat larger than average, but no giant, contains approximately three hundred billion stars (300,000,000,000). Scientists speculate that revolving around the stars of our galaxy are at least one billion planets that can support some form of life. Let us assume that only one in one million of these auspicious planets sustains intelligent life that has developed civilizations at least comparable to what the earth had in the pre-technological era, between 2000 B.C. and 1800 A.D. when the great religions formed. That would mean that the known universe may host not four trillion but four quadrillion worlds (4,000,000,000,000,000) that support intelligent species forming diverse religions and wondering about the meaning of life and the God or gods who made it all. Moreover, it seems likely that the majority of this enormous plethora of species believed, at some point in their development, that the god who made the universe and themselves, made them in his own image. That would give God four quadrillion different faces!
In addition to the vast universe in the great beyond with its countless unknown worlds and their mysteriously varied inhabitants, we have discovered new worlds on a scale much smaller than our unaided senses can perceive, worlds of molecules, atoms, sub-atomic particles, novel forces, perhaps the vibrating strings at the frontier of reality. Then in biology we face the vast complexity of our own bodies, filled with billions of bacteria, helpful and not, and viruses, prions, and other particles, denizens along the borders of life and mere chemistry.
Moses, Zarathustra, Lao Tzu, Confucius, Buddha, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Jesus, Hillel, Paul, Augustine, Mohammad, Aquinas, and Luther-- none of them conceived of a creator of 4,000,000,000,000,000 worlds with at least that many different forms of intelligent life all wondering in their different species adapted ways about their creator, its nature, character, and purposes. They assumed the creator fashioned just one world, the earth, and one race of intelligent beings, humanity; most of them believed that the creator closely resembled a human being in temperament and even physical appearance. They did not conceive of innumerable worlds unimaginably far beyond our little blue planet, or realms much smaller than the furthest reach of our five senses. Yet it surely seems reasonable that a creator or creative force that would make four quadrillion different worlds endowed with intelligent life, might well be very different from a deity who, like our traditional god, was content with only one lonely planet inhabited by a single intelligent species. Such a god would be more awesome, and more incomprehensible and probably mo