Reference: Becoming Powerful Makes You Less Empathetic

Last year, I worked with a senior executive — let’s call him Steve — who had received feedback from his boss that he was wearing the power of his new title in an off-putting way. Steve’s boss told him that he had developed a subtle way of being right in meetings that sucked all the oxygen out of the room.  No one wanted to offer ideas once Steve had declared the right answer.  Since his promotion, Steve had become less of a team player and more of a superior who knew better than others.  In short, he had lost his empathy.

Why does this sort of shift in behavior happen to so many people when they’re promoted to the ranks of management?  Research shows that personal power actually interferes with our ability to empathize. Dacher Keltner, an author and social psychologist at University of California, Berkeley, has conducted empirical studies showing that people who have power suffer deficits in empathy, the ability to read emotions, and the ability to adapt behaviors to other people. In fact, power can actually change how the brain functions, according to research from Sukhvinder Obhi, a neuroscientist at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, Canada.

The most common leadership failures don’t involve fraud, the embezzlement of funds, or even sex scandals.  It’s more common to see leaders fail in the area of every day self-management — and the use power in a way that is motivated by ego and self-interest.

How does it happen?  Slowly, and then suddenly.  It happens with bad mini-choices, made perhaps on an unconscious level.  It might show up as the subtle act of throwing one’s weight around.  Demands for special treatment; isolated decision-making; and getting one’s way. Leaders who are pulled over by the police for speeding or driving drunk become indignant and rail, “Do you know who I am?!” Suddenly the story hits social media and we change our minds about the once-revered personality.

The recent story about NBC’s disgraced Brian Williams points to a bigger story about power and fame.  How do people start out in pursuit of a dream and wind up aggrandizing themselves instead?  They reach a choke point, where they cross over from being generous with their power to using their power for their own benefit.

Take the case of former Charlotte, North Carolina, mayor Patrick Cannon. Cannon came from nothing.  He overcame poverty and the violent loss of his father at the age of 5.  He earned a degree from North Carolina A&T State University and entered public service at the age of 26 — becoming the youngest council member in Charlotte history. He was known for being completely committed to serving the public, and generous with the time he spent as a role model for young people.

But last year, Cannon, 47, pleaded guilty to accepting $50,000 in bribes while in office.  As he entered the city’s federal courthouse last June, he tripped and fell. The media was there to capture the fall, which was symbolic of the much bigger fall of an elected leader and small business owner who once embodied the very essence of personal achievement against staggering odds.  Cannon now has the distinction of being the first mayor in the city’s history to be sent to prison. Insiders say he was a good man, but all too human, and seemed vulnerable as he became isolated in his decision-making.  And while a local minister argued that Cannon’s one lapse in judgment should not define the man and his career of exceptional public service, he is now judged only by his weakness — his dramatic move from humility and generosity to corruption. And that image of Cannon tripping on his way into court is now the image that people associate with him.

What can leaders do if they fear that they might be toeing the line where power turns to abuse of power? First, you must invite other people in. You must be willing to risk vulnerability and ask for feedback. A good executive coach can help you return to a state of empathy and value-driven decisions. However, be sure to ask for feedback from a wide variety of people. Dispense with the softball questions (How am I doing?) and ask the tough ones (How does my style and focus affect my employees?).

Preventive maintenance begins with self-awareness and a daring self-inventory:

• Do you have a support network of friends, family, colleagues who care about you without the title and can help you stay down to earth?
• Do you have an executive coach, mentor, or confidant?
• What feedback have you gotten about not walking the talk?
• Do you demand privileges?
• Are you keeping the small, inconvenient promises that fall outside of the spotlight?
• Do you invite others into the spotlight?
• Do you isolate yourself in the decision-making process? Do the decisions you’re making reflect what you truly value?
• Do you admit your mistakes?
• Are you the same person at work, at home and in the spotlight?
• Do you tell yourself there are exceptions or different rules for people like you?

If a leader earns our trust, we hold them to non-negotiable standards. Nothing will blow up so much as a failure in walking the talk, or the selfish abuse of power. We all want our leaders to be highly competent, visionary, take-charge people. However, empathy, authenticity and generosity are what distinguish competence and greatness. The most self-aware leaders recognize the signals of abuse of power and correct course before it’s too late.

COMMENTS:

Julie Erickson 4 years ago
I've seen abuse of power happen, and experienced the lure of power myself despite my strong efforts to resist. Other people treated me as special and I began to believe it. The process is subtle, and even my executive coach didn't spot it. As I read the questions here, I realized they would have been quite helpful for me to see what was happening to me. One thing I notice in hindsight is that I stopped wanting to hear any criticism from people I perceived as not supporting me. Now I see that my very resistance to the criticism was an indication that there was a problem that deserved close examination. My emotions - anger, fear, pride - got in the way of my willingness to engage in self-examination, even through a 360! Today I remember what Spiderman says: "With great power comes great responsibility." I focus more now on how I can serve others, rather than what I can achieve.

Sai Bhupalam 5 years ago
Lack of empathy and compassion along with an increase in hubris are commonplace for people in power. In my experience, group-think and inner circle politics are what enable autocratic attitudes which in turn deplete empathy and compassion. It is similar to corruption. The people who offer bribes to get their work done through a shortcut are the ones who are actually corrupting the officers in charge and so it is in management/leadership. Those who want to fawn the leaders to protect their own vested interests also contribute to this malaise. Great article - I am curious about the related neuroscience on this - thank you for the link and the article.

Václav Dekanovský 5 years ago
Hello. It reminds me what British author David Gemmell wrote in his books. Evil doesn't walk the world having horns and spitting fire around. It creeps in one small step at a time.
Great advise to keep some friends and advisers around. It's worth even without being in power.

Lou Solomon, "Becoming Powerful Makes You Less Empathetic" (Harvard Business Review, April 21, 2015)

Mood of destruction and renewal

A mood of universal destruction and renewal… has set its mark on our age. This mood makes itself felt everywhere, politically, socially, and philosophically. We are living in what the Greeks called the kairos – the right moment – for a “metamorphosis of the gods”, of the fundamental principles and symbols. This peculiarity of our time, which is certainly not of our conscious choosing, is the expression of the unconscious human within us who is changing. Coming generations will have to take account of this momentous transformation if humanity is not to destroy itself through the might of its own technology and science… So much is at stake and so much depends on the psychological constitution of the modern man.

- Jung, CG, (1970) Civilization in Transition



See also:
Apocalypse

The Archimedian point

Do things happen accidentally, or do we call them to us? An easy, and true answer, is yes to both; to only believe that one is true is to become one-sided, the great sin of the psyche.

Another good, and true, answer is to say yes... but it’s not in a blaming way. If we call negative experiences to us then it’s not our conscious, not our ego (“ourselves”) that’s doing it but another part of us, one which is as alien and other as another person entirely.

The other thing, and probably most important thing, is that these opposites - “It’s all your fault if bad things happen to you!” And “How dare you say it’s someone’s fault! Are you saying an innocent child asks for bad things to happen to them?????” - these opposites are secretly united. This is why, for example, Erykah Badu’s response that even Hitler has something good about him both irritated but also failed to arouse the truly strong, almost violent, reactions that others got. The sinner and the righteous warrior of goodness and purity are two halves of the same whole. The light, by it’s very existence, calls darkness into existence. One half can never defeat its other half... or if it does it risks self-annihilation. This why we must find a dialectical solution, one which gets beyond the pair of opposites. An Archimedean point outside the battle. It’s only when you get beyond sinner and saint that a true peace can be attained.

The end of the world doesn't scare me, but it does make me sad

I've been thinking about the end of the world a lot (unsurprisingly). Scientists keep moving the date of ecological devastation from climate change closer and closer. The possibility that all the beautiful life on this planet could be destroyed is such a tragedy. Every once in a while it just hits you, how close to the edge we are.

This is one of my favorite songs by one of my favorite bands. It really captures this feeling. The video destroys me every time I watch it, without fail.

Sai, by Acidman


We're Now Even Closer to the Point of No Return (Esquire)
Indulge Your Existential Dread 24/7 With This Real-Time Global Warming Clock (Earther)

The missing half

I’ve been ruminating for months and months about what psychology really is. It’s treated like a science - most psychologists (including Jung!) want it to be a science. The reason Freud is still discussed in psychology classes, even though he was clearly full of shit, is because Freud shared this desire. Even Jung had some tendencies in this direction but, as a thoroughgoing empiricist, he knew when to give up this lifesaver and actually swim in the water. In fact, I think this was his whole point: his theory is based on reality... however, that reality includes spirituality! By refusing a priori to even look at the possibility that psychology has a spiritual aspect, these people are denying what is actually true, which is why they can never find out how to create deep, fundamental change in people.

What I’ve been struggling with is: how much of psychology is spiritual? This morning, as I was waking up, I realized that of course psychology is spiritual, because everything is spiritual! Psychology, even Jungian psychology, isn’t spirituality, but when you go deep enough it is. But this isn’t something unique to psychology alone. For example, go far enough into physics and again, you come to spirituality.

The thing is... everything is spiritual at its deepest place. Art, ecology, politics, farming, wood-working, cooking, everything. This is, in fact, our disease, the fact that we’ve forgotten this. Jung wrote about the “infrared” and “ultraviolet” ends of the archetypes; that is, our instincts and the spiritual archetypes that both live within us. The thing is, the entire world, all of reality and every part of it, has an infrared and an ultraviolet end. It’s just more obvious in psychology.

Until recently religion served to regulate the psyche. When religion lost its place of importance, we needed psychology to fill that gap. And the reason that modern psychology fails us over and over is that spirituality is a uniquely large and fundamental part, at every level, of the process of psychological healing, which is really actually spiritual healing. Instead, it’s techniques fail to create fundamental change in us but rather merely clean up the most shallow parts of our wounds (stick bandaids on them one might say). But what's not unique about psychology is the fact that it has a fundamental spiritual component. And how can that not be the case, since reality itself is spiritual, or ultraviolet, as well as infrared.

The illnesses of our time are caused by the lack of awareness of this spiritual side of reality. In fact, the illness of our time is at root this lack; everything else - the wars, the social and racial unrest, the looming nuclear destruction and actual ecological devastation - are just symptoms of this fundamental disease. The fact that we have forgotten this whole half of reality is the cause of everything wrong, not only in our individual lives but in the world at large. Just as our lives would fall apart if we failed to grasp the physical side, so it is falling apart because we have forgotten the spiritual side. Our world is reflecting this illness back on us. And as nothing in our individual lives will truly improve until we grasp this, so too will nothing fundamentally improve in the world until we come to understand both its halves.

Article: Ursula K. Le Guin's speech at National Book Awards; "Books aren't just commodities"

Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom – poets, visionaries – realists of a larger reality.

Right now, we need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. Developing written material to suit sales strategies in order to maximise corporate profit and advertising revenue is not the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship.

Yet I see sales departments given control over editorial. I see my own publishers, in a silly panic of ignorance and greed, charging public libraries for an e-book six or seven times more than they charge customers. We just saw a profiteer try to punish a publisher for disobedience, and writers threatened by corporate fatwa. And I see a lot of us, the producers, who write the books and make the books, accepting this – letting commodity profiteers sell us like deodorant, and tell us what to publish, what to write.

Books aren’t just commodities; the profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable – but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.

I’ve had a long career as a writer, and a good one, in good company. Here at the end of it, I don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river. We who live by writing and publishing want and should demand our fair share of the proceeds; but the name of our beautiful reward isn’t profit. Its name is freedom.

- Ursula K. Le Guin


Commodification is a symptom of the disease the world is suffering. Commodification is, at its root, Ego run amock, completely unmoored from the ground of the Unconscious, and the Self. This is why the spiritual is so denigrated in the world today. Or, what is considered “spiritual” is often just another attempt by Ego to “get it’s use” out of the world.

Ego is necessary. It is what allows us to survive in the world. It is also what allows us grow spiritually; without a solid ego, we wouldn’t have a boat large enough and strong enough to go out on the deep, turbulent waters of the unconscious and bring back the fish we caught. Ego is one leg, but we need both legs to walk.


Ursula K Le Guin's speech at National Book Awards: 'Books aren't just commodities' (The Guardian)

Achieving peace

Yoko Ono's action for peace, like all other such actions, is beautiful but ineffective. The call for peace is the agonizing beauty of a lovely dream hovering over ugly reality. The dream of peace is real, but it's a mirage. It's not the enemy but the pointer towards the path to reach the goal. Peace is not now, but it may exist in our future if we do what is necessary for it. Political revolution is necessary, yes, but equally so is individuation.

Individuation sounds so abstract, a purely intellectual construct with nothing in reality. But it's the world of star and stone; the eternal, in comparison to the transitory world. The more people get free from possession, the more ability they have to achieve things of worth and meaning. The thing of worth and meaning for you may be simply becoming a little bit more yourself... or it may be world shaking. We each have our own task to accomplish, the failure of which is our great tragedy, the success of which adds it's incremental weight to the side of peace.


Article:
Yoko Ono Calls for Peace on the Anniversary of John Lennon's Death (Time Magazine)

Article: What Would C.G. Jung Say about Donald Trump

I'm just gonna put this right here:

Deeply wanting to take advantage of my good fortune, I try to connect by asking him if he can believe the insanity that is happening in the United States today. As if he recognizes what is playing out, Jung says, with the utmost assurance, that what is taking place is “brought about by an upheaval of forces lying dormant in the unconscious.” It is as if darker subterranean powers that have been brewing in the cauldron of the collective unconscious for centuries have been unleashed into our world.

I remember that in Jung’s view what distinguishes our age from all others is that we are being forced to recognize and come to terms with the active world-shaping powers of the psyche. As if hearing my thoughts, Jung comments that the psyche is “the World Power that vastly exceeds all other powers on earth.” Jung adds, “We can no longer deny that the dark stirrings of the unconscious are active powers.” This immediately makes me think of Jung’s well-known insight that if we don’t bring consciousness to the shadow forces within the psyche, we will then most assuredly dream up our inner unconscious situation to play out – destructively – on the world stage as our fate.
-------------------------------

Jung continues, “If ever there was a time when self-reflection was the absolutely necessary and only right thing, it is now, in our present catastrophic epoch.” Self-reflection, a privilege born of and intrinsic to human freedom, is a genuinely spiritual act – essentially the act of becoming conscious. He continues, “The true leaders of mankind are always those who are capable of self-reflection.” In self-reflection we recognize ourselves in the mirror of the world. As if amplifying my thoughts, Jung exclaims, “Yet, whoever reflects upon himself is bound to strike upon the frontiers of the unconscious, which contains what above all else he needs to know.” I love Jung’s idea that the unconscious, instead of simply being a repository of what we repress, contains what we need to know. My unconscious apparently contains the living figure of Jung.

As if reflecting upon my own self-reflection, Jung says, “Individual self-reflection, return of the individual to the ground of human nature, to his own deepest being with its individual and social destiny – here is the beginning of a cure for that blindness which reigns at the present hour.” Connecting with the innermost foundations of our being is like finding a safe refuge during these crazy times we are living through. “If things go wrong in the world,” Jung says, and then waits to make sure I am listening, “I shall put myself right first.” I certainly can’t argue with that.

- Paul Levy, "What Would C.G. Jung Say about Donald Trump" (Reality Sandwich)

The perversion of love

This is kind of off topic but unfortunately very much on topic in light of current events. Trump's (still) in the White House and Republicans are doing their damndest to pass a health care bill that will basically lead to the deaths of many poorer people in this country, a kind of social Darwinism not seen since the era of the robber barons... Or maybe it does have something to do with the topic of the four functions. Why don't you decide?



White people (or men, or people of any other dominant group) simply don't get group dynamics unless it's brought up by a person of a dominated group.  It may be perfectly clear to everyone else, including people who don't belong to either group. When you're in a dominating group there's some sort defense mechanism that tries to prevent you from seeing reality. The same doesn't happen to a dominated group; they have no reason to distort reality, they haven't done anything wrong, i.e. anything in violation of the laws of basic human dignity. So, members of the dominating group refuse to even see it... unless it's an attempt to balance the inequities that inevitably result from such relations. In that case, they take the “best defense is an offense” tactic and try to use sleight of hand to turn the accusation on their victims. This is because people's identity is actually very deeply tied with their group identity (this is the similarity between American and Japanese cultures that leads both to attack the loners).

There is a difference between white and black peoples because in this culture white people are on top... and they want to stay there. The masculine way is to look at the law itself, completely without any reference to the relationship. The reality is that to truly understand the situation, we must admit to the truth of the unequal relationship which is baked into the system, upon which the system is dependent to maintain itself. This is because the true motivator is the drive for power; because love is not there, because there is no consciousness in the feeling side, it comes up in its unconscious form, the desire for power.

The desire for power is love perverted. It's an attempt to get the good feelings of love without sacrificing anything of yourself. We want love but the only way to get it is to allow a part of yourself to die. This is why I've had to live a life of failure. Any part of life can be can be a time we got it right, but especially when your Self is pushing you away from the things of this world. This is why spiritual people down the ages have spoken about giving up this world in order to gain the other one, the eternal one, the real one. But the truth is, both worlds are real; the real is something beyond them, that unites them but also transcends them. Each must be accorded its respect and treated with all the dignity due them. Only then does one achieve the goal.


- "Object Anyway?", More Perfect

Listen to this podcast; it's awesome. Actually, you should listen to the entire series. It was created by the gifted and passionate folks over at RadioLab (and if you haven't listened to them, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR????)

Article: "A Psychic Profile on President Donald J. Trump"

Just posting something that got my attention - I've been thinking a lot about the concentrated need for bringing balance to our culture. We've gone so far to the extreme of practicality, so far from our spiritual roots. The need is urgent for all of us to, as much as possible, get our spiritual act together.

We are in a quickened ascension process right now, which, in plain terms means we’re having to deal with a whole bunch of garbage at once, emotionally, sociologically, spiritually, and psychologically. Standard western society has taught us to compartmentalize every aspect of ourselves and our lives. Yet we are now face-to-face with the reality that mind, body, and spirit are indivisible.

Why must this lesson be driven so intensely? Because nature wastes nothing and prepares for everything, and the climate will be experiencing further changes coming up quickly where everyone’s" participation is mandatory for survival.
It is in our best interest as a species to give away the idea of one ideology, one savior, one President, fixing everything. Together we are the body of positive change, the collective mind of evolution. There is no us-vs-them.
We ARE them.

View the larger whole of President Trump for who and what he is. And view yourself for who and what you are. We are all part of the solution to avarice and world destruction.

Thanks to lessons President Trump is bringing us, publicly submitting himself for perhaps the greatest example of spiritual, emotional and social disconnection we’ve seen in decades — we grow faster, in observance. There is great gratitude to be had for his service in this regard.

Be okay to learn, and don’t always take the lessons personally that are intended for the world. That gets rough. Invoke the Law of Love — lead your own life with grace, respect, and of course, love, the greatest element on the spiritual periodic table.

All of that, met with a little good ol’ fashioned elbow grease, integrity, humility and hard work —

— and the rest falls into place, healing the world.

Because nothing is wasted.

- Danielle Egnew, "Insider Look: A Psychic Profile on President Donald J. Trump"

The Dog

As usual, whenever I'm working on an issue I end up synchronistically running across a bunch of related topics at around the same time. Since working on the The Cat series I found some interesting dog quotes. I will also be posting a meditation I had a while back about "cats" and "dogs." This is all particularly applicable to what we've been going through recently here in the U.S., I think.

Also, a random observation: I think it's really interesting how people who like dogs tend to very dog-like, i.e. more conservative, fall more in line with the old Emperor; while "cat people" seem to generally be more progressive, feminist, and to value independent thinking more. Symbolism in action!

The dog has lost his independence and become dependent on human beings. Both Saint Barnard and Saint Dominic were also servants of a master: Christ. This is the motif of the katoche. They are the prisoners of a special fate; every impulse to live their own life is controlled; they are really the dogs of Christ, serving him in this world and as dogs leading to hope of the other world. They are also responsible for keeping the flock together, since heretics are the wolves or "the little foxes, that spoil the vines."

These particular "dogs," however, have a negative aspect as well, for they served only one point of view; they did not deal with the problem of their time. Bernard was incapable of engaging in discussion with Abelard, he only "barked" at him! And Dominic "barked" at the Albigenses. We must not overlook the fact that this was the beginning of the Inquisition, which attempted to eliminate, through sheer power, every heretical movement. As a result, however, the religious confrontation became increasingly fanatic. Such a solution of the conflict is no solution; but at that time man was not yet capable of dealing with the problem in an individual, human manner.

- Marie Louise von Franz, Dreams, p. 101

"We are all deplorables"

Walking to work, and thinking about all the people who voted for Trump but claim not to be racist... who believe his promises to bring back coal jobs (he can't) and build a wall to keep the immigrants out (he won't) and Make America Great Again (too late.) These are the same people who say that they're angry at liberals because they look down on them and think that they're stupid and uneducated... but I'm thinking that I'm not wrong in thinking that they are, in fact, so ignorant and so lacking in the ability to think critically. So what's missing??? I know it has to do with my inferior feeling function, so what is it??

Then later that day I read this article, and I felt it:

My relatives in Maine are deplorables. I cannot write on their behalf. I can write in their defense. They live in towns and villages that have been ravaged by deindustrialization. The bank in Mechanic Falls, where my grandparents lived, is boarded up, along with nearly every downtown store. The paper mill closed decades ago. There is a strip club in the center of the town. The jobs, at least the good ones, are gone. Many of my relatives and their neighbors work up to 70 hours a week at three minimum-wage jobs, without benefits, to make perhaps $35,000 a year. Or they have no jobs. They cannot afford adequate health coverage under the scam of Obamacare. Alcoholism is rampant in the region. Heroin addiction is an epidemic. Labs producing the street drug methamphetamine make up a cottage industry. Suicide is common. Domestic abuse and sexual assault destroy families. Despair and rage among the population have fueled an inchoate racism, homophobia and Islamophobia and feed the latent and ever present poison of white supremacy...

Those cast aside by the neoliberal order have an economic identity that both the liberal class and the right wing are unwilling to acknowledge. This economic identity is one the white underclass shares with other discarded people, including the undocumented workers and the people of color demonized by the carnival barkers on cable news shows. This is an economic reality the power elites invest great energy in masking.

Martin Luther King Jr. understood the downward spiral of hating those who hate you. “In a real sense all life is inter-related,” he wrote in “Letter From a Birmingham Jail.” “All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. …”

It's empathy... but it goes beyond empathy; it's a "feeling with" that accepts weakness and reality, but opens the picture, away from cold, simple facts to a fuller world and relationship. It's sympathy but goes beyond sympathy; it's not mere compassion or pity, not a looking down upon, but a taking in of another's experience, a removal of the glass that's between us to allow us to connect, as one warm human animal to another.

Link:
We Are All Deplorables, by Chris Hedges (Truthdig)

The thin thread

As I was watching a video about Jung this particular section hit me hard. Trump is America's screaming Id in human form. Now more than ever we need to do everything in our power to prevent catastrophe in our own time.

When you observe the world you see people, you see houses, you see the sky, you see tangible objects. But when you observe yourself within you see moving images, a world of images, generally known as fantasies. Yet these fantasies are fact. It is a fact that a man has such and such fantasy, and it is such a tangible fact that when a man has a certain fantasy another man may lose his life. Or a bridge is built. These houses were all fantasies. Everything you do here, all of it was fantasy to begin with, and fantasy has a proper reality that is not to be forgotten. Fantasy is not nothing! It is of course not a tangible object but it is a fact nevertheless. It is, say, a form of energy, despite the fact we can’t measure it. It is a manifestation of something. And that is a reality that is just a reality as, for instance, the peace treaty of Versailles or something like that. It is no more… you can’t show it, but it has been a fact! And so psychical events are facts, are realities, and when you observe the stream of images within you observe an aspect of the world, the world within.

… The man who is going by the external world, by the influences of the external world - say, society or sense perceptions - thinks that he is more valid because this is valid, this is real, and the man who goes by the subjective factor is is not valid because the subjective factor is “nothing.” No, that man is just as well based because he bases himself upon the world from within, and so he is quite right even if he says “Oh, it’s nothing but my fantasy.” Of course that is the introvert, the introvert is always afraid of the external world. He will tell you when you ask him… he will be apologetic about it. “Of course, yes I know, it’s only my fantasy.” And he has always a resentment, against the world in general. Particularly America is extroverted like hell. The introvert has no place. Because he doesn’t know that he beholds the world from within. And that gives him dignity, and that gives him certainty because (nowadays particularly) the world hangs on a thin thread, and that is the psyche of man. Assume that certain fellows in Moscow lose their nerve, or their common sense, and the whole world is in fire and flames!

Nowadays we are not threatened by elemental catastrophes. There’s no such thing as an H-bomb [in nature]. That is all man’s doing. We are the great danger, psyche is the great danger. What if something goes wrong with the psyche? So you see it is demonstrated to us in our days, what power the psyche is, how important it is to know something about it, but we know nothing about it.

From: "The World Within: C.G. Jung In His Own Words" (go to 10:00)

The piggish, Trumpian animus

Overeating, bulimia, and other eating disorders are the woman's reaction to the internalized bad father. She wants to nourish herself, feed herself. To give life and love to herself (that's what the kitchen is in the unconscious; the place where nourishment is made by someone's hands, with their love).

This is why so many women have emotional and digestive disorders. The only way for the feminine to fight this aspect of the masculine is to pull away from it, to abandon him, to deprive him of any sustenance. It's why he's so ravenous, so rape-full of everything he desires, like a piggishly greedy spoiled little boy. This is why such men are insatiable in their childish neediness; they get no real nourishment. Like irate babies they fling their food on the floor and scream and throw temper tantrums. What need did they never get fulfilled, that they scour the earth hungrily for anything to stem the tide of hunger that gnaws at their ribs, any sort of satisfaction, even if it’s only temporary (satisfaction that he, of course, denies her.) Not that he consciously denies her (although sometimes he does), it’s more that he neither knows nor cares what she thinks, because he neither knows nor cares what anyone thinks about him. He is one of those ones who deep inside is a retarded, shit covered little child, alone in the center of a vast, empty nothingness. This is why they do what they do. The only possible solution is to create a world in which they never have the ability to hurt others or to cause them any suffering. Maybe they can be reached, maybe they can't. But they should never be free to hurt others with impunity.

It's also why we women tend to love cats and their feminine nature. A cat just wants pleasure, and maybe some affection (ok, lots of affection). To care for a cat, whether in a dream or in your life, is to care for your sensual, affectionate, pleasure-loving femininity. It’s very healing, especially when dealing with the brutal Animus.

Possession in politics

There were bomb explosions in New Jersey and Chelsea over the weekend but they caught the bomber (or so they're saying). Besides the fact that this whole situation is suspiciously convenient for the republicans, my mind immediately went to the increase in hate crimes against Muslims that will probably result from this. Putting aside all the political issues there's a very real danger of possession, and a very contagious one at that.

The same demon that possesses a terrorist - whips up his rage and in his mind robs his targets of humanity - this same demon also infects Americans who are open to such possession. It robs them in turn of their humanity. It steals their ability to think clearly and rationally but, more importantly, it destroys one's ability to connect; to empathize, to feel with, to understand another being with the heart.

The main broken latch that lets the demon in so he can create havoc is having an unconscious shadow. Marie Louise von Franz spoke to this vulnerability in an interview:

In practical life the personal and the collective shadows merge but the personal shadow is the personal shortcomings of things which every human being could be conscious of, which is not archetypal, and therefore not a mystery. For instance such things as greed for money, or jealousy, jealousy is one of the aspects of the shadow, or laziness, sloppiness, unrelatedness, sentimentality, and whatnot. Inferiorities which everybody has but prefers not to know about. We generally strive through education and environment to be a bit better than we actually are, or we have our own ideals (“I oughten to be jealous” “I oughten to have a power complex”). The inferior shadow is not really bad, it’s just human all too human, and something one could know about. If one is jealous, or one is suddenly possessed by wanting money, one could know about it if one was honest with oneself.

The collective shadow has to do with the dark side of the archetype of the Self. That means it’s the shadow of the God image. In the Christian tradition it would be the devil, and that has always been personified and felt as something which has not to do directly with the human being. If somebody is possessed by the devil he’s much worse than just… He’s not human. It’s demonic. On the other hand, generally that merges; first you have this area, a dim, dark side, and behind it lurks the other.

I’ve seen that when Germany went to the devil in Nazism, people fell into it through their personal shadow. For instance, they didn’t want to lose their job because they were clinging to money. That was a personal shadow. Then they joined in with the Nazi movement for that reason, and did much worse things than they would have done normally, under normal social conditions. So you can say the personal shadow is the bridge to the collective shadow, or the open door to the collective shadow.

The collective shadow comes up in those terrible mass psychoses. That’s why it’s so amazingly important, because then you don’t fall into the collective shadow. There’s not that open door. It’s like you have a room and there’s one door in it that the devil can come in. If you know your personal shadow you can shut all the doors. Then you don’t join into massacres and holocausts and such. You catch yourself and you realize… and you can keep out of it and keep reasonable, keep your head. While the average person who doesn’t know about her personal shadow will get swept away by the collective in you.

- “Remembering Jung series talk with Marie-Louise von Franz” (29:40)

The person whose shadow is a Dorian Grey-like horror is a person who has no knowledge of their shadow let alone a relationship with it. This creates a wide open back door into the personality; unconscious shadow contents are reflexively projected onto a convenient target and all the hate, rage, and disgust they feel at their own orphan parts is conveniently given over to a scapegoat to carry. Instead of doing the hard work of reclaiming your own lost parts you try to cheat, you lie to yourself and pretend like you're clean when you're really not.

The sewer runs in all of us. The question is; what do you do about it? Do you protect your ego at the expense of everything else, sacrifice every other part of yourself and even others to keep your narcissism intact and unwounded? Or do you face your own ugliness, stew in your own juices, and undergo the painful and humiliating process of transforming your own personal lead into gold.