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)

Dealing with the negative animus

When the contrasexual inner figure in a woman is negative, like this rifleman, it personifies very sharp negative judgments about herself: “You are a nobody. You will never make it. Men don’t like you. They only want to have sex with you. Nobody loves you. You’ll never find a husband. You are not really a good woman. Your life will always go on as meaninglessly as it is now.” These self-destructive thoughts cut her off from her femininity and block her possibility of relating to an outer man in a positive way. It is, therefore, great progress in the dream that she suddenly stops running away by hiding in her gray mist and thinks, “It’s not me; it’s that man who is responsible for my fearful situation.” It’s as if at that moment she disentangles herself and realizes that those negative thoughts are something outside of her. They are not her thoughts. It’s as if she said, “It’s not me thinking that; it’s only something in me thinking those thoughts, and I don’t need to believe them.”

… And so with this air stewardess’s dream, she must realize that the negative man in her that always says “You are nobody. You’ll never relate properly to a man, blah, blah, blah,” is not her. Then the miracle happens! At that moment that rifleman gets up and walks away.

- Marie Louise von Franz (from Fraser Boa’s The Way of the Dream, p. 174)

The cruel, jealous lover

The negative animus behaves here like a jealous lover. He wants to keep the woman for himself by cutting her off from all men. When she has some loving feelings toward any man, then up comes this “You should not do that” animus. Or it’s projected.

I know a classic case of a woman who once attacked Jung violently with the animus during the analytical hour. They later went into what happened, and Jung told her, “Whenever you have a feeling, that’s when you attack.” What happened was that on the way to meet with Jung, she had seen some beautiful strawberries. Her first impulse was, “Let’s buy them and bring them to him.” And then the animus said, “Oh, Jung will say that strawberries have an erotic meaning and he’ll mock you.” So she didn’t buy the strawberries and arrived in a fierce mood and attacked Jung the entire hour. All because she had suppressed the strawberries. If she had bought the strawberries everything would have gone well, but she had repressed her own feelings.

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[T]he worst thing is that she experiences it as if she thinks it herself. You see, the animus thinks in her “Jung is going to laugh at the strawberries,” and then she believes that she thinks that. That is one of the great difficulties in analytical work: to make women distinguish between what they really think themselves and what it thinks in them.

The problems is that they think animus thoughts are their own. Even after working for years on that, I sometimes still have negative thoughts against myself, and if you asked me at that moment, I would say, “Yes, that’s what I think about myself.” Later, I would have a dream of a man raping me, and realize, “No, that was an evil animus in me who thought that.” And then I could disidentify and wonder, “Why on earth did I ever think that about myself? Naturally, I don’t think that.” But, you see, that is the essence of what one calls possession. When a woman is possessed by the animus, she thinks that he animus is herself. Only when, or if, she wakes up does she comes to realize, “No, that’s not me.”

- Marie Louise von Franz, from Fraser Boa’s The Way of the Dream, p. 158

Glossary: Chthonic

Pertaining to the underworld, i.e. the unconscious. Persephone and Hades are considered chthonic gods. The opposite of chthonic is olympian (e.g., the gods of consciousness; the gods who live on Mount Olympus; Zeus, Hera, Apollo, Athena, etc.)

Glossary: Auxiliary function

The second strongest and most developed of the four psychological functions. One function will always be the strongest; this is called the "primary function." In addition, there's a second function that will also generally be under the conscious control of the ego. This second function is never the opposite of the primary function; e.g. those whose feeling function is superior can have either intuition or sensation as their auxiliary function, but never the thinking function.(1)

While this second function is never quite as firmly under our control as our dominant function, it is still fairly well adapted to the external world. In an extrovert this secondary function supports the primary function, assisting it as the ego strives to prosper in the world. If the primary function is "rational" (thinking or feeling), the ego uses the auxiliary function to get information that the primary function then judges. If the primary function is "irrational" (intuition or sensation), then the auxiliary function gives the ego a way to judge the information that it takes in.

In introverts, however, the auxiliary function works differently. Extroverts turn their primary function towards the external world; when you meet an extrovert you can quickly make out their primary function because that is the one with which they will greet you. Introverts turn their primary function inwards; the function they turn to the world is actually their auxiliary function. For example, if you meet an extroverted feeling type who secondarily relies on their sensation, you will see a feeling type. But if you meet an introverted feeling/sensation type, you will initially perceive their auxiliary function, sensation. This is because introverts rely on their auxiliary function to get through life. Introverts hide their primary function (in this case, feeling), unless they get to know you well. This makes introverts seem a bit awkward because they're generally using their second best function when dealing with the world.(2)


The auxiliary function as the "growth state"(2)

A useful way of thinking about the various functions is to imagine the four functions as passengers in a car. The first function would be the Driver; the second, in the seat next to the driver, is the Co-Pilot (or the auxiliary function). The two other functions are the two kids in the back seats, the tertiary or "10 Year Old" function and the inferior or "3 Year Old" function. The car looks something like this:

(from Personality Hacker)

The auxiliary function, or the Co-Pilot in the Car Model, is of huge importance; it's what Personality Hacker calls our "growth state." Time and effort spent developing this particular function takes us to a whole new level. This is because it makes up for the weaknesses of our Driver function; it allows us to introvert if our Driver is extroverted (and vice versa), and to make decisions if our Driver is a perceiving function (and vice versa). It also stops us from running to our 10 Year Old process and act out the worst aspects of that function in an effort to defend ourselves, which we often do precisely because we don't want to do the difficult task of living in our Co-Pilot.

The Co-Pilot is always hard. We're not used to living in that world (introverted or extroverted). It's scary and intimidating, and difficult... but it's the exact thing we need to do if we want to accomplish great things. As an example, my Driver is introverted thinking. It's very easy for me to run to my 10 Year Old function of introverted sensation when the going gets tough; when I'm hurt, or especially when I'm scared to go into the outside world. What this looks like is staying at home, where I feel safe and comfortable. If someone of my type (INTP) does this too much, their world becomes very small. They may even become shut-ins, unable to bring themselves to leave the safety of their homes. Even worse, if I do this too much then it will begin warping even my primary function; I will no longer be able to think clearly, my ideas about things will probably be wrong.

The antidote to this is my Co-Pilot, extroverted intuition (or Exploration). It's tends to be scary and difficult for me to do but it's precisely what INTPs need. Going to my Exploration function gets me out of the house. It allows me to test my theories, to put them into practice in the real world. If I keep all the cool ideas to myself, what good are they? Going to my Co-Pilot lets me actually make a difference in the world.

Every type does something similar when they hide in their 10 Year Old function. Every type will be well served by working on their Co-Pilot. The good thing is that this second function is actually something that we can get quite good at; believe it or not, it's actually an area of natural talent. After spending some time developing our Co-Pilot, it becomes a part of our personality. It may always require a little more effort than our Driver; while the Driver is our area of unconscious competence, our Co-Pilot is our area of conscious competence. Energy spent here, though, is some of the highest leveraged work we can do. It pushes us to develop the weaker parts of ourselves. It makes us a more complete person.

For a more in-depth look at your type, and your Co-Pilot function, check out Personality Hacker.

Absolute sovereignty always belongs, empirically, to one function alone, and can belong only to one function, because the equally independent intervention of another function would necessarily produce a different orientation which, partially at least, would contradict the first. But since it is a vital condition for the conscious process of adaptation always to have clear and unambiguous aims, the presence of a second function of equal power is naturally ruled out. This other function, therefore, can have only a secondary importance… Its secondary importance is due to the fact that it is not, like the primary function… an absolutely reliable and decisive factor, but comes into play more as an auxiliary or complementary function.

- "General Description of the Types," CW 6, par. 667.

I have frequently observed how an analyst, confronted with a terrific thinking type, for instance, will do his utmost to develop the feeling function directly out of the unconscious. Such an attempt is foredoomed to failure, because it involves too great a violation of the conscious standpoint. Should the violation nevertheless be successful, a really compulsive dependence of the patient on the analyst ensues, a transference that can only be brutally terminated, because, having been left without a standpoint, the patient has made his standpoint the analyst… (Therefore) in order to cushion the impact of the unconscious, an irrational type needs a stronger development of the rational auxiliary function present in consciousness (and vice versa).

- “General Description of the Types,” CW 6, par. 670

The process of working through the auxiliary functions goes on somewhat as follows: Suppose you have sensation strongly developed but are not fanatical about it. Then you can admit about every situation a certain aura of possibilities; that is to say, you permit an intuitive element to come in. Sensation as an auxiliary function would allow intuition to exist. But inasmuch as sensation (in the example) is a partisan of the intellect, intuition sides with the feeling, here the inferior function. Therefore the intellect will not agree with intuition, in this case, and will vote for its exclusion. Intellect will not hold together sensation and intuition, rather it will separate them. Such a destructive attempt will be checked by feeling, which backs up intuition.

Looking at it the other way around, if you are an intuitive type, you can’t get to your sensations directly. They are full of monsters, and so you have to go by way of your intellect or feeling, whichever is the auxiliary in the conscious. It needs very cool reasoning for such a man to keep himself down to reality. To sum up then, the way is from the superior to the auxiliary, from the latter to the function opposite to the auxiliary. Usually this first conflict that is aroused between the auxiliary function in the conscious and its opposite function in the unconscious is the fight that takes place in analysis. This may be called the preliminary conflict. The knock-down battle between the superior and inferior functions only takes place in life.

- Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar


(1) Inferior function
(2) John Betts, Jungian's Podcast, Episode 13
(3) Antonia Dodge, "The Car Model" (Personality Hacker)


Link:
"Why is the Co-Pilot Process Vital for Growth?" (Personality Hacker)
"Personality Development Tools: The Car Model" (Personality Hacker)
"When You ALMOST Know Your Personality Type" (Personality Hacker)


See also:
Primary function
Tertiary function
Inferior function
Rational function
Irrational function
Psychological functions
Integrating the functions

Response: Can women have an anima?

[The original article by Karen Hodges, “Reflections on Women, Depression, and Soul-image,” is available on the internet as a download (I can't get a link to include in this post - you're going to have to search Google for it. And you should, it's a great essay.)]


I don't know what this woman experienced, whether she does in fact have an anima or she's mistaken. Maybe what she's experiencing is actually the anima. Or maybe it's the Self/the Wise Woman. The powerful, Goddess-like woman with a scythe is the Goddess of Death, the most mysterious part of our lives (along with rebirth - we come from Mystery and return to Mystery, this Goddess is both the usherer of the mystery as well as the Mystery itself.)

The more I think about it, the more her description of her experience feels like she encountered the Wise Woman, or possibly an inner Goddess figure (i.e. the Self). We women need contact with the deep, powerful, numinous feminine in our lives; it's such a desert out there. This may be why so many feminists dislike the Jungian concept of the animus and anima. The most obvious reason is because they (and others - I've actually found men's rights activist Jungians!!!) confuse archetypal attributes with blanket statements about all members of a specific gender ("Jung says the anima is nurturing, and the animus is good at thinking! That means he thinks women can't think!!!") Clearly, I don't think this is what he was saying but I'll save that for another post.

The truth is, there's not enough of the feminine out there, whether it's the nurturing side, or the Goddess as the devourer. The nurturing Great Mother and the sexy Aphrodite Goddess of attraction may be more sought after, but even they're not really given respect. The Great Mother is demeaned as "merely" a stay-at-home-mom, while Aphrodite is called a slut and a whore. The only Goddess who gets any respect is the meek, inoffensive Maiden. But even the Great Mother and Aphrodite are treated better in this society than the Reaper Goddess; a woman may be denigrated for being a mother or a sexual being but society will try to obliterate her if she manifests Kali. I believe that what offends the author, and other women, is the lack of space for, and respect for, all the different parts of us; the ugly, the terrible, the horrifying, as well as the pretty and nice parts.

Then again, the point isn't to prove what's "right" and tell people what they "should" believe. It's not a goddam religion. From my perspective it looks like this and not that. That's what's important; if anyone else gets a little shock of recognition that shocks them into understanding their truth, then that's great. But the important thing is for us to discover our own truth, as much as possible. Then we can see if maybe it has value for others.

Vacation!

I'm taking a short break - I'm on vacation starting today (woop!) I'll be back in two weeks, though. Have a great two weeks my friends! I'll see you on the other side.  :)

Glossary: Archetypes

[The archetype is] a dynamism which makes itself felt in the numinosity and fascinating power of the archetypal image.

Psychologically… the archetype as an image of instinct is a spiritual goal toward which the whole nature of man strives; it is the sea to which all rivers wend their way, the prize which the hero wrests from the fight with the dragon.

- "On the Nature of the Psyche," CW 8, par. 414 & 415


The archetype is the spiritual/mental aspect of a universal symbol; it is the “primary structural element” of the human psyche. Primordial images. Archetypes live in the collective unconscious and are passed down the generations along with the physical body and it's instincts. They’re deep, invisible, universal psychic structures made up of image and emotion and they're the roots of religion and myth. Archetypes live in the unconscious, but their existence and effect can be deduced from dreams, religion, and personal experience. When an archetype has become activated in this way we say it has “constellated,” and the specific image of the archetype is called an “archetypal image.”

Jung believed that archetypes are the “spiritual” end of the instinct, that they’re the psychic equivalent of instincts (e.g. a woman may experience the mother archetype either as a bodily instinct of nurturing and protection, or as a dream or vision of The Great Mother.) Other examples of archetypes are the classic Jungian archetypes (shadow, anima/us, Wise Old Woman/Man, etc.); universal archetypes that appear across cultures (the maiden, the hero, the child, the trickster); and animal and other non-personal archetypes (birds, wind, flood, death, rebirth). As archetypes and instincts are two ends of the same phenomena, they are deeply connected; anything done to one side affects the other as well. Suppress an archetype and it will make an appearance in the instinctive end, and vice versa.

Archetypes also often make their presence known by sneaking up on us and taking over the ego during possession; this happens automatically and unconsciously, without us even being aware of it. Neuroses are often caused by refusing to confront an archetype which is trying to make it's way into consciousness; this often manifests in the instinctive realm. Although archetypes can cause great problems for individuals, they are, at the same time, the means through which we achieve individuation, as well as being the bridge to the Unus Mundus.

Archetypes are systems of readiness for action, and at the same time images and emotions. They are inherited with the brain structure - indeed they are its psychic aspect. They represent, on the one hand, a very strong instinctive conservatism, while on the other hand they are the most effective means conceivable of instinctive adaptation. They are thus, essentially, the chthonic portion of the psyche… that portion through which the psyche is attached to nature.

- "Mind and Earth," CW 10, par. 53.

The dynamism of instinct is lodged as it were in the infra-red part of the spectrum, whereas the instinctual image lies in the ultra-violet part... The realization and assimilation of instinct never take place at the red end, i.e., by absorption into the instinctual sphere, but only through integration of the image which signifies and at the same time evokes the instinct, although in a form quite different from the one we meet on the biological level.

- "On the Nature of the Psyche," CW 8, par. 414.

We can never legitimately cut loose from our archetypal foundations unless we are prepared to pay the price of a neurosis, any more than we can rid ourselves of our body and its organs without committing suicide. If we cannot deny the archetypes or otherwise neutralize them, we are confronted, at every new stage in the differentiation of consciousness to which civilization attains, with the task of finding a new interpretation appropriate to this stage, in order to connect the life of the past that still exists

- "The Psychology of the Child Archetype," CW 9i, par. 267.


Link:
Jungian archetypes

Glosary: Participation mystique

A term used by anthropologists when talking about primitive, or archaic, psychology; a form of consciousness in which the subjective and objective are unconsciously united. Jung specifically used it to refer to the tendency to project personal contents of one’s unconscious out into the world (e.g. a tree that talks). An inability to separate oneself and other people or outer objects. Associated with concretistic thinking, compulsiveness, and the fusion of psychological functions (thinking with feeling, feeling with sensation). Everyone, even a person with the most differentiated thinking is, at their base, archaic. See also projection.

Glossary: Anthropos

"The Vitruvian Man" by Leonardo da Vinci

Image from World Mysteries


The original, whole human; the symbol of archaic unity and completeness. From Gnosticticism. See also Self.

There is in the unconscious an already existing wholeness, the "homo totus" of the Western and the Chên-yên (true man) of Chinese alchemy, the round primordial being who represents the greater man within, the Anthropos, who is akin to God.

- "The Personification of the Opposites," CW 14, par. 152