International Journal of Jungian Studies (original) (raw)
Related papers
Propaedeutic Interpretation of The Red Book by C G Jung
Postmodern Openings, 2017
The interpretative approach made over one of the most imposing and controversial works of psychological literature, Carl Gustav Jung's Red Book, does not pretend to essentially define or clarify certain concepts. This is due to the fact that the author respects Jung's opinions, according to which the interpretation of the dynamics of the unconscious has to be open and mobile like the productions and manifestations of this latter. We are, therefore, in the parameters of a special kind of logic, similar to the poetic inspiration or to the theological revelation. Even more, as Jung warned, throughout this extremely complex work, such a field of the human mind must be explored and appreciated at its right value. Starting from this challenge, the interpreter can propose an itinerary going through the dimension of visionary confession and relating opened by Jung's famous work. The present article attempts to highlight a series of general conceptual parameters and a number of k...
“Literary Jung: Mythos, Individuation, and Poetics”
Interdisciplinary Discourses, Education and Analysis (IDEA) Journal Issue 1 - Myth: Intersections and Interdisciplinary Perspectives, 2021
My paper shall discuss Jung’s stance on literature, with the definitive point made that Jung’s approach to literature may be viewed as valid insofar as for him, literature and artistic creativity more generally are not reducible to analytical psychology but are in their totality analogous repositories of the same. The psychological aspect that I explore in Jungian poetics is the formation of such art in the creative self, in what is to Jung a transformative ‘psyche’, for which mythological and alchemical symbols contribute to expressions of the individuation process. Although Jung called for logos in his theories, he stressed the importance of mythos. Logos alone was not enough for understanding the psyche, and in turn, humanity; however, mythos, which can manifest as narrative or poetry with its language of symbolism and imagery, is necessary to reveal the hidden aspects of the collective unconscious in the work of individuals. I shall discuss how, for Jung, myths were narratives that both expressed and shaped the psyche, which is where poetry and psychology meet. Archetypes are not wholly discrete essences separate from empirical experience. Rather, they exist in the empirical world like transcendental truths as the constructors of individual experience.
2021
W e do not yet have a history of the imagination in psychotherapy in the twentieth century, nor even a history of the ways in which the imagination was used by Jungians, let alone by other kinds of therapists. So for that reason alone, this book is a welcome addition to the literature, and will certainly be useful reading for anyone who attempts such a history in the future. Couple with that the fact that this is (to my knowledge at least) the first account of Robert Desoille's waking dream therapy (rêve éveillé dirigé, henceforth RED) in English and you certainly have a pretty interesting start. Cassar divides his work into three parts, themselves divided into several chapters. Part 1 looks at Jung's understanding of active imagination, Desoille's RED and at the subsequent theoretical & practical developments of these two techniques in Jungian and Desoillian (or post-Desoillian) traditions. The second part (called 'Jung and Desoille-A Historical Investigation') looks, rather briefly, at some of Jung and Desoille's shared intellectual context (e.g. Pierre Janet, psychical research) and also outlines the work of some figures that both Jung and Desoille encountered at some point in their lives, some of them psychotherapists, but not all, such as Charles Baudouin, Roberto Assagioli and Mircea Eliade. Part 3 is concerned with more closely comparing the two techniques of RED and active imagination, examining topics such as the body, the use of verbal stimuli in RED vs. the non-directiveness of Jungian active imagination, transference and counter-transference, or interpretation. Many things could be said about this rich account. On the positive side, it is clear that Laner Cassar is intimately familiar with Desoille's work and with all the developments that have happened among his (primarily French) disciples since his death in 1966. His chart of the development of post-Desoillian groups is an excellent tool for anyone trying to make sense of the history of these little groups,
Jungian Psychology, Active Imagination, and Western Philosophy: Volume 2, C.G. Jung and the Philosophical Imagination, 2020
Countervailing the Industrial Revolution’s spiritual alienation and loss of symbolic perspective, a romantic current arose in German Idealism that elevated human imagination to a superordinate, world-making power. In this context, Jung’s analytical psychology and his method of active imagination compensated the prevailing scientific rationalism of the day and legitimized that imagery, images, and imagination can produce knowledge. This volume situates Jungian and archetypal psychological views of images and imagination in the context of Western philosophy, and it traces the various ways imagination has been imagined through its polysemous evolution in Western thought.
Forging New Roads of Creative Psychology: A Glimpse Into the Ideas of Jung, Hillman & Grof
In the late nineteenth century, Carl Jung began his career in psychiatry, opening new doors to a psychology of the unconscious. Through his studies with mental illness at Burgholzi, a psychiatric hospital in Switzerland, he began to creatively see through reductionistic and materialistic psychological techniques towards a more holistic view of human nature, encompassing elements such as archetypes, the collective unconscious, and the process of individuation. By acknowledging unconscious components of his own mind, Jung succeeded in finding wellsprings of creativity within what at first might have seemed like madness.
The snake in the mandala: dialogical aspects of Jung’s ‘A study in the process of individuation’
Journal of Analytical Psychology
Jung's study centres on the amplification of pictures painted by a woman patient and posits their sequence as evincing the initial stages of the individuation process. His text performs a dialogue with its audience whereby Jung persuades us of this truth, and also reveals Jung's dialogue with his patient and with his own ideas. The present paper revisits the clinical material first with a focus on the interaction between Jung and his patient. The second part compares the 1940 and 1950 versions of Jung's study with attention to tensions that traverse them, such as Jung's attitude to the animus and his two voices as a practitioner and a theorist.