Carl Gustav Jung is the founder of analytical psychology. It is interesting that while developing his theories and ideas, he often turned to world religions, occultism, Holy Scripture, and visited “places of power.” It was Carl Jung who introduced such concepts as the “collective unconscious,” “animus/anima,” and “shadow” into modern psychology.
Many argue that analytical psychology has revealed to the general masses the underworld of the human soul. Sigmund Freud first described the unconscious, which is home to complexes, fears, secret desires and sexual pathologies. And Jung spoke about the “shadow” - the stronghold of a person’s demonic energy.
First of all, Jung noted that the individual’s psyche consists of several parts. Its center is consciousness. One can imagine that this is a whole galaxy with “planets” - archetypes and the “sun” - consciousness at the center.
When we talk about a person, we mean a holistic personality, but in reality we are dealing with several subpersonalities.
In his studies, Carl Jung described these parts of the human “I” in detail. First of all, this is the Ego complex . Among the less significant ones, one can observe a father or mother complex, many constellations and archetypal images. If we take a closer look at a person, he consists of multidirectional attitudes that conflict with each other and create the basis for internal conflict. The most significant subpersonalities are Persona and Shadow .
Archetypes according to Jung
Archetypes, according to the works of Carl Gustav Jung, are a kind of library of images that is located in the sphere of the collective unconscious. Its contents are passed down from generation to generation. These images give rise to stereotyped reactions to standard situations.
All archetypes come from instincts. Therefore, their main task is survival. For example, the “enemy” archetype helps a child in the wild to recognize a predator and take the right actions - hide, hide, run away, etc.
It happens that we meet people who are unpleasant to us without good reason. We feel uncomfortable around them and want to run away. Perhaps this person fits our “enemy” archetype, and this is the reason for the reaction.
Jung identified three areas in the personality structure:
- personal unconscious;
- collective unconscious;
- consciousness.
The personal unconscious is everything that was previously conscious, but has moved to the level of the unconscious. The collective unconscious is inherited, like a package of documents with ready-made images and examples of reactions.
Personality development is based on the interaction between five main archetypal figures: self, persona, shadow, animus and anima, ego.
- The Self is the unification of consciousness and the unconscious in a person. The self is formed through the process of individuation, when certain aspects of the personality must be integrated. Jung often depicted the self as a mandala, circle, or square.
- The shadow relies on the instinct of reproduction and the thirst for life and freedom. There is a shadow as an invisible part of the unconscious, consisting of suppressed ideas, desires, actions, shortcomings and instincts of a person.
Jung wrote that the shadow can come into dreams and take on a wide variety of forms - in the form of a monster, a snake, a monster, Baba Yaga, a dragon, etc.
- Anima is the unconscious feminine side of the personality, and animus is the masculine side. This true “I” serves as the main source of connection with the collective unconscious. The combination of these archetypes is called the “divine couple” or syzygy. These images embody integrity, harmony and perfection.
- Persona is our ideal image of ourselves and appearance before the world. In Latin, the word persona means “mask.” The Persona archetype is a set of social masks that we use in different everyday situations.
The Persona's task is to protect the Ego from showing its negative side. Jung believed that a person can also manifest himself in dreams, incarnating himself in positive images.
Carl Jung argued that in reality there are more than five main archetypes. Some of them can overlap or combine with each other. Additionally, Jung described the following archetypes:
- Mother - consolation, calmness;
- Father - power, strength, authority, power;
- Child - innocence, longing for childhood and carefreeness, salvation, rebirth;
- Sage – knowledge, wisdom, experience;
- Hero – rescuer, protector, support;
- The enemy is danger, anxiety.
What is Shadow?
Jung considered the shadow to be an archetype that was passed down to man from the animal world. This is a collection of passionate desires and actions, immoral and violent instincts that are condemned by society and often do not correspond to the ideals of the person himself.
During the period of personality formation, the child learns to understand what “good” and “bad” are. Over time, we create a certain ideal image, according to Jung - it is called Persona. This “ideal person” fits well into the norms and standards of social life: he is tolerant, successful, eloquent, has endurance and patience, decent and responsible. At the same time, internal content that can destroy the Persona is carefully ignored.
Most often, the shadow side of the personality is suppressed and repressed to such an extent that a person simply does not notice his negative sides. At the same time, a storm is brewing in the unconscious, which sooner or later will cover and deprive a person of self-control.
According to Jung's works, the Shadow is not considered the stronghold of evil in man. Rather, it is what creates it that is to blame: high expectations, denial of one’s own “I,” abstract ideals, living “someone else’s life,” lack of love and respect for oneself.
Shadow archetype is a collection of any personality attributes that we deny and suppress, and sincerely hate in ourselves.
Interaction of Shadow and Ego
Every person's ego casts a Shadow . This is fine. During the period of adaptation to the world, the Shadow absorbs emotions and desires that lead to moral conflicts. Without Ego control, these processes are hidden in the darkness of consciousness. The work of the Shadow is comparable to the activities of spy intelligence, when the head of state knows nothing about the dirty and immoral work of spies. At the same time, he enjoys the results of their activities, living in a safe country.
Analytical work with the Ego can reveal shadow processes and helps to realize them, but the Ego’s defense mechanisms work effectively, and only a few manage to overcome them.
The shadow never comes under the control of the Ego, it is an unconscious factor. Our Ego sometimes does not suspect that it is casting a Shadow. In describing this archetype, Jung sought to point out the shocking lack of consciousness that most people exhibit.
If we delve into the root of human intentions, desires and choices, we find ourselves in a dark area. We will see that our Ego in the dark part is self-confident, insensitive, selfish, prone to manipulation and perverted desires. What appears before us is a 100% egoist who strives at any cost to achieve pleasure and power over others. This negativity inside the Ego is the embodiment of world evil in fairy tales, myths and classical literature. For example, the character Iago in Shakespeare's Othello is a prominent representative of the Shadow.
The most interesting thing is that the Ego does not experience its Shadow in any way. It is projected onto other people, being unconscious. For example, if you are annoyed by a notorious egoist, the unconscious content of your shadow is projected onto him. No doubt other people provide "hooks" for shadow projection. Indeed, in strong emotional reactions there is real perception and projection.
The defensive ego always insists on being right and often acts as a victim or observer. While one's Ego makes a person a "saint", another person turns into a "monster". When working psychologically with your own Ego, you can learn to recognize projections and not create “scapegoats” .
How is the Shadow born?
At the beginning of civilization, people lived following their own instincts, impulses, and laws of nature. Today, emotions and desires control the norms of behavior in society, morality, and etiquette. A person is subject to many categorical restrictions and prohibitions. The Shadow helps to live with all this.
The shadow begins to form in early childhood, when adults diligently manipulate children, demonstrating all the imperfection and one-sidedness of the adult world. For example, if parents suppress a child or show injustice to him, the child reacts with indignation and healthy, natural aggression. But instead of apologizing and accepting that he was wrong, the adult humiliates him even more, yells at the child, punishes him or beats him. After all, you need to “respect your elders” and “shut your mouth.”
After some time, the baby will learn the lesson. He will stop showing aggression, although it will still arise. The child will begin to suppress it. All negative experiences will be pushed into the unconscious, which will be the beginning of the formation of the second “I”. Unfulfilled dreams and desires will also go there for storage: “this won’t bring you money,” “men don’t dance,” “do a normal job,” “you won’t make a living from this,” etc.
The Shadow takes on those character traits that are incompatible with the Persona and the Ego-consciousness of the individual. Both the Shadow and the Persona are actually alien to consciousness. According to Jung, Persona is a “public personality” that helps a person form a psychosocial identity. The Persona, like the Shadow, is invisible to the Ego. But the Ego accepts the Persona more loyally, since it does not contradict the moral standards of behavior in society.
How does the Shadow manifest itself?
The Shadow patiently waits for the moment when we are irritated, exhausted, or under the influence of alcohol/drugs, etc. It is she who pushes us to actions that we would never allow ourselves to carry out in a sober state.
A person under the influence of the Shadow offends loved ones, waves his fists, betrays his principles, speaks rudely, starts a fight, or steals something. After what happened, he becomes very ashamed, and this state is described as “something was found”, “a fly bitten”, “like something was replaced”.
Despite the fact that for some actions you need to stand in the corner of 3-4 lives, you cannot blame a person’s consciousness for everything. After all, he actually acts as if in a dream, when the Shadow overshadows the mind and breaks out of the “dungeon” of the unconscious.
Jung described that the Shadow tends to possess power over something, behave obsessively, and persistently oppose moral standards. So in this case there are several culprits - weakened consciousness, people who mistreated the child in childhood, the unconscious that broke out.
It is the Shadow that makes a person doubt his abilities, reminds him of helplessness, clumsiness, etc. On the one hand, the childhood scenario is triggered, and on the other, in such conditions it is easier for the Shadow to fight for power.
Following the example of Animus and Anima, the Shadow projects itself onto the people around it. Therefore, our hatred and anger towards someone is a failure to accept these qualities in ourselves.
Chapter 1. Contributions to Analytical Psychology
Preface
The records collected in this book represent my work as a psychoanalyst since 1938, and their diversity is perhaps the main reason for this publication. But if there is one theme that embodies the continuity and growing nature of my research today, it is the relationship of psychology to culture. This is perhaps best seen in two works, The Cultural Unconscious and Unity of the Soul, but it is implied in others as well. I am indebted to Donald Sandner for this handy term he coined in Navajo Healing Symbols: “cultural variable.” Just as individuals can be neurotic, cultures can be unbalanced and one-sided. People function well when they integrate the roles of both being part of a family and being part of a cultural tradition, as I suggest in Unity of the Soul. Sandner writes about this condition:
“The family and the individual are immersed in culture, like a fish in the ocean... Objectivity is an illusion if you consider your culture from the point of view of another.”
But once the basic unity is broken, it becomes painfully necessary for a person or a culture to turn to psychological methods to study the nature of dissociation, first through diagnosis, then through therapy. But although we constantly return to these medical terms, considering the issue as a problem of “health versus disease,” sooner or later we realize that our efforts are better directed not at curing disease, but rather at renewing the source of psychic energy. As Mircea Eliade (1968) aptly observes:
“We developed the idea that for ancient societies, life cannot be repaired, it can only be recreated by returning to the source.”
Even if the person is considered a patient or the culture is considered severely damaged, healing occurs through re-education rather than through medicine, allowing "the patient to identify himself with symbolic symbols... and enter into them to recreate himself in a healthy and whole state" (Sandner, p. iii ). This view, while honoring the psychological principles of Jung's concept of archetypes, by definition anticipates the formation of any culture. It tells us that we, as members of archaic societies, may need to return to our own basic myths of origin. In line with this, we find that many of the people we work with are faced with the need to recreate their own cultural attitudes in a variety of forms that offset established patterns by producing something unique rather than simply repeating what happened previously. In this case, our cultural variable can become an instrument in the process of individuation in the Jungian sense.
I am especially indebted to Murray Stein for his encouragement in developing my thoughts about the cultural unconscious. I am grateful to him and Dr. Schwartz-Zalant for publishing all my works. I would also like to thank John Levy, Harry Prochaschka, and Holly Reppert of the Institute. K.G. Young in San Francisco for her support and assistance in the production of this body of work, and Deborah Farrell for her editorial work.
Joseph L. Henderson San Francisco, 1989
Joseph Lewis Henderson
August 31, 1903 – born in Elko, Nevada, second child of John Henderson and Maude Henley Henderson
1919 – Enrolled at Lawrenceville Preparatory School, New Jersey
1927 – received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Princeton University, New Jersey
1928 – began analysis with Elizabeth Whitney, San Francisco
1929 – began analysis with C. G. Jung (beginning of development of the concept of “cultural attitudes”)
1930-1938 – medical practice at St. Bartholomew's in London
September 18, 1934 – married Helena Darwin Cornford
1938 – last period of analysis with Jung; start of clinical practice in New York
1939 – the first analytical publication about the “Rituals of Initiation”
1941 - moved to California, began practice in San Francisco
1943 – internship at San Francisco General Hospital, in the department of the medical society of analytical psychology, created by Henderson, Whitney, Elliott and Gray
1946 – start of the first training seminars
1950 – The Medical Society became the Northern California Society of Jungian Analysts
1954 – published the work “Resolution of Transference in the Light of Psychology by K.G. Jung", presented at the international conference on psychotherapy
until 1955 – employee of the clinical department of Zion Hospital, San Francisco
Lecturer at Stanford School of Medicine, San Francisco
1960 - invitation by Jung to participate in the book “Man and His Symbols”, which resulted in the chapter “Ancient Myths and Modern Man”
1962 – Vice-President of the International Association of Analytical Psychology; edited a four-hour interview with Jung conducted by Professor Richard Evans
1963 – publication of The Wisdom of the Serpent (with Maud Oakes)
1967 – publication “Thresholds of Initiation”
1967-1968 – President of the Society of Jungian Analysts and the Institute. K.G. Jung in San Francisco; creation of the Archetypal Research Archive of Symbolism (ARAS) and consultation with Jessie Fraser, its organization and development
1972-1973 – President of the Society of Jungian Analysts and the Institute. K.G. Jung's in San Francisco
1984 – publication “Cultural attitudes in the context of psychology”
Since 1989 – continued private practice in San Francisco as an analyst; teaching and working on psychological and cultural topics.
Chapter 1
Contributions to analytical psychology
1. Origin and modern development of Jungian psychology
Jung's emphasis on the universality of mental life saved the depth of psychology from the Freudian view that personal complexes were responsible for all deviations from some psychological normality. Jung, however, never downplayed Freud's original emphasis on the persistence of the basic, primitive instinctual pattern for which scientific interpretation is appropriate. Jung's study of the collective unconscious led him to another kind of model, archetypes, which allowed him to distinguish between symbolic and personal aspects of human experience. Jung's followers gradually formed two camps: those who sought the purely symbolic method of research associated with Jung, and those who used the clinical approach, which they felt had been hijacked by the Freudians.
A reaction was formed that created a well-founded reason for a certain circle of analysts not to trust the well-known Jungian injunction to extol the numinous symbol above all else. These analysts distanced themselves from Jung, influenced by the Freudian or neo-Freudian school of thought. The London Jungian group with Michael Fordham became so strongly associated with the Melanie Klein school that Fred Plot, a member of the group, described it as a Jung-Klein hybrid. Another member of this group, Andrew Samuels (1985), identified the Fordham School as evolutionary in its approach. While the classic Jungian method is to use active imagination for the purpose of individuation, usually in the second half of life, the Fordham school primarily dealt with the topic of relationships in childhood.
In the early 1980s, followers of these two methods faced the threat of finding themselves on opposite sides of the barricade, but, in my opinion, this division did not occur. In any case, the basic Jungian theory on which both methods were based remains the same - that there is an archetypal and a personal unconscious. The conflict between the symbolic and clinical approaches to our work is not new, but has been there from the very beginning, and will continue to have its place hereafter; so we need to try to build a bridge over this section. Fordham addressed this issue at a public debate in San Francisco when he stated that the method to be used in working with unconscious material should primarily respond to the needs of patients rather than doctors and their theories.
I began to encounter this problem when I was researching the topic of initiation as a cultural phenomenon of great psychological importance. By valuing cultural content alongside archetypal and personal content, I have attempted to create a bridge that would help avoid conflicts between symbolic and clinical methods.
My book Thresholds of Initiation was first published in 1967, but there is a long personal history behind it. Its origin lies in certain endopsychic experiences, dreams and visions that came to me during my first year of analysis with Jung in Zurich in 1929-1930. One of the early dreams suggested analysis. I rode on a tired horse; bowing her head, she slowly walked up the hill towards Lake Zurich to quench her thirst. This image of mental fatigue could be interpreted as neurasthenia for the young man I was then, signifying a failure both culturally and psychologically. I apparently thought that I could find healing in the healing waters of the unconscious, which could cleanse me through personal surrender of will. This is a necessary condition for the initiation which I later described in the story of my patient (see The Ritual of Vision by Henderson, 1967, pp. 133-172). This chapter contains the story in the form of a dream of a young man who was also forced by his nature and desire for change to return to the source of psychic life through a descent through cultural history in order to restore a lost personal connection with the archetypal images of the unconscious.
Before my analysis I knew none of this, and it was only much later that I learned that I too was on some inner path to self-discovery, which requires a type of learning that cannot be found in the schools or colleges of our society, but which is vital tribal communities in whose ancient rituals and traditions it can be found. I felt a longing to return to the simplicity of such an existence, to the childhood of culture, with its supposed safety and sense of being in the bosom of Mother Nature. But during my trip to Zurich I was in search of a father figure, which was perfectly embodied in Jung. My own father, while a moral man, was a banker with a dogmatically materialistic approach to life. My mother felt everything about this, and although she was a protective one, this attitude can become extremely debilitating if it is not balanced by strong paternal influence. While working with Jung, I had a dream that reflected a change in this pattern of parental influence of the kind that we associate with the resolution of the Oedipus complex.
I transferred more than just the image of my father to Jung. He was originally an image of the Self, and although I made a strong transference onto this projected image, his genius was quite capable of accepting such a projection. In fact, at times this transference was even too strong. Accordingly, when I needed separation from the intensity of the transference, I dreamed of a royal yacht, where all the comforts were arranged for me. I began to get tired and even irritated by the inertia of this situation, and then I left it, which was not difficult in this dream. The King was an image of the aspect of the Self that I was projecting onto Jung, and my impatience meant that to me he seemed too powerful, too regal - something Jung never wanted to be for his patients. After leaving the yacht, I saddled a brown horse, which seemed young and full of energy, and galloped towards the distant hills. At first, another rider on a white horse rode with me. For some reason this seemed wrong to me, since the white horse was too disciplined; it seemed to belong more in a ceremonial parade. An association occurred to me with Roman processions in which the consul rode stately on a white horse. Thus, the horse represented adherence to the patriarchal formation in exchange for independence. Again, some aspect of the personal father was associated with this image.
I left the rider on the white horse behind, and, climbing the hills, I found myself on a high plateau, where I saw a huge elephant standing quietly, but somewhat ominously, to my right. The color of the elephant was unusual, light beige or yellow-gray, and for some reason it created the impression of a higher spiritual power, while primitive peoples sometimes spoke of it as an animal “doctor.” I did not dare face the animal, but instead drove past to the other side of the plateau. When I told this dream to Jung, I only remember that he said that it was a compliment to my masculinity. Jung was quite concise when interpreting dreams, and he often left the most important part for me to figure out.
It was the image of the elephant that impressed me most of all, but it took me a long time to get to the point of carefully explaining its appearance in my dream. The obvious difference between this dream and the previous one, in which I was riding a horse down to a lake to water it, is the change in direction. The earlier dream meant the beginning of a journey back to the source, while this dream meant the journey up and out. The movement of images in dreams sometimes moves cyclically, according to the rhythm often observed in analysis: decline is replaced by growth and vice versa. It was the same for me. Although it may seem that I was slowly moving from my return to the unconscious, where I felt safe, back to the restoration of my independence in an upward movement towards some higher unconscious, in reality this is not quite the case. I repeated this boom-bust movement over and over again over the course of several years of my analysis. But the movements were not simply monotonous; they followed a kind of spiral that reminded me of the movement of knitting needles.
In the symbols of horses I have almost always seen the representation of personal ego-consciousness supported by instinct. This combination of ego-consciousness and instinct supports Jung's theory of the archetype having the power to both create images and manifest in patterns of behavior of a psychic nature. (By the way, the expansion of this theory meant further study by Jung of Freudian psychology of instincts). This pattern of behavior is represented in these dreams through the imagery of horse and rider, which sometimes symbolizes tribal ritual (white horse and rider) and more specifically represents the individual impulse to separate from some collective form of ritual.
In terms of archetypal dream imagery, the king symbolizes the central archetype at its origins and can be represented as a man or a woman; it presupposes a condition of social unity in relation to the ancestors and living members of the human family. The symbolic elephant is free from any family or social ties. It is united in its own right and stands alone as something that man cannot be, but can revere and learn to experience as a true symbol. In my writings I have called this the True Self, as opposed to the primary Self. The self, of course, seems to be a unified center, but I think there is evidence that it has two aspects. These two aspects of the Self often appear less as images than as two magnetic fields that pull ego-consciousness up and down, back and forth, according to factors associated with age and experience.
The dream of the elephant shows how I, as a youth, was able to leave behind the retrospective desire to live close to the primary Self, with its soothing sense of content (royal yacht), and move to a more mature level of consciousness (high plateau). Since I was only twenty-six years old, I was not yet developed enough to come face to face with the elephant as a symbol that had a certain meaning for me. The real turning point between primary Self-awareness and true Self-awareness seems to correspond to Jung's observation that the soul tends to change course midway through life, which typically occurs between the ages of thirty-five and forty. A new form of consciousness then awakens with a glimpse of something greater, such as a future path that has been revealed through the acceptance of the essential meaning of early life experiences and a sense of connection with the living traditions of the ancestors. Consciousness at this turning point remains confused for some time until time passes and we become accustomed to accepting that retrospective (non-regressive) and progressive views are not mutually exclusive, but can be understood as part of a continuum.
A few years later, out of the blue, even more light was shed on my question about the elephant in my dream. Jung gave a seminar in English on the topic of yoga-Kundalini with Jakob Wilhelm Hauer, who outlined the importance of this Indian system of religious philosophy, while Jung commented from a psychological point of view. In the yoga-Kundalini system, the lower or root chakra is Muladhara, physically located in the perineum; the central symbol is the Kundalini serpent wrapped three and a half times around the phallus. According to Karl Alfred Mayer (1978):
“it is a quasi-latent state when everything divine is still asleep... The main animal symbol of the whole is the elephant, which represents the tamed libido in India. Starting from this state, it is time to awaken Kundalini - to rise” (p. 109).
At a higher bodily level, at the level of the pharynx, the graphic representation of the fifth chakra is again an elephant; however, it is a white elephant with several trunks, and, unlike the lower center associated with the earth, this one is associated with the ether, which
“is, and at the same time no longer is matter... so purely mental. Thus it is also the chakra of the reality of the soul as a whole... For the Indian it is the place of sound, language and song, here the moon and the sun, gold and silver, that is, elemental opposites, unite.” (Mayer, 1978, p. 111)
This chakra is called Vishuddha and I recognized the elephant from my early dream in this symbolic elephant. Also during the seminar, I learned that not only my immaturity did not allow me to understand this symbol, but also the immaturity of the entire Western people, to accept all the consequences of the Eastern path of connecting physical and spiritual reality. Jung himself had not yet fully formulated this concept of the reality of the soul, and it took many more years before this idea was understood and accepted by his followers.
The polarity that exists between the two images of the elephant - Muladhara and Vishuddha - prompted me to discover their significance for initiation. The elephant in Muladhara emphasizes the basis of being and confirms the concept of immanence, that is, the existence of spirit in matter, a theme that Jung later fully developed in his works on alchemy. The elephant in Vishuddha signifies liberation and transcendence from the bonds of external reality; it contains the realization that the soul is as “real” in its own way as the physical body is in its own egocentric state of being. Here we encounter a polarity, in the middle of which is the symbol of the Kundalini serpent, which is said to move between the higher and lower chakras, awakening the forms of consciousness corresponding to each of them. The primordial experience is a rite of passage, depicted as crossing certain thresholds in order to visit these different areas of consciousness. Now it seems to me that the lower chakras relate to the symbolism of the primary Self, while the upper ones correspond to the awareness of the true Self.
According to this phase of my own analysis and the understanding I formed after Jung's seminar, I doubted that the Eastern path of yoga would be of significant use to me in professionally helping others find the path from Muladhara. It was then that I began to focus my work with patients on the Western tradition. The archetype of initiation seemed most clearly expressed in the early culture of Greece and other Mediterranean countries throughout the Hellenistic period and ending with early Christianity. Jane Harrison, Frances Cornford and Gilbert Murray were my main advisers at this time, and I discovered an extraordinary parallel between what they found in the origins of Greek mythology and material from the dreams of myself and several of my patients. I was also influenced by Jung's seminars, in which he relied heavily on Greco-Roman cultural models to generalize.
Eastern symbolism, however, has also appeared in the dreams of some of my patients, and in recent years it has become extremely important to clarify certain psycho-religious conflicts. I have worked with several patients who found symbolism in the chakras that saved them from the typical Christian prejudice that enlightenment comes only from the denial of sexual pleasure and worldly prestige. The dreams of these people indicate that they may have learned to spiritualize their lives in accordance with tangible life goals, but in doing so they need to transcend behavioral education where it lacks archetypal content.
Jung tells us that his early awareness of the Self first developed in response to Indian spirituality (see Jung, 1921/1971, pp. 118, regarding the atman). His interest in yoga-Kundalini and Chinese Taoism belongs to the same period, but during his intoxication with Eastern wisdom he experienced the sobering influence of alchemy (see Richard Wilhelm's commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower, 1931). His study of alchemy gradually supplanted all his previous interests and consumed him in his later years. Although his research was based on Western models, his methodology did not represent any real deviation from the principles of Yoga-Kundalini.
The study of initiation expands our understanding of reality and the soul and makes it more useful for clinical psychology in the West. The classical Jungians, as Andrew Samuels called us, needed and still need to refine the methods of ancient times. They need to realize, like the alchemists, that no spiritual change is possible without a corresponding change in the texture of life itself. This includes recognition of the miracle of modern physics in the discovery of the source of atomic energy and the means of liberating it from matter. Jung formulated this concept of a unus mundus, born from an idea by Gerard Dorn, in the same two decades in which these discoveries in physics were made, and he noticed the possible complementarity in the study of matter and the study of the soul. This complementarity was later explored by von Franz (1980) in “Projections and the Return of Projections in Jungian Psychology.”
In modern psychotherapeutic practice, I believe the symbolic (classical Jungian method) is moving towards the clinical method, and although these methods diverge in some respects, a new series of intersections seems more likely. One of these is presented in Donald Kalsched's (1980) essay “Narcissism and the Search for the Inner,” in which he exposed the fallacy “that the perfect, ideal Self exists a priori in a transitional form, and then acquires matter (or body) where it finds its way back". Kalshed wanted to “emphasize that such a return is not possible without the initial movement towards relationship (the transition stage) and that this is where we can make an impact in psychotherapy. If this stage is carried out properly, then the return occurs on its own” (p. 72). I have observed this transitional stage on three levels - personal, cultural and archetypal - and its mediation between the primary and true Self. Jung himself carried out reflections beyond the Neoplatonic philosophy of the world of the soul (a priori of the nature of the Self), showing in his alchemical works that the spirit can be liberated from this matter as an increatum, something that has never been seen or seen before. could be "remembered".
I have noticed that over the past twenty years of using the program at the K.G. Jung in San Francisco, candidates with whom I have dealt invariably describe their membership examination as an initiation. This means that the trials taught them how to appreciate and fully experience the archetypal foundations of their work so that they treated them as more than just another test of their clinical skills that they had already demonstrated during their academic training. Because we require them to have adequate training and licensure in their professional disciplines, whether in medicine, psychology, sociology, or counseling, our program provides them with the opportunity to join the token with clinical methods through genuine experience in analytical psychology. Understanding the inherent nature of their resulting case presentations and dissertation allows them to follow their own path and not feel the need to limit themselves to set standards. The purely tribal form of initiation should have been satisfied long ago, and such initiation can only mean the emergence of initiation in an individual form. Therefore, candidates under my control report on various forms of initiation. No two of them are alike, but they all have something in common.
Such initiation brings both frustration and satisfaction, since by its nature it must avoid repetition of the hero myth of claims to worldly superiority. Once past this threshold, some candidates subsequently feel deflated or depressed and wonder why they do not feel a sense of achievement. This reaction reflects the lack of initiation that I described in my book (Henderson, 1967), but it is also part of the initiation process, and I have never heard anyone call it a state of frustration. It always disappears.
During the last twenty-five years there has been a major change in this form of initiation in analytical psychology. I remember a time when the field was still very male-dominated. Although Jung was surrounded by some remarkable female analysts, teaching and research were generally male pursuits. The work that Jung and others did to raise the cultural level of women's participation in this movement into the depths of psychology was an incredible success. We now have more female applicants at our institute, and these women demonstrate an independent approach that allows them to work more fully as women, and not as reflections of men.
I did not foresee this change and therefore did not give much attention in the early works to the initiation of women. I would like to give an example of the initiation of Navajo girls described by Charlotte Frisby (1967). This ritual occurs shortly after the first menstruation. She is prepared by an elder woman of her choice, who tells her what she must do in order to honor her coming of age and awaken the primordial goddess, the Turquoise Woman, who performed her first Kinaalda. The ceremony honors two basic principles that I have also noticed in all male initiations: the ordeal, the “judgment of God,” and the test of strength. Ordeals in the case of girls are moderate and pleasant. The elder woman powerfully “shapes” her with a massage and washes her hair, after which she is visited by all her fellow tribesmen, both men and women. She then runs the race with her guests and her test of strength is celebrated in the spirit of equality with men. Her guardian advises her to respect herself as a woman and not to give herself thoughtlessly to an unworthy man. It is her character that is formed during this ceremony, which is different from other tribal initiations designed to force a girl to serve a man.
The Kinaalda ceremony ends when the female guardian bakes a cake, which is shared with all those present. This form of unification completes the transitional rite; it goes back to the model described by van Gennep (1960), who identified a type of metamorphosis in which a liminal or transformational ritual is followed by a unification or integration of all experience. The initial ritual of separation culminates in a final ritual of acceptance, in which the pubertal ritual is valued as an individual religious experience, important both for all members of the tribe and for the individual girl.
This type of initiation is only possible in a matriarchal society, which today exists in the Bronze Age culture, so distant from us that it seems a complete anachronism. However, modern women in our Jungian tradition are purposefully looking for a way back to the feminine mysteries of ancient culture. Their goal is to find the lost secret of female initiation, an initiation that is comparable and complementary to the male initiation ritual. Such a discovery would allow men and women to become less at odds with each other and learn to share a common heritage, at least at the level of initiation.
While I am interested in the renaissance of women in Jungian society and in society at large, I am also interested in how this renaissance can free men from two problematic reactions to women: the view that women are completely dependent on men and the fear and rejection of criticism that comes from a woman's negative animus (in short, nagging). The more a woman can feel that her own initiation, the transition into womanhood, is equal in importance to the male initiation, the less will have to interfere with the growth and development of a true and equal relationship.
Initiation primarily means a transition that affects not only individuals, but also groups, families, especially married couples. Polly Young-Eisendrath (1984), an experienced practitioner of these transitions in couples, has written an interesting book: Hags and Heroes: A Feminist Approach to Jungian Couples Psychotherapy, in which she emphasizes the need to integrate clinical and symbolic treatment of such transitions in concrete ways.
Another illuminating example of initiation, which also includes the issue of interpersonal relationships and the role of Anima-Animus in Jungian therapy, can be found in John Layard's (1985) book The Celtic Quest: Sexuality and the Soul in Individuation. This book consists of an in-depth psychological study of the Mabinogion legend of Cilhugh and Alwyn. It also includes four appendices, two of which I found most interesting: Anima and Animus and Incest Taboo. Layard was an anthropologist before he became an analyst, and his main contribution comes from his seminal study of the still existing Stone Age culture of the Malekula Islands, a report of which appears in his book The Stones of Malekula. He is also the author of The Incest Taboo and the Virgo Archetype (1972). Layard enriched the literature of analytical psychology with his knowledge of Jung's (1946/1966) work on transference and the role of relational libido as a bond that can arise in many relationships. In his Celtic Quest and other works, Layard explains that the resolution of the incest taboo results in the formation of a kinship relationship that replaces and releases any incest-tainted transferences and countertransferences that are formed between a man and a woman, in therapy or in life. I'm talking about this permission of transference into a kind of symbolic friendship that avoids any specific sexual references and points to something more personal.
Links:
Frisbie, C. (1967). Kinaalda: A study of Navaho girls' puberty ceremony. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
Gennep, A. van. (1960). The rites of passage (MB Vizedom & GL Caffee,
Trans.). Chicago: University Henderson, J. (1967). Thresholds of initiation. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan
University Press..
Jung, C. G. (1966). The psychology of the transference. In Collected works: Vol. 16. The practice of psychotherapy (pp. 163-323). Princeton: Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1946)
Jung, C. G. (1971). Psychological types. In Collected works (Vol. 6). Princeton: Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1921)
Kalsched, D. (1980). Narcissism and the search for interiority. Quadrant, 13(2), pp. 46-74
Layard, J. (1942). Stone men of Malekula. London: Chatto and Windus.
Layard, J. (1972). The incest taboo and the virgin archetype (Dunquin Series, No5.)Dallas: Spring Publications.
Layard, J. (1985). A Celtic quest: sexuality and the soul in individuation.
Meier, C. A. (1978). Localization of consciousness. In The shaman from Elko (pp. 102-113). San Francisco: C. G. Jung Institute.
Samuels, A. (1985). Jung and the post Jungians. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
von Franz, M.-L. (1980). Projection and recollection in Jungian psychology. LaSalle and London: Open Court.
Wilhelm, R. (1931) The secret of the golden flower. New York: Harcourt, Brace.
Young-Eisendrath, P. (1984). Hags and heroes: A feminist approach to Jungian psychotherapy with couples. Toronto: Inner City Books.
