The Spiders of Allah

The Spiders of Allah
By James Hider

Thankfully, I have not witnessed war firsthand but have relied on journalists Ike James Hider to escort me through the raw, pock-marked landscape of violent human conflict. Hider is to be commended for the understated manner by which he uses his unbeliever status to frame his engaging narrative of the Middle East during the past decade.

Unbridled, zealous belief so often undergirds violence between peoples that it might seem hackneyed to write another book on the subject. But this is a collection of personal stories that transcends political rhetoric, avoids hyperbole, and avoids oversimplification. At times Hider offers unusual Biblical references that bring to life Santayana's famous quote about those of us who do not learn from history being destined to repeat it. At other times, Hider describes primitive, pre-scientific beliefs among the Iraqis that are at once entertaining and disheartening. How can we continue to believe our Western style democracy will ever take root and flourish in such an environment.

A wartime journalist must seek to balance vivid, horrific details that satisfy prurient interests and stories that preserve to prevent their readers from becoming anesthetized. Over thirty years of practicing psychiatry I have treated many individuals with post-traumatic stress disorder but the number of persons suffering extreme trauma in the Middle East (including American and European personnel) is unimaginable to me.

Within weeks of 9/11 I was convinced that The Patriot Act, the march to war in Iraq, and many other events was proof that the terrorist attack was America's Reichstag fire. In fact, I briefly composed a basket of stocks chosen by investigating the corporate relationships of Vice President Cheney (his wife) and Cabinet members like Rumsfeld. The basket of stocks rose dramatically in the years following the attacks on the Twin Towers. My wife forbid me from actually investing in this basket of stocks that would profit from massive bloodshed and human suffering. My conspiratorial ideas may reflect an effort to find meaning from senseless violence. But Hider's broader vision of history is seasoned in real life, face to face encounters with Middle Easterners.

The Spiders of Allah is infused with a sense of destiny. For instance, in Karbala, during the holiest Shia holiday, James Hider and his girlfriend, Lourdes Garcia-Navarro (aka Lulu), a reporter for National Public Radio, are subjected to a search as they enter their hotel. They are nearly banished from town when Lulu is discovered to have a bottle of wine in her bag. The pair secure their release for fewer than ten dollars and the following day they are on the scene of terrible carnage when more than one dozen suicide bombers execute their brutal attack. Hider juxtaposes the calm demeanor of a young Shia sheikh whose religious joy belies the loss of his cousin, who hours earlier was blown apart by one of the blasts. Maybe Hider and Garcia-Navarro do not see that their commitment to reliable, honest journalism shares a heritage with the religious fervor of the young sheikh and other believers.

The Spiders of Allah opens with a slightly self conscious voice but by the end of the book, Hider gives the readers a chapter titled, "Creatures of the Id" wherein he muses and speculates about the abhorrent features of human nature that lead us to fight. The last chapters are free of self consciousness and they provide a window into how war correspondents resolve the exquisite and insane circumstances they encounter. I have been a fan of Garcia-Navarro's reporting on NPR for years and Hider's book is the sort of firsthand narrative that can only be written by persons like this pair who travel at the margins where history is made.

The book is missing the most important chapter in the lives of Hider and Garcia-Navarro that was written after the book was published. Earlier this year they were married.

Not Totally Rad: Waking Up is Hard to Do

Seldom do I repost this sort of thing but this one was clever, well done, and not offensive.  Enjoy.  
Not Totally Rad: Waking Up is Hard to Do

The Female Trickster: A Post-modern, Post-Jungian Feminist Perspective on an Old Archetype

The Female Trickster

For inexplicable reasons, lawyers are the purveyors of some of my recent reading material.  One is Justice Antonin Scalia and the other is Dr. Ricki Tannen, a lawyer who refashioned herself as a depth psychologist.  If the skills of rhetoric and argumentation interest you, then you may enjoy Justice Scalia’s Making Your Case .  Whereas, Dr. Tannen’s, “The Female Trickster”, is a comprehensive revisioning of the trickster archetype through the lens of a feminist, postmodern theorist.  She has published scholarly material in the area of feminist legal theory.  She displays a sound understanding of how patriarchal structures can subjugate the feminine but this is neither a political rant or a stridently feminist contribution.  It is a well crafted, timely addition to the study of archetypal psychology.

Books that purport to be post-modern turn me off and to claim the status of Post-Jungian only aggravates this irritation. Ordinarily, the appearance of post-modern, or post-Jungian dissuades me from any further approach.  I am glad I didn’t allow “The Female Trickster: The Mask That Reveals~Post-Jungian and Postmodern Psychological Perspectives on Women in Contemporary Culture” halt my pursuit.

Dr. Tannen recently moved to Asheville and I am looking forward to meeting her soon.   She studied law at the University of Florida (my undergraduate alma mater) and has published on various topics in feminist legal theory.  She went on to complete doctoral work at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Depth Psychology.

If you are asking why I am featuring this book, it is because when a new, feminist voice appears on the scene, it deserves to be acknowledged.  Tannen’s is a new voice.  Listen to some phrases from her book.  “Tricksters preside over moments of passage, rupture and transformation”.  This is surely not a new idea.  But the female trickster embodies “psychological authority, physical agency, and bodily autonomy”.  That is a revolutionary idea.  Tannen proposes that the subversive, strategic use of humor along with a refusal to identify herself as a victim, are defining features of the female tickster.  Three female sleuths, V. I. Warshawski, Kinsey Millhone, Kate Shugak, serve as three exemplars of the means by which popular literature transmutes “imagination into reality” in ways that transform the individual and collective consciousness.  The books scholarship is broad and imposing enough to justify owning it.  But scholarship alone would not have moved me to devote a blog entry to this book.

There are books that proclaim with a deep, authentic voice a message that changes my understanding of the world.  Years ago, In a Different Voice (Gilligan), Women’s Growth in Connection (Jordan, et al), Toward a New Psychology of Women(Baker Miller), and Jane Eyre (Brontë) caused the tectonic plates  of relationship to the feminine to shift.   The Female Trickster joined the canon of writings by women that transformed my appreciation of The Second Sex (this was not meant as commentary, but I could not overlook this title).

Is there an archetype associated with the postmodern period?  Is there room for a post-Jungian persepctive?  I am skeptical of any proposition that a new archetype has emerged.  I understand archetype as the substratum of psychic content that cuts across the ages, trascends cultures, and plunges deeper than an historical context can fathom.  But I want to remain open minded to the notion that just as our species evolves (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-we-are-evolving) our psychic structures may be evolving.

If I have a criticism of The Female Trickster, it is that the chapter titled “Where have all the virgins gone?” was too brief a survey of the ancestral origins of the female trickster archetype.  I suspect that the female trickster has declared herself in ages past.  The ineffable realms of feminine intuition and ways of knowing has aroused fear and suspicion in patriarchal culture again and again.  Perhaps because the effort to suppress female trickster energy has been so successful, the chapter was as extensive as it could be.  My objection to the concept of a new archetype were mollified by Tannen’s liberal use of phrases like female trickster energy rather than archetype.

Tannen uses the Female Sleuth (detective) as an example of the female trickster and she enriches that example with other popular characters from Sex and the City and pop music.  Dr. Tannen has something to say.  It is something profoundly important for our time.  The female trickster is inherently complete and her proclivity for social work in the world is a defining characteristic.

I have a personal affinity for the trickster motif and friends, colleagues, loved ones have ascribed trickster qualities to me.  Tannen’s understands the trickster’s clever use of humor that permits simultaneous challenges to the established structures while remaining inbounds.  The Female Trickster is a sort of Summa Psychologica of the female trickster. viewed as one step on the long march toward deeper understanding and integration of the feminine it is worth your attention.  Be prepared for a curried mix of scholarship, personal reflection, and deep psychological insight.

Please tender your opinion on the following matters (whether or not you read this book):

• Is it possible for new archetypes to emerge?
• How has the trickster archetype or motif (male or female) manifested in your clinical work and in your personal life?
• What response do you feel to the notion of a female trickster as a discrete entity, recognizable entity?
• Do you have any personal encounters with the female trickster?

We are very interested in your thoughts, reflections, and memories of your encounters with the female trickster.

Len Cruz, MD

Related articles

• Native American Mythology (socyberty.com)
• Men, Women and Relationships – A Post-Jungian Approach (psypress.com)
• Palin’s Use of Jungian Archetypes [Dispatches from the Culture Wars] (scienceblogs.com)
• Nora Ephron, Amy Bloom, and others draw lines in the sand. (slate.com)

Missed It By That Much

Missed It By That Much

Len Cruz, MD

Those who are familiar with the television show, “Get Smart” recognize the source of the title.  Maxwell Smart, a hapless secret agent would justify his obvious missteps with the phrase, Missed it by that much! During yesterday’s Red Book conference with Dr. Murray Stein, there were too many gold nuggets to even attempt a summary.  Instead, I chose one that Dr. Stein illustrated by recounting one of Jung’s dreams.  I’ll begin with a shortened version Jung’s dream as recounted by Dr. Stein.

Jung and his father are in a mosque.  They find themselves kneeling and beginning to bow.  Evidently, Jung’s father bows fully allowing his head to make contact with the floor.  However, Jung stops within a millimeter of the floor.  He will not permit himself to bow completely.(Missed it by that much!)

Yesterday Dr. Stein suggested that in Jung’s later years Jung stated that he did not believe but he knew. This may reflect Jung’s integration of the figure of Philemon a sort of prophet with whom he had engaged in fertile relationship for years.  According to Dr. Stein, the famous dream described above reflected Jung having outgrown a childish faith.  Soul had invited Jung to offer obedience to the gods, an exhortation he refused.  He argues with this anima figure and refuses to offer unqualified, blind obedience.   Instead, Jung proposed that if the gods wanted him to obey they must do something for him.  Dr. Stein suggested that this is evidence of Jung’s mature faith, a fully flowering faith founded upon knowing and notbelieving. At an earlier point in the conference Dr. Stein explained that Jung did not oppose faith but that the German word to which he objected might be better translated as belief, the experience of believing in something because you have been told to do so or because it has been transmitted to you.  Belief, in this context, is the untested, un-lived version of knowing.

Dr. Stein connected his ideas about Jung’s mature faith to the modern theological trend known collectively as “Process Theology”.  Anyone interested learning more about Process Theology may find these two books helpful, “Process and Reality (A. N. Whitehead) and “Process Theology: An Introductory Exposition” (John Cobb & David Ray Griffin).  What a brilliant insight Dr. Stein makes in suggesting that Jung’s later writings such as “Answer to Job” presage the movement that has come to be known as “Process Theology”.  An exceptional summary and commentary on “Answer to Job” by J. Marvin Spiegelman can be found online at http://www.junginstitute.org/pdf_files/JungV8N1p1-18.pdf .  It is no surprise that Dr. Stein, who is divinity trained (and possibly divinely trained), should make such a clear connection between Jung’s mature faith perspective and the process theologians.   However, let me propose a different rendering of Jung’s dream.  Jung may have missed it by that much!

Dr. Stein discouraged the reader of the Red Book from viewing the material as somechanneled work. Jung’s ego not only remained intact, it was actively engaged with the interior figures.  There was no merger, no suspension of ego into some passive vessel, no idle recipient of channeled experiences.   To the contrary, Jung was contentious, argumentative and even rude at times.  While this stance toward his interior figures may have permitted a fuller, deeper exposition of their insights and instruction, it may also have obstructed a different kind of knowing.  That stance also reflects an unyielding, willful, recalcitrant feature in Jung that earlier perhaps contributed to his split with Freud and delayed reconciliation with Father Victor White.  Perhaps the dream and that single millimeter are simultaneously a testament to Jung’s mature faith and his inability to offer a complete surrender into the mystical union.  It was a bridge he could not cross.

Jung’s tenacious grip upon the egoic functions that allowed him to record such a rich travel log as the Red Book may have been the ultimate barrier to the experience of the mystic.  We think of Rumi’s poetry as a different sort of travel log from one who became lost in a merged state with the divine.

This brings us back to Jung’s dream.  It is at once a testament by a man who has done the arduous work of soul building and one who had not found a way to step willingly into complete surrender.  Jung is a post-Promethean man.  He has received the fire of illumination and steps out fearlessly to claim his rights as an image bearer of God.  He sustains his fortitude when he declines soul’s request for his obedience to the gods.  Earlier, Philemon counseled Jung to always keep his eye on this figure (soul) and never lose sight of her.  But Philemon also advised Jung to beware since she would lead him astray.  Jung’s defiance to yield that last millimeter pays heed to Philemon’s counsel.   I propose that single millimeter of difference between Jung and his father extends in myriad directions.  It suggests an Oedipal defiance that conflates his earthly father and heavenly Father.  The drama of that single millimeter is like an harmonic in music, akin to an integer multiple of an earlier note in Jung’s life when he had his falling out with Freud.  And again, it is as if that millimeter he withholds is an overtone of an earlier conflict with Fr. Victor White.

Jung exemplifies the Übermensch  Nietzsche glorifies.  In addition, the endless recurrence of which Nietzsche was so fond, seems confirmed by the harmonic resonance between Jung and his succession of opponents (earthly father, Freud, White, heavenly Father).  Jung claims his place in relation to the gods and will not demure.  He is reminiscent of Camus’ Sisyphus.  Camus imagines this rebellious, miscreant trickster differently as he carries out his sentence of rolling a stone up a hill only to have it roll down the other side and starting over again.  Camus turns away from suicide by rendering this mythopoetic figure as being happily defiant toward the gods who condemned him.  Jung’s refusal to yield that last millimeter conforms to Camus’ Sisyphus.  To parody the title of the 1967 hit Broadway musical, he was a Thoroughly Modern Mensch (not Millie).

Sadly, Jung will not allow himself to recover the childlike realms of faith by offering a complete surrender.  It is tempting to wonder what might have occurred if Jung had descended one additional millimeter.  It is in that final millimeter that Jung reveals a profound struggle.  While not disputing Dr. Stein’s proposition that the millimeter reflects Jung’s mature claim upon his own divine attributes, I propose that the fateful millimeter is also an indication of the transcendent function falling short of its mark.  Perhaps it points to the unification of apparent opposites at a meta-level.  Can a person be simultaneously defiant as Jung is when he refuses refuses to descend one last millimeter and knowingly submit by offering himself as a living sacrifice to the gods (or God).  That sacrifice is akin to the one Jesus commits to in the garden in Gethsemane.  He knows his fate, he is fully developed as a Self, and he proceeds to surrender anyway.  Do not think that I am proposing some inflating identification with Jesus the Christ; I am not.  I am using His example to illustrate a point.  It may be the transcendent function failed Jung and in his final moments, he turned away from the mystical, merged state and chose to keep his bearings.  If he had plunged just a millimeter deeper perhaps he might have had nothing to show for his work but an exquisite love poem of the sort Rumi left us.  To Jung, who had faced his demons and realized that he was driven by the pursuit of honor, that might not have seemed enough.

In Jung’s personal Twilight of the Idols he refrains from the callous, barren expression that Nietzsche arrives at but he seems unable to unify the rational, willful, fully developed man with the numinous, yielding, childlike man.  And so, it is in that last millimeter, that Jung truly may have Missed It By That Much.

From “Thus Spake Zarathustra”-Nietzsche

O man, take care!

What does the deep midnight declare?

“I was asleep—

From a deep dream I woke and swear:—

The world is deep,

Deeper than day had been aware.

Deep is its woe—

Joy—deeper yet than agony:

Woe implores: Go!

But all joy wants eternity—

Wants deep, wants deep eternity.”

Len Cruz, MD (first published at www.ashevilleungcenter.org/blog/ on May 15, 2010)

Global Politics, Obama and the Transcendent Function, A Jungian Perspective

n September the Asheville Jung Center has ambitious plans to host a conference titled “Symbols and Individuation in Global Politics”.  In preparation, I’ve been reading  Anyaten Sen’s “Identity and Violence”, Ortega y Gassett, and a panel discussion by Singer, Meador, and Samuels (Panel: The transcendent function in society) from the April 2010 issue of Journal of Analytical Psychology.  It is a thought provoking article.

Let me begin with a question.  Do Jungians and the field of Analytical Psychology  have something unique to offer in the arena of politics, political science, and political discourse?  Of course, Jungians are entitled, indeed obligated, to participate in the political process.  But is there a Jungian perspective on these matters?

Singer, Meador, and Samuels examined the transcendent function and specifically explore the proposition that certain individuals (for example, President Obama) carry the transcendent function in ways that may promote resolution of cultural complexes.  Such figures may help society unify apparent opposites.

The transcendent function is that psychological mechanism through which apparent opposites are unified.  Jung compared the transcendent function to its mathematical equivalent:

“There is nothing mysterious or metaphysical about the term “transcendent function.”  it means a psychological function comparable in it’s way to a mathematical function^[1] of the same name, which is a function of real and imaginary numbers.  The psychological “transcendent function” arises from the union of conscious and unconscious content.” (The Transcendent Function, Jung 1959)

Individuals tend to identify with one aspect of a polarity while relegating the other aspect to the unconscious.  The transcendent function is at work when the individual reconciles such opposing elements in their psyche.  There is a distinguished history of transcendent function within political theory.  Hegel’s dialectical approach proposed a such a motor of history and politics that consisted of an endless clash of opposites resolved by a synthesis.  His use of the word aufhebung, often translated as sublated, connotes abolished, preserved, and transcended in a single word.  Hegel may have intended to ambiguate the idea.  This is reminiscent of Jung’s characterization of symbol as “the best possible expression for a complex fact not yet clearly apprehended by consciousness.”

During the election cycle of 2008 there appeared to be a collective stirring of such dialectal tensions.  There seemed to be opposing forces marshaling everywhere.   There were rabid gun rights advocates who seemed to feel they were under siege and  liberal activists who vilified the previous administration as a reign of terror worth of epic tales like “Lord of the Rings” or “Star Wars”.  Countless other examples could be cited of seemingly deep rifts that were more evident during the 2008 election season.   An unlikely figure, Barack Obama, emerged from this milieu and galvanized people across the political spectrum.  Thomas Singer opined that President Obama “…has the potential to embody in his being a transcendent function that might point to real reconciliation and healing of the entrenched cultural complexes that divide Black and White communities in America… Some gifted individuals …actually carry the transcendent function for the group…” (Singer 2006, pp. 26-27)

There is little doubt that Barack Obama demonstrates the capacity to arouse strong passion.  He resonates with people from different countries and cultures.  People are drawn to him.  Celebrity accounts for some of this allure.  When President Obama visited Asheville earlier this year, even his ardent detractors were caught up in the excitement about sightings around town.  His celebrity seemed to dampen the usual fiery discourse seeming to unify opposing parties.  However, this should not be confused with reconciliation or the exercise of thetranscendent function.

There may something useful in considering leaders like President Obama as carriers of the transcendent function since this serves to remind us of the enormous value of transcending any opposites, whether intra-psychic or within the crucible of socio-cultural differences.  But there are other reasons for caution.

Displacing individual psychological functions onto persons like Obama are a form of infantile wish fulfillment of the sort Freud exposed in  “The Future of an Illusion”.  Individuation is personal, as is the transcendent function that supports it.  Extrapolating to the realm of politics imperils the individuation process.  Psychological contents that we project, especially upon charismatic leaders like Obama, are robbed of some of their energy.  This can reduce the chances that they will break through to consciousness.  Cultural complexes are not exempt from such obfuscating maneuvers. The individual is summoned to use the transcendent function as a vehicle for perpetual growth and adaptation.

Logicians might object to the idea of leaders carrying the transcendent function because it reflects an error of logical type.  A classic example of such an error may be helpful.

“This statement is false.”

(If the statement is true, it is false, and if it is false, then it is true, and so on.)

Such paradoxes are resolved by recognizing that the actual truth value of the statement is of a different logical type than the statement itself.

A similar disquiet emerges from the effort to extrapolate a function of the individual psyche (the transcendent function) to the sociopolitical arena.  The truth and explanatory power of thetranscendent function when applied to the individual is different than when it is applied to thepolis. The two are of different logical types. (see Russell & Whitehead or Bateson).

Whether or not President Obama carries the transcendent function for cultural complexes he clearly activates psychological elements for individuals and for the masses.  It is an intriguing idea to consider what role figures such as Obama play for society at large and individuals in their own political (& psychological) development

We are eager to generate discussion about the symbols and and other topics related to global politics as we approach the September conference.  What do you think about the proposition that President Obama carries the transcendent function for various cultural complexes?  We encourage you to share your thoughts concerning what (if anything) Jungians have to offer politics and political science.

Len Cruz, MD (first published at www.ashevillejungcenter.org/blog/ on July 11, 2010)

---

^[1] For an infinite series a1 + a2 + a3 +⋯, a quantity sn = a1 + a2 +⋯+ an, which involves adding only the first n terms, is called a partial sum of the series. If sn approaches a fixed number S as n becomes larger and larger, the series is said to converge. In this case, S is called the sum of the series. An infinite series that does not converge is said to diverge. In the case of divergence, no value of a sum is assigned.  An example of a convergent series is 1 + ½ + ¼ + ⅛ … that converges upon the solution 2.

Projections & Introjections in Global Politics: Obama, Lula da Silva, Merkel, Sarkozy, Berlusconi, Mandela

But the people refused to listen to Samuel. “No!” they said. “We want a king over us. Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles.” 1 Samuel 8:19-20

In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes. Judges 17:6

(See other Bible verse translations at end of BOLG.)

The constellation of forces that are activated between members of society and their leaders is among the topics being explored in “Symbols and Individuation in Global Politics: The Case ofBarack Obama” on September 10, 2010.  This blog entry explores one portion of that realm involving projection and introjection.   It suggests some ideas for how any citizen might engage his/her leaders as part of their individuation process.

I offer a simple definition of terms.  Introjection is a maneuver characterized by the unexamined incorporation of traits of another.  Individuals with weak ego boundaries are more prone to use introjection as a defense mechanism. (Winnicott, DW. Home is Where We Start From: Essays by a Psychoanalyst.New York, London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1986. 50.)

Projection is somewhat antithetical to introjection in that one’s own unconscious content is projected outward upon the other.  What is projected is then encountered as if it actually belonged to the otherperson to begin with.  Projection is a fundamental mechanism by which we remain uniformed about ourselves.  (A word of caution is in order.)

The recent discovery of mirror neurons in primates (including humans) should give us pause to cast all projection and introjection into some pathologic basket.  These neurons are present in the motor cortex and are activated when we observe someone executing an act.  It is as if our own motor strip is carrying out the act we observe; it may be a form of rehearsal.  So, neurobiology may one day help us to better understand projection and introjection.

Political figures who are charismatic and able to resonate with individual & cultural complexes are likely to activate processes of projection and introjection in the individual.  These forces may illuminate unconscious material and facilitate its integration into the personality.  But it is also possible for political figures to become targets of our projections and also possible for us to introject aspects of these figures into our personalities without having authentic encounters with the Self.

President Obama’s ability to galvanize the electorate and to generate widespread participation was unprecedented.  There remains some doubt about the claims that the vast majority of Obama’s contributors made small donations (under $200) but the breadth of participation that he either engendered or “appeared” to engender is notable.   Individuals were lifted up during the campaign and a sense of unity among people of different backgrounds and even across national borders was kindled.  Such broadly appealing (or irritating) leaders provide fertile ground for projection and introjection to take root.

Ask yourself what sort of relationship you developed with Obama during the period leading up to his election.  Consider what sort of relationship you have with other leaders.  How did the rise of President Lula da Silva, a union leader with limited formal education  engage your projected hopes and/or fears?  What role did introjection have in celebrating the indomitable and noble qualities displayed by President Mandela?  How does President Sarkozy’s noble Hungarian family roots or his marriage to Carla Bruni contribute to his wide appeal?  (He might a target for projections of royalty with a common touch.)  Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi affords another powerful example of how leaders may receive our projections and introjections.  Does Berlusconi’s alleged ties to organized crime and his triumphs in several prosecutions tap our own desire to be outside the law?  And then there is the fascinating example provided by Chancellor Angela Merkel, a scientist whose family enjoyed unusual freedom of travel between East and West Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall.  How has her own personal capacity to unify opposites within herself captivated the German people who were struggling to unify East and West?  When Chancellor Merkel resisted EU pressure during the sovereign debt crisis what feelings toward the German people were provoked in your psyche?

In asking those questions I am inviting each of us to explore how leaders become lightning rods for our own psychological process.  I was a youngster when President Kennedy was stuck down by an assassin’s bullet and watched in horror the reports of Dr. Martin Luther King’s murder.  Within two months I endured the defeat of seeing Senator Robert Kennedy gunned down.  President Obama was the first political figure to heal those wounds and I engaged more than I had ever engaged.  I allowed myself to hope and in the course of those months I remembered the painful wounds I’d suffered at a tender age.  Loss of several idealized objects produced a sort of exquisite corpse to which President Obama added the most recent touch.  I have remained deeply afraid for President Obama but I have also been delivered from what had been a forty year political slumber.

Not long ago my sister expressed her outrage at what she perceived as President Obama’s betrayal of campaign promises.  He had cozied up to Wall Street’s powerful elites, I offered a more sober perspective.  I suggest that President Obama’s presence in office alone might have more lasting and transformative effects than many (perhaps all) the policies he pursues.  It will be difficult to look upon the Office of the President in the same way now that an African American has occupied that hallowed spot.  Though I know very little about President Lincoln’s tenure in office, the impression of a self-educated man capable of writing beautiful and lyric words (the Gettysburg Address) is etched into my political character.

I am dimly aware that President Obama helped illumine the inner landscape of my childhood losses.  If projection and introjection were at play, the result was helpful.  But there is an unconscious domain to my relationship with this man I call President.  I am a Cuban-American born on US soil.  I have lived on that hyphen with a measure of uncertainty about where I fit in to the fabric of American society.  I suspect that President Obama receives my projections about the immigrant experience.  Early in his candidacy, conversations about whether or not he was black enough combined with the vehement attacks upon him for attending Rev. Jeremiah Wrights church struck deep chords in me about what it means to succeed in White-Anglo culture and the price I’ve paid for blending in.  But I have also marveled at the President’s capacity to reject the white majorities definition of him.  His example empowers me to be less concerned with what others might think about a passionate, expressive, festive Cuban spirit that has always been an irrepressible part of me.

Whatever negative aspects of projection and introjection that have been aroused by my relationship with President Obama remain unconscious.  I suspect my desire to have a deliverer, a king in the mold of the ancient Israelites is one complex that has been aroused but there are likely many more.  I am hopeful that projection and introjection may recede with time and that in its place will emerge a mature political self. That political self may be better equipped to take full advantage of the psychological impact that leaders exert while avoiding the dangers that anyone who attempts to escape from freedom.

Take a moment to examine your own psychological relationship with Obama or any other political figure.  We are interested in hearing from you about the psychological dance you’ve had with political leaders.

Len Cruz, MD (First appeared at www/ashevillejungcenter.org/blog  on August 17, 2010)

President Barack Obama: A Case Study of Opposites and Transcendence

Dr. Tom Singer will be one of the presenters for the conference being presented by the Asheville Jung Center titled, Symbols and Individuation in Global Politics: The Case of Barack Obama

I recently posted a blog on the subject of the transcendent function and the notion that figures like Obama carry that function and various cultural complexes for the wider culture.  I am persuaded by the most recent cover of Newsweek, an American news magazine, that Dr. Singer is more right than wrong.  Below is the text of what appears on the cover:

THE MAKING OF A

TERRORIST-CODDLING

WARMONGERING

WALLSTREET-LOVING

SOCIALISTIC

GODLESS

MUSLIM

PRESIDENT*

*who isn’t actually any of these things

The dichotomized and clearly opposing characterizations of Obama underscores Tom Singer’s deep insights and dispels any remaining doubt I have about the validity of his construct.  The timing of that Newsweek cover, the week before our conference, reminds me of the synchronicity of things.  The fact that this president can be so deeply misunderstood and so confusedly characterized alarms me.

Why alarm?  I remain convinced that individuation is one of the most important tasks to which a person can apply herself or himself.  The more individuated person will be capable of dynamically holding tensions such as those depicted on the cover of Newsweek.  The process of individuation improves the likelihood that there will be persons who recognize that from the depths of their unconscious there arise life affirming, inspiring, seemingly charmed currents but there also arise sinister, destructive, rejected forces.  These darker, unconscious forces often make themselves known through their projection upon others.

So it should alarm us that the current president is such a figure who exposes the individual and collective capacity for projection.  Newsweek has drawn fire for this cover (FOX News).

http://video.foxnews.com/v/4326868/critics-cry-foul-over-newsweek-cover/?playlist_id=86858

Of all things, FOX News, a news syndicate that has spared no opportunity to exploit the inflammatory rhetoric to oppose Obama, criticizes Newsweek for relying on such extreme and sensational epithets to sell magazines.  If FOX News had chosen to confront its own sensationalism, I would be more encouraged, but instead, it assailed Newsweek and the author for employing the same tactics it uses.  (Does anyone detect a bit of PROJECTION?)

There is less danger for the public to be overtaken, deceived, or led astray by projections when persons get on with the business of their own individuation.  To that end, Analytical Psychology has something to offer.  The focus of Analytical Psychology is likely to be the individual and yet, the subject of Analytical Psychology will also remain the collective, that  infinitely larger field with which the individual’s unconscious resonates and sometimes discords.  The harmonics between individual and collective are the roots of the notes that every single person is given to sing.

Mr. Obama appears to have a near endless capacity to inflame such opposing polarities (see the actual cover at  http://www.politico.com/static/PPM170_100827_domestic.html)  InPsychology and Alchemy (1955) and Mysterium Conjunctionis (1956) Jung recognized that the substratum of the alchemist’s efforts was the archetypal union of opposites by means of integrating opposing polarities.

I am more eager than before for the September 10, 2010 conference where these themes will be explored.  Registration is still open at

http://ashevillejungcenter.org/symbols-individuation-global-politics-case-of-barack-obama-registration/

Len Cruz, MD

Wilderness of Childhood

(1st Published @ www.ashevillejungcenter.org/blog/ )

I tore an essay by Michael Chabon out of the July 31, 2009 issue of The Week magazine nearly a year ago and retrieved it from a stack of magazines early this morning.  The essay first appeared in the New York Review of Books http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2009/jul/16/manhood-for-amateurs-the-wilderness-of-childhood/ under the title “Manhood for Amateurs: The Wilderness of Childhood”.  Chabon begins by describing the joy and wonder of explorations in the Wilderness of Childhood.  For some of us it was a real wilderness of varying degrees of tameness.  For me, it sometimes consisted of nothing more than riding my bicycle eight to ten miles to South Miami where my brother and I fished for gar along the banks of canals and hooked each other as often as the stolid fish. In the Wilderness of my youth, development hadn’t pushed large tracts of strawberries or sugar cane deeper into the Everglades.  

The Wilderness of a child is devoid of adults.  Children’s writers understand this.  There is a realm of childhood wherein adults have been expelled.  Children’s writers like C.S. Lewis, Charles Schultz, and Paul Pullman understand.  Apart from the watchful and too often stultifying view of adults a child encounters the Wilderness in which she engages the adventure of her life.

Contemporary urban or suburban, American children may miss the joy of  Wilderness.  They are victims of our collective fears of abductions, preventable injuries, drug abuse, and more.  Parents are more determined than ever to provide children every available opportunity to thrive, learn, and excel.  Given such vigilant attention, there is little room left for Wilderness.  The Wilderness of childhood hasn’t been civilized as much as it's been strained of nearly all traces of danger and unpredictability.  

According to Chabon, our children have become “...cult objects to us, to precious to be risked. At the same time, they have become fetishes, the objects of an unhealthy and diseased fixation.  And once something is fetishized, capitalism steps in and finds a way to sell it.”

Chabon wonders about the impact of closing down the Wilderness upon children's imagination.  Perhaps the answer is glimpsed when we see children dining with their parents at the Rain Forest Cafe or visiting Disney’s Animal Kingdom.  Those of us who never let our children out of our site, who schedule our children’s activities, who strive to enrich them, may unwittingly be extinguishing the sparks of adventure that can later ignite into flames of creative inspiration.  From Wilderness beginnings where dangers lurked in the shadows behind tree trunks and sticks became rifles come novels, films, inventions, and new business ventures.  

Jung’s Red Book created a stir among Jungians.  His inner explorations and his artistry are a torrent of illumination.  Below are two paragraphs from Frank McLynn’s book Carl Gustav Jung (St. Martin’s Press).

“At around the age of four Jung developed a morbid fascination with death and corpses: he was fascinated by the dead body of a four-year-old boy found near the Rhine Falls and, clearly -- Jungians would say -- at the unconscious level, wished he was that boy. Accident proneness was much in evidence. Firstly he fell downstairs, then he fell against the leg of a stove, scarring himself so badly that the wound was still visible in his senior year at Gymnasium. It is a familiar idea that accident-prone children tend to have problems with their mother and 'self-destruct' because of rage against the nurturer who has failed them. The preoccupation with the corpses also fits the scenario of rage against the mother.

"More serious than the falls was an accident on the Rhine bridge at Neuhausen when the child Carl Gustav had one leg under the railing and was about to slip through when the maid caught him. Jung himself attributed these untoward events to an unconscious suicidal urge or a kind of fatal resistance to life in this world. But while still alive and an international figure he explained his `corpse preoccupation' as simply a means of trying to accommodate to the idea of death."

This is not a childhood without a measure of Wilderness. And here are two more from the first chapter of McLynn’s book.

“It was just before he went to school that he had one of the most significant dreams of his life; although Jung claimed this occurred when he was aged three or four, clinical evidence points to five or six as the more likely time.

"In the dream Jung was in a meadow near Laufen castle and discovered an underground passageway. He descended and in a subterranean chamber found a kind of altar or king's throne on which stood what he thought at first was a tree trunk, some twelve to fifteen feet high and about two feet thick. The object was made of skin and naked flesh, with a rounded head and a single eye on the very top of the head. Later he would recognize the object as a ritual phallus. He was awoken by his mother's voice, as it were from outside, crying out, `That is the maneater!'”

Jung is not accompanied by adults on this subterranean adventure, and, perhaps this prepared him for the solitary explorations he would undertake in later years.   His mothers voice, an adult voice, retrieves him from the adventure.  

Let yourself recall the Wilderness realms of your own childhood, and if you can bring yourself to do so, release a child to have an encounter with their wilderness.  We can scarcely predict where this leads. Chabon closes his essay this way:

“Art is  form of exploration, of sailing off into the unknown alone, heading for those unmarked places on the map.  If children are not permitted--not taught--to be adventurers and explorers as children, what will become of the world of adventure, of stories, of literature itself?”

Projections and Introjections in Global Politics: Obama, da Silva, Merkel, Sarkozy, and Mandela

Projections and Introjections in Global Politics: 

Obama, da Silva, Merkel, Sarkozy, and Mandela

(1st Published @ www.ashevillejungcenter.org/blog/ )

But the people refused to listen to Samuel. "No!" they said. "We want a king over us. Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles." 1 Samuel 8:19-20

In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes. Judges 17:6

The constellation of forces that are activated between members of society and their leaders is among the topics being explored in “Symbols and Individuation in Global Politics: The Case of Barack Obama” on September 10, 2010.  This blog entry explores one portion of that realm involving projection and introjection.   It suggests some ideas for how any citizen might engage his/her leaders as part of their individuation process.  

I offer a simple definition of terms.  Introjection is a maneuver characterized by the unexamined incorporation of traits of another.  Individuals with weak ego boundaries are more prone to use introjection as a defense mechanism.

Projection might be considered its antithesis in that one’s own unconscious content is projected outward upon another.  What is projected is then encountered as if it actually belonged to the other to begin with.  It is a fundamental mechanism by which we remain uniformed about ourselves.  A word of caution is in order. 

The recent discovery of mirror neurons in primates including humans should give us pause to cast all projection and introjection into some pathologic basket.  These neurons are present in the motor cortex and are activated when we observe someone executing an act.  It is as if our own motor strip is carrying out the act we observe, a sort of rehearsal.  So, neurobiological underpinning of projection and introjection continue to provide rich territory for further understanding.  

Political figures who are charismatic and able to resonate with individual & cultural complexes are likely to activate processes of projection and introjection in the individual.  These forces may illuminate unconscious material and facilitate its integration into the personality.  But it is also possible that political figures may become targets of our projections and also possible that we might introject aspects of these figures into our personalities without having authentic encounters with the Self.

President Obama’s ability to galvanize the electorate and to generate widespread participation was unprecedented.  There remains some doubt about the claims that the vast majority of Obama’s contributors made small donations (under $200) but the breadth of participation that he either engendered or “appeared” to engender is notable.   Individuals were lifted up during the campaign and a sense of unity among people of different backgrounds and even across national borders was kindled.  Such broadly appealing (or irritating) leaders provide fertile ground for projection and introjection to take root.  

Ask yourself what sort of relationship you developed with Obama during the period leading up to his election.  Consider what sort of relationship you have with other leaders.  How did the rise of President Lula da Silva, a union leader with limited formal education  engage your projected hopes and/or fears?  What role did introjection have in celebrating the indomitable and noble qualities displayed by President Mandela?  How does President Sarkozy’s noble Hungarian family roots or his marriage to Carla Bruni contribute to his wide appeal?  (He might a target for projections of royalty with a common touch.)  Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi affords another powerful example of how leaders may receive our projections and introjections.  Does Berlusconi’s alleged ties to organized crime and his triumphs in several prosecutions tap our own desire to be outside the law?  And then there is the fascinating example provided by Chancellor Angel Merkel, a scientist whose family enjoyed unusual freedom of travel between East and West Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall.  How has her own personal capacity to unify opposites within herself captivated the German people who were struggling to unify East and West?  When Chancellor Merkel resisted EU pressure during the sovereign debt crisis what feelings toward the German people were provoked in your psyche?  

In asking those questions I am inviting each of us to explore how leaders become lightning rods for our own psychological process.  I was a youngster when President Kennedy was stuck down by an assassin’s bullet and watched in horror the reports of Dr. Martin Luther King’s murder.  Within two months I endured the defeat of seeing Senator Robert Kennedy gunned down.  President Obama was the first political figure to heal those wounds and I engaged more than I had ever engaged.  I allowed myself to hope and in the course of those months I remembered the painful wounds I’d suffered at a tender age.  Loss of several idealized objects produced a sort of exquisite corpse to which President Obama added the most recent touch.  I have remained deeply afraid for President Obama but I have also been delivered from what had been a forty year political slumber.

Not long ago my sister expressed her outrage at what she perceived as President Obama’s betrayal of campaign promises.  He had cozied up to Wall Street’s powerful elites, I offered a more sober perspective.  I suggest that President Obama’s presence in office alone might have more lasting and transformative effects than many (perhaps all) the policies he pursues.  It will be difficult to look upon the Office of the President in the same way now that an African American has occupied that hallowed spot.  Though I know very little about President Lincoln’s tenure in office, the impression of a self-educated man capable of writing beautiful and lyric words (the Gettysburg Address) is etched into my political character.  

I am dimly aware that President Obama helped illumine the inner landscape of my childhood losses.  If projection and introjection were at play, the result was helpful.  But there is an unconscious domain to my relationship with this man I call President.  I am a Cuban-American born on US soil.  I have lived on that hyphen with a measure of uncertainty about where I fit in to the fabric of American society.  I suspect that President Obama receives my projections about the immigrant experience.  Early in his candidacy, conversations about whether or not he was black enough combined with the vehement attacks upon him for attending Rev. Jeremiah Wrights church struck deep chords in me about what it means to succeed in White-Anglo culture and the price I’ve paid for blending in.  But I have also marveled at the President’s capacity to reject the white majorities definition of him.  His example empowers me to be less concerned with what others might think about a passionate, expressive, festive Cuban spirit that has always been an irrepressible part of me.  

Whatever negative aspects of projection and introjection that have been aroused by my relationship with President Obama remain unconscious.  I suspect my desire to have a deliverer, a king in the mold of the ancient Israelites is one complex that has been aroused but there are likely many more.  I am hopeful that projection and introjection may recede with time and that in its place will emerge a mature political self. That political self may be better equipped to take full advantage of the psychological impact that leaders exert while avoiding the dangers that anyone who attempts to escape from freedom.  

Take a moment to examine your own psychological relationship with Obama or any other political figure.  We are interested in hearing from you about the psychological dance you’ve had with political leaders.  

Len Cruz, MD, ME

Pathways to the Personal & Collective

(1st published @ www.ashevillejungcenter.org/blog/ )

Recent discussion about the movie AVATAR conducted in an online forum led me to the following thoughts.  What other films, pieces of literature, poetry, paintings or sculpture, or music that others have encountered that touched a plucked a chord in you while also making a "collective" chord vibrate?  For example, the progression in "Adagio for Strings" by Samuel Barber evokes that effect. http://www.amazon.com/Leonard-Bernstein-Conducts-Barber-Schuman/dp/B0000CD5GJ/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1273284763&sr=1-5 

Another is "Herman Melville" by W H Auden. The first four lines stand alone for me in producing the effect.


Towards the end he sailed into an extraordinary mildness,
And anchored in his home and reached his wife
And rode within the harbour of her hand,
And went across each morning to an office
As though his occupation were another island.

Goodness existed: that was the new knowledge
His terror had to blow itself quite out
To let him see it; but it was the gale had blown him
Past the Cape Horn of sensible success
Which cries: 'This rock is Eden. Shipwreck here.'

But deafened him with thunder and confused with lightning:
-- The maniac hero hunting like a jewel
The rare ambiguous monster that had maimed his sex,
Hatred for hatred ending in a scream,
The unexplained survivor breaking off the nightmare --
All that was intricate and false; the truth was simple.

Evil is unspectacular and always human,
And shares our bed and eats at our own table,
And we are introduced to Goodness every day,
Even in drawing-rooms among a crowd of faults;
He has a name like Billy and is almost perfect
But wears a stammer like a decoration:
And every time they meet the same thing has to happen;
It is the Evil that is helpless like a lover
And has to pick a quarrel and succeeds,
And both are openly destroyed before our eyes.

For now he was awake and knew
No one is ever spared except in dreams;
But there was something else the nightmare had distorted --
Even the punishment was human and a form of love:
The howling storm had been his father's presence
And all the time he had been carried on his father's breast.

Who now had set him gently down and left him.
He stood upon the narrow balcony and listened:
And all the stars above him sang as in his childhood
'All, all is vanity,' but it was not the same;


For now the words descended like the calm of mountains --
-- Nathaniel had been shy because his love was selfish --
But now he cried in exultation and surrender
'The Godhead is broken like bread. We are the pieces.'

And sat down at his desk and wrote a story.

_______________________

Are there works that succeed at evoking a strong effect at the personal level while also opening you to the collective realm?  If so, share them (possibly with a hyperlink that allows others to enjoy the uplifting or expansive effect you've had.    

Special Theory of Relativity for Psychotherapy

Special Theory of Relativity for Psychotherapy

Years ago, I taught courses in psychotherapy and supervised residents in training and psychology interns.  I drew some conclusions that coalesced into a sort of Special Relativity of Psychotherapy.  The recent excerpt from Dr. Stein’s Individuation about first visits from a Jungian perspective got me thinking about how Einstein’s theory pertains to the work of therapy.

In 1905, Einstein “On the Electro dynamics of Moving Bodies” described that the frame of reference of an observer determines what is observed.  For example, an observer moving at a speed close to the speed of light will encounter drastic effects upon their perception of objects in different inertial frames.  Your inertial frame governs what you observe.  This is strikingly like psychotherapy.  To the Freudian and Neo-Freudian analyst, the analysis of resistance and will help expose libidinal impulses that have been obstructed by conflicts with a strict super-ego resulting in neurotic structures employed by the ego.  A Self-psychologist may seek to illuminate the connection between early relationships (and their representation as internal structures of introjects, object representations, self-object representations, etc).  The Cognitive-Behaviorally oriented therapist will apply herself to identifying negative, unproductive cognitive schemas that contribute to symptoms.  It begins to appear that when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.  I could go on with other examples.  One thing I concluded about schools of psychotherapy is that like Einstein’s inertial frames of reference, they determine what a therapist will observe.  (No problem provided we understand that is the nature of our discursive thinking is always constrained by our frame of reference).  

Another thing I concluded when teaching psychotherapy was that any model of therapy helps the therapist feel secured and anchored.  The result is often that the therapist can provide a non-anxious presence to the client.  In so far as the relationship is the critical element of healing in therapy, a non-anxious therapist allows the client to explore their interior life with less contamination.  In this regard, almost any philosophic stance will do.  Acknowledging this generic feature of therapy can help therapist in training (and all of us are truly therapist in training) to embrace the value of being well schooled in at least one frame of reference about how therapy ought to be conducted.  

Not all schools of psychotherapy are created equal.  In addition, the therapeutic approach that proves well-suited to one person may be ill-suited to another.  Psychotherapy is not an exact science; it is nothing like testing for antibiotic sensitivity or resistance with acute infections.  Instead, a therapist is guided by some amalgam of evidenced based science and deep intuition.  An excessive reliance on either often proves detrimental to a client.  

There is a natural inclination toward being purist in public while being far less dogmatic, and much more adaptable in our consulting room.  This is reminiscent of the difference between those poets who can write metered or rhyming verse who choose to compose free verse and those who cloak themselves in the mantel of vers libre simply because they have neither the gifts or discipline to cultivate metered or rhymed verse.  We suspect one another of being less dogmatic behind closed doors.  And why shouldn’t we; we know what we do?  

While we are striving to maintain a suitable stance with clients it is our duty to notice when we deviate.  We strive to remain alert to those deviations, to be alert for those moments when our process adversely influences the work of the client (and vice versa).  But we are never impeccable.  Instead, we endlessly seek to remove ourselves in service of the other.  

In the process of monitoring our process and its potential impact upon the other we honor Einstein’s discoveries in our own way.  We begin by reconciling ourselves to the fact that we cannot extricate ourselves from some frame of reference.  We can acknowledge that any system of ideas supports the illusion of certainty and this, it turns our, fosters in us a non-anxious presence.  We end up focusing less on defending dogma and more on present moment, mutual discernment.  We admit that in the midst of our striving toward a relatively pure theoretical stance we encounter detours; we allow others to know that the mystery of therapy can never be circumscribed by a theory, no matter how sound that theory appears.  

Ask yourself the following three questions.

1. How would I articulate my personal theoretical/philosophic stance about the work I do with clients?
2. Where do I see evidence that having a stance helps me relax enough to really be with my clients?
3. When I depart from my theoretical/philosophical stance, what causes can I recognize?

I have found the following to be true about the last question.  Sometimes, my deviations from a coherent stance occurs because I am slothful, I do not always maintain highest degree of vigilance when conducting therapy.  Mostly, these tend to be minor deviations, worthy of note but hardly exploitive or destructive.  Sometimes, I am visited by my own complexes that insert themselves in the process.  This is fertile ground for me and especially fertile ground for my client when I attend to it.  Sometimes, the client’s process is so intense that it warps the fabric of our relationship like a massive object warps the space-time continuum.  I may deviate because there seems to be no recourse for the moment but these are the most fertile realms of exploration.   

As I seek to balance all these forces I am reminded of the closing lines of Tennyson’s poem “Ulysses” 

Ulysses 

Tennyson 

...Tis not too late to seek a newer world. 

Push off, and sitting well in order smite 

The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds 

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths 

Of all the western stars, until I die. 

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: 

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, 

And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. 

Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’ 

We are not now that strength which in old days 

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; 

One equal temper of heroic hearts, 

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will 

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.