Community and Social Media

What sort of community does social media engender?  Deriving from a very transient media that prizes immediacy over deliberation, the sense of community that social media produces is large on appearance but short on substance.  Perhaps this helps explain how mobs of individuals can suddenly band together as if they are a single organism without any real, substantive intention.  

The same superficial sense of community that can be ignited in a flash mob can also easily be exploited by politicians, disaffected groups, terrorist enterprises, and corporations seeking to manufacture tastes among consumers.  

If the immediacy and speed with which community can form in the internet age is the persona, then perhaps  violent, mindless collective actions like those displayed by a mobs, the Tea Party activists, terrorists, or youngsters attending a rave are shadow aspects of communities in the internet age.This discussion stirred some thoughts concerning the sort of community that social media engenders.  Deriving from a very transient media that prizes immediacy over deliberation, the sense of community that social media produces is large on appearance but short on substance.  Perhaps this helps explain how mobs of individuals can suddenly band together as if they are a single organism without any real, substantive intention.  

The same superficial sense of community that can be ignited in a flash mob can also easily be exploited by politicians, disaffected groups, terrorist enterprises, and corporations seeking to manufacture tastes among consumers.  

If the immediacy and speed with which community can form in the internet age is the persona, then perhaps  violent, mindless collective actions like those displayed by a mobs, the Tea Party activists, terrorists, or youngsters attending a rave are shadow aspects of communities in the internet age.

CROESUS SYNDROME: The Shadow in Psychotherapy

CROESUS SYNDROME: The Shadow in Psychotherapy
What, if anything, can the psychoanalyst or psychotherapist do to contend with the shadow aspects of their professional persona?   This is by no means a universal concern among psychotherapists for several reasons.  Certainly there are many persons practicing forms of psychotherapy that do not regard the unconscious as their concern at all.  Behavioral, cognitive, and solutions-oriented therapies, to name a few, have no need of the unconscious.  I am reminded of one of my supervisors in residency who attempted to encourage me to face facts squarely about a certain repeated conflict I was experiencing.

He pointed out:
"It's entirely up to you whether or not you choose to ignore reality;  the question  is, will reality ignore you?".

Likewise, modern therapies that emphasize ego adaptation are free to ignore the unconscious; the question remains; however, will the unconscious ignore the therapy?

A psychotherapist in training is more likely to remain in contact with their unconscious.  Formal supervision, whether or not it intends to examine the psychotherapist's unconscious, may provide a measure of scrutiny to the psychotherapist's unconscious process.  Ideally, supervision imparts to the psychotherapist a praxis and a habit for such examination.   This may then develop into a continuing process of self-examination that will serve both therapist and clients in the future.reality this is where reality frequently diverge from the ideal objectives of training.
There are no formal requirements that the psychotherapist remain in supervision.  Instead, there is a tacit implication that a figure has arisen in the psychotherapist whose function becomes supervisor in abstentia.  It seems highly unlikely that if this figure ever really coalesced that it will be preserved.  There are many reasons why such an interior figure is likely to atrophy or die.   Chief among the reasons for this figure either never fully developing or atrophying is what I shall call the Croesus Syndrome.



Croesus was King of Lyda from 560 BC to 547 BC until his defeat by the Persians.  He is credited with being the first to introduce gold coinage of a standard weight and purity.  His wealth and power was vast and before setting out on his campaign against Cyrus of Persia, he consulted the Delphic Oracle.

Consulting the Oracle by John William Waterhouse

The message provided by the Oracle took it's usual cryptic form.  Croesus was told that if he campaigned against Cyrus of Persia a great empire would fall and he was further advised to align himself with the most powerful Greek state.  He struck alliances with Sparta among others and set off.  As was the custom, Croesus disbanded his army when winter arrived.  Cyrus did not and he attacked Croesus in Sardis.  Croesus then understood the great empire that the oracle foretold would be destroyed was his own empire.  Such is often the fate of the psychotherapist who endeavors to cultivate an interior figure that serve as supervisor in abstentia.




Like Croesus, that psychotherapist seeks the oracle's message but the psychotherapist's dreams, associations, and active imagination yield their mysteries in cryptic form.  And also like Croesus, the psychotherapist suffers a predictable inclination toward interpreting his or her unconscious material in accord with their conscious, more acceptable understanding.  Notice that the psychotherapist's shadow need not be included in this process.  In fact, the shadow elements of the psychotherapist will further resemble Croesus's tale in that its unacknowledged state may be credited with the failures of the campaign, the psychotherapy or psychoanalysis itself.

CHALLENGE
I have some ideas of what may be done about this predicament but I am interested in knowing what other therapists think about this dilemma and how others endeavor to address it.

But I encourage you to explore the idea for yourself.

Len Cruz, MD

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

Remembering, Repeating, Working-Through: Working with the Shadow

“Everyone carries a shadow”, according to Jung, “and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is."
Being an irrational realm, the Shadow is prone to being projected so that our own inferiority ends up appearing to us as a deficiency in the other.  "The projection-making factor (the Shadow archetype) then has a free hand and can realize its object--if it has one--or bring about some other situation characteristic of its power."
In dealing with Shadow, three phases of our engagement can be seen.  In the first phase, a person is either unaware or so dimly aware that the only evidence that can be detected consists of the projected contents.  These are reflected back to a person in the form of other’s deficiencies.  Another phase consists of revealing of Shadow in its true form, that is, as disowned, unacceptable aspects of the Self.  This is a phase of recovery of projections.  An individual begins to be emancipated from the  enslavement to Shadow.  In the course of this phase the bondage imposed upon others by the projected contents is diminished.  We might compare this phase to the aroma that wafts through the air, it does not sate the appetite but may arouse the appetite for the actual victuals.  Finally, there is a phase that involves integrating Shadow into the personality. Here Shadow becomes integrated into the whole Self.  There is no longer a need to stow The Secret Sharer of our unconscious below deck.
In Freud’s essay, “Remembering, Repeating, and Working Through” he offers relevant insights that can be adapted to the work with the Shadow.  In order to adapt Freud’s ideas you must overlook how his thoughts are encased in his theories of psychosexual development.  Patients, according to Freud, begin by repeating.  “As long as the patient is in treatment he cannot escape from his compulsion to repeat and in the end we understand this is his way of remembering.”
“...the patient yields to the compulsion to repeat, which now replaces the impulsion to remember.”  Substitute projection of Shadow for repeating in Freud's essay.  Where you see Freud discussing remembering replace it with the notion of recognizing and recovering the project Shadow elements.  Finally, Freud credits the handling of transference as the main instrument for converting a patient’s compulsion to repeat into a motive to remember.  “One must allow the patient time to become more conversant with this resistance (to remembering) with which he has now become acquainted, and work through it.”
What striking similarities exist between Freud’s evolving psychoanalytic techniques and the work with the Shadow proposed by Analytical Psychology.  Both render the unconscious realm as pressing itself upon life in the form of either repetition (Freud) or projection (Jung).  Both assert a critical role for remembering (Freud) and becoming conscious (Jung).  And the notion of working-through (Freud) and integration (Jung) seem to be one in the same.  Both Freud and Jung were pointing toward a cauldron of unconscious, instinctive, irrational psychological stuff that plays out to the detriment of all concerned when it remains unconscious and can be incorporated and dealt with through therapy.
Ask yourself what means you have found to work with Shadow.  How do you foster the ability to move from projecting (and repeating to do so) to recovering projections?  How do you encourage the arduous task of helping clients make the journey from repeating to remembering, from  projecting and recovering a projection?  And finally, what have you found helpful with regard to working-through (or integration of Shadow)?
References
Jung, C.G. (1938). "Psychology and Religion." In CW 11: Psychology and Religion: West and East. P.131
Jung, C.G. (1951). "Phenomenology of the Self" In The Portable Jung. P.147
See http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/220 for a text of "The Secret Sharer" by Joseph Conrad.
See http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/classes/201/articles/1914FreudRemembering.pdf for a copy of the essay "Remembering. Repeating and Working-Through:

Len Cruz, MD