Home and Archteype: A Book Review of "At Home in the World"

Home and Archetype: A Review of “At Home in the World”

When John Hill performed the role of Father Victor White in  The  Jung-White Letters, he seemed possessed by the spirit of the man.  In John Hill’s recent publication,  At Home in the World: Sounds and Symmetries of Belonging, leaves me wondering if he has now been possessed by an entire cloud of witnesses comprised of Irish poets spanning centuries.  There is a lyrical quality that pervades the book and the publisher, Spring Journal Books, has done a marvelous job with the layout, cover design, the references, and every detail of the book.  Perhaps John Hill pulled his inspiration from a Fairy fort but the result is magical.

At Home in the World

As the February 4th conference Architecture of the Soul:  The Inner & Outer Structures of C G Jung, (with Murray Stein & Andreas Jung) approaches, this is a timely read.  Hill’s scholarship is systematic and rigorous, but the book is replete with powerful and evocative language.  Hill gently weaves into the text many others who have shaped and influenced him like Paul Ricouer, Ernst Cassirer, along with one of my favorite fiction writers, Jhumpa Lahiri.  The thesis of his book may appear self-evident but I could not have imagined the depth and breadth of material I found in this book.


John Hill has been practicing Jungian Psychoanalysis for forty years and it shows.  He has been devoted to matters of the spirit even longer.  The reader will enjoy the subtle, perceptive way Hill incorporates clinical material from client’s dreams and narratives.  It is refreshing to encounter a writer who also lays himself bare to the reader without crossing the line into self-indulgence that can easily become a spectacle.   This is an analyst who comprehends that self-disclosure, even within the pages of a book, can be a powerful tool and unwieldy tool.
Modernity has ushered in unprecedented opportunities for homeowners to furnish their in a cohesive style sold as a package.  Some furniture retailers make it easy to avoid making mistake by standardizing entire groupings of furnishings.  IKEA is not unique in its ability to commoditize home furnishings and to impart a sense to its customers that a unique look can be achieved on a budget.  The sheer volume and global reach of an IKEA testifies to the inclination to make a home unique through elements that are in fact standardized.  Such a home, according to Hill, “….is without a soul.”

In contrast, we will have the opportunity coming up on February 4th to participate in a conference whose outer, visible subject is

The House of Jung

The Home of C. G. Jung.  After reading Hill’s, At Home in the World: Sounds and Symmetries of Belonging, I suspect the upcoming conference presented through Asheville Jung Center will end up being about our own magnum opus, our home.  We each approach this differently, just as we each approach the magnum opus of our individuation differently.  For some, the reliance on a standard assortment of furnishings provides a personal space that avoid too much personal disclosure but also impedes personal discovery.  For others, the home provides a platform of self-expression.  There are homes I have entered where I could sense the disconnection between the soul of its inhabitants and the structure itself.  There are limitless permutations for combining the inner dimensions of our being and the outer structure of our home.  And according to John Hill, “When a home becomes a mere product, dissociated from one’s own personal and collective history, it is probably in danger of losing its soul.” (pg11)
Some individuals delight in assembling elements into a home.  They strive for that ineluctable symmetry between the inner call of the soul and the outer manifestation of their home.  When we speak of homemaking as a function of managing the household we miss the much deeper connection between the demands of keeping things going in a family and the making of a home.   Hill notes, “We live in a world that offers us two different ways of seeing it — one functional and the other symbolic.”  (pg47)  It seems there as many different modus operandi for fashioning a home as there are styles of composition, materials  and technique for the artist.

Good teachers like John Hill convey complex subjects in clearly understandable ways.  The five or six pages on transference provide a good illustration and despite their conciseness Hill does not sacrifice the rich, evocative quality of his prose.

Images alone do not necessarily address key psychological issues or cross the great divide between Thou and I … (pg112)

Often in the deep constellations of transference and countertransference, the client finds the opportunities to relive much of the past.  …  The analyst must realize that he cannot indulge in the fantasy of providing a home for all those who need one. (pg113)



I live on the hyphen as a Cuban-American.  My soul has one foot firmly planted in the United States of America where I was born while the other foot, the one possessed of dreams of return to an island I have never known, has nowhere to step.  Countless others share my experience of life on the hyphen. The nations that bookend their hyphen do not separate us nearly as much as the hyphen unites us.  We who are hyphenated are a diaspora in our own right.  We are caught between two homes the one we left and the one where we dwell.  But we are all likely to find ourselves somewhere along the continuum of a home we have known, a home we know now, and a home that awaits us.

Salmon Rushdie writes that, “Exile is a dream of a glorious return.”  Like Odysseus, we  may find ourselves in a seemingly endless pursuit of a return home.  John Hill reveals to us some of the personal details of his own life away from his native Ireland without being mawkish.  At Home in the World would be wonderful preparation for the upcoming conference Architecture of the Soul:  The Inner & Outer Structures of CG Jung, (with Murray Stein & Andreas Jung).  It will also be a great resource for anyone interested in the psychological implications and underpinnings of home from a Jungian perspective.

John Hill gave a gifted performance of Father Victor White in The Jung White Letters  that moved me to examine the chords that resonated through Jung’s relationship with Sigmund Freud and later Father White.  It also deeply moved me to consider what chords resonate through my relationships with men in my life.  Now At Home in the World has moved me to examine from a fresh perspective my relationship to place.  It has stirred a renewed interest in exploring the spaces and structures, past, present, and future that are called home in my life.  Hill’s last paragraph reads like a closing hymn in prose and here he reveals a dream that arrived as he brought the book to completion.

… All at once the dream flashed across my mind, and I “knew” what it was trying to say.
…The house was my book on home.  The brickwork symbolized the thoughts and ideas of others who had influenced me, and contributed to its making.  The rough-hewn stones indicated that the work was connected with my identity.
… I have built the house from the materials of the earth.  It is a house that contains, but it is also open to the world and to the spirit.  Hopefully it can be an object of delight and contemplation, not just for me, but also for all who have crossed its threshold, so that you, dear reader, may appreciate your own home in new and creative ways.

Invitation
Take a moment to consider the word “home”.  Let your imagination run free and let yourself be transported to homes you have occupied, homes you have wished to occupy, homes you have left, homes you have awaiting you in the future.  Consider what home means in your interior life and notice where the interior experience or awareness of home is in sync with the structure you call home and where the two seem out of sync. Please consider posting a comment about “home” so that we might open the doors and let one another peak in.

Len Cruz, MD

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

Architecture of the Soul: Inner & Outer Structures of C. G. Jung

On February 4, 2011, Dr. Murray Stein will present a conference together with Andreas Jung, in collaboration with the Asheville Jung Center titled “Architecture of the Soul: Inner and Outer Structures of C. G. Jung”. Andreas Jung is an architect whose father and great uncle were also architects.  He is a graduate of Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETHZ) and currently lives in the home on Seestrasse.

C. G. Jung was intimately involved in the design of this home and attended to such things as the cladding upon the walls that provided deeply niched windows and lovely inset glass cabinets in the dining room.  Andreas Jung authors two very personal chapters and serves as the co-editor of the book.

Arthur Rüegg, a professor of architecture at ETHZ, opens one of the chapter titled “Living in a Museum?” with the following rendering:

The house of Carl Gustav Jung is without a doubt the physical expression of a great mind.

In 1906, while still “an impecunious assistant medical director at the Burghölzi mental home in Zürich”, Jung wrote to his cousin, architect Ernst Fietcher, of his plans “… to build a house someday, in the country near Zürich, on the lake”.  It was the untimely death of Emma Jung’s father that allowed the couple to build the home.   The Jungs worked closely with the architect and landscape architects on the design. 

Three generations of Jung’s have lived in this home that is now owned by a foundation (Stiftung C. G. Jung Küsnacht).  Two of those generations of inhabitants were “…families who could read these traces and respectfully carry on the tradition.” (p 90). The history of the house and it’s renovations is crisply and artfully presented.

What emerges from the pages of  The House of C. G. Jung is a portrait of an intentional man who demonstrated an uncanny ability to move between the worlds of the mythopoetic interior life and the tangible, concrete realms.  It should be no surprise that the man who constructed the Tower at Bollingen would have built a home worthy of memorializing.   Jung gave attention to details such as wall hangings, tile selection and placement of the rooms where he conducted analysis so as not to displace Emma from the library and interfere with her work.

The chapter “Living in a museum?” reads like a patient’s anamnesis as it reviews the homes history and developmental influences.  The reader is reminded that homes, like organic things, change and adapt to their circumstances and their inhabitants.  Despite several major renovations through the last century, the respect and regard for the original home was preserved.  The home is a testament to what concentrated self-examination and openness to the individuation process can produce.  It is the biography of a house that is no less impressive for what it reveals or the man who built it.

Architecture and psychology are first cousins.  Consider a few quotes assembled from several renown architects:

“Space and light and order.  Those are the things that men need just as much as they need bread or a place to sleep.”  Le  Corbusier

“The home should be the treasure chest of living.”  Le Corbusier

“Buildings, too, are children of Earth and Sun.”  Frank Lloyd Wright

“Form follow function – that has been misunderstood.  Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union.”  Frank Lloyd Wright

“Freedom is from within.” Frank Lloyd  Wright

“The heart is the chief feature of a functioning mind.” Frank Lloyd Wright

“Architecture is the will of the epoch translated into structure.” Ludwig Miles van der Rohe

Invitation:  The house that “you” built

Take a moment to consider the space you inhabit, whether it is a home, office, apartment, or just a room.  Examine it for details that reflect aspects of your interior life.  Where do you see function pronouncing itself and where does aesthetic seem to announce itself?  Examine the space for signs and signifiers of your individuated self and for signs of where your individuation is ensnared in its effort to emerge.

Compose a work of your own that reflects the house you have built.  If you feel so moved, please share those reflections with others in our community by posting a comment on this blog. If you are planning to attend the seminar on February 4, “Architecture of the Soul: Inner and Outer Structures of C. G. Jung”. then this exercise might be a useful preparation, like tilling the soil before the planting.

Len Cruz, MD

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)