Either this blog is drifting away from the topic of active imagination or my life is drifting from it. I'll try to refocus by throwing some thoughts about dreams onto this post. (With thanks to the writings of James Hillman for showing me some of these things.)
The dream world is backwards-land. The thing you feel love for in your dream is the thing you may be afraid of in your waking life. The thing you fear in your dream is the thing you must embrace.
The shorter-than-normal figures in my dreams - gnomes, dwarves, tiny dolls - function in the areas of my life that I haven't taken seriously; that I haven't given enough attention. They shrunk!
Giants in my dreams sometimes have an inflated ego! Some of them are figures of such importance and power that they have impressive size.
None of the archetypal figures represent anything. They ARE. They are who they are and they function as they function, and if we said they "represent" we'd be saying that they don't exist as themselves. Does that make sense? And each figure who you meet in your dream has a specific (primal, singular, one-dimensional) function within your psychological makeup.
Yadda yadda yadda. I'm fulla these thoughts.
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Monday, October 10, 2011
Love and the Trickster
Jung and Sartre, different as they were, both wrote that love begins with projection. We project our own ideas of who we want the other person to be onto that person. We project ourselves onto the ones we love. The great archetypal trickster plays his tricks on us by letting us trick ourselves. Love, by beginning with projection becomes the greatest trick to be played on the fool who falls for it by fooling himself; the lucky fool.
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
narcissism & fairytale beings
Elemental beings in folk legends and fairytales dwell in water, air, fire, earth, plants and animals. Among them are the nymphs, swan maidens, undines, and fairies. Emma Jung, in an essay titled "The Anima as an Elemental Being" compared the elemental to a man's internal anima.
While I read the essay, I noticed that the qualities Emma Jung described as belonging to the anima and the elemental coincided with qualities describing a narcissist.
I was intrigued and a little excited by this association. If a narcissistic romantic partner is similar in behavior to elemental beings of fairytales, then fairytales can be a guide on how to conduct a relationship with a narcissist in a positive framework instead of a negative one. After all, these elemental beings in fairytales have some very positive, magical qualities, along with their dangers.
Here is a list with some of the qualities of elemental beings which coincide with qualities of narcissists. Emma Jung, by the way, didn't mention narcissists in her essay. That's just my own observation. The list refers to narcissists in the feminine gender because the essay was on the anima, but I suspect the animus and male narcissists fit equally. The quotes are brief references to Emma Jung's essay.
1. The elemental and the narcissist deconstruct the partner in a relationship. "These beings (sirens, the Lorelei, and so on) lure a man into their realm, where he disappears forevermore, or..."
2. The Elemental and the narcissist use charm to captivated - to hold captive emotionally. "...they try to bind a man in love..."
3. The elemental and the narcissist lack a sense of self or "soul," so she adopts the interests of her partner. "...that they may live in this world with him."
4. The elemental and the narcissist are easily hurt in areas of unconscious content. "The nixie's disappearance into her element describes what happens when an unconscious content comes to the surface but is still so little coordinated with the ego consciousness as to sink back at the slightest provocation."
5. The elemental and the narcissist become easily angered because of a touchy inferior function. "There is a taboo connected with them that must not be broken."
6. The elemental and the narcissist take offense even if the offending action is unintentional. "The taboos are not always the same; sometimes the man may not touch his wife with iron, or he may not speak unfriendly words more than three times, and so on. But always the violation of the condition results from heedlessness, or a fateful accident; it is never intentional."
7. The elemental and the narcissist hide their reality, fearful of the partner seeing her true nature. "Purusavas must not be seen naked by Urvasi. ... Human reality is not to her taste."
8. The elemental and the narcissist lack empathy. "He, with human feeling, laments the loss of his beloved, he tries to find her again and wants to speak with her, but her words, when she says that women have the hearts of hyenas, are the expression of a soul-less elemental being passing judgement on itself."
9. The elemental and the narcissist cannot know the self and are largely not conscious of the Self. "We may conclude that the femininity represented by the nymph, Urvasi, is as yet too nebulous and incorporeal to live permanently and realize itself in the human realm, that is, in waking consciousness."
10. The elemental and the narcissist withdraw emotionally to make the other prove his commitment. "The (swan) maidens feel an overwhelming yearning for battle and, by flying away, draws the brothers after them..."
11. The elemental and the narcissist are restless and insecure in a relationship and look for other lovers outside of the relationship. "...In psychological language, this means that the yearning, the desire for new undertakings, makes itself felt first in the unconscious feminine."
12. The elemental and the narcissist desparately seek connections, even against being faithful to a different life, person or ideal. "From this it follows that they woo man, and that they seek him assiduously and in secret."
13. The elemental and the narcissist are cruel and make unreasonable demands. "Often she is cruel, demanding senseless and superhuman feats of her knight as the sign of his subservience."
14. The elemental and the narcissist have a godlike attitude. "The swan maiden's royal descent, shown by her crown, marks her as being from a higher order, and can be related to the superhuman, divine aspect of the anima."
15. The elemental and the narcissist when they lose their masks, and thus their power in a relationship, will end the relationship at the first opportunity. "Swan maidens... for the most part do not seek a relationship of their own accord, but by the theft of their garments fall into the man's power through a ruse. Hence they try to escape at the first opportunity."
16. The elemental and the narcissist are malicious without reason or remorse, just as nature and the weather have no moods. "To be discerned in the anima are the incalculability, mischievousness and frequent malice of these elemental spirits, which constitute the reverse side of their bewitching charm. These beings are simply irrational, good and bad, helpful and harmful, healing and destructive, like nature herself of which they are a part."
17. The elemental and the narcissist are easily projected upon. "It is easy for a man to project the anima image to the more elemental woman; they correspond so exactly to his own unconscious femininity."
18. The elemental and the narcissist find relationships opening when a man pours out his emotional problems. "He came upon three beautiful maidens sitting beside a stream, one of whom was Melusine. He poured out his sorrow to her and she gave him good counsel, whereupon he fell in love with her."
19. The elemental and the narcissist "seek soul" because they lack a sense of self. "Through union with a man they receive a soul and the children, too, of such a union possess souls."
20. The elemental and the narcissist use a mate's soul to compensate lack of self. "Her kind cannot win souls except through a bond of human love."
21. The elmental and the narcissist provoke conflict in order to test a relationship. "What brings about the catastrophe here is the conflict between the anima, that is the nature creature, and the human woman. In the Siegried legend this plays an important part, as the strife between the Valkyrie Brunnehilde and Chriemhilde, and it frequently leads to great difficulties in actual life. Fundamentally, such conflict expresses that opposition between two worlds, the outer and the inner, the conscious and the unconscious, which it seems to be the special task of our time to bridge."
22. The elemental and the narcissist have the power to captivate. "The song ends with the fairy taking her love away on the horse to her kingdom. Being carried away to fairyland is, psychologically, a very important motif." "That the anima rules this realm and leads the way to it is well known. The danger of getting lost there, that is, in the unconscious, seems to have been felt even in early times, for countless stories describe the knight, caught in the bonds of love, who forgets his knightly duties."
23. The elemental and the narcissist have a puer aeternus complex. "It is not a kingdom of the dead but is called 'Land of the Living' or 'Land under the Waves,' and is thought to be composed of 'green islands,' which are inhabited by fair feminine beings adn so sometimes called 'islands of women.' Eternally young and beautiful, these creatures enjoy a life without sorrow, full of music and dancing and joys of love."
24. The elemental and the narcissist bring sudden change into a relationship, moving from love to terror, to love to terror; the beautiful to the sublime.
From the Tannhauser Legend:
"Throughout the week they're fair all day
Decked out with silk and gold,
Rings and beads and crowns of May,
But Sundays they're otters and snakes."
25. The elemental and the narcissist can cause the other, in a relationship, to lose his or her sanity. "As life bestower and goddess of fertility, Cybele ruled the waters; as Mountain Mother and Mistress of Animals, she loved and ruled all that was wild in nature. She bestowed the gift of prophecy, but caused madness also."
26. The elemental and the narcissist with their ability to fascinate, lead partners to danger. "Fascinating all men who come her way with the beauty of Venus, the wisdom of the serpent, and the cruelty of the carnivore, she works irresistible magic upon them and without exception they perish. ... She is a purely destructive anima figure; those whom she enchants lose all of their masculine strength and virtue and finally die."
27. The elemental and the narcissist project themselves into their partner's world, and adopt his interests as her own, in order to "gain soul" or resolve a "lack of self." "When, as happens in so many legends, an elemental creature seeks to unite with a human being and be loved by him in order to acquire a soul, it can only mean that some unconscious and undeveloped component of the personality is seeking to become joined to consciousness and so to be informed with soul."
28. The elemental and the narcissist attach to a man's soul in order to uncover her own unconsciousness - to find herself. Because she does this in fear, she is prone to violence in the process. "The urge toward increase of conscousness in the material discussed above is expressed in the desire of a creature, still bound in nature and only half human, to approach a human being and be accepted by him, that is, by consciousness."
29. The elemental and the narcissist have father issues. "Elemental beings quite often possess a (more or less hidden) father. The Valkyries are Odin's maidens and Odin is a god of wind and spirit. In the tale of the huntsman and the swan maiden, who has to be released from the glass mountain, her father is with her and is released at the same time."
30. The elemental and the narcissist are nature-creatures and end a relationship without remorse or empathy, just as a storm in nature strikes without empathy. "The story comes to a natural conclusion; after they have lived together for a long time, the nymph one day says farewell to her husband, foreseeing that the end of her oak tree can no longer be averted. Then the tree is struck by lightening and she, whose life has remained bound to it despite her human quality, disappears forever."
While I read the essay, I noticed that the qualities Emma Jung described as belonging to the anima and the elemental coincided with qualities describing a narcissist.
I was intrigued and a little excited by this association. If a narcissistic romantic partner is similar in behavior to elemental beings of fairytales, then fairytales can be a guide on how to conduct a relationship with a narcissist in a positive framework instead of a negative one. After all, these elemental beings in fairytales have some very positive, magical qualities, along with their dangers.
Here is a list with some of the qualities of elemental beings which coincide with qualities of narcissists. Emma Jung, by the way, didn't mention narcissists in her essay. That's just my own observation. The list refers to narcissists in the feminine gender because the essay was on the anima, but I suspect the animus and male narcissists fit equally. The quotes are brief references to Emma Jung's essay.
1. The elemental and the narcissist deconstruct the partner in a relationship. "These beings (sirens, the Lorelei, and so on) lure a man into their realm, where he disappears forevermore, or..."
2. The Elemental and the narcissist use charm to captivated - to hold captive emotionally. "...they try to bind a man in love..."
3. The elemental and the narcissist lack a sense of self or "soul," so she adopts the interests of her partner. "...that they may live in this world with him."
4. The elemental and the narcissist are easily hurt in areas of unconscious content. "The nixie's disappearance into her element describes what happens when an unconscious content comes to the surface but is still so little coordinated with the ego consciousness as to sink back at the slightest provocation."
5. The elemental and the narcissist become easily angered because of a touchy inferior function. "There is a taboo connected with them that must not be broken."
6. The elemental and the narcissist take offense even if the offending action is unintentional. "The taboos are not always the same; sometimes the man may not touch his wife with iron, or he may not speak unfriendly words more than three times, and so on. But always the violation of the condition results from heedlessness, or a fateful accident; it is never intentional."
7. The elemental and the narcissist hide their reality, fearful of the partner seeing her true nature. "Purusavas must not be seen naked by Urvasi. ... Human reality is not to her taste."
8. The elemental and the narcissist lack empathy. "He, with human feeling, laments the loss of his beloved, he tries to find her again and wants to speak with her, but her words, when she says that women have the hearts of hyenas, are the expression of a soul-less elemental being passing judgement on itself."
9. The elemental and the narcissist cannot know the self and are largely not conscious of the Self. "We may conclude that the femininity represented by the nymph, Urvasi, is as yet too nebulous and incorporeal to live permanently and realize itself in the human realm, that is, in waking consciousness."
10. The elemental and the narcissist withdraw emotionally to make the other prove his commitment. "The (swan) maidens feel an overwhelming yearning for battle and, by flying away, draws the brothers after them..."
11. The elemental and the narcissist are restless and insecure in a relationship and look for other lovers outside of the relationship. "...In psychological language, this means that the yearning, the desire for new undertakings, makes itself felt first in the unconscious feminine."
12. The elemental and the narcissist desparately seek connections, even against being faithful to a different life, person or ideal. "From this it follows that they woo man, and that they seek him assiduously and in secret."
13. The elemental and the narcissist are cruel and make unreasonable demands. "Often she is cruel, demanding senseless and superhuman feats of her knight as the sign of his subservience."
14. The elemental and the narcissist have a godlike attitude. "The swan maiden's royal descent, shown by her crown, marks her as being from a higher order, and can be related to the superhuman, divine aspect of the anima."
15. The elemental and the narcissist when they lose their masks, and thus their power in a relationship, will end the relationship at the first opportunity. "Swan maidens... for the most part do not seek a relationship of their own accord, but by the theft of their garments fall into the man's power through a ruse. Hence they try to escape at the first opportunity."
16. The elemental and the narcissist are malicious without reason or remorse, just as nature and the weather have no moods. "To be discerned in the anima are the incalculability, mischievousness and frequent malice of these elemental spirits, which constitute the reverse side of their bewitching charm. These beings are simply irrational, good and bad, helpful and harmful, healing and destructive, like nature herself of which they are a part."
17. The elemental and the narcissist are easily projected upon. "It is easy for a man to project the anima image to the more elemental woman; they correspond so exactly to his own unconscious femininity."
18. The elemental and the narcissist find relationships opening when a man pours out his emotional problems. "He came upon three beautiful maidens sitting beside a stream, one of whom was Melusine. He poured out his sorrow to her and she gave him good counsel, whereupon he fell in love with her."
19. The elemental and the narcissist "seek soul" because they lack a sense of self. "Through union with a man they receive a soul and the children, too, of such a union possess souls."
20. The elemental and the narcissist use a mate's soul to compensate lack of self. "Her kind cannot win souls except through a bond of human love."
21. The elmental and the narcissist provoke conflict in order to test a relationship. "What brings about the catastrophe here is the conflict between the anima, that is the nature creature, and the human woman. In the Siegried legend this plays an important part, as the strife between the Valkyrie Brunnehilde and Chriemhilde, and it frequently leads to great difficulties in actual life. Fundamentally, such conflict expresses that opposition between two worlds, the outer and the inner, the conscious and the unconscious, which it seems to be the special task of our time to bridge."
22. The elemental and the narcissist have the power to captivate. "The song ends with the fairy taking her love away on the horse to her kingdom. Being carried away to fairyland is, psychologically, a very important motif." "That the anima rules this realm and leads the way to it is well known. The danger of getting lost there, that is, in the unconscious, seems to have been felt even in early times, for countless stories describe the knight, caught in the bonds of love, who forgets his knightly duties."
23. The elemental and the narcissist have a puer aeternus complex. "It is not a kingdom of the dead but is called 'Land of the Living' or 'Land under the Waves,' and is thought to be composed of 'green islands,' which are inhabited by fair feminine beings adn so sometimes called 'islands of women.' Eternally young and beautiful, these creatures enjoy a life without sorrow, full of music and dancing and joys of love."
24. The elemental and the narcissist bring sudden change into a relationship, moving from love to terror, to love to terror; the beautiful to the sublime.
From the Tannhauser Legend:
"Throughout the week they're fair all day
Decked out with silk and gold,
Rings and beads and crowns of May,
But Sundays they're otters and snakes."
25. The elemental and the narcissist can cause the other, in a relationship, to lose his or her sanity. "As life bestower and goddess of fertility, Cybele ruled the waters; as Mountain Mother and Mistress of Animals, she loved and ruled all that was wild in nature. She bestowed the gift of prophecy, but caused madness also."
26. The elemental and the narcissist with their ability to fascinate, lead partners to danger. "Fascinating all men who come her way with the beauty of Venus, the wisdom of the serpent, and the cruelty of the carnivore, she works irresistible magic upon them and without exception they perish. ... She is a purely destructive anima figure; those whom she enchants lose all of their masculine strength and virtue and finally die."
27. The elemental and the narcissist project themselves into their partner's world, and adopt his interests as her own, in order to "gain soul" or resolve a "lack of self." "When, as happens in so many legends, an elemental creature seeks to unite with a human being and be loved by him in order to acquire a soul, it can only mean that some unconscious and undeveloped component of the personality is seeking to become joined to consciousness and so to be informed with soul."
28. The elemental and the narcissist attach to a man's soul in order to uncover her own unconsciousness - to find herself. Because she does this in fear, she is prone to violence in the process. "The urge toward increase of conscousness in the material discussed above is expressed in the desire of a creature, still bound in nature and only half human, to approach a human being and be accepted by him, that is, by consciousness."
29. The elemental and the narcissist have father issues. "Elemental beings quite often possess a (more or less hidden) father. The Valkyries are Odin's maidens and Odin is a god of wind and spirit. In the tale of the huntsman and the swan maiden, who has to be released from the glass mountain, her father is with her and is released at the same time."
30. The elemental and the narcissist are nature-creatures and end a relationship without remorse or empathy, just as a storm in nature strikes without empathy. "The story comes to a natural conclusion; after they have lived together for a long time, the nymph one day says farewell to her husband, foreseeing that the end of her oak tree can no longer be averted. Then the tree is struck by lightening and she, whose life has remained bound to it despite her human quality, disappears forever."
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Edmond Burke's Sublime and Beautiful
All those posts I wrote about “impressiveness” – I didn’t know that a better word might be “sublime.” I just read A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful by Edmond Burke. Oh man, I’m no scholar but I should have known the definition of sublime. I’m terrible at Scrabble.
Burke associates the sublime with “terror,” and I think sublime has a wider meaning than that: awe-inspiring, amazing, astonishing, impressive, maybe terrible… heavy, overwhelming. To walk through life with a sense of the sublime is to carry sense of wonder. Okay – all those things have something to do with terror, and maybe Burke’s definition of terror 260 years ago was wider and different than the definition in my head.
My main thoughts are, 1) “sublime” might be a better word than “impressive” for the ideas I’ve been trying to express, and 2) … something about beauty…
I read Burke's old, difficult book (the writing is archaic!) because I wanted to understand what art-books meant when they talked about beauty. Burke writes that beauty is anything that inspires love and the sublime is anything that causes terror.
I wrote a lot of blog-posts saying that impressiveness is what wakes us up psychologically. The cool thing about Burke’s book is that he showed me there’s something else that wakes us up: the alternative to impressiveness / sublimity, which is beauty / love.
I should have noticed that love wakes us up psychologically, but I’ve been so focused on the painful anguish of the sublime that I lost sight of anything having to do with love. Interesting to suddenly see that again.
Here’s a quote from A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful:
“I have before observed, that whatever is qualified to cause terror, is a foundation capable of the sublime; to which I add, that not only these, but many things from which we cannot probably apprehend any danger have a similar effect, because they operate in a similar manner. I observed too, that whatever produces pleasure, is fit to have beauty engrafted on it.”
Burke associates the sublime with “terror,” and I think sublime has a wider meaning than that: awe-inspiring, amazing, astonishing, impressive, maybe terrible… heavy, overwhelming. To walk through life with a sense of the sublime is to carry sense of wonder. Okay – all those things have something to do with terror, and maybe Burke’s definition of terror 260 years ago was wider and different than the definition in my head.
My main thoughts are, 1) “sublime” might be a better word than “impressive” for the ideas I’ve been trying to express, and 2) … something about beauty…
I read Burke's old, difficult book (the writing is archaic!) because I wanted to understand what art-books meant when they talked about beauty. Burke writes that beauty is anything that inspires love and the sublime is anything that causes terror.
I wrote a lot of blog-posts saying that impressiveness is what wakes us up psychologically. The cool thing about Burke’s book is that he showed me there’s something else that wakes us up: the alternative to impressiveness / sublimity, which is beauty / love.
I should have noticed that love wakes us up psychologically, but I’ve been so focused on the painful anguish of the sublime that I lost sight of anything having to do with love. Interesting to suddenly see that again.
Here’s a quote from A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful:
“I have before observed, that whatever is qualified to cause terror, is a foundation capable of the sublime; to which I add, that not only these, but many things from which we cannot probably apprehend any danger have a similar effect, because they operate in a similar manner. I observed too, that whatever produces pleasure, is fit to have beauty engrafted on it.”
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Want Wish Will
Thinking about Nietszche's "will to power" and thinking about a woman I was once involved with. She'd frequently ask, "What do you want?" which I assumed meant, "What do you want in this relationship?" Truth is, at the time I wasn't sure what I wanted.
I eventually realized, however, that she shouldn't ask "what do you want?" A better question would have been, "Do you know yourself?" I know now, a man who knows himself knows what he wants, but a man who has no self-knowledge has no sense of his wants.
I'm weary of wanting and wishing. The last time a person asked me what I want I answered "I don't wan't." The Psalmist wrote "I shall not want." Wishing and wanting are connected with powerlessness, childishness and dreaming. Nietszche's concept of "will to power" puts things in a new perspective - of taking hold of personal power. I don't want, I will: I will to do these things that I once wished for and wanted.
Strikes me as a good idea, at least.
I eventually realized, however, that she shouldn't ask "what do you want?" A better question would have been, "Do you know yourself?" I know now, a man who knows himself knows what he wants, but a man who has no self-knowledge has no sense of his wants.
I'm weary of wanting and wishing. The last time a person asked me what I want I answered "I don't wan't." The Psalmist wrote "I shall not want." Wishing and wanting are connected with powerlessness, childishness and dreaming. Nietszche's concept of "will to power" puts things in a new perspective - of taking hold of personal power. I don't want, I will: I will to do these things that I once wished for and wanted.
Strikes me as a good idea, at least.
Saturday, May 14, 2011
A Nietzsche Quote
"My suffering and my pity - what of them! For do I aspire after happiness? I aspire after my work!"
Thus Spake Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche
Thus Spake Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Freedom and Loneliness
Last night I talked to a friend who was envious of my freedom. She has a relationship with a guy and, in fact, they're very happy together. But, she said, "It's so much work trying to understand him all the time and wanting him to understand me, and having to do things together when I just want to be left alone!"
I started laughing as she said this - I mean really laughing, more than I've laughed in a long time, because I know those feelings. She said that I should appreciate my freedom, and appreciate how because I'm alone no one puts any expectations on me.
I agreed, "The freedom is a trade off for the loneliness, but for now I'd rather have the freedom and live with the loneliness." The freedom to not be expected to understand a partner's thoughts and feelings all the time! Yes! Give me that for just a little longer!
Some day, though, I'd like to experience the work again of trying to communicate in a romantic relationship. There's nothing quite like it.
Here's a quote on the topic from Emma Jung:
"It happens only too frequently that instead of understanding a situation - or another person - through feeling and acting accordingly, we think something about the situation or the person and offer an opinion in place of a human reaction. This may be quite correct, well-intentioned, and clever, but it has no effect, or the wrong effect, because it is right only in an objective, factual way. Subjectively, humanly speaking, it is wrong because in that moment the partner, or the relationship, is best served not by discernment or objectivity but in sympathetic feeling."
It strikes me that freedom and aloneness go well together, and unlimited freedom means infinite aloneness. Maybe I'm wrong about this. We humans certainly crave the loss of our aloneness.
I started laughing as she said this - I mean really laughing, more than I've laughed in a long time, because I know those feelings. She said that I should appreciate my freedom, and appreciate how because I'm alone no one puts any expectations on me.
I agreed, "The freedom is a trade off for the loneliness, but for now I'd rather have the freedom and live with the loneliness." The freedom to not be expected to understand a partner's thoughts and feelings all the time! Yes! Give me that for just a little longer!
Some day, though, I'd like to experience the work again of trying to communicate in a romantic relationship. There's nothing quite like it.
Here's a quote on the topic from Emma Jung:
"It happens only too frequently that instead of understanding a situation - or another person - through feeling and acting accordingly, we think something about the situation or the person and offer an opinion in place of a human reaction. This may be quite correct, well-intentioned, and clever, but it has no effect, or the wrong effect, because it is right only in an objective, factual way. Subjectively, humanly speaking, it is wrong because in that moment the partner, or the relationship, is best served not by discernment or objectivity but in sympathetic feeling."
It strikes me that freedom and aloneness go well together, and unlimited freedom means infinite aloneness. Maybe I'm wrong about this. We humans certainly crave the loss of our aloneness.
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