June Singer on Jung.
June Singer
reflects in 1994: …
what is psyche, if not soul? … soul is that essence of
consciousness that enables us to know ourselves and our world, to recognize
what is unique in us as individuals and what each one of us shares with the
immense totality of which we are part.
Jung had the
capacity to touch something essential in the human soul which needs to be
touched or needs to be healed, in order to be made whole, and Singer tunes in
on this phenomenon.
It amazes me
how well this fits into my thoughts in my essay on Edinger:
we are touched – something touches us in our essence, and because we are
touched there, we become aware of it… we become conscious of bits and pieces of
Self, re-collect Self, and thus are healed/become (more) whole again.
Singer
shares Jung’s awareness of the importance of subjective experiential perception
as a vital factor in the acquisition of all knowledge, and is, as he was,
interested in the subjective aspect of experience. Psychic reality is not the
same as objective reality – it refers to immediate reality as we experience it.
What we perceive are the psychic contents which crowd into the field of
consciousness. All I perceive as the objective world out there is in fact what
I experience, so subjective self in here. There is no separate self set apart
from the world as the word does not exist outside self. How does one determine
what things are like apart from self???
Subject and
object have to be seen in their relationship to one another.
The
relationship, the interplay – the way in which subject and object, individual
psyche and collective psyche, relate is the object of Jung’s/Singer’s
(subjective) attention.
The psyche
consists of consciousness and the unconscious: the are
two aspects of one system.
The starting
point of understanding the analytic process is the concept of the psyche as a
self-regulating system in which consciousness and the unconscious are related
in a compensatory way.
The exchange
of energy between consciousness and the unconscious provides the dynamic for
growth and change. The analytic process attempts to improve the nature of this
exchange: it systematically draws contents upon the unconscious and
progressively integrates these into consciousness; at the same time letting go
of those conscious contents that are no longer desirable.
The goal of
treatment is the shift of psychic balance from the area of consciousness with
the ego as its center, to the totality of the conscious and unconscious psyche
(the soul is, in Singer’s view, the central guiding aspect of the unconscious).
An active an reciprocal relationship between ego and
the unconscious is helped by the analyst who enables the self-regulating aspect
of the psyche to function.
June Singer
beautifully describes the Individuation Process as learning to sail your boat
on the waters of life: “In learning how to sail you do not change the current
of the water (realities of life) nor do you have any effect on the wind
(spiritual forces), but you learn to hoist your sail and turn it this way and
that to utilize the greater forces which surround you. By understanding them,
you become one with them, and in doing so are able to find you own direction –
so long as its in harmony with, and does not try to oppose, the greater forces
in being…… you do not feel helpless any longer…. you may even become a guide to
others”.
Jung never
pushed away any of the unanswerable problems that beset his life. ‘I will try
to understand it, but if I cannot, I will keep it always near me, and hope that
one day the meaning that is concealed in the mystery may be in some measure
revealed.” These matters were constantly being turned over and over again in
the unconscious, mixing with other contents, and gathering power for their
emergence at a later time when the ground would be better prepared for them…
I do not
know why I want to add this here, but it will come to me….
So, the
“Jungian” therapist, analyst, approaches each new client with interest,
curiosity, and wonder. “No one has ever been exactly like this person who sits
with me.” This therapist is receptive, attentive and alert; open to receive all
the signals and non-signals the client is transmitting. This therapist wants to
befriend her client, not antagonize her or deliberately mobilize her defenses.
Singer shares my sentiments of being privileged to gain access to another
person’s deepest/darkest reaches, in this case the unconscious. It is the
therapist’s role to create an atmosphere of trust (the client faces hidden
aspects of himself that he may fear) and freedom to come with whatever enters
his mind (acceptance par exellence..).
To do that the therapist has to be willing to take her place: to show herself
explicitly and implicitly as an individual, inviting the client to do the same.
The analysand is expected to have confidence in and
to commit to the process. He needs to believe that somewhere in him is rising the possibility of being another sort of person, the
one he was meant to be.
Singer
writes: “The unconscious contains that portion of the human potential which
needs to be actualized in order for individuals to move toward individuation,
that is, toward becoming whatever they are innately capable of being”. As such
it is the Urgrund of our being, the original basis
from which everything valuable may develop. The unconscious is at its basis
collective in character.
Jung insists
that each individual develop consciously a unique Weltanschauung, a philosophy
of life, in accordance with the “given” factors of the personality which are
present at birth (and unfold according to their genre and in their own time)
and also those “acquired” factors which include the environment into which one
is born and the circumstances and events of life. This philosophy envisions a
person as a unitary and total being; with its particular nature as an
individual ànd with its human nature, embedded in general principles drawn from
the history of human consciousness and experience. Psychotherapy, in Jungian
style, should enable individuals to fulfill their individual potential by
utilizing more effectively the special gifts with which they are endowed.
Analysis confirms that potential, this individuality, born in every person, but
often lost in the pursuit of the more practical goals of life.
The
involvement between analyst and analysand is intense
and active; they are not merely observers, but active partners in a mutual
endeavor. The analysand needs to recognize the
discrepancy (experienced as a conflict situation in his life) is between his
conscious attitudes and unconscious factors (complexes) which interfere with
his carrying through on the intentions (which correspondent with those
conscious attitudes).
Singer
defines a complex as nothing more than an idea filled with emotionally charged
contents, which interrupts our attention and redirects our thinking and often
behavior. Jung was interested in these “incomprehensible elements which erupt
into consciousness from unknown sources” and explored tracing their origin. The
trail of a complex led him backward towards its sources in those basic
elemental tendencies of the human personality which produce certain specific
kinds of the thinking patterns common to the entire human species, he named the
archetypes.
Those
experiences which threaten our deepest beliefs – in our gods and in ourselves – those are the ones which give rise to complexes.
As a complex becomes conscious in analysis, it is possible to disengage its
components, its associations, even to de-magnetize its nucleus. This can in
turn cause a shift in lifelong attitudes and alter ways of thinking and
consequently ways of behaving.
Back to therapy. We must realize that the conflict between consciousness and the
unconscious cannot be resolved by advice from the analyst, but only through the
patients understanding and consciously integrating of the unconscious material
as it comes up (psychic reality is not the same as objective reality). The therapist
is primarily interested in evoking understanding and integration in the client.
The possibility for healing lies in the psyche of the client, writes Singer,
that’s the place where the disunion or split exists. A therapist is to use
herself as a vehicle for clarifying the clients dilemma’s
and for helping him to learn to interpret his unconscious “production”.
In that
sense the analysand is encouraged to lead the
process.
The
awareness of (the twin problem of) transference and countertransference
is given a position of great importance in the analytic process. Singer even
says: “the analysis of the transference is the crux of the analyst-analysand relationship, for the unconscious patterns come
into play here were we can see them directly and do not have to rely on the
client’s recital of things”.
And of
course transference material is presented spontaneously by dreams.
Archetypes
are structural pattern-forming elements in the unconscious psyche, which
produce out of themselves mythological components, motifs or primordial images
(“archetypal images” when translated by a particular culture). They represent
certain regularities, consistently recurring types of situations and types of
figures. They are forms existing a priori, or biological norms of psychic
activity.
Singer views
the archetypes as “the very source of our thought processes…. of our attitudes
and behavior”; therefore they cannot fully be grasped by our minds.
The
archetype, according to Jung, is a dominant of the collective unconscious (that
layer of the unconscious that is detached from anything personal and entirely
universal).
In the
psychological material of an individual we find manifestations of both layers
of the unconscious: of the personal and of the collective unconscious. By separating
the personal aspect of a problem from its archetypal (collective) core, the
effect of the archetype (the identification of the ego with the archetype in Edinger’s terms) can be markedly depotentiated.
The psychic energy that has previously been contained in the unconscious now
becomes accessible to the conscious ego. Furthermore the insight that our
experience shares a common core with al of humanity,
has its healing effects as we saw before.
The concept
of a archetypal, collective aspect “influencing” our
psychological processes requires a divergent way of thinking. Where convergent
thinking reduces any psychic experience to its causes in earlier experiences or
contexts, divergent thinking is much more creative: it regards a situation as
“given” (that is what we must deal with) and values subjective experiential
perception in a larger transpersonal perspective. In other words: you learn to
hoist your sail and turn it this way and that to utilize the greater forces
which surround you… And Singers asks: “Is the awakening to the functioning of
the archetype all about us a way of synchronizing the beating of our own hearts
in time with the cosmic rhythms?”
“Who knows himself, knows the All”[1]
The individuation process is Jung’s path to
self-knowledge and ultimately to self-realization.
Since whatever we know or claim to know must pass
through the portal of our psyche’s perception, it is important to develop the
psyche’s perceptual function. Jungians do it with the process of analysis;
through an introspective training that Jung calls the “individuation process”.
The ideal of the individuation process, as Jung
describes it, is the conscious realization and integration of all the
possibilities contained within the individual. This process involves the
differentiation of self from that which is not self and moves along two tracks:
·
The self differentiates from the
“internal not self” which developed through conditioning imposed by family and
other external influences.
The individual recognizes his/her own
potential.
·
The self differentiates from the ”external not self”.
The individual recognizes how he
is part of his environment and how he is different.
Singer points to the importance
to engage in this process (rather than to “lust” after the goal), and I do
agree with her. In a way life is this process of differentiating self from not
self; it is the process of becoming more conscious of Self beyond the Ego we
consider “I”. The Ego re-captures parts of Self by
becoming conscious of them, the individuation process (life?) is a
“re-collection” of Self. “Individuation seems to be the innate urge of life to
realize itself consciously.”, writes Edinger.
People are more than their image
in the world, and once we have “sensed” this potential beyond, nothing is quite
the same; we cannot turn our backs and go on with our lives as if nothing has
happened. We want to discover this more, we feel an
urge to be more like this more.
We are in fact already more by
this discovery of the more beyond; we have already outgrown our old coat, our
old Ego, and it limits our movements and becomes uncomfortable to us.
Singer writes: “individuation is
natural”. It occurs in most individuals during the course of their lives.
Jungian analysis is only one way to enhance this process.
Underlying the Jungian
“individuation process” is the concept of the self-regulating nature of the
psyche. The unconscious, through dreams and through its manifestations in
everyday life, provides all the information we need to know. It is the
responsibility of the analyst to “read” with utmost care the unconscious
material that is brought up, and to allow herself to
be guided by it. The tool with which an analyst works is herself
and it is her responsibility to keep this tool in optimal physical and
psychological condition.
I like the way in which Singer
stresses the importance to work on the two levels:
·
The unconscious material is given its
proper attention… and
·
An effort is made to strengthen
consciousness
thus
acknowledging that these two go hand in hand: clients need to heighten their
awareness – feel a ground in their own being, to profit from their continuing
encounters with contents of the unconscious.
All this reminds me of the two most important points
of Edgar Cayce’s “practical guide for living” in 1747-5: The knowing of Self ànd The expressing of Self.
The focus in Jung’s approach seems to be on
“differentiating self”, first through self-exploration and subsequently through
self-realization (integration of self-knowledge).
An extra dimension could be added in my view, which is
probably more Gestalt.
I, as a therapist, would be interested in how the
client experiences the self-realization, thus adding a feedback loop into more
self-knowledge. This feedback from Self-expressing requires self-awareness, an
individual needs to be able to experience what he is experiencing (meta-level
awareness; self-awareness). This is why I consider it extremely important to
strengthen this awareness; it is a mayor source of information to deepen one’s
self-knowledge.
Singer writes: “Perhaps the stress on method and the
lack of stress on man's relatedness to his own deepest needs and commitments is
one of the most serious problems in the practice of psychotherapy today”, and I believe she is right (I know I took this out
of its original context).
Now we come to a short description of some of the most
important archetypes. Singer weaves them loosely together in pairs, whereas I
believe that – although we all carry aspects of all types, each of them stands
alone. For me this is a main characteristic of an archetype; its qualities are
so basic, so bottom-line, that they stand on their own ground.
In becoming civilized, we compromise between our
natural inclination and the patterns of society. We assume a certain character
or stance (mask) through which we can relate. This is our PERSONA. It is
important to realize that this mask serves a useful function – it mediates
between ourselves and society; it facilitates the
adaptation of an individual to the requirements of society and helps him to
define himself in a particular setting.
When the mask is somehow damaged or changed, the
person feels a lack of a personal sense of identity – the “desired-image” mask
in not working anymore and this individual acknowledges the persona as false
self. This step of recognition is, of course, necessary before a new truer self
can be found. Awareness of the mask is a prerequisite to find the identity of
the one behind it!
It takes courage to take off a mask. I sense two
aspects again – a more internal and a more external one:
·
The individual becomes more visible to
himself – more self-conscious. He experiences himself more directly thus
heightening the self-knowledge aspect
·
the individual expresses a self, closer
to Self, and thus becomes more conscious of self in the “expressing-self”
experience
Both these developments (more or less simultaneously
operating in this phase of the individuation process) lead to a heightened
awareness of self – a growing consciousness. The consequent re-evaluation of
“who am I” is in Singer’s words “the burden of greater consciousness”; this
touches for me the issue of “responsibility” I was discussing in IIIa..
(Experience is the prize of consciousness – sharing
this experience a responsibility towards mankind)
Which brings us neatly to the archetype
of the SHADOW. It is what is inferior in our
personality, that part of us which we will not allow ourselves to express. Our
shadow contains important aspects of our personality which we repress to the
unconscious.
Important is to realize that the shadow finds its own
means of expression, particularly in projections: what we cannot admit in ourselves
we find in others. Some people say that “all is projection” and it could be
true. What I see, or let us say what I pick out , what
touches me is (as we saw in IIIb) something that
resonates in me, otherwise I would not focus on it, or react to it.
A shadow is also a potential. There is no shadow
without consciousness, no darkness without light. And I might add: as soon as
the shadow becomes conscious it ceases to exist.
Jung writes about this: “To become conscious of it
(the shadow) involves recognizing the dark aspect of the personality as present
and real. This act is the essential
condition for self-knowledge, and it therefore, as a rule, meets with
considerable resistance.”
The difficulty is that we have no clue about stuff we
are not aware of. We sit on this potential volcano of shadows; it is no wonder
that we are afraid to explore… And Singer writes: “……the analysand
is initiated into a lifelong process, that of looking within,
and being willing to reflect long and hard on what he sees there, in order to
avoid being taken over by it (the shadow).
The beauty of the self-regulating quality of our
psyche is that it presents us, whether we resist it or not, with what needs to
be worked on/healed. Jung speaks of a building, a gathering of psychic energy
in the unconscious waiting to get a chance to discharge its contents into
consciousness.
This is what makes that something attracts my
attention, that a particular aspect of a person or situation becomes my
fore-ground (a typical Gestalt term), and touches me/awakens my consciousness
right there, on that spot.
Synchronicity is part of this – the
whole, let’s say the whole of our psyche, is looking for
balance, strives for wholeness. All parts of this whole are interconnected in
their effort to make this whole more whole.
ANIMA and ANIMUS are in Jung’s words the twin
archetypes of the contrasexual: the anima standing
for the “eternal feminine” aspect in a man, the animus representing the
“eternal masculine” aspect in a woman.
This for me is a tricky distinction. What is “eternal
feminine” or “eternal masculine” and, even if we are able to agree on that,
isn’t it nonsense to say that a woman only represses her masculine aspects and
has all her feminine aspects neatly integrated in consciousness/in her
personality.
I strongly feel I do (and did) repress some “eternal
feminine” aspects too. And on the other side of the spectrum I feel free to
express some of my more “eternal masculine” aspects, without being less
feminine because of it. I do respect and value the very real differences that
do exist between the sexes, but I do not feel limited in re-collecting aspects
of both archetypes within my psyche.
This brings me to the archetype of wholeness the SELF,
the primary, all-encompassing archetype. Self, as Jung uses it,
has a special meaning; it is that center of being
which the ego circumambulates; at the same time it is
the superordinate factor in a system in which ego is
subordinate. This Self is the wholeness at the end of an ideal individuation process.
It is the point of balance where the self-regulating system of our psyche
strives for. It is the goal the goal-directedness of psychic energy thrusts
toward…
The archetype of the Self is the element in the human
psyche which makes it possible for us to conceive of such an entity as the
self. (As we saw, the ego only functions as an organ of awareness.)
The goal of the individuation process, as seen from
the standpoint of the ego, is the expansion of awareness, its own emergence
from the unconscious so to say.
From the point of the Self, the goal of individuation
is a union of consciousness with the unconscious - a wholeness represented by the
archetype of the Self.
Singer calls the Self the instigator of the process of
individuation, and I believe that it is. The self-regulating system of our
psyche and the phenomenon of synchronicity are concepts based on this wholeness
of the Self, and its Self-oriented – wholeness-oriented dynamism.
Singer on
approaches.
“Since in every life the same goal is reached (death),
and what lies beyond remains a mystery, the process is the only thing that
matters. The sooner we realize it, the sooner we identify with the flowing
stream (or any other metaphor of process which presents itself), the more
likely we are able to become free of pointless struggles and fruitless
conflicts. Thus, we liberate our energies for that collaboration with
(transcendental) nature, which is self-realization in the highest sense.”
Singer writes in her last chapter. I am intrigued by this quote – it is almost
as if Singer invites me to go backward, from self-realization to were we are now. In this context: from individuation to
where we try to grasp what Jung envisioned, to where Singer explores approaches
to individuation.
Jung writes: “Not your thinking, but your being, is
distinctiveness. Therefore, not after difference, as ye think it, must ye
strive; but after your own being.”
I was reflecting on an extra feedback loop in the
self-knowledge/self-expressing sequence, making it a cyclic, possibly spiral
movement/process. Now that makes even more sense. If I have had the experience,
I know. Only in experience/in living/in being in this process, can
consciousness re-capture aspects of the unconscious and realize Self, become more Self, grow towards individuation.
The process matters – the flowing in it, where
possible with it. Following that thought: to be able to go with it you surely
have to be aware of it.
We were discussing awareness of inspiration. Can I,
for a moment, consider that the flowing stream that represents the process of being, is inspiration? (Spirit is transcendental nature, ànd the ground of all being[2]) We humans seem to be
unconscious of this stream most of the time, we do not realize we are in it,
flow with it. We need to experience it to know. Inspiration, then, is indeed a
gift. Only those who experience it, become aware of it, can know, can realize
it is there. The experience of Spirit, the awareness of inspiration, is a key
to consciousness.
So my question is: what can we do to become more
aware???
Singer
says: “Whoever has experienced the divine presence has passed beyond the
requirement of faith, and also of reason”. In other words, until you get the
experience, you have to go blind – on faith, on reason… This going blind,
without much use of faith or raison reminds me of the concept of holons[3] (considering that the
process towards individuality moves along an holoarchy). In one
Jung seems to have experimented with
just that, as have many others, even using drugs and other techniques (hypnosis
would be an example, as is holotropic breathing) to get the conscious “out of
their way”.
And of course Jungians make use of
the way in which we unconsciously surrender our consciousness to the
unconscious, like in our dreams, in our fantasies (active imagination), associations
and projections.
Analytical therapy, Singer says, is
oriented forward, toward what the psyche can be when it is fully developed. All
that we can be is already present in us in potentia
in this view – waiting to be awakened.
A therapist can point out a path
through the holons of life’s processes, in a sense providing a “ vision of knowledge” , as a light the analysand
can follow. But it is the individual who must walk that path with courage to
“experience”; to gain that consciousness for himself,
taking responsibility for his own journey, each step of the way.
Let me take a look at a few
approaches June Singer mentions that come from Jung’s psychology but are
applicable to other methods of therapeutical work: where do they fit into all
this, or should I say: where does all this fit into these approaches?
·
enhancing
recognition of projections/projected aspects from ourselves in others, in order
to reclaim them – to re-own the psychic energy contained in them. Awareness of
the way our conscious mind is tricked by unconscious aspects in seeing a
reality “outside” which is in fact our own “inside”.
Allow me to add here that for me, the
acknowledgment of the “directing factors” of
self-regulation of the psyche itself, and synchronicity as the
regulating pulse from the whole (Self, the divine beyond), gave me an entirely
different perspective on projection and transference. I recognized that my
projections are (as “messages” from the unconscious) leading me towards where I
need to go. There, for me, lies the transpersonal dimension, the realization of
the process, the discovery of the stream… the inspiration.
·
stimulating
clients to take full responsibility for the way they respond to events and
circumstances – it resonates with what I understood to be Buddhism’s Eightfold
Path: doing right – interacting with life in the right way - means doing things
true to our nature (one of Buddha’s names is “the arouser of faith”…) To become
aware of what is right, what is truest to our transcendental nature, is the
process of individuation.
·
Awareness
of transference and countertransference in the
therapeutic context is a great tool to discover how a client is in relation to
others. I try to be very aware of these processes. By becoming aware of my own
reaction to this person (often stimulating the client to do exactly what he
always does with others/facilitating negative behavior) I am in a position to
experience directly how others feel and react to this human being in front of
me. Recognition by “being there” works for both client and therapist.
·
Learning a client to stop being the victim; to heighten awareness of
this person’s boundaries and the ways in which he guards them.
Ah, boundaries – where do I begin???
For me this has everything to do with
building a person’s ground in being to stand on his own, so to say, to
have the awareness of a personal wholeness that needs to be preserved.
And Singer adds, almost as an
afterthought:
·
Guiding
the individual to take an pro-active role in life in
which the authentic person he (in potential) is, is taking charge of his
actions. The responsibility to take one’s place in life, not only a personal
responsibility for one-self, but also a transpersonal responsibility for
humanity as a whole.
This is the step I mentioned to
“complete” the process, it actually is the step that makes individuation into
the process; the expressing of self – the realizing of self. The
essential step towards consciousness. The tricky part is of course that
we do no “know” before we experience, so the moment of pro-acting is the moment
we give ourselves the chance to experience and know. In that sense it is always
a leap into the unknown – a jump though the air to the other swing of the
trapeze. We never know what our unconscious will come up with (or the
collective unconscious for that matter).
Which is exactly
why awareness, especially in its transcendent function, is so important for us
to be able to take charge of our own lives, to be responsible for our own right
actions, to see the ground in our being, to realize the flowing stream…