“I would like to live
Like a river flows,
Carried by the surprise
Of its own unfolding.” (John O’Donohue)
(Below are several extracts from my thesis Resonance and Reciprocity:Ego-Self-Earth Axis. Please do not copy without authors permission.)
When Jung discusses individuation he emphasizes that the task for the individual is to differentiate her or his own values from the expectations of family and from collective ideas of the culture. Those personal values, or parts of the personality, have been hidden or buried in the unconscious because they were considered unacceptable. The work of the individuation process aims to integrate these parts into consciousness. As a result, the person feels more fully themselves, more authentic. In the passage where he describes the coming-to-be of the self ( the individuation process) Jung writes that:
“the self comprises infinitely more than a mere ego, as the symbolism has shown from old. It is as much ones self, and all other selves, as the ego. Individuation does not shut one out from the world, but gathers the world to oneself.”
But what have we been assuming is the world to which Jung refers? Is it only the human, social world which we gather to ourselves as we individuate?
For individuals in industrialized society, the sense of self is felt to be and understood to exist within the confines of that person. Further, the only beings that are assumed to possess this sort of subjectivity are humans; other beings, lacking this subjectivity, become an other and as such, are of lesser value. Moreover, any point of view which does understand nonhuman beings as possessing an individual self charged with spirit, soul and intelligence is dismissively accused of animism or of anthropomorphizing the outer world. Animism is defined by Freud as nothing but the projection of primitive man’s emotional impulses. As a result of that sweeping assumption, the whole of the highly complex, sensuous and intelligent natural world is reduced to mindless things, blank screens. But by declaring ourselves the only beings with intelligence and a sense of self, we have, in many ways, placed ourselves in a vulnerable position.
The socialization process in industrial society reinforces the version of the self which locates the self in an inner and mental place, strictly autonomous from the body and the surrounding natural environment….This model of the self places total responsibility for one’s own being upon the shoulders of the individual. The possibility that any physical or mental condition may be a healthy response to a sick society was out of the question since mental illness is assumed to be a completely inner problem. There has been a strong cultural expectation requiring us to be rugged individualists and we are expected to have the power to shape not only our own bodily experience but our own emotional reactions. As long as the individual is expected to pick up complete responsibility there is no room for critique of the pathology of the society. More recently, with the work of infant observation and developmental psychologists has the context of an individual’s life been appreciated, even if it is still only the human, relational context.
A therapy focusing strictly on the individual, as James Hillman suggests, also places itself outside the planetary dilemma. As individual humans become poisoned by environmental pollution and driven crazy by social conditions of poverty, racism, gender and class discriminations, their individual ‘craziness’ is pathologized. We are slow to critique and change ourselves on a larger scale. To engage and grapple with the larger issues we would recognize that we are parts of a larger whole, as necessary as any species in an ecosystem. That seems to be a challenging conceptual shift.
Having said all that, the turn towards interiority, or introversion, may be considered the hallmark of the Jungian methodology and as such, is deemed to have great value. When it becomes a way of life, however, introversion can be an abdication, a fearful withdrawal from society rather than a method of relationality. Introversion as a prolonged retreat from the outer world is a sort of crutch. As one of the many possible attitude towards life, introversion can become a way of escaping the normal conflicts of life necessary to growth and individuation. At the best of times, the rare value and knowledge gained by way of Jungian approaches (such as Active Imagination and dream work) give us access to the inner otherness in the psyche. These qualities of sensitivity and imagination turn out to be vital in the necessary shift from prioritizing qualities of the intellect and rationality so valued by the ideology of industrialized society. The Jungian approach works towards a healthy relationship between ones ego and self, attuning the outer self to inner otherness. This shift can be the beginning of a recognition and value of otherness in all its forms.
Working with the unconscious then, may to be considered the foundational piece rather than the final resting place. We are embedded in a context which is not just a social context but the entire environment. What is required now is a new relationality with the other souls and intelligences in humanity and the sensual, natural world.
In terms of wider industrialized society, our disconnection from the natural world, the privileging of subjectivity to humans, our focus upon individuality and subsequent retreat into interiority, all result in the sacrifice of our connection to the powerful source which enriches and sustains human life. It is not just the relativization of our ego to our unconscious which will renew us. Renewal comes when our ego learns to relate to our unconscious and in turn, remembers and rekindles the most important relationship with the natural world. Just as the ego is dependent on the self for sustenance, so we are, in our mind/body/spirit/soul, totally dependent on the Earth. Without a biosphere there is neither ego nor consciousness nor unconscious — unless we plan to live in hermetically sealed living containers.
It is one thing to recognize the problems resulting from our isolation and dissociation from the natural world; it is quite another to attempt restoration of that relationship. Human relationality with the Earth has long been absent from the agenda of industrialized cultures. Our concerns have been social, economic, familial. The sense of belonging and kinship which may have existed has been replaced with empty but immediately gratifying substitutes. Not only have we become used to our isolated existence but we can hardly remember or even imagine our capacity to feel kinship with the beings in Natures matrix. And the ideology which drives our culture denigrates any recognition of the subjectivities in Nature as irrationalistic animism. So is it even possible to awaken our relationship with Nature? How would we begin such a project?
Any cultural structures, such as myth or ritual, which may have facilitated our reconnection with the rest of the world have been rendered obsolete by the predominant ideology of industry and science. Sean Kane (1994), cultural studies professor at Trent University, has an important insight into our spiritual relationship with the Earth. In his book, Wisdom of the Mythtellers, Kane asserts that the myths themselves do not exist in human culture. Rather, Kane argues, stories are embodied in the land where they are waiting to be overheard by humans who will listen for them. Many cultures have or had the means to receive, interpret and communicate with the nonhuman environment with vehicles such as myth and stories. With such vehicles, the gap between humans and nature, Kane suggests, may be redefined as a boundary which one traverses by means of reciprocal exchange.
Stories and myth used to articulate our resonances with and love of specific, personally experienced places on the Earth. Many contemporary myths, as they are expressed in film, rarely tell of us of how we belong to a place. More often film is concerned with themes expressing the trials of human relationship. The background environment against which these stories unfold is often secondary. We have very few myths and stories that speak of our powerful need to live in kinship with sensuous, irrational nature. We have many stories which play back to us our social and personal dramas. Like most art, they show us to ourselves– the myriad of ways in which we inspire, love, hate and fail each other. But these kinds of stories can hardly instruct or inspire us in the present and urgent challenge: to rekindle our relationship with the environment.
There is something missing in industrialized society, something which ripples into the psyches of individuals. Something is missing. We may feel like we lack a feeling of belonging. Maybe we feel a strange disconnect. Grief signals the enormity of this loss. While these feelings can be traced back to the blockages that occurred during early developmental stages, they also parallel a lack and a disconnect felt on a group level in our fractured relationship with the beings which share our environment. We have lost our ability to connect and communicate with those other beings which make up the great, beautiful and infinitely complex natural world. This is the great tragedy of our time. We need to have our blocked, inarticulate feelings expressed, explained and placed in a meaningful context within our culture. This situation of environmental crisis challenges the gifts of all of us, as storytellers, musicians, poets, writers, dramatists, painters and filmmakers– to translate and articulate our loss and grief as well as our desire for relationship with the beings of the Earth.
to be continued….
C.G. Jung, CW 8, ( my italics), para. 432.
Sigmund Freud, “Animism, Magic and Omnipotence of Thought” in The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud , p. 878.
James Hillman, Justice and Beauty, p. 1.
Sean Kane, The Wisdom of the Mythtellers. p. 32.
Other resources from my thesis:
Abram, David. (1996) The Spell of the Sensuous, Vintage Books, New York.
Fisher,Andy. (2002) Radical Ecopsychology, State University of New York Press, Albany, N.Y..
Kidner, David W.. (2001) Nature and Psyche: Radical Environmentalism and the Politics of Subjectivity. State University of New York Press, Albany, N.Y..
Suzuki, David. (1997) The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place In Nature. Greystone Books, Vancouver, B.C..
