The Last Generation

Countdown to Singularity, Image via Wikipedia

Are we the last generation of humanity?

One of the unique aspects of human consciousness is a desire to understand the nature of our reality. This has manifested itself across all domains of life: spiritual, scientific, psychological, and philosophical. As a species, we are blessed with a deep dissatisfaction with whatever our current circumstances may be, leading to a drive to improve our quality of life. This has lead to the rise and fall of civilisations and religions across the ages. Distinct from this waxing and waning of interpersonal systems has been a much more steady rise in our technological sophistication. Of course there have been hiatus, often caused by an influx of newcomers into a rigid society e.g. the arrival of the Sea Peoples leading to Bronze Age collapse, or the fall of the Roman Empire due to political infighting during a period of external pressure from the Goths. Similar patterns can be detected in civilisations across the globe. But while the collapse of societal structures have delayed technological progress, they have never been able to fully press the reset button, and so sophistication accumulates.

It has been suggested that such progress is logarithmic, leading inevitably to the development of a technological singularity at which time mankind would be able to design an artificial intelligence greater than its own. Beyond this point, such superintelligences become able to improve themselves faster than man can understand, leading to an unpredictable and rapidly-evolving future. The idea is old, stretching back to the 19th century, but has received much greater attention and publicity over the past quarter-century. Theories abound as to whether singularity is possible, and whether the implications will be transformative or apocalyptic for humanity.

What is certain is that recent technological progress has done nothing to suggest that the theory is fundamentally flawed. Almost every day brings stories of startling new discoveries. For instance, it is now possible to read what another person is thinking, at least in a very rudimentary fashion. Is it really so far-fetched to assume that at some point, the technology to do so will be refined, miniaturised and made portable?

Consider your mobile phone, and how it would have seemed the height of science fiction even 30 years ago to suggest everyone would be routinely carrying around such incredibly powerful and versatile devices. It does not seem unlikely to me that such technology would continue to advance and become so integrated into our lives that it becomes integrated into our bodies, with displays directly interfacing with our retinas. Science fiction? Only just. There are already more than a dozen electronic prosthetic retinas in various stages of development and clinical trials, with an aim of restoring sight to the blind. While still primitive, money and time have a way of solving most difficulties, and both have been made available to these devices. The next obvious step would be using such technology to augment vision, instead of merely to restore it.

Even if we do not go down the road of cybernetic implants, it seems irrefutable that our degree of technological immersion will advance in other ways. Our entertainment systems, our cars, our phones, our very ability to acquire and process new information: all are already heavily influenced by electronic networks. It seems almost irrelevant whether they become physically part of us; they are already mentally – and emotionally – part of us.

The great hope of many transhumanists is that technological singularity and our increased integration with electronic networks will lead to a form of immortality, at least of consciousness. This has the vague air of eschatological myth, albeit built upon scientific hopes rather than religious ones. One might even describe this unconscious desire for ego dominance over death as a power phantasy.

I am not so convinced; everything I see suggests we are on a path to a very different kind of existence, with potential for a signifiant degree of self-actualisation within its broader scope.

Unfortunately, I do rather suspect the transhumanists are over-optimistic on the timeline. They suggest singularity sometime around the middle of this century or a little later i.e. within my lifetime, with luck and good health. I have a sneaking suspicion that it will arrive somewhat later. I will have to make do with other ways of seeking Jungian individuation.

Strange to think that my generation may be the last to need to do so.

Archetypes, Stereotypes, and the Absence of Knowledge

Image via Wikipedia

All knowledge is ultimately self-referential, imbued with only such meaning as we choose to give it.

The archetype is a difficult idea to grasp within Jungian psychology. Archetypes are thought to exist within our psyche, being innately derived. Jung suggested that their existence is due to our connection with the collective unconscious, a broad sharing of the unconscious mind across humanity and across the aeons. While this can have spiritual overtones – and to Jung it likely did – it can also be interpreted using a less spiritual framework. Archetypes can be considered as a set of psychological memes passed down socioculturally through the generations, perhaps reinforced genetically by some basic similarities between all humans in terms of how our brains are neuroanatomically formed.

Archetypes include our Self – the person we both are and aim to be; the Shadow – those traits that lie hidden within ourselves, and often from ourselves; and the Anima/Animus – the part of our psyche that allows us to understand and communicate with the opposite sex. It’s also perhaps possible to consider our Persona – the person we project to others – as a form of archetype, although I consider it a simpler more superficial entity than the others mentioned.

When these archetypes come into contact with the world, a number of consistent mythic symbols are created to understand them. They have been referred to as symbols, motifs or archetypes-as-such. I like to think of them as Stereotypes. Stereotyping is often thought of as a bad thing these days, but in truth, the Stereotype has an important beneficial function. They are widely-held, over-simplified views but that also makes them very useful as a short-cut to understanding the world. Stereotypical forms of archetypes include the mythological motifs of the hero, the wise old man, the earth mother, and so on.

As we perceive the world around us, we do not process every situation as being fresh data. Consider: colours are not real; colour is a perception, or construct, based on the wavelength of photons hitting our retinas. Similarly, what we think of other people are also not actually real people; they are constructs based on the data we receive from those entities. We each possess a personalised understanding of who other people are, and what they mean. There is no objective reference yardstick by which to measure them. We interpret their existence both consciously through reason, and unconsciously through archetypes and stereotypes.

A careful reader might now suggest that if conscious thought and reason can allow interpretation, then this potentially provides a scientific approach to understanding. This is only true if reason itself is independent of archetypal influence. As our rules of reason are human constructs, we cannot be entirely certain that this is so. Munchhausen’s Trilemma (also known as Agrippa’s Trilemma) suggests that any line of reasoning can eventually be boiled down to one of three arguments: circular, regressive and axiomatic. Circular arguments depend on the theory and proof supporting each other, regressive arguments become a never-ending series of proofs, and axiomatic arguments are based on an assumption of correctness.

This is a difficult proposal to accept, but consider a child asking why the sky is blue. You could argue that the sky is blue because we have defined the colour we perceive it to be as blue: a circular argument that ends the debate but does not fundamentally answer the question. You could humour the child by discussing wavelengths of photons and the energy they carry, the effect that energy has on the retina, transduction mechanisms, post-processing of the transducted stimuli into perceptions, psychological constructs of perception, the concept of a construct, the meaning of a concept, and so on, without ever really getting to a final irrefutable proof. This regressive approach allows for a vast expansion of knowledge, but at some point you have to limit your field of study, or be trapped in a never-ending sequence of “but why?”s. Finally, the poor parent of our inquisitive child may simply snap, and say “it just is”: a mere axiomatic assertion of truth.

You can choose to accept any one of the three horns of trilemma and still carry out much productive work, but that does not answer the trilemma’s problem.

Jung’s archetypes and the stereotypes that result from them could be conceived of as humanity’s practical solution to the trilemma. They give us a framework for understanding ourselves, each other, and the ideas and concepts we create, without us ending up in a never-ending morass of “unknowability”. Of course, archetypal theory is in itself just as trapped by the dilemma as is any other idea (and indeed, is the trilemma itself, if you want to give yourself a headache). But it does allow us to think about who we are in a practical way, and consider who we might become.

Buddhists have the concept of sunyata or “emptiness”, which seems to my limited understanding of the term to be a similar concept. It suggests a middle way between the nihilism and anomie of nothing being provably real and the illogicallity of considering what we think of as real being necessarily true. It hints at a way of finding meaning in the emptiness by embracing it and finding oneself in that void. Jung might call that individuation, the ultimate manifestation of one’s potential self.

All knowledge is ultimately self-referential, imbued with only such meaning as we choose to give it. And what a wonderful opportunity and privilege of our humanity that is.

The Fetishisation of Perfection

Head of a Nymph, Sophie Anderson

I must confess a penchant for complex systems.

There is little more pleasant than the intricacy of checks & balances, although I only enjoy them if my understanding of them arrives through noting the overall patterns that result, rather than through crude mechanistic analysis. Appreciating the underlying ebb & flow of emergent phenomena speaks to what Jung would have termed my intuitive rational nature.

My fondness and aptitude for noticing these mechanisms is at least part of what attracted me to psychiatry. The mind is doubly complex, consisting as it does of both physical and psychic constructs. The physical is the complexity of our neuroanatomical wiring and the neurochemical connections within that network. While some argue that theoretically the psychic world can be entirely understood through the physical, even such reductionist evangelists would admit that our current understanding is a long way from complete.

The psychic world is the more intriguing. It consists of our modes of thought: how we view ourselves, others, and the interplay between these entities. We create an internal construct of both ourselves & others, often built upon rather dubious foundations, and our entire understanding of the world in predicated upon these constructs. Some of the constructs emerge through experience, some are models formally taught to us, and some are probably rooted in a genetic hard-wiring. Even more amusingly, we are only generally aware of a small minority of the conceptual filters through which we view the world, which gives rise to what Freud would term the unconscious mind and perhaps also to what the spiritual would call the soul.

Regular readers know I enjoy a variety of complex systems; not just psychiatry & psychology but also clothes, economics, philosophy and some kinds of art. The common thread linking these interests are the delightful emergent patterns that are created through expression & exploration these systems. Different schools of art & philosophy, different conceptual models of the mind & human behaviour, different fashions & economic systems… they are all best considered not as absolutes with pros & cons relative to some theoretical gold standard, but as different sensory modalities. No-one would ever claim that smell is better than sound, or sight is better than touch.

Of course, this very relativist and individualist intellectual position of mine is itself derived from a set of preconceptions. In the end, everything anyone can attempt to say really is nonsense, if Wittgenstein will pardon the liberty of my paraphrasing. But this is to miss the point entirely: it’s rather delightful to play the game anyway.

The title of this post is a lament at how much of the world either cannot play, or refuses to play. Instead, they focus on improving things in an endless search for perfection. While superficially a laudable goal, the problem is that in order to improve a situation, you must understand the system well enough to know what improvement means. Simply having one specific goal in mind frequently – possibly, inevitably – leads to problems in other important areas. Imagine a fat woman being squeezed into a too-small corset: the narrow waist comes at the high price of either fat spilling over as visible unsightliness elsewhere, or internal distress. Similarly, targets and outcome measures can lead to many more negative issues in unexpected areas even if the target is achieved. Better to appreciate the system for what it is, and harmonise your existence within it, which can mean insulating yourself from its excesses by detaching yourself from its impact through rising above it.

Naturally, I am extremely grateful that most people prefer to seek perfection. It has led to tremendous improvements in material comforts, and grants me the luxury of not having to live a purely subsistence lifestyle myself. Nonetheless, those capable of broader perspective will be happier for indulging that aloofness rather than chasing the flitting faerie nymph of perfection. The nymph, you will recall, generally doomed her lover.

The Modern-Day Monk

It is not surprising that several guests at Friday’s Royal Wedding were anonymously quoted as “feeling jaded” yesterday. Anticipation of great events is commonly followed by a drained numbness, even if the event meets elevated expectations. Life thus passes by as a series of interspersed highs and, if not lows, mediocre neutrals. Is this the sum total of the human experience?

Man has historically found three ways to neutralise this nihilistic perspective: fame, religion and propagation.

Fame, with its associated glamour, can be fleeting or it can last a lifetime. Occasionally it outlasts its originating source and is considered worthy – or notorious – enough to be important to historical and cultural record. Whether transient or semi-permanent, its nourishment to the famous person is thin when weighed against the permanence of death. It can sustain the mind in the short-term, but is ultimately lacking.

To combat this failure of Temporal Power to assuage anomie, religion developed to offer believers escape from death, whether through reincarnation or heaven. Such Spiritual Might remains a comfort to many, channelling and guiding human emotion into soothingly predictable paths. Like Temporal Power, it offers individuals a larger sense of self that is part of a grander existence than Hobbes’ description of Man’s life as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”.

But for many, meaningful fame is impossible (the Warhol-esque 15 minutes of reality TV or social networking hardly counts) and religious faith escapes them, or is actively shunned. Frequently, their final refuge is propagation and it is a rare parent indeed that does not think of their children as the best thing they ever did.

Creating the next generation is certainly a valuable role; I would not want to see the human species wiped out! But does it truly offer a solution to the impermanence of man? I suggest not; the real essence of even the best of parents is lost from collective memory within at most four generations. As long as the parent does not think too deeply about this inevitable historical dissipation, Familial Legacy can substitute for either Temporal Power or Spiritual Might and stave off despair at the prospect of death.

What if none of the above are to the liking of the individual, if all are thought to fail the essential test of overcoming fear of death and giving life meaning, what then?

Enter the Modern-Day Monk.

The archetype of the man who seeks spiritual enlightenment through disengagement from the world is an ancient one. We see echoes of his presence in all the major world religions, mythologies and philosophies. Traditionally, the Monk has sought physical separation from the world; either to wander alone or in the company of select fellow travellers on a similar journey. He has used asceticism as a tool to aid enlightenment. Asceticism encourages the abandonment of sensual pleasure and material wealth, deeming these to be distractions from personal growth.

The Modern-Day Monk follows a different path to individuation. It is not physical abandonment of the world that is important, but intellectual detachment. This detachment from the value systems of others (the Temporal, Spiritual and Familial spheres) nonetheless permits material and emotional engagement with the world. He is able to weigh up and measure situations and people rapidly, allowing only positive effects through to his inner self. He comes across to others as tolerant and moderate, as he has no need to be otherwise. He enjoys the world, but does not let the world rule his inner heart. And in the face of new challenges, he has an inner core of willpower – a clear sense of self – to neutralise against torment.

The more philosophically (or religiously) minded will have already identified the characteristics outlined in the preceding four sentence as the Four Cardinal Virtues: Prudence, Temperance, Justice, and Fortitude respectively. The virtues are named Cardinal for being the hinge (L. cardo) upon which rests the door of life. It is not the door to a physical retreat from the world as the first step to an afterlife. It is a system to support and enhance our human desire to be part of the world, while not being ruled by it.

The Modern-Day Monk lives well, as well as wisely.

Personal Identity: Form and Content meet

Viktor & Rolf exploring extreme content in classic form, photo by Blommers & Schumms for GQ Style Italy

How do we define our personal identity?

A recent theme I’ve explored has been to understand personality through Jungian typology (and the later Myers-Brigg typology which is heavily based on Jung’s Psychological Types). Our personality governs how we perceive ourselves and how we interact with others. In that sense, it’s possible to conceive of personality as being the Form of our personal identity. It is the essential shape and outline of who we are, but lacks the detailed depth that comes with what we say and the actions we take. Those words and deeds are the Content. If Form and Content come together in harmony, a clear sense of personal identity – our personal brand – emerges. It is a brand that will make sense to others because it makes sense to ourselves.

This is a powerful and flexible way of viewing identity as it allows for active practical interventions to adjust the brand to our liking. The first step is to identify our natural Form; our core personality. Introspection and personality tests like MBTI can help with this. Secondly, we can determine whether we are living our lives (the Content) in harmony with that Form. For instance, are we in a job or relationship that naturally complements our personality, or are we trying to blend immiscible liquids together? Finally, we can adjust the Content to better fit in with the Form by making changes to our lifestyle that allow us to maximise our strengths and minimise our weaknesses. If need be, Form can also be nudged slightly in a different direction, but Content is almost always much simpler to change. It is easier to fill an amphora with wine instead of oil than it is to create a completely new vessel.

I often relate psychological principles to clothes on this blog but in this case, it was clothing that led me to this line of thinking. Consider a man wearing a tailored suit. The basic form is set by the core nature of these items; a jacket and trousers. However, the form comes with individual variation: number of buttons, vents, lapel size, degree of shoulder padding, gorge height and so on. The content is also highly variable: the fabric material, weight, pattern, colour and so forth.  A suit with conservative form will naturally take to conservative content while a suit with fashion-forward form may find its optimal expression with equally unusual content.

However, this is not always so. Sometimes a conservatively cut suit can be combined with an unusual colour to create a strikingly eccentric look that is made all the more interesting because of those conservative boundaries of form. And sometimes an aggressively-styled suit is rendered more pleasing to the eye by using a conservative cloth. Different designers play with these two continua to define their own brand identities. For example, Thom Browne often uses conservative classic cloth with an extreme shrunken form, whereas Ozwald Boateng has been known for vividly leery colours on a fairly classic suit. Tom Ford sometimes ventures to wild extremes on both axes with his heavily stylized suits in bold plaids, whereas Brooks Brothers is often conservative in cut and cloth.

Form and Content combine to define our personal identity. If yours seems unclear, identify your natural Form and then choose the Content that harmonises best with it to suit the identity you want to project.

The Importance of Tolerance

 

Passenger crying after the Moscow airport bombing, photo credit Denis Sinyakov/Reuters

There has been a preponderance of Jung in my blog recently, caused by re-reading Psychological Types over the past week. As I type, news reaches us of a fresh terrorist atrocity, this time in Russia’s largest airport, with a suicide bomber killing at least 35. I find Jung’s words relevant:

[speaking of the superficiality of most human relationships]

A rapport of this kind is by far the most frequent; it rests on mutual projection, which later becomes the source of many misunderstandings.

[later]

As a rule, partisans of either side attack each other purely externally, always seeking out the chinks of their opponent’s armour. Squabbles of this kind are usually fruitless. It would be of considerably greater value if the dispute were transferred to the psychological realm, from where it arose in the first place.

A real understanding can, in my view, be reached only when the diversity of psychological premises is accepted.

I think Jung is trying say that so much of what we commonly think of as disputes about facts, possessions, territories, economic systems and ideologies are fundamentally disputes about ways of thinking; about personalities. This is not so much a clash of worldviews as it is a clash of ways of identifying those worldviews. Because most daily human interaction – and therefore political interaction – is focused on the superficial, true engagement with the other person is very rare, and violent clashes about proxy issues result instead. Most of the time these violent clashes remain social or verbal, and so pass largely unnoticed apart from an abundance of hurt feelings or reaffirmed prejudices.

Sadly, for Russia’s air travellers today (as it was those present at Gabrielle Giffords’ meeting recently), the violence can become physical.

Jung is an advocate of tolerance through wisdom, encouraging attempts to see the world through the psychology of others, to prevent such catastrophic outcomes.

The Aesthetic Life, or Why Clothes Matter

Mandalas are Eastern abstract artforms used by Carl Jung to explore the unconscious mind

From the division of Man into introvert and extrovert, came the suggestion that the conscious mind of the introvert is driven by his ego, and the extrovert by his sense of relatedness with the world. Subconciously, the introvert finds joy when emotionally satisfied by a beautiful intellectual system, whereas the extrovert finds happiness when held intellectually rapt by a beautiful sensual world. It is the dual satisfaction of both conscious will and unconscious mind that results in an optimal state of well-being.

Schiller suggested that “creative/wise play” allowed for the appreciation and development of Art/Beauty. This appreciation of the Aesthetic allows both introvert and extrovert to satisfy their conscious and unconscious needs. It is interesting to consider what forms of Art miight satisfy these two different types. It has been suggested that two branches of Art exist: the Empathic and the Abstract. Empathic art creates identifiable objects; representations of reality to which we feel an emotional response. An example would be the work of an Old Master. Abstract art requires an intellectual leap of reasoning to imbue with it with meaning and emotional content. Examples would include modern works of installation art.

Empathic art derives its power from its representative function; the real world idea it depicts and gives larger-than-life meaning to. It is not a stretch to suggest that it would appeal more to an introvert, who, in their desire to externalise themselves onto the outside world, consciously recognises the depicted idea, and fills it with emotional meaning in their subconscious inner world. Abstract art may appeal more to the extrovert, who notes his own overt emotional response to an otherwise meaningless abstraction and is then forced to internally derive an intellectual meaning. Thus, each type of art encourages each type of man to draw on both his conscious and subconscious mind into order to fully appreciate it, albeit by mirror-image methods.

Of course few of us are extremes of type, so few of us consume Art so rigidly. And even in extreme cases, practice and familiarity can lead to appreciation of the other form of Art than would otherwise be predicted. But the underlying theme being suggested is that when indulging in creative play, the form of play chosen by each type is such that it satisfies both conscious and unconscious yearnings.

The appreciation of the aesthetic thus enriches our entire psyche and so increases our sense of fulfilment and happiness. It is, as one writer put it, “objectified self-enjoyment”.

It does not require a great artist to appreciate the aesthetic; merely a mind willing to appreciate possibilities other than the crudely concrete. On the other hand, the creation of art offers a more interactive, possibly synergistic, medium for achieving happiness compared to the mere appreciation of pre-existing work. Naturally, not all of us are meant to be the next Turner Prize winner, but it is not the end-point of Art that is important, nor even the nature of it, but rather the process by which it is created, that is likely to drive the enrichment of our whole self. Whether the Art produced is bad or good is largely irrelevant under this theory.

What is more, Art can be defined exceptionally broadly. It is not just painting or sculpture, nor just literature or music. It is any activity where the aim is to blend conscious and unconscious, and rationality with sensuality. That opens it up to nearly everyone, although not all will feel confident enough to try.

For myself, as a strongly expressed introvert with no great skill with a brush or pen, one example of how I find some small creative release is the simple act of dressing every day. What are clothes but a means by which we design a collage for the day, or a theme to whistle as we go out about our life? We choose colour, pattern, form and shape and blend them together, adding in the vital ingredients of intellectual design and emotional response, and crucially, we do this to our very bodies, and then wear the product in full view of the outside world. What more vital way of creating Art could there be?

Perhaps I over-reach, and in truth, my tongue felt firmly pressed against my cheek while typing the more purple patches of prose in the above paragraph. But I do believe this: finding, appreciating and creating Art in its broadest sense – living the aesthetic life – elevates an otherwise mundane and tramelled existence into something that can satisfy both the conscious and the unconscious mind, and so pave the way to self-actualisation and individuation.

In short? Happiness beckons for the snappy dresser!

Hope, Happiness and the Potential of Man

Friedrich Schiller, Image via Wikipedia

It is commonly suggested that Man can be characterised as either an Introvert or an Extrovert. The validity of making such a distinction rests on the potential utility such taxonomy may bring; I am not interested in abstruse cataloguing without meaningful purpose. Does the attempt to divide Man into two broad groups help us understand him and the challenges he faces? Will it make him happy?

Carl Jung, drawing partly on Friedrich Schiller’s fertile correspondence with Goethe, suggested that the conscious mind of the introvert is driven largely by his ego (his internal sense of self)  while his sense of “relatedness” (affective/emotional responses) to objects in the external world is diminished. The extrovert, by contrast, is captivated by the world and his relationship to it, and the ego becomes secondary to this. Thus, “the extrovert discovers himself in the fluctuating and the changeable; the introvert in the constant”. Affectivity is “positively painful” to the introvert, while for the extrovert “it must on no account be missed”.

There is no better statement of this difference in approach to the world than that expressed when Schiller, the archetypal introvert, wrote to extroverted Goethe: “You have a kingdom to rule, and I only a somewhat numerous family of ideas which I would like to expand into a little universe”.

The introvert feels driven to externalise all the ideas he possesses within his mind, and make them manifest in the outside world. The extrovert yearns to internalise the world and consume it utterly. At their extremes, therefore, both the introvert and extrovert are autocrats, ruthlessly desiring absolute complete control, and unable to settle for nothing less.

A crucial point is that these drives and responses are functions of the conscious mind; they are how we overtly interpret in the world. But our opposite, inferior, nature can be found in the relatively submerged subconscious mind. So the extrovert finds harmony not just when emotionally exposed to a changing and vibrant external world ecology, but when he can come to intellectual terms with the impact and meaning of those emotions upon him. And the introvert waxes lyrical when he feels the emotional pleasure of appreciating an elegant rational system.

It is when the conscious drive moves in the same direction as the subconscious that this true pleasure results. Unfortunately, many of the systems in which we function do not encourage this dual approach to life. Schiller noted this, Jung remarked that it was worse by his time, and I may be bold enough to suggest that the situation has deteriorated further since. Jung said, “the differentiated function procures the possibility of a collective existence, but not that satisfaction and joie de vivre which the development of individual values alone can give”. Or, the need to earn money means that people gravitate to the roles and professions they are superficially productive at; the jobs that make the most use of their introverted or extraverted nature. They do these jobs to the practical satisfaction of their superiors, but not to the satisfaction of their inner self which demands more than this, and so they are unhappy.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, being a crisper wordsmith than I, phrased it thus: “You must choose between making a Man or a Citizen; you cannot make both at once”.

If both conscious and subconscious drives exists, both must be satisfied for our minds to be at peace. The challenge is therefore to find ways of living that allow for the exploration of this dual, yet intertwined, nature of our psyche. Schiller proposed that “creative play” or “wise play” (such as that involved in appreciating or making Art, or Beauty) would enable this. Both the extrovert and the introvert can express their inferior, subsconscious, selves through this process. Indeed, Jung postulated that this process is a conduit to expressing an inner symbolic representation of our true (whole) self.

The trouble is that to be wise when playing suggests the requirement of insight into what the end-point of our play should be. And that is a very circular argument as it is the creative play itself that is supposed to align our conscious and subconscious minds in this fashion. It is suggestive of an iterative process of incrementally improving wisdom and insight, whereby the act of play opens new avenues of thought, which in turn suggest new types of play, and so on.

It is worth pausing here to note that most people are not yet ready to even begin to play wisely. So Jung warns: “for them seriousness must occupy the middle place instead of play”; they must first think about their rational and emotional natures and the tension between them, before they are ready to use creativity to begin to meld the different parts together. This again reinforces the value of insight, and encourages self-reflection.

But if one is ready, the potential reward is individuation and self-actualisation. True individuality results from the ability to both be, and be separate from, the two opposing functions of our conscious and unconscious minds. Interaction between individuals would only occur when creative play was the aim of the meeting.

Is this achievable?

I suggest not in this lifetime! To be so fully cognisant and accepting of ourselves may theoretically be possible, but suggests to me such a differentiation from humanity as to be divinity.

But think of this: Man is the only beast to even contemplate such heights. We have the gall to wish to strive beyond ourselves, to fulfil our ultimate potential, to become god-like. The only collective community that would satisfy us would be the liberty of Mount Olympus. That is the truly remarkable thing about our species, and why typology and psychology are not mere taxonomy, but tools we can use to understand our potential.

It is this hope within us that fires our creativity. Eternal happiness may be the ultimate reward for all that effort, but for now, it is enough to know that splendid things will result from just the creative potential.

The Higher Path

Image via Wikipedia

Psychoanalysis is a technique to cure excessively suffering individuals of the unconsciously misdirected desires and hostilities that weave around them their private webs of unreal terrors and ambivalent attractions. The patient released from these finds himself able to participate with comparative satisfaction in the more realistic fears, hostilities, erotic and religious practices, business enterprises, wars, pastimes and household tasks offered to him by his particular culture.

But for the one who has deliberately undertaken the difficult and dangerous journey beyond the village compound, these interests too are to be regarded as based on error.

With these words in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell describes the two types of journey most humans travel on through their lives, and the different ways they can react to therapy.

One group – the majority – seek out only a return to a shared delusion of normality: “the last projected fantasies of primitive physical will to live like other human beings; the will to live according to normal motives of desire and hostility, in a delusory ambient of phenomenal causes, ends and means”. This is nothing more than procrastination, but many people are not ready for something more, and at least it allows them to function within society.

Another group seek something higher. The subconscious conflict they feel between a yearning for life/flesh and a wish for death/peace is such that before they can return to the normal world, they must walk a different path. Many religions attempt to find a solution by theorising that the mortal life is fundamentally flawed (“sinful”), only to be redeemed after death; or that a true understanding of life can only come about through leaving behind physical limitations and accepting a transcendental unity (Buddhism). Clearly, these can be interpreted as two sides of the same coin.

Can this sense of tranquillity with existence be achieved during life itself? Again, I find myself returning to Epicurus for an answer:

• We must free ourselves from the prison of everyday affairs and politics
• The tranquil man is not troublesome to himself or to another
• There is also a limit to frugality. The man unable to consider this suffers a similar end as the man who indulges in excess
• The greatest fruit of self-sufficiency is freedom

All are taken from the Vatican Sayings, but I have taken the liberty of re-ordering them to make this point: the more the noble soul involves himself in the affairs of those trapped in unhappy states, the unhappier he will become. That does not mean he looks down on others, but simply recognises he operates differently. By limiting his exposure to the necessary minimum for his needs, he will be as free as possible.

And from freedom, comes tranquillity, or true happiness.

A Guided Tour of Dreams

I have been busy the past two days, which both explains the lack of posts here and provides the foundation for my entry today. Last night I had a pleasant dinner with friends I first met while working my last job before leaving full-time employment in favour of my current lifestyle. It was fun to catch up with them and I indulged in rather more food and wine than usual which led to some intriguing dreams overnight.

I am not a complete believer in dream analysis but the unique nature of dreams can be a good jumping-off point to spark discussion about one’s current psychological state. It is two months since I left that job and I have noticed occasional unexpected thoughts regarding this recently. Thoughts such as “I really don’t have to go back” and “I wonder what I’ll do tomorrow”. These are not wistful or regretful thoughts but have the feel of a genuine and deeper sense of freedom than the initial exuberance of the first flush of liberty.

Last night’s dreams fed into this deeper quandary of choice.

The first dream I can recall put me back in that last job on a normal working day. I was doing the work well, but just as I was getting close to completing one task, another was given to me, and I became increasingly irritated by the incessant workload. So far, so simple to interpret. I then experienced a brief interlude as a mediaeval knight in armour riding through a forest (which was in fact a more thicketed version of the land near my last workplace) and I knew that I was searching for something but I knew not what.

The Questing Knight is a classic Jungian archetype of the collective unconscious and is also found in some form within every world mythology. It represents travel towards a lofty goal and the classic flaw of the Knight is that he fears nothing but that he will fall prey to personal weakness at the height of crisis. What is also interesting is that the Knight usually achieves his goal by confrontation or violence, and this symbolic conflict led directly into the next dream element.

From hunting knight, I then found myself hunted prey. I was a forensic psychiatric patient, detained under the Mental Health Act, and fleeing the authorities as they tried to recapture me. The police were after me, but so too was a paramilitary organisation. This part of the dream did not last long; just as I was about to be captured, I became the paramilitary sniper tracking me. I was looking down a rifle’s sights, flitting from one potential target to another before finally hitting the fugitive with a tranquillising dart. My squad members congratulated me on the successful hit as we drove back to our base.

In the foyer, there was a poster advertising for applicants for a space mission to a red planet, possibly Venus or Mars. I then flash-forwarded to successfully landing on the planet – effectively conquering it – and returning home. From that successful return home, I segued into returning back to my parents’ home of 10 or 15 years ago and was congratulated and welcomed back by my late mother. I woke up shortly afterwards, with a vaguely perplexed sense of both happiness and curiosity.

A simple interpretation would be to suggest that my unconscious mind still seeks a task to complete to validate my existence. This is something I consciously reject, believing such tasks to be self-imposed constructs. So it is not surprising that these thoughts instead found voice in my dreams.

They represent my Jungian Shadow, that part of the unconscious mind that is a conglomerate of repressed weaknesses and instincts. It is the part of us that defies everything we believe true about ourselves. My conscious self – my Persona – is calm, controlled, even-tempered and often dispassionate. The Shadow (whether as Knight, Sniper, Fugitive or Conqueror) is the more violent and passionate undercurrent of my unconscious mind.

The presence of my mother at the end of the dream could be interpreted as part of my Anima – the feminine side of my nature – congratulating me on the acceptance of emotionality (the thrill of the chase, the triumph of the planetary landing, the completion of the quest) into my life.

The turbulent and emotional natures of Shadow and Anima have the capacity to drive creativity, in a way the conscious Persona cannot. But the Shadow cannot be allowed to overwhelm the Persona. As Jung himself said in Archetypes, to do so would result in “a man… always standing in his own light and falling into his own traps… living below his own level”. If the Shadow is not recognised it leads to over-identification with the Anima in order to satisfy the Shadow’s desires: “Possession caused by the anima [results in] the anima surround[ing] herself with inferior people”.

The task facing me – as it is to all of us – is acknowledging the creative power of the Shadow and the Anima, integrating them into the Persona without letting them overwhelm it. Writing about the dreams I experienced last night is thus one step in the ultimate life-task of individuation and perhaps the dream also expresses a residual creative hope that others will attempt their own similar journeys.