It was the Best of Times; It was the Worst of Times

                      It was the Best of Times; It was the Worst of Times

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. 

–Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

Recently, I re-read this paragraph which was, as I recall the experience, forced on me in Highschool. It had meant little, or nothing to me at the time, except for the music that the rhythm of the words left in my ears, and a slight vibration to that music, that the music in words, always leaves in the heart. I am surprised to discover that the depth of meaning contained in these oppositions could, this many years later, offer me something so essential.  Now, the words bring light to the dark corridor, I have recently entered. I had attributed this darkness simply, and one-sidedly, to the “Spirit of the Times,” giving no nod to its opposite, and its potentially broadening “Spirit of the Depths.”

Ali Smith, a Scottish author, states in her interview in the Paris Review, in the Spring of 2017:

What is the point of art, of any art, if it doesn’t let us see with a little bit of objectivity where we are?…I use the step-back motion that I learned from Dickens—the way that famous first paragraph of A Tale of Two Cities creates a space by being its own opposite—to allow readers the space we need to see what space we’re in.

…We are living in a time when lies are sanctioned. We always lived in that time, but now the lies are publicly sanctioned. Something tribal has happen which means that nobody gives a damn whether somebody is lying or not because he is on my side…in the end will truth matter? Of course, truth will matter….But there is going to be a great deal of sacrifice on the way to getting truth to matter to us again.

Dickens tells us in fiction, the truth, that perhaps, at times, only fiction can offer. “Fiction tells you, by the making up of truth, what really is true.”(Smith, 2017) In this case, and, obviously, in many others, fiction offers entrance to a world that we may not have yet come to fully know from the travels and meanderings of our own psyche.

It is through fiction that we have an opportunity to occupy the realm of the opposites. Dickens’ prose creates for us the organic experience of occupying the coveted realm of possibility. Reading the beginning quote, has within it the inherent possibility of transporting us to a moment when the opposites can be experienced together, or at least in in the vicinity of one another.

For Jung, it is shadow, that stands at the gateway to this experience. Shadow’s presence leaves the door open to begin our acquaintance with the opposites. Jung, in describing the function of shadow, draws attention to shadow’s subtle, and unconscious exclusionary process, and suggests that it requires a depth of moral fortitude and integrity to be willing to tolerate the dissonance that the presence of shadow creates.

How much can we learn from the phrase: “It the worst of times,” when we have the courage to add, it’s shadow opposite, “it is the best of times” to it; and when we add to “we had everything before us, the phrase, “we had nothing before us”? For me, expanding my psychic realm like this, creates a sympathy for noticing things at the margins. I have learned from life, that extraordinary things happen at the edges. Jungian theory requests that we hover there, gaining perspective and regaining a lingering sense of the possibility offered to us at the edge of things.

Many of us have grown up in the margins of the realm created by our mothers, challenged by the world of our fathers; the realm of the nationality of one parent, transformed by the nationality of the other; the realm of our home life, augmented and changed by our school life; our private internal life, augmented by the outside world in which we live; our lived life, transformed by the life brought to us by our reading, and the multiplicity of our education.

Collectively, has also been enlarged  for me in my lifetime. My sense of “White” has been augmented and transformed by my changing sense of “Black”; the meaning of “Nationalism” has changed by the foul history of “nationalisms.” On my first trip to Europe my sense of being an American, was shattered (and enlarged) by the French seeing my country as inhabiting only part of the vast continent of North American. Also, the word “colonies” that I learned all about in history has been profoundly transformed by my understanding of the word, “colonization.”

I have learned from all of this that opposites do not exist easily and cooperatively, and naturally in consciousness. One side of the equation seems to live in the darkness to allow us to exist peacefully in the realm of the “oneness” of the other side, and it’s consequential, one-sidedness. It is only when we are able to hold these oppositions as neighbors that we realize how much is hidden from us, how much has been lost.

I know from all this, that transformational things happen on the edges, that the numinous and the mysterious happens on the edges.  Great art, fiction, and our dreams informs us again, and again that much that seems impossible, is possible at the edges. It is where the opposites meet, where margins can be celebrated and where anything is possible.

However, there is a great deal of sacrifice on the way to getting the margins of things to seriously matter to us again. It always involves allowing ourselves to be seriously and utterly disturbed.

Joan Golden-Alexis, Ph.D. is a Jungian Analyst and psychologist in New York City. Her practice consists of individuals as well as couples. drjoangolden@gmail

Reference:

Begley, A. “The Art of Fiction, No. 236,” Paris Review, Issue 221, Summer.

Written in the Flesh—The Transformational Magic of the Tattoo

 

To tattoo one’s body is merely one of the thousand ways of conjugating the verb ‘to be’ that fundamental concept of our metaphysics—Michael Thévos

 What lies deepest of all in man, is the skin—Paul Valery

 

In the last several decades both in academic circles and as a method of healing, analytic psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, with its central focus on the unconscious and the multilayered psyche, has decreased in popularity. Seemingly, reflective of the current zeitgeist, cognitive therapy with its narrow focus of symptom reduction, has taken the lead. In the popular therapeutic discourse, symptom relief, has replaced symbolical understanding of the symptom—the symptom understood as an access point to unconscious and potentially transformative aspects of the personality.

In contrast, tattoos, and other forms of body modification, as a method of healing (having been utilized for centuries to cure arthritis, to express autonomy, and to connect with higher and sacred curative powers), have increased in popularity. Seemingly reflective and reinforcing of a zeitgeist which emphasizes the innate metaphysic of becoming and memorializing that metaphysic on the surface of the body, tattoos have made an explosive impact. Currently, tattoos creep like vines on the arms, legs and torsos of many, unabashedly and comfortably crossing gender, educational and social barriers.

In fact, ink art has exploded, and now according to research studies 15 to 38 percent of Americans have some kind of long-term body art. What was once considered self-mutilating behavior and a psychiatric problem has now become the cure. Body art is on the move, and for the first time in history American women are more likely than men to get tattooed; 23% have tattoos as compared to 19% of men; and 14% of men and women have two or more. It is a now a credible hypothesis, that the increase in body modifications have arisen to fill the vacuum left by the loss of a symbolic and metaphorical connection to the unconscious.

Tattooing and the process of tattooing brings the emphasis back to the body, the skin, and most directly to the multi-layered psyche as a focus of interest. In fact, except for psychoanalysis, little in my opinion more directly connects the body, and corporality to interiority and the Self, than various forms of body modification. Privileging the body, always privileges psyche; modifying the body, often awakens and strengthens linkages between consciousness, and the unconscious psyche.

Although many express the importance of the surface appeal of their tattoos, rarely does the narrative end at that point. Most, who tell their stories, weave an intricate connection between the tattoo of choice, the story of its healing potential, and its connection to the never-ending project of self-expression and transformation. “Written on the skin—the very membrane that separates the self from the world—tattoos are diary entries, public announcements, conversation pieces, counter-cultural totems, valentines to lovers, memorial to the dead, reminders to the self. They are scars and symptoms, mistakes and corrections.  Collectively they form a secret history of grappling with the self in relationship to body….” [i] In fact, tattoos often directly transform the place of profound wounding, (from sexual assaults, to deeply invasive or deforming surgeries) sealing and containing them, reclaiming the body for the Self and initiating a generative process within.

The defining feature of tattooing is the making of indelible pigmented traces which are inside or underneath the skin behind what seems like a transparent layer. When in tattoo, the skin is transformed, and gives its own half-life over to a newly “living” image. This underscores the tattoo’s potential to effectively represent the interior of the psyche. It is the transformation of an area of the skin into an image (or script) which appears to elevate the tattoo to a form of psychic expression. This combined with choosing a particular image, and designating a particular placement on the body, places the power in the hands of the person who is experiencing something internally and makes choices. These choices result in a physical permanent mark on the skin, and a potential point of deep connection with the unconscious psyche.

One can conceive of the process of tattooing as a converting of the skin into a “ritual space” for healing.[ii] The tattoo and the process of tattooing, despite its conversion into a sanitized and modernized process, remains a form of corporeal transformation. What is external is transformed into something internal to the subject; and memory, a critical property of contemporary self-identity, is externalized and fixed upon the skin. Accordingly, tattoo artist Vkyvyn Lazonga claims that “getting pierced and tattooed tends to develop a person’s awareness of memory; the piercings or tattoos become points of reference that reinforce the self and history, and such practice do more than merely ‘remind’ or ‘reinforce’, they may also elicit who the person is or is becoming. In this sense they evoke, not only the registration of external events but internal depth.” [iii] Chinchilla, the British tattooist adds that, “everything that she inks on people is already inside them…she only opens the skin and lets it out.” [iv]

What is central to the conversion of the skin to a vehicle of psychic transport is what Alfred Gell, in his account of Polynesian tattooing, has termed the, “technical schema” of tattooing: “the puncturing, cutting and piercing of the skin; the flow of blood and the infliction of pain; the healing and closure of the wound; and the indelible trace of the process, a visible and permanent mark on, yet underneath the skin: ‘an inside which comes from the outside…’ the exteriorization of the interior which is simultaneously the interiorization of the exterior.” [v]

 Central to this process, is both the intentional wounding, the opening and then closing of the body, and the pain. Pain is an intrinsic and necessary aspect of the process of body modification and psychic penetration. Such practices speak to important and powerful concerns around flesh (body) and Self, linked with these processes of bodily inscription. Lacassagne[vi] speaks of these tattooed marks as “scars that speak”. I would add here, these are scars that not only speak, but in so doing, create a dialogue between inner and outer, and between interiority and exteriority.

This method of theorizing about the tattoo, is interesting as it captures a quality of the paradoxical and turns on the idea that there is an interaction or play between the “interior” and the “exterior” aspects of the tattoo, and the indelible mark that is simultaneously on and under the surface of the skin. This play of opposites, inside and outside, symbolic and corporeal and their interaction creating something new, underscores Jungian thought, and provides a context with which to explore with our analysands, (a population already involved in symbolic work) how tattoos function within their own internal-external processes, and opens the question, if this population, requires bodily inscription less than other groups.

In this context, it is interesting to understand, the moment when an analysand already involved in a deep symbolic connection to psyche, develops the need to have an indelible pigmented mark carved into their skin. Is that a moment akin to how Jung imagined the “big dream,” a notification from psyche of a momentous transition in the person’s life? Culling from the many narratives surrounding tattooing, I think this may be true.  But, if this is the case, the question arises as to why some analysands are called to mark the occasion in this way; why is it that he or she are called to have it, “written in the flesh”; and how does this act impact the on-going treatment? Cultural and social changes, provide the opportunity for those who seek analysis to feel comfortable tattooing, but this is clearly not the whole of what is involved. The link between the metaphorical connections involved in body modification, and the generative movement of psyche appears to be a fruitful area for further study.

[i] Mifflin, Bodies of Subversion, 2013, p. 147.
[ii] Lars Krutak, Spiritual Skin: Magical Tattoos and Scarification, p. 8.
[iii] V. Vale and Andrea Juno, ‘Introduction” in Modern Primitives, ed. Vale and Juno, p. 5.
[iv] Tattoo International, CLLV, November 1994, p. 11.
[v] Alfred Gell, Wrapping in Images: Tattooing in Polynesia. Oxford, 1993, pp.38-39, quoted in Susan Benson, “Inscription of the Self: Reflections on Tattooing and Piercing,” p.237…in Caplan, Written on the Body.
[vi] Quoted in Ibid p. 237.

Author
Joan Golden-Alexis, PHD, is a clinical psychologist, and certified Jungian analyst, practicing in New York City. She is on the teaching faculty of the Philadelphia Association of Jungian analysts, the Jungian Psychoanalytic Association of New York, and the clinical faculty of Yeshiva Graduate School of Psychology. Her practice consists of individuals and couples. She can be reached at drjgolden@earthlink.net.

Getting to Ordinary: in memory of Sonia March Nevis

Getting to Ordinary
In memory of Sonia March Nevis

Gestalt trainer, wise woman, practitioner of the art of ordinary

One rainy day when going to the playground was a no go, I read The Velveteen Rabbit to our five-year-old granddaughter. It had been a long time since I’d read it to my children and I liked it a lot better than she did–so much so that I’ve searched for ordinary words to say why getting to an ordinary kind of real is so important.

Do you remember the story? A velveteen rabbit was given to a Boy on Christmas. “He was fat and bunchy, as a rabbit should be; his coat was spotted brown and white; he had real thread whiskers and his ears were lined with pink sateen.” The Boy quickly forgot about him, so he lived in the toy cupboard where, because he was “only made of velveteen, some of the more expensive toys quite snubbed him.”

The cheaply made and nameless rabbit wondered what Real was. A wise old Skin Horse whose coat had worn off explained that “Real isn’t how you are made, it’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.” The lonely rabbit longed to belong to a child, to be loved, and to become Real.

“Does it hurt?” asked the rabbit. Like most of us, he longed to become Real without too much difficulty. The Skin Horse explained: “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt…It doesn’t happen all at once…You become. It takes a long time.” The plus is that “once you are Real you can’t become unreal again. It lasts forever.”

One night the rabbit was chosen to sleep with the Boy. The Boy rolled over on him, which was decidedly unpleasant, but then played with him daily. As time passed, the happy rabbit failed to notice that his velveteen fur was getting shabby and his tail was coming loose. The unique marks of love wore away manufactured perfection, and one day the Boy pronounced the rabbit Real.

It is plainly so: getting to ordinary starts with an initial awakening into a self that feels Real. Only another’s devoted attention enlarges being and brings meaning: we matter to someone. It takes two to create one who feels Real. Although I would wish everyone this magical awakening, which is supposed to get a running start in childhood, we also know that Real that depends on another cannot last–either for Rabbit or ourselves. We must achieve a separate sense of self.

In stories, this hard and necessary separation is often imaged as a farewell to the other. In this story the Boy gets sick and Rabbit, along with infected bedding, must be burned. Forlorn, mourning the never-again days with the Boy, and accepting his fate with simple sadness, Rabbit feels a real tear trickle down his dingy little face.

Tears are part of the inevitable sorrows of life. We will lose our innocence, some of our beliefs, our faith in forever, and beloved others. Tears are how we let our hearts break. When Rabbit feels utterly bereft…

…the nursery fairy appears. She transforms Rabbit from Real to real. The fairy—symbol of the discovery of an indwelling self—doesn’t create a unicorn or even an eagle, but an ordinary rabbit. He can twitch his ears, nibble good things, and find real rabbit friends. It turns out that real life is gloriously ordinary, and I hope all of us get there.

So I have to get hopping now. We’re almost out of milk, I need to pick up the mild green olives our granddaughter likes, and get winter sweaters to the dry cleaner. Biscotti at the Italian bakery, maybe a gelato (as long as I’m there), and a birthday card. It’s an ordinary day.

AUTHOR

Deborah Stewart is a Jungian Analyst on Cape Cod. She trained with the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts and the Westchester Institute for Training in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. She is a faculty member of the Philadelphia Jung Institute and sits on the board and faculty of the Gestalt International Study Center on Cape Cod. Previously, she trained as a Gestalt therapist at the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland. She can be reached at http://www.DeborahCStewart.com

Mythological Dreams

According to Jung, the unconscious spontaneously produces images that are mythological in nature, meaning that they are symbolic, universal, and address the nature of the cosmos, and our place in it. Mythologems, or mythological motifs, are a kind of pre-existing psychic natural resource, present at least in potential in the deep layers of the psyche of every person. These mythological images are the raw materials from which the grand narratives that we know of as myth are formed.

Myths are products of the unconscious and reveal its workings. Jung wrote that “myths are original revelations of the preconscious psyche, involuntary statements about unconscious psychic happenings.”[i] Jung believed that myths and dreams spring from a common source – that they both draw from to the same aquifer of universal images. “The whole world of myth of fable is an outgrowth of unconscious fantasy just like the dream.”[ii] Jung believed that the motifs found in dreams and myths were so similar that they were nearly identical.

Dreams, being statements of the unconscious, play no small part in the therapy….The indubitable occurrence of archetypal motifs in dreams make a thorough knowledge of the spiritual history of man indispensable for anyone seriously attempting to understand the real meaning of dreams. The likeness between certain dream motifs and mythologems is so striking that they may be regarded not merely as similar but even identical. This recognition not only raises the dream to a higher level and places it in the wider context of the mythologem, but, at the same time, the problems posed by mythology are brought into connection with the psychic life of the individual.[iii]

Joseph Campbell adds some nuance to Jung’s assertion that myth and dream originate from the same source. He contends that myths are produced with the help of consciousness, and contain not merely upwelling of instinctual wisdom, but the distillation of generations of lived knowledge.

If we are to grasp the full value of the materials, we must note that myths are not exactly comparable to dream. Their figures originate from the same sources – the unconscious wells of fantasy – and their grammar is the same, but they are not the spontaneous products of sleep. On the contrary, their patterns serve as a powerful picture language for the communication of traditional wisdom. This is true already of the so-called primitive folk mythologies. The trance-susceptible shaman and the initiated antelope-priest are not unsophisticated in the wisdom of the world, not unskilled in the principles of communication by analogy. The metaphors by which they live, and through which they operate, have been brooded upon, searched, and discussed for centuries – even millenniums; they have served whole societies, furthermore, as the mainstays of thought and life. The culture patterns have been shaped to them. The youth have been educated, and the aged rendered wise, through the study, experience, and understanding of their effective initiatory forms. For they touch and actually bring into play the vital energies of the whole human psyche. They link the unconscious to the fields of practical action.[iv]

The grand mythic narratives, therefore, have been forged by culture. Myths tell us how to live and contain the distilled wisdom of the ancestors. Mythological stories, then, always tell us something important about the collective. They instruct the individual about how he or she ought to orient toward the wider culture. It may be that, at decisive moments in personal individuation, our individual choices intersect with larger collective currents. At these times, our personal story becomes part of the larger myth unfolding in the life of society around us. It is likely that mythological dreams appear at just such junctures.

As Jung points out, our dreams often include images that could have come from myths or fairy tales. There are big symbols such as snakes or trees, and these are accompanied by big feelings. Or our dreams have supernatural creatures or occurrences. Animals talk. There are witches or vampires. Then we know we are in the realm of the mythic. When mythological dreams appear, it may be that these are there to link our personal story to collective events, to place our personal drama decisively in a historical context. If we are indeed connected to the entirety of human experience through the underground rhizome of the collective unconscious, and influence flows both ways, then receiving a dream from this level of the psyche alerts us that we are in the flow of a collective psychic happening.

Consider the following dream:

It was a sunny day, and I was carrying a little girl dressed in a long white gown to be baptized. The path to the church led up a steep hill. But I was holding the child safely and securely in my arms. All of a sudden, I found myself at the brink of a crevasse. I had just enough time to set the child down on the other side before I plunged into the abyss.[v]

The image of the little girl alerts us that we are potentially in mythological territory. The child is a profound symbol of futurity, of that which is both fragile and yet destined to survive us. Jung says that the child is a symbol that new thing that appears spontaneously as a result of the union of opposites just at that time when we feel most stuck and desolate.

The “child” is born out of the womb of the unconscious, begotten out of the depths of human nature, or rather out of living Nature herself. It is a personification of vital forces quite outside the limited range of our conscious mind; of ways and possibilities of which our one-sided conscious mind knows nothing; a wholeness which embraces the very depths of Nature. It represents the strongest, the most ineluctable urge in every being, namely the urge to realize itself.[vi]

The transpersonal content symbolized by the little girl is being carried by the dream ego toward a ritual experience of rebirth and consecration. The dream is reassuring that this content will survive beyond the destruction of the conscious personality. As a symbol, the child can stand for that which was there before consciousness, and that which will remain after consciousness ceases to be.

The child…is thus both beginning and end, an initial and a terminal creature. The initial creature existed before man wan, and the terminal creature will be when man is not. Psychologically speaking, this means that the “child” symbolizes the pre-conscious and the post-conscious essence of man. His pre-conscious essence is the unconscious state of earliest childhood; his post-conscious essence is an anticipation by analogy of life after death.[vii]

Just as our actual children will survive us and go on to carry a part of our essence into the infinite future, the symbolic child carries transpersonal values into the future beyond our personal, temporally limited engagement with them. (The image of the child is used to suggest just such a content at the end of the film 2001 A Space Odyssey.)

In fact, this dream was dreamt by Sophie Scholl on the night before her execution. According to the biography written by her sister, Scholl interpreted the dream to her cell mate thus:

“The child represents our idea, which will triumph in spite of all obstacles. We are allowed to be its trailblazers, but we must die before it is realized.”[viii]

Such a dream reveals to us the mythic substrate on which our personal drama unfolds. Mythological dreams may also perhaps reflect the currents of history and world events which flow beneath us at all times, but which we may not be capable of detecting without the benefit of hindsight.

Mythological dreams are usually Big Dreams, dreams that affect us powerfully, and stay with us for years. Mythological dreams encourage us to fulfill our personal destiny, so that we can take up our unique role in the life of the collective. They seem to appear at nodal points in our life, often prefiguring decisive moments when we face a choice whether to move in the direction of our mysteriously pre-ordained unfolding.

[i] “The Psychology of the Child Archetype,” The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, CW 9i, par. 261.
[ii] “Principles of Practical Psychotherapy,” The Practice of Psychotherapy, CW 16, par. 17.
[iii] “Foreword to White’s ‘God and the Unconscious,’” Psychology and Religion: West and East, CW 11, par. 450.
[iv] Jospeh Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, pp. 256-257.
[v] Beradt, C. (1968). The Third Reich of dreams. With an essay by Bruno Bettelheim. Chicago: Quadrangle Books, pp. 107-108.
[vi] “The Psychology of the Child Archetype,” The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, CW 9i, par. 289.
[vii] “The Psychology of the Child Archetype,” The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, CW 9i, par. 299.
[viii] Beradt, C. (1968). The Third Reich of dreams. With an essay by Bruno Bettelheim. Chicago: Quadrangle Books, p. 108.

AUTHOR

Lisa Marchiano, LCSW is a certified Jungian analyst in private practice in Philadelphia. She blogs at http://www.theJungSoul.com and is the co-creator of This Jungian Life podcast. She can be reached through http://www.lisamarchiano.com

 

Some Commentary on Psychological Ethics and the Plural Nature of Consciousness

In contemporary society the reigning notion of psychology has increasingly come to be dominated by the physical sciences. Consequently discussion of ethics in psychology has largely been framed on the practice of medicine. The supposition underlying such a framing holds that events in the psyche are much like those in medicine, that is, due to specific causal factors and this furthermore suggests a definition of the psyche as a collection of effects. There are a number of good questions to ask with regard to this state of affairs the most important of which is whether or not the actual nature of the psyche is consonant, or even compatible, with the terms imposed upon it by a medical accounting of its nature. If the answer is yes, we may give some credence to the present state of affairs. But if the answer is no, even in part, a new notion of ethics must be introduced that would accord with the actual nature of the psyche.

One need not take the matters very far in order to realize that any approach to remediation of psychological suffering that proceeds from a fundamental misunderstanding, or mischaracterization, of the phenomenon with which it is concerned is likely, at some level, to yield problematic results. The question regarding the relationship between the nature of the physical sciences and that of the psyche is not a difficult one to answer. The psyche is not by nature an exclusively physical entity and its workings exceed those describable by the cause and effect relations that would characterize a purely physical universe. The phenomenology of the soul, therefore, cannot be adequately folded into either medicine or the physical sciences. It exists at a very different level of manifestation and pertains to an entirely different order of phenomena.

I feel the need to pause here. I have learned from experience that to suggest that science is not the only means through which one may define what is real is regarded as a sort of heresy. Doing so often invites dismissal and even scorn. This is an odd occurrence in psychology whose natural order includes, not only those measurable forms and patterns that would be the legitimate scope of scientific inquiry, but the entirety of those aspects that make up the context of immediate experience. It is also an odd appearance if the prevailing air currently adopted by psychology is scientific in nature as science purports dispassion as one of its core tenants. This latter feature reflects a shift in the situation of science within the cultural consciousness, one that alerts us to the fact that science has slipped it bounds and had become a belief system. However, if one removes from our understanding of the psyche, the existence of consciousness, of meaning, and any notion of the creative, which itself reflects the living aspect of psychic existence, one then has no need for the term psychology at all, for we are not longer speaking of a logos of the soul but simply an arrangement of matter. Herein lies the problem. The passion with which the contemporary mentality has molded science into a social belief system, and accorded it an exclusive status as the arbiter of what may be considered real, is something that actually represents an obstacle in even understanding psychologically, let alone establishing a genuine ethics of the soul. The exclusion of some criteria, and the overemphasis of others, leaves us with a distorted concept of the soul, not to mention the fact that the chosen means for authenticating reality runs counter means that would be appropriate for truly psychological understanding.

The supposition that the psyche is a scientifically definable entity is actually a logical absurdity, but it is an absurdity void of any awareness of its absurd nature. Once any approach to the soul is limited to that framed according to a single mode, it is impossible for awareness to come into contact with any dimension of experience that would challenge what has now become a fundamentalist stance. The underlying mode of consciousness underlying scientific inquiry is the rational mode. This mode has its specific function, an important one in the conscious life of the individual, as well as in society. In the development of technologies, and in acquiring information regarding the spatiotemporal order of things this mode functions in a vital manner. But set up as an arbiter of all reality it becomes an agent of dissociation, establishing schisms between the diversity of aspects of consciousness that would naturally inform one another. Understood from another viewpoint that is capable of engagement with a plurality of forms of consciousness, even contradictory ones, it represents a hegemonic state of affairs, absurdly so. One does not go too far in analogizing this situation to a kind of colonization of the psyche by a particular mythic structure, and this is the core of the problem. The rational mind has sought to take over the role of the mythic consciousness rather than assuming its rightful place as one mode within a plurality of modes of consciousness. It is likely that it is the assertion of its factual basis that leads rational consciousness into a denial of its unconsciously mythic role. Under such circumstances, one aspect, within a plurality, has managed to assert dominance over the rest of the possibilities.

Were it the case that rational consciousness actually represented the apogee of emerged forms of consciousness, one might make a positive argument for its hegemonic status, but alas, this is not  the case. It was not idle intent that moved Einstein to state, “The rational mind is a faithful servant and the intuitive mind a sacred gift. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” If we can speak of a hierarchy of forms, rational consciousness would naturally assume a lesser role. It is therefore ethically problematic to exclusively equate rational consciousness with psychological health, as some forms of psychotherapeutic approach tend to assert. Such an assertion merely points to the idea that conformity to an established societal myth is the measure of psychological health. If so, the ethical question then rests upon the ethics of the society in question. Here, there may be problems.

One of the problems that we face is the fact that any mode of understanding will tend to extend its structural principle so that it appears universal in scope. This process has a functional aspect in that it expands the depth of understanding along the lines of the particular mode in question and, in some cases, forms the binding structure of a society. This latter tendency, to act as a binder, is a mythic role. But at the same time this process gives rise to a shadow result as it narrows consciousness and begins to imprison consciousness within its own limited confines. This secondary result is pathological, not only in the individual, but also at the broader societal level. The rational mind organizes its vision of the cosmos according to its precepts, as a rational entity that will ultimately be reducible to rational terms. This assumption is, from a mythic standpoint, almost indistinct from the religious one that saw in the cosmos the workings of a divine will exclusively. These two modes never shared the same reference language because they arose out of very different functional roles within consciousness and pertain to very different orders of phenomena. Both have historically appeared purposeful in their respective realms of functioning. However, once established in the role of being at the top of a hierarchic paradigm and armed with an insistence on an unassailable claim to confer truth, what was at first purposive, became altogether malignant. The very same thing that once extended humanity’s embrace with life now begins to constrict it.

Part of the problem resides in science as a legitimate mode of engagement with phenomena within its own parameters, as opposed to science as a mythic structure. The dilemma that we are in is that one mode of consciousness has attempted to usurp the functional role of another. The notion that religion could replace the function of science is a fairly easy fallacy for most in contemporary society to perceive. But that science has assumed the mantle of myth is less clear to us. This is so because we are living within it. The myth of origins of rational consciousness is one in which all phenomena must conform to physical law. However such a notion excludes phenomena that are more than physical in nature.

As a binder that establishes a coherent bond between individuals within a society that is highly diverse and fragmented, any cement for that bond is likely to become that to which all parties may agree. The problem appears to arise when such a bond assumes the form of a unifying myth that cannot actually function effectively in a mythic manner. The rational mind understands myth as a false or provisional explanation. Myth is an inferior, or un-evolved attempt at fact. But myths primary role is not the establishment of fact, nor even a compensation for its lack, but rather it serves to cohere a diversity of experience into a form that renders the flow of existence both meaningful and relatable. This means that myth acts as a bridge between forms of consciousness, and the diversity of phenomena that correspond to them, rather than reducing them to a single mode of understanding. Myths are fictive constructs that reveal an objectivity that is of an entirely different order than that understood by the rational mind. The two run in almost diametrically opposed manner. Ratio means to divide, but myth is a fictive construct whose form embodies within it the cohered reality of lived experience. It unifies a natural diversity into a unified livable reality.

Each myth has something that is true as it base but no mythic structure known to humanity is able to account for the totality of possible truths. Rather, it creates an image of a totality out of the truth it touches and provides a means of maintaining the continuity of our relations with it. The role played by each myth differs, not only between civilizations, but also between individuals, each of whom carries within them a construct in image form that holds together the universe that they know. That such a myth is born out of conditions of privilege, privation, safety, or trauma, has little impact upon the fact that it retains its unique and fully objective nature, an objectivity linked to the context of a lived life and a unique truth, rather than in spite of it. It is a naturally arising form that exceeds description according to means lying outside of it and can only be understood through entering into its world. An approach to this world is entirely different than the one utilized in the sciences as we now conceive of them for its nature exceeds linearity and is itself a creative mutation rather than another iteration along the lines of a previously established order. Such an approach as is needed, while perhaps not necessarily religious in nature, requires something of a stance in consciousness that one did find in most religious constructs; the ability to not know, and to anticipate the existence, or appearance, of an order that exceeded ones ability to predict in advance. The loss of contact with this ability within a society, as well as within a discipline that purports to now define what it means to be a human being in relationship to the broader cosmos, is a problematic state of affairs at best.

What I have been suggesting is that an ethic associated with the psyche will have far more to do with the nature of myth and the fictive, rather than with fact, so long as our definition of myth includes an understanding of its functional nature. This includes the meaningful unification of highly diverse modes of awareness into a coherent system, one that will allow life to be lived fully in a psychological sense rather than merely a physical sense alone. The implications of this for the ethical approach of the psychologist, is that the psychologist must be prepared to enter into the mythic reality of the patient as opposed to standing at a distance safely ensconced in a societal one which reduces the mythic function to a state of unreality. This is so because the mythic reality of the patient, no matter how non-rational it may appear, has at its core a truth that is conveyed through its dramatizations and imagistic expressions, only some of which may conform to the realm of fact.

It is this above all that seems essential if we are to consider an ethics of the soul, for soul speaks to us not in parts, so much as through them. It is the ethical task of the observing consciousness of the psychologist to tend as carefully as possible to all of the diverse utterances of the soul without resorting to a scheme that would assert one dimension of the psyche arbitrarily over another. This dimension of ethical consideration demands a discipline that is actually far more exacting than is found in other fields, for it asks of the would be explorers of psychological reality that they participate in the very emergence of psychic reality at multiple levels of awareness even as they maintain the ability to observe and relate to it. In that sense the psychologist is not merely recording but also tending to that which is emerging and even becoming a part of that process. In that sense it is through the very being of the psychologist that psychological reality is realized in an internal sense rather than through means that are external to the context of experience. This is a demanding task but perhaps given the nature of the psyche, the most ethically pertinent approach that we may take.

In a future posting I hope to expand on some of the natures of the diverse aspects of consciousness and the stances within consciousness that may be called upon (at least potentially) for any actual encounter with the soul to take place if we are not to overtly reduce it. These include not simply those that frame the modern myth, but mythical, magical, and archaic ones as well, ones that modern thought presumed it had surpassed. These seemingly more “primitive” forms continue as functional aspects of humanities intimate bond with the cosmos and their influence may be everywhere seen so long as one is willing to look. In that regard a visiting of esoteric thought in particular is well worthwhile. The image from the visionary Jakob Bohme, (above) is one such example. Bohme’s cosmology suggested a transit to higher knowledge through a return to an intimate contact with nature, a paradigm that has a profound meaning to it and is applicable to daily analytic practice. It reflects the position that I am putting forth here; that the plurality of forms of consciousness each have functional value, and that this functional value persists in our makeup in a manner that contradicts the modernist myth of matter. Indeed I would suggest that the incapacity of consciousness to loan its own function to nature is likely the singularly most tragic pitfall of modern civilization. It is not fact alone that ties us to nature herself any more than science can define the psyche. A review of esoteric forms will be helpful in showing how highly invested such forms are in compensating what is actually lacking in the contemporary mentality. What they restore is a function within consciousness that permits a spanning of the realm of the archetype with that of the discrete life of the individual. Another way of saying this is that they connect the mundane world of material things with their eternal origins. In so doing they complete a circuit of reconnection and renewal.

AUTHOR

Mark Dean, MFA, MA, ATR-BC, LPC is a Jungian Analyst and an art psychotherapist with credentials as a Registered, Board Certified Art Therapist and Licensed Professional Counselor (PA) with nearly twenty years experience. He has been an Adjunct Professor at Arcadia University since 1990. Previous work experience includes providing addiction treatment at the Charter Fairmount Institute, Clinical Case Management for the Adult Day Program, and serving as the Clinical Coordination of the Geriatric Outpatient Programs at Belmont Center for Comprehensive Treatment as well as his private practice. His volunteer work includes providing clinical intervention with violent and displaced youths in the Violence Postvention Program and at The Northern Home for Children in Philadelphia. Mr. Dean has been the recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Award for Artistic Excellence and has twice received the Pennsylvania Council of the Arts Award. Prior to his graduate training as an art psychotherapist, Mr. Dean was a professional artist. His work is featured in several prominent private and public, national, and international collections. He can be reached at http://www.psychearts.org

 

 

Meditation on Mothers and Death

Eshu’s Vision

Crows with iridescent rich feathers
swoop in layers in front of my windshield. 
Their chatter hales down like hard pellets
fallen from an August rain cloud in this October month.
I drive into furious black wings, expecting they can be swept aside, made invisible,
that they have not chosen me, but  only like me, are weary after night flight across a sleeping continent.
 
Their black pea eyes refuse to blink.
They push roughly against air forcing me to breathe deeper
like the first time, out of the birth waters,
trying to catch that first breath of air.
 
On this umbilical highway each exhalation releases:
wings rise and fall to earth,
these messengers of Eshu, bring divination, falling like rain,
blur my vision in embryonic thin air.
 
Finished, they fly east to the ocean.
Sunrise reflects like water and oil on wings of charcoal.
The space behind my heart darkens, while nigredo feathers fallen to earth,
predict my mother’s death.

The summer is only beginning, though these hot, humid days suggest August, rather than the light touch of warmth that June most often brings.  For the last several months I have been thinking, actually more ruminating about mortality, and to say it in what seems a more blunt manner, dying.  This is the close personal death—not the distant one of a collective ritual such as Catholic extreme unction or the death of an actor playing someone dying in a movie. It is not the hearing of the death of an actor who has been immortalized on the screen.  I question.  How could he die?  How old was he anyway—surely not that old? Then I remember the years since I first saw him on screen.  I realize that the difference of our age is not that great.  I might be closer to death then I think.  Of course I am because I cannot know the minute nor the hour.  This thought makes dying seem so very close to me. As if I will die. Can die—soon.   For these few seconds I know this and think I can actually feel my body dying.

I have begun with my own mortality but I also want to talk about mothers and our holding and lose of them.  In a soft way, like a small pocket of lightly swirling cove water, under the ocean, I have been thinking only about my own personal mother’s death, and so a patient came not too many days ago, because she is in mourning about her own mother’s recent death.  Of course, every one who walks through the analytical door is carrying a gift, a contributing reason for my existence as I am for theirs. They are each bringing something I must hold with love and bear with courage.  This is because I have forgotten and need reminding of my necessary life work.

I wonder if it isn’t too mournful and dreadful in some way to be thinking about death in the summer.  Doesn’t it belong in a dark month, a rainy, cloud-driven late January day?  As a depth psychologist I can safely say not—it’s all right to bring the darkness anytime as it never really leaves us.  Yes, there is safety here but there is also safety in wanting the light—the beautiful light of a blue-sky June day.

I struggle with wanting both—because I actually need both.  It does remind me of what appears as a paradox to me of having someone bring you into the world, be your first place of heart connection, all the while having them die, and yet still be with them in memory. This is for all the years the rest of my life. This might seem so simplistic in thought but it holds a great importance in how I feel my life and feel into my life.

This apparent eternal connection to life and mother, even through her death, sometimes even more so because of her death, interweaves through my life and that of my patients.

As I read through pages of author discussions in service of writing a book on what I have called Archetypal Grief—African American mothers losing their children for generations due to slavery, and the emotional pain of such losses, I feel myself to now be living within the phenomenological field of mothers and death.  But like many things, I feel myself to have been chosen in this moment because I have chosen a topic—a theme, that wants to be expanded upon and yet carries the weight of intergenerational trauma that remains today.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, a pioneer in the field of writing about death and dying, begins to inform my writing work—allowing me to develop an idea for a new model of consideration.  This idea is that something changes the model of grief with intergenerational dying and mourning caused by an archetypal event such as slavery.  It is almost as if a mother, and all the enslaved future daughters she births and their daughter’s daughters, moving down the maternal line, will have no place for denial or bargaining as regards death.  Emotionally, there can only be room for anger, depression and acceptance.  This is what can frame the lived experiences of mothering slaves bound to death through birthing and intergenerational child loss.  I’m speaking of this because it has threaded through my consciousness for the past year as I write about enslaved mothers.  I also know that it lives in me as a member of this cultural collective.

Working Hands
 
Sunset red next to
azure blue
next to
spring green,
the colors
of the quilt
stream,
an unchecked flow
of
colored river 
gradually meeting shore,
the working brown
of my grandmother’s
hands.

This past Mother’s Day was a May Sunday in the middle of the month. I performed a short ritual in remembrance of my mother and all of the women of my matriarch lineage. I also remembered the women on my father’s side of family.  This day designated for mothers is not the only one in which we think about the women who have given us life.  In speaking of the mother archetype Jung says:

Like any other archetype, the mother archetype appears under an almost infinite variety of aspects….First in importance are the personal mother and grandmother, stepmother and mother-in-law….or a remote ancestress….The qualities associated with it are maternal solicitude and sympathy;  the magic authority of the female;  the wisdom and the spiritual exaltation that transcend reason;  any helpful instinct or impulse;  all that is benign, all that cherishes and sustains, that fosters growth and fertility.  The place of magic transformation and rebirth, together with the underworld and its inhabitants, are presided over by the mother.

C.G. Jung, CW, vol9i, para. 156, 158

As I consider the passage of my own mother into death, I think more of my own to-come experience of dying.  I think about how we can be afraid of dying. As I age, I realize I am in the category of one more likely to die.  This is sobering.  It doesn’t seem to matter how much presence death has when one is younger—in the twenties, thirties, the later years adds a different quality dimension.  How I can be afraid of it, and how each patient who discusses dying of a parent, friend or stranger is actually referencing their own death.  I believe this is why we must consider wisdom as we age.  It seems an important exchange—a trade-off, a softening offered against the hard edge of ego consciousness leaving the body.

As I write now, I wonder about my own purpose on choosing this meditation on mothers, death and dying. It feels not like swimming in a spiral of self-aggrandizement but more like a spider traversing her web.  Seeking a place to belong while knowing that all is at once home.

Blue Pearl
 
Stepping outside of the hospital where she had just died,
my arms have become wings.
 
Blue pearl surrounds my heart
and moves in the birthing motion of a star,
unencumbered by fear of loss,
now desiring only a child’s life.
 
I am warm with sunrays.
All false joys are tossed away like disappointing fruit,
fallen next to discarded sorrow.
All of it waiting to be washed away by the next rainfall.
 
Ocean stone shines cerulean glory,
pierces doubt, recovers with winds of truth
any falsehood about love,
and it’s power to heal all that hurts.
 
Caresses heartbreak.
Breathes tender.
Like the velvet softness of aged skin.
 
Sapphire reflects upon itself,
star to star,
captures my breath,
recreates it pearl by pearl.
 
And by this I know you have arrived safely.

AUTHOR

Fanny Brewster Ph.D. M.F.A., is a Jungian analyst and author of African Americans and Jungian Psychology:  Leaving the Shadows. (Routledge, 2017). She is a faculty member of the Philadelphia Jung Institute and can be reached through www.fannybrewster.com

Sleeping Beauty: a Wake-Up Call

I have been thinking about Sleeping Beauty lately—remember her? She was never one of my favorites. I felt on early reading that she was rather a twit, stumbling upon the one and only spindle left in the entire kingdom and then pricking herself with it. Surely, at age 15, she should have developed more hand-eye coordination. This unlikely occurrence—how sharp could a spindle be, anyway?—caused every living being in castle to fall into a coma, even the flies. I mean really, SB.

As a child, I resonated to tales of ego strength: Jack, after his initial bad bargain (trading the family cow for a handful of beans), climbed the beanstalk and polished off a giant. Cinderella had the chutzpah to go to the ball and was rewarded with a prince. Hansel and Gretel roasted the horrid hag in her own oven—gotcha. SB, on the other hand, zonked out for 100 years, and was then awakened by a prince who happened to show up at just the right moment. If there was a life lesson in this story, it wasn’t apparent to me then.

But let’s get to the Evil Fairy part: EF wasn’t invited to the celebration of SB’s long-awaited royal birth, so she crashed the party and cursed SB, which turned into the fateful spindle-prick and 100 comatose years even for flies, not to mention innocent citizens. All this because SB’s parents were royally witless. In one version of the tale, EF wasn’t invited because the king and queen ran short of gold dinnerware. In another, they thought EF was dead, and didn’t bother to check.

Neither did they explain the evils of spindles to their daughter in case the burning and purging they had decreed missed a few. Or, the minute SB turned 15, assign a bevy of bodyguards to fend off any spindles that might be stalking her. Instead, the king and queen went on a trip, SB went poking around the castle—and guess what? There was a spindle right there in the castle—duh!

With everyone out cold, plant life sprang into action: a Trump-tower high hedge of thorns grew up around the castle and entrapped any would-be hero trying to get through (what a way to die). But on the exact day the hundred-year curse was up, the malevolent hedge opened to Hero Prince, who was visiting the area and was curious about the rumored castle avec princess. Of course HP found SB even though she was up in a remote tower with that terrible spindle. Everyone in the castle came back to life, now very unfashionably dressed, and HP and SB got married, code for Problem Over.

What I found frustrating about this tale was its lack of human agency, and along with it, assurance that I, like many a hero and heroine, can overcome even the most daunting difficulty. Feckless parents are a common occurrence in fairy tales, but even dummlings like Jack could finagle a way out of a situational jam. SB, however, totally checked out, only to be rescued by a prince who was mostly in the right place at the right time—no clever effort, brave feat, or lofty love.

From a Jungian viewpoint all the characters in a fairy tale can represent aspects of an individual psyche. We can recognize parts of ourselves in SB’s clueless parents, an innocent princess, and the fury of a disdained fairy. What an unappealing cast of characters—I mean characteristics.

But what I have found most irritating in this tale is its fatalism: sometimes you-know-what happens and we just have to wait in situ until a savior arrives. But no worries: when the time is right (even if it feels like a century), a hero-prince-rescuer will show up. Life and energy will then be restored without anyone having to make much effort. This is hardly a heartening message.

But wait: the fateful chain of events began when the king and queen excluded the 13^th fairy. Because they were unable to engage her darkness, the shadow she represented became actively hostile. The royal couple had hoped to ensure their daughter a rosy life, but her life, and ours, must necessarily include shadow.

Conscious and unconscious must have it out with one another, a process Jung likens to that of hammer and anvil. Two sturdy opposites are required for psychic life and conscious individuation. Otherwise, as we see in the tale, collapse and stasis ensue.

The king and queen’s denial of shadow illustrates one of Jung’s famous dictums: When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate—which, as we know from the tale and from life, exacts a high price. Because everyone except the late and lucky hero falls unconscious, resolution resides outside human agency.  Redemption is left to the archetypal realm as fate.

We can, of course, mitigate fate: “We have to discover more consciousness, to extend consciousness, and the more it is extended the more we get away from the original condition.” (CW 11, p. 967) Perhaps that famous, fateful spindle can prick us into the value of ever more conscious engagement in our lives.

AUTHOR

Deborah Stewart is a Certified Jungian Analyst on Cape Cod. She is a faculty member of the Philadelphia Jung Institute and a co-creator of This Jungian Life podcast. You can reach her at http://www.deborahcstewart.com

Grief as Anger

           

One of the most recognizable stereotypes of African American women is that of the Angry Black Woman.  I believe that this image of Africanist women has grown out of the Collective’s need to have a Feminine upon which to project strength.

Following the decades after slavery and the plantation system where black women worked in the fields, birthed and lost their children, took care of the children of others and suffered being a mothering slave, it seems that the American psyche would find these women to be strong of character.  This is oftentimes applied to black women—that they are strong.  But sometimes this strength is mistaken for anger—thus the angry black woman stereotype. Stereotypes exist because there was once an image, language, a story that created in our consciousness a tangible remembrance.  The recollection becomes solidified as a stereotype.

When I think about the stereotype of the angry black woman I begin to search deeper, looking for something else that resonates with what has risen to the surface.  But before going there it might be important to see why an African American woman might be angry.  The emotion of anger within ourselves can sometimes make us afraid.  We cannot tolerate the uncontrolled welling up and intense heat of the energy of rage or anger.  We can be equally afraid of the release of this anger.  I’m thinking of a situation that might cause one to be angry and yet be out of touch with how to express this anger—to have it suppressed for the sake of one’s survival. Just for a moment imagine that you are a female child born into slavery in the early 1800’s.  Your mother has birthed you and returned to the cotton fields within a month of your birth.

She sometimes comes home to breastfeed you when given permission but otherwise, your early infancy is spent in the care of an elder in the shack where you may have been born.   You might easily be cared for by a young boy if there is no elder woman available. As an infant, you continue to live with others in the shack who may or may not be biological family.  As you begin to get older you are given chores to perform in the white family’s house or in the fields.  These are minor chores and do not take up much of your time as you can still find time to play with the other small white children of the plantation owner.  The day eventually comes when you are no longer allowed to play with these children.  At the age of 8 or ten you must take on more serious jobs—you become a night-pillow for the mistress or worse yet for the master.  Your body, that never really belonged to you, now becomes recognized by you as being the possession of another. Suspicion of the ownership of your mother’s body is now finalized in your mind as you understand that she too belongs to a white master.  You find that your skin color makes you a slave.  You are told that this is how it is and how it will be for the rest of your life.  Imagine that this is your life—for the rest of your life. Imagine your anger.

The idea that slavery happened so long ago and has no place in our cultural thinking today is a part of  America’s Shadow.  It is difficult to bear the thoughts of what life must have been like back then but this is a necessary part of the healing of our American collective.  We wish to forget and we cannot forget.

When we remember and attempt to make some changes good can happen—a civil rights movement emerges which does not end in another civil war; voting rights are guaranteed by law; segregation ends.

But we cannot shine enough light onto the shadow for too long and so once more we sit at the edge of shadow awaiting the next racial storm to begin.  We have had our Ferguson and all the deaths of Black men and women by policemen within the last five years.  I believe that our cultural complexes are so activated by fear and anger that we have a great difficulty staying with patience for understanding what might help us heal our American racial Shadow.

We can understand our anger, our guilt. What of the grief that lives under the anger?  What happens to the emotion of generations of former slaves?  Jung says that our history is in our blood.  The DNA that we live with identifies us as historical and archetypal human beings.  If I feel into how my ancestors before me lived, whether through mirror neurons or the spirit of ancestors, how do I carry the traumatic emotions such as anger and the underlying grief of centuries-old slavery?  I think that we could be angry but we must also hold a deep place for grief.  So when I hear about the angry black woman, I am also trying to hold psychic space for the grief-filled woman.  Where does this grief emerge from and where does it go?  I think that at this point it could be just enough to consider that such a thing exist—an underlying grief that rests within the bosom of generations of African Diaspora women.  This grief can appear as anger.  Why not?  Within the clinical setting oftentimes the emotion of anger covers sadness and sorrow.  What would make this unlikely in a cultural group that has survived 400 years of slavery?  What is the archetypal grief of a mothering slave? These are questions that I ask myself because of the American life that I lead—both personally and professionally.

Biography

Fanny Brewster, Ph.D., M.F.A. is a Jungian analyst, PAJA member and Core Faculty with Pacifica Graduate Institute.

The Archetype of Child Abuse: Nixzmary Brown

Untethered

I first saw the publicized school picture of her,
chestnut shoulder length brown curls close to her face,
wide eyes staring out as if trying to see into a future,
twirling faster than can be caught by a child
who has only seen seven autumns.
Angels only visit us when we are mourning, when we are open to receive.
They greet us, sending a hummingbird heartbeat message.
I saw her face and heard a whisper.
Say something about this sweet child.
Say something about this no longer Earth tethered angel.

1.17.06 The wake for Nixzmary Brown. Copy photo from a few years ago. Best New York Post only. Nixzaliz Santiago, mother of Nixzmary Brown, along with her husband, Cesar Rodriguez, are charged with second-degree murder, child endangerment and assault in the fatal beating of seven-year-old Nixmary Brown, who was found dead in the Brooklyn apartment she shared with five siblings. Hundreds of mourners stood in the rain and wind on Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2006 while the child’s funeral services were held in a New York City church.

Nizxmary Brown enrolled in PS256 at the start of her 1st grade year. During this year she had few notable absences except towards the end of the school year in May. From September 2005 to June 2006, the attendance of 2nd graders at New York City Public School 256, Benjamin Banneker was the highest it had been in ten years.

The 1st grade teacher did not recollect ever having a behavioral problem with Nixzmary. The child reportedly arrived on time for school, and always presented her homework as required. The first grade teacher remembers her as a “quiet child”. Whenever called on Nixzmary Brown generally knew the answer to questions but was never a child to raise her hand and volunteer answers. She always waited to be called by the teacher even though she often knew the correct answer to questions. She successfully completed all the school-wide assessment tests and was promoted to 2nd grade.

The beginning of 2nd grade saw a remarkable difference in the attendance of Nixzmary Brown. In November, she was present in school for a total of only two days.

As the month was approaching its’ end, one of the social workers at PS 246 made a call to the child abuse hotline at Administration for Children Services reporting the absences and expressing concerns regarding Nixzmary Brown. A similar call had been made in May, 2005 when Nixzmary had been absent from school for a period of seven consecutive days.

Margarito Cotto was the PS 256 Social Worker assigned to Nixzmary Brown who on at least five occasions prior to December, had contacted ACS regarding the child’s absences and bodily bruises. As a result of her telephone call on December 1st to ACS, an ACS supervisor Orlene Cummings and caseworker Vanesssa Rhoden spoke with Nixzaliz Santiago, the mother, in her Chauncey Street apartment following their initial visit to PS 256 to interview the teaching staff and principal. After attempts to contact Ms. Santiago by phone failed because Mr. Rodriquez stated the former was too ill to answer the phone, the caseworkers had traveled the short distance to the family’s apartment. It was at this time that the premature miscarried fetus of Mrs. Santiago was observed by the ACS workers, in a jar on the couple’s nightstand.

On the same day, December 1st, prior to visiting the Santiago/Rodriquez home, the caseworkers interviewed Selena, Nixzmary’s sister at her school. Salena said more than once during this interview that Cesar Rodriquez had caused the most recent head injuries to Nixzmary which had required a visit to Woodhull Hospital Emergency Room on November 10th. The parents had previously reported to the school that the injury was from a “fall on a piece of wood”.

The time between that initial telephone phone call on December 1st by the school social worker, Margarita Cotto and the death of Nixzmary Brown on January 10, shows contradictory claims and denials as the Administration for Children Services, the New York City Police Department and the New York City Department of Education all attempt to limit blame of their agencies in the death of Nixmary Brown. Later, following the death of Nixzmary, the doctor at Woodhull who saw Nixzmary would insist that his diagnosis of the cause of her fall was consistent with and in agreement with information from the parents as to how Nixzmary’s head lacerations occurred.

School administrators and staff at PS256 were uneasy about Nixzmary Brown’s home life. The second grade teacher had reported several instances of body bruises to ACS, the agency responsible for protecting New York City children against parental harm. ACS field notes taken by staff at the school on December quote the teaching staff : “Stepparent beats mother and he is intimidating….Mother is withdrawn and passive, taking no action to protect herself or children.” Further remarks state, “Stepparent recently hit Nixzmary, causing lacertation on her forehead and a bruised eye.”

On December 1st, with this information and more from school officials, ACS , visited Nizxmary Brown’s home, interviewed her parents and instead of removing the children from the home, which they were empowered to do, allowed the children to remain with their parents. Nixzmary had playmates in the neighborhood and a family member of one of these noticed the bruised injuries on the child. Perry Robinson’s grandnephew often played with Nixzmary. Mr. Robinson says that Nixzmary told him, “He (Cesar Rodriquez) threatened to kill me and mom and everyone. Mr. Robinson remembers Nixzmary as being “so petrified”.

Due to Nixzmary’s frequent school absences, perhaps the days she was at her worst, anyone who could protect or remove her from her abusive family environment, never saw her most damaging signs of abuse.   Mr. Robinson says, “I saw her with welts on her arms, limping.”

He adds, “She would tell me she fell.” Maybe because Nixzmary tried to hide the stepfather’s abuse and was “so petrified”, Mr. Robinson and others at PS256, felt limited in their ability to intervene. There appears to have been enough evidence for concern on the part of the staff at PS 256, but not enough to secure a safe haven for Nizxmary away from her parents.

Since Nixzmary’s death, Ms. Cotto questions if she could have done more….visited the home and insisted on ACS removing Nixzmary. This is probably a question facing all of the staff at PS256 and the immediate neighbors, who came into contact with Nixzmary. Could I have done more? Why didn’t I do more? Following the discovery of Nixzmary’s body by police officers, New York City residents and neighbors of the Santiago family speaking to the media, continued to ask how such a “horrible” thing could have happened. Why hadn’t they seen the harm Cesar Rodriquez could have caused and why didn’t someone stop him?

But who could have stopped him?

The smell of magnolia

 Sometimes I remember a place that doesn’t exist anymore.
Like my grandmother’s side yard of the house built for her in 1946,
where pecan trees dropped nuts across autumn yellowed leaves.
It has been years but I can still feel in my hands
the rough edges of the small brown burlap bag that held pecans.
As I read the first news story about Nixzmary,
I was once again in my grandmother’s yard, nine years old, picking up pecans,
as the smell of late blooming magnolia passes over me,
on a warm day in November.

The Collective and Individuation 

C.G. Jung whose work has entered our American lives through his writings, and the clinical practice of analytical psychology, says that we must individuate—leave our collectives and suffer through learning the psychological pain of being alone. I believe the process of individuation was Jung’s most noted idea regarding becoming psychologically mature and morally responsible. He believed morality develops because of individuation. We cannot be moral human beings, if we remain only in concert with collective thinking throughout our entire lives.

A collective stance can only minimally support us in resolving issues of familial incest and child abuse. We can turn away from this kind of suffering because we may be afraid. As individuals, we also turn away because we do not feel responsibility for protesting—someone else will take care of the problem. This is what happens with collective thinking. The individual claims no power to stop abuse, to take conscious action in whatever form it takes.

Something drastic, usually murder must occur, and then the collective will pass a law as in the case of the death of Nixmary Brown. In New York State, there is now a Nixmary’s Law that punishes perpetrators with a maximum life sentence in prison for abuse of children under 14 years of age. This law comes too late for Nixmary Brown. Will it really help other abused children? Are we attempting to fix a Collective psychological problem only with mandated laws?  How can we as individuals feel our own morality, and take action to make important changes in the area of child protection? How can we deepen our morality in the face of abuse and the murder of children?

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Fanny Brewster, PhD., M.F.A.

Biography

Dr. Fanny Brewster is a Jungian analyst in private practice in New York City where she completed her analytical training.  She is a lecturer and workshop presenter on Jungian related topics. In December, she gave a workshop through the IAAP in Rome, Italy on the topic of “Black Lives Matter and Jungian Psychology”.

Dr. Brewster is a writer of poetry and nonfiction. Her most recent poems have been published in Deep South Magazine and Evening Street Press. Poems are forthcoming in the Psychological Perspectives Journal where she will be the featured poet of that issue.  Her nonfiction book African Americans and Jungian Psychology: Leaving the Shadows is forthcoming this year by Routledge Publishing. Poems are from the author’s unpublished manuscript, Turn a Blind Eye:  The Death of .

The Phoenix and the Butterfly

As Spring emerges from Winter and we begin to see the buds on trees and feel the warm edge to the breezes, we are again nudged to consider the profound inclination of Nature—both human and earthly– to renew and transform.

There is a useful distinction between those two possibilities—renewal and transformation. The Phoenix is the symbol of renewal, as he rises from his ashes, restored and wholly himself. It seems that almost all cultures have some version of the Phoenix in their mythologies: the Egyptian Bennu Bird, the Bird of Paradise of the Persians, the Chinese bird called Feng-huang. In Jewish midrash, the Phoenix is the one animal that does not obey Eve’s admonition to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The reward is eternal life, (although it comes with no knowledge).

In the most common western versions of the phoenix story, the immortal bird burns itself up, becoming ashes out of which it is reborn. It can continually renew itself. It is immutable; even as ashes, it rises again just as it was before.

We all wish for renewal. We speak of restitution and restoration, of being made whole again. And yet, is this possible for us? Can we be like the phoenix? Is that psychologically possible?

Which brings me to the image of the Caterpillar/ Butterfly. Here is another common symbol of death and rebirth. And yet, it is the opposite of the Phoenix. For while the Phoenix is reborn to be exactly as it was before, the caterpillar is completely transformed.  It goes through a profound disintegration and reformation. It is ‘itself’ but utterly new. This is what actually happens to us through experience, we are changed.

So much of our suffering is activated by the idea that experience should not change us, that we just want to get back to what we were, or that we need ‘to get over’ things. The Jewish midrash leads us to see that we mortals will always be changing. In little and big ways, transformation is in our nature. We are  like the others creatures who ate from the apple and now have the knowledge of good and evil, and are therefore thrust into the knowledge of free will, cause and effect, and the flow of life. As Heraclitus says, “Everything gives way and nothing stays fixed” and “You could not step twice into the same river.”

And yet—the Self is immutable. As the archetype of wholeness it remains immortal. It renews and restores itself.

To bring this full circle: we have the capacity to be held by both symbols: The phoenix, as a symbol of Christ, of immortality and perpetual, consistent truth, holds us to a sense of Self—the part of us that does not change, no matter what. And the Caterpillar/Butterfly is a symbol that brings us the hope of, and the challenge of, being continually changing, affected by life, relationships, history, suffering, joy, love.

This spring let us allow ourselves to embrace our every-transforming caterpillar-selves while holding fast to the steadfastness of the Self.

Margaret Klenck MDiv, LP, is a Jungian Analyst in private practice in New York City. She is a past President of the Jungian Psychoanalytic Association in New York, where she also teaches and supervises. She is also a member of PAJA.  She serves as the JPA representative to the Executive Council of the IAAP. Margaret has lectured and taught nationally and internationally. Her most recent publication is Jung and the Academy and Beyond: the Fordham Lectures 100 Years Later, for which she served as co-editor.