TYRE NICHOLS MEMORIAM

What Did I Do?

As people of color, we have come to ask that question with a sincerity that shows the depth of our heartbreak. The final word that was missing in that question, that Tyre Nichols repeatedly asked, as he approached his too-soon ended life, was the word wrong. 

He didn’t do anything wrong on that January night, because there was no way to be right.  He knew that in the blackness, once pulled by Memphis policemen from his car, only several yards from his home, his life could end, violently, and without any logical cause.  And it did. This is the terror, the anxiety of being Black in America.  This anxiety that is specific to those of us who carry the ancestral lineage of our Black and Brown Africanist ancestors, know too well the fear that can live in us as a culturally rational sense of knowing that our skin color puts us at life-threatening risks.  We call it now Black when ____________.

 Fill in the blank.

Once again, the emptiness, the blankness of the hole left in us, deepens as we witness another Black man brutally beaten almost to death on an urban landscape.  Death would come later for Tyre Nichols, in the hospital, where his family could only grieve as they looked at their loved son, brother, father.

We look in mournful wonderment questioning how anything this young man could have done to five Black policemen with guns would necessitate his being beaten, shoved up against a wall while arrived emergency ambulance services waited, walked around his battered body.  While they spoke with one another, talking amongst themselves—while he waited for care. While they waited for what?

The analytical space of sharing must hold much for those of us who bear witness and can tolerate recollection of the words and images that speak to the brutality of Black men being brutalized. We cannot turn our gaze away. The inner eye remembers Rodney King, Emmet Till all the others before and since them….Trayvon Martin.

Even if we do not watch television or listen to the news, the psychic, phenomenological field of our work welcomes the energy of the analysand into the room. It must hold whatever they bring.

Do we ourselves not feel the anxious pressure of others who breathe and must bear witness to their own archetypal grief?  The generations of our Africanist people?

We are those who welcome the wounded into our circle of soul and healing every week.  They don’t stay only in their analytical chairs but can visit us as we walk into the minutes and hours long after they have left.  They have brought with them their own deep cultural suffering that joins and is held by the arms of the analyst of color who truly does feel their pain. Who recognizes the anguish of the question.

What did I do (wrong)?

There is no answer to that question because there was nothing done by Tyre Nichols that could ever justify what happened to him or even perhaps save his life. His words of calm questioning contrasted with the cursing and enraged language directed at him by the five Black policemen seem like whispers now as he called to his mother.

 There is no rational or logical reasoning that has caused the death of people of color through the centuries. Much rationale has been offered including biblical verses. I believe there is a Racial Collective Understanding now, reinforced since the death of George Floyd, that the only logic is one of a consciousness of racism.  People of color have always been awake to the ancestral legacy of slavery and the brutality expressed against our bodies.  We know racism and its effects on the Africanist cultural body. 

More others are waking up. 

Internalized self-hatred does not stay closed within the self.  It too can show itself in the behaviors we witness on both a personal and professional level.  Is this not a part of self-analysis?  Must we not “analyze” our own inner psychological workings to train to become analysts? How does this work for an analyst in training who is an individual of color?  How can self-deprecation and self-hatred as a person of color live and be experienced in that space—how does it move towards healing?  Perhaps, a difficult question for us Africanist people, as we continue to bear the deepened sorrow of brutality upon the body of our kin by our kin.

Where do we put the questions? There would certainly be more than one or two, regarding intergenerational cultural pain and anguish, while being in those self-reflective moments, when there is only unrelenting introspective suffering.

Forever asking:  What did I do? This would seem to be one of the questions of our Africanist Archetypal Grief.

In moments, that January night on the sidewalk, Tyre Nichols would be recorded calling to his mother. 

Blessing

May you be blessed with remembering being held in the arms of your Mother

May you remember all that is Mother so that you may give this love to yourself in your next Life.

Fanny Brewster Ph.D., M.F.A. is a Jungian analyst, Professor of Depth Psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute and member analyst with PAJA. She is a multi-genre writer who has written about issues at the intersection of Jungian psychology and American culture. The Racial Complex:  A Jungian Perspective on Culture and Race is her most recent book. (Routledge, 2019). Dr. Brewster is available through her website, www.fannybrewster.allyou.net/

Hillary and Donald, “Nasty Woman” and “Deplorable” Man: A Glimpse at the New Archetypal Couple

What has Jung and Jungian thought got to do with it—do with helping us comprehend the post-value, post-truth universe that we now inhabit and the leaders, who have come forth to guide us through it?

By the time you are reading this, the people of the United States of American may have elected their new president. They will have chosen from the two candidates the one whom they hope might lower their anxiety, or at least not engender it soaring to the brink of breathless panic. I have seen more than one-person momentarily cease breathing, and sink into agony at the thought of the candidate winning the election that has not garnered their passionate embrace.

The American people have desperately embraced the convenient and comforting “truth” from one or the other candidate that helps them find some solace in the increasingly confusing universe where truth as inspiration can no longer be easily located. For most of us these two figures have become elevated to archetypal principles united in enmity, and in that sense have begun to redefine what it is to be “human.”

For those of us who can put our dreams into words, we know that each of the aspiring leaders has very little chance of helping us create a society that considers the individual, allows personal self-worth, a deep respect for diversity, individuality and the possibility for a safe economic future for all. It is difficult to imagine that either one understands (or has the slightest interest in developing within themselves or in society) a space, for each individual that would support and respect the need for an internal life. An internal life by definition facilitates the reception of the creative unconscious, and the internal play of affects and ideas that generate and authorize private imaginations, creatively informing work and giving continuing resource to interpersonal relations.

Rather, Hillary and Trump are defined by what it takes to survive in an amoral universe. Trump has co-opted the lowest form of the masculine, and Hillary (G-d bless her heart) has co-opted a form of the feminine that we all hope can survive this wild and dangerous masculine energy. Stepping back from what I see as an archetypal possession, and gaining some much needed reflection and perspective, it is clear that for now, and in the near future, we will have to rely for hope and generativity on the simple humanity that remains in each of us.

It is clear why certain people would have more or less sympathy, or to be more precise, be drawn into an archetypal identification with one or the other of these personalities. Trump, as several have said before (Stewart, 2016), is identified with an archetype, and embodies the sheer force of power, a raw amoral life force, the pure force of survival. He embodies a godlike singular titanic energy that explodes truth as we know it, and creates his own truths over and over again. He cannot be seen as contradictory to the truth, as he is truth itself and is positioned to re-define it at a moment’s notice. As an energetic source, we experience him as emotionally and frightening near, riveting and engulfing. When he explodes which is his normal form of communication, his energy and his reality penetrate deeply. His explosions annihilate individuality, but in return for this sacrifice, identification with this world-creating force brings hope to some. Absorbing this godlike power, the recipients can imagine that they can also create new worlds and become gods to and for themselves.

Others are offended at the arrogance and destructiveness of such an identification. The latter group moves quickly to contain this contaminating, usurping energy. They rush to psychiatric diagnosis, to make mythological comparisons, or to make comparisons to historical personages who have who have also developed their personalities into cults. They believe the unleashing of this torrential impersonal titanic force on our country will result in an Armageddon at best! They are correctly terrified by its destructive, amoral and unconscious energy.

Hillary, on the other hand, presents as identified with persona, and as such she embodies a concretization of Jung’s concept, “a kind of mask, designed on the one hand to make a definite impression upon others, and on the other, to conceal the true nature of the individual.” (Jung, v. 7, §305). There is little evidence of a creative, reflective and independent part of her personality involved in “sorting out and becoming aware” of her “masks and identifications” and differentiating “what is unduly pressured by conformity, from what is emergent and true… the work of individuation.” (The Book of Symbols, p.724 as quoted in Berry Tschinkel 2016, p.7)

She presents as a hard working public servant, serious, prepared, and a representative of diversity in all its many colors. The active, vital and creative connection she has with her persona, what motivates, and generates who she is can only be imagined, (perhaps intuited), but it cannot be experienced or accessed directly. With her humanity, and affects inaccessible, she has become the symbol of the pre-fabricated aspects of the ruling elite, untrustworthy, designed to deceive, and seduce others to believe in their ideas, all the while conspiring to obfuscate their true and uninspiring motivations. It is also easy for another large part of the population to appreciate her devotion, a life of hard work and experience and cling to her as the only possible hope for a kinder, gentler nation.

We have had many leaders that embody the possibility of society and a humanity in which the creation of an inner informing life is primary. Their presence and their words have always inspired each of us to remember the better parts of ourselves. They are inspiring because they demonstrate and illustrate by example how each of us needs to proceed to access the most sacred and informing parts of what it is to be truly human. The following quote from Nelson Mandela is a perfect example:

“I have walked that long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter; I have made mis-steps along the way. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But I can only rest for a moment, for with freedom comes responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not ended.”

Mandala reminds us that he both lives his life and has a profound reflective perspective on it. There is the persona that he presents to the world, it is a mask, but like the masks used in ancient ritual it is not used only to limit accessibility but also allows the sacred and transcendent meaning to emerge through it, and touch us all.

It is most important now to try to remember him and all of the people both famous, and not-at- all famous who embody this most human possibility. We are all in dire need to remember that this is still possible for us as we proceed forward in this most chaotic and dangerous of times.

Joan Golden-Alexis, Ph.D. is a Jungian psychoanalyst and psychologist in New York City. Her practice consists of individuals as well as couples. (drjgolden@earthlink.net)

References:

Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism (ARAS), The Book of Symbols: Reflections On Archetypal Images, Taschen Books, 2010.

Berry Tschinkel, S., Colette, A beautiful dreamer, a transformative persona

ARAS Connections, 2016 Issue 3, (For a fuller discussion of persona as a dynamic component of the transformational process involved in individuation).

Mandala, N., Long Walk to Freedom; The Autobiography of Nelson Mandala, Little, Brown & Company in 1994.

Stewart, D, Icarus Aloft, PAJA Blog, June 7, 2016

Image Credit: Tina Fineberg/AP, US News February 26, 2016

The Ripple on the Water

The Universe is a continuous web.  Touch it at any point and the whole web quivers.

––Stanley Kunitz

I woke up on Monday morning and my first thought was: I need to get the garbage out to the curb for the weekly early morning pickup.  I did what I could to get ready for the beginning of the work week, but neglected to remember to carry out the trash.  As I sat down to eat my breakfast I picked up a novel that I had left on the table the night before and as the book opened the following passage leapt out at me:  “….and he saw the trash truck approaching as it rumbled through the neighborhood.”  I was shocked to be so aptly reminded of what I had forgotten, and at that very moment, I felt the low level vibration of the garbage trucks as they made their way towards my home. 

I was experiencing the phenomenon that Jung called synchronicity.  Jung developed the concept of synchronicity and defined it as an “acausal connecting principle,” an experience of a meaningful connection between our psyche and the outside world.  Arthur Koestler explains synchronicity as, “the seemingly accidental meeting of two unrelated causal chains in a coincidental event which appears both highly improbable and highly significant.”

That particular encounter with the mysterious coincidences that occur in our daily lives not only made me jump and run to get my chore done, but it also made me smile to be reminded of such an ordinary event In such a profound way.  I marvel at these moments that nudge me towards a continuing realization of how each of us, in our very human lives, are a part of all that makes up the universe, including those events and circumstances of which we might not be consciously aware.

Jung says that, “The realization of the Self also means a re-establishment of man as the microcosm, i.e., man’s cosmic relatedness.  Such realizations are frequently accompanied by synchronistic events.” These meaningful coincidences cause me to wonder how my life might be affected if I could become more attuned and responsive to the spontaneous connections that are manifesting in my life each day.  I’m encouraged to attend to these intimations that suggest we are participating in a larger reality.

Many of the meaningful relationships between the outside world and our psyches may arise and yet remain undiscovered in us.  I do believe that we can become more sensitive to those events when they do occur. It seems to me synchronicity is more likely to happen when we are in the flow of life following our own inner direction, following our dreams, and confronting our fears. Jung suggests that the way the unconscious relates to us is a reflection of our attitude towards the unconscious.  If that is so, then it behooves us to examine how we do relate to our unconscious and the collective unconscious. As people who are interested in Jungian psychology, we tend to seek out and cultivate the processes that awaken and support the inner explorer and help us to discover and connect with our own teleology.

Sometimes I get the feeling that my life is moving too fast, or that I’m moving too fast through my life to notice when something causes a ripple on the surface of the water.  I cherish those moments when I am quiet inside myself and am able to be curious about what that ripple is connected to–what that ripple means.

Cynthia A. Candelaria, Ed.D., LPC, Jungian Analyst

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?

********

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.

I Lift My Lamp Beside the Golden Door

Since we live in Brooklyn, I have crossed the Brooklyn Bridge countless times, but even when I have to crane my neck Brooklyn-bound from Manhattan, I look for Lady Liberty. She moves me every time with her blazing testimony to the truth of the human spirit. In difficult times—after 9-11, Hurricane Sandy, or current waves of human emigration—I like to see her steadfastly lighting the way.

The goddess Libertas, widely worshiped in Rome and symbolic of emancipation from slavery, has appeared in various forms throughout history, most majestically as The Statue of Liberty. Libertas seems always to have been represented as feminine, for the promise of liberation is new life, ever the gift of the maternal matrix, wellspring of birth and transformation. We recognize the power of a new beginning and its potential to redeem all in us that has been forsaken, oppressed, or denied.

Liberation is an image of what Jung called individuation, the process of discovering your innate potential and becoming wholly who you were meant to be. Individuation, “the central concept of my psychology,” is a process by which “the psyche is transformed or developed by the relationship of the ego to the contents of the unconscious.” Symbols spark individuation, for only a symbol has the numinous power to unite conscious and unconscious and awaken us to a new reality. Like the Statue of Liberty.

Conceived and built in France as a gesture of friendship between nations, Lady Liberty inspired people from her inception. More than 100,000 French people contributed funds to create the 30-story copper lady. When Congress refused to allocate the funds necessary to build the massive foundation for the 225-ton statue, 120,000 Americans gave money. A symbol mobilized thousands to give Lady Liberty a home in New York harbor. Artists donated paintings, children sent small change, and Emma Lazarus wrote her famous poem, which concludes:

                       Give me your tired, your poor,

                        Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

                        The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

                        Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me:

                        I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

Lady Liberty represents more than freedom from injustice and oppression in the external world. She represents liberation in the inner world, as we set sail from restrictive beliefs, imposed roles, and one-sided attitudes. Like immigrants packed miserably in steerage for weeks, suffering and sacrifice often precede the discovery of new life. But if we embark on the journey of individuation, Lady Liberty will ever lift her lamp beside the golden door of wholeness.

AUTHOR

Deborah Stewart is a Jungian Analyst and Licensed Clinical Social Worker residing in Cape Cod, MA. You can find her at www.DeborahCStewart.com. She is Co-Creator of This Jungian Life Podcast.  She is a member of the Philadelphia Association of Jungian Analysts, where she co-chairs and teaches in the training seminar and contributes to the Association’s blog. She is an active member of the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts and participates in other professional organizations. She has a special interest in trauma and is the author of Encounters with Monsters: The Significance of Non-Human Images of Trauma in the Psyche.

On Active Imagination

One of the most surprising and vivid experiences of my life occurred because of my Jungian studies. Our Philadelphia seminar was studying active imagination, and our reading included a letter from Jung to “Mr. O”:

“The point is that you start with any image, for instance just with that yellow mass in your dream. Contemplate it and carefully observe how the picture begins to unfold or to change. Don’t try to make it into something, just do nothing but observe what its spontaneous changes are. Any mental picture you contemplate in this way will sooner or later change through a spontaneous association that causes a slight alteration of the picture. You must carefully avoid impatient jumping from one subject to another. Hold fast to the one image you have chosen and wait until it changes by itself. Note all these changes and eventually step into the picture yourself, and if it is a speaking figure at all then say what you have to say to that figure and listen to what he or she has to say….therewith you gradually create the unity of conscious and unconscious without which there is no individuation at all.”*

With a mixture of skepticism, curiosity and hope, I went outside, sat down in a lawn chair, and focused on a nearby river-fed pool where watercress grows. In my image, the pool was about four feet in diameter, with the black-green cress growing thickly around the edges. Suddenly two bright red eyes gleamed up at me from the upper right quadrant of the pool, just in front of the watercress, and I saw the gestalt: the pool was a face, with curly cress locks and two eyes, which then blinked shut, as the frog to whom they belonged sank beneath the surface. I knelt down and found myself brushing leafy locks from the water maiden’s face as a mother would brush hair from the face of her sleeping child. And then I simply leaned into the pool, dived down, and found myself swimming underwater behind the ruby-eyed frog.

My vision went on to an encounter that was alive and surprising. Although I had had intention to actively imagine, “I” did not control the process and could never have created such a magical gift—one that ended with an introduction to a lost part of myself I could then begin consciously to reclaim. I understood what Jungian analyst Edith Wallace meant when she said that to be understood, Jung must be experienced.

Over time I came to understand that Jung’s psychology and methodology repeatedly seeks to achieve a dialectical, experiential relationship between consciousness and the unconscious. This is the essence of the process of individuation, or wholeness, that is central to Jung’s work. Unlike dreams, reverie, meditation, or fantasy, active imagination allows an intentional, living relationship with the unconscious. Jung says active imagination “…is a way of attaining liberation by one’s own efforts and of finding the courage to be oneself.”

I love the availability of active imagination. Although what arises—or doesn’t—on any particular day is uncertain, the unconscious tends to welcome willingness to engage it, and active imagination provides a connection in waking life to the autonomous, creative inner companion Jung so often referenced. Often, some new aspect of the chosen image or issue will emerge that consciousness can continue to mull over to make meaning—or reflect on with gratitude.

What I know for sure is that when our conscious self and the unconscious engage over time in the mutual play of active imagination, we find ourselves bigger, more alive, and truly companioned.

*You can find this passage and more in Joan Chodorow’s book, On Active Imagination, part of the Encountering Jung series.

Author

Deborah Stewart is a Jungian Analyst and Licensed Clinical Social Worker residing in Cape Cod, MA. You can find her at www.DeborahCStewart.com. She is Co-Creator of This Jungian Life Podcast.  She is a member of the Philadelphia Association of Jungian Analysts, where she co-chairs and teaches in the training seminar and contributes to the Association’s blog. She is an active member of the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts and participates in other professional organizations. She has a special interest in trauma and is the author of Encounters with Monsters: The Significance of Non-Human Images of Trauma in the Psyche.

Reverie on the broken heart…

The heart is a mysterious psychophysical organ. The ancient Egyptians sensed it had an independent memory of its own. The Greeks found it more important than the brain – Aristotle held it as the seat of intelligence. The 12^th century Sufi Ibn ‘Arabi tells us the heart has the power to imagine. With all this intuitive knowledge about the heart it is no wonder that when it breaks we are shaken to our core.

We know of heartache and the burdens the heart bears when it is exposed to painful revelations or unredeemable disappointment. When a friend haltingly whispers the news of their life threatening diagnosis, the knowledge is stored and held in the listeners heart where the heat of the secret burns. When our own soaring romantic feelings are shattered by the coarse realities of human conflict, our chest hurts with our heart’s struggle to bear the truth. But these kinds of labors put muscle on our hearts – teaching them to be staunch and resilient.

Breaking the heart is different and there is a great divide in the world between those whose hearts are still innocent and those whose hearts have been broken and as we meet the eyes of strangers there is a silent nod of recognition between those who bear the hidden scar.

In severe trauma often the heart breaks and cannot hold the memory of the events – images seem to fall into other organs. An unremembered sexual assault is voiced by the lower back as a piercing pain that makes physical intimacy impossible. Memories of excruciating childhood isolation lodge in the belly and are kept quiet by regular over-feeding. The remembered sounds of the front door opening and the leaden wine-soaked footsteps are encapsulated in the jaw and kept silent by the slow grind of the teeth.

A broken heart still works desperately to keep the soul alive. Each splintered part following its own disparate beat – a cacophony takes residence in the soul like a misery of ravens. Symptoms replace the natural unfolding.  Intimacy is replaced by lust – creativity becomes sepia repetition until the pain of living without heart comes to crisis. And that is the miracle.

When the suffering of the heart can no longer be silenced everything becomes possible. When that person enters my consulting room, I feel that nod of recognition rise between us. I do not believe the heart can be mended by the analyst, it is too sacred an operation. But with care and patience the strength to fulfil the suffering can arise, granting a certain silent dignity which orients the psyche toward the inner center where the pattern of the heart-in-wholeness can be found.

Offering ones heart-shards to the Self is the only way through.

AUTHOR

Joseph R. Lee is a certified Jungian Analyst and licensed clinical social worker in private practice in Virginia Beach, Virginia at www.DepthPsychotherapy.net. He works with adults and teens. He is currently the president of The Philadelphia Association of Jungian Analysts, www.cgjungphiladelphia.org, which provides a public seminar and trains Jungian Analysts. He is accredited by the I.A.A.P., and received his Diploma in Analytical Psychology from the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts. He lectures nationally on the Hermetic Kabbalah with a focus on its reinterpretation through modern idioms.

Why Are Images So Dangerous?

“A psychic entity can be a conscious content, that is it can be represented, only if it has the quality of an image.”

Jung, CW 8, para 322

 “An archetypal image is not only a thought pattern…it is also an emotional experience—the emotional experience of an individual.”

von Franz, Interpretation of Fairytales, p.10

Why are images so dangerous? Why would ISIS smash the Assyrian statues, or the Taliban the giant Buddha’s, or the Protestants the icons and frescos in churches all over northern Europe in the 1500’s? What is threatening about pieces of stone and surfaces of paint? What ISIS did, what the Taliban did, what the Protestants did, was not wonton destruction. It was purposeful annihilation –of images. What is it about images that pose such a danger?

One answer is that images, such as the Assyrian statues, relativize; they remind us of the grand sweep of history. They put the moment’s concerns in relief. He/she who controls the images controls the ideology. No leader allows the images of his predecessor to remain; the more ruthless the leader, the more images are destroyed. More civilized ways of demonstrating a change of power include taking down the loser’s flag and putting up the winner’s, or changing the corporate logo or, as in the case of civil rights movements, making sure that there are images of African Americans and women on the government’s sites.

But I suggest that the savaging of the Assyrian statues and artifacts by ISIS is not just a propaganda move and an attempt to control the conversation, although of course, it is clearly propagandistic.  Rather this destruction is a deeper, more profound attempt to try to cut people off from the wellsprings of the numinous.

Images carry history with them; images carry meaning as well. Whether they are rebuses as in hieroglyphics or carefully crafted icons for use in devotion and prayer, images put us in touch with dimensions both personal and archetypal. Images encourage us to fall into reverie and to encounter ourselves in non-verbal ways. Images, such as those destroyed in Iraq, remind us of myth and metaphor, and cause us to be humble in the face of their vast Otherness.

Each time in history when images have been destroyed, the excuse has been that the worshiping of idols misleads the people. Yet, that has never really been the case.  Take the story in Genesis for example.

The Golden Calf was not an arbitrary image of greed or an idol to be worshiped. The cow is the symbol of the extremely important Egyptian Goddess Hathor, Goddess of fertility and abundance. The Hebrews were evoking the Goddess of the land they just left—at a time when they were hungry, frightened and in need of abundance. Moses had to smash that symbol—not because it was an idol, but because it was an authentic object of devotion and worship. Moses had to break it to bits because of what it stood for, what it evoked, what it engendered in the spirit of the people. He was trying to establish Yahweh as the one God; the power of the Egyptian Gods had to be undone in the hearts and minds of the people.

I am certainly not equating Moses with ISIS, but rather seeing that tale as an example of how powerful images/symbols are, how dangerous they can be felt to be, and how essential it can be to do away with previous power-laden archetypal images when trying to change the power structure.

Another example: In Bern Switzerland in 1528, Ulrich Zwingli proclaimed, “That to set up pictures and to adore them is also contrary to Scripture, and that images and pictures ought to be destroyed where there is danger in giving them adoration.” (from the 10 propositions of the public disputations, Bern 1528) His reform movement caused thousands of religious paintings, frescos, statues and devotional objects, including pipe organs, to be destroyed—all across Europe. Countless artifacts were annihilated; countless images lost to humanity forever. (see The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400-1580,  by Eamon Duffy, Yale University Press, 1992 for an wonderful and excruciating exploration of this movement in Europe)

Certainly, praying to an idol misdirects devotion away form the numinous god—if one thinks the statue or picture is the god or spirit itself. However, devotional images are not inherently idols. The relationship one has to an image is personal and profound. Images inspire us, they focus us, and they offer us glimpses into what is both universal and specific at the same time. Images transcend language; they transcend understanding. “ When the archetype manifests itself in the here and now of space and time, it can be perceived in some form by the conscious mind. Then we speak of a symbol.” ( Jolanda Jacoby, Complex Archetype Symbol, page 74)  When we make paintings and statues and images, we give the archetypal images a form and the possibilities for symbolism and meaning. Jung also states:  “Whether a thing is a symbol or not depends chiefly upon the attitude of the observing consciousness.”   (Jung, CW6, para. 603)

Jung says, “The psyche consists essentially of images.” (CW8, para. 623) We are made of images, we communicate with images and we thrive in the presence of images. We wither without them. Images hold people even more than words. Images precede thought and remain when words fail. Images become symbols. ISIS knows this, I suspect. They know very well how to manipulate images (just look at their horrific videos). They know that smashing these images will affect us all profoundly, emotionally and spiritually, regardless of our personal religious beliefs and traditions.

ISIS wants us to be afraid. And, it is right for us to be scared, for to be cut off from images is to be cut off from ourselves.

To see the images being destroyed:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-31660944

AUTHOR

Margaret Klenck, MDiv, LP is a Jungian Analyst in private practice in New York City. She is a graduate from the C.G. Jung Institute of New York and holds a Masters of Divinity from Union Theological Seminary, where she concentrated in Psychology and Religion. Margaret is the President of the Jungian Psychoanalytic Association (JPA) in New York, where she also teaches and supervises. She is also a member and on the faculty of the Philadelphia Association of Jungian Analysts and has served on the faculty of the Blanton-Peale Institute. Margaret has lectured and taught nationally and internationally. Recently, Margaret co-wrote, with the cinematographer Tom Hurwitz, the opening essay in the second volume of Jung and Film, edited by Chris Hauke and Luke Hockney. Margaret is currently the JPA’s representative on the IAAP executive council.

Our Dreaming Lives

We all lead full and complete lives: we go to work, we go go to school, we spend time with our families and friends. Yet under the thin veneer of our civilized lives exists the full panoply of our dream and fantasy lives where we are adventurers, captives, sluggards, sirens, kings, and queens.

All of us dream several times a night and there is even some speculation that the purpose of sleeping is so that we can dream. Whether or not we realize it, we bring our dream world into our waking world. Our dreams get our attention, often very dramatically, and can help us become more conscious by showing us things we have been unaware of in our lives. Jung says that dreams show us the unvarnished truth and  “… fetch up the essential points, bit by bit and with the nicest choice.”

A dream is made up of a series of images, ideas, and emotions that come to us from the unconscious psyche while we are sleeping.  According to Jung, dreams will draw on a person’s experiences as well as the collective unconscious to show us “Ineluctable truths, philosophical pronouncements, illusions, wild fantasies, memories, plans, anticipations, irrational experiences, even telepathic visions.”

Dreams can help us see possibilities and potential in our lives and they can also help us  understand some aspects of our development that have eluded us. But to make sense of dreams it helps when we understand the symbolic nature of the dreams. Dream language is the language of image and metaphor; for example your dream might offer up a snake in the grass or a rat.  Some one once told me that they had a dream and said, “I was in the same boat with my Mother.”

Do you remember your dreams and take time to savor your dream experiences? Do you notice how you feel when you wake-up from a dream? Your emotional state, your affect, can be an important aspect of the dream’s message. When we make the effort to remember the dream and honor the dream we often discover that it has something to tell us. When we understand the dream we may feel a sense of relief or of being in touch with something long forgotten that has a great importance for us.

Dreaming is a natural process and everyone can benefit from their dreams whether or not we remember them or interpret them. However, we benefit most when we are able to integrate the dream more fully into consciousness. Understanding our dreams can help us live more productive and conscious lives. Human beings have always known that dreams help us to understand our human and spiritual condition more fully. Jung says “The dream is its own interpretation, meaning, they employ no artifices in order to conceal something, but inform us of their content as plainly as possible in their own way.”

Dreams can educate and instruct us and if we can follow the dream, the dream can lead us toward wholeness with a profound wisdom. James Hillman, in The Soul’s Code, says: “Dreams can’t protect us from the vicissitudes of life, but they can guide us on how to cope with them, how to find meaning in our life, how to fulfill our own destiny, how to follow our own star, so to speak, in order to realize the greater potential of life within us.”

AUTHOR

Cynthia A. Candelaria, EdD, LPC is a Jungian analyst and a graduate of the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts and has a private practice in West Chester, Pennsylvania. She received her doctorate in counseling and human development from Vanderbilt University and completed a re-specialization in clinical psychology at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. Cynthia is a senior training analyst and is currently the Director of the Seminar for the C.G. Jung Institute of Philadelphia and serves on the training committee of the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts.