Memories, Dreams, Reflections by C. G. Jung (2/5)
A Commonplace Commentary
Click here for part one of this series.
PAGES 99 - 144
Page 99
Nevertheless, it could be established that at all times and all over the world the same stories had been reported again and again… Rather it must be connected with the objective behavior of the human psyche.
Remarks
The objective behavior of the human psyche is one of Jung's lifelong fixations. Something which Jung's soul rebuked him for.
"... Do you actually know who I am? Have you grasped me, defined me, and made me into a dead formula? Have you measured the depths of my chasms, and explored all the ways down which I am yet going to lead you? Scorn cannot challenge you if you have not vain to the marrow of your bones."
11, Dec. 1913, Black Book II
It could be assumed that "the objective behavior of the human psyche" had two distinct meanings for Jung. One meaning, pre-1914, was that the human psyche was scientifically study-able, that it could be measured, weighed, poked, and prodded into the collective knowledge base of humanity. The other meaning, post-1914, is more fluid and nuanced; the objective psyche is objective in this meaning because of its transpersonal aspects, people can confirm through direct experience that the things Jung spoke of and interacted with are literally there for anyone to uncover themselves.
The post-1914 meaning would posit that the psyche isn't measurable in human terms, one must deal the psyche, on this level, with psyche's terms. One cannot observe the psyche, one can only experience the psyche.
...the personality too desires to evolve out of its unconscious conditions and to experience itself as a whole. I cannot employ the language of science to trace this process of growth in myself, for I cannot experience myself as a scientific problem.
Pg. 3, MDR
However, the pre- and post-1914 distinction is too clean of a break and Jung will flip between meanings in his later writings with no warning. It's up to the reader to discern for themselves which meaning Jung intendeds.
Page 100
This insight proved dangerous, because it tricked one into fits of superiority, misplaced criticism, and aggressiveness, which got me deservedly disliked. This eventually brought back all the old doubts, inferiority feelings, and depressions – a vicious circle I was resolved to break at all costs. No longer would I stand outside the world, enjoying the dubious reputation of a freak.
Remarks
One cannot enjoy the highs of egoism without the lows of a fall. To be superior is to be despised and to cut oneself off from the world.
Jung’s statement however, is in relation to his openness towards and awareness of unconventional possibilities. In the country “so-called occult phenomena” were taken for granted, in the city no body seemed to know about such things. Jung had explained to himself that the country was the “real world of mountains, woods, and rivers” and Jung had knowledge of such things. In other words, the urban world had a wealth of learning but was mentally limited.
Jung found comfort in such an explanation but it “proved dangerous”. Such is the danger of increasing knowledge and awareness, it may trick us into believing we are better than everyone else.
I find myself in this thought-space on occasion. Experientially I’ve seen that to be better-than is to be separate-from, to be separate-from is to be other-than, to be other-than is to be a freak, to be a freak is to loose ones humanity, and to loose ones humanity is a great misfortune. This may have been Nietzsche’s path which led him to mental break-down and the famous moment of identification with the beaten horse.
The “real world of mountains, woods, and rivers” is a sentiment which couldn't exist without the uninformed philosophy that modern human society is something outside of nature or super-natural, in some way. This philosophy seems to trace back to the fundamentalist interpretation of Genesis 1:28 "...and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth."
The uninitiated read Genesis 1:28 as meaning the human organism has been given dominion whereas the initiated see that only the divine spark within has dominion. Therefore, the "mountains, woods, and rivers" are no more natural than human organization and the cities which spring from it. The truly super-natural is something else, something more profound.
Western Society has, in many ways, taken Jung's "vicious circle" the it's philosophical end. The vicious circle's philosophy thinks we're outside nature and can observe and harness its powers like a machine. For example, the Kardashev scale; such a thing would never exist without an assumption that it's possibilities could exist. Therefore, it's scale implies a galactic hubris, one which one would expect to find in mid 20th century Russia.
Page 103
[Of Nietzsche] ...he fearlessly and unsuspectingly let his No. 2 loose upon a world that knew and understood nothing about such things.
Remarks
By "his No. 2," Jung refers to a kind of alternate personality or archetype he had direct experience with throughout his life. Previously in MDR, Jung mentions the second personality as an inspiration for much of his psychological work. Jung describes, on Pg. 3 Par. 2, when he first became aware of the "other," who "was important, a high authority, a man not to be trifled with," he was then 12 years old. Jung recounts multiple times when he subconsciously identified with his No. 2 personality and some people and things from his No. 2 personality's lifetime, all while Jung was a child.
Later in his life, this No. 2 personality grew to mean different things to Jung. In some ways, the second persona was a daimon, in the Socratic sense. In another sense, his No. 2 was a past life in which Jung doesn't seem to see much stock in. Lastly, the No. 2 personality was a powerful archetype in Jung's subconscious. None of these things, which the No. 2 could have been to Jung, are mutually exclusive. These labels attempt to put words to the same thing, but the thing changes when viewed from another direction. As one circumambulates around the thing, it shifts kaleidoscopically and can never be held as a single dead, unmoving, and unmoved object because it's alive, just as we are.
What Jung seems to suggest about Nietzsche is that he was following, expressing, and identifying with an alternate personality that contained deep wisdom and demanded to be taken seriously but which the world (and Nietzsche himself) was unprepared to deal with. Jung came to this conclusion after reading Thus Spoke Zarathustra, he became afraid that he would become too much like him as Zarathustra seemed to be so similar to his own No. 2 personality. Jung had a similar experience reading Faust as well. Faust didn't destroy Goethe, but Zarathustra ruined Nietzsche. Another hint Jung eventually realized but isn't mentioned is that, in all of Jung's dealings with subconscious archetypes, they tend to favor bombastic language, metaphors, and hymnlike raptures, precisely like how Zarathustra acts.
Those with relationships with their No. 2, or daimon, gain inspiration from it. In Apology, Socrates says,
I have a divine sign [daimonion] from the god which… began when I was a child. It is a voice, and whenever it speaks it turns me away from something I am about to do, but it never turns me towards anything. This is what has prevented me from taking part in public affairs, and I think it was quite right to prevent me. Be sure, gentlemen of the jury, I should have died long ago otherwise.
This is all an indication that a relationship with the unconscious is valuable but not without danger. We all possess a connection with the unconscious, whether we're aware or not, but those who become aware are the only ones who can begin to explore it. Nietzsche's first chapter in Beyond Good and Evil shows our connection to the unconscious in point #17, "…a thought comes when "it" wishes, and not when "I" which." Nietzsche fearlessly pulled on those threads of thought and became aware of profound realities. But he went so far in his exploration that society needed to catch up to comprehend the path. He was ahead of his time in the worst kind of way.
Page 113
I have neither the desire nor the capacity to stand outside myself and observe my fate in a truly objective way. I would commit the familiar autobiographical mistake either of weaving an illusion about how it ought to have been, or of writing and apologia pro vita sua. In the end, man is an event which cannot judge itself, but, for better or worse, is left to the judgement of others.
Remarks
Apologia pro vita sua (Latin) = a defense of one's own life. This could also refer to John Henry Newman's spiritual autobiography, in which he defended his religious convictions, specifically from attacks from Charles Kingsby. Historically, a very popular book.
It is difficult for one to judge the nature of his container. Describing the nature of a building's facade is impossible when one has never been outside it, even if one knows everything about its contents.
The inverse is also true. Those who only see a building's facade have few clues about its contents.
This is why Jung's approach is the correct one. Leave the judgment of the exterior to the ones who are outside. The communication of the internal reality is that domain of which Jung is the only caretaker and which few autobiographies truly hit the mark. Autobiography is too frequently a propagandizing tool to write history in favor of the subject. I want to read more subjective, factually questionable, authentic autobiographies.
Page 128
In a way I regarded the woman as a pleasant old creature because she had such lovely delusions and said such interesting things.
Remarks
This quote refers to a woman named Babette, whom Jung treated for schizophrenia. The words were spoken to Freud when he asked how Jung was able to spend so much time with such an “ugly woman.” This answer shows the curious, open, and adventurous mind Jung came to his work with. Not only is that mindset an admirable thing worth imitation, but it was also a significant advancement in psychology that generated remarkable insights into Psyche. I wonder what other slight shifts in perspective in a given field could generate similar effects.
Insight from Jung’s time working with schizophrenic patients was not just that the delusions were “lovely” but that many of them contained clues into the specific nature of each patient’s schizophrenic affliction. Therefore, with a combination of listening and analysis (or integration), the client and psychologist could come nearer to a cure or at least increased health. The cure may even be the dialectic of the analysis! This may seem obvious to us, but for clinicians of the past, the shift from a prescriptive orientation of psychological treatment was very new and still not absolutely practiced today.
There’s something here, in plain sight, which people miss. Generally, in talk therapy, the client tells a therapist their thoughts; the therapist then takes those thoughts seriously and, through a dialogue, investigates the client’s thoughts and helps connect points between other thoughts along the way. This makes me wonder: How seriously do we take our own thoughts? Do we investigate and connect them with other thoughts? Is there something special about doing this exercise in a therapeutic setting with a professional? If so, to what extent? And, if not, why is it rare to practice a form of self-therapy?
A therapist will be more objective and unwrapped from one’s emotions. They will also carry wisdom from their training, which is priceless. But how much benefit could we get from taking our thoughts seriously and investigating those trains of thought alone and outside the therapist’s room?
Many of us mistakenly identify with our thoughts. But as Nietzsche mentioned, thoughts come from someplace other than the “I” “… a thought comes when “it” wishes, and not when “I” wish; so that it is a perversion of the facts of the case to say that the subject “I” is the condition of the predicate “think.”
Nietzsche is taking a sort of hot take at the Cartesian postulate: “I think therefore, I am,” but he’s also stating that thoughts do not come from the ego-consciousness; they come from someplace other. Jung picked up this thread as part of his development of the ideas of the subconscious and collective subconscious. We would do well to take a stance like Jung’s toward our own psychic landscape by thinking like, “Wow, my mind has such lovely fantasies and comes up with the most fascinating things. Where did that come from?” If one takes this disposition towards their psychic activity, profound wisdom awaits in the world of the unknown-known.
Page 131
…the cure ought to grow naturally out of the patient himself.
Remarks
More to the previous point. The therapist is there to aid more so in one’s personal development rather than prescribe. Therefore, nothing is stopping someone from going down a similar path on their own, within reason.
Page 133
Dreams are, after all, compensations for the conscious attitude.
Page 140
I have frequently seen people become neurotic when they content themselves with inadequate or wrong answers to the questions of life.
Remarks
Seeking external things, a narrow or paranoid spiritual life, and an underdeveloped personality are common traits that show one has contented oneself with unsatisfying answers about life. Unfortunately, our society has unsatisfying answers ready-made so that people keep in line with societal expectations. We must continually resist society's pressure to conform to inadequate answers. Often, one of the first experiences the initiate must undergo is rejecting society's standards. The rejection is a prerequisite to understanding the root of some standards, and in other cases, it's a prerequisite to standing up for the good, the true, and the beautiful.
The search for answers about life and personal development is a basic need. It's a never-ending search since each answer and clue one seems to find leads to more questions and further topics to investigate. Those who give up the search and opt for shallow or wrong answers suffer. Often, this is done for the sake of certainty, for some kind of finality, but finality is dangerous and misleading.
Finality scarcely exists anywhere, even less so within the human psyche. When one tries to exact finality on the psyche, they make the infinite subconscious, and subconscious infinitudes will do much to become conscious. Things do not die within the subconscious. Instead, they gain energy and will inevitably thrust themselves upon the ego in neurotic, somatic, symbolic, or cryptic ways. The psyche will push the ego to begin searching again for satisfactory answers in uncomfortable ways and rarely in our clear, rational language. One must pursue the context and meaning of one's life or continue to suffer the consequences.
For me, the neurosis was addiction, and it manifested over the course of my loss of faith. Trying to live without faith is contenting oneself with an inadequate and wrong answer to multiple questions of life.
The addiction worsened proportionally to the amount of faith lost. By faith, I mean multiple of its manifestations, but centered around my faith in an objective God. Coincidentally, my faith in humanity, history, the world, myself, my family, my work, and so on were all lost after losing God. Before restoring any of the multiple faiths, I had to begin by restoring my faith in God. It has not been a linear path; I continue to alter and lose my way. Such is the search for satisfactory answers! This flows directly to the following quote.
Page 140
The majority of my patients consisted not of believers but of those who had lost their faith... to live and experience symbols presupposes a total participation on the part of the believer, and only too often this is lacking. In such cases we have to observe whether the unconscious will not spontaneously bring up symbols to replace what is lacking.
Remarks
Reading this is when I realized I had lost my faith.
For a while, I thought I didn't need faith; that faith was a deception crammed down my throat by the Jehovah's Witnesses. It went unnoticed that I've been rebuilding my faith.
I've undergone a process of loss and rediscovery of my faith twice, and it's taken different forms each time. The first loss occurred after my removal as a JW and culminated in drug addiction, self-harm, and oblivion-seeking. My rediscovery began with 12-step recovery and culminated in the belief in a patchwork God resembling that of the Jehovah's Witnesses.
The second loss began during the COVID-19 pandemic because I thought Bible prophecy was being fulfilled. I failed to return to the JW cult. Instead, after attending one of their meetings, I felt something was deeply wrong, so I began researching. My research uncovered the true nature of the Jehovah's Witnesses; my faith evaporated once again, and I felt betrayed. This second loss climaxed while looking at other religions and finding nothing appealing. I found comfort in Literary Satanism and atheism, however, which evolved into a blend of Deism. I gained a fear of death, and my relationships were almost non-existent. Over some years, I discovered a desire for children and improvement in my relationships, so I began therapy with a Jungian-oriented therapist. Therapy is where I started to find faith again, even though my intent was tangential to faith.
This quote divined the framework I needed to restore my faith, but I knew nothing of these words; things flowed naturally to this course. Granted, I was very familiar with Jung's work and psychology in general, but he doesn't speak so plainly in his other texts (that I've read) about the restoration of faith.
To live and experience symbols is Jung's path to wellness for the lost sheep. Through the church, believers can live a symbolic life, but frequently, those who have left or never had one are tasked with finding the symbolic life, faith, and meaning elsewhere. Everyone has these things within themselves, but we will only benefit from them if we recognize and interpret the symbols that arise from within, so it becomes necessary for many people to seek the symbolic outside of themselves to make sense of what's within.
One's search for meaning and religious experience are inextricably linked with one's well-being. There are two sides to this coin, yin and yang, or the philosophico-scientific functions versus the religio-intuitive. Eliphas Levi has a lot to say about how these two functions interact.
To know is to believe no longer; to believe is not to know as yet.
Eliphas Levi, The Key of the Mysteries, Part I, Resume of the First Part
These two functions map onto what Jung says about living and experiencing the symbolic: living is the philosophico-scientific, and experiencing is the religio-intuitive. This line of reasoning, that man must be philosophically and religiously intertwined within the symbolic to find meaning, begs a question: Why? Why must we be religious to remain sane?
One can answer this by saying, "because that's the way it has always been," or "because God exists," or "because man needs something to keep his fear of death from overwhelming him," all of these are equally viable.
The question of why bends towards the more profound mysteries of God, and people have been trying and failing to find a suitable answer for thousands of years. Jung attempts and fails to answer this question at the end of this book. I plan on seeking a suitable answer to the question and failing in the process, too. All I have to say is that "it seems to be the case." Some people seem to be an exception, but it's unprovable, and even if they are, the implications are unclear. However, I know the details of my life and have listened to the shared experiences of others, and it still seems to be the case.
I'm keenly aware that a lack of symbolic living is not the root of all mental unwellness. However, an orientation towards the symbolic would help more than the common knowledge of today may assume. But I'm not simply asserting that more people must attend church. Many churchgoers lack the symbolic life as much as the most staunch scientific-materialists. A church may help, but the symbolic life is an inner work. It doesn't matter how many symbolic objects one has around them; nothing is achieved if one doesn't engage with it.
Page 144
No one has any obligations to a concept; that is what is so agreeable about conceptuality it promises protection from experience.
Remarks
An underdevelopment of ones feelings can occur from their over-intellectualization and all sorts of malaise can arise. (pg. 145)