The Sleep Paralysis Nightmare,Wrathful Deities,and the Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious

The sleep paralysis nightmare has been reported from antiquity to modernity across manifold cultures. Many people who experience nocturnal assaults by dark entities, demons, hags, or incubi during sleep paralysis ascribe them to evil spirits with varying degrees of malevolence. The majority report the episodes as terrifying, mysterious, and uncanny. Known in the neurocognitive literature as “isolated sleep paralysis” or “sleep paralysis with hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations,” the phenomenon is fascinating to researchers across disciplines because it occurs when we are both asleep and awake, presenting fundamental questions on the subject of conscious experiences in sleep.

This article considers the nightmare of sleep paralysis to be an archetypal psychic process akin to Jung’s night sea journey and having correspondence to the wrathful deities presented in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. With a Jungian perspective directed at artwork created by a person who has experienced sleep paralysis, archetypal imagery emerges and reveals elements missing from conscious view. Utilizing the interpretive frameworks of Jungian-oriented depth psychology and Tibetan Buddhist psychology, this universally experienced nightmare of terror can also be undergone as a dream of transformation with potential for psychological and spiritual growth.

Swiss psychiatrist C. G. Jung turned to the stories and images of religion and mythology to explore psychic life, in general, and the religious function of the psyche, in particular. For Jung, both myths and what Jung termed “big dreams” are expressions of psychic content emerging from the collective unconscious, which includes the entire spiritual inheritance of humankind’s evolution. Because dreams contain images that are not created with conscious intent, they provide self-portraits of the psychic life process and can be utilized for their objective insights into the psyche’s teleological directedness. Jung’s psychological theories drew on a vast number of sources, including shamanism, art, religion, alchemy, parapsychology, and Eastern philosophy. Notably, Tibetan Buddhist cosmology strongly influenced his thought (Jung, 1935/1989a Jung, C. G. (1989a). Psychological commentary on “the Tibetan book of the dead.” In H. Read, M. Fordham, G. Adler, & W. McGuire (Eds.), The collected works of C.G. Jung (R.F.C. Hull, Trans.; Vol. 11, pp. 509–526). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1935, revised 1953) [Google Scholar]).

Whereas Jungian psychology is rooted, albeit loosely, in the philosophies of empiricism that presuppose a subject–object duality, Tibetan Buddhist philosophy emphasizes the empty and illusory nature of the separate self, whether in waking life or nightly dreams. Nevertheless, although all phenomena are empty of inherent existence, they are, at the same time, pure manifestations of Buddha mind. In this philosophical system, the world of dream occupies an interesting paradox. On the one hand, dreams are considered to be unreal and deceptive, yet they are also a magical art to be mastered by the seeker, and their meanings are deemed of highest importance (Wallace, 2012 Wallace, B. A. (2012). Dreaming yourself awake: Lucid dreaming and Tibetan dream yoga for insight and transformation. Boston, MA: Shambhala. [Google Scholar]; Young, 1999 Young, S. (1999). Dreaming in the lotus: Buddhist dream narrative, imagery and practice. Boston, MA: Wisdom. [Google Scholar]).

Drawing on the dreams and subsequent paintings of one person, this article investigates the sleep paralysis nightmare—a phenomenon that has been recognized universally across time in folklore and myths, as well as by contemporary science—through the lens of both Tibetan Buddhism and Jungian-oriented depth psychology. With its emphasis on image and symbol, Jungian-oriented depth psychology is especially well suited to dialogue with art in the exploration of psyche. Both expressive product (image) and experience (meaning) are essential in this process. Jung (1946/1972 Jung, C. G. (1972). On the nature of the psyche. In H. Read, M. Fordham, G. Adler, & W. McGuire (Eds.), The collected works of C. G. Jung (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.; Vol. 8, pp. 159–234). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1946) [Google Scholar]) stated, “Image and meaning are identical; and as the first takes shape, so the latter becomes clear” (p. 204, par. 402).     

Severe Mental Illness: A Bridge between Neurochemistry and the Collective Unconscious

This article builds a relationship between neurochemistry and Jung's a priori construct of the collective unconscious through an exploration of the psychotic delusions present in severe mental illness and the psychopharmacological drugs used to treat them. Jung's postulations of a collective unconscious were rooted in his clinical work with severely mentally ill patients, and he was aware, early on, that severe mental illness offered an example of the interplay between human biology and our psychological lives. Current post-Jungian discourse has moved away from addressing severe mental illness as a means of understanding the continued relevance of Jungian theory amidst advances in the fields of neuroscience. Narrative analysis of qualitative data on severe mental illness adds psychic dimension to medical research and offers evidence that the rise and fall of delusional content, replete with archetypal patterns of expression, are related to the presence or absence of psychopharmacological drugs used for the treatment of bipolar disorder.     

Personal Political Salience: The Role of Personality in Collective Identity and Action

Personal political salience (PPS) is proposed as a personality characteristic that assesses individuals' linkage of political events with their personal identities. Its role in facilitating the development of politicized collective identity and action is examined. In four samples of midlife and activist women, we show that PPS was consistently related both to politicized gender identity and political participation. Further analyses show similar results for PPS, politicized racial identity, and political participation. Politicized gender identity mediated the relationship between PPS and women's rights activism, and politicized racial identity mediated the relationship between PPS and civil rights activism. PPS is demonstrated to independently predict political action and also to provide a personality link between group memberships, politicized collective identity, and political participation.     

The Unconscious Mind

ABSTRACT— The unconscious mind is still viewed by many psychological scientists as the shadow of a "real" conscious mind, though there now exists substantial evidence that the unconscious is not identifiably less flexible, complex, controlling, deliberative, or action-oriented than is its counterpart. This "conscious-centric" bias is due in part to the operational definition within cognitive psychology that equates unconscious with subliminal . We review the evidence challenging this restricted view of the unconscious emerging from contemporary social cognition research, which has traditionally defined the unconscious in terms of its unintentional nature; this research has demonstrated the existence of several independent unconscious behavioral guidance systems: perceptual, evaluative, and motivational. From this perspective, it is concluded that in both phylogeny and ontogeny, actions of an unconscious mind precede the arrival of a conscious mind—that action precedes reflection.     

无意识信息加工中的“完型”——无意识捆绑假说的新证据

采用连续闪烁范式(Continuous Flash Suppression,CFS)考察了无意识状态下完型能否发生.研究通过2(线条完整性)×2(意义破坏)×2(熟悉性)的被试内实验设计考察了8种条件下图片的突破抑制时间(Suppression Time,ST).结果发现:线条完整和意义未破坏的图片能更快地克服噪音图片的抑制进入意识;熟悉性不影响突破抑制时间.重要的是,不完整的图片也可以出现意义破坏效应.这表明即使在被抑制的状态下,不完整图形的信息也能够传达至与完型相关的高级视觉区域形成客体表征.研究为无意识捆绑假说(The Unconscious Binding Hypothesis)提供了新的实验证据.     

Architecture and the Unconscious

The way we plan and live our built environments reflect unconscious forms of thinking realised through architecture. Cities become holding environments that offer inhabitants differing forms of psychic engagement with the object world. The way they are planned and the types of objects they offer add up to degrees of ''imageability'', an attribute of any city that could become part of a psychoanalysis of the built world, or what Bachelard termed a ''topoanalysis''. Cities also play with life and death as those who inhabit built structures will be outlived by the places they inhabit, yet they enliven the inorganic spaces they construct. All buildings may, then, be forms of death brought into lived experience, and architects negotiate complex issues involving the matriculation of forms of death into human life. The ''spirit'' of human endeavour needs representation in the built environment and we may consider the ways in which a psychoanalysis of the built world could lead to a psycho-spiritual representation of human life.     

Rhetoric and the Unconscious

This paper develops the ideas of rhetorical psychology by applying them to some basic Freudian concepts. In so doing, the paper considers whether there might be a Dialogic Unconscious. So far rhetorical psychology has tended to concentrate upon conscious thought rather than on the unconscious. It has suggested that thinking is modelled on argument and dialogue, and that rhetoric provides the means of opening up matters for thought and discussion. However, rhetoric may also provide the means for closing down topics and, thereby, provide the means of repression. It will be suggested that language is not merely expressive but it is also repressive. Moreover, the repressive aspects of language are built into the very practices of dialogue. In learning language, we learn the codes for socially appropriate ways of speaking. These must be acquired as habits, so that we learn to repress routinely the desire to transgress the codes of appropriate speech. Thus, the routine use of language provides the resources for repression. If language is repressive, then this applies equally to the language of psycho-analysis itself. Freud's famous case histories, such as that of Dora, can be re-examined, in order to see what Freud's own theory of repression was itself repressing.     

从个体效能到集体效能--班杜拉自我效能理论的新发展

班杜拉于70年代后期提出了自我效能理论。但早期的研究主要集中在个体效能方面,强调个体行为的调控,却忽视了集体行为的研究。到了80年代中期,班杜拉又提出了集体效能的概念。经过十多年的研究积累。从90年代开始。班杜拉对集体效能概念进行了系统地理论整合和阐释。进一步扩展了其自我效能理论的内涵。因此,从个体效能概念发展到集体效能概念,代表着班杜拉自我效能理论的新进展。     

Architecture of the Unconscious

Finally, when Freud unveiled the predominant role of the unconscious in psychic processes, it turned out that our ego does not even rule its own house.

— Slavoj ?i?ek, How to Read Lacan

Get up off the pavement, brush the dirt up off my psyche …

— rapper Earl Sweatshirt, “Chum” In the Kitchen

Psychoanalysis is known primarily for its preoccupation with the “truth” that “speaks.” Following the critical tradition pioneered by Lacan and now ?i?ek, I would instead like to shift our attention to the “site[s]” where these pivotal experiments in truth take place—the environments we transform and the objects we fashion as we “learn to live with” the social plight we have inherited. Simply put, the aim of this paper is to explore the architecture of the unconscious. To develop this argument, I draw upon an array of genres and cultural artifacts, including personal memoir, cartoons, and hip hop lyricism.     

Dancing With the Unconscious: The Art of Psychoanalysis

This article examines psychoanalytic work as an art and uses the metaphor of dance between two unconscious minds to describe the rich creativity of mental life. Free association, transference/countertransference, and dreamwork are each discussed for their creative dimensions and their coupling in the cure. A compelling session with dream analysis of a transsexual patient is presented verbatim (along with the author's inner thoughts) to illustrate the art of dance that takes place between analyst and analysand.