Constructing the collective unconscious

Abstract: Innovative attempts at collating Jungian analytical psychology with a range of ‘post‐modern’ theories have yielded significant results. This paper adopts an alternative strategy: a Lacanian vantage point on Jungian theory that eschews an attempt at reconciling Jung with post‐structuralism. A focused Lacanian gaze on Jung will establish an irreducible tension between Jung's view of archetypes as factors immanent to the psyche and a Lacanian critique that lays bare the contingent structures and mechanisms of their constitution, unveiling the supposed archetypes’a posteriori production through the efficacy of a discursive field. Theories of ideology developed in the wake of Lacan provide a powerful methodological tool allowing to bring this distinction into focus. An assembly of Lacan's fragmentary accounts of Jung will be supplemented with an approach to Jungian theory via ?i?ek's Lacan‐oriented theory of the signifying mechanism underpinning ‘ideology’. Accordingly, the Jungian archetype of the self, which is considered in some depth, can begin to be seen in a new light, namely as a ‘master signifier’, not only of Jung's academic edifice, but also —and initially—of the discursive strategies that establish his own subjectivity. A discussion of Jung's approach to mythology reveals how the ‘quilting point’ of his discourse comes to be coupled with a correlate in the Real, a non‐discursive ‘sublime object’ conferring upon archetypes their fascinating aura.     

The fragmentation of the religious tradition of the creation,after‐life and morality: Modernity not post‐modernity

Religion asks three central questions: ‘What becomes of us after death?’, ‘How should we lead a moral life?’, and ‘How and why were the universe, life and human beings created?’ In the past, these questions were answered together as part of a single unified narrative. From the mid‐nineteenth century onwards, the growth of modern science and of spiritualism led to a fragmentation of this religious tradition so that the questions are now often asked separately and the answers combined in unexpected ways. This phenomenon is an outgrowth of modernity, not post‐modernity. Post‐modernists have suggested that there has been a recent, new and definitive ending of modernity with a collapse of all dominant grand narratives. Religion is one of the grand narratives supposed to have suddenly unravelled and fragmented in this recent sea‐change, although post‐modernists in general have not bothered to provide the empirical evidence to demonstrate this. The detailed account of the long, slow process of religious fragmentation and the particular role of nineteenth‐century spiritualism given here shows that the post‐modernist thesis does not work for Europe's most important grand narrative—the Christian religion. We can see rather a process of slow unravelling of the origins which go back at the very least to the latter half of the nineteenth century, a time of classic modernity and confidence in progress. This tendency towards fragmentation has continued at least in Europe, but religion persists; it has not experienced the mushroom rise and sudden implosion that has characterised the (until recently) fashionable, grand narratives of the secular intellectuals. We are living in modern, not post‐modern, times.     

Freedom and the psychoanalytic ontology of quantum physics

Jung's paper ‘Synchronicity – an acausal connecting principle’, defining the phenomenon as a ‘meaningful’ coincidence depending on archetypal activation, was published in 1952, together with a conceptually related piece by physicist and Nobel Laureate Wolfgang Pauli entitled, ‘The influence of archetypal ideas on the scientific theories of Kepler’. Slavoj ?i?ek, in The Indivisible Remainder: On Schelling and Related Matters, suggests that, in contrast to any notion of a ‘pre‐modern Jungian harmony’, the main lesson of quantum physics was that not only was the psychoanalytic, empty subject of the signifier constitutively out‐of‐joint with respect to the world, but that the Real in itself was already incomplete, out‐of‐joint, ‘not‐all’. Yet while ?i?ek frequently tries to separate Jung from his own ontology, this paper shows that his ontology is not as different as he suggests. Consistent with our earlier publications on Jung and Zizek, a closer investigation reveals an underlying congruence of both of their approaches. In this paper we show that this affinity lies in the rejection by both Jung and ?i?ek of the ideology of reductive materialism, a rejection that demonstrably draws on quantum physics in similar ways. While Jung posits an inherently meaningful universe, ?i?ek attempts to salvage the freedom of human subjectivity by opposing his Lacanian ‘dialectical materialism’ to reductive materialism.     

A strange half‐absence: reflections on a faithful presence

‘Not being with it’ is a reproach levelled these days against those who do not easily assume that the most recent is the most authentic. By contrast, ‘being with it’ is a quality to be coveted in the field of ‘inter‐faith’ relations. Thus, to the recipient it seemed a possible exaggeration to entitle a Festschrift in that area A Faithful Presence. Perhaps response is permitted, adopting the more modest A Strange Half‐absence as more apt to tell how far the academic mind may be from the realities of faith; how vested interests of ‘fund and find’ may distort inter‐cultural assessments; how far religious leaderships may be from gentle cognisance of human tribulation; how dubiously we resolve the tension between assessing and possessing faith. Or is Faithful Presence an elusive dream?     

Hidden feelings 1945-95

Abstract

It was a fact learnt early in life: wherever I travelled in Europe as a teenager, it paid me to explain that I was Dutch, not German. And when I left home at 18, in search of the elusive key to good faith and freedom, and came to Britain, crossing the Channel to reach the sole part of Europe untouched by enemy invasion, I felt I was welcomed like a lost daughter; many people told me of the part they played in the liberation of Holland in 1945. And now, fifty years after the historic events of the Second World War have passed, I still like to invoke the ‘magic’ if I can. While staying in a bed and breakfast in Coventry recently, I pointed out to the landlady that a morning call, as written down by the German guest, was requested at 7.15, instead of, as she had read, at 9.15. ‘Oh’, she said, annoyed, realizing the mistake: ‘Do they cross their number seven? We never do’. I was instantly eager to clear my name: ‘The Dutch never do so either’     

‘A Garland in Place of Ashes’:1Transformative Spirituality and Mission in the Post‐Modern and Secular Contexts

In this paper I aim to explore not what is the so‐called ‘post‐modern and secular context’ but how the church responds to it, which is predominantly to blame it for ‘decline’. Yet it may not be decline, it may be something else altogether. I am reflecting on a western/UK context, but within this are theological assumptions that characterize the wider church. So, having made some remarks on how to approach decline I will then explore some transformations of spirituality and mission that are responses to the post‐modern and secular context. Underlying this is an attitude to ‘spirituality’ which is not about how we worship or our experience of the ‘ethereal’ but is about our ‘capacity for life’. But, I want to maintain that nothing new or transformative can emerge until the church stops resenting and despairing of the context and change we are experiencing. Further, I am not convinced the church in the UK or the West is able to adapt to the strangeness of this new context and will seek always to bring it back under church control. But, I will then offer a post‐modern image for transformative spirituality and mission that could leave its mark on the church.     

Do You Have the Heart to Come to Faith? A Look at Anti‐Climacus' Reading of Matthew 11.6

In Practice in Christianity, Søren Kierkegaard's pseudonym, Anti‐Climacus enters into an extended engagement with Matthew 11.6, ‘Blessed is he who takes no offense at me’. In so doing, he comes to an understanding that ‘the possibility of offense’ characterises the ‘crossroad’ at which one either comes to faith in Christ's revelation or rejects it. Such a choice, as he is well aware, cannot be made from a neutral standpoint, and so he is led to propose that it is ‘the thoughts of the heart’ (i.e. a person's disposition) that constitute the pivotal factor in determining whether or not God will reconcile a person into the Christian faith. In this paper, I discuss Anti‐Climacus' interpretation of Mt. 11.6 and consider his reasons for interpreting a person's predisposition as being so decisive for faith.     

Geographies of Meaningful Living

Because it is significantly unclear what ‘meaningful’ does or should pick out when applied to a life, any account of meaningful living will be constructive and not merely clarificatory. Where in our conceptual geography is ‘meaningful’ best located? What conceptual work do we want the concept to do? What I call agent‐independent and agent‐independent‐plus conceptions of meaningfulness locate ‘meaningful’ within the conceptual geography of agent‐independent evaluative standards and assign ‘meaningful’ the work of commending lives. I argue that the not wholly welcome implications of these more dominant approaches to meaningfulness make it plausible to locate ‘meaningful’ on an alternative conceptual geography — that of agents as end‐setters and of agent‐dependent value assessments — and to assign it the work of picking out lives whose time‐expenditures are intelligible to the agent. I respond to the challenge confronting any subjectivist conception of meaningfulness that it is overly permissive.     

PERSPECTIVE‐NEUTRAL INTRINSIC VALUE

Is it possible to do a good thing, or to make the world a better place? Some argue that it is not possible, because perspective‐neutral value does not exist. Some argue that ‘good’ does not play the right grammatical role; or that all good things are good ‘in a way’; or that goodness is inherently perspective‐dependent. I argue that the logical and semantic properties of ‘good’ are what we should expect of an evaluative predicate; that the many ways of being good don't threaten the thesis that some ways are perspective‐independent; and that there are clear examples of perspective‐independent goodness.     

Psychotherapists' dreams about their patients

Abstract This study examines therapists’ dreams about their patients from the Jungian and the relational perspectives. Few clinical and empirical references to this subject are to be found in the literature. In the present study 31 dreams were collected from 22 therapists. Dreams were collected using anonymous self‐report inventory. The research focused on three theoretical research questions: 1. What themes appear in the manifest content of therapists’ dreams about their patients? 2. What contributions are made by Jungian interpretation of therapists’ dreams about their patients? 3. To what extent are masochistic contents present in the manifest content of therapists’ dreams about their patients? The first question was addressed using categorical content analysis of a) themes common to different dreams and b) pre‐determined themes for all dreams. The third research question was addressed using Beck's (1967) ‘Masochistic Dream’ measure. Results: Among the themes common to different dreams were: therapist‐patient role reversal; therapist and/or patient attends and remains in meeting, departs/doesn’t depart; cancellation of therapy session; sexuality between therapist and patient; aggression; presence vs. absence; non‐verbal relationship and communication; time; driving vs. stopping. With regard to pre‐determined themes it was found that in 20 of the 31 dreams, the therapist had a negative experience and was characterized as vulnerable. Likewise it was found that 26 out of 31 dreams took place in either a) a street, a road, a route, a corridor; b) en route to somewhere; c) a therapy room and/or building; d) a house. With regard to the contribution of Jungian interpretations of the dreams it was found that 17 of the dreams had diagnostic and prognostic elements, 4 of which were initial dreams, 9 of them were compensatory dreams and in 14 it was found that the patient represents the shadow of the therapist. With regard to the third question it was found that 18 of the 31 dreams met Beck's (1967) criteria for masochistic dreams. The theoretical discussion examines the findings from a Jungian perspective, with an emphasis on also understanding the dream in terms of its expression of relational aspects of the therapist‐patient relationship. The findings affirm the presence of the ‘wounded healer’ archetypes in therapists’ dreams about their patients. The results of the study indicate that therapists’ dreams about their patients can be a valuable tool for deepening understanding of the therapeutic relationship and process.     

How Much Jungian Theory Is There in My Practice?

This non-clinical paper consists of the author's subjective and personal value judgements on theory and practice. He discusses nine topics: I) What is analysis and why do people seek therapy? 2) Dangers of reification and hypostatizing: reinforcement of narcissistic defences and schizoid unrelatedness. 3) The problems of archetypal psychology and amplification. 4) The cultural and political aspects of the unconscious psyche, and the value of studying the philosophical background to the psychodynamic approach. 5) Criticism of the classical Jungian over-emphasis of the intrapsychic at the expense of the interpersonal. 6) Psychosomatic healing through experience and interpretation of psychosomatic identity in the transference/countertrans-ference; idea of the ‘animating body’. 7) Dangers of theoretical hndamentalism and crusading among Jungian schools: envy and intolerance. 8) The need for the analyst to have enough good objects. 9) An acknowledgement of theoretical influences other than Jung on the author's practice; although Jung's ideas facilitate a personal pluralism - the spirit of Jung.     

Heidegger’s Destruktion of Theology: ‘Primordial Faith’ and ‘Recognition’ of the Messiah

Heidegger’s phenomenology of religious life offers important insights by engaging Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, where he distinguishes ‘Paul the Pharisee’ from ‘Paul the Christian’ in order to explicate the nature of faith in contrast to systematic theology. Neither certitude in God’s existence is primordial to Christian faith, according to Heidegger, nor is rabbinic nor theological disputation concerning God’s existence or God’s nature. Instead, what is essential to Heidegger’s phenomenology of religious life are: (1) faith as lived experience and (2) recognition of ‘the Christ’ (ho christos/ha ma?ía?). This ‘recognition’, however, requires phenomenological clarification and not philosophy of religion as traditionally construed.     

IS THERE A TENSION IN WITTGENSTEIN'S PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION?

This paper responds to Severin Schroeder's recent charge that Wittgenstein's philosophy of religion contains an ‘unresolved tension’ between three propositions, namely: (1) ‘As a hypothesis, God's existence (&c) is extremely implausible’; (2) ‘Christian faith is not unreasonable’; and (3) ‘Christian faith does involve belief in God's existence (&c)’. I argue as follows: that the first of these propositions has no place in Wittgenstein's thinking on religion; that the second is ill‐phrased and should be re‐worded as the proposition that ‘Christian faith is neither unreasonable nor reasonable’; and that the third proposition (contrary to what Schroeder seems to assume) tells us nothing about the nature of the objects of religious belief. It follows from my argument that Schroeder has not exposed a tension in Wittgenstein's thoughts on religion. I end with some positive remarks about Wittgenstein's method.     

A preliminary sketch of a Jungian socioanalysis – an emerging theory combining analytical psychology,complexity theories,sociological theories,socio- and psycho-analysis,group analysis and affect theories1

This paper presents a preliminary sketch of what we have termed a Jungian socioanalysis – an emerging theory combining analytical psychology, complexity theories, sociological theories, socio- and psycho-analysis, group analysis and affect theories. Our assumption is that Jungian theory and practice need to attend to and focus more on social contexts, sociality and the influence of societal developments. But also, on the other hand, that analytical psychology, primarily Jung’s theory of individuation and the transcendent function as well as the broad complexity perspective of his theory of psyche, can be extended to a ‘socio’ and not just a ‘psycho’ perspective. The paper presents five foundational assumptions for a Jungian socioanalysis, with the following headings: 1) A Jungian socioanalysis calls for a complex psychology; 2) (Un)consciousness is social and sociality has a dimension of (un)consciousness; 3) A Jungian socioanalysis explores social fields ‘from within’ by smaller groups; 4) A Jungian socioanalysis enables and is enabled by emerging metaphors and affect-imagery; 5) Socio-cultural fields have an impulse toward individuation. This is the first of two papers in the present edition of the journal – the second paper gives socio-clinical illustrations of our thesis in this paper.     

Buddhist Conceptual Rhyming and T.S.Eliot's Crisis of Connection in TheWaste Land and ‘Burnt Norton’

In this essay, I elaborate a reading of the Buddhist allusions throughout T.S. Eliot's poetry as being not confessions of Buddhist faith or merely syncretic experiments, but rather ‘conceptual rhymes’ with the crisis of personal connection that preoccupies Eliot across multiple texts. In the Buddhist concepts of pratītya-samutpāda, ?ūnyatā, sa?sāra, and the pretas, Eliot finds thematic resonances with his own emotional and psychological concerns and so alludes to these concepts in ‘The Fire Sermon’ section of The Waste Land and ‘Burnt Norton’ of Four Quartets as part of his characteristic poetic collage. By examining the connection between Eliot's personal poetic practice and the cross-cultural traditions upon which he drew, my argument intervenes in a long-standing debate regarding the meaning of Asian religio-philosophical influences in the poet's key texts. Moreover, by close reading the third movement of ‘Burnt Norton’ for Buddhist allusions, I attempt to refocus scrutiny of Buddhism in Eliot from the oft-discussed ‘Fire Sermon’ section of The Waste Land to Eliot's later Four Quartets, which remains under-examined for its Buddhist influences by scholars who instead attend to the latter text's more pronounced Vedic references.     

Competing Accounts of Progress: The Redemptive Purpose of Memory in J.B. Metz and Theodor Adorno

What unifies the accounts of history and progress presented by Adorno's Critical Theory and Metz's political theology? I show: (i) that both resist the ‘magic spell’ of an Enlightenment totality on whose strength the violent excesses of modernity have been built; (ii) that both accomplish this resistance by memory of victims or the ‘losers of history’; and (iii) that both hold out hope for the possibility of progress in time. However, the two accounts differ in important ways. These differences stem from: (i) the transference of historical subjectivity from homo emancipator to the God of Jesus’ passion; (ii) the role of the ‘eschatological proviso’ in guaranteeing theological futuricity; and (iii) the fullness of Metz's eschatological justice as compared to Adorno's conception of progress as the mere ‘avoidance of catastrophe’. This project brings the work of one of the most influential social critics of the twentieth century into dialogue with that of a politically engaged theologian of the same historical‐cultural context. In doing so, I hope to suggest the theological richness of Metz's approach but also the significant contributions of dialectical criticism to the practice of theology in the modern era.     

Heidegger's Descartes and Heidegger's Cartesianism

Abstract: Heidegger's Sein und Zeit (SZ) is commonly viewed as one of the 20^th century's great anti‐Cartesian works, usually because of its attack on the epistemology‐driven dualism and mentalism of modern philosophy of mind or its apparent effort to ‘de‐center the subject’ in order to privilege being or sociality over the individual. Most who stress one or other of these anti‐Cartesian aspects of SZ, however, pay little attention to Heidegger's own direct engagement with Descartes, apart from the compressed discussion in SZ §§19–21. I here show through a careful reading of Heidegger's lectures on Descartes from the years immediately preceding SZ that, while he has sharp criticisms of Descartes and certain ‘Cartesian’ aspects of modern philosophy along the lines commonly recognized, he also aims to disclose what he calls the ‘positive possibilities’ in Descartes and the philosophy he inspired. I detail a number of these and then show that they force us to see Heidegger's own early project as largely unconcerned with dualism and mentalism per se, and much more with questions of the philosophical methodology that gives rise to them. Moreover, I show that a careful reading of Heidegger's treatment of the cogito makes clear that he is no serious way attempting to ‘de‐center the subject’ and that the fundamental question of the ‘analytic of Dasein’ is one that takes Descartes as an immediate jumping off point: how can I articulate what I understand myself to be as the general kind of entity I am, and on what besides me does my being depend?     

Response-dependence without reduction?

I will discuss those epistemic accounts of truth that say, roughly and at least, that the truth is what all ideally rational people, with maximum evidence, would in the long run come to believe. They have been defended on the grounds that they can solve sceptical problems that traditional accounts cannot surmount, and that they explain the value of truth in ways that traditional (and particularly, minimal) accounts cannot; they have been attacked on the grounds that they collapse into idealism.

I show that all these claims are mistaken. The system of statements accepted by an adherent of an epistemic account who also accepts the equivalence scheme is the same as that accepted by an adherent of a traditional account who also accepts a remarkably strong thesis of epistemic optimism. The singling out of one rather than another claim within this system as defining ‘true’ cannot make as much difference as to imply idealism or refute scepticism.

However, it can make all the difference when it is a matter of explaining the value of truth. For a crucial point in such explanation depends on what can be soundly substituted for what in intensional contexts; above all those governed by such verbs as ‘know’, ‘hope’, ‘believe’, ‘value’. That is, it depends on what expressions are intensionally equivalent. And one point of singling out one formulation as definitional can be to settle just this.

But though some epistemic theorists have deemed ability to explain the value of truth a merit of their account (and lack of this ability a fatal defect of traditional accounts, of minimal accounts in particular), it turns out that minimal accounts of ‘true’ fit a sound account of our valuing of truth in a way that epistemic accounts do not.

In the course of this argument I rebut related positions: e.g. Dummett's, that minimal definitions fail because they cannot account for the point of having a notion of truth, and that an account of the practice of assertion is what would fill this lacuna. I argue to the contrary that if the point of the notion could not be explained on the basis of a traditional definition, it could not be explained at all.     

The only X and Y principle

In this paper, I consider the validity and proper formulation of the only‐x‐and‐y principle, which states, roughly, that whether a later individual, y, is numerically identical to an earlier individual, x, can depend only on facts about x and y and the relationships between them. In the course of my investigation, I distinguish between two classes of physical entities?–?those that exist in a ‘real’ sense, and those that exist in a mere Cambridge sense. This distinction is grounded in Peter Geach's distinction between ‘real’ and mere Cambridge change. I argue in favor of a modified version of the only‐x‐and‐y principle?–?the qualified only‐x‐and‐y principle?–?which applies to entities that exist in a ‘real’ sense, but not to mere Cambridge entities. It is also argued that the plausibility of the qualified only‐x‐and‐y principle has more to do with facts about the nature of causality than with intuitions we have about existence or numerical identity. I finish by considering some traditional objections to the only‐x‐and‐y principle, and conclude that they do not succeed in refuting the qualified only‐x‐and‐y principle.     

An Inquiry into Views,Beliefs and Faith: Lessons from Buddhism,Behavioural Psychology and Constructivist Epistemology*

Abstract

 The causes of disagreements between individuals, social groups, cultural groups, political parties, and nations can be traced down to the basic human tendency to give form to – and to reify views, beliefs, and opinions. With this being the case, I would like to ask the question: what, exactly are ‘views’ (including here such overlapping categories as ‘opinions’, ‘beliefs’ and ‘attitudes’,)? How, exactly, do we give form to them? Why is it so difficult to change, or get rid of them? The Buddhist tradition since the time of its inception, has been greatly concerned with the matter of identifying ‘false views’ and replacing them with ‘correct views’. But serious and insightful research into the formation and maintenance of views and beliefs is by no means limited to Buddhism. It has been a topic of great concern in the past century to a wide range of secular researchers: social and behavioural psychologists; literary theorists and epistemologists; scientists and marketing strategists. What the specialists in these various fields have to say about beliefs is diverse – and yet there is much overlap. The ways in which they overlap are thought-provoking, and their differences are revelatory. In this paper, I investigate a few prominent approaches to the study of views and beliefs, and show how these various approaches can do much to fill in each other’s discourse. Finally, I reframe the Mahayana Buddhist notion of ‘correct faith’ within the context of this exploration of views.