Archetypes as symbolic forms

In Jung's psychology, archetypes are biologically inherited supra-individual predispositions of the collective unconscious, and in this paper this controversial theory of archetypes is evaluated in the context of Ernst Cassirer's philosophy of symbolic forms. The main thesis of the author is that with the help of the Cassirerian approach, archetypes can be understood as culturally determined functionary forms organizing and structuring certain aspects of man's cultural activity, namely those predominantly non-cognitive (for example, emotional, numinous, pathological) mental aspects of human life, which remain more or less unarticulated due to their non-discursive nature. The revision the author is proposing revolves around the notion that the archetypal theory can be removed from the rather unfruitful discourse on the genetic inheritance of archetypes. When archetypes are seen as symbolic forms, Jung's theory is in a position to make a potentially valuable contribution to hermeneutical and cultural studies, as archetypes function in this new context as active constituents of human experiences, which give these experiences a non-discursive, symbolic form. Thereby, archetypes can become accessible to historical and cultural analyses, and hermeneutical inquiry into the manifold symbolism of mental (including unconscious) phenomena can be enriched.     

Hermeneutic Inquiry in Depth Psychology: A Practical and Philosophical Reflection

This article examines foundational issues with respect to hermeneutic inquiry in depth psychology. Originally presented in a symposium on the relationship between psychological science and practice, the article begins by questioning psychology's commitment to its original vocations in both science and practice. The article then examines foundational perspectives in hermeneutic inquiry including the significance and implications of the hermeneutic circle for research in depth psychology. Following Martin Heidegger's phenomenological hermeneutic approach to scientific and philosophical inquiry, the article distinguishes between methodological and ontological hermeneutics and offers practical suggestions and examples for hermeneutic inquiry in the field. The article goes on to expose the origins and meaning of the term depth psychology and then reconsiders the term through the ontological perspective of Daseinsanalysis, suggesting that depth psychology is a psychology of the secret, a psychology of concealment as such. Finally, the relevance of a hermeneutic perspective for research in depth psychology is discussed by briefly dialoging core concerns in the work of Sigmund Freud and Martin Heidegger.     

Case History, Case Story: An Enquiry Into the Hermeneutics of C. G. Jung

The case histories written by C. G. Jung, from his 1902 Doctoral Dissertation to his 1950 case of Miss X, are evaluated as pieces of evidence in support of his theories. Evidence is shown to rely for its validity on an 'evidential context' which has altered over time. Jung's case histories change over the course of his writings and become more like stories. The reason for this difference is his move from an interpretative schema based on the natural sciences when a psychiatrist, through that of psychoanalysis, to one based on the human sciences, and in particular to one based on hermeneutics - the study of interpretation and meaning - when he developed his theory of analytical psychology. Jung moves from a form of hermeneutics based on what constitutes a 'valid' interpretation to one that concentrates on meaning and understanding. In writing his later case histories like stories, Jung is using them as merely part of the wider cultural context of evidence required by analytical psychology rather than as privileged pieces of evidence in themselves.     

The Baldwin effect: a neglected influence on C. G. Jung's evolutionary thinking

This paper considers the claim that C. G. Jung used a Lamarckian model of evolution to underwrite his theory of archetypes. This claim is challenged on the basis of Jung's familiarity with and use of the writings of James Mark Baldwin and Conway Lloyd Morgan, both of whom were noted and forceful opponents of neo-Lamarckian theory from within a neo-Darwinian framework. The paper then outlines the evolutionary model proposed by Baldwin and Lloyd Morgan, which has come to be known as Baldwinian evolution or the Baldwin effect. This model explicitly views psychological factors as central to the evolutionary process. Finally, the use of Baldwinian thinking in contemporary theorizing regarding language and other symbolic systems is reviewed and suggestions are made regarding the implications of Baldwinian models for theory building in analytical psychology.     

Jung's mediatory science as a psychology beyond objectivism

In this paper, the author argues that Jung's non-objectivist--yet scientific--epistemology and his empirical/hermeneatic methods of inquiry situate him within a psychological tradition that, in many respects, began with William James and, today, is finding expression in the work of many non-Jungian cognitive scientists. In an effort to encourage dialogue between Jungians and scholars within related intellectual traditions, the author presents evidence from the corpus of Jung's work that demonstrates that, like William James, Jung intentionally rejected the absolutist claims of objectivism and the opposite position on 'anything goes' relativism, emotivism, or subjectivism. Instead, Jung forged a path that led to the meta-psychological position similar to internal realism (Putnam 1981) or experientialism (Lakoff 1987) and to a theoretical psychology that gave a central place both to unconscious cognitive structure and to imagination. This he labelled a 'mediatory science'. The psychological theories developed within this mediatory science framework represent an early articulation of key constructs that are currently used by a number of cognitive scientists seeking to understand how we make sense of experience.     

Synchronicity as A Basis of Analytic Attitude

My aim is to describe Jung's approach to the experience of the chaotic, which could equally be termed the irrational, the non-ego, the unordered or prima materia , and to extract from this a clinical approach to the analytic patient which, in Jung's own writings, is often more implicit than explicit. My interest in this enquiry arises from the clinical experience of the unconscious in the form of transference/ countertransference, involving relentless pressure on both analyst and analysand to attempt to impute meaning and order. I examine Jung's work 'Synchronicity: an acausal connecting principle' and extrapolate from it what I think to be its unique contribution to hermeneutics - the ontologically-based concept of a psychoid understanding of meaning and pattern. In the second part of the paper, I discuss the application to analytic work of Jung's hermeneutic approach. I look at how analysts relate to meaning in terms of their relationship to theory. I illustrate this by comparing two short psychoanalytic papers on aggression, an instinct which is often seen as engendering splitting and which tends therefore to promote the dissociations which Jung was trying to address in 'Synchronicity'. I then illustrate with clinical material how Jungian analysts might relate to meaning in their approach to the patient. Together, these form the basis of what is commonly called 'analytic attitude', which I see as the basis for a distinctively Jungian identity for analytic practice.     

Thinking individuation forward

This paper extends Jung's theory of individuation as faithfully elaborated by Joseph L. Henderson in his authoritative book Thresholds of Initiation. It addresses analyses that continue over very many years with analysands said to be individuated and proposes psychodynamics that explain and support such work that is otherwise beyond formal theoretical justification. In so doing, the paper addresses both Jung's and Henderson's refusal to explore the relevance of metaphysics for psychology and offers both a theoretical corrective for this shortcoming and a clinical illustration in support of an expanded point of view. In the course of the paper, personal material from interviews with Dr. Henderson, aged 101, serve as a substrate, both to support the above considerations and to shed new light on the development of his thought that led to Thresholds of Initiation.     

Approaching archetypes: reconsidering innateness

The question of innateness has hounded Jungian psychology since Jung originally postulated the archetype as an a priori structure within the psyche. During his life and after his death he was continually accused of Lamarckianism and criticized for his theory that the archetypes existed as prior structures. More recently, with the advent of genetic research and the human genome project, the idea that psychological structures can be innate has come under even harsher criticism even within Jungian thought. There appears to be a growing consensus that Jung's idea of innate psychological structures was misguided, and that perhaps the archetype-as-such should be abandoned for more developmental and 'emergent' theories of the psyche. The purpose of this essay is to question this conclusion, and introduce some literature on psychological innateness that appears relevant to this discussion.     

Gnosticism and Psychology

In this paper, I have attempted a historical analysis of what Jung might have been thinking when he wrote the 'Seven sermons'. To this end, I tried to ascertain which Gnostic texts Jung may have consulted before writing it. These documents were then compared with the 'Seven sermons', and numerous affinities noted between it and the Gnostic texts. Jung's contemporaneous academic works were then compared with this treatise, and parallels were established between the 'Seven sermons' and Jung's emerging psychology of the unconscious. In the process, an attempt was made to show how Jung made use of Gnostic themes in his emerging psychology. While there is no way of knowing precisely what Jung was thinking when he wrote the 'Seven sermons', it is clear that he was well acquainted not only with the work of Basilides, but also with the work of other Gnostic thinkers. It is not enough to assume that because Jung chose the pseudonym of Basilides, he was necessarily Jung's primary Gnostic influence. At the same time, it is also evident that Jung was developing his own psychology during the writing of the 'Seven sermons'. We recall Jung's observations regarding the 'Seven sermons', which we quoted on page 17: These conversations with the dead formed a kind of prelude to what I had to communicate to the world about the unconscious . . . All my works, all my creative activity, has come from those initial fantasies and dreams which began in 1912, almost fifty years ago. Everything that I accomplished in later life was already contained in them, although at first only in the form of emotions and images (Jung 21, p. 192). On the basis of what has been published, there are enough affinities between his academic work and this treatise to posit that the 'Seven sermons' played an important role in the emergence of Jung's psychology. Given these numerous parallels, I suspect that Jung's unpublished writings, including the Red Book, would only strengthen the arguments put forth in this paper.     

论伦理学与诠释学的内在关系

人的行为活动趋于善的特性,是人类活动的价值特性。人通过教化、通过自己的价值活动,能够对自己的本性作出决定,能够化性起伪,决定自己是什么人或成为什么样的人,从而建构一个道德价值意义的世界,使自己获得作为诠释的诠释视域。同时,在一个多元性价值观念的世界,对于事物产生误解或理解分歧的可能性直接要求诠释学的在场。诠释学的理解要求一种回到前理解的共享性前见中去,在这个意义上,人具有作为伦理诠释和诠释理解的双重身份。伦理学与诠释学的内在贯通,从根本上看,在于它们都分有着实践理性的特性。这种实践理性体现在,普遍的东西的具体化。换言之,是普遍性知识与具体实践情境的结合。     

Can there be a science of the symbolic?

Science means not just 'knowing', but knowing verified by replicability. Science is particularly hard to bring to depth psychology because the individual uniquenesses that can't be repeated are what make people most deeply themselves. Everyone, including the analytic investigator, however, has a science, in the sense of a world-view that is replicated by experience. Jung offered hermeneutics as an alternative mode to science for getting to know the psychological subject. But as Heidegger emphasized, hermeneutics always begins with the projection of a world-view, i.e., the science of the would-be interpreter. In the analytic situation, dialogue is available to test the world-view and enlarge its horizon, in accord with Gadamer's expansion of hermeneutics, 'the classical discipline concerned with the art of understanding texts', into a method of inquiry open to the possibilities of otherness. An example is given from an analytic training seminar, in which the author began by projecting his version of the theory of psychological types onto the dream material a candidate offered in response to the seminar. A dialogue with the candidate ensued which enabled the teacher to correct his original, somewhat rigid, application of his scientific viewpoint. In such a dialogue, psyche emerges as the final interpreter of what is, generating hypotheses that can fruitfully be applied to the understanding of other cases.     

Thawing the 'frozen accidents': the archetypal view in countertransference

Jung's concepts of psyche and psychic energy are relevant in countertransference. Working with Jung's archetypes as 'transconscious' dynamic fields of probabilities helps the analyst, as a clinician and teacher with limited human consciousness, to confront and recognize the unconscious cross-purposes of 'anomalous' countertransference, and to convert it to insightful 'participatory' countertransference-Jung's archetypes will be juxtaposed with William James's fields, Gerald Edelman's qualia, and most particularly with Murray Gell-Mann's 'frozen accidents'. Two vignettes – from A clinical and a training setting – suggest chat from a Jungian perspective, countertransference may be seen at the psychic juncture where ego, the personal shadow, the interpersonal other and the archerype of the collective unconscious meet in the determining images of a life, fantasy, dream, analysis, and seminar. So-called 'parallel process' will be seen as enclosure in the circles of reference emanating from the patient's experiences in those arenas deemed archetypal, i.e., structurally significant. The relativity of unconscious time will be mentioned. Jung's notion that, called or uncalled, the archetypes are present, informs the thesis that we must name archetypal images if we are to know them, and we must know them to be free.     

Jungian psychology and pastoral care

This article provides a review of the implications of analytic psychology for pastoral care and the caregiver. Four areas of Jung's thought are examined: (1) his mode of treatment, (2) the process of individuation, (3) his theory of personality types, and (4) his concept of synchronicity. We suggest that Jung's system of thought contains a rich reservoir of insight for the enrichment of pastoral care.     

Un-thought out metaphysics in analytical psychology: a critique of Jung's epistemological basis for psychic reality

The author investigates the relation of Kant, Schopenhauer and Heidegger to Jung's attempts to formulate theory regarding the epistemological conundrum of what can and what cannot be known and what must remain uncertain. Jung's ambivalent use and misuse of Kant's division of the world into phenomenal and noumenal realms is highlighted in discussion of concepts such as the psychoid archetype which he called 'esse in anima' and his use of Schopenhauer's concept of 'will' to justify a transcendence of the psyche/soma divide in a postulation of a 'psychoid' realm. Finally, the author describes Jung's reaction to Heidegger's theories via his assertion that Heidegger's 'pre-given world design' was an alternate formulation of his concept of the archetypes. An underlying theme of the paper is a critique of Jung's foundationalism which perpetuates the myth of an isolated mind. This model of understanding subjectivity is briefly contrasted with Heidegger's 'fundamental ontology' which focuses on a non-Cartesian 'understanding' of the 'presencing of being' in everyday social and historical contexts.     

Jung in the academy: devotions and resistances

Jung's position in the contemporary mainstream English-speaking university is problematical indeed. For various historical and ideological reasons, Jung is generally not included in the courses in academic psychology, and in the humanities and social sciences his reception is lukewarm to say the least. He has only a marginal place in religious studies. This notorious academic resistance to Jung is compensated, some would say overcompensated, by student interest and enthusiasm, which sometimes seeks to make a religious dogma out of Jung's psychology. In a sense, cynical resistance to Jung and fanatical devotion to Jung can be seen to generate each other in a sort of binary opposition. This situation is unfortunate because neither extreme presents a fair or balanced view of Jung's thought or of his contribution to intellectual history. These and other problems associated with the teaching of Jung in a university setting are briefly outlined in this paper.     

Primordial Image and the Archetypal Design of Art

This paper extends Jung's work on the relationship of art to (postulated) archetypes of the collective unconscious. Archetypes of the collective unconscious, according to Jung, are revealed to ego consciousness only by way of images--images of a specific form. Jung suggests that archetypes, primordial images, combine two aspects in a single form and are therefore paradoxical. The wise old man and youth and hermaphrodites illustrate Jung's definition of a primordial image. My study of Jung's illustrations concludes that he is referring to what I term double-figures as the design form of primordial imagery. I elaborate upon the design form of double-figures, and illustrate my conception of archetypal imagery through comparative analysis of nine cases of double-figure imagery from selected prehistoric and contemporary societies. Double-figures, as archetypal primordial imagery of the collective unconscious, are spontaneously generated, autonomous, and known to a wide variety of societies. I distinguish between form and content in the study of primordial imagery, and conclude with a summary of the importance of Jung to the cross-cultural study of art.     

后经验主义时代的理论心理学

随着经验实证主义的衰落,心理学迎来了后经验主义时代。在后经验主义时代,人们对理论和经验观察的关系有了新的理解。理论不再是经验观察的附属物,相反,经验事实是被理论决定的。理论不是经验事实的概括和归纳,而是一种文化历史的建构。后经验主义时代的理论心理学以库恩的范式论、现象学、释义学和社会建构论作为自己的哲学基础。理论的评价标准不再是与经验事实的一致性。因为经验事实由于受到理论的污染,不再是一种客观的标准。在后经验主义条件下,理论的评价标准可建立在概念和逻辑、价值观和意识形态、修辞与叙事以及实践和应用的水平上     

Taylor,Paul C. 2013. Race: A Philosophical Introduction. 2nd edition. Malden,MA: Polity Press

While supporting radical anti-essentialism and the primacy of practical choices in delineating objects of inquiry, this paper spells out the constellation ‘beliefs-practices-meaning-objects-inquiry-texts-interpretation’ in a manner alternative to that suggested by Rorty's strong textualism based on the conception of ‘inquiry as recontextualisation’. The perspective of hermeneutic phenomenology on the constitution of meaning is applied in the analysis of that constellation. Scientific inquiry is presented as a process of textualising contextualised in configurations of ‘readable technologies’. The approach to the constitution of contextual units in scientific inquiry by reading theoretical objects forges arguments for the position of hermeneutic realism as opposed to epistemological behaviourism.     

A collective unconscious reconsidered: Jung's archetypal imagination in the light of contemporary psychology and social science

A needed rapprochement between Jung and the contemporary human sciences may rest less on the much debated relevance of a biologistic collective unconscious than on a re-inscribing of an archetypal imagination, as the phenomenological and empirical core of Jungian psychology. The most promising approaches in this regard in terms of theory and research in psychology come from combining the cognitive psychology of metaphor and synaesthesia, individual differences in imaginative absorption and openness to numinous experience and spirituality as a form of symbolic intelligence. On the socio-cultural side, this cognitive psychology of archetypal imagination is also congruent with Lévi-Strauss on the metaphoric roots of mythological thinking, and Durkheim on a sociology of collective consciousness. This conjoined perspective, while validating the cross cultural commonality of physical metaphor intuited by Jung and Hillman on alchemy, also shows Jung's Red Book, considered as the expressive source for his more formal psychology, to be far closer in spirit to a socio-cultural collective consciousness, based on metaphoric imagination, than to a phylogenetic or evolutionary unconscious. A mutual re-inscribing of Jung into congruent areas of contemporary psychology, anthropology, sociology, and vice versa, can help to further validate Jung's key observations and is fully consistent with Jung's own early efforts at synthesis within the human sciences.     

‘Undecidability’ or ‘anticipatory resoluteness’ Caputo in conversation with Heidegger

In this article I will consider John D. Caputo’s hermeneutics of deconstruction or what he calls ‘radical hermeneutics’, with ‘undecidability’ as its major theme, in conversation with Martin Heidegger’s notion of ‘resolute existence’. Through an examination of the different positions of Caputo, Heidegger, and also Kierkegaard, Derrida and Meister Eckhart on the possibility of repetition, the hermeneutical circle and the mystical way of prayer and faith, I am arguing that deconstruction is not the end of hermeneutics, it is not the final destination of an interpretative task, and thus deconstructive hermeneutics has to concede a reconstructive process. Further, I am arguing that Caputo’s ‘radical hermeneutics’ is too reductionist to keep any meaning for the hermeneutic enterprise to aspire to. I am contending, rather, that it is resolute existence that theology aspires to as it is a move beyond ‘undecidability’.