Jung’s Psychoid Monism

Jung’s final psychoid theory of archetypes was an additional attempt to find a solution to the philosophical problem of how to relate mind and matter. In the following essay Jung’s solution is summarized by a set of 17 theses, and Jung’s philosophy will be called psychoid monism. According to psychoid monism, what ultimately and primarily is, is the psycho-physically neutral domain of instinctual experience. The origin of this view can be traced back to Post-Kantian German Idealism (Schopenhauer, Schelling, Hölderlin), and a systematization of the view requires a dialectic approach and, in particular, contradiction-tolerant dialectic logic.     

Standing in the gap: ref lections on translating the Jung‐Neumann correspondence

This paper considers the experience of translating the correspondence between C.G. Jung and Erich Neumann as part of the Philemon series. The translator explores the similarities between analytical work and the task of translation by means of the concepts of the dialectical third and the interactional field. The history and politics of the translation of analytic writing and their consequences for the lingua franca of analysis are discussed. Key themes within the correspondence are outlined, including Jung and Neumann's pre‐war exploration of Judaism and the unconscious, the post‐war difficulties around the publication of Neumann's Depth Psychology and a New Ethic set against the early years of the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich, and the development of the correspondents’ relationship over time.     

Ambiguity and contradiction: the outlines of Jung’s dialectics

This essay explores Jung’s thinking strategies, argumentation patterns, and concept formation processes, and reveals how they distinguish his work from normal present‐day science. Jung doesn’t much appreciate the law of noncontradiction, which is a cornerstone of classical logic, and he doesn’t refrain from using openly ambiguous theoretical terms. It will be pointed out that not only specific archetypes, but the notion of archetype itself, as well as other of Jung’s theoretical notions (energy, including libidinal energy, polarity, integration, wholeness, instinct, symbol, and so on), are consciously ambiguous and thus potentially contradictory. It is shown that this kind of dialectic research strategy and related contradiction‐tolerant and ambiguity‐tolerant methods connect his work to Post‐Kantian German Idealism, Schelling’s and Schopenhauer’s philosophy in particular. However, it was Hegel who, in his Science of Logic, presented a systematic overview of such dialectic principles of reasoning, which were, in the 19^th century, widely applied by German philosophers, theologians, and other scholars. Unfortunately, Jung decided not to study Hegel, but, instead, wrote derogatorily of his work. It will be argued that a Jungian who wants to be conscious of her own argumentation strategies and methods of concept formation should study Hegel’s complex and sophisticated dialectical logic. In addition, it is suggested that Jungian depth psychology might help us to amend the phenomenological deficits of Hegel’s system by providing it with a primal experiential source. This is needed because Hegel’s Geist, due to its intellectual emphasis, is a self‐conscious conceptual totality which advances progressively from stage to stage by guiding itself with the help of dialectical reason (Vernunft). It will be shown that if enriched with a proper kind of experiential givenness, which includes the Jungian unconsciousness (with libidinal energy, instincts, and archetypes), Hegelian metaphysics would be able to embrace a seriously aconceptual or preconceptual dimension. Aconceptual experience, which is, for Jung, mainly the instinctual layer of archetypes, remains essentially inaccessible, not only for normal scientific concepts, but for the concepts of any form of dialectics as well.     

La métaphore vive ou la représentation de l'Irreprésentable

Pointe extrême de la métaphore, l'oxymore postule, dans le théâtre claudélien, une altérité essentielle entre l'Amant et l'Amante, entre Dieu et sa créature, altérité que ne contredirait pas cependant l'identité existentielle: l'Incarnation. Prouhèze déploie sous nos yeux la bannière divine dont le signe est, comme dans les versets de Raymond Lulle, un homme mort. Si la corde de l'amour est tissée à coups de languissements de soupirs et de pleurs par le poète-dramaturge, la Croix est symétriquement désignée dans ses drames comme l'Arbre de Vie.Un personnage aussi étrange — car bien peu théâtral — que l'Ombre Double duSoulier de Satin résume ce paradoxe dans la mesure où la représentation qu'elle offre de la tension amoureuse crée un lien insécable entre la Terre et l'Ailleurs; l'Ombre Double témoigne de ce que l'Amant et l'Amante comme Dieu et sa créature peuvent concorder dans la béatitude sans pour autant fusionner. Autrement dit, selon Claudel, que l'homme soit à l'image de Dieu ne suffit pas à sa foi, encore faut-il qu'il ne cesse de manifester sa ressemblance à Dieu. Seule, la métaphore vive, c'est-à-dire la métaphore ayant gardé en mémoire les paradoxes et les tensions de l'oxymore, respecterait le mystère d'une relation où la présence croît a proportion de l'absence et fonderait cette parole sacrée et compensatoire d'une resseblance mille fois déjouée.     

‘Clemency on the way to the gallows’: death,dreams and dissociation

The survivor of a decade of childhood sexual trauma and violence, perpetrated by a monstrous father, produced a series of dreams in the final year of a ten‐year analysis. They illuminated the ‘death drive’ beneath a lifelong preoccupation with dying and fantasies of submission to death, perpetuated by the promise of hoped‐for freedom from pain and release from a life of suffering. The initial dream involved the collapse of a team of white horses drawing him in a pillory cart to his own hanging for a crime he did not commit. It signified the collapse of a fragile psychological system based on his role as the ‘sacrificial lamb,’ protecting a (not so) innocent mother. The raw truth was now unconcealed: primal, violent, and terrifying dreams and affects emerged where he was now the murderous aggressor. His dreams would become primary agents for an instinctive, life‐giving authenticity to emerge, offering him clemency from the shattering repetitions of persecution and dissociation.