A Strange Fire: an exploration of psycho‐spiritual development aided by Jungian analysis and Vedanta

This paper explores the process of psychological and spiritual development through a series of active imaginations arising from the author's ‘psycho‐spiritual quest’, a process of transformation in which the individual progressively frees themselves from the ego's identifications and may be afforded a vision of the ‘self as consciousness’, as described by Vedanta. The author describes how this quest was facilitated by the disciplines of Transcendental Meditation, Jungian analysis and Vedanta, and how these three disciplines can work together to foster psycho‐spiritual development. The paper aims to de‐mystify the actual experiences that can accompany these practices. The records of these active imaginations, tracing some key stages in this process, are then presented, with a commentary by Marcus West, linking them to Jung's concepts of ego and Self and recent understandings of consciousness and ego development. There is a discussion of Jung's conceptualizations of the ego and the Self and his rejection of the Vedantic understanding of the Self as consciousness. These views are then explored and a reconciliation is suggested through the understanding of the process of disidentification where the difference between Jung's view of the Self and that of Vedanta is understood to be due to the extent of disidentification from the contents of consciousness.     

Supervising away from home: clinical,cultural and professional challenges

This paper explores some challenges of supervising clinical work of trainees, known as ‘routers’, who live in countries with diverse cultural, social and political traditions, and the analysts who travel to supervise them. It is written as an evolving dialogue between the authors, who explore together the effects of their own culture of origin, and in particular the legacy and values of their own training institutes on the styles and models of analytic supervision. Their dialogue is framed around the meaning of home and experiences of homesickness for analysts working away from home in an interactive field of strangeness in countries where analytical psychology is a relatively new discipline. The authors outline the findings from their own qualitative survey, where other supervisors working abroad, and those they have supervised, describe their experiences and their encounters with difference. The dialogue ends with both authors discussing what they have learned about teaching and supervising abroad, the implications for more flexible use of Jungian concepts, and how such visits have changed their clinical practice in their home countries.     

The realization of absolute beauty: an interpretation of the fairytale Snow White

This paper interprets the fairytale Snow White (Bruder Grimm 1857) in terms of the realization of absolute beauty. Jung's understanding that ‘in myths and fairytales, as in dreams, the soul speaks about itself’ (Jung 1945, para. 400), underpins such an approach. From this perspective a fantasy image is not about us, not about our unconsciousness, but is essentially about itself. The idea of absolute beauty first arises in the Queen's mind as a wish. Despite the Queen's strong desire to be named as the most beautiful person in the world, her mirror reflects that it is actually her daughter Snow White who is the fairest. Snow White might be regarded in the language of Giegerich as her internal other. Effectively they are separated into the Real that conceives the idea of absolute beauty and the Ideal that embodies it. The exchange that takes place between the two – mediated by mirror and window – generates the corpse of surpassing beauty that never decays but lies inaccessible behind the glass coffin. However the loving and penetrating gaze of the Prince, representing masculinity, succeeds in reanimating Snow White. Thus the Prince as the Other that is completely external and unknown to both the Queen and Snow White, specifically to their femininity, facilitates the realization of absolute beauty as the Ideal in the Real.     

Soul in the world: symbolic culture as the medium for psyche

Whilst the loss of a sense of living connection with the material world is mainly associated with the scientific revolution in seventeenth century Europe, it can be traced back to Plato's introduction of a hierarchy between soul and body. Jung's attempted solution to this – esse in anima – is ingenious but maintains the Cartesian split by which the aliveness of the world is reduced to a projection of psychic forces (the archetypes). An alternative approach is proposed, rooted in the Aristotelean emphasis on practical activity that sees the soul as a function of our way of being in the world. Human cognition is extended and distributed by our social and material engagement with the world, especially via collective representations whose symbolic character is constitutive of the reality of the world in which we live. Despite the dominance of ‘scientific Cartesian’ representations in the modern Western world, there remain numerous instances of participation mystique that cannot be captured by the Cartesian notion of projection. These indicate an opening to ways of being in the world that may lead us out of the impasse of the Cartesian matrix.     

Cultural unconscious in research: integrating multicultural and depth paradigms in qualitative research

Culturally focused research has gained momentum in many disciplines, including psychology. However, much of this research fails to pay attention to the unconscious dynamics that underlie the study of culture and culturally influenced human beings. Such dynamics may be especially significant when issues of marginalization and oppression are present. Therefore, this paper seeks to contribute a framework for understanding cultural dynamics, especially unconscious cultural dynamics, within depth psychological qualitative research influenced by Jungian and post‐Jungian scholarship. Inquiry that is approached with a commitment to making the unconscious conscious seeks to empower and liberate not only the subject/object studied but also the researchers themselves. Following a brief review of multiculturalism in the context of analytically informed psychology, this paper offers several case examples that focus on researchers' integration of awareness of the cultural unconscious in their study of cultural beings and topics.