Psychological individuation and spiritual enlightenment: some comparisons and points of contact

In his writings on individuation Jung often references Eastern religions and philosophies such as Buddhism, Taoism, and Hinduism. This essay discusses differences and similarities between analytical psychology's concept of individuation, especially in its advanced stages, and enlightenment as expressed in such texts as Zen (Chan) Buddhism's Ten Ox‐Herding Pictures. I advance the argument that important common features can be found while cultural differences must also be respected. There is here a convergence between West and East that can foster dialogue and mutuality.     

The art of the tincture: analytical supervision

Using the alchemical metaphor, effective supervision can be seen as an excellent example of the tincture: a little goes a long way. This paper offers a model of the dynamics in analytical supervision: a mirroring of the professional-self of the supervisee, the opportunity to learn through empirical factual knowledge, and, most importantly, experiential, interactive and dynamic learning. The container of supervision will be amplified using an image of the triple vessel of alchemy. The materia of supervision is discussed as 'amalgams' of complex related material. The supervisory field is seen in a triadic intersubjective and interimaginal manner. Jung's diagram of all the possible conscious and unconscious connections between patient and therapist is expanded to include the supervisory situation. Moving beyond projective identification as explanatory process, the concept of the mundus imaginalis is used as the medium for this triadic structure. The 'analytic third' expands to include the 'supervisory fourth' while incorporating the supervisor's imaginings of the patient as the quintessential experience of the imaginal other. The supervisor's attitude and state of mind are seen through the paradigm of active imagination. This state of mind is called supervisory reverie.     

Jung's equation of the ground of being with the ground of psyche

The paper amplifies Jung's psychology of ground associated with the culmination of the alchemical process in the unus mundus. It argues that Jung and Dorn identify the experience of the ground with the experience of divinity as the common originary source of individual and totality. It notes the monistic and pantheistic implications of the experience and goes on to amplify the experience through Eckhart's mediaeval mysticism of ground and Paul Tillich's modern philosophical/theological understanding of ground. It concludes that the Jung/Dorn psychological understanding of ground supersedes monotheistic consciousness. Their vision supports the emergence of a societal myth based on the identification of the ground as the source of all divinities and faith in them. This source currently urges a mythic consciousness that would surpass its past and current concretions and so alleviate the threat that monotheistic consciousness in any domain now poses to human survival.     

Coronavirus: does its activation of archetypes of evil cause added psychological suffering?

Fear and grief caused by the pandemic have produced a powerful unconscious narrative in the collective psyche that the coronavirus is driven by an innately evil, and possibly divine, force. The resulting archetypal dimension of fear causes an extra layer of psychological suffering in individuals. This paper discusses how and why this narrative was created and why it is so compelling by looking at 1) the myth-making nature of the human psyche, 2) the psychodynamics of fear that drive the narrative, 3) the properties of the coronavirus and the pandemic that activate negative poles of some archetypes, in particular, archetypes of evil, and 4) asking how analytical psychology can help ease psychological suffering caused by these negative narratives, where one possibility is to invoke the transcendent function. The author’s personal experiences as both biochemist and analytical psychologist elucidate how the transcendent function can promote healing.     

Chronos in synchronicity: manifestations of the psychoid reality

Jung's most obvious time-related concept is synchronicity. Yet, even though 'time' is embedded in it (chronos) there has been no systematic treatment of the time factor. Jung himself avoided dealing explicitly with the concept of time in synchronicity, in spite of its temporal assumptions and implications. In this paper the role of time in synchronicity is examined afresh, locating it in the context of meaning and relating it to the psychoid archetype. Synchronicity is viewed as an expression of the psychoid; the vital parameter for the elucidation of this link appears to be time. The author argues that the psychoid rests on relative time which Jung deemed transcendent. The existence of two different uses of the word 'time' in Jung's opus are emphasized: fixed time that dominates consciousness and relative time that exists in the psyche at large. Since consciousness cannot grasp the psychoid's temporality it de-relativizes time; examples of this 'behaviour' of time can be observed in instances of synchronicity. It is thus argued that synchronicity demonstrates by analogy the nature of the psychoid archetype. Jung's quaternio, as it developed via his communication with Pauli, is also examined in light of the above presented 'time theory'.     

Introduction: Fragmentation of the Unus Mundus

This panel is a series of presentations by a father and his three sons. The first is a critique of the concept of the Unus Mundus, an idea that goes back at least as far as Plato's Cave in western intellectual history. A longing for unchanging foundational ideas lies at the core of much of our culture, psychology, and theology. The subsequent presentations describe various unforeseen, destructive results stemming from the perspective of the Unus Mundus. The first example is of persons with Alzheimer's disease, whose singular subjectivity is often ignored because they are seen as a category. They are 'Alzheimer-ed', subtly enabling those around them to avoid an anxiety-producing encounter with their enigmatic otherness. Another important perspective is the modernist re-construction of city spaces that has resulted in the loss of an organic sense of containment. The lengthy horizon of the grand boulevards seemed like openings upon infinity, often provoking panic and agoraphobia, as seen in the work of Edvard Munch. Lastly, the genocidal tendencies of modern times epitomize the dangers of totalizing, Utopian ideas. Violent elimination may be visited upon groups or peoples who are deemed 'impure', as besmirching idealized social visions. Such examples illustrate some of the ethical dangers of conceptualizations related to the Unus Mundus.     

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.     

Conspiracies of immanence: Paul Tillich,Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and C.G. Jung

Jung's psychology proffers a sustained reflection on the traditional religious question of the relation of divine transcendence to immanence. On this issue his psychology affirms a position of radical immanence in its contention that the experience of divinity is initially wholly from within. Though this position remains on the periphery of religious and theological orthodoxy Jung is not alone in holding it among moderns. Paul Tillich adopts a similar stance with his controlling symbols of the divine as ‘Ground of Being’ and ‘Depth of Reason’. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin understands divinity as the experiential energy of evolution itself working within nature and humanity toward greater configurations of universal communion as the basis of community. All of Jung's master symbols of individuation assume such an understanding of immanence uniting individual and totality. His psychology strongly suggests and contributes to the current emergence of a new religious sensitivity based on the awareness of the intra‐psychic origin of all religions. In his later writings he held out such a position as a significant alternative to genocide.