The vertical labyrinth : individuation in Jungian psychology PDF
Preview The vertical labyrinth : individuation in Jungian psychology
Page 1 The Vertical Labyrinth Page 2 MarieLouise von Franz, Honorary Patron Studies in Jungian Psychology by Jungian Analysts Daryl Sharp, General Editor Page 3 The Vertical Labyrinth Individuation in Jungian Psychology Aldo Carotenuto Translated by John Shepley Page 4 Originally published in Italian as Il labirinto verticale. Copyright © 1981 Casa Editrice Astrolabio. Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Carotenuto, Aldo The vertical labyrinth (Studies in Jungian psychology by Jungian analysts; 20) Translation of: Il labirinto verticale. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0919123198. 1. Psychoanalysis Case studies. 2. Jung, C. G. (Carl Gustav), 1875–1961. I. Title. II. Series. RC509.8.C3713 1985 616.89'17'0926 C850980143 Copyright © 1985 by Inner City Books. All rights reserved. INNER CITY BOOKS Box 1271, Station Q, Toronto, Canada M4T 2P4 Telephone (416) 9270355 Honorary Patron: MarieLouise von Franz. Publisher and General Editor: Daryl Sharp. Editorial Board: Fraser Boa, Daryl Sharp, Marion Woodman. INNER CITY BOOKS was founded in 1980 to promote the understanding and practical application of the work of C.G. Jung. Cover: The labyrinth or maze, traditional symbol of the path of life, can represent a crucial moment in the journey of selfknowledge, a point when the archetype of the hero is constellated (see text, pages 48ff). Index by Daryl Sharp Printed and bound in Canada by Webcom Limited Page 5 Contents 1 7 The Mythical Unconscious 2 20 Solitude and Psychology 3 30 The Development of Consciousness 4 45 Psychic Reality 5 58 The Destiny of Great Souls 6 74 Creative Relationships 7 86 Death and Rebirth 8 99 Immense Light 9 109 Conscious Discrimination 10 119 Human Dignity Notes 126 Glossary of Jungian Terms 133 Index 135 See final pages for descriptions of other INNER CITY BOOKS Page 6 The goal is important only as an idea; the essential thing is the opus [the work on oneself] which leads to the goal: that is the goal of a lifetime. —C.G. Jung, The Practice of Psychotherapy Page 7 1 The Mythical Unconscious The man whose story I tell here is a successful painter who for six years shared with me some moments of his life. Now that the memory is distant, and the turbulent images of his sufferings form a background to many other experiences with which my work is filled, the outlines of an inner life and the discrepancy between existence and being appear more clearly to my mind. Perhaps every patient, should one care to lower one's gaze into the depths of neurotic torment, finds himself in the position of having to deny himself in order to be able to live. Juvenal summed up this position in the line, "Et, propter vitam, vivendi perdere causas" (To lose what gives life its value for the sake of saving your skin). 1 Fame pursued this man, but strangely enough this success was completely separate from the feeling he had about himself. For some time he had been troubled by the suspicion that he was dissembling, that he was not, so to speak, up to the situation. Glory and artistic recognition seemed to him an extraneous excresence on his inner reality, and the only way to deal with this distressing feeling was complete inactivity. He would, of course, have liked to go on painting, but the block was total: a sad farewell to creativity, a wish for death, the tragic and painful confrontation with his own failure. This is a sufficiently common experience that can strike anyone, man or woman, particularly at certain fundamental moments of existence. Perhaps it could also be called fear, but a special kind of fear, without welldefined outlines and endowed with almost mysterious characteristics, paralyzing in part and in part propelling. It is a fear that has to do with the world and with our own being in the face of it. But the world is infinite and gives us no response. As Spengler writes: "The birth of the Ego, and of the worldanxiety with which it is identical, is one of the final secrets of humanity and of mobile life generally."2 When he is seated in front of me, I know that his fear may be the beginning of a new life even though it appears in the guise of the tragic, in which he could end by losing himself. On the other hand, there are no simpler alternatives in these situations. A rapid, and Page 8 above all certain, solution of our emotional blocks is everybody's dream, but unfortunately it remains for the moment an unfulfilled wish. Arion, as I shall call him, had heard of me, and even before our meeting (for the simple reason that someone had suggested psychological analysis to him as the only possibility for recovery) he has begun to experience me as a powerful and accomplished person. At that moment he has an absolute need to believe that I am omnipotent, to think that I have understood more than what I say and write. His need to see me in this light stems from the fact that, like anyone in a psychological crisis, he has lost his capacity to make decisions and is in his turn governed by impulses that do not pass through thought but discharge themselves immediately under the impact of external stimuli. His deepest wish is that I, thanks to my power, should be able to tell him what to do, that is, suggest to him the way to be happy. This is the greatest mistake people make about analytic therapy, for in reality it has nothing to do with making anyone happy. The analyst's concern is a more modest one, and that is to help the patient to, in Jung's words, "acquire steadfastness and philosophic patience in face of suffering." 3 I leave him in his illusion but at the same time I am obliged, in the face of his devastated life, to take account of myself, to make an honest reckoning of my own existence. Jung himself made the fundamental observation that "we meet ourselves time and again in a thousand disguises on the path of life."4 It is difficult for people to understand that it is possible to help someone else only if his or her fate touches us, even if only marginally. This new patient pushes me toward my own "cosmic fear," which I, perhaps distracted by the sounds of daily life, persist in not hearing. Or else by his mere presence he may indicate to me the points where I have failed or might fail, where I have foundered without realizing it. And so the patient is not only a clinical "case," that term so dear to the medical, so called scientific profession. He is something more, and has to be something more because otherwise I would have no possibility of understanding him. I must also say that at certain moments in our time together I had the feeling of working psychologically only for myself, but in reality what I was offering my patient was not exactly insignificant. To his destruction I was opposing something different. If he could infect me with his neurosis, I could offer him the contagion of my "presumed" sanity. If he was blocked, I was not, but I was well aware of what it Page 9 means to be blocked. I leave myself open to him completely and allow him to fill my unconscious with his illness, but I too will fill him with my own contents. As Jung says: "Doctor and patient thus find themselves in a relationship founded on mutual unconsciousness." 5 And so the fact is that my understanding has passed through my own suffering and been filtered by the comparison with my personal situation. Every true analysis has this characteristic, and if it is missing it is not an analysis but a benevolent relationship in the course of which, if things go well, a modest strengthening of the conscious situation is achieved. And if there are analysts who state the contrary, they are lying and know they are lying: this is actually a defensive attitude taken against the direct impact of the other, an impact involving deep and serious problems since sooner or later the most scabrous and painful things in our experience come to light. But this path is necessary for psychological rebirth. The notion of psychological rebirth confronts us with the problem of the development of consciousness. Of course, the man of a hundred thousand years ago did not have the same kind of consciousness that we have today, and we must suppose that a gradual process of development allowed man at a certain moment to put to himself the first and fundamental question: who am I? This possibility of selfinterrogation coincides with a radical transformation: man's existence emerges from a purely natural dimension and acquires "human" quality. I cannot say whether we should be proud of this event, but the fact remains that it was by putting this question to ourselves that we began to write history. This same model of evolution can be traced in the life of each of us, which is to say that if with suitable instruments we examine our psychic development on the ontogenetic plane, we can recognize in it the same phases that characterize the phylogenetic process followed by all humanity. It is not by chance that I say "suitable instruments," since awareness always depends on them. Analysis is doubtless an instrument, but it is important to note that, to the extent that it traces the psychic structuring of the individual exclusively to his personal history, it is merely reductive and is not capable of offering that broad range of results and cultural data peculiar instead to an analysis carried on in light of the transpersonal or archetypal. Indeed, it is sometimes possible to deal with psychological discomfort without at all leading it back to the ontogenetic and personalistic dimension, but by referring solely to those "mythical" models that mark the stages of
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