For Love of the Imagination: Interdisciplinary Applications of Jungian Psychoanalysis

257 Pages·2013·3.274 MB·English

by  Michael Vannoy Adams

FOR LOVE OF THE IMAGINATION
I have entitled this bookFor Love of the Imagination. Long ago,
I fell in love with the imagination. It was love at fi rst sight. I
have had a lifelong love affair with the imagination. I would
love for others, through this book, to fall in love, as I once did,
with the imagination.
Michael Vannoy Adams
For Love of the Imagination is a book about the imagination – about what and
how images mean. Jungian psychoanalysis is an imaginal psychology – or
what Michael Vannoy Adams calls “imaginology,” the study of the imagination.
What is so distinctive – and so valuable – about Jungian psychoanalysis is
that it emphasizes images.
For Love of the Imagination is also a book about interdisciplinary applications
of Jungian psychoanalysis. What enables these applications is that all
disciplines include images of which they are more or less unconscious. Jungian
psychoanalysis is in an enviable position to render these images conscious, to
specify what and how they mean.
On the contemporary scene, as a result of the digital revolution, there is no
trendier word than “applications” – except, perhaps, the abbreviation “apps.”
In psychoanalysis, there is a “Freudian app” and a “Jungian app.” The “Jungian
app” is a technology of the imagination. This book applies Jungian
psychoanalysis to images in a variety of disciplines.For Love of the Imagination
also includes the 2011 Moscow lectures on Jungian psychoanalysis. It will be
essential reading for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, students, and those
with an interest in Jung.
Photograph by Rose Callahan
Michael Vannoy Adams is an internationally prominent Jungian psycho-
analyst in New York City. He is a clinical associate professor at the New York
University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. He is
also a faculty member at the Jungian Psychoanalytic Association, the Object
Relations Institute for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, and the New
School, where he was previously associate provost. He is the author of
The Fantasy Principle: Psychoanalysis of the Imagination (Routledge, 2004) and
The Multicultural Imagination: “Race,” Color, and the Unconscious (Routledge,
1996). He is the recipient of three Gradiva Awards from the National
Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis. He has been a Marshall
scholar in England and a Fulbright senior lecturer in India.
For information about Jungian psychoanalysis, visit Michael Vannoy
Adams’s Web site: www.jungnewyork.com.
FOR LOVE OF THE
IMAGINATION
Interdisciplinary Applications of
Jungian Psychoanalysis
Michael Vannoy Adams
First published 2014
by Routledge
27 Church Road, Hove, East Sussex, BN3 2FA
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2014 Michael Vannoy Adams
The right of Michael Vannoy Adams to be identifi ed as author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identifi cation
and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Adams, Michael Vannoy, 1947-
For love of the imagination : interdisciplinary applications of Jungian psychoanalysis /
Michael Vannoy Adams.
pages cm
Includes index.
1. Jungian psychology. 2. Imagination. I. Title.
BF173.J85A333 2013
150.19’54--dc23
2013002593
ISBN: 978-0-415-64408-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-415-64409-9 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-74298-3 (ebk)
Typeset in Garamond
by Saxon Graphics Ltd, Derby
IN LOVING MEMORY OF JAMES HILLMAN
This page intentionally left blank
CONTENTS
Permissions ix
Preface xi
PART I
Imaginal Psychology 1
1 For Love of the Imagination: Why I Became a Psychotherapist 3
2 Imaginology: The Jungian Study of the Imagination 14
3 Imaginology Overboard with a Shark and an Octopus:
How to Do Things with Images that Do Things 28
4 Golden Calf Psychology: James Hillman Alone in Pursuit of
the Imagination 72
PART II
Jungian Interdisciplinary Applications 81
Cultural Applications 83
5 The Islamic Cultural Unconscious in the Dreams of a
Contemporary Muslim Man 84
6 The Sable Venus on the Middle Passage: Images of the
Transatlantic Slave Trade 96
Economic and Political Applications 105
7 The Invisible Hand and the Economic Unconscious:
The Most Important Image of the Last 250 Years 106
vii
CONTENTS
8 Obama and Icarus: Political Heroism, “Newspaper Mythology,”
and the Economic Crisis of 2008 117
Literary and Artistic Applications 139
9 Getting a Kick out of Captain Ahab: The Merman Dream
inMoby-Dick 140
10 “It Was All a Mistake”: Jung’s Postcards to Ernest Jones
and Kipling’s Short Story “The Phantom ’Rickshaw” 154
11 William Blake, Visionary Art, and the Return of Odysseus:
Homeric Mythology, Neoplatonic Philosophy, and
Jungian Psychology 167
PART III
The 2011 Moscow Lectures on Jungian Psychoanalysis 179
12 The Mythological Unconscious in Moscow: A Dream of a
Russian-American Woman in New York 181
13 The Metaphor of Metamorphosis: Change in Myth and Psyche 196
14 O Baal, Hear Us: Active Imagination and the Mythological
Unconscious 209
Name Index 228
Subject Index 233
viii
PERMISSIONS
Permission to reprint or reproduce the following material is gratefully
acknowledged.
Approximately 1,590 words from the Collected Works of C.G. Jung. Jung, C.G.,
Collected Works of C.G. Jung, © 1977, Princeton University Press; reprinted by
permission of Princeton University Press.
Adams, M.V. (1998) “For Love of the Imagination,” in J. Reppen (ed.), Why I Became
a Psychotherapist, Northvale, NJ, and London: Jason Aronson: 1–14; reprinted by
permission of Jason Aronson, Rowman & Littlefifield.
Adams, M.V. (2006) “The Islamic Cultural Unconscious in the Dreams of a
Contemporary Muslim Man,” Journal of Jungian Theory and Practice, 8,1: 31–40;
reprinted by permission off Journal of Jungian Theory and Practice.
Adams, M.V. (2008) “Imaginology: The Jungian Study of the Imagination,” in S.
Marlan (ed.),Archetypal Psychologies: Refl ections in Honor of James Hillman, New Orleans:
Spring Journal Books: 225–42; reprinted by permission of Spring Journal Books:
www.springjournalbooks.com.
Adams, M.V. (2009) “The Sable Venus on the Middle Passage: Images of the
Transatlantic Slave Trade,” in P. Bennett (ed.), Cape Town 2007: Journeys, Encounters:
Clinical, Communal, Cultural: Proceedings of the Seventeenth International Congress for
Analytical Psychology, Einsiedeln: Daimon Verlag: 161–6; reprinted by permission
of Daimon Verlag.
Adams, M.V. (2009) “Obama and Icarus: Political Heroism, ‘Newspaper Mythology,’
and the Economic Crisis of 2008,” Spring: A Journal of Archetype and Culture, 81:
291–318; reprinted by permission of Spring Journal Books: www.
springjournalbooks.com.
Adams, M.V. (2012) “Golden Calf Psychology: James Hillman Alone in Pursuit of
the Imagination,”Quadrant, 42,2: 58–69; reprinted by permission of Quadrant.
Adams, M.V. (2012) “The Invisible Hand and the Economic Unconscious: The Most
Important Image of the Last 250 Years,” in P. Bennett (ed.),Montreal 2010: Facing
Multiplicity: Psyche, Nature, Culture: Proceedings of the Eighteenth Congress of the
International Association for Analytical Psychology, Einsiedeln: Daimon Verlag: 547–
58; reprinted by permission of Daimon Verlag.
ix