Detouring, from biography, into Archetypal Psychology in pursuit of soul-making for all genders

 Navigating the swirling waters of gender politics, including definitions and vocabulary, human rights, support groups and  public opinion, not to mention various organizational, cultural, ethnic and national aspects, requires more than an advanced swimming skill, a ready helmet, a fully developed muscularity, as well as basic senses, acuity, a full possession of one’s own basis for even considering the questions and a processing method that does no harm, while helping to elucidate new insights. In the midst of these turbulent waters, one encounters words, perspectives and attitudes that bring one up short.

This piece, while deterring from the biographical briefly, is an attempt to find a path between some of the more recent data-word-image sign posts that have emerged while on this path of discoveMeeting a male individual who echoes the distaste and discomfort with Carl Jung’s work for the reason that “Jung has an interest in something called a divinity”, is just one of these ‘litmus tests’ that many universities in North America have failed. Both a divinity and an unconscious, as part of the metaphysic of this profound and generous and complex thinker, and the concomitant ethereal perspective that literally and imaginatively escapes the rational, empirical, experimental, scientific model of formal academic research, however, is not sufficient reason for his studies to be marginalized. History has perpetually, inevitably and immutably cast aside all thought, theory and perspectives, as well as the attitudes and the methods inherent in the ‘untenable’ and the “politically incorrect” and the “intellectually challenging”. From the beginning of recorded history, humans (mostly) male writers and thinkers have ascribed to the gods and goddesses those aspects of the universe over which they had no control, no full comprehension, and not a full appreciation. The whole notion of the history of mythology linked intimately to the cultural imagination, defying one specific academic discipline, for example, is more of an indictment of the traditions of the academic perfectionists than it is of the scholarship implicit in its study, and also in the application of such theories to the study of psychology, as a formal academic discipline.

Falling into the trap of the empiricists, the number crunchers, the diagnosticians and the prescriptive model of medicine, and then galloped at break-neck speed to justify itself with its own DSM and the pharmaceuticals of remediation, along  with interventions of various kinds and theories, to “make people  whole” and psychologically healthy, begs both scepticism and empirical review as to the ‘success’ the current psychological model has attained. Not incidentally, too, the open and free study of Jung, Freud, Perls, Rogers, Adler, Maslow et al, opens the potential for rigorous and critical evaluation both of the strengths of each and the vulnerabilities of each, both in isolation and in comparison. Put James Hillman in that list as well, one who studied and practiced as a Jungian depth therapist, and then evolved into what he terms ‘archetypal psychology’, the ‘making of soul’ as Hillman puts it.

Embracing not merely the full exploration of the biography of individuals, not in search for abnormal and strict adherence to those definitions that assign abnormalities to one of two buckets: medical (because the individual is sick) or legal (because the individual is criminal), it seems to this untutored pilgrim that archetypal psychology portends a different way of coming face to face with human eccentricities, without first ascribing and assigning either the medical or legal templates.

The human imagination, in the form of images that continue to run in and through our conscious and unconscious, flooding each and every minute and situation, as a dynamic in which we all involuntarily and yet inescapably swim, opens the pathway to both an internal and intrinsic perception of one’s soul, from the perspective of the imagination. It also offers the potential of multiple links to those same gods and goddesses, myths and archetypes that have populated our lives forever, it would seem. Medical and legal definitions, by their very nature, are confining to a single or a series of symptoms, and then a class of those symptoms that beg and demand comparison with the appearance of similar symptoms from other individuals in other times. They reduce the universe that we consider from our ‘senses’ to only those symptoms and features that we feel comfortable in acknowledging, with some professional care-or counsel-giver. And, while there are instances in human existence, both individually and collectively, when such fine-tuned attention (psychopaths, sociopaths, sex offender, for instance) seems not merely necessary but serving the interests and safety and security of the community.

It is in the area of eccentricities, those ‘unfamiliar’ instincts that drive each of us, that archetypal psychology could (and we postulate, do,) provide different and useful and far more supportive and inspiring clues to what is, has been, and will be going on in our psyche. Looking at individual lives after their close in death, for example, discloses patterns that are instructive in terms of getting to know who such people were for the purpose of providing a way of seeing for our own lives, looked at backwards. Speculative, curious, indeterminate, somewhat inconclusive and certainly drawing in and evoking more exploration, regardless of which images we might discern, just the ambiguity itself is attractive not only to the imagination but to the culture obsessed with absolutes, correctness, perfection and the sterility of the dominance of those pursuits. Portending naturally towards androgyny, archetypal psychology is both a liberating potential for both men and women. Constricting our models of masculinity and femininity to those positive  “ideals” or ‘heroes,’ or “kings” or “queens” in a cardboard reduction of each of those images, defies the fulsome range of those images that are scampering in and through our psyches throughout our lives.

We are more complex that those self-imposed simplistic, reductionistic magnetic role models; we each can ‘see’ (imagine) ourselves, for example, as not merely taking issue with another, but having a full-fledged duel, or a devious, deceitful sabotage of an enemy, in our imaginations, just as our ancestors themselves engaged in, in their imaginative lives. Often, too, without our fully grasping how, such fantasies birth into our active conscious lives, having slipped the bonds of dreams and fantasies.

 It is those very dreams and fantasies that archetypal psychology seeks to mine, to explore and to supplement our emotional and cognitive and imaginative comprehension of our whole person. As one who grew instincts that, like radar, “smelled” the atmosphere in our home, with a view to determining the relative safety, calmness, kindness, and acceptance, like the knight errant in literature, I tend to deploy that perspective, attitude and absorption of the details in my surroundings instinctively, rather than merely cognitively, or merely emotionally, and certainly not only through the senses. Intuition, without my taking classes in it, or being formally coached in its capacities and risks, or even being conscious that it was intuition that I was using to protect myself, has been my ‘lens’. Also like the knight errant, impelled by curiosity, drive to explore, I have been something of a vagabond, without a permanent home for many of my mid-life years.

With this perspective/lens/soul, I also find absolutes restrictive, confining and deadening. Interested in ‘going inside’ to foreclose on a compulsive and driven effort to ‘prove myself,’ I withdrew from the corporate, public and ‘such models of North American culture. Looking from inside, I could reconnect with fantasies of the writer, the explorer, the adventurer and the shit-disturber, without actually having to engage in the many real risks and dangers if one were to enter into those various vocations physically. Some will undoubtedly consider the archetypal perspective to be ephemeral, fatuous even, and certainly impractical. It does not ‘solve’ any crisis; in fact, in the process of pursuing its requisite questions, often one is led into even more uncertainty, ambiguity and more fanciful dreams and images. Of course, the literary, imaginative and the ideational lens, is not proposed as a full solution; it serves rather as a way of seeing differently from the dominant, (some would say, colonial) model of treating both the self and the other.

And while discussions of various archetypes, images, fantasies and dreams is also enriching for those fortunate enough to find collaborative perspectives in others, no suggestion, or diagnosis or prescription of any kind is either expected or implied in the process from one to another. The imaginative universe, by definition, escapes the “pinning-to-the-board” of the symptoms, as if they were an anaesthetized insect, for the purpose of dissection. Rather, it takes a position, even on such common subjects and vocabularies as “emotions” that is slightly more detached, curious, exploring and suggestive. Seeing emotions as momentary, perhaps inflammatory, phosphorescent, and thereby not conclusive of any specific symptom, but rather a brief and useful expression of something that comes naturally, and passes as quickly as it arrives. It is the residue that lingers, and the patterns of those residues helps in the imaginative ‘dig’ for the images that are ‘in charge.

There is a relevant and potent vulnerability, from the archetypal psychology perspective. Through its lens, we are unable to dominant either our description and definition of an experience, or a final mapping of our lives. There is a shadowy, ethereal, and mercurial aspect to the images dancing in our imaginations, and they are all linked, if we are to taste this approach, with our own death.

And as such, there is an inescapable resistance to all forms of denial, of death, certainly, and also of many other ways by and in which we succumb to the demands of a public culture that ‘sees’ us as things, to be manipulated, deployed, and also dismissed when no longer effective or useful.

The pursuit and the discovery of ‘soul’ rather than the driving and cool ‘spirit’ (to borrow from Hillman) is also a more resonant, more complex and more realistic, even though paradoxical, coming as it does attempt to do, from the imaginative, the images and the eccentricities and the instincts.

“Something” inside told Ella Fitzgerald, appearing at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem in a talent contest as a dancer, to change her mind and tell her audience she was about to sing. Something inside Yehudi Menhuin, at four, after attending a symphony concert, that he wanted ‘one of those’ violins, and when his parents gave him an aluminium instrument, he stamped on it, demanding a ‘real violin. These somethings inside, these voices, Hillman terms the daimon, the angel that resides somehow, somewhere in our psyche, that, while not determining our specific vocation or professional career, nevertheless, serves as an influential factor in ‘how’ we go about living our lives.

And both men and women, regardless of where they might find themselves on the continuum of ‘radical’ or modest gender advocates, for their own gender, can explore their own lives, through the mirror of memory, fantasy, dream and images none of which are exclusively masculine or feminine, nor can or do they deny the androgyny of each of us.

Talk of “winning” as some of the more prominent mens’ support groups do, seems more than a trifle restrictive, based on clearly defined goals and the accomplishment of those goals. This model is embedded in the cultural imagination and the political ethos of North America, and, from the perspective of this desk, it is, has been and will continue to ‘erode’ much of the energy, imagination and hope from millions, as an exclusive model for all genders.