Jung Made Easy

First the disclaimer: I'm not a shrink, nor a psychologist, nor have I read all of Jung and particularly not in the original language. However, I keep tripping over Jung's ideas in all sorts of settings. I've also been reading about the brain and memory and we seem to be able to remember large hunks of information by filing them under simple words. Our brains can keep about 7 ideas in present memory at any one time, but some of those ideas can be really large: a piece of music, for example. I keep adding to the memory file I have labeled "Jung" and revising it, and I tend to try to simplify things down to where they feel coherent to me.

One idea that Jung had, nicely explained in Robert Johnson, MD's book Transformation, is that we have three stages of development. Two are well publicized and the third is not. The first is the savage. Anyone who has had a child and pictured a perfect sweet loving obedient little angel knows what I am talking about. We are born uncivilized and our parents and culture try to civilize us. That is stage two: being civilized. Growing up, learning how to be polite in one's culture, getting through school, getting a career or job, keeping from starving or being killed in lots of parts of the world and then having some savages of one's own and discovering that civilizing them is harder than it looks. Stage three is the mysterious one. I don't understand why. The public name is a midlife crisis and the therapist name is individuation or differentiation. My impression is that therapists think that most people don't do it, or rather, they don't do it Right. Stage three is when the ego is all built up to satisfy family and culture and as functional as it can be (which may not actually be very functional or may look extremely functional) and all of a sudden the self says, is this all there is? Then the self starts making trouble and starts deconstructing the ego. This can come in all sorts of forms: trotting off to therapy (me), having an affair, buying a convertible, quitting one's job and running off to some other land, acting out, changing careers. By doing it wrong, so far as I can tell, the therapists mean that some people do it unconsciously: their lives look like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are fighting it out for control. Sometimes people are caught doing exactly the thing that they have publicly said is terrible, evil, they've spent their lives campaigning against it (yes, certain politicians come to mind). I'm not sure there really is a wrong way to differentiate, but I am hopeful that consciously doing the deconstruction might cause a little less collateral damage, though I may be wrong. I am told that individuation doesn't end, either, one doesn't wake up one day and suddenly think, wow, that was intense, but it's over.

My trip started right when I felt like things were a bit under control. Home had settled a bit after much fighting about moving, kids were doing well, work had settled down after a business crash, I had friends, I was more or less healthy and I'd just been made chief of staff. I thought, cool! Within 2 months everything crashed and I could feel it starting with something called disassociation: I felt stupid and terrible every time I tried to do one part of my job and I became slow as molasses. I knew it wasn't real, so to speak. When I would go back and look at what I'd done, it was fine, but it was like pulling teeth to do it. My main thought was "uh-oh" and I promptly scheduled with a counselor. Dreams and poetry helped me through this. They may not help other people, each person has to find their own path. More on that later, but there are all sorts of helpers out there and not always who or what you would expect.

I think that one signal that a person is entering this stage is that practically everyone who knows them will tell them they are acting crazy. Jung thought the first half of life was to build up the ego: and the second half is to deconstruct it and let the self take over. The self is our whole self, not just the parts that were allowed to stay conscious while we became civilized. The other half was stored in the unconscious and it will out! There are some dark things there and stuff we are ashamed of but the unconscious is also a rich swamp with beautiful growth hidden in the muck.

That's enough for today!

Yours,
Red Paw