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214. 티아레
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2013-06-09 20:31:43 (일) |
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The going home project is deeply programmed in us from our traumatic onsets. But, as we see all around us, it remains the chief saboteur of intimate relationship. Thus, we are all caught between the deeply programmed desire to fuse with the Other and the inner imperative to separate, to individuate. This tension of opposites will always be present. Holding that tension, bringing it to consciousness, is the moral task of both parties in any close relationship, a task that requires conscious effort and heroic will.
When one has let go of that great hidden agenda that drives humanity and its varied histories, then one can begin to encounter the immensity of one's own soul. If we are courageous enough to say, "Not this person, nor any other, can ultimately give me what I want; only I can," then we are free to celebrate a relationship for what it can give. The paradox lies in the fact that the Other can be a means through which one is enabled to glimpse the immensity of one's own soul and live a portion of one's individuation.
Without the otherness of the Other, we would have nothing to counter the inflated certainties and one-sidedness of ego consciousness. While this sort of conversation with oneself must eventually occur, few would undertake it without being painfully confronted with the otherness of the Other. That is the chief contribution of relationship to the process of individuation. The dialogue between self and Other is a psychodynamic from which growth comes. I am more than me because you oblige me to rise up and out of my limited consciousness to recognize you as Other, and vice versa. This is the primary way in which we can help one another to grow beyond the tension of opposites.
The encounter between two people generates the possibility of what Jung calls "the reconciling third," or transcendent function. We are more than two ones who, in fusing to become One, remain only two; we are two ones who have also become a third. As Jung wrote,
In nature the resolution of opposites is always an energic process: she acts symbolically in the truest sense of the word, doing something that expresses both sides, just as a waterfall visibly mediates between above and below.
This mediating third is how relationship truly serves us, and brings us to what Jung called the symbolic life. We live the symbolic life as a direct consequence of the quality of our dialogue with the world and with the cosmos. My dialogue with you is my dialogue with the cosmos, for you carry and incarnate those same energies. You oblige me to consider, to reflect, to grow, to enlarge my sense of the possible, and thereby expand my embodiment of what the Self requires. We are asked from birth to death to become as fully as possible that which we are capable of becoming. Living in a dialectic with you, I am then living the symbolic life, which is to say, a life in depth.
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213. 티아레
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2013-06-09 19:38:03 (일) |
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Apart from the pain of such discrepancies, we may detect projections in the same three ways in which we detect complexes.
Firstly, there are predictable situations in which complexes, or projections, are likely to be activated. Most generally, the entire sphere of intimacy is one such charged field in which projections are being exchanged at all times. This fact may seem depressing - it is in any case humbling - for one does not really know the Other, ever, and what we do not know we are prone to fill with our own projected material. Even those who have lived together for decades barely know each other, psychologically speaking, though they may be greatly habituated to each other.
Secondly, we may experience projection in a physical way. A churning stomach, a quickening heart, sweaty palms and so on are somatic states that can alert us to the likelihood of projection.
Thirdly, in projection the quantity of energy discharged is always disproportionate to the situation. Since the field of intimate relationship carries the burden of the "going home" project, so the largeness of energy we feel in such a relationship is evidence of the largeness of the agenda projected. This is not to say that relationships are not profoundly important, but rather that we may make them too important. Again, this is why one is bereft at the loss of the Other, sometimes suicidal, for the fantasy of recovering the lost Primal Other has crumbled. We are meant to grieve loss, of course, but too often the overvaluation of the Other is achieved only through the devaluation of oneself.
Jung reminds us of the ubiquity of projection: "The general psychological reason for projection is always an activated unconscious that seeks expression."
Having suffered the discrepancy, the loss of the Other as projected, we are left with the humbling task of becoming conscious. What we do not know can and does hurt us, and others too. Ultimately this constitutes a moral imperative.
What reamains in the relationship diagram is most critical of all: the vertical axes, the relationship of each party to his or her own unconscious. The quality and character of all relationships stem from this axis, yet it is the one most ignored. Again, we cannot know that of which we are unconscious, but we must never forget that the unconscious is active and projecting.
Since the content of every projection is some aspect of ourselves, what we are "seeing" in the Other is something of ourselves. It may seem ludicrous, but in this sense, what we fall in love with is some aspect of ourselves as reflected back to us from the Other.
If one could stay in that permanent state of romantic excitation I suppose one would so choose, but it is not possible. (I recall someone asking the Buddhist Alan Watts why one would not remain in satori, and he replied, "Because you bloody well can't.") Psychic enery cannot be fixed; its hermetic character is forever moving, dying, disappearing, reappering in a new place, which is why the Greeks considered Eros also the youngest of the gods. Of course joy in the Other, trust, deep caring and commitment may abide. We have a word for this continuing feeling; it is love. It is not as intoxicating or illusory as romance, but it has the potential to last.
Ultimately, the health and hope of any intimate relationship will depend on each party's willingness to assume responsibility for that vertical axis, the relationship to one's own unconscious material. Sounds logical, even easy, yet nothing is more difficult. The chief burden on any relationship derives both from our unwillingness to assume responsibility and from the immensity of the project.
It takes great courage to ask this fundamental question: "What am I asking of this Other that I ought to be doing for myself?" If, for example, I am asking the Other to be mindful of my self-esteem, I have a project waiting unaddressed. If I am expecting the Other to be the good parent and take care of me, then I have not grown up. If I am expecting the Other to spare me the rigor and terror of living my own journey, then I have abdicated from the chief task and most worthy reason for my incarnation on this earth.
Of every projection we must ask, "What does this say about me?" And what we are asking of the Other, we are obliged then to ask of ourselves. Since projections are unconscious in their origin, the need for such work usually arises only due to the suffering that follows the erosion of the projection. Yet it is through taking on the heroic task of lifting our projections off of the Other that we may best serve their interest, that is, love them. As Mahatma Gandhi once remarked, " A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave." Projection, fusion, "going home," is easy; loving another's otherness is heroic. If we really love the Other as Other, we have heroically taken on the responsibility for our own individuaition, our own journey. This heroism may properly be called love. St. Augustine put it this way: "Love is wanting the other to be."
This view of love expresses an oxymoronic truth, that true love is "disinterested." It not only allows Other to be but supports their being as Other. The Swiss theologian Karl Barth defined God as "Wholly Other." Well, The Beloved too is Wholly Other. Such a respect for the Other seems obvious in theory, but in reality it must always contend with our fragile, frightened nature.
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212. 티아레
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2013-06-09 18:35:19 (일) |
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Pretty powerful stuff-and all projection. What is real here is Dante's experience; what is not real is that Beatrice herself is the source of the energy that fuels his creativity and leads him to become the mythopoeic voice of his age. And it is ever thus: the one who inspires us, the Beloved, has been in us all along.Indeed, this is one of the wonderful things about projection: it spurs the release of energies that might otherwise lie dormant. This, I know, is as true of you and me as of any Dante, any artist, any entrepreneur, any auto mechanic, any waitress - anyone.
In formal analysis, one brings to each session not only the desire for consciousness, but also a carpetbag of psychological history that is dynamic, intentional and autonomous. The analyst is not free of history either, but by virtue of a long-term analysis has a good idea of what complexes might be activated by the setting and the material the analysand brings. It is not that analysis renders one fully conscious of such psychic reflexes, but rather it better enables one to recognize their presence when they do emerge.
When we remember the central law of projection, that what is unconscious will be either repressed or projected, it is clear that a tremendous amount of traffic transpires in any given instant of relationship. We can even observe a difference between big projections and small projections. The latter have to do with relating to the Other in programmed, habitual ways, which comes from the whole history of relationships. And the former, "big" projections, have to do with the transference of the "going home" project onto the Other. - the fantasy that through him or her I will be healed, nurtured, protected and spared the awful rigors of growing up.
It is inevitable that projections occur, that transference and countertransference occur, that we have a large project in mind for the Other, for we are never courageous or conscious enough to pull it all back. We remain human in our deep longing for that suprahuman Other. The only question is to what degree we realize this.
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211. 티아레
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2013-06-09 17:50:40 (일) |
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Projection, as a psychological phenomenon, is ubiquitous and inevitable.
All projection occurs unconsciously, of course, for the moment one observes, "I have made a projection," one is already in the process of taking it back. More commonly, we only begin to reclaim our purchase on consciousness when the Other fails to catch, hold, reflect our projection. If there is a central law of the psyche, it is that what is unconscious will be projected. This is why Jung observed that "when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate." But since the psyche consists of a multitude of split-off shards of energy, complexes and archetypal forms (to which Jung granted near-mythological status with names like anima, animus, shadow), virtually all of which are unconscious, there is always ample opportunity for projection. As I can never know the unconscious, by definition or practice, so I can never know what energies may be acting autonomously and casting a veil of Maya, or illusion, over the world as I know it.
Kant cautioned two centuries ago that one can never know the Ding-an-Sich, the "thing-in-itself," that is, never know the essential character of external reality, but only the subjective, phenomenological workings of one's own psychic experience. In tautological terms, we may only experience our experience! In his insistence on the radical subjectivity of human experience, Kant ended metaphysics, the search for absolute reality, but thereby made necessary psychology, the tracking of interior process.
"All relationships, all relationships, begin in projection."
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210. 티아레
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2013-06-09 17:28:53 (일) |
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Eros has often been further narrowed in our time to the merely erotic. Defined elementally, eros is the desire for connection. Surely sexuality may be subsumed under that motive, but eros is richly differentiated and may be found in many venues. As he is a god, divine Eros is always present, at least implicitly, when connection is sought, though the god himself may be forgotten, ignored, violated, trivialized or, paradoxically, adored. Music is erotic; prayer is erotic; violence is erotic; language is erotic... the permutations are infinite because the gods are infinite.
To designate such diverse human activities as "erotic" may seem strange, even as the invocation of a deity may seem strange to the modern sensibility. But the ancients had it right - where there is depth, there is also the divine. Where the gods are is where meaning may be experienced. What the gods most ask of us is that we attend them, that is, bear conscious witness to their energies, of which their forms are but the material husk. If we do not serve that depth energy which a god represents in whatever erotic act, then we have violated something profound.
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