Description
A critique on the exhaustive set of essays written by leading Jungian scholar, Marie-Louise Von Franz.
Tags
Type
Essay
- Highlights of the Historical Dimension of Analysis
- Antichrist or Merlin?: A Problem Inherited from the Middle Ages
- The Transformed Berserker: The Union of Psychic Opposites
- Matter and Psyche from the Point of View of the Psychology of C. G. Jung
Highlights of the Historical Dimension of Analysis
- Von Franz’s central argument is that through the collective unconscious and the various generations in which we are spawned, that we inherit the psyche of our ancestors. Said differently, our subconscious processes things through dreams which can manifest through fairy tales and myths, but while we may not be conscious of what they pertain to, understanding one’s history can be the key to linking their particular interpretation to their historical roots.
- Stored deep within our subconscious lies this history. I in particular have spent 8 years documenting my family tree and learning of the roots of my heritage: the Afghan people, in particular Kabul and Logar provinces. Naturally I would look as far back as is documented, but that isn’t far. I stretch farther back to the beginning of Islam in that area, but ask myself a fundamental question of what existed before that, and before that. Suddenly my instinctual draw towards Buddhism makes sense when you look back far enough in the region.
- Thinking patterns and psyche can exist in certain slices of space and time, known as a zeitgeist. Some examples are the Reformation and Renaissance periods, where there is a collective shared outlook, idea or feeling.
- This can explain how both Gottfried Leibniz and Isaac Newton can independently create Calculus without ever crossing paths. It seems that when an idea is close to its fruition, there are several contenders for the title of discoverer/creator. It’s as though knowledge, ideas, or even events fall within particular grooves and that it’s merely a matter of time — but like a single drop raises the ocean, the zeitgeist acts more as the water line.
Antichrist or Merlin?: A Problem Inherited from the Middle Ages
The Transformed Berserker: The Union of Psychic Opposites
Matter and Psyche from the Point of View of the Psychology of C. G. Jung
“…There was also a third independent discoverer of the unconscious, the French mathematician Henri Poincaré, who found the unconscious in himself through a personal experience. He was looking for an explanation for the so-called automorphic functions but was unable to find the formula. Then he intuitively glimpsed the solution to this problem in a kind of half-awake, half-asleep vision. On the basis of this, he came to the conclusion that there must exist in man a second unconscious personality, which, to his great astonishment, was even capable of valid mathematical judgments
- Coincidentally, Thomas Edison came to the same conclusion and would take a nap next to a metal plate with a ball in his hand, so that the minute he would doze off, the ball would fall on the plate and make a sound, jolting him awake. In this state, half-asleep and half-conscious, he would find that he could think better.