Instead of a title I would like to begin my lecture with a quote from “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” by William Blake: “Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence.”¹

The Vienna Conference of German speaking Jungians in summer 2005, about one year after I started my training at the Institute for Psychotherapy in Berlin, was my first encounter with pluralism and diversity within the Jungian community. The comfortable assumption of a unity of Analytical Psychology could no longer be maintained. Berlin, Zurich, Stuttgart, Vienna - all of them speak different dialects and languages. Classifications have been developed to put this diversity in order dividing Jungians today along series of parameters such as individuation, causality, transference or the issue of the container. Schools evolved as receptacles for different theoretical views but also as systems of different ideals.

Questions arise along this differentiation: What do these differences mean to me? Where is my position? Where are the boundaries? What happens if I cross them? More questions arose when a group of candidates in training from Austria and Germany first met in Munich last year. Also questions that were not asked but wait to be answered and continue to prey on our minds as future analysts:

What? Training analysis just two times a week? Sitting in front of each other? And you must lie down on a couch? At least three times a week? You do sandplay in your training analysis? Why don’t we have guest lecturers from Zurich? Do they deal with myths and fairy tails only? Can what we do still be called Jungian?

Of course nobody would argue about the “true” training, the ”right” training analysis. These predicates cannot be determined by positivistic criteria. And yet the astonishment remains about the otherness and the question how this all goes together which touches what you could call analytic identity. How do I find my analytic identity? How do I feel with the analytic family of my institute? Where is my analytic home?

I would assume that this analytic home has got its strongest roots in the training analysis. For the training analysis determines the constitution, the timbre of the inner space in which the relation to our patients finds its echo and our unconscious is unfolding. Along with the development of the ability of this specific counter-transference within the transference relation to the training analyst, ideals are imparted that are characteristic for this analytic pair and that differentiate them from other pairs. The process of self-constitution in these ideals progressing with the training analysis is, I think, not only fundamental for the own analytic work but also for the debate with the third, within my class, and with fellows from Zurich, Vienna or Munich.

I would imagine there is nothing more hurting and splitting among colleagues than alien ideas of what a good analysis is and how a good analysis is done. I am convinced that different ideals underlie emotional discussions about theoretical differences beside the pursuit of power and the need for self-affirmation which of course also determine the group dynamics between the so called schools. In his book “The Jungians – A Comparative and Historical Perspective”², Thomas Kirsch provides an interesting insight into the genealogy of the Jungian community, into the “Who with whom” which is inextricably connected with separation and the development of different schools of Analytical Psychology.

Besides the training analysis, there is no doubt that the training institute, its history and position within the analytic community is of utmost importance for our own place in the broad spectrum of theoretical and practical Jungian viewpoints.

Now; where do I come from? What is the position of my institute and the Berlin group of Jungians in this landscape?

Let’s go back in history. There are three foundations of Jung Societies and Jung Institutes in Berlin: 1931, 1946, and 1977.

The history of Jungians in Berlin is intimately connected with the roots of psychoanalysis and with the general history of Germany in the 20^th century. Berlin was the capital of a Germany having been united for the first time in the late 19^th century by Bismarck. Germany was the leader in science, philosophy, music, and the arts. Both Freud and Jung thought that if psychoanalysis to survive, it would be vital that analysis in Germany be strong. ²

Karl Abraham who was trained in psychoanalysis by Bleuler and Jung at the Burghoelzli in Zurich introduced the new therapy in his private practise in Berlin in 1907. Three years later, both the Berlin Psychoanalytic Society and the German Society of Psychoanalysis were founded. In the same year the International Psychoanalytic Association was constituted with Jung as its first president. After Jung’s break with Freud and his theoretical concepts in 1913, the centre of psychoanalysis moved from Zurich to Berlin. The first psychoanalytic institute was not in Vienna where Freud lived and worked, but was established in Berlin in 1920 together with an outpatients’ clinic. Franz Alexander, Michael Balint, Erich Fromm, Wilhelm Reich, Renè Spitz, Melanie Klein, Otto Fenichel – they all worked or taught at the Berlin Institute. The structure for most training institutes, Freudian or Jungian, goes back to the model of the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute, which included analysis, supervision, and training seminars. Beside criminological and pedagogic working groups, the Berlin Institute focused its activities on outpatient care and training of medical specialists from Germany and abroad. Until the Nazis banned Jewish practitioners and burnt Freud’s books in May of 1933, the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute was the leading Freudian Institute in the world.²

The Jung Society in Berlin was founded on Christmas of 1931 with Adolph von Weizsäcker and Wolfgang Kranefeld on the executive committee. Käthe Bügler and others of Jewish descent were not mentioned in the official document. Adolph von Weizsäcker analysed with Emilii Medtner and Jung, in 1933 interviewed Jung on the radio for the Nazi government.²

The Jung Society had an active lecture program where Heinrich Zimmer for example, the great Indologist lectured several times on “The Psychology of Yoga”. It is important to note that at that time in Berlin there were several young Jewish Jungians who were to become influential later in other countries: Erich Neumann in Palestine, later Israel, James Kirsch and Max Zeller in Los Angeles or Gerhard Adler in England.² Two years after the foundation, the society lost its integrity like the then-German Society of Psychoanalysis when the Nazis demanded that all Jewish members had to resign from political and scientific organisations. Anti-Semitism, persecution and the fatal threat of Jewish members and the experience of the collective inhumanity did not lead to a deliberate dissolving of the analytic societies in Germany like in other countries such as the Netherlands or Austria.

In May 1936, the German Institute for Psychological Research and Psychotherapy was founded. With Matthias Goering as head (therefore it was also called the “Goering Institute”), he was a first cousin of the Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, it was granted favourable status within Nazi political structure until the end of the war. The task of this institute was to create the “New German Psychotherapy” (Neue deutsche Seelenheilkunde) with its emphasis on conveying to the patients the newer higher values and the great common destiny of the German peoples. The curriculum was run on the model of the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute, but psychoanalytic theory was not recognised. The governing body consisted of representatives from the three groups gathered within the institute: Künkel and Herzog for the Adler group; Müller-Braunschweig, Böhm and Schultz-Henke for the Freudians and neo-Freudians; and Moritz, Kranefeldt and von Weizsäcker for the Jungians. Psychoanalysts were allowed to practise as long as they were not Jewish.² In the Jungian group, Heyer was the non-representational end of a spectrum from compliable conformance to inner emigration. Heyer, a physician who was first sold on both Freud and Jung, later became an absolutely identified Jungian and ceased to be an analyst at the latest from when he was in uniform.³

The Institute for Psychological Research and Psychotherapy, however, could not totally be exploited by Nazi ideology. Boehm’s working group “Homosexuality” for example, saved the life of many homosexuals by marking them as seriously ill requiring treatment who otherwise would have been sent to concentration camps. John Rittmeister, the head of the institute’s outpatient clinic, participated in activities of the “Red Orchestra”, an anti-Hitler resistance group around Schulze-Boysen and Harnack. He was arrested in September of 1942 and executed 6 months later.⁴

In 1941, the Jung society dissolved when on request of the Gestapo two Nazis, Schmaltz and Körner, were made board members. During the war Jungian activities were limited to the Goering Institute which disbanded after the collapse of the Nazi regime.²

By the early 1930^th, Jung had won world-wide recognition. He was known to the German-speaking psychotherapists as representative of Kretschmar, the well-known psychiatrist and president of the German Medical Society for Psychotherapy. Jung took the presidency when Kretschmar resigned in protest after the seizure of power by the Nazis. After many months of negotiations Jung accepted this position subject to the following conditions: (1) that the society would change its name to become the International Medical Society for Psychotherapy, and (2) that German Jews could remain as individual members of the Society². Jung later stated in many different places that eventually he made the decision to take the presidency because he could not let his German colleagues down. In correspondences and interviews of that time, Jung adamantly denied any anti-Semitism and Nazi affinities. A number of Jewish people saw Jung during the 1930s, and they all have stated that they could not find any anti-Semitism in the work.²

On the other hand, Jung made statements in that period in which historical-cultural differentiations were obliterated in favour of a biological concept of race which, at that time, did include a biologically defended anti-Semitism.⁵ Jung should have known that these ideas were used by the Nazis to underpin their “scientific” anti-Semitism to justify their inhuman policy. In his Wotan essay, Jung considered the rise of the National Socialism as the expression of a charge which affected all of Europe. He identified the youthful élan of fascism with the Germanic gods, humiliated by Christianisation and now emerging from collective repression, and he interpreted National Socialism as the expression of a puer-senex psychology. Jung applied his psychology of individuation, i.e. the process of differentiating the ego from the collective psyche, to the concept of the leader’s personality (Führerpersönlichkeit).⁵

You can read this as an interpretation Jung gave the Germans as Psychiatrist and Analytical Psychologist. However, this therapeutic view on National Socialism he continued to take until 1945 and beyond prevented Jung from clearly distancing himself from the crimes of the Third Reich.⁶

At the same time, the socio-political changes in Germany led him to intolerable defaming polemics against his analytic father and later adversary, Freud, and against his theory. In 1933, as the new president of the International Medical Society for Psychotherapy, Jung wrote in an introduction to the resuscitated Zentralblatt: “Genuinely independent and perceptive people have for a long time recognized that the difference between Germanic and Jewish psychology should no longer be effaced, something that can only be beneficial for the science” ². In the same issue, which was supposed to go the German members only, a statement by Goering was included, acknowledging the scientific validity of Hitler’s Mein Kampf and the expectation that the members had studied it. The juxtaposition of the two statements caused a huge international furor.²

The polemics against a “Jewish science” became even more visible in “The State of Psychotherapy today” written in 1934 (CW 10, pars. 333-70): “Freud did not know the German soul, and neither do any of his blind adherents. Has not the shattering advent of National Socialism, upon which the world gazes with astonished eyes, taught them better?” And he continues: “The Jew as a relative nomad is presumably not able to create his own culture, as all his instincts and aptitudes in order to unfold, require a more or less civilized host-people (Wirtsvolk). The Jewish race therefore has got an unconscious that can hardly be compared with the Aryan one. … The Aryan unconscious has a higher potential than the Jewish one; this is the advantage and disadvantage of a youthfulness that has not yet been entirely alienated from the barbarian.” [Translation of the author].

With these statements Jung grounds his theory of archetypes which had been conceptualized in the meantime close to the doctrine of races of the National Socialism. In a radio dialogue with Adolph von Weizsäcker recorded for the Berlin radio in May 1933, Jung considered “the general confusion of today’s Europe to be compensated by ‘instinctive’, that is to say natural powers…The need instinctively arises for a comprehensive Weltanschaung [world view]…which would allow us to embrace…an over-all view and therefore to see the inner meaning of the whole movement”⁵. According to his conception, which was formulated later, that the archetypal image or idea underlies the instinct, he attributed an underlying archetypal meaning to the National Socialist world-view.⁵

I am telling you this because the Berlin Jungians are inextricably connected with this history. In the 1920s and early 30s Berlin was the place of the major innovations in psychoanalysis. A decade later, the world associates Berlin with mass extermination of human beings and the destruction of whole cultures and their spiritual and intellectual properties, including psychoanalysis.

I also consider Jung’s relation to the historical reality of that time as part of our heritage which plays a role in the formation of our identity as Jungian analysts. With the recognition of this heritage we are bound to ask ourselves: Does Jung offer us a mythologizing of history – a defence against the torturing reality of contemporary history? Do Jung’s theory and language seduce us into an ideological view of reality? Do we thus avoid the suffering from reality and a socio-political transformation of reality instead of learning to deal with it by mourning?⁵ The honest attempt to find answers on these questions should accompany our process of individuation along with our training, I think.

The ideology of being unpolitical (a paradox in itself) which in critical differentiation to Freud grounded in the ahistorical conceptualization of the psyche, led into a moral catastrophe. Psychoanalysis in its quest for truth was damaged by the collaboration with a totalitarian regime. ³ The emigration of many analysts, the question of the role of some analysts during the war, and a divided Berlin, made the revival of analytical psychology in Berlin and the reconstitution of a Jungian group difficult.²

During the war, the three groups of the Goering Institue regularly met for scientific meetings; Jung’s theory was the one which was most supported at that time. Schultz-Henke, who rejected Freud’s libido theory, developed his “Amalgam” – an attempt to synthesize the work of Freud, Adler and Jung into one comprehensive theory. For him, Individual Psychology, Psychoanalysis and Analytical Psychology were facets of his own theory of depth-psychology. This Amalgam, also known as Neo-psychoanalysis later became the theoretical basis for the training at the post-war institute. But let’s now follow the ways which the groups of the Goering Institute took after the war.

Already one month after the liberation of Germany, an active group of Berlin Freudians (mainly former members of the Goering Institute such as Schultz-Henke, Müller-Braunschweig, Felix Böhm) constituted the “Institute for Psychopathology and Psychotherapy”. Schultz-Henke considered his neo-psychoanalytic “core group” essential and did not want to allow the psychoanalysts under Müller-Braunschweig or the Jungians equal rights. Therefore, members of the Jung group rejected any collaboration with this institute until a new foundation in 1947. ⁴

In 1946, the Insurance Institution Berlin, which at that time combined pension,- accident,- and health insurance, took over the “Institute for Psychopathology and Psychotherapy” with all psychotherapists and changed the name into “Zentralinstitut for Psychological Diseases”. As a result of this take-over, my analytic home base, the “Institute of Psychotherapy Berlin” was established in 1947 as a training institute which was interlinked with the Zentralinstitut. This connection of psychotherapy with a public health insurance institute was vital for the survival of medical and non-medical therapists in Berlin at that time.⁴ Since 1967, after an empirical retrospective study conducted by the Zentralinstitut had shown the cost reduction for medical treatment of psychotherapy patients, psychotherapy became refundable by public health insurances which specifically determined the further development of psychoanalysis in Germany. Today, an application format is in effect, which permits analytic treatment up to two to three hours weekly for up to 300 sessions.

What did the Jungians do after the war?

After1945 Jung was not available as person and teacher. He regretted his anti-Semitic statements during the first years of the Third Reich privately, but never in public and unequivocally. True reparation, implying the acceptance of the damage, could have been identity creating for German Jungians. In this respect, however, there was not much to learn from Jung.³ As no real remembering and working-trough happened, history obeyed a compulsion to repeat. On the hand, analytical psychology survived in an idealized form as foundation of a study group in Jung’s psychology by Käthe Bügler. On the other hand, there was an opportunity to continue with the remainders of Group A, the Freudians of the Goering Institute. As in the 1930s Jung encouraged the latter as survival strategy and Käthe Bügler’s group disbanded in 1949.² Thus the Jungians participated in the foundation of the “Institute of Psychotherapy Berlin”.

Both, the Jungians around Schirren and Kranefeldt, and the Freudians around Schultz-Henke, were practised in co-operation under the constraints of the Goering Institute. In the Berlin post-war isolation, both groups lacked an identity creating tradition. The ideological basis of the whole group of founders and early members was the provision of the population with psychotherapy on the material level, and theoretically Schultz-Hencke’s Amalgam. The foundation of a common institute obviously based on two negations: Neo-Psychoanalysis eventually rejected Freud, and the small Jungian group followed a Jung who did not belief in the Berlin Jungians to found their own institute in representation of his theory. In this situation, Schultz-Hencke’s Amalgam was the ideal prima materia for a restart: fatherless, progressive, defiant and fit for survival.³

Julius Schirren, a very intuitive and creative man with a good connection to his unconscious but without any analytic training, headed up the Jungian section of the new Neo-Freudian Institute. Schirren and Käthe Bügler, who refused to be a part of that institute, were staunch enemies. As Schirren was the only Jungian at the institute, those who were interested in Jungian psychology had to have analysis with him. By the early 1950’s a group of four medical doctors with training in psychiatry, including Hannes Diekmann, Hans-Joachim Wilke, Eberhard Jung, and Rudolf Blomeyer, began analysis with Schirren and trained at the Neo-Freudian institute.² Jung and Wilke still give lectures today and represent my analytic grandparents’ generation. Psychoanalysis was the subject of all their courses, and it was difficult to include any classes in analytical psychology. From a historical perspective it is important to understand here that no Jung institute would have survived in Berlin that grounded itself only on Jung’s theories developed after his break with Freud.³

At first these four students, who were called the “Gang of Four” after the Chinese communist leader, had to meet privately at Dieckmann’s house to study analytical psychology, and in order for them to graduate from the Neo-Freudian institute they all had to present psychoanalytic cases. Dieckmann was the only one of the four who came under any direct influence from Zurich when he had a second analysis with Jolande Jacobi, travelling to Zurich three times a year.²

The group focused on the clinical application of Jung’s “Psychology of Transference” and worked through the whole spectrum of Analytical Psychology and also Freud: from classical Jungians of the Zurich school like Adler and C.A. Meyer to Fordham who developed his developmental Jungian theory in examination of the work of Freud, Melanie Klein and Winnicott.³

The critical acquirement of the psychology of Freud and Jung in relation to the concept of transference became the theoretical foundation of the Berlin School and the Jung Institute Berlin that was established in 1977. The generation of founders, however, remained identified with Neo-Psychoanalysis³; and genuinely Jungian techniques such as active imagination were and are not thoroughly taught in Berlin.

On the occasion of the 20^th anniversary of the Jung Institute Anne Springer, a member of our institute, proposed the interesting hypothesis³ that the Berlin group of Jungians shares, enacts, and re-enacts an unconscious fantasy that Freud and Jung may have not really split up; that they may just argue with each other and might be reconciled again. In a denial, the group would presume that the quarrels of 1912/13 could be undone. The group would thus behave like children of divorce who by omnipotent fantasies fend the desperation, rage and mourning about the broken pair which includes the defence of the reality of destruction and associated shame and guilt. This means that we would possess both, a Jung who has not been damaged and a Freud who survived all attacks.

Springer supposed that the Jungian group in Berlin can be characterised by a mixture of post-Freudian and post-Jungian identification (and not identities). Post-Jungian in a sense that our generation of founders insists on their distance to Jung in that his concept of archetypes and his libido theory is accepted whereas his theory of neuroses, his ideas about early child development, his understanding of transference and psychotherapeutic practise are rejected or at least need to be amended. The political Jung is thereby kept separate and is separately reflected from the theoretical Jung.

Post-Freudian in a quest for a psychotherapeutic technique that allows working in transference. For this purpose, Klein, Winnicott, Bion and on the Jungian site Neumann is studied who by the way knew his Freud and worked-through it, as well as the work of Fordham who was strongly influenced by the British School.

Until today, the group of Berlin Jungians has been increasingly dismissing the idea of Jung and Freud as a pair.³ They have been accepting that both survived the break, that their theories developed independently from each other, and that both theories cannot be mixed, merged or glued together. The Berlin Jungians acquire and dispute more and more ideas from the English Developmental School, i.e. from a tradition which does not idealize or devalue Freud on the one and Jung on the other hand. The group has been attempting to translate between both theories acknowledging a remainder which cannot be translated.

Coming to an end of my lecture I would like to get back to the questions with which I started: How do I find my analytic identity? Where is my analytic home?

From the very beginning, our personal myth is enmeshed with the self-conception and the history of our group. There is no meaningful personal biography without a social group as there is no analytic identity without an ideational and institutional reference. A school or group ideology thus creates the room for consciousness and subjectivity, it can give our life meaning and impart a system of ideals as foundation for our analytic work. But I think that an ideology alone does not create identity.

The difficulty to write my own history as a Berlin Jungian includes the critical examination of the historical ground on which I stand and the recognition of my ambivalent heritage. However, only the consequences of this historical, political and moral reflection, i.e. my decisions in favour or against a theoretical concept give my reflections a meaning and thus have an identity creating potential. These decisions are signifiers for my analytic work and my position within the Jungian community. I take my decisions, others take different decisions. The development of our own identity means taking responsibility for the construction of our own life and our own history. The risk is the loss of paradise.

November, Berlin 2007

¹ William Blake (1998): “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” in “Zwischen Feuer und Feuer. Poetische Werke”. Dtv Taschenbuch.

² T.B. Kirsch (2000): “The Jungians – A Comparative and Historical Perspective”. London and Philadelphia. Routledge.

³ A. Springer (1998): “Jung in Berlin. Geschichtliche und gruppendynamische Anmerkungen”. Analytische Psychologie 29. Karger. 1-17

⁴ A. Köhler (1998): „Vom Reichsinstitut zum Institut für Psychotherapie e.V. Berlin“ in „Über die Schwierigkeit, die eigene Geschichte zu schreiben“. I. Kothe-Meyer (Editor).Tübingen. edition discord. 31-54.

⁵ A. Erlenmeyer, A. Springer, K. Winkelmann (1986): “Destructiveness in the Tension Between Myth and History (A Discussion among three Analysts)” in “The archetype of shadow in a split world. Proceedings of The Tenth International Congress for Analytical Psychology Berlin, 1986”. Zürich. Daimon. 317-329.

⁶ A. Erlenmeyer (1992): „Jung und die Deutschen“. Analytische Psychologie 23. Karger. 132-161.

]]> http://artrosengarten.wordpress.com/?p=1211 Wed, 13 Aug 2008 21:48:35 +0000 artrosengarten http://artrosengarten.wordpress.com/?p=1211 Excerpted from Chapter 9 'Synchronicity' in TAROT AND PSYCHOLOGY: SPECTRUMS OF POSSIBILITY   

"Science comes to a stop at the frontiers of logic, but nature does not--she thrives on ground as yet untrodden by theory."   C. G. Jung 

Strange Workings

Even after reading and accepting (albeit provisionally) the foregoing discussion pertaining to the meeting of Psychology and Tarot, the responsible psychotherapist will still properly wonder: How could these spiritually-based, randomly-selected Tarot cards be reliable and valid in psychological treatment?   It is one thing to establish a Tarot lexicon based on sound psychological principles, or even stunning metaphysical insights, but quite another to actually bring this arcane instrument into one’s livingroom, much less one’s consulting room.  Particularly as the Tarot method requires placing supreme trust in the natural intelligence that collects around sacred or “empowered” randomness, many will feel hesitant, fearing the method’s lack of reliability.  Before being sufficiently comfortable to introduce so unorthodox a tool into actual practice, the therapist will need to better understand the mysterious mechanism of its operation.  How on earth, she well asks, does it work?

Little assurance will be drawn from so unlikely an apologist as Fred Gettings, occult author and compiler of the voluminous Fate & Prediction: An Historical Compendium of Palmistry, Astrology, and Tarot , who himself allows an echoing, if not disconcerting, sentiment:  “Although the Tarot method works,” he writes, “it must be admitted from the outset that no one has ever been able to explain how it works [italics mine].”2   Perhaps a more precise summation of Mr. Gettings’ factually correct assertion would grant that although the mechanism behind Tarot has been speculated upon in multiple arcane and exotic ways, from nonlinear postulates of theoretical physics to ancient wisdom myths like Indra’s Net (and everything in between), still no one to date has empirically demonstrated to any  satisfaction how or even “that” the Tarot method works.

To do so scientifically, one must clearly demonstrate a causal relationship linking method and effect, a linkage that can be repeated under similar conditions by different observers.  The inherent problematics of scientific proof for a subjective, invisible, and irregular effect present a real challenge to the would-be Tarot empiricist, much as is encountered with related depth techniques or even in the fierce “brain versus mind” debates brewing in the emerging science of consciousness.  It is widely agreed that scientific study is not well-equipped to penetrate the subjective dimensions of the human mind.  The problem with classical scientific method when dealing with intrapsychic states is that mental events are not always clearly distinguished, nor are they independent from each other.  Subjective effects in some cases are not easily translatable into precise language, nor are they consistently or objectively reported.  There is no clear flowing of influence from one event to the next as (allegedly) with outer behavior, and finally, “psychological time” is neither linear nor unambiguous, but irregular, observer dependent, and contextually shaded.  All of which makes direct quantification and measurement especially troublesome.

The Theory of Meaningful Chance

Such inherent difficulties notwithstanding, I believe an empirical explanation for the Tarot method can indeed be demonstrated in Jung’s theory of synchronicity.  As we suggested earlier, many explorers today believe synchronicity carries the key not only to divinatory practices but to paranormal phenomena and certain anomalous physical phenomena as well.  Herein lies a region we may refer to as “metascience,” the study of invisible, acausal, non-linear relationships between inner and outer worlds.

As was briefly discussed [in Chapter Four], the term “synchronicity” made its first introduction into the world’s lexicon in 1938 by Carl Jung, in his quite famous foreword to sinologist Richard Wilhelm’s classic translation of the I Ching.  For those not familiar with the Book of Changes, it has been without rival the fundamental text of traditional Chinese culture and continues to capture the imagination of intuitively-inclined Westerners today. The text is a divinatory system with 3000 year old roots in the traditions of magic and shamanism.  Nearly all that was significant in traditional China--philosophy, science, politics and popular culture--was founded on interpretations and adaptations of the I.   The core of the book is considered the oldest and most complex divinatory system to survive into modern times.

Perhaps more than any other divinatory tool, the I Ching’s  mechanism of operation parallels that of Tarot.  The Chinese term I, reminiscent of our description of the Tarot method, emphasizes “imagination, openness and fluidity” as contemporary I Ching  scholars Ritsema and Stephen Karcher (1994) note:

[I ] suggests the ability to change direction quickly and the use of a variety of imaginative stances to mirror the variety of being.  The most adequate English translation of this is versatility, the ability to remain available to and be moved by the unforeseen demands of time, fate, and psyche.3

The authors further summarize:

The I Ching  offers a way to see into difficult situations, particularly those emotionally charged ones where rational knowledge fails us yet we are called upon to decide and act...[It] is able to do this because it is an oracle.  It is a particular kind of imaginative space set off for a dialogue with the gods or spirits, the creative basis of experience now called the unconscious.  An oracle translates a problem or question brought to it into an image language like that of dreams.  It changes the way you experience the situation in  order to connect you with the inner forces that are shaping it.  The oracle’s images dissolve what is blocking the connection, making the spirits available.4

From highly personal divinatory experiments with the Chinese Book of Changes or I Ching, Jung advanced the synchronicity hypothesis.  In his later works he more generally describes synchronicity in relation to certain strange curiosities of nature operating in various rare instances of inner/outer “crossovers” which defy normative constructions of reality.  Such anomalies as prophetic dreams, unconnected parallel processes, paranormal oddities and chance occurrences in which subject and object mysteriously seem to collide are included in this brave literature of “acausal” connection.  According to Jung, synchronicity is a special case of “acausality” that additionally produces in the observer some intimate, self-deepening, or spiritually-enhancing meaningfulness, or put in the Jungian vernacular, “unconscious compensation in the service of individuation.” 

By this definition, not all acausal phenomena are necessarily synchronistic.  As its name implies, ‘acausality’ simply means that no exchange of energy (the hallmark of Newtonian causality) is transmitted between related events.  Examples have been shown, for instance, by experimenters like Robert Jahn et. al. at the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory (PEAR) that certain acausal phenomena occurs naturally and can be scientifically demonstrated as such.  Through studying the interaction of human consciousness and complex machines (“sensitive physical devices, systems, and processes common to engineering practice”) Jahn has shown that a test-subject’s conscious intent could influence a machine’s operation.  Such effects, though usually quite small, have nevertheless been proved to be statistically repeatable and appear to be operator-specific in their details.5  

Technically however, these extraordinary findings of ‘acausal connection’ are not purely ‘synchronistic’ as they carry no particular meaningfulness to the subject unless, of course, the test-subject is lucky enough to be a race car driver, a machine-gun mercenary, or even a high-speed computer user with minimal techno-skills like myself, in which case, any clairvoyant repartee with one’s machinery would prove immensely meaningful indeed.   Be that as it may, one point is certain as put succinctly by Jungian author James A. Hall: “Science without parapsychology is two-dimensional.  Parapsychology without synchronicity misses psyche.”6

Therapists in all their sophistication should take heart as they search for alternative explanations for the “synchronicity hypothesis.”  Jung stipulates clearly that acausality requires not merely the absence of physical energy exchange between events, but equally the absence of psychological  energy exchange as well.  Victor Mansfield (1995) an astrophysicist and synchronicity author, further specifies this point: “just as gravity causes the apple to fall,  anxiety causes the head to shake.”  Both events are easily explained by ordinary causation.  Psychological causation (like physical causation)  contradicts the elusive precondition of acausality itself;  Jung carefully stressed that neither repressed contents, defense mechanisms, complexes, nor archetypal constellations could cause such coincidences, thereby ruling out subtler mechanisms like projective identification or conversion from slipping through the psychological cracks.7 

Synchronicity And Events

Examples of synchronistic phenomena are easily illustrated in collective events, as for instance, the Oklahoma City Bombing of April 19, 1995.  But first, let’s examine (hypothetically) the more likely cause-and-effect scenario of this incident, which must be ruled out should we find the genuine article.  Suppose several research psychologists attempted dream studies in Oklahoma City following the event.  They discover significant numbers of subjects reporting dreams and fantasies involving sabotage and destruction, of buildings exploding, of hidden bombs or mass death--that is, dreams occurring shortly after  reports of the tragedy.  These parallels would hardly be considered ‘synchronistic’ or even ‘acausally-connected’.  The psyche of such dreamers has obviously been affected by psychological causes churning throughout local and collective awareness.  Anxiety dreams following shocking events of this nature are quite common.  To the contrary, after the tragic news one might rather expect a great many people in all parts of the country to incorporate this upsetting imagery in their dreams.  We would then obviously rule out ‘synchronicity’ to explain such clearly ‘caused’ correspondences.

If, on the other hand, a particular dreamer reports: (1) the same sort of mayhem and destruction in his dream, perhaps with lucid details of the Ryder truck, the screaming panicked government employees, The Murray Building collapsing etc.;  (2) this startling dream occurred on the night preceding the catastrophe; and (3) we can be certain this dreamer bears no possible conscious or unconscious relationship to the conspirators themselves, or has not been made privy at all to their goings on whatsoever; then, (4) it is then safe to conclude that those clamoring headlines discovered on the morning AFTER the event (by said dreamer) must reasonably be considered ‘acausally-connected’ to the dream.  This is simply because the actual event for which such dream content was referent had not yet taken place. 

No exchange of energy can therefore connect these two events or account for their mutual co-arising, neither physical nor mental energy.  An acausal connection is thus clearly established between dream and event.  But note: “synchronicity” has not yet technically occurred.  If then, (5) upon reading the dreadful report in the newspaper on the morning after, the dreamer is thus struck meaningfully (i.e. in regards to his/her own sense of psychospiritual purpose or individuation) by this eerie coincidence, and encouraged perhaps to reevaluate core beliefs (say, of the importance of family, or perhaps, the impermanence of life and death) owing to this strange coincidence, it is at that point, officially, that these two events have produced a bone fide "synchronicity."  They are now, in Jung's famous phrase, “acausally connected through meaning.”

Of course, the parapsychologist may beg to differ.  His argument would insist that a causal exchange did in fact occur: the dreamer was simply prescient, his psychic foreknowledge (precognition) would account for (i.e. caused) the seeming dream coincidence as such.  It was simply a case of prescience or clairvoyance; in a manner of speaking, the ‘future’ had caused the dream!   It’s simply that we have not yet the technology to measure such invisible forces.  Jung himself, with his great fascination for J.B. Rhine’s groundbreaking ESP experiments at Duke in the 1930’s, entertained the impressive parapsychological evidence contributing to synchronistic phenomena.  Many in the Tarot community, as well, believe divination to be a psychic phenomenon, with the cards acting as “psychic springboards” or triggers for telepathic, clairvoyant, or precognitive phenomena.  Paranormal research, in fact, may one day isolate certain subtle and causal energy fields operating between Tarot cards, readers and subjects, and require major revisions of the synchronicity hypothesis.

More recently, however, Mansfield (1995) challenges this argument by making a compelling case against such paranormal attributions which, in effect, violate the technical specifics of Jung’s own treatise.3  Psychic causes, Mansfield contends, suggest some transfer of energy between bodies, albeit to date, not an “energy” clearly isolated, measured, or demonstrated as such.  Psychic causal agents, of course, even unseen hypothetical ones, would veer away from Jung’s central notion of “acausality.”

Absolute Knowledge

Suggested in Jung’s theory of synchronicity is the presence of some underlying interior intelligence at work, some non-personal agency of wisdom which purposively guides each individual psyche towards its predestined objectives of balance and wholeness (equilibrium and individuation).  Empty of the sentiment that normally muddies human perception, this higher logic flows more like a fresh running river.  It is deep and clear, cool and nonpersonal, unfixed and nonlocalized.  Though accessed from a mysterious source, it is nonetheless closer to the natural order.  It is immune to those arbitrary habits or conventional thinking which, in the final analysis, may rest on no logic at all.

For Jung, such transcendent intelligence is viewed as the very matrix from which all psychological development and transformation unfolds; it operates through a system of compensatory self-regulations for the purpose of linking conscious and unconscious worlds with the objective of psychological wholeness.  This view is quite distinct from the determinist constructions of evolutionary psychology which place more emphasis on the role of social and cognitive factors of adaptability without reference to teleology.

From a depth psychological perspective, the bridge that this transcendent intelligence uses to link conscious and unconscious worlds is the symbol.  After all, one might pause to consider this: given the generally accepted hypothesis that dreams and dream symbols are significant and meaningful, and moreover, that these spontaneous unconscious narratives are revealing, multifaceted, intricately crafted, economical, restorative, poetic, and even comical-- then by whose masterful intelligence are they authored?  The sleeping child?  Your snoring, comatose “creative side?”  Who is it really, in the final analysis, that speaks to us when we sleep?  After studying thousands of such dreamscapes captured from his patients and his own mind, Jung was moved to formulate the concept of “absolute knowledge” to account for their true creator:

Final causes, twist them how we will, postulate a foreknowledge of some kind.  It is certainly not a knowledge that could be connected with the ego, and hence not a conscious knowledge as know it, but rather a self-subsistent “unconscious” knowledge which I would prefer to call  “absolute knowledge.” 8

Habitual Causality

One needn’t be a behavioral psychologist to know that old habits die hard.  These learned patterns of activity through chronic repetition become automated, fixed, and effortlessly carried out much like putting one’s left sock on first each morning.  As author Umberto Eco laments

I believe that you can reach the point where there is no longer any difference between developing the habit of pretending to believe and developing the habit of believing.   

Given the undeniable fact of our own nearly intractable, causally pre-conditioned, modern habits of explanation-- the cognitive reflex that needs to discern “this is so because of______,”   I think it is safe to surmise that many reading this brief synopsis of the synchronicity hypothesis, and even Tarot divination in general, will find it bordering on the ungraspable.  I myself feel this way often.  There will likely be a gnawing urge to restate the obvious, at least to oneself, as almost everything learned throughout our scientifically-constructed lives has taught us not to presume otherwise.  Be it parlor trick, clairvoyant reader, psychological illusion, misattribution, projective identification, accident, meaningless coincidence, miracle, or loaded deck: something  surely must be given credit (or blame) as the “real cause.”

Jung’s puffy phrase “absolute knowledge,” a cause without a cause, will smack of fuzzy theology and leave the scientifically-grounded and metaphysically-squeamish (i.e. most therapists) whining about Ouji boards.  His or her  gut will continue to encourage rational assurances: “There can be no reliable effects resulting from non-existent or indiscernible causes.”  Of course, the corollary to this logic is equally tenacious: “if no reliable cause can be established, then the effects of the reading cannot be valid.”  A short while later, after the Tarot reading one has just witnessed does appear to be unambiguously accurate, “amazing” by some accounts, or at least, strikingly meaningful to its subject, then and there, as a matter of habitual reflex, the explanatory litany of accidental factors, suggestibility, projection, fraud, or “coincidence” is causally assigned.  We are relieved.   Phew...  “It was merely an instance of  _________.”

But no matter.  In defiance of our reassuring rationality, the synchronistic hypothesis reasserts its ugly head:  All energetic exchanges between reader/querent/card are categorically ruled-out and unrelated to the effect!  That is, no parlor trick, no clairvoyant reader, no psychological illusion, no misattribution, no projective identification, no accident, no meaningless coincidence, no miracle, and no loaded deck has caused the reading’s accuracy.  Indeed, there are NO BECAUSES.  

To the contrary, one finds instead only the disquieting reminder that the world moves in mysterious ways.  Meaning has arrived acausally  as a function of the method itself, involving no extrinsic influence whatsoever.  Instead, an agent presumably of ‘higher intelligence’ or ‘absolute knowledge’ (at least from our limited vantage points) has delivered the correct cards for this moment much as it delivered the correct dream in all its well crafted complexity last night.  Although in Tarot, unlike the dream, the agent is deliberately called forth.  Sagaciously, and in concert with the emotional motivation of the querent, the Tarot method itself creates conditions for the probability of synchronicity to occur.  And as mentioned in a previous chapter, psychologists will likely locate this innate, guiding agency as residing within the psyche, while metaphysicians, theologians, and perhaps quantum physicists will place its residence in nature or in god.

In the Tarot method, a procedure that intentionally disrupts and confounds linear assumptions, the meaningful coincidence that occurs between cards and querent can not be causally explained, because in the final analysis, there is no conventional causality operating.  A linkage between mind and matter, subject and object, has been facilitated by what has been deemed ‘empowered randomness,’ the vehicle of oracularly-intended synchronicity.  This phenomenon is likely to be simply an occurrence of nature-- related perhaps to “The Force” (of Star Wars fame)--though typically unrecognized due to our vast inculcation of scientific realism and habitual causality.  When it occurs spontaneously we deem either fraudulent or else categorize it as “some religious miracle.”   Such describes the so-called “apex problem” of the Tarot practitioner, mentioned earlier with Thought Field Therapy.

We should regard such things in keeping with our earlier theme of opposition: that is, so-called ‘acausal/synchronistic’ phenomena are merely the other side of conventional causality, “like the different, but inseparable, sides of a coin, the poles of a magnet, or pulse and interval in any vibration (Watts).”  The apparent rarity of synchronistic occurrences reflects more than anything our habit of causal explanation.  If we can’t explain it, it probably doesn’t exist.  But it is important to remember that the concept of so-called “randomness” is itself a modern invention that developed out of the dogma of causation.  Of course, that well-oiled band of naysayers--the professional skeptics and debunkers--who bravely embrace the scientific realism of the 19th century, will not be deterred by such unbridled “metaphysical hogwash” but instead will salivate over such claims like greedy jackals over wounded rabbits.  “Blatantly unscientific!” they hoot and snarl with great assurance.  “Prove it!  Prove it!  The method is flawed, it’s entirely random.  It can never be re-peat-ed!” 

Little do these smug evaluators realize that Tarot’s random selection is precisely what makes it Tarot.  Repeatability is hardly the point.  Like each unique fingerprint or signature of human identity, no two Tarot readings are ever identical or repeatable per se.  Though what does repeat, should we call it that, is the consistent and striking experience of meaning for the subject.  John Van Eenwyk notes in Archetypes & Strange Attractors: The Chaotic World of Symbols  (1997):

If a dynamic repeats over and over (orbits, chemical reactions, symbols), it is possible eventually to figure it out.  That which occurs just once, however (miracles, the creation of the universe, a crank telephone call) is infinitely more difficult to decipher.  Repetition creates patterns that can be scrutinized.  Single occurrences are incomparable, hence they tend to be labeled “random.”9

 The serious scientist, without the professional skeptic's need to prejudge or “debunk” to make his living, does, however,  indeed hold forth a legitimate challenge for objective verification.  To my mind, solid scientific verification of the synchronicity hypothesis is an unrivaled and highly worthy challenge for the very best scientific explorers.  But as the imaginative, and indeed highly regarded scientific thinker Arthur C. Clarke recently noted from his home in Sri Lanka:

We need more scientists...to push the limits of knowledge and understanding. Science, unlike politics or diplomacy, does not depend on consensus or expediency-- it progresses by open-minded probing, rigorous questioning, independent thought and, when the need arises, being bold enough to say that the emperor has no clothes.10

In this case is the Emperor clothed or naked?  The scientist is quite right to wonder: Could this synchronistic hypothesis using the Tarot method be demonstrated experimentally?  Could it empirically be shown to have practical value and application?  Regardless of Tarot’s inherent difficulties with scientific measurement, could a pilot study of sorts be designed to demonstrate sufficient consideration of this approach, in the least to initiate a path of further research and experimentation?  The following chapter describes one of several such pilot studies conducted by the author wherein the synchronicity hypothesis was tested.

Notes

¹ Jung, C. G., ‘On the Nature of the Psyche’. Reprinted in Collected Works Vol. 8;  Second edition (Princeton University Press), Ziff, 246, p. 167.

² Getting, F., Fate & Prediction:  An Historical Compendium of Palmistry, Astrology, and Tarot;  Exeter, New York, 1980, p. 157.

³ Ritsema, Rudolf, and Karcher, Stephen [trans] I Ching: The Classic Chinese Oracle of Change;  Element Books Limited, Great Britain, 1994, p. 10.

⁴ Ibid. 

⁵ Jahn, Robert, and Dunne, Brenda, Margins of Reality:  The Role of Consciousness in the Physical World;  Harcourt, Brace, Javanovich, New York, 1987.

⁶  personal correspondence, 1998.

⁷ Mansfield, Victor, Synchronicity, Science, and Soul-Making,  Open Court. 1995, pp. 22-36.

⁸ Jung, C. G., Synchronicity  [Collected Works, Vol. 8]; Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J.,  1978, p.493 ”

⁹ Van Eenwyk, John, Archetypes & Strange Attractors: The Chaotic World of Symbols; Inner City Books, Toronto, Canada, 1997, p. 42.

¹⁰  Clarke, Arthur, C. quoted in The San Diego Union Tribune [“La Jolla Nobelist rocks the scientific boat”, Graham, David, E.), September 15, 1998, p. A13.

Readers-- Chapter 9 actually introduces the final section of my book, The Tarot Research Project, which is a landmark pilot study of the synchronicity hypothesis; unlike anything attempted before, it explores tarot divination with an experimental population of spousal abusers and female victims (that I conducted in 1997 in Southern California). If interested, order directly on Amazon.com or from Paragon House. FSA

Es un acuerdo que tiene cada vez más adeptos el que no existe "casualidad", sino "causalidad". Las cosas ocurren a través de un proceso de causa y efecto, conocido como "Ley de Causalidad", enunciado por Hermes Trimegisto, el padre de las escuelas herméticas (El Kybalión). Un evento lleva a otro, y éste genera otro y así sucesivamente, estableciendo una cadena causal en la cual el pasado determina al presente y éste el futuro.

El psicólogo suizo Carl G. Jung y el Premio Nobel de física (1945) Wolfgang Pauli colaboraron en el desarrollo de una teoría de las coincidencias que bautizaron con el nombre de "Sincronicidades". Concluyeron que existen dos principios de conexión en la naturaleza:

El primero era la causalidad ordinaria, estudiada por la ciencia. Esta es la causalidad lineal: si A causa B, entonces para que se dé B, debe ocurrir primero A.

El otro principio de conexión era el acausal. Este principio fue denominado por Jung y Pauli "sincronicidad" porque, contrariamente al principio de causalidad, los acontecimientos acausales admiten que dos hechos aparentemente inconexos se relacionen simultáneamente. Su lógica es la de la psiquis profunda, la lógica que sólo se halla en los sueños y en los mitos, pues la sincronicidad supone la ocurrencia de dos eventos no asociados ni causal ni mecánicamente, pero vinculados por una relación significativa.

Ejemplos de hechos sincrónicos

Narra el mismo Jung que una vez, en Zurcí, un paciente le describía un sueño con un escarabajo de oro y justo en ese momento, algo golpeó el vidrio de la ventana del despacho. Jung fue a ver qué era y al abrir la ventana penetró en la habitación un escarabajo muy similar al que describía el paciente, un scarabeide cetonia aurata, lo más próximo a un escarabajo de oro. Esto es un hecho sincrónico.

Muchas veces, soñamos con, un amigo que no vemos desde hace tiempo y al día siguiente nos lo encontramos en el lugar más inusual. O vamos al teléfono para llamar a un amigo o un pariente y el teléfono repica en ese instante y es él quien nos llama. Muchos llaman a estas situaciones coincidencias. Pero Jung creía que estos eventos eran indicativos de cómo nos interconectamos los seres humanos con la naturaleza en general y con otros seres humanos en particular, a través del inconsciente colectivo.

Jung nunca declaró su posición religiosa, pero esta idea de sincronicidad la hallamos en la perspectiva hindú de la realidad, en la cual nuestros Yo individuales son como islas en el mar. Nos hemos acostumbrado a ver el mundo y a los demás como islas o entes individuales y separados, pero no vemos nuestra conexión a través del suelo marino bajo las aguas.

Cuando soñamos o meditamos, nos metemos dentro de nuestro inconsciente personal, acercándonos más y más a la esencia: el inconsciente colectivo. En estos estados somos más permeables a las "comunicaciones" con otros Yo. La sincronicidad hace de la teoría de Jung una de las pocas que no sólo es compatible con los fenómenos parapsicológicos, como en este caso sería la telepatía, sino que incluso permite explicarlos.

Un hecho sincrónico es -sin duda- que el pintor florentino Rafael (1483 - 1520), reconocido por los temas religiosos de su obra, nació y murió un 6 abril y en ambas oportunidades era Viernes Santo. A esto, estimado lector, sumo yo otra sincronicidad más: en el año 2005, cuando investigada sobre este caso, era Abril ¡y viernes Santo!

Sincronicidad y Tarot

Cada carta del Tarot posee un significado que se relaciona directamente con estados del alma y circunstancias y tipología de personas. Es inespacial y atemporal, pues nos conecta con circunstancias del pasado, presente y futuro.

Tal como hemos visto antes, de acuerdo con la teoría de Jung, los Arcanos del Tarot representan arquetipos que sugieren aspectos de la vida. Por ello nos remiten no sólo a lo inmediato, lo evidente; sino que representan las experiencias de la persona, sus propias pasiones, deseos y motivaciones inconscientes, ya que los símbolos reflejan directamente lo que hay en nuestras memorias atávicas y memorias de nuestra vida individual.

Las circunstancias no suceden por azar. Nada ocurre por casualidad, como han demostrado la psicología humanista y la física cuántica. Ni siquiera existe la casualidad como tal (Sincrodestino, Deepak Chopra). Cuando seleccionamos y extraemos una carta para representar una situación o persona, el principio que opera es el de sincronicidad. Extraemos la carta justa para decirnos aquello que debemos saber, aquella cuyo simbolismo responde a nuestra pregunta.

Autor: Marinela Ramírez
Socióloga, Terapeuta Holística, Profesora de Tarot ]]> http://kuckstein.wordpress.com/?p=41 Fri, 23 May 2008 17:00:56 +0000 kuckstein http://kuckstein.wordpress.com/?p=41 Nachdem sich in der letzten Zeit viele spannende Wege als gesperrt herausstellten war es an der Zeit, neue Wege in der Einsamkeit zu suchen. Fünf Stunden durch den Westerwald gefahren, 137 Kilometer:

Nach Bad Hönningen, Anstieg Richtung Weißfeld, Over, Waldbreitbach, Niederbreitbach, Wolfenacker, Kurtscheid, Rengsdorf, Hardert, Straßenhaus, Daufenbach, Puderbach, Steimel, Lautzert, Berod,  Wahlrod, Mudenbach, B414, Altenkirchen, B8, Oberölfen, Weyerbusch, Hasselbach, Rettersen, Fiersbach, Kircheib, Gresenbach, Oberscheid, Buchholz, Eudenbach, Quirrenbach, Nonnenberg, Ruttscheid,Thomasberg, Heisterbacherrott.

Gehört u.a.: Philosophisches Radio - Sendung "Über den Traum von der ewigen Jugend" vom 16.05.08. Darin: C.G. Jung - Das archetypische Bild vom Ewigen Jüngling (Puer Eternus), der in der Krise der Lebensmitte in den Träumen auftauchen kann. Das Auftauchen dieses Bildes provoziert Schicksalsschläge, die dann einen Individuatiossschub erzwingen. Die eigene Identität wird vertieft und erweitert.

A Review Of The Novel

The Sonderman Constellation

by

R.E. Prindle

Review by David A. Adams

The Sonderman Constellation by R. E. Prindle, 210 pages iUniverse, 2008.  14.95.

     Sooner or later we all have the task of reconciling our childhood pasts with an adult present.  Most do it by living through the ordeals, then promptly forgetting the painful slings and arrows, or, as Freud would have it, by burying the past in a more or less comfortable neurosis we learn to live with this side of a more destructive psychosis.

     In "The Sonderman Constellation,"  R.E. Prindle manages to pull us through the ordeal of childhood and early manhood kicking and screaming at each of the forces that somehow make us what we are.  The novel is a Bildungsroman that drives full speed through a Freudian slash Jungian analysis of his early years in a fictional account of what made the man who he is today.

     Even though the author disclaims a direct relationship the various personas found between the lines, the masks are familiar ones, which makes the story ring true.  Even though the canvas is framed within the terms of the various psychologies of both Freud and Jung, the picture is a a large one, showing a subtle mind at work.

     At times, I wish that Prindle had simply told us the story without the constant battering of Jungian terminology.  It is a compelling story that could stand on its own without psychoanalyzing each step of the way.  Hesse did this over and over again in each of his novels, even though he was writing within a similar Jungian framework.  However, it does give us an interesting account of a strong self-analysis that is quite remarkable.

     Yet, I must admit the story is more than a simple case-study.  The fictional writing is strong enough to overcome what might seem to be an uncomfortable dragging by the hooks of psychological terminology.  The "Constellation" of the story is what one might call in Jungian terms, a "complex" - all those events of a life that center around a certain problem, or in this case a person, who happens to be the "Sonderman."

     Sonderman is an obsession of sorts, a boy, and later a man who both truly is and truly symbolizes a constellation about which the narrator's life circles.  There are other "constellations" or personas in this story, all all of them meet and sometimes collide like wandering stars as the story turns upon its fictional orbits.  We are drawn along by the gravitational vortices of these lives and hopefully come out the other end of this intergalactic worm-hole through a life of a novel the better for the ride.

Availabe from amazon.com, Barnes And Noble, Alibris, abebooks and other online sellers.

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Those of you who know me personally know that, in my heart, I am hardly an indie dude. I've always loved big, mainstream, pop music. Sure, it can be formulaic, but that particular approach to songwriting evolved into a formula because it works so well -- because it's a brutally efficient method for injecting a melody into the human brain. (Apologies for the fascist imagery.) My favorite practitioner of this kind of all-American hitmaking is Tom Petty. His songwriting is unadorned and effective, and the Heartbreakers (his band) exemplify L.A. session-man restraint at its finest. Allow me to overstay my welcome by adding that I've thoroughly enjoyed all the songs I've heard from Sheryl Crow's latest album, Detours. And I've already used this space to profess my attraction to the work of Aimee Mann. So you all know the drill: I'm a big dork.

It was only a matter of time before my love and respect for big mainstream pop found its way into my songwriting. In this week's song, the arc from the verse to the chorus, and the placement of the choruses within the overall arrangement, is all exactly how Petty would do it. (Not that I'm claiming that my songwriting is as brilliant as his by half.) I also borrowed from two different Bowie songs -- "Lady Stardust" and "Ziggy Stardust" -- as well as countless other pop songs that are lodged in our Jungian collective unconsciousness.

On a related note, it's been a long-term goal of mine to write more direct lyrics -- another thing that Petty, along with lots of country-music writers, makes look easy. So this is my attempt to write a straightforward "story song": a promising Hollywood actress is outed as a lesbian, and even in our enlightened modern age, it ruins her career (see: Lucy Liu, Anne Heche). Topically, I'm ripping Petty off yet again, via a little song of his called "Into the Great Wide Open."

I always appreciate your feedback, but I'm especially curious to hear what you (yes, you) think of this one, since I consider it a pretty drastic departure from other stuff I've posted here.

“Those who are willing to be vulnerable,” writes the poet Theodore Roethke, “move among mysteries.” Sounds good; easy to say yes and nod to. Reads well on a greeting card or fridge magnet. But what does it mean, to be vulnerable?

Ahh, to be exposed to the wind, to possible ridicule, to naked viewing, to seeing and feeling things I’d rather avoid, not show, not let anyone see. Even myself would rather not be witness to That Part of me. So why do it; why expose parts of me may be unpleasant to the eye and ear. Why look at parts of my behavior, why open myself to honest feedback, why look in the mirror or at a candid photograph? 

"To be vulnerable to the mystery of our life as it presents itself," says Roger Housden, "requires forgoing our hopes and fears for the future and being willing to taste what is here before us, in all its poignant bittersweetness."

Quick, the dictionary: 1605, from L.L. vulnerabilis "wounding," from L. vulnerare "to wound," from vulnus (gen. vulneris) "wound," perhaps related to vellere "pluck, to tear."

There is, first in Greek mythology (Chiron et al) and later the work of C.G. Jung, the concept of the ‘wounded healer.’ It raises the question of whether a caregiver—be it a relative, volunteer or professional—can fully care for others who're wounded spiritually, emotionally, and physically, without first addressing trauma they may have experienced in their own lives.

R. Housden (2004), Seven sins for a life worth living, p.23. image: "Wounded Healer" by UK sculptor George Blair.