Wednesday, June 12, 2002
"Generally speaking shamans have good reason to be leery of psychology, which historically has dismissed shamans as schizophrenics, epileptics, and hysterics. Jung, who at least does not pathologize shamanism, nevertheless seems to denigrate it when he says that shamanism works out of a 'primitive mentality' which sees the psyche as 'outside the body,' whereas we denizens of the 20th Century West have no choice but to view the psyche as 'inside.' What separates shamanism and psychotherapy, in short, is a clash of metaphysics. Mainstream psychotherapy--including much that is Jungian--locates the real 'inside' and constructs a topography of drives, instincts, archetypes, complexes, and the like to explain our experience as the result of 'interior dynamics.' Meanwhile shamanism locates the real 'outside' and maps a greater cosmos comprised of a Lower World, Middle World, Upper World, and the entities that live in them, in order to explain our experience in terms of 'exterior dynamics'." --Taking Directions from the Spirit by John Ryan Haule
"In 1925, at the age of 50, Jung visited the Taos Pueblo in New Mexico... Ochwiay Biano, the chief, shared that his Pueblo people felt whites were 'mad,' uneasy and restless, always wanting something. Jung inquired further about why he thought they were mad. The chief replied that white people say they think with their heads - a sign of illness in his tribe. 'Why of course,' said Jung,'what do you think with?' Ochwiay Biano indicated his heart. Jung reported falling into a 'long meditation,' in which he grasped for the first time how deeply colonialism had effected his character and psyche..." --Individuation, Seeing-through, and Liberation: Depth Psychology and Colonialism
Ariyon Deborah Salt
The International Association for Analytical Psychology
The C.G. Jung Foundation for Analytical Psychology
The Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts
The New York Centre for Jungian Studies
The C. G. Jung Center of New York
The C.G. Jung Institute of New York
Jung Society of Atlanta
The Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism
The Groundworks Institute
Re•Vision
TCG
Archetypical Psychology
Metaphysical Perspective
David Ulansey
Quadrant: The Journal of Contemporary Jungian Thought
Inner City Books: Studies in Jungian Psychology by Jungian Analysts
Analytical Psychology Books
Spring Publications
Chiron Publications
Daimon Publishers
Karnac Books
Chthonios Books
Jung Lexicon
"Jung's radical view of mental illness, specifically schizophrenia, as primarily psychogenic, had the important clinical application of viewing psychological symptoms not just as evidence of pathology to be cured (as Freud thought), but as meaningful personal communications, potentially capable of being understood through psychotherapy, and of being accepted and integrated, thus ridding the symptoms of their numinous power. This view surely underpins the Jungian analytic goal of individuation. It is also very seriously at risk in mainstream psychiatry today, with its increasingly genetic or biochemically-based view of the aetiology of mental illness, its emphasis on drug treatments as 'cure' and its demand for brief models of therapy, again judged by swiftness of symptom relief. While post-Jungian medical research has established that there are undoubtedly biochemical and genetic contributing factors to much psychopathology... again I would argue that this is only a partial, incomplete way of understanding the workings of the psyche." --Metaphor, mysticism and madness
"The preeminent authorities on modern Gnosticism are Eric Voeglin, the political philosopher, and Hans Jonas, the existentialist philosopher and Gnostic scholar. For Voegelin, modern Gnosticism encompasses 'Such movements as progressivism, positivism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, communism, fascism, and national socialism.' Voegelin goes so far as to define modernity per se as 'the growth of gnosticism.' Moreover, modernity for Vegelin is no recent phenomenon. It begins 'perhaps as early as the ninth century.' Leading modern Gnostics for him include Joachim of Fiore, More, Calvin, Hobbes, Hegel, Comte, Marx, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Hitler. Modern Gnostic individuals and movements share six characteristics that Voegelin calls 'the gnostic attitude': dissatisfaction with the world, confidence that the ills of the world stem from the way it is organized, certainty that amelioration is possible, the assumption that improvement must 'evolve historically,' the belief that humanity can change the world, and the conviction that knowledge--gnosis--is the key to change.
Where Voegelin seeks to show the Gnositc nature of modernity, Jonas seeks to show the modern nature of Gnosticism. Jonas draws parallels between ancient Gnosticism and modern, secular existentialism to prove that Gnosticism is existentialist, not that existentialism is Gnostic. For Jonas, both philosophies stress above all the radical alienation of human beings from the world.
Initially, Jonas assumed that existentialism was the key to Gnosticism because it was the key to all worldviews. Gradually, he came to see existentialism as a particular worldview and consequently to see Gnosticism not as the ancient version of existentialism but as its ancient counterpart: 'There is one situation, and one only that I know of in the history of Western man, where... that [existentialist] condition has been realized and lived out with all the vehemence of a cataclysimc event. That is the gnostic movement.'" --"The Gnostic Jung" by Robert A. Segal
"The eternal Tao or great Tao had many names representing the idea that there is an eternal law or principle at work, underlying what appeared as a perpetually changing world in motion. Taoists referred to it by many names, including the Primal Unity and Source, the Cosmic Mother, the Infiite and Ineffable Principle of Life, the One. Tao has been referred to as the right, the moral order, the principle, the nature of life forces, the idea of the world, the method, ofr the way. Some even have translated it as God. Richard Wilhelm, the sinologist and translator fo the I Ching translated Tao as 'meaning.' In many respects, the concept of Tao resembles the Greek concept of logos. In modern translations of the New Testament into Chinese, logos is translated as Tao; the Gospel of St. John then opens, 'In the beginning was the Tao.'" --The Tao of Psychology: Synchronicity and the Self
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