Mythology & Depth Psychology in the 21st Century | By Christopher Miller, Ph.D.

Myth & Justice II (“Roman Polanski & The Goddess Justice”)

Posted on November 5, 2009 by Chris

The last blog entry entitled Myth & Justice (“Image is Everything”) argued in essence that “everything is image.” The language, motifs, and images with which we surround ourselves come from deeply felt needs and intuitions within the psyche, or unconscious. From an inner sense these needs then take on outer form: the mythic sense is given concrete expression.

One example given of this concrete expression in the last entry was that of the plaques and/or monuments engraved with the Bible’s Ten Commandments. If one thinks about it, there is a certain irony in the very existence of these monuments as well as the court battles that have surrounded them in recent years. After all, the second of the Ten Commandments is: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth” (Exodus 20:4 KJV). The zeal with which these monuments are protected and court cases waged suggests that the proponents are themselves unknowingly caught in the grip of powerful images which, as the case would have it, have been graven or carved in stone. Whether they know it or not, these proponents are violating the very same commandment they seek to preserve.

The first of the Ten Commandments is also telling and ironic: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” (Exodus: 20:3 KJV). Here, the God of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) demands fealty from His subjects, but in so doing He at the same time admits the existence of other gods! While these commandments are deserving of their own series of blog entries, on a psychological level the existence of multiple gods, i.e., a pantheon, symbolizes the individualized embodied expressions of deeply felt psychic needs and energies. The injunction against graven images in the second commandment reflects to a substantial degree, then, the first commandment’s desire to have one psychic image or expression put above all the others.

Of course, the imagistic embodiment of psychic energies was and is not limited to gods but includes goddesses as well. One such Greek goddess is Themis whose Roman name is Iustitia, or Justice. A Google Images search quickly turns up some very interesting (even provocative) images of Themis, many of which are in the form of statues decorating courthouses around the world. The global presence of the Themis image strongly suggests the embodiment of energies still alive in and important to the human psyche – especially when it comes to the idea of justice.

Much could be said about Themis and the role she played in Greek mythology. I refer readers to From Ancient Myth to Modern Healing by Pamela Donleavy and Ann Shearer which bears the subtitle Themis: Goddess of Heart-Soul, Justice and Reconciliation. For the purposes of this blog series on Myth & Justice, Mythfire will provide only the briefest of insights into her symbolic meaning in this and the following entry.

The heart-soul in the subtitle just mentioned speaks to the idea that, born of the Titans, Themis is connected to the emotional and instinctual energies or passions that come into conflict with the more rational spirit-soul of the Olympians. This latter soul is characterized by adherence to transcendental and/or eternal principles and ideals. On some level, every person has both souls dueling within him or herself, a fact also noted by the great German writer Goethe:

“Two souls, alas, are housed within my breast,

And each will wrestle for mastery there.

The one has passions craving for crude love,

And hugs a world where sweet senses rage;

The other longs for pastures fair above,

Leaving the mark for lofty heritage.” *

My Fate Is In Your Hands. A recent article by Peter Bart about the Roman Polanski case currently in the public eye bears the title “Passions Polarize over Polanski’s Plight” which, while alliteration heavy, reflects along with the article’s content much the same battle of two souls as limned by Goethe and again in the above book by Donleavy and Shearer. The article title also testifies to the fact that the spirit-soul can be as passionate about its beliefs as the heart-soul. In the Polanski case, the spirit-soul is focused on his violation of both a young girl and the law when he raped her and then again when he fled the country. The heart-soul focuses on the “erratic behavior of the judge who mishandled the case 30 years ago,” the fact that Polanski did everything the judge asked of him, and, of course, Polanski’s own personal history, i.e. tragically losing his parents in the Holocaust and later his wife Sharon Tate to Charlie Manson’s murderous followers. One might say that the spirit-soul’s call is “Remember: no one is above the law,” to which the heart-soul gives this response: “Yes, but there are extenuating circumstances! Don’t you have a heart?!!?”

Bart closes his article with this statement: “I realize there are grounds for disagreement here, but the nastiness of the debate surprises me. If there is yet another act to be played out in the Polanski opera, one would hope it would be conducted with greater restraint and civility.”**

The next blog entry will continue to broach the question of how this “greater restraint and civility” might be realized between the warring passions of the spirit- and heart-souls. In the time of Ancient Greece and their mythology, it was realized in the figure of Themis – a goddess who arguably still speaks from within us today.

——–

*Faust, Part One (trans. Wayne), p. 67.

**http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118010350.html?categoryid=3745&cs=1&query=Polanski

Posted in Culture, Fundamentalism/Literalism, Justice, Myth | Leave a comment

Mythfire Responds (“Don’t Spook The Locals!”)

Posted on October 29, 2009 by Chris

A reader recently sent in an email to Mythfire with this question:

Been enjoying your blog. About that “sin of literalism,” isn’t it equally a sin to go too far to the other extreme (and what would you call that?)? The author chose to use a heavily freighted word (sin), when error would have been more succinct (I feel). And, he used literalism in a sense that implied an extreme form of literalism. Isn’t a certain amount of literalism required for basic communication?

The quote being referenced here was included in the blog entry from October 11, 2009, and comes from James Hollis’s book Archetypal Imagination. Here is the quote again along with the one that preceded it:

“In a poem titled ‘a High-toned Old Christian Woman,’ Wallace Stevens asserted that he, the poet, and she, the theologue, are about the same process, the making of fictions. But the poet remains metaphysically and psychologically free in his awareness of the fictive nature of all knowledge and the provisionality of all perspectives, while she remains trapped in her idolatrous literalism. Such fictions are necessary, coming from facere in Latin, meaning ‘to make,’ for all constructs are things made. To fall in love with our own constructs and believe that they contain the mystery is blasphemous, for such reification seeks to colonize the mystery on behalf of ego’s dominion.” (88)

“This modern sensibility is required since depth psychology has taught us that each statement about reality is an implicit Rorschach of our own mind. What Blake called ‘reorganized innocence’ is necessary to spare us from the sin of literalism, which is an unintended insult to the autonomy and complexity of mystery.” (89)

Sin is indeed a loaded or “heavily freighted” term. In his book Healing Fiction, James Hillman employs the phrase “disease of literalism” instead of “sin of literalism” (80). Hollis’s complaint in his above quote is directed against religious fundamentalism; Hillman’s complaint is essentially against philosophical materialism (“The theory that physical matter is the only reality and that everything, including thought, feeling, mind, and will, can be explained in terms of matter and physical phenomena” – American Heritage Dictionary). Both men are against the ego’s dominion over – or colonization of – the mystery that is life.

When he writes “sin of literalism,” Hollis most certainly also has in mind one or more etymological meanings of the word “sin.” In another book of his, Creating a Life, Hollis observes that “sin” is derived “from an archery term which means to miss the mark” (13). A quick search of the word “sin” online suggests that it is also linked in both its Ancient Greek and Biblical Hebrew forms with the meanings “offense” and “err.” Thus, the Mythfire reader is absolutely correct to suggest that “error” is a good word to use in place of “sin,” especially if the latter is taken to mean “to do evil” as is generally the case today.

For Hollis and Hillman, the error, offence, or the missing of the mark – the sin of literalism – is the belief that there is not more than meets the eye. What you see is the only thing you get. Bible verses, stories, and figures have only one possible meaning and, of course, it is not metaphorical or allegorical. And for the philosophical materialists, well, only matter matters. The spiritual dimension is quite literally nowhere to be seen.

As for the rest of the reader’s question, if the “sin of literalism” is the dominion of the ego (and colonization of the mystery), then the opposite extreme could be understood as the absence of the ego and/or its enslavement to the mystery. This can sometimes be seen in cults and New Age movements. Here, it is not the case that only matter matters, but its opposite: only that which is immaterial matters. Perhaps we could label this desire to forever be in a mystical state of loving union with the divine the “sin of immaterialism.” The problem of course is that while we may indeed have our head in the sky at times, it certainly is preferable to at the same time have two feet firmly planted on earth. (Jungian psychology refers to this balancing act of human relationship with the divine mystery “the ego-Self axis”).

Finally, yes, on several scores a certain amount of literalism is required for “basic communication.” Whether it is navigating traffic lights out in our car or navigating relationships with strangers, friends and loved ones, there certainly are rules of the road that are ignored at our own peril. This is where the ego part of the human-divine or ego-Self axis must be honored and given its due. Don’t run red lights and, when interacting with loved ones who are religious literalists (a.k.a. having a fundamentalist understanding of scripture), it’s more often than not advisable, and the more loving thing, to not step on their toes, i.e. their fundamental beliefs.

Or, in keeping with the upcoming Halloween weekend, a teacher of myth and psychology once put it this way: “Don’t spook the locals!”

—————

Been enjoying your blog.  About that "sin of literalism,” isn't it
equally a sin to go too far to the other extreme (and what would you
call that?)?  The author chose to use a heavily freighted word (sin), when error would have been more succinct (I feel).  And, he used
literalism in a sense that implied an extreme form of
literalism.  Isn't a certain amount of literalism required for basic
communication?

Posted in Fundamentalism/Literalism, Mythfire Responds | Leave a comment

Myth & Justice (“Image is Everything”)

Posted on October 25, 2009 by Chris

Are you questioning my authority?!!? One of the objectives of Mythfire is simply to build a deeper appreciation for what myth is. Another objective is to show how the combined study of myth and application of psychology contribute to a fuller picture of human nature. As Mythfire embarks on a series of entries on how myth and psychology might be applied to the contemporary understanding of justice, it may be good to first reiterate one or two ideas basic to the project:

“Nothing could be more mistaken than to assume that a myth is something ‘thought up.’ It comes into existence of its own accord, as can be observed in all authentic products of fantasy, and particularly in dreams. It is the hybris of consciousness to pretend that everything derives from its primacy, despite the fact that consciousness itself demonstrably comes from an older unconscious psyche.” *

And:

“The forms we use for assigning meaning are historical categories that reach back into the mists of time [. . .]. From whatever side we approach this question, everywhere we find ourselves confronted with the history of language, with images and motifs that lead straight back to the primitive wonder-world.” (CW 9i, para. 67)**

The first quote is included as a reminder – in light of the last couple blog entries – that “myth as fiction” does not mean that myth is “thought up” or “made up” by our conscious mind. Such a belief is ultimately reflective of the ego’s own hybris, or arrogance. Rather, myth is a product of the unconscious mind as it tries to address and adapt to the questions and challenges posed by reality. Myth is a necessary fiction required for self-preservation.

The second quote repeats this truism while at the same time it zeroes in on some of the fictional devices used by the myth-making self-preserving unconscious mind. Jung calls these devices “historical categories” and “forms we use for assigning meaning.” More commonly we know these mythic devices as language, images and motifs – a fact Jung also notes.

So – when Jung observes that “image is psyche,” (CW 13, §75), or James Hillman writes in this context that “According to Jung, the sine qua non of any consciousness whatsoever is the ‘psychic image,’” (Anima: An Anatomy 95), both men are not just saying that “image is everything” but also that “everything is image.” At any moment we are surrounded by language, images, and motifs created by the unconscious fantasy or myth-making mind (a.k.a. the “psyche” or soul) in its need to understand, make order out of, and create meaning for everyday existence.

When applied to the ideas of justice and jurisprudence, certain phrases, images and motifs have been generated by and taken root in the myth-making imagination or unconscious of the public. In “Myth and the Modern World,” the first chapter in The Power of Myth series of interviews Bill Moyer did with mythologist Joseph Campbell, Campbell mentions one of the best known such images:

“When a judge walks into the room, and everybody stands up, you’re not standing up to that guy, you’re standing up to the robe that he’s wearing and the role that he’s going to play. What makes him worthy of that role is his integrity, as a representative of the principles of that role, and not some group of prejudices of his own. So what you’re standing up to is a mythological character […]. When someone becomes a judge, or President of the United States, the man is no longer that man, he’s the representative of an eternal office; he has to sacrifice his personal desires and even life possibilities to the role that he now signifies.” (12)

This quote may be returned to later in the blog series in the context of the Roman Polanski case presently in the public eye. If the judge who was involved the first time around over thirty years ago engaged in half of the activities attributed to him in the documentary film Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, then he certainly was acting more from personal desires and prejudices than from the integrity expected of judges in their mythological role. To what extent this violation of sacred office should be taken into consideration as Polanski’s case moves forward is one of the questions waiting (and needing) to be answered.

In the U.S.A., other mythic images, motifs, and language associated with the justice system range from the phrase “no one is above the law” to that which is inscribed on the walls of many if not all courtrooms: “In God We Trust.” This phrase or motif lends a mythic sense of righteousness and ultimate authority to the proceedings in the same way as the judge in his robe. This very same mythic sense is also behind the news stories and court proceedings in recent years concerning whether or not plaques inscribed with the Bible’s Ten Commandments may or may not be located at properties belonging to executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government.

The problem in this last case, of course, is that the mythic sense has become literalized (and even literally “writ in stone”) so that mythic sense and concrete stone are confused as if they were one and the same. Again, this is reminiscent of Campbell’s analogy mentioned in an earlier blog of confusing the menu with the meal. Here, the plaque with the Ten Commandments is the menu representing something deeper and more substantial, namely the mythic image of righteousness and authority originating in the psyche. If we say that the Ten Commandments have a hold on the public imagination (or at least on certain members), what this means is that something deep in the psyche has for a time put on the Ten Commandments as a necessary fiction just as the judge puts on his robe. Authentic mythic awareness means in no small part to be able to see through the Ten Commandments to the seminal energies at their heart, to see through the robe of the judge to the idea of authority and righteousness, to see through the menu to the meal it really represents.

This is all to say, then, that the awareness of the power of myth (i.e., ofthe psychological underpinnings of mythic images, motifs, and language) facilitates distinctions such as that just made between the image-making unconscious and its concrete mythic expressions. The next blog entry will continue in this never-ending endeavor at the same time that it looks at an as yet unmentioned mythic image and how it reflects the way we perceive and practice justice.

*Jung, CW 10, “Civilization in Transition,” pp. 437-55.

**see 10.08.09 blog for entire quote

Posted in Imagination, Justice, Myth | Leave a comment

The Future of a Fiction – An Interlude (“In the Midst of Play”)

Posted on October 18, 2009 by Chris

Inter-lude: between, among, in the midst of + play

wolf spider ONE NIGHT A MAN HAS A STRANGE DREAM. He writes it down and takes it to his therapist / analyst. Sinking down into the comfy Lazy-Boy chair in the analyst’s office, he looks at the analyst and starts to recount his dream:

“It’s the strangest thing. I am in a large room in what seems to be maybe a castle or something. I’m not sure about that, but there are a lot of people, and we’re all seated facing a speaker at the front of the room. And the speaker is the Pope! You know, he’s talking about the need for religion and God today. He reads from some prepared notes and goes on and on. Suddenly, there is a shift of awareness in the room — as if people one moment had not been paying close attention to him but the next moment ALL EYES are on him. It’s like no one dares take a breath.”

The dreamer pauses and then continues:

“It takes me a second to realize why this is, but then it becomes abundantly clear what everyone is looking at: a spider has appeared on the Pope’s robe, or whatever you call that outfit he wears, right at his left shoulder. The spider crawls across the cloth of the robe and disappears around the Pope’s back. Then it re-appears again around the Pope’s neck to the right – our left as we’re watching, you know – and believe me, everyone is watching. Riveted. It’s like the whole world is watching this spider move about the body of the Head of all Christendom. Anyway, the spider moves down the Pope’s right arm and then back upwards toward the Pope’s neckline. But he just reads on, completely oblivious, no idea there’s this spider nonchalantly crawling all around him. In the end, the spider just heads back down the Pope’s left shoulder where it first appeared and the dream ends.”

The dreamer stops and sees that the analyst is looking at him. “You woke up?” “Yes,” replies the dreamer before continuing, “I wrote the dream down, and here I am.” After a second the dreamer continues, “It seemed so real.”

The analyst smiles. “Dreams do seem pretty real.” He then turns thoughtful. “What associations do you have to the Pope being in your dream?”

The dreamer doesn’t hesitate. “None. I’m a Presbyterian!”

“Hmmm…” says the analyst. (He has been known to utter “hmm” with some frequency). The analyst slowly stands from his chair and goes to a nearby bookcase. Running his fingers along the backs of the books on one shelf, he takes into hand what suspiciously looks like The Penguin Dictionary of Symbols. He opens it, presumably to the entry on spiders, maybe even page 903, and reads aloud: “While the spider’s thread is reminiscent of that of the Fates, as the Koran emphasizes, what is woven is of extreme fragility. ‘But verily, frailest of all houses surely is the house of the spider’ (Koran 29:40).”

He pauses a moment and then continues reading: “This fragility evokes the fragility of a reality which is no more than illusory and deceptive appearance.” He slowly closes the book and sends a sideways glance at the dreamer. “What if your dream is a big dream?”

“A big dream?” Instantly the dreamer feels himself puff up inwardly with pride at the sound of this – although he’s not entirely sure what “big dreams” are. The analyst comes to the rescue.

“Most of our dreams that we have are personal, reflective of something going on in the life of the dreamer,” the analyst begins. “They are very important to the life of the individual dreamer, of course. Sometimes, though, we have dreams that reveal something about the collective – not just the individual human being but society, maybe even humankind in its entirety. These are dreams coming up from the collective unconscious. Big dreams.”

The dreamer suddenly remembers something. “Do you mean like that dream that an analyst had and took to Jung? The one where a huge temple was being built by a lot of people. The analyst/ dreamer was building on gigantic pillars along with other people. He told Jung that in the dream the ‘whole building process was in its very beginnings, but the foundation was already there, and the rest of the building was starting to go up’ and that he and many other people were working on it.” **

“That is exactly what I mean by a collective big dream,” the analyst responds. “Do you know how Jung interpreted that dream?”

“I can’t remember,” the dreamer admits.

“Jung said, ‘that is the temple we all build on. We don’t know the people because […] they build in India and China and in Russia and all over the world. That is the new religion,’ Jung said.” The analyst pauses and looks somberly at the dreamer across from him, still sitting in the Lazy-Boy chair. “Do you know how long it’s going to take to build that temple? That new religion?”

“How long?”

“Six hundred years,” the analyst says. “Jung knew this from the dreams of his patients as well as from his own dreams. Pretty humbling, isn’t it?”

“Six hundred years,” the dreamer repeats soberly, perhaps even somewhat disbelievingly. Then the analyst says something even more surprising.

“I think your Pope dream may be saying something very similar.”

“Really?!!?” the dreamer says in shock.

“Yes,” the analyst begins. “The spider crawling all about the Pope with the Pope unaware of its presence might be saying something about the status of our present religious condition. About something fated to change, to transform into something else which is new.”

“Something new like what?” the dreamer asks, always preferring to have things spelled out for him.

“That depends on what we build, I suppose,” the analyst replies, always preferring not to spell things out.
Then he adds “And, of course, how much consciousness we bring to the building of it.”

The dreamer waits, hoping the analyst will say more.

The analyst opens his mouth to speak:

“Well….looks like our hour is up.”

“What?” The dreamer can’t believe it. He looks at the clock on the wall. How does this always happen?!!? The hour always ends when we’re just getting somewhere, he thinks to himself. He reluctantly rises from the Lazy-Boy and slowly heads for the door.

As the dreamer leaves, the analyst says one more thing to him: “See if another dream doesn’t come to you this week. You can bring it with you next time and we’ll take a look at it.”

The dreamer nods. At least the analyst didn’t say “Rome wasn’t built in a day” like he often does.

They say goodbye. The dreamer opens the door and goes out into the daylight world…

————————————-

**Zeller, Max. The Dream – The Vision of the Night. Los Angeles, CA: Analytical Psychology Club of Los Angeles & the C.G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles, 1975.

Posted in Dreams, Mythic Interludes, Play | 2 Comments

Myth & The Symbolic Attitude (Or “The Trappings of Orthodoxy”)

Posted on October 11, 2009 by Chris

I'm trapped!

The last blog began with and emphasized the importance of “play” when discussing myth. The entry ended by linking myth to mystery. The present blog continues what might be considered an introduction to myth by describing one or two things that myth is not. I have already suggested that myth is not a lie. However, paradoxically, this does not mean that it is not a fiction:

This quote is taken from James Hollis’s The Archetypal Imagination. He continues:

In other words, myth is a fictional construct and it is not meant to be taken literally (at which point it is no longer myth but dogma). [What depth psychology has to say about possible transcendent and immanent sources of myth no doubt will be discussed in future blogs along with some of their religious &/or metaphysical implications].

Here, Hollis speaks of myths, or necessary fictions, as those constructs that keep us free of the sin of literalism, give us room to breathe (or in the spirit of the last blog, room to play); at the same time they keep us connected on some level to the mystery represented in such capitalized words as Creation and Creator and such big questions as “Who am I?” “Where do I come from?” “Why am I here?” “Where am I going?” et cetera.

The “modern sensibility” of Hollis’s second quote, then, is not a literalistic one. What it is, from a depth psychological way of seeing things, is a symbolic approach or attitude.

Professor and psychotherapist Don Fredericksen draws much the same comparison in his discussion of semiotic versus symbolic approaches (in this case to filmic images). In a nutshell, semiotics argues that an image, or sign, represents one and only one thing, and that one thing is knowable. Thus semiotics, in this example, commits the sin of literalism:

“The limiting character of the semiotic attitude involves a clear hubris of – and often a fear by – the rational and the conscious mind toward the irrational and the unconscious mind. Throughout his life Jung warned against this hubris, without ever denying the absolute necessity of reason and consciousness in one’s striving for self-realization. For Jung, the point is not to identify with either the conscious or the unconscious mind, but to forge and keep a living tie between them. To this end a symbolic attitude is crucial, because symbols rising from the deep layers of the unconscious are precisely that tie made manifest.” (“Jung/Sign/Symbol/Film” 28).

It might be a good exercise to re-read the above quote while substituting the word “literalistic” for “semiotic.” The difference between semiotics and/or the literal on the one hand and the symbolic on the other will to a certain degree underscore most if not all of the blogs at Mythfire. Hopefully in time the difference will be made more apparent.

Mythologist Joseph Campbell once said that embracing a literal approach is like confusing a menu with the meal. If you believe that the menu (say mythological or religious stories) is literally true, representing only historical events not interpretable in any other way, you miss out on both the rich symbolic meaning behind the images and myths as well as an authentic relationship with the ultimate mystery. Or as Campbell said, you confuse the menu with the meal and end up eating cardboard.

Put differently, if the trappings of any orthodox religion, i.e. rites, sacred scriptures, stories, images, figures, leaders, etc., are taken as reflecting or having the one and only “right opinion” (Gk orthodoxos) – then all other opinions or symbolic readings are out of the question. In Hollis’s words, we are, like Wallace Stevens’ theologue, “trapped in…idolatrous literalism.”

This way of literalistic (or fundamentalist) thinking and this type of idolatry, of course, need not be strictly limited to orthodox / organized religion. Nor, finally, are all examples of organized religion guilty of “the sin of literalism” to the same degree.

——–

Posted in Fundamentalism/Literalism, Imagination, Myth, Play, Symbols | Leave a comment