This talk derives from a chapter in my 2019 book, "Two Souls Alas... Jung's Two Personalities and... more This talk derives from a chapter in my 2019 book, "Two Souls Alas... Jung's Two Personalities and the Making of Analytical Psychology". The video was originally a contribution to the Freedom Day Global Edition: 1º Congresso Internacional Online de Psicologia Analítica
This talk addresses Jung's relationship to science. My suggestion is that Jung developed a scienc... more This talk addresses Jung's relationship to science. My suggestion is that Jung developed a science that, at its best, engages with conventional scientific discourse by subverting it. This is consistent with a broadly individuational approach.
In MDR Jung explicates what he calls his ‘personal myth’ – a narrative that is foundational to hi... more In MDR Jung explicates what he calls his ‘personal myth’ – a narrative that is foundational to his psychology because it places at its heart the uniqueness of the individual’s psychological development. This chapter addresses an unresolved problem inherent to the notion of ‘personal myth’. If the myth in question is indeed personal, and if the personal equation, as Jung himself tells us, tends to distort one’s psychological perspective, then to what extent has Jung’s own personal myth smuggled Jung’s own biases and blind-spots into analytical psychology itself? The mythic narrative of what Jung calls his ‘two personalities’ is explored and it is suggested that it functions within MDR as a foundational parable, grounding in Jung’s own experience what shows up in the psychology as a persistent emphasis upon psychic balance and the dangers of one-sidedness. In practice, however, Jung was not always able to maintain such a balance. An examination of Jung’s relationship with Freud reveals the distorting and destructive effects of Jung’s one-sidedness in his life and work.
This paper responds to a recent paper by Wolfgang Giegerich entitled ‘Two Jungs: apropos a paper ... more This paper responds to a recent paper by Wolfgang Giegerich entitled ‘Two Jungs: apropos a paper by Mark Saban’. Giegerich disputes my assertion that the ‘rigorous notion’ at the heart of his psychology ‘finds no source in Jung's psychology, implicit or explicit’. In order to do this he posits the existence of two Jungs, an exoteric Jung and an esoteric Jung. The implications of Giegerich's binary scission of Jung are explored in this paper, and show that the tendency to exalt one Jung while disparaging the other betrays a comprehensive blindness toward the contradictory complexity of Jung's psychology as a whole. It is suggested that this blindness is the consequence of Giegerich's systematic prioritization of a neo‐Hegelian agenda that is in profound conflict with the telos of Jung's psychology.
International Journal of Jungian Studies, Sep 2, 2014
Mills' paper tackles an important question for Jungian studies: what are the underlying metap... more Mills' paper tackles an important question for Jungian studies: what are the underlying metaphysical assumptions behind analytical psychology? However, his attempt to pursue this inquiry is undermined by a strong but unsupportable insistence by Mills that Jung intended to present himself primarily as an ontologist. I also argue that various further inaccuracies and misreadings lead Mills into a fundamental misunderstanding of the intentions and aims that characterise Jung's psychology.
This extensive article feels like it is written by a son who was not recognized by the Father and... more This extensive article feels like it is written by a son who was not recognized by the Father and who, now that Dad is dead, will try to reduce him to a pathetic failure, a dishonest puer, a traitor to Jung. All the while, Jung (the Good Father) is elevated to the level of the One and Only God of Individuation Theory, right about everything. Tacey has the honesty to warn us, ‘It may seem that the critique offered in this paper is the work of yet another Oedipus intent on murdering the father, but my hope is it may serve as an attempt to understand the reason why such a brilliant thinker became derailed’ (Tacey 2, p. 500). Sure enough! Tacey, the long-suffering student, and later the colleague with whom Hillman would not engage, wants to convince the reader thatHillman failed to individuate, stole everything from Jung, had nothing original to say and ultimately died an abject failure. Tacey contrasts Hillman’s lack of individuation to his own successful maturation: Tacey, contrary to Hillman, had the courage to grow up, become conscious of his complexes, go beyond imagination, and finally, individuated— thanks to Jung and von Franz, whose theories are valid—he comes to the realization that Hillman’s theories are not; in fact following Hillman for all these years was the biggest mistake of his life. Hillman, he regrets, did not tell him how to live his life, to fulfill ‘the developmental requirements of masculine consciousness’ (Tacey 2, p. 498). The reasoning here is that if Dad did not tell me how to live, it means Dad is a failure. It is Hillman who is made responsible for all the years when Tacey was being lost in the realm of imagination which, for Tacey, is Neverland: abandonment to Neverland is laid at Hillman’s doorstep.
Given his lifelong battle against one-sidedness Jung's persistent prioritising of the 'inner life... more Given his lifelong battle against one-sidedness Jung's persistent prioritising of the 'inner life' over the 'outer' can seem problematic. The question is raised as to whether an approach that seems to verge uncomfortably close to solipsism can sometimes render Jung blind to the intuition that psychic life is constituted by an ongoing interplay between inner and outer, self and other (an intuition that he himself sometimes articulated so brilliantly). The 'ambiguation' of Jung's work offers an opportunity to confront this problem by utilising a critical dynamic that is consistent with Jung's psychological insights.
Disappointingly, Barreto's lurid claim to have revealed a nefarious 'hidden goal' within my paper... more Disappointingly, Barreto's lurid claim to have revealed a nefarious 'hidden goal' within my paper turns out to merely underline his failure to grasp the full nature of my argument. In fact, the conclusion my paper reaches (that Giegerich's psychology is irrelevant to modern Jungians) is quite clearly implicit in my stated intention (to show that 'the 'rigorous notion' at [the] centre [of Giegerich's psychology] finds no source in Jung's psychology'). Giegerich explicitly grounds his own importance to Jungian psychology upon a single claim: that he alone provides an immanent critique of Jung. By casting doubt upon such a claim, I have therefore also cast doubt upon his relevance to analytical psychology-the very relevance which Giegerich claims for himself. Given this context, the broad question of 'who owns Jung' as Barreto puts it, does indeed dominate my paper, precisely because this is the subtext of much of Giegerich's own work. Let me remind the reader that Giegerich's key work, The Soul's Logical Life (Giegerich 2008) expounds his, Giegerich's, claim to have identified the 'Notion' at the heart of Jungian psychology and therefore to be its true inheritor. Readers of the chapter entitled 'Jungians: immunity to the Notion' (ibid., pp. 79-101), and particularly the section entitled 'Polemic vs. conventional Jungianism' (ibid., pp. 81-87) (in which Giegerich attacks Jungians for having betrayed this implicit 'Notion') may be amused by Barreto's hilarious representation of Giegerich as a tolerant pluralist who welcomes many different approaches to Jung. This improbable depiction is also conspicuously undermined by Giegerich's numerous and ferocious polemical attacks on those individual Jungians who have had the temerity to offer approaches alternative to his own. (See, for example, Giegerich 1975, 2010a, 2010b, 2010c, 2012a, 2012b). Strangely, I am the one Barreto accuses of 'fundamentalism' and of 'moralism'. Let me be clear: I have done my best to show respect for the context and meaning of those texts by Jung which I understand Giegerich to have skewed and distorted. Moreover, I have tried to articulate and passionately argue for a particular understanding of Jung's psychology. Finally, I have admitted a preference for an interpretation that does justice to the whole of Jung rather than one that disfigures and dismembers him. If this adds up to fundamentalism and moralism so be it.
This paper attempts to address the problematic of the other in analytical psychology. Despite the... more This paper attempts to address the problematic of the other in analytical psychology. Despite the important contributions of Papadopoulos (1991, 2002) and Huskinson (2000, 2002) this question has not received the attention it warrants. Read in the light of Levinas' writings on otherness, Jung's tendency to characterize the self as unitary, autonomous and undivided may be seen as a defence against or even an erasure of otherness. However, a Derridean revisioning of this approach suggests that the ambiguities and paradoxes which Jung insisted were intrinsic to his intuitions about the self-concept have the potential to evoke a remarkably subtle vision of Selfhood manifesting within the very tensions generated between Same and Other. In conclusion, this experience of Selfhood is amplified in the light of some of the insights of contemporary German philosopher Waldenfels, with particular attention to the role of pathos in the encounter with alterity.
In his review of Memories Dreams Reflections, Winnicott diagnosed Jung as suffering from a psychi... more In his review of Memories Dreams Reflections, Winnicott diagnosed Jung as suffering from a psychic split, and characterized the content and the structure of analytical psychology as primarily moulded and conditioned by Jung's own defensive quest for a ‘self that he could call his own’. This pathologizing analysis continues to be endorsed by contemporary Jungian writers. In this paper I attempt to show that Winnicott's critique is fundamentally misguided because it derives from a psychoanalytic model of the psyche, a model that regards all dissociation as necessarily pathological. I argue that Jung's understanding of the psyche differs radically from this model, and further, that it conforms by and large to the kind of dissociative model that we find in the writings of Frederic Myers, William James and Theodor Flournoy. I conclude that a fruitful relationship between psychoanalysis and analytical psychology must depend upon an awareness of these important differences between the two psychic models.
International Journal of Jungian Studies, Mar 1, 2012
Jung's psychology is founded upon this problem: ‘Somewhere deep in the background I always kn... more Jung's psychology is founded upon this problem: ‘Somewhere deep in the background I always knew that I was two persons’ (Jung & Jaffé, 1977, pp. 61–62). I intend to read the disquieting tension of this problematic as haunting everything he wrote. My thesis is that Jung's perspective is both enchanted and disenchanted and, moreover, that this antinomial tension makes him and his psychology peculiarly modern. Utilising recent scholarship on the modern occult, which has placed enchantment at the centre of modernity, this paper argues for a peculiarly modern disenchanted enchantment that Jung's psychology both exemplifies and explores.
This talk derives from a chapter in my 2019 book, "Two Souls Alas... Jung's Two Personalities and... more This talk derives from a chapter in my 2019 book, "Two Souls Alas... Jung's Two Personalities and the Making of Analytical Psychology". The video was originally a contribution to the Freedom Day Global Edition: 1º Congresso Internacional Online de Psicologia Analítica
This talk addresses Jung's relationship to science. My suggestion is that Jung developed a scienc... more This talk addresses Jung's relationship to science. My suggestion is that Jung developed a science that, at its best, engages with conventional scientific discourse by subverting it. This is consistent with a broadly individuational approach.
In MDR Jung explicates what he calls his ‘personal myth’ – a narrative that is foundational to hi... more In MDR Jung explicates what he calls his ‘personal myth’ – a narrative that is foundational to his psychology because it places at its heart the uniqueness of the individual’s psychological development. This chapter addresses an unresolved problem inherent to the notion of ‘personal myth’. If the myth in question is indeed personal, and if the personal equation, as Jung himself tells us, tends to distort one’s psychological perspective, then to what extent has Jung’s own personal myth smuggled Jung’s own biases and blind-spots into analytical psychology itself? The mythic narrative of what Jung calls his ‘two personalities’ is explored and it is suggested that it functions within MDR as a foundational parable, grounding in Jung’s own experience what shows up in the psychology as a persistent emphasis upon psychic balance and the dangers of one-sidedness. In practice, however, Jung was not always able to maintain such a balance. An examination of Jung’s relationship with Freud reveals the distorting and destructive effects of Jung’s one-sidedness in his life and work.
This paper responds to a recent paper by Wolfgang Giegerich entitled ‘Two Jungs: apropos a paper ... more This paper responds to a recent paper by Wolfgang Giegerich entitled ‘Two Jungs: apropos a paper by Mark Saban’. Giegerich disputes my assertion that the ‘rigorous notion’ at the heart of his psychology ‘finds no source in Jung's psychology, implicit or explicit’. In order to do this he posits the existence of two Jungs, an exoteric Jung and an esoteric Jung. The implications of Giegerich's binary scission of Jung are explored in this paper, and show that the tendency to exalt one Jung while disparaging the other betrays a comprehensive blindness toward the contradictory complexity of Jung's psychology as a whole. It is suggested that this blindness is the consequence of Giegerich's systematic prioritization of a neo‐Hegelian agenda that is in profound conflict with the telos of Jung's psychology.
International Journal of Jungian Studies, Sep 2, 2014
Mills' paper tackles an important question for Jungian studies: what are the underlying metap... more Mills' paper tackles an important question for Jungian studies: what are the underlying metaphysical assumptions behind analytical psychology? However, his attempt to pursue this inquiry is undermined by a strong but unsupportable insistence by Mills that Jung intended to present himself primarily as an ontologist. I also argue that various further inaccuracies and misreadings lead Mills into a fundamental misunderstanding of the intentions and aims that characterise Jung's psychology.
This extensive article feels like it is written by a son who was not recognized by the Father and... more This extensive article feels like it is written by a son who was not recognized by the Father and who, now that Dad is dead, will try to reduce him to a pathetic failure, a dishonest puer, a traitor to Jung. All the while, Jung (the Good Father) is elevated to the level of the One and Only God of Individuation Theory, right about everything. Tacey has the honesty to warn us, ‘It may seem that the critique offered in this paper is the work of yet another Oedipus intent on murdering the father, but my hope is it may serve as an attempt to understand the reason why such a brilliant thinker became derailed’ (Tacey 2, p. 500). Sure enough! Tacey, the long-suffering student, and later the colleague with whom Hillman would not engage, wants to convince the reader thatHillman failed to individuate, stole everything from Jung, had nothing original to say and ultimately died an abject failure. Tacey contrasts Hillman’s lack of individuation to his own successful maturation: Tacey, contrary to Hillman, had the courage to grow up, become conscious of his complexes, go beyond imagination, and finally, individuated— thanks to Jung and von Franz, whose theories are valid—he comes to the realization that Hillman’s theories are not; in fact following Hillman for all these years was the biggest mistake of his life. Hillman, he regrets, did not tell him how to live his life, to fulfill ‘the developmental requirements of masculine consciousness’ (Tacey 2, p. 498). The reasoning here is that if Dad did not tell me how to live, it means Dad is a failure. It is Hillman who is made responsible for all the years when Tacey was being lost in the realm of imagination which, for Tacey, is Neverland: abandonment to Neverland is laid at Hillman’s doorstep.
Given his lifelong battle against one-sidedness Jung's persistent prioritising of the 'inner life... more Given his lifelong battle against one-sidedness Jung's persistent prioritising of the 'inner life' over the 'outer' can seem problematic. The question is raised as to whether an approach that seems to verge uncomfortably close to solipsism can sometimes render Jung blind to the intuition that psychic life is constituted by an ongoing interplay between inner and outer, self and other (an intuition that he himself sometimes articulated so brilliantly). The 'ambiguation' of Jung's work offers an opportunity to confront this problem by utilising a critical dynamic that is consistent with Jung's psychological insights.
Disappointingly, Barreto's lurid claim to have revealed a nefarious 'hidden goal' within my paper... more Disappointingly, Barreto's lurid claim to have revealed a nefarious 'hidden goal' within my paper turns out to merely underline his failure to grasp the full nature of my argument. In fact, the conclusion my paper reaches (that Giegerich's psychology is irrelevant to modern Jungians) is quite clearly implicit in my stated intention (to show that 'the 'rigorous notion' at [the] centre [of Giegerich's psychology] finds no source in Jung's psychology'). Giegerich explicitly grounds his own importance to Jungian psychology upon a single claim: that he alone provides an immanent critique of Jung. By casting doubt upon such a claim, I have therefore also cast doubt upon his relevance to analytical psychology-the very relevance which Giegerich claims for himself. Given this context, the broad question of 'who owns Jung' as Barreto puts it, does indeed dominate my paper, precisely because this is the subtext of much of Giegerich's own work. Let me remind the reader that Giegerich's key work, The Soul's Logical Life (Giegerich 2008) expounds his, Giegerich's, claim to have identified the 'Notion' at the heart of Jungian psychology and therefore to be its true inheritor. Readers of the chapter entitled 'Jungians: immunity to the Notion' (ibid., pp. 79-101), and particularly the section entitled 'Polemic vs. conventional Jungianism' (ibid., pp. 81-87) (in which Giegerich attacks Jungians for having betrayed this implicit 'Notion') may be amused by Barreto's hilarious representation of Giegerich as a tolerant pluralist who welcomes many different approaches to Jung. This improbable depiction is also conspicuously undermined by Giegerich's numerous and ferocious polemical attacks on those individual Jungians who have had the temerity to offer approaches alternative to his own. (See, for example, Giegerich 1975, 2010a, 2010b, 2010c, 2012a, 2012b). Strangely, I am the one Barreto accuses of 'fundamentalism' and of 'moralism'. Let me be clear: I have done my best to show respect for the context and meaning of those texts by Jung which I understand Giegerich to have skewed and distorted. Moreover, I have tried to articulate and passionately argue for a particular understanding of Jung's psychology. Finally, I have admitted a preference for an interpretation that does justice to the whole of Jung rather than one that disfigures and dismembers him. If this adds up to fundamentalism and moralism so be it.
This paper attempts to address the problematic of the other in analytical psychology. Despite the... more This paper attempts to address the problematic of the other in analytical psychology. Despite the important contributions of Papadopoulos (1991, 2002) and Huskinson (2000, 2002) this question has not received the attention it warrants. Read in the light of Levinas' writings on otherness, Jung's tendency to characterize the self as unitary, autonomous and undivided may be seen as a defence against or even an erasure of otherness. However, a Derridean revisioning of this approach suggests that the ambiguities and paradoxes which Jung insisted were intrinsic to his intuitions about the self-concept have the potential to evoke a remarkably subtle vision of Selfhood manifesting within the very tensions generated between Same and Other. In conclusion, this experience of Selfhood is amplified in the light of some of the insights of contemporary German philosopher Waldenfels, with particular attention to the role of pathos in the encounter with alterity.
In his review of Memories Dreams Reflections, Winnicott diagnosed Jung as suffering from a psychi... more In his review of Memories Dreams Reflections, Winnicott diagnosed Jung as suffering from a psychic split, and characterized the content and the structure of analytical psychology as primarily moulded and conditioned by Jung's own defensive quest for a ‘self that he could call his own’. This pathologizing analysis continues to be endorsed by contemporary Jungian writers. In this paper I attempt to show that Winnicott's critique is fundamentally misguided because it derives from a psychoanalytic model of the psyche, a model that regards all dissociation as necessarily pathological. I argue that Jung's understanding of the psyche differs radically from this model, and further, that it conforms by and large to the kind of dissociative model that we find in the writings of Frederic Myers, William James and Theodor Flournoy. I conclude that a fruitful relationship between psychoanalysis and analytical psychology must depend upon an awareness of these important differences between the two psychic models.
International Journal of Jungian Studies, Mar 1, 2012
Jung's psychology is founded upon this problem: ‘Somewhere deep in the background I always kn... more Jung's psychology is founded upon this problem: ‘Somewhere deep in the background I always knew that I was two persons’ (Jung & Jaffé, 1977, pp. 61–62). I intend to read the disquieting tension of this problematic as haunting everything he wrote. My thesis is that Jung's perspective is both enchanted and disenchanted and, moreover, that this antinomial tension makes him and his psychology peculiarly modern. Utilising recent scholarship on the modern occult, which has placed enchantment at the centre of modernity, this paper argues for a peculiarly modern disenchanted enchantment that Jung's psychology both exemplifies and explores.
In this chapter I intend to think psychoanalysis, and particularly Jung's analytical psychology i... more In this chapter I intend to think psychoanalysis, and particularly Jung's analytical psychology in conjunction with the idea of theatre, and with the god of theatre -Dionysus. There is a theatrical aspect to psychotherapy, and perhaps a therapeutic aspect to theatre, that have been, for various reasons, articulated only rarely. 1
I want to try to unpack an idea in this paper: the idea is that Jung's model of the psyche, which... more I want to try to unpack an idea in this paper: the idea is that Jung's model of the psyche, which is, as I shall try to explain, a dissociationist model, brings with it certain political implications and possibilities. So, first of all I shall look at what I mean by 'dissociationist' and why I think Jung's model earns this description. Second I want to explore what such a model might imply when it comes to politics, and thirdly I want to give an example of how Jung's failure to be consistent with his own psychic model delivered some catastrophic political results.
The logos of the soul requires a way of seeing outside of the positive, everyday seeing which ego... more The logos of the soul requires a way of seeing outside of the positive, everyday seeing which ego consciousness utilizes. By exploring the kind of seeing we find in the theatrical event, (specifically the complex relationship between audience and performer) and comparing theatre with Jung's writings on dream and active imagination, themes of reflexivity and reciprocity are highlighted. A reading of Euripides' Bacchae reveals that to see the psychic image means to be seen by it and that this reflexive theoria is Dionysian, displaying a logos that, through its profoundly paradoxical nature moves beyond the subject/object dichotomy.
Abstract:
The logos of the soul requires a way of seeing outside of the positive, everyday seein... more Abstract:
The logos of the soul requires a way of seeing outside of the positive, everyday seeing which ego
consciousness utilizes. By exploring the kind of seeing we find in the theatrical event, (specifically
the complex relationship between audience and performer) and comparing theatre with Jung’s
writings on dream and active imagination, themes of reflexivity and reciprocity are highlighted. A
reading of Euripides’ Bacchae reveals that to see the psychic image means to be seen by it and that
this reflexive theoria is Dionysian, displaying a logos that, through its profoundly paradoxical nature
moves beyond the subject/object dichotomy.
Keywords:
Theatre, Jung on Active Imagination, Seeing the psychic image, Dionysian, Paradox, Subject/Object.
A paper delivered at the inaugural conference of the International Society for Psychology as the ... more A paper delivered at the inaugural conference of the International Society for Psychology as the Discipline of Interiority (ISPDI) in Berlin July 2012. After a lengthy and animated online debate (in the online Forum of the ISPDI), on September 19th 2012 Giegerich published (on the website of the ISPDI) a thirty five page rebuttal of my position(s). This paper is available to non-members and may be found at http://ispdi.org/images/stories/PDFdocuments/Saban's%20Alternative.n.pdf In the wake of this, several people have privately asked me if they could read my original paper. Here it is. Those interested in further developments might also like to read an article by Sean McGrath, published in June 2013 in the International Journal for Jungian Studies, entitled ‘The question concerning metaphysics: a Schellingian intervention in analytical psychology’
Jung’s psychology is founded upon this problem: ‘Somewhere deep in the background I always knew t... more Jung’s psychology is founded upon this problem: ‘Somewhere deep in the background I always knew that I was two persons’ (Jung & Jaffé, 1977, pp. 61-62). I intend to read the disquieting tension of this problematic as haunting everything he wrote. My thesis is that Jung’s perspective is both enchanted and disenchanted: and, moreover, that this antinomial tension makes him and his psychology peculiarly modern. Utilising recent scholarship on the modern occult which has placed enchantment at the centre of modernity, this paper argues for a peculiarly modern disenchanted enchantment which Jung’s psychology both exemplifies and explores.
My aim in this chapter is to examine Gilbert Simondon's philosophy of individuation from a very p... more My aim in this chapter is to examine Gilbert Simondon's philosophy of individuation from a very partial perspective: that of Jung's psychology. Simondon has, I think, some things to say that might enrich the ways in which we might approach key aspects of analytical psychology. I am a Jungian analyst and not a philosopher. I am very aware that this means I am in danger of doing what Jungians (and Jung himself) have historically been very good at doing: colonising alien disciplines, appropriating (and thereby distorting) the fruits of those disciplines, and forcing the whole into service for the greater good of Jungian psychology. The pages of Jungian journals are littered with half-digested, half-thought neuroscience, quantum physics, postmodern philosophy-in much the same way they used to be strewn with barely understood ideas from anthropology, ethology, and theology. In this case, however, I am encouraged by the important fact that Simondon is a member of a very select group: important modern thinkers who have not only read Jung, but quote him, and not only quote him but quote him approvingly, and not only quote him approvingly but incorporate and develop his ideas within their philosophy. Simondon is then capable of thinking forward-rigorously and critically-what Jung describes as the "central concept of [his] psychology" (Jung, 1989, p. 209): the "individuation process". One might suggest that he is capable of individuating individuation.
It is impossible to do justice to the question of Jung's relationship to science if it is approac... more It is impossible to do justice to the question of Jung's relationship to science if it is approached solely from within Jungian discourse. Until Shamdasani's (2003) groundbreaking Jung and the Making of Modern Psychology, there had been little scholarly interest in locating analytical psychology in a wider cultural or historical context [1]. Writings about analytical psychology tended to come from a narrowly Jungian perspective, and were mostly aimed at a narrowly Jungian audience. With regard to the question of science, this endemic parochialism shows up in the form of two contrasting approaches: one characterized by a persistent tone of embattled intellectual defensiveness (Zurich as bunker), and the other which enthusiastically trumpeted any scientific discovery (whether in ethology, quantum physics, or evolutionary science) which could be shown (however implausibly) to prove that Jung had been right all along. Behind these equally unedifying approaches it is possible to distinguish two distinct positions within the tradition of analytical psychology: the first approach, which we might describe as aggressively archetypalist, recognises science as only one archetypal or mythic mode amongst many, while the second derives from a defensive need to obtain recognition for Jungian psychology within the official scientific world at all costs (in order that it might eventually take up its rightful place as a true science). Each of these responses derives from, and can be defended by, a partial reading of Jung; and each reading maintains its claim to validity for as long as its alternative is ignored. It is my contention that a reading of Jung which attempts to overcome this partiality by acknowledging the importance of both aspects to Jung's thought not only has the advantage of being truer to Jung's psychology as a whole psychology, but also offers the only way to gain an better understanding of what Jung intended to achieve with that psychology. My contention is that while Jung's psychology does indeed seek to be seen as part of the western scientific tradition, it does so by offering a radical re-visioning of certain aspects of the very science within which it operates. In order to understand this, we need to recognise the context of Jung's ideas within the wider history of European thought. Such a recognition is in no way intended to diminish the value of Jung's psychology, but rather to allow its full heuristic potential to be released.
Uploads
Videos by Mark Saban
Papers by Mark Saban
The logos of the soul requires a way of seeing outside of the positive, everyday seeing which ego
consciousness utilizes. By exploring the kind of seeing we find in the theatrical event, (specifically
the complex relationship between audience and performer) and comparing theatre with Jung’s
writings on dream and active imagination, themes of reflexivity and reciprocity are highlighted. A
reading of Euripides’ Bacchae reveals that to see the psychic image means to be seen by it and that
this reflexive theoria is Dionysian, displaying a logos that, through its profoundly paradoxical nature
moves beyond the subject/object dichotomy.
Keywords:
Theatre, Jung on Active Imagination, Seeing the psychic image, Dionysian, Paradox, Subject/Object.