How Friedrich Nietzsche used ideas from the Ancient Cynics to explore the death of God and the nature of morality

Haven’t you heard of that madman who in the bright morning lit a lantern and ran around the marketplace crying incessantly: ‘I’m looking for God! I’m looking for God!’ Since many of those who did not believe in God were standing around together just then, he caused great laughter. Has he been lost, then? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone to the sea? Emigrated? – Thus they shouted and laughed, one interrupting the other. The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. ‘Where is God?’ he cried; ‘I’ll tell you! We have killed him – you and I! We are all his murderers.’

No! they shouldn’t laugh, cause God is dead! We can see the event in this corresponding every day these days. Nietzsche has always fascinated me.

again, (sorry of my attacking this very day, I have only a Saturday just to be able to think!!) but is not this man a really fascinating creature? I think if I understand Nietzsche, I’ll understand me too!

via https://aeon.co/

Helen Small
is professor of English literature at the University of Oxford, and a fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford. Her most recent book is The Value of theHumanities (2013). She lives in Oxford.

Edited by Nigel Warburton

Ancient Cynicism was an eccentric model for practising a philosophical life. Diogenes of Sinope (c404-323 BCE) and his followers claimed independence from conventional material desires and the normal turmoil of emotional life. They were notorious without shame – pissing and satisfying their sexual needs in public, like the dogs (kynes) from which their name partly derived. 

Diogenes himself was said to have slept in a tub or a shack in the Athenian marketplace. Seeing a youth scoop up water in the hollow of his hand, he threw away the wooden cup he had been using, pleased to see that he did not need it. When Alexander the Great announced himself: ‘I am Alexander the great king,’ Diogenes replied: ‘I am Diogenes the dog.’

For Friedrich Nietzsche – steeped in the Classics – the Cynics, and the much later account of them in the gossipy collection of anecdotes The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius (no relation to Diogenes of Sinope), were attractive material long before he parted company with an academic career to practice a more abrasive public philosophy of his own. ‘Diogenes Laertiades’ was how Nietzsche signed himself in a letter to a friend in his late 20s: ‘son of Laertius’, or literally ‘sprung from Laertius’, ie from Diogenes Laertius. In the wake of a great deal of critical work in recent years, excavating Nietzsche’s Cynicism, two questions are worth asking afresh: how far did the identification go? And what did his philosophy hope to gain, and risk losing, by it?

The Cynic Diogenes of Sinope appears in Nietzsche’s The Gay Science(1882) as der tolle Mensch (‘the crazy man’) who proclaims the death of God; it is a canonical scene of modern philosophy:

Haven’t you heard of that madman who in the bright morning lit a lantern and ran around the marketplace crying incessantly: ‘I’m looking for God! I’m looking for God!’ Since many of those who did not believe in God were standing around together just then, he caused great laughter. Has he been lost, then? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone to sea? Emigrated? – Thus they shouted and laughed, one interrupting the other. The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. ‘Where is God?’ he cried; ‘I’ll tell you! We have killed him – you and I! We are all his murderers.’

The drama of the madman performs a serio-comic riff upon The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers: ‘He [Diogenes of Sinope] lit a lamp in full daylight and walked around with it, saying: “I’m searching for a man”.’ Sometimes more loosely translated as ‘searching for an honest man’, the words are a challenge and potentially an affront to all who hear them. Tapping into the radicalism of the ancient example, Nietzsche echoes its original cynicism – the sorry absence of anyone capable of living in the knowledge of what it means to be human – and gives it an updated point. A new Diogenes declares the death of God, the collapse of the belief system that underpinned Judaeo-Christian morality and provided the culture’s sources of valuation for hundreds of years. Or rather, the crazy man demands attention to what should have followed from that realisation, since the realisation itself is hardly news.

Later in The Gay Science, Nietzsche clarifies what is at issue. By ‘God is dead’, we should understand that ‘belief in the Christian God has become unworthy of belief’: the time has come for human beings to live truthfully, in accordance with their situation. The neo-Cynic affront lies not in the debasement of long-lost metaphysical certainties, but in a fresh insistence, that destruction of the old basis for morality raises urgent consequences about how to live now. ‘Aren’t we straying as though through an infinite nothing?’ asks the crazy man; ‘Isn’t empty space breathing at us? Hasn’t it got colder? Isn’t night and more night coming again and again? Don’t lanterns have to be lit in the morning?’

Striking through the revival of the Cynic figure is, what might impress a reader with equal force is how stylistically unlike the original scene Nietzsche’s version of it is. Where Diogenes Laertius was concisely anecdotal and minimally interpretative, Nietzsche is – within the flexible parameters of the aphoristic form – expansive, even garrulous, and, if not psychologically intimate, certainly interested in staging a public psychological drama from his philosophical materials. 

Enlightenment scepticism has been around a long time. Get up to speed!

Some features of the classical text remain. The anecdotal focus is on a single event, with a narrative delivery that suggests word-of-mouth transmission of matter of general public interest (‘Haven’t you heard …?’) Nietzsche also retains the distinctive mix of a whiff of philosophical scandal with an element of comedy that puts in question quite how much that sense of scandal is warranted, and what its presence might tell us about the conditions in which the Cynic issues his challenge to conventional moral thought. The broad parameters, then, are largely consistent, but the paragraph is, in Robert Pippin’s phrasing in Nietzsche, Psychology, and First Philosophy (2010) ‘quite mysterious’ as Diogenes Laertius’ account of the lamp lit in the morning light is not.

Much of the mysteriousness arises from the projection of the Cynic as unstable psychology into a public encounter that is, on both sides, full of questions with no obvious answers. Addressing an audience largely, but not entirely, committed to a view of itself as enlightened (‘many’ of them do not ‘believe’) the tolle Mensch seems absurd, histrionic, unduly agitated. The questions were thrown back at him as he makes his erratic progress – ‘Has he been lost?’, ‘Did he lose his way like a child?’, ‘Is he hiding?’, ‘Is he afraid of us? Has he gone to the sea? Emigrated?’ – are variants on a caustic theme: where has he been? Enlightenment scepticism has been around a long time. Get up to speed! Comedy turns to embarrassment only with the direct physical confrontation as he jumps into their midst, ‘piercing’ them with his eyes. The charge of ‘murder’ (in which he includes himself) silences the mockery, but it is far from clear what response beyond silence could be satisfactory at this point. By his own account, the new Diogenes has come too soon, or too abruptly. ‘Deeds need time, even after they are done, in order to be seen and heard’ – a reflection that sounds like pessimism about the power of the philosopher on the tolle Mensch’s part, even if it is not as finally so on Nietzsche’s.

Much more might be said about the tolle Mensch and his role in The Gay Science, but I want to concentrate on what this celebrated episode suggests about Nietzsche’s relationship to Cynicism as a form of heavily mediated philosophic self-expression – eccentric material that offers a set of old stylistic and intellectual strategies for the writer-philosopher, including strategies for apprehending the nature and limits of his or her own authority. With thought-provoking asperity, Nietzsche’s sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche remarked: ‘There is no doubt … that my brother tried a little bit to imitate Diogenes in the tub: he wanted to find out how little a philosopher could get by with.’ Echoing lines from Nietzsche’s Human, All Too Human(1878-9), it is a statement to keep in view, since his handling of Cynicism was, in many respects, far from the kind of minimalism it seems to point to.

Numerous philosophers, public moralists, literary writers and cultural critics before and after Nietzsche have played with the possibilities of confrontational philosophic self-fashioning in Diogenes’ image, but the depth and extent of his intellectual engagement were unusual. Since Heinrich Niehues-Pröbsting’s groundbreaking work in the late 1970s, there have been many analyses of how Cynicism helped to shape Nietzsche’s style, his commitment to combatting pessimism and opening up avenues for ‘gaiety’, and (perhaps most extensively) his presentation of philosophy as a kind of affronting outspokenness, underwritten in part by the philosopher’s situation as exile (in Diogenes’ case, a political exile from his native Sinope; in Nietzsche’s, a more elective exile from the institutions of academia).

Revealing work has been done on Nietzsche’s early philological studies of the texts of Diogenes Laertius; much has been said too about his attraction to the French moralistes who placed themselves in the Cynic tradition, including François de La Rochefoucauld, Nicolas Chamfort and Jean de La Bruyère. This is a body of work that understandably tends to stress how much Cynicism does. But where does its usefulness to Nietzsche stop?

It is in the nature of cynicism, both the ancient kind and its modern derivatives (where psychology has as much to say about it as philosophy), that the identifications it provokes tend to be reluctant, ironic and partial. Always on the margins of mainstream or accepted thinking about morality, it exhibits a conscious detachment, or (maybe) alienation, from the common goals, projects, aspirations of others, pursuing a quasi-vocational (in the psychological view, a temperamental) calling to expose the illusions and self-delusions sustaining, or helping to sustain, those commitments. More than any other philosopher-critic who has turned to Cynicism (including Michel Foucault and Peter Sloterdijk, who owe a great deal to him), Nietzsche puts a sense of Cynicism’s limitations to work. When he invokes Cynic ways of thinking or speaking, he is not really offering a model for philosophy (though he sometimes seems to be): he is exploiting a set of conventions that palpably do and do not serve his purposes.

Nietzsche makes abundantly clear that Cynicism cannot be the light by which we guide ourselves 

The shortcomings of the classical sources are an advantage here, rather than something to be regretted. Nietzsche was unrelentingly scathing about the poverty and stupidity of The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, on which he had expended so much philological labour: this is a ‘stupid’, ‘impudent’, ‘imprudent’, ‘wretched’, ‘careless’, ‘vain’, ‘pretentious’ author. Philosophically inept as Diogenes Laertius is (a biographical gossip, at a long historical remove), the anecdotalism preserves the ‘spirit’ of Cynic philosophy in a way that escapes abstraction and systematisation. The ‘received’ quality of the tolle Mensch episode (its temporal remoteness from the events, the lack of authorial warrant or capacity to do more than report what others have said) is a continuation of that mode. It rattles any effort to get at its subject and comprehend him fully; but it also puts in question the writer/Nietzsche’s ‘philosophical’ claim to lead others in the murky historical, psychological, lived terrain that is our attachment to morality.

Nietzsche makes abundantly clear on several occasions that Cynicism cannot be the light by which we guide ourselves. When Human, All Too Human observes that the search for man requires a lantern, then asks: ‘Will it have to be the Cynic’s lantern?’, the answer is implicit but clear. Should there be any doubt, as Niehues-Pröbsting notes, Beyond Good and Evil (1886) clears it up: Nietzsche is eloquent, there, about the limits of Cynic self-fashioning. Cynicism, he warns, is a kind of clowning, ‘the only form in which base souls approach what is called honesty’. The original Cynics’ radical reduction of their requirements for a good life made happiness possible, but only by embracing life like an animal (a dog, or kunos). Diogenes and his ilk understood ‘self-overcoming’ as an ascetic practice of toughness in the face of deprivation, but had no concept of transformative ‘self-overcoming’ and none of the finer apprehension of art that distinguishes a ‘noble’ spirit. The best relationship the ‘higher man’ can have with Cynicism, then, will be strategic: there are ‘real short-cuts and aids’ here ‘to make his work easier’, Nietzsche suggests while remaining on the lookout for the inevitable betrayal of its limitations:

the higher man needs to open his ears to all cynicism, crude or refined, and congratulate himself every time the buffoon speaks up without shame, or the scientific satyr is heard right in front of him.

Be on your guard, in short: Cynicism is the operative mode of people who deal too much with ‘the average man’, and have learned to ‘recognise the animal, the commonplace, the “norm” within themselves’: strategically deployed, their ‘honesty’ might be of use.

The most obvious use to which Nietzsche puts it, beyond the revival of Diogenes himself as an unstable and perplexing public moralist, is at the level of style. The contrarian zest of ‘so-called cynic’ speech (to use Nietzsche’s own locution) is a significant element in his literary repertoire, and never more so than in the very late work, where he runs the gamut of its ‘crude – refined’ possibilities. Speech of this order is at its most concentrated in the ‘skirmishing’ [‘Streifzüge’] section of Twilight of the Idols (1889). Take this brief extract on the shortcomings of other artists, philosophical and literary-poetic:

Dante: or the hyena who writes poetry in tombs. – Kant: or cant as intelligible character. – Victor Hugo: or the lighthouse on the sea of nonsense. – Liszt: or the school of fluency – with women. – George Sand: or lactea ubertas, translated: the milk cow with ‘a beautiful style’ …

The sneering litany takes to fresh extremes Nietzsche’s earlier gestures in the way of ridiculing, castigating and mocking philosophers and public moralists across a sweeping panoply from Socrates to Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The cynicism here assists the combative energy of the prose, as it lashes out against all authorities. Nietzsche’s philosophy looks to a future that will be free, ‘gay’, ‘momentous’, as far as possible self-determining and nondialectical; it resists and resents the poisoning, ‘nausea’-inducing hold of past ways of thinking. (That resentment itself is an acknowledgement of debt is, of course, a thoroughly Nietzschean insight.)

More important than either the reworking of the character of the Cynic or the channelling of his stylistic energy is the allusive mode of argument that pervasively informs the genealogy of morality. Human, All Too Human, Beyond Good and Evil, the first edition of The Gay Science, but also The Wanderer and His Shadow (1880), Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality (1881) and On the Genealogy of Morality (1887): all these texts make extensive play with Cynicism’s characteristic move, the ‘debasement’ of conventional morality.

These are classic Cynic manoeuvres: what looks like virtue is ‘devalued’, its conventional value ‘adulterated’ 

When Human, All Too Human, tells us, for example, that ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are just the names we have learned to give to the operation of power (‘He who has the power to requite, good with good, evil with evil … is called good; he who is powerless and cannot requite counts as bad’), or when Beyond Good and Evil tells us that: ‘In the final analysis, “love of one’s neighbour” is always something secondary … in relation to fear of the neighbour’, they are performing classic Cynic manoeuvres. What looks like virtue or like morally motivated behaviour is ‘devalued’ in the sense that its conventional value is compromised or ‘adulterated’ (as the underlying allusion to Diogenes of Sinope’s alleged adulteration of the Sinopean coinage encourages us to conceive of things).

The main difficulty of interpretation here attaches to the metaphoric scope of ‘debasement’. The Cynic manoeuvre unmasks an earlier, more primitive motive that counts for ‘less’ than the standard one. ‘What really are our reactions to the behaviour of someone in our presence?’, Daybreak asks:

– First of all, we see what there is in it for us – we regard it only from this point of view. We take this effect as the intention behind the behaviour – and finally we ascribe the harbouring of such intentions as a permanent quality of the person whose behaviour we are observing and thenceforth call him, for instance, ‘a harmful person’. Threefold error! Threefold primeval blunder! Perhaps inherited from the animals and their power of judgment! Is the origin of all morality not to be sought in the detestable petty conclusions: ‘what harms me is something evil (harmful in itself); what is useful to me is something good (beneficent and advantageous in itself); what harms me once or several times is the inimical as such and in itself’.

In a much-quoted closing flourish that is often made into a kind of epigraph for the entire genealogical project, Daybreak pronounces: ‘O pudenda origo!’ (‘Oh shameful origin!’) of morality. The moral texture of our psychological relations with others goes back, or comes down, in this locally Cynic reading, to the ‘detestable’ as-it-were-primal rationales of self-interest.

This looks very like a problematic appeal to something not just more ‘primitive’ but in some sense more ‘natural’ – and Nietzsche does indeed seem to be offering a kind of naturalistic psychology as a basis for understanding our investment in morality. Nietzsche’s genealogist, observes Brian Leiter in Nietzsche on Morality (2002), appears deeply ‘interested in “the nature of things” as they really are, not simply as some arbitrary interpretation would have them be’. The aim, Leiter concludes, is ‘critical, not positive’. The repeated invoking of ‘shameful origins’ rhetorically assists that purpose: it ‘brings a feeling of diminution in value of the thing that originated thus and prepares the way to a critical mood and attitude toward it’. The ‘reductive spirit’ is an error (Bernard Williams puts the point succinctly in his introduction to The Gay Science) but, under controlled circumstances, it is one that can help shift entrenched perspectives.

As with so much of Nietzsche’s writing (the tolle Mensch passage included), what keys us into the difference between a critical and a positive aim is a kind of literary excess in the delivery. One ignores the role of burlesque at one’s peril. Aping the voice of outraged conventionality (‘O pudenda origo!’ – the Latin adds an edge to pastiche), Daybreak asks for critical wariness at just the point where a conventional reader might be predisposed to take the story of origin semi-literally. Like the ventriloquist on audible in the ‘primaeval blunder’ – ‘whatever harms me is something evil’ – the ventriloquist on of a more modern ‘shame’ asks to be read at one remove as irony, or worthy of our irony.

Pippin is not wrong that the gesture of unmasking is continuous with the moralist tradition of La Rochefoucauld and others, and to that extent registers a familiar skeptic demand for ‘clarity about human frailty and failings’, but Nietzsche’s scepticism is unlike La Rochefoucauld’s in that it comes laced with a relish for mimicry that goes beyond intellectual requirements for clarity about what morality is and where it comes from, and targets the will to clarity itself. Exuberant excess of denunciation wards off an error that Nietzsche is constantly priming himself and us against the tendency of philosophers to ‘make the whole cosmos out of th[e] intellectual faculty’. ‘Primeval blunder!’ ‘Not much better than the judgments of animals!’ ‘Detestable petty conclusions!’ We don’t strictly need any of this expostulation, but such hyperbolic notes create a stylistic intimacy between the ravelling-up of morality (how it gets a hold on us) and the unravelling work of Nietzschean philosophy that seeks to put us on our guard against it, and against philosophy itself. That is: against the tenacity of inherited morality and against any claim that he, the philosopher, might want to make to avoid error and afford a value perspective that we could call ‘true’.

It is in this sense that we might best understand what it means for Nietzsche to be emulating Diogenes ‘a little bit’, seeking a practice of philosophy that would ‘make do’ with less. The most important question one can ask of so strategic a Cynicism, finally, is not ‘How far does it go?’, but ‘Where does it stop?’ It stops (or should stop) at the point where the complacency it targets has been dislodged – which means that it must be hyper-alert to the danger that Cynicism itself (old, well-recognised, liable to become more an object of affection and comic interest than shock or distaste) risks being not a tool but a gimmick. At that point, it must be cast aside, like the tolle Mensch’s lantern.

“Individuation means becoming a single, homogeneous being, and, in so far as ‘individuality’ embraces our innermost, last, and incomparable uniqueness, it also implies becoming one’s own self. We could, therefore, translate individuation as… ‘self-realization.’” (Collected Works of C.G. Jung: Volume 7, Carl Jung )

A wonderful easy understanding of #Jung. (at least humbly for me 😉

via https://academyofideas.com/

The following is a transcript of this video.

“Individuation means becoming a single, homogeneous being, and, in so far as ‘individuality’ embraces our innermost, last, and incomparable uniqueness, it also implies becoming one’s own self. We could therefore translate individuation as… ‘self-realization.’” (Collected Works of C.G. Jung: Volume 7, Carl Jung )

In this second video in our mini-series on the ideas of Carl Jung we are going to examine the individuation process, a process Jung believed to be essential for a healthy functioning personality. Such an examination will lead us to explore some of the parts of the personality that Jung viewed as particularly important,  namely the persona, the shadow, the anima and animus, and the self. Before we go into more detail on the individuation process we will begin with a brief overview of the relevant content from our first video on Jung.

Jung conceived of the psyche, or one’s total personality, as composed of a conscious and unconscious realm. The unconscious realm he split into the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. The personal unconscious is largely composed of repressed elements from one’s personal history, while the collective unconscious is composed of instincts and archetypes which are common to all human beings. Archetypes can be viewed as evolved cognitive structures which influence emotions, thoughts, and behaviours.

Archetypes provide structure to different parts of the psyche and the psyche functions optimally when there exists a harmonious balance between these parts. Unfortunately, according to Jung, few people function in an optimal manner. Rather most suffer from imbalances where some parts of their personality suffer from inflation, or over-expression in consciousness, while other parts suffer from deflation or underdevelopment whereby they lack proper expression in consciousness. Imbalances, Jung believed, often lead to the development of neuroses and a lack of vitality in life.

Working to bring about proper expression of the various archetypally structured elements of one’s personality by confronting contents of the unconscious and thus obtaining self-knowledge, is the purpose of the individuation process.  It is important to note that this process occurs spontaneously if unimpeded as contents of the unconscious naturally strive for outward expression in the world, or as Jung put it  “Everything in the unconscious seeks outward manifestation”.

However, the problem is that while natural, most people get stuck at various stages of the individuation process as they are unable to properly integrate into consciousness certain elements of the unconscious. How to promote such integration when it does not occur naturally was a question of deep concern for Jung.  Through his patient analysis, research, and personal experience he arrived at the idea that dreams provide the greatest opportunity to access the unconscious.
As he put it:

“Dreams are impartial, spontaneous products of the unconscious psyche, outside the control of the will. They are pure nature; they show us the unvarnished, natural truth, and are therefore fitted, as nothing else is, to give us back an attitude that accords with our basic human nature when our consciousness has strayed too far from its foundations and run into an impasse.” (The Collected Works of C.G. Jung: Volume 10, Carl Jung)

Jung put enormous emphasis on the therapeutic effects of dream analysis. By recording and analyzing one’s dreams, determining their meaning and relevancy, Jung thought one could integrate unconscious contents into consciousness.
It must be noted, however, that dream analysis is not a simple matter, due to the often confusing nature of dreams and the fact that quite frequently dreams express material which can be difficult to incorporate into consciousness.  The interpretation of dreams, therefore, must be seen as a skill acquired through practice and improved with an understanding of some of the most important archetypes, archetypes which we will spend the remainder of the video looking at.

Before looking at some of the archetypes which suffer from underdevelopment and therefore may manifest themselves in dreams, it is important to first look at the persona. The word persona was used in Roman times to signify a mask worn by an actor. In an analogous manner, in Jungian psychology,  the persona represents the social mask that each of us “wear” in our interaction with others in society. Or to put it differently, it represents the personality that we try to portray to others.
While the persona plays an important role in promoting social interaction and communal life, problems arise when people over-identify with their persona.  As Jung writes:

“Fundamentally the persona is nothing real: it is a compromise between the individual and society as to what a man should appear to be. He takes a name, earns a title, represents an office, he is this or that. In a certain sense all this is real, yet in relation to the essential individuality of the person concerned it is only a secondary reality, a product of compromise, in making which others often have a greater share than he. The persona is a semblance, a two-dimensional reality.” (Carl Jung)

Most people suffer from inflation of the persona, meaning that they over-identify with their “social mask” to the detriment of other important areas of the psyche.  In the course of the individuation process, one must come to the realization that the persona is not the totality of their being, but rather only a small component of a much larger personality. Such a realization is achieved by diving into the unconscious and mining from it the rich and meaningful contents manifested by the archetypes.

The first stage in the exploration of the unconscious, according to Jung, is an encounter with one’s shadow archetype. Over the course of one’s life, certain personality traits elicit negative feedback and even punishment from others. This negative feedback creates anxiety resulting in these traits being pushed away from awareness into the unconscious where they form the shadow – the “dark” side of one’s personality.

To become aware of and integrate the shadow into consciousness is often a difficult and sometimes heroic endeavour. But failure to do so can create chaos in one’s life. In the darkness of the unconscious the shadow is far from impotent, but instead influences emotions, thoughts, and behaviours, in a manner which is beyond conscious control. Often the shadow finds expression through projections, whereby instead of seeing the disagreeable elements of the shadow as residing within ourselves we project these traits onto to others.

Bringing elements of the shadow into the light of consciousness is crucial if one is to correct some of these less desirable aspects of themselves. As Jung explains:

“Unfortunately there can be no doubt that man is, on the whole, less good than he imagines himself or wants to be. Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. If an inferiority is conscious, one always has a chance to correct it. . .But if it is repressed and isolated from consciousness, it never gets corrected.” (The Essential Jung, Carl Jung and Anthony Storr)

The shadow, according to Jung, is not only composed of negative traits. Rather, in the process of over-identifying with the persona often people reject personality traits not because they are harmful, but because they don’t fit with the dominant social attitudes of the day. Therefore, when integrating the shadow into consciousness, one is also exposed to positive traits and creative energies that can bring about a renewed sense of vitality to life.

“The shadow, when it is realized, is the source of renewal; the new and productive impulse cannot come from established values of the ego. When there is an impasse, and sterile time in our lives. . .we must look to the dark, hitherto unacceptable side which has been at our conscious disposal.” (Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature)

In addition to the shadow, another archetype which normally suffers from underdevelopment is a contra-sexual archetype termed the anima in males and the animus in females. While the persona is oriented outward, acting as a barrier protecting the ego from the external social world, in an analogous manner the  anima/animus is oriented inward, protecting the ego from the sometimes threatening and overwhelming contents which emerge from the dark inner depths of the unconscious:

“The natural function of the animus (as well as of in the anima) is to remain in place between individual consciousness and the collective unconscious; exactly as the persona is a sort of stratum between the ego-consciousness and the objects of the external world. The animus and the anima should function as a bridge, or a door, leading to the images of the collective unconscious, as the persona should be a sort of bridge into the world.” (Carl Jung)

An encounter with the anima/animus is manifested in one’s consciousness as a meeting, in dreams or visions, with a member of the opposite gender. Such a figure often arises during times of severe psychic disorientation, offering guidance as to how to remove any psychological barricades hindering the natural progression of the individuation process. Encountering such an archetype can, therefore, signify the coming of a deeply meaningful period in one’s life, defined by significant psychological transformations:

“The meeting with the anima/us represents a connection to the unconscious even deeper than that of the shadow. In the case of the shadow, it is a meeting with the disdained and rejected pieces of the total psyche, the inferior and unwanted qualities. In the meeting with the anima/us, it is a contact with levels of the psyche which has the potential to lead into the deepest and highest…reaches that the ego can attain.” (Jung’s Map of the Soul, Murray Stein)

After one encounters and integrates aspects of the anima/animus archetype into one’s ego, one gains access to enter into the deepest layer of the psyche, the archetype of wholeness – which  Jung called the self and viewed as the most important of all the archetypes. Proper expression of the Self is the goal of the individuation process.  As Jung put it:

“. . . the self is our life’s goal, for it is the completest expression of that fateful combination we call individuality. . .” (Carl Jung)

As the sun occupies the centre of the solar system, in an analogous manner the Self is the central archetype of the entire psyche.  The Self-archetype acts as the unifying or organizing principle of the psyche and is oriented toward a union of the conscious and unconscious realms. Remembering from our first video on Jung that the centre of the field of consciousness is the ego,
Jung noted that:

“the more numerous and more significant the unconscious contents which are assimilated to the ego, the closer the approximation of the ego to the Self, even though this approximation must be a never-ending process.”(Carl Jung)

As one increasingly identifies with the self they will notice a greater sense of harmony both within themselves and with the world as a whole. In fact, Jung saw the connection with the self as so important that at various times he described it as  “a treasure that would make [one] independent” and a  “link to the infinite”.

Jung came upon the existence of the self by exploring the universality of symbols such as the quaternity and  mandala, which in his words,  “occur not only in the dreams of modern people who have never heard of them, but are widely disseminated in the historical records of many peoples and many epochs.”

“A mandala”, said Jung “is the psychological expression of the totality of the self.” Not only do mandalas have an extremely  long history and repeatedly show up in the imagery of many religions including Hinduism, Buddhism and Christianity, but Jung observed that with some of his patient’s mandalas spontaneously arose “during times of psychic disorientation or re-orientation.” Mandalas, and other “symbols of order”,  Jung believed to be compensatory symbols of wholeness which are manifested by the Self in times of crisis.

The individuation process which culminates in an identification with the self is, according to Jung, crucial for the development of a healthy functioning personality as well as the expression of the unique potential that exists within each of us. But along with these personal benefits, Jung thought the process of individuation was essential for the well-being of society.   Jung believed that conformist societies, composed mainly of people who over-identify with their persona, are easy prey for the rise of oppressive governments. Therefore it is essential for any lasting positive social change that increasing numbers of people, assisted by the individuation process come to the realization that there is more to their being then the social role dictated by the persona. A society increasingly composed of individuated individuals would not, according to Jung, succumb as easily to the rise of oppressive governments:

“…in so far as society is itself composed of de-individualized human beings, it is completely at the mercy of ruthless individualists. Let it band together into groups and organizations as much as it likes – it is just this banding together and the resultant extinction of the individual personality that makes it succumb so readily to a dictator. A million zeros joined together do not, unfortunately, add up to one.” (Man and His Symbols, Carl Jung)

Greeting to my dear wise friend Elaine Mansfield and with her allowance, I share here her brilliant article about #Life or much easily say; the way we begin with the first step in our lives till to the end.

I have also some loss in my life: as I was seven, my father had gone, and with eighteen, my mother said goodbye to me and my brother, cause of blood cancer. and finally, I’ve lost my brother in 2007, as he was just 54 years old. He has got a sudden anomaly, a tumour in 2006 in his genius brain but the surgery let him only one year more to live. We were just two sons and I’m the only one left. {Of course, my father and my brother were both ingrained authors and couldn’t do anything else but writing and as you might have mentioned, I’m not as good as them as I try to summarize this little piece with all effort. That’s why I should live a bit longer!!} 😏 😁

These are the realities which I must live with, and life is hard enough not to spend time with moaning, therefore, we all must stand against these difficulties. and as we read in this article; Mythology can help us to understand all these better. It is interesting that coincidentally, Mythology was one of my brother’s most favourite subject to investigate and I’ve learned a lot by him.

via Elaine Mansfield, Grief is a sacred journey
On February 19, 2019,/   Psychology and Mythology  
Elaine Mansfield With many Thanks ❤

We imagine heroes as willful and disciplined. The hero wins with a smart positive attitude. We accept the top part of this diagram, the “known” part, where we’re consciously working a problem and following our plan. But notice how small the known part is–and it’s larger in this diagram than it is in life.

Our culture honours winners, those who climb to the top and come out in the first place. The Journey of Ascent is ever higher and more successful with a focus on the individual doing well, often at the expense of the group.

But what about real life? Does this model make an ageing or sick person a loser? What about someone who needs help? As a child, I lived with a dying dad and learned it was shameful to be sick since he hid his illness except at home. He was positive and courageous, but his body still gave up at 44. His friends were shocked. No one got to say goodbye. I can only imagine how he felt keeping his lonely secret.

Being positive doesn’t solve every human problem no matter what we’re promised. What about shattering experiences like surviving an accident with lasting trauma and permanent wounds? What about illness without an obvious cause? What about grief from the death of a parent or spouse, a child or a pet? Positive thinking won’t bring them back.

Yes, staying positive can feel supportive in the rough spots, but hard times won’t disappear. Maybe we need to accept and expect that being human sometimes hurts. Sometimes our ego is helpless.

Initiations of Descent are part of many ancient and indigenous traditions. They teach us how to take a downward journey. They support us during hard times without demonizing the one who suffers. Even Christianity includes three days of Christ’s suffering and death, although we hurry along to the resurrection part.

It’s hard to accept the dark valley on the other side of the majestic hill of success. It’s hard to accept death and loss as natural parts of the whole. Ancient mythology helps me understand, so I’ll share a few stories.

In Greek mythology, Hades abducted Persephone and took her to his Underworld Kingdom where she became Queen. Her Descent and her mother Demeter’s insistence on her return guided the dominant religious ritual in Greece for 2000 years. We don’t know what happened in the Eleusinian Mysteries, but worshipers experienced a ritual death followed by a symbolic rebirth.

In Sumeria 2500 BCE, the Goddess Inanna was Queen of Heaven and Earth. Without knowing mortality, something was missing, so she descended to the Underworld. At each step, she was stripped of power (a lot like ageing or illness) until, naked, she entered the throne room of the Goddess of Death. Inanna was a corpse in that cave for three days before rising again. Sound familiar?

In Greek mythology, gentle Chiron was struck by a poison arrow. Since his father was the God Zeus, Chiron was immortal, so his suffering was eternal. He became a teacher and a healer, a Wounded Healer who couldn’t heal himself. Many great teachers and healers are wounded by descent and loss. Having lost his homeland after the Chinese invasion, the Dalai Lama became a Wounded Healer who teaches us about compassion and acceptance.

We deny the descending part of life’s cycle. We hate facing the truth that life is precarious and doesn’t bend to our will. Disease won’t happen to us. We’ll be healthy forever if we live right and think correctly. If a loss happens, it will come later. Much later.

We know others lead lives of suffering from minimal care or food. We know many people don’t have clean water or shelter. We know war, poverty, and climate disaster force people into lives they didn’t choose. Still, we often look the other way.

Our ideal of ascent leaves us unprepared and shocked by life’s descending times, times when we often learn the most. Every living being will sooner or later descend. It’s part of being human. It’s another kind of heroic journey.

***

Have you looked back at periods of descent or loss and found a gift or important lesson there? I’ll be giving a workshop “Finding Wisdom in Aging and Loss” in Columbus, Ohio on May 17-18, sponsored by the Jung Association of Central Ohio and First Community Church. We’ll explore the wisdom of descent and see what mythology teaches us about loss. For another article about descent, see Listening to the Dark: The Descent of Inanna.

Cochlear Implant Surgery update: All went well, and I’m slowly recovering. I have to keep a tight leash on my tendency to push too hard. It’s time to rest.