The Jung Topic: Self Identity -- The Ego and Persona

[spiritual_emergency]

malign: Freud always did get the snappy comebacks.

The only man I ever wanted to see in a slip.

[spiritual_emergency]

Mark: Any other (living, obviously) clinicians in this vein we're mining here who would be interesting to be able to ask questions of or listen to an interview of? If you can provide names and maybe some links to contact info, I will see if it can be arranged.

Here's three that come to mind:

- Maureen Roberts - Australia

- Rob Couteau - US

- Anne Baring - UK

Of the three, Maureen Roberts most appeals to me but this is because, like Perry, she has actively worked with individuals in psychotic states of consciousness. Rob Couteau also has some experience with the same whereas Anne Baring gives psychosis at least a passing nod in some of her work. Those are individuals who may be able to acknowledge the purposive value of psychosis which is not necessarily something any Jungian will be capable of, however it may also not be your particular area of interest. If you're looking for something along a more mainstream line, John Betts is a Jungian from Canada with a fairly strong online presence.

I'm quite eager to read the interview with James Hollis. I did also follow up on Wilma Bucci and felt her comments regarding the symbolic and sub-symbolic might have found a happy home in a Jungian camp. Stanislav Grof, if you can get him, would likely produce a fascinating interview. Another individual who could probably speak quite knowledgeably of spiritual emergencies might be David Lukoff.

...we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.

And here you thought you couldn't play with the Jungians.

See also: T.S. Eliot ~ ... if you came this way

Music of the Hour:

[spiritual_emergency]

finding my way: I just want to bring up that trauma isn't the only initiation into these contents, and there are a variety of ways to interface with the unconscious if we are open to it and maybe have someone to show us how.

Dreamwork is the most common form of introduction for many. Active imagination is another. Some may find themselves there as a result of meditative or contemplative activities. Wading may be preferable to diving but you get what you get.

Don't answer this if it is too personal SE, but do you feel safely related to your unconscious parts now?

Yes. I no longer relate to those aspects of myself as if they were separate. During my experience however, I did. All of the above has fueled my interest in the role of trauma in psychosis/schizophrenia and healing and recovery from the same.

See also: How to Produce An Acute Schizophrenic Break

[spiritual_emergency]

IrmaJean, glad to know you enjoyed the Groban offering. The man has an incredible voice but his lyrics are very powerful as well.

IrmaJean: I always liken that to a burning house. You have to run through the flames first in order to find the room that holds the treasures. Sometimes the right questions can take you there if you are willing to look for the honest answers.

I had two very significant dreams in the immediate aftermath of my experience and then, didn't dream for many months. Slowly, that ability returned and somewhere, maybe around year two I dreamed of being in a house at Christmas time. The house was full of visitors, one of whom was just a baby in a cot by the tree. During the dream, the Christmas tree started on fire and the entire house began to burn. Panic ensued among all the visitors but a voice in the dream instructed me, "Get the baby. Get the baby." I did exactly that and then walked out of the house, unscathed.

Like you, I have also found it valuable to learn to recognize triggering events and to learn to face my fears. But see, now we're talking about the Shadow again.

[spiritual_emergency]

finding my way: Take a look at this site, Mark, as maybe someone to interview: http://www.wingedheart.org/

The traditional approach to defining Self in IFS can be found in (Schwartz, 2003). Intellectual language, however, is limited in its attempt to describe Self because the intellect is much better suited for the articulation of theoretical concepts rather than giving expression to nuanced qualities of human experience. Poetry on the other hand excels at giving expression to human experience, it is for this reason when offering trainings in the IFS model I have often chosen to use poetry as means for deepening understanding of the nature of Self. ... This parallels Carl Jung's description of self as “that center of being which the ego circumambulates." (Singer, 1973, pp. 271-272)

Source: Tom Holmes: Poetry of the Self

Very nice, fmw. (Is a shortening okay?) I found myself thinking of Walt Whitman's poem and then, was tickled to see Tom Holmes reference it as well.

And there we are, skipping ahead again.

See also:

- The Flyer of the Kite

- The Mandala Experience : Visions of the Center in Schizophrenic and Fictional Accounts of Disintegration

[spiritual_emergency]

malign: "When the student is ready, the master appears." If the master (any source of learning, any lesson) appears before the student is ready, the student just misses it, or misunderstands.

In terms of my own experience (and learning from it) the rule of thumb I try to follow is: Be open to learning from everyone, follow no one. Some of my own best teachers have been "the schizophrenics". Sometimes, the lesson doesn't sink in until months have passed since the original exchange took place.

Wilber does have quite a name for himself but his work has also been informed by other, lesser known names. One such individual is Clare Graves. I find I greatly prefer his model which was the founding agent of Spiral Dynamics; the latter has simply become too slick and shiny for my liking.

Wilber is certainly capable of generating a following although my own understanding is that anyone who does, will all too soon be proven to be human. This may be more evident in one of Wilber's partners, Andrew Cohen who seems to have generated a bit of a reputation for grandiosity. I would hate to see Wilber go down the same road for in spite of his prettiness, I think he has some valuable information to share.

See also:

- The Guru's Trap

- Clare Graves: Colors of Thinking

[Mark]

Maureen Roberts

Rob Couteau

Anne Baring

John Betts

I've spent a portion of this evening reviewing web materials these folks have provided (thank you SE!). I have mixed feelings, but I suppose that is to be expected, given that I entered said thread with the same (e.g., towards Jung).

Roberts seems very new age or poetic. Hard to get a read on Couteau since the link is just a book review. Baring I have heard of. I read a book she and another woman did some years ago (late 90s or so) about the Goddess archetype. An interesting read. Betts is the most web savvy. Has some nice podcasts and generally presents the material in a very clear-cut way.

I'm reminded in reading this stuff of several other writers whose work I've enjoyed.

Robert Bly had a thing going there for a while with the whole Iron John phenomena. that was quite some time ago, but I remember very much liking that book and the general use of fairy tale to talk about psychological tensions (e.g., the boy must steal the golden ball from mom == cutting the apron strings during the process of becoming a man). I never related to it as about "archetypes", but the method can certainly illustrate a set of interpersonal relationships with figures that loom larger than life.

Morris Berman (blog) is a brilliant, bitter writer. Two good books. The "reenchantment of the world" and "coming to our senses". The second book is the better of the two - out of print I think but you can get it used).

From an Amazon review of "senses":

Morris Berman begins his exploration of the "hidden history" of the West with a discussion of the nemo, a word he borrows from John Fowles' The Aristos which connotes the sense of non-existence at the core of the existential condition. The experience of this nemo, according to Berman, results from a developmental split between the felt sense of embodiment (somatic awareness) and the mental self image that comes from how others see us (specular awareness). Berman uses the history of mirrors and the human relationship to animals to demonstrate how this split has led historically to a de-valuation of somatic, embodied experience, a consequent preference for "cognitively top-heavy" abstraction, and various attempts to heal the breach between the two.

Yes, Jung and Psychosynthesis etc. are in the vertical tradition, but I don' mind a little injection of it now and then. For example, I do pay attention to my dreams, try to incorporate the messages into my life. ..... The real danger w/the vertical or shamanic tradition is that it can mesmerize the person, take them over; it uses them, when they shd be using it. The horizontal is where it's at, to my mind; but it's not particularly sexy...altho if u do it rt, it can be. Anyway, as I said, this is the short version of a very long answer.

from Moris Berman's blog (https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=25497693&postID=3331057749072674854 - about a quarter of the way down the page. "vertical" is Berman's term for esoteric. )

There is also Norman Brown and Love's Body.

So there is this long tradition of gnostic dissent from the mainstream understanding of reality. Jung is one part of that dissent. These authors above are also.

At the root of my discomfort here is that I was raised a behaviorist and though I'm broad minded, at the end of the day, though I love grand theories, I tend to trust theories that can be falsified over those which cannot. Without falsification (e.g., the ability to measure something predicted by the theory yielding either support for the theory or a knock against it) theory is simple revealed wisdom. The problem with revealed wisdom is that you have to take someone's word that it is true (e.g., sources of inaccurate knowledge).

As a publisher of information about mental health, and as a psychologist (in the research tradition in which I was raised) I don't feel that it is right for me to be pointing people towards stuff I understand may be over-reaching without attaching disclaimers. It's an accuracy thing. Nothing to do with whether the material is interesting, or provokes an emotional reaction that feels true.

And yet I am very sensitive here to the idea that you (SE) relate to this material as something that has provided an accurate map for experiences that you've actually had. You've found this helpful and at some level that makes it good.

So the question for me becomes - is a subjective psychology still psychology. The answer is yes, but it is a psychology that shares more in common with poetry or religion than with empiricism.

Can I ask how you (all) deal with separating out the hokey or abusive parts of gnostic psychology from the good stuff?

[finding my way]

Hey Mark D, : )

So the question for me becomes - is a subjective psychology still psychology. The answer is yes, but it is a psychology that shares more in common with poetry or religion than with empiricism.

It's an empirical fact that people have dreams, delusions, fantasies, transferences, etc... This is the special body of data we are dealing with. There is a remarkable correlation of these contents to the imagery of myths, religions, poetry, alchemical texts, fairy tales, etc. Jung analyzed 70,000 dreams before coming up with his theory of the archetypes. What we want to do here is find our way with this material and not just ignore it. Especially if a person is truly suffering because of it. The "good stuff" helps me. The rest I leave, but it might help someone else... we each figure that out ourselves.

[finding my way]

Yes. I no longer relate to those aspects of myself as if they were separate. During my experience however, I did. All of the above has fueled my interest in the role of trauma in psychosis/schizophrenia and healing and recovery from the same.

Thanks, SE, that means a great deal to me. And fmw or finding is fine with me:). Thanks again for your participation with us.

[spiritual_emergency]

Mark: At the root of my discomfort here is that I was raised a behaviorist and though I'm broad minded, at the end of the day, though I love grand theories, I tend to trust theories that can be falsified over those which cannot. Without falsification (e.g., the ability to measure something predicted by the theory yielding either support for the theory or a knock against it) theory is simple revealed wisdom. The problem with revealed wisdom is that you have to take someone's word that it is true (e.g., sources of inaccurate knowledge).

For me, I like to go with what I call the "proof of the pudding" test. There are three examples here: Can a Mind Be Well?. John Weir Perry, Loren Mosher and Jaakko Seikkula all produced a recovery rate in the range of 85%. Perry, used no medications whereas Mosher and Seikkula used a minimal amount of medications. It's worth noting that Perry was the only Jungian in the group and if anyone was worth interviewing, it would be, he. Unfortunately, he's dead and a channelled interview would most certainly be too new-agey for me. Perry's method appeals most strongly to me because it is the one that most closely resembles my own but clearly, there is more than one way to produce recovery.

When we take those results and juxtapose them up against the recovery rates that are typically seen in the West -- where I am too frequently told that the recovery rate is an absolute 0% (also false) -- it's that approach that strikes me as the falsification. The biological model, and thus, the one that can be most easily measured, is the one that seems to produce the most chronicity and the least recovery. And yet, it is the one that is most actively promoted.

It reminds me a bit of the following joke...

A man is on his hands and knees beneath a streetlight. A friend comes upon him and asks what he is doing. He explains that he lost something of value so the friend gets down on his hands and knees and begins helping him search. After a fruitless effort the friend exclaims, "We have looked everywhere and it's not here!" The man remarks, "Oh, I know it's not here -- I dropped it in the dark but at least I can see here."

That may not be the best analogy but it adequately addresses my concerns about relying solely on an approach because it can be statistically weighed and measured as opposed to the approach that produces what we are actually after -- recovery, the fuller, the better.

Meantime, what strikes me as most troubling is that even if you wanted to promote Jungian-based approaches as a treatment for schizophrenic individuals, it would be a moot point. For example, it's my understanding that there are roughly 1000 Jungian analysts in the US; there are more than 2 million schizophrenics. Assuming that those analysts were willing to treat someone who was in the midst of a psychotic episode (many would not) or who wished to unpack the same in hindsight ... analysts don't work for free, Medicaid and insurance programs don't cover Jungian analysis, and most schizophrenics have very limited financial resources. There are some therapists of all persuasions who are willing to set their fees on a sliding scale but none of them can afford to give away their time for free.

Jungian-based treatment is not likely to ever become mainstream. Thanks to the wealth of material available for free on the net however, there are and will be some, like myself, who are making use of it as a means of facilitiating our own healing and recovery. What we were looking for could best be found in the dark.

See also:

- When The Dream Becomes Real: The Inner Apocalypse in Mythology, Madness and the Future: A Conversation With Dr. John Weir Perry [PDF File]

- Robert Couteau: Jungian Social Neglect

[spiritual_emergency]

fmw: It's an empirical fact that people have dreams, delusions, fantasies, transferences, etc... This is the special body of data we are dealing with.

Yes. One of the things that makes a Jungian application look so very far out there is because it requires working with the psychotic content that emerges -- the fantasies, transferences, etc. This is a taboo activity in many fields. More often, people are told to put such thoughts away, that they are little more than evidence of a physiological defect or chemical imbalance.

There are a certain proportion of people who seem to feel most comfortable doing that very thing. If that's what helps them feel better I see no reason why they should have to stop. Others however, find it helpful and meaningful to plumb the depths. There is a wealth of information available on the psychology of the psychoses, not purely Jungian, that we largely ignore in Western culture.

There is a remarkable correlation of these contents to the imagery of myths, religions, poetry, alchemical texts, fairy tales, etc. Jung analyzed 70,000 dreams before coming up with his theory of the archetypes. What we want to do here is find our way with this material and not just ignore it. Especially if a person is truly suffering because of it. The "good stuff" helps me. The rest I leave, but it might help someone else... we each figure that out ourselves.

I've noted that I knew nothing of Jung previous to my experience. Neither was I any sort of "religious" person. I was quite baffled myself at some of the content that came up and the patterns that emerged. In terms of seeking out that which is helpful, if there was common ground, I found it to be helpful. Essentially, I worked with what was present. For example, Kali was part of my experience, so I studied that. Aliens were not part of my experience so I did not pursue any understanding of that symbol. As a result, I now know something about Kali and I understand that symbol's role in my experience. I know little about aliens.

Meantime, this post in the Schizophrenia topic provides an example of emerging content from the psyche and how it relates to an individual's lived experience: The Lady Who Lived on the Moon

[finding my way]

So is there anything more we want to explore here about Persona? Is the drive to fit in socially and with the world (the role of Persona) that leads us to dissociate? :eek:

[Mark]

agreed 100% that the psychotic content under discussion is real. Also agreed that it makes people uncomfortable to talk about it in many cases. If there is a taboo around it, it is because of its' social undesirability.

This is not really the point I was trying to make however. you *can* study internal events empirically. This is what cognitive-behavioral researchers were able to establish and what earlier behaviorists did not tackle.

That is not what Jung did - and it's hard to blame him - it was not part of the tradition which had raised him (e.g., early psychoanalysis, which as Bucci has pointed out, turned their backs on the university environs (where research is conducted) and built free standing institutes which she seems to suggest led the field of psychoanalysis to become dogmatic and stagnant.

It is something that could be done today, now that dynamic traditions are reinventing themselves in a more empirically minded fashion). What is needed (in part) is careful recording of the material and then careful comparison of the material across many many cases/cultures to then start to see if there are indeed universal patterns.

[spiritual_emergency]

fmw: So is there anything more we want to explore here about Persona?

It's been a good conversation although I'm not sure how much we've talked about the Persona. Still, conversations often wander in their own directions.

fmw: Is the drive to fit in socially and with the world (the role of Persona) that leads us to dissociate?

That's a good question. I don't know if that's what causes us to dissociate or not but it's certainly what prompts us to produce a Shadow. Maybe now would be the time to initiate that discussion and perhaps dance between the topics/layers of Persona/Ego/Shadow while acknowledging that we're (mostly) still in the realm of consciousness.

Mark: If there is a taboo around it, it is because of its' social undesirability.

It's not valued. The rational mind (ego) sees no value in it. In truth, the rational mind wants to believe that it is superior to the "irrational". We're dealing with an age-old dynamic here.

Mark: What is needed (in part) is careful recording of the material and then careful comparison of the material across many many cases/cultures to then start to see if there are indeed universal patterns.

In a post above, fmw noted that Jung studied 70,000 dreams before coming up with his theories regarding the archetypes. Numerous others have continued with Jung's work. What I'm wondering is, hasn't this already been done? I'm asking aloud here for I'm not certain it has and if it has, where all that knowledge has been contained. I suspect that degree of knowledge is quite vast -- too vast possibly, to be contained within any neat summaries.

Meantime, I did want to note Mark that I've very much enjoyed the links you have shared in this topic. You self-identity as an Engineer but you seem to have a "feeling" for the Gnostic, at minimum. Most every link you have introduced into this topic has held some degree of resonance for me. I especially enjoyed the poem you shared by Rilke. This line: Every angel is terrifying... could have easily served as an intro to The Lady Who Lived in the Moon story.

~ Namaste

[Mark]

Mark: What is needed (in part) is careful recording of the material and then careful comparison of the material across many many cases/cultures to then start to see if there are indeed universal patterns.

In a post above, fmw noted that Jung studied 70,000 dreams before coming up with his theories regarding the archetypes. Numerous others have continued with Jung's work. What I'm wondering is, hasn't this already been done? I'm asking aloud here for I'm not certain it has and if it has, where all that knowledge has been contained. I suspect that degree of knowledge is quite vast -- too vast possibly, to be contained within any neat summaries.

Meantime, I did want to note Mark that I've very much enjoyed the links you have shared in this topic. You self-identity as an Engineer but you seem to have a "feeling" for the Gnostic, at minimum. Most every link you have introduced into this topic has held some degree of resonance for me. I especially enjoyed the poem you shared by Rilke. This line: Every angel is terrifying... could have easily served as an intro to The Lady Who Lived in the Moon story.

Why thank you SE. I like a wide range of psychology, but I do have my home base too.

I think one way to view a thread like this is that is is akin to a jam session. In that sense we are riffing off the others. It's a nice way to pollinate ideas.

When you are organizing reported material for research purposes, (such as trying to count the number of times someone makes a particular gesture e.g., behavioral coding) the gold standard is to measure inter-rater reliablity. Cronbach's Alpha is a method used to do this. You have two or more raters using the same definitions, go through the same material and then you compare their counts using alpha, and alpha tells you if they are seeing the same thing or not. That is how you establish the "reality" of a pattern in an objective fashion. They didn't do this (in psychotherapy anyway) in Jung's day - he worked alone so far as I know. So it is not the case that he hallucinated all his results, but they may have been an ideosyncratic understanding of what the underlying reality was. It would be nice to see if multiple indpendent viewers can intuit the same things. Not sure that work has been done at all.

[Luna-]

I do hear what you are saying, Mark, but the devil in me wants to know if that isn't a bit like trying to prove that the wheel is round or that there even is a wheel? (Oops, my bias is showing. )

The real question is: is there a PhD or two to be got out of this? If so, can I get in on the action?

[Mark]

A lot of science is intensely boring for precisely this reason; it involves verifying the "obvious". However, in the process of verification, often times new things are noticed that were not previously 'obvious' and things that seemed obvious become shown to be incomplete.

A great example of this sort of thing is the work that has been done on the basic factors of human personality. these days, most everyone agrees upon some version of the "five factor theory" : Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness and Conscienciousness. These have been independently verified across studies by different researchers at different times and across different languages and cultures. It is because of all this cross cultural replication that today there is such agreement. It was not always the case.

I think the reality of the situation is that before Jung and other system makers were there to provide a set of categories for making sense of the material, the material was just itself and "mysterious". After Jung, we have a set of categories that can be useful for organizing the material and that fits pretty well without too many loose threads. So we think we have appreciated the actual material but we haven't; we've just appreciated the category system or theory. When a new category system comes along that is even more powerful, it will superceed Jung. Think Newton and then Einstein in physics. Think before and after Piaget in developmental psychology. Piaget has not yet been superceeded but it will happen one day.

Yes, this is the sort of thing that could become a Ph.D. dissertation. However, it would be hard to get done, would require a ton of money that probably would not be available and when you graduated, having done the work would not be practical in terms of helping you make a living. So I would not recommend it. Being a scientist is actually very hard work these days; many more people want to do it than there are permanent jobs available, and as a result, you have people doing post-docs well into their 30s. It's a very uncertain career.

[Mark]

(on the topic of having psychotic experiences not be taken seriously)

Sarafin's Asylum Squad #10

http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=39353&cn=7

[Luna-]

I was just kidding about the PhD.

And I do hear what you're saying about post-initial-categorisation, I'm just approaching Jung from the point of view that as a patient, it speaks to me intuitively and works for me and I trust that. I'm more drawn to the part of psychotherapy that is an art than that which is a science (even if it is "fuzzier") because I crave meaning. So it's a personal bias and probably removed from this (more theoretical) discussion.

NICE cartoon instalment.

[finding my way]

.... is the coast clear yet to get to our topic? {}

Maybe what we've been doing here in a way is negotiating a site Persona--- what is acceptable for us to talk about. Persona is there for a reason: to negotiate our shared space in the world so there is enough safety yet enough risk to grow. Mark is there another term besides Persona in use?

Anyway, a healthy Persona, like a healthy ego, is a valuable thing. The part I am mulling over is not so much the interface with the outer world, that seems obvious to me, but the interface you have with yourself. People all over this site say horrible things to themselves, as if that doesn't "count"--- like trashing yourself is calorie-free or something. I am thinking it counts very much, at least as much as what people say to you. So, is there a "persona" with what you are saying to you about you? Or is that called something else maybe?

[Luna-]

Finding, the archetypal Heroine rides in on her white steed to speak up for the Persona!

Good question. Where does a punitive superego fit in?

If the Persona is consciously assumed in response to cues from the outside that indicate how we should behave, then might the conflict not be within the Ego?

[Mark]

:confused: Reading between the lines, I would guess that my contribution here is seen as off-topic and something to be endured until the coast is clear again. I'm sorry about that; not my intention!

I'm really not trying to stifle discussion. I'm trying to add a counterpoint discussion - the questions I have about Jung are real too even if they are not from the perspective of someone who is bought into it. And you folks who do "feel" this psychology are in a better position to inform me than if I were to read a book on the subject which I do not have time or inclination to do at this point in my life.

I guess I'm unclear if this is a discussion or a lecture. It seems people are more interested in a lecture? That's not it. Please tell me if you want this discussion to be completely uncritical of Jung and I will stop providing criticism.

[Guest ASchwartz]

Mark and Everyone,

You have "hit the nail on its proverbial head" when you ask if this is a lecture or discussion. My point to everyone, especially SE in another forum, is that this is a lecture, intellectual and incredilby boring. SE is not boring nor are the others but, my point is that the "intellectual nature of this is distancing and defensive and that is why its boring. I fear that this is taken as criticism rather than observation.

Allan

[Luna-]

:confused: Reading between the lines, I would guess that my contribution here is seen as off-topic and something to be endured until the coast is clear again. I'm sorry about that; not my intention!

Not at all, Mark, not at all. You're an integral part of the discussion.

I think finding was just trying to ask something about the topic title "The Ego and the Persona" and was joking that we had really got off topic and was it safe to come back to that question now (finding?). And I felt a bit bad for meandering away from that title (although most of the discussion has been "off the topic") so I joked with her about "saving" the topic.

Please, Mark, I am enjoying what you are saying and this discussion, and your contribution is not something that has to be "endured". Far from it.

Feels like a discussion to me, a very interesting one and it's nice to hear it from several viewpoints, Jungian or not ...

[IrmaJean]

I agree with Luna. I think it's very interesting and challenging discussion. I'm always wanting to learn more so have enjoyed reading.