Full immersion.a.

FULL IMMERSION
PROF. PHILLIP BALDWIN

Monday, February 8, 2010

Full Immersion

Postmodernism in architecture will then logically enough stage itself as a kind of aesthetic populism, as the very title
of Venturi's influential manifesto, Learning from Las Vegas, suggests. However we may ultimately wish to evaluate
this populist rhetoric,2 it has at least the merit of drawing our attention to one fundamental feature of all the
postmodernisms enumerated above: namely, the effacement in them of the older (essentially high-modernist)
frontier between high culture and so-called mass or commercial culture, and the emergence of new kinds of texts
infused with the forms, categories, and contents of that very culture industry so passionately denounced by all the
ideologues of the modern, from Leavis and the American New Criticism all the way to Adorno and the Frankfurt
School. The postmodernisms have, in fact, been fascinated precisely by this whole "degraded" landscape of
schlock and kitsch, of TV series and Reader's Digest culture, of advertising and motels, of the late show and the
grade-B Hollywood film, of so-called paraliterature, with its airport paperback categories of the gothic and the
romance, the popular biography, the murder mystery, and the science fiction or fantasy novel: materials they no
longer simply "quote;" as a Joyce or a Mahler might have done, but incorporate into their very substance.-F.
JAMESON

Screens still. It was a cold weekend and the urban populace was attending to their screens as if they were a fire for
warmth. The super bowl was on and so friends gathered at the house of those who had a meal or drink ready.
Earlier I had dipped into the big electronics store where it was everything expensive exploding out at you in audio or
visual or both. Here was a whole large city with men and women gathered around the warmth of the screen. The
‘game’ was vastly staged and punctuated with entertainment and commercials that were even more entertaining.
The products that were sold had to penetrate into the individual psyche with a type of humorous surrealism and an
one/two trope. I hadn’t seen the super bowl opening for a long time and now I was surprised by the inclusion of the
military. The bully arm of the country would have to be honored also as men started and stopped a ball up the field
in a very ritualized manner. All of this while garrisons was overrun in Afghanistan.

Screens and the immersion into the stylized and ‘symbolic’ behaviors of violence of the screen. Each figure was
propped up as an identity and then the super bowl unraveled as a pretense for the sales of commodities. The
game itself was a type of commodity that had become so abstract it took a double analysis to figure what the real
product was. I think it was one of the few occasions where the male could invite other males over to their house
and share in a limited engagement. The spectacle…in my all male enclave in lower Manhattan…was the flickering
spectacle on a wide, high-density television…where the attending six or seven males could quickly comment on
their lives and events between plays. The male comments would be fractured and limited in time avoiding real
discourse. The comments would be mixed with the surrealism of the humorous thirty second spots. One of the true
products of the super bowl was a true men’s forum between the flickering lights of the action.

How could you contrast this with ‘avatar’? How could you contrast this with ‘halo’ the game? How could you
contrast this with ‘love in the afternoon’ by Eric Rohmer? I had to move on from the male only party watching the
super bowl and went back to my ‘man cave’ where my roommate made chili and put on the Rohmer film. New
forms were overtaking the landscape and this meant that there were fewer forums where males would get together
and compare notes of the vastly shifting times. Where were the flickering lights of the next male forum if the game
would not be important again? What were the real differences between the highly successful ‘avatar’, the game of
halo (first person immersive shooter), the super bowl, ‘love in the afternoon’, and an outpost overrun in Afghanistan
and the resulting news or non-news about that? The classic work of cinema was a story about a suburban

FULL IMMERSION businessman extended temptation with an attractive urban woman and the resulting encounter with his twice
pregnant and cold but benign wife who seems to have had an affair of her own. All of these works demonstrate
ways men talk about and to themselves in an immersive environment-television, the screen lit room, the movie
PROF. PHILLIP BALDWIN theater, the singular internet computer, and the true facing down with the male enemy who has a very similar male
challenge of getting you off his land. Violence and acquisition seem to be very well in place after thousands of


years and the but the ritual portrayal of these things seem to be in counterpoint to the false sense of immersion that
the media provides. What is the ‘manly’ way out? What is the way of the hero? What are the messages? What is
individuation of the male as compared to the altruistic caring for their tribe? The flickering light draws in and unfolds
these things.

The Self-regulation of the Psyche

1. Difficulty of adaptation. Little progression of libido.

The life force. The libido is on hold for a while in these media. Violence and acquisition is splayed out before the
males as an obligatory act for the tribe. Avatar positions us behind the underdog against boys with toys who will
acquire more merely to sustain their unwieldy and complicated machinery. The technology is added as a feminine
phallic attachment. The female characters challenge the males as equals in both the ‘native’ realm and in the realm
of the army/scientists. The female element adds the voice of reason to the blind and compulsive acquisition of the
male drive. It is ironic that the three-d glasses are handed out to the teaming crowds in lower Manhattan as an
inclusion or exclusion to the symbolic story unfolding. In the Rohmer film the businessman is tempted and teased
by the woman who is waiting for his move of confidence in her direction. Every approach and overture is oblique
and she averts her face against the full kiss. When she is naked from the shower and demand that he dry her off he
suddenly bolts from her beautiful young body. Guilt. Part. But it is also repulsion from the thing he has yet to
acquire and he feels that wheat he has acquired of suburban culture is in question. This is a battle between
suburban ritual and the wonderful accidents of the city. He is told by his months long ‘almost mistress’ that she saw
his wife in town with another man. He returns to his wife in the afternoon and surprises her…there is enough
indicating that she is having an affair while he is only having a pseudo affair of the heart. Who is more culpable in
breaking the bond? These are all stories of libido as acquisition.

2. Regression of energy (depression, lack of disposable energy).

In college I had a section mate who was a black from the Deep South who cam to the far north. He had a much
older brother who had been the soul survivor of an overrun garrisons in Vietnam. There is a large question why the
cong or NVA left him alive. The section mate said that his brother was left crazy and depressed after this upon
returning to the states. The news from Afghanistan is that there are similar battles with the Taliban. The male
element of expelling the foreign male is ancient and potent. The returning (defeated or ‘time marking’) soldiers
come back after the surreal horrors of Iraq and Afghanistan and they are unable to communicate the imperatives
and the images to the commodity driven public…and…perhaps their female and non-soldiering public. The war
continues seven contrary to the promises of Obama. It is financially draining the west and it is founded in old male
acquisitions of resources. The ‘man depression’ is a factor in the marketplace where lower earning female are
retained and males are fired. The creative of these males become househusbands in shifting cut-and-paste ethics.
Some of the returning soldiers participate in drama therapy with workshop versions of ‘Ajax’-the tale of the good but
treasonous solider. Anything to scaffold the rearranged narrative.

FULL IMMERSION
3. Activation of unconscious contents (fantasies, complexes,
archetypal images, inferior function, opposite attitude,
shadow, anima/animus, etc.). Compensation.
So the male shrouds frustration and an inability to converse with each other in game. Game theory of the zero
sum. This, after all, was the framing of the relationship with his mother (take more love for less) and his wife. With
his girlfriend it is a matter of time and moving on (into the abyss of disappearance or marriage) halo is the game
Monday, February 8, 2010 that prepares him for war. The super bowl allows him to converse with other males and compare notes. Avatar

So the male shrouds frustration and an inability to converse with each other in game. Game theory of the zero
sum. This, after all, was the framing of the relationship with his mother (take more love for less) and his wife. With
his girlfriend it is a matter of time and moving on (into the abyss of disappearance or marriage) halo is the game
that prepares him for war. The super bowl allows him to converse with other males and compare notes. Avatar
allows him to empathize with the Afghanis and Iraqis similar to the two centuries fight with the Native Americans.
Love in the afternoon allows him to see his reticence of the sequestered space and false choices. In ‘hurt locker’
the bomb diffuser is paralyzed by the false choice of the supermarket. Immersion is compensation after frustration.

4. Symptoms of neurosis (confusion, fear, anxiety, guilt, moods, extreme affect, etc.).

Insomnia. No cure. Now even women get it thinking of their ‘career’. There are fewer reasons why men stay. The
zero sum of commodity culture makes for bad sleep.

5. Unconscious or half-conscious conflict between ego and contents activated in the unconscious.
Inner tension. Defensive reactions.

The hero has no clear journey. The feminine is acquisitive also. The enemy overruns the garrison. The males are
left to compare notes with the other battered tomcats.

6. Activation of the transcendent function, involving the self and archetypal patterns of wholeness.

Anyone’s best guess. This cannot take place wholly on the screen. Nor can it be in an overrun garrison that the
news will never mention. It is somewhere in between.

7. Formation of symbols (numinosity, synchronicity).

They emerge during the commercials…the challenge is not to see them as a zero-sum relationship with women,
children, or the male ‘other’.

8. Transfer of energy between unconscious contents and consciousness. Enlargement of the ego,
progression of energy.

And the working of symbols through work and play. The non-suspension of disbelief. Immersion for testing.

9. Assimilation of unconscious contents. Individuation.

FULL IMMERSION A male that exists in the liminal worlds of immersion and ‘the real’…. between zero sum individuality and recognized
collaboration and consummation.

Monday, February 8, 2010 Psychosis. An extreme dissociation of the personality. Like neurosis, a psychotic condition is due to the activity of

Psychosis. An extreme dissociation of the personality. Like neurosis, a psychotic condition is due to the activity of
unconscious complexes and the phenomenon of splitting. In neurosis, the complexes are only relatively
autonomous. In psychosis, they are completely disconnected from consciousness.

To have complexes is in itself normal; but if the complexes are incompatible, that part of the personality which is too
contrary to the conscious part becomes split off. If the split reaches the organic structure, the dissociation is a
psychosis, a schizophrenic condition, as the term denotes. Each complex then lives an existence of its own, with no
personality left to tie them together.["The Tavistock Lectures," CW 18, par. 382.]
[In schizophrenia] the split-off figures assume banal, grotesque, or highly exaggerated names and characters, and
are often objectionable in many other ways. They do not, moreover, co-operate with the patient's consciousness.
They are not tactful and they have no respect for sentimental values. On the contrary, they break in and make a
disturbance at any time, they torment the ego in a hundred ways; all are objectionable and shocking, either in their
noisy and impertinent behaviour or in their grotesque cruelty and obscenity. There is an apparent chaos of
incoherent visions, voices, and characters, all of an overwhelmingly strange and incomprehensible nature.[On the
Psychogenesis of Schizophrenia," CW 3, par. 508.]
Jung believed that many psychoses, and particularly schizophrenia, were psychogenic, resulting from an
abaissement du niveau mental and an ego too weak to resist the onslaught of unconscious contents. He reserved
judgment on whether biological factors were a contributing cause.

Puer aeternus. Latin for "eternal child," used in mythology to designate a child-god who is forever young;
psychologically it refers to an older man whose emotional life has remained at an adolescent level, usually coupled
with too great a dependence on the mother.[The term puella is used when referring to a woman, though one might
also speak of a puer animus-or a puella anima.]

The puer typically leads a provisional life, due to the fear of being caught in a situation from which it might not be
possible to escape. His lot is seldom what he really wants and one day he will do something about it-but not just
yet. Plans for the future slip away in fantasies of what will be, what could be, while no decisive action is taken to
change. He covets independence and freedom, chafes at boundaries and limits, and tends to find any restriction
intolerable.

[The world] makes demands on the masculinity of a man, on his ardour, above all on his courage and resolution
when it comes to throwing his whole being into the scales. For this he would need a faithless Eros, one capable of
forgetting his mother and undergoing the pain of relinquishing the first love of his life.[The Syzygy: Anima and
Animus," CW 9ii, par. 22.]
Common symptoms of puer psychology are dreams of imprisonment and similar imagery: chains, bars, cages,
entrapment, bondage. Life itself, existential reality, is experienced as a prison. The bars are unconscious ties to the
unfettered world of early life.
The puer's shadow is the senex (Latin for "old man"), associated with the god Apollo-disciplined, controlled,
responsible, rational, ordered. Conversely, the shadow of the senex is the puer, related to Dionysus-unbounded
instinct, disorder, intoxication, whimsy.
Whoever lives out one pattern to the exclusion of the other risks constellating the opposite. Hence individuation
quite as often involves the need for a well-controlled person to get closer to the spontaneous, instinctual life as it
does the puer's need to grow up.
The "eternal child" in man is an indescribable experience, an incongruity, a handicap, and a divine prerogative; an

FULL IMMERSION imponderable that determines the ultimate worth or worthlessness of a personality.[The Psychology of the Child
Archetype," CW 9i, par. 300.]


Monday, February 8, 2010 Rebirth. A process experienced as a renewal or transformation of the personality. (See also individuation.)

Rebirth. A process experienced as a renewal or transformation of the personality. (See also individuation.)

Rebirth is not a process that we can in any way observe. We can neither measure nor weigh nor photograph it. It is
entirely beyond sense perception. . . . One speaks of rebirth; one professes rebirth; one is filled with rebirth. . . . We
have to be content with its psychic reality.[Concerning Rebirth," CW 9i, par. 206.]
Jung distinguished between five different forms of rebirth: metempsychosis (transmigration of souls), reincarnation
(in a human body), resurrection, psychological rebirth (individuation) and indirect change that comes about through
participation in the process of transformation.
Psychological rebirth was Jung's particular focus. Induced by ritual or stimulated by immediate personal experience,
it results in an enlargement of the personality. He acknowledged that one might feel transformed during certain
group experiences, but he cautioned against confusing this with genuine rebirth.
If any considerable group of persons are united and identified with one another by a particular frame of mind, the
resultant transformation experience bears only a very remote resemblance to the experience of individual
transformation. A group experience takes place on a lower level of consciousness than the experience of an
individual. This is due to the fact that, when many people gather together to share one common emotion, the total
psyche emerging from the group is below the level of the individual psyche. If it is a very large group, the collective
psyche will be more like the psyche of an animal . . . .
. . . The group experience goes no deeper than the level of one's own mind in that state. It does work a change in
you, but the change does not last.[Ibid., pars. 225f.]

Regression. The backward movement of libido to an earlier mode of adaptation, often accompanied by infantile
fantasies and wishes. (See also depression; compare progression.)
Regression . . . as an adaptation to the conditions of the inner world, springs from the vital need to satisfy the
demands of individuation.["On Psychic Energy," ibid., par. 75.]
What robs Nature of its glamour, and life of its joy, is the habit of looking back for something that used to be outside,
instead of looking inside, into the depths of the depressive state. This looking back leads to regression and is the
first step along that path. Regression is also an involuntary introversion in so far as the past is an object of memory
and therefore a psychic content, an endopsychic factor. It is a relapse into the past caused by a depression in the
present.[The Sacrifice," CW 5, par. 625.]
Jung believed that the blockage of the forward movement of energy is due to the inability of the dominant conscious
attitude to adapt to changing circumstances. However, the unconscious contents thereby activated contain the
seeds of a new progression. For instance, the opposite or inferior function is waiting in the wings, potentially
capable of modifying the inadequate conscious attitude.
If thinking fails as the adapted function, because it is dealing with a situation to which one can adapt only by feeling,
then the unconscious material activated by regression will contain the missing feeling function, although still in
embryonic form, archaic and undeveloped. Similarly, in the opposite type, regression would activate a thinking
function that would effectively compensate the inadequate feeling. ["On Psychic Energy," CW 8, par. 65.]
The regression of energy confronts us with the problem of our own psychology. From the final point of view,
therefore, regression is as necessary in the developmental process as is progression.
Regarded causally, regression is determined, say, by a "mother fixation." But from the final standpoint the libido
regresses to the imago of the mother in order to find there the memory associations by means of which further
development can take place, for instance from a sexual system into an intellectual or spiritual system.
The first explanation exhausts itself in stressing the importance of the cause and completely overlooks the final
significance of the regressive process. From this angle the whole edifice of civilization becomes a mere substitute

FULL IMMERSION for the impossibility of incest. But the second explanation allows us to foresee what will follow from the regression,
and at the same time it helps us to understand the significance of the memory-images that have been reactivated.
[ Ibid., pars. 43f. ]
PROF. PHILLIP BALDWIN Jung believed that behind the mundane symptoms of regression lay its symbolic meaning: the need for
psychological renewal, reflected in mythology as the journey of the hero.


It is precisely the strongest and best among men, the heroes, who give way to their regressive longing and
purposely expose themselves to the danger of being devoured by the monster of the maternal abyss. But if a man
is a hero, he is a hero because, in the final reckoning, he did not let the monster devour him, but subdued it, not
once but many times. Victory over the collective psyche alone yields the true value-the capture of the hoard, the
invincible weapon, the magic talisman, or whatever it be that the myth deems most desirable.[The Relations
between the Ego and the Unconscious," CW 7, par. 261.]

Self. The archetype of wholeness and the regulating center of the psyche; a transpersonal power that transcends
the ego.

As an empirical concept, the self designates the whole range of psychic phenomena in man. It expresses the unity
of the personality as a whole. But in so far as the total personality, on account of its unconscious component, can
be only in part conscious, the concept of the self is, in part, only potentially empirical and is to that extent a
postulate. In other words, it encompasses both the experienceable and the inexperienceable (or the not yet
experienced). . . . It is a transcendental concept, for it presupposes the existence of unconscious factors on
empirical grounds and thus characterizes an entity that can be described only in part.["Definitions," CW 6, par. 789.]
The self is not only the centre, but also the whole circumference which embraces both conscious and unconscious;
it is the centre of this totality, just as the ego is the centre of consciousness. ["Introduction," CW 12, par. 44.]
Like any archetype, the essential nature of the self is unknowable, but its manifestations are the content of myth
and legend.
The self appears in dreams, myths, and fairytales in the figure of the "supraordinate personality," such as a king,
hero, prophet, saviour, etc., or in the form of a totality symbol, such as the circle, square, quadratura circuli, cross,
etc. When it represents a complexio oppositorum, a union of opposites, it can also appear as a united duality, in the
form, for instance, of tao as the interplay of yang and yin, or of the hostile brothers, or of the hero and his adversary
(arch-enemy, dragon), Faust and Mephistopheles, etc. Empirically, therefore, the self appears as a play of light and
shadow, although conceived as a totality and unity in which the opposites are united.[Definitions," CW 6, par. 790.]
The realization of the self as an autonomous psychic factor is often stimulated by the irruption of unconscious
contents over which the ego has no control. This can result in neurosis and a subsequent renewal of the
personality, or in an inflated identification with the greater power.
The ego cannot help discovering that the afflux of unconscious contents has vitalized the personality, enriched it
and created a figure that somehow dwarfs the ego in scope and intensity. . . . Naturally, in these circumstances
there is the greatest temptation simply to follow the power-instinct and to identify the ego with the self outright, in
order to keep up the illusion of the ego's mastery. . . . [But] the self has a functional meaning only when it can act
compensatorily to ego-consciousness. If the ego is dissolved in identification with the self, it gives rise to a sort of
nebulous superman with a puffed-up ego.[On the Nature of the Psyche," CW 8, par. 430.]
Experiences of the self possess a numinosity characteristic of religious revelations. Hence Jung believed there was
no essential difference between the self as an experiential, psychological reality and the traditional concept of a
supreme deity.
It might equally be called the "God within us."[The Mana-Personality," CW 7, par. 399.

The Self-regulation of the Psyche

FULL IMMERSION
1. Difficulty of adaptation. Little progression of libido.



2. Regression of energy (depression, lack of disposable energy).

3. Activation of unconscious contents (fantasies, complexes,
archetypal images, inferior function, opposite attitude,
shadow, anima/animus, etc.). Compensation.

4. Symptoms of neurosis (confusion, fear, anxiety, guilt, moods, extreme affect, etc.).

5. Unconscious or half-conscious conflict between ego and contents activated in the unconscious.
Inner tension. Defensive reactions.

6. Activation of the transcendent function, involving the self and archetypal patterns of wholeness.

7. Formation of symbols (numinosity, synchronicity).

8. Transfer of energy between unconscious contents and consciousness. Enlargement of the ego,
progression of energy.

9. Assimilation of unconscious contents. Individuation.

Consciousness and the unconscious seldom agree as to their contents and their tendencies. The self-regulating
activities of the psyche, manifest in dreams, fantasies and synchronistic experiences, attempt to correct any
significant imbalance. According to Jung, this is necessary for several reasons:

(1) Consciousness possesses a threshold intensity which its contents must have attained, so that all elements that
are too weak remain in the unconscious.

(2) Consciousness, because of its directed functions, exercises an inhibition (which Freud calls censorship) on all
incompatible material, with the result that it sinks into the unconscious.

(3) Consciousness constitutes the momentary process of adaptation, whereas the unconscious contains not only all
the forgotten material of the individual's own past, but all the inherited behaviour traces constituting the structure of
the mind [i.e., archetypes].

FULL IMMERSION (4) The unconscious contains all the fantasy combinations which have not yet attained the threshold intensity, but
which in the course of time and under suitable conditions will enter the light of consciousness.["The Transcendent
PROF. PHILLIP BALDWIN Function," CW 8, par. 132.]


Sensation. The psychological function that perceives immediate reality through the physical senses. (Compare
intuition.)

An attitude that seeks to do justice to the unconscious as well as to one's fellow human beings cannot possibly rest
on knowledge alone, in so far as this consists merely of thinking and intuition. It would lack the function that
perceives values, i.e., feeling, as well as the fonction du réel, i.e., sensation, the sensible perception of reality. ["the
Psychology of the Transference," CW 16, par.486.]
In Jung's model of typology, sensation, like intuition, is an irrational function. It perceives concrete facts, with no
judgment of what they mean or what they are worth.
Sensation must be strictly differentiated from feeling, since the latter is an entirely different process, although it may
associate itself with sensation as "feeling-tone." Sensation is related not only to external stimuli but to inner ones,
i.e., to changes in the internal organic processes.[Definitions," CW 6, par. 792.]
Jung also distinguished between sensuous or concrete sensation and abstract sensation.
Concrete sensation never appears in "pure" form, but is always mix-ed up with ideas, feelings, thoughts. . . . The
concrete sensation of a flower . . . conveys a perception not only of the flower as such, but also of the stem, leaves,
habitat, and so on. It is also instantly mingled with feeling of pleasure or dislike which the sight of the flower evokes,
or with simultaneous olfactory perceptions, or with thoughts about its botanical classification, etc. But abstract
sensation immediately picks out the most salient sensuous attribute of the flower, its brilliant redness, for instance,
and makes this the sole or at least the principle content of consciousness, entirely detached from all other
admixtures. Abstract sensation is found chiefly among artists. Like every abstraction, it is a product of functional
differentiation.[Ibid., par. 794.]
Shadow. Hidden or unconscious aspects of oneself, both good and bad, which the ego has either repressed or
never recognized. (See also repression.)
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the
shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the
personality as present and real. ["The Shadow," CW 9ii, par. 14.]
Before unconscious contents have been differentiated, the shadow is in effect the whole of the unconscious. It is
commonly personified in dreams by persons of the same sex as the dreamer.
The shadow is composed for the most part of repressed desires and uncivilized impulses, morally inferior motives,
childish fantasies and resentments, etc.--all those things about oneself one is not proud of. These unacknowledged
personal characteristics are often experienced in others through the mechanism of projection.
Although, with insight and good will, the shadow can to some extent be assimilated into the conscious personality,
experience shows that there are certain features which offer the most obstinate resistance to moral control and
prove almost impossible to influence. These resistances are usually bound up with projections, which are not
recognized as such, and their recognition is a moral achievement beyond the ordinary. While some traits peculiar to
the shadow can be recognized without too much difficulty as one's personal qualities, in this case both insight and
good will are unavailing because the cause of the emotion appears to lie, beyond all possibility of doubt, in the other
person.[Ibid., par. 16.]
The realization of the shadow is inhibited by the persona. To the degree that we identify with a bright persona, the
shadow is correspondingly dark. Thus shadow and persona stand in a compensatory relationship, and the conflict
between them is invariably present in an outbreak of neurosis. The characteristic depression at such times indicates
the need to realize that one is not all one pretends or wishes to be.
There is no generally effective technique for assimilating the shadow. It is more like diplomacy or statesmanship
and it is always an individual matter. First one has to accept and take seriously the existence of the shadow.
Second, one has to become aware of its qualities and intentions. This happens through conscientious attention to

FULL IMMERSION moods, fantasies and impulses. Third, a long process of negotiation is unavoidable.
It is a therapeutic necessity, indeed, the first requisite of any thorough psychological method, for consciousness to
confront its shadow. In the end this must lead to some kind of union, even though the union consists at first in an
PROF. PHILLIP BALDWIN open conflict, and often remains so for a long time. It is a struggle that cannot be abolished by rational means.
When it is wilfully repressed it continues in the unconscious and merely expresses itself indirectly and all the more


dangerously, so no advantage is gained. The struggle goes on until the opponents run out of breath. What the
outcome will be can never be seen in advance. The only certain thing is that both parties will be changed.["Rex and
Regina," CW 14, par. 514.]
This process of coming to terms with the Other in us is well worth while, because in this way we get to know
aspects of our nature which we would not allow anybody else to show us and which we ourselves would never have
admitted.[The Conjunction," ibid., par. 706.]
Responsibility for the shadow rests with the ego. That is why the shadow is a moral problem. It is one thing to
realize what it looks like-what we are capable of. It is quite something else to determine what we can live out, or
with.
Confrontation with the shadow produces at first a dead balance, a standstill that hampers moral decisions and
makes convictions ineffective or even impossible. Everything becomes doubtful.[Ibid., par. 708.]
The shadow is not, however, only the dark underside of the personality. It also consists of instincts, abilities and
positive moral qualities that have long been buried or never been conscious.
The shadow is merely somewhat inferior, primitive, unadapted, and awkward; not wholly bad. It even contains
childish or primitive qualities which would in a way vitalize and embellish human existence, but-convention forbids!
[Psychology and Religion," CW 11, par. 134.]
If it has been believed hitherto that the human shadow was the source of all evil, it can now be ascertained on
closer investigation that the unconscious man, that is, his shadow, does not consist only of morally reprehensible
tendencies, but also displays a number of good qualities, such as normal instincts, appropriate reactions, realistic
insights, creative impulses, etc.[Conclusion," CW 9ii, par. 423.]
An outbreak of neurosis constellates both sides of the shadow: those qualities and activities one is not proud of,
and new possibilities one never knew were there.
Jung distinguished between the personal and the collective or archetypal shadow.
With a little self-criticism one can see through the shadow-so far as its nature is personal. But when it appears as
an archetype, one encounters the same difficulties as with anima and animus. In other words, it is quite within the
bounds of possibility for a man to recognize the relative evil of his nature, but it is a rare and shattering experience
for him to gaze into the face of absolute evil.["The Shadow," ibid., par. 19.]
Soul. A functional complex in the psyche. (See also Eros, Logos and soul-image.)
While Jung often used the word soul in its traditional theological sense, he strictly limited its psychological meaning.
I have been compelled, in my investigations into the structure of the unconscious, to make a conceptual distinction
between soul and psyche. By psyche I understand the totality of all psychic processes, conscious as well as
unconscious. By soul, on the other hand, I understand a clearly demarcated functional complex that can best be
described as a "personality." [Definitions," CW 6, par. 797]
With this understanding, Jung outlined partial manifestations of the soul in terms of anima/animus and persona. In
his later writing on the transference, informed by his study of the alchemical opus-which Jung understood as
psychologically analogous to the individuation process--he was more specific.
The "soul" which accrues to ego-consciousness during the opus has a feminine character in the man and a
masculine character in a woman. His anima wants to reconcile and unite; her animus tries to discern and
discriminate.[The Psychology of the Transference," CW 16, par. 522.

Splitting. A term used to describe the dissociation of the personality, marked by attitudes and behavior patterns
determined by complexes. (See also neurosis.)
Although this peculiarity is most clearly observable in psychopathology, fundamentally it is a normal phenomenon,
which can be recognized with the greatest ease in the projections made by the primitive psyche. The tendency to
split means that parts of the psyche detach themselves from consciousness to such an extent that they not only

FULL IMMERSION appear foreign but lead an autonomous life of their own. It need not be a question of hysterical multiple personality,
or schizophrenic alterations of personality, but merely of so-called "complexes" that come entirely within the scope
of the normal. ["Psychological Factors in Human Behaviour," CW 8, par. 253].


Subjective level. The approach to dreams and other images where the persons or situations pictured are seen as
symbolic representations of factors belonging entirely to the subject's own psyche. (Compare objective level.)
Interpretation of an unconscious product on the subjective level reveals the presence of subjective judgments and
tendencies of which the object is made the vehicle. When, therefore, an object-imago appears in an unconscious
product, it is not on that account the image of a real object; it is far more likely that we are dealing with a subjective
functional complex. Interpretation on the subjective level allows us to take a broader psychological view not only of
dreams but also of literary works, in which the individual figures then appear as representatives of relatively
autonomous functional complexes in the psyche of the author.[Definitions," CW 6, par. 813.]
In the analytic process, the main task after the reductive interpretation of images thrown up by the unconscious is to
understand what they say about oneself.
To establish a really mature attitude, he has to see the subjective value of all these images which seem to create
trouble for him. He has to assimilate them into his own psychology; he has to find out in what way they are part of
himself; how he attributes for instance a positive value to an object, when as a matter of fact it is he who could and
should develop this value. And in the same way, when he projects negative qualities and therefore hates and
loathes the object, he has to discover that he is projecting his own inferior side, his shadow, as it were, because he
prefers to have an optimistic and one-sided image of himself.[Definitions," CW 6, par. 813.]
Subjective psyche. See personal unconscious.
Subtle body. The somatic unconscious, a transcendental concept involving the relationship between mind and
body.

The part of the unconscious which is designated as the subtle body becomes more and more identical with the
functioning of the body, and therefore it grows darker and darker and ends in the utter darkness of matter. . . .
Somewhere our unconscious becomes material, because the body is the living unit, and our conscious and our
unconscious are embedded in it: they contact the body. Somewhere there is a place where the two ends meet and
become interlocked. And that is the [subtle body] where one cannot say whether it is matter, or what one calls
"psyche."[ Nietzsche's Zarathustra, vol. 1, p. 441

Symbol. The best possible expression for something unknown. (See also constructive and final.)

Every psychological expression is a symbol if we assume that it states or signifies something more and other than
itself which eludes our present knowledge.[Definitions," CW 6, par. 817.]
Jung distinguished between a symbol and a sign. Insignia on uniforms, for instance, are not symbols but signs that
identify the wearer. In dealing with unconscious material (dreams, fantasies, etc.), the images can be interpreted
semiotically, as symptomatic signs pointing to known or knowable facts, or symbolically, as expressing something
essentially unknown.
The interpretation of the cross as a symbol of divine love is semiotic, because "divine love" describes the fact to be
expressed better and more aptly than a cross, which can have many other meanings. On the other hand, an
interpretation of the cross is symbolic when it puts the cross beyond all conceivable explanations, regarding it as
expressing an as yet unknown and incomprehensible fact of a mystical or transcendent, i.e., psychological, nature,
which simply finds itself most appropriately represented in the cross.[ Ibid., par. 815.]
Whether something is interpreted as a symbol or a sign depends mainly on the attitude of the observer. Jung linked
the semiotic and symbolic approaches, respectively, to the causal and final points of view. He acknowledged the
importance of both.
Psychic development cannot be accomplished by intention and will alone; it needs the attraction of the symbol,

FULL IMMERSION whose value quantum exceeds that of the cause. But the formation of a symbol cannot take place until the mind has
dwelt long enough on the elementary facts, that is to say until the inner or outer necessities of the life-process have
brought about a transformation of energy.["On Psychic Energy," CW 8, par. 47.]
PROF. PHILLIP BALDWIN The symbolic attitude is at bottom constructive, in that it gives priority to understanding the meaning or purpose of
psychological phenomena, rather than seeking a reductive explanation.


There are, of course, neurotics who regard their unconscious products, which are mostly morbid symptoms, as
symbols of supreme importance. Generally, however, this is not what happens. On the contrary, the neurotic of
today is only too prone to regard a product that may actually be full of significance as a mere "symptom.[Definitions,
CW 6, par. 821.]
Jung's primary interest in symbols lay in their ability to transform and redirect instinctive energy.
How are we to explain religious processes, for instance, whose nature is essentially symbolical? In abstract form,
symbols are religious ideas; in the form of action, they are rites or ceremonies. They are the manifestation and
expression of excess libido. At the same time they are stepping-stones to new activities, which must be called
cultural in order to distinguish them from the instinctual functions that run their regular course according to natural
law.["On Psychic Energy," CW 8, par. 91.]
The formation of symbols is going on all the time within the psyche, appearing in fantasies and dreams. In analysis,
after reductive explanations have been exhausted, symbol-formation is reinforced by the constructive approach.
The aim is to make instinctive energy available for meaningful work and a productive life.
Synchronicity. A phenomenon where an event in the outside world coincides meaningfully with a psychological
state of mind.

Synchronicity . . . consists of two factors: a) An unconscious image comes into consciousness either directly (i.e.,
literally) or indirectly (symbolized or suggested) in the form of a dream, idea, or premonition. b) An objective
situation coincides with this content. The one is as puzzling as the other.["Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting
Principle," ibid., par. 858.]
Jung associated synchronistic experiences with the relativity of space and time and a degree of unconsciousness.
The very diverse and confusing aspects of these phenomena are, so far as I can see at present, completely
explicable on the assumption of a psychically relative space-time continuum. As soon as a psychic content crosses
the threshold of consciousness, the synchronistic marginal phenomena disappear, time and space resume their
accustomed sway, and consciousness is once more isolated in its subjectivity. . . . Conversely, synchronistic
phenomena can be evoked by putting the subject into an unconscious state.[On the Nature of the Psyche," CW 8,
par. 440.]
Synchronicity was defined by Jung as an "acausal connecting principle," an essentially mysterious connection
between the personal psyche and the material world, based on the fact that at bottom they are only different forms
of energy.
It is not only possible but fairly probable, even, that psyche and matter are two different aspects of one and the
same thing. The synchronicity phenomena point, it seems to me, in this direction, for they show that the nonpsychic
can behave like the psychic, and vice versa, without there being any causal connection between them.[Ibid., par.
418.

Fantasy. A complex of ideas or imaginative activity expressing the flow of psychic energy. (See also active
imagination.)

A fantasy needs to be understood both causally and purposively. Causally interpreted, it seems like a symptom of a
physiological state, the outcome of antecedent events. Purposively interpreted, it seems like a symbol, seeking to
characterize a definite goal with the help of the material at hand, or trace out a line of future psychological
development. ["Definitions," CW 6, par. 720.]
Jung distinguished between active and passive fantasies. The for-mer, characteristic of the creative mentality, are
evoked by an intuitive attitude directed toward the perception of unconscious contents; passive fantasies are

FULL IMMERSION spontaneous and autonomous manifestations of unconscious complexes.
Passive fantasy, therefore, is always in need of conscious criticism, lest it merely reinforce the standpoint of the

Monday, February 8, 2010 unconscious opposite. Whereas active fantasy, as the product of a conscious attitude not opposed to the

unconscious opposite. Whereas active fantasy, as the product of a conscious attitude not opposed to the
unconscious, and of unconscious processes not opposed but merely compensatory to consciousness, does not
require criticism so much as understanding.[Ibid., par. 714.]
Jung developed the method of active imagination as a way of assimilating the meaning of fantasies. The important
thing is not to interpret but to experience them.
Continual conscious realization of unconscious fantasies, together with active participation in the fantastic events,
has . . . the effect firstly of extending the conscious horizon by the inclusion of numerous unconscious contents;
secondly of gradually diminishing the dominant influence of the unconscious; and thirdly of bringing about a change
of personality. [The Technique of Differentiation," CW 7, par. 358.]
Father complex. A group of feeling-toned ideas associated with the experience and image of father. (See also
Logos.)
In men, a positive father-complex very often produces a certain credulity with regard to authority and a distinct
willingness to bow down before all spiritual dogmas and values; while in women, it induces the liveliest spiritual
aspirations and interests. In dreams, it is always the father-figure from whom the decisive convictions, prohibitions,
and wise counsels emanate. [The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales," CW 9i, par. 396.]
Jung's comments on the father complex were rarely more than asides in writing about something else. In general,
the father complex in a man manifests in the persona (through identification) and as aspects of his shadow; in a
woman, it manifests in the nature of the animus, colored by the projection of her father's anima.
The father exerts his influence on the mind or spirit of his daughter-on her "Logos." This he does by increasing her
intellectuality, often to a pathological degree which in my later writings I have described as "animus
possession."[The Origin of the Hero," CW 5, par. 272.]
The father is the first carrier of the animus-image. He endows this virtual image with substance and form, for on
account of his Logos he is the source of "spirit" for the daughter. Unfortunately this source is often sullied just where
we would expect clean water. For the spirit that benefits a woman is not mere intellect, it is far more: it is an attitude,
the spirit by which a man lives. Even a so-called "ideal" spirit is not always the best if it does not understand how to
deal adequately with nature, that is, with animal man. . . . Hence every father is given the opportunity to corrupt, in
one way or another, his daughter's nature, and the educator, husband, or psychiatrist then has to face the music.
For "what has been spoiled by the father"[ A reference to Hexagram 18 in the I Ching (Richard Wilhelm edition, p.
80): "Work ok on What Has Been Spoiled."] can only be made good by a father.[The Personification of the
Opposites," CW 14, par. 232.]

Hero. An archetypal motif based on overcoming obstacles and achieving certain goals.
The hero's main feat is to overcome the monster of darkness: it is the long-hoped-for and expected triumph of
consciousness over the unconscious.[The Psychology of the Child Archetype," CW 9i, par. 284.]
The hero myth is an unconscious drama seen only in projection, like the happenings in Plato's parable of the cave.
[The Dual Mother," CW 5, par. 612.]
The hero symbolizes a man's unconscious self, and this manifests itself empirically as the sum total of all
archetypes and therefore includes the archetype of the father and of the wise old man. To that extent the hero is his
own father and his own begetter [Ibid., par. 516.]
Mythologically, the hero's goal is to find the treasure, the princess, the ring, the golden egg, elixir of life, etc.
Psychologically these are metaphors for one's true feelings and unique potential. In the process of individuation, the
heroic task is to assimilate unconscious contents as opposed to being overwhelmed by them. The potential result is
the release of energy that has been tied up with unconscious complexes.
In myths the hero is the one who conquers the dragon, not the one who is devoured by it. And yet both have to deal
with the same dragon. Also, he is no hero who never met the dragon, or who, if he once saw it, declared afterwards
that he saw nothing. Equally, only one who has risked the fight with the dragon and is not overcome by it wins the
FULL IMMERSION hoard, the "treasure hard to attain." He alone has a genuine claim to self-confidence, for he has faced the dark
ground of his self and thereby has gained himself. . . . He has acquired the right to believe that he will be able to
PROF. PHILLIP BALDWIN overcome all future threats by the same means.["The Conjunction," CW 14, par. 756.]
The hero's journey is a round as illustrated in the diagram. [Adapted from Joseph Campbell, Hero with a Thousand

Faces, Bollingen Series XVII (Princeton University press, 1949), p. 245.]

Faces, Bollingen Series XVII (Princeton University press, 1949), p. 245.]

In myth and legend, the hero typically travels by ship, fights a sea monster, is swallowed, struggles against being
bitten or crushed to death, and having arrived inside the belly of the whale, like Jonah, seeks the vital organ and
cuts it off, thereby winning release. Eventually he must return to his beginnings and bear witness.

In terms of a man's individuation, the whale-dragon is the mother or the mother-bound anima. The vital organ that
must be severed is the umbilical cord.

The hero is the ideal masculine type: leaving the mother, the source of life, behind him, he is driven by an
unconscious desire to find her again, to return to her womb. Every obstacle that rises in his path and hampers his
ascent wears the shadowy features of the Terrible Mother, who saps his strength with the poison of secret doubt
and retrospective longing.["The Dual Mother," CW 5, par. 611.]
In a woman's psychology, the hero's journey is lived out through the worldly exploits of the animus, or else in a male
partner, through projection.

Individuation. A process of psychological differentiation, having for its goal the development of the individual
personality.
In general, it is the process by which individual beings are formed and differentiated; in particular, it is the
development of the psychological individual as a being distinct from the general, collective psychology.[ Ibid., par.
757.]
The aim of individuation is nothing less than to divest the self of the false wrappings of the persona on the one
hand, and of the suggestive power of primordial images on the other.["The Function of the Unconscious," CW 7,
par. 269. ]
Individuation is a process informed by the archetypal ideal of wholeness, which in turn depends on a vital
relationship between ego and unconscious. The aim is not to overcome one's personal psychology, to become
perfect, but to become familiar with it. Thus individuation involves an increasing awareness of one's unique
psychological reality, including personal strengths and limitations, and at the same time a deeper appreciation of
humanity in general.
As the individual is not just a single, separate being, but by his very existence presupposes a collective relationship,
it follows that the process of individuation must lead to more intense and broader collective relationships and not to
isolation.[Definitions," CW 6, par. 758.]
Individuation does not shut one out from the world, but gathers the world to itself.["On the Nature of the Psyche,"
CW 8, par. 432.]
Individuation has two principle aspects: in the first place it is an internal and subjective process of integration, and in
the second it is an equally indispensable process of objective relationship. Neither can exist without the other,
although sometimes the one and sometimes the other predominates.[The Psychology of the Transference," CW 16,
par. 448.]
Individuation and a life lived by collective values are nevertheless two divergent destinies. In Jung's view they are
related to one another by guilt. Whoever embarks on the personal path becomes to some extent estranged from
collective values, but does not thereby lose those aspects of the psyche which are inherently collective. To atone for
this "desertion," the individual is obliged to create something of worth for the benefit of society.

FULL IMMERSION Individuation cuts one off from personal conformity and hence from collectivity. That is the guilt which the individuant
leaves behind him for the world, that is the guilt he must endeavor to redeem. He must offer a ransom in place of
himself, that is, he must bring forth values which are an equivalent substitute for his absence in the collective
PROF. PHILLIP BALDWIN personal sphere. Without this production of values, final individuation is immoral and-more than that-suicidal. . . .
The individuant has no a priori claim to any kind of esteem. He has to be content with whatever esteem flows to him


The individuant has no a priori claim to any kind of esteem. He has to be content with whatever esteem flows to him

from outside by virtue of the values he creates. Not only has society a right, it also has a duty to condemn the
individuant if he fails to create equivalent values.["Adaptation, Individuation, Collectivity," CW 18, pars. 1095f.]
Individuation differs from individualism in that the former deviates from collective norms but retains respect for them,
while the latter eschews them entirely.
A real conflict with the collective norm arises only when an individual way is raised to a norm, which is the actual
aim of extreme individualism. Naturally this aim is pathological and inimical to life. It has, accordingly, nothing to do
with individuation, which, though it may strike out on an individual bypath, precisely on that account needs the norm
for its orientation to society and for the vitally necessary relationship of the individual to society. Individuation,
therefore, leads to a natural esteem for the collective norm. [Definitions," CW 6, par. 761.]
The process of individuation, consciously pursued, leads to the realization of the self as a psychic reality greater
than the ego. Thus individuation is essentially different from the process of simply becoming conscious.
The goal of the individuation process is the synthesis of the self. [The Psychology of the Child Archetype," CW 9i,
par. 278.]
Again and again I note that the individuation process is confused with the coming of the ego into consciousness and
that the ego is in consequence identified with the self, which naturally produces a hopeless conceptual muddle.
Individuation is then nothing but ego-centredness and autoeroticism. But the self comprises infinitely more than a
mere ego, as the symbolism has shown from of old. It is as much one's self, and all other selves, as the ego.[On the
Nature of the Psyche," CW 8, par. 432.]
In Jung's view, no one is ever completely individuated. While the goal is wholeness and a healthy working
relationship with the self, the true value of individuation lies in what happens along the way.
The goal is important only as an idea; the essential thing is the opus which leads to the goal: that is the goal of a
lifetime.["The Psychology of the Transference," CW 16, par. 400.]

FULL IMMERSION


Full immersion.a.

More Related Content

What's hot (20)

More from PROFESSOR PHILLIP BALDWIN (10)

Recently uploaded (20)

Full immersion.a.