At the moment I'm reading Carl Jung 's "Memories, Dreams and Reflections". And I'm loving it. It suits the cast of my mind perfectly, it was written for me.
And it stirs the thought of how out of fashion Freud and Jung have become.
Personally, I've always been a fan. "But the times, they are a changin" and you don't get blog anywhere now-a-days without a CGI of a firing neuron or an MRI scan. It would help to know a little NLP.
I'm not dismissing these advances, they are great advances, but as much as they sift and measure there seems to be equally much that they miss.
Freud. Very unfashionable, with his Ego, SuperEgo, Id, Eros and Thanatos. SO much mumbo jumbo....Many new psychologists know of him only by reputation, he is studied anecdotally in university, superficially, there are different theories, Stanley Milgram, BF Skinner and Bandler and Grinder amonst them, that are far more "current" and "hip".
That's not to deride or undervalue them. But Freud and Jung were amonst the first to move into this area. And they were mapping the human mind, the landscape of the unconcious, the soul. And they did great work. Great work.
My boy, at 4, maybe 5 years old, we're out camping in Jasper and I'd been teasing him. He has a fit, a rare (for him) tantrum - "I'm going to poke your eyes out with this stick, then kill you and marry my Mom.!" That's a quote. I watched him while I sipped my coffee, unable to express the impression his outburst registered. It was a classic Freud moment. Up until then I'd been a little leery, I had my own theories as well. That changed everything.
They studied the layering and ordering of personality, the concious and unconcious motivations. They were, in a sense, adventurers mapping an unknown, undiscoverd world. And, with the tools they had, pen and paper, conversation, patients, they did a remarkable job. An incredible job. Think of drawing a map of the world, without Google Maps or an Atlas to aid you, you have to discover it all yourself first. A very big job.
They were working on the big picture. I read studies now, they are tiny pictures, parts of a mosaic. Elements of personality and intelligence mapped by divisions of psychologists, psychiatrists and neurosurgeons in different universities. There is no "Whole Theory of Human Personality", just as there is no "Unified Theory" in physics. But these guys, Freud and Jung, they were undertaking the tremendous task of mapping the entire human personality. In Carl Jung's case, the "Soul".
If you doubt Freud's substance or impact try reading Bruno Bettelheim's "The Uses of Enchantment". It sits on my folklore and fairy tales shelf in the office. No, you can't borrow it, buy your own. It's a masterpiece. It doesn't tell you anything you didn't know already, that you didn't intuit or understand or somehow in a deep way comprehend. But it uses Freud's theories to reveal plain truths in plain language, which in itself is a sort of genius. Think of Newton and the Apple. He was not the first to discover gravity, but he certainly was the first to notice it.
SO it's back now to reading Carl Jung. He suits me, somehow, his stories, experiences are not mine, but the world's. And while I don't recognize the events, the places or time, I recognize the humanity and emotion in his writing. The commonality of our experience. It's a great read.
Quotes: Carl Jung
"The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed."
"The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves."
"Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent."
"The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it."
Quotes: Sigmund Freud
"America is a mistake, a giant mistake." and "America is the most grandiose experiment the world has seen, but, I am afraid, it is not going to be a success." and "Yes, America is gigantic, but a gigantic mistake."
"Everywhere I go I find that a poet has been there before me."
"I have found little that is "good" about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash, no matter whether they publicly subscribe to this or that ethical doctrine or to none at all. That is something that you cannot say aloud, or perhaps even think."
"If you can't do it, give up!"
"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."
"The mind is like an iceberg, it floats with one-seventh of its bulk above water."
"Time spent with cats is never wasted."
"What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult."
"What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books."
"The voice of the intellect is a soft one, but it does not rest until it has gained a hearing."
"The first requisite of civilization is that of justice."