A Starting Point

September 13, 2009

This is the first blog that I have ever created. I don't believe that I am doing this for anyone else but myself.

Some background about me is that I have significant experience in therapeutic counseling and I resonate with the Jungian perspective. Most of my thoughts will not be unique to the collective (everyone) but they come from me and that meets one of the most basic instincts within all of us, the need to create. My personality type is introvert, with my strongest function being intuitive and my weakest function being sensation.

I am not a determinist, however, I would classify myself as a maturationist (Carl Rogers). The idea is that we really don't become something that we are not. We simply use our senses upon the external objects (Plato) to develop into that which we truly are. I probably fall somewhere in line with the Gnostics in that I believe that true divinity is within ourselves. As children of God, our SELF is the eternal and divine part within us that can give us direction and orchestrates our dreams (holy cow, more of that later). In terms of being a Christian and understanding as well as using A Savior or Christ in my life, I am working on that, and there is quite a bit of ambivalence for me in this area.

My goal in creating this blog is to present and discuss how symbolism, specifically, the symbolism of alchemy can be used to understand and give meaning to daily life problems, challenges, successes, and most important, relationships.

I will be using resources that are Jungian. Not strictly, but generally. My background is a doctorate in Marriage and Family Therapy. Although, for the last two years of my education I really took a hard left into the night, did independent study, and pursued Jung. My favorite authors are Jung and Freud (although I have not read as much Freud as I would like), Edinger, Harding, definitely Von Franz, as well as Robert Johnson, and a smattering of others. Obviously, there is plenty that I don't know.

If you are a behaviorist, or if you don't give credibility to the idea of meaning in all aspects of our lives, then this is probably not for you. If you think age old symbols and religion are simply the imaginations of people and that they really don't have any meaning in terms of why we are on this earth and what we should be doing with our lives - our own personal myth (Von Franz), then you might find this pretty annoying. While I will try to be open about all points of view, I think there has to be a starting place, and the integrity of the page will not make the assumption that you agree with Jung, but that you seek, find, and give value to making meaning about your life.

The beginning, which most of us never get through is always about one's own personal myth. This doesn't have to be volumes of written work, it is simply the poignant experiences from your own history, and your suspicions or your superstitions about you and the world you live in. Basically this is about where you are from (the context or situation), where you are at now, and where you project your life will be in the future.

Transference or Running Away From Home is Not An Option

We've all heard the saying that, "You take a piece of yourself with you wherever you go". The nurturing and loving relationships that we have with our parents, yes, even when they traumatized us and were horrible to us, imprint or form a basis (reference point?) for future intimate relationships in our lives. Many people interpret what they think Freud meant, so I will try not to do that. I don't have a clue what Freud meant in most of the things he said. Instead of colloquially stating that a person marries his mother or her father, I see it as people form intimate connections (not just romantic) with both genders using their previous and most fundamental relationships with their parents and siblings as a reference point. In other words we make judgments and decisions about the the kind of people we want to be with based on whether it feels comfortable (familiar?) to us. The familiarity is from our fundamental family relationships. This doesn't mean that we choose people that make us feel, think, and act in the same way as we did in our own families.

Think of it like a continuum. On one end there is the kind of connection that you had with your mother and on the other end there is a connection that is the exact opposite to any kind of interaction that resembles what you had with your mother. This is the reference point. The continuum defines any relationship that you will choose and not choose. So, while you may choose someone who is exactly like your mother, someone who is the opposite of your mother, or someone who is between those two end points of the continuum, the continuum serves as a reference point to select out a specific person from an infinite number of people we could be with.

Okay, that's a lot. But its a starting place. It means that to understand your own personal myth, you try to find out the kind of people you are connecting with and then trace it back to your family's interactions, beliefs, and the significant experiences that you had growing up.

One last thing, and then I will write about some of the symbols I associate with the beginning of this (Lapis) later. When I talk about the unconscious here I will be speaking about the personal unconscious unless I specifically state that I am discussing the collective unconscious. An assumption that I make is that our unconscious is a living breathing part of us that we probably get some of the best access to through dreams. The unconscious has a running experience of our day-to-day life just as the conscious (ego) does. However, the unconscious speaks to us in symbols. Ahh, hence the need for some framework that helps us understand symbolism.

Because our focus and concentration can only be on one or two particular things at a time, there is much in our day-to-day experience that escapes our awareness. Jung uses the metaphor of a spotlight (Man and His Symbols) to discuss our limitations. However, the unconscious is picking up on different aspects of our experience and then, at times, presenting it to us in our dreams. The metaphor would be like having the TV on. While we are watching one channel (maybe two or three of we have that screen-within-a-screen thing), we cannot dismiss that there are hundreds of other channels broadcasting. So tonight, when you go to sleep, think about the dreams you might have as the unconscious commenting on different (often times unacceptable) aspects of recent and poignant experiences that you have had.

More later.