Quadrant: The Journal of the C.G. Jung Foundation

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Volume XLV:2 Fall 2015

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On the Brink: Stepping into the Unforseen — Murray Stein

This essay is a reflection on the problem of dealing with the ghosts of the past while finding the courage to move into an unforeseen future. I look at three instances of how this problem is faced from the works of Erich Neumann, Franz Kafka, and C.G. Jung. Neumann takes the famous 'leap of faith' and finds resources in the depths of the abyss; Kafka dwells on the question of endless repetitions of the same story; Jung through active imagination finds a resource in Philemon's wisdom and teachings. Each story is instructive, and together they provide some assistance in considering options when standing on the brink of fateful decisions.

A Jungian Aesthetic: Art, Active Imagination, and the Creative Process — Maria Taveras

This article (presented in 2013 at the 19th Congress of the International Association for Analytical Psychology in Copenhagen ), discusses the prospects for a Jungian aesthetic. In the history of modern art there is, in Surrealism, a famous Freudian aesthetic based on free association and inquires why, in contrast, there is no Jungian aesthetic based on active imagination. The article addresses the ambivalent, even contradictory, attitudes that Jung exhibits toward art and aesthetics in relation to the psyche (and especially in relation to the anima). It emphasizes that Jung ultimately argues that 'aesthetic formulation' is psychologically just as necessary and just as valuable as 'understanding.'

Inflated Self - Alienated Ego: A Journey through the Film All is Lost — Boston Carter

Edward F. Edinger created a model depicting Carl Jung's individuation process and he called it the Psychic Life Cycle. Edinger's model depicts the cycle of ego alienation through the process of inflation, rejection, humility, and acceptance with a final return to Self. With almost no dialogue and only one character, the film All is Lost symbolically displays the Psychic Life Cycle of inflation all the way through a reunion with Self.

Why Michael Corleone Fails: How Hermes and Hestia Shape the Narrative of The Godfather — Carol Cooper

The first film in the trilogy built around Mario Puzo's novel, The Godfather, is remarkable for many reasons. For those who choose to view it from the perspective of Jungian and Archetypal psychology, it remains memorable for the great clarity with which the film and the novel reveal unconscious material managing to shape the perspective and destiny of their protagonists. This article compares Mafia boss Vito Corleone to his son and heir, Michael, as each struggles to hold their families as well as their own personalities together under the psychological stress of maintaining power over an international crime syndicate. Both are smart, charismatic, pragmatic men of Sicilian descent. But there are depth psychological reasons—having to do with archetype-driven ego complexes and unresolved childhood trauma—why the father is slightly more successful than the son. The Italian Mafia in America, as portrayed in Puzo's mythologizing fiction, succeeded only when it achieved dynamic synergy between the archetypal domains of Hestia and Hermes. What The Godfather narrative shows is how Vito Corleone maintained a better internal and external balance than Michael ever could between the psychic energy ruled by the civilizing goddess of the hearth and family loyalty, and that of her necessary opposite, the trickster god of outlaws, maverick businessmen, and the uncivilized frontier.

On the Undisturbed Functioning of Memory — Robin Brown

Taking a short quotation from Jung as its cue, this paper is constituted as a series of reflections on the theme of memory. Exploring how the pursuit of 'facts' might result in the sense of an imaginative decline, the author draws upon the thought of Rene Guenon, James Hillman, Michel Foucault, Daniel Stern, Martin Buber, Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, and Frances Yates. It is argued that the role played by the internet in shaping the nature of self-representation might be considered diametrically opposed to psychotherapeutic process.

Welcoming the Shadow as Guest and Self: Archetypal Approaches to Healing in Jung's Red Book —David Odorisio

Jung's Red Book demonstrates the delicate and vital link between psychological healing at personal and archetypal levels. Examining The Red Book from Jung's concept of the shadow illuminates these various layers of healing that touch upon individual, collective, and archetypal realms of consciousness. Insights from a Jungian approach to trauma offer an additional investigation of The Red Book, further demonstrating that healing, far from an individual or isolated journey, touches upon and participates in the numinous dimensions of the psyche linking both the personal and transpersonal in the journey towards an individuated self. 

Book Reviews — Beth Darlington, Review Editor

Reviews by Deborah Reider Bazes, Gary Brown, and Sarah Jackson

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