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Volume XXXV, No. 1, Winter 2005

From the Editor — Kathryn Madden

The death of a loved one draws a silent divide between us and the beloved. The painful void left by their departure can be measured by how much we loved them, how much unresolved there was left between us, or both. But the death of a loved one is still someone else's death. We can observe it, grieve it, contemplate it, learn and grow from it. A different matter, our own death. When you really think about it, there is something so jarring about the thought of our own death that the mind may quickly rush to change the subject. If we are able to stay with the thought long enough, questions of meaning arise. Will anyone know or care that we have lived? Have we done anything of value with our lives? Left behind anything worthwhile? And, then, what lies on the "other side?" Is there another side at all? Will we be known there? Will we know that we are known? Will the separation from loved ones who are living be compensated for by, in some way, rejoining with those who are not? Perhaps so, but it is unverifiable from this side of the veil.

The collection of articles in this issue of Quadrant consider aspects of physical death (Waldron and Wood), egoic death (Astrachan), and an archetypal daimon who attacks our inner world (Kalsched), who Freud would probably have attributed to a personification of the “death instinct.”

In “Dante's ‘Dis:’ Archetypal Image and Clinical Reality with Early Trauma Patients,” Donald Kalsched identifies a powerful dis-integrating force lodged deep in the psyches of those suffering from early traumatic experiences. Kalsched reasons that this force, which he has named “Dis” from the figure of the same name in Dante's Inferno, actually serves to protect against re-suffering the early, original wound that was so disorienting to the young, fragile ego. Rather than wish for death, this inner assailant seeks to preserve the ego, albeit at a state which has not yet integrated the ancient pain.

In “Naming the Unnamable (Pt.1),” Gary Astrachan makes the provocative argument that the path from consciousness to the “unpresentable core of our being … necessarily lies along the border between madness and ecstasy, with all of its attendant risks of Dionysiac dissolution, disintegration and destruction.” Artists, mystics, and other creative people who have plumbed the inner depts have tread upon “this groundless ground of the soul, the fathomless psyche itself, and its beckoning void of non-being and death to which we are ineluctably drawn.” It is a dangerous journey, but one that can yield a rich bounty.

In “A Very Easy Death,” Sharn Waldron examines the phenomenological gap between the death of a loved one and the prospect of one's own death. For Waldron “the death of another … involves the elimination of an object within the world and not of the observing self or subject.” In contrast, she observes that “[t]he image of the death of oneself is tantamount to asserting the end of the world.” While these thoughts do not sit easily next to a hope in the continuation of life, Waldron presents the near-death experience of Marion Woodman as evidence that the dissonance between the two can be held in tension.

In “Cancer and Active Imagination,” Lorna Wood relates a story of her own experience with breast cancer. After the shock of learning of her diagnosis, she was drawn to look for meaning in the cancer, even to address it as a living entity that wanted something from her. Engaging in an active imagination with the disease, Wood relates a sometimes chilling series of statements Cancer makes to her. As she begins to give Cancer its voice, the terror gives way to energy and inspiration.

I invite you to mindfully enter into these essays that explore the difficult theme of death. And as you do, consider also these words of C. G. Jung in his Memorial to J. S. which seem especially relevant.

Out of the turmoil and terror of our life the one precious flower of the spirit begins to unfold, the four-petaled flower of the immortal light, and even if our mortal consciousness should not be aware of its secret operation, it nevertheless does its secret work of purification.

— Kathryn Madden

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