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Volume XXXV, No. 2, Summer 2005

From the Editor — Kathryn Madden

Summer is a time when rising temperatures cause a lightening, even a lessening, of clothing. We become more aware of our bodies and, as we do, perhaps become aware of now-broken resolutions made in January to get into better shape by June or July. In the spirit of body–mindfulness, the summer issue of Quadrant presents the contributions of authors with something to say about how our physical natures reveal and/or hide our identities, mediate emotional awareness, or even produce the experience of the numinous.

Cedrus Monte, in “Numen of the Flesh,” asserts that, despite the fact that the body “continues to be largely marginalized in psychoanalytic practice,” there exists within the very cells of the body a “dimension which corresponds directly to the archetypal experience of the numen.” Rather than being simply the “receiving vessel” of the action of the spirit, the flesh “is also the generator for the experience of the numinosum.” As a result, Monte insists that “a new relation to one's body must be established for a more complete individuation.”

In his interview with Robert Henderson, Arnold Mindell speaks of the integration of Jungian analysis with a deeper understanding of the body. He has been exploring for two decades something he has termed the “dreambody experience.” Illness, especially serious illness like cancer and Alzheimer's, are what Mindell calls “big dreams.” The body is always “dreaming in its own way” and producing symbols that reveal deep feelings and imaginations about our “body experiences.” He advocates closely attending to the images and symbols produced by bodily symptoms, allowing them to lead not only to possible alternative treatment of the illness, but also to greater meaning.

In Part 2 of “Naming the Unnameable” (see Quadrant, XXV:1, Winter 2005, for Part 1), Gary Astrachan examines two more “sublimely raving poets of naming,” Friederich Nietzsche and Antonin Artaud, as they generated for themselves numerous appellations in a desperate attempt to preserve a connection to the world of time-space while slipping into an abyss of no-thing-ness. As he felt himself “disappearing,” Nietzsche reached for historical names as a “hope and possibility of remaining incarnated, staying in the body, in time, and in history.” Artaud's names, like Nietzsche's, are generated in an attempt to counterbalance the slide into madness. “Though they are clearly his soul's many names,” Astrachan tells us, “ the names have been just as deeply buried in his muscles, cells, tissues, sinews, bones, and blood, as in the recesses and folds of his timelessly ancient and unraveling psyche.” In the end, Astrachan wishes to call our attention to “the matrix that holds together the name and the names …, the mysterium, the adhesive glue of the soul that allows the mercurial name to stay fastened, in connection with our bodies” — that which he calls “the unnameable.”

J. M. Furniss provides a Jungian interpretation of J. M. Coetzee's novel, Disgrace. The protagonist is a 52-year-old professor of English named David Lurie, who Furniss sees as suffering from an “anima projection.” Like Dante, Lurie has lost his way at midlife and feels he has become a “ghost.” His “magnetism for women,” which has served as his “backbone,” is gone. They “psychological disconnect” that arises as a result of this loss leads him to even consider “finishing the job bodily by self-castration — ‘tying off’ desire so that he ‘can turn [his] mind to the proper business of the old: preparing to die.’ ” Only through a purgation of his projections does the anima image arise within Lurie's psyche. With the appearance of this inner sybol comes healing and a music “felt ‘in his blood.’ ” At the Last, Lurie “[rejoins] the ranks of the becoming [with] a new realization of meaning in life's endless cycles of darkness and light.”

These thoughtful articles are movingly complemented by James Hall's poem, “The Last Time I Saw Isis,” an exploration of the appearance of the anima from a brilliant mind that inhabits a body left inert by a rare pontine stroke some 14 years ago. We are honored to include Dr. Hall's contribution in this issue of Quadrant.

Finally, I conclude this editorial by thanking our book review editor, Matt Greco, who has decided to move on to devote more time to his own writing and other career pursuits. We at Quadrant would like to express great appreciation for his dedicated service to our journal and wish him much success in the future. In addition, we are very pleased to welcome Beth Darlington as the new book review editor. Beth is a Jungian analyst and professor of English at Vassar College with a special interest in Jungian and archetypal psychology in relation to literature. We look forward to Beth's contribution in maintaining Quadrant's position of importance to those interested in the presentation of the full spectrum of Jungian psychology.

— Kathryn Madden

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