Quadrant Winter 1977

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

Spatial Archetypes — Mimi Lobell

Architecture translates psychic structures into material structures giving form to the spatial archetypes of the collective unconscious. It houses our physical, social, cultural, and spiritual selves; and just as we cannot understand bees without knowing the beehive, so we cannot understand human beings without knowing architecture. Though the cultural and spiritual are uniquely human dimensions of experience, modern architecture has denied these dimensions and addressed itself only to physical and social needs. Modern architecture’s goals of being functional, industrialized, and culture-free were first established in Europe around the turn of the century in belated response to the Industrial Revolution, and were brought to America by influential refugee architects shortly before world War II. … Today this style is finally being questioned by some architects; but it still holds strong in the conservative bulk of the profession, and what is worse, it is rapidly spreading from its Western origins throughout the world as European and American dominated environmental planning agencies design new cities, housing, and tourist facilities in developing countries …

Reflections on Oedipus — Jonathan J. Goldberg

Well before becoming professionally interested in psychology, I taught Sophocles’ Theban plays to humanities classes. It struck me each year how strange it was that the drama of Oedipus’ life, in which a young man flees the land of his supposed parents in order not to fulfill a prophecy that he would kill his father and marry his mother, should have lent its name to the Oedipus complex as a crucial event in the psychology of early childhood. What the thoughtful if impulsive youth who killed a stranger at a disputed crossroads — and then won a queen by delivering her city from a monster — was seen to have in common with a jealous little boy wanting to replace his father in his mother’s bed seemed less than totally self-evident.

Today I find it possible to formulate more precisely with respect to the material and its interpretation. …

Hestia/Vesta — Barbara Black Koltuv

Hestia was wooed by both Poseidon and Apollo. She refused to give herself to either of them and swore a great oath on Zeus’ head to remain a virgin and true to herself forever. In gratitude to her for preserving the peace of Olympus “Zeus gave her a beautiful privilege instead of a wedding gift: he has her sit in the center of the house to receive the best in offerings.” Hestia, well pleased with the honors granted her, secure in her position as recipient of first and last sacrifices, and seated symbolically as an altar in every domestic and public hearth in Greece, seems never to have left her home on Olympus and took no part in either the love affairs or wars of the Olympians.…

Hestia, called “Vesta” by the Romans, played a major role in Roman mythology and religious life. …

The Child Archetype — James H. Young

… Children usually appear in Wordsworth’s poems simply as an essential element in the panorama of life. Sometimes, however, children take on a special aura of divinity; they are invested with holy light or they function as inspirations to others. These special, rather superhuman children in Wordsworth’s poems show many of the features of what C. G. Jung has called the “child archetype,” and consequently these special children are of particular interest.

Because of the similarities between certain of the children in Wordsworth’s poetry and the child archetype, it is reasonable to consider to what degree Jung’s concept of the child archetype sheds light on Wordsworth’s poems. It is the purpose of this study to demonstrate that Jung’s comments on the child archetype are indeed very useful in the interpretation of Wordsworth’s poetry. Particularly, Jung’s ideas illuminate Wordsworth’s Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood — a poem that affirms the possibility that the adult may regain something like the lost “vision splendid” of childhood.