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

Depth Psychology as the New Dispensation: Reflections on Jung’s Answer to Job — Edward F. Edinger

…In his old age, Jung remarked that he wished he could rewrite all of his books except Answer to Job. With this book he was completely satisfied. … At the outset, let me state candidly my appraisal of this book. In my opinion it has the same psychic depth and import as characterize the major scriptures of the world-religions. In accordance with the modern mind, it differs from these scriptures in its modesty of expression and in the objective consciousness that illuminates it. One should not be deceived by its personal, unpretentious style. It is this very quality that demonstrates its authenticity. …

Coming to Terms with Hera— Christine Downing

…About a year and a half ago I realized that the goddess before whom I needed to bring myself was Hera. After having been married for more than twenty-five years, I was about to be divorced. My husband and I had been separated for several years; the divorce felt right to each of us, but I knew that for me some ritual observance of this ending was essential. That intuition somehow led me to recognize that what I wanted to do was to come to terms as wholly as I could with what “wifeness” had meant to me, and that my way of doing that was to turn to the Greek mythological representation of wifeness, the figure of Hera, and ask what role she has played in my life. This coming to terms seemed to provide me with a way of understanding myself more fully, more consciously, and more symbolically than I had before — and that at a point in my life where in an outward literal sense I was no longer to be defined by my relation to her.…

Narcissism and Narcissistic Character Disorders: A Jungian View — Nathan Schwartz

Narcissism, the common conception of which is extreme self-adoration with an aloofness that denies any need for another person, is a subject that is a very old human concern. Ovid’s telling of the myth of Narcissus in 8 A.D. in his Metamorphoses is the beginning of a long literary tradition …

The term “narcissism” made its appearance early on in psychoanalytic theory, and did so in an especially pejorative manner. It initially meant extreme self-love, and an associated impenetrability that was tantamount to a pessimistic therapeutic prognosis. To be “narcissistic” was, thus, “bad.” It was a statement that one was not only self-involved but beyond reach. This decree in psychoanalytic thought extended itself to meditation, introversion and creative fantasy, so that it is hardly surprising that Jung rarely uses the term “narcissism.” …

The Scapegoat Complex — Sylvia Perera Massell

Today we use the term “scapegoat” easily in discussions of collective morality. We have become attuned to finding the phenomenon of scapegoating in social psychology and there are many studies of the scapegoat pattern in small groups, in families, in ethnic and national politics. We apply the term “scapegoat” to individuals and groups who are accused of causing misfortune. Thus, they seem to relieve others, the scapegoaters, of their own responsibilities, and to strengthen the scapegoaters’ sense of power and righteousness. In this current usage a search for the scapegoat relieves us also of our relationship to the transpersonal dimension of life. For in the present age we function with a perverted form of the archetype that ignores the gods; and we blame the scapegoat and the devil for life’s evils.

We forget that originally the scapegoat was a human or animal victim chosen for sacrifice to the underworld god to heal the community. The scapegoat was a pharmakon or healing agent. …

Reviews

Coomaraswamy: Selected Papers: Traditional Art and Symbolism, Vol. I; Selected Papers: Metaphysics, Vol. II: His Life and Work, Vol. III. — Roger Lipsey, Editor. Princeton University Press. Reviewed by Jonathan J. Goldberg.

The Culture of Narcissism— Christopher Lasch. W.W. Norton, & Co., Inc. 1978. Reviewed by Jonathan J. Goldberg.

Birdy— William Wharton. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. 1978. Reviewed by Thomas H. Records.

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