Reading: Modern Man in Search of a Soul (C. Jung): Ch. 9 The Basic Postulates of Analytic Psychology

Starting out the essay, Jung disparages the false dichotomy of materialism and spirit. In contrarian fashion, he argues that psyche is not merely the results of biochemical reactions, in essence arguing for the separate existence of a psychological reality within humans. This seeks to accomplish a legitimation of his work and others like his as scientific. His science would go beyond what can be touched or seen - the merely rational. Mind is the great unknown quantity, forever eluding capture by precise measurement. It takes a different form of investigation to understand the contours of mind, one that involves human meaning. His science then is a science of the breakdown in human meaning that results always and everywhere in suffering. He sums it up: "To grant the substantiality of the soul or psyche is repugnant to the spirit of the age, for to do so would be heresy" (p. 176). He continuous on: "We can perhaps summon up the courage to consider the possibility of a "psychology with the psyche"--that is, of a field of study based on the assumption of an autonomous psyche." (p.180) Interesting, Jung divides the psyche from the soul: Psyche is the sum of conscious and unconscious mental processes; Soul is equivalent to the personality.

Reading: Jung in Context (P. Homans) Ch 4

p 84. Homans makes some fascinating comments on Narcissism and Otherness, that essentially the obsession with self is a relational one: without the other there is no question of self. Narcissism takes place and Self-esteem and Identity comes into creation through the differentiation between other and self. This evokes the process of the I-Thou, God-Man,Father/Mother(Parent)-Child: sacred and profane relations intermingle and manifest themselves as a process of individuation or narcissism. That said, the contents of one's life would inform this overall process: religious,intellectual, cultural, social environment and an individual's personal relationship with them as well as with parents and significant other persons. What then is the collective versus the personal elements of unconsciousness? The collective portion would be all the external, environments (religious, cultural, ethnic, intellectual factors) while the personal would be one's relationships to significant other persons (most often parents) and self. In a sense this is the story of the self and extra-self in the creation of a stable personality. However, the personality is always vulnerable to disruption from within; that mind has a self-disruptive function that is not strictly rational (Read Lear to clarify thoughts). To what extent is the above description culturally bounded to the judeo-christian West? In what ways is the notion of individuation or autonomy as the goal of the above intra-psychic process?

Reading: Self-Actualizing People: A Study of Psychological Health (A. Maslow)

1. Published in 1950 but written in 1943. He delayed publishing until he had the courage to put the ideas out there.
2. Section: More efficient perception of reality and more comfortable relations with it p 203
   
   1. p 204 fascinating comments on the sick and the healthy: "if health and neurosis are, respectively, correct and incorrect perceptions of reality, propositions of fact and propositions of value merge in this area, and in principle, value propositions should then be empirically demonstrable rather than merely matters of taste or exhortation. For those who have wrestled with this problem it will be clear that we may have here a partial basis for a true science of values, and consequently of ethics social relations, politics, religion, etc.
3. Section: Acceptance (Self, Others, Nature) p 206
   1. Impression: The idea that acceptance of self and others comes from this generation of thinkers and writers. This radical acceptance of self marks a break with the religious past. To be healthy is to be freed from the condemnation of original sin. Evidence of such radical acceptance came in the form of freedom from guilt and anxiety. With radical acceptance as the goal and indication of self-actualization or more generally as self-fulliment, a whole generation turned inward and became preoccupied with the state of the existential self, concerned as they were with freedom from neurosis and the pursuit of happiness. This pursuit of happiness highlights one dimension of the americanness of this search for meaning. This search is the individualized form of american exceptionalism.
4. p 2-8 Section: Spontaneity
   1. p 210 Description of the new therapeutic subjectivity: "Their ease of penetration to reality, their close approach to an animal-like or childlike acceptance and spontaneity imply a superior awareness of their own impulses, desires, opinions, and subjective reactions in general." Feeling becomes emphasized in the act of perception of reality. Feeling is no longer considered to be irrational per se, but should be incorporated into rational thinking [quote the passions]. The dichotomy between reason and passion in the self-actualized individual finds resolution.
   2. read 211 for a good description of the new subjectivity; I will have to define the "old" subjectivity. What is my data source for this? Religious or economic man. Where can I find descriptions of these?
5. p211 Section: Problem Centering
6. p212 Section: The Quality of Detachment; the need for Privacy
7. p213 Section: Autonomy; Independence of Culture and Environment
8. p214 Section: Continued Freshness of Appreciation
9. p216 Section: The Mystic Experience (William James); the Oceanic Feeling (Freud)
   1. This section reminds me of the criticism that later commentators would make that the search for self-fulfilment was for intense personal experience.
   2. Maslow mentions here the loss of self or transcendence of it.
      1. What is interesting is he is discussing these ideas two decades before the general population begins to experiment with them. How would you measure or track the seepage of these ideas into the culture at large? Hmmm...I guess I could look at popular accounts or diaries of the 1960s to look for this evidence. Who are characters I can use to illustrate how ideas like self-actualization were absorbed into consciousness in the 1960s? Off the top of my head: Abbie Hoffman, Joyce Milton, Rossinow Subjects (should I interview them?). I could also use other psychotherapists like Rollo May, Carl Rogers, Gordon Allport or any one else who expounds on transcendence and self-actualization.
      2. I could follow Cosmos Crumbling in the Body Reformers and portray Maslow as a Lawgiver of psychological health. Methodologically following Abzug, I would need to trace the reforms promulgated by multiple reformers to suggest how society began to focus on happiness, health, healing, and self-fulfilment like never before. So the story of modern reform begins with the advent of psychotherapy. While psychotherapy espouses a secular outlook, it address the questions of life traditionally answered by religion. What was unique about Maslow in this sense? He built his theory of the hierarchy of needs off the therapeutic insights gained through traditional psychoanalytic psychotherapy, adlerian psychotherapy, and neo-freudian psychotherapy as they addressed themselves to the crisis of meaning enveloping the modern western world. In a sense the questions of suffering, transcendence and healing that these therapeutic and cultural elite pursued predated the larger cultural questioning that would consume so much energy in the 1960s. At some point in the 1960s the process of secularization reached a tipping point and many critics prophesied the end of religion. Give examples. As traditional forms of worship gave way in the 1960s, individuals like Maslow, May and Rogers searched and taught about new forms of sacred life. Give examples.

Reading: Re-Enchanted Science (A. Harrington) Ch. 5 The Self-Actualizing Brain

1. Harrington mentions that Goldstein had an interest in Neo-Kantianism. Did this have any effect on his work as relates to Maslow?
2. p 142-143 discuss the cultural critique of modernity that animated Goldstein's work. This then means that German holism directly attacked modernity and in turn Maslow absorbed this attack on the dehumanizing trends in modern society. Curiously, Maslow rarely references to the so-called modern social ills of anomie and spiritual desolation. In some sense, he found enough faith in science and progress in psychology to prevent such a confrontation personally with the harsh realities of life in the modern era.
3. p 146 Harrington mentions that Goldstein sought to bring to his study of brain-injured patients a phenomenological approach.
4. p147 discusses the case of schiender
5. p149 Mentions that Brain damaged patients would develop adaptions to avoid existential anxiety. Goldstein developed this formulation based upon conversations with Paul Tillich. So modern religious and existential concerns found their way into biological theory of the operation of the human being or organism. What implications does this have for Maslow's thought? It further places his work with the tradition of existential musing that rose to prominence after the second World War. Maslow only later "discovered" this dimension in his work: see page 56 of Maslow's journal (quote it). This then makes for the argument that Maslow's work should in part be considered in the tradition of German psychological existentialism represented by such thinkers as Nietzsche, Jaspers, Tillich, Heidegger, [who else?]. But not Sartre and French Existentialism as Maslow understood Sartre's writing as "high IQ whining" [find reference] and did not share his emphasis on atheism.
6. p 150 Has an interesting discuss on the concept of how to define health and a return by a patient to having an "essence" that is in harmony with his environment. This clearly connects to the "psychosomatic constitution" that Goldstein refers to in the Organism when discussing human nature. This then marks the idea of having a biological essence, which is anathema to French Existentialists, who view the self as the ultimate project with ultimate freedom. Maslow mis-reads Sartre's existentialism [find quote - What Psychology can Learn from the Existentialist - TPB in regards to the project of the self in that he does not recognize the limits Sartre saw on the possibilities of the self. While the individual has ultimate freedom of to choose his fate and he does not have ultimate freedom from historical and biological realities [find quote-potentially use Myth of Sisyphus]. Rather the individual has the ultimate responsibility to respond to these realities, denying or accepting them at the basic level [Defiance of the gods]. But there is some continuity as Goldstein mentions that health is a "choice" the patient must make to live again.
7. p 153 Harrington discusses how Gestalts are limited in the natural world, and thereby so are the patterns of potentiality. This is important for understanding 1960s culture as the notion of human potentiality dramatically expanded in the popular consciousness of the time because of Maslow and other humanistic psychologists' writings [See Toward a Psychology of Being]. Along with and because of existentialism, a cultural shift in mood took place in which the notions of radical freedom began to shaped how individuals sought out new patterns of living and thinking. Maslow's work had a direct impact on the human potential movement [get a secondary source on the human potential movement - see Maslow Biography p 262-263 for a great quote on the expansion of human potential. This also ties Maslow to Marcuse in the emphasis of new freedom that should be available as a result of technological advance - review notes on marcuse when writing] as has been noted]. Self-actualization mixed with the ultimate freedom preached by existentialism lead to the expansion of notions of human freedom well beyond the limits seen by Goldstein and the Gestalt psychologist. Essential and biological constraints no longer existed as inhibitions on consciousness in the new world described by Maslow and sought by the adherents of the human potential movement [see Wiki for reference on Human Potential movement]
8. p 154-159 has a discussion of Reason (Abstract Capacity), Courage, and Essences. This is great context for understanding Maslow's view of human nature. It makes Goldstein clearly appear as an existentialist who recognized that normal people move through crises in their live with courage and as result develop mastery of themselves while expressing their nature. This connection with Courage then links up with Tillich's Courage to Be. Goldstein also quotes Kierkegaard here "To venture causes anxiety, not to venture is to lose oneself". There is a connection with Fromm and his existential writing Man for Himself. Harrington turns to a discussion of essences: "Organisms must be understood as in terms of their teleological reasons rather than merely the proximate causes" The purpose of life is life itself. Go to Lear in Happiness, Death, and the Remainder of life for a discussion of the problems of teleological reasoning.
9. p160-161 has some criticisms of psychoanalysis; this will be useful when discussing how Maslow misunderstood the implicit criticisms in Goldstein's work of psychoanalysis.
10. p169 makes a small comment on hierarchies: "Goldstein began to lay more emphasis on the hierarchical nature of the relationship between a "primitive" concreteness on the one hand, and an evolutionarily more advanced capacity to detach and abstract on the other"
11. p 170. "Actualization is always actualization in relation to others" - Use this
12. p173 Excellent comments on how Goldstein was appropriated by 1950s american psychologists

Writing Process: How do I approach both reading and writing?

Today I performed a new process in regards to writing the thesis. I organized all the books I believe will be useful in writing the thesis into a spreadsheet (about 120 books in total). Seeing the sheer volume of this I quickly realized that there is no way I could read all these books and meet my deadline of finishing the work by the end of September. Something needed to be done. I quickly created a binary Y/N column that defined whether I absolutely needed the book or not. This eliminated 41 books from my must read list (which is good), but ~80 books remained (still not feasible). So then I created "read" and "summarized" columns with the same binary form of Y/N. This cut the list further down to 65 books. Still not good enough. At this point it became clear that some narrowing of my focus would be needed. With the outline of the thesis in mind, I began creating a priority scheme of ranking each book with a one through five rating, with one being the most relevant to the chapter outline and five being the least relevant. I figured that I would definitely have to read everything with a one priority first, and then worry about everything else later. This cut down the list to 28 books - a very manageable number. But it does highlight that I can't do an in-depth reading of everything. Some books will be to be read in an overview or cursory style while others will need to be more deeply explored. All in all, I know where to focus now and have a plan for moving forward refining the outline and getting ready to write, which I want to start in earnest in August.

Reading: Modern Man in Search of a Soul (C. Jung): Ch. 10 The Spiritual Problem of Modern Man

Jung comments on how the psyche is noticed more often and acutely by modern men: p 201 "There has never, of course, been a time when the psyche did not manifest itself, but formerly it attracted no attention--no one noticed it. But today we cab no longer get along unless we give our best attention to the ways of the psyche." This again is great context for the emergence of psychological man. The psyche became man's problem. Man's existence became his chief problem. How was man to explain himself to himself?

p 202. Jung maintains that the church is essential to protecting man's spiritual life: "But as soon as he has outgrown whatever local form of religion he was born to--as soon as this religion can no longer embrace his life in all its fulness--then the psyche becomes something in its own right which cannot be dealt with by the measure of the Church alone. It is for this reason that we of today have a psychology founded on experience, and not upon articles of faith of the postulates of any philosophical system. The very fact that we have such a psychology is to me symptomatic of a profound convulsion of spiritual life. Disruption of spiritual life of an age shows the same pattern as radical change in an individual..." What makes this any different from the various spiritual crises occurring throughout the ages? The simple answer is there is no difference but rather continuity: to be modern is to be in perpetual spiritual crisis. The two are one and the same. This spiritual convulsion gains it's energy in the process of secularization. In a sense, Maslow was trying to adopt spirituality without having faith in creed or word. The only clear evidence of Maslow having a spiritual experience came in the form of a confrontation with death. After he collapsed from a major heart-attack he writes to his friend and fellow psychologist Rollo May that this near death experience had [fill in details].

There is something new about the age Maslow lived in, some alteration of the spiritual currents in society that his cadre of psychologists were reacting to. In the most basic form they all sought salvation in a secular faith of psychotherapy. Sin became neurosis, grace became cure, savior became therapist.

p 203 Jung points to World War I as the event that lead many to recognize the dark strain in the unconscious.

pp 206-207 Jung supplies some context for the decline of old systems of religion and the rise of other forms of organizing psychic phenomenon. Humanistic Psychology would fit into this context. His chief point is that the psychic energy previously attached to religious strivings now attaches to other movements: spiritualism, Theosophy, astrology, and above all else Gnosticism. These movements evoke the changing spirit of faith and religious practice in the modern era. They pre-date the psychological imaginations of later writers.

Jung sums up the will to knowledge of the psychological type: "Our age is apparently bent on discovering what exists in the psyche outside of consciousness"

p211 Jung makes the connection between social and psychic upheaval: "The upheaval of our world and the upheaval in consciousness is one and the same." - This makes me think of Berger and the secularization of consciousness he mentions. Necessarily this would entail confusion and chaos of mind. I am also coming under the spell of dialectical thinking when considering Berger's approach.

p217 Jung addresses the idea he does not wish to be called a prophet. He then turns to the crux of the spiritual problem. Re-read this section when writing about Jung.

Reading: Cosmos Crumbling (R. Abzug): Ch. 7 The Body Reform

I was looking to this chapter for how to organize comments and interpretations of Maslow in the historical context of the 1960. In some sense, I still don't feel like I know what he was doing. Hopefully with some theoretical signposts I will be able to make sense out to the chaos of his writing.

A key point: p 164. The body reformers sacralized "realms of life usually perceived as profane"

--Thoughts on constructing biography:

1. Note key works encountered in the development of thought - include this in a timeline
2. Discuss problems Maslow was trying to solve (valuelessness, etc?)
3. Explain key theories and works of Maslow
4. Note Key turning points in Maslow's life (intellectually, socially, politically, culturally, psychologically)
5. Observe curious absences of occurrences (i.e., Maslow did not have a crisis of meaning in his life)
6. Follow discussion of main biographical events and key works with analysis and interpretation:
   1. Maslow's development (intellectual and pure biograpy)
   2. Interpretations of SA (other historians and then offer mine)
      
      1. Show continuity with other historians and commentators
      2. Show discontinuity with other historians and commentators
      3. Offer my own interpretation - SA as a search for authenticity; rationalization of the motivation and mind against freudian interpretations
   3. Reflected a search for the ethical