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?