Wednesday, July 6, 2011

I'm Just Sayin...

Soul enters only via symptoms, via outcast phenomena like the imagination of artists or alchemy or “primitives,” or of course, disguised as psychopathology. That’s what Jung meant when he said the Gods have become diseases: the only way back for them in a Christian world is via the outcast.

   (James Hillman)



4 comments:

  1. This takes some thinking about JSS! Care to explain your understanding of it?

    Hope you are well.
    x

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  2. Hi WS, I am well thank you. I would be happy to explain my understanding although with the caveat that this is and will continue to be an on-going learning experience for me and I cannot say my thoughts are clear just yet. In any case I’ll do my best.

    I have been reading much about mythology and archetypal psychology lately. Of course there are many who know but never having been one of those people who listened all that well in school to me mythology was nothing more than a bunch of stories written by dead people hundreds and hundreds of years ago. In all fairness I’m not sure my teachers presented them as anything else and frankly given that the last time I can remember even studying mythology was in the 6th grade I doubt I could have grasped the meanings at any higher level, which is to say at the psychological, existential, spiritual levels that give substance to them and make them more than mere fairy-tales. I’ve come to believe that mythology is something to be studied at the high school and college level. Not something you present to 10-year-olds and leave it at that.

    I read a book not long ago by Joseph Campbell and something he said in it struck me, he said “one of the main problems with western society is that we have lost our mythology, or we have no mythology”. The stories of mythology are not ‘just’ fairy-tales. The gods, the Muses, the Furies, the Fates, all of the characters are personifications of aspects of the human personality. Their activities, their personalities speak directly to the human condition. There is good, evil, treachery, inspiration, love and hate, crimes of passion, acts of heroism and failure after failure born of flawed reasoning and impassioned motive.

    Just for starters.

    In our westernized, rational society we use the word “myth” to mean untrue or fake or fairy-tale, not real, not valid, immature children’s tales. We dismiss something as ‘just’ a myth. But that is not at all what mythology is. Mythology is representative of all that encompasses our human psyche. It is the expression of the foundation (or archetype yes?) of the human psyche which encompasses the entirety of our spiritual nature.
    And when we forget our mythology, when we dismiss our mythology as not relevant well then our mythology (the gods or perhaps more the Furies) find their way out, or rather back “in” as it were in the form of psychopathology, e.g. depression, eating disorders, chemical dependency, pornography addiction, gambling addiction, you name it.

    I hope I have explained with some clarity.

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  3. Blackbile
    Its dificult to me to understand or interpret my particular furies when they putme in a state of anhedonia and slurred thinking

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  4. I don't doubt that is true. Have you tried medication? Perhaps there is something available that would help with the slurred thinking.

    Thanks for coming by and commenting.

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