Author Topic: Introduction to this forum  (Read 10452 times)

Matt Koeske

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Introduction to this forum
« on: February 11, 2008, 11:37:16 AM »

I couldn't decide where this forum fit best, so I decided to create a new category for it.  My intention for this area is that actual Jungian articles, books, or excerpts from books will be linked to or posted here.  We can then discuss the ideas, attitudes, and theories put forth in these texts . . . subjecting them to analysis and, when necessary debate. 

This is meant to be less a "check out this cool book" (or book/article review) section than an arena for specific literary criticism.  I encourage anyone to bring in texts that you find troubling (and perhaps can't completely put your finger on why), as well as texts that you feel do an excellent job of applying Jungian theory to a specific topic.  I think this kind of format will be constructive, especially because there is so little textual analysis in Jungian thinking today.  That is, generally, Jungian texts are presented like poems: they are meant to give us a certain feeling or tweak our epiphany buttons a bit.  But they are not subjected to theoretical scrutiny.  We do not often ask ourselves why we believe such and such a theory or subject our belief to analysis or any discussion.  Essentially, but steering clear of such analyses, we risk making Jungian psychology a belief system, a dogma, and not an evolving, organic theory of psyche. 

My hope is to inject just a little bit of rigor into Jungian thinking with his forum.  My personal intention is to bring in articles that make excellent gateways into the discussion of core Jungian concepts and attitudes.  Some of these articles may present positions that I find flawed (but still representative of conventional Jungian thinking), while others may present articles that I feel do an excellent job of illustrating a particular Jungian position that may have become muddled over the years (as Jungian psychology moved into popularization and the New Age marketplace).

Although I certainly don't want to outlaw analyses of entire books, I think this will work better if we stick to articles or take specific excerpts from books to discuss.  I think these discussions will be most effective if they are directed at specific topics and concepts.  The goal I imagine for all of us is not criticism so much as deeper and more diverse understanding of what Jungians believe, why, and if and how these beliefs might be improved or revised.  So many Jungian ideas are never faced with those dangerous "why?" questions . . . and my desire is to throw as many dangerous questions at the pieces of theory examined as we can. 

Think of this environment of questions as natural selection for the species, Jungian theory.  If we can do this effectively, we can see how fit some of these theories are . . . and perhaps observe how "mutations" of these theories might prove more or less fit than the originals.  The goal here is movement toward evolution and adaptivity in Jungian thinking.  I tend to see Jungian thinking as an endangered species that has become maladaptive to the modern environment.  Jung proposed his theories as a "solution" to modernism (or the foundation of one) . . . but too often today, Jungianism is more of a rejection of modernism.  And that places it in the same category with other fundamentalisms.  Fundamentalist ideologies are systems of thought that have stopped growing and evolving.  I think we need to try to get back to the "solution to modernism" approach to applying and developing Jungian thinking and out of the tar pit of fundamentalism (which is generally where "occult" philosophies drown and start to fossilize).

We'll start off by making a thread for each article . . . but if we eventually accumulate enough, perhaps a reorganization by topic would be helpful.

Enjoy!  And please pitch in (with either linked/attached articles or comments or both).

-Matt


Ah, also, don't forget about copyright.  If an article is free and available online, please just link and tell us where it came from.  If you wish to discuss a book excerpt, please scan it into a .pdf and attach it to your post (or, if you don't have a scanner, send out a note on the forum to see if someone else has both a scanner and the book in question).  If you want to discuss a whole article that is not free and available online, please request permission from the author . . . or mention it here and one of the Useless Science folks will e-mail the author to request permission to reproduce it for discussion on the forum.
You can always come back, but you can’t come back all the way.

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Matt Koeske

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Re: Introduction to this forum
« Reply #1 on: February 11, 2008, 12:02:27 PM »

Another thought: if you would like to bring in your own article for discussion, you are welcome to do so . . . but there are some stipulations and cautions to consider first.  For instance, your article may be "sliced and diced" in a way you wouldn't like.  This is not a vessel for personal promotion or propaganda.  And if you haven't noticed yet, the general tack of Useless Science is pretty critical and "revolutionary"/revisionary. 

More importantly, the idea of this section is to address articles that are in some way representative of mainstream Jungian thinking.  Yes, there are a lot of fringe-Jungian ideas out there that incorporate various mysticisms (tarot, astrology, neo-shamanism, Kundalini, quantum physics  (-)laugh(-), etc.).  We may love or hate these particular schools of thought/belief, but we should understand what conventional Jungian thinking is, before we introduce anything "fringe".  For instance, we should be aware of what the conventional Jungian attitude is on astrology or Kundalini before presenting a fringe interpretation for discussion.  In my opinion and experience, these fringe approaches to/edits of Jungian thinking are almost always regressive.  They don't "correct" Jungian attitudes so much as misunderstand them or miss their original complexity . . . setting up a straw man that can easily be burned down.  Most of the "revisions" of Jungian thought I've seen in the online communities have struck me this way.  So please, no proselytizing.  The articles submitted here are for analysis and discussion.

Despite my favored cloak of naturalistic atheism and science-advocacy, I don't mean to imply by this that "no mysticism are allowed" here.  Mysticisms, occult philosophies, and Eastern spiritualities are a big part of mainstream Jungian thinking.  But if and when we address these topics, it will be with careful scrutiny and a desire to understand why these thought systems have had the appeal to Jungians that they have.

If, in the context of the analysis of a text, you wish to promote a "fringe" theory (mystical or otherwise), please build an actual argument for it.  That is all we are asking.  After all, most of my theories are "fringe", too.  Which is why I'm constantly (tirelessly) arguing for their validity (as opposed to telling people they must believe them in order to be "wise" or healed or somehow saved).

Anyone who has frequented this forum might have already seen that more-scientific Jungian theories have been held to the same level of scrutiny as more-mystical ones.  The best advice for anyone participating at Useless Science is to try to check your "most dangerous" beliefs at the door.  We want this place to be as safe as it can be while still housing a lot of diversity.  Beliefs of any kind are like weapons brought into a bar (imagine the old, American West here).  If you are carrying a loaded pistol (and so is everyone else), chances are higher that you will use it (instead of resolving conflicts less violently).  But if we check them at the door, we are less likely to do damage to others or to incur damage.

Best,
Matt
You can always come back, but you can’t come back all the way.

   [Bob Dylan,"Mississippi]

RetiredEagle

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Re: Introduction to this forum
« Reply #2 on: February 03, 2010, 04:44:08 PM »
Hi Matt, I am extremely interested in Jungian psychology and often write about this subject on my blog site, Through a Jungian Lens (http://retiredeagle.wordpress.com).  Currently I am working through a series of books by Jungian analyst, Daryl Sharp.  The series of three books is called Jung Uncorked.  Often I also draw on passages from CG Jung himself or other Jungian writers such as James Hollis, John Dourley, Hillman, Hall and a host of others - I have a large library of Jungian works at hand and a long familiarity with them.  So, as an opening, perhaps this would be somewhere to start.  I hope that this isn't too presumptuous of me.

rgl (retired eagle)

Matt Koeske

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Re: Introduction to this forum
« Reply #3 on: February 05, 2010, 11:33:05 AM »
Hi Robert,

Great idea!  Please feel free to discuss Sharp's texts here.  Sharp is definitely a "mainstream" Jungian in many ways . . . and one of the most prolific.  On the other hand, he has had the interesting idea of combining Jungian theory with novelistic and memoiristic literary approaches.  There are pluses and minuses to his "experiment" . . . both of which are well worth discussing.  Sharp's lexicon is also a wonderful aid to Jungian scholarship, especially because it is so difficult to determine which of Jung's essays or books one should read to learn about Jung's theories on one thing or another.  The lexicon is always a decent place to start (even if it isn't exhaustive).  Sharp has certainly contributed a lot to Jungianism.

I have not read the Jung Uncorkerd books, but I have read a few other things by Sharp.  More recently, I've focused primarily on "post-Jungianism" and the attempts of various Jungians to either nudge Jungian thinking forward or run away from its inheritance.  Not that I find this vein of the literature any more satisfying.  In general, I have one major gripe with the many Jungian books that try to recap, translate, simplify, or summarize Jung's own ideas.  They always strike me as diluted.  Jung never really felt only one way about anything in the psyche . . . and this makes his writings very difficult to summarize.  Something is inevitably lost . . . and I think there's a "logic" behind what is lost in interpretation.  Typically what is lost is what doesn't jibe with the interpreters ideas of Jung, Jungianism, and psyche.  Too often, what is left behind is of crucial value to any Jungian understanding of the psyche.

As a result of this accumulating truncation of Jung, a large hole has developed in modern Jungian thinking.  Inevitably this abyss is the burial ground of Jung's rationalism and scientific inclinations, his more rigorous thinking, his self doubt and skepticism.  And he had these traits in abundance.  The man was not a smiling Buddha dribbling out aphorisms.  He was more of an Indian Jones of the psyche.  And like that character, Jung might seem like a kind of dreamy, absent minded professor to those sitting attentively in his "classroom", but he really comes alive in the grip of "adventure", in the quest to know.

I like my Jung with shadow and teeth, with flaws, sins, and human passions.  I like the Jung that could be wrong . . . and I respect that, even in error, he stayed deeply devoted to a kind of gnosis (rather than a dogma).  He was never a cheap and easy thinker.  Although romantic and excitable at times, I don't think he ever lost that "chivalric knight" attitude toward the investigation of the psyche.  His personal brilliance lay in his ability to think about psychic phenomena in numerous ways at the same time.  His complexity derives from this ability . . . and the ability and its signature complexity is sorely lacking in most Jungians.

I think Jungian thinking desperately needs to evolve and progress.  But before this can happen, Jung's fallibility needs to be examined more closely.  It doesn't need to be wailed about or excommunicated or denied three times (as it seems to me many in the British Jungian schools are inclined to do).  It needs to be bravely and somewhat gently poured over and lovingly understood.  Lovingly but critically.  No apologetics, no denials.  I see Jung like a family member.  Even if he pisses you off or lets you down or you stumble upon his closet full of skeletons, he's still family.  You can't throw him out in the street.  But you also can't go on treating him like the great white patriarch and father Christmas of the Jungian tribe.

The problem with recaps and simplifications of Jung's ideas is that they tend to not be adequately critical of the formation and functionality of those ideas.  In this sense, they can be regressive.  And the number of Jungian books that seek to recap and simplify Jung's ideas is enormous.  It's a whole sub-genre of the literature unto itself.  I mean, it's conspicuous in its excesses.  What is going on in the Jungian mind that would stimulate all of these books?  Obviously, despite the abundance of examples, these publications remain unsatisfying.  And of course, there's that good old definition of madness: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

I do agree with one aspect of the mentality that produces these books: Jung's writing is too complex, unnecessarily complex.  But the solution thus far has been (unwittingly for the most part) to truncate some of Jung's ideas and attitudes in order to "perfect" a certain Jungian representation.  This simply doesn't work (and is, frankly, "un-Jungian").  I think some kind of new synthesis needs to be performed.  The third thing ("transcendent" in Jung's terminology) that is born is not exactly the thesis or the antithesis.  That is, in synthesis, both thesis and antithesis "die" . . . and are alchemically reborn in the third.  Jungians have never been able to work this alchemy, even as they have reiterated its psychological tenets again and again.  And the thing that prevents this from happening is an inability to form a functional relationship to the thesis or the antithesis.  It cannot either be despised and vanquished or embraced like a reentering of the womb.

It is the job of Jungians (should the tribe itself survive) to transform Jung, not to be transformed by Jung.  but sacrifices have to be made to get to that point.  In alchemical parlance, this point to be reached, a proto-synthesis, was called Solutio, dissolution, or Coniunctio.  It was followed by Nigredo, blackening, death, putrefaction . . . from which a viable synthesis eventually could emerge.  Jungians have failed to collectively derive the "black, blacker than black" . . . and so have not managed to do much synthetic, "alchemical" work.  The continuous Jung summaries and the post-modern and psychoanalytic retreats from Jungian "history" are both examples of this failure to synthesis.

I don't mean to apply this criticism directly to Sharp.  I have not read the texts in question . . . but the context of my argument is a piece of baggage I would be inclined to bring to any discussion of a Jungian summary.  As ideological as I might be, I am also fair-minded enough to have my opinions revised (as they so often have been, even within the three year lifespan of Useless Science).  Even in those points that I would be inclined to agree with Sharp and other Jungian summarizers (and I suspect there are many such points), I would still be inclined to ask of both of us: why do I believe this? what is my evidence?  This is the attitude I bring to all my own theories.  And it's an attitude that, regrettably, many Jungians are deficient in.  I am not comfortable with the Jungian tendency to deal in "truths" and wisdoms.  I prefer to deal in arguments, logic, reasoning, and when possible, evidence. 

In matters of the psyche, evidence is not always readily available or scientifically perfect.  Thus the inclination of Jung to value "experience" (and eternally accumulating body of "evidence" that can never be complete).  But experience is only as valid as grinding stone for theory as that experience is "adventurous", questing and questioning, dissatisfied with truths, and universally skeptical.  It is powerful and important to "experience" or feel the affect of the numinous . . . but this alone does not lead to valid theories of psyche.  Such numinous affect is not really a communicable languaging or psychologization of phenomena.  In order for psyche to be studied and deeply investigated, we must continuously work toward a "Logos".  This is not in conflict with "Eros" and needn't be understood as such.  Jung himself tried to separate belief from knowing . . . imperfectly, but he still tried.  This effort (Herculean in almost all cases) is not honored by many Jungians.  Logos is cheapened, and Eros is worshiped and exalted (therefore, it is distanced and totemized, felt and honored, but not understood).

But that is not the "Jungian way" . . . it was not Jung's way at least.  If Jungians do want to embrace this deviation from Jung's own methods and attitudes, that's fine, but if this is to be declared "psychological", they need to justify it.  Without that "Logos" justification, Jungianism becomes merely an occult religion and sacrifices therewith its claim to any influence on the modern world or on any modern or scientific understandings of the psyche.  That is, it renders itself impotent, maladaptive, defunct.  I don't want to see that happen (although I doubt it can be influenced much) . . . and Useless Science is a small burp of protest against this trend.


I don't really mean to be forbidding, and I apologize for ranting.  I certainly do not oppose other points of view . . . nor do I make any effort to filter Useless Science or conform members contributions to a specific philosophy.  I just value logical argument and differences of opinion, well stated.  My notion of Useless Science is that is should be a vessel to contain any such differences.  I don't want to sacrifice volatility in the mixture.  You can't conduct any useful experiments if you refuse to see anything react with anything else.  My personal goal for my own contributions (all appearance to the contrary, no doubt  (-)dogma(-)) is to be not only passionate, but ultimately fair as well.  I never want to extinguish one or the other.  But they surge back and forth.  First one is on top, then the other.  Most people probably don't stick around here long enough to see that  (-)smblsh(-), but my own self-assessment of the last three years is that my passionate opinions have been adequately tempered by my fair-mindedness.  Passion is volcanic,fiery, and spews forth a lot of mass in a short amount of time, though, and fairness works like the slow erosion of water flow against rock.  Over sufficient time, both sculpt a livable landscape.  Without the passion and the leaps at "stance", there is no movement, no change.  All would be static.  Without the fairness, the whole thing would explode and run over and be lost.  I like to keep everything on the boil . . . or like the alchemical Circulatio of cyclical evaporation and condensation . . . the winged and wingless birds or dragons, the Opposites in constant motion.

Yours,
Matt
You can always come back, but you can’t come back all the way.

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RetiredEagle

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Re: Introduction to this forum
« Reply #4 on: February 07, 2010, 07:16:42 PM »
Well, Matt, that was a mouthful.  I see that you have likely visited my blog site and if you have, you will have begun to sense that I don't exactly fall all over post-Jungians.  In my opinion, it is vital to actually read Jung's works first hand without a translator such as Hollis, Sharp, von Franz, Edinger or others.  Each is a disciple and as such are not open to going past/through/around what they consider to be classical Jungian ideology as they were taught in their trainings.  Still, it is fruitful to read these authors along with Jung, along with humanist-school psychologists, existentialists and anything else that might turn on a light bulb or two in the recesses of one's psyche.

In my own way, as I read through Jung's works and those of others, I am in search of a singular truth, that of "self" in the small sense as well as the large sense.  I guess one could say that I am being selfish in that I am not really into debate of fine points of any psychology that doesn't touch some deep nerve, that doesn't give me a sense of being filled.

I wonder at the long spells of silence here.  As someone who was a listowner of a Jungian discussion group for a number of years, I am seeing the same thing happening in so many other places.  The desire to communicate, to listen, to learn is there.  But, also there is a fear present that has grown as people have begun to realise that once written, the words are there forever and that is something that tends to reduce intent to silence.  No one wants to be exposed, there is a fear that in becoming transparent, others will confirm that one is worthless, flawed and not a good candidate for a relationship.  It takes almost too much courage or else naiveté to brave speaking out in an Internet forum.  This is why I switched to a blog where the need for sustaining a dialogue with others disappears.  One is forced to begin a dialogue with self.

Now, I turn the mic back over to you or to someone else waiting for an opportunity to speak out and be heard.

Matt Koeske

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Re: Introduction to this forum
« Reply #5 on: February 08, 2010, 11:22:25 AM »
Well, Matt, that was a mouthful.  I see that you have likely visited my blog site and if you have, you will have begun to sense that I don't exactly fall all over post-Jungians.  In my opinion, it is vital to actually read Jung's works first hand without a translator such as Hollis, Sharp, von Franz, Edinger or others.  Each is a disciple and as such are not open to going past/through/around what they consider to be classical Jungian ideology as they were taught in their trainings.  Still, it is fruitful to read these authors along with Jung, along with humanist-school psychologists, existentialists and anything else that might turn on a light bulb or two in the recesses of one's psyche.

I concur.  My relationship with the Jungians (post or otherwise) has always been rocky and generally dissatisfying.  When I mentioned "post-Jungian" in my previous post, I really meant those (often British) schools that are most inclined to label themselves "post-Jungians".  The developmental school, as Andrew Samuels called them.  I had been more familiar with the classical school Jungians like the ones you mentioned (perhaps because I'm American, and there is a strong, Zurich-bred, classical or quasi-classical vein of Jungians in the States).

But with the exception of a few scattered books, I've found this classical Jungian writing to be largely derivative and often either fluffy or muddled.  Jung's own writing has always most appealed to me and influenced me.  Although I have no school/tribe affiliation as a Jungian, I still feel an affinity with Jung and find that my own attitudes and perspectives are rooted in his.


In my own way, as I read through Jung's works and those of others, I am in search of a singular truth, that of "self" in the small sense as well as the large sense.  I guess one could say that I am being selfish in that I am not really into debate of fine points of any psychology that doesn't touch some deep nerve, that doesn't give me a sense of being filled.

I don't see anything wrong with that.  For the most part, my orientation to Jungian thinking is similar.  It's only over the last few years that I have become more interested in "Jungian studies" . . . and in truth I don't find this all that stimulating in and of itself (i.e., as a scholarly field).  But I have been reading a lot of "post-Jungianism" in order to better understand the social psychology of the Jungian tribe.  As you said, there is still a substantial identity concern in this pursuit.  I feel that some part of my identity is "Jungian", so I am interested in the identity-making factors of Jungianism.  Therefore, I tend to study Jungianism as a tribal entity, a group that has both conscious and unconscious relationships with their identity-making factors, their beliefs, dogmas, totems, ideologies.  To be a member of the Jungian tribe is both to choose such membership and also to participate mystically and unconsciously.

Most of the Jungians I've run into aren't willing to look at their participation in Jungianism in that way.  They seem to feel that their own participation is wholly conscious and directed/controlled.  Those "other Jungians" might be caught up in a Jungian participation mystique . . . but not them.  This just strikes me as naive.  But the result of this naivete is that no one is really studying the depth psychology of Jungian sociality.

In any case, my orientation to much Jungianism has been organized through the lens of observing and analyzing Jungian tribal sociality lately . . . so I am trying to understand the roles of various Jungians in the greater tribe and the way they construct their identity in relation to the tribe.  In other words, Jungianism or Jungian texts are no longer directly a "Self-pursuit" to me.  Indirectly, but not directly.  The Self-pursuit (which I've been calling the Work) in my life has found a new vehicle, one that is more creative and personalized.  I don't think my ego/Self relationship has been illuminated by reading a Jungian text in many years . . . and I have long since stopped expecting any such illumination from these texts.  I tend to be a bit cynical about Jungian literature, but I suppose that's not really fair . . . because it may still be functional for those who want to use it to bolster their Self-pursuits.


I wonder at the long spells of silence here.  As someone who was a listowner of a Jungian discussion group for a number of years, I am seeing the same thing happening in so many other places.  The desire to communicate, to listen, to learn is there.  But, also there is a fear present that has grown as people have begun to realise that once written, the words are there forever and that is something that tends to reduce intent to silence.  No one wants to be exposed, there is a fear that in becoming transparent, others will confirm that one is worthless, flawed and not a good candidate for a relationship.  It takes almost too much courage or else naiveté to brave speaking out in an Internet forum.  This is why I switched to a blog where the need for sustaining a dialogue with others disappears.  One is forced to begin a dialogue with self.

I hadn't really considered that fear of exposure was a factor in low traffic at Useless Science.  Not that such a fear doesn't abound.  Unless I misunderstand what you mean by "long spells of silence here" . . .  if pertaining to my own writing, it has always come in bursts (due to the patterns of time available to me for writing).  I'm thinking that's not what you meant, because there is hardly any fear of transparency in my own overly-exuberant, flood-like writing  (-)laugh2(-)!

I have been seeing low traffic on the site as primarily the result of two main factors.  Mostly, there just isn't much of an audience for Useless Science, a forum with intentions to be Jungian, intellectually sophisticated and rigorous, scholarly, and progressive.  There just aren't many people attracted to Jungianism for these things.  Most of the people who get into Jung that I have run into online do so because Jung seems to enable them.  They take whatever they can from Jung, and they do so on their own terms . . . but they never feel like they have to give back.  Jung is an inexhaustible natural resource.  I am pretty critical of that attitude, and have really tried to design Useless Science to "give back" to Jungianism, even if that giving is often antagonistic in a superficial sense.

But people drawn to Jung often have issues with being egocentric.  If they "get" Jung well enough, this egocentricity might eventually subside.  Jung doesn't really enable pathological egocentricity if you take everything he wrote and said to heart.  But Jung is often bastardized and abbreviated in New Agey ways so that his ideas can be commodified for the self-help market.  And that market is sustained by relatively quick but false fixes that stroke but do not transform the ego.  If rigorous and "true" Jungian methods and philosophies were applied to either treatment or individuation, analytical psychology would be much more esoteric and unrepresented than it is.

Certified Jungian analysts have a strange relationship with the New Agey, self-help oriented lay Jungians.  Many of them gripe about the new Age reputation of Jungian psychology, yet the alternative is to tighten up the Jungian belt and "lay down the law".  And not only are most analysts not inclined to do this, there is also some shadowy recognition that the New Age and self-help hunger for Jung pays the bills of the professional analysts.  Not only would they no longer be able to sell as many books if they made efforts to wean this audience, but much of their clientele would dry up.  So the Jungians have gotten themselves in a serious bind due to their own willingness to (to put it crudely) "sell out" the rigor and complexity of Jung's theories for more public recognition and revenue.

A major factor of this is the dumbing down or truncating of Jung, who then becomes stylized as a mystic or guru figure (his rationalism, skepticism, intellectuality, and desire to be scientific stripped away).  Much of the hoopla over the recently published Red Book banks on the promotion of Jung as mystic in order to sell more copies and inflate the importance of Jung to non- and quasi-Jungians.

The other reason I suspect there is low traffic here is that I am often both overwhelming as a writer and a bit of a bastard (at least I prance around in a bastard outfit).  I have set the bar for participation here increasingly high as I have become increasingly dismayed with the lay Jungians I've encountered online.  I am not an enabler.  My objective is to subject theory to criticism and analysis, and most lay Jungians merely want to find their true tribe and some comforting, enabling ideologies.  This is a factor of the non-scholarly audience, I suppose.  People don't want to study or even understand Jung, they just want to touch his robes and be healed.  Which is understandable . . . but that's not my own orientation or the orientation of this forum.

As a forum host, I am not the false senex that many Jungians pretend to or desire to be.  There is a lot of creative/destructive energy at Useless Science . . . and it is with that kind of energy that I prefer to engage in life.  I don't really think that my attitudes are that far out or even really antagonistic.  If I was participating in the way I have been in various other fields, the signature antagonism of my approach would seem insignificant.  Because criticism and intellectual rigor are considered functional in those fields.  In Jungianism, there is much searching for mystical answers, but there is not much discipline in thought, very few ego-sacrifices are made.  The people want to be fed, and they want to be fed on manna.  Jung seems like a pretty good manna chef, so they camp out like beggars at his door.

You can't have a scholarly or "scientific" field that operates on these kinds of principles.  So, in my opinion, Jungianism operates in bad faith.  I try to operate in good faith as a Jungian, but this tends to shove me toward antagonism.

In any case, I came to a similar position as you (if not for precisely the same reasons).  I decided that there was no community out there that I had imagined for Useless Science.  It's a shame that there isn't, but there isn't, so I can't go on trying to get blood from a stone.  Therefore, I too have switched to a blog format.  In that format, I am not really looking for collaboration, debate, or feedback (although I would be happy to receive it).  I don't even have comments turned on and have laid out the blog in a literary (table of contents) rather than a chronological format.  This forum is still open, but it is not very active, and I am not making any new attempts to promote it.  But it will remain open if people ever do want to use it.

Regarding transparency, of course people are afraid of it.  But transparency is a tricky beast, I think, because we don't control it.  It is non-egoic.  It's an expression of the objective Self as perceived by other people.  We can exercise some kind of exhibitionism intentionally, but then we are only exposing what we understand about ourselves (or think we understand).  We only expose what we are in control of.  Although, not uncommonly, such public exposures are also exposing the pathologies we would rather still conceal . . . usually some kind of narcissism or grandiosity.  That is no doubt the product of thinking that oneself (or one's Self) is the ego's to expose and express to others.  We thing it is a kind of precious family jewel we can take out to show to others to impress them or tell them something important about ourselves.  But it doesn't really work that way.

In genuine transparency, one simply is as one is.  No attempt is being made to expose anything . . . but no real attempt is being made to conceal anything either.  Such transparency invites people to misunderstand it, to judge it, to criticize it.  It is socially tabooed.  One is supposed to conceal and misdirect, to fortify and defend and ward off intimacy, to be strong and silent.  People who have a lot of transparency are bound to upset others with their rawness.  Personally, I like people like that.  They have psychic mass.  One gets sick of tiptoeing around everyone's complexes, hang-ups, and neuroses.  So many people that I've met (in the Jungian community) are enormously fragile . . . although often full of bluster and posture and senexy wisdoms. They have never really come to terms with their puers and puellas and figured out how to make use of them.  Many of these Jungians devote vast amounts of neurotic energy to concealing (and at times beating) their puers.  It makes for very top-heavy personas.

Jungians feel they have to appear wise, balanced, individuated, enlightened . . . but the Jungian model for achieving these things is simplistic and impractical.  It casts a large shadow.  There is something refreshing about the occasional young (usually 20 something) people I see stumbling into Jungian thought.  They are still swallowed in a kind of adolescent mania and despair, dripping delusion and grandiosity.  But they haven't been conditioned into pretending to be senexes yet.  Chiseling through that senexy fortification at midlife is incredibly difficult . . . perhaps because one feels that one should "know things" or be wise at that age, and it feels shameful not to.

As a Jungian, my late teens and twenties were very productive.  Crazy and terrifying, but productive.  I still benefit from the richness of those years.  The notion that Jungian psychology is a mid-life philosophy is, I feel, erroneous.  It's part of the inflation of the signature Jungian disease.  Jungianism turns around the axis of adolescent issues like "true identity" and the animi and shadow.  These are the essential foundations of a functional adult psychology.  The quintessential midlife Jungian is often the person who managed to muddle through life with a more or less functional artificiality or persona until the "natural resources" of the Self were exhausted.  But coming to psychic movements like the animi work at midlife is very tricky, because one is often tempted to deny and mistreat the puer.  But in reality, something essential in the ego/Self relationship stopped growing in adolescence, and so the Jungian midlifer is reduced to an "adolescent psychology" if she or he wants to proceed.

And that is asking a lot of our pride.  I don't mean to criticize Jungians or Jungianism for this scenario.  It's the way our society works.  No real rites of passage, no real understanding of what it means to be an adult (not the kind of understanding that derives from the ego/Self relationship).  Coming into the residual turmoil of adolescence at midlife is simply inevitable.  The problem is that Jungians are too proud and too willing to promote Jungianism as a midlife philosophy (and to encourage the Jungian audience and patient population to do the same), and this positions them in bad faith on the issues of adolescence, puerism, adult responsibility to groups and others, and the animi.

In any case, what I mean to say is that I think this is where signature Jungian lack of transparency is typically found.  This is what Jungians are afraid could be exposed.  Although, I get the impression from most that I've met that they are not very aware of this predicament.  When the buttons of this particular complex get pushed, some clever (or not so clever) rationalization is utilized to mask the real wound and need.  i my opinion, Jungianism will flounder and eventually fail if it can't figure out how to confront this issue of its persona/identity.

Best,
Matt
You can always come back, but you can’t come back all the way.

   [Bob Dylan,"Mississippi]