Image and Symbol > Myth and Folktale
Right-hand and Left-hand Paths
Keri:
We’ve discussed the Hero archetype a great deal on this site. There are, I think, still differences in opinion among the members about this subject. I came across something the other day that helped me understand the two different perspectives a little better.
I was watching the Mythos series, a collection of Joseph Campbell’s talks, on DVD. In the section on Psyche and Symbol, he draws a diagram to describe his understanding of the psychic system. I think this is not news to students of psychology, and I’ve heard Betts describe something similar. I’ve reproduced part of that drawing here for discussion.
You can see the traditionally understood aspects of the Psyche and their relationships here. Interestingly, you can see that one of the main ways for unconscious material to become conscious is via projections onto outside objects (people, animals, environment, etc.). I understand that this is very well understood in the different schools of psychology, and do not think anyone here would disagree with that (and Kafiri would probably applaud loudly! (-)laugh(-)).
Of course, mythology and dreams also make this material (from both the “personal” and “collective” unconscious) available to consciousness. Campbell describes mythology as the language of the Self speaking to the Ego system. He says that it is the job of the ego system to learn how to read that language (which to me sounds like developing the Logos).
The Personae system is unique to each culture, and is enforced by the “neighbors” (as in, “what will the neighbors think”), institutionalization of morality and social custom, the idea of natural moral laws, and the idea of transcendence. Different cultures emphasize this to different degrees, but in “primitive” or more traditional cultures, the person is meant to identify with the persona (ie, someone is the warrior, is the shaman, etc.).
But then Campbell goes on to describe what he calls two different kinds of mythology, and I think this is where our differing emphasis on the qualities of the hero have come from.
He says the first kind is that of “The Right-Hand Path.” This is the mythology of the village compound (perhaps what we have been calling myths, epics, etc). It is specific to the culture. It helps keep you fixed in the context of your world. It helps you live as expected, live with dignity, respect, etc.
Then he says, “On the other hand, you may flip out!” He calls this the mythology of “The Left-Hand Path.” These stories (eg, fairy tales and the more global, less culture-specific, myths) help you when you have begun to develop a sense of incongruity with the right-hand path. He says that one moves out into a realm of danger, where there are no rules. People on this path may live a life of danger and creativity, but perhaps not a “respected” life, according to the culture. This “left-hand” or “general” mythology is that of the Hero journey (or individuation), that which helps a person fulfill his or her own potentialities.
This distinction may not be news to anyone reading here, and may not completely help our discussion, because there is still room for debate about what the characteristics of that Hero are (eg, conquering vs vegetal/sacrificing, etc.), but it really did help me put it into larger context.
By the way, Campbell makes the point that neither path is better or worse than the other. If the mythology is living and vital, it helps the people that it is speaking to, whichever path they are on. It is not wrong to be on the right-hand path, as long as there is no incongruity. From what I understand, it would result in a participation mystique with one’s society or tribe, which is pleasant and adaptive, as long as the environment is suitable. However, our problem (the Problem of the Modern, as I understand from reading here), is that our environment of modern diverse culture is no longer very amenable to our desire for that tribal participation. Therefore, there are more and more people feeling the incongruity. Additionally, Campbell states that our mythology became fixed (at the time of the Bible), and so has not changed with our understanding of the world (our science). This means it is not vital or helpful anymore.
Actually, I find it interesting when I reflect on the fact that three of the major world religions (Judaism, Islam, Christianity) developed at relatively the same time in our evolutionary history. I wonder if they were a response to that increasing sense of incongruity? And though, in my humble opinion, these religions have become fixed and maladaptive, if you look at the way Matt has described the Gnostic tradition of Christianity (with the Christ as the example of the sacrificing and devoted Hero that one is meant to identify with, at least in attitude) or the alchemists’ rendering of the resurrected Christ as the Philosopher’s Stone, there may have been some adaptive value to them at the beginning. I mention Christianity alone only because it is the one I have even a tiny bit of understanding about . . . I can’t speak about the others at all. And, of course, there is Hinduism, Buddhism, etc., which I know even less about.
Anyway, I thought this might be helpful in future discussions of the Hero archetype.
Keri:
I think one of my current problems is that I thought one could "flip out" onto that left-hand path and then go back to the right-hand path, happily readjusted. But this doesn't seem to be the case! ;D
Sealchan:
I believe the two paths are two sides of the same coin...whether one's personal journey and search for meaning benefits from the archetypal forms of their culture or finds those same forms problematic is a subtle difference. Whether one's personal transformation is seen primarily as serving and preserving culture or denying or changing culture is itself a two-sided coin.
I see the Ego/Self distinction in a similar two-sided coin way...we see ourselves as existing moment to moment like a soul with responsibilities at any given time for what that soul's body does. The moment-to-moment aspect is Ego but the bigger piece is Self. However, the moment-to-moment aspect (Ego) invokes certain dimensions of the greater psyche (Self) and, thereby, determines the state of the psyche. In this view the Ego has power (through the impact of the World) over the Self. The Ego can force the psyche out of balance in spite of the Self's balancing direction. But the state of the whole psyche also determines how the moment-to-moment aspect will arise and response. In this view the Self determines the Ego and is the power in spite of the energies of the World.
As I have been reading Eric Kandel's In Search of Memory I am gaining a better sense of the root energics involved in the mind/brain. Long term and short term memory creates a kind of two-fold quality to our consciousness that may be behind the differentiation of Ego and Self. Ego as the moment-to-moment "center of consciousness" and Self as the center of the psyche as a whole would seem to intuitively map to short term memories focus on the present and long-term memories' focus on the broader life experience. If one identifies with one's long term memories as opposed to their daily experiences, something perhaps one tends to do as one gets older, one might think of themselves as a Self with an Ego (persona?) that oscillates like a busy bee through the day. Perhaps, when one is younger one feels that one is bound more in the moment and that one's history is lost once it passes out of mind. Getting in touch with long-term memory requires holing up by one's self and reflecting on the past. Then it would seem like the busy Ego must set aside time to get back in touch with one's greater life meaning (Self).
As soon as one takes responsibility for the contents of their "non-Egoic" psyche (owns one's unconscious decisions?), one begins to have this two-sided view of personality. The identification with short-term/Ego vs long-term/Self begins to become a matter of shades of grey.
So I have begun to think of Ego, Shadow, Anima/us, Self as really various faces of one overall psychic order. This overall order is co-created by the structure and function of the brain as well as the rules and expectations of the culture from its moral laws to its linguistic conventions.
The trick to me in interpreting anything psychic one has to choose sides to fit one's own personal history, but, at the same time, always be ready to see the opposite way (style, history, interpretation) which is always also true. Sometimes one can even choose to prefer that opposite (shadow, anima/us, ego/Self) when it seems advantageous. This is the value of the trickster archetype which shows us that though we are biased the whole psychic reality is just flexible enough that if we are watchful we might jump the tracks of our own bias from time to time rather than remain in a predictable role. It is then that we gain a more objective view of ourselves as a limited, but unique, expression of a deeper potential and that we all have our differing values in that context. Our true free will is that we can, in those certain moments, jump the tracks of our typical behaviors.
Matt Koeske:
Well, this off the cuff thought is probably a product of my first of the day med load kicking in (sorry about that), but seeing that (fairly conventional) Jungian diagram of the psyche again brought up an alternative model/analogy in my mind. An elephant.
At first I thought of the blind men and the elephant story with the ego sort of like the blind men and the elephant like the "objective psyche" or Self (as whole systemic personality). But then I thought, actually, the ego is more like the trunk of the elephant. It can't ever see the elephant (no eye in the trunk), but it is perhaps its most important and sensitive organ for interacting with the environment. A trunkless elephant would not survive. What an amazing organ it is! The elephant is so dependent on it. The trunk is an adaptation to the elephant's evolutionary niche.
My steroids are probably making me extra cranky, but I grow tired of the good old mandala diagrams of the psyche that Jungians are always drawing. They are misleading in so many ways. This is not meant as a critique of either Sealchan or Keri, of course. There is a habitual use of mandalas and quaternities in Jungian psychic modeling that at first had a New Agey chic to it, but now (in my opinion) has become an obstacle to looking at the psyche less "philosophically/theologically" and more organically and withing the context of the evolution of complex dynamic systems.
For years now i have rejected the idea of persona. Ego and persona are cut from the same cloth. Persona is just a bit of ego that we are aware is not wholly representative of us. It is not (as Jung tried to neatly claim) the opposite of anima/animus. Also, the ego (as Jung and other Jungians have often suggested) is not the "center of consciousness". It is immersed in psyche and very much characterized not my how much it "sees" or is conscious of, but by how little is sees and how limited its scope of languaging is. Again, like the elephant's trunk.
There is another bad habit in Jungianism that implies (or flat out claims) that the expansion of "consciousness" through "ego-strengthening" is a positive form of psychic growth and progress (on a "spiritual" path toward greater enlightenment). But the elephant's trunk is not characterize by how much it sees. Rather, it is its extreme sensitivity and tremendous flexibility that enables it to facilitate the survival and adaptation of the whole organism. I don't think the ego is meant to become "super-conscious" any more than the elephant's trunk is meant to develop vision. The goal of a healthy, functional, and well-developed ego is capacity to use its great flexibility and sensitivity to the best possible survival benefit of the elephant.
As for the whole elephant as Self, there is a problem in the analogy, I admit. It is the same problem that drove Jung to use the metaphor of the Self as both center and circumference of the personality. This is a problem of representation or languaging in our conscious approach to the Self. On one hand, the elephant is a whole, unified, complex system. But there is also a more abstract "elephantic system" that uses the various cooridination of system traits of the elephant (coupled with its instincts) to adapt extremely well to its environmental niche. This abstracted elephant is like what I call the Self system . . . it is the complex, systemic coordination of the all the various organs of the elephant into a whole thing designed to adapt to a specific environment.
Such a Self system is not "biological" per se. It is based more in the laws of complex systems theory. The Self, therefore, can be represented as a systemic organization principle . . . but that principle is equally defined and represented by a whole organism that operates by that principle of organization. So, there is the elephant as objective animal and then there is "elephantness". In the human psyche, these are both representable, sometimes together (as when the Self appears in a dream as animal" and sometimes separated (as when the Self is represented as a symbol of abstract complexity, a sacred geometry or mandala, etc.) Being able to recognize the Self in both forms simultaneously is part of the Logos of individuation/the Work.
Gotta go to physical therapy now. Sorry for no spell checking.
Best,
Matt
Sealchan:
Now I can digest a good metaphor very easily...and Matt, does this qualify as one of your shortest posts? (-)appl(-)
Now to translate to thinking...your definition for Ego might be derived from the following: "the elephant's trunk (Ego) is the most sensative and flexible part of the elephant (Self)".
How about the Ego is the most energic activity in the Self? Or tying this into Eric Kandel's (In Search of Memory) explanation (up to what I have read and extrapolated from it) for how short and long term memory work, Ego is the most persistent (most energic over time) excitation (implies also inhibition) of short-term memory and the resulting engagement of changes in long-term memory that result.
I think one distinction to make here is whether Ego is a system, an order, or is it a relative quality of some psychic activity in general as I have suggested in my memory explanation. From a wikipedia summary of Daniel Dennett's views (I need to re-read his Consciousness Explained) I think he ties in consciousness to what is remembered (as does Gerald Edelman Remembered Present). So how memory works in the brain is likely fundamental to understanding the Ego/Self dichotomy.
What is conscious and, therefore, what is associated with Ego is whatsoever drives memory. Now is there an intermediary order between the psyche as a whole and the world that we should call an Ego? Or is the Self directly interacting with the world and its point of contact is always a "most sensative and most flexible" interaction? Is the elephant's nose a fixed bodily organ with locality or is it a bodily state capable of being physically located almost anywhere in the elephant's body? That is, is the Ego a part of the Self or is it a state of the Self?
Using such devices as a mandalic diagram is but one way of using a metaphor to intuitively grasp what is psyche. By literally mapping concepts (inner persons) to a circular space (mandala) are we not creatively engaging the visual cortex and our facial recognition cortex and our linguistic cortex together to produce a picture of the relative qualities of psyche as a set of inner persons? The fact that the list of inner characters is short conforms to our short-term memory limitations to create a finite spectral set of parts to stand for (map to) an unknown whole? Making that finite spectral whole into pairs of opposites (ego/Self, persona/Anima, etc) also reinforces the libidic content (through simultaneous "entertainment" of opposites) and makes it more powerful (greater libido) in our Ego consciousness (aka short term memory) thereby making it more amenible to long-term memory storage and later short-term memory recall and manipulation.
I've felt for a long time that the New Age is a re-engagement of intuition as a means to creatively re-express abstract concepts onto non-spiritual substances. The result is the spiritualization (or abstract noumenizing to coin a term) of matter and the daylighting of spiritual matters into physical substances. A short-attention span form of alchemy. It doesn't matter so much what constellations or gems or Tarot card sets you use so long as the physical set or "deck" offers a "spectral" (diverse like the primary and secondary colors), "finite" (accessible or relatively accessible to short-term memory manipulation) array of parts which stand togther for a whole.
To me the Ego is a Trickster, it is whatever part of the Elephant's body needs to be the nose. The Trickster made the world and still doesn't get it. That's why I have been eager to dissolve the distinction between ego and Self because I see but one order in the psyche with two faces. The two faces are the two types of memory and the energic (neural impulse strength and frequency) flows that drive them.
To understand archetypes we need merely to understand the processing functions of the various cortical regions and through abstraction (aka mapping) to other cortical regions see what "new age" mappings might result. This occurs when instinctually driven libido comes into conflict and yields a highly energized but static situation in the psyche. This is when creative mapping takes place spontaneously in the cortex and eventually yields some kind of symbol, aka spectral whole which resolves the conflict through a remapping of the original issue onto a third context.
There I think I've packed in a good variety of my own private theories into a relatively (for me) cohesive and not too long post. But does it make sense to anyone else...besides me...yet? lol
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