Chris, I've written a very long and detailed reply to your last post (which I'll break up more or less arbitrarily into multiple posts). I'm not sure how much use there was in doing this, because I'm not sure there is a place of synthesis between our contrasting attitudes or philosophies. Still, I am going to make my arguments. Ideally, if either of our arguments can't bear fruit through reasoning alone, data could be provided to supplement a person's position. But I'm not sure that the accumulation and organization of such data would be worth the effort. Data is just as easy to ignore as reason. And a lot of data in this more philosophical subject matter can be interpreted in various ways (necessitating more and more data in a process that swells into a tide of minutia). And ultimately, reason should suffice if it is constructed solidly enough.
In general, I am inclined to say that instead of debating many of these things with me, you would be better off turning to and reading almost any piece of Jungian writing that touches on these issues. Despite your Neumannian orientation, I don't think that your general thrust is compatible with Jungian thinking. Which is, of course, perfectly fine. Your opinion of the conquering ego/hero is in contrast with everything I've gotten out of Jungian literature . . . and I am not going to influence you if Jung and the Jungians could not. My main concern (perhaps distant hope) is that you have merely misinterpreted or misunderstood the conventional Jungian line of reasoning on this topic . . . and that then maybe I could find a way to make the Jungian argument more sensible or overt.
But it seems more likely to me that you have consciously deviated from conventional Jungian thinking about the hero. In which case, nothing I say is likely to make any more sense out of that argument. If that is the case, though, I would like to suggest that the greater burden of "proof" is on you in this situation. That is, if you are contradicting a mainstay of Jungian thinking, it isn't me that should really have to bend over backwards to construct arguments that you can understand. You are really in the position in which you have to hard-sell your own "new and improved" Jungianism door to door. And I'm saying that not as a brush off, but as one who is very much this kind of door to door Jungian revisionist. The reason I am always going into such detail and devoting so much of my writing to argument and disagreement is that I understand that I am offering something different. And that demands some kind of explanation or salesmanship for the value of this difference. I get so stuck in this mode as the Willy Loman of Jungian route, that I don't realize right away when I don't need to sell, because somebody else is trying to convince
me to buy.
But my arguments below are still filled with my characteristic and compulsive sales pitch. Partly because I am delineating subtle differences between my position and the conventional Jungian position, and partly because I worry that your attitude that so highly values the conquering ego is ultimately self-limiting if not self-destructive. So I'll make this pitch for what it's worth.
My thinking about things Jungian actually started with Neumann and trying to understand all of this and trying to come to grips with how he distinguished between a masculine and feminine line of development. Neumann saw the typical male hero figure and Jung's ideas as inadequate to explaining feminine psychology.
My reading of Neumann has been limited to
Amor and Psyche and a number of excerpts (mostly from
The Origins and History of Consciousness). I've mostly read
about Neumann from other Jungians. My impression (perhaps erroneous) is that Neumann has fallen out of favor with mainstream Jungians, who perhaps find him overly intellectual and more philosophical/theoretical than experiential/clinical. I can't say whether or not I would agree.
Giegerich takes Neumann to task severely in one of his books. I came away from that article feeling distanced from both men's arguments, though. I'll find the chapter and scan it for you; you can see what you think.
Here's an article praising Neumann by Camille Paglia:
http://www.bu.edu/arion/Volume13/13.3/Camille/Paglia.htm. She has some basic, but astute things to say . . . mostly about the deficiencies of a postmodernism that ignores Jungian and Neumannian theories altogether. Paglia summarizes Neumann's proposed stages of feminine development as follows:
Neumann laid out what he theorized to be four fundamental stages in women's psychological development. The first is an undifferentiated matrix or psychic unity where the ego and the unconscious are still fused. He called this stage matriarchal and symbolized it as the uroboros, an ancient symbol of a snake biting its tail, both devouring and giving birth to itself, an image of either solipsism or fertility. In the second stage, there is spiritual invasion and domination by the Great Father archetype (associated with rationalism and monotheism), who is perceived as a destroyer or rapist. A gloss here might be William Blake's peculiar, haunting poem, “The Sick Rose,” where a ruthlessly phallic “invisible worm . . . flies in the night / In the howling storm” to “destroy” a virginal rose's passively self-enclosed “bed / Of crimson joy.” In the engraved plates of The Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1789, 1794), Blake, like Neumann, is picturing an unfolding series of spiritual and psychosexual states.
In his third developmental stage, Neumann embodies the masculine in a normative individual, a rescuing hero who liberates the young woman from the controlling father but yokes her to conventional marriage under new male authority. Sex roles are polarized, with masculinity and femininity mutually exclusive. Neumann's fourth and final stage has feminist implications: here the mature woman discovers her authentic self and voice. As she borrows from the masculine, sex roles are blurred.
I'm not sure what to say about this. Although I am not inclined to see these stages as anything but a fairly restrictive, perhaps even deceptive paradigm, it's true that the focus of my own writing and thinking would be on the 4th stage and "beyond". I've never been driven to read any more of Neumann previously, although a desire to understand you better is some motivation. But I'm not sure Neumann would really help all that much with that. And I'm not sure I want to get into a critique of Neumannian thinking (or a critique of your interpretation of it).
The separative vs connective lines of development are really my effort to de-sexualize the so-called masculine and feminine dichotomy mentioned above. I think the truth may lie somewhere in the middle of genetics (male/female differences), culture (sexual bias) and that there isn't really a significant sexual difference in conscious development in the ultimate sense.
That confuses me, because I thought this was one of the things we disagreed about. The bolded line above pretty much represents my opinion, too. But if one believes this, doesn't it necessitate the devaluation if not outright dismissal of any theory that sees conscious(ness) development as having both a Masculine and a Feminine style that are essentially Opposites?
Even "de-sexualized" it seems that your notion of "separative" and "connective" intelligences/modes/styles maps completely to Masculine and Feminine respectively. My thinking would be, in order to truly "de-sexualize" concepts like a separative and a connective mode of consciousness or consciousness development, we would have to state that these styles of intelligence are
both equally represented in men and in women. Not that women tend to be more "connective" and men more "separative" . . . as you have clearly stated to me in the past.
But even de-sexualized, I'm not sure that this is the ideal paradigm through which to talk about consciousness. In fact, I don't think this theory can be de-sexualized, because I think that the theory determines or demands its own mindset. I.e., that the mindset/perspective behind this theory is seeing consciousness from what I would consider a "patriarchal-egoic" perspective. It is the patriarchal perspective that valuates separation as a "masculine mode" and sees connection as its Opposite and compliment . . . therefore, feminine.
I'm not sure, though, that the patriarchal ego is able to see this clearly. I.e., it sees things inherently as "like me" and "not like me" . . . where the "like me" is masculine in the patriarchal sense. I'm saying that this patriarchal ego doesn't get outside itself enough to either truly relate to and understand the Other (the not like me) or to look upon itself from an Other's perspective. It looks out at everything around it from within and constructs theories of things based on this perspective.
But this is what I call the egoic fallacy. It is projective thinking, not scientific or gnostic thinking. The goal of science or gnosticism is to be able to look at self and Other from a neutral (or non-egoic) perspective. So, in science, we have made progress by trying to understand the behavior of matter and material things from what is essentially the perspective of Nature itself. So, "projective sciences" like alchemy are discarded for non-egoic sciences like chemistry. The problem of this, as the Jungians lament, is that soul is lost, human psychology and our ability to relate to it "directly" are abstracted and become endangered species. But in order to understand matter better, we had to extract psyche/projection from it.
My opinion is that this can be done (and should be done as much as possible) to psyche itself in the attempt to understand psyche. We have to try to look at psyche as a natural phenomenon. We have to get outside of it and our unconsciousness of it in the same way that we have dealt with matter. That is, we need to extract ego from it in order to understand it (where "extract" means to objectify and gain and outside perspective on). By which I mean, egoic-perspective, the idea that because something seems such and such a way to us, therefor it
IS precisely as we see it. The egoic fallacy.
Ego is extracted out of psychology and studied as its own entity. As we come to better understand how the ego works, how it "tends to behave", what it doesn't see very accurately, we can then reintroduce that to our study of psyche as a whole. The study of egoic behavior needs to be isolated as much as possible from the study of the psyche as a whole, or else we will commit the egoic fallacy and project egoism onto the psyche (which, as both Jungians and neurobiologists know, is significantly different as a mechanism or object than it is as perceived egoically).
The alchemists talk about the extraction of spirit from matter. I propose that this is the same thing as I described above . . . except the alchemists didn't understand psych-free matter very well, so they could only do this mystically or metaphorically by projecting the extraction of ego/spirit onto a symbolic, mystical process. That is, as Jung pointed out, they were really dealing with psychology more so than chemistry. Also, the Hillman term "seeing-through" that I've been employing . . . it's all the same thing: a distancing of oneself from the egoic perspective, which doesn't see things as they are, but only as they resemble or relate to the ego.
What I have to question in your separative/connective paradigm is whether you are getting a non-egoic perspective on the psyche or seeing psyche specifically through the lens of your ego-position. I question this for two main reasons: 1) I see no such dynamic inherent in psyche (which could be because I have an ego-perspective that limits me in a different way or could be because I am seeing psyche with less ego-determination), and 2.) Your ego-position or conscious attitude, from what I can tell, necessitates the perception of psyche within the paradigm you propose. That is, it seems to me that you are bringing this particular paradigm to psyche and then detecting it, "projectively". And that it is not psyche in general you are really talking about, but
your psyche . . . or more accurately, your psyche as perceived through your favored ego paradigm.
I'm not saying that this is bad or even avoidable. We always bring our ego to our thinking and can't extract it out completely. What we can do, I think, is calculate into our theories a "margin or error" based on our own limited, egoic positions. We can say, "I know I tend to see things in such and such a way, so when I see an Other or an object in a way that reflects this, I have to exercise special scrutiny and skepticism." One of the best ways I see to maintain that scrutiny and skepticism is to pay careful attention to all the data that don't seem to fit our favored egoic paradigms. How do we treat those data? Do we devalue them ("they only pose minor inconsistencies")? Do we ignore or reject them outright ("they are irrelevant")? If we valuate them in some way, why do we do so? Do we valuate them based on how well they fit with our favored paradigm? If so, is that attitude in anyway credible?
When I think of separative vs connective I don't think of the relationship between the ego and the unconscious so much as I think of the relationship between personality centers, those multitudes of inner others I keep going on about. I am suggesting that the ego preferentially develops with a biased (strong foot/weak foot) approach to development by either separating or connecting with others in the greater psyche. The masculine line of consciousness seeks to polarize others as to whether they are, at bottom, for or against the ego's own separated objectives while the feminine line seeks to maintain in coordination the already polarized others. The unconscious, per se, pushes both separation and connection by virtue of it harboring a largely undifferentiated (by collective conscious standards) response to precise, real world situations.
But why would such a dynamic operate in the psyche in this way? How could it be adaptive? Why might it have evolved? How does it solve (as elegantly as possible) an evolutionary "problem"? Where else in nature might there be parallels to this organizational principle? These are important questions for anyone who feels biology plays a role in psychology.
And those personality centers, what are they "really"? Are they innate or do they develop with or through socialization? Are there instinctual drives founding them or is their organization random or is it a matter of living experience and specific memory accumulation? Do we consciously
feel that there is a muddle when personality centers "over-connect"? Can it be perceived in one's thought or in one's neuroses or complexes or dreams? Is clarity of thought generated by the just-right amount of separation? What does it really mean to separate or connect personality centers?
I apologize for being antagonistic . . . but this is the kind of process I like to employ when I develop theoretic paradigms. And I can't elicit my own answers to these kinds of questions for your theory. I'm not asking you to answer these questions for me . . . but I am curious if you can answer these kinds of questions for yourself without feeling there are neglected or devalued data.
We are left with a disorganized inner bunch of individuals and we may either separate the ego as a centralized power that "orders" the other psychic others into hierarchical compliance (alignment) or we can connect psychic others together in response to their existing divergent inclinations into a harmonious, coordinated whole being careful not to centralize egoic power.
Is it the ego, then that establishes order in the psyche either by connecting or organizing personality centers in a hierarchical, differentiated fashion? Does the ego have this kind of shepherding power over the sheep of the psyche? What evidence is there for this kind of power and influence of the ego over the unconscious?
To but it in an evolutionary framework, how and why might such an animal evolve that had this thing we call an ego that was responsible for organizing the psyche into a healthy and functional network? Conventionally, evolution produces species that are unconsciously driven to behave in adaptive ways; are we so different? Can our adaptive behavior be said to be driven not by instinct or unconscious drives so much as by egoic choices and willpower?
We know that many of our bodily functions and behaviors are largely or entirely autonomous from consciousness. What are the guiding forces of adaptability in our societies? Generally, they are "institutions" in modern society or "traditions" in pre-modern and tribal societies. Religion, education, government, law, marriage, parenting, rituals for passage of life stages, death. How much do we egoically determine these things and how much do they determine us, our identities, attitudes, and beliefs?
What I'm basically questioning here is the idea that the ego is responsible for psychic organization in any fashion as opposed to there being an "unconscious" source of psychic organization . . . that (at least in part) organizes the ego. I have never personally felt that I was able to organize my psyche consciously and intentionally, whether by separating psychic contents or connecting them. I might consciously observe that one thing is related to another thing in my psyche, but I am not responsible for connecting them.
As for differentiation/separation, I'm not sure that we can actually "differentiate" psychic contents in a way that moves those contents around. More conventionally, the process of differentiation is the discovery of pieces of clarity or focus in something that was initially perceived as amorphous, indistinct, black, chaotic. In fact, differentiation is often the product of recognizing meaningful connections that weren't previously seen. But I don't see this as "creating order" so much as valuating complex order that already existed. In general, I think we only have power (and even then, not all that much) over the things we have taken in from outside us that formed our identity. We can "change our minds" about these things . . . but I have yet to see any evidence that we can change our brains or instinctual psyches. Nor have I seen any evidence that instinctual and organic psychic contents can be "disorganized". Only that we can have inadequate egoic paradigms through which to understand them. Some severe childhood traumas and genetically inherited psychological disorders potentially withstanding.
The instinctual unconscious, in my opinion, is just trying to live in a state of relative equilibrium. The ego is trying to fit the drives of the instinctual unconscious to the environment: human society. But even this "fitting" is driven almost entirely by unconscious means, the acquisition of tribal identifiers or beliefs and attitudes that help connect us with support groups that in return offer protection and validation for our identities. We generally gravitate toward what is most validating of us . . . and in this drive toward validation, we build identities based on what our tribes will and will not validate. In this behavior, I see very little conscious determination. Although, in the modern world, there are certainly many more choices to make regarding these affiliations than there were in our environment of evolutionary adaptedness.
So from this perspective you might see how the collective development of the interpersonal marriage as opposed to the arranged marriage actually introduces an advance to the process of individuation on the part of the collective. It does so not by building up "guarantees" for individuation to occur, but by removing collective forces (familial or cultural taboos or expectations) that would contain a marriage without having to differentiate/negotiate a relationship with one's complimentary other. The very, so called, ritual void that not having an arranged marriage creates is the opportunity, instantiated in the collective, for a higher development of consciousness to occur. This development was probably an unconscious, even consciously resisted by tradition, fallout of other seemingly unrelated social-collective developments.
I don't know. This construction doesn't really add clarity to the understanding of consciousness for me. It completely ignores the biological. Arranged or chosen, sexual attraction and desire still exist. Human sexuality predates marriage . . . and sexuality in general well-predates our species.
So there is no sense of conscious intentional striving just patterns of behavior-attitude-underlying character to how we relate to outer and inner others. This view I think fits in with Carol Gilligans' research described in In a Different Voice which describes her understanding of how women typically resolve conflict differently than men.
I feel like you are taking two lines of thought that are contradictory to one another and laying them down together as if they don't actually self-negate. Your position is becoming less and less clear to me.