Author Topic: 4 - Individuation, Mysticism and the Dissolution of Identity  (Read 6116 times)

Matt Koeske

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Individuation, Mysticism and the Dissolution of Identity

I am not suggesting that modern individuals are all latent shamans or that they should seek shamanic initiation as a cure to all their modern woes.  I have no self-help advice to offer and no new religion.  But the tribal shaman is a useful model for modern psychologists to study, as it suggests the most ancient way we know of how personality can be "destroyed" and rebuilt.  It can help us understand the "fault lines" of personality.  And it can also help remedy what has been one of the most significant problems in modern investigations and executions of "inner work" (whether this is enlightenment-seeking meditation, asceticism, or psychotherapy).

C.G. Jung is one of the individuals who bears a great deal of responsibility for accentuating this problem.  Although, he is more indirectly than directly responsible, because what has been said in his name is typically much less sophisticated and evenhanded than the original idea.  But Jung is one of the most important figures behind the modern New Age, and although his romantic enthusiasm for mysticism is forgivable, a number of his signature ideas need to be (and often have been) carefully reevaluated.  Although the standard dismissal of Jung (which I believe stems from Freudian criticism or was at least perpetuated by it) has it that "Jung was a mystic" . . . where the connotation is that mystics are charlatans.  This criticism doesn't hold up under real research.  Jung was not a mystic, but a rather romantic empiricist of religious and spiritual psychic phenomena.  But Jung was interested in mysticisms and to some degree practiced the "Jungian mysticism" that he called "individuation".  He also prescribed it to modern individuals, and this is problematic . . . perhaps far more problematic than many Jungians have realized or been willing to admit.

Although fascinated by mysticisms, and even personally pursuing his own version of mysticism, Jung would not qualify as a textbook "mystic".  I believe he was much more interested in studying the psychic phenomena accompanying mysticism than he was in really indulging in it directly.  He was more likely to study and perhaps wrestle with God than surrender to God.  Jung's characterization of the "unconscious" (which in many ways was his term for God) was not mystical or worshipful but equivocal and distinctly marked by egoic subjectivity.  Jung felt that the ego needed to make a stand against the possibility of utter possession by the unconscious . . . and in this way enter into a dialog with the Other.  But Jung sought to make this a dialog among equals, and he staunchly and heroically defended the autonomy of the ego against dissolution in that Other.  He is very clear and consistent about this (a rarity for Jung) in numerous texts . . . and in his "individuation experiment" captured in the Red Book, he practices what he preaches.

This curiosity but resistance to the Other was what really signified the Jungian position on the unconscious, and Jung made many efforts to try to depict the unconscious dualistically, as both good and evil, light and dark.  It took a strong and heroic ego to beat back the dark temptations and mine the good.  It's a fascinating stance, and very fruitful for a psychologist hoping to maintain some degree of aloofness from the experience of phenomena.  But this is in no way a "mystical" stance.  The mystic surrenders and dissolves in the Other/God, sacrifices him or herself, does not seek so much to study but to live the experience of initiation, the transformative mystery.

Regrettably, Jungians (especially of the classical school and those who worked with Jung directly) have been inclined to make Jung into a mystic and guru, a kind of "enlightened master".  And this has led to a great deal of confusion and hypocrisy in the area of Jungian individuation.  That Jung himself was interested in Eastern mysticisms like Kundalini yoga and often made comparisons between these mysticisms and individuation doesn't help.  But phenomenologically speaking, he was not wrong.  Individuation events do typically stir up images and emotions that accompany historical mysticisms.  But the activation of these images and feelings is not equivalent to a mystical initiation . . . and this is something many Jungians have not grasped and do not want to grasp.  Fantasy and active imagination are not the mysticism itself, but merely the environment of mysticism.  The true mysticism is about being deeply broken down, dissolved, and then reassembled in line with the Self's organizational principle.  Mysticism involves loosing identity and affiliation until identity becomes fluid.  It is not about acquiring a new identity of mystic or enlightened being or shaman.  A shaman may be "Called" to initiation, but only a tribe can employ the shaman as a shaman and give her/him a shamanic identity.

In Jungian mysticism/individuation, we see that popular New Age idea of a "true self", an inner identity that must be excavated.  But genuine mystical initiation does not discover a true identity.  It would be more accurate to say that such initiation allows one to accept that identity is arbitrary and in some sense illusory . . . although still very much essential to all relationship and sociality.  The only initiation-like experience that can grant a revelatory "new" identity is indoctrination, the joining with a tribe in mystical participation.  Tribe grants identity.  Initiation does not.

At times, Jung described individuation as a "becoming whole".  This is confusing, because it is impossible to understand just what this "wholeness" could mean.  Sometimes, it seemed to suggest the finding of a "true self" that was "whole" where the false self was fractured or dissociated.  As I mentioned above, there is another dimension of "wholeness" that is not reliant on "true self" assumptions.  Namely, the conscious facilitation of the Self principle.  The Self seeks and attempts to regulate homeostasis in the psyche, and homeostasis is a kind of integrative coordination of parts.  But this form of "wholeness" requires initiation or deconstructive surrender to the Other/Self.  And since the organizational principle of the Self system is dynamic, the ego would learn to facilitate that dynamism . . . meaning that perfect stasis or "trueness" is never possible.  Utterly fixed identity is impossible when facilitating the Self.  Although Jung observed some of this phenomenon and tried to incorporate it into his idea of wholeness, Jungian wholeness remains inadequately differentiated and understood.
You can always come back, but you can’t come back all the way.

   [Bob Dylan,"Mississippi]

Sealchan

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Re: 4 - Individuation, Mysticism and the Dissolution of Identity
« Reply #1 on: June 27, 2011, 04:44:46 PM »
And didn't Jung also speak to the hazards of trying to adopt a foreign system of symbols that isn't supported by one's culture?  And isn't mysticism more strongly supported in Eastern religious systems?

Those who peg Jung as a mystic might not be considering the extent to which one can only measure themselves in a mirror well-fashioned and available.  It is easy to seem like a mystic in an un-mystical or anti-mystical culture. 




Matt Koeske

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Re: 4 - Individuation, Mysticism and the Dissolution of Identity
« Reply #2 on: June 29, 2011, 12:21:15 PM »
And didn't Jung also speak to the hazards of trying to adopt a foreign system of symbols that isn't supported by one's culture?  And isn't mysticism more strongly supported in Eastern religious systems?

Those who peg Jung as a mystic might not be considering the extent to which one can only measure themselves in a mirror well-fashioned and available.  It is easy to seem like a mystic in an un-mystical or anti-mystical culture.

Hi Sealchan,

The whole "Was Jung a Mystic?" issue is an old one.  Freudians began accusing Jung of being a mystic as soon as Freud and Jung had their falling out.  Academic culture has been significantly influenced by Freud (but not much by Jung), and perhaps this has encouraged the reputation of Jung-as-mystic to spread.  As frustrating and problematic as that may be, at least as great a problem (especially because this one Jungians can actually do something about) is that Jungians and quasi-Jungians have often embraced Jung as a mystic (even as Jung constantly demurred . . . at least publicly).  In essence, many (classical and New Age) Jungians have been in unwitting collusion with Freudians on this issue.  Many who are drawn to Jung want "religion" from him or some kind of religious revitalization.  Jung then becomes a kind of prophet.

The much more complicated reality (as I have argued for it) is that Jung was not a mystic . . . not because he had no mystical or religious/prophetic inclinations (he certainly did), but because he did not follow the traditional path of the mystic that requires extensive dissolution of the ego and surrender to the Other/unconscious/God/etc.  Very, very clearly, in all of Jung's relevant writings (including and especially the Red Book, a supposed mystical text), Jung opposed this mystical tradition in favor of "ego strengthening" and a kind of compromised "stand-off" between ego and autonomous psyche/Other.  At the same time he consistently criticized egoic inflation and false identifications of the ego with the hero who could "conquer" the unconscious.

That is, his position was extremely subtle and complex (and in my opinion very poorly understood by Jungians and critics of Jungianism alike).  He did not shun the autonomous Other of the psyche (i.e., the unconscious).  He wanted passionately to know it and to understand and draw out its value and meaning.  But he feared that anything resembling "surrender" to this Other would result in a loss of selfhood and become a possession and a psychotic breakdown.  The "transcendence" and growth of the individuating ego (in Jung's conception) was a factor of its ability to stand in oppositional dialog with the psychic Other.  But despite this dialog, that Other (epitomized by the anima for Jung, which stood as representative of the unconscious) was to be emotionally resisted and understood as seductive, hungry, even greedy for ego possession.

His stance toward the Other can be thought of as something like the stance of a person with strong prejudices against a particular ethnic minority that he still lives in close proximity with.  He values cooperation with and tolerance of this other, even sees value in some of that others beliefs and attitudes.  But this tolerance (although an ethical stance in general) only extends so far.  He doesn't want his daughter to run off and marry that other.  As long as there is no "interbreeding", noble tolerance is maintained and prized.  But the threat of an intimacy with the other that might more deeply change the self/ego is too much and will be staunchly resisted.

If one studies Jung's characterizations of all kinds of others (from the anima/unconscious to Jews to women to blacks to children to primitives . . . and even to Eastern mystics) one finds that this particular stance of noble tolerance of the other but resistance to transformative intimacy with it is entirely consistent throughout all of Jung's works and relationships.  And this is saying something very notable, because Jung was hardly ever consistent on anything.  Discovering consistencies in Jung should, I feel, be taken as facilitations of leaps forward in Jungian thought (whether we decide to extend or contradict these consistencies).

A true mystic, by contrast, "marries" the Other in some way and is "possessed" and transformed by this Otherness.  Jungian psychology simply doesn't go there . . . not experientially, at least.  It has nothing useful to say about these transformations, because it devoutly resists them.  In fact, Jung was only willing to see such mysticisms as expressions of mental illness . . . which is why when he was confronted with what I call "initiation hunger or initiation disease", he became terribly afraid of "going mad" as well as being seen as such.  Although that response is quite common during initiation disease, and it's true that many people are unable to process these feelings and changes and do "lose" and fail to recover themselves . . . Jung was a rare breed because he managed to develop a systematic response that preserved sanity without radically compartmentalizing or splintering his psyche.

But his solution was to strike a posture that hardly anyone can emulate: this very subtle tolerance/resistance to the autonomous psyche.  The so-called holding of the tension of the Opposites.  I believe he managed this only by identifying with the "Great Man" fantasy . . . or what he himself called the mana-personality (epitomized by Philemon).  Throughout his life, he moved through a succession of identifications with Great Man figures.  Previously, it was Siegfried and Faust.  What came after Philemon was less clear . . . but there is no indication in his late writing that he shook off the identification completely (even as he put some chinks in its armor). 

But we don't live on that still surging wave of high modernism.  We postmoderns have a hard time identifying as Great Men (or Great Women . . . something Jung's very patriarchal fantasy doesn't even bother to consider).  We are more concerned with deconstructing fantasies of greatness.  So even the barely attainable fantasy of Jung as a kind of Samson with a hand on each pillar of the Opposites (stuck there because of the wily seduction of a woman, of course) is unavailable to us.  Even if it were, it is still an illusion and not an ideal stance toward the autonomous psyche.  It is still founded in prejudices against the Other and not really fit for the postmodern, increasingly diverse world.  It is not cooperative and sympathetic enough.

What remains of this Great Man complex is a lingering inflation in the Jungian mindset that is not well recognized or understood.  But what is especially interesting when reevaluating Jung's stance toward the autonomous psyche as I have been trying to do is that although neither a real mystic nor a complete fraud and impostor nor a terrible bigot, Jung's experiments with the unconscious do resemble a stance that remains viable today.  Namely, that of the scientist, who studies data experimentally without necessarily meaning to profit from it directly (i.e., commodify it) or to condemn it.  The scientist seeks neutrality and detachment from the object of study.  This attitude has its flaws, but scientifically it remains as sound or sounder than any other approach.  Jung's consistent claims to being a scientist do have merit when looked at in this way.

He was more scientist than he was either mystic or bigot.  Yet it is this scientific approach to Jungianism that has no Jungian tradition to continue it.  Classical Jungianism has always been more concerned with following Jung-the-prophet on a religious journey of faith-seeking . . . which involves a dogmatic preservation of Jungian thought as "wisdom teachings" and Jung as spiritual culture hero.  Other schools of Jungianism react against that in various ways, but fail to comprehend just exactly why it is deeply inappropriate.  That is, they fail to comprehend that Jung was doing a kind of experimental science.  From the progress of our contemporary perspective, we might call Jung's efforts "proto-scientific".  But that is looking at Jung's experiments from a historical perspective (as one might look back at alchemy).

I've recently read a few books on alchemy and chemistry from historians (and non-Jungians) who argue (convincingly and abundantly) that there was no actual divide between alchemy and chemistry (William R. Newman, Lawrence Principe, and Bruce Moran).  This supposed "scientific revolution" that clearly separated the two was a fantasy written back into history by proponents of scientific rationalism in the 19th and 20th centuries and then taken as dogma by subsequent scholars of the history of chemistry.  In other words, much of the experimental foundations of modern chemistry derives very clearly from alchemical experimentation done in the attempt to make alchemical gold or simply to make gold alloys through various ancient (and still used) forms of metallurgy.

Likewise, Jung's "proto-science" of analytical psychology only appears "proto-scientific" because no one has continued the scientific or experimental tradition of Jung over the last 60 years.  But Jung cannot be blamed for this (not entirely, at least).  Jung's efforts where scientifically viable and reasonable.  Some of his hypotheses are now easily understood as wrong, but science is filled with erroneous hypotheses.  What makes science science is not a flawless history of guessing, but the dedicated attempts to keep assessing and retesting these guesses, refining them and redefining them as necessary.  That hasn't been done in Jungian thought.  But this is not a failure of Jung . . . and that Jung was wrong about such and such matters little . . . unless of course one judges Jung on the validity of his "prophecies".

Taken as a scientist, though, Jung's errors only help inform future experiments . . . all the more so because even though erroneous, they were reasonable and logical attempts to explain actual data.  Only in a religious context must theories be either believed or disbelieved because either true or false.  Science tests and learns.  So I find this abandonment of a scientific/experimental tradition in Jungianism extremely regrettably.  It more than anything else is responsible for a lack of growth and perhaps even the relative ostracization from mainstream academic thought that currently plagues Jungianism.

But so long as we get stuck in the trap of debating whether Jung was a "true mystic" or "false mystic", we fail.  Both answers are wrong and perpetuate a great loss and lack in Jungian thought.
You can always come back, but you can’t come back all the way.

   [Bob Dylan,"Mississippi]