This topic is meant to house a gradually accruing list of the specialized terms I frequently use. I try to make neologisms as infrequently as possible, but I do have revised definitions for many Jungian terms. Most of this languaging is complex. There are rarely easy, simple definitions for the terms I use. That may come from being a poet and seeing language as complex, contextual, malleable, and massively interconnected.
Still, my desire (rarely achieved) is to be clear and comprehensible, and I am extremely particular about languaging. I am generally sympathetic to Jung's languaging approach. I like the way he will take a term like anima or shadow or even archetype that has a long history of various usages that all sort of circle around an invisible center. He meant to continue the phenomenological tradition of trying to define this invisible center using a traditional term, but tweaking and psychologizing its meaning.
Of course, I still reject about half of Jung's signature terms because they have become too inaccurate or non-functional in today's intellectual and scientific climate. "Unconscious", for instance. It's a misleading term. I have started using "autonomous psyche". It is not an "unconsciousness" that defines this phenomenon but its autonomy. That autonomy is constantly affecting and influencing consciousness, constantly appearing (often symbolically) and being represented to or in consciousness.
My efforts at defining the terms in this topic will be something like throwing a handful of darts at a dart board. I could probably write a completely different definition of each term on any given day. Not contradictory, but different. It depends what I feel like emphasizing (or what feels to me like it wants be emphasized) at the particular time.
Some terms are robust enough to support whole essays or books (e.g., "valuation", "animi work"), but I don't mean to go into that much detail here.
Thanks to Micah (and to Keri from years ago) for suggesting this.
-Matt
