FROM SHADOW NEUROSIS TO HEALTH Paul Budding 1
Abstract There are individual minds all distinguished/separate from the thingin-itself, different from the situation, event and from other minds etc. However, there are patterns of psychology that we observe. Thankfully that enables us to better understand ourselves and others, thus to overcome shadow neurosis and attain health. Introduction In this paper I articulate my entire psychology, starting from the agonizing torturous pain of psychosis to the health of psychological meaning. Note that what I write here (concerning the unhealthy side of psychology) is largely (but not entirely) selected from my previous writings. Psychosis Here I select an extract from my paper titled Complex and Image Psychology I write that The psychotics ego consciousness is overwhelmed by complexes that dissociate it. The psychotic doesn t fight. This I have taken from Jung. [ ] The neurotic goes into a power battle with his or her complexes and tries to re-repress them. Hence there s a fight. However the psychotic doesn t even fight hence his or her ego consciousness is taken over by the complexes. (S)he is effectively psychologically drowned by them. Neurosis 2
If the neurotic personality wants to recover from the repetitive cycle they find themselves in, then they need to verbalize what they think in an honest way to them-self and to relevant others. They need to persuade and generate understanding. In effect they need to stabilize their ego consciousness. I wrote in Complex and Image Psychology that the healthy person responds to the complex surfacing into consciousness by facing it, thinking it through by working out what (s)he really thinks and then being open about that to him or herself and to others. Thus it s not a complex at this stage because it isn t feared. Once that anxiety is vanquished then the complex is vanquished. If you are not anxious and vigilant about something occurring then it s not a complex. Hence you are no longer neurotic. My paper titled Complex and Image Psychology on Neurosis was very small, just 1,155 words. And I not only stick to what I said in it, I also think it s very important for sufferers. Therefore I am including it all here. But I highlight the very end of the paper where I say that this paper isn t relevant for those who have overcome their disposition to neurosis. And therefore they are in the fortunate position of being able to skip this part of the paper and focus on the more healthy side of their psyche. 3
Complex and Image Psychology on Neurosis Paul Budding 4
Introduction This mini paper adds the term Fixed Idea (or attachment ) to Complex and Image. This is necessary to be more accurate concerning what is said about neurosis. This paper is about the medical side of Complex and Image psychology, specifically neurosis. It is not the authors intention to say anything about psychosis or PTSD here although psychologists may be able to see logic in what s said that could be applied to both. 5
COMPLEX AND IMAGE PSYCHOLOGY C O N FIXED IDEA/ IMAGE DEAD SIGN S ATTACHMENT The idea is now in the open. i.e., The idea is thought C it is admitted to oneself as through. i.e., the I being a problem that needs solution to the O a solution. It s now conscious problem is U because it s not being repressed discovered. S and projected out. ------------------------------------------------------------------- When the repressed complex surfaces into conscious awareness it dissociates the fixed idea/attachment. The neurotic re-represses it. The healthy person openly faces it and hence the complex is now an image. (see above). ------------------------------------------------------------------- U N C O N S REPRESSED COMPLEXES C I O U S 6
Hypothetical Example of Complex and Image Psychology Note this works vice versa: Jungian ideas may establish a repressed complex in the unconscious mind of the Freudian. Fixed Freudian ideas are in the conscious mind of the Freudian and Jungian ones maybe considered as contradicting them. Therefore a Jungian idea may trigger the complex in the Freudian s unconscious. The Jungian idea then surfaces into the conscious mind of the Freudian and dissociates the Freudians consciousness. Addition to my thinking (Fixed Idea s) and clarifying terminology In my last paper (titled Complex and Image Psychology) I discussed much of what I am discussing here but I hadn t unified my thinking concerning the connection between fixed idea (or attachments) with the complex. I have done here. (as above). Attachments can be to anything. But I agree with Pierre Janet that narrow fixed ideas are the big problem. Note that due to my study of Jungian psychology I am aware that the way I use the term Fixed Ideas could be termed projective identification or participation mystique. However I think that Fixed Idea gets across what is meant very effectively/instantly. Shadow Projection is not the Fixed Idea. Shadow projection ensures that the complex remains repressed hence we never get out of the unconscious cycle of complex, dissociation, re-repression. This psychology feels negative even to the person whose psychology it is. Shadow projection is the method used to re-repress the complex. This ensures that the 7
contradiction to the attachment is not experienced as the contradiction is projected out onto someone else. Hence in Complex and Image Psychology the complex equates to the contradiction to the fixed idea. Projective Identification (or participation mystique) can be used interchangeably with Fixed Idea and with Attachment. The definition of projective identification equates to projecting what s in you onto something else and then identifying with it. (subject/object non-differentiation). The fixed Idea is so similar in that its narrowness and rigidity means that it is part of you as opposed to being an idea outside of you that is open to change. Given that the individual is unwilling to cease identification with the attachment or fixed idea it implies that (at some point) the fixed idea was healthy. However attachments rarely stay healthy forever and once the shadow side of the attachment has been recognised then the work needs to be done. It needs to progress to the image stage. (see cure : below). This occurs through the contradictory complex being faced up to eventually. Cure The cure requires that we stop projecting out the complex and cease rerepressing it. Hence we face up to it. Once we have done that then we are no longer neurotic. That first step is a big step. Now we are at the image stage. This requires ability to critically think and as Pierre Janet would say, to be able to integrate it into one s existing thought. This requires a consciousness that is not so narrow and not so controlling a mind that doesn t just defend its existing thinking all of 8
the time and a mind that enjoys the thinking through process. Remember that you can t dissociate if you are integrated but you are not integrated if your unconscious is choc-a-bloc with complexes. The individual will not think through their fixed idea or attachment until they have detected a shadow element either in the idea itself or through seeing the controlling shadow in themselves. Recognising the shadow element gets us from the neurosis to the image. Sometimes an attachment is something that one needs to grow out of as it is something that has existed since childhood. Other times it will be a fixed idea that only originated in adulthood. In either case the attachment is being used to grasp and cling onto in order to defend one s consciousness. This is a strategy of trying to control others in order to be healthy. The attachment is used as a means to this end. Conclusion In Complex and Image Psychology the complex is always repressed. The Fixed Idea is the attachment. The complex and attachment are linked in the sense of the complex dissociates the fixed idea (attachment). If the reader sensed that any of this applies to them personally then I would recommend the following as reason to take action the reason to take action is that living a life of complex psychology means that the experience of painful dissociation will be repeated literally forever. We do not need to vanquish attachments that we do not feel are dissociating us. We should not eliminate attachments when we cannot detect any shadow in them. Those attachments are balanced and 9
sensible otherwise there would be some psychological suffering associated with them. It would be not only unnecessary but also unhealthy to think through healthy attachments. You are not a prisoner of them and your mind is not suffocated by them. Finally, a key point of Complex and Image Psychology is this: The healthy mind does not desire to control other minds. It only focuses on ensuring its own mind is healthy. You cannot control others. You can only control yourself. Thus Complex and Image Psychology gets to the point, i.e., the point is your mind and its health. Thus it s a medical psychology as it is about a healthy mind. A mind that is already healthy has no need for the medical side of Complex and Image Psychology. Following writing the above paper, I used the term image as merely (from now on) meaning something more-or-less like my thoughts and feelings concerning X. Hence I could use thoughts and feelings or I could use psychological image to mean the same thing. But before moving on beyond neurosis, I would like to add a few more points. Each of us needs to improve ourselves not by saying "Oh okay, I am now perfect" but by self criticism that is constructive not destructive. If we are aware of the shadow then we will stop ourselves from projecting or acting it out onto others. We will remind ourselves that it is our own shadow problem and then calm will slowly return as opposed to a painful experience. That potential painful experience is just not worth it. (no-where near worth it!) In the paper titled The Ego Fantasy Image and the Collective Unconscious Projection of Psychological Life I said that Shadow 10
projection is usually about a repressed contradictory complex that is very much unwanted and hence projected out onto someone else. But some or many people also project the shadow onto someone else simply to establish 'distance' between oneself and the other person... i.e., a rather psychologically brutal way of differentiating oneself from the other person. If a person does operate in this way, i.e., shadow projects in order to maintain a feeling of independence and autonomy, then that has seriously unhealthy implications for their psychosocial health for their entire life. It is 'paranoia'. Susan Rowland writes Jung gives [ ] attention to why modernity s projections are so dark. He concludes in the Trickster essay that loss of myth concentrates the projection into dangerous shadow territories. (Rowland, 2007). In The Ego Fantasy Image and the Collective Unconscious Projection of Psychological Life I wrote: Sometimes people project the exact opposite of the shadow onto another person in their life e.g., a woman who falls in love with a man (too quickly), and commits to him (too quickly) and merely months later painfully realises that he isn't the guy that she thought he was so the relationship ends not long after it started. And it should never have started in the first place. In the same paper I started to realize that we too often literalize our psychology by projecting our thoughts and feelings into an object and 11
then identifying with it. Thus I started to realize that we confuse our psychology (its swirl of thoughts and feelings) with the object, situation, or event outside of it. The two are not one-and-the-samething. I pointed out that Carl Jung didn t confuse psychology with the thing-in-itself. I wrote that he didn t respond to the collective unconscious by becoming an atheist. Nor did he respond by calling ghosts nonsense. Nor did he respond by saying that UFO sightings are nonsense. Jung understood that the appeal is, always was, and always will be the psychology of these phenomenons. He describes the silver round disc UFO as symbolic of the God-image in the psyche (Jung, 1995, p366) and as signifying the wholeness of the self. (Jung, 1995, p367). I agree that, at the most archetypal level of the Unidentified Flying Object Phenomenon there is a savior psychological projection onto the silver discs. Elsewhere in MDR Jung says that the UFO phenomenon expresses expectation of redemption. (Jung, 1995, p239). Jung is very interested, not possessed, by these things. It is precisely because he consciously psychologizes these things that he avoids possession. The psychologizing = the disidentifying/the deliteralizing. In my paper titled Psychological Fantasy Reality I was doing two things (1) re-capping/clarifying what I had written recently (2) just starting to get to a point where I could describe meaning. I hadn t really arrived there yet as I hadn t taken into account the necessity to change 12
perspective rapidly. In other words a necessary clash was necessary between psychological meaning (that could too easily be just another contradiction complex forming attachment and identification and genuine psychological meaning (which would have to be non-contradiction complex forming). I was also still distinguishing between consciousness and unconsciousness. I no longer do that. I refer instead to healthy unconsciousness and unhealthy unconsciousness. We will get to that later. But I can say here that referring to conscious and unconscious makes sense at one level (neurosis to basic health) but as we approach the healthy wing of psychology then it s no longer necessary nor does it feel right or accurate to do so. In terms of recapping, I defined Ego-Image Fantasy Identifications as strong and powerful. They form accompanying contradictory complexes in the unconscious that dissociate the psyche following being shadow projected onto someone else and then re-experienced back at you when that someone else triggers the complexes. That s the reason why we need to overcome ego-image psychology because the ego-image equates to all of our unconscious or conscious identifications. Then the contradictions to these identifications establish repressed complexes in our unconscious. These complexes are projected out onto others (thus psychosocially unhealthy). Those others trigger the complexes and dissociate the psyche. So that is why I dislike the dominant ego and shadow psychology. 13
I hadn t yet clashed the need for rapid change in psychology with meaning. Hence the former wasn t being considered when I went on to refer to the de-literalizing of the object (e.g., the UFO, God, Ghost), and thus the psychologising of them IN as opposed to psychologising them away. Nevertheless I had finally started to touch on psychological meaning in my paper titled Psychological Fantasy Reality. On deliteralizing I wrote The individuals psychological projection onto anything is never identical with the thingin-itself. (nor identical with the situation or event). This means that there is psychology separate from things. We can understand the fact that no two people experience objects in exactly the same way from the fact that their minds are never identical in their thoughts and feelings. If people did experience the objects (or situations, events) in exactly the same way then there would be many identical people. BEYOND NEUROSIS Once beyond individual neurotic shadow psychology, we can refer to psychology without the word conscious. Only if referring to complex and dissociation psychology is conscious/unconscious split necessary. But at the healthier side of psychology we can say that we are never really conscious. We are always psychologically unconscious. We only ever realise later when we look back and think "hey, what was it I was 14
thinking back then???" But of course the person who says that will (ironically) be psychologically unconscious even as (s)he says it. (S)he will realise that later. As Marie Louise Von Franz puts it, when one looks back they call it "an error, an illusion - a projection [...] but as long as one is caught in it [...] one will never call it a projection but will consider it to be true cognition. The subject then feels that he is talking about true facts as honestly as he can." (Von Franz in Jung, 1998, p245) Of course it is impossible to be psychologically conscious in the way that most people think that they are psychologically conscious. This is because what is in their head is not the same thing as that which they are claiming to be conscious about. Their mind and the thing-initself are two different things. Consciousness is a literalization confusion. There is however a distinction that can be made between "Healthy" Unconsciousness and "Unhealthy" Unconsciousness. We cannot, however, say that we are conscious just because we feel good. That would make no sense... albeit it is said by almost everyone. This is because consciousness is a necessary illusion, for me, you and everyone. I agree with Von Franz. She understands de-literalization. She is saying that you do not realize that you are literalizing until later. You can only realize that you were unconscious. You cannot know that you are unconscious. (except in rare phenomena such as waking dreams). 15
CONCLUSION: PSYCHOLOGICAL RAPID CHANGE AND PSYCHOLOGICAL MEANING Before I start to delve into the healthier side of psychology I should say that I do not mean that the Shadow Psychology world is now nonexistent. But if you are aware of your own shadow you should be able to read the shadow psychology side of others. Maybe it is they who are unable to constructively self-criticise - thus unable to take criticism from others and thus project their shadow onto those critics. Maybe extreme introversion has prevented others from establishing an ego that can argue, persuade and so forth (i.e., argue and persuade without lashing out i.e., without projecting the shadow!) To read others you must first be able to see these basic painful psychological errors in yourself. Those that do not realize their own shadow go through life thinking that things just happen to them. This is inevitable because they do not reflect on their own thoughts and feelings rather they project them out endlessly onto others. Even when a wrong really has been committed against someone it is important that the someone doesn t amplify the affects. Of course if (s)he is a neurotic personality then all hell will break loose in their psyche! Finally on shadow Psychology usually the shadow projector looks for a suitable hook. But sometimes there isn t one to be seen. Hence the shadow projector goes on a search in the others psyche in an attempt to find the shadow in the other person. 16
People neurotically attach so as not to feel like they are just a meaningless swirl of thoughts and feelings. Attachment can be to anything but there are some common well documented examples alcohol, gambling, another person etc. The rest of this conclusion will focus on Healthy Unconsciousness. It is not collective common sense to know what is psychologically good for us. It is more common to know what is psychologically bad for us. Most people who think they have everything sorted are experiencing contented unconsciousness. If Jung, Freud et al, discovered neurotic patterns (shadow) that they can read like a book then surely it is possible for the individual to pattern health. That s certainly what Jung did. The risk of course, is that one simply ego identifies with the so-called healthy pattern and due to the psychological importance invested in this identification - - - it would be all the more dissociable. An online contact of mine (Justin Ricke) said that the "ability to change perspective rapidly" is psychologically important. (personal correspondence). I quickly realized that I needed to clash this with a simple need and potential for the experience of psychological 'meaning': I concluded that the ability to change perspective rapidly is necessary (and thus enables) the realization of 'meaning'. The alternative is identifying with something for meaning. But that alternative produces anxiety and is defensive and potentially painfully dissociable. We mustn't use meaning for power and control purposes. If you do then you will simultaneously attain neurosis. You will produce anxiety and become dissociable... as power and control is hard to sustain and even if it is sustained... then the anxiety invested in its maintenance equates to loss of psychological health. 17
Object attachment can be to anything and that includes phenomena associated with 'meaning'. Infact attachments to things associated with 'meaning' are a good example of attachments and identifications. When someone dissociates the treasured anxiety producing attachment you would unconsciously project your shadow onto him or her (equating to projecting your unconscious doubt onto him or her)... then that persons presence would be experienced as having the doubt thrown back in your face. (boomerang). Often there is paranoia (or at least excessive suspicion ) mixed in with shadow projection. Consciousness is a literalization confusion. We can however nondefensively experience psychological health. Hence, rather than experiencing a meaningless swirl of thoughts and feelings that are neurotically defended we instead (quite simply) experience health. So if you are relatively beyond shadow psychology (in sense of awareness of it!) then the following is how you can put the icing on the healthy cake: In my psychology all that there is is individual projections onto objects, situations, events. Some of it is recognizable in the sense that there s a pattern of shadow projection. Given that people identify with their ideas, we can safely say that the individual artificially attaches their ego image (or artificially inserts it) into an outer object, situation, event. If something negative happens to the outer object, or something negative happens concerning the situation or 18
event then so too something negative happens to that persons psyche - - - despite it being separate from the object, situation or event. The negative experience for the psyche = dissociation because it is artificially connected to the object/situation/event. We will now look at an example of psychology in action. This is the transcript of a Larry King show on UFO s and Nukes. (July 18 th, 2008) Click on the link to read: http://www.stealthskater.com/documents/ufonuke_02.pdf What are we to make of this transcript? First of all we know that something deactivated or turned off the U.S nuclear weapons. We know that they don t just all experience power failure. We know that something was seen before they shut down. We know that the people who report this are Air Force Officers. We know that the CIA confiscated the film. Now if we are to just fall into the cultural default positions then we have two choices: (1) Ignore everything that we know about what happened and just say that nothing happened. OR (2) Accept the cultural interpreted projection onto Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO s) and Identify them as ET s from another planet that build nuts n bolts craft and then fly to earth. For me, neither of those assumptions is intelligent. For me, the most likely answer (applying Occams Razor) is that the UFO was something designed by human beings and hence, human beings turned off the U.S nuclear weapons. Of course, Occams Razor can be wrong too. I have 0% evidence. It just seems to me to be the most likely explanation. However I am not dogmatic about it. My explanation is different from the thing-in-itself. (or situation/event in-itself). There s a projection of interest, curiosity, 19
onto the UFO Phenomenon, from me to the UFO Phenomenon. The reality is different to my projection because my psychology and the thing-in-itself are two different phenomena s. My psychology is not world-renouncing. It s an attempt to go beyond shadow neurosis and to be healthy. Hence I only need to withdraw interest and curiosity IF (and only if ) the projection is experienced as neurotic. (for example if shadow projections started to be dished out against opponents, and if complexes started to be triggered). This psychology can be used against some of the thinkers fixed ideas on the Larry King show. I read the manuscript and re-read it. When you cut through the projections you can discover something. I get to what I rate highest from the interview when I quote James Fox (below). So if you have read the link then the following should make sense There s a lot of bluster and it s hard to believe that Bill Nye doesn t have an ego-identification with scepticism. Can he really be open-minded? Is he capable? Well maybe. After winding up the Air- Force s Bob Jacobs in the sense of making Jacobs believe that he (Nye) had come on the show to just deny everything irrespective of what the evidence is - - - he does actually go on to prove that he isn t just living a life of psychological denial and identification with being a debunker - - - when he says that the simplest explanation is generally the best one. [ ] people are confident that the United States government has covered things up. [ ] And indeed, if you read recent publications, stuff declassified last year [ ] the CIA has covered up a lot of things. A couple of times they got their own forces shooting at themselves, because one part of the organization didn t tell the other part of the organization. (p18). One of the moments 20
that Bob Jacobs became more aggravated by Nye was when Nye projected the cultural hypothesis of alien spacecraft onto him. (p12). This resulted in a countering shadow projection from Jacobs onto Nye, as Jacobs responds Hey pal! Listen to me. I didn t say it was a spaceship from another civilization. I said it was something in the air that we couldn t identify. Therefore it was an Unidentified Flying Object. (p13) That response was fair even if the Hey pal! Listen to me! part of it seems like shadow being projected. As it so happened, Nye didn t listen because on page 14 he again says I m saying that it s quite a step to see something you don t know what it is in the sky to say that these are alien spacecraft. (p14) That really did wind up Jacobs given that he had just told him to listen on that issue. The two exchange insults about being attacked and Jacobs says that in 1964 he (Jacobs) was in the service as a senior scientist while he (Nye) was still trying to figure out what girls were. (ibid). I think (without being too certain, too dogmatic, without thinking that I am definitely right) that the film-maker, James Fox, was the voice of reason on this show. His point is well-made here but note that he is talking on CNN in a heated debate so excuse him if what he says doesn t quite flow He said that Basically, there s an observed technology for at least 60 years that one can easily establish. The ability to hover without making sound, without disturbing the air, and accelerate from the standpoint to out of sight in the blink of an eye. Either there s an agency within some government in the world that is in possession of that technology and has kept it under wraps for 60 years. I can definitely say that. [ that s ] its terrestrial explanation. [ ] the government could be 21
ours which would explain that they ve kept this technology under wraps for 60 years or more. (p17). Further on, on page 20, Fox says that I was the first person to get Jimmy Carter on camera saying that he tried to launch an investigation and got nowhere. I got Gerald Ford in a phone interview. He did the same thing. (p20) [ ] We don t know it s the CIA [that is blocking information being revealed]. It s some sort of quasi-government, quasi-military. (p21) For me, Fox doesn t project the exotic cultural interpretation of ET nuts n bolts craft designed on other planets and flown to earth. Nor does he scoff at the phenomenon as if it were all flocks of birds, swamp gas, balloons and cloud formations! He realizes that there s a serious side and really, if Nye s bluster and defensiveness was diluted, the sceptic demonstrates enough here, that he too can see that there s a serious side to the phenomenon that is very much top secret. In effect Nye accepts that the President doesn t have a need to know and is therefore blocked by an agency within the U.S. establishment. To conclude if your perspective never changes - - - it suggests a stagnant/unhealthy psyche. Some people may be able to be healthy with a lack of reason. Maybe they do not dissociate if they remain the same from infant to 80! Others would feel the painful doubt, the contradictory complex would be triggered and then they would have to choose between a cycle of re-repressing and re-experiencing the complex OR change. Thinking about a phenomenon such as the UFO Phenomenon can get the mind buzzing with energy and that s great just as long as you do not start to identify and produce contradictory complexes and dissociate in other words ensure that 22
you do not get into that neurotic repetitive cycle that has been discussed throughout this paper. Bibliographical References All of my referenced papers can be found in the following document: Budding, P, 2014, Depth Psychology: Key Papers Jung, C, 1995, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Recorded and Edited by Aniela Jaffe) (Fontana Press) Jung, C, 1998, Jung on Mythology (Key Readings Selected and Introduced by Robert A. Segal) (Routledge) Larry King Show, July 18 th 2008, UFO s and Nukes (CNN) http://www.stealthskater.com/documents/ufonuke_02.pdf Rowland, S, Nov 2007, Response to Robert Segal s Jung and Levy Bruhl. In The Journal of Analytical Psychology, Vol. 52, 659-665 23