Stephen Gerringer
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Thanks Craig!
What a wonderful origin story regarding your encounter with Campbell’s work. That seven day water-only fast and Taoist breathing methods certainly enhanced the viewing experience!
I also appreciate your very helpful explanation of “numinous” (we may have to designate you COHO’s official “Shadow Stapler” for that!). Numinous is a term I associate in particular with archetypes, another slippery, difficult to nail down concept. Both are examples of what Campbell called “the best things”:
My wonderful friend, Heinrich Zimmer, my final guru, often said, ‘The best things cannot be told.’ That is to say, you can’t talk about that which lies beyond the reach of words.
The second best are misunderstood, because they are your statements about that which cannot be told. They are misunderstood because the vocabulary of symbols that you have to use are thought to be references to historical events.
The third best is conversation, political life, economics, and all that.”
(from A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living)
Rafael’s comment in this thread, associating numinosity with the radiance of a work of art (borrowing Joyce’s term), also rings true. What stands out for me in these overlapping explanations is that “numinous” isn’t just a fancy adjective, but an experience.
I find myself returning to Jung. In Man and His Symbols, a work unfinished at the time of his death, Jung describes how
… archetypes appear in practical experience: They are, at the same time, both images and emotions. One can speak of an archetype only when these two aspects are simultaneous. When there is merely the image, then there is simply a word-picture of little consequence. But by being charged with emotion, the image gains numinosity (or psychic energy); it becomes dynamic, and consequences of some sort must flow from it.” (p. 87)
Jung expands on that:
I am aware that it is difficult to grasp this concept, because I am trying to use words to describe something whose very nature is incapable of precise definition. But since so many people have chosen to treat archetypes as part of a mechanical system that can be learned by rote, it is essential to insist that they are not mere names, or even philosophical concepts. They are pieces of life itself – images that are integrally connected to the individual by the bridge of the emotions. That is why it is impossible to give an arbitrary (or universal) interpretation of any archetype…
The mere use of words is futile when you do not know what they stand for. This is particularly true in psychology, where we speak of archetypes like the anima and animus, the wise man, the great mother, and so on. You can know all about the saints, sages, prophets, and other godly men, and all the great mothers of the world. But if they are mere images whose numinosity you have never experienced, it will be as if you were talking in a dream, for you will not know what you are talking about. The mere words you use will be empty and valueless. They gain life and meaning only when you try to take into account their numinosity – i.e., their relationship to the living individual … (p.87-88)
Jung doesn’t mince words. On the same page he describes archetypes as “pieces of life itself,” charged with numinosity – a sacred experience, fully engaging one’s emotions. We can speak of Artemis, see a picture of Shiva, or hear a sermon about Jesus, yet these are not archetypes. If, however, you pray to Artemis, if you feel her breath on your neck in the woods beneath the full moon, or if you dance with Shiva, let your ego, your soul, your being, dissolve into nothingness, dissolve into the Dance, or you experience the transformative power of sacrifice and resurrection as you eat the flesh and drink the blood in communion with Christ, you are living/experiencing/engaging an archetype.
Of course, Jung’s description of “numinous” (and “archetype”) above, like yours or mine or Rafael’s, barely scratches the surface – these are such big subjects! But what seems key to each is a subjective experience. If one has not had the experience, then doesn’t matter what words are used – trying to explain it is about as effective as trying to convey an experience of the color red to someone blind from birth.
I love your enthusiasm, sunbug!
You are so right that many critics tend to dismiss Joseph Campbell based on a superficial reading. I find reading Campbell in many ways is like peeling an onion – layer upon layer upon layer. The Power of Myth is a wonderful place to start, but that really is just a beginning: there is so much more to his work – more nuance, more treasures – for those willing to explore.
I am so glad The Ecstasy of Being speaks directly to your own experience and understanding of Dance.
6. “The job of the educator is to teach students to see vitality in themselves.”
This is attributed to Joseph Campbell, but it actually Bill Moyers responding to Campbell, who had just said “. . . The influence of a vital person vitalizes . . .”
Campbell’s reply to Moyer’s indicates agreement with the point Bill makes, but it is not something Joe said himself . . .
Marianne,
Thanks for the vote of confidence . . .
😄My degree is in history – so naturally, over the years I’ve taught primarily English and literature, a fair share of math and science, but very little social studies or history (such is the field of education!). I can teach anything – even had to handle sex education on occasion . . .
Toward the end of my hitchhiking years, I’d earn a little income over winter substitute teaching (which is how I discovered I had a gift for teaching). A few upper level high school math teachers would regularly request me because then they didn’t have to come up with make-work or a video for their trigonometry, calculus, or quantitive analysis classes. As long as I’m in the classroom early enough ahead of time to review the previous day’s homework and the upcoming lesson in the textbook, I’d be able to correct the homework with the class and explain difficult problems, and then present the days’ lesson with examples. Often I’d be covering those classes for several days in a row, which was even better, as after the first day I’d have more time to prepare.
But teaching math isn’t as much fun as teaching other subjects.
Science is a joy to teach, in part because students learn by doing (I always love lab days – busy, fun, and interactive) . . .and then so much of teaching science involves story – locating the information I need to convey within a narrative that strikes a chord with the students’ own experiences of life.
A few years ago I covered junior high science classes for a few days for a dear friend (one of my favorite people to sub for) who had a teacher-in-training shadowing her. The student teacher assumed he’d have to step in and rescue me, since he knew the kids and I didn’t, and had seen other subs flounder.
Instead at the end of the day he expressed pleasant surprise at how I managed the classroom and taught the lesson through storytelling – a lesson he later told me he shared with his classmates doing teacher credential coursework.
Of course, to do that successfully you need a mastery of the subject and a wealth of life experience (there is nothing quite like sharing an episode from one of my many hitchhiking treks to command teenagers’ attention – they react like I’m Daniel Boone, or maybe an astronaut, with a lifetime of exotic adventures of which they could barely conceive – and then suddenly we slide into the point I’m making or the lesson I intend to illustrate with my tale, and you can almost see the lightbulbs going off over their heads . . .)
Well said, Shaheda. What an incredible feeling when we engage what we had feared, what we had not realized was surfacing.
Trés magnifique!
JamesN writes:
thank you very much for setting this up as a separate topic Stephen.”
I am not the one to thank. That gratitude is due the Trickster, or perhaps Fate. I thought I was moving your comment to Shaheda’s dream thread but must have clicked the wrong button, for now it stood alone as its own topic – and this particular forum plug-in only allows one move of a reply.
So, apparently, it was meant to be . . .
Everyone is invited to add to this list of helpful works on dreams, with the idea of creating a crowd-sourced resource for those interested in dream work.
Two more titles to add, both by C.G. Jung.
Psychology and Alchemy (Volume 12 of The Collected Works of C. G. Jung)
In the nearly 200 pages of the second half of this volume (“Individual Dream Symbolism in Relation to Alchemy”), Jung examines a series of dreams reported by an individual who remains nameless throughout (though today we know the dreamer in question was Wolfgang Pauli, who in 1945 received the Nobel Prize in Physics after being nominated by Albert Einstein). Prior to the release of the two Dream Seminars detailed in the initial post above, this work offered the best glimpse of Jung’s approach to dreamwork as he charts how these dreams portray Pauli’s process of individuation over time.
Dreams by C.G. Jung
This work consists of excerpts on dreams from Jung’s voluminious writings (including the selection above from Psychology and Alchemy )
James – I do apologize. I’d like to keep the thread on Helpful Books on Dreams as a resource of works on dreams recommended by forum participants – so, as admin, I moved a few posts where you and Shaheda were discussing dreams in general, and not sharing helpful titles, to her thread on When Is a Dream a Future Dream. I was successful with with some of that, but this post of yours ended up a separate topic, and this is where it will stay.
You are on to something about Jung’s stress on the emotional charge of a dream image. In Man and His Symbols, a work unfinished at the time of his death. Jung describes how
… archetypes appear in practical experience: They are, at the same time, both images and emotions. One can speak of an archetype only when these two aspects are simultaneous. When there is merely the image, then there is simply a word-picture of little consequence. But by being charged with emotion, the image gains numinosity (or psychic energy); it becomes dynamic, and consequences of some sort must flow from it.” (p. 87)
Though it is possible to train oneself to remember dreams, for most people most of the time, generally only dreams with emotionally charged imagery make it across the divide into consciousness when we wake – which are primarily nightmares, and some dreams with erotic overtones.
I wouldn’t necessarily call Shaahayda’s dream of Campbell’s irritation with her questions (in the thread linked above) a full-blown nightmare, but she did find Joe’s reaction to her disturbing. That emotional charge gives the image enough energy to etch itself into her memory.
Thank you integralartist,
Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality is a game changer – a pivotal work in Ken Wilber’s career (which I mentally divide into before SES and after SES – related, yes, but late Wilber is very different from early Wilber, though the latter builds on the former).
The forum guidelines do prohibit self-promotional posts, except in the Share Your Work corner (where personal writings and links to one’s projects are allowed), so I moved your post there. I will visit you links, and trust others will do the same.
In the meantime, Conversations of a Higher Order is a work in progress (we are experimenting with nested replies to make conversations easier to follow, and no doubt other changes will follow). Feel free to make suggestions in the Village Compound forum
What an intriguing dream, Shaahayda!
Joseph Campbell has served as a compelling figure in more than a few of my dreams as well. In fact, I imagine over the decades Joe’s image has carried the energy of the Wise Old Man archetype in the dreams of countless individuals (poor guy must be exhausted over there in the Otherworld!).
I find it useful to play with my dream images a bit and see what other details I might be able to tickle out of them. If you have no objection, perhaps you might try that with yours. For example, the second part of your dream takes place in a lecture hall, but there is no mention of the setting in the first part of your dream. Perhaps you could take a moment to see if you recall anything about the locale.
You are asking Joe questions: do you recall if you are inside, or outside? Any idea if it is daytime, or night? If inside, might the first part be in a public setting – like a classroom? Or maybe a restaurant? Or could it be a private home – a living room, or a kitchen, or maybe a bedroom? Are there other people present, or is it just you and Joe?
Moving on from the surroundings, do you have any sense of the nature of the questions you are asking? If you can’t remember any of the questions, perhaps you can recall the tone: do they they focus on something specific, like clarifying details related to Campbell’s work, or are they more “meaning of life” questions – and if so, are these broad, sweeping questions, or focused more on your life?
Don’t worry if these answers don’t come to you – but sometimes, just being asked the question provides enough of a nudge for another trace or two of the dream to surface, additional details that might shine a little extra light on the subject.
So why is Joe annoyed by you asking questions? Hard to say, but I do notice a few things which may, or may not, be relevant.
You pose questions which seem to annoy Campbell – and when Joe responds, he morphs into somebody foreign, alien, Other: not-Joe. So the pivotal moment seems to have something to do with asking questions.
Speaking of questions, I am intrigued at the frustration you express in this post:
I am clueless, what should I be asking myself?”
” . . . asking my Self?” – hmm.
No dream image has one and only one specific meaning; there are of course multiple layers and many dimensions embedded in each. With that caveat in mind, one of many different ways into a dream is to approach the figures we encounter there as aspects of oneself.
So, when you are posing questions to Joseph Campbell, on one level you are posing these questions to yourself – the higher wisdom aspect of your psyche.
It almost seems as if the dream itself is underscoring that association, for in the very next movement you are center stage in a lecture hall – a position most might tend to associate with Joseph Campbell rather than oneself (almost as if the dream is emphasizing the resonance between the Dream Campbell and the Dream You).
And what is the subject of your talk?
“My Personal Myth”
. . . which might provide a clue as to the nature of the questions Dream You is asking Campbell in the first movement of your nocturnal drama.
Now, I generally don’t think of Joseph Campbell as someone who is easily annoyed, and I doubt you do either, especially when he is asked an honest question. So clearly this stands out as a major deviation from our conception of the flesh-and-blood Joseph Campbell (or at least, of the projections we make onto the mortal man).
And what immediately follows on that? A major disconnect: Joe morphs into some other, alien, individual, foreign to your waking ego; the Wise Old Man aspect of your psyche, your innate wisdom nature, is now experienced as something strange, something Other than that which it is (tat tvam asi – “Thou art that”]. That may be what the dream Joe finds annoying – that separation and disconnect from the inner wisdom you can call upon to illuminate “my personal myth.”
That’s not to suggest that’s your conscious position at all (which may be why the dream is so disconcerting – not at all what the waking Shaahayda intends or expects) . . . but even within the dream you recognize that “I was no longer in dialogue with Joe” (the info is there, but it feels foreign, Other).
Indeed, that dynamic is essentially restated in the second movement of the dream, with a hint at resolution: as you are presenting on your personal myth, of which your life is an expression, you hear Campbell lecturing in an adjacent hall; despite that disconnect, you can hear his voice clearly.
There are many levels to this dream – but it does seem in one sense as if it is reassuring you that you can trust that voice within, despite a reflexive hesitancy of which the conscious you is unaware (hence Campbell’s annoyance – the hesitancy in trusting the wisdom of your own depths).
I don’t know if any of that strikes a chord with you, Shaahayda. If it does, great – but this is your dream, not mine, and what I read into it may be no more than my own projections – but maybe, listening to my take, no matter how far off base, creates an opportunity to clarify your own impressions and understanding.
What I would suggest is to start with what seems central to the dream – your focus there on the center stage within your psyche – exploring your personal myth. This process seems related to your questions for Joe (and every question begins with a quest).
From recent back channel discussions, my sense is that you are doing exactly that. Something tells me Joe won’t be irritated for long . . .
James and Shaahayda
I apologize for the slow turn-around in response – seems like I’ve been doing a lot writing the last few days, and then work issues demanded my attention on top of that . . . but I really appreciate your recommendations, and hope others follow your lead and continue to add to the list. The more choices, the better.
I do agree, Shaahayda, about Robert Moss’ Three Only Thing – Tapping the Power of Dreams, Coincidence, and Imagination – that’s one I don’t own, but I did check it out of the library way back when.
And James, your reference to Hillman’s The Soul’s Code and Dennis Slattery’s book on “Rising Myth” (love that play on words) highlight an important point. Though neither is technically about dreams, dreamwork is actually a portal into so many related fields, from psychology to mythology to divination and more. Though we think of dreams as subjective, they really can’t be properly studied in isolation; in many ways, they pull us out of ourselves and back into the larger world.
We’ll save this thread for further recommendations; I hope to take a look at the dream you posted, Shaahayda, in another thread, but not sure I’ll be able to get to that today.
Namaste
Robert – thanks for sharing the review; I recall the controversy when Bair’s biography was published.
I’m a firm proponent of multiple sources, and find myself returning to a number of favorite accounts – starting with Jung’s own words (Memories, Dreams, Reflections strikes me as a rare personal reflection – less detail-oriented, but including some acknowledgement of shadows that tend to be whitewashed in a traditional memoir – absolutely unique in conveying a sense of the man’s rich inner life).
One of the best (and earliest) accounts in English is Joseph Campbell’s succinct 25 page synopsis of Jung’s life in his editor’s introduction to The Portable Jung, published exactly ten years after Jung’s passing. I also appreciate the piercing look at Jung’s troubling relationship with patient-turned-psychoanalyst Sabina Spielrein, in clinical psychologist John Kerr’s A Most Dangerous Method (a rich, informative biography that became a trippy 2011 David Cronenberg film, with Keira Knightly, Viggo Mortenson, and Michael Fassbinder, that debuted to critical acclaim).
But I really appreciate Deirdre Bair’s bio, in large part because she’s neither psychologist nor mythologist, and has no dog in the fight. Bair, a professor of comparative literature, as well as a Guggenheim and Rockefeller Fellow, penned award-winning biographies of Anaïs Nin, Simone de Beauvoir, and Samuel Beckett. Her text stretches to just under 650 pages, followed by 200 pages of detailed footnotes (in a smaller font).
As to where psychology and mythology are headed in the future, that depends. The psyche is with us always, as is mythos (mythologizing remains an ongoing process, in terms of the imaginal, unconscious narratives that drive individual and collective human behavior, as evidenced most recently by reactions to the pandemic regardless of science, not to mention the slippery, shadowy realm of U.S. politics).
As for the fields of psychology and mythology, any prediction I might make would be about as accurate as a scientist in 1904 describing the direction he expected physics to take (just before Einstein’s special and general Theories of Relativity and the emergence of quantum mechanics broke the field wide open). I expect on the broad scale the depth psychologies of Freud and Jung will remain important (evolving in new directions, as with Roberto Assagioli’s psychosynthesis, Hillman’s archetypal/imaginal psychology, and the transpersonal psychologies espoused by Maslow, Piaget, Anthony Sutich, and Stanislav Grof), while behavioralism continues to recede.
But I see outcome-based therapies in the ascendent, from medication to techniques such as the dialectical-based therapy (DBT) that has proven relatively successful in treating borderline personality disorder. Though most therapists I know might embrace the sweeping theories of a Freud or Jung or Maslow, in actual practice there is less dreamwork and more focus on what treatments produce the best results in the shortest time (a function of the cost-benefit, insurance-driven medical field).
As for mythology, there is far more to the field than just Joseph Campbell (Jack Zipes, Alan Dundes, and even Robert Segal come to mind as among the many scholars who tend to reject archetypal interpretation), but even among those drawn to Campbell’s work, JCF is doing its best to expand beyond exclusive reliance on Joe as the Authority and highlight a wide array of voices (indeed, the multiple contributors to our MythBlast essay series include individuals with a focus ranging from magic realism to marxism, and everything in between).
Mythology shows every promise of expanding beyond academic tomes on dusty library shelves, relevance to creativity, pop culture, and social narratives.
But only time will tell how vibrant that will be . . .
Dr. Slattery,
I’d like to officially thank you, Dennis, for giving so generously of your time this past week in JCF’s Conversations of a Higher Order. Though we understand you have other commitments and demands on your time, looks like this conversation has legs and a life of its own – thanks for getting it started! (Of course, you’re always welcome to participate as much or as little as you’d like, but no need to feel obligated – I look forward to doing more of this with future MythBlasts).
Namaste
Robert,
In response to your question,
How much did Joseph Campbell write on Faust mythology ? Wagner and archaic German influences ?
Campbell refers to Goethe (and Faust), and Wagner, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, et.al. quite a bit in The Masks of God, Volume IV: Creative Mythology (the link is to the eBook download; I believe New World Library will be publishing a newly revised edition in 2022).
And they come up fairly regularly in a number of audio lectures.
