It is with great pleasure that we present
the inaugral volume of Jung: the e-Journal of the Jungian Society for
Scholarly Studies. This journal arises from the work of a group
of scholars, mostly from New England, who, in 2002, intiated what has become
an annual academic conference celebrating, questioning, and critiquing
the research and theories of C.G. Jung and the post-Jungians (particularly
important to the creation of this group is the work of Charlotte Spivak,
Christine Herold, Barabara Silliman, and Glenda Andrade). The foundational
focus of the conference was (and remains) the humanities and the arts,
though contributions to the conference and the journal are welcomed from
any field. In 2003, this group began publishing peer-reviewed, selected
papers from the conference, and these are available at www.thejungiansociety.org/Conferences
; this practice will continue.
I sense that we are on the cusp of a
most exciting time for Jungian studies in the academy. A growing
impression of place, purpose, and voice can be seen in the founding of
this society, journal and annual conference (this year in Providence, Rhode
Island; next year in Toronto, Ontario, Canada) as well as the recent founding
of the International Asociation of Jungian Studies, their journal, Harvest,
and annual conferences (this year in Texas, next year in Greenwich, U.K.).
Arising independently, and both established in 2002, these groups share
the goal of supporting the use of Jungian theory and research in the academy;
I anticipate and encourage as much co-operation and intermingling between
the groups and their members as possible.
Why now? I suggest that Jung's arguments
for the social role of the arts provides an apt insight into the current
surge of activity and interest in analytical psychology in the academy:
| By giving [the archetypal image] shape, the artist translates it into
the language of the present, and so makes it possible for us to find our
way back to the deepest springs of life. Therein lies the social significance
of art: it is constantly at work educating the spirit of the age, conjuring
up the forms in which the age is most lacking. The unsatisfied yearning
of the artist reaches back to the primordial image in the unconscious which
is best fitted to compensate the inadequacy and one-sidedness of the present.
People and times, like individuals, have their own characteristics and
attitudes…very many psychic elements that could play their part in life
are denied the right to exist because they are incompatible with the general
attitude…Here the artist’s relative lack of adaptation turns out to his
advantage; it enables him to follow his own yearnings far from the beaten
path, and to discover what it is that would meet the unconscious needs
of his age. Thus, just as the one-sidedness of the individual’s conscious
attitude is corrected by reactions from the unconscious, so art represents
a process of self-regulation in the life of nations and epochs (The
Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature 91) |
|
Where Jung writes artist, I will be bold enough to substitute scholar.
The arising of these two organizations "represents a process of self-regulation
in the life" of the academy, which needs to compensate for a century of
behaviouristic and quantifiable values and practices. Perhaps
this movement has become possible due to the postmodern age, with its increased
interest in the phenomonological and a general questioning of the postivist
scientific perspectives that have dominated the paradigms of research in
so many academic fields, even those outside of the sciences. I think
these developments are due to a collective desire for meaning, for an increased
awareness that we need more emphasis on the qualities of our academic,
social, and personal lives. There is a shared recognition of the need to
further imbue our professional and personal lives with soulfulness -- a
spirituality that can be found by honouring the life of the psyche.
Let me acknowledge that there remains much
resistance in the form of ignorance and bias against Jungian studies, exhibited
often by those who have read little or none of Jung and the post-Jungians.
I hope we can contribute to alleviating these biases. We also recognize
that there are valid questions about archetypal theory being asked by scholars
in fields such as post-modernism, gender, post-colonialism, race, and many
others. If Jungian and post-Jungian thought is to gain a firmer place
in the academy, those working in the field will show themselves to be familiar
with that work and to be able to engage in informed dialogue -- certainly
there will many areas of divergence, but Jungian scholarship can be, and
can be shown to be, informed by contemporary perspectives. Much work has
been done within the domain of Jungian studies to answer such critiques,
but that work too often remains unknown outside of the Jungian community.
One of the goals of this journal will be to facilitate conversations between
the 'Jungians' and the academic community. It seems to me that in
doing so, an important task is to more clearly and adamantly define the
nature of Jungian research and theory in order to respond to questions
and movements current in the academy. In this regard, I recommend,
for instance, Susan Rowland's fine book Jung: A Feminist Revision,
in which she responds to valid feminist and postmodern critiques of archetypal
theory -- For similar reasons, I also recommend Christopher Hauke's Jung
and the Postmodern.
This Issue:
Submissions arrived in the in-box from Israel,
Taiwan, Poland, Canada, and the United States, and we look forward to expanding
the international nature of the work represented herein. Each of
the papers selected for publication has undergone blind review by at least
three scholars (my own submisison was recommended by each of four reviewers
-- a fact I mention only in anticipation of valid questions regarding the
'peer-reviewed' integrity of editing and publishing in the same journal),
and we are grateful to the reviewers for their contributions and suggestions.
The papers included cover a variety of topics: Austin
Clarkson's paper details some pedagogical implications and applications
of archetypal theory in his design and teaching of a university class on
creativity. Kathryn Berthlesen provides an analysis of Wilson Harris’
The Guyana Quartet, and provides an excellent example of contemporary
archetypal literary theory in practice. My own paper uses a
specific case, that of a postmodern feminist critique of Northrop Frye,
to respond to some common postmodern critiques of archetypal literay theory.
More papers are scheduled to be added to the journal as they become available.
What they share is their practice of translating Jungian theory into the
language of the present, and so making it possible for each of us to find
our way back to the deepest springs of our professional and personal life.
Darrell Dobson
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
April, 2005
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