Articles

Writing about War: Jung, Much Ado About Nothing, and the Troy novels of Lindsay Clarke
by Susan Rowland, Ph.D.
University of Greenwich, UK.

Arguably, in a time of war literature, and indeed all writing, is saturated with deep psychic responses to conflict. So that not only in literary genres such as epic and tragedy, but also in the novel and comedy, can writing about war be discerned. C.G. Jung,  Shakespeare and Lindsay Clarke are fundamentally writers of war who share allied literary strategies. Moreover, they diagnose similar origins to the malaise of a culture tending to war in the neglect of aspects of the feminine that patriarchy prefers to ignore. In repressing or evading the dark feminine, cultures as dissimilar as ancient Greece, the 21st century, Shakespeare's England and Jung's Europe prevent the healing energies of the conjunctio of masculine and feminine from stabilising an increasingly fragile consciousness. In the Troy novels of Clarke, Answer to Job by Jung and Much Ado About Nothing by Shakespeare, some attempt at spiritual nourishment is made through the writing.

"Sonny's Blues" and Cultural Shadow
by Inez Martinez, Ph.D.
City University of New York

James Baldwin’s short story, “Sonny’s Blues,” portrays a jazz artist’s transformation of an historic and ongoing aspect of America’s cultural shadow, treating black people cruelly as if they were not real. He is enabled to bring about this transformation through his becoming conscious of and owning his personal shadow, treating people regardless of race cruelly as if they were not real. His self-knowledge indicates an equality in the human potential of behaving oppressively and thus frees him from the self-pity and helpless rage of victimization possible to those having suffered the injustice of racism. It thus frees him to create music free of lament, music which in turn frees his brother, who has responded to American racism with repression of his emotions, to feel his grief. Baldwin’s story implies that art, such as the story “Sonny’s Blues,” can express a society’s unjustly caused suffering without lament if the artist has taken responsibility for having him or herself unjustly caused suffering. This art is portrayed as freeing its audience through new consciousness and feeling to develop a new relationship with cultural shadow, one suggesting a beginning of its integration.

The Finer Forge: Work and the Fires of Transformation
by Jason E. Smith
C.G. Jung Institute-Boston

This paper explores work in the light of Jungian psychology.  There are two trends of ideas that can be discerned in Jung’s writings regarding the subject of work.  On the one hand, work is associated with the ego’s adaptation to life in the social world.  This view results in an opposition between external work—often called “real work”—and inner work.  Meaning is associated with inner work and is divorced from a primary activity of everyday life.  On the other hand, Jung takes an historical view of the work instinct and derives the appearance of work from the activity of the transformation of libido.  In this view, work is understood as a symbolic process reflecting an inner development. External work and ‘inner work’ are reunited in this attitude.  The figure of Hephaistos is employed to explore the archetypal background of the experience of work.  Fairy tales and poetry are used to illustrate the transformational nature of the Hephaistian energy that manifests in our work with its potential for both creative and destructive outcomes.  

Saint Guinefort Addressing Thomas Aquinas's Shadow
by Marie-Madeleine van Ruymbeke Stey, Ph.D.
Capital University, Columbus, Ohio, USA.

In 1250, the French monk and inquisitor Etienne de Bourbon described a strange cult he had found in the Dombes, a poor agricultural region North of  Lyon in France. In confession, he had heard many women who recognized that they had prayed to Saint Guinefort, Martyr.  Upon inquiring on the saint unknown to him, de Bourbon found out that Guinefort was a dog. 
Taking into account Jung's reflexion on animals and his notion of conjunctio oppositorum, this paper will examine the reasons why, in the thirteenth century France, the peasants' piety canonized a dog, a fact unique in Christian history. This question will be addressed here in two steps: why did the French peasants include a dog among the Christians saints, and what does today's anthropozoology have to say about animals' healing powers.

The Religious Imagination: Fear and Fundamentalism in Contemporary American Culture
by Sally Porterfield, Ph.D.

Why Hillman Matters
by Bernie Neville, Ph.D.

Book Review:

ROBERT D. ROMANYSHYN, The Wounded Researcher: Research with Soul in Mind
by Susan Rowland, Ph.D.