Destruction of the Image and the Worship of Transiency

Erel Shalit: Destruction of the Image and the Worship of Transiency -- Jung Journal: Culture and Psyche: Winter 2010, Vol. 4, No. 1, Pages 85–98

Frontispiece

Susan Bostrom-Wong, Geology of Time #8, 2008, oil on panel, 20" × 24" (By permission of the artist) – see more of Susan's wonderful art at www.susanbostromwong.com

Abstract

Taking as its starting point Jung's statement, "Everything of which we are conscious is an image, and that image is psyche . . . [which] is a world in which the ego is contained," the fundamentalist's collective consciousness of the One Truth is compared with the postmodern imagination of a multitude of perspectives (CW 13,¶75). The identity of the fundamentalist is shaped by archetypal identification, whereby the shadow is projected onto the Evil Other, against whom acts of evil may then be "justifiably" perpetrated. Postmodern deconstruction of identity, on the other hand, tends toward a condition of transiency and "as-if." Images and ideas become detached from "ground and reality." The image becomes its own simulacrum, detached from the images of interiority. Finally, features of transiency and the transient personality are compared to and contrasted with the survivor syndrome.

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