Shared Realities: Participation Mystique and Beyond (edited by Mark Winborn)

'Emerging'
by ©Susan Bostrom-Wong

'Emerging' appears on the cover of Enemy, Cripple, Beggar. Another incredible painting by Susan Bostrom-Wong will appear on the cover of the forthcoming volume of Fisher King Review, edited by Mark Winborn.

Shared Realities: Participation Mystique and Beyond

Mark Winborn (Editor), Fisher King Press (forthcoming, early 2014)

Shared Realities: Participation Mystique and Beyond brings together Jungian analysts and psychoanalysts from across the United States, the United Kingdom, and France. Jung’s concept of participation mystique is used as a starting point for an in depth exploration of ‘shared realities’ in the analytic setting and beyond. The clinical, narrative, and theoretical discussions move through such related areas as: projective identification, negative coniunctio, reverie, intersubjectivity, the interactive field, phenomenology, neuroscience, the transferential chimera, shamanism, shared reality of place, borderland consciousness, and mystical participation. This unique collection of essays bridges theoretical orientations and includes some of the most original analytic writers of our time (approximately 320 pages).

Contents:

Introduction: An Overview of Participation Mystique 

     Mark Winborn

Negative Coniunctio: Envy and Sadomasochism in Analysis

     Pamela Power

Trauma, Participation Mystique, Projective Identification and Analytic Attitude
     Marcus West

Watching the Clouds: Analytic Reverie and Participation Mystique
     Mark Winborn

Modern Kleinian Therapy, Jung’s Participation Mystique, and the Projective Identification Process
     Robert Waska

Songs Never Heard Before: Listening and Living Differently in Shared Realities
     Dianne Braden

Variants of Mystical Participation
     Michael Eigen

Participation Mystique in Peruvian Shamanism
     Deborah Bryon

Healing Our Split: Participation Mystique and C.G. Jung
     Jerome Bernstein

The Transferential Chimera and Neuroscience
     François Martin-Vallas

Toward a Phenomenology of Participation Mystique and a Reformulation of Jungian Philosophical Anthropology
     John White

Conclusion
     Mark Winborn

A Year of Wisdom

@Benjamin Shiff: Doves of Peace

 

 

"Does not wisdom call? And understanding put forth her voice? She stands at the top of high places by the way, where the paths meet. She cries at the gates, at the entry of the city, at the entrance of the doors. To you, O men, I call; and my voice is to the sons of man. O you simple, understand wisdom; and, you fools, be you of an understanding heart." (Proverbs 8)

@Susan Bostrom Wong

Joseph Campbell says,

The mirror, reflecting the goddess and drawing her forth from the august repose of her divine non-manifestation, is symbolic of the world, the field of the reflected image. Therein divinity is pleased to regard its own glory, and this pleasure is itself inducement to the act of manifestation or “creation.” 

"When the mirror is dim, the soul is unclean.” (Japanese proverb)

@Benjamin Shiff: Magic City

Erel Shalit titles 15-45% off directly from Fisher King Press

"The Hero and His Shadow- A Necessary Companion to Ari Shavit's 'My Promised Land'"

Psychiatrist Carl Jung wrote in The Red Book of the distinction between “The Spirit of the Times” and “The Spirit of the Depths”. We see this vividly demonstrated when we put Ari Shavit’s acclaimed new book My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel alongside Erel Shalit’s classic work, The Hero and His Shadow: Psychopolitical Aspects of Myth and Reality in Israel.

The former takes us through the history of the heroic creation of Israel, including the darkest “shadow” behaviors of the Jewish state in the 1948 massacre of the Arabs of Lydda.

In the latter work, Erel Shalit tells us why.

This is no simplistic psychological analysis. The brilliance of this Israeli Jungian analyst is that he offers no easy solutions, plumbing the paradox of the necessary heroic identity of the Jewish state, and yet, around every corner is the shadow of every hero: the beggar, the frightened one, the part of all of us that is dependent on forces outside of our control.

It is also very important to note that Erel Shalit’s book is fascinating reading for anyone interested in the inner workings of the soul. On one level Israel is the backdrop for the author to explore how shadow, myth, and projection work in all of us, regardless of our life circumstance, nationality, environment, or history. It even includes a comprehensive glossary of Jungian terms that has some of the best definitions I have ever encountered, and hence a find for readers new to Jung.

And, of course, for people who are fascinated by the scope and depth of the story of Israel, this is a simply great read. It stands alone, but read as a companion to Ari Shavit’s My Promised Land, Erel Shalit’s Hero and His Shadow gives us The Spirit of the Depths in all its dimension. We may not be able to resolve the Arab/Israeli conflict, but we can learn many things from this brave, complex Israeli author, that we can apply to healing the inner and outer wars in our own lives.

Reviewed by Elizabeth Clark-Stern, author of On the Doorstep of the Castle, Out of the Shadows, and Soul Stories.

American Icarus and America on the Couch by Pythia Peay

Pythia Peay is an acclaimed author and Huffington Post and Psychology Today blogger on psychology, spirituality and the American Psyche.

She is the author of forthcoming AMERICAN ICARUS: A MEMOIR OF FATHER AND COUNTRY and AMERICA ON THE COUCH: PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON AMERICAN POLITICS AND CULTURE

American Icarus: A Memoir of Father and Country is the psychobiography of my greatest generation father, Joe Carroll – a flier, a farmer, a dreamer, and an incurable alcoholic – and the American myths that shaped his epic life. In search of the father I’d never really known, I interviewed psychologists and historians, and set out to learn about the people and places who made him and the times he lived in: Altoona and the Pennsylvania Railroad, World War II and the Air Transport Command in Brazil, Buenos Aires, the start-up airline El Al in newly independent Israel, TWA and 1950s Missouri and the cultural upheavals that would drive us apart, Mexico and Corpus Christi, Texas.

America on the Couch: Psychological Perspectives on American Politics and Culture is an inspiring and enlightening collection of interviews with some of the world’s leading psychologists on the historical, archetypal and psychological background of such enduring issues as immigration, war and violence, addiction, the presidency, American-Israeli relations, the economy, the environment, and the classic myths of independence and individuality that shaped my restless, sky-faring father and his homeland. Contributors include James Hillman, Marion Woodman, Erel Shalit, Tom Singer, Andrew Samuels, Mary Pipher, Robert Jay Lifton, Judith Jordan, Nancy Furlotti, Harriet Lerner, Ginette Paris, Luigi Zoja and many more.

1950, Joe Caroll, Pythia's father, in Israel,
standing in front of El Al Airline's first DC 4.

Visit Pythia's Facebook page.

To pre-order your copies of American Icarus and America on the Couch, please visit the Indiegogo site, where you can view the book video, and a "Gallery" of over forty photos and three excerpts from each book.

Read one of Pythia's classic interviews on the American psyche was with Jungian thinker James Hillman on a "Shift in Ages," and his vision of America's future.

Heine's Birthday, December 13

Heinrich Heine was born December 13, 1797, in Dusseldorf. Besides his essays and poetry, he is so well known for instance for his saying ‘Where they burn books, at the end they also burn people.’

The monument by Micha Ullman at Bebelplatz,
where the Nazi book burnings began

The following is a paragraph from Requiem: A Tale of Exile and Return

Wandering off in reverie, E. S. came to recall some of those great men, such as Heine, who at the end of their days tried to search their way back, to remember where they came from. True, Heine had said that there was no need for him to return to Judaism, “for in fact I have never abandoned it.” Shimeoni was not really convinced, yet felt embarrassed to argue with good old Heinrich. His prophecy that where books are burned, they will ultimately burn people, was inscribed at the very centre of his psyche. Just like “God was quite delighted by His composition of the woman’s body,” as Heine said, Eli could not but be delighted by H. H.’s Song of Songs. And who knew exile better than Heine, “Does not the oak grow higher in one’s land? Do not the violets sway more gently in that dream?” And was it not Einstein who had said that we Jews had been “too eager to sacrifice our idiosyncrasies in order to conform?”

BBC: Memories pass between generations

Odin with the Corpse of Mimir, painting by
Georg Pauli (1855-1935)

The Norse god, or giant, Mimir, the rememberer, tells us that The Well of Knowledge and Wisdom is guarded by Memory 

The following article appears on BBC 

'Memories' pass between generations, by James Gallagher, December 1, 2013

Behaviour can be affected by events in previous generations which have been passed on through a form of genetic memory, animal studies suggest.

Experiments showed that a traumatic event could affect the DNA in sperm and alter the brains and behaviour of subsequent generations.

A Nature Neuroscience study shows mice trained to avoid a smell passed their aversion on to their "grandchildren".

Experts said the results were important for phobia and anxiety research.

The animals were trained to fear a smell similar to cherry blossom.

The team at the Emory University School of Medicine, in the US, then looked at what was happening inside the sperm.

They showed a section of DNA responsible for sensitivity to the cherry blossom scent was made more active in the mice's sperm.

Both the mice's offspring, and their offspring, were "extremely sensitive" to cherry blossom and would avoid the scent, despite never having experienced it in their lives.

Changes in brain structure were also found.

"The experiences of a parent, even before conceiving, markedly influence both structure and function in the nervous system of subsequent generations," the report concluded.

Family affair

The findings provide evidence of "transgenerational epigenetic inheritance" - that the environment can affect an individual's genetics, which can in turn be passed on.

One of the researchers Dr Brian Dias told the BBC: "This might be one mechanism that descendants show imprints of their ancestor.

"There is absolutely no doubt that what happens to the sperm and egg will affect subsequent generations."

Prof Marcus Pembrey, from University College London, said the findings were "highly relevant to phobias, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorders" and provided "compelling evidence" that a form of memory could be passed between generations.

He commented: "It is high time public health researchers took human transgenerational responses seriously.

"I suspect we will not understand the rise in neuropsychiatric disorders or obesity, diabetes and metabolic disruptions generally without taking a multigenerational approach."

In the smell-aversion study, is it thought that either some of the odour ends up in the bloodstream which affected sperm production or that a signal from the brain was sent to the sperm to alter DNA.

______________________________

It is sometimes surprising how easily we forgot, or how limited we are in an era of specialization. Freud's phylogenetic endowment (e.g. as regards primal scenes), and Jung's entire concept of archetypes, pertain exactly to what here is called "transgenerational epigenetic inheritance."

We might say that Archetype is Memory.

Marcel Proust (1871-1922)

For Marcel Proust, a spoonful of the tea and the taste of the madeleine brings him back to the memory of the old grey house upon the street, and “in that moment all the flowers in our garden and in [the] park, and the water-lilies on the Vivonne and the good folk of the village and their little dwellings and the parish church and the whole of Combray and of its surroundings, taking their proper shapes and growing solid, sprang into being, town and gardens alike, all from my cup of tea.”

Review of ‘On the Doorstep of the Castle,’ a play by Elizabeth Clark-Stern

I often find it difficult to read a play in book form. However, the gripping drama of Elizabeth Clark-Stern’s ‘On the Doorstep of the Castle’ comes across in a vivid and powerful way in this intense book.

The imagined meeting between the historical Teresa of Avila, and the fictional Alma de Leon carries the intensity of searching souls. There is beauty coupled with pain, for instance when Alma, the young converso woman seeks to become a Carmelite nun, “Such a lovely name. From the hermits of Mount Carmel [God’s Vineyard], in the holy land. It is said they drank water from the fountain of Elijah, lived on berries, their only concern, love. I have a cousin called Elijah. He fled in exile to Jerusalem when we were but thirteen. His family refused to submit to conversion.”

The meeting between the two, Teresa the real figure, and Alma, based on the Jewish philosopher Edith Stein, who converted to Christianity, yet exterminated in Auschwitz, movingly and deeply reflect the meeting of the Soul’s Voices.

Nearly every paragraph brings a different turn in their encounter, whether the Jew in the Christian and the Christian in the Jew, the feminine faces of the God-image, the teacher in the disciple, as well as the various aspects of exile and return.

Both figures in the play are captivating. Alma, so splendidly conjured up in the author’s mind, is a merger between Edith Stein and a fictional descendant of Moshe de Leon, author of the Zohar (the Book of Splendor), the central treatise of the Kabbalah. As the author points out, Alma is ‘soul’ in Spanish. In Hebrew, Alma is ‘maiden’ (like Kore in Greek) – pertaining to the concealed, hidden, unknown (virginity) – and perhaps, as well to the word for eternity (Olam, in Hebrew spelled like Alma). Quite pertinently, in Lindsey Rosen’s moving postscript, Alma turns up in a mysterious way, perhaps synchronistically.

Elizabeth Clark-Stern says so profoundly that as we arrive at a new developmental stage in our lives, we find ourselves ‘On the Doorstep of the Castle.’ This book/play takes place right there, in our search for “the innermost castle” (p. 65). This is a meditative book – read it!

Erel Shalit, author of Requiem: A Tale of Exile and Return.

"The Hero and His Shadow- A Necessary Companion to Ari Shavit's 'My Promised Land'"

A Review By Elizabeth Clark-Stern

Psychiatrist Carl Jung wrote in The Red Book of the distinction between “The Spirit of the Times” and “The Spirit of the Depths”. We see this vividly demonstrated when we put Ari Shavit’s acclaimed new book My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel alongside Erel Shalit’s classic work, The Hero and His Shadow: Psychopolitical Aspects of Myth and Reality in Israel.

The former takes us through the history of the heroic creation of Israel, including the darkest “shadow” behaviors of the Jewish state in the 1948 massacre of the Arabs of Lydda.

In the latter work, Erel Shalit tells us why.

This is no simplistic psychological analysis. The brilliance of this Israeli Jungian analyst is that he offers no easy solutions, plumbing the paradox of the necessary heroic identity of the Jewish state, and yet, around every corner is the shadow of every hero: the beggar, the frightened one, the part of all of us that is dependent on forces outside of our control.

It is also very important to note that Erel Shalit’s book is fascinating reading for anyone interested in the inner workings of the soul. On one level Israel is the backdrop for the author to explore how shadow, myth, and projection work in all of us, regardless of our life circumstance, nationality, environment, or history. It even includes a comprehensive glossary of Jungian terms that has some of the best definitions I have ever encountered, and hence a find for readers new to Jung.

And, of course, for people who are fascinated by the scope and depth of the story of Israel, this is a simply great read. It stands alone, but read as a companion to Ari Shavit’s My Promised Land, Erel Shalit’s Hero and His Shadow gives us The Spirit of the Depths in all its dimension. We may not be able to resolve the Arab/Israeli conflict, but we can learn many things from this brave, complex Israeli author, that we can apply to healing the inner and outer wars in our own lives.

Reviewed by Elizabeth Clark-Stern, author of On the Doorstep of the Castle, Out of the Shadows, and Soul Stories.

Jung and the Great Maggid

Dov Baer of Mezeritch, the successor to the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism, was known as "The Great Maggid (preacher)."

Like the Baal Shem Tov, also Dov Baer left no writings of his own. However, a relative of his, Solomon ben Abraham, collected his teachings.

As quoted from Aryeh Kaplan, in one of his teachings the Maggid says,

Nothing can change from one thing to another [without first losing its original identity]. Thus, for example, before an egg can grow into a chicken, it must first cease totally to be an egg. Each thing must lose its original identity before it can be something else.

Therefore, before a thing is transformed into something else, it must come to the level of Nothingness.

In his Seven Sermons to the Dead, Jung says,

“Nothingness is the same as fullness. In infinity full is no better than empty. Nothingness is both empty and full. This nothingness or fullness … is nothing and everything … both beginning and end of created beings.” Later on, Jung makes it clear that, “God and devil are the first manifestations of nothingness,” and in fact, like empty is no different than full, God and devil are one, until consciousness sets them apart.

In an interview on his 80th birthday, Jung says,

 "But do you know who anticipated my entire psychology in the eighteenth century? The Hassidic Rabbi Baer from Meseritz, whom they called the Great Maggid. He was a most impressive man."

The Maggid died 241 years ago, December 4, 1772.