Redeeming the Feminine: Eros and the World Soul

Nancy Qualls-Corbett, Ph.D. is a practicing analyst in Birmingham, Alabama since 1981. A diplomat of the C.G. Jung Institute, Zurich, she is the author of The Sacred Prostitute: Eternal Aspect of the Feminine and Awakening Woman: Dreams and Individuation. She has also contributed to the book The Secrets of Mary Magdalene. Nancy combines her love of mythology and travel in teaching seminars in Greece, Italy, Egypt, and Canada.

Nancy Qualls-Corbett has contributed the chapter Redeeming the Feminine: Eros and the World Soul to The Dream and its Amplification.

Nancy says:

In the body of his work, Dr. C.G. Jung explains the dynamics not only the personal psyche and the personal association to one’s dreams but also the far reaching effects of the collective unconscious. These archetypal elements connect past and present that mirror a more universal aspect, the World Soul, the Anima Mundi. Redeeming the Feminine presents the dreams of a woman that depict not only the abuse and repression of the feminine principle, a term Jung referred to as Eros, but also how these vital images of psyche reflect the essence of the feminine principle onto a greater dimension. Her dreams also lead us to a more conscious understanding of how one may begin to redeem the feminine principle in one’s life and how that healing process may be reflected in the World Soul.

A Giant Dream© from an original painting
by Howard Fox www.howardfox.com

The Dream and Its Amplification unveils the language of the psyche that speaks to us in our dreams. We all dream at least 4-6 times each night yet remember very few. Those that rise to the surface of our conscious awareness beckon to be understood, like a letter addressed to us that arrives by post. Why would we not open it? The difficulty is in understanding what the dream symbols and images mean.

Through amplification, C.G. Jung formulated a method of unveiling the deeper meaning of symbolic images. This becomes particularly important when the image does not carry a personal meaning or significance and is not part of a person's everyday life.

Contents 

I. The Amplified World of Dreams - Erel Shalit and Nancy Swift Furlotti

II. Pane e’ Vino: Learning to Discern the Objective, Archetypal Nature of Dreams - Michael Conforti

III. Amplification: A Personal Narrative - Thomas Singer

IV. Redeeming the Feminine: Eros and the World Soul - Nancy Qualls-Corbett

V. Wild Cats and Crowned Snakes: Archetypal Agents of Feminine Initiation - Nancy Swift Furlotti

VI. A Dream in Arcadia - Christian Gaillard

VII. Muse of the Moon: Poetry from the Dreamtime - Naomi Ruth Lowinsky

VIII. Dreaming the Face of the Earth: Myth, Culture, and Dreams of the Mayan Shaman - Kenneth Kimmel

IX. Coal or Gold? The Symbolic Understanding of Alpine Legends - Gotthilf Isler

X. Sophia’s Dreaming Body: The Night Sky as Alchemical Mirror - Monika Wikman

XI. The Dream Always Follows the Mouth: Jewish Approaches to Dreaming - Henry Abramovitch

XII. Bi-Polarity, Compensation, and the Transcendent Function in Dreams and Visionary Experience: A Jungian Examination of Boehme’s Mandala - Kathryn Madden

XIII. The Dream As Gnostic Myth - Ronald Schenk

XIV. Four Hands in the Crossroads: Amplification in Times of Crisis - Erel Shalit

XV. Dreams and Sudden Death - Gilda Frantz

From a review by Marcus West, in Spring, 2014.

"This book is an exploration of the collective unconscious as witnessed, primarily, through dreams, … it is a celebration, … demonstrating the wisdom of this unconscious self.  

Every single chapter illuminates the process of the self, the collective unconscious and dreams. 

The book is rich and inspirational, encouraging us to trust in the wisdom of the psyche and to open ourselves to the lumen naturae of the self. I thoroughly recommend it."

The book can be purchased from Amazon or directly from Fisher King Press

James A. Hall, M.D., 1934-2013

James A. Hall, M.D., 1934-2013

James Hall, M.D., who died on January 22 at his home in Dallas, was a prominent American Jungian Analyst. He graduated from the Jung Institute in Zurich in 1972., He was a founding member and first president of the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts, and the author of important works on Jungian approaches to dreams and interpretation, as well as the introductory text “The Jungian Experience: Analysis and Individuation.” His writings span four decades. 

Following a stroke, James Hall suffered for the last twenty-two years from "locked-in" syndrome. With Patton Howell he wrote the book Locked in to Life, which is described the following way: 

“In 1991 while traveling in his professional capacity of Jungian psychiatrist, James Hall falls ill, beginning the rest of his life as a man who must deal with the limitations of being "locked-in," a form of stroke so devastating and complete that the resulting physical damage is considered a death sentence. In living his life with Locked-in Syndrome, Dr. Hall brings to bear the significant and formidable intellect of his professional training to consider questions, and answers, which only a man of his experience could entertain. James will begin a journey and over time, return to the Beginning of the Universe and find new understanding and his task of redemption. Written with his long-time friend Patton Howell, a forensic psycho-physiologist and President of PEN Texas, in eloquent text unhampered by ego or illusion, Locked in to Life is a book which will change your life in ways you cannot imagine.” 

Together with James Hall, I had the honor to write an article, ‘The Complex and the Object: Common Ground, Different Paths’ (Quadrant, vol. 36:2, Summer 2006, pp. 27-42). 

I pray that James, while bravely struggling when locked-in to life, will find some rest in the soul’s freedom from its earthly trap.

‘The Complex and the Object: Common Ground, Different Paths’

Abstract

While complex and object are part of everyday psychoanalytic discourse, the meaning of the terms varies with different approaches, and the relationship between the concepts is far from apparent. Specifically, in this paper the Jungian complex and the Kleinian internal object are compared. It is the view of these authors that the internal object is primarily related to the archetypal image, and the internalized object to Jung’s concept of imago. The complex is the central concept that in a well-defined model of the psyche dynamically unites the phenomena described by these concepts. Furthermore, while in neurotic conflict the struggle between the ego and autonomous complexes takes place on the battlefield of the subjective psyche, in the personality disorders the complex is projected ‘wholesale’ onto the external object, turning the other into a ‘complex-object.’

Introduction

The complex and the object have traveled along noticeably different paths through the history of psychoanalytic and clinical development.

While the complex was a central idea in the early conceptual space of psychoanalysis, it has since been reduced to a single core complex, carried by Oedipus. Even in Jungian psychoanalysis, which Jung at one point considered calling Complex Psychology, the complex has lost some of its vigor. Although Jung, in contrast to Freud, accounts for a large or even an infinite number of complexes, the concept is less in use today than in the early 1900s, when by means of the Word Association Test a plenitude of complexes were traced down and extracted from their hideaway behind every galvanic skin response. Since then, the complex has by and large been discarded in the shadow – which of course is the appropriate place for complexes, as they thrive and grow most significantly in the dark, outside of consciousness. Yet, the repressed tends to reappear, and as indicated by recent literature, the complex reemerges from the shadow (cf. Dieckmann, 1999; Shalit, 2002; Singer & Kimbles, 2004).

In comparison, the object has become a dominant in the collective consciousness of psychoanalysis. “‘Object’ was the term chosen by Freud to designate the target of the drives, the ‘other,’ real or imaginary, toward whom the drive is directed,” writes Mitchell (1981, p. 375).

While Freud did not use the term internal object, he did describe phenomena such as internal ‘voices’ and images (ibid.). Particularly in the aftermath of Klein, the term has become part of everyday psychoanalytic discourse.

We find that the two concepts, the Jungian complex and the post-Freudian internal object, while not identical, share common ground and embrace a shared space. James Hall says, “Object-relations theory is very close to Jungian theory in its conception of intrapsychic objects, which behave with some of the attributes of part-personalities. In this regard, the term intrapsychic object resembles Jung’s picture of a personified complex described in his doctoral dissertation in 1902” (1991, p. 49).

Does this mean that the complex and the object describe the same phenomenon, and are merely dialects of different psychoanalytic tongues? Are they manifestations of different perspectives on the same structure of the psyche? Or, are the complex and the object truthfully different psychic structures and phenomena?