The Complex - Messenger from the Gods

Joseph Camosy writes on Photography and the Complex:

A photograph is an image. An image that's "magical and powerful" is an image which has "charge" or generates "Affect." Put these two ideas together and you have the concept of the "charged image." This happens to be the very definition of a complex. Now as created images, photographs can be evocative of individual complexes (what Barthes called the "punctum") or of collective cultural complexes (what Barthes called the "studium").

I recommend you read The Complex: Path of Transformation from Archetype to Ego by Erel Shalit. If you do, you will see that the complexes are soul food - they are the way our psyche's can relate to and be nourished by the soul/archetypal/spiritual realms.

Here is a short excerpt from the book:

"...Jungian psychology postulates an objective psyche, or collective unconscious, made up of forms, molds and energies that serve as blueprints for common and universal human experiences. These are the archetypes which, Jung clarifies,"correspond in every way to the instincts, which are also determined in form only. The existence of the instincts can no more be proved than the existence of the archetypes, so long as they do not manifest themselves concretely." (pg 24)

As "possibilities of representation," the archetypes manifest only when some level of consciousness comes into play. Thus we find archetypal ideas and images in myths and fairytales, in religion and in literature. Archetypal motifs, for instance the stages of childhood and coming of age, unfold in a person's actual experience. These motifs exist prior to the individual child's development, and whatever unexpected realizations the encounter with old age might bring, there were those who came of age before oneself.

However, what for mankind is a small step might sometimes be a giant leap in one's life. The archetype does not determine one's life course, and the actual experience is not shaped by a predetermined mold. to this end, we need complexes, for they are the path and the vessel that give human shape and structure to archetypal patterns as they unfold in personal experience. The complexes provide the link between archetype and ego, enabling transformation of the archetypal into the personal. Just like dreams, which attain their garments from the complexes, writes Jung, "[Complexes] are not subject to our control but obey their own laws... In saying this, we assume that there are independent psychic complexes which elude our conscious control and come and go according to their own laws."

The complex is, thus, messenger of the gods, or the archetypes, rather than that of the ego, though the personal life is its object."

The iconic, magical, powerful photograph is in fact, a messenger from the gods.

"The Complex" is a masterpiece.

Joseph Camosy

Researcher, Integral Theory

http://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com

Charged Images by Joseph Camosy


Erel Shalit Amazon Author Page