Imitation and the Archetypal Adult

In The Cycle of Life: Themes and Tales of the Journey, I mention five pathologies that I relate to the idea of the Archetypal Adult. In this brief presentation I mention an additional one, which Jung speaks about – imitation. In the Red Book he writes, “The new God laughs at imitation and discipleship.”

In Two Essays in Analytical Psychology he writes,

"The human being has one faculty which, though it is of the greatest utility from the collective point of view, is immeasurably detrimental from the standpoint of individuality; the faculty of imitation. Collective psychology can never dispense with imitation, for without it the organization of the masses, that of the state and of society, is quite simply impossible. Society is organized, indeed, less by law than by the propensity to imitation, implying equally suggestibility, suggestion, and moral contagion."

            

Imitation is a shadow-side of the self. The Self means authenticity, and in its wholeness it includes its opposite – imitation.

This beautiful ten-minute video, which you can watch here, was created by Karol Domanski and Adam Kosciuk.

On Kafka's short story The Next Village

“The art of life is the most distinguished and rarest of all the arts.” 

C.G. Jung

Kafka's short story The Next Village illustrates two aspects of the cycle, or the stages, of life - the experience and the memory.

You are invited to watch an 8 minute video on YouTube, excerpted from a lecture on The Cycle of Life.

I am grateful to Adam Kościuk and Karol Domański who have prepared and edited this video, as always in the most wonderful way. (The video can also be watched with Polish subtitles here).

Topics explored in the book The Cycle of Life include:

 I. The Journey

Stages and Seasons

 Jung’s Stages of Life

 All the World’s a Stage, and a Stage of Life

 Being on the Way—A Way of Being

Hermes and the Journey: Being on the Way

The Crossroads

II. The Child

The Child in the Mirror

 Psychotherapy and Childhood

 The Divine Child

 From Divine to Human

 Eros, Psyche and Pleasure

III. The Puer and the Puella

 Between Shame and Fear

 Wine, Spirit and Fire

 Prometheus—the Thoughtful Thief

IV. The Adult

 King on Earth

 Boundaries of Reality

 Celestial Jerusalem—Terrestrial Jerusalem

 The King who Refuses to Die

 The Dried-up Earth

 The Limping Ego

 The Empty Shell

V. i. The Senex

V. ii. Homage to Sophocles

V. iii. The Last Chapter: Self and Meaning

 Ancestral Roots

 An Oak and an Acorn

 We Are All Beggars, Are We Not?

The Cycle of Life is available on Amazon, Fisher King Press, and other book sellers.

The Cycle of Life - David van Nuys interviews Erel Shalit - transcription

You can now listen to David van Nuys from Shrink Rap Radio interviewing Erel Shalit about

The Cycle of Life

You find the audio interview on the Shrink Rap Radio website.

A transcription of the interview has now also been uploaded, here.

Painting by Benjamin Shiff

A Magnificent Book for All Interested in the Journey of Life

by Lori Goldrich, Ph.D., Jungian Analyst and Clinical Psychologist

It is with great pleasure that I review Erel Shalit’s marvelous book. To begin, I feel so moved by the synchronous events that led to his finding of the book’s cover, or “face.” Benjamin Shiff’s painting “Life” and the meaning he gives for this marriage of book and painting are quite exquisite. “The candle’s soft light of life is poised against the painful inevitability of burning out. Yet, as long as they burn, there are shades and colors; there are the distinct faces of transient existence, and there are those of obscurity, hidden in distant nature; there is a lyrical melancholy, as well as a tense harmony…Only an unlit candle will never burn out. A fully lived life extracts the awareness of its finality.” These words are like pearls for the journey he takes us on in The Cycle of Life.

I also appreciate the ground he creates by discussing fate and destiny as a “primary tenet,” or underpinning of his book. When we let the tides of our fate and our destiny flow together into a union of opposites, meaning can be found. What begins as our fate can so often become a part of our destiny, which he so aptly discusses in his book. I have found this to be an important foundational principle, both personally and in my analytic work with patients. “On our journey through life, an incessant tension prevails between predetermined fate and free will, between archetypal patterns as opposed to individual distinctiveness.” So well stated!

Erel Shalit truly succeeds in describing the different stages of life in a way that keeps the reader interested and engaged. The weaving of psychological and theoretical perspectives from Freud to Klein to Winnicott to Neumann to Jung, and others, along with the wisdom from various disciplines including philosophy, literature, religion, and myth, is presented in such a way that both clinician and layperson can deepen in experience and knowledge. I especially appreciate his discussion of how the focus on archetypal images and experience can release the energy that lives in the deeper stratas of the psyche to assist in the transformation of psyche, body and spirit.

I also want to share a personal delight while reading Erel’s book. I always enjoy exploring the precise meaning of Hebrew words, and I so enjoyed his inclusion of this for select words and names. It “makes the connection between word and image comparatively close.” It is also reflective of the depth of attention he brings to his writing.

Erel Shalit has written a truly magnificent piece of work. It is a book for all those interested in the Journey. At the beginning of his book, he offers us the image of the “river” and writes from Plato, “While the river preserves its identity, it is incessantly moving and changing, simultaneously being and becoming.” As I read his book, I can truly experience the being and becoming on the journey of life.

'Life' by Benjamin Schiff

Erel Shalit - On Self and Meaning in the Cycle of Life

Cover Painting by Benjamin Shiff

An excerpt from The Cycle of Life (pp. 177-8)

In old age, hearing becomes impaired and vision more blurred. For some, this provides an opportunity to open the senses to the pulsation of the soul, to hear the echoes of the sounds that arise from the depths, and perceive the reflection of the patterns that take shape under the sea.

This may be the transparency and the invisibility of not being seen by others, and the fear of being run over by the phenomena, the appearances of this world. However, as has been mentioned, it entails exchanging the reality-oriented ego-vision for the inward gaze—like Oedipus upon tearing out his eyes, and the seer Tiresias, or Samson. When blinded to this world of appearance, the inner world of transparent, invisible psychic substance may open up, to be sighted. This change in the ego-Self relationship marks a release of the ego from the persona of social roles. It is the invisibility of allowing oneself to be a beggar, a wanderer, or an old fool—not in the social, but in the psychological sense.

In order to attain a sense of integrity in old life, rather than suffer severe despair, Erikson emphasizes the importance of reflection. The reflective instinct is specifically human, and determines “[t]he richness of the human psyche and its essential character,” says Jung. Reflexio, which means ‘bending back,’ “is a turning inwards, with the result that, instead of an instinctive action, there ensues ... reflection or deliberation.”

“What youth found and must find outside,” says Jung, “the man of life’s afternoon must find within himself.” Jung calls reflection “the cultural instinct par excellence.” Reflection on one’s life is instrumental at every developmental stage, unless it takes precedence over living one’s life. In old age, the proportions alter, so that reflection on one’s life becomes at least as important as merely living it.

When cut off from one’s inner depths, the personality shrinks as the ego dries up and becomes limited. A reflective state of mind, however, enables the depths to be reflected in the mirror of one’s Self and soul. Henry Miller tells us in Colossus of Maroussi that he did not know the meaning of peace until he visited the principal sanctuary of Asclepius at Epidaurus, where dream incubation began around 600 BCE. In the intense stillness and the great peace at Epidaurus “I heard the heart of the world beat. I know what the cure is: it is to give up, to relinquish, to surrender, so that our little hearts may beat in unison with the great heart of the world.” Henry Miller makes it clear that Epidaurus, principally, is an internal space, “the real place is in the heart, in every man’s heart, if he will but stop and search it.” 

Reflection and imagination constitute the intangible substance of soul, which Hillman suggests refers “to that unknown component which makes meaning possible,” and which he imagines “like a reflection in a flowing mirror.” (p. 177-8)

Erel Shalit (2011) The Cycle of Life: Themes and Tales of the Journey, Fisher King Press.

Dr. Shalit's most recent work is The Dream and its Amplification, Erel Shalit and Nancy Swift Furlotti, eds. (2013, Fisher King Press).

Dr. Shalit's books can be purchased directly from Fisher King Press, at Amazon, and Barnes and Noble. 

The C.G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles presents:

A Weekend with Erel Shalit

Friday, October 5, 7:30-9:30 pm
Saturday, October 6, 10:00 am-3:00 pm

Click to Register for this special event!

“To speak of a general, human life cycle,” says Daniel Levinson, “is to propose that the journey from birth to old age follows an underlying, universal pattern on which there are endless cultural and individual variations.” In his essay “The Stages of Life” Jung discusses “the problems connected with the stages of life,” claiming problem to be the kernel of culture and consciousness. On our journey through the stages of our life, we encounter the archetypal essence of each phase and are challenged by the essence of meaning that we are requested to deal with on our journey. The lecture will explore crucial archetypal images of the journey and the stages of life, and tell some of the stories.

Dr. Erel Shalit is a Jungian psychoanalyst practicing in Ra’anana, Israel. He is Founding Director of the Jungian Psychotherapy Program at Bar Ilan University. A training and supervising analyst, and past President of the Israel Society of Analytical Psychology, Dr. Shalit also served as Director of the Shamai Davidson Community Mental Health Clinic at the Shalvata Psychiatric Center in Israel. His most recent books include The Cycle of Life: Themes and Tales of the Journey; Requiem: A Tale of Exile and Return; and Enemy, Cripple, Beggar: Shadows in the Hero’s Path. In addition Dr Shalit's work has appeared in numerous books and journals. He wrote the chapter on Jerusalem in Tom Singer (ed.), Psyche and the City. He is on the editorial board of Quadrant. With Nancy Furlotti, he is editing a forthcoming volume on The Dream and its Amplification.

Recommended in US Review of Books

The Cycle of Life
by Erel Shalit
Fisher King Press

reviewed by Peter M. Fitzpatrick

"The perspective of life as a cycle lived through its stages enables us to bring the archetypal and the personal dimensions together."

While Sigmund Freud mapped out the psychosexual development of children to puberty through the oral, anal, phallic latency and genital stages, Carl Jung expanded the study of human development through the second half of life. Jung also expanded Freud's somewhat materialistic focus on psychosexuality as the source of the unconscious to include a vaster world of archetypes that emanate from our undifferentiated Selves through symbolic forms. It is the child's slow separation from the Great Mother archetype that allows him to incorporate the powerful unconscious energies of this symbol into a developing ego. The next stage, the "puer," or troubled teenager, carries this process further, adding the "fire" of his or her growing awareness of Eros to the "dismemberment" of the "unconscious" contents of the archetypes so that the ego can use their energies. A successful transition to adulthood entails a completion of the ego's ascendancy. But the ego must learn to surrender its role as "king" once old age begins.

The author engagingly illustrates Jung's conceptions of the power of the archetypal forces that inhabit our unconscious Selves, showing how they are dual, with both grandiose and terrible aspects. In accessible language, he maps out how figures from the Bible, Greek mythology, and fairy tales contain eternal truths on the mythic level where the Self at the core of our being operates. He explicates the dangers of becoming stuck in a particular stage, and cites actual cases of individuals he has helped make the transitions in his clinical practice as Jungian analyst.

RECOMMENDED
US Review of Books