Thursday 10 July 2008

The contemporary condition of the soul, Jung and shamanism

Jungians have a very different idea about the pre-Oedipal (early childhood) psyche than do those of the Freudian stream. Certainly, they seem to weigh the capacity for spontaneous self-healing as more likely than do those of the Freudian school. Perhaps this is why the view of pre-Oedipal "magic" lost favour? I believe that accessing the pre-Oedipal consciousness for the purpose of self healing is quintessential to shamanistic practice. The fact that there are very few effective shamans and very many who are hardly spontaneously healing from their traumas testifies to how tenuous the use of pre-Oedipal modes such as psychological splitting and projective identification (together) is, in terms of producing healing.

The shamanistic aspect of Jungian healing involves the use of one's individuated and mature emotions in conjunction with one's pre-Oedipal self (i.e., a use of shamanistic 'doubling') , to "water" (or nurture) one being,thus effectively producing an encounter with split-off aspects of self in the here-and-now. Such an encounter with fragmented aspects of oneself enables one to psychologically rework the repressed trauma in terms of one's "emergent self", thus bypassing the futile (and in Freudian terms, pathological) need to repeat (seen in Jungian terms as the constant return to a narrative that is "stuck"). This Jungian view has echoes in neo-shamanistic "Soul Retrieval". For it is the lack of integration of the split parts of oneself IN THE PRESENT that causes one to become sick.

Why it is that the majority of people seem unable to access this shamanist mode for self-healing? Part of the reason is no doubt attributable to overly "rational" modern lifestyles, which have the disadvantage of also being what Adorno terms "administered lives" -- hence not under the control of the subjects themselves. (One would hesitate in doing a "soul retrieval" one oneself if one's mind and body really belonged to the community and the State.) Another point to consider is that a real engagement with one's own psychic innards takes a strength of mind as well as a certain capacity to transcend squeamishness, to which not every individual is constitutionally inclined. There is also the need for a lot of time, to do the job properly (which is the only way it can be done) when quick fixes like a medical prescription draw upon the load from the pharmacists' shelves.

Also, few of us hail from a shamanistic culture, so the wisdom of how to heal ourselves is not passed down through the generations.

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Cultural barriers to objectivity