Happy New Year Dear Friends

Currently in Sigmund Freuds house in Vienna,
The waiting room

"The white man had invented glasses which made objects too near or too far, cameras, telescopes, spyglasses, objects which put glass between living and vision. It was the image he sought to possess, not the texture, the living warmth, the human closeness."

Anaïs Nin, Seduction Of The Minotaur

“But even there in the infantile neurosis, where the defense out of real anxiety [that means: fear of the outside world], analytic therapy has a very good chance of success. The simplest and most unanalytic is the analyst's attempt, after undoing the defense process in the child itself, to influence reality, namely the child's educators, in such a way that there is less real anxiety.”

*~ Anna Freud *

Source: Anna Freud: Das Ich und die Abwehrmechanismen. Fischer Taschenbuchverlag, 19. Auflage, Frankfurt am Main 2006, S. 69.

Photo: Sigmund and Anna Freud in the Dolomites in 1913

For this photo (taken from an installation by artist Cees Krijnen) a well-known Spanish magazine was suggested to be given a title by its commenters, and I can say that almost all the comments were quite funny. Observing the artist's excellent concept, I noticed that the woman who jumps the phallus-es is deliberately colored by the artist in the same color as them. And it reminded me of something from Lacan's Ecrits: Men are positioned as men insofar as they are seen to HAVE the phallus. Women, not having the phallus, are seen to "BE" the phallus. The symbolic phallus is the concept of being the ultimate man, and having this is compared to having the divine gift of God.

So I think that's The title!

Precisely as described by Jung's famlous dream/vision asa boy when he descended into the cave and saw the phallus with the single eye stood upon a throne. A life changing event perhaps; almst as much as the dream he had where the large "turd" dropped upon the roof of the cathedral.

Recognizing the work of Dr. Otto Kernberg M.D. - 'The text presents expositions and critiques of the theories of Melanie Klein, W.R.D. Fairbairn and Edith Jacobson, and correlates the authors own work with that of Margaret Mahler. The theory of object relations can be applied to both psychoanalytic technique and psychoanalytic psychotherapy - and to narcissism, both normal and pathological, in middle age. An entire section of this book is devoted to group phenomena, expanding on the classical psychoanalytic theory of group psychology and demonstrating the effects of regressive processes to be found in various kinds of groups. Essentially the work places special emphasis on the temptations and dangers to individual members of groups and to their leaders, temptations and dangers resulting from the activation of regressive processes. The final section of the book brings together concepts of object relations and group processes to examine the complicated interactions within a couple and between couples and groups. In this context, the author offers an original psychoanalytic formulation of love and its psychopathology.'

Book review - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/000306518403200312

Bio -

Otto Friedmann Kernberg is an Austrian-born American psychoanalyst and professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medicine. He is most widely known for his psychoanalytic theories on borderline personality organization and narcissistic pathology. Wikipedia

Born: 1928 (age 94 years

In 1936 Freud was invited to write something for French author Romain Rolland’s 70th birthday by their mutual acquaintance, Victor Wittkowski. He initially refused - but eight days later composed an open letter titled 'A Disturbance of Memory on the Acropolis'. The essay reflected on a strange incident of disbelief and astonishment he had experienced during his only visit to Greece more than thirty years before. Our new exhibition, 'Tracing Freud on the Acropolis', opening in July, brings together objects, archives and anecdotes exploring Freud's journey to Greece and his encounter with the Acropolis.

https://www.freud.org.uk/exhibitions/tracing-freud-on-the-acropolis...

Freud Museum London

From 1895, Freud travelled to Italy nearly every summer in the company of his younger brother Alexander. In 1904, they travelled to Athens for the first and only time. Our exhibition, Tracing Freud on the Acropolis, explores Freud’s journey to Greece.

https://ow.ly/pRPR50PqI4H

"Couples Therapy" ,  by Grace Weston

Real liberation comes not from glossing over or repressing painful states of feeling, but only from experiencing them to their full.

~ C.G. Jung

Art by George Fredrick Watts c.1864 "choosing" artist's wife Dame Ellen Terry

Nobody can fall so low unless he has a great depth. If such a thing can happen to a man, it challenges his best and highest on the other side; that is to say, this depth corresponds to a potential height, and the blackest darkness to a hidden light.

— C. G. Jung

He looked at his own Soul with a telescope. What seemed all irregular, he saw and showed to be beautiful constellations, and he added to the consciousness hidden worlds within worlds.

-- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Notebooks.

(This is also aptly quoted in the prologue to Jung's autobiography "Memories, Dreams and Reflections."

Photography Hans Schnaps

INDEED, AND THAT IS THE WAY WE ALL NEED TO LOOK AT OUR SUBCONSCIOUS, THERE IS SO MUCH TO LEARN THERE!

THIS WAY, WE CAN FOLLOW OUR OWN PATH!

The spirit of the depths teaches me that I am a servant, in fact the servant of a child. This dictum was repugnant to me and I hated it. But I had to recognize and accept that my soul is a child.

~ C.G. Jung - "The Red Book"

Painting: Felice Casorati

“But we must not forget that only a very few people are artists in life; that the art of life is the most distinguished and rarest of all the arts.

C.G.Jung - Collected Works Vol 7

The unconscious always tries to produce an impossible situation in order to force the individual to bring out his very best. Otherwise one stops short of one's best, one is not complete, one does not realize oneself. What is needed is an impossible situation where one has to renounce one's own will and one's own wit and do nothing but wait and trust to the impersonal power of growth and development.

C.G. Jung

Photo: Hulton Archive

Sigmund Freud with his sons Ernst and Martin who served in the Austro-Hungarian Army in WWI. (c. 1914).

“My language is German. My culture, my attainments are German. I considered myself German intellectually, until I noticed the growth of anti-Semitic prejudice in Germany and German-Austria. Since that time, I consider myself no longer a German. I prefer to call myself a Jew.”

~ Sigmund Freud
Interview, (1926)

"Civilized man...is in danger of losing all contact with the world of instinct -- a danger that is still further increased by his living an urban existence in what seems to be a purely man-made environment. This loss of instinct is largely responsible for the pathological condition of contemporary culture."

~ C.G. Jung

So true, unless we awaken to that reality and change our course, which I believe it is happening, even as I write this!

"The figure of the wise old man can appear so plastically, not only in dreams but also in visionary meditation (or what we call “active imagination”), that, as is sometimes apparently the case in India, it takes over the role of a guru. The wise old man appears in dreams in the guise of a magician, doctor, priest, teacher, professor, grandfather, or any other person possessing authority.

The archetype of spirit in the shape of a man, hobgoblin, or animal always appears in a situation where insight, understanding, good advice, determination, planning, etc., are needed but cannot be mustered on one’s own resources. The archetype compensates this state of spiritual deficiency by contents designed to fill the gap."
Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious Paragraph 388

Life isn’t handed to us like an opera libretto: It is an adventure into which we must throw ourselves. Failures cannot hold us back if we have fire in our hearts. We must allow ourselves to encounter life and God.

Pope Francis, Hope: The Autobiography

The rose he is holding is named "Pope John Paul II".

“I would rather be whole than good.”

C.G Jung
Art: William Blake

“The first half of life is devoted to forming a healthy ego, the second half is going inward and letting go of it.”

C. G. Jung

Art: "Maria"- Carl Strathmann

“Life really does begin at forty. Up until then, you are just doing research.”

"The first half of life is devoted to forming a healthy ego, the second half is going inward and letting go of it."

The time is a critical one, for it marks the beginning of the second half of life, when a metanoia, a mental transformation, not infrequently occurs.

(on being 36 yrs old)
Carl Gustav Jung, Symbols of Transformation (Collected Works 5)

"Younger people, who have not yet reached the middle of life (around the age of 35), can bear even the total loss of the anima without injury. The important thing at this stage is for a man to be a man. The growing youth must be able to free himself from the anima fascination of his mother." (p. 71)

"After the middle of life, however, permanent loss of the anima means a diminution of vitality, of flexibility, and of human kindness. The result, as a rule, is premature rigidity, crustiness, stereotypy, fanatical one-sidedness, obstinacy, pedantry, or else resignation, weariness, sloppiness, irresponsibility, and finally a childish ramollissement with a tendency to alcohol." (p. 71)

The distance from the heart to the head is sometimes 30 years, sometimes a whole lifetime :
"We say, “You know it in the head, but you don’t know it in the heart.” There is an extraordinary distance from the head to the heart, a distance of ten, twenty, thirty years, or a whole lifetime."

C.G. Jung, Seminars on Kundalini Yoga

The celebrations of Carl Gustav Jung’s 150th birthday (happening all over the world this year) echo the lasting power of his ideas and perhaps the growing need for his psychology. Jung was one of the most fearless, original, and irreverent thinkers of the past two centuries. His psychology boldly challenges the dominant scientific and reductionist view of life by reintroducing the notions of soul and mystery into our understanding of the human experience. In a world increasingly shaped by materialism and hyper-technology, Jungian psychology stands as a small but steadfast island—a place of refuge for the curious, the contemplative, and for those called to deeper meaning.

– Luis Moris, PhD. Jungian analyst at ISAPZurich