My Left Face

Like Hok Lee I woke up and my face was paralyzed. Actually his was swollen but mine is paralyzed. A condition called Bell's Palsey involves infalmmation of the seventh cranial nerve. Uaually associated with Herpes virus but also Diabetes is a culprit. I feelo like popeye and look like him except for the forearms which were a little wierd anyway. A drool on my left side and bite my lip and food gets caught on that side like a hamster. When I laugh only my right side seems to have a good time. My left side is terribly serious. I am getting electrical stimualtion to me left face kinda like Cuckoo's Nest but not so much. It tingles a little and my muscles just respond with "ok, ok, I get it". The physical therapist is about 30 ish and gorgeous. I think today she is going to rub my temple. I'm not sure if that was literally or if it was a religios practice. Either way if she is doing it I will enjoy.

It is perfect that it is my left side as that represents my unconscious side. It fell asleep probably in retaliation for that DSM IV evaluation of Schmidt. It was all right side. So my left side said fuck it, I'm going to sleep. It seems I will need to delve deeply into my unconsious to win it back. It is just like a woman, the unconscious, the moon, waxing and waning, the inconstant moon. A scorned woman. I will have to be charming and attentive and apparently dance with the dwarfs.

The Century of the Self

This BBC production divided into 4 parts is an extraordinary exploration of the impact of psychoanalysis in the area of marketing both for the benefit of consumerism in manufacturing as well as politics. It is perfect shadow material contrasting the world of the Islamic extremist explored by Wright. We have been controlled by our own desires and unconscious needs fulfilled through knowledge gained by focus groups and infused in the products we purchase and the politicians we elect. It makes sense to me that there is a population of individuals resisting this indulgent life style for the retaking of the self by the ego, the master. Through denial of these indulgences one takes back control of the unconscious desires rather than simply submitting to them. The Islamic extremist experiences the ordinary American as embodying the possibility of annihilation of the self. To avoid this he simply blows himself up along with a few of those he believes is willing to swallow his soul.

Parcifal and His Mother's Shirt

When Parsifal enters the grail castle he forgets to ask the master of the castle the appropriate question, "whom does one serve with the grail?" This question must be asked in order for the fisher king to be healed but instead the question is not asked and the castle and all the kingdon turns to wasteland. Years later Parsifal returns to have one more try and this time succeeds in asking the question and in turn the Fisher King is healed and Parsifal is able to see the grail.

The reason Parisfal does not succeed when he was young because he was not ready and this was symbilzed by his wearing the shirt given to him by his mother when he left home to follow the knights and the code of chivalry.

When I arrive to see Nic he is surrounded by women. His mother and two sisters. He is struggling to breathe. He seems the same except for his hair and some gray and some wrinkles. But not much different. He struck me as someone who never made it out of the mother realm. He was still wearing his mothers shirt. She was pissed off that he hadn't taken it off yet. It seemd like the "shirt of Nessus" that Hercules wore and caused him to burn. All these women anxious to mother him and deeply disappointed that they had to.

Fellini and Anima Husbandry

I spent a lovely evening alone at a local movie revival house that was showing two Fellini classics: "La Strada" and "Juliet of the Spirits." Both starred Fellini's real life wife Giulietta Masina, and together they offer complementary perspectives on the road to spiritual consciousness.

"La Strada" (The Road) is the earlier of the two films and also the simpler. In it, Gelsomina (Masina) is a poor, uneducated girl from a seaside town who is sold in marriage to a wandering carnival strongman named Zampano (Anthony Quinn). He is brutish, quiet and unfaithful. Gelsomina struggles to connect with him and love him. Though she is offered opportunities to leave, she can never quite do so. The pair encounter a trickster in the form of a circus clown called il Matto who lives to undermine Zampano's act. Zampano's conflict with il Matto ends in an accidental murder. Zampano must flee. Though Gelsomina wishes to stay with him, he must abandon her. Later, Zampano returns to the place by the sea where he left Gelsomina. He is told she is dead, and the final image is of Zampano at the beach, grieving in the shallow waves.

"Juliet of the Spirits" (Giulietta Degli Spiriti) is a later work by Master Fellini. In this story, Masina plays Giulietta Boldrini, a wealthy housewife who enjoys holding seances and speaking with the dead. She surrounds herself with psychics, artists and other eclectic characters in a pursuit of spiritual knowledge. Her husband, a successful man, is also unfaithful. When Giulietta's suspicions about her husband are confirmed by a private investigator, she takes the advice of a hermaphrodite mystic who tells her to pursue the pleasures of the flesh. For assistance, she turns to the expertise of her neighbor Suzy, a high-priced call girl with a zest for living. Suzy exposes Giulietta to many opportunities to indulge. In one scene, Giulietta comes very close to giving in to the seductive powers of a beautiful young man. In the end, however, Giulietta chooses to hold her desires in check. She returns to her house, where all the characters in her mind, past and present, swarm her. In the end, she looks inward, and confronts a shameful memory from her childhood involving her participation in a Catholic school play. In it, she played a Christian martyr who is burned and ascends to heaven. By rescuing her inner child from damnation, she returns to the present and is able to dispel the phantoms that plague her. As she leaves her house to walk alone in the woods, she hears for the first time the voices of the true spirits that can now finally speak to her.

The two films make an excellent pair, as many of the issues raised in the simple, poetic "La Strada" are more maturely explored in the carnivalesque spectacle of "Juliet of The Spirits." In each film, the cheating husband can be seen as the ego, unable to face it's failure and unwilling to relent to the spiritual. Giulietta Masina, Fellini's own partner in life, can be taken as his on-screen anima.

In "La Strada," this anima is neglected and denied. Much like the witches in Macbeth, the trickster helps the ego play out its own folly. Thus, the ego's triumph causes permanent separation from the anima. In the end, the victory is utterly Pyrrhic. The ego is left at the shore of consciousness, unable to immerse itself in the refreshing waters.

In contrast, "Juliet of the Spirits" refocuses on the anima as protagonist. The cheating husband here is a distant, almost secondary character. It is Juliet who must take the journey and heal herself. And there are many tricksters, indeed the whole population, that will act as a catalyst for her to do so. By pursuing but not being engulfed by the flame of her desire, Juliet gains spiritual power and is able to integrate and become whole. She is opened up to a wider world of infinite spiritual potential.

Taken together, it seems possible that Fellini was struggling with the problem of ego in 1954 when he made "La Strada," and had transcended to a higher level of psychological interest by 1965 when he made "Juliet of the Spirits." Death looms as the great teacher in both films. While Gelsomina must literally die in "La Strada" to teach Zampano a simple life lesson, Giulietta must speak with the dead to learn her lesson and get the chance to truly live.

Godfather

Robert Johnson reminds that in olden days the purpose of the godfather was to carry the spiritual gold of the godson until he was ready to take it on himself. As you chop wood remember that all turns to gold someday and amazingly when you are more prepared to do something with it. I see in you an extraordinary gift and it brings me great joy to provide some mentorship during this time. I hope you have a wonderful birthday. I love you and am very proud of you. D

Drowning

The image of drowning stayed with me last night. It seems entirely consistently that both your mother and father were unable to manage the unconscious forces that were controling them when you were born. Unable to consttruct enough ego strength to offset the power of these forces they spilled them out onto you. Just as Rapunzel's parents abandoned them to the enchantress so did your parents abandon you to face these unconscious waters alone. You relied on wits and a rich fantasy world to navigate through but there was much that was stored away behind a plaster wall encapsulating a deep shame. It seems to me a perfect image of your father submerging you under water as he himself could not swim, that is , swim in unconscious waters. He himself was drowning so he was symbolically taking you with. Much the same as your mother who asked you quite literally to be her husband because her real husband was not able to address her needs. She may as well have been along side your father holding you under water and laughing. But remember what Hillman says, "our wounds become your parents."

An afterthought. Your father is obsessed with his pool. There is something about the pool, the water that attracts him.

Darkmotherscream strikes again.

I found out today that a guy I went to high school with is very sick. He was someone I looked up to and I felt I could never compete with him. The summer before went to college (the first time) He and I spent a weekend at Notre Dame University in a dorm. He knew someone there and he was planning on attending there in the fall and I was starting at Quincy College. I remember him reading the Book of Job while we were there. It was like a sabbatical and I walked the campus and was intrigued by the idea of going to the school buit did not feel I had his intelligence. I always wanted to be Nic. Your father met him at Maroon Club function or one of his many organizational functions and Nic gave him his number to give to me. I never called him.

Now he has been diagnosed with advanced heart disease from smoking and drinking alcohol. He is in the middle of a divorce and is alone. I plan to go see him. It will be difficult. The dragon has hold of another victim. The mother realm does not let go of its most promising, most talented. Darkmotherscream strikes again. Wish me luck.

Randle P McMurphy & Brick

Two scenes that have come to my attention recently seem to be lingering in my mind for a lttle extra attention. The first is Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and the significance of the only character in the play that is dead (literally) and that is Skipper, Brick's childhood friend. The end of the play reveals that Skipper committed suicide but we are not sure why. Brick is guilt stricken because Skipper reached out to him before he died. He also reached out to Maggie with sexual advances, which she rejected. Brick was seemed attached to Skipper's corpse, inhabiting more of the groud six feet under than above. It was shame that drove him underground. It is clear he must let this person go to move on with his relationships (wife and father). Maggie and Big Daddy resent Skipper for holding Brick in the grave. They also resent Brick's attachment to the puer realm. Brick's release from Skipper (Captain?) is necessary for him to move into adulthood. There is an underlying suggestion that Skipper was in love with Brick in a homoerotic relationship that Brick did not come to terms with either. It suggests the puer realm is the realm of homoerotic love. This sounds very platonic but may be very close to the truth. Brick's wounding is in the leg, as close as one gets to the source of generativity. This makes him impotent. We realize that Brick was carrying the fun loving aspect of Big Daddy, who set that part of himself aside for ambition. He reflects on his own father's carefree and loving nature and realizes that by resenting his father he cast the baby out with the bath water. Brick of course let's go of Skipper precisely as Big Daddy embraces the fun loving aspect of his father and himself. Skipper is sacrificed. He dies then though he's been dead for a while.

Now what does this have to do with Cuckoo's Nest? No idea. So let's proceed. Nurse Ratched is confering with her psychiatrist colleague over the fate of RPM and the "Boys" are talking about how RPM is no ordinary man (superman) and Nurse Ratched breaks in, "Oh. no gentleman, I believe you are very wrong. He is very much just a man." Ratched is like Hera unable to forgive Hercules for being born of the love affair between Zeus and the mortal Alcmene so she sets out to kill him. The story is more ancient than I originally realized. It is the battle between puer and senex and senex always wins because senex is tied to aging. Brick and RPM are more alike than I knew. Only RPM's fate can only be castration, because he is archetypal. Brick is a real person and unsticks himself from the complex and moves on.

MY Trip to Al Qaeda

I saw a film made by Lawrence Wright based on his book "the Looming Tower". This fits right in with the upcoming webinar from Asheville on politics and a Jungian perspective. Wright tried to get to the roots of how the Al Qaeda were formed and what compels it now. The film is actually a version of his one man stage play based on the book. Wright's message to the world is that we are playing into the hands of Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda by damaging our own civil rights and continuing a war we cannot win because we don't understand the "enemy". Wright's belief is that many Muslim's in the world share a commmon sense of humiliation and dread of life that can very easily translate into a love of death. It does not take much to convince a young Muslim who is not allowed to find pleasure in this world to give up his life to destroy the "oppressor" who is the one responsibile for his humiliation. But beyond a love of death there is no plan, no political agenda, no vision of the future except destruction. I imagine Freud's two basic principles Eros and Thanatos being the foundation for this battle. Which people could more perfectly reflect the opposite of a love of death than the Americans who have have such a love for life and are ruled by the Eros principle that death is always a surprise and and a cruel intrusion into our love affair with the outer world. It would take a people who hated this world and loved the afterlife to confront a people who only loved this world and had no understanding of the imaginal realm, the symbolic, the archetypal.

Life Without Father

I attended a recent showing of Tennessee William's "Glass Menagerie" a the Ahmanson Theater. It seems to me the piece is a meditation on the absence of archetypal father energy and the insatiable craving we each carry to heal the father wound.

All three of the main characters miss the literal father in the play, a man of charm who abandoned them long ago. In different ways, this absence is causing them suffering and creating a desperate need.

Amanda, the mother, has not confronted the pain of her marriage failing. She regresses into adolescent girlishness, obsesses with flirtation, and projects her failure onto her daughter in an unending bipolar cycle of unrealistic dreams and bitter disappointments.

Laura, the frail daughter, is devoid of self-esteem. She is unable to function in the world outside the realm of her mother's protection, and can only relate to men through fantasy and the safe role-playing with her glass figurines. Her wound is displayed literally in an awkward limp.

Tom, the brother, is immensely unhappy. Without father energy, he is stuck in the oppression of his mother's suffocating psychological womb. He lacks the passion and ambition to take risks and enter the world. Through guilt and smothering, Amanda's aggression toward her absent husband finds its target in Tom.

So Amanda needs male energy to heal her wound, affirm her beauty and provide a worthy adversary. Laura needs the validation and confidence that a father can instill in a young woman. And Tom needs to find his own manhood, which he seems to be pursuing through contact with other men, be it artistic, professional or sexual.

Into this spider's web wanders Jim, the gentleman caller. Jim is not so much a person as an ideal. He flirts with Amanda and makes her feel young. He values Tom's creativity, calling him Shakespeare and offering words of encouragement about his potential. And he tries to instill confidence in Laura, calling her pretty, dancing with her, and kissing her because "somebody ought to."

But in the end, Jim disappoints them exactly as their father did. He leaves. The father wound is eternal and recurring. Amanda blames Tom, because she cannot be accountable or make the absent father accountable. Tom leaves, but part of him is trapped in that apartment for all time, haunted by the wound that time and distance cannot heal.

In the universal sense, the father wound leaves us each alone in the desert of the world. Our fathers are mirages fading on the horizon. And though our mothers are safe oases, they cannot help us get to our fathers. We are left in the sand between the two, thirsting for something we must find on our own.

The Happy Accident of SALT

I saw "Salt" this weekend, and was delighted and intrigued. Though you had recommended it, I knew little of the plot and went in with no expectations.

After seeing it, I discovered that the project was intended for Tom Cruise but rewritten for Angelina Jolie. While Tom would have been fine in the role, a male Salt would have been merely "Mission Impossible: Revisited."

What luck that Tom Cruise was unavailable, though, as I felt most of the story's power resonated in Salt being the only female at the center of the most masculine of all struggles, the Cold War.

Her destructive power was transcendent. Like the Goddess Kali, she was creator and destroyer all at once. Though I had no evidence through most of the story of whether she was acting for good or evil, I found myself rooting for her to just destroy, destroy, destroy. Rather than seem like a minor piece in someone else's chess game, Salt became a powerful grey Queen mercilessly cutting down black and white pawns.

It was as though the imbalance inherent in the all-male world of war and supremacy had to be corrected by any means; only a woman, free of male ego, could move through this world and do what needed to be done.

Did anyone really care if the Russian or American President lived or died in the end? No. We care that Salt prevented the deaths of millions of innocent women and children in the Third World. The Great Mother had an agenda, and men were expendable to save the offspring.

Being of No Woman Born

So MacBeth is brought down as the witches predicted, by a man of no woman born and by Birnam wood that was honed into bows for battle. So what of this detail. A man not born of woman was the only one who could kill MacBeth while MacBeth himself was born of woman. So macBeth had a vunerability that MacDuff did not simply by being born of a woman. The wounding inherent in the mother complex was MacBeth's undoing and now we have the full picture. MacBeth could not say no to his wife despite his initial resistance to her suggestions. The witches represent the dark mother and both husband and wife fall completely under it's powers. But it takes a true man, one not under the influence of the mother complex to undo MacBeth. Removed by cesarian section MacDuff symbolically escaped the bondage to the mother complex. MacBeth's moment of truth was when he failed to overcome his wife's corruption and break the shackles that bound him to his mother. All his prowess in battle was simply symbolic opposition to the mother with no true inner strength to confront himself. There is no depth to MacBeth. He reminds me of James Gagney in White Heat. No more perfect image of the devastation caused by the mother complex than a man on top of exploding fuel tanks saying, "Look at me ma, I'm on top of the world".

Get Low

Get Low ia a movie Robert Duvall struggled to bring to the screen. One can see why as the subject is death. An old man who lived most of his life as a hermit decides to have a funeral party while he is still alive with the promise of telling people why he lived that way and a raffle ticket for his 300 acre land for $5. Somehow this movie does not get low enough though I am moved by Duvall's performance. It takes place in the 1930's by the look of the automobiles but Duvall's character lives in the woods. The movie takes place during the winter and chills the viewer by placing one into the cold world of Felix Bush. This coldness suggests the grave he placed himself into when he was a young man. The secret that brought about his self-imposed isolation becomes the hook that compels the story but is less interesting than the man himself and I think we desire to know more about him and less about how he became him. He is a wounded man whose wounds compel him to find healing within and eventually reach out to the community he abandoned years before. Apparently based on a true story I find myself more interested in the man's struggle than his redemption which seems anticlimactic. The last scenes depict the resistance we have to both death and death in life. Coming to terms with one's failings and one's unlived life as well as one's accomplishments is the axis one needs to come to at the end. The axis of how one lived and how one failed to live, our divine (generative) nature and our human (mortal) nature. There is also the puer and the senex drawn together in the story-the younger man played by Lucas Black. I like the Bill Murray character placed in the story for comic relief becuase the inherent heaviness of the mood of the movie but also to show how that heaviness can be transformative. Despite his selfish nature Murray's character seems to grow up a little by the end of the movie.

Macbeth the Castrati

Macbeth, Act IV, Scene 3 is an often overlooked but ultimately revealing scene. Malcolm, the rightful heir to the throne, is in exile talking with Macduff, a warrior who is at least Macbeth's equal. Macbeth has killed both Malcolm's father and Macduff son. So we have a fatherless child and a childless father coming together to defeat the murderous usurper.

Indeed, Macbeth seems obsessed with dual murders of fathers and sons. He always seems to succeed in killing one while the other survives. Duncan dies, but Malcolm and Donalbain escape. Banquo dies, but Fleance escapes. And Macduff is not home when his assassins arrive, but his young son is brutally butchered.

The witches plant the seeds of obsession by telling Macbeth he will be king, but not a father of kings; that honor will go instead to good father Banquo.

Back to Malcolm and Macduff. In order to test Macduff's loyalty, Malcolm tries to present himself as unworthy and unfit to be king. The older Macduff proves he is loyal to Scotland and honest with Malcolm, and this allows the puer to reveal his true virtue.

It is then that Macduff discovers his own son and wife have been killed. As Macduff wails, Malcolm tries to redirect his anger toward battle with Macbeth, but the older wiser Macduff must first express his feelings. In this, he teaches the younger man how to grieve, which we have yet to see Malcolm do for his father.

One can imagine the immediate bond that might take place between two such men, united by grief and loss.

From a Jungian perspective, Malcolm and Macduff seem to be the parts of Macbeth that he cut off from himself when he commit his heinous crime. Macbeth could not be a loyal son and so can never be a wise old man. He is cut off from his innocence and his wisdom. He has no progeny and no creativity. His fate is destruction.

So perhaps Macbeth, Macduff, and Malcolm can be viewed as aspects of the same man. Is Shakespeare's message cautionary, as if to say "here is what happens when you neglect your inner child and inner old man"? Or is his message darkly optimistic, as in "even your choice to walk the path of ego and self-destruction can lead to enlightenment and psychic integration"?

In the end, it is fitting that Macbeth must be beheaded. If they went after his balls, I doubt they'd find any.

Hillman

He seems to stroll slowly, effortlessly to the stage but another look reveals him pressing his right hand into his cane and pulling his right leg forward and locking it in before the next step. I am reminded of the image of Geras, the god of aging, with the curved cane. Hillman arrived early so he would be seated before the particpants arrived. He hesitated at the step to the stage as someone moved out of a group to offer his arm so Hillman could grab it and climb up. Hillman drew himself up onto the stage and walked to his seat. His head did not match his body. His hair was white and thin at the top but his eyes were clear and open and excited. He sat next to Stanton Marlon whose book on the alchemy of the Black Sun was well recieved by the analytic community. There were 5 other guests Hillman handpicked for the panel from all over the world. They talked about image and archetype. Hillman reveals he hates the term archetypal psychology though he admits inventing it. He is particularly engaged with an analyst from Japan whose English is difficult. Hillman passes the conversation often to him but it isn't clear whether the man from Japan understood the thread of the conversation. Hillman tries to explain a concept he and the gentleman had been discussing earlier that day, the idea that he is already living in the afterlife. Hillman and this man enjoy this idea together. Then the man from Japan tries to explain the difference between Japan and the United States. American archery is more interested in hitting the target and how many times and how close to the bull's eye. The man stood up and assumed the form of the archer and then said, "The Japanese archer is more interested in the form he assumes before the arrow leaves him." The man stood there in position silently. Hillman was impressed. So it is the image before death that represents the life. This is why in the Japanese how someone dies is very important and will have influence on the afterlife. I once had a nurse tell me when she arrived to a home of a Japanese patient who had been struggling for breath. When the nurse took his blood pressure the patient suddenly took his last breath. The family believed the nurse helped his spirit leave his body to be in peace and the person's spirit came out through his last breath. You could not convince the family otherwise had you tried. In a way their perception of death was much more poetic than western medicine would allow. In the west there is only death. Nothing more. And since there is no afterlife then how someone dies doesn't matter. Dying in a state of shame is the worse thing for the Japanese. I did not see Hillman again until I was leaving and he was walking by himself from the elevators to the conference hall. I said hello to him and addressed him as Dr. Hillman. He smiled and said hello. Anywhere else, with anyone else he would have just been another old man walking with a cane trying very hard not to fall.

Billy Budd / Hud / Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

The Father, The Son and The Shadow: Who Gets Out Alive?

I spent the weekend with three classic films: Billy Budd, Hud and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Unwittingly, I had crafted an interesting three-part meditation on the nature of the Father-Son conflict and the Shadow's need to force confrontation, destruction and rebirth.

Billy Budd is Peter Ustinov's brilliant and underrated adaptation of Herman Melville's novella by the same name. Billy Budd is a perfect sailor. Young, attractive, idealistic and happy, he is the very essence of the Puer. Forced to serve on a naval vessel, Billy makes fast friends. But he finds himself and his shipmates subjected to cruelty at the hands of a man named Claggart, who lives to make men suffer and squirm. Claggart believes the world is a dark dangerous place, and so attacks others preemptively with patient, manipulative evil. Claggart represents the Shadow. Above both men is The Captain, who is the flawed father of the story. He sees both Billy's goodness and Claggart's evil. When the inevitable confrontation between the two men leads to Claggart's accidental death, the Captain is forced to punish and execute Billy. The Captain and every man on the ship knows it is immoral and wrong. But the law must be serve; the ritual must be obeyed. The sacrifice of Billy Budd can be viewed as a Christ allegory. But from a Jungian perspective, there would seem to be a more intricate dance taking place. The Shadow demands the confrontation. The father avoids it, so the son must be sacrificed. Billy's blood is on the Captain's hands. The Captain is left alive; perhaps by striving to be a better man, he may transform through the loss, shame, and grief.

Hud is a brilliant story written by Larry McMurtry about three generations of men living and working together on a Texas cattle ranch. Homer is the principled old man who owns the ranch. Hud is his drunken, manipulative and selfish son. Homer also has a grandson named Lonnie, a puer who admires both his Uncle Hud and Grandfather Homer for different reasons. Lonnie's father (Homer's other son, Hud's brother) is dead, killed in an accident caused by Hud. Never having forgiven each other, Homer and Hud engage in a proxy war, using the cattle ranch and Lonnie's impressionable psyche as the battlefield. In the end, Homer must die, along with his cows and his ideals. Hud wins the ranch. But he cannot win Lonnie, who walks away in the pivotal last scene as his own man. So again, the Shadow demands confrontation. But this time it is the Father who must be sacrificed. The Puer is transformed, and a young new king is crowned.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is Tennessee William's classic play about a Southern patriarch called Big Daddy and his ne'er-do-well drunken ex-athlete son Brick. Inflated and egotistical Big Daddy has mastered the material world, but not the inner world. He is dying, and his son Brick is in a fruitless marriage full of resentment and self-destruction. So we have a Father and a Shadow. Where is our Puer? Was he killed off long ago, or do both men carry the archetypal innocence deep inside? In the end, only through confrontation and resolution can Brick get what he craves: for his Father to remember his own innocence and happiness of his childhood, to recall his fond feelings for his own long-dead father. So again the Shadow pursues the confrontation. And a sacrifice must be made with the impending death of Big Daddy. We are left with the Shadow dispelled as Brick promises to sire a new heir to the family name. The lost Puer is regained.

These tales reveal similar insights. In all three stories, the Shadow relentlessly pursues confrontation between Father and Son. In all three stories, Father or Son must be sacrificed; Death must be accepted. And in all three stories, transformation and rebirth are achieved, as difficult as that process may be for all parties involved.

THe Cost of Mechination

The cost of machination is the sacrifice of the feminine. The cost of taking the easy route such as with the character of Peter Sarsgaard is sacrifice of the feminine but not in him, in those around him. He is the master of the feelings realm, the arts, the carefree life represented by Paris but what he lacks her father carrries, the senex, the sense of rules and responsibility and money doesn’t grow on trees and you have to work for it. But he is all too willing to sacrifice his dream of her going to college. He is as captivated by Paul as his daughter. The parents have sacrificed that part of themselves long ago and that part remains unresolved, unintegrated and it remains in shadow until Paul constellated that part of the them and led to the parents betrayal of the daughter. It reminds us how easy we can be tricked by someone who can tap into that lost self.

And what of loss. The incredible alchemical plates of Lucius signify a process that has captivated me. I believe it has to do with transformation but different from the Rosarium. A king is no longer listening to his servants as they are beseeching him. They are in want. One wonders if this is similar to the themes in fairytales in which desire and want are evident from the beginning of the story, such as Rapunzel and the desire for rapion and in Godfather Death and the desire for a godfather for his son. The want in our alchemical image is for a new king or a new view of the world, a new attitude toward the world. In modern times this desire is usually acted out and leads to change but at a very high price. The very public affairs and betrayals seen in the media are attempts, misguided as they are, at change or transformation. The psyche does not understand this need nor how to meet it. We have no road maps for this change. We think that all change comes from without, not from within, so live by those rules and end up acting out a dynamic that can be characterized as betrayal in order to precipitate change from within.

Let us look deeper. The son steps up to kill the king. This is not left to anyone else. The son kills the king is a very deep psychic need reflective of Freud, yet the son also represents the new moving forward to replce the old. A father feels this in his son, that he is there to replace him. This is very primordial and the father's usual reaction is anger and defensiveness and at worst, a father's excuse to destroy the son psychologically if not physically as in the case of physical abuse. But this death is not out of anger or hatred. It is very prescribed and serious. Upon the death of the king the son places the blood of the father on his own clothes. This act acknowledges the son's ownership of the death. He takes responsibility for this death and does not deny it. Human nature is very resistant to acknowledging a death that one has psychologically particpated in so this ownership is essential.

Then the son must bury the father, the king. The new buries the old but in the act of burial the son reluctantly follows his father into the tomb. We are told in the alchemical text the the son's movement into the tomb was aided by the art of the alchemist. One replaces alchemist with therapist and we see the therapist as an important component of moving the patient toward this burial, this movement into the grave where the old and the new go through a period of "incubation" together. So we cling to the old for a period of time. This is mourning.

Big Jake

I couldn't sleep tonight, so I flipped on cable and came across the John Wayne classic "Big Jake" on TCM. I decided to watch it again all the way through.

I forget if Grandpa or Dad first showed me "Big Jake." One or both of them insisted that I watch it when I was very small. I've always loved the film; though I've seen several John Wayne pictures, it's probably the only one I vividly remember. It resonated deeply with me and instilled something that I am only now able to articulate.

A young boy is abducted from his family by a band of dark criminals. The boy's father is wounded during the attack (the archetypal father wound!), and so the powerful matriarch (who else but Maureen O'Hara?) must reach out for help to her estranged husband Big Jake (John Wayne).

Up to this point, all three of her sons have lived within her realm. Yet she sees their immaturity and insolence and knows that they need the energy of their father.

Is Big Jake a literal father or the archetypal father? It is difficult to see John Wayne as anything less than an archetype, and this story in particular presents him as more an ideal than a man. He agrees to help, and his two healthy sons are confronted for the first time with a true patriarch. As they ride down to Mexico, they enter the wild, contentious, but crucial father realm.

One son brings resentment and mistrust. The other is uncontrolled and destructive. Big Jake barks orders, lets them fall on their asses, and even throws a few punches in order to teach them the needed lessons: respect, listening, survival.

Big Jake travels with an Indian named Sam. Sam is hardened by a life full of danger and death, and yet is soft enough to offer trust and loyalty to his friend. He gently guides Jake's sons back to Jake when they want to defy their father.

The abducted boy is Little Jake. He has been taken by a villain who repeatedly threatens to kill him. So the puer is threatened by the shadow. Big Jake and Little Jake can only be reunited through confrontation with the shadow.

The shadow wants money. It doesn't care about women or children or right and wrong. It is ruthless and unrelenting.

Big Jake carries a chest full of money to ransom the boy. But of course we find out the there is no money in the chest. (As in "The King and Corpse," the Trickster must be tricked!) Material wealth is not what's really at stake; rather, it's a struggle for the soul of the boy.

Before the boy can be freed, Big Jake gives him a handgun. The boy must defend himself. As the final gunfight unfolds, the puer races out into the night pursued by a wild bearded thug wielding a machete. The brutality of nature is unleashed, and though he is dressed like Little Lord Fauntleroy, the boy cannot be spared exposure. He is thrown into the harsh reality of the world.

But the boy is not alone. In the end he is saved by an uncle, who is saved by a brother, who is saved by a father, who is saved by a friend, who is saved by a dog named "Dog." The men survive outside the mother realm by banding together. They show their love with deeds more valuable than gold.

The story ends with Big Jake reunited with his sons and grandson. We do not see them return to the mother's ranch. Perhaps psychologically, they have left it for good.

MacBeth, War and Death

Is the heroic pathway so hardwired into us we cannot control the context? Killing in battle was not enough, MacBath needed to extend the battle field into his own kingdom killing all those who could get in the way of his acheiving the throne. He and his wife, like Hickock and Smith, bands of brothers (and sister) coming togther to commit this crime that neither one would commit alone. The guilt becomes overwhelming for Lady and MacBeth slips into battle gear again which was never really retired only this time to meet his own death. Psychologically it is the same old story, the witches as messengers of the unconscious nag at our egos to become king, that is the supreme ruler, the predominant way of seeing the world. The king is always looking for supremacy. The unconscious is looking for wholeness but doesn't know the direct pathway, nor how to explain itself, so when the self says to kill the king, that is confused with killing the outer king (whoever is closest and highest in the land) But the real message is to kill the inner king so a new king can emerge. Whenever we confuse the outer world with the inner we make stupid mistakes like this. So why the guilt? Perhaps the psyche realizes it screwed up and instead of moving closer to wholeness actually moved far away and when you get those instructions wrong you realize you had only one shot at them really and what is done in the outer world is irrevocable. In the absence of true learning our neurosis takes over and we regress to handwashing and suicide or the terrible addiction to war.

An Education

Another movie post. Peter Sarsgaard again. He does a wonderful puer aeternis and one in the grips of "mother". Great movie. I am giving a presentation on betrayal and using this movie as an illustration how betrayal can be transmuted into gowth and individuation. A high school girl preparing for admission to Oxford starts to question the worth of this educational pathway that only leads to an adult world that is dreary and devoid of passion, art and fun. She is smitten by an older man who is charming and worldly (I thought of Nick Arnstein from Funny Girl) played by Peter Sarsgaard. In this case not only is she seduced but her parents as well, who seem willing to give up their ambition of their daughter going to Oxford as long as David (Sarsgaard) is willing to marry her. Her parents give their daughter over to the archetypal puer. I am reminded of Rapunzel and the parents giving their child over to the enchantress for a little rampion. In both cases their is a betrayal by the parents. When the parents are seduced by the enchantress the daughter becomes the completely taken over by the archetypal witch. In the movie at hand it is the daughter being taken over by the charm of narcissus and we all know what happened to Echo as a consequence. The only adults protesting her abandonment of her Oxford dream is her teacher and principal. Each of these women seem as though the world of enchantment which seduces our young heroine was a world they had to abandon top pursue their education but its seems eahc is grieiving that loss and are a bit jealous of her escape into this realm. Consequently they do a poor job of mentoring her during this period but it is the teacher that comes through even after the principal abandons the girl and does not allow her to return to finish school to prepare for Oxford. The teacher privately tutors her through to the exam. I love this movie and the most touching scene is when the father played by Alfred Molina admits his failure as a father to his daughter and asks for her forgiveness.

The Orphan

I watched a movie last night which a perfect portrayal of a man in the grips of the mother complex and the devastation caused by such a state. It was a commercially prepared slasher movie about a 9 year old orphan girl adopted by a well meaning couple trying to address their feelings of loss of a third child that miscarried. A review of the movie and synopsis of the plot can be read at the following site:
http://www.imdb.com/reviews/421/42123.html

What the review does not do is explain the underlying psychological structure that makes this a little more interesting that the average "evil child horror" movie. I found this more interesting than say a movie like "The Omen" because there is a very real reference to a psychological phenomenon that is much more accessible that the good /evil paradigm. John Coleman (Peter Sarsgaard) is the real problem in this movie because he has not yet sorted out his mother from his wife from his daughter. This is a good description of the mother complex. In not being able to sort this out he contaminates his marriage and his children and sets the stage for the adoption of a 9 year girl who is to say the least suffering from a character disorder and is a psychopathic killer. The principle characters in this movie are primarily women who are in one way or another against or mistrustful of Kate Coleman (Vera Farmiga)and are dead set on convincing her she is sick or crazy.

It is interesting that the husband finds this lttle girl after he and his wife visit an orphanage and are watching the children playing during a children's party. John took a stroll around the orphange by himself and came upon a lone girl painting in a crafts room and he was smitten by her and her paintings. This is the man that confuses his own anima with the charm of a little girl. This sets the stage for a rivalry between the wife and this orphan whose erotic desires toward the father eventually emerge in the movie. To the reviewer the movie collapsed because the husband believed in his adopted daughter long past reasonableness demanded he pay attention to all the signs. That may be as a critcal review of the film's structure but fits perfectly with the idea that when one is grabbed by the mother complex, one loses all sense of reason. Kate does come through the epxerience and John gets what he deserves ( I have no sympathy for men who refuse to grow up) and the other kids come through probably with some scrapes and bruises and some significant PTSD but what the hell do you expect when the father doesn't don his warcoat and meet the internal dragon head on to save his children from inheriting that garbage. Almost every woman in this movie from the mother in law to the therapist are against Kate and do not stand up for her. The only other woman, the nun,who sides with her doesn't survive. What does this movie say about women in our culture in marriages where the husband/father contaminates the entire family with his inability to grow up?

The Necromancer

The necromancer is the shadow side of the ascetic and represents the death instinct or thanatos principle of Freud. It is also the mother complex that we must confront and moving into the realm of the dead, the graveyard we come very close to the mother complex and constellate very strong feelings that try to overwhem us. The symbol of deference that is staged by the necromancer when he kneels down and bows his head is very interesting. A Christian version of this story might require a sacrificial act so this image would not make it into a more western story. We are reminded that the east does not believe in self-sacrifice so the ritual of kneeling and bowing is to be avoided. Yet the celebration comes from cutting off the head of the destroyer, defeating the mother complex and transforming the mother complex into the creative and ever-expanding mother archetype. It is the difference between drinking alcohol until unconscious and drinking herbal tea referring back to the fishing trip. It is using the fermentation of yeast in making bread vs making and drinking alcohol. It is transmuting mother nature into nurture rather than being destroyed by mother nature's byproducts. In fact a Christian version of the story is the story of Faust and requires a pact with the Devil. There is no good and evil in our Indian story just the visible and invisible worlds.

The necromancer is also the archetypal trickster setting us up for failure by telling us a lie. The king's response is to become the trickster himself and turn the tables on him. There is an internalization of the components of the story into the king. The king takes in the fruit that hides the gems for years. He takes in the corpse and his stories and teaching and finally he takes in the trickster and the trickster becomes part of him. He is now a complete person.

The Corpse

What is this dead criminal we must carry on our back for an entire night? What is this graveyard in which we must find him? This is Dante's Inferno and Faust's romp with Mephostopheles. This is the time in our life when we must unearth the dead and decaying parts of ourselves so that we may come to terms with them. They hang about us like strange fruit from the tree of death rather than the tree of life and they offer as much surpise as the fruit which bore the gem.

Rose as an 85 year old patient who had cancer. She was a woman whose feeling function had been repressed and who appeared very critical and cranky. She hated her life in a nursing home and did not wish to die there. She would toss doctors and other staff out of her room if they did not listen to her instructions. Everyone was afraid to go into her room. She trusted me and togther we started to unearth the dead parts of her self. One such part involved her best friend when she was in high school. She told her best friend who she was going to ask to the prom. Rose always felt insecure about not having a boyfriend. She did not feel attractive and because her friends had boyfriends she felt she was missing out on life. Her girlfriend asked the boy out behind Rose's back and that betrayal destoyed their friendship but also caused Rose to mistrust her feeling function and relegated it to the baggage she carried with her the rest of her life. Her thinking function took over and she secretly vowed never to be betrayed again. In the course of our sessions her feeling function become activated again and this lost part of her emerged. In fact, this young person part of her seemed to dominate her life towards the end and instead of appearing the critical old woman she became full of life and open to those around her. In some ways I became the boyfriend she left behind and our final words to each other were a declaration of love. So Rose unearthed one of many corpses she needed to come to terms with in order to become a complete person just as the king must carry the corpse on this dark journey through the graveyard in order to fulfill his role as hero.

Why is this corpse a criminal? We banish these parts of ourselves to our unconscious as if to prison, as if they were criminals. Secondly it is the realm of criminality we must go to get them, that is outside the rules we normally follow in life. The criminal is banished from society and it is this place of banishment we must go to find them.

The King and the Corpse-The Monkey

The King represents that ego we know, the one that makes up our conscious attitude towards the world. This ego is in on autopilot mode that eventually becomes bored or unsettled. It takes the king ten years in the story to come to the realization that all the gifts he has been given by life he has thrown away not understanding their true value. Sometimes this can take a lot longer, maybe even 50 years. It is important to take note that it was the monkey that revealed to him the value in the fruit and the monkey resides in the female quarters. This is the unconscious parts of us, the lunar side, the realm of the feminine, the feeling function which most men repress most of their lives. Now the king's realization there is value here he had previously ignored seems an easy transition, perhaps because this is an Indian tale and Indians are much more in touch with their feeling function. In the west this would manifest as a complaint, depression, anxiety because the ego would resist such new knowledge. Or the person would act out in an affair or something that would force his stance with the world to change (once caught). The king feels indebted to the peasant who brought the fruit once he realized their value. This indebtedness we all experience when we come to the same realization often late in life that we have taken advantage of life all our lives and that it's real meaning was right in front of us. The peasant turns out to be something more than a peasant just as the fruit turned out to be something more than fruit. The peasant is actually a holy man, an ascetic, and the king offers the holy man a favor. The holy man requests the king as hero assist him in an enterpise of magic. The holy man's name is "Rich in Patience" which is quite befitting him. This is that part of us that intiates us into the realm of the imagination, the magical realm and he can wait many years before he is listened to.

The King and the Corpse

This very old story from India has not had the shake and bake handling of a jungian analyst as I can find and except for Heinrich Zimmer, an Indologist not an analyst, I can find no other attempt to interpret. It is a rather long story so I will leave out much in a synopsis. A king was quite content in his office and would meet daily with the people of the kingdom to give them access to him for a short time each day. A peasant shows up and begins offering him fruit everyday which the king politely accepts and then gives to his treasurer who tosses them through a window into a treasure room. This went on for ten years until one day the peasant gives the fruit to a monkey that escaped from the women's quarters in the castle. The monkey takes a bite and throws it down revealing a large gem in the center of the fruit. Now the king is interested and has the treasurer check on all the other fruit in the room only to find many gems with fruit in some state of decomposition, The king is intrigued with the peasant and the next day asks the peasant what he, the king, could do for him. The peasant tells him he could be a hero and directs him to a sorcerer. The necromancer tells the king he must go to the graveyard and cut a corpse down from the large tree on which the criminal was hanged. The king finds the corpse and cuts him down and carries him on his back to the sorcerer but on the way a voice from the corpse begins to tell the king a riddle and if the king knew the answer he must tell it or his head would explode in many pieces. The king asnwers the first riddle and the corpse flies back to the tree. The king trudges back to cut him down again and begins the trek back to the sorcerer but along the way the corpse tells him another riddle that the king, if he knows, must answer or else his head will explode in many pieces. The king answers the next riddle and the corpse flies back to the tree. This goes on all night with the king answering 24 riddles. Then the 25th riddle the king could not find an answer and with that the corpse is impressed and reveals to the king a secret. That when he brings the corpse back to the necromancer he will try to kill the king by instructing him to kneel down and lower his head so that the king can be given power over the world of souls and spirits but the necromancer will cut off the king's head instead and he will become the ruler over all the world visible and invisible so the corpse spirit told the king when the necromancer tells him to do this to ask the sorcerer to show the king how it is done and when the sorcerer bows his head the king would cut it off with the same sword and that is what is done. The corpse spirit in gratitude offers the king power over all the visible world and when he dies over the spirit world as well. The corpse spirit, in gratitude for the king completing the journey offers the king whatever his heart desires and the king simlpy asks that the 24 tales and his own story be handed down through the ages for all mankind and this is done.

Work this story around for a while and we will discuss next posting.

Fishing/Breadmaking

There is a wonderful paradox in going on a fishing trip with a group of men. So much energy goes into fishing which is symbolic of delving into the unconconcious. Yet so much resistance to actually learning anything. The alcoholic drowning that takes place seems an attempt to shut feelings down suggesting that there is a tremendous amount of energy that is captured during sobriety that has no outlet. There is no learning that goes on when drinking suggesting the only learning can come from keeping the opposites in tension and not releasing the tension artifically through drinking. So the fishing for "unconscious material" is in the ritual of casting into the water but there is no preparation for the ritual so the ritual becomes meaningless.

There is also the risk of violence particularly as men drink. The violence is emotional rather than physical but can turn physical. This is all in the absence of the mother as if in protest to the mother. We act like dogs more domesticated at home and wild when our wives aren't around. There is the odor of destruction with all the drinking and smoking and farting as if the mortificatio is serving some purpose. Maybe there is a misguided attempt to move to a feeling level but there is no mechanism for it and alcohol interfers with this movement rather than facilitating it. Perhaps we feel dead in the day to day workings of our lives, our domestic lives and we need to smoke and drink and fart to know we are alive.

I found myself, in the middle of this testosterone bath baking bread for several hours as in a frenzy. There seems to be some compensation there. The bread making is both feminine in nature and alchemical. It is time contained. You cannot rush through the process and there are no shortcuts. Perhaps the shortcut in drinking alcohol brings us to bliss but not by way of meditation. The breadmaking is feminine also because it is maternal, it comes from the mother realm, the realm of feeding and nourishment. The bread expands as in pregnancy. In alchemy it is both the process of sublimatio (expansion of air and "rising") and coagulatio becuase it is very earthbound. Earthbound and airbound at the same time. paradoxical. Fishing is time bound and requires patience. No shortcuts there either. Have to put in the time. Cardplaying is very intellectual. So we have gone from drinking solutio to breadmaking coagulatio and sublimatio to cardplaying which is sublimatio and trickster energy. Where is the fire? Ah the fire was there in the pit and was very high and seemed to be required as part of the experience. We have all four elements: fire, water, earth and air.

Infantilizing Lear

Act II, Scene IV is a remarkable turning point in Shakespeare's tragedy of King Lear. Having been disrespected by Goneril, Lear arrives at Gloucester's castle. There both Regan and Goneril work in a coordinated fashion to control and limit Lear. In his eyes he has given them everything, and they wish to return the favor by dismissing his retinue of soldiers and leaving him with nothing.

It is as though a small child is having his toys taken away by Mommy, or being told he need not order his own meal as a few scraps off of Mommy's plate will be enough. In this way, an amazing reversal takes place. Goneril and Regan are clearly the parents; Lear is the child.

But what kind of parents are they? They show little charm or compassion for the inconveniences involved in hosting Lear. Indeed, it seems as though they leap at the first opportunity to confine him, rob him of respect or dignity. They are frigid mothers, like smoothe, cold-blooded Medusas. If Lear is an infant in their eyes, he is one they are trying to abort.

Their role in the play seems to be to betray and destroy the literal father. Rising from the ashes of this destruction will be a truer, kinder better father (albeit briefly). But Goneril and Regan will not benefit from the transformation they help set in motion. Only Cordelia, who from the beginning seems to value the archetypal father more than the literal father, will get a glimpse of Lear the man.

Lear imagined his retirement as a comfortable nap in the laps of his grown adult daughters acting as mother figures. What he gets instead is a humbling confrontation with the true brutality of nature.

Like Hamlet, Lear's journey can be viewed as a passage out of the mother realm and into the realm of the archetypal father. In both stories, much has to be sacrificed in order to make the crossing. But both Hamlet and to a greater extent Lear face death as better men for having done so.

Parsifal and the Grail King

The story of Parsifal is the story of the differentiation of the real father for the archetypal father. On Father's Day it is appropriate to return to it. When a young man Parsifal, who is living with his widowed mther, sees five knights ride past him he is smitten with the desire to join them in their journey. So he leaves his mother whose name is Heart Sorrow and goes off to find the 5 knights. He has many adventures but never finds the knights. He does find a great knight living in the castle of Gournamond. The mentor teaches him to become a knight and instructs him if he were to ever find the Grail Castle he muct ask, "Who does the Grail serve?". After a time Parsifal meets a fisherman who invites him to stay the night in his home down the road. When Parsifal gets there he realizes he is in the Grail Castle. The Fisher King in in charge of the castle but the castle and its kingdom are poor and without food and in is in illrepair. The Fisher King got his name as a child when wandering the woods he came upon a spit upon which salmon was cooking and he touched the fish and ate of it. He never tasted anything so good but he suufered a wound in the tasting and the wound was in his thigh. He suffered greatly all his life but the wound would neither heal nor kill him. The King oversees the Grail which is kept in the castle but the power of the grail does him no good. He cannot touch it. The king and kingdom cannot be healed until an innocent fool (origin of Parsifal's name) eneters the castle and asks the right question, "Whom does the Grail serve?" Parsifal is bathed and brought to a banquet room wherein lies the Grail and a sword dripping blood but he forgets to ask the question and the next morning all, the castle, the king and Grail have disappeared. It is many years before Parsifal again finds the castle and is brought through the same experience to the Grail and this time he asks the question, "Whom does the Grail serve?" and he is given the answer,"The Grail serves the Grail King." The Grail King is the archetypal king or father and the Fisher King only the lord of the castle. When Parsifal understands the difference the Fisher King is healed and the kingdom becomes productive and nourished once again.

To discern the archetypal father and to access him within heals the wounding of the literal father, the lord of the castle. Until we can do that the king and the kingdom remain blighted in our eyes. Happy Father's Day

Lac Virginis

Virgin's milk. One of the liquids flowing into the Mercurial Fountain is the remedy for darkmotherscream. I didn't know. There it is hiding in the alchemical image all this time. The virgin's milk softens the dark mother complex. Perhaps that is the walk in darkness. But why virgin's milk. Perhaps the purity of image. The lack of toil with the real world, the profane, the lack of tainting by the personal realm. It is the archetypal realm, the soft white milk from the archetypal realm that softens the dark mother. When the father confronts the enchantress in Rapunzel he tells her of his wife's plight and need for the rapion from the garden. The witch softens and doesn't swallow him whole but gives as much of the greens as he wants for the price of his daughter. The softening of Sedna, the princess of the sea, by combing the lice out of her hair. When Hera finds Hercules in the field in a basket "exposed" she takes pity on him and saves his life, not knowing he was her mortal enemy. Hercules' mother, Alcmene, knew Hera would kill him unless she softened her dark side by appealing to her maternal side. The virgin's milk comes from our maternal side, when caring for ourselves we soften the darkmotherscream.

Separatio, Horatio.

So I'm breaking up with my personal trainer.

Granted, six weeks in, you can hardly even call it a relationship. But working out in the park under her direction has dredged up some interesting and unexpected unconscious material.

On the surface, things are good. I've made excellent progress. She has gotten me to endure things I would never have thought possible. Squats. Lunges. The dreaded jump-rope.

A few days ago, she and I had a sort of an emotional "check-in." Our six week package of sessions was coming to an end. She asked me how I thought I was progressing. And I said, "Physically, very well. But psychologically, I'm regressing." She was confused, and I told her that instead of developing my own will and determination, I was substituting hers. Looking for her approval.

She understood. She said I had come so far. That I was working so hard. That I made her proud and she was discovering that I was really such a good guy.

I was touched by her words. They brought a tear to my eye. Before I left that session, we verbally agreed to negotiate a new package of sessions.

But that night, I had a telling dream.

I dreamt I was on a couch, curled like a fetus. My trainer sat over me. Like a baby, I broke wind without thinking. She immediately disapproved, and I felt ashamed and embarrassed.

Through this dream, and I came to realize that by granting her authority over my body for an hour twice a week, I was in a sense abdicating my own responsibility for myself. I was making her into a mommy. She was in charge and I was along for the ride.

I thought about this dream, and then today I get an email from her.

She is doubling her hourly rate.

I had an instantaneous and deep emotional reaction. I felt angry. Hurt. Betrayed. I realized it was all projection on my part. By making her into a mommy, I was opening myself to the destructive side of the mother archetype, Kali, vagina dentata, darkmotherscream.

I thought of Hamlet's anger with Gertrude. She betrayed him more than anyone. So Hamlet had to break that umbilical cord. He did it roughly to give Gertrude a taste of the pain she delivered unto him.

But separation can also be smooth. My projection withdrawn, I sent a polite email saying I could not continue to work with her at the suggested rate, and that I had learned so much and would certainly recommend her to others, best, etc.

In truth, the money is largely the determining factor. But by ending the business relationship, I am also able to withdraw the projection and reclaim something of myself.

To lunge or not to lunge: that is the new question….

The Urge to Dissolution

The alchemical goal is to bring a reaction to a state of blackenss and from there the real healing begins. This blackness or darkness involves a tearing apart of the ego realm and a temporary psychosis in which we deal with real people and things from the perspective of a crazy person. It is here the archetypal realm spills into the conscious realm and there is "going to be trouble". But this splitting apart is required as in Rapunzel when she and the prince are banished and separated, one blind and the other destitute (but pregnant). Nathan Schwartz-Salant calls this the carzy parts of ourselves that break us apart so we can be rebuilt into a new perspective. Hamlet too goes through this blackness, in fact the whole of the play is his playing the role of alchemist adding ingredients to the story that is intended to drive it to blackness. We are often overtaken by this madness even in the light of day but the urge to dissolution is complemented by an urge to unite and the coniunctio is that alchemical phase which pulls it all together again sometimes over a cup of coffee.

Walking In Darkness

"Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost"
– Dante's Inferno

Last night, I was angry and did not know why. It wasn't hunger or fatigue. I suspect it had to do with my new exercise regiment. (I find that I am euphoric after a workout, but then if I am inactive for 48 hours, I get agitated and punchy.)

After barking at my wife over something ludicrously trivial, I decided enough was enough. I put on my shoes and went for on a long walk. At night. In Los Angeles. I walked north until my boil calmed to a simmer. Then I walked west until my simmer cooled to something near room temperature. At at that point I started home.

Los Angeles is a city with bipolar disorder. During the manic daytime, everyone seems fit and golden and healthy; by night, they are the living goddamned dead. Tattoooed, pierced, pale, skeletal, desperate, filthy. It is as though all the pretty Eloi are asleep, and the night is ruled by the dreaded Morloch.

I imagined getting mugged or worse as I passed every dark alley. I had $5 and an ID on me. Slim pickings for an urban criminal. How would I react? Was it foolish to take the walk at all, or was it foolish to walk in fear? Thankfully, the mugging never came.

I also thought of Dante's Inferno, of walking through a never ending landscape of suffering and horror. The imagination, in such a situation, becomes perversely intrigued to see how bad it can get. And I realized that the Inferno is a mental landscape, not a literal landscape. When we are angry or depressed, we see the world through filters that convert it into hell. And when we are happy, our perspective shifts and we find heaven in everything, like citizens of Oz strolling around with emerald green glasses.

When I got home, I measured my walk on GoogleMaps. It was 5.5 miles. I felt tired, but good. Alive and strong. Something had changed about my perspective. It was as though I had walked through the Valley of Darkness and, as a result, everything seemed brighter.

Hamlet's world is dark a the start of the play. His father is dead. His mother has betrayed him. And his death is in the cards. Claudius has usurped his birthright and will scheme to disinherit and kill him. That is his world. And he must change his perspective on his own existence to summon the father within and master his world.

When he returns from England, it genuinely feels like this transformation has taken place. He harbors no ill will, and can take up a sword with grace and gallantry. And when death comes, as all knew it would, he faces it boldly and beautifully. By the end, I like him. I forgive him all his dithering.

Maybe that's just how I see it now, in the bright light of a beautiful Sunday morning as I sit in a restaurant. And my porcelain coffee cup feels like heaven on my lips. And a three year old Korean boy looks over from the next booth to play peek-a-boo, a glimmer of Buddha in his shining eyes.

Ask me again after sundown.

Source of the Hamlet Story...

I found this at Shakespeare-Online.com...

Sources for Hamlet

Hamlet is based on a Norse legend composed by Saxo Grammaticus in Latin around 1200 AD. The sixteen books that comprise Saxo Grammaticus' Gesta Danorum, or History of the Danes, tell of the rise and fall of the great rulers of Denmark, and the tale of Amleth, Saxo's Hamlet, is recounted in books three and four. In Saxo's version, King Rorik of the Danes places his trust in two brothers, Orvendil and Fengi. The brothers are appointed to rule over Jutland, and Orvendil weds the king's beautiful daughter, Geruth. They have a son, Amleth. But Fengi, lusting after Orvendil's new bride and longing to become the sole ruler of Jutland, kills his brother, marries Geruth, and declares himself king over the land. Amleth is desperately afraid, and feigns madness to keep from getting murdered. He plans revenge against his uncle and becomes the new and rightful king of Jutland. Saxo's story was first printed in Paris in 1514, and Francois de Belleforest translated it into French in 1570, as part of his collection of tragic legends, Histoires Tragiques. Saxo's text did not appear in English until 1608, so either Shakespeare was fluent in French or he used another English source based on the French translation. Generally, it is accepted that Shakespeare used the earlier play based on this Norse legend by Thomas Kyd, called the Ur-Hamlet. There is no surviving copy of the Ur-Hamlet and the only information known about the play is that it was performed on the London stage; that it was a tragedy; that there was a character in the play named Hamlet; and a ghost who cried "Hamlet, revenge!"

In this version of the story, Hamlet's madness is a conscious charade executed to survive the situation. I wonder if the original staging played on this angle. Perhaps in our era, theater artists treat the story with more gravity than was originally intended.

Oedipus or Hamlet

Yes. Not only embracing the father but slipping a knife between his ribs I susupect is the archetypal demand. I am thinking that Hamlet is the modern version of Oedipus. Our delicate egos cannot accomodate incest and patricide so we invent an uncle to do the dirty dead. Yet the same requirement is there from a psychological perspective. We must kill the father and marry the mother. We cannot avoid that fate, Oedipus already tried. So Hamlet steps back from the drama and thinks he has a choice and that his choice is between the archetypal realm or the civilized realm of the ego. Its hard to choose so his hesitation caused many people to perish. You have to accept the burden of the murder.

In the attached alchemical plates the king has been killed by the son and the son takes his fathers blood to put on his own shirt symbolizing the need to take responsibility for his father's death. Then the son falls into the tomb with his father sacrificing his own life for the process. Hamlet fails to understand the need to own his father's death so himself must die. So he would rather die than grow up?

Hamlet's Father's Ghost

It appears Hamlet is prepared for his father's ghost to visit him. There is no doubt in his mind when told that his father's ghost was seen by Marcellus and Bernardo that this did occur and that he needed to engage him. This interests me. It is as if he is in the realm of the imaginal already and no preparation is required. He strikes me as one with little interest in the outside world up to this point. The prince who has been pampered is a puer aeternis being compelled to grow up and his father is compelling him. Dressed in battle garb his father demands Hamlet avenge his death. This call to battle is every father's call for his son. The call to battle through the mother realm to become an autonmous man. Yet when Hamlet first sees him he is not sure what to call him. Hamlet, King, father...in that order as if Hamlet himself is sorting out who this archetypal/hallucinated figure is. He uses his first name, first, as if he is thnks he is on equal ground somehow with his father. Then he wavers and calls him by his title, King, which also doesn't quite define his relationship and perhaps pulls it too far the other side and then settles on father which, like Goldilocks, feels just right. Again the number three comes up when Hamlet demands his friends swear not just once but three times to never report what they saw. Is this a little OCD on behalf of Hamlet or have we already moved into the archetypal realm where numbers have significance and demonstrates Hamlet's respect for and understanding of this realm? We know we are in for quite a battle not just between Hamlet and those in whom he expects to seek revenge but between the archetypal and literal realms. We are just moving out of the alchemical period in history and its imprint is all abound in this play. WE will have fun.

The Mercurial Fountain

We are the metals’ first nature and only source
The highest tincture of the Art is made through us.
No fountain and no water has my like
I make both rich and poor both whole and sick.
For healthful can I be and poisonous.
Above is the translation of the Latin inscription that is beneath the first alchemical plate of the Rosarium Philosophorum. This first plate depicts the Mercurial Fountain which represents the sealed vessel or vas hermiticum. All lies within including the opposites. C.G. Jung believed this vessel perfectly represents the analytic relationship. We will be exploring in our own way how the unconscious waters from the fountain interplay with our conscious lives. We will alos be exploring literature, philosophy and analytic writings to develope a deeper understanding of ourselves. Much like the alchemists.

The fountain depicts the three spouts of liquid which included the lac virginis (virgin’s milk), acetum fontis (vinegar of the spring) and aqua vitae (water of life). Also in the image are the opposites, the sun and the moon. We will be referring back to this image and others throughout this blog.

Vas Hermeticum.

The sealed vessel has been opened. But what lies inside?