Jung Pynchon

[Ian Livingston]

Mark Kohut wrote:

wikipedia: "Everyone carries a shadow," Jung wrote, "and the less it
is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser
it is." [1] It may be (in part) one's link to more primitive animal
instincts,[2] which are superseded during early childhood by the
conscious mind.
According to Jung, the shadow, in being instinctive and irrational, is
prone to project: turning a personal inferiority into a perceived
moral deficiency in someone else. Jung writes that if these
projections are unrecognized "The projection-making factor (the Shadow
archetype) then has a free hand and can realize its object--if it has
one--or bring about some other situation characteristic of its power."

Carl Jung
1958
"Beneath the social mask we wear every day, we have a hidden shadow
side: an impulsive, wounded, sad, or isolated part that we generally
try to ignore. The Shadow can be a source of emotional richness and
vitality, and acknowledging it can be a pathway to healing and an
authentic life. We meet our dark side, accept it for what it is, and
we learn to use its powerful energies in productive ways.

The text clearly links the year-long wait of the shadow as ending with
Metger's letter. Pierce's shadow side is now, from beyond the grave,
trying to bring about a situation by its power to do so....No wonder
innocent Oedipa feels 'exposed, finessed, put down'....



Yes.  Notice, too, that at the end of the chapter, Oedipa is
identified first with Rapunzel and then implicitly with Tennyson’s
Lady of Shalott, the Arthurian miss who wove reality, bound to her
loom in a tower by the curse that if she looked away from her work of
weaving she would perish.  The LoS is also the source for Agatha
Christie’s title, The Mirror Crack’d, the Lady sees her work only in a
mirror.  (Is this a subtle link to the later theme of mirrors as OBA
develops it in the Venetian sequences in AtD?)  The two elements,
Rapunzel and the LoS are then twinned in Oedipa’s personal tower,
“only by accident known as Mexico” and given explicit reference to
modern psychology in the line, “Such a captive maiden, having plenty
of time to think, soon realizes that her tower, its height and
architecture, are like her ego only incidental...”

The thing about the shadow is that, until we become aware of it, it
contains those elements of ourselves we consider somehow unacceptable
and therefore project outward into the world.  When those
characteristics then act upon us from without, they seem to work like
some dark magic.  Ergo, “...what really keeps her where she is is
magic, anonymous and malignant, visited on her from outside and for no
reason at all.”

Also remember that Psyche is feminine, acted upon by Eros.  The mind
finds unions, syntheses in the world and calls them objective reality.
 Oed is representative of the Mass, the middle, or, as it was known at
the time, the Silent Majority, which acted on the political scene like
an “anonymous and malignant” force.  Drawing American culture into a
morass of self-obsession, the ultimate foe of what those in the true
counter-culture were working so hard, so dangerously to enact:  a
pluralistic view of reality.

The shadow, light and darkness, and the union of opposites get a
marvelous workover in CoL49.




Reply
	
Reply to all
	
Forward
		
	


On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 5:58 AM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://media.www.loyolaphoenix.com/media/storage/paper673/news/2008/11/12/Diversions/The-Good.Woman.Of.Setzuan-3538712.shtml
>
> Brecht's The Good Woman of Setzuan:
> Combining the Shadow & Animus for practical living
>
> The setting is modern-day China, and three gods are searching for any
> sign of goodness left on Earth when they find a kind-hearted
> prostitute named Shen Te (junior Alyson Grauer) who overlooks her
> profit margin to take them in for the night. Her kindness is rewarded
> with a hefty tip, and the gods go on in pursuit of goodness, leaving
> Shen Te with the mixed blessing of moderate wealth. She purchases a
> small tobacco shop and begins handing out rice to the poor, but when
> deadbeats and derelicts start showing up and leaching off of her
> kindness, she realizes how difficult life as a small business owner
> can be. In order to cope with capitalism she dresses up as her male
> "cousin," Shui Ta, and begins taking charge. Shui Ta's no-nonsense Mr.
> Hyde balances Shen Te's charitable Dr. Jekyll, only emerging in her
> times of need.
>
> On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 8:46 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>> Three times the word shadow appears in Chapter one. > Carl Jung
>> 1958
>> "Beneath the social mask we wear every day, we have a hidden shadow side: an impulsive, wounded, sad, or isolated part that we generally try to ignore. The Shadow can be a source of emotional richness and vitality, and acknowledging it can be a pathway to healing and an authentic life. We meet our dark side, accept it for what it is, and we learn to use its powerful energies in productive ways.
>
>