In Which Jung prewrites AtD's epigraph

[Ian Livingston]

Jung plays prominently throughout Pynchon's opus. Think especially of
all the varieties of light in M&D. Some like to minimize his influence
on P., but the multitudinous allusions to J's work render dismissal
petty. It's easy to dislike Jung not only based on the overblown
industry of psychoanalysis in the last half of the 20th C (and Freud
on the same account), but also because of New Agers popularization of
a few of his more accessible ideas. That's just unfortunate. Some of
P's most generous metaphors find their lights in Jung.

But the literary Everybody seems to love Freud. Maybe that's because
he was so wrong about people, maybe it's because he smoked big cigars
and suffered sexual obsessions. "No one is smart enough to be wrong
all the time," so especially the most verbose may accidentally present
a useful idea. That certainly fits both Freud and Jung. Maybe Jung
just gets more readily dismissed because of his role in pop culture,
but that's precisely why I think P both embraces and lampoons both of
the analysis biggies.

Btw, while Freud's ideas are mostly absent from current trends in
psychology, a number of the tools Jung developed remain in play,
evolving as more information comes to light.

Just settling into a read of Spinoza. I've already begun to suspect
links there, too.

On Wed, Mar 14, 2012 at 4:47 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>  As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle
> a light in the darkness of mere being.
>                                                         ----Memories, Dreams
> & Reflections
>
> And in the afterword of which, by Siggy Freud hisself, he speaks of "the
> co-operation of chance"....
>
> A...and, in an anthology I read a page translated from Spinoza in which he,
> writing of young men going into
> the world, that some would risk "the inconveniences of war" over staying at
> home.
>
>



-- 
"Less than any man have I  excuse for prejudice; and I feel for all
creeds the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the
trust in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments
of darkness groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates
than the simplest urchin in the streets." -- Will Durant