This is a masterful rendition of The Sounds of Silence, most certainly a song for our times now more than ever.

A new resource from Aeon looks good!

If you treated your dream, not as property but as guest--

What a difference!

--Arlan Condon

When Dreams Become Real

Melville’s initial publication of Moby Dick was in three volumes released in London in October 1851. The text had been subjected to considerable censorship, and many manuscript changes had been made unseen by the author. In addition, Melville’s Epilogue had been lost and was not published. The Epilogue had made it clear that Ishmael had survived. Without the Epilogue, readers raised a chorus of protest. If there was no survivor, who was narrating the novel?

In November 1851, the novel was published in New York with the Epilogue intact.

The error in London, whatever its nature, is interesting from a psychological point of view. Readers experienced a complete disaster without the “comfort” of a surviving narrator.

As we enter the Sixth Extinction, with the distinct possibility that humans will not survive, the “error” edition of Moby Dick begins to add depth to a question I posed back in 1979: What whale does America pursue? 1

That article began as a review of Edward Edinger’s Melville’s Moby Dick: A Jungian Commentary. I said at the outset that Edinger’s commentary was “definitive,” meaning that nothing further need be said. Everything was clear, explained, understood. While I understood and practiced interpreting art psychologically, I was more interested in what art contributed to psychology. Edinger’s analysis, while brilliant and definitive, left me feeling “high and dry.” I wrote in the margin: …why am I so thirsty while reading this commentary about such a story of water and passion? I asked a lot of people about Edinger’s analysis. Except for one or two, all had read Edinger but not Melville. I found this dispiriting because analysis does not excite the imagination in the way art does. What happens in your imagination while reading Moby Dick, is the “fruit” of the artistic seed. That is when psyche gives birth to images that will guide and nourish.

Melville’s Ahab puts everyone in peril as he pursues revenge on Moby Dick for having injured him. If we think of much of the world as embodying Ahab’s revenge, what does this lead to? We can clearly see that profit and power are leading to the destruction of much of life in various forms, in its mad passion for “more.” If we think of Moby Dick as much of the embodying much of the spirit of life, then if we try to “do in” life, life will do us in instead. Thinking this way suggests that what underlies the massive juggernaut of profit and power is an injury, some form of trauma. This is no doubt why profit and power become severe addictions and seemingly incurable.

What is at work in the world today is incurable which is why it cannot and will not change course as it adds to the inevitable consequences of climate change, economic inequality, and a threat to life itself.

Like the London version of Moby Dick, there will be no Epilogue, no survivors to tell the story of our demise.

­------------------------------------------

1. Russell A. Lockhart. “What Whale Does America Pursue?” Los Angeles: Psychological Perspectives, Spring 1979.  

Yesterday, Greta Thunberg, the 16-year old climate conscience spoke to the world "leaders" gathered at the United Nations. She spoke the truth of what humanity faces more clearly than anyone: extinction, pure and simple. Listen to her:

In response, president Trump mocked her:

"She seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future. So nice to see!"

Here is what I felt after hearing her:

For Greta:
“The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb,
The leopard shall lie down with the young goat,
The calf and the young lion and the fatling together;
And a little child shall lead them.
Isaiah 11:6
As you know, this has nothing to do with a child leading adults as is often assumed. It has everything to do with leading the animals. Only the child has the wisdom to do this and in the coming time, it is this that will be crucial as a way to face the end.

I'm not expecting anyone to get what I am saying here. That's OK. I'll elaborate on this theme later. For now, let it be.

Belief overwhelms all; not just belief in God or any other

divinity--divine or human--but everything becomes mere opinion

while mere opinion becomes belief and belief supplants knowing

and unknowing turns its back on knowledge.

No way to test belief, nor any desire to.

Belief marries power and the offspring's smile

send chills among those who can see what's coming:

the Inquisition reborn, Torquemada lives again!

Reality, Susan Sontag observed, is ineluctable
But ineluctable has met its match, and the fire is lit
Ubiquitous addiction to hope prays for the Phoenix
But no one yet knows what rises from reality absconded
No one prepared for what is now creeping from the ashes
Look out for dreams without blindfolds, without earplugs
So you can see and hear what Yeats foretold long ago

There were no images, no voices, only awareness, an awareness that correction was underway, correcting all the damage that had been done by the world’s leaders in recent time. It was clear that this correction was not being carried out by persons, but by some implacable force. I did not have the impression that this dream was conveying this awareness in any personal sense. The dream startled me awake—a rare event. The experience was stunning, the impact leaving me breathing hard, disoriented.

The next night, the dream repeated, only this time with an insistence that the correction would be complete.

The sense that this was some personal “wish fulfillment” dream was ludicrous on the face of it and most every orientation I came up with toward the dream felt much the same way. All minor potatoes in relation to the intensity and breadth of the dream experience.

Finally, I felt that what I was being made aware of was a vast enantiodromia now underway. This felt as close as I was going to get to an “understanding” of the dream, though even this seemed paltry in relation to the experience itself.

To understand the meaning of enantiodromia, one needs to understand the meaning of dominant.

On a personal level, Jung used the term dominant primarily in relation to the psychological functions. If, for example, the thinking function was dominant in consciousness, then its opposite would be dominant in the unconscious. Over time, as the personality is urged onward in development, the conscious function resists this, seeking only further development of the dominant function. However, what happens is that the dominant function in the unconscious grows more powerful and eventually breaks through and overwhelms the conscious dominant. This is an example of enantiodromia, where the thinking function gives way to its opposite. This forces a struggle between these dominants to achieve a necessary balance and greater wholeness that is the hallmark of the process of individuation. Anything less subjects the personality to breakdown, reversals, illness, debilitating neuroses, addiction, or worse.

When applied to groups, culture, nations and large-scale processes, Jung used dominant to refer to the “spirit” of the time. Ordinarily, there are multiple spirits of the time, keeping the aggregate in some state of uneasy balance. However, periodically in history, a particular “spirit” will become dominant. This is marked by extremity of one sort or another, that goes way beyond the usual and normal. Extremity is psychologically dangerous because it unleashes unconscious processes in vast numbers of people that fuel further extremity. This is a cycle that builds up to explosive potentials that usually are catastrophic. History is the story of such catastrophes.

The trigger for enantiodromia cannot be predicted, but it always relates to extremity increasing to some point. The dream indicates that a process of correction, complete correction, is underway. The fact that such a process was not the result of persons, but some impersonal force, points to the potential for an archetypal shift, a change on dominants, is underway. If so, I want to be on the lookout for evidence of this. Such evidence will be the subject of my next post.

Cesar Sayoc sent crude pipe bombs to major Democratic figures. His aim was to threaten and intimidate, not to injure. He will serve 10 years in prison for domestic terrorism. A straightforward case.

In commenting on attending Trump rallies, Sayoc said, “It became like a newfound drug.” This struck me as a significant insight into the nature of Trump’s “appeal” to a large segment of the US population.

A new form of addiction.

Trump addiction.

Trump as drug.

Most anything can become an object of addiction, even a president. All forms of addiction begin in finding pleasure in something that relieves pain. This phenomenon of pleasure associated with the relief of pain develops craving. Because the relief from pain is short-lived, the craving becomes intense. Seeking the object becomes overwhelming and consuming. The addiction becomes entrenched when the person cannot stop the seeking. Increasing negative consequences do not break the cycle but increase the addictive process.

Most everyone has some degree of addictive process. Those most vulnerable to full-fledged addiction are those subjected to severe trauma. Trauma can occur at any time, even before birth. Pregnant women experiencing high degrees of stress will bear children that are vulnerable. Childhood trauma increases susceptibility to addiction. On-going life trauma of any form ensures that addictive processes will manifest.

If a Trump rally is a new-found drug, as Sayoc says, then the high frequency of Trump rallies serves as a drug supply. What Trump does at rallies becomes what Trump does in Twitter Tweets. The dailyness of this supply ensures ongoing addiction.

Rational attempts to dissuade the addict from the addictive process fail. The pain an addict seeks to relieve derives from the absence or loss of love. This is the root of the vast reservoir of trauma in our society and is why addiction of all forms is epidemic. The same is true of Trump addiction.

There is important reciprocity between Trump addiction and Trump's addiction. Trump had a severe traumatized childhood and the absence of love was striking. This serves as the basis for Trump's glaring addictive processes.

It is easy to have little or no compassion for the addict. It is easy to blame the addict. It is easy to criminalize the addict for crimes committed as an addict. It is easy to seek punishment for the addict. But we all know that none of these "easy" things will help the addict become free from addiction.

As far as I can see, there is no process at work to free Trump from his addictive behaviors. Nor is there any process at work to free those caught in Trump addiction. As far as I can see, everything at work at present only serves to strengthen the grip of these addictions.

The ravages to our system, to our institutions, to equality and to truth itself will continue. In one way or another, we are all caught in this web. Addicted or demoralized by the addiction of others we and everything we value is at risk.