Hi all,
Here is an important interview. Jon Wilson interviews John Woodcock on
the subject of therapist as shaman, the subject of John's new book. Here is
the link:
On the Couch with John Woodcock PhD (substack.com)
Russ
SATURDAY’S MEMORIES
Russell Lockhart
In the dream, I was working on a new project. It was a weekly letter to be published on Saturday’s and entitled, Saturday’s Memories. The content was to be focused on writing, in some detail, about a memory that had come to me during the week. This dream has sparked a desire to do what I was doing in the dream. So, I will begin next Saturday and post my comments on whatever memory visits me in the coming week. [10.06.24]
With great excitement, the C. G. Jung Society of Seattle announces the launch of an online monthly seminar with Dr. Russell Lockhart starting September 18th from 10 a.m. - 12 p.m., Pacific Time.
Based locally in Everett, Washington, Dr. Lockhart—Jungian analyst, trainer, writer, editor, and publisher over more than 50 years—has generously offered to share his extensive Jungian knowledge with participants using a question-and-answer format. To begin, he plans to focus discussion on the Red Book, imagination, and dreams starting with his essay “Appassionato for the Imagination” (available to members only here: https://jungseattle.org/learn/members-special-collections/ ). In this essay, Dr. Lockhart connects the Red Book with Jung's perspective on modern art and his insistence on the reality of "Other." He then asks” for us today, "How...and in what way, can The Red Book be a guide?"
This drop-in discussion group is in addition to our newly published Archives of the Writings of Russell Lockhart, located on our website in the Members' Dashboard. No prior knowledge, experience, or previous participation in the group is required. Please join us and sign up by clicking this link: https://jungseattle.org/connect/become-a-member At the site, click on “Join Today.” The Archive and the Seminar will be available only to members.
The Re-Education of Eddie Morgenstern
A Novel
Russell Lockhart
©2024
Preface
June 28, 2024
I had a dream last night: I saw the title page of my new novel. The title is The Re-Education of Eddie Morgenstern. This may have been inspired by a novel I have been reading, written in first person (something I've never done) by Freida McFadden. She is now a top-selling novelist. As I read it, I felt strong impulses “to write” in first person—in this case, to write from Eddie Morgenstern’s point of view.
Before writing anything, I asked artificial intelligence (on the co-pilot platform) what it knows about this title. Here is AI’s response:
It seems there might be a mix-up here! The film you’re referring to is titled “The Re-Education of Molly Singer,” not Eddie Morgenstern. Directed by Andy Palmer and starring Britt Robertson, the movie follows a young lawyer who goes undercover by enrolling as a freshman at her old alma mater to help her boss’s awkward teenage son.
So, I guess AI doesn't know about my next novel even though my dream intelligence does. This sparked an impulse to write an essay on DI on the theme of dream intelligence in relation to artificial intelligence.
Then I told AI: The Re-Education of Eddie Morgenstern is from a dream.
Copilot responded.
Ah, I see! Dreams can be fascinating sources of inspiration. Let’s delve into the dreamlike world of “The Re-Education of Eddie Morgenstern.”
The Re-Education of Eddie Morgenstern
In the hazy twilight of Eddie Morgenstern’s subconscious, reality blurred with imagination. The edges of his existence softened, and he found himself in a place that defied logic—a school unlike any other.
The corridors stretched infinitely, their walls adorned with chalkboard equations that whispered secrets to those who dared listen. Eddie wandered, his footsteps echoing through the empty halls. Each door he opened revealed a classroom where forgotten knowledge danced like fireflies.
In one room, ancient philosophers debated the nature of existence. Socrates scribbled proofs on the blackboard, while Confucius sipped tea and pondered the meaning of virtue. Eddie sat among them, absorbing wisdom that transcended time.
Down another hallway, he stumbled upon a library with books that pulsed with energy. Their titles shifted—Quantum Mechanics for Dreamers, The Art of Levitation, Navigating Parallel Universes. Eddie reached for a volume titled Dream Syntax: A User’s Guide, but it slipped through his fingers like smoke.
And then, at the heart of this dream-school, he met the enigmatic Professor Hypnos. With eyes like constellations, Hypnos taught Eddie the language of dreams—the syntax of starlight, the grammar of moonbeams. Eddie learned to rewrite his own narrative, to unlearn and relearn.
As dawn approached, Eddie stood at the threshold of awakening. Professor Hypnos whispered, “Remember, Eddie, reality is just a dream you’ve all agreed upon.” And with that, Eddie stepped back into the waking world, carrying the echoes of forgotten equations and the promise of re-education.
Whether Eddie Morgenstern’s dream becomes a novel or remains a secret whispered to the night, it’s a tale worth exploring. If you’d like more glimpses into this dream-realm, feel free to ask!
For now, I have no feeling or enthusiasm for following up AI’s version of the novel. Instead, I’m going to hand over the project to Eddie Morgenstern and see what he comes up with.
CHAPTER ONE
Welcome, reader, to The Re-Education of Eddie Morgenstern. Being Eddie Morgenstern, you might except that I would know what this “re-education” thing is about, but I don’t. And, most likely you don’t know either. Keep in mind that the whole idea came from another person’s dream. I haven’t an inkling how or why this applies to me. So, on impulse, and with some curiosity about the so-called “wisdom of the crowd,” I have set up an e-mail address so that you can write to me. Even if I am blank-minded maybe you have an idea, a fantasy, an intuition, or even a dream about what is afoot. If so, jot it down and send it along to:
[Copy and paste in your mail program]
I won’t promise to use anything you send but I will promise to read every word that you send, and consider its possibility of inclusion. I’m a great believer in inclusion and including the reader in the writing of my novel is a good example of this.
Besides, I don’t want to do this all by myself. I have done enough things by myself. Maybe this impulse to include others is part of my re-education. I like that idea! Though it was not my dream that started all of this, I respect the dream and intend to take it seriously. So, I do not know what my re-education might be; I am wide open to suggestions no matter how real or fanciful.
So, let’s begin. Send me something to work with and I will work to open myself to whatever presents itself, to whatever comes along.
Medical issues and age (86 in November) have made slow a necessary part of my daily life. I mean really slow. I have worked hard to accept this inevitability. Still, it is difficult to feel the increasing estrangement from the world's increasing addiction to speed. I find less and less valuing of slow at any level. But when I do, I find myself savoring it like a slow-cooked meal.
I have recently stumbled across a book that I am now reading. The title is The Art of Slow Writing by Luise DeSalvo. While I used to enjoy reading fast, that is no longer the case. So, I am reading this book slowly, very slowly. Early on she quotes from a poem by Eve Merriam: "It takes a lot/of slow/to grow." I've taken this up as a mantra.
I did not want to wait until I finished this book to alert you to it. But from what I have read so far, I recommend it highly.
COMMENTS ON RAL’s “What is the Value of Asemic Writing”
Paco Mitchell
Russ, What a fascinating question: Whether dreams are asemic or not? How about both? Yes and
no? Looking forward to reading what you come up with.
Meanwhile, I am wondering whether there may be an asemic assumption “built in” to the
prejudicial idea that only humans can write. I don’t KNOW that for a fact, but as I mull over
your post, I am reminded of one of several powerful HERON DREAMS I had over the years.
I want to tell that dream here, in case it will give us more to speculate on the question of
“animal speech.” I have long since thought that animals, especially birds and mammals, have
languages. This dream dates from at least half a century ago:
SPEECH OF THE SWALLOWS DREAM
I see two swallows sitting on the “telephone” wires running into my Blue Heron Foundry
building. [In actuality, at the time of the dream in the late 1970s or early 1980s, there were
two telephone cables running into the foundry building.] The swallows are chattering away,
the way swallows do. I realize that I can understand the speech of the swallows. I know what
they are saying. Furthermore, I can see the swallow-words spelled out in high relief. The
birds have their own archaic vocabulary. It corresponds to no human alphabet. What amazes
me is that the speech of the swallows is rendered in a never-before-seen alphabet, each letter
carved out of solid blocks of hard stone, like basalt. The “letters” are all about 30ft. to 40 ft.
high. It is an ancient alphabet that far pre-dates the earliest human alphabets (like
cuneiform, hieroglyphics, Hebrew, etc.)
I am stunned to realize that I can understand what the swallows are saying, in English
translation. I can also see, in the dream, the graphic representation of the “swallows’
alphabet.” I realize that I can understand both the “stone-carved original letters” and the
English translations thereof. As I begin approaching the waking state, I try to decide which
image I will carry into consciousness with me. When I wake up, I can no longer remember or
visualize what the 40-ft. stone letters are, nor can I remember the English translation. [End of
dream.]
The implicit idea in that dream was clear: Swallows—and therefore other birds and
animals—have their own forms of speech, which apparently involves having their own
“alphabets.” Would it be, perhaps, an “asemic alphabet”?
Did the tiny swallows themselves—Masters of Graceful Flight and Beauty, sacred to the
ancient love-goddess Aphrodite—carve the monstrous-sized letters in stone? If not, then just
who did carve them? I admit, I have no trouble at all assigning formidable powers to those
sacred birds. But the sheer size of the letters, and the obdurate material of their realization, set
me back on my heels in amazement.
"Are dreams asemic?" Such an amazing provocative question, Russ. Has it ever been asked before? I am thinking that this question, given by psyche, is quite different from the neurobiological stance today that dream are meaningless. This dominant stance simply leads us away from dreams and towards our collective fate. But psyche posing the question draws us deeper into the nature of dreams. Much to ponder, thanks!
As analysts, we have to take each and every dream as asemic. As Jung said, we do not know what a dream means. But the dream itself seems to find its way to meaning. We should not, as helpers, ascribe meaning to it. The dream has a way of creating meaning. We must notice, we must do our best to see the untying of the massa confusa. This is totally anathema to AI, incidentally. “Analyzing” a dream has gotten away from its original meaning. “Analysis” comes from the Greek prefix “ana-“ which comes from the notion of “against” or “un” as in the idea of doing the opposite of what the next part of the entire word implies. The etymology of the last part of the word “analysis” is “-lysis.” Its root comes from the words related to “tying up” or “bringing together,” as in an elision, a liaison, a ligament. So an “analysis”has to do with pulling apart what has been tied together. As when a complex balls up the messy neuroses that shows up in dream imagery.
It is only the feeling that there is an inherent meaning already, brought in the dream as an asemic display. The meaning finds itself. There is an accompanying feeling that attends asemic dreaming. It is that sudden knowledge that there IS a meaning and that when it is untied, the mass of threads, opened just enough to see the components that give what seems like nonsense, a deep feeling sense.
I just woke up to a dream or the first thought or the words that spring into consciousness right out of sleep.
It was this verbatim: “Artificial Intelligence has no possible way of enduring Negative Capability.” Those were the words.
AI’s sole purpose is either to find or to inject meaning non-organically into a given situation. So dreams MUST be interpreted logically in AI. Asemia must never exist there because it cannot be explained and tolerated. AI has no ability to “wait” withOUT explanation, without “making meaning” immediately, or as the 19th century poet, Keats knew so young and so well, “without any irritable reading after fact and reason.” What does AI know what the psyche wants to mean? Nope. We must be in WuWei, the Asian concept of “waiting” for the meaning, in the conscious tension of being at home in opposing forces. In Negative Capability. If you have not yet caught on, this was what Jung first understood what alchemy was. The ability to be in the unknown, to observe, to wait, for what the psyche wants, not what the intellect wants post haste, and for the psyche to be the active motive in observing the transcending and uniting experience that arises without my mind, without my intellect, and to submit to the answer my Unconscious wants. We must have patience. We must be pregnant with this tension to begin to move into a new “matrix,” a word that derives from”mother” “matter” and “womb.” To be born absolutely organically from tension to a NEW matrix. Always a new womb from which we must constantly be born from and into yet another matrix. This is how we learn. We get curious. We are, as Jung said in the Mysterium, “compelled” to know new things. Either by a “mere interest or by compulsion proper.” Check my quote. I just woke up, lying in bed and allowing my thoughts to chop logic, NOT to know.
It is not a simple task to let ideas live semi-consciously inside you. The unconscious has to prepare you for that Transcendent. Not a Hegelian “synthesis.” Not at all. It is state of the Tertium Non Datur, the Third or Transcendent not yet in existence. Not quite yet. It is the promise of some new position or understanding that is coming and quickening.
THIS is what defies AI. Asemia chops logic (with apologies to William James here). To be human often requires having no explanation or good answers. Or some meaning served up like the world’s fastest food, just to stave off the hunger of anxiety and of needing an answer fast. Now.
AI cannot tolerate the process of waiting for meaning. Asemic writing is in the right direction of allowing the unconscious to move according to its own purpose. And we cannot know that before we DO know that.
Today is the 63rd memorial of Jung’s death. Imagine, because you CAN, what Jung would have thought of this predigested meal, served up by AI. He would not very likely stand for it. And here we are, on the 63rd memorial of his death, grappling still with the questions Jung also grappled with, night after night, for years, being dragged by his ears into Asemia.
We must go slowly. Bring out the pen, the paper, the stamps. Snail Mail a thought. You will have to wait days, not nanoseconds, for the impact of your thoughts on another human being. Somebody please proofread this! I need a biobreak!
Depth psychology treats dreams, just as you say, Suzan, as being inherently meaningful (there is an inherent meaning already...). This inherent meaning has to be teased out (analysis) again as you say, and, yes we are not to ascribe meaning to dreams. What appears to be nonsense holds (hidden at first) meaning. But the concept of asemic is pointing to something radically different from all this, I think. There is no meaning to be (eventually) found or discovered. I don't believe it is a matter of dreams being inherent meaning "brought to an asemic display" so that it can "find itself", as you suggest above. If dreams are asemic, we probably have to drop current ideas of meaning, finding meaning, dreams as meaning, unconscious meaning etc. This what I find exciting! In my musings subsequent to Russ' post, I thought of Barnett Newman's "Zip" paintings along with Heidegger's "Contributions to Philosophy" which is his version of The Red Book, an almost crazy book. "Inception" comes to mind. There is huge interest at this time in how meaning itself comes to be! Not comes to be discovered but comes to be. "Spitting fissure" comes to mind. So this concept is very psychoactive for me in the light of my work on "the threshold", ie where the asemic action is... All the best, John
I was thinking about asemic writing, and I realized that some of my poetry (used loosely) really grabs images, and words, sometimes from songs, and puts them together, and they truly have no “meaning.” Though I might begin with a meaning in mind, when I let go of ego control of the outcome, something else comes about. What grabbed me just now in reading about asemic dreams, and thinking about those poems, is that while there is no “meaning,” there is no meaning needed. A “feeling,” is evoked. In this way it seems, though I may not find meaning, there is a feeling and the feeling seems to “know” and perhaps not “solve,” but relieve, express, or present something other that what the words themselves would define. My poems seem meaningless to me still, yet I can recall the writing and experience something being worked within me, and so I am fond of and thankful for them. I’ve only ever read two poems aloud to others on one occasion, and the reading evoked feelings in the listeners. Perhaps the listener might imagine a meaning but can never be truly certain. No resolution through meaning, yet something if not resolved, is moved. So too with my dreams. I can attempt to find meaning, but often the dream evokes deep emotion without the need of meaning, and seems to be communing with something within myself that even I do not know, but that I experience.
Asemic writing is writing without semantic content, that is, as the Greek word says, “without the smallest unit of meaning.” Like abstract painting, asemic writing is abstract, and any “meaning” is generated within the subjective field of the viewer. Asemic authors create myriad forms of writing that are deliberately empty of meaning, attempting to produce a “vacuum” of meaning that is then filled in by the viewer.
Why would an “author” do that? (see note below).
Asemic writing finds its home in literature, but it also finds itself considered an art form. Across various other categories of expression, it has become a global movement. It is a major question when producing an asemic work whether it is possible to create a work devoid of meaning. While the author’s intent is “no meaning,” the viewer's experience?particularly if something of the deeper psyche is triggered, will inevitably begin to fill the vacuum and this will be experienced as “meaning.” The asemic work is “created” as an art form, while the subjective response is “created” also. Is the subjective response (particularly if outside the conscious ego’s intention) also an art form?
It was this question I went to sleep with. In the morning, I woke out of the mist of sleep with the question: Are dreams asemic?
I’ll respond to this question in a later post. First, I must post a piece on how my mind recently has been taken up with the idea of favorites. I will do that shortly and try to articulate the relationship between “favorites” and asemic writing/art.
NOTE: A useful exposure to the forms, history, and current developments in asemic writing is available in Wikipedia under the title, “asemic writing.”
http://ralockhart.com
This is my main website and provides links to most of my online activities.
http://ralockhart.com/WP
This is my main blog with posts on all aspects of psyche and culture.
This site is for the fictive creations of Russ and Paco. Here you will find Fex & Coo, The Deathling Crown Lottery, The Ceilidh of Dreams, Not in My Nightmare, and other offerings.
http://owandhersonpress.website
This cite is for publications of the Owl & Heron Press division of The Lockhart Press. Here you will find links to Words As Eggs, Psyche Speaks, The Final Interlude, The Paraclete of Caborca, Dreams, Bones & the Future and coming volumes.
http://ralockhart.blog
In the dream I was working on a new website. It was intended, it seemed, to be a place for poems, art, music, readings, photography, and other manifestations of psyche that did not readily fit in the current sites.
This site is for access to The Paraclete of Caborca and for interacting with Paco in relation to this incredible book.
Archive of the Writings of Russell Lockhart
A place for all of my published and unpublished writings plus additional items. Watch for more details and access beginning Jung 15, 2024.
Owl Books
Russ will be donating and selling his professional library in areas of Jungian and psychoanalytic psychology, religion, culture, language, etymology, history, criticism, the arts, and other areas of interest. Watch for details beginning June 15.