Generative and non-generative ego development

http://youtu.be/IA_v096vric

This short video briefly demonstrates how the ego can develop in a more generative way when supported in its contact with the unconscious in a safe and measured way.  When the ego is guided and kept safe, it can navigate through life when unconscious forces would overwhelm or overcome it.

Silk purse, sow's ear, an archetypal exploration of the Feminine

My dear friend and colleague, Linda Albert and I, worked on the adage:  You can’t make a silk purse from a sow’s ear, to find out what message that might bring us from the Archetypal realm.  One of the premises of the work we do is that beneath what we think we know, there are objective meanings that deepen and enrich our understanding.  We took the adage and looked at it in the way we are training to read archetypal patterns.
We started with the the contextual:  when did the phrase arise, what were the conditions that it spoke to and then what is called the Manifest, what did it mean at the time and what does it mean now on the surface level.
Then we went through the adage word by word as we have learned to do and translate it into the two underlying elements:

1.   The psychological:  what would this say about a “dreamer” who had these images in their dream and what it might mean for them

2.   The archetypal:  what wisdom is the Objective Psyche expressing, what, if anything, is it compensating for, what is the message that we need to know.

The Contextual:
What we found was that this adage was first published in 1514 in England by British cleric and satirist  Alexander Barclay (1514) who said,  “None can make goodly silke of a gote's fleece.” This was follwed in 1611 by Randle Cotgrave, who wrote, A man cannot make a cheverill purse of a sow's eare.
And in 1659,  Jonathan Swift, also known for his satiric writing, is given authorship of this quote in its present form.  It also shows up in the 1800's in America and is extant and has energy to this day.  When looking at the history of early and late sixteenth century in Europe , it was clear that this was a time of unprecented change.  The beginning of the modern era, it saw a revolution in almost every aspect of life.  The century opened with the discovery of a new continent.  The renaissance in Italy was peaking, even arriving in England, which was then a backwater.  Life was largely prosperous for the average person, the economy was growing.  The mechanisims of commerce, systems of international finance, ocean going trading fleets and an entrepreneurial bourgeoisie were all building a recognizably capitalist, money based economy.  Geniuses were producing scientific innovations right and left.  Technological innovations like gunpowder were changing the nature of war and the military caste system of society.  The printing press created a media revolution.  It brought ideas, partisan rhetoric,how to manuals and, most importantly,  the Bible to the masses.
Contemporaries viewed the Reformation as the most earth-shattering change in the century.  The cultural consensus of Europe based on universal participation in the Body of Christ was broken.  This was never to be restored.  Along with that came challenges to secular society. It was into this setting that Barclay, who preceded the Reformation, intent on warning of the ills of change and wanting to preserve the power of the status quo and homeostasis of the old system, introduced this adage into the culture.
In England, Elizabeth,  co-opted the religious conflict and kept the culture from falling into chaos despite all the changes.  She become head of the Church of England, ostensibly organizing the country under neither a Catholic nor a Protestant banner.  With the ecclesiastic and monarchical power in her hand, Elizabeth both maintained a court and country where art, science and literature flourished, and which also gave rise to the Victorian period in England and eventually was the ancestor to our Puritan heritage. 

The Manifest: what it means on the surface
The most basic understanding is that you cannot take inferior material and make something of value from it. Those who would conserve the status quo were cautioning against the mixing of the classes.  The silk purse people, those with status and privilege, with treasure, did not want to see those resources fall into the hands of those who were close to Nature, who put their hands in the soil (who were lowly, unrefined, dirty).  Barclay saw people whose stations had once been more lowly as putting on airs as they began to share in the growing wealth and greater flexibility of the time. In this respect, it was a caution against thinking that you could actually change your nature and become refined when born into the lower, “coarser” classes.
When we break down the adage word by word, we get the following information.
You:  is a noun that denotes h the collective, the plural, and the individual.  This speaks to something that needs to be heard on all levels.  It is a command form to the ego and to the collective both.
Cannot:  Because this is a negative, we went to the denifition of can first:
Can:  to know how to, be able to, have the ability, power, right, qualifications, or means to…
Cannot: denying the right, extreme negation of ability, negation of probability, there is no possible alternative

·Prohibition (both externally and internally constellated archetypally evolved code)

·Caution and futility

·Lack of right and freedom (there is an authority greater than me that decides what is possible for me)

·Inhibitory (inhibits growth and integration of disparate elements) 

Make: actually requires agency, a someone or something that constructs, manufactures.  To make is to have something come into being from component parts, to bring into being from material that exists, transformation.  
So that the person, ego, collective cannot transform or create something into something else.  Material may or may be transformed into a different form, ie, iron into steel or material into a dress.   
Silk:  a material which is produced from the silk worm, it undergoes a process of transformation which required, in its inception, a tremendous amount of human energy to reel, spin and weave. It also involves the sacrifice of thousands of silk worms, all of whom die after they produce their silk and reproduce.  Because silk was discovered and exported from China, it speaks to a refined material from an exotic, ie: foreign place, which meant only the rich, the aristocracy and the nobility could afford to buy it, use it, enjoy it and flaunt it.  (The production of silk was exported to Europe as early as the 12 century, though European travelers and explorers became acquainted with it even ealier.  Silk still retains an aura of status and luxury to this day and continues, on the whole to be more costly than other materials.)

Purse: a purse is a container, thus a symbol of the Feminine.  It holds treasure,  gold, identity, and all other items that one carries to symbolize the self.  It is a uterine and a sexual organ symbol in a refined form.  Purses were used first mainly by men of the aristocracy and nobility as a way to demonstrate their status, power and wealth. 
From:  the starting point of an initative  - where something originates, used to express removal or separation in space, time, order, etc.

Sow:  the female of swine, an adult female hog, used for breeding,food for many, considered unclean and it’s flesh is forbidden by others, lives in mud, can be vicious, capable of eating her young, and someties is a lovable image in literature as in Charlotte's Web or an evil image in Lord of the Flies.  Most importantly, the sow is  also a symbol of the Great Mother, Demeter, the instinctual nurture, the terrible devouring mother who also gives birth, the symbol of all things:  birth and death, creation and destruction, the sensual, sex, dirt, feces, afterbirth, blood, gore, and all things beautiful as well. 

Ear:  the ear is an organ of perception, of hearing and listening.  A dismembered ear can no longer function to connect to awareness or consciousness (whether human or other).   And as we have seen, the sow is a symbol of the instinctual realm.  A sow’s ear, once severed from the body is useless, not only is the animal/body dead or dismembered, what is left behind is only a remnant which is considred of no value.  Today, pigs ears are sold as dog treats.   .

The Psychological:  what this means to aperson who has this image in their dream.
On the one hand, this is an expression of a complex in which the ego/self believes that they can never become/have or be the silk purse which contains treasure, which is refined and succesful in the world.  Beneath this complex though is the psychic reality that that the ego cannot hold the tension between the polarities of the Good and the Dark Mother and bring the psychic energy of the Dark Mother into awareness because the organ of perception has been severed from the source.   Both the collective and the personal have repressed, devalued and dismembered the instinctual and relegated it to the unconscious realm,  where it becomes contaminated with the unconscious elements.   As long as the sow’s ear, the world of the Dark Mother is rendered useless and unreachable, the silk purse, the container which hold’s the self’s treasure cannot come into being.  The dreamer needs to know that they have not only lost the connection to that realm, but that they reject the value in the sacred/sensual/dark realm that is part and parcel of the whole.  Without access to that world and awareness of its utility in an of itself, the ego will not find it’s treasure.   While it is totally accurate to say that you cannot take material from one realm and turn it into another for which it is not suited, it is also true to ask the dreamer what they devalue in themselves, what are they cut off from that has energy, depth and meaning.  The issue is not to transform the one into the other because that cannot be done, but rather to explore what is being inflated in value (the silk purse) at the cost of deflating the other value (the sow’s ear, the symbol of the rejected feminine, which includes creativity, sexuality and instincual life).   

The Archetypal:
On an archetypal level it seems clear that we are dealing with the archetype of the Feminine  - the symbolic womb nature of the image of the silk purse and the sow – at least with ear attached - seems to support that conclusion. In Neumann's “The Origin and History of Consciousness” we find that when the great Mother is turned into the Harlot from the Sacred Prostitute, the vessel of fertility, “the great reevaluation of the feminine begins its conversion into the negative, thereafter carried to extremes in the patriarchal religions of the west.”  He also says that  wherever there is prohibition of eating the flesh of the pig and the pig is held to be unclean, we may be sure of its originally sacred character.  By cutting off the sow's ear, we see her sacred energy snuffed out, and the further separation from her original sacred nature. 

When the instinctual, fearsome aspect of the feminie is thrust into the background,  only the picture of the good Mother is retained in consciousness, her terrible aspect is relegated to the unconscious.  This has resulted in the development of the original archetype of the Great Mother into that of the virgin and the whore. 

The point in not trying to make one into the other is this:  when one part of a whole is denigrated, disowned and stripped of it's sacred energy, it goes into the shadow or must live deep in the unconscious where it either cheats everyone of it's gifts or wreaks havoc on us as it is projected out or acted out without conscious collective or personal choice.  Both the masculine and the femine – both men and women – and the Mother earth who shelters and feeds us and the masculine that seeds the earth, suffer under this fragmentation and lack of partnership between a whole feminine and a whole masculine. 

So the reason you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear is that it will cause suffering and corruption of the archetype.  It's not a matter of turning one into the other, but rather of honoring both and holding the tension of the opposites consciously where we have choice rather than being playthings of those gigantic forces. To honor both equally in order to find that transcendent third.  That which lies in the unconscious must be approached with respect, awe and fear.

In much the same way as the psychological, this wise adage from the Objective Psyche tells us that indeed we should not attempt to approach the Black mother as though she were base and turn her into the Good Mother. Not only is it impossible, we should not attempt it.  The cautionary edge of the adage is clear, don’t do it because it cannot be done.  Humans cannot engage the Dark Mother, the voracious appepites, the destructive tendencies and sanitize them.   What is called for is a deep appreciation for both and an understanding of the costs incurred by the Psyche when one aspect is kept in the unconscious.  The goal is not to try to transform but to bring into consciousness those aspects that will erupt into our personal and collective lives because they are kept in the unconscious.  Another way to look at it is that which has been killed off cannot be transformed.

 

Hummingbirds

There are two crucial elements to translating an image objectively.  The first is to understand that Psyche provides the image with a high degree of specificity.  It's not any snake that appears in a dream.  It can be a garter snake or a boa constrictor and they are very different from one another.  


The other element is to look at the way the image functions in Nature.  What is the innate, normal, and natural development in each image?   Does the image conform with Nature or does it go against Nature?  I was really taken by these two elements when a friend provided me with an image from a dream.  The fragment of the dream that remained was the image of a hummingbird held in the hand.  The dreamer could clearly see the hummingbird's breast in the palm of the hand and it seemed to still be alive.

Now, it could be easy to say things like how wonderful it was that the bird allowed itself to be held so intimately, that there is such a natural connection between the dreamer and this beautiful bird.  And that may be so. 


However, my training is to look at the image from the point of view of what would happen in the natural world.  It is a great temptation to pick up a wounded or sick bird and bring it inside and care for it. The danger to the bird is that human contact makes it likely that it will not be accepted back into the flock.  Some birds actually nest on the ground and picking them up takes them from their habitat.  Either way, it also points to the human inability to accept that some things don't make it, some birds die, some birds are protecting their young, and human interference is about human needs and not the needs of the bird.


The next thing to look at is what are the main characteristics of a hummingbird.  It is a solitary bird that is designed to pollinate nectar-producing flowers, it has the fastest heartbeat of all birds (and maybe all animals?) and its wings beat so fast, it seems as though they are staying still.  They are a highly specialized bird, its beak perfect for inserting into the flower for the nectar.  In mating,  the male only fertilizes the egg and leaves the female and the young because to stay would  put them in competition with one another for the nectar.  Hummingbirds can navigate in all directions, including backwards. This is some kind of fantastic avian!


But this one is lying breast up in a human hand.  It is completely exposed and seems to be dying.  Something had to happen to make it still long enough to be picked up, after all!  On further research, I found the most amazing fact:  when the nectar supply is too low or the temperature is too low, the hummingbird goes into torpor!  It just stops.  And when I read this, I understood that the most basic of needs for life support were not being met.  This bird was telling the dreamer something important.  


We know some things about birds in dreams; they are the messengers of the Spirit, they can traverse heaven and earth, they are the mediators of two realms.  We also know that animals in dreams represent the instinctual life.  What I got from this amplification is that the dreamer has to pay attention to feeding instinctual basic needs.  To ignore them puts the dreamer into a torpor that could mean death of something vital, necessary and unique for both the self and the world.  If the bird can no longer fly or feed, flowers do not get pollinated, the dreamer's destiny cannot be fulfilled.  


I welcome any comment or insights that I have missed.  

Dream Pattern Analysis

I recently completed a Dream Pattern Analysis certification process that changed the way I view and work with dreams, images and symbols. According to Jung, Conforti and others in the analytical community, the Psyche expresses itself in images and symbols that are universal and unchangeable by human experience. The Collective Unconscious or the Objective Psyche, that which is the matrix of existence seeks to express itself in meaningful ways for the individual. Each image has to be looked at for its specific attributes, proclivities, way that it behaves in the natural world. Depending on the context, we can accurately translate the meaning from the image if we stay with the image. The problem is that we cannot always understand what we are being told because the images seem too chaotic and subjective: we ascribe our own personal meaning to what we experience. There is really nothing wrong with associating our experiences to images and symbols, but we can truly miss the mark if we stay with what we think we know versus really looking at what the image really is.

For example, if a snake appears in your dream, we can make any number of associations with snakes. Freudians will assume it is a sexual allusion to the male genitals, others might go with the meaning of transformation or healing. But if we look at the snake and begin to ask questions about the snake, we might find out that the snake is a garter snake in the garden and not a boa in the bedroom. There is a huge difference between the two. The first is a natural occurrence which is consistent with how things are and the other is a dangerous situation which does not occur in the natural world. The context of the garden tells us that we are in nature, that snakes belong out there and that garter snakes perform an ecological function. All is well. The bedroom, on the other hand, is a person's most intimate space, not only for intimacy with a loved one, but where one goes to sleep, to re-charge, where one is the most oneself away from others. A boa constrictor not only does not belong in a house, if it is there, it is saying that something very dangerous that could crush and devour one has entered one's psychic space. The appropriate response to that is to run! And then ask the question: What is in your life that is so dangerous, so close to you that can obliterate you? In addition, we would want to look at the dreamer's response to the boa. Are they aware of the danger?

In this case, we could ask what one's feeling about the boa is in order to determine whether the dreamer has an appropriate attitude toward the image or if it is dissonant. If the dreamer says something like a boa is an incredible exemplar of power and potency, they might want to see the boa in the bedroom as a symbol of their own power. What is missed is that a boa in bedroom represents extreme danger and would point to the dreamer's naivete when dealing with others in intimate spaces who pose a real threat to the dreamer. In addition, it could also point to the dreamer's illusion that they possess those attributes to compensate for a sense of powerlessness. The rest of the dream would provide more information.

On the other hand, if the dreamer says that boas are dangerous and that they were scared of it, that tells us something different. Since they are not ignoring the danger, then we would want to look at what is in their lives that they know is dangerous and needs immediate attention.

There are many other aspects to this image as well that would reveal more about the dreamer's life. Questions to ask would be: what does the dreamer do when she/he sees the snake? What happens next? how does the dream end?

This is a very beginning look at how I am learning to approach dream images or any image that comes up in counseling sessions. Since images are the way that Psyche communicates, it is a good idea to get as close to the objective meaning of the image as we can. When we research how a particular image actually is in the world, a bear, a bee, a shoe, a glass, we can come very close to the meaning it holds for the particular person at the particular time. If there is a bear in the winter eating honey, we know that something is off! Bears hibernate in the winter and there is no honey. So why this image? Is the dreamer engaged in something where the timing is way off and the resources are missing?

This way of approaching images is exciting and exacting work. It takes time and discipline and curiosity. If you are interested in learning more, go to assisiconferences.com