It is with great pleasure that we present this special IJJS journal issue on the topic of ‘The Spectre of the Other’ in Jungian Psychology. The five articles in this issue were selected from the many excellent papers presented at the International Association for Jungian Studies (IAJS) Conference, held in Cape Town, South Africa in 2017. The conference was hosted at the historically significant Centre for the Book, now a unit of the National Library of South Africa, and previously the official archival centre for the Western Cape. Prior to being the archival centre, the Centre for the Book was home to Cape University, which is the ‘University of South Africa’ today. In these ways, the Centre is a space steeped in significant cultural memory and, thus, an appropriate container for the conference given the theme of ‘The Other’ and the discipline of Jungian psychology with its emphasis on the collective unconscious.
The Ceremonial Hall, at The Centre for the Book, and the location of the keynotes and various panels of presentations given at the conference, was modelled on the plan of the ancient Greek theatre with the central dome rising some fifty-six feet. With parallels to Greek philosophy and Greek oratorical significance in the city–state of Athens, including the festival called the Dionysia, the city of Cape Town is the location of the first public speech that ignited the beginning of democratic elections and a new era for South Africa, made by Nelson Mandela after his release from imprisonment during the period of Apartheid. Today, Cape Town is the seat of the National Parliament and a cosmopolitan city that, like many cities across the world, struggles with growth and prosperity alongside ecological challenges, economic disparities, and racial divides.
Along with the importance of the location of the conference being in Cape Town, South Africa, the African Baobab tree also bore significant meaning for the conference and the subject matter of ‘The Other’ being discussed. Depicted on this issue’s cover, and as the official image of the conference, the image of the African Baobab tree became our symbol of the evolutionary nature of humanity through its encounter with duality as well as the Jungian conceptualization of the process of ‘individuation.’ The Baobab trees grow quite large in height and width, and hollow out as they grow. Eventually, the tree creates an optical inversion, appearing upside down – as if its roots are at the top. The tree can be viewed as a metaphor for the duality (roots and crown) at play in the development of consciousness and culture. The hollowness that emerges within the trunk is symbolic of the liminal space that is essential in which consciousness and the unconscious connect in order to evoke the transcendent, thus furthering individuation at the individual and cultural levels.
In the liminal space of the conference, those in attendance considered the question of how we might understand the contribution Jung made with his psychology when applied to issues of ‘Otherness,’ an experience which is increasingly being grappled with in South Africa and globally. For instance, we pondered the question of the negative impact of such contributions on indigenous people and to those who identify as post-modern. We also asked ourselves how indigenous cultures and others, such as refugees seeking safety in various countries or people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT), have carried the shadow projection of non-indigenous people and those in authority. We questioned what has been the price for the shadow projectors as well as the ones who carry the projections? Do Jung’s theories of the Self and other core Jungian concepts, which he came to understand while in the midst of indigenous cultures, stand the test of time? Or, do they fall short due to not addressing political realities, such as European Colonialism, and, later in time, ‘Apartheid’ as well as our current political issues. As importantly, how do these theories and political realities interface with global expressions of philosophical and spiritual concepts or beliefs?
As we read in his works, Jung had a deep love of indigenous cultures and he described his trip to Africa in 1925 as a spiritual journey, which he associated with the Egyptian Horus Myth. Jung interpreted this mythic drama as depicting the resolution of duality (Horus and Set) and the emergence of consciousness, in which he saw parallels with his theory of individuation. In this development of theories about the mind and the Self through these mythological and cultural contexts, and even though he acknowledged the limitation of the term he used, Jung intellectually and conceptually colonized indigenous people with his notion of the ‘primitive psyche’ as being archaic and regressive when compared to that of the ‘modern’ Western psyche. In this way, the indigenous people of Africa, as well as indigenous people throughout the world, constituted an effective foil in Jung’s work and his conceptualization of personhood through the foil of the ‘Other.’ We might reasonably suggest that in this context, Jung harboured somewhat of a dichotomous reverence and patronization toward indigenous people.
What richness of thought and experience and, yet, what trauma was reinforced through Jung’s descriptions and dichotomous approach? To help answer this question, we look again to our image of the Baobab tree. Kalsched (2013) in his excellent book, Trauma and the Soul, discussed the Baobab tree, which appears in St Exupery’s novella, The Little Prince. In this novella, the tree’s poisonous seeds link it to non-creative traumatic intergenerational experiences. Kalsched used the tree to discuss the ‘deadening’ effects of trauma on the development of the self if it is not worked through sufficiently as well as its negative impact on future generations. Using this metaphor, those who gathered together in the liminal space created by this conference in such a profound location, sought to explore various understandings and actions that need to occur in relation to individuals and communities and to propose ideas for what needs to be worked through more sufficiently.
Within this context, we now invite you to consider these ideas and questions through the lens of these five papers.
McMillan’s article, ‘Jung and Deleuze: Enchanted Openings to the Other: A Philosophical Contribution,’ considers how much of Jung’s thought is echoed in and amplified by a consideration of Deleuze. The paper considers issues of repetition and time, synchronicity and ‘boundedness’ both in the macro and the microcosm. In ‘The Essence of Archetypes,’ Mills offers a philosophical and dialectical investigation into this foundational Jungian concept by offering a novel view of archetypes outside of their standard register, the collective unconscious.
Ulon and McCoy Brooks present their findings in the article, ‘Collective Shadows on the Sociodrama Stage,’ which describes a sociodramatic group exploration held during the IAJS conference in Cape Town, South Africa, 2017. They argue for the inclusion of social contextualization and group dynamics for a better understanding of the collective unconscious contained in personal as well as group identity. In ‘Think Outside the Box! Jung, Lévi-Strauss, and Postcolonialism,’ Nakajima critically interrogates the comparison of Lévi-Strauss’s structuralism and Jung’s theory of archetypes. He emphasizes the differences between the group dynamics of structural anthropology with its linguistic and semantic approach, and Jung’s individual psychology, with its emphasis on the mythological and imaginal.
Jutta Schamp, in ‘Whose Shadow is it? The Representation of Trauma and Creativity in Anton Nimblett’s, Ring Games and Sections of an Orange,’ offers an in-depth hermeneutic analysis of Nimblett’s short stories and their commentary on the traumatic impact of colonialism and neoliberalism on the subject’s possibility of creative self-realization.
Each of these articles in their own unique way, as well as in their points of convergence, invite us to deeply examine the question of the ‘Other,’ conceptually, interpersonally, socially and, germanely, given our field, intrapsychically. We hope they provoke the reader to ponder the ‘Spectre of the Other.’
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Marybeth Carter, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and a candidate in the analyst training programme at the C. G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles. She is an executive member of the International Association for Jungian Studies, a former Executive Director of California Coalition against Sexual Assault (CALCASA), and a past President of the National Alliance to End Sexual Violence/National Coalition against Sexual Assault. Marybeth holds an honours degree in Religious Studies from Indiana University and a doctorate from Pacifica Graduate Institute where she is an Instructor in the Clinical Psychology Programme. Her chapter, ‘Rape and Sexual Assault’ is published in The Encyclopedia of Global Social Issues and she co-authored the chapter, ‘Rape Crisis Centers’ published in Child Abuse and Neglect: Guidelines for Identification, Assessment, and Case Management.
Stephen Farah, MA, is the co-founder and head of learning at The Centre for Applied Jungian Studies South Africa. He is an executive member of the International Association for Jungian Studies. Stephen holds an honours degree in analytical philosophy from the University of the Witwatersrand and a Master’s degree in Jungian and Post Jungian Studies from the University of Essex. Stephen’s areas of interest include psychoanalysis, film, the philosophy of language, consciousness, individuation and the simulation hypothesis. His chapter ‘True Detective and Jung’s four steps of transformation’ has been published in The Routledge International Handbook of Film Studies.