Brain, Psyche, and Self: a Dialectic Between Analytical Psychology and Neuroscience

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BRAIN, PSYCHE, AND SELF: A DIALECTIC BETWEEN ANALYTICAL PSYCHOLOGY AND NEUROSCIENCE

A dissertation submitted

KESSTAN C. BLANDIN

PACIFICA GRADUATE INSTITUTE

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in DEPTH PSYCHOLOGY

This dissertation has been accepted for the faculty of Pacifica Graduate Institute by:

•ennis P. Slattery, Chair

Jennifer L.~Selig, Reader

(/tyjz Susan E. Mehrtens, PhD External Reader UMI Number: 3519792

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JANUARY 25, 2011

KESSTAN C. BLANDIN

2011 iii

ABSTRACT

Brain, Psyche, and Self: A Dialectic Between Analytical Psychology and Neuroscience

Kesstan Blandin

Although much of C. G. Jung's work is not compatible with neuroscientific methods or perspectives, his ideas on the structure of the psyche and self overlap with attempts to understand the phenomenon of a self in consciousness through mapping correlates with brain functions and processes. They are therefore appropriate to engage in dialogue with neuroscience. Through these dialogues we can further understand the construction of the self and identity in light of current findings in neuroscience and the theories of C. G. Jung, particularly the collective unconscious and archetypes. In this exploration we discover how the boundaries of the self in the imagination of the psyche are revealed as the horizon of the self in the brain emerges.

This dissertation employs a dialectic methodology with a dual-aspect monism and complex systems theory perspective. Dual-aspect monism understands brain and mind as different aspects of the same phenomenon, whereas complex systems theory holds that the emergence of the psyche is of unique integrity and relative autonomy.

Research on implicit consciousness and the right brain hemisphere indicates that the subjective experience of the collective unconscious is autonomous and thus outside the boundaries of the ego. Temperamental predispositions manifested through neurobiological profiles are analyzed through Jung's theory of typology, which is found to be the first subjective manifestations of physiological predisposition. A discussion of iv the role of experience and the external world is provided for balance and clarity in light of the self s construction through the interchange of brain, psyche, and experience.

The theory of archetypes is analyzed through a current dialogue within analytical psychology in light of an emergent perspective in neuroscience. Further exploration considers the role of memory as the bridge between neuronal functions of the brain and imaginative functions of the self. Primary conclusions are that identity is the mythic skin of the self, whereas archetypes are emergent symbols of the potential becoming of the self. TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1. Introduction 1

Statement of Research 2

The Dialogue 8

Fear of Reduction 16

Pathology and Souls in Distress 18

Essays on Definitions 24

Subject, self7Self 24

Identity, Ego, Persona 26

Provisional, Habitual, Conditioned self 27

Chapter 2. The Modern Self: Introduction to the Literature Review 29

Metaphysical Self. 31

Historical Self 35

Physiological Self 40

Fictive Self 44

Summary: The Clearing of the Research 50

Chapter 3. Methodology 52

An Archimedean Point 52

Dialectics and Interiority 56

Dual-aspect Monism 57

Delimits 58 SECTION I. THE BRAIN 60

Chapter 4. The Ground 63

The Collective Unconscious 64

The Evolution of the Brain: Phylogenetic 67

The Evolution of the Brain: Ontogenetic 70

The Limbic System 71

Prefrontal Cortex 77

Case Study: Borderline Personality Disorder 79

Chapter 5. The Other Within 91

Core Consciousness 92

Implicit Consciousness 95

Cerebral Hemispheres 100

Conclusions 109

SECTION II. FATE 113

Chapter 6. Temperament and Typology 116

Temperament 116

Typology 128

Chapter 7. A Confluence of Events 139

Biological Predisposition 140

Temperament and Parental Conditioning 145

The Other Environment: Social Adaptation 147

Parents and Culture 154

Public and Private Selves 159 vii

Conclusions 164

SECTION III. IMAGINATION 171

Chapter 8. Imagine the Archetype 173

A Continuum of Existence 184

Archetypes are Emergent 189

Archetypes are Numinous and "Not-me" 198

Archetypes are Subjective, Distinctly Human, and Transformative 200

Chapter 9. Memory's Cleave 209

Memory in the Brain 209

Imagination and Memory 219

Misattribution 221

Suggestibility 222

Bias 225

Memory's Cleave 227

Chapter 10. Psyche's Remainder 230

Self Memory System 230

Nodal Points 233

A Congregation 236

Archetypes Revisited 240

Mythic Skin 245

Chapter 11. Concluding Thoughts 248

Critique of Jungian Theory 248

Brain and Psyche: Structures of the Self. 250 Vlll

The Joy of Discovery 253

References 254

The style used throughout this dissertation is in accordance with the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6th Edition, 2001) and Pacifica Graduate Institute's Depth Dissertation Handbook (2010-2011). Chapter 1 Introduction

Identity has been a life-long fascination of mine, primarily because I wanted to be someone else. I remember the day that a favorite fantasy came into being: I was 7, alone and lying flat on my back against cool earth in the middle of a rhubarb patch. It was late spring in Vermont: a saturated, fragrant, and lush world of green, warm wind, humming insects. In my fantasy, I suffered a terrible accident that left me with complete and irreversible amnesia. I remembered no thing and no one. A tabula rasa. I would quickly move, as only a 7-year-old can, through the obligatory letting go of sad family members for whom I was as lost as my memories, and begin the glorious task of rebuilding myself from the inside out. Without memories, I had no evidence of known qualities or characteristics. I began from scratch. This took quite some time, and as I repeated the fantasy through the years, I would try on different qualities from people I admired like a

Potato Head doll. When my personality was rebuilt, I went about constructing new memories from my new life to gird my personality; sometimes pre-amnesia memories would reappear like ghosts. I would decide whether to keep each one or not, and how I would treat it, as though it were a guest. I relished this fantasy and told no one about it.

Although the construction of identity from the world is plainly obvious—family conditioning, cultural and historical influences—it is plainly not complete either.

Always, a navel of mystery remains; for example, why do people respond so differently to similar life circumstances? Even my siblings, who were raised with the same familial conditioning factors, in the same part of the country at the same time in history, incorporated those conditioning influences differently than I did.

Each self, it appears, does the same thing uniquely. 2

How did you come to be? Have you ever wondered how much of who you are has been imagined? Put another way, have you ever considered if who you think you are is somehow constructed or made up? And if this is so, who or what constructed you?

What aspects of identity can be reconstructed, recreated, or changed, and which cannot?

It is possible, and the current research posits, that our identity is a product of imagination as much as of physiological processes and conditioned experience. This dissertation searches into the nature of identity as an imaginative and physiological construction—a historical fiction. The intention is to deconstruct the literalness of identity—the certainty of who we think we are—by examining its construction in early experience employing an interdisciplinary analysis of neuroscience and Jungian psychology.

Statement of Research: Importance and Contribution

Western culture values self-knowledge, beginning with the Greeks and the examined life of Socrates and the Oracle at Delphi's famous dictum, Know Thyself, and this charge being taken up by centuries of philosophers. Still, Western culture, and

particularly American popular culture, has been accused of promoting a high degree of

self-involvement and even narcissism. Is research into the construction of identity

contributing to anything other than turning the gerbil wheel of self-absorption? Andre

Gide, in a famous reference, denounces self-knowledge: "Whoever observes himself

arrests his own development. A caterpillar who seeks to know himself would never

become a butterfly" (quoted in Nersoyan, 1969, p. 58). An ironic statement, indeed, for a

novelist and philosopher, one who must spend considerable time in reflective thought on

his own interiority and that of others if he is to connect with readers, a necessity of a 3 successful writer, which Gide certainly was. Still, it is a comment worthy of response.

Why know yourself?

The construction of subjectivity, a question that inquires into how we know at all

and therefore how we know the world itself, has been central to psychology and

philosophy for more than the last century. However, the 20th century has seen an

increased and compelling interest in identity in many fields, perhaps in large part due to

the dangerous and precarious state of the world and the essential role played by human

beings in creating this state. Scholar Nick Mansfield's description of the subjective

experience of the modern self reflects this precariousness:

Things and events are now understood on the level of the pulsing, breathing, feeling individual self. Yet at the same time, this self is reported to feel less confident, more isolated, fragile and vulnerable than ever. ... It is this ambivalence and ambiguity—the intensification of the self as the key site of human experience and its increasing sense of internal fragmentation and chaos—that the twentieth century's theorists of subjectivity have tried to deal with. (2000, p. 2)

We are torn between two poles of our own nature, a potential for both greatness and

great destruction. In our anxiety we ask, but cannot answer: is the nature of human being

essentially creative or destructive? The response to this question determines more than

the quality of the individual life; collectively our answers will determine humanity's

future. Jung emphasizes the significance of the self this way:

Nobody seems to have noticed that without a reflecting psyche the world might as well not exist, and that, in consequence, consciousness is a second world creator, and also that the cosmogonic myths do not describe the absolute beginning of the world but rather the dawning of consciousness as the second Creation. (1975, p. 487)

The research takes this opinion seriously. In an age of world wars, terrorism,

global violence and genocide, the Holocaust, and nuclear weapons, the significance of the 4 creative or destructive potential within individuals that comprise societies can hardly be overstated, nor does it need to be demonstrated. Therefore, a sound understanding of how identity is constructed that leads to an understanding of how an individual can intentionally participate in the evolution of her own being and potentials can reveal a horizon of possibility for human beings; a most significant threshold at any given time and particularly so in our moment in history where the largest threat to human life is the destructiveness of human nature itself. It is precisely because identity as the construct or filter of subjectivity determines the world that we live in at any given time, both individually and collectively, that serious thought into the nature and construction of subjectivity has been explored through religion, philosophy, psychology, and science for centuries, and why it is taken up again here. To Gide, then, I say, "Know thyself because thyself creates and destroys thy world and butterflies don't have nuclear bombs."

Jung was known for not being as interested in the psychic development of childhood itself as he was with the individuating adult psyche. However, his work is

peppered with statements as to the obvious significance of early experiences:

We know that the first impressions of childhood accompany us inalienably throughout life, and that, just as indestructibly, certain educational influences can keep people all their lives within those limits. In these circumstances it is not surprising that conflicts break out between the personality moulded by educational and other influences of the infantile milieu and one's own individual style of life. It is a conflict which all those must face who are called upon to live a life that is independent and creative. (1955/1967, p. 136)

Still, the vast majority of Jung's works are devoted to the transformations and expansions of consciousness towards wholeness through individuation in the second half of life. Further, Jung wrote significantly about therapeutic, clinical techniques and

theories as well as abstract, theoretical, empirical, and philosophical treatises on a wide 5 area covering the self, the objective psyche, and its archetypal processes, such as alchemy, myth, religion, and others. In the vast field of Jungian discourse, there are

Jungian clinicians, Jungians who are more interdisciplinary or humanities-based, and some who are both. One intention of the research is to further develop the links between

Jungian theory and the neurosciences outside of clinical practice or techniques.

Although a growing field of Jungian psychoanalysts contribute rich work to the dialogue between analytical psychology and neuroscience, there is ample room for a cultivation of the ideas between Jungian ideas of psyche, soul, and self and the functions of the brain and mind in neuroscience and cognitive psychology. An example is Jean

Knox's Archetype, Attachment, Analysis: Jungian Psychology and the Emergent Mind

(2003), in which she presents a revision and reinterpretation of Jung's theory of archetypes, a text designed for the psychotherapist and intended to bridge theory and

practice in those areas of overlap between analysis and science. Knox's text represents

the current work in analytic psychology establishing links between Jungian theory and

the neurosciences in that it is written by and for clinicians.

There are notable exceptions, however, to the lack of clinical integration of Jung

and neuroscience, such as Ginette Paris' Wisdom of the Psyche: Depth Psychology After

Neuroscience (2007). Paris claims her text has two voices: (1) an objective critique of

her field by a psychotherapist through which she draws a circle around the discourse of

depth psychology and makes a case for depth psychology separating from the sciences

and claiming itself part of arts and humanities, where it has always belonged; and (2) the

personal relation of her near-death brain injury which brought Paris "to test all the

theories against my own experience of suffering" (p. xiv). In order to accomplish this, 6

Paris turned to literature and the imagination. "It was so liberating that I began questioning myself: what if, all through my career, I had written my patients' case histories with the same literary attention that I am now giving my own experience?" (p.

xv). The research explores a similar theme in seeing identity as a historical fiction, that is, one emerging from the history of the body yet crossing over to be a story of the psyche.

A niche is carved in an under-represented area of the dialogue between Jung and science

outside of clinical perspectives but accompanied by a particular focus on the construction

of the psychic layer of identity, an object curiously born of the brain but psychic,

imaginative, and immaterial.

The research makes several basic inquiries: What is a depth psychological

understanding of how identity emerges from the meeting of biology and circumstance?

How does the nature of psyche, archetypes, and complexes influence or structure one's

storied identity? What is the distinction between identity and character? What aspects of

identity are of imagination? Essentially, the research turns an aesthetic eye towards

identity as it emerges in the interstice between the brain and experience.

Aesthetics in this sense is the creative, imaginative psychic process that produces

works of art, those objects which curiously represent subject and object. Art works are

the subjective, idiosyncratic expression of the artist, and as Rank (1932) argues, it is an

objective channel of the internal conflicts and wounds of the artist in the same way that

neuroses are the expression of the neurotic's internal conflicts and wounds. The research

employs this perspective with identity as well, that identity is an imaginative, aesthetic

working-through of internal conflicts that is at the same time subjective and objective.

Many influential texts have been written analyzing identity psychologically as a story and 7 making literary analyses of identity. Some of these texts are discussed in relationship to the research in the literature review below. The aesthetic lens that the research employs is distinct in that it does not see identity as a story, literally, comparing identity as a psychological construct to literature; nor does the research conduct a literary analysis of identity. Rather, the research understands identity as an object of an aesthetic process natural to the psyche, to produce an aesthetic object via the imagination. That is, identity is not held as if it were a work of art or an aesthetic object, but as an aesthetic object.

Identity is not like art as though art were something produced from a psychic process separate from the psychic processes that lead to identity. It may be clearer to say that art is an object of the identity process as identity is an object of the aesthetic process.

Joel Whitebrook, commenting on Michel Foucault's psychological conflicts from childhood, points to the aesthetic working-through of internal conflicts when he states:

The pertinent question, however, is not whether such primary experiences exist, for in important work they are almost always present. It is rather whether one remains "stuck in" them or is able "to think them through" and "go beyond them" in order to create works that can stand on their own merits. (2005, p. 316)

It remains to be seen if this current research on identity will have any influence on others outside of the dissertation committee and academic tradition it is written within, but it is clear that the topic is of great personal significance to

me because it is the site of my deepest wounds, my noblest efforts, and my

grandest illusions. My analyses, like Foucault's and those of many others who

theorize about the nature of the subject, are products and consequences of the

processes and truths that have healed me. This research is connected to my struggles and liberations from a negative identity, the personal wounds of 8 childhood, and the interpretations that sourced me. Although I do not propose complete healing that sees with absolute clarity through the veils of identity, nonetheless I have traversed enough terrain and pierced enough self-delusions to know the edges of transferences and projections I may have on the work. Again, I do not claim absolute clarity but rather the humble recognition that I am blind without my glasses, limited though they may be.

The Dialogue

The self is complicated; most people on this planet have a definite sense of self, and yet no one discipline can adequately capture its nature, essence, or even location. I do not even pretend to be able to offer answers to this conundrum, but will provide some initial explorations into the relationship between two fundamental aspects of the self: its subjective and objective realities. I bring together two fields of knowledge that exemplify the subjective and objective perspectives: Jungian analytical psychology and neuroscience.

It is not an easy conversation for several reasons, not the least of which is a mutually dismissive attitude of each field towards the other represented in a lack of interdisciplinary explorations between analytical psychology and neuroscience. The dialogue is incipient, yet growing, as evidenced in Pacifica Graduate Institute's graduate programs emphasizing somatic studies, including neuroscience and Jung. Yet we must keep in mind that Pacifica is a unique program with few peers. As for the number of

Jungian scholars beginning to explore the links between Jung and neurobiology, there are few again, though this number is growing. Yet, I believe an argument can be made that it is a necessary, or at least significant, conversation to broach. In declaring his intention 9 not to make too strong a boundary between the Naturwissenschaften, the natural sciences, and the Geisteswissenschaften, the human sciences, scholar Mark Freeman in Rewriting the Self: History, Memory, Narrative (1993), claims:

If there is anything that has served to compromise and diminish the discipline of psychology over the course of the last century or so, it is its persistent difficulty in accommodating adequately nature and spirit— broadly taken—into its scope, (p. 4)

In this historical separation, human nature has been distorted on both sides, as

Freeman succinctly states it: "Human beings ... are either reduced to objects like any other (which is to say dehumanized) or elevated into the status of the very gods they dethroned" (1993, pp. 4-5). In the various theories of the self, no one has come out ahead, no one has figured it out yet. This is not because "the various theories proposed to date are all wrong, but because many are at least partly correct. If this is true—and I believe this is the case—then the best way to construct a view of the self might be not to pit the various theories against one another but rather to synthesize across them" (LeDoux, 2002, p. 26). Current trends in interdisciplinary theorizing between science and the humanities support the premises held here: that not only can we do better in imagining and knowing human nature, but the reality of human nature will become clearer as we bring seemingly incompatible views into dialogue.

For most of their history analytical psychology and neuroscience have been exploring two different entities: the psyche and the brain-mind. The psyche and the brain-mind remain two different phenomena, yet today the containing discourse they are held in is changing to be inclusive of both. Specifically, they are understood more and more as differing perspectives on the one same phenomenon: consciousness. In The Three Cultures, developmental psychologist Jerome Kagan muses on the popularity of Freudian psychoanalysis at the turn of the 20th century:

We still do not completely understand why a small cult on the fringe of European society created a broad and influential intellectual movement, which dominated psychiatry and psychology, without the advantage of empirical data to support most of its core concepts and principles. (2009, p. 110) He further speculates that the combination of Puritanical attitudes towards sexuality, the cultural movement of individuals towards self-actualization, and women seeking gender equality were all important for the dominance and acceptance of Freudian theory. Historical success on this scale is overdetermined, and these factors most certainly contributed, but I think a subtle yet primary reason why Freud's ideas met that moment in history, and not the many others making similar discoveries, was that he bridged the gap between science and subjective experience. For a short time, psychoanalysis made meaningful links between the objective reality that science discovered and the subjective reality that we actually live. Previously, Christianity had performed this linking function for the majority of men and women in Western culture, providing a containing myth through which people had a direct relationship to the cosmos and the scheme of creation. Freud's theories had a foot, for a while, in each camp to bridge science and the humanities through the Oedipus myth, through case studies that read like literature, and through a focus on the metaphoric, imaginative passions of the irrational Id. But the 20th century has seen a widening gulf between science and technology on the one hand, and the humanities, in particular depth psychology, representing subjective experience on the other. The following comment about psychoanalysis in The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology could just as well be stated about analytical psychology.

The diminished influence of contemporary psychoanalysis is largely a product of theory mis-management: Rather than looking forward (to the evolving demands of science and practice) and outward (to ideas and 11

findings in other areas of psychology and medicine), many psychoanalysts have chosen to look backward (at the seminal but dated contributions of early psychoanalytic practitioners) and inward (at their like-minded colleagues' own analytic writings). (Cloninger, 2009, p. 17)

Karen Kaplan-Solms and Mark Solms (2002) demonstrate convincingly that Freud's move from neurology was due to insufficient scientific knowledge and technology to validate methodologically what he was observing. As a result, Freud turned to the psyche itself. However, he maintained that one day science would be able to validate physically the psychoanalytical observations of the psyche. Yet as scientific knowledge of the brain and human nature advanced, psychoanalysis, and all of depth psychology, fell to the margins, not necessarily because the representations of the psyche were inaccurate but because an active relationship with scientific knowledge was not maintained.

In Wisdom of the Psyche: Depth Psychology After Neuroscience (2007), Ginette

Paris makes a strong stand for not forging these couplings between neuroscience and depth psychology, stating that science in its factual perspective literalizes the imaginative psyche and asserts that the theories of depth psychology in general, and Jung in particular, have always been guiding myths. The time has come, Paris asserts, to separate depth psychology from neuroscience. As a primary piece of evidence in this argument,

Paris argues that Freud and Jung sought scientific affirmation and approval of their

theories as a necessity of their time and the radical nature of their ideas. This is an assumption that many conversations among Jungians, including the faculty and students at Pacifica Graduate Institute where Paris teaches, stem from; that is, the theory of courting scientific approval in analytical psychology's past is not discussed as much as it

lends context and reasoning as to why neuroscience is not integrated into contemporary

Jungian thought. I think it may be a gestating myth, perhaps too a fiction, but a partial 12 one, that those within the Jungian discourse have literalized to justify certain intellectual stances towards science. As mentioned previously, although Pacifica is unique in offering somatic and Jungian studies that integrate neuroscience and Jung, this program is recent and rather rare in graduate psychology programs. An integration of neuroscience and analytical psychology was not offered just a few years ago when I was a student, nor did the curriculum involve serious critiques of established Jungian concepts and discourse.

However, if Pacifica is a litmus of the evolving conversation, then the current research aligns itself with the interdisciplinary thrust of intellectual exploration of consciousness represented in the Imagination and Medicine conference hosted by the Institute.

Freud's desire for psychoanalysis to be a scientific psychology is well documented, but Jung's courting of the medical-scientific establishment is decidedly less clear. In fact, Jung more often intentionally kept from associating or correlating his ideas with medical research on the brain. Considering M. L. von Franz's comments below,

Paris' argument that Jung sought medical or scientific approval for his theories should be challenged.

Jung from the beginning had consciously avoided creating any such premature equivalences between the unconscious and physical and material processes. Indeed this was not because he did not believe in such relationships, but rather because he was convinced that the phenomena should first be investigated much more in the psychic realm per se before connections to somatic processes were established. In this way, he was also seeking to counter the materialistic prejudice of his time, which was inclined to draw the hasty conclusion that the psyche was an epiphenomenon of physiological processes. Jung was convinced that a link with physiology would manifest itself naturally when both fields had gone far enough in their research. (Von Franz, 1988, p. 2)

On a surface level, this explanation of Jung's rejection of neuroscience may be accurate, but it is also a cool rationalization of an intellectual stance that was actually based on tumultuous and intensely personal emotions between Freud and Jung. The time has come 13 for a link with the body and analytical theory as well as a platform to question the reasons why Jungians have so actively dismissed the brain as relevant to their work.

What is interesting here to consider is the insightful theory posed by Peter Homans (1979) in Jung in Context, in which he makes an articulate and persuasive argument that Jung's split from Freud was initiated by a powerful narcissistic crisis in which Freud played the unconscious role of an affirming and approving Father for Jung. Freud's rejection propelled Jung into his infamous confrontation with the unconscious and Jung's resulting "writings on introversion and the moral task of individuation ... betray a preoccupation with what can only be called a 'struggle with narcissism'" (p. 50). In this context, Jung's rejection of science is intimately related to his rejection of Freud and psychoanalysis. Paris' assumption of desiring scientific approval and von Franz's rationalization are common interpretations in analytical circles of Jung's resistance to the medical-scientific establishment of his day, and I do not here claim that they don't accurately reveal Jung's intellectual motivations. Rather, in the spirit of depth psychology that seeks to know the underlying, unconscious motivations, which are always personal, Homans' thesis of Jung's psychic development of analytical psychology is especially influential and cogent. Including it in our understanding of Jung's motivations gives a fuller, more complete understanding of the origins of analytical psychology and its historical relationship to neuroscience. Homans looks closely at Jung's period of creative illness after his break with Freud as the origin of analytical psychology, as do many other theorists, including Jung

himself in Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1961). Yet he understands this as initiating from Jung's early narcissistic attachment to Freud as a father figure, which Jung was missing psychically in his relationship with his father and with a religious tradition he could not idealize. Homans bases his analysis of Jung's relationship to Freud as primarily narcissistic on Kohut's theories of narcissism. If a "child's narcissistic needs are not gradually embraced and tamed, however, the wish for an idealized, powerful 14 parent imago will become split off or repressed, as will the child's grandiosity" (Homans, 1979, p. 40). Whereas a grandiose self with delusional claims may incapacitate a lesser ego, Kohut believed that in a gifted individual this grandiosity may compel the development and use of their talents into exceptional performance; this, Homans argues, is the case with Jung (pp. 40-41). In the Freud-Jung Letters, the correspondence between the two men begins "rich in the language of idealization and of merger and, on Jung's part, in confidences" (Homans, 1979, p. 51) and end with each man "struggling to maintain a positive relationship" (p. 50). Homans, again applying Kohut's theory of narcissism to the transference between the men demonstrated in the letters, argues that Jung attempted to idealize Freud and psychoanalysis in place of the disappointment of his father and religious tradition. In 1910, in response to an inquiry from Freud as to whether psychoanalysis should form a fraternity to protect it from the state, Jung's reply indicates clearly a religious idealization, if not infatuation:

I imagine a far finer and more comprehensive task for psychoanalysis ... we must give it time to infiltrate into people from many centers, to revivify among intellectuals a feeling for symbol and myth, ever so gently to transform Christ back into the soothsaying God of the vine.... A genuine and proper ethical development cannot abandon Christianity but must grow up within it, must bring to fruition its hymn of love, the agony and ecstasy over the dying and resurgent god. (McGuire, 1974, p. 212) For his part, Freud resisted Jung's attempts to idealize him or psychoanalysis and "their fusion with mythology and religion" (Homans, 1979, p. 56) and directed Jung not to "regard me [Freud] as the founder of a religion. My intentions are not so far reaching ....I am not thinking ofa substitute for areligion; this need must be sublimated"

(McGuire, 1974, p. 222). From there ensued the infamous rupture and lifelong animosity between them. If truth be told, Freud also experienced a narcissistic rupture in the break with Jung which may have spurred his plunge into the psychological problem of narcissism shortly after their break (Homans, p. 50). But it was especially determinant 15 for Jung's ideas. Jung discovered the cost of seeking or needing approval by a venerated figure, as we all eventually do with father figures as part of the discovery and claiming of our own voice, when Freud began criticizing his movement into the symbolic and religious psyche. He was literally dumped into the unconscious through his split with Freud when he first comes to terms with the reality of the unconscious and the assimilation of the personal unconscious—the parental imagoes and the shadow. Then, a confrontation with the collective unconscious mediated by the anima brought him eventually to a confrontation with the self archetype, or God imago. Homans understands individuation as a method of overcoming narcissistic inflation. Individuation involves de-identification with the various unconscious inflations one holds as a natural consequence of psychically coming into being or into ego-consciousness. Jung's psychology locates individuals "at the center of a cosmological epic and encouraged them to view their past traditions and surrounding culture exclusively in terms of the structures and processes of their own consciousness" (Homans, 1979, p.

111). Germaine to this discussion is not how Jung's narcissistic overcoming into authentic selfhood gave rise to analytical psychology—Homans' thesis—but how it unconsciously shaped his attitude of rejection towards Freud, science, and the brain. Jung was thinking and writing in a time of threat to the individual by "mass man," whom

Jung saw as unconsciously identified with the social persona and collective norms. He associated the rigid persona of modern men and women "with extraversion and excessive rationality" (Homans, 1979, p. 178). This association not only accurately reflects the imbalance of the time that analytical psychology sought to address, but serves as a description of Freud himself and of psychoanalysis. And we need to reflect on the timeliness of this imbalance: is it still accurate today that the primary collective imbalance to address is the dominance of rationalism? It seems to me that the major ills of our world—fundamentalism, terrorism, violent crimes, excessive greed—are due to an 16 influx of the irrational, not the rational. It is possible that in the 21st century we have crossed the cusp of an enatiodromia and are being called to bring the rational and irrational into balance by shoring up the irrational emotional impulses of the collective unconscious through rational and reflective thought. Fear of reduction. At the heart of Jung's rejection of Freud, rationalism, materialism, and neuroscience is a fear that illuminates a current and unconscious fear that I believe the humanities holds towards science today. Homans cites a key document, a letter in 1915 from Jung to Dr. Hans Schmid, in which he "lamented how destructive of human integrity was Freud's extreme and exclusive emphasis upon analytical-intellectual understanding" and that the methods of psychoanalysis were "a form of excessive intellectualization that snuffed out that mystery of life which is the unique, individual self' (Homans, 1979, p. 94). In the desire for understanding itself, Jung responds:

there lurks the devil's will.... Understanding is a fearfully binding power, at times a veritable murder of the soul.... The core of the individual is a mystery of life, which is snuffed out when it is "grasped." ...That is why symbols want to be mysterious; they are not so merely because what is at the bottom of them cannot be clearly apprehended. The symbol wants to guard against Freudian interpretations.... With our patients "analytical" understanding has a wholesomely destructive effect. ...It is atechnique we have learned from the devil.... The menacing and dangerous thing about analysis is that the individual is apparently understood: the devil eats his soul away. (Jung, 1973, pp. 31-32)

These statements have a powerful affective charge even now. On the one hand I applaud Jung's intellectual stance of remaining in the discomfort of the unknown when confronting the mystery of the self, yet he is clearly motivated by a compulsive emotional bias against Freud as well; I believe this prejudice was then projected onto and rationalized against medical science, especially neuroscience, not only by Jung but by his followers. Current Jungian discourse is replete with reverence for the unconscious that at times loses a sense of discernment and discrimination; a mystery does not equal infallibility or superior knowledge. Although it is true that rationalism taken to an 17 extreme snuffs out the soul, the unconscious can be quite seductive and capable itself in squashing independent and critical thought, making mindless followers of entire countries of souls. I believe this fear of reductionism that Jung gives voice to so movingly is at the heart of the chasm between faith and reason: that science, as it solves mysteries, will reduce the mystery at the heart of the subjective experience of the human being to physical matter. The experience of our aliveness as ineffable, mysterious, and idiosyncratically precious is a subjective reality. It can only be known in subjective terms and cannot be expressed by objective reality. Meaning is not the domain of science; it is the domain of the humanities and one's subjective experience. Just as the metaphorical truths of religion are made absurd when literalized, the objective knowledge of science used to express a metaphoric truth can only distort by reduction. Even if neuroscientists can one day point to a glowing red dot on a functional magnetic resonance image (fMRI) and say "we've determined this is the cluster of neurons in the brain that fire excitedly when we realize or experience the mystery at the core of our being," they

have not discovered or explained what that mystery is, only a physical correlate of it. For neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, the distinction between subjective experience and objective matter is clear.

You do not see what I see when you look at my brain activity. You see a part of the activity of my brain as I see what I see.... We have seen that our knowledge of the biological mechanisms behind the formation of images and their experience is one thing and our experience of those images is another. (1999, pp. 306-307)

Neuroscience could map all of the structures of the self and consciousness—how it is constructed, manipulated, and transformed in the brain—and we would still need the imagination, its myths, stories, and images, to express what is true about our subjective, lived experience. This unique subjective experience is uniquely human. 18

It is worthwhile to reflect on the fact that most scientists do not feel a lack of the sacred in their lives or the world due to their pursuits of scientific knowledge of the brain and the self. Their pursuits of the rational and ordered in our world do not squelch a sense of mystery and sacredness; indeed, many would likely attest to the fact that these intellectual pursuits open them up to mystery and a sense of the sacred. For scientists

working on the brain, mind loses none of its power or beauty when experimental methods are applied to human behavior. Likewise, biologists do not fear that mind will be trivialized by a reductionist analysis, which delineates the component parts and activities of the brain. On the contrary, most scientists believe that biological analysis is likely to increase our respect for the power and complexity of the mind. (Kandel, 2006, p. 9)

Meaning, mystery, and a sense of the sacred is not the sole province of depth psychology, the unconscious, or the psyche. There are those who are certainly more reductive and vituperative towards the humanities, such as Richard Dawkins, but they are not the majority perspective. Just as Jung was repeatedly accused of reducing theological or ontological realities of God to psychology, and he repeatedly defended himself as making no comment on theological or ontological realities of God, preferring to stay with the psychological correlates of the experience, our dialogue between analytical psychology and neuroscience does not reduce the psyche to the functions and processes of the brain but finds neurological representations. And by understanding the nature of the neurological and cognitive functions that correlate to specific psychological experiences,

we may learn something new about them. Pathology and souls in distress. Scientific affirmation and acceptance are not the only reasons to cultivate a dialogue between the two perspectives; this is where Paris is short-sighted. I agree that depth psychology is a powerful and important guiding contemporary myth of psychological growth and realities, but it cannot be reduced to

this, or any, one purpose. Depth psychology in general and Jungian theory in particular span a breadth and depth of knowledge overlapping with many fields—science among 19 them—and we would miss out on many rich insights into the human condition to separate neuroscience and depth psychology so rigidly. Though there is truth in Paris' statement that "the money poured into research [by pharmacological companies] for these 'mental disorders' shapes the DSM and blurs the line between a symptom that is due to brain pathology and the expression of the soul in distress" (2007, p. 35), it is also true that there are levels of psychological dysfunction or pathology without known direct or primary neurobiological factors for which a psychotherapy that focuses on the imagery of dreams and mythological metaphors is not effective. An example is Borderline Personality

Disorder (BPD), a DSM-IV-TR classification that fits Paris' distinction of a mental disorder without brain pathology that is a soul in distress. BPD has been demonstrated to be most effectively served in reaching states of stability and healing through therapies such as Dialectical Behavioral Therapy and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy that focus on mindfulness, or attention to the present, coupled with cognitive and behavioral structures and disciplined actions (Lieb, Zanarini, Schmahl, Linehan, & Bohus, 2004): Borderline individuals in particular may request Jungian work because they are drawn to the idea of working with archetypal material, of which they may have an abundance, but they are actually too fragile to be able to deal with it. (Corbett, 1996, p. 29) As Corbett further points out, if the structures of the personality are too weak or fragile, an experience of the intensity of the archetypal psyche can be "the production of excessive, unmanageable anxiety, or even psychosis" (p. 23). It may be the case that higher levels of functioning in this personality disorder can

be served through analytical psychology. Nathan Schwartz-Salant (1989), for instance, wrote an excellent and insightful text of his experiences with borderline analysands. Yet Paris casts too wide a net to consider mental disorders not due to brain pathology as separate from a soul in distress, or, that a soul in distress is the province of a psychological perspective that does not include the brain; as though psychic connection

with the brain does not exist outside of brain pathology. 20

Hysteria has long been considered a purely psychological disorder that can now be demonstrated to have important nonpathological neurobiological correlates.

Researchers gave positron emission topography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scans to a hysterical male patient with a paralyzed leg. When they asked him to move his leg and he stated that he was actually intending for it to move though it did not, the motor cortex in the brain that should have lit up remained dark. The areas that lit up were the anterior cingulate and the orbitofrontal lobes, the former being a structure of the limbic system involved in emotional decision-making and the latter an area of inhibition of behavior. The speculation from the researchers is that the activity in the anterior cingulate and the orbitofrontal lobes inhibits the motor action of the leg through unconscious emotional decisions. Neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran thinks this makes sense "because the anterior cingulate and the orbitofrontal cortex are intimately connected to the limbic emotional centers in the brain, and we know that hysteria originates from some emotional trauma" (2004, p. 86). Ramachandran adds that this proves that one of the oldest cases of psychological disturbances studied by Freud "has a specific and identifiable organic cause" (p. 86). I don't agree that the neurobiological correlates in the anterior cingulate and orbitofrontal cortex are necessarily causal; this is an assumption of Ramachandran. It could be that the emotional trauma occurred first and then exhibited influence on the brain in what is known as "top-down processing." However, there is a powerful and unmistakable connection between the brain and the psyche that cannot be ignored or sectioned off from one another any longer for those who want to know what is in fact functioning in the mind.

Consciousness is far too complex to cut it cleanly into brain pathology and spiritual suffering. All psychological states of pathology may accurately be called a soul in distress; all suffering is a soul in distress, why limit depth psychology to address suffering outside of identifiable brain pathology? Jung himself suggests: 21

The separation of psychology from the basic assumptions of biology is purely artificial, because the human psyche lives in indissoluble union with the body.... Although psychology rightly claims autonomy in its own special field of research, it must recognize a far-reaching correspondence between its facts and the data of biology. (1936/1969, p. 114)

The intellectual error made by Paris and other Jungians, as well as Jung himself at times, is that in their dealings with one aspect of the psyche that is relatively autonomous from the brain, their thinking is severed from the biological base of the mind though the psyche never is. Paris also notes that "scientific modeling works beautifully for scientists, but fails miserably when trying to 'explain' the psyche as one would explain the night sky with current findings in cosmology" (2007, p. 23). True, to explain the poetic reality of the night sky with the knowledge of cosmology is absurdly limiting, yet the scientific discoveries of the cosmological night sky can bring insight into the nature of the night sky itself, deepening our poetic understanding of it. In Re-visioning Psychology, Hillman also makes this claim, writing that "it is impossible for a psychology based on the psyche to imagine itself as a science" (1975, p. 169). It is not accurate to classify all work finding meaningful relationships between depth psychology and neuroscience as attempting to imagine itself as a science. In these instances, Paris and Hillman employ rigid black-and- white thinking to carve out the territory of archetypal psychology. The reality of the self

exists on many levels: biological, psychological, mythological and poetic. While agreeing with the gist and mythic claims of Paris' stand, my criticism—which could just as easily be leveled at other depth psychological theorists and practitioners —rests on her

tendency to reduce depth psychology's relevance to the field she practices, which is, ironically, the same offense neuroscience and the DSM often make against the psyche. In short, the mystery of the psyche and the self is too complex to be rigidly split between either a brain camp or a soul camp; the body is as soulful as the images she generates. 22

In the essay, "Contents of the Psychoses," Jung remarks on the criticism a previous essay of his on dementia praecox (schizophrenia) gathered regarding its scientific validity. He is gratified that a psychiatrist of the stature of Bleuler accepted all the points that Jung made on the disease, but he notes that the chief difference between him and Bleuler is "whether the psychological disturbance should be regarded as primary or secondary in relation to the physiological basis" (1914/1960, p. 155). Clearly, Jung differed from psychiatrists of his time in that he felt the psychological disturbance was primary over the neurobiology of mental disease. In contradiction to the predominant physiological view, Jung chose the view that "an unadapted psychological function arises which may develop into a manifest mental disturbance and secondarily induce symptoms of organic degeneration" (p. 156). He further states that there was, at that time, no evidence of the primary nature of an organic disturbance but "proofs in abundance of a primarily psychological failure of function whose history can be traced back into early childhood" (p. 156). Jung's viewpoint on schizophrenia has been proven untenable; it indeed has a neurobiological etiology and secondary psychological disturbances (Solms & Turnbull, 2002, p. 204). The psychiatric science of his time could only measure gross brain lesions and anatomy, not the intricate and more intimate movements of regional areas—the white matter of the ventromesial prefrontal cortex—and neurochemistry such as dopamine, leading Jung, reasonably, to assert that since the majority of patients of the asylum were suffering from dementia praecox in which "anatomical changes are practically non existent ... [a] psychiatry of the future ... can only be by way of psychology" (1914/1960, p. 162). The position that psychological disturbance is primary and physiological functions secondary does suit what is known of personality disorders; even though we are able to correlate dysfunctional brain processes or neuro-anatomical measurements with personality disorders, their etiology still leans predominantly in the realm of psychological conditioning. The point here is that Jung could not have known 23 his assessment of dementia praecox was inaccurate at that time, and we need to update our knowledge of psychological disturbance and structures with the discoveries of the working of the brain. The truth is, both Freud and Jung were ahead of the science of their time and had to explore the psychological elements of mental pathology alone until neuroscience could technologically catch up. As Von Franz was quoted above, Jung believed that one day there would be a natural link between psyche and physiology when both fields had advanced enough. That day has come. In 1914, Jung was still referring to psychiatry as "the art of healing the soul," (1914/1960, p. 158), whereas in 2004 neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran claims that psychiatry will soon become "just another branch of neurology" (p. 83). Things have changed. Analytical psychology, however, remains a healing modality of the soul; this is its great distinction with psychoanalysis and other fields of psychotherapy. In this sense, it would do damage to the soul and to the essence of Jungian theory to reduce it to neurobiological functions. Therefore, a great deal of Jung's work cannot be correlated or compared to neuroscientific findings of the brain-mind in a fair manner that would reveal the psyche; instead it would only reduce it. For the most part, Jung was truly working with the psyche as an autonomous function holding its own integrity, as noted when he states that in psychiatry "function has become the appendage of its organ, the psyche an appendage of the brain" (1914/1960, p. 160). This seems to be the position from where Paris asserts her opinions on the separation of neuroscience and depth psychology. I agree that the psyche is not an appendage of the brain; I do not agree that there are not valuable and even necessary conversations between analytical psychology and neuroscience.

To be sure, the self is an autonomous psychic being with roots in the body, just as the individual is rooted in her ancestral history and an iris rooted in the soil. Poetry is written about the iris that knows nothing of its roots, as poisoned soil destroys an iris without any knowledge of the poem. 24

Essays on Definitions

Subject, self/Self. In Subjectivity, a philosophical treatment of the development of the modern sense and understanding of subjectivity, scholar

Donald Hall states:

Subjectivity as a critical concept invites us to consider the question of how and from where identity arises, to what extent it is understandable, and to what degree it is something over which we have any measure of influence or control.... In this way, subjectivity is the intersection of two lines of philosophical inquiry: epistemology (the study of how we know what we know) and ontology (the study of the nature of being or existence). (2004, pp. 3-4) A differentiation among scholars of modern from pre-modern identity is the role of participation and responsibility for creation of one's selfhood. The research is definitely aligned with this modern concept of the self as having a capacity for self- transformation and creation as well as sitting at the threshold of epistemology and ontology.

Current discourses of subjectivity make a key distinction between subject, self, and identity. "Although the two are sometimes used interchangeably, the word 'self does not capture the sense of social and cultural entanglement implicit in the word 'subject'" (Mansfield, 2000, p. 2). Hall suggests that identity is that set of qualities and traits that comprise personality and social roles, while subjectivity is reflection and self-

consciousness of identity (2004, p. 4). Michel Foucault's understanding of the subject as a cultural and historical construction is similar to depth psychology's "ego" except that ego brings with it unconscious antecedents; the postmodern subject, by contrast, is constructed entirely from the external world. In this work, the concepts of self and subject are used relatively interchangeably, both pointing to the experiences of a personal, subjective, separate, and individual being, while understanding that subject, as compared to self, does impart a more idiosyncratic, irrational, and personal sense of being 25 than self alone. Both subject and self encompass conceptually terms such as ego, identity, and persona, defined below, and understood as aspects, layers, or portions of the whole sense of being a subject or self. That is, a subject and self have identities, egos, and personas, but the latter do not have selves as much as they express portions of a self. The research relies on Jung's understanding of the self as an unknowable totality.

As an empirical concept, the self designates the whole range of psychic phenomena in man.... But in so far as the total personality, on account of its unconscious component, can be only in part conscious, the concept of the self is, in part, only potentially empirical and is to that extent a postulate. In other words, it encompasses both the experienceable and the inexperienceable (or the not yet experienced). (1921/1971a, p. 460)

Jung himself did not distinguish between a self with small "s" from a Self with a capital "S," as for him, the use of self always "expresses the unity of the personality as a whole" (1921/197la, p. 460). This distinction is maintained in the dissertation in spite of widespread and common usage in not only depth psychological literature but in various other fields as well (e.g., transpersonal psychology, consciousness studies, metaphysical and religious discourses, among others) to denote the particular, ego bound, and worldly self with a lowercase "s" and the existence of a containing, numinous and mysterious, higher quality of being with an uppercase "S." It may be worthwhile to compare Jung's concept of self with his definition of psyche in Psychological Types, when he writes: "By psyche I understand the totality of all psychic processes, conscious as well as unconscious" (1921/1971a, p. 463). Of course, this appears almost identical to his definition of the self. The subtle but essential distinction is that the psyche is the container or medium of those processes that house the self, the ego and all of the myriad processes, archetypes, and complexes of the whole. The self is, paradoxically, the 26 archetypal subject of the psyche, the archetype of wholeness, and the totality that contains itself.

Identity, ego, persona. Jung's distinction of identity is as an unconscious level of being; it is more of a state of consciousness than an object:

I use the term identity to denote a psychological conformity .... Psychological identity presupposes that it is unconscious. It is a characteristic of the primitive mentality and the real foundation of participation mystique, which is nothing but a relic of the original non- differentiation of subject and object, and hence of the primordial unconscious state. It is also a characteristic of the mental state of early infancy, and, finally, of the unconscious of the civilized adult, which, in so far as it has not become a content of consciousness, remains in a permanent state of identity with objects. (1921/1971a, p. 441)

Where Jung presents identity as a state of being, the research employs identity as the storied or aesthetic aspect of the self. This is distinct from the process of identification.

Ego is understood as a construct and psychic function of consciousness that has an identity, from which the subject emerges, and that relates to the world and the unconscious. I rely on Jung's description of ego:

By ego I understand a complex of ideas which constitutes the centre of my field of consciousness and appears to possess a high degree of continuity and identity. Hence I also speak of an ego-complex. The ego-complex is as much a content as condition of consciousness, for a psychic element is conscious to me only in so far as it is related to my ego-complex. But inasmuch as the ego is only the centre of my field of consciousness, it is not identical with the totality of my psyche, being merely one complex among other complexes. (1921/1971a, p. 425)

Jung understood persona to be a

mask, i.e, the ad hoc adopted attitude ... the name for the masks worn by actors in antiquity.... The persona is thus a functional complex that comes into existence for reasons of adaptation or personal convenience ... exclusively concerned with the relation to objects. (1921/197la, p. 465)

His explanation calling the persona a "functional complex" can confuse it as one more complex among complexes, stated above in the definition for ego. In the context of the 27 current study, the persona, in its concern exclusively with objects, is a function complex of the ego itself, concerned and related only to the world of society. Considering the ego, the persona is an aspect of the ego, which is, in turn, a function of the self. Each represents the other in a deeper, wider, and more inclusive context, as layers of an onion, with the outer layer being the persona, the middle layers where the ego lives, while the self is the entire onion. Provisional, habitual, conditioned self. In Marcel Proust and the Creative Encounter, literary and Proustian scholar George Stambolian writes of Proust's distinction between the habitual self, an attribute of the ego, and identity. In a chapter discussing the Proustian theme of suffering, Stambolian explains the nature of habit in self-consciousness:

Because it is an "instinct of self-preservation," habit opposes the action of time and tries to establish and preserve fragile islands of stability in the general flux .... Being automatic, the action of habit does not bear any moral weight, yet a moral dimension is added whenever a deliberate turning toward habit represents a conscious flight from suffering .... In the Proustian world there is no such thing as the passive endurance of suffering, for to endure means to resist the desire to escape suffering, and such resistance, requiring as it does the strength of the will, is closer to a truly moral act than the decision to seek out the more passive existence of habit. To resist the temptation of habit means to accept the destruction of the old self, and, therefore, to play a more active part in the birth of the new self. (1972, p. 51)

There are several links with Jungian theory: the moral implications of Jung's theory of individuation, suffering the integration of the shadow, and the transformation of unconsciousness. The research explores the conditioning of consciousness that forms into the structures of the habitual self: ego, complexes, identity. Identity comes into being with the intention to establish stability in the overwhelming inundation of sensory perception. What I name the conditioned, and Proust the habitual self, Jungian James Hollis calls the provisional self. Essentially, this is a self wired in early childhood conditioning, 28 filtered through an identity that is a defense system to protect wounds, a defense system built on misinterpretations. As Hollis defines it,

the provisional personality, that is, the acquired as opposed to natural sense of self, as an assemblage of behaviors, attitudes toward self and other, and reflexive responses whose purpose is to manage the anxiety suffered by the child. Such an assemblage is repeated, reticulated and reinforced, becoming the provisional vehicle of the soul, even as it is also the instrument of progressive estrangement from it. (2001, p. 41)

The research will explore the boundary and processes that separate what Hollis refers to as "the natural sense of self' and the provisional self in the chapters on temperament and conditioning. 29

Chapter 2 The Modern Self: Introduction to the Literature Review

Many sources contribute to the modern concept and experience of being a self; most treatments, such as Charles Taylor's Sources of the Self (1989), trace the trajectory of philosophical ideas that shape the historical horizon of the self. Most contemporary understanding of the self is predicated, explicitly or implicitly, on the collapse of traditional religion roughly from the Enlightenment forward. "Modern philosophy begins when the generally accepted basis upon which the world is interpreted ceases to be a deity whose pattern is assumed to have already been imprinted into the universe" (Bowie, 2003, p. 1). Reflection, discussion, and analysis of the cultural and existential consequences of the collapse of the over-arching narrative provided by Christianity are so ubiquitous as to be foregone conclusions; indeed, the collapse of the containing myth of Christianity is the pre-cursor that sources and defines modernity and leads to the legacy of the Enlightenment to understand the self as the ground of knowledge and meaning, as the starting point of the world (Mansfield, 2000, p. 20). Rather than the self being defined by traditional and religious beliefs, the self defines the world.

The contemporary experience and understanding of the self as autonomous, self- determined, progressing or developing, possessing a rich, narrative interior, being unique and uniquely talented—these characteristics which we may take as always already existing—have actually appeared in modern Western culture since the Scientific Revolution's great rupture of the Christian tradition. Many scholars have written on this trajectory of the self to the point that it is a presumed historical development when entering the discourse on subjectivity. Murray Stein succinctly sums it up: "The loss of religious life is a central problem of modernity" (1998, p. 62). And Paul Kugler sees this historical happening as predicating the emergence of a new subject:

Prior to Descartes, existence was predicated on a transcendent God, matter, or Eternal Forms .... But, in the 21st century, we find ourselves once again at a critical moment in the history of Western psychology. 30

Today we are witnessing a transformation in our underlying system of thought that is every bit as dramatic as the movement in the 17th century out of scholastic and medieval assumptions about human nature. (2005, pp. 67-68) The broad sweep of the self through modern Western history is a movement from a "natural" self with a divine essence to an increasingly separate, historical, talented yet destructive individual in a discontinuous cosmos of meaning. The headiness of our talent and genius exploded in the Scientific Revolution, became intoxicated with itself in Romantic and Transcendental idealizations, and crashed into the 20th century in a full-on confrontation with the destructive, even evil, aspect of human nature as manifested in two world wars, the Holocaust, and the atom bomb. The cultural development of the modern sense of subjectivity has received prolific scholarly attention and is not re-worked or analyzed in this research; rather, it is relied upon as the a priori historical pre- understanding informing current discourses about subjectivity. From this history, the nature of the self has become a significant site of inquiry. Due to this, the questions of whether the individual has an essence and what sources it, how subjectivity is constructed, and the individual's relationship to a "greater than" or grounding reality, has become a primary question in cultural studies, consciousness studies, and philosophy of the late 20th and early 21st century, not to mention many fields of psychology. Scholar Nick Mansfield claims:

The 'I' is thus the meeting-point between the most formal and highly abstract concepts and the most immediate and intense emotions. This focus on the self as the center both of lived experience and of discernible meaning has become one of the—if not the—defining issues of modern and postmodern cultures. (2000, p. 1)

The contemporary conversation is whether the subject is essentially historical, as viewed in postmodern, constructivists perspectives, essentially physiological as seen from the scientific perspective, or essentially metaphysical, as viewed in new age and spiritual

perspectives. 31

The following literature review discusses those texts that have generated the inquiry of the current research. Some have contributed to questions regarding the nature of identity through eliciting critical disagreements, whereas others have presented an affinity with personal experience and thinking. This review is not intended to be an exhaustive representation of each perspective on subjectivity, nor is it meant to be exhaustive of the larger discourse on identity. Rather, it is presented as the intellectual and textual foundation that led to the questions that the research extrapolates and to give a range of the various ways the self is configured in current culture. I find the concepts of self in modern Western culture roughly break up into four categories: the metaphysical, historical, scientific, and fictive concepts of self. It is my intention to offer a sound, fair, and basic representation of each perspective's concept of self that together create the horizons from which this dissertation on identity carves out a space for itself.

The Metaphysical Self

In current popular culture, there is a concept of self that I call "the metaphysical

self," concocted from a pastiche of cultures and perspectives; modern in that it is

inherently cohesive, progressive, and purposive; Eastern in its dismissal of temporal

reality as maya, or ego illusions; and new age in its source from a transcendent, divine,

omnipotent and loving source. It is heady stuff and exactly opposes the postmodern

historically and culturally constructed self. This genre is not particularly intellectually

rigorous or even particularly reflective, and is found in popular culture—through self-

help and new age mediums and genres—whereas the other concepts of self presented

here—postmodern, neuroscientific, and depth psychology—are primarily academic. Yet,

the metaphysical self is ubiquitous and influential, demonstrated aptly by the fact that

Oprah regularly features authors and topics that promote the metaphysical self on her 32 show and in her magazine. This perspective offers and contributes something that is lacking for many people: meaning, sacredness, and purpose.

In 1996, Australian Rhonda Byrne produced a documentary and published an accompanying book called The Secret, based on the Law of Attraction, essentially a tenet that thoughts create reality. It has been wildly popular—yes, Oprah has dedicated more than one show to it—though it is transparently one dimensional.

People who have drawn wealth into their lives used The Secret, whether consciously or unconsciously. They think thoughts of abundance and wealth, and they do not allow any contradictory thoughts to take root in their minds.... They only know wealth, and nothing else exists in their minds. (1996, p. 6)

Of course, people who have become wealthy do not hold pure thoughts or intentions without contradiction; this is an absurd and unobtainable goal. The perspective of The Secret is one that dismisses the reality of the human being almost entirely and relies instead on pure potential. The book and documentary are laden with these types of comments.

Another popular author of the metaphysical self is Deepak Chopra, a prolific writer, healer, and speaker. His perspective is decidedly new age metaphysical in that it

is an eclectic blend of Eastern philosophy and religion with new age divinity. Chopra's

subject is uniquely talented and designed to serve and love. "Expressing your talents to

fulfill needs creates unlimited wealth and abundance" (1994, p. 96). Chopra promotes a

basic tenet of the metaphysical self in that we are primarily divine and spiritual and our

humanity is secondary. "We're not human beings that have occasional spiritual

experiences—it's the other way around: we're spiritual beings that have occasional

human experiences" (p.97). Our spiritual reality is "pure potentiality" (p. 99), and when 33 we can transcend the distortions of the ego we access our spirit, our pure potential, manifesting unlimited abundance. The intellectual weaknesses of these examples of the metaphysical self do not need to be extolled. However, Byrne and Chopra are not trying to be intellectually rigorous; they are fulfilling a real need for meaning, transcendence of worldly dominance, and the sacred in people's lives. They speak to the embodied sense many individuals have at some time in their lives that there is more to the world than the history of forms; usually it happens in specific or unusual moments that are typically kept private because they are not congruent with the agreements of mainstream reality.

The criticism of The Secret and Deepak Chopra is not that what they're saying is based on lies, but that their presentation is so distorted as to be a lie. These authors promote the self as spiritual in essence, not of this material world, while dismissing the significant impact of embodied experience as a primary shaper of the self s attitudes, beliefs, wounds, and ways of being. Yet their texts also openly support and encourage the pursuit of the fruits of this material world as the primary pursuit of the self. In this way, they appear unconscious as to their role as mouthpieces for the materialist cultural reality that they treat dismissively as an illusion while representing the self as enlightened in its consumerist, capitalist pursuit of all the temporal world has to offer. That is, the metaphysical self as portrayed in popular culture is precisely a spiritualized consumer, an ego whose guilt for self-serving desires is cleansed in its association with serving others and with a transcendent source. Transcendence in this movement annihilates the particular. Ironically, the popular metaphysical view of the self intends to transcend the limited and illusion-driven ego, yet ends up unconsciously validating the desire-driven, consumerist, materialistic world of the ego. 34

A more grounded and realistic text from the popular metaphysical perspective is

Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth: Discovering Your Life's Purpose (2005). Essentially,

Tolle's text constructs a self that has a "true" center, a core reality he calls "being," equated with a conscious awareness and distorted by faulty cognitive-emotional schemes erected throughout conditioning. "The new spirituality, the transformation of consciousness, is arising to a large extent outside of the structures of the existing institutionalized religions" (2005, pp. 17-18). A key distinction in the metaphysical self is that "how 'spiritual' you are has nothing to do with what you believe but everything to do with your state of consciousness" (p. 18).

This idea of a true core encased in ego defenses is a popular perspective in the self-help genre and one that in its basis is aligned with depth psychology. Jung noted a distinction between the personal psyche and the collective or objective psyche from which the transcendent archetypes, including the archetype of the Self, radiate into the personal psyche as numinous experience. Tolle is not a depth psychologist, though he does use the ego concept and one could argue also the concept of Jungian complexes renamed as "pain bodies"; he is grounded in an Eastern meditation inspired method and

Western psychological structure and spiritual, philosophical traditions of Being. Tolle states:

And the greatest miracle is the experiencing of your essential self as prior to any words, thought, mental labels, and images. For this to happen, you need to disentangle your sense of I, of Beingness, from all the things it has become mixed up with, that is to say, identified with. (2005, p. 26)

This 'I' is described as an illusion. "In normal everyday usage, 'I' embodies the primordial error, a misperception of who you are, an illusory sense of identity. This is the ego" (Tolle, 2005, p. 28). Tolle represents the metaphysical self perspective in that he 35 extols a divine source as the "real reality" and the core of human being, that suffering is essentially separation from this source, causing confusion about who one really is, and in his intellectual dismissal of the embodied reality of history.

In Tolle, self transcendence is immanent. "In fact, at the heart of the new

consciousness lies the transcendence of thought, the new found ability of rising above

thought, of realizing a dimension within yourself that is infinitely more vast than

thought" (2005, pp. 21-22). As we consider the historical self—a culturally constructed

self—below in Michel Foucault's thought, it is proposed that this immanent position of

transcendence is unconsciously relied upon in their theories.

Historical Self

The historical self refers to the general view that our sense of subjectivity and

identity, who we think we are, is constructed entirely from external sources (e.g., culture

and familial conditioning). A significant distinction within this perspective is that

conditioning forces of culture instill within us our sense of uniqueness, autonomy, and

interiority; that is, culture's construction of the self includes the internal conviction that

one is not constructed but spontaneously unique. This viewpoint is decidedly

postmodern and constructivist. One could say that the postmodern worldview points out

the ironic and curious fact that through our prodigious intelligence and talents that gave

rise to industry, technology, and culture, we have created a carapace of culture, a

systemic matrix, that now has the upper hand in creating the selves whose ancestors

created the system in the first place.

There is an appreciation of the plasticity and constant change of reality and knowledge, a stress on the priority of concrete experience over fixed abstract principles, and a conviction that no single a priori thought system should govern belief or investigation. (Tarnas, 1990, p. 395) 36

From this appreciation comes postmodernism's characteristic relativity.

The postmodern attitude towards reality is that of an open-ended, fluid, and interactive field of possibility in which the subject is already and always enmeshed, and therefore it is a falsity, an illusion and impossibility to view the subject and the world from a transcendent perspective. For scholar Linda Hutcheon,

postmodernism is fundamentally contradictory, resolutely historical, and inescapably political.... Because it is contradictory and works within the very systems it attempts to subvert, postmodernism can probably not be considered a new paradigm.... It may mark, however, the site of the struggle of the emergence of something new. (1988, p. 4)

This brings to mind Kugler's statement above that the 21st century marks the period of a new subject emerging into history. Richard Tarnas, among others, has noticed that "the twentieth century's massive and radical breakdown of so many structures ... suggests the necessary deconstruction prior to a new birth" (1990, p. 440). Whether we believe that this new birth is one more contingent phenomena or the result of a transcendental process matters not: something new is appearing on the horizon of the 21st century. In Tarnas' conclusion I find an impetus for the research: "For the deepest passion of the Western mind has been to reunite with the ground of its own being" (p. 443; italics added).

However, before we turn to the birth of a new subject, let us first understand more fully the historical self.

Philip Cushman's Constructing the Self Constructing America: A Cultural

History of Psychotherapy (1995) is a hermeneutic study concerned with putting the 20th- century development of psychotherapy in its cultural and historical context. But what makes it a postmodern study is Cushman's view that "each era has a predominant configuration of the self, a particular foundational set of beliefs about what it means to be 37 human" (p. 3). This configuration is a "self [that] is a product of the complex, awe- inspiring cultural process that weaves together various elements of a society in order to perpetuate the status quo" (p. 7). This construction of a subject designed to perpetuate the standards and aims of the system that constructed it is echoed in Foucault's statement about power's subject: "The individual which power has constituted is at the same time its vehicle" (1980, p. 98). Cushman further argues, lucidly, that 20th-century American culture specifically configures what he terms the empty self. "The empty self is a way of

being human; it is characterized by a pervasive sense of personal emptiness and is committed to the values of self-liberation through consumption" (1995, p. 6). It is

precisely this pervasive sense of personal emptiness that can find liberation through

consumption that the metaphysical perspectives, discussed above, are, in part,

unconsciously motivated by.

In the metaphysical perspective there exists an unconscious contradiction between

the belittling of historical antecedents of individuality, even an eclipse of individuality—

the I—by spirituality, all the while holding a focused pursuit of happiness and wealth

through materialist means at the same time. In other words, the metaphysical perspective

tells you not to identify with the lesser things of this world—a separate identity, historical

woundings, circumstantial injustices—but to pursue the offerings of this world for

happiness, and that in fact, as you become spiritual you will have more of the rewards of

this world.

In comparison, Cushman's postmodern perspective is that "humans do not have a

basic, fundamental, pure human nature that is transhistorical and transcultural" (p. 17).

Yet, this does not lead him to Foucault's more extreme stand that there is no need for 38 self-reflection, since the subject is a pure construction of the institutions of power; for

Foucault, there's no one to reflect upon. For Cushman, and neuroscience and others as well, there is the reality of reflective awareness within the individual that transcends its construction. This immanent-transcendence, found in Tolle, is within the Foucauldian subject as well, discussed below, though it remains unconscious.

Foucault sees the self as historically constructed by an essential force he simply names power. Power organizes the discourses of knowledge, hierarchies of institutions and systems, and standards of behavior in culture. Foucault does not discuss power itself, but only its effects. However, power was not necessarily the point of Foucault's inquiries, as he has said:

I would like to say, first of all, what has been the goal of my work during the last twenty years. It has not been to analyze the phenomena of power, nor to elaborate the foundations of such an analysis. My objective, instead, has been to create a history of the different modes by which, in our culture, human beings are made subjects. (1984, p. 208)

The construction of the subject, Foucault's real goal, is born from and existing within cultural power structures that effect its own regulation. Foucault has an interesting response to the system of subjedification called the aesthetics of existence. The aesthetics of existence is about intentionally resisting, thwarting, and frustrating the norms and institutions that define and construct subjectivity by mining the margins of socially acceptable ways of being: the pathological, deviant, taboo, rejected, and abnormal.

At the end of his life, Foucault recommended that the best way of managing subjectivity was to be rigorously aware of the forces that had constructed our inferiority for us, and then to undertake an aesthetic renewal of ourselves by experimenting with the infinite possibilities of feeling and the artifices of identity. (Mansfield, 2000, p. 179) 39

This aesthetic renewal goes deeper than experimenting with lifestyle choices and risk- taking with egotistically uncomfortable expressions. The aesthetics of existence involves a transformation via intentional self-creation. As Foucault himself explains it:

What I mean by the phrase ["art of existence"] are those intentional and voluntary actions by which men not only set themselves rules of conduct, but also seek to transform themselves, to change themselves in their singular being, and to make their life into an oeuvre that carries certain aesthetic values and meets certain stylistic criteria. (2000, pp. 365-66) Clearly, in order for one to transform himself in his singular being, Foucault finds a force primary or transcendent to the system that constructs subjectivity that can be marshaled in a self-creative enterprise. Yet Foucault does not ask who sees the subject's construction through power and who transforms herself in her singular being? Though he does not raise these questions, still his work necessarily posits a transcendental viewpoint in reflective self-awareness from which to understand one's condition and to enact an autonomous aesthetic process; reflective self-awareness is not divine or otherworldly, but an, at times, objective viewpoint that can take a new action detached or independent from what it sees, beyond the historical situation. Understandably, this question of who sees and chooses leads to metaphysical speculations, which Foucault did not indulge in, yet "Foucault's work... does present a portrait of a heroic self-creating force, challenging the restrictions of conventional life" (Mansfield, 2000, p. 56). Foucault does not consider that this heroic self is also a construction of power in order to give the subject room to express its resistance; that is, he does not consider that the system itself usurps the power of revolution by creating within the system room to resist and be autonomous to it. And yet, unless one supposes a position in the subject's consciousness transcendent to culture and history, the heroic response of the aesthetics of existence must be another effect of power internalized and authenticated by the subject. 40

Physiological Self Our rich history of inquiry into the nature of the self has been pulled between two major modern perspectives commonly referred to as nature versus nurture. This classic debate asks: what shapes the development of identity more, external circumstance or genetic endowment and physiological structure? Most scholars from either camp acknowledge that these polarities form a necessary whole and that the construction of identity is a dance requiring the tension of opposites the way a spider only spins her web when the silk is taut, anchored on two opposing ends. Internal a priori psychic structures, though rudimentary, are the driving impulses seeking and meeting external circumstance, weaving and organizing the resulting experiences into an identity. The nature/nurture debate is no longer an either/or tug of war but an inquiry into how these realities push, repress, confront, and negotiate as they weave an individual self. In this way, identity is a bridge between worlds understood as being parented from both camps: forged through historical circumstance yet sourced from the body.

Genetic inheritance is thought to account for about 35% of the variance in individuals along a broad range of traits, more in cognitive ability and less in personality traits (Plonin & McClearn, 1993, p. 20), whereas others estimate between 30 - 50% (Cozolino, 2006; Siegel, 1999). And in yet other sources genetic effects in personality characteristics are thought to account for 22% - 46% of variance and "the remaining variation, 44% - 55%, presumably represents some combination of environmental effects unique to the individual, genotype-environment interaction, and measurement error" (Goldsmith, 1993, p. 156). While genetic inheritance represents a significant and influential component, "the answer to the nature-nurture question appears to be that environment is more important" (Plonin & McClearn, 1993, p. 21). At the conclusion of a large, longitudinal study of emotionally high-reactive and low-reactive infants through 2 years old, in which the sensitivity of amygdala arousal in the child was measured, the mother's discipline and affection styles were recorded and analyzed. The authors 41 conclude that "the biology of the child and social environment both contribute to the evolution of the psychological phenotype, which the 19th century called character" (Ancus, Kagan & Snidman, 1993, p. 205). This conclusion, so commonsensical, seems to be stating the obvious for us nonscientists, but is important nonetheless to establish a scientific, biological basis of personality development. A point that constructionists and science agree on is that there is not a pre-existing essential self before an individual is forged through confrontation with experience.

Cognitive scientist Steven Pinker states that "cognitive neuroscience is showing that the self, too, is just another network of brain systems" (2002, p. 42). The disagreement is where that self is sourced from: the brain or culture. Where science sees the predominant influence in physiology, constructionists, such as Cushman or Foucault, assert the nonexistence of an a priori essence of the self. I don't know if this would include rejection of an inherent neurobiological structure; I suspect that if asked directly, they would of course acknowledge genetic or neurobiological predisposition—how could they deny it?—but negate its significance in shaping the subject. The Blank Slate (2002) is Pinker's metaphor for the postmodern understanding of the self as forged and conditioned entirely by the external world of circumstance and culture. A concept sourced by Romanticism (the essential purity of Rousseau's noble savage), Locke's empiricism (the blank slate), and Descarte's Ghost in the Machine

(separation of body and mind). Pinker claims that the combination of these ideas led to "the idea that the human mind has no inherent structure and can be inscribed at will by society or ourselves" (2002, p. 2). Where individuals of various cultures differ, Pinker asserts, is in the specific cultural conditioning and standards (e.g., the actual content that arouses our anger is specific but the capacity for anger is universal). Culture forges our expression and matures our "lower" unconscious nature but doesn't create or source the self; that is done via instinct and biology. However, culture can and does distort, mangle, repress, oppress, or support, contain and channel nature. "Behavior may vary across 42 cultures, but the design of the mental programs that generate it need not vary.... And all people may have good and evil motives, but not everyone may translate them into behavior in the same way" (p. 41). For Pinker, postmodern constructionist attempts to see behavior as determined by culture are due primarily to a fear of the prejudices of determinism that biological perspectives engender, such as sexism or racism.

Postmodernists and other relativists attack truth and objectivity not so much because they are interested in philosophical problems of ontology and epistemology but because they feel it is the best way to pull the rug out from under racists, sexists, and homophobes. (2002, p. 202)

After explaining the basic argument of Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel, essentially that geography shaped the world distribution of wealthy, dominating nations,1 Pinker believes "the best explanation today is thoroughly cultural, but it depends on seeing a culture as a product of human desires rather than as a shaper of them" (2002, p. 69). This insight that culture, however influential it may be in shaping identity, is a product first of human consciousness and desires, is lacking in the constructionist

viewpoint. A friend who is also a scientist once said to me, "It is easier to disprove an idea about reality than to prove one." This is the tack of geneticist and psychologist David Rowe in The Limits of Family Influence: Genes, Experience, and Behavior (1994). Rowe

slogs unimaginatively through loads of statistical studies and data on twins and adoptive

children to demonstrate that the rearing environment—the family home—has negligible

influence on the development of personality. Rowe's demonstration involves finding no statistical correlation between character traits in parents and their offspring in comparisons of adoptive children, their adopted parents, and the parents' biological offspring. "Individuals who share genes are alike in personality regardless of how they

1 Eurasia, an east-west latitude allowed successful animal, plant, and technology migration from culture to culture much easier than in north-south continents such as Americas and Africa; also, the river networks in Eurasia were/are superior to Africa and Australia. 43 are reared, whereas rearing environment involves little or no personality resemblance " (1994, p. 64; italics in original). Rowe has a slight misunderstanding of the nurture end of the nature/nurture dichotomy: environmental influences do not create personality traits as much as shapes and conditions the existing traits given by genetic endowment. That is, one's rearing environment determines the expression, repression, and value assigned to one's traits and given qualities rather than creating those qualities ex nihilio.

There is always the opportunity for the child to learn to control the urge to withdraw from a stranger or a large dog.. .Indeed, the role of the environment is more substantial in helping the child to overcome the tendency to withdraw than in making that child timid in the first place. (Ancus et al., 1993, p. 209) The rearing environment does not create personalities, but shapes them, and the fact that Rowe finds similar personalities among siblings who were not raised in the same familial home does not indicate that rearing environment has no influence. To state that one's early environment has no influence on one's developing sense of self is such an extreme

statement as to seem absurd. This relationship between genetics and environmental conditioning in personality development appears to have escaped Rowe: that the individual is born with certain innate tendencies and qualities but the amplification, overcompensation, repression, or direct expression of these innate endowments will be forged through experience.

Nurturing does not create character as much as shape it, a proposition to be discussed further in the dissertation, where the research will attempt to delineate clearly the level of

conditioned identity and innate character. Neuroscience understands the sense of self as an emergent phenomenon of the brain, which adapts sensory input to existing structure and processes. The development of the mind happens at the interstice of neurobiological processes and interpersonal experience, particularly of the parents and early environment. Contemporary 44 neuroscience is a balance of nature and nurture where the majority of the neuronal wiring in the brain is experience-dependent and established during the early years of life.

Early experience shapes the structure and function of the brain. This reveals the fundamental way in which gene expression is determined by experience .... Therefore, caregivers are the architects of the way in which experience influences the unfolding of genetically preprogrammed but experience-dependent brain development. (Siegel, 1999, pp. 84-85)

In developmental neuroscience, the focus is on two ends: the early years of life when primary caretaker relationships forge the neuronal pathways of the brain, and in adulthood when brain plasticity can provide for healthier expression and experience.

Even though many longitudinal personality studies have demonstrated that character traits remain stable throughout life (Pinker, 2002; Rowe, 1994), a primary characteristic of the brain is its plasticity (Cozolino, 2006; Siegel, 2007). These are not contradictory realities; the brain is always responding to experience and retains the ability to re-learn and re-structure itself, but what is being re-wired is conditioning not character. Again, this distinction will be extrapolated further in the research.

We also know that the brain is capable of change at any time and that social interactions are a primary source of brain regulation, growth, and health. Those of us who study interpersonal neurobiology believe that friendships, marriage, psychotherapy - in fact, any meaningful relationship - can reactivate neuroplastic processes and actually change the structure of the brain. (Cozolino, 2006, p. 8) The brain, and therefore the self that emerges from it, is always able to adapt and to learn.

Fictive Self The development of identity and its storied structure have been worked through in narrative and developmental psychology and literary theory. However, some depth psychologists do give a nod or discussion of the fictive level of identity, and two of them, James Hollis and James Hillman, are discussed in this review of the storied or fictive level of self. A basic distinction between these perspectives of the storied self and the preceding concepts of self is that the following discussions do not center on the question 45 of whether there is an a priori reality to the self. The main point of the review of these texts is to understand the perspective of the storied nature of identity itself which the viewpoints reviewed thus far have not commented on in detail, and to compare these ideas of the fictive identity with the intention and trajectory of the research. Early in The Soul's Code, Hillman states his intention to show that "despite early injury and all the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, we bear from the start the image of a definite individual character with some enduring traits" (1996, p. 4). The research, too, will delve into character as the primary mover in the development of personality. Hillman employs a teleological perspective that the development of a self is pulled by the future as much as, and at some point more than, it is pushed by the past. The mythological view of The Soul's Code has metaphysical vibrations, as does much of Jung's work. Hillman's acorn theory can be understood as his metaphoric and mythological representation of Jung's theory of the self archetype. This is how he states it, "I am answerable to an innate image that I am filling out through my biography" (p. 4). The innate image is the self and biography is the storied identity. A tenet of the depth psychological viewpoint is that the mistakes or crises experienced in one's unconsciousness and youth are necessarily related to the fated unfolding of happenings within the larger trajectory of one's life as guided by the self. There is a sense that the ego identity spins a story explaining why one is so, why life happens so, and this story reflects well on the ego. If the ego is out of alignment with the intentions of the self, it will be necessarily adjusted through crises, shadow, or fate. For Hillman it is a matter of reframing or re-casting one's story. "We are ... less damaged by the traumas of childhood than by the traumatic way we remember childhood as a time of unnecessary and externally caused calamities that wrongly shaped us" (1996, p. 4). Hillman's acorn experiences nothing that the larger story does not require of the individual and nothing is given that the self cannot incorporate in such a way as to 46 manifest one's fate. It is a matter simply, but not easily, of being in alignment with one's fate (i.e., the telos of the self) or not.

James Hollis also speaks to the role of mistakes and unconsciousness when he says

One may say, without ironic intention, that most of the first half of life is a gigantic, unavoidable mistake. Not a mistake of deliberate intention, but a set of intentions which are governed by the unconscious mythologems of the provisional personality. As one serves these mythologems, so one is obliged to digress further and further from the natural, instinctual teleology whose becoming is our life purpose. (2001, p. 50)

Depth psychology focuses on the emergence of a deeper, non-ego structure of self in later life. Hillman's stance is to see the traumas of circumstance as necessary for fate to unfold. This is a rich, meaningful, and powerful re-orientation but if it is gripped by a weak and unstable ego desperate to escape its compulsions and unconscious wounds, then this level of depth psychology can become an escapist sublimation. It is easy, when overwhelmed with one's own flaws and suffering, to reach around one's antecedents to the untarnished future. The research looks with detail at the construction of identity as a testament to the importance of doing one's ego work before moving on to the more sophisticated, subtle, mythological, and numinous work with the objective psyche directly.

Hillman's intentions are transparent; he does not pretend to hold an essential truth about the development of personality or a life story. Rather, he theorizes from the aesthetic psyche which sees through all stories as stories and posits more stories.

More deeply, however, we are victims of academic, scientistic, and even therapeutic psychology, whose paradigms do not sufficiently account for or engage with, and therefore ignore, the sense of calling, that essential mystery at the heart of each human life. (1996, p. 6) 47

This allegiance with the mysterious and marginal aspects of the individual aligns Hillman with both aesthetic and metaphysical perspectives; both are discourses loyal to the imaginative yet intangible experiences of being a self.

Hillman desires to see through the story of our lives and ourselves, not in a dismissive way as some New Age metaphysicians do, but rather as situated within the context of a larger story. Hollis speaks to this when he states that "finding one's story, the examination of how it has played out, and the recognition of possibly another story which seeks to emerge, is the task of therapy, or any pretense toward the examined life"

(2001, p. 35). Where Jungian psychology sees the ego's story as either a filling out

(Hillman) or a false cover (Hollis) to the larger story of the self, the perspective of the research does not see such a dramatic demarcation of false and real, but rather, aspects of the self as a whole that come together to create identity, and all are plastic in nature.

Narrative psychology overlaps with some views of depth psychology—such as

McAdams' statement that "stories are less about facts and more about meanings" (1993, p. 28)—has at least one significant difference: it does not see identity-as-story as false, but indeed, the very way we come to know ourselves. "The central idea of this book is a disarmingly simple one: in the modern world in which we all live, identity is a life story"

(p. 5; italics in original). Specifically, McAdams "presents a new theory of human identity. The theory is built around the idea that each of us comes to know who he or she is by creating a heroic story of the self' (p. 11).

McAdams basically breaks down the story of identity into its literary components: narrative tone, ideological themes, and mythic structures. There are many accurate insights into identity as story, such as the experience of childhood setting the narrative 48 tone of our lives and how this develops into mythic themes (McAdams, p. 45). Yet when the discussion of childhood experiences, which McAdams understands through neuroscience's attachment theory, leads to further questions into character and innate attributes, McAdams appears to reach the limits of his inquiry. In noting that according to literary scholars mythic forms of life story break up into four general forms—comedy, romance, tragedy, and ironic—optimistically toned narratives will be predominantly comedic or romantic, pessimistically tone narratives will be primarily tragic or ironic, he confesses that a bad childhood does not necessarily lead to a pessimistic story form and vice versa.

Psychologists do not know exactly why some choose optimistic and others pessimistic forms. It is tempting, of course, to say that narrative tone is determined by the events of a life. If, in general, good things happen to us, then our myth is comic or romantic, and if not, then tragic or ironic. But there is no simple correspondence between narrative tone and life history. (McAdams, p. 52) The research inquires into this curious reality directly: why do individuals respond with such variance to similar life experiences? Is it accurate for McAdams to say that individuals "choose" the literary forms of their story? Who chooses? And is there a level of unconscious and conscious choosing? The limits of narrative psychology are the limits of literary analysis of identity: they treat the story of identity as the reality of the self and therefore exempt themselves from inquiries into innate character. This is humanities and literary scholar William Randall's basic tack in The Stories We Are: An Essay on Self-Creation (1995). Randall's statements such as "the inside story is something we create from the outside story" (p. 67) indicates that we are empty before the story begins, pointing to Pinker's theory of the blank slate, revealing the lack of reflection or incorporation of possible innate, biological, or inherited potentials and qualities to the self. Not that Randall, or anyone, needs to agree on the matter of innateness, but it would add edge to a curiously large but flaccid 49 text to demonstrate that opposing viewpoints were reflected upon. And Randall's understanding of the complex concept of the unconscious is a one-dimensional image of a bottomless waste bin: "The unconscious contains all that I have ever been, done, thought, or felt in my life but that is largely lost to conscious retrieval" (p. 59). Since the unconscious is by definition that which is not known to consciousness, and we can only know it through its conscious manifestations, how can we possibly assert that it holds all one has "ever been, done, thought, or felt"? Randall reveals a limit, perhaps, of crossing over disciplines without having enough depth of the field outside of one's area of specialty. He goes on to describe two full pages of eventually unanswered questions as a "litany [that] testifies to the untested nature of a poetic perspective on personal change" (1995, p. 257). But they reveal more of Randall's own uncharted waters than untested scholarship. He asks:

Is there a limit to how much re-storying we should encourage in others? ... Do we sometimes try to wrest people's stories from them before they have indicated a desire or readiness to disclose them, however convinced we are that those stories are in need of renewal? (p. 256) It feels as though these questions come from an unresolved confrontation Randall had with a pushy friend, relative, or therapist. While Randall appears to have forgotten at this point in his lengthy essay the gem of insight he quotes by psychologists White and Epson, '"as persons become separated from their stories, they are able to experience a sense of personal agency'" (p. 250), it does not prevent him from producing the most elegant and insightful question in his entire text:

How can I find a story big enough, that has a horizon broad enough, to account for, accommodate, and re-member the events of my life so that as much of my life as possible is available to me as a coherent whole? (p. 250) Unfortunately, he does not provide satisfactory response to these provocative questions. 50

There is a tendency in Randall's analysis to see the story of identity with great simplicity, flatly, linear, as constructed purely from external events and that the incorporation of these events into a story creates who we are. While identity-as-story obviously displays literary qualities such as narrative tone, themes, mythic battles, heroic struggles, and bounded linear progression, as well as many other similarities with works of fiction, and while conferring that fiction and identity are primarily produced by the imagination, a strict literary analysis of identity falls flat when confronted with the depth, mystery, and complexity of the self. The self is more than the story she tells of herself, and the story she tells is much more complicated, layered, and nuanced than revelations of themes and plot will ever enflesh. Summary of the Literature: The Clearing of the Research The secular and the sacred have become polarized in Western culture, and this is reflected in the various oppositions of the concepts of self. When the self is polarized we are either impossibly powerful or impossibly empty. The challenge is not to prove one viewpoint as more accurate; the challenge is to see that the opposition itself is an illusion. The research enters through the space between the oppositions, holding identity as the filter that mediates the external world, makes sense of it, and expresses the inner world. Identity is a portal between worlds. This research reflects on and investigates identity as a crucial player in subjectivity and an individual's ability to be in touch with both worlds of the sacred and the secular, of subject and object.

The theorists reviewed do not exhaust the perspectives they represent; most thinkers are interdisciplinary, straddling both depth psychology and neuroscience as in attachment and self-object theories, or psychology and aesthetics as in narrative psychology or Hillman, or, metaphysical perspectives of psychology, such as Tolle. Each perspective on the concept of self detailed here is seen as a different section of an organic whole. Each perspective, metaphysical, historical, scientific, depth psychological, agrees that identity is constructed, and, each looks for meaning within the limits of their system. 51

In addition, each perspective leans towards a type of self-creation, some action or stand that the individual can take within the discourse, even the postmodern constructivist perspective. Self-creation, to interpret one's self rather than be the interpretation of others, an aesthetics of existence in which the individual chooses one's way of being in response to constructed being is something we all seek. Neuroscience demonstrates that the brain learns responsively throughout life, sees consciousness as emergent from physiology and that this consciousness can become aware of itself objectively, being able to direct its energy towards change or growth, towards breaking through patterns of thought, emotions, and behavior. These themes— Identity as construct, meaning, and self-creative properties—are the deductive premises that the research builds upon as it inquires into how the construct of identity is grounded in the body and emerges as an aesthetic object through the imagination. There is disagreement among the theorists and texts on whether there is anything beyond the constructed identity; specifically, is there an a priori Being or consciousness? I respond: does it matter? But I give Jung the final word:

One should not be deterred by the rather silly objection that nobody knows whether these old universal ideas - God, immortality, freedom of the will, and so on—are 'true' or not. Truth is the wrong criterion here. One can only ask whether they are helpful or not, whether man is better off and feels his life more complete, more meaningful and more satisfactory with or without them. (1939/1954, p. 326)

While the question of the existence of an a priori Being is meaningful for each individual to answer for him or herself, in this research it is not addressed. The research brings all of the perspectives to bear on the self: neuroscience and the brain, depth psychology's self objects, complexes, and archetypes, metaphysical meaning, sacredness, and a containing consciousness, and the Active construction of identity via memory and imagination. 52

Chapter 3 Methodology

An Archimedean Point Depth psychology has an innate methodological problem in that the object of research is also the subject performing the research. Von Franz brings up this problem in Psyche and Matter (1988) and finds that a correlation with quantum physics grounds the depth psychological inquiries in a body of objective physical knowledge.

Jung considered his psychology to be empirical in method and therefore part and parcel of natural sciences. However, what is problematical about this method is that psychology describes psychic contents with psychic means. Its knowledge or process of explanation does take place in the same medium .... It lacks an Archimedean point outside of itself, and in this respect it is critically limited, (p. 17)

But Von Franz is not the only one to recognize this inherent methodological problem in psychology; Jung himself recognized it. Researchers Devos and Banaji note that William James saw the same epistemological problems of studying the self and identity in 1890 as they recognize that:

The object of scrutiny, the self, was also the agent doing the scrutinizing. This illicit merger of the knower and the known has created an epistemological unease that philosophers have worried about and psychologists have either ignored or turned into an assumption of their theorizing. (2003, pp. 177-178) This epistemological issue is why having an objective field of knowledge to ground

observation and theory is important methodologically, and why Jung considered the objective psyche, especially as it manifested in dreams, just such an essential internal ground. The authors also refer to this same function of the unconscious. "When knowledge about oneself resides in a form that is inaccessible to consciousness but can indeed be tapped indirectly, the self-as-knower and the self-as-known can be dissociated

in a manner that is epistemologically more pleasing" (p. 178). Neuroscientific experiments separate consciousness and unconsciousness in exactly this manner, providing a potential supplement and complement to analytical knowledge. 53

British analyst Jean Knox (2003) draws attention to the fact that analytic interpretations are "shaped, not only by the patient's material but also by the theoretical models that we draw on to understand the material" (p. 2). It is important, not only for intellectual accuracy but also for therapeutic responsibility, that analysts be up-to-date on the latest models of consciousness, even if they do not agree with them, as this keeps our own knowledge fresh and sharp. Many psychotherapists believe that sharing technique and case studies in seminars and papers is sufficient to keep them apprised of the human mind and how it works. This approach to research and education is solipsistic—a method that finds evidence for the model of the mind and therapy used by practitioners of the same model; this "enumerative inductivism" (p. 3) is known colloquially as "preaching to the choir." Simply stated, "checking the findings of one method against those of another makes it possible to minimize the bias associated with a single method" (Solms & Turnbull, 2002, p. 182). In analytical psychology this same principle is captured in the value in consciously dialoguing in relationship with the opposite; this is a tenet of Jung's thought. In this regard, the dialogue between analytical psychology and neuroscience can be compared to a conversation between an intuitive and a sensation type. For these reasons, we need to extend the objective grounding of subjective insights and experiences of the self into the brain. We know too much about the connection between the brain and

mind to analyze one separately from the other any longer. To come to conclusions about the self or psyche through analysis that doesn't consider the brain is like applying classic Freudian analysis to Capgras delusion, a method originally used in older psychiatry books. In Capgras delusion, after suffering

head trauma, a patient can recognize the face of a familiar loved one, such as one's

mother, but believes her to be an imposter. If the mother calls on the phone, the patient immediately recognizes her voice as her, but if she walks into the room the patient will tell the doctor that this woman looks like his mother but is an imposter. Classic psychoanalysis claims the trauma damaged the inhibitory effects of the cortical layer 54 allowing taboo Id urges to surface, in this case Oedipal sexual urges for the mother. Consciousness provides a rationalization, albeit an absurd one, but as we'll see in later chapters, absurd rationality is quite in line with ego-consciousness, to protect it from knowing the contents of the unconscious. But what actually happens in the brain to produce the effects of Capgras delusion is a severance of the neuronal connection from the visual areas in the parietal cortices that process familiar faces to the emotionally appraising amygdala in the middle of the brain. The individual has the dissonant experience of recognizing his mother or familiar people visually but not experiencing the emotional recognition of them at the same time (Ramachandran, 2004, p. 80). In this odd situation, it feels to the patient as though the familiar other is an imposter. Jung, in his wisdom, saw that individuals need an objective ground for psychological subjectivity; he found this ground in the objective psyche and the process of individuation. Individuation guides the ego in the process of de-identification with people, objects, and circumstances in both our outer and inner worlds. "The aim of individuation is nothing less than to divest the self of the false wrappings of the persona on the one hand, and the suggestive power of primordial images on the other" (Jung, 1943/1953a, p. 172). Neuroscience implicitly asks us to de-identify the self from the movements and processes of the brain. Understanding the neurobiological correlates of consciousness does not reduce the self to the processes of the brain but deepens the de- identification process where more of what is self and not-self is discovered. An objective ground is methodologically necessary for our subjective experiences, for "like historians, personality psychologists may be able to make sense of almost any observation after the fact" (Corr & Matthews, 2009, p. 17). Interdisciplinary research involving a "blending of research across fields is not just a luxury to behold, but increasingly a necessity to make genuine progress" (Davidson, 2010, p. xi).

In using neuroscience as an objective ground for depth psychology in the exploration of identity, generally accepted theories and knowledge from scientific fields 55

are included and analyzed in the dissertation. Like depth psychology and most fields of study, there are many subtle, advanced arguments within the various subfields of neuroscience. This dissertation does not make an argument in these areas but rather argues the finer points of Jungian theory in light of consensual knowledge of the brain. As stated above, the truth is that both Freud and Jung were ahead of the science of their time. Neurology at the turn of the 20th century simply could not explain or correlate the close, empirical observations of the psyche they were making. Now, at the turn of the 21st century, neuroscience is leaping ahead of depth psychology; the clear distinctions and assumptions made between the psyche and biology in Freud and Jung's time are no longer viable. Although it is true that this relationship between neurobiology and consciousness exists on a spectrum—with neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's at the biological end and discovering the myth and purpose of one's life journey on the imaginative end—there is a wide band of enmeshment, relationship, and dialogue between the snaps of the brain and the crackle of the imagination. Along the spectrum of consciousness there is a relationship of psyche and matter, where the

psychic functions merge into the physiological processes of the body .... Thus it is to be suspected that our division into material versus mental, that which is observable from the outside versus that which is perceivable from the inside, is only a subjectively valid separation, only a limited polarization that our structure of consciousness imposes on us but that actually does not correspond to the whole of reality. In fact it is rather to be suspected that these two poles actually constitute a unitary reality. (Von Franz, 1988, p. 11) Her observation may explain the irony that as science has gone further and further into the world of matter it discovered objective, universal principles and structures, just as Jung went further and further into subjective experience and found objective, universal principles and structures of the psyche. Unknowingly, each discipline worked in complementary fashion, according to the nature of the psychic medium that contains

both. 56

Dialectics and Interiority

The dialogue between analytical psychology and neuroscience embodies a dialectic methodology. Classic dialectics is a systematic weighing of conflicts and contradictions with an intention of reaching resolution or synthesis at a new level.

Hegel's change process of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis is traditionally considered a dialectic, as is Jung's confrontation of conscious and unconscious in the transcendent function. Essentially, a pair of opposites meet in antagonism, and as the contradictions are worked out in dialogue, a synthesis is forged. However, according to Jungian analyst Wolfgang Giegerich, dialectics is not about conflicts and their resolution; this position necessarily begins with opposing external forces and dialectics is about interior contradictions. "But dialectics does not start out with opposites, and not with Two. Rather, dialectical thinking begins with one single idea, notion, phenomenon and then shows its internal contradiction" (Giegerich, 2005a, p. 2). Further, Giegerich tells us that "dialectical thinking thus has a lot to do with 'making conscious' and getting inside the topic at hand" (p. 3). In this process, there is not pursuit of a solution and not necessarily a movement to a higher understanding. Dialectics is a deepening that "reveals that the opposites had been united all along in a common Ground. There is no need for a solution here, but rather the insight and realization that the experience of the opposites was due to a superficial and preliminary

view" (p. 5). The trajectory of dialectics is a moving under and interior. There is not a solution to be created or generated, but an understanding, a making conscious of the

original unity or common Ground. Dialectics is our methodology; considering psychology as does Giegerich, as the

discipline of interiority (and the soul as the experience of interiority and the imagination

as the medium of interiority), the topic of the dialogue is the interior of the self. In this interior experience we have two primary perspectives: the body and the psyche. It is from both of these sources that the self and identity is generated. While I discuss the 57 influence of conditioning external forces—family, circumstance, culture—these factors do not generate identity; rather, they shape it. When a subjective focus of identity is maintained, the content and dynamics of the self are comprised of the body and the psyche, both of which takes the stimulus, movements, influence, and intrusions of experience and sublimate it into an identity. Dual-aspect Monism This work holds that the psyche emerges from the body, and in particular, processes of the brain. Though consciousness cannot be reduced to the brain, it remains intimately related to it and reflects neurobiological structures and processes. "As we scale up from the physics to biology to psychology, each successive level of complexity is sustained by regularities that are manifest on the level below" (Kugler, 2005, p. 142). However, Kugler also notes that the behavior of content or processes at more complex levels is neither explainable nor reducible to levels below. Agreed. This truth of nonreducibility poses a challenge to psychology expressed by both Kugler and Otto Kernberg. "Psychology's theoretical challenge is to explain how macroscopic psychic regularities emerge out of microscopic physiological elements, such that the psychological regularities exhibit a certain degree of autonomy" (Kugler, 2005, p. 142). Otto Kernberg (2009) captures the same sentiment, writing that "we still have to clarify how neurobiological disposition and structures relate to psychological development and

its derived structures" (p. 506). In this endeavor, I hold a perspective of dual-aspect monism, which accepts that we are made of only one type of stuff (that mind and brain are not separate as in the classical dualist position of Descartes) but that this stuff is perceived in two significantly different ways. This implies that

in our essence we are neither mental nor physical beings .... Dual-aspect monism implies that the brain is made of stuff that appears 'physical' when viewed from the outside (as an object) and 'mental' when viewed from the inside (as a subject).... This distinction between body and mind is therefore an artifact of perception. (Solms & Turnbull, 2002, p. 56) 58

In other words, the psyche is a wave of light collapsing into brain matter.

The mind and brain are equally real, but they exist at different levels of complexity. Just as water ... emerges from a particular combination of hydrogen and oxygen and has distinctive properties of its own (properties that do not characterize hydrogen or oxygen alone), so, too, mental phenomena emerge when the neurons of the human brain are connected or activated in a particular way. (Solms & Turnbull, 2002, p. 54)

And just as we do not know how matter jumps from hydrogen and oxygen to water, we do not know how the mind leaps from synaptic sparks to image and thought. Opening up analytical psychology to scientific discoveries may well transform it in important ways. But isn't this excitingl As noted previously, I concur with Paris that Jungian theory is a good story and guiding myth of the psyche with a permanent home in the arts and humanities, but do not agree that all of Jung's work can or should be defined this way. Jung knew well that opening one's self up to a relationship with an Other offers both danger and reward. "For two personalities to meet is like mixing two chemical substances: if there is any combination at all, both are transformed" (1931/1954, p. 71). This is as true for the relationship between analytical psychology and neuroscience as it is between lovers. Delimits This dissertation critiques Jung's theories of the structure of the psyche, in particular the collective and personal unconscious, archetypes, and complexes. It does not incorporate theories of alchemy, religion, or synchronicity nor touch on other important structures such as the shadow, anima, or animus. Further, this work is not a depth psychological reading of neuroscience and the brain; this may be difficult for a humanities-oriented, Jungian reader. A valid and rich criticism of scientific methodologies is to see them symbolically, recognizing a guiding myth that determines the methods of measurement and to a large extent the results achieved. This is true, not only for science but for all fields; we will all find what we're looking for. Analytical 59 psychology is historically an insular field of knowledge; not only does Jungian psychology not participate in scientific methodologies to test its theories, but most of the interdisciplinary work in analytical psychology is with the humanities, which provide lush imagery and discussions but due to the high compatibility between the fields, but do not provide as sharp an edge of definition as neuroscience can. The intent in this work is to ground the valuable subjective experience of the psyche from Jung's work in the objective processes of the body. Discussions in the previous chapters about the fear of reduction, dialectics, and dual-aspect monism are meant to remove from the work a sense of reduction or competition in the dialogue; while there is criticism and a standard of intellectual rigor, it is not intended to reduce Jung's thought or the reality of the psyche to biological principles or processes. Indeed, in one chapter I suggest that analytical psychology needs to claim a shadow projection of its own in reducing archetypes to biology. But that is for later. For now, understand that this work, like all long, creative, inspired research, had many options at several points to take different pathways in thought. I have chosen to stay close to the latest, relatively uncontroversial findings of neuroscience, the brain, and consciousness, while applying a close critique of the Jungian structure of the psyche, especially the collective unconscious and archetypes. This close critique is not due to elevating neuroscience above Jungian psychology. I have lavished my attention, with

intense detail, on the ideas I love the most. 60

Section I: The Brain

In order to understand what elements of identity are of the imagination or psyche, we must first know what parts are not. To this end, this first section explores the nature of the brain systems and structures that operate outside of ego-consciousness. These processes quite often are made aware to consciousness, though some aspects of the brain are not accessible to consciousness at all. These forms of consciousness—called either implicit or nonconscious in neuroscience—are both phylogenetically and ontogenetically older than ego-consciousness. To explore identity's interiority, we must start with the ground of our experience of being an individual; this ground is the brain in neuroscience and the collective unconscious in analytical psychology. Both are as interior as you can get, and both existed before the "me" we each know as ourselves existed. There are various ways to understand the collective unconscious, and I propose three models or perspectives. The first model is our evolutionary legacy as expressed in our genes and biology. The second perspective is as an autonomous realm or medium that is not dependent on ego-consciousness and has its own functions and processes. The third is the manifestation of what Jung called the psyche: a subjective, imaginative realm that operates in our individual lives and in our culture. The first model is what I term the phylogenetic collective unconscious; it is the collective unconscious molded through eons of evolution. The second model is an ontogenetic collective unconscious or implicit consciousness. This aspect of the collective unconscious within an individual brain and psyche developmentally precedes ego-consciousness. The third and last perspective is the archetypal collective unconscious. An understanding of the archetypal collective unconscious that Jung so closely studied and articulated is the imaginative representation in the psyche of the phylogenetic and ontogenetic neurobiological structures of the brain.

Jung's work with the archetypal collective unconscious is sometimes confounded in his work with the phylogenetic collective unconscious, a confusion carried over into the work of some contemporary Jungians. In this first section, the phylogenetic and 61 ontogenetic collective unconscious are delineated from the collective unconscious of analytical psychology, or, we could say, the mysterious evolution of human being in the brain is separated from the ancient stories we tell about it. Memory researchers Markowitsch and Welzer summarize the work of Merlin Donald, who theorizes that there were three evolutionary steps in human primate consciousness and memory that led to our great differences and divergence from other primates. He calls these three additional qualities mimetic, mythic, and theoretic. Mimetic is the ability, first emerging two million years ago in Homo habilus, to plan, practice, and transmit knowledge to others, as in the example of fashioning stone tools for hunting. This ability means that humans began to cope with the demands of the external world through delay; "it opens up a space in time between a demand and then coping with that demand. Such a cognitive technique also has the potential for the uniquely human ability of representing one's own self in the form of thoughts" (Markowitsch & Welzer, 2005/2010, p. 40). This key mimetic ability, Markowitsch and Welzer explain, leads to the recognition of intention in one's self and in others, such as drawing conclusions of another's intentions when watching them form a hunting spear. The next stage in cognitive evolution, mythical, "is characterized by the development of forms of symbolic communication. This is the stage at which Homo sapiens appeared, approximately only 200,000 years ago" (Markowitsch & Welzer,

2005/2010, p. 40). At this time in history funeral rites emerge indicating a clear awareness of time, past and future, marking the end of immediate presence characterized by other primates. The theoretical stage, which we are still in now, is marked by an intense acceleration of the cultural transmission of knowledge initiated by the invention of writing and highly symbolic forms of communication. This transmission of cultural knowledge is called an "externalization of memory" (p. 40), where the neuronal coding of experience in one individual, which Donald terms an engram, is projected out in the

form of an exogram, a building block of culture. 62

The phylogenetic collective unconscious is conceivably timeless; one could say it begins with the stars or when primates formed a unique evolutionary branch from reptiles some 65 million years ago. The ontogenetic collective unconscious is equated with the emergence of a reflective space in the mind, appearing in history roughly 2.5 million years ago, that transformed a stone into a tool and carved a niche for a self. The archetypal collective unconscious would conceivably have begun some 200,000 years ago when the first funeral rites and symbols of human culture were established. The time of totems, taboos, and ritual is the historical period that anthropologist Alondra Oubre (1997) speculates that the first experiences of numinous revelation occurred. Actually, her reverie is that it began before the funeral rites and totems and taboos took form in early culture, in huddles of wailing and swaying hominids during the time of Homo erectus. She imagines them starving, cold, frightened. Perhaps one of their tribe, a child, a young one, has been killed or lost. Perhaps the winter is descending and they have nowhere to go and nothing to eat. It is possible, she imagines, that as they wailed and swayed in unison in their collective grief, a rain storm began, a sunbeam broke through, or some other natural movement appeared as though in response. And she wonders, is it too far to speculate that one of them, the proto-shaman among them, had a flicker of numinosity in linking their subjective, collective state and actions with the external happening?

In this telling, the ontological threshold of the self is the sublime. It is a story that

could be true. 63

Chapter 4 The Ground

In his work, Jung was essentially exploring and writing about the subjective, imaginative layer of the psyche. He admonished his students in the Tavistock lectures to remember the relationship of subjectivity to unconscious contents; we will do well to heed it here and throughout this work.

Whatever we have to say about the unconscious is what the conscious mind says about it. Always the unconscious psyche, which is entirely of an unknown nature, is expressed by consciousness and in terms of consciousness, and that is the only thing we can do. We cannot go beyond that, and we should always keep it in mind as an ultimate critique of our judgment. (Jung, 1935/1950, pp. 7-8) And again in the introduction to Esther Harding's Woman's Mysteries, Jung makes this subjective distinction clear:

Of course this term [archetype] is not meant to denote an inherited idea, but rather an inherited mode of psychic functioning .... In other words, it is a "pattern of behavior." This aspect of the archetypes is the biological one .... But the picture changes at once when looked at from the inside, that is, from within the realm of the subjective psyche. Here the archetype presents itself as numinous, that is, it appears as an experience of fundamental importance. (1955, pp. ix-x) And finally, Jung clarifies that "the archetype does not proceed from physical facts but describes how the psyche experiences the physical fact" (Jung, 1951/1959, p.

154). This distinction of the subjective experience of the psyche—personal and collective—is important; it clearly sets our task not to reduce the collective unconscious or archetypes to the brain, but to understand the nature of the areas and functions of the brain that might give rise to these psychological structures that generate our subjective archetypal experience. Consciousness as an emergent property of the brain does not necessarily translate into the mind being reduced to and explained by the functions of the

brain. 64

The Collective Unconscious

The concept of the collective unconscious has a long history in cultural religions, myths, and ideas of "a 'world-spirit,' as it was postulated by the Stoics, or of a 'world- soul' that animates the universe and flows from the divine or demonic 'in-fluences' (in flowings) into the human subject" (von Franz, 1988, p. 78). Jung describes the images and figures of the collective unconscious as being "expelled from the psyche into cosmic space" (1954/1959, p. 12) and says that "we should really have guessed long ago that myths refer to something psychic" (p. 6). Note here that he does not reduce myths to psychology. The classical Jungian view, expressed by von Franz, understands that ''''myths and mythical religious systems. . . are the first and foremost expression of objective psychic processes, " (1988, p. 79; italics in original) yet the first experience of the collective unconscious is subjective. The collective unconscious can be described as the subjective experience of unconsciousness that is felt to be transpersonal in origin and yet intimately related to the subject. In discussing the function and development of neurobiological structures that I correlate with the archetypal psyche, it is important to keep a clear distinction between the formation of the collective unconscious and a region of the brain such as the limbic system; the limbic system is far older than the collective unconscious. The collective unconscious is the subjective awareness, my argument goes, of certain regions and systems of the brain, not the regions themselves. The quality of numinosity, a sense of ancientness, and an intelligence outside the boundaries of the ego—what I call the not-me or non-self—are correlated in experience and function with the limbic system and the implicit consciousness of the right hemispheres of the brain.

The unconscious is often thought of as a container of the repressed, forgotten, or dissociated material incomprehensible to consciousness. It is also accurate to think of the unconscious as a continuous process which sometimes generates material and content into consciousness awareness. "We have stated that the lower reaches of the psyche begin 65 where the ftmction emancipates itself from the compulsive force of instinct and becomes amendable to the will, and we have defined the will as disposable energy" (Jung, 1954/1969, p. 200). To understand the collective unconscious conceptually as the psychic realm and reality that gives birth to archetypal images, we need to look to the lower reaches of the psyche, referring to the physiological edge of the collective unconscious. This level of the psyche is not conscious in an egotistical, reflective manner, though it is, as we will see, intelligent and autonomous in function and process. Jacobi explains that this experience "must be taken not as a metaphysical concept but empirically as signifying 'beyond consciousness'" (1959, p. 50) where consciousness is understood as ego-consciousness. The ego has two aspects: it is formed by both conscious and unconscious processes and contents. The personal unconscious, distinct from the collective unconscious, is derived from personal experience and is the unconscious aspect of the ego. The ego, as a psychic object, is the totality of reflective consciousness and personal unconscious contents. The personal unconscious is constructed, along with the ego, primarily through experience in early infancy and childhood. In this sense, the ego is constructed of both self and others, or, more specifically, of self and self s relationship with primary, significant others. In essence, the collective unconscious is distinct from the personal unconscious in its impersonality; it is a realm beyond the ego that belongs to all human beings and its primary manifestation is in the archetypes. "The archetype is a fundamental organizing principle which originates from the objective psyche, beyond the level of the empirical personality" (Corbett, 1996, p. 15). While Jung found clear theoretical distinctions between the personal and collective level of the unconscious, it is not as easy to separate them experientially as it is intellectually. Both concepts are subjective in nature in that they are the ego's description and felt experience. Therefore, the first distinction of the collective unconscious is that it exists outside the boundaries of the ego. "The instincts and the 66 archetypes together form the 'collective unconscious.' I call it 'collective' because, unlike the personal unconscious, it is not made up of individual and more or less unique contents but of those which are universal and of regular occurrence" (1948/1969a, pp. 133-34). And Corbett affirms that "our felt sense is that we are addressed by transpersonal levels of the psyche" (1996, p. 1). In analytical psychology the collective unconscious is typically discussed under the rubric of the archetypes: its primary content and manifestation. In this way, an understanding of the nature of the archetypes is an understanding of the nature of the collective unconscious. However, the collective unconscious as a concept, reality, and realm, though represented by archetypal images and affects, is not contained by them. One can say that the collective unconscious is an archetypal realm or region, whereas archetypal images and affects are the manifestations known to consciousness. However, on a practical level, this is theoretical separation; what marks the collective unconscious is its affective intensity. Corbett, like Jung and the Jungians, links this with the experience of the numinosum. "The numinous grips or stirs the soul with a particular affective state, which [Rudolph] Otto describes as a feeling of the lmysterium tremendum," (1996, p. 11). This affective experience imparts a sense of profound importance and is the basis of religious experience. The archetypal experience of the collective unconscious is not necessarily a

regressive state to the primitive though the emotional experience certainly can invite this description. Key in the experience of the collective unconscious is the attitude and strength or flexibility of ego-consciousness. If the structures of the personality are too weak or fragile, an experience of the intensity of the archetypal psyche can be "the production of excessive, unmanageable anxiety, or even psychosis" (Corbett, 1996, p.

23). A too fragile ego will be inundated, fearful, and perhaps regressive, whereas a too rigid or rational ego will be calcified, made brittle and rejecting. With a healthy and stable ego, the experience of the collective unconscious may be awesome and dreadful, 67 including intense affect, but there is not confusion of the personal identity with the moment; in more vulnerable, fragmented ego states, there is likely to be great confusion and enmeshment with the experience as one's own personal material. The emotional regulatory system of the psyche is important here in mediating archetypal experience. It is especially important in the fact that the collective unconscious often enters our life through our weak points, wounds, and pathology. This is because ego-consciousness is typically a rather well woven object, and as with a dam, it is at the weak points under the water line—points one does not tend to because they are unseen—that the pressure of the water is most dangerous. As we correlate the phenomenology of the collective unconscious with the brain, we will be looking particularly for experiences of the numinosum or intense affect that appears to be transpersonal and outside of the boundaries of the self. We will look towards a sense of ancientness, of otherness, and of autonomy. These will be the core experiences that we link with brain regions and systems that are the likely site of these experiences in the body.

The Evolution of the Brain: Phylogenetic The earth is about 5 billion years old. Reptiles originated 300 million years ago; mammals, 200 million. "Molecular data comparing monkeys, apes, and humans (the only living hominid species) indicates that all these groups are descendants of a common, primate-like ancestor which originated over 65 million years ago" (Oubre, 1997, p. 37).

By comparison, bipedal hominids, from which modern humans are descendents, have a history of about 5 to 6 million years. The bipedal hominid ancestor of the Homo species, Australopithecus afarensis, lived 3.5 million years ago, had ape-like consciousness and a

brain the size of a chimpanzee (about one-third the size of our brains). In the first 3 to 4 million years of bipedality there was practically no change in brain size. About 2 million years ago (mya), however, in the time of Homo habilis, simple stone tools appear. In a sudden punctuation of evolution, over the next 1 million 68 years the brain expanded rapidly to about two-thirds the size of present-day brains. The appearance of simple stone tools between 2 to 2.5 mya in the lower Paleolithic period and the emergence of symbolic art around 100 thousand years ago (kya) in the middle Paleolithic period, spans the range of appearance of the genus Homo to fully modern humans, though anatomically modern Homo sapiens emerged out of Africa about 200 kya (Allen, 2009, p. 49). In terms of brain size, Homo habilis, considered the first species of the genus Homo, who lived 2.3 to 1.8 mya, had a brain approximately 40% the size of modern brains. While there is controversy in anthropological fields as to the ancestor of Homo sapiens—there is speculation that Homo sapiens did not evolve from a single species of Homo erectus but evolved independently from different species—the majority of biological anthropologists agree that Homo erectus evolved from Homo habilis, and, that Homo habilis is the Homo species that made a punctuate evolutionary leap from ape-like consciousness to quasi-human cognitive capacity (Oubre, 1997, p. 31). Neanderthals (a species of Homo erectus that was extinct by 35 kya) and archaic Homo sapiens, who both lived about 300 kya, had brain size ranges equivalent to modern men and women. As history moved from the Middle Paleolithic to Upper Paleolithic periods of the Stone Age, stone tool technology made a catalytic shift. "The precipitous transformation in tool manufacturing that occurred during this and even earlier phases of human evolution reflected a momentous transition in consciousness" (Oubre, 1997, p. 69). It is thought that the capacity for symbolic thought, evolving into ritual and abstraction, catapulted the evolutionary development of the brain and the human being. And the simple stone tool, emerging in history 2 mya, is itself a symbol of the capacity to think

reflectively. In comparison to the pace of evolution before the simple stone stool—there

was not significant increase in brain size or material culture for up to 4 million years after the emergence of bi-pedal hominids—the appearance of simple stone tools is followed by 69 a rapid increase in brain size and evolution in consciousness, ritual, invention, and culture over the 2 million year period since Homo habilis. It is seductive to equate gross brain volume with complexity of consciousness. To a certain extent this may be correlated accurately enough but the brain also increases in proportion to the body and the body of Homo sapiens grew larger than the body of hominids. At some point, a larger brain becomes a liability; many more neurons with longer fibers connecting across longer distances would create congestion and sluggishness. This is known as "the connection problem" in the encephalization of the brain through history, and it was resolved through the functional reorganization of the brain.

Modern homo sapiens evolved in Africa approximately 200,000 years ago and subsequently became a global species, with no surviving hominid competitors. Clearly, there was some sort of cognitive element in the human advantage, but it seems likely that it was one that resulted from functional reorganization rather than a gross increase in brain size. (Allen, 2009, p. 80) This functional reorganization led to, among other things, a cognitive capacity for symbolizing. Jungian analyst Paul Kugler finds language and the imagination deciding factors in the sudden and complex evolution of our species.

Cultural artifacts and human language have been around for only a brief period of time in biological terms, and yet, our species has used its newly acquired symbolic ability to transform our planet, as well as our biology. The development of the capacity for imaging forever altered human evolution, transforming the process into an interactive dynamic between the forces of biology and symbolic representation. (2005, p. 143)

Not only for Kugler, but for anthropologists, biologists, scientists, psychologists, and indeed for all of us, is this moment in our evolution the fateful one for humans: when the imagination emerged from a complex psychic soup and began to consciously represent the meeting of the inner and outer worlds in emotional and personally meaningful images. 70

Yet, we cannot know for sure why Homo sapiens became the evolutionarily favored selection over other species, as "the diversity of species being discovered indicates that there were many different ways to live successfully as a biped with a more- or-less ape-sized brain" (Allen, 2009, p. 276). The mystery is in the moment about 2 mya when Homo habilis made a tool out of a stone, and brain size began its fateful increase. We lcnow that it happened and we know the consequences of this happening; but we still do not know why one day, one of our ancestors saw a symbol in a stone. The Evolution of the Brain: Ontogenetic

In evolutionary terms, there are three brains: the reptilian brain, which ensures vital functions and organismic survival and goes through little change; the limbic or primitive brain, which has phylogenetically old areas (some can be seen in salamanders) but goes through considerable ontogenetic development, particularly in its functional relationships with other brain regions; and the neocortex, which goes through the most alteration in interaction with the environment (Markowitsch & Welzer, 2005/2010, p. 90). When we are born our brains weigh 400 g and increases to 1200 g by one-year-old. It is estimated that five sixths of brain growth is post-natal and continues until a person is 2 years old (Schore, 1994, p. 11). The infant's brain has an intact brain stem (reptilian) and primitive brain, as the limbic brain was once called because these structures are evolutionarily quite old and process basic emotion, appraising our environment for danger, among other things. The brain develops in critical stages through the first two years and the frontal lobes—the lobes that house our higher, executive and reflective functions—are the last to mature. A significant aspect of the evolutionary functional reorganization of the brain that led to the level of complex consciousness that we enjoy today is the relationship between the prefrontal cortex (portion of frontal lobe behind the forehead) and the limbic system. This prefrontal cortex—limbic relationship will be discussed first, and a case study of 71

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) will be analyzed as an example of a limbic and archetypally dominated personality. Then, in the following chapter, the second significant functional reorganization of the brain that led to our complex, reflective consciousness—the specialization of the hemispheres—will be explored and analyzed in connection with the collective unconscious. Not only did the limbic system and the prefrontal cortex experience functional reorganizations: research evidence points to reorganization of other brain systems, such as visual regions (Allen, 2009, p. 118). But our focus is on the limbic system of the brain because it is a likely site of a key experience of the collective unconscious: an inner sense of a primordial Other and non- self. The Limbic System The term limbic system is often lamented by neuroscientists as a simplistic concept, yet it is used repeatedly anyway, by scientists and nonscientists, because it is also useful. The limbic system has been called the visceral brain, the primitive brain, and the emotional brain. Many if not all neuroscientists note that emotion is the ground and quality of consciousness, just as many if not all depth psychologists would say emotion is the valence of the unconscious or the soul. The limbic system is "really a theoretical concept about a group of structures that, many neuroscientists feel, are linked together in a functionally significant way" (Solms & Turnbull, 2002, p. 17) and is primary in processing emotion, especially in mediating fear and emotional appraisal. Neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux's criticism of mainstream descriptions of the limbic system as "the emotional brain" is that it has not been demonstrated that the limbic regions are the seat of conscious emotions. Instead, he refers to it as "an emotional- processing system" (2002, p. 210) and makes a distinction, which he claims too many theorists do not, comparing emotions—instinctual, somatic, and few—with feelings— cognitive, descriptive, and many. However, there are some points about the limbic system as regulator of emotions that seem correct to LeDoux: 72

The notion that emotions involve relatively primitive circuits that are conserved throughout mammalian evolution seems right on target. Further, the argument that cognitive processes might involve other circuits, and might function relatively independent of emotional circuits, at least in some circumstances, also seems correct. (LeDoux, 2002, p. 212)

Although there is disagreement on which structures are part of the limbic system, there are some which practically all neuroscientists agree on: the cingulate gyrus, the parahippocampal gyrus, the amygdala, and the hippocampus (Allen, 2009, p. 30). The limbic system is evolutionarily much older than the neocortex, and the neocortex is crucial in sophisticated cognition, yet "the production of sophisticated and complex behaviors depends on diverse structures working in conceit" (Allen, p. 92). Again, intelligence and complexity are products of functional relationships, not a heroic layer of cortical bark. Neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp uses the concept of a basic emotion command system which represents the underlying universal affects of all mammals. "Needless to say, the 'basic-emotion command system' evolved over eons of time" (Solms & Turnbull, 2002, p. 113). Basic emotions have survival value and are shared by all mammals; these universal affective reactions are innate yet modifiable and located in the limbic system and brain stem. There are four basic emotions: SEEKING, RAGE, FEAR, and PANIC (always capitalized when used by Panksepp, and here, to indicate their conceptual context). "This shared evolutionary heritage literally embodies the primal experiences of our ancestors, which, even if we cannot re-experience them, have left traces in our 'procedural-memory' systems" (p. 113). Strikingly similar to Jung's repeated descriptions of the primordial images of the collective unconscious being the deposited experiences of our ancestors over eons, the basic emotions generated by the

limbic system are the neurobiological equivalent of the collective unconscious. Like the body, the brain is not finished growing when a baby is born; indeed, much of what we consider our humanness is correlated with the frontal lobes and the 73 orbital (behind the eyes) prefrontal cortex in particular: self-reflexive consciousness; conscious inhibition and judgment; logical, rational planning; and language. "The maturation of the prefrontal cortex, the largest area in the human cerebral cortex (Uylings & Van Eden, 1990), is essentially postnatal" (Schore, 1994, p. 13).

Three structures—the orbital medial [in the middle] prefrontal, insula, and cingulate cortices—are the most evolutionary primitive areas of the cortex .... In one of the parallels between ontogeny (development of the individual) and phylogeny (evolution of the species), the more primitive cortical regions develop earlier than the rest of the cerebral cortex. (Cozolino, 2006, p. 51) Our species-specific limbic brain is intact when born, and the paralimbic cortex areas develop first postnatally, providing the ground from which conscious individuality emerges in the prefrontal cortex. This development is a simple yet symbolic relationship of the layer of the collective unconscious—limbic—underneath the personal unconscious and ego-consciousness represented in the brain regions that develop postnatally. When we are born the limbic system is processing, organizing, and responding to experience, but though considered intact, its postnatal development is crucial, and most significantly by 3 years old, in the neuronal wiring of the limbic brain with the frontal lobes, especially the orbitofrontal cortex. Schore (1994) argues that it is in this time period that the humanness of the infant is born through the development of emotional regulation, self- recognition, and a consistent inner experience of being which becomes the scaffolding of autobiographical memory and a conscious identity. The first basic emotion system, SEEKING, is a reward system aroused by bodily needs and underlies the other emotions. It is characterized by curiosity, interest, expectancy, and seeking in the outer world the stuff of somatic satisfaction; its emotional domain is appetitive states, play, and predatory ("cold") aggression. The SEEKING system is objectless and when activated (which happens by various different types of stimulus) it simply seeks in a nonspecific way. "The mode of operation of the SEEKING 74 system is therefore incomprehensible without reference to the memory systems with which it is intimately connected" (Solms & Turnbull, 2002, p. 199). It is the coupling of blind appetitive drives with the conditioning of memory and learning that provides us with our objects of appetitive desire.

LUST, a subsystem of the SEEKING system, is demarcated when the object of satisfaction is attained and consumption is activated. Stimulation of the brain regions correlated with LUST produce orgasmic feelings. In experiments with animals whose LUST brain regions are electronically stimulated through learned self-stimulation behavior—such as mice learning to push a lever to activate the electronic stimulation— they rapidly learned the movements that produced self-stimulation and perform these stimulations to exhaustion and to the near exclusion of all other activities including eating, drinking, and having sex. The parallel with addictive behaviors is obvious. (Solms & Turnbull, 2002, p. 121) Perhaps the most well-known structure of the limbic system is the amygdala. Notoriously, the amygdala is responsible for fear regulation and the flight-fight response.

The prime directive of the amygdala is to pair stimuli with a fear response to protect us .... On the other side of the fear regulatory system is the orbital medial prefrontal cortex (OMPFC), [behind the eyes and in the middle] which has a reciprocal relationship with the amygdala in that the OMPFC can inhibit the amygdala based on conscious awareness (Beer et al., 2003). (Cozolino, 2006, p. 60)

At the same time, too high threshold activation of the amygdala will shut down the OMPFC, preventing rational, reflective thought and conscious encoding of memory in the face of overwhelming fear. Damage or ablation to the amygdala is associated with a loss of fear of objects, hyperorality, and hypersexuality. Because the amygdala is the structure "most responsible for the mediation of fear," loss of amygdala functioning produces a "loss of cautionary behavior that has been shaped by millions of years of evolution" (Allen, 2009, p. 94). 75

The amygdala receives sensory input from the thalamus, which sits atop the brain stem and is considered the gateway to the cerebral cortex through which all sensory data passes; this thalamatic connection provides the ability of the amygdala to bypass cortical processing in dangerous or high fear arousal. Its connection to the hippocampus (memory encoding) and cerebral cortex link memory and context to fear responses. A specialized function of the amygdala's mediation of fear, performed in cooperation with other structures, is the assessment of emotional content of faces. The left amygdala appears to be more important in processing emotional linguistic messages (Allen, 2009, p. 95). Recent research is suggesting "significant reorganization in the amygdala in the context of cognitive evolution in the neocortex" (p. 97) and in particular the orbitofrontal cortex. That is, a significant evolutionary development in human consciousness is the neuronal connections between the amygdala and the orbitofrontal cortex. Damasio (1999), Schore (1994), Siegel (1999) and others maintain that the emotional pressure from the body coupled with the developing neocortex create a somatic sense that leads to an eventual recognition of the self. Damasio calls it "the feeling of what happens" (1999, p. 29) marking the moment the self recognizes that it is a self having a feeling. In the basic emotions command system, the amygdala is intimately involved with producing and regulating FEAR and RAGE. The RAGE system is activated by states of frustration, when the goal-directed activities of SEEKING and LUST are thwarted. It initiates the fight response, although not all aggressive behavior is activated by the RAGE system. RAGE emotions are considered hot aggression, whereas cold aggression is predatory. The key structure in triggering RAGE is the medial nucleus of the amygdaloid complex. A low-level activation manifests as irritability (Solms & Turnbull, 2002, p. 125).

The FEAR system generates feelings of fear-anxiety and the flight response. The basic emotion command system makes a distinction between fear-anxiety (paranoid) and panic-anxiety (depressive). The FEAR system is also centered in the amygdaloid 76 complex but in the central nuclei. Mild stimulation of this area produces a freeze response (Solms & Turnbull, 2002, p. 127). In extreme neurological disorders where the amygdala is destroyed, the patients become hypersexual, even finding nonhuman or inanimate objects attractive, hyperoral, and hyperdistractable because everything is of equal interest. This points to the role of the RAGE and FEAR systems activated by the amygdala in helping to prune, shape, and channel our conscious attention towards what is

important.

Organized like a map of the body, the insula cortex and anterior cingulate connect primitive bodily states with the experience and expression of emotion, behavior, and cognition; both structures are involved with mediating the gamut of emotions from disgust to love (Bartels & Zeki, 2000; Calder et al., 2003; Carr et al., 2003; Phan et al., 2002). (Cozolino, 2006, p. 266) The cingulate cortice, a para-limbic structure, synthesizes emotional appraisals from the amygdala, hippocampus, and other limbic structures with cognitive reality-testing and is therefore considered a crucial brain structure in decision-making. In addition, the cingulate cortice is involved in feelings of connection and bonding. The PANIC system of the basic emotions is the separation-distress system associated with feelings of loss and sorrow. The operation of this system is intimately linked to social bonding and parenting. The core brain region is the anterior (front) cingulate gyrus (fold in the cortex). The neurochemistry of this system is dominated by

opioids, oxytocin, and prolactin; the latter two are involved in feelings of connection and bonding, linking the PANIC system and maternal behavior. Stimulation of this system produces panic attacks and depression. When PANIC is first activated it provokes the

SEEKING system, but after a time interval of not being found, withdrawal from the environment occurs and depression sets in. Separation from the loved object reduces opioids in the system producing, literally, a feeling of pain (which opioids serve to decrease or reduce) (Solms & Turnbull, 2002, p. 131). 77

The basic emotion systems demonstrate the automaticity of our species that is on line when we are born, producing FEAR, RAGE, SEEKING, and LUST: the primary elements of all drama, tragedy, and comedy in our actual stories and in art. The PANIC system indicates that our anticipation of and longing for an Other, to be protected and taken care of is an innate expectation of our species. Even though the prefrontal cortex, the region of the frontal lobes that our "humanness" in the form of autonoetic awareness is held, has not developed in our infancy, these limbic systems are alive, seeking, driving, expecting, and responding. From a perspective of dual-aspect monism, the limbic structures of the brain can be considered the tightly coiled primitive cortex of the collective unconscious in its pre-conscious state. That is, until there is awareness of the self, the collective unconscious as we know it in depth psychology—the third, imaginative perspective—does not exist yet. What does exist is its soma-affective reality and imaginative potential.

Prefrontal Cortex The prefrontal region of the cortex "is an important site for the integration of information from different parts of the brain" (Allen, 2009, p. 99) and is considered "the seat of those cognitive faculties that underlie the basis of human intellectual supremacy among all other animals" (p. 101). The prefrontal cortex is responsible for executive planning, abstract reasoning, self-awareness, empathy, and modulation of emotional reactions, as well as "hosting some of the primary language areas of the brain" (Allen, 2009, p. 101). The "prefrontal cortex is the critical cortical regulatory system, especially

early maturing orbitofrontal cortex ... with its unique extensive connections with lower limbic structures in the brain stem, midbrain, and diencephalons and with all other parts of the cerebral cortex" (Schore, 1994, p. 34). So although the prefrontal cortex itself is

not a part of the limbic system, the orbitofrontal cortex is "the major cerebral system

involved in social, emotional, motivational, and self-regulatory processes" and is the

"hierarchical apex of the limbic system" (Schore, 1994, p. xxx). 78

The orbitofrontal cortices inhibitory and regulating functions are important in relation to the basic-emotion command systems. Although the basic emotions do have hard-wired responses, "the representational (or 'object') aspect of the system is left largely blank, to be filled in by early experience" (Solms & Turnbull, 2002, p. 134). The connections between stimulus and emotion systems are made with extreme rapidity and are maintained afterward outside of consciousness. Using the FEAR system as an example, "Once a stimulus (thing or place) is associated with a painful experience ... the FEAR system is immediately and automatically activated whenever that stimulus is encountered again, even before it is consciously recognized as such" (Solms & Turnbull, 2002, p. 134). Yet reflective consciousness, in the prefrontal cortices, is also synaptically wired to this system, able to exhibit a learned, inhibitory effect leading to a taming of affects. Once a neuronal connection in these basic systems is linked with an external circumstance or object, it is considered indelible, though reflective inhibition can modify behaviors. This modification through reflection and will demonstrates the plasticity of the brain. Depth psychology is built on the recognition that these links are deeply unconscious and can be maladaptive, and its response—the "talking cure" and coming into conscious, de-identified relationship with unconscious material—recognizes the inherent ability of the brain to learn, re-channel, or transform its affects. The subjective experience of the limbic system—intense affect, autonomous

activation outside the prefrontal cortex, primordial, survival-related emotional

appraisal—runs parallel with the expressions of the collective unconscious as an ancient, not-me, mythological aspect of the psyche involved in epic struggles of survival. In the phylogenetic evolution of the brain in our species, and in the ontogenetic evolution of the brain in each one of us, the ancient limbic system and basic-emotion command systems exists first and is active upon, and even before, birth. The fact that the frontal lobe cortices develop postnatally—literally in material form as well as in synaptic, functional relationship with the limbic system—symbolizes the subjective, imaginative experience 79 we each have of a much older, numinous, primordial part of ourselves within us, but not us. Jung named this phenomenon the collective unconscious and suggested that it may be the part of our psyches that we meet in our dreams. Now, in order to understand further the relationship of these two general regions, of the brain, we will look at the relationship between the limbic system and the prefrontal cortex in the phenomenological manifestations of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). Case Study : Borderline Personality Disorder

Clinically, BPD is considered a disorder characterized by a failure of emotional regulation; in analytical terms, BPD can be understood as an individual psyche possessed by the collective unconscious, a personality with a weak ego-identity structure unable to mediate archetypal material. In neuroscientific terms, this is a brain in which the neuronal wiring between the limbic system and the orbitomedial prefrontal cortex is weak; in this sense, we can call the borderline a limbic personality for whom the prefrontal cortex is unable to mediate and successfully inhibit the affective storms of the limbic system. Primitive defenses of splitting and projective identification are primarily employed to manage overwhelming emotional states. The neurobiological underpinning in BPD as theorized by Schore (1994) and others below describes a dominance of the limbic system, and, matched with the phenomenological manifestations of symptoms as described in clinical reports, BPD represents the link between the subjective experience of the collective unconscious and the limbic regions of the brain.

BPD became an official personality disorder in 1980 when it was first included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), published by the

American Psychiatric Association. In the most recent edition of the DSM-IV-TR, a clinical diagnosis includes at least five of the following symptomatic descriptions:

1. Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment. (Do not include suicidal or self-mutilating behavior covered in criterion 5.) 2. A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized as alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation. 3. Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self image or sense of self. 4. Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., spending, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating). (Do not include suicidal or self-mutilating behavior covered in criterion 5.) 5. Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, or threats or self-mutilating behavior. 6. Affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood (e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days). 7. Chronic feelings of emptiness. 8. Inappropriate intense anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights). 9. Transient stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms. (American Psychiatric Association, 2000, p. 710)

In the clinical description, we see the symptoms and effects of emotional dysregulation, unstable identity or sense of self, and intense fears of abandonment. An intolerance of being alone, a heightened neediness and dependence on others and on circumstances for stability, and a haunting sense of shame all characterize the borderline individual. Psychologists who work with childhood borderline syndrome call

attention to the presence in these impaired children of a discrepancy between their private, personal selves and their shared selves in terms of a lack of ease in communication .... These children seem to sense that there is something ... wrong with them, and they feel a deep sense of shame about themselves as a result. One of the consequences of this awareness is alienation and withdrawal. Another is the development of a true-self/false-self dichotomy (Winnicott, 1960). (Grotstein, 1994, p. xxv) The behavioral symptoms of BPD—anger, suicidal, self-mutilating, and self- destructive behaviors—are all attempts to manage overwhelming negative affect,

specifically, shame, fear of abandonment, and chronic emptiness. This failure of emotional regulation erodes the glue in the construction of a cohesive self, resulting in 81 chronically unstable and porous sense of self; yet the causation is a two-way street, where the failure to develop a cohesive identity structure results in dysregulation of emotion. At the core of BPD is a polarity of these two failures—emotional regulation and identity— that elicit destructive behavioral and relationship patterns. As with other mental illnesses, the etiology of BPD is a complex confluence of predispositions and circumstances. It is generally agreed upon by clinicians and researchers that in order for BPD or any personality disorder to develop, a combination of neurobiological, developmental, and circumstantial factors must be present; none of these factors are sufficient criteria in and of themselves. The genetic heritability of BPD is about 68%, and most borderline persons report a history of abuse or neglect in childhood. These rearing environment conditions vary from documented severe abuse, including sexual abuse, to a sense of "mismatch" with the parents that results in a subjective feeling of neglect. No matter the actual conditions and occurrences in early childhood, the borderline individual emerges with a sense of being emotionally and psychologically abandoned or neglected, and this leads to a belief in being inherently unlovable and even evil. It is also generally agreed that BPD represents a failure in attachment. A diagnosis of BPD "is linked with insecure, preoccupied, ambivalent, and perhaps fearful attachment patterns." (Fonagy, 2005, p. 192). Attachment theory focuses on the early development

of secure or insecure relationships that infants establish with caregivers and emphasizes how children come to perceive themselves and others. Anxious or preoccupied attachment styles are characterized by separation anxiety, clinginess, and an inability to be soothed upon reunion due to intense affect and anger in the infant towards the caregiver. An anxious attachment style can be clearly correlated with the anterior cingulate of the limbic system and PANIC, discussed above, through which social bonding and emotional decision-making are rendered. In the borderline person, the "frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment" (American Psychological 82

Association, 2000) arise from a dysfunction in attachment and thus the PANIC system and anterior cingulated, not to mention a possible hypersensitivity of the amygdaloid structure. (Coccaro & Siever, 2005; Fonagy & Bateman, 2005) In the first years of life, an infant's brain produces a gross excess of synaptic connections between neurons in the brain. During critical stages a pruning process, known as parcellation, eliminates synapses that are in excess of neuronal patterns "most effectively entrained to environmental information (Tucker, 1991)" (Schore, 1994, p. 19). What this means is that the neuronal imprints in the brain that will be retained are those that adapt to and represent the environment the child is reared in. It is precisely the functional relationship between the right hemispheric orbital prefrontal cortex and the limbic system that mediates emotion and produces self-reflective consciousness. The critical stage for this maturing of the prefrontal cortex is between 10 and 18 months, which has been extensively validated through research. Schore (1994) has demonstrated that this neuronal wiring is accomplished by imprinting the nervous system via attachment relationships with primary caregivers and rearing environment. If successful, the right prefrontal cortex attains inhibitory dominance over the subcortical limbic system, making the right prefrontal cortex primary in socioemotional functions (p. 15). It is this stage that is speculated to fail in the borderline individual's history, thereby leaving her vulnerable to the powerful, primordial affects of the limbic system due to a weak inhibitory force in the prefrontal cortex.

Between 10 and 18 months, in what is known as the early practicing period, there are repeated "reunion transactions" with the mother as the infant goes through a cycle of separation-individuation. The mother plays a crucial role in modulating affect of the sympathetic (arousal) and parasympathetic (conserving) nervous systems. The child's sympathetic nervous system arouses motivation, self-expression, and exploratory behaviors that lead him or her into the world, eventually causing separation anxiety. The conserving parasympathetic nervous system is active when the infant seeks reunion with 83 the mother and her excitement and energy activate sympathetic arousal, producing positive affect in the infant who then has the energy and security to explore and play more. It is thought that these reunion transactions imprint through the nervous system

onto the developing brain in which the structural system for assessing the affective and motivational environment—the orbitofrontal cortex—is maturing. These repetitive imprinting experiences then become a part of the deep structures of the affective- motivational psyche. "The mechanism of imprinting, a very rapid form of learning which underlies attachment bond formation, has been understood to involve an irreversible stamping of early experience upon the developing nervous system" (Schore, 1994, p. 116).

During this phase, the mothers' attunement to the infants' over-excitation soothes them and keeps a premature activation of the parasympathetic nervous system from occurring. In the borderline person, there is a significant failure in the mediation of separation anxiety, "either by the mother discouraging separation and/or rejecting the child when she returns for support" (Dougherty & West, 2007, p. 118). It is theorized that the attachment failure experienced by the borderline individual results in a premature activation of the parasympathetic system leading to "a phenomenon of excessive shame" (Grotstein, 1994, p. xxiii). This failure in the mediation of separation anxiety, displayed through an anxious attachment style, results in a weak reflective function—ego—unable

to contain and sublimate intense affect manifesting in the characteristic emotional dysregulation and unstable identity in the borderline person's experience. In neurobiological terms, the primitive affects of the limbic system have dominance over the reflective and inhibiting orbital prefrontal cortex. This neurobiological dominance of the limbic system is reflected in the brain

structures of individuals with BPD; these differences in neuroanatomy are both inherited

and developmentally conditioned, although the percentage of contribution from each is

unknown and most likely varies in each borderline individual (Cozolino, 2006; Paris, 84

2005; Schore, 1994) That is, some borderline persons may have had milder early conditioning experiences but a stronger genetic predisposition to vulnerabilities, whereas others are reversed with a more severe conditioning history and less physiological vulnerabilities to emotional regulation. This is true, of course, for all of us, including those within a normal range of personality structure. We all represent a point of collapse on the spectrum of personality from the convergence of genetic potential, neurobiological predisposition, and conditioning experiences.

"Traditional neuropsychological testing has demonstrated frontal and temporal lobe dysfunction in borderline patients .... Borderline patients have smaller hippocampi, amygdala, left orbital medial and right anterior cingulate cortices" (Cozolino, 2006, p. 261). These neurobiological dysfunctions have been repeated in other studies as well (Coccaro & Siever, 2005; Schore, 1994) indicating that brain differences in BPD center on the inhibiting and processing functions of the frontal lobes in combination with the size and activity levels of limbic regions such as the hippocampus, amygdala, and cingulate cortices—the smaller structures are more easily overwhelmed. The frontal lobes, especially the right hemispheric prefrontal cortices, are responsible not only for emotional and instinctual inhibition but also in mediating motivation and judgments of social appropriateness or context. Thus, much of what we consider to be manifestations of the personality are held in the functions of the frontal lobes, as demonstrated in the famous case of Phineas Gage, a railway worker who suffered brain damage when an iron rail tie went through his forehead, obliterating his prefrontal lobes. Psychologists witnessed first-hand the sudden and extreme change in personality that occurs from frontal lobe damage, which initiated knowledge of the link between the brain and personality. Gage survived, miraculously, with much of his mental cognition intact— memory, language, motor skills—but his personality was completely changed. Once mild mannered, dependable, and well-liked by his peers, he became impulsive, 85 aggressive, and self-centered on his own desires and needs (Solms & Turnbull, 2002, p. 4). As mentioned, the limbic regions of the hippocampus, amygdala, and anterior cingulate cortices measure out to be both smaller and overactive in the brains of borderline individuals.

In the case of borderline personality disorder, hypersensitivity to negative stimuli and excessive activation of negative affect, linked to hyperactivity of the amygdala and related structures of the limbic system, and at the same time, a lack of the capacity for cognitive contextualization and affect control, linked to the decreased functioning of the prefrontal and orbital cortex and the anterior cingulate area, represent significant neurobiological correlates of this pathology. (Kernberg, 2009, p. 506)

Again, the limbic structures are involved in reality testing, modulating fear and emotionally important events and social bonding, and in processing emotional decision making. In BPD, limbic dominance is expressed by its specific symptoms of maladaptive emotional regulation and a failure of the cognitive, reflective inhibition. Studies report volume reductions in the borderline population of not only these limbic structures but also of the right orbitofrontal and the right anterior cingulate cortices. "Given the role these structures are thought to play in emotional information processing, it is tempting to speculate that these structures represent anatomical correlates of the emotional dysregulation ... seen in patients with BPD" (Coccaro & Siever, 2005, p. 163). In response to emotionally laden images or events, the borderline limbic system is hyperactive, yet in modulating heightened affect in order to be cognizant of reality and learn, it is hypo-aroused. Cozolino speculates that "the core of the borderline experiences may be organized and stored within the early formation of the insula, anterior cingulate, OMPFC [orbitomedial prefrontal cortex], and amygdala" (2006, p. 265). Research on brain imaging and function consistently points to a dysfunctional relationship between the orbital prefrontal cortex and the limbic system in BPD, which are the systems involved in the functional evolution in the brain theorized to have brought about modern 86 consciousness and sense of self (Allen, 2009). As we will now see in the analytical descriptions and analyses of BPD, this dysfunctional relationship between the orbital prefrontal cortex and the limbic system manifests in the dysfunctional relationship between the self and the archetypal psyche. In The Matrix and Meaning of Character: An Archetypal and Developmental Approach, authors Dougherty and West state that the "archetypal other has the power to possess an undeveloped psyche" (2007, p. 11). This is the situation of the borderline individual who has an underdeveloped ego and experiences himself as possessed by overwhelming affective, psychic forces. Schwartz-Salant explains this possession as a power dynamic with the unconscious:

The borderline person has a power problem; he or she is possessed by the need to control the unconscious. Its constellations are so negative that a flexible attitude, or one of proper reverence, is very difficult to establish. This power complex is a source of great distress to the borderline patient, for he or she knows that it blocks access to an authentic life based upon relationship to others and to the unconscious. (1989, p. 131)

Dougherty and West explain that an "experience of the mysterium tremendum ... lies at the core of the borderline dynamics. Chaotic, intense affects and crowded, fast- paced, overpopulated and enmeshed interactions tend to govern borderline reality" (2007, p. 108). Breaking character structures into groups based on Karen Homey's categorization of three primary relational patterns—seeking, withdrawing, and antagonistic—Dougherty and West place borderline patterns in seeking patterns:

The core anxiety in the seeking relational pattern revolves around dismemberment.... This person lives with an insistent/persistent anxiety about being dismembered and devoured .... [Borderline individuals] are object-full rather than object-less. Borderline experience tends to revolve around chaos, too-muchness, crowdedness, unstoppable bombardment— bombardment that leads to dismemberment. (2007, p. 129)

This echoes Bion's (1967) theory of psychosis, in which the psychotic parts of the self attack links between subjective and objective realities, thereby eroding the 87 mentalizing, reflective functions of consciousness. Indeed, BPD has been called a problem of mentalization by clinical, psychodynamic researchers in which the individual does not develop a hearty enough reflective function that can withstand these inner attacks (Fonagy & Bateman, 2005). This experience of bombardment from within explains why the borderline condition is situated in a power complex with the unconscious which the person feels is constantly attacking him. Corbett notes that "the borderline personality ... is particularly prone to fragmentation in the face of the numinosum" (1996, p. 139). Further noting that the archetype announces itself via its affective intensity, Corbett states, as do others, that it is the state of cohesion of the self which determines the effects of an intrusion of the collective unconscious. "If the self structures are fragile, as in the case of borderline personalities," the result is overwhelm and fragmentation (p. 115).

Freud's reference to the "oceanic" experience was to the early fusion states between infant and mother:

The borderline person suffers from an absence of the nurture and support of this 'Ocean.' But he or she has often known a mystical realm, wherein the Ocean is not the personal mother but the numinosum. In the borderline person especially, the numinosum combines with the mundane. (Schwartz- Salant, 1989, p. 12)

Even though the negative affects of the unconscious tend to dominate the experience of

the borderline person, they are also privy to the mystical, sublime manifestations of the collective unconscious as well, perhaps even more so than those with a well girded, cohesive ego, because a cohesive self mediates and inhibits positive as well as negative affects of the unknown, "not-me" aspects of the psyche; that is, the ego tends to find all

emotional prompts outside of its boundaries frightening. As Schwartz-Salant notes, the "archetypal energy storms that so afflict borderline individuals and through them, others, have traditionally been represented by myth and religion as the negative side of God" (p. 21). The borderline condition is also accessible to the positive side of the divine, but 88 being that the unconscious reflects the face we show it, the borderline is locked in a negative appraisal of self and the collective unconscious. Schwartz-Salant believes that borderline individuals are terrified of engaging the positive form of the numinosum because of a fear that they will be eclipsed by this force, just as they fight against being eclipsed by the negative manifestations. "Futhermore, there is a tenacious belief that if the positive numinosum were consciously owned for one's individual needs, appropriation would be at the cost of taking the numinosum away from another person" (p. 34). For borderline people, the key fact is a weak ego structure rendering them unable to mediate the overwhelming energy of the collective unconscious whether in positive or negative form, and, as Schwartz-Salant refers to above, unable to separate from significant others. In the separation-rapprochement phase—the same practicing period discussed previously in which there are repetitive reunion transactions between infant and mother at 10-18 months—Schwartz-Salant sees the gradual incarnation of the numinosum or self archetype through the weaving of archetypal energy into personal internal structures. Corbett also links this gradual incarnation of transpersonal levels of the psyche with embodying soul by making the impersonal personal (1996, p. 115). For the borderline person, this incarnation failed, splitting the individual into secular and sacred parts, with the secular aspect of self being dead or "as-if," false and not real, and the sacred parts remaining outside of one's being, external and overpowering. Yet, the sacred element is the life-giving force as well and in this respect necessary. Schwartz-Salant asks, "Isn't a therapist who links a borderline patient's failure to negotiate rapprochement issues to incarnation of the numinosum into space-time existence aligning with the patient's delusional and primary process thinking?" (1989, p. 90) Yes, and in this sense, the developmental, traumatic, personal aspects of the rapprochement failure need to be worked through first in order to create a world-bound, cohesive ego; otherwise, the charged presence of the archetypal psyche continues to inflate and eclipse the ego, 89 causing it to rely on its primitive defenses. In Jungian terms it is true that we need to integrate unconscious wounds in order to "develop the ego-strength to actively relate to the numinosum .... Without this knowledge of our limitations, and hence, an awareness of our humanity, contact with the numinosum leads to an inflated state" (Schwartz-Salant, 1989, p. 93). This is the condition of the borderline individual who exists in an often dark, eclipsing inflation with the collective unconscious because the stage in which one obtains a "healthy" sense of limitations, or shame, failed to mediate the affective experiences. Psychological treatment for BPD varies according to modality. As discussed, a Jungian approach identifies archetypal affect and images and attempts integration of these numinous experiences through containment in the being or mind of the analyst until the analysand can contain her own experience consciously (Dougherty & West, 2007; Knox, 2003; Schwartz-Salant, 1989). A neuroscience perspective is not essentially much different except for the fact that it does not identify archetypes as archetypes; rather, a neuroscientific approach locates the symptoms and manifestations of an inability to contain overwhelming emotions in an imbalanced relationship between the right hemisphere and limbic system with the prefrontal cortex (Cozolino, 2006; Fonagy & Bateman, 2005; Schore, 1994). It would be inaccurate to label the understanding of symptoms in correlations with brain functions as reductive; rather, this is a neuroscientific method of egoistic de-identification with symptoms, a primary method in analytical psychology, even if effected in de-identification from collective as opposed to personal contents. However, both perspectives lead to similar therapeutic dynamics involving the necessity of developing a strong enough ego or self structure that can contain intense affects in consciousness, modeled in and performed by the psychotherapist until the borderline patient can contain his or her own experience. It should be noted that borderline persons in particular tend to have an abundance of archetypal material, and 90 until a certain stability of self is developed, analytical modalities that focus primarily on the exploration of archetypal contents may not be the most effective approach (Corbett, 1996). I believe this is why in studies of efficacious treatment with BPD, which analytical psychology does not participate in, dialectical and cognitive approaches are considered the most effective modalities in treating BPD (Kemberg, 2009; Lieb, et al., 2004). In the borderline personality, we see a dominance of the limbic systems of the brain coupled or created by a weak reflective function in the orbital prefrontal cortex. A failure of the developmental task of neurobiological

integration between limbic and cognitive functions is incomplete, resulting in so-called dissociative personality disorder or, in the extreme case, 'double' or 'multiple personality', in which the symbiotic unity of a person's rational-cognitive and affective-emotional levels fails to take place. Emotional elements force their way through into the foreground and suppress the reflective-cognitive abilities, thereby making it impossible to find an internal expression (the ability of verbalization) for feelings and thoughts. Such patients are caught up in stereotyped, uncontrollably recurring mental images or, in extreme cases, in delusions (Fujiwara & Markowitsch, 2003). (Markowitsch & Welzer, 2005/2010, p. 89)

In a less intense experience, one that lends itself to nonverbal expression but does not overwhelm ego-consciousness all together, we might expect to find mythological, artistic,

and imaginative expression of emotions. Yet this takes a strong enough container to

mediate the oceanic feeling produced by the dominant limbic brain. In analysis, the

borderline patient is possessed by the archetypal psyche, locked in a power battle with the

collective unconscious, which announces itself through numinous affect. Symbolically

and neurobiologically, BPD represents an arrested moment, eternal and ancient, of the

emergence of self from its primordial ground. 91

Chapter 5 The Other Within

One great splitting of the whole universe into two halves is made by each of us; and for each of us almost all of the interest attaches to one of the halves; but we all draw the line of division between them in a different place. When I say that we all call the two halves by the same names, and that those names are 'me' and 'not-me' respectively, it will at once be seen what I mean. The altogether unique kind of interest which each human mindfeels in those parts of creation which it can call me or mine may be a moral riddle, but it is a fundamental psychological fact. (James, 1942, p. 163)

In the previous chapter, we correlated the numinous and affective intensity of the collective unconscious with the limbic system. Neuroanatomically, this involved an examination of the relationship between cortical (prefrontal cortex) and subcortical (limbic) systems of the brain, as well as between anterior regions (orbitofrontal, behind the forehead and eyes) and the medial midbrain (deep within at the center). But the collective unconscious also imparts a felt sense of otherness within; this has been analyzed by various concepts and mythologies in Jungian literature and the examples to choose from are almost endless. Otherness has been described through Jung's personality No. 2, the shadow, the alter ego, dissociated traits and qualities of the ego, and also through the image of daimon, genius, or particular archetypes. Elie Humbert explains that Jung's psychology does not put manifestations of the unconscious into categories of a psychic apparatus, referring to Freud's framework, but rather his distinction is to describe them as "images of the 'other'" (1988, p. 47). Jung's psychology is personal. Psychic otherness is also found in Hillman's polytheistic, personifying psyche.

Some have considered Jung's most important discovery to be the psychological complex, others the archetype, but perhaps his main contribution lies not so much in these ideas as in his radical, personified formulation of them.... Whereas philosophers had conceived such forces as mental events, Jung described them as persons. (Hillman, 1975, p. 20)

Jungian conceptual structural components of the personality—ego, self, anima/animus, shadow, etc.—"are always imagined to be partial personalities" (Hillman, 92

1975, p. 22). As Jung developed his theory of complexes, he discovered that their "autonomy and intentionality derives from deeper figures of far wider significance" (p. 22): the archetypes. Of the archetypes, Jung says, "It is not we who personify them; they have a personal nature from the very beginning" (quoted in Hillman, 1975, p. 22). All of these examples involve a sense of an otherness within that is yet outside the boundaries of the ego and possessing its own volition. In this section we turn to neuroscientific discoveries in hemispheric differences and distinctions between explicit and implicit consciousness, linking them with a felt sense of an internal other that is not-me. Though I make distinctions within Jungian theory between the collective unconscious and archetypal psyche, unconscious structures, and a sense of internal Otherness, these concepts overlap phenomenologically and theoretically. In the same manner, neuroscientific terms of explicit and implicit consciousness, nonconsciousness, and the nature of the hemispheres conceptually overlap as well.

Core Consciousness In general, scholars of cognitive neuroscience as well as other fields agree with depth psychologists that the vast majority of mental functioning takes place unconsciously. "Bargh and Chartrand (1999) concluded that 95% of our actions are unconsciously determined" (Solms & Turnbull, 2002, p. 84). Consciousness, or free will, then, accounts for 5% of our behavior. Implicit consciousness or nonconsciousness makes up this 95%, its content and dynamics.

There are two ways to understand implicit consciousness: through Antonio Damasio's levels of consciousness and through more general distinctions and workings of implicit and explicit consciousness. First, neuroscientist Damasio considers consciousness to be the aspect of mind that includes or is the knowing of the self that it knows. The self is the feeling of what happens when it becomes aware that it is a self having a feeling. In his work, The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the 93

Making of Consciousness (1999), he distinguishes core consciousness from extended consciousness—also called the autobiographical self—as well as from the proto-self which exists in the structures of the brain before consciousness as a structural condition and potential for consciousness to emerge. The proto-self is that part of the brain that is constantly monitoring the internal milieu and contains the neuronal mapping of the boundaries of the body. "Internal milieu, viscera, and musculoskeletal frame produce a continuous representation, dynamic but of narrow range, while the world around us changes dramatically, profoundly, and often unpredictably" (Damasio, 1999, p. 142). Our organismic survival and existence happens along a narrow spectrum; not very much change can be tolerated in biological basic functions, unlike our emotional and psychological capacities. Core consciousness and emotion go hand-in-hand; when one disappears so does the other; when one exists the other exists (Damasio, 1999, p. 122). Damasio speculates that emotion and core consciousness must occupy the same neural substrates in the brain so that when these substrates are disrupted, both core consciousness and emotion are disrupted. Core consciousness emerges from the somatic pressures of the body and is the experience of the self in the here and now, in the moment, that is not extended in time by the autobiographical self. In extended consciousness the sense of self is connected to "the lived past and anticipated future" (p. 196). This autobiographical self "hinges on the consistent reactivation and display of selected sets of autobiographical memories ... those that can easily substantiate our identity, moment by moment, and our personhood" (p. 196). Clearly, we can link Damasio's concept of the extended, autobiographical self with the ego in depth psychology. Core consciousness is not founded on autobiographical memory or identity. David, a patient with profound memory loss due to herpes virus encephalitis that left severe damage to the hippocampus (memory encoding) and temporal lobe cortices (long- term memory storage), cannot recall any autobiographical memories or details about his 94

life, has not been able to learn anything since he had encephalitis at 46 (he is now in his 60s), and can retain short-term memories for about 1 minute. Yet David has core consciousness: he has retained general, semantic knowledge of the world, how it operates, he can hold a normal conversation about general topics, and his emotional resonance and response to others and his experience are normal. But he remembers no unique details whatsoever, about himself, his family, or you, if you were to meet him. If pressed for details, David will fabricate a story, making something up on the spot to answer the question.

Finally, his spontaneous behavior is purposeful—he will look appropriately for a good chair to sit in, for food and drink to consume, for a television screen or a window from which he can watch the world. Left to his own devices, he sustains purposeful behavior relative to the context he is in for many minutes or hours, provided that what he is doing is engaging .... When almost nothing comes to mind, David's sense of self still does. (Damasio, 1999, pp. 117-118) In medical school, Damasio received a standard answer to his questions about how we produced the conscious mind: language did it. He did not believe this. "Language ...," says Damasio, "is a translation of something else, a conversion from nonlinguistic images which stand for entities, events, relationships, and inferences" (1999, p. 107). In contrast to postmodern and deconstructionist theories that posit consciousness from language, Damasio's work actually finds the reverse: the existence of

nonverbal images or states of conscious knowing of a self who can then know that certain translations in language are accurate (p. 108). In Damasio's work and in neuroscience in general, consciousness is found to be essentially emotional, with linguistic, linear, rational thought at the conscious tip of an ocean of implicit, physiological nonconscious

ground. Even though Schwartz-Salant (1989) makes a persuasive case for the fourth element in Jungian psychology as the missing feminine and the body in Christian trinity symbolism, the body itself is missing from much of Jungian theory. Nonetheless, there 95 are clear parallels here between Damasio's emergence of consciousness from the somatic-affective pressures of the body into increasingly complex levels of consciousness and Jung's understanding of archetypes which places them at the affective-imaginal end opposite the somatic instincts along a spectrum of consciousness (Jung, 1954/1969, p. 207). In both concepts, consciousness exists along a spectrum that moves between the body and instincts, to the imagination and ego-consciousness. Implicit Consciousness LeDoux and Debiec note that the natural sciences—neuro- and cognitive scientists—have come late to the discussion of nonconsciousness or the unconscious, typically the province of the social sciences, and in particular, depth psychology, but are showing a different view of the unconscious mind. "The unconscious processes viewed as relevant to the self are diverse, and include aspects of normal perceptual, memory, and emotional functions" (2003, p. vii). The bestial, immature, and primitive unconscious of the Freudian Id, witnessed primarily in children and the mentally ill, while still accurate, is a small portion of the unconscious mind that the neuroscience terms "nonconscious" or "implicit consciousness" encompass. Essentially, explicit consciousness is declarative, it is that aspect of consciousness that we are aware of and that is or can be expressly stated and definite. Implicit consciousness is then that aspect of consciousness outside of explicit awareness. The correlation with depth psychological distinctions between conscious and unconscious are evident. Whereas Freudian psychoanalysis has tended to understand the unconscious as personal, repressed material, for Freud himself "the mind itself is unconscious, and consciousness is mere perception of the mind's actual processes" (Solms & Turnbull, 2002, p. 72). This view is resonant with Jung's view of the relationship between consciousness and unconsciousness as well, in that ego-consciousness is a slim portion of the processes of the mind as the personal unconscious is a slim portion of the dynamics of the unconscious as a whole. Also, as noted in the beginning of chapter 5, Jung reminds 96 us that what we call the unconscious is the subjective experience in consciousness of what is essentially unknown. The primary distinction in explicit and implicit consciousness against consciousness and unconsciousness in analytical psychology is that states of consciousness and unconsciousness are related to ego states; that is, what the ego is conscious of or not and how it relates to unconscious material. Neuroscience, on the other hand, uses explicit and implicit consciousness as terms to denote processes in the brain (i.e., there are explicit and implicit processes and content that can be entirely separate from one another). An example is the semantic knowledge system which can remain thoroughly intact although the autobiographical knowledge system is wiped out, or learning in the procedural memory system when conscious learning is obliterated. Analytical theory recognizes that the unconscious operates outside of the awareness or knowledge of ego-consciousness but cannot and does not make much comment other than what the ego is aware of at any given time. In this way, in Jungian theory, consciousness and unconsciousness are more often solely in connection with their contents. Neuroscience does not use the term ego so readily; although it is sometimes used, more often researchers employ the term self. Explicit consciousness is certainly what the ego is aware of, but it is more than this. For example, it encompasses the processes and content of semantic, declarative memory: that aspect of memory that includes knowledge and information not associated with autobiographical memory (and hence, the autobiographical self). Knowledge that broccoli is green, that we eat food with a fork, and that George Washington was the first U.S. president are examples of semantic memory and explicit consciousness without autobiographical reference to the ego. A self was present for conscious focus and learning of semantic knowledge, yet it is distinguished by the lack of the self in the memory; that is, most of us do not recall the personal moment and circumstances when we learned that we eat food with a fork or that 97 the H on the left is for Hot on a faucet. We learn semantic knowledge personally, but it is not stored in our autobiographical memory system. Developmentally, the signs of explicit consciousness emerge between 18 months and 4 years of age through self- recognition, use of personal pronouns, and pretend play (Lewis, 2003, p. 114). In a logical extension, implicit consciousness refers to those processes of the mind that occur outside of explicit ego awareness, that are unavailable to explicit consciousness or are not declarative in nature. "The term 'implicit' is used to refer to processes that occur outside conscious awareness .... [It] is also applied to those processes that occur without conscious control" (Devos & Banaji, 2003, p. 179). Some Jungians, such as Knox (2003, 2004), correlate implicit consciousness functions with archetypes-as-such, in that both are inaccessible to consciousness and have a dynamic and autonomous nature not dependent on consciousness. In later chapters, I argue against this interpretation of archetypes-in-themselves. Implicit consciousness is correlated with the limbic system in that "emotional states ... refer to implicit consciousness. Implicit consciousness can have goals, can learn and profit from experience, can control functions, and can react to events, including people" (Lewis, 2003, p. 110). In relation to the term unconscious, it is more accurate to call implicit consciousness nonconscious rather than unconscious, as unconscious implies a subrelationship to consciousness that nonconscious does not impart. "The unconscious, in the narrow meaning in which the word has been etched in our culture, is only a part of the vast amount of processes and contents that remain nonconscious" (Damasio, 1999, p. 228). In comparison, the unconscious is always understood as the subjective sense of the ego's knowledge or relationship to certain contents or processes. I propose that the term unconscious in its personal and collective sense always be used to denote the subjective experience of objective implicit processes or contents of the mind. In both neuroscientific and analytical psychology, concepts of implicit consciousness and the objective psyche are not dependent on the ego or explicit consciousness, whereas the ego 98 and explicit consciousness are dependent on an unconscious ground of structures and implicit processes.

We tend to find incongruence uncomfortable, leading us to avoid cognitive dissonance: the experience of holding two contradictory ideas or feelings in mind. Most of the time, we will move to rationalize or justify one idea or feeling over the other in order to obtain emotional comfort. In a study of consistency bias and cognitive dissonance, researchers asked if it was necessary to have explicit memory of the past experience that is causing dissonance with current experience in order to prompt the response of psychological rationalizations.

This rationale assumes that the past can influence the present only through conscious or explicit recollection of past happenings. However, more than two decades worth of research on implicit memory (Schacter, 1987) has demonstrated that past experiences can influence subsequent experience and behavior despite an absence of conscious or explicit recollection. (Schacter, Chiao, & Mitchell, 2003, p. 235)

The specific study cited involved a control group and a group of amnesiacs who ranked art prints as to how much they liked them. Both groups were then made to choose between two prints that they had ranked as equally desirable to keep for themselves. At a later time the participants were asked again to rank all the prints in order of how much they liked them, indicating which one they had chosen previously. In previous studies with nonamnesiac subjects, in the second ranking of the same prints after being made to choose one, the subjects consistently inflated their desire for the print they chose and deflated their desire for the print they did not choose. In the study that included amnesiacs, who all indicated they did not know, explicitly, which print they had chosen previously, they demonstrated the same consistency bias of inflation and deflation as the control subjects.

These results suggest that amnesic patients were trying to reduce the dissonance created by choosing between the two prints even though they lacked conscious memory for making the choice that produced dissonance in the first place .... [Further] the results suggest that considering implicit 99

forms of memory is critical for understanding the relation between memory and self. (Schacter et al., 2003, p. 236) In many various studies "modularity of brain function has demonstrated that areas of the brain are quite capable of carrying out complex tasks or learning complex problems without other areas having explicit knowledge of them (Bechara et al., 1995; Gazzaniga, 1985; LeDoux, 1990)" (Lewis, 2003, p. 126). In one such study, Damasio (1999) and his colleagues designed and conducted an experiment on the unconscious level of learning in which participants were asked to hold the tip of a stylus pen to a dot on the edge of circular plate while the plate moved in a circular motion. A machine recorded the time intervals that the stylus was in contact with the dot. Participants mastered this task in a few sessions and had a predictable learning curve when the performances were plotted on a graph. Then the research team used amnesiac patients, including David discussed earlier, who have an inability to consciously learn or retain new information and memories. The amnesiacs "learn it perfectly and their actual performance is in no way distinguishable from the performance of the normal subjects" (Damasio, 1999, p. 299). The major difference between the participants was that the amnesiac patients did not learn any information that surrounded the performance (i.e., the people, place, apparatus, and instructions for the experiment). To them, consciously, it was the first time they were participating in the experiment, but their nonconscious mind was learning the task just as an individual with functioning explicit memory retention did. Finally, the implicit nonconscious knowledge of the learned skill in amnesiac patients was retained and able to be employed in re-testing 2 years later (p. 299). Studies with face-agnosic patients—individuals who cannot recognize familiar faces—demonstrate how implicit consciousness contains personal emotional responses as well.

When a face-agnosic patient... is shown, in random presentation, faces of people whom she has never met as well as faces of close relatives and 100

friends, and when we simultaneously record her skin conductance with a polygraph, a dramatic dissociation takes place. To her conscious mind, the faces are all equally unrecognizable. Friends, relatives, and the truly unfamiliar generate the same void, and nothing comes to mind to permit the discovery of their identity. And yet, the presentation of virtually every face of a friend or relative generates a distinct skin-conductance response, while unknown faces do not. None of these responses is noticed by the patient. Moreover, the magnitude of the skin-conductance response is higher for the closest of relatives. (Damasio, 1999, p. 300)

Of this experiment, Damasio says "the finding illustrates the power of nonconscious processing, the fact that there can be specificity underneath consciousness" (p. 301). Clearly, a nonconscious aspect of the mind is perceiving external reality directly, accurately, and with personal response without the awareness or involvement of ego-consciousness, and we can easily understand why this may express subjectively as a sense of an internal other separate from the ego. In fact, neurobiologically, the decisions of implicit consciousness not only can occur outside of explicit consciousness, but do not need the involvement of explicit consciousness; yet, explicit consciousness depends on implicit functions for its existence as the ego depends on the unconscious. In the specialized functions of the cerebral hemispheres in general, and through commissuratomies—"split-brain" procedures through which the corpus callosum connecting the hemispheres is severed—in particular, we witness further a possible origin of a sense of an internal other. Cerebral Hemispheres The cerebral hemispheres are almost anatomically identical, yet as "regards mental functioning ... the two hemispheres are radically different" (Solms & Turnbull, 2002, p. 240). In general, the right hemisphere is known for superior visuo-spatial skills, is dominant for visual understanding and also holds superior synthetic, holistic understanding.2 In contrast, the left hemisphere has superior language and analytical

2 Discussion and analyses of hemispheric dominance and differences based on right-handedness. 8-10% of the population is left-handed; 70% of left-handers are believed to also have the same left hemisphere/right hemisphere demarcations as right-handers. That is, their left hemisphere is dominant in language and right hemisphere in visual-spatial functions, among others. Of the remaining 30% of left 101 skills and works to breaks things down rather than synthesize. Yet "the world of science supports the idea that the relationship between the two cerebral hemispheres is more appropriately viewed as two complementary halves of a whole rather than as two individual entities or identities" (Taylor, 2006, p. 29).

The right hemisphere takes in whole moments of time, thinks in pictures, images, and intuitions. "Information processed this way allows us to take an immediate inventory about the space around us and our relationship to that space" (Taylor, 2006, p. 30). The right brain is empathic, imaginative, spontaneous, and creative while the left hemisphere "takes each of those rich and complex moments created by the right hemisphere and strings them together in timely succession" (p. 31). While the left hemisphere houses primary language regions and is biased towards a sense of a "conscious linguistic self," the right hemisphere is biased towards a "physical emotional self' (Cozolino, 2006, p. 25). The hemispheres have differing emotional natures as well: it is believed that positive, approach-based emotion is processed in the left prefrontal cortex, whereas the right hemisphere, more richly connected to the subcortical limbic systems, is dominant in appraisal and negative emotions.

Right brain functions are similar to Freud's notion of the unconscious .... Perhaps most significantly, the right brain responds to negative emotional stimuli prior to conscious awareness. Thus unconscious emotional processing based on past experiences invisibly guides our moment-to- moment thoughts, feelings, and behaviors (Kimura et al., 2004). (Cozolino, 2006, pp. 67-68)

Discussion of the contrasts in hemispheric characteristics leads one to speculate that Jung's childhood sense of personality No. 2 was generated from the right hemisphere. handers, half are thought to have reversed hemispheric functions, making them dominated by the language hemisphere, same as right-handers, and the remainder have language functions dispersed equally in the two hemispheres. This would make the majority of left-handers, 70%, "right brain dominant" (i.e., the non- language hemisphere is dominant), an interesting topic outside of the domain of this research. 102

Somewhere deep in the background I always knew that I was two persons. One was the son of my parents, who went to school and was less intelligent, attentive, hard-working, decent, and clean than many other boys. The other was grown up—old, in fact—skeptical, mistrustful, remote from the world of men, but close to nature, the earth, the sun, the moon, the weather, all living creatures, and above all close to the night, to dreams, and to whatever 'God' worked directly in him. (Jung, 1961, p. 42) At least one other author has speculated along these lines of right hemisphere dominance in Jung. In Anatomy of Genius (1986), Jan Ehrenwald links geniuses from history— Freud and Jung among Beethoven, Da Vinci and others—with hemispheric dominance in their personalities, talents, and styles. In Jung's confrontation with the unconscious, Ehrenwald sees a shift to right brain dominance in his thinking and work, "an inspired prophet and dispenser of a beguiling personal myth in an increasingly demythologized technological age" (p. 100). The left hemisphere generates distinctions, boundaries, and, by psychologically minded scientists, is considered the home of the ego. "One of the jobs of our left hemisphere language centers is to define our selfby saying 'I am'" (Taylor, 2006, p. 32). Therefore, Taylor understands the left hemisphere as the "home of our ego center" that "revels in our individuality, honors our uniqueness, and strives for independence" (pp. 32-33). Metaphoric and visionary perception is generated in the right brain; hence Ehrenwald's description of Jung as a prophet. "Without the right hemisphere's ability to evaluate communication in the context of the bigger picture, the left hemisphere tends to interpret everything literally" (Taylor, 2006, p. 34). However, we need to make a careful and subtle distinction here, which is that ego-consciousness cannot be completely and simply relegated to the left hemisphere and the unconscious to the right hemisphere. This left hemisphere bias of language tends to make it easy to equate it with the ego. The primary language centers are housed in the left hemisphere, but not all aspects of ego-consciousness are captured or processed in language. This is demonstrated in cases in which damage to the left hemisphere does not 103 equal an inhibition of ego-consciousness—it manifests in an inhibition or diminishment of the languaged aspects of ego-consciousness which can be considered a core aspect of ego-consciousness but not its totality. As an example, Solms and Turnbull (2002) describe a patient, a young man in his 20s who suffered a stroke which affected Broca's area, a region in the left hemisphere's frontal lobe which is primary in communicative, intentional production of speech. He was reduced to saying a very few words. This patient was offered psychotherapy which he eagerly took part in, and, through much effort and courage was able to express, share, and consciously "digest" his profound losses and eventually construct a new, workable life for himself (p. 258). This patient had sustained considerable damage to the left hemisphere but did not lose the consciousness and executive functions of ego-consciousness. As another example of the bilaterality of ego-consciousness, some patients sustain brain damage that manifests phenomenologically as though the restraints of ego- consciousness are weakened, allowing the irrational, chaotic unconscious to flood consciousness. "These patients' beliefs are riddled with contradictions, their perception of external reality is overwhelmed by their wishful fantasies, they appear to have no sense of time, and their thinking is grossly distorted by primary-process transformations" (Solms & Turnbull, 2002, p. 260). Yet these patients sustain bilateral lesions to the ventromesial (lower orbitofrontal) area of the prefrontal lobes. Specifically, damage to

this area produces disorders of the regulatory function of language, our "inner speech" that subordinates our actions to reflective thinking and decisions (p. 260). In these patients, the ego-consciousness function of reflective inhibition is damaged.

In simplistic terms, the right hemisphere is often cited as being the seat of the unconscious and of emotional processing. It is true that the right hemisphere is more connected to the subcortical and limbic systems of the brain and processes the emotional content of circumstance and language, for example. However, research indicates that the left hemisphere plays a predominant role in approach-oriented, positive emotions, 104 whereas the right hemisphere is dominant in emotional appraisal and negative emotions. Considering the nature of the limbic system, discussed earlier, this connection with negative emotions in the right hemisphere makes sense. In general, the majority of patients who suffer damage to the left hemisphere experience heightened catastrophic or depressed emotions, whereas the majority of patients who experience damage to the right hemisphere experience blunted affect. "Overall, there appears to be a good case for believing that the right hemisphere is more involved in both the processing or perception of emotional information than is the left" (Deutsch & Springer, 1998, p. 233). However, researchers maintain a critical attitude to a clear demarcation of emotional processing to the right hemisphere as they do towards assigning language functions to the left hemisphere; each hemisphere is functionally specialized, but each plays a necessary role in all functions as well. Our sense of a self involves far more than that what can be perceived and expressed through language, as is demonstrated beautifully in Taylor's (2006) account of suffering a massive stroke in her left hemisphere and also in Paris' (2007) rich account of suffering left hemisphere damage. Both women experienced a definite, rich, complex sense of self, though they lost their left hemisphere language skills. "Split-brain research has dramatically confirmed that, in most persons, control of speech is localized to the left hemisphere" (Deutsch & Springer, 1998, p. 42). However, the right hemisphere is involved with certain aspects of speech, such as prosody and singing. In patients with damage to the speech or comprehension functions of the left hemisphere, they can sing songs known to them clearly and without hesitation. Also, the right hemisphere is involved with nonliteral aspects of language such as humor and metaphor. Without the metaphorical perception and interpretations of the right hemisphere, the left hemisphere language centers will interpret everything literally

(Sidtis, 2006; Taylor, 2006). 105

The capacity for language brings a prominent, and humorous, characteristic of the left hemisphere: the tendency towards appalling confabulations and an

ability to weave stories. This story-teller... is specifically designed to make sense of the world outside of us, based upon minimal amounts of information .... Most impressively, our left brain is brilliant in its ability to make stuff up, and fill in the blanks when there are gaps in its factual data. (Taylor, 2006, p. 142)

A neuropsychological disorder called anosognosia hemiplegia results from damage to the right parietal cortex, the area that maintains a physical representation of the left side of the body. Individuals with this disorder do not recognize the left side of their body as their own and are unable to direct it in action. When asked specifically to do certain things with their left arm, such as point at something, they cannot, but will come up with an explanation when asked why. One patient explained "because I didn't want to" and then identifies her left hand as really belonging to her son. Another patient claimed that her left hand was two inches from the doctor's nose, which he had requested she point to, though it actually lay paralyzed on the bed beside her body. The brain damage leaves the individual unable to process sensory data for this part of her body, causing it literally not to exist, "and as a result she engages in elaborate confabulations to explain its presence" (Turk, Heatherton, Macrae, Kelley, & Gazzaniga, 2003, p. 71). It is not only neuroscientists and analysts who have collected many examples of the confabulations of ego-consciousness; surely we each have our secret stash of such embarrassing epiphanies.

Neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga calls the left hemisphere "the interpreter"

(Turk et al., 2003, p. 70) and Steven Pinker says, "The conscious mind—the self or soul—is a spin doctor, not the commander in chief' (2002, p. 43). Pinker notes further 106 that among Freud's many insights into the nature of the ego is "the discovery that often our conscious minds do not control how we act but merely tell us a story about our actions" (p. 43). Pinker claims that the decisive blow to the ego came through cognitive neuroscience's demonstration of the ego's relativity through research in cases where the corpus callosum that connects the brain's hemisphere was severed. Commissuratomies, as these split-brain surgeries are called, also give the most dramatic examples of the presence of the other within.

Split-brain surgery came about in the attempt to free individuals afflicted with severe epilepsy whose condition could not be addressed in any other way. In this procedure the thick bundle of nerve fibers that connects the cerebral hemispheres in the anterior of the brain is severed. The bilateral structures of the limbic system, however, such as the amygdala and hippocampus, which sit in the deep, medial midbrain, remain untouched.

Split-brain research has identified different cognitive processing styles for the two cerebral hemispheres. The right hemisphere appears to process what it receives and no more, while the left hemisphere appears to make elaborations, associations and ... attempts to assign a coherent explanation to events or behavior, even when in reality none is present. (Turk et al., 2003, p. 70)

N. G., a commissurotomy patient of Gazzaniga, in an experiment to determine the processing of information occurring outside of ego-consciousness, sat in a chair facing a screen. Fixating on a black dot on the screen in front of her, images were flashed (one to two tenths of a second) to the right of the dot and to the left of the dot. The left eye sees images to the left of the dot and is connected to the right hemisphere; the right eye to the right of the dot and to the left hemisphere. N. G. could say what she saw with the right eye because the left hemisphere could translate it into language, but because she could not articulate verbally what her left eye/right hemisphere saw, her left hemisphere, when 107 responding to the question of what she saw, replied, "Nothing." It was clear that she in fact did register and understand the images with the right hemisphere, but because it could not be verbalized in language, it remained nonconscious to the left hemisphere. For example, after a picture of a nude woman was flashed to the left eye/right hemisphere, N. G. giggled and blushed but could not say why except that it was "some machine" the doctors had. "It is very common for the verbal left hemisphere to try to make sense of what has occurred in testing situations where information is presented to the right hemisphere. As a result, the left brain sometimes comes out with erroneous and often elaborate rationalizations based on partial clues" (Deutsch & Springer, 1998, p. 39). It is provocative, and perhaps embarrassing, to consider how often we interpret our world based on partial clues and inferences, by making rational what is, in reality, incomplete. Precisely this tendency and incompleteness of ego-consciousness is what analytical psychology is designed to address.

In another experiment with N. G., sitting in front of a screen and focusing on a dot in the middle, an image of a cup is flashed to her right eye/left hemisphere. When asked what she saw she replied, "Cup." Next an image of a spoon is flashed to her left eye/right hemisphere and N. G. claims she saw nothing. But when then asked to reach under the screen in front of her with her left hand and find by touch only among various objects one similar to what was just flashed (but she didn't see), N. G. picks out a spoon (Deutsch &

Springer, 1998, p. 36). Experiments such as these with N. G. have been repeated and are common results with split-brain patients. An aspect of mind that perceives and interprets reality and can respond to it accurately is clearly indicated and clearly outside of the domains of ego-consciousness. This refers to a nature of the unconscious captured in Jungian theories in particular, as opposed to the Freudian image of the unconscious as repressed material, able to act but blind in its ignorance. Whereas the unconscious is certainly represented by blind, repressed material, these split-brain experiments 108 demonstrate a present, responsive intelligence, more akin to Jung's concept of the unconscious as an autonomous Other. Neuroscientists and psychologists alike know that the vast majority of processes and content of the mind are unconscious and that the verbal self of the left hemisphere is driven to make sense only out of the data it perceives, including its own behaviors and feelings, which may very well be unconsciously motivated. For example, Gazzaniga and LeDoux found repeatedly in a split-brain patient, P. S., a forced consistency or rationalization from the left hemisphere of unconsciously motivated events. P.S. was presented with visual images, again focusing on a dot in the center of a screen, to each hemisphere: a chicken claw to the left and a snow scene to the right. P. S. claimed to have seen the chicken claw but not the snow scene image. He was then asked to choose among several pictures in front of him one that best related to what he saw on the screen. P. S. chose a picture of a shovel and a chicken. When asked why he explained he saw a picture of a chicken claw and one needs a shovel to clean out the chicken shed. Gazzaniga and LeDoux interpreted these results, repeated in trial after trial, that "the major task of the 'verbal self is to construct a reality based on actual behavior.... Verbal mechanisms are not always privy to the origin of our actions and can attribute cause to actions not actually accessible to them" (Deutsch & Springer, 1998, pp. 338- 339). V. S. Ramachandran is more blunt: "Your conscious life, in short, is nothing but an elaborate post-hoc rationalization of things you really do for other reasons" (2004, p. 1). He is more cynical of consciousness than is really called for. We fool ourselves, yes, but the verbal, rational left hemisphere does much more than rationalize; we wouldn't consider Bach's violin sonatas, Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, or whispered conversations in the middle of the night with a lover, elaborate post-hoc rationalizations

of things we do for other reasons.

More telling still of a presence of an internal other is a phenomenon known as acute disconnection syndrome, which sometimes occurs after a commissurotomy in 109 which patients experience competitive, conflicting behaviors between their right and left hands. Typically this syndrome lasts only a few weeks to a few months, though there are some well-known cases that last longer and are more dramatic, such as the right-handed man whose left hand reached out and choked his wife while his right hand pulled it off of her. Or the woman whose right hand would reach for an article of clothing in her closet while her left hand grabbed something completely different and wouldn't let go of the garment; she had to call in her daughter to help her pry the left hand loose. "Cases such as these support the concept that the cerebral commissures transmit information that is inhibitory in nature," allowing one hemisphere to mediate or stop the activities of the other. Researchers speculate that this inhibitory function is "quickly masked by compensatory mechanisms in most split-brain patients" (Deutsch & Springer, 1998, p. 40). The question comes up, who is inhibiting whom? The data from acute disconnection syndrome indicate that the hemispheres not only house differing cognitive styles but also different tastes, feelings, and desires towards things and people in the world.

Conclusions The hemispheric differences boil down to the dependence of ego-consciousness on language or linguistic processing. For this reason, the functions performed predominantly by the right hemisphere, outside of language, are experienced as unconscious or nonconscious. Theorists argue over the linguistic necessity of consciousness; it seems to me from research of split-brain patients, left hemisphere damage, and the experiences of Paris (2007) and Taylor (2006) who both had left hemisphere damage, consciousness and experiences of the self from a dominant right hemisphere are intact, but what is linguistically dependent is ego-consciousness: the sense of "I" that we refer to every day in typical thought, speech, and action, which is, as

it turns out, a small portion of consciousness and the self. 110

So, is there more than one self to a brain? Some scientists conclude that there are different selves represented by each hemisphere in the brain; others conclude as certainly there are not. It is a controversial topic, to say the least. It seems to me to be a matter of self and identity. There is not more than one self (in the normal personality or brain) but

there is definitely more than one identity, or, looked at another way, many levels of

identity. A self is a whole and containing concept and experience; an identity is a

particular quality of experience of the self in a given context, at a given age, with certain

perspectives—sensual, emotional, linguistic—among them. The problem is that we each,

in our daily lives, tend to think our identity is our self, as Jung noticed in our

identification with the persona. This is confounded by the fact that left hemisphere ego-

consciousness feels compelled to rationally create cohesion, order, and sense at the cost

of veracity and reality. Where neuroscientists see that the verbal left hemisphere will

confabulate wildly to maintain its illusion of control and consistency, Jung saw that the

ego engages in self-deception to maintain control and consistency in response to internal

pressures.

A review of the characteristics, functions, and cognitive styles of the hemispheres

certainly relates to the understanding of the relationship between conscious and

unconscious in analytical psychology. The depth psychological unconscious is

emotional, primordial, and ancient, possessing an irrational intelligence; in the right

hemisphere there is a predominance of emotional processing, especially from the

primitive limbic system, metaphorical and nonsensical sensibilities, music and

abstraction, image, and the appraisal of factors that lie just below our consciousness but Ill that we are dependent on for perceiving an embodied world, such as the valence of voice and interpreting body language.

But there is also a connection between the concepts and felt experiences of a collective unconscious and an internal other in the right hemisphere and implicit consciousness. Neurobiologically, there are regions and processes of the brain that in fact, if the ego is understood as a specific pattern of neuronal firing in the brain that is constructed via personal experience after birth and that comes into consciousness through language, then there is literally an Other within, neuronally mapped within the same

brain, with relationships to the egoistic neuronal map but existing autonomously outside the ego as well.

In the third perspective of the collective unconscious—imagination—manifests in mythopoetic and nonpersonal, though not impersonal, form due to its correlations with the limbic, ancient, "not-me" regions of the brain. I have argued in this first section that the subjective phenomena of the collective unconscious correlates with the limbic system,

right hemispheric, implicit consciousness aspects of the brain. These regions and

processes are outside of ego-consciousness, they exist and function before ego exists; in

fact, they are the ground of instinctual affect and archetypal symbolism that emerges into

the psyche. This relegates to them a personal felt sense of transcendence, of otherness, of

ancientness, and autonomy.

These areas and processes of the brain are experienced by the ego as "not-me"

because truly, though the ego shares the same brain and body with the limbic system,

right hemisphere, and implicit processes, they exist and operate outside of the boundaries

of ego-consciousness. The limbic and implicit aspects of the brain evolved over millions 112 of years, whereas the brain of ego-consciousness evolved over the last few hundred thousand years. In a symbolic representation of this fact, the limbic and implicit systems of the brain "come with us" when we are born; they are intact and functioning in each infant just as they functioned in our ancestors. Through the development of the frontal lobes, the individual that knows and names the collective unconscious is born. 113

Section II: Fate Fate reaches us through others in two primary ways: our ancestral legacy and the conditioning influences of our childhood and culture. Phenomenologically, in neither of these circumstances do we have any choice; it is what you get, what you are born in to. We do not choose the flaws, strengths, and characteristic weaknesses of our ancestral line. Nor do we choose the family dynamics we are born in to, the level of consciousness of the significant others in our early lives, nor the cultural-historical epoch we become an individual within. All of these aspects of identity are brought about by others—personal, collective, and anonymous. This is a statement of phenomenological, subjective experience and is not meant as a statement of fact. Even within a paradigm of reincarnation that believes we, or an a priori soul, chooses our parents and circumstances of fate, the immediate, personal, and phenomenological experience of fate is that we are confronted with events that have an impact on us but which we did not consciously choose. This is reflected in the Christian serenity prayer to be granted the ability to change what one can, accept what one cannot change, and the wisdom to know the difference. Fate, as understood here and phenomenologically referenced, is represented in the request for wisdom to accept what one cannot change.

Referring to a famous image in Heidegger's philosophy of Dasein, Palmer notes that a hammer that is simply present is an object that can be weighed, catalogued, and compared with other objects; but this is not knowing or understanding the object. It is not until one comes upon a broken hammer that we at once grasp what a hammer is (1969, p. 133). A depth psychological understanding of this metaphor is that it is through our wounds—where we are "broken"—that we separate from others and the emergent consciousness breaks through our unconscious identifications. Our psychological wounds are the space where we become conscious of ourselves, where we can then reflect and come to know ourselves as a separate being or person. Identity has this same relationship to the fate and conditioning received via others: it is not until we are marked 114 and wounded that our peculiar shape and potentials emerge through the horizon of our limits. That is, it is only through the limits and falsehoods imposed by what Hollis

(2001) refers to as the provisional or acquired self, that we find the way to become who we are. Another aspect of identity brought about by others is content. By content, I mean the literal content of our knowledge, our minds, our imagination, and our identities. Content encompasses images and facts, but also dynamics, interpretations, truths and falsehoods, beliefs and values. Not all of this content, of course, is determined by others, but much of it is. Which part others and which part psyche? The chapters in this section are written with this question as impulse. First, we look at the role of temperament in neurobiological profiles as the first representation of our personality in our typological characteristics. Our neurobiological profile—literally, how our individual brain is structured functionally to perceive the world—determines our instinctual, automatic sensitivities and lack thereof towards the world. This aspect of identity is captured in William James's aphorism: "Sow an action, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny" (1942, p. 82). Most often how we think of others shaping personality is through childhood experiences, especially our parents. Developmental psychology research is heavily studied and the correlations between genetics, rearing environment, early experiences,

and resulting personality have been so validated as to be assumed. In attempting to find the edges of conditioning, and from which source, we will look at a range of ingredients from genetics, rearing environment, brain development, and culture through the lens of

an influential and rather radical text that asserts that the assumption of the parents providing the nurture aspect of the nature-nurture debate is bunk. The benefit of a radical idea is that it has clear boundaries that can be used as a scalpel, both for and against the originating theory, in drawing distinctions between realms of influence. 115

The idea of the self-made individual is a common image in contemporary American culture that lends to the myth that you can be anyone you want to be. It's clear this is not true, but there is wiggle room in consciousness for self-creation. Which attributes are learned, which are inherited? How malleable are our patterned ways of being? These are the questions this second section intends to explore. 116

Chapter 6 Temperament and Typology Temperament

In 1929, Jung speculated that there might eventually be a bridge found between psychology and physiology - their definite relationship established - via typology (1929/1969, p. 107). Seventy-five years later, in 2004, reporting on the findings from a large, longitudinal study on temperament in children that involved establishing biological correlates, researchers Jerome Kagan and Nancy Snidman referred to Jung's work on typology, stating that his insights into introversion and extroversion "apply with uncanny accuracy" to their research findings (2004, p. 218). Jung discussed the necessity of proceeding from the mind to the body in methodological attempts to understand the psyche.

It is necessary that research should follow this direction until certain elementary psychic facts are established with sufficient certainty. But once having established these facts, we can reverse the procedure. We can then put the question: What are the bodily correlatives of a given psychic condition? (Jung, 1933, p. 75)

He proceeded on the certainty of his empirical observations of psychic conditions; intuitive genius aided him here because the physical, scientific methods did not catch up with certain psychic facts until time tipped over the 21st century. Kagan and Snidman found the same relationships in their research into the neurobiological correlates of temperament as Jung found in his theory of types. Specifically, Kagan and Snidman's research asked how the amygdalar threshold of excitability was correlated with temperament.

Neuroscientific methods have caught up with Jung's foresight.

For much of the last century, personality psychology has been concerned more with describing personality than with explaining it—that is, with how people differ from each other rather than with why they differ from each other. One reason for this emphasis on description rather than explanation was the immaturity of human neuroscience. (De Young & Gary, 2009, p. 323) 117

Neuroscientific research into temperament and personality inquires into the functions of the limbic or visceral brain, the role of chemical neurotransmitters such as serotonin, Cortisol, or dopamine, and the physiological responses of the skin, heart rate, and blood flow to the brain, but what they are all measuring is essentially the innate level and pattern of arousal in the brain. Biologically, temperament is a phenomenon of the central nervous system (CNS) which stems from the limbic brain. The level of arousal of the CNS, or stated another way, the height of the threshold for stimulation, determines how we react cognitively, both consciously and unconsciously, to the constant stimulation received by our senses. Our most basic orientation to the world is captured in whether we tend to first approach or avoid novelty. Jung called these hard-wired strategies extraversion and introversion, respectively. Recall from the preceding chapters that basic emotions—again, in distinction to feelings—are driven by ancient limbic structures and neurochemicals. We inherit a neurobiological capacity to regulate stimulation. The arousal thresholds, not the potential or learned response, of these somatic-affective functions are genetically determined. Neuroscientific research in temperament and personality seeks to establish the correlation between character traits and affective arousal functions of the brain. The general and consistent distinction between temperament and personality is the line between biology and environment: "temperament is a basic property of the nervous system of both animals and humans, whereas personality is a product of external social conditions and is an essentially human phenomenon" (Vernon, 1994, p. 240). Temperament arises from the regulation of arousal and emotion reliably producing characteristic and automatic responses to experience, whereas personality is the constructed, storied level of identity that emerges through our relationships with others, ourselves, and the world. In enough studies over time to be generally accepted in the scientific community as reliable and accurate, the percentage of heritability for both temperament and personality traits is about 50%. Obviously, temperament and 118 personality have an intimate relationship; they are often used synonymously. "One possible interpretation of these findings is personality variables are so influenced by and reflective of temperamental characteristics that much of the heritability observed in adult personality is temperament based" (Vernon, 1994, p. 239). Temperament, being a biological function of the nervous system and arousal regulation, would appear to be the less malleable to environmental influences; personality is considered more malleable due to being a hybrid of genetic potential and environmental conditioning. In light of this understanding of the genetic origins of temperament, we can understand temperament as the underlying, neurobiological structure of personality and conditioning as those environmental influences that shape biological potentials via attitudes, values, and interpretations into reliable and characteristic expressions and patterns of behavior. In this sense, personality traits refer to temperament; that is, the traits underlying personality are the result of neurobiological temperamental structures. The term personality always includes the traits of temperament. We need to keep in mind that traits of temperament and personality are thoroughly enmeshed in experience and application and therefore the

terms are often used interchangeably. In general, researchers agree that there are three to nine traits of temperament—a growing consensus settles on five—and that traits remain relatively stable throughout one's life time. The most accepted, applied, and tested model of personality traits is

called the Big Five or the Five-Factor Model (FFM). This FFM of personality traits is based on reducing patterns of self-description in nonclinical (normal) populations to the underlying traits. The five overarching constructs are (1) Neuroticism or the tendency towards experiencing negative affect; (2) Extraversion or the tendency to experience positive affect; (3) Conscientiousness; (4) Agreeableness; and (5) Openness to experience (Heim & Weston, 2005, p. 22). Neuroticism refers to a temperamental trait, not a rigid

psychic defense structure as used in clinical psychology and psychoanalysis. Neuroticism refers to an innate heightened sensitivity to limbic arousal, translating into 119 subjective affective states of anxiety, depression, and negativity. Extraversion is not only the tendency to experience positive emotion but is also described as assertive sociability. Agreeableness is characterized as warmth and kindness, Openness as imaginative and curious, and Conscientiousness demonstrates reliability and honesty. Other trait models include Psychoticism, notably Eysneck's, which refers to traits of impulsiveness and aggression; clearly, this term, like Neuroticism, is distinct as a trait from the clinical description of psychosis. The FFM is one of the most influential and applied models in psychology. Longitudinal research has consistently demonstrated traits as stable and enduring dispositions in personality. The translation of the FFM into other countries has produced the pithy interpretation: "personality is much the same everywhere" (McCrae, 2009, p. 151). We must keep in mind that when McCrae says the FFM structure is universal, this does not mean other cultures have a majority of personalities just like Americans, but that the underlying categories of traits are reliably measured and present. "Marsella (2000) proposed that cultural factors influence patterns in which such traits are displayed, situations in which they tend to be elicited, their value in behavioral description, interpersonal responses to them, and meanings attributed to them" (Draguns, 2009, p. 563). Each culture assigns various values, weights, and influences to different personality traits and styles at different points in history. However, what the FFM demonstrates is that there are biological underpinnings to

personality that are present universally, even if they are valued, conditioned, and

expressed differently across cultures. For example, though there is considerable overlap between traits, the FFM does reliably reflect small but consistent gender differences between men and women universally.

Women score higher in N [neuroticism] and A [agreeableness] than men. At the level of specific facets, there are sometimes differences within domain. Thus, both Warmth and Assertiveness are facets of E [extraversion], but women are typically 120

wanner and men more assertive. Again, women are more open to aesthetic experiences, whereas men are more open to ideas. (McCrae, 2009, p. 151)

In addition, there is a universal trend of decline in Neuroticism, Extraversion, and Openness as we age, along with a corresponding increase in Agreeableness and Conscientiousness (Dreary, 2009, p. 104). The universality of the structure of the FFM of personality has created a revolution in personality psychology since the second half of the 20th century. The theory is that because the FFM is rooted in biology, in temperamental traits tied into neurobiological profiles and genetic dispositions, "variations on the same trait-related genes are found in Homo sapiens worldwide" (McCrae, 2009, p. 151). Again, this does not eclipse the real shaping influence of experience and culture; it simply gives a clearer delineation between biology and personality. As psychoanalyst Otto Kernberg has said, "We still have to clarify how neurobiological disposition and structures relate to psychological development and its derived structures" (2009, p. 506). The lens of the FFM brings us a little closer to this goal. There are many ways to study traits and temperament: some research focuses on one or two traits, and some focus on a model that includes all of them. Two well- researched traits are Extraversion and Neuroticism; these traits overlap with Jung's terms of Extraverted and Introverted attitudes. Correlations will be picked up in later discussions. Researchers differ in their theories of which biological processes or systems traits emerge from. For Eyseneck, the biological determinants of introversion and extroversion are thought to stem from the reticular activating system (RAS) in the brain stem that controls the arousal level of the central nervous system (CNS); for others, such as Kagan and Snidman's research discussed below, the focus is on the amygdala in the limbic brain. Eyseneck's research has relied on the

brain's ascending reticular activating system, associating Extraversion with the reticulo-cortical circuit and Neuroticism with the reticulo-limibic circuit. Eyseneck hypothesized that extraverts have a higher threshold for cortical arousal than 121

introverts ... [and] that neurotics are more easily aroused by emotion-inducing stimuli than are emotionally stable people. (DeYoung & Gary, 2009, p. 326)

In other words, Extraverts need a higher level of stimulation in their limbic system but are easily aroused cortically; the limbic system, as mentioned above, is associated with negative affect and the cortical layer of the brain is associated more with positive affect, especially the left orbital prefrontal cortex. In comparison, Eyseneck associates Neuroticism with a limbic system that is easily aroused and a cortical circuit that requires more stimulation for arousal. Eyseneck theorized that introverts are found to have a higher arousal level of the CNS, thereby producing their characteristic desire for solitude and low-stimulus environments and activities, as well as a tendency to avoid novel situations. In extraverts, on the other hand, one finds the opposite in behavior that seeks external stimulus and novelty. Further, introverts tend to have a more pessimistic attitude and extroverts a more optimistic attitude, again linking the sensitivities of each brain circuit— limbic or cortical—with the dominant trait and subjective attitude— Neuroticism/Introversion and Extraversion. But it is not so simple or straightforward as cortical or amygdalar arousal; some researchers focus on the level of crucial neurotransmitters in the brain, as discussed briefly in chapter 5.

The role of dopamine in exploratory behavior and cognitive flexibility is well-established .... A growing body of evidence indicates that Extraversion is partly a function of dopaminergic activity (Depue and Collins 1999; Wacker, Charanon and Stemmler 2006; Wacker and Stemmler 2006) (DeYoung & Gary, 2009, p. 330). Traits of intelligence, extraversion/introversion, neuroticism (anxiety and negative emotionality), and psychoticism (impulsivity; aggression) are reliably found to have

biological origins, though, again, there is differing focus on the various systems and

processes in the brain that produce them, such as brain functions or chemical neurotransmitters. Indeed, most likely more than one system, function, or process is

involved. 122

In The Long Shadow of Temperament (2004), developmental psychologists

Jerome Kagan and Nancy Snidman present the methods and results of an 11-year research study of two primary temperamental traits—introversion and extraversion—in an original cohort of 500 infants followed from 4 months old to 11 years old. First, Kagan and Snidman acknowledge that "different life histories create different personalities in children born with the same temperament. But one's temperament imposes a restraint on the possible outcomes" (p. 3). But although "no temperamental bias determines a particular personality type," and it is true that by adolescence we are able to marshal our will to present a persona to the world, "we have learned that some features of these biases stubbornly resist extinction and continue to affect a person's private mood" (p. 2). Also note that this study singled out only two temperamental traits, introversion and extraversion, from among many. The following analysis and comparison of this work with Jung's theories of introverts and extraverts does not assume that these traits make up the majority of the personality; rather, it is meant to demonstrate the connection between temperament and personality, between physiology and typology, and the relationship between the subjective felt sense of self and world and an innate neurobiological profile.

Most scientists define temperament as a biological bias for particular feelings and actions that first appear during infancy or early childhood and are sculpted by environments into a large, but still limited, number of personality traits .... We believe that most temperamental biases are due to heritable variation in neurochemistry or anatomy, although some could be the result of prenatal events that are not strictly genetic. (Kagan & Snidman, 2004, p. 40) Prenatal events that are not strictly genetic refer to unique experiences of the pregnant mother that makes a significant change in her biology, such as the fact that a female embryo developing next to a male embryo will share in the masculinizing effect of his testosterone which will have an effect on her level of activity and aggression

compared with other girls (p. 40). 123

The amygdala, as discussed in chapter 5, modulates fear, though Kagan and

Snidman make a powerful argument that the amygdala also primarily modulates reaction to novelty. It is our reaction to the unfamiliar that is then translated into surprise or fear, depending on the assessment of the unexpected event. The amygdala receives direct neuronal wiring from sensory modalities, such as the thalamus, allowing immediate

response that bypasses conscious cognitive processing.

It is the only brain structure that detects change in both the outside environment and the body, and in addition, can instruct the body to flee, freeze, or fight. Every sensory modality sends information to one or more areas of the amygdala, and each area, in turn, sends projections to sites in the brain and body that mediate emotions and actions, including the cerebral cortex, brain stem, and autonomic nervous system. (Kagan & Snidman, 2004, p. 10) Kagan and Snidman's hypothesis is that the amygdala is the primary brain structure that determines the affective reactivity of an infant, producing characteristic responses of what they refer to as a high-reactive or low-reactive infant. "Human beings ... are exquisitely sensitive to changes in facial expression, voice, and posture that signify anger, empathy, fear, seduction, delight, or disapproval from another person" (2004, p. 11). This sensitivity, mediated in part by the amygdala (and also the right hemisphere), represents an innate index of temperamental bias. An individual with

heightened amygdalar sensitivity would be predicted to be a high-reactive individual, expressing behaviorally as introverted, shy, anxious, and timid. The complement is a low-reactive individual who does not experience the internal movements of threat or

danger so readily from the environment and therefore is more likely to exhibit an extraverted attitude of being outgoing, exploratory, and rather fearless. The longitudinal study incorporated physiological testing of biological markers for amygdalar activation— such as heart rate, brain scans, and sympathetic nervous system activation—as well as qualitative, descriptive assessments from the child when appropriate, the parent (usually 124 the mother), and when possible, from teachers. In addition, research diagnostics included direct observations of behavior made in the lab by trained observers who were not known to the participating children. The researchers first made assessments of 4-month-old infants, categorizing them as either low-reactive or high-reactive to unfamiliar events in their environment. Amygdalar excitation sends messages to the motor centers of the body, and in infants this is expressed as a thrashing of limbs, arching of the back, and crying. Thus, a central hypothesis of Kagan and Snidman's research was that an infant born with a neurochemical profile that rendered the amygdala highly reactive would respond to unfamiliar stimuli with a vigorous motor and emotional display, whereas a low-reactive infant would have a minimal display. After categorizing 4-month-old infants as high-, low-, or mixed-reactive, the research followed up with further testing of amygdalar sensitivity and temperamental bias at approximately 2, 4, 7, and 11 years old. The data reported at various ages reflects the general themes of the research (1) most individuals are a mixture of traits, with about a fifth to a quarter exhibiting more extreme temperamental biases, (2) between infancy and preadolescence, a fifth to a third of children retained their characteristic profiles categorized in infancy, and (3) a majority of those classified at the extremes of high- and low-reactive developed profiles at 11 years old inconsistent with infant categorization. In an original cohort of 500 4-month-old infants, a fifth (20%) were classified as high-reactive and a quarter (25%) as low- reactive; the remainder of the infants, a little more than half, were a mixture of traits with a small group termed aroused, showing high motor arousal not accompanied by crying. In follow-up lab visits of 300 of the original infants at 14 or 21 months old (or both), one third displayed a high level of fear to the tests exposing them to unfamiliar stimulus, one third displayed a notably low level of fear, and the other third had intermediate scores. The infants who had been evaluated as high-reactive at 4 months old had the most fear, while those who were low-reactive had the least fear. These results linked innate 125 temperamental bias detected at 4 months old with behavioral bias in the second year (Kagan & Snidman, 2004, p. 15). In their fourth year, 193 children returned to the lab where an unknown female examiner interviewed them and then several weeks later they returned for a play session with other unknown children their age. Twice as many children designated as low- reactive in the previous tests were more spontaneous and sociable with both the examiner and the unfamiliar children than those who were high-reactive. Almost half of the children who were high-reactive infants continued to display behavior congruent to this assessment by being notably shy, quiet, and timid, whereas only 10% of those children who had been low-reactive infants acted in a timid or shy manner (Kagan & Snidman, 2004, p. 15).

A total of 18 percent of the high-reactives were consistently inhibited at all four ages—14 and 21 months and 4.5 and 7.5 years—but not one high- reactive infant was consistently uninhibited across all four evaluations. Moreover, the high-reactives with anxious symptoms, compared with the non-anxious high-reactives, showed higher diastolic blood pressure and greater cooling of the temperature of the fingertips as they listened to a long series of numbers they had to remember. These latter two measurements imply a more reactive sympathetic nervous system in the presence of a cognitive challenge, (p. 17) The last assessment took place between 10 and 12 years old. Of the 237 children who returned for this evaluation, 30% had been high-reactive infants and 39% had been low-reactive. This cohort underwent an extensive assessment of biological variables— EEG power, brain stem auditory-evoked potential, sympathetic reactivity in the cardiovascular system and others—selected because these biological markers are potentially under the direct or indirect influence of the amygdala. The majority of the research, its findings and interpretations, was taken from the evaluations of the 11-year- olds. In essence, the researchers were asking to what degree behavior (high/low reactive) was yoked to past and present biology (amygdalar reactivity). 126

The high-reactives showed greater activation in the right hemisphere as compared to the left, higher Cortisol arousal (hormone released under stress), and greater sympathetic tone in the cardiovascular system. The researchers observed that high- reactive children were more likely to be of slender build with a narrow face and blue eyes; low-reactive children were more likely to be taller, heavier, and brown-eyed. A likely reason for this is that the genes that contribute to the threshold of amygdalar reactivity influence many traits, including body size and eye color (Kagan & Snidman, 2004, p. 21). Kagan and Snidman noted an interesting intuitive reflection of this observation in Disney's artists: more of the heroes and heroines are sensitive, light- haired, and blue eyed, where the typical aggressive villain more likely has dark-eyes. By age 11, 20% of high-reactive infants and just over 30% of low-reactives preserved their expected behavioral and biological features; that is, high-reactives tended to be shy, intimidated by the unfamiliar, and disliked interacting with large groups, whereas low-reactives tended to be outgoing, attracted to novelty, and enjoyed large groups. Yet less than 5% of each group displayed characteristics of the complementary type; most of the remaining had constrained characteristics. That is, high-reactives who were not in the 20% of preserving expected behaviors did not act like low-reactives (less than 5% did) but rather had a mixture of modified high- and low-reactive traits (Kagan & Snidman, 2004, p. 190). Why would a majority of those classified as high- or low- reactive in infancy not develop a behavioral profile at 11 years old congruent with an earlier assessment atinfancy? This consequence is believed to be the affect of conditioning. "The biology of the high-reactives had not prevented them from learning ways to cope with strangers and new challenges, but it did prevent them from displaying the relaxed spontaneity ... characteristic of many low-reactive children" (p. 23). Kagan and Snidman continue with this assessment of external behavior modified by conditioning contrasted with the internal experience of the individual: 127

The more important fact is that very few high-reactives became exuberant, sociable, minimally aroused preadolescents, and very few low-reactives became fearful, quiet introverts with high levels of biological arousal.... Most children who did not conform to expectation were neither extremely shy nor extremely exuberant, and few possessed more than one sign of amygdalar excitability. The power of each infant temperamental bias lay in its ability to prevent the development of a contrasting profile, (p. 23) The results of the research showed that it is easier to predict what an infant with a definite temperamental bias of high-reactivity will not become at age 11—spontaneous, ebullient, fearless—than what he or she will become—extremely fearful and shy. "An infant's temperament, therefore, constrains the acquisition of certain profiles more effectively than it determines the development of a particular personality" (Kagan & Snidman, p. 24). There a several reasons for this including environmental conditioning and the relationship of biology to psychology and behavior. At 11 years old there was not a consistently high correlation between biological markers and behavior; for example, "high- and low-reactives who were described by their mothers as highly sociable ... differed in their biological profiles" (p. 205). The data from Kagan and Snidman's research as well as others reflect a relative independence of biological and behavioral variables; "these data imply that some brain states may have minimal influence on the quality of a person's consciousness, intentions, or behavior, just as some alleles have no implications for either phenotypic features or adaptation (Tang et al., 2001)" (p. 206). So although we can clearly trace correlations between neurobiology and temperament and typology, as I will do further below, we must remember that biology and psychology, though intimately related, each retain a relative independence. "A biological state represents only a potentiality for a psychological property" (p. 206). For now we will explore the connections between the objective level of biology expressed in temperament and the subjective manifestations of typology in Jung's theories on introversion and extraversion. 128

Typology

When noting the relevance of Jung's attitude types to their research on temperament, Kagan and Snidman acknowledge that "each adolescent's dominant feeling tone, not the degree of shyness or sociability in his outward persona, is the seminal property that differentiates these temperamental groups" (p. 218). Dominant feeling tone is precisely what Jung's typological classifications capture; it is the underlying structure and energy to external persona, the area that Jung's own intuitive nature read with ease and accuracy. Kagan and Snidman note that "the developmental journey that leads to a relaxed or a tense feeling tone requires a more substantial contribution from temperament than does a sociable or shy posture with others" (p. 218). It is this link between feeling tone, or typology, and temperament that is explored here.

Jung notes that the distribution of introversion and extraversion, as general attitude types, is widespread throughout gender, classes, cultures, and time periods; philosophers from the Greeks to the 1 ^-century aesthetic philosophy to modern-day psychology have detailed the distinctions between the various yet repetitive occurring of types in human nature. Therefore, Jung concludes, the distinction in attitude types could not come about through conscious and deliberate choice: "As a general psychological phenomenon, therefore, the type antithesis must have some kind of biological foundation"

(1921/1971b, p. 331). At root, the relation between subject (self) and object (other) is one of adaptation; biologically, an innate predisposing somatic sensitivity to the world determines our style of adaptation. What Jung and Kagan and Snidman describe are these subjective adaptations to the world that emerge from the meeting of a general somatic profile and unique conditioning experiences. Jung, like Kagan and Snidman, 129 finds that the reliable thread is found in temperament. "Although nothing would induce me to underrate the incalculable importance of parental influence, this familiar experience compels me to conclude that the decisive factor must be looked for in the disposition of the child" (Jung, 1921/1971b, p. 332).

Jung calls introversion and extraversion "attitude types," as these are characteristics

distinguished by their attitude to the object. The introvert's attitude is an abstracting one; at bottom he is always intent on withdrawing libido from the object, as though he had to prevent the object from gaining power over him. The extravert, on the contrary, has a positive relation to the object. He affirms its importance to such an extent that his subjective attitude is constantly related to and oriented by the object. (192171971b, p. 330)

Psychologist and philosopher William James names these types as rational or tender-minded and empirical or tough-minded. The tender-minded, representing the introvert, are individuals of "principles and systems; they aspire to dominate experience and to transcend it by abstract reasoning, by their logical deductions and purely rational concepts" (Jung, 1913/1971, p. 502). In contrast, the extravert, oriented by the external object, is logically represented in James's tough-minded empiricist who follows the facts above opinion, for whom "only tangible phenomena in the outside world" count and "thought is merely a reaction to external experience" (p. 503). Even further in James's types do we find the level of affective sensitivity of Kagan and Snidman's high- and low- reactives in the image of the thin-skinned, tender-minded high-reactive who is motivated by intense feelings and concern over others' or their consciences' evaluation of them, and the thick-skinned, tough-minded low-reactive who is relatively unconcerned with the opinions of others and tend not to feel personal transgressions so acutely. Jung also analyzes Worringer's types of modern art from the classic Abstraction and Empathy (1920) in light of introversion and extraversion. In abstraction is the desire to find haven in a self-made form from an overpowering and dissonant reality; in art 130 created from the empathic attitude we find harmonious works into which we can project our internal affective states, finding there alignment with the art object. The introverted attitude, represented in abstraction, finding the world threatening, attempts to devalue the object, to leech it of its power over him and therefore be dominant and secure. In contrast, the extraverted attitude, represented in empathic art, finding no threat from the external world but rather a universe of dead objects, seeks to animate them through the projection of her libido. This projection of her own libido into the object produces empathy, a harmonious relationship between viewer/artist and object/world.

What we see in Jung's theory is the subjective manifestation and attitudes of certain biological profiles; note that both Kagan and Snidman and Jung concentrate their descriptions on those individuals who are lop-sided in their profile, which amplifies the mental, emotional, and behavioral correlates. Focus on profiles in the margins offers a clearer peering into the inner workings of the brain-mind and psyche. "We call a mode of behavior extraverted only when the mechanism of extraversion predominates" (Jung, 1921/1971b, p. 340). We should remember that a majority of us have a nature coiled somewhere in-between the pure or even strong introvert-inhibited and extravert- uninhibited.

Kagan and Snidman's inhibited, high-reactive type correlates with Jung's introverted type. Again, the inhibited high-reactive is characterized biologically by a low excitability threshold in the amygdala which translates into more intense and consistent subjective feelings of anxiety, fear, shame, and guilt. Recall that a high-reactive is characterized by the trait of shyness and high-reaction to the unfamiliar in Kagan and Snidman's lab experiments, causing him to be more vigilant in his reading of the environment for danger or unfamiliarity and in this sense is more likely to be exquisitely sensitive to tone of voice, facial cues, actions, for instance. Consider Jung's observation that "one of the earliest signs of introversion in a child is a reflective, thoughtful manner, marked shyness and even fear of unknown objects .... Everything unknown is regarded 131 with mistrust; outside influences are usually met with violent resistance" (1923/1971, p. 517). It is easy to understand why Kagan and Snidman consider Jung's work on introverts and extraverts, made almost a century ago, to reveal uncanny insight into the research on the biological structures of temperament.

A high-reactive child is also more vigilant in reading and analyzing her own inner environment because she has to; the high-reactive preadolescents and adolescents reported more anxiety about others' perceived judgments of them and a heightened, painful sensitivity to transgressions of their own standards. For high-reactives, there is a sense of being bombarded with thoughts and feelings, that the world provokes much emotion in her and therefore an internal focus that understands, organizes, and interprets these constant messages is a way of coping or managing her internal state. A low- reactive does not need to develop an inner vigilance because he is not compelled to do so; his inner world is rather quiet compared to the high-reactive. It is present, but on a consistently lower volume.

Jung's assessment of the introvert as attempting to devalue the object world and elevate the primacy or superiority of one's subjectivity dovetails with the above description of the inner world of a high-reactive. Jung describes the introvert having a relationship to the object (the external world) that seeks to devalue it by draining it of its libido. This leeching of the object's energy is performed because the world holds an overwhelming power for the introvert in its ability to constantly elicit strong somatic and affective states that the individual then has to respond to and attempt to mediate or calm.

For the introvert, the world is highly charged and alive and one feels in constant battle for equilibrium; a solution is to withdraw from the world and to interact only under certain circumstances. A high concern and focus with inner states cause an introvert to be much more concerned with her own subjectivity than with the circumstances of the world or others external to her. In this way, an introvert's subjectivity—what he thinks and feels about things—takes a priority and superiority over facts or another's subjectivity. After 132 all, the primary and immediate route an introvert has to find peace is to manage and control inner space, since it is so easily stirred. The extraverted attitude, oriented by the external object rather than subjective states, shows an early sign of

quick adaptation to the environment, and the extraordinary attention he gives to objects and especially to the effect he has on them. Fear of objects is minimal; he lives and moves among them with confidence .... He likes to carry his enterprises to the extreme and exposes himself to risks. Everything unknown is alluring. (Jung, 1923/1971, p. 516)

Consider the descriptions of low-reactives as playing easily with unfamiliar children or smiling within the first few minutes of entering a room alone with an unfamiliar adult. The low-reactive could be described as finding the "unknown alluring" because it does not disrupt his inner life; he does not experience dissonance between self and world but rather seeks alignment, an experience of pleasure and harmony. For the extravert, "objective happenings have an almost inexhaustible fascination for him, so that ordinarily he never looks for anything else" (Jung, 1921/197lb, p. 334). It's not that the extravert's objective world is that fascinating compared to his inner world, but that the objective world is the inner world. Recalling the analogy in Worringer's types of art, the extravert is associated with empathic art because he projects his subjective experience into the art object and experiences his subjectivity there. So again, it's not that an extravert does not have an inner world but that he or she realizes the inner world through the external world, in contrast to the introvert who moves to keep the external world from exerting too much influence or dominance on subjective experience. A highly extraverted nature finds, through projection, her inner world in external objects and events, thus Worringer's interpretation that the empathic artist-extravert lives in a world of dead objects, whereas the abstract artist-introvert is perpetually pursued by an all too alive object world. 133

Projection brings alignment between inner and outer in the extravert, allowing him to adapt with ease to the environment, something introverts and high-reactives find much more difficult because inner turbulence puts them at odds with the outer world. The extravert finds an ease of communication between his inner world and outer world in that the outer world is not threatening—it does not elicit the amygdalar-limbic system— and therefore we can presume that objects are for the most part pleasing or neutral in comparison for a predominant experience of the threatening power of objects in the introvert. This affinity between the internal state and objective circumstances allows the extravert to adapt to external circumstances. Whereas an introverted temperament, finding a general dissonance between inner and outer worlds, does not feel an easy fit between who she is and the circumstances she finds herself in and therefore easy adaptation eludes her. In Jung's assessment, this leads the introvert to raise subjective experience above circumstance and appear maverick, self-centered and egotistical, irrational, or a combination of these judgments. This dissonance between inner and outer causes the introvert to attempt to orient the object world to the subjective world. The extravert, on the other hand, tends to elevate circumstance and objects, thereby appearing gregarious, exploratory, superficial, or slavish in the attempt to adapt to external circumstances. In Jungian theory the unconscious is autonomous, possessing its own attitude and volition, and compensatory in these functions to the conscious attitude. A compensating attitude in the unconscious of an extravert, therefore, would have a decidedly introverted nature. What does this mean? It points to an unconscious focus on the subjective factor as a complement to the conscious focus on the object; that is, an unrecognized self- centeredness in the extravert's attitude, whereas the unrecognized attitude in the consciously subjective introvert is the tendency to take internal states as objects. Jung's writing on the unconscious attitude is sometimes not as clear as his explication of the conscious attitude. For example, he focuses on the infantile and primitive manifestations 134 of the extravert's unconscious, but this general claim could be made on anyone's unconscious material as the unconscious is, in part, that which has not been integrated, developed, and thus matured through conscious reflection and application. Thus, we all have infantile and primitive unconscious attitudes, qualities, and content, whether we are predominantly extroverted, introverted, or somewhere in between.

Jung does refer to qualities of a strong extravert's unconscious attitude that are more revealing, especially in light of the biological foundation of attitude types found in Kagan and Snidman's hypotheses. The egocentric nature of the extravert's unconscious attitude, Jung writes, "goes far beyond mere childish selfishness; it verges on the ruthless and the brutal" (1921/1971b, p. 339). In Kagan and Snidman's research, boys in the extreme end of the low-reactive spectrum from deprived backgrounds who did not effectively sublimate or socialize aggressive urges had a higher tendency towards criminality. Further, the researchers note that studies of criminals revealed low-reactive biological profiles and attitudes with a low concern for the opinions and judgments of others (2004, p. 223). Therefore, the ruthlessness and brutality observed by Jung in the unconscious of lop-sided extraverted types may be an accurate subjective description of their motivations. That is, an extreme extravert, as an extreme low-reactive, more than others will tend not to register as important others' opinions and feelings because they do not experience these responses as fearful, producing anxiety or personal threat. Conditioned in an environment that does not shape his attention towards learning to care for and consider the feelings and concerns of others, a low-reactive extravert could easily

develop along the path of least resistance where there is a marked lack of concern for other's feelings culminating in a brutal or ruthless self-centeredness.

Jung considers the introvert oriented by inner psychic structures, but this is not the ego per se. Rather, he asserts that the introvert, in his focus on his inner state, is identified with innate psychic structures beyond the ego. More specifically, Jung 135 believes the introvert tends to identify with the promptings, impulses, and movements of the collective unconscious.

But it is a characteristic peculiarity of the introvert... to confuse his ego with the self, and to exalt it as the subject of the psychic process, thus bringing about the aforementioned subjectivization of consciousness which alienates him from the object. The psychic structure is ... what I call the 'collective unconscious. (1921/1971b, p. 376) This observation finds a synonym in the correlation in section one of this dissertation of the collective unconscious with the limbic system of the brain of which the amygdala is a primary structure. The biological underpinning of high-reactive's inhibition centered in the excitability threshold of the amygdala and its projection sites. In biological terms, the introvert has a highly reactive limbic system and as a result feels intensely, and we can presume more often, the subjective feelings of anxiety, fear, shame, and guilt which the introvert links with objects—circumstances and other people—in their outer world. That is, the high-reactive is overly focused on her subjective state because it keeps her in a state of alert, if not threat. This vigilance is also indicative of an identification with her internal states as objective statements about her worth. Jung's observation that a key feature of the introverted nature is to identify the ego with the collective unconscious is expressed in Kagan and Snidman's work as a high reactive identifying with the somatic ripples of the limbic system in feeling and thought and attributing these internal states to external judgments or conditions (e.g., what others are thinking and feeling towards one), that a threatening presence is hidden in the external world rather than a subjectively generated experience. Referring back to the empathic- extravert projecting subjective states into the object world and experiencing one's subjectivity in the world, the abstract-introvert is also seen here to project one's subjective state into the world and experience it there; the primary difference appears to be the valence of the emotion: for the extravert it is positive and for the introvert, negative. 136

This identification with subjective states, or ego with the collective unconscious, leads to an over-valuation of one's internal world; the subjective element takes on a superiority because it is the loudest and most threatening to one's sense of peace and stability. But it also leads to the unconscious compensation in introverts of objectifying their subjective world. In Jungian parlance, the ego is inflated with the transcendent material of the collective psyche, and "the inflexibility of his subjective judgment, setting itself above all objective data, is sufficient in itself to create the impression of marked egocentricity" (1921/1971b, p. 377). Jung correlated specific psychopathologies with extraversion and introversion. Hysteria is the pathology he links with an extraverted attitude. "The hallmark of classic hysteria is an exaggerated rapport with persons in the immediate environment and an adjustment to surrounding conditions that amounts to imitation" (Jung, 1921/197lb, p. 336). For the introvert, "should he become neurotic, it is the sign of an almost complete identity of the ego with the self' (p. 336) and hence, schizophrenia is the mental illness Jung named as representative of the introvert, revealing an enmeshment of ego and collective unconscious. In their symptoms, Jung finds correlations with the attitude types: the hysteric's fantasies are always tied to the subjective history of the individual, whereas in the schizophrenic the typical fantasies of a collective and mythological nature remain disconnected from the history of the patient. The hysteric's subjective unconsciousness is a compensation for the extravert's over-valuation of the object; the schizophrenic's objective unconscious content compensates for the subjective orientation of the introvert. Finally, the centrifugal movement of the libido in hysteria correlates with the extravert's outward focus. Likewise, the centripetal movement in schizophrenia mirrors the inward focus characterizing the introvert.

I call regressive extraversion the phenomenon which Freud calls transference, when the hysteric projects upon the object his own illusions and subjective valuations. In the same way, I call regressive introversion 137

the opposite phenomenon which we find in schizophrenia, when these fantastic ideas refer to the subject himself. (Jung, 1913/1971, p. 500)

In summary, the introvert/high-reactive is temperamentally driven to over emphasize the power of the objective world consciously, which elevates the importance of his subjective states. In contrast, the extravert/low-reactive is biologically driven to over-emphasize the life-giving power of her inner world consciously but compensates unconsciously by being slavishly possessed by their objects. The extravert has a style that assimilates subject to object, whereas the introvert has a style that assimilates object to subject. Stated differently, the extravert adapts to the external world, whereas the introvert attempts to make the external world adapt to his subjective reality. As discussed previously, the introvert's strategy is less successful from an inner dissonance perspective, as reflected in the experience of high-reactives who learned to adapt behaviorally to the world, appearing congruent when still experiencing an elevated, more intense subjectivity. The extravert does not know herself as an individual as clearly as the introvert does; indeed, the introvert deals with the loneliness of being separate more than the extravert because the incongruence between inner and outer makes him aware of himself as separate more than the extravert's experience of alignment and connection with the outer world allows. An introvert's nature leads her to follow her own promptings more than outer demands, whereas an extravert's nature prompts him to follow the openings and opportunities in the world more than open the doorways presented subjectively. Yet, an extravert, having less internal chaos or traffic, may unconsciously fear feeling dead or empty inside if he stops chasing objects and sits within his own subjective experience. This focus on resonance with the object leads to an orientation by the object world which, in pathological unconscious compensation, causes the outwardly gregarious extravert to be cold and self-centered, unable to consider others' feelings or needs. In contrast, the introvert fears the power of the world because she experiences so much dissonance and 138 chaos in response to objects; they elicit so much from her, without her choice or will, that she experiences the world as too alive in comparison with the dead world of the extravert. In pathological unconscious compensation, conscious orientation to the subjective world leads the introvert to be dominated by an inner objective world. In Jung's work we find rich descriptions of the subjective experience of neurobiological profiles of temperament. I believe we can consider Jung's observations to be the first lifting off of psyche from physiology. The attitude types develop organically from their physiology into characteristic ways of being in and responding to the world. Yet, Kagan and Snidman's studies found just as readily the influence of experience and conditioning on nature; only a quarter of those categorized as high- or low-reactive infants maintained a character profile in pre-adolescence consistent with earlier temperament assessments. Clearly, the world had intervened, an aspect of personality development Jung's theories lack. In the next chapter, we will consider the influence of the intervening world through the impact of conditioning. 139

Chapter 7 A Confluence of Events The previous chapter demonstrated two points: from a dual-aspect monism perspective, temperament and typology are two sides of a single coin, and that temperament is the basic, driving force in shaping personality. Considering the influence of neurobiology, where does this locate us in the nature-nurture debate? Research into the nurture sector has primarily focused on parent-child interactions and conditioning relationships, called the rearing environment. A major criticism of this developmental research, and a valid one, is that it has not incorporated the fact of genetic heritability in traits and personality. Genetic research has reliably validated that between 40 and 80% of temperament and personality traits are inherited, depending on the specific trait, and the conclusion that generally 50% of personality attributes are inherited is uncontroversial. Biological evidence of the structures girding personality is not enough to tell us about the correlating behavior without context and individual history. Kagan and Snidman note that an impediment to understanding research results of temperament is an assumption that behavior is reduced to the biology; it is not, and cannot be actually, any more than a wave crashing on a beach can be reduced to the billions of water molecules that it's made of (2004, p. 49). However, each aspect of the wave is real and necessary to truly understand an ocean wave. In the same manner, in order to truly understand the role of temperament we must consider both its ground—biology—and the context through which it is realized. As physicist Niels Bohr said, "scientists can never know a phenomenon as it exists in nature; all they can ever know is what they can measure" (Kagan & Snidman, 2004, p. 49). Science that relies solely on physical measurements may never know a phenomenon as it exists in nature, but we can. As individuals, we know the living experience of being a self with an identity. But being that this work is focusing on where the measurements of neuroscience correlate with the theories of 140 analytical psychology, we must consciously accept the limitations as well as the revelations of scientific methods. What our measurements tell us are that matters of personality, identity, and pathology or mental health are a confluence of events. Biological Predisposition

Research into temperament and the FFM demonstrates the shaping influence of neurobiology on personality. There is a general consensus that in the FFM the personality dimension of Neuroticism is associated with personality disorders and major depression, that Extraversion predisposes people to be happier, that Openness predicts a tendency towards social and political liberalism, that the risk factor for substance abuse increases as scores on Agreeableness decrease, and that Conscientiousness is associated with positive ratings on job performances (McCrae, 2009, p. 152). Critiques of the FFM are that differences in personality types represent different psychological processes rather than traits, that traits describe but do not explain behavior, and that the FFM, though accurate in its domain, does not explain personality fully. Of course, the FFM does not explain personality fully, no one methodology or measurement does. In response to the first critique, if we approach a whole person in personality theory, then we must see that biological and psychological processes are connected at some level. Although it is true that at some point, and the location of this point can be argued, an individual's psychology separates from its physiological ground, possessing a relative autonomy, the fact remains that biology and psychology are intimately connected. A dual-aspect monist perspective would hold that each manifestation is a different aspect of the same phenomena. In response to the third critique that temperament describes but does not explain behavior, the FFM demonstrates a validated relationship between genetic and neurobiological profiles and psychological traits; these factors are then shaped via experience into the more complicated, contingent, and unique personality of the 141 individual. Longitudinal research on childhood temperament demonstrates this relationship, and the "findings suggest that early temperamental predispositions form a core or nucleus around which the later developing personality is built" (Rothbart, Sheese,

& Conradt, 2009, p. 181). While keeping an eye on not confounding correlation with causation, the analysis goes forward understanding temperament as more than a description, but as a generating nodal point for personality traits and patterns.

Although a large body of research evidence correlates childhood adversity as risk factors for personality disorders, there is not a direct causal link.

It has been consistently shown that the impact of childhood adversities is different in clinical and community samples. Community surveys of the effects of childhood sexual abuse (Browne and Finkelhor 1986; Rind and Tromofovitch 1997), as well as of physical abuse (Malinovsky-Rummell and Hansen 1993), have found that only a minority of children exposed to abuse and trauma suffer measurable sequelae. (Paris, 2005, p. 123) Clearly one explanation is that abuse or adversity is a necessary but not sufficient condition for personality disorders to develop. It makes sense that over millions of years of evolution in which the conditions for survival were consistently harsh, most human beings are born with a resilient and hearty psyche. This is not, of course, to dismiss the moral issue of abuse or adversity and our worthy attempts to address it. Nor does it dismiss the fact that the more sensitive souls among us have special and valuable contributions to make from their experiences. Outcomes of trauma research demonstrate that our genetic predisposition establishes a biological ground from which we respond to adversity. For example,

during the winter of 1984, a sniper fired at a group of children on the playground of a Los Angeles elementary school, killing one child and injuring 13. One month later, when clinicians interviewed the children to determine who was experiencing extreme levels of anxiety, 38 percent were judged to be anxious, while 39 percent seemed free of unusual levels of tension or fear. The children who were judged to be anxious had shown an inhibited style prior to the school violence (Pynoos et al., 1987). (Kagan & Snidman, 2004, p. 46) 142

And finally, 15 months before Hurricane Andrew hit south Florida in 1992, a group of elementary students had been assessed for the presence of anxiety. Seven months after the hurricane, 11% of these children had elevated distress and all of them had been categorized as anxious in the study before the hurricane (Kagan & Snidman, 2004, p. 46). A research study of posttraumatic stress disorder tested adults who were exposed to several hurricanes that struck Florida in 2004 for those "born with the short allele in the promoter region of the gene that affects the concentration of serotonin in the synapse" (Kagan & Snidman, 2004, p. 151). The allele leaves individuals with a higher genetic vulnerability to stress. "However, only those with this allele who also had been deprived of social support developed posttraumatic stress disorder. Adults possessing exactly the same allele who enjoyed social support did not develop these symptoms" (p. 151). The inheritance of personality traits is a multivariant phenomenon. Several conditions— neurobiological vulnerability, developmental failures, abuse, psychosocial and cultural factors—are necessary but not sufficient in and of themselves. Also, the presence of alleviating and modulating factors needs to be accounted for as well. However, there are limits to the influence of genes and our scientific knowledge of them. The most popular method makes an erroneous assumption that genetic and environmental forces are additive—that is, that they add to the profile or dynamics rather than influence, integrate, and build upon one another in complex ways. Another

methodological assumption is that interactions between genes themselves and between genes and the environment are small and can be reliably separated. These assumptions lead geneticists to assume that the variation in a gene and its relevant trait or phenotype is linear and direct. "Most biological or behavioral pheonotypes are not a function of additive factors but products of nonlinear interactions among genes and between genetic

propensities and experiences" (Kagan & Snidman, 2004, p. 229). 143

Behavioral genetics attempts to establish the ties between genetic material and personality traits and behavior. There are two methodologies in behavioral genetics: studies of molecular genetics and twin and adoption studies. Molecular genetics is represented in the type of research stated above regarding specific alleles and individual responses to trauma or adversity, such as the combination of a certain allele, the Florida hurricane, and support networks in individual lives. Molecular genetics relies on the assumption that the biological underpinnings of personality traits are linked to a number of genes which influence the variation in neurobiology. This area of research finds links between neurotransmitters and behavior, such as dopamine for approach behaviors (extraversion) and serotonin and noradrenaline for avoidance behaviors (neuroticism). The difficulty confronting molecular genetics research is in the polymorphism of genetic material and the necessity for studies of considerably large populations that can reveal the subtle and small influences being measured. Polymorphic refers to the ability of some genotypes to express in a number of phenotypes; for example, the dopamine D4 receptor, just one receptor for dopamine, is highly polymorphic. And the effects of single genes, such as D4, are difficult to isolate among the many gene x gene effects occurring in any phenotypic expression. "A reasonable conclusion after ten years of personality genetics research is that main effects of single genetic variants are likely to be of small magnitude, and unlikely to account for more than 1 per cent of phenotypic variance (and possibly much less)" (Munafo, 2009, p. 295). Where there is a definite contribution of molecular genetics to traits and behaviors, it is not as well established or as influential as other contributions to personality.

Twin and adoption studies consistently indicate that 50% of personality traits have genetic contributions; yet the fact that this also demonstrates that 50% of personality traits are shaped by the environment is not discussed or incorporated into the findings of researchers who have a genetic bias. For example, a personality trait with a traditionally high heritability quotient is intelligence. In an analysis of developmental studies of 144 twins, "the heritability of IQ varied ... as a function of socioeconomic status (SES). Thus, among twins living in impoverished environments, a substantial portion of the variance was accounted for by environmental factors, with relatively little variance accounted for by genetics; in contrast, this effect was nearly completely reversed among twins living in affluent families" (Nelson, de Haan, & Thomas, 2006, p. 31). Translation of this data does not mean that SES creates a dumb or smart individual. Environment does not create but modifies genetic potential, as genetic potential constrains the number of possible developmental responses to any given environment. Therefore, an impoverished environment can hinder natural intellectual potential, whereas a rich environment allows for a more full expression of genetic potential. Studies of twins and adopted children rely on "shared environment" distinctions in theorizing the influence of the environment in the remaining 50% of traits. Shared environment are those aspects of the environment that each sibling experienced, whereas nonshared environment are those aspects unique to an individual child. It is hypothesized that individual differences in personality must be due to nonshared environment. However, because this argument does not consider the influence of neurobiological profiles of temperament, it makes an erroneous assumption about shared and nonshared environment. Essentially, the assumption that shared environments—having the same parents and rearing environment—produce similar or the same traits in different children is simply wrong. Studies in temperament demonstrate over and again that each child will respond to the same stimulus with great differences which then go on to develop considerable personality differences.

It is accepted that genetic influences on personality will be polygenic (i.e., comprise effects of multiple genes, each of small effect, as well as numerous gene x gene interactions) and will be modified by environmental effects (i.e., gene x environment interactions). It is therefore perhaps not surprising that the evidence to date has not strongly implicated any single genetic variation in the etiology of human personality. (Munafo, 2009, p. 296) 145

When temperament is considered in the analysis of shared or nonshared environments, we must allow that sometimes shared environments can become nonshared. Studies on gene x environment interactions demonstrate what every parent of multiple children knows: the significance of individual response to shared environmental conditions. The shared environment argument is not really "shared" by siblings who perceive, receive, and respond to circumstance and stimuli with different genetic and neurobiological predispositions. "The evidence supports the central premise of gene x environment interactions, which is that individuals of differing genotypes may respond differently to specific environmental influences" (Munafd, 2009, p. 297). Theorists such as Rowe and Harris (discussed below) assign the rearing environment negligible influence in shaping personality because the same parents can raise vastly different children. This does not prove, however, that the parental conditioning had no effect on personality; it means it is more difficult and complicated than they are thinking. The influence the parents have on each child differs with the child; and this does not include the reality that parenting styles often differ with different temperaments. Temperament and Parental Conditioning Parental conditioning is powerful and complex. Although parental response to innate temperamental profiles is only one ingredient, it is a significant one. For example, in Kagan and Snidman's research they found that "the mothers of high-reactives who, out of equally loving concern, were reluctant to cause them distress and protected them from new experiences had the most fearful 2-year-olds" (2004, p. 24). On the other hand, the small number of parents who interpreted a high-reactive child's distress as an act of willfulness, and responded with angry punishment, tended to have the most detrimental effect, producing children who became severely irritable and withdrawn (p. 30). Finally, some families of high-reactives held the belief

that they must prepare their children for a competitive society in which retreat from challenge is maladaptive .... Children reared this way are less 146

likely to be avoidant when it is time to begin first grade. Such children often display a high energy level, talk too much, and ask too many questions. (Kagan & Snidman, 2004, p. 29)

Could it be that these high-energy traits of talking too much and asking too many questions are a manifestation of an innate tendency towards fearfulness channeled into assertively conditioned behaviors? It is easy to imagine that a naturally shy child conditioned to be more assertive may ask a lot of questions out of anxiety and the desire to know what is going on in order to feel more secure. Further, tendencies towards shyness can be combined with innate predispositions towards traits that hide shyness, such as impulsivity or aggression, which would make fearful responses of the child go unrecognized as such by others and even the child himself. As children age, it is more and more difficult to determine an individual's inner state by outer behaviors. An example from Kagan and Snidman's research was the interview at home of two 15-year-old girls who had been high-reactive infants. Both were relaxed and showed minimal defensiveness externally, yet both described inner states of anxiousness in crowds, in anticipating the negative evaluations of their peers, and being exceptionally uneasy when they violated a personal standard (2004, p. 218). Therefore, the researchers make a distinction between feeling tone of a personality and the outward manifestations of behavior which tend to become dissociated, more for some people than others, as we grow up.

Temperament makes a more substantial contribution to feeling tone than to the public personality during adolescence and adulthood....The developmental journey that leads to a relaxed or a tense feeling tone requires a more substantial contribution from temperament than does a sociable or shy posture with others, (p. 218)

This is where Jung's description of introverted and extroverted attitudes "apply with uncanny accuracy to a proportion of our high- and low-reactive adolescents (Jung, 1961)" (Kagan & Snidman, 2004, p. 218). Jung's attitude types are descriptions of the subjective feeling tone of individual nature. 147

"Fearful children who are harshly disciplined often experience an arousal level that far exceeds the optimal level. Such a high level of anxiety does not allow the child to process the parents' message effectively (Koschanska 1993, 1995)" (Jensen-Campbell, Knack, & Rex-Lear, 2009, p. 508). It is easy to imagine that some parents may misinterpret this temperamental disposition and treat the child as stupid or inappropriately willful; it is easy to imagine further that the child would incorporate this interpretation into self definitions. On the other hand, fearless children do not become aroused through gentle discipline, yet studies have shown that a typical response to harsher discipline is anger. "Indeed, fearful children respond best to gentle discipline while fearless children respond best to alternate parenting methods that capitalize on a positive parent-child relationship (Kochanska, Aksan and Joy 2007)" (Jensen-Campbell et al., 2009, p. 508). Considering that many parents attempt, out of principles of fairness, to treat all of their children the same (i.e., the same disciplinary methods and consequences), we can surmise that siblings sharing 50% of their genetics with each other and receiving similar treatment from the same parents respond to this shared environment with great variance. The Other Environment: Social Adaptation Judith Rich Harris represents the other major criticism of developmental-parental paradigm research on personality. In The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do (2009), Harris attacks the major tenet of accepted developmental theory

in Western culture: the nurture assumption that parents shape their children's personalities. As with other critics, she cites the lack of incorporation of biological factors and their significance in determining personality, but she does something relatively unusual: she separates the nurture sector into rearing environment and the socialization environment of culture through peer groups. Incorporating into her argument socialization theories from other theorists, Harris presents a cohesive argument 148 not only for the power of peer group identification but also against developmental research as it has been designed and practiced in the last four decades. Harris's hypothesis is that personality is shaped primarily by two forces: biology and culture. By culture, Harris refers specifically to adapting to society through our peer groups. It is this process of adaptation that hones and molds our personalities, she argues, not the almighty influence of the parents. Her argument is persuasive, if anecdotal, and consists of these main points: (1) developmental research does not incorporate the facts of genetics; (2) developmental research confuses correlation with causation; and (3) the influence the rearing environment does have on children is to construct the patterns of their personal relationships within their families. Modern families have become islands, no longer connected to the larger community. Parents do not transmit cultural norms, and who one is in one's family remains in that context—with annoying reliability popping out at Thanksgiving—remaining separate from who one is in and for the world.

People, regardless of their age, do behave differently in the presence of their parents. A mistake made by psychologists of every stripe is to assume that the way people behave with their parents is somehow more meaningful, more important, more lasting than the way they behave in other contexts. It is not. (Harris, 2009, p. 307) This is a simple and yet profoundly original insight that pulls a primary assumption of psychotherapy out from underneath itself. From here, Harris argues that who we are, our personality and identity, is the result of our adaptation to the larger culture and our niche within it, which is distinct from who we are in our family and is not necessarily carried over into who we are in the larger world. For this, Harris relies on an application of the theory of brain modularity specific to her anecdotes. Experiments support a model of the mind as innately structured and strongly modular at lower levels of cognitive function, while more weakly modular at higher levels of cognitive function (Maloney, 2003, p. 105). This means that at basic, implicit, or unconscious levels, the brain is heavily structured towards specific and 149 certain functions. For example, in earlier chapters, implicit consciousness was discussed as both operating autonomously from explicit consciousness and being predictable in its outcomes; this is modular. The processes of explicit consciousness, or higher cognition, rely on implicit consciousness as a base and at this level, cognitive functions are less modular or less structured towards specific outcomes. Specific examples would be procedural learning at a modular level of function and symbolic thinking, which is less modular. As the mind becomes more conscious, creative, and complex through experience, learning, and reflection, it becomes less modular and more emergent. Emergence is less predictable than modular. In later arguments, Harris proposes that personality has two components, public and private, and that these aspects are an expression of the modularity of the brain. Her theory involves an idiosyncratic definition of modular as separate functions of the brain—that private aspects of personality are not only minimal but do not spill over into public aspects—rather than being more or less predictable in the outcome of its functions. Research supports an understanding of the brain as having distinct regions and functions but more along the line of explicit/conscious and implicit/unconscious, not a split personality such as Harris offers. The function of the ground of biology via temperament in shaping personality has been argued above, and I agree with Harris's criticism that developmental research does not incorporate this reality. She also notes that temperament biases parental response to

each child. However, Harris employs the same confusion behavioral geneticists do: specifically, that because the same parents turn out different kids, parents don't shape personality. Why would an individual with a unique genetic blueprint, a temperament distinct from siblings, respond to parental conditioning the same as his siblings and develop a similar personality? Neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux comments on the genetic bias that asserts the insignificance of parental influence found in twin studies, mentioned above: 150

We hear a lot these days about how identical twins, reared apart by separate adoptive parents, can have similar habits and traits. We hear less about the many ways they differ. The main outcome of Judith Rich Harris's controversial 1998 book, The Nurture Assumption, in which she proposed that parents hardly matter, was probably the emergence of clearer ideas about just how important, and under what circumstances, parents do matter. (LeDoux, 2002, p. 5) The fact that siblings raised in the same environment by the same parents turn out with very different personalities does not prove that parents don't have a shaping influence on their children's personalities. In the same vein, twins reared apart who maintain many similarities also do not prove the insignificance of parental conditioning. In the perspective of Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), Harris pinpoints the unconscious assumption of the development perspective that children are shaped by their rearing environment as a driving force for the subject matter and design of the research studies. "A resistance to acknowledging the seminal truth that no conclusion is independent of its source of evidence is one of the most serious problems facing the social sciences. Natural scientists are less resistant to this restriction" (Kagan, 2009, p. 132). We tend to find what we are looking for, whether it is the influence of parents or a self archetype, when we use its de facto existence as the ground of our inquiry. Harris demonstrates that developmental researchers find parental influence and conditioning because they look for it. This charge is accurate, but unfortunately, it is accurate for all researchers and theorists, including Harris's, and therefore makes for a weak charge against another's theory when it is not applied to one's own as well.

The confusion of correlation with causation was mentioned in a broader context earlier in regards to the fears of reduction from humanists and depth psychologists when looking at the biological ground or origins of the self. To correlate our behaviors and personality with brain systems and functions does not reduce our psychic reality to our physiology; rather, the correlation points out the relationship between matter and mind. Harris argues that researchers see correlations between experiences with parents or in the 151 home and behavior and erroneously assign causation to the experiences in the home. Statistically, "everything is related to everything else," Harris claims (2009, p. 302) and a case can be made for her assertion. Unregulated high blood pressure and high cholesterol are implicated in developing vascular dementia and Alzheimer's disease later in life, but this does not mean that high blood pressure and cholesterol cause dementia—they do not—but that because they are correlated they tend to express together more often than not. They are related; there is a significant association, but this association is not causation. What causes Alzheimer's disease are amyloid placque and neurofibrilliary tangles in the brain. In the same way, Harris argues:

Teachers and parents have higher expectations for kids who have done well in the past; these kids are likely to do well in the future. Kids who do well in school are less likely to smoke and less likely to break laws. Kids who receive lots of hugs tend to have nicer dispositions than kids who receive lots of spankings, (p. 302) Although Harris does not indicate who is giving these influential hugs and spankings—probably the parents more than the peers—her point that perhaps the nicer disposition causes one to get more hugs than spankings, or that the ability and motivation for a good performance preceded the higher expectations, is well taken. Developmental research must address methodological problems, such as the correlation-causation confusion and the use of subjective self-assessments as objective data, an issue raised and addressed in Kagan and Snidman's longitudinal temperament study. Harris is not careful with language and has a confusing collapse of the terms personality and socialization. She writes that "the central question of this book is: How do children get socialized—how do they learn to behave like normal, acceptable members of their society?" (2009, p. 157). The loaded terms normal and acceptable need to be de-charged through specific, contextual definitions. Fitting into the larger social structure is not necessarily a sign of a successful personality, an authentic personality, or normality. It is not even a deeper sense of self, as indicated when Harris says: 152

We learn how to disguise our differentness; socialization makes us less strange. But the disguise tends to wear thin later in life. I see socialization as a sort of hourglass: you start out with a bunch of disparate individuals and as they are squeezed together the pressure of the group makes them more alike. Then in adulthood the pressure gradually lets up and individual differences reassert themselves. People get more peculiar as they grow older because they stop bothering to disguise their differentness. The penalties for being different are not so severe. (2009, p. 337) Considering personality the disguise over our differentness that is eventually dropped in later life is a superficial understanding of personality. This definition is more akin to Jung's concept of the persona as the face one shows the world; it is the public self that adapts to the conditions of the world and learns to survive and hopefully thrive in that world. But it is not who one "really" is, a deeper, genuine identity. It is a mask, as Harris says, a disguise. To ask the question: "how do children get socialized?" is quite different than to ask "how do children's personality come into being?" Although there is overlap between these constructs—socialization processes certainly have an impact on personality and vice versa—successfully adapting to the social environment does not capture all or even a significant portion of personality. Personality is a complex construct containing private and public aspects as well as developmental and stress-related aspects; personality is heritable and consists of temperamental traits, of memory and story, fantasies and self-images, personal interpretations, socialization desires and realities, and more. Harris needs to define more clearly what she means by "how children turn out." Harris provides the field with rich insights into the role of peer groups and social adaptation in shaping personality; it is a perspective few have honed and developed, and her leads deserved to be followed with solid research. The main weakness stems from her extremes when she argues that parental influence on identity is so negligible that the parents in any given community could be switched around and it wouldn't affect how the children turn out at all. So what does it matter, then, to point out that different innate traits in children bring out different attitudes and behaviors on the part of the parents, one 153 of the main arguments in the text, if their role is negligible in the first place? Harris made the point because it actually does matter: parental style and response are important conditioning factors of individual identity, alongside cultural, biological, and peer group dynamics. The research cited above on the effects of parental relationships and conditioning on the personality outcomes in their children is just a small portion; there is a growing body of developmental work, such as Kagan and Snidman's, that addresses the lack of incorporation of the biological ground of temperament.

Kagan and Snidman's work supports Harris's claims of the influence of socioeconomic status on how children turn out (not necessarily in terms of strict personality traits but in a larger sense of how well adjusted they are in society). In studies of aggression, boys, and criminality, a relationship has been demonstrated between an extremely uninhibited temperament, low socioeconomic status in childhood, and parents who did not socialize the aggressive behaviors. An uninhibited temperament manifests as low levels of fear of others' evaluation or judgment, low fear of punishment, and low guilt response in violating personal or social ethical standards. "But low-reactive boys living in nurturant families, free of psychopathology, that effectively socialize aggression do not have higher rates of delinquency. Indeed, these boys are likely to be popular with their peers" (Kagan & Snidman, 2004, p. 223).

Temperament also affects peer relations. Extraversion, Agreeableness, and

Conscientiousness are all correlated with social competence and smoother interpersonal

relationships. As might be expected, Neuroticism is associated with poorer social

relations and victimization. "Because neurotic children are more likely to experience

negative emotions, they are angrier during peer conflict, are less forgiving of others, and

are more likely to blame others, which increases the likelihood of being victimized by

peers (Bollmer, Harris and Milich 2006)" (Jensen-Campbell et al., 2009, p. 509). 154

Harris's argument that one's friends make a powerful difference in successful socialization is also supported by research.

Neurotic children who have an emotionally stable best friend do not differ from a low neurotic child on skills such as initiating relationships, resolving conflict and self-disclosing .... [whereas] a neurotic child with a neurotic best friend has the lowest levels of interpersonal functioning (Knack, Rex-Lear, Bryant, Gomez and Jensen-Campbell 2007). (Jensen- Campbell et al., 2009, p. 509) Harris' theory of personality and socialization considers the significant portion of personality shaped by socialization more than personal familial relationships. Actually, however, research into culture and personality has demonstrated the opposite. "Although there appear to be personality-relationship transactions, Asendorpf and Van Aken (2003) found that surface characteristics (e.g., loneliness, self-concept) are more likely to be influenced by social relations than are more core personality characteristics (e.g., Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness)" (Jensen-Campbell et al., 2009, p. 512). Both environments—rearing and social groups—shape our personality. I think this is a distinction between private and public selves rather than a power struggle between parents and culture; this distinction will be discussed more fully later. Parents and Culture One reason that parents are not as influential in shaping their children as developmental researchers would have us believe, says Harris, is that parents do not transmit culture, and culture is the true shaping force of who we become. As an example, Harris sees a cultural assumption in a cultural practice, or the confusion of correlation with causation, that putting children in their own bed to sleep—a distinctly Western custom—makes children independent: a trait we prize. "They are put to bed by themselves because we believe children should be independent. Child-rearing practices are the product of a culture, not necessarily the baton with which the culture is passed on from one generation to the next" (2009, p. 76). Although it is clear that child-rearing practices are a product of culture, the latter conclusion is not clear. Our beliefs about the 155 type of adults our children should be drive our customs, but they are also driven by cultural customs. That is, Westerners believe children should be independent because our culture prizes this, and as a result, these beliefs drive cultural customs. It is also entirely possible that child-rearing practices are a product of culture and that child- rearing practices are a conduit of culture from one generation to the next; her insights provide no evidence that parents are not conduits of culture. Harris makes persuasive arguments that adaptation to society is an influential factor in shaping personality, and she brings up salient criticisms of developmental research, but these do not, in themselves, prove her alternate contention that parental conditioning is negligible. Harris's theory is that culture is transmitted through peer groups, and she makes a good case for this. But she mistakes a good argument for the power of peers to double as a good argument that early conditioning factors through primary relationship with parents and siblings are inconsequential. A persuasive insight does not on its own disprove the opposite argument. Besides, cross-cultural developmental research brings into question the opinion that parents are not conduits of cultural norms. Researcher Naomi Quinn (2003) performed cross-cultural studies of a model that hypothesized that child-rearing practices are designed to produce adults who will be productive in the larger culture. Her cohort included Americans, Chinese, Germans, Gusii (Kenya), Ifaluk (Micronesia), and Inuit

(Baffin Island). From the study, a cross-cultural model of child-rearing with three constant features emerged. The three features were (1) ensuring the constancy of the child's experience around important lessons, (2) making these lessons emotionally

arousing, and, (3) attaching these lessons to evaluations of the child's behavior and to the child herself as good or bad. "Child rearing depends upon constancy, emotional arousal, and evaluation because these three features of experience are especially effective in imparting to children what their rearers desire to convey to them, and in making these lessons durable ones" (2003, p. 147). Of course, it is stating the obvious to point out that 156 these specifically parental concerns of conditioning are culturally informed and that the emotionally important lessons parents inculcate into their children are cultural values. But because Harris makes assertions that refute common sense, which is both her gift and her weakness, the obvious needs to be stated at times.

Quinn found that much of the constancy of communication is in unconscious or implicit communication through looks, gestures, tone of voice, and body language, that are "highly habituated ... [and] shape what the child experiences—and, equally importantly, what the child does not experience—with enormous regularity" (2003, p. 148). The more constant the experiences, the stronger and more memorable are the synaptic patterns that result. This is made even stronger by the coupling of emotional arousal with constancy. "Hormones released during emotional arousal actually strengthen synaptic connections, and emotional arousal organizes and coordinates brain activity, crowding all but the emotionally relevant experience out of consciousness

(LeDoux, 2002: 200-234)" (p. 148). Approval and disapproval by one's caretakers is especially emotionally arousing because of the importance of these relationships for the care and survival of the child. Understanding what is good and will secure love as an adult and what is bad and will not secure love, is an intensely important and affective lesson for the young child. Emotionally driven synaptic patterns established early are more likely to be unambiguous because they are not contradicted by other experiences. This, coupled with the emotional arousal of security and survival issues, makes lessons learned in infancy particularly strong. The Gusii of Kenya prize calm, obedient adults who are submissive to the strict hierarchical social structures and induce fear and shame in childhood to produce these adults. One of the child-rearing methods observed by the researchers was the consistent avoidance of eye contact a mother had with her infant in general, and in particular, with her toddler and young child as they expressed narcissistic or attention-getting behavior.

This aversion of recognition produced adults who had a sense of smallness or humility 157 and who were inhibited in expressing individualistic opinions or needs (Quinn, 2003, p. 168). A child in this culture who is born with a neurobiological profile of being outgoing, extraverted, and rambunctious would be judged rather harshly on a personal level by the parents, the community, and the culture at large. On the other hand, as America prizes assertive, independent, and extraverted adults who take full advantage of the opportunistic, entrepreneurial, and consumer-driven culture, a child who is markedly introverted, timid, and fear driven will be judged harshly as well. Yet clearly, for the Gusii this misfit of American culture would be prized. One can easily imagine both of these children growing up with a core identity of being a misfit and even possibly an unconscious interpretation that something is essentially wrong with them. Developmental research involving language and memory as they are transmitted through conversation from parent to child also confirms the role of parent as mediator of cultural values. At the age of 3 to VA , children are able to tell more or less coherent stories with assistance. Researchers have found correlations between stylistic differences in memory talk of mothers and the details of the stories their children tell. A distinction is made between elaborative mothers and repetitive mothers. Elaborative mothers focus more on narratives and emotional content of memories and invite their children to contribute their own memories to the narrative. Repetitive mothers focus more on asking their children questions to elicit details of an event but do not contribute details or their own interpretations of the event; repetitive mothers place emphasis on who and what, whereas elaborative mothers place emphasis on how and why (Markowitsch & Welzer,

2005/2010, pp. 172-173). Children of elaborative mothers had more autobiographical memories when tested at 3 years old than children of repetitive mothers. Also, in general girls had more autobiographical recall than boys; researchers surmise that, in part, this is because mothers tend to engage in more emotionally focused memory talk with their daughters than they do with their sons. "In talks about emotional events with their daughters, 158 mothers put particular emphasis on having an elaborative style, far more so than with their sons, and this was especially the case when the talks were about sad events (Fivush et al., 2000)" (Markowitsch & Welzer, 2005/2010, p. 174).3 The influence of parental focus on the memories and stories of their children is important when considering the cultural element to personality and whether parents are conduits of culture. How else but through conditioning of what to pay attention to do we learn what is valuable? And as this research demonstrates, subtle but powerful cultural values are transmitted, as seen in the gender bias of emotionally descriptive language and in the memories of daughters as compared to those of sons. Genetic endowment and conditioning are impossibly enmeshed in shaping personality; so are familial rearing environment and cultural influences. These cultural selves are deeply ingrained yet implicit, outside of conscious self-reflection. We need to recognize that our home environments are profoundly culturally shaped; there is not a clear line between rearing environment and culture. In further disagreement with Harris's perspective are other culture-personality researchers, in particular, authors who analyze the methods and results of decades of cross-cultural research in personality psychology. These authors

concluded that the pioneers of culture and personality investigation had substantially overestimated the impact of culture upon personality .... Moreover, attention should be paid to the interaction between the person and his or her environment and situational influences, hitherto neglected or underestimated, should be accorded their due importance. (Draguns, 2009, p. 568)

No matter the perspective taken in personality research, theorists must include factors and perspectives outside of their own theories, as they discuss the confluence of events that make up personality. What is glaringly lacking in Harris's theory as well as in the social-cultural theorists discussed here is the role of the unconscious. Depth

3 Could this be a priming precursor as to why more adult women than men experience depression in our culture? 159 psychology is based on the significance of the unconscious, and neuroscience is also coming to value this component in personality development, as LeDoux understands: "An understanding of the mystery of personality crucially depends on figuring out the unconscious functions of the brain" (2002, p. 11).

Public and Private Selves A most important delineation in Harris's theory is the distinction between the public self and the private self, though she dismisses the private self and spends her time on the public self, contrary to the focus of developmental researchers. Yet, this boundary is at the heart of Harris's work; who one is in her family is a limited, less influential identity than who she is socialized to be. I agree that there are two selves constructed for each of us along these lines, but it is a matter of opinion as to which one is "more" who we really are. It seems to me that this is different for each of us and a part of our unique story. However, what I want to build on here is that Harris's distinction between the public and private personality is a concept worthy of further inquiry in developmental research and depth psychological theory, and that it is dealt with in both Kagan and Snidman's research on temperament and Jung's theories of persona and types. "The public personality is the one that a child adopts when he or she is not at home. It is the one that will develop into the adult personality" (Harris, 2009, p. 165). Building on Turner's (Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987) theories on group socialization, Harris draws a circle around "groupness," a salient identification that children move through effortlessly as their social context changes. Through assimilation into their peer groups' norms, children's personalities are honed to amplify what will bring belonging; on the other hand, a sense of differentness is also carved through these interactions. "Some of the characteristics they have when they enter middle childhood get exaggerated, rather than toned down, as a result of their experiences in the peer group" (Harris, 2009, p. 165). This statement is accurate—the problem is that it also describes what happens as the private self is constructed within the family context. A 160 major gap in Harris' theory is that she does not adequately explain why the sense of self constructed in our personal relationships is less salient or influential than our social self.

Kagan and Snidman's work clearly demarcates the private and public self, without necessarily using these terms, when they describes the process of adaptation that high-reactives/introverts go through in learning to be more extraverted, yet, interviews reveal that their subjective internal world—their private self—exists in sharp relief to their adapted, public selves. A successfully adapted high-reactive child has the behavior of an extravert but the inner world of an introvert, of their original temperament and nature. We would assume that a low-reactive feels low dissonance between private and public selves where a high-reactive is highly sensitive to the dissonance, and the rest of us, the majority, feel a mixture of alignment and dissonance, most likely associated with our social context at any given time. Jung, in polar opposition to Harris' priorities, was far more interested in the subjective inner self; he was as dismissive of our public selves, both family roles and social personas, as Harris is of the private personality. He used the term "persona" for the face of our social adaptation because it refers to the mask worn by Greek actors. This term confers with Harris' use of "disguise" for the public personality. A weakness in explicating her theory is that she does not adequately demonstrate that the public personality is "the one that will develop into the adult personality" (Harris, 2009, p. 165).

Jung's theory of the persona seems to be more realistic and sober understanding of the boundary between private and public. The persona is the part of the ego—the outer wrapping—specifically involved with social adaptation, again, in agreement with Harris' sense of the public personality. And while the persona in adult life is the face we publically show and it is true that some adults erroneously confound persona with their entire identity, the persona remains directly related to the inner, private, subjective self. In fact, it cannot be understood separate from the internal, unconscious dynamics and personal history of the individual. Being that the persona is an adaptive function of the 161 ego, and the ego is in part unconscious and emerges from the greater collective unconscious, the persona is structurally intimately involved with the whole self. Further, an adult who is primarily identified with the persona or public personality is not healthy; in Jungian terms this person would be lop-sided in development and likely neurotic or at least rigidly defended. Harris does not include in her quite lengthy text on identity a relevant discussion of pathology, particularly in connection with generalizing statements such as that the public personality develops into the adult personality. Jung was interested in the intersection of these two selves, as am I. In stating that he believed the arbiter of type to be biological disposition—temperament—over the effects of parental conditioning, Jung notes that this is the normal case. The typical person is a combination of introverted and extraverted attitudes and not at an extreme; Kagan and Snidman's original cohort reflected this in the distribution of a fifth of the original group of infants who were categorized as high-reactive and another quarter low- reactive. A full 50% fell into a mixed group of types. In abnormal circumstances, however, Jung notes, an attitude can be forced on the child that is not aligned with his or her neurobiological temperament. "As a rule, whenever such a falsification of type takes place as a result of parental influence, the individual becomes neurotic later, and can be cured only by developing the attitude consonant with his nature" (1921/1971b, p. 332). Pathology in the personality is a hallmark of an uneasy and maladaptive relationship between the private and public selves. Inquiry into personality disorders and pathology is missing in Harris' research. The extravert finds an ease of communication between his inner world and outer world in that the outer world is not threatening and we can presume he finds objects primarily pleasing or neutral in comparison of a predominant experience of the threatening power of objects in the introvert. This affinity between who one is internally and the objective circumstances she finds herself in allows the extravert to adapt to external circumstances with more ease. Is the extraverted nature a type that would be the 162 most adaptable in any culture? Or is the extravert a cultural artifact of American and Western cultures that prize an assertive, sociable nature? In other words, would introverts find more affinity between their internal states and external conditions in a culture that valued introversion over extraversion? From a neurobiological perspective, the high-reactive/introverted nature would be more uncomfortable physiologically in any environment, but some cultures would surely be a better fit in that there would be an overt value of introverted/high-reactive behavior. The high-reactive may be somatically more aroused but would feel that this leads naturally to behavior that is valued. For the introvert in America, the internal state would tend not to match the peer environment one needs to adapt to, and this perpetual emotional mismatch creates a painful dissonance between private and public selves. If we consider manifestations of pathology, and in particular the state of the borderline individual, there is an obvious match between Kagan and Snidman's high- reactive and Jung's introverted type. A crippling self-consciousness is a typical experience in BPD, and to manage it, the borderline person develops a false self/persona to adapt to significant others and social circumstances, leaving a haunting sense of a true self that is protected through its hiding but also unbearably vulnerable, ineffective, and incompetent. Marsha Linehan, the creator of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), which has proven to be highly effective with BPD, among other mental illnesses, developed it from her insight that the borderline is treated as competent but feels consistently dissonant with this external observation. Linehan calls this an invalidating environment where the borderline person feels others do not grasp how vulnerable and unable she truly is and how much support she truly needs (Lieb et al., 2004). The over-adaptation that the borderline develops to try to secure emotional grounding leeches him of a sense of a stable, cohesive, authentic self and is the technique of his opposite attitude, the extravert, taken to an overcompensating extreme. Recall Jung's words "that a reversal of type often proves exceedingly harmful to the physiological well-being of the organism, usually 163 causing acute exhaustion" (1921/1971b, p. 333) at the least and a mental breakdown or illness at the worst. Excellent future research and theory development would be to bring the knowledge of neurobiological profiles of temperament together with the construction of private selves in depth psychology and public selves in socialization theory. Harris separates the two major strands of experiential conditioning: rearing environment and society. However, her thorough dismissal of the former is not supported by evidence or logic. Moreover, she does not recognize that her argument for socialization shaping personality, although relevant and strong, has many of the same arguments and issues as developmental research. That is, sometimes she simply carries the same argument out of the home and into the schoolyard and argues that these dynamic processes can only take place in one realm, not both. For example, after asserting that wounds of status in one's peer group lead to permanent effects on personality, Harris states, "It is not easy to prove, however, that adults' insecurities (or other psychological problems) date from experiences in their childhood peer groups. Inevitably there are cause-or-effect uncertainties" (2009, p. 167). Well, yes, and these are the same uncertainties that rearing environment theories face, as Harris herself effectively pointed out.

It is necessary to separate the various elements that come together to create our individuality, yet we cannot theorize on the whole—the self—from the evidence of partial views; no matter how accurate the evidence is in its realm, its realm is limited. In spite of my criticisms of Harris' argument, I agree with her essential gist: the influence of parents on the personality of their children receives a distorting focus in Western, and particularly American, research and culture. It is evident that a rearing environment has the capacity to significantly impair or support children—and I do think that there is a distinction between private and public selves and their primary shaping influences—but our early environment and relationships are just part of a confluence of factors and events that shape us. Beyond the pastiche of shaping influences, the final arbiter is our capacity 164 for conscious reflection and choice. Our neurobiology perhaps cannot be altered by the quality of our consciousness, but our conditioning from parents, culture, and circumstance certainly can. We may not be able to alter the biological sensitivity of our amygdala no matter how much healing we attain, but we can change our attitude and relationship to these aspects of ourselves. This transformation in conscious attitude and relationship to the unconscious is at the heart of analytical psychology.

Conclusion In spite of the evidence that rearing environment is an influential factor in shaping personality, it is one among many significant factors, and one that is over-emphasized in developmental psychology. The money, effort, attention, publishing, and validated results are convincing in persuading us that parents have a direct and lasting effect on the organization of their children's emerging mind as well as their future ability to give and receive love; however, the lack of equal research and attention given to other developmental factors cause theories about parental conditioning to be distorted in their significance. Although parents are certainly shown to be influential, they are not always so. Many studies demonstrate that most children are born along a spectrum of resilience that allows them to emerge relatively unscathed (none of us is without scars) from a dysfunctional or adverse beginning. A methodological problem is that most research uses retrospective methodologies in which the adult in the present is asked to report on past conditions. Recall bias, the tendency for "individuals with current symptoms to remember more adversities in the past" (Paris, 2005, p. 123), distorts and colors this reporting. More longitudinal studies are needed to address recall bias. Another methodological goal is the need to control for temperament factors genetically so that the effects of heritability and parenting can be understood separately.

As discussed in the beginning of this chapter, not all people who experience trauma develop PTSD and not all abused children develop mental health issues. The focus on the role of parenting skews the data, causing it to appear bigger than it really is 165 in psychic development. Hillman addressed this 15 years ago in The Soul's Code (1996) when he drew a circle around what he called "the parental fallacy." I believe this still exists today and that part of the value in Harris' contribution was to point this out while elucidating the power of socialization. Why would we still cling to this myth of the absolute primacy of the parents? Is it a desire to latch onto the aspect of development that we feel we have some control over, and therefore, someone to blame? Is our thinking following the cultural evolution of the isolated family; that is, do we see that the parent-child relationship becomes more and more primary in our social structure and assume it is primary in the development of psychological structure as well? Measuring the relationships between parents and child is relatively easy, and it will give more definite results than measuring slow-moving, diffuse cultural paradigms; we want answers, even if they're short-term. Furthermore, a focus on social realities quickly becomes political—economic status, for example, tends to play a large role—and these realities cannot be easily responded to by individuals. Depth psychological and psychodynamic developmental theories in particular are threatened by a release of focus on the parents in the turn to culture, for these theories are particularly invested in the internal, unconscious structures of self constructed in the early years of children's primary relationships with caregivers. The internal and subjective focus of depth psychology needs to be balanced with the objective perspectives of biology and external forces of culture. It seems to me that temperament is the driving force that meets, receives, and is shaped through experience, but many factors are woven into our story of ourselves. I offer two dynamic shaping experiences: repetitive and wounding. Wounding experiences make us aware of ourselves in a painful way; their shaping experiences are especially powerful because they separate us out from others, as an individual, alone. It seems that people have significant wounding experiences that shape their identity from different areas: some in their bodies, such as disabilities, illness, or chronic health problems; some 166 in their parental or sibling relationships, to which those with personality disorders seem especially sensitive; some in their peers groups or social belonging, such as Harris; and some in their cultural-historical milieu, such as African Americans or homosexuals in American culture. Having difficult parents or being gay in America does not guarantee that it is a wound; it depends on how the particular factors combine to shape that individual. In Harris's example from her own youth, she was rambunctious, outgoing, loud, made friends easily, until suddenly in a new school between 9 and 12 years of age, she became an outcast of her peers. This changed her into an insecure and inhibited girl. Apparently her peers did not agree with the positive perspective she presents of her qualities. A psychological reading might see that Harris needed to confront her negative personality tendencies that her parents, apparently, did not effectively socialize. (This reminds me of the comment, above, that fearless children are not as emotionally aroused by discipline as fearful children. Harris certainly appears to be fearless in what others may think of her). This confrontation and rejection are simply part of maturing and growing up, but on a wounding level they contribute to how we develop an identity, through our recognition of ourselves in comparison and relationship to others. These events can leave emotional and psychic wounds. It did in Harris's case, and she says it changed her; she became quieter, more restrained, more studious. What her home life did not accomplish her peer groups did: maturation, thinking of others, balancing the brash leader with the thoughtful intellectual. It is no surprise that when she moved to a new school in junior high and found herself well-liked again, she attributed this in part to the changes resulting from her experience of rejection, and this was not an entirely negative thing. This self-defining wounding experience didn't happen for Harris at home but with her peer group; hence her theory that it "really" is the peer group that conditions us. This is the value of a depth psychological perspective that places content in an underlying dynamic context of 167 psychic wounds: we are oriented by our significant psychic wounds that are inextricably caught up in the details of our experiences but cannot be defined by or wholly attributed to this content. When our theories elevate one class of experiences over another—as Harris does with socialization experiences and developmental researchers with private rearing environment—we erroneously find causation in a correlation. Repetitive experience and conditioning are silent and harder to see for what they are; they feel simply as how one is who one is, and this may be an accurate statement in that there is not something to heal and resolve, as with wounds, but to see and choose. This may be best expressed through Jung's typology functions. We rely on our dominant ftmctions because they are a part of how we naturally work; it is what we automatically bring to all of our experiences. When we see this about ourselves, we realize that we can choose other functions, other ways of seeing, being, acting, and we can also choose our dominant functions consciously, which changes the experience of them. Consideration of the physiological base of character and behavior is important, yet environmental influences reliably shape the other 50% of measurable personality characteristics. If we understand conditioning as those external, environmental forces that shape the expression of our genetic potential as we adapt in response to experience, then conditioning doesn't "create" an introvert, for example, but molds the manifesting personality traits associated with it. This may result in an individual afraid of the world, insecure or shy to the extreme, who finds it difficult to move into society, or, an introvert who values her solitude and learns to arrange her life so as to exploit the riches of her nature. It may be fair to say that most people move through life in the middle of the road, that is, with a biological disposition and conditioning experiences that inflict wounds but without tipping towards the extremes.

The cultural paradigm at any given time of how the self comes to be and its malleability, as well as the desirable qualities of individuals within the culture, have a 168 powerful influence not only on how individuals may evaluate themselves and others, but it also determines the questions researchers are more likely to ask. For example:

18th century England, on the cusp of great economic and military power and eager to announce its intellectual separateness from Catholic France and Spain, celebrated the power of the human mind to accomplish whatever it desired without metaphysical restrictions. (Kagan & Snidman, 2004, p. 35) Therefore, philosophies and evidence that pointed towards the malleability of human nature—such as John Locke's position that we each are born a blank slate—were prized and esteemed above perspectives that awarded influence to biological disposition. Yet by the time Darwin's ideas burst on to Western culture, with the state of competition in industrialized nations, a great number of poor in the inner cities, and slavery in the American South, it was more rational to see human nature as biologically determined in which the strong survive or conquer. The cultural cycle of finding society or biology the more influential in shaping human nature—the nature versus nurture debate—has oscillated accordingly throughout the 20th and now the 21st century. Or consider a matter as simple and common as anxiety today. Even an affective- somatic human constant such as anxiety can go through vastly different cultural interpretations and therefore responses to it.

The ancient Greeks, as well as Europeans during the Middle Ages, did not regard anxiety as a mental illness because worry over Zeus's actions, God's wrath, or social criticism for violating community mores were utilitarian emotions that guaranteed civility and obedience to local rules. Anxiety was an aid to adaptation rather than an alien emotion to be exorcised. Further, most individuals in premodern times lived with extended families who provided social support when they became worried. Single adults with few friends living alone in apartments in large cities represent a historically unique social condition that makes chronic anxiety a more likely phenomenon. (Kagan & Snidman, 2004, p. 98) Currently, it is becoming more common for researchers to at least give a nod to the complexity of perspectives that make up the potential of what can be known of human beings, consciousness, identity, and development, but it is still uncommon in 169 actual practice for researchers to incorporate findings from other fields. However, I believe it is time for an interdisciplinary approach to the discourse of the self and identity to be further developed and defined. An interdisciplinary perspective must accept the great complexity of various relevant fields and acknowledge the inherent vulnerability of the fact that as we rely on various fields to develop our theories, changes in just one field can and will influence the entire theory. The truth is that extreme perspectives—such as Rorty or Foucault's insistence that the self is only a culturally constructed fiction, geneticist David Rowe's argument that genetic potential is deterministic, or theorist Judith Rich Harris' arguments that biology and culture are the determining factors rendering parental conditioning obsolete—can be so partial and myopic as to be untrue. Harris is accurate and insightful, even original, about the influence of peer groups because she experienced a powerful shaping influence through a wound with her peer group. Her mistake was to then see her own wound in everyone. Like a person under the influence of major depression who squeezes all past, present, and future happenings into the gray shape of his or her depression, Harris sees all people as wounded through the same dynamics that she herself was wounded through. She is in impressive company for this cognitive and theoretical bias. The psychologies of both Freud and Jung can be understood in this light. It has been said that psychoanalysis is a psychology of repression and neuroticism—traits and states found in Freud—and that analytical psychology is one of projection and psychosis—attributes and experiences Jung was prone to and struggled with himself.

But it is not only Harris, Jung, and Freud who do this: they happen to dare to put their ideas in writing where we can see their cognitive flaws more easily than our own. The tricks of our minds and our unconsciousness is one of several reasons for an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the self and identity. If our desire is to attempt to grasp and know the truth of the self as much as possible, we need to begin from an acceptance of the truth that the self—as well as many other psychological 170 phenomena—is highly complex, complicated, and on a deeper level, unknowable in its entirety or wholeness. Researchers and theorists in the field of personality psychology and structures of the self are recognizing and embracing this complexity.

One way to embrace complexity is to frame psychological phenomena in a systems perspective. General systems theory (Sameroff 1995) takes into account the biological roots of behavior without reducing psychology to neurochemistry. Mental processes have emergent properties that cannot be explained at other levels of analysis. (Paris, 2005, p. 119)

The self is not captured exclusively in the brain's synaptic patterns, in predominant neurotransmitters, in the relationship of limbic to cortical functions, in genetic potential, rearing environment, culture, history, evolution, language, story or myth. It is all of these. It is none of these. The self is that which emerges from all of these factors. It is born from them but not of them, as the child is born of her parents but is not her parents, born in the world but not of the world. 171

Section III: Imagination The work turns here on an aesthetic hinge into psyche. This is not a fork in the road; it is a qualitative shift. Now that we have circumscribed the brain and molding of personality through others, we inquire into how imagination is woven into identity. More accurately, since identity is the aesthetic aspect of the self, we inquire into how imagination weaves identity. In order to understand the self aesthetically, we must first understand aesthetics as a discourse of subjectivity and depth psychology as an aesthetic discourse. Scholar Terry Eagleton describes aesthetics as "a discourse of the body" (1990, p. 3). Etymologically, aesthetics is derived from the Greek aisthetikos, "things perceptible by the senses" (p. 3) and also "a showing forth or display''' (Slattery, 2010, p. 468). The aesthetic moves us emotionally; a sensual, subjective, and particular expression.

"Aesthetics attends to that which is not reducible to scientific cognition and is yet undeniably a part of our world" (Bowie, 2003, p. 25). The imagination is not imaginary; it is a nonliteral reality beyond the senses yet born of the senses.

The subject is a kind of aesthetic object that straddles worlds—in depth psychology the conscious and unconscious—of the interior and exterior. Art critic

Donald Kuspit suggests, "The artist keeps one foot in the everyday through his subject matter... but transcends it by recreating it in aesthetic terms" (2004, p. 9). In this section, we will come to an understanding of archetype and identity as an aesthetic re creation of primary experience. In short, as Kuspit explains, "aesthetic experience leads to the realization that social identity is not ingrained—not destiny—nor the be-all and end-all of existence ... it involves insight into the needs of what Winnicott calls the incommunicado core of the self' (p. 13). 172

Analytical psychology is a discourse of image, fantasy, and aesthetics. Jung's work is primarily with the same medium that artists are concerned with, psyche: the imaginative, creative unconscious. Consider as just one example among many, the comparison between Jung's description of the psyche and art critic Rudolf Arnheim's reference to the source of artistic inspiration. Jung writes that psyche is "the mother of all possibilities, where, like all psychological opposites, the inner and outer worlds are

joined together in living union" (1921/1970, p. 52). Arnheim explains and cautions us

that "creative thinking below the level of awareness preserves the primordial unity of

thought and image, without which art is impossible. Our civilization promotes a

separation of abstract ideas from what the senses perceive, which is fatal for the artist" (p.

288).

Jung personified unconscious structures and dynamics into persons,

subpersonalities, demons, and gods, with their own volitions and messages. Along the

same vein, scholar, mythologist, and poet Dennis Slattery considers the psyche

"fundamentally mythic and metaphoric and that psychic energy is composed primarily

along these, among other, contours" (2010, p. 444). Although the roots of the psyche and

identity are in the body, the fruits are clearly of the imagination. 173

Chapter 8 Imagine the Archetype

Jung's theory of archetypes was one of the most debated areas of his work while he was alive, particularly among non-Jungians, and this continues in Jungian discourse today, as the following discussion of the current debate on archetypes from various scholars demonstrates. In particular, Jung received consistent criticism that he asserted that archetypal images were inherited (Jung, 1948/1969b, p. 133). Throughout his life, Jung consistently lamented that his critics did not understand archetype theory:

The concept of the archetype has given rise to the greatest misunderstandings and—if one may judge by the adverse criticisms— must be presumed to be very difficult to comprehend .... My critics, with but few exceptions, usually do not take the trouble to read over what I have to say on the subject, but impute to me, among other things, the opinion that the archetype is an inherited representation. Prejudices seem to be more convenient than seeking the truth. (Jung, 1959, p. x)

It may be that Jung's critics were responding to a statement such as this, written in 1943: "I have often been asked where the archetypes or primordial images come from. It seems to me that their origin can only be explained by assuring them to be deposits of the constantly repeated experiences of humanity" (Jung, 1943/1953b, p. 68). Jung used the word deposit repeatedly in his work to describe how archetypes are created. This word is ambiguous and provocative when left unexplained, which it was, possibly referring to a literal deposit of images or abstract renderings of evolved brain structures. "But because of the wide-ranging application of the term 'archetype' in Jung's writings, it is no wonder that confusion about its meaning has been one of the results" (Saunders & Skar, 2001, p. 312). In spite of years of claiming that his critics did not understand archetype theory, Jung consistently contributed to the misunderstanding with his own contradictory language. 174

He indicated a transcendent origin of archetypes as

located beyond the psychic sphere, analogous to the position of physiological instinct, which... forms the bridge to matter in general. In archetypal conceptions and instinctual perceptions, spirit and matter confront one another on the psychic plane. The ultimate nature of both is transcendental, that is, irrepresentable. (Jung, 1954/1969, p. 216)

The distinction made here is between the archetype-as-such, indicated in the transcendent position of spirit, and the archetypal image, referred to as the archetypal conception in the psyche, and the realm of matter represented in instinct. The archetypal image is found in the psyche, but the unknowable archetype structure and the instinct are

"transcendental" and "irrepresentable." Jung often described the archetype as the imagistic representation of the instinct, but he did not see the archetype as emerging from the instinct and appearing in the imagination, but rather meeting the instinct from opposite ends of the spectrum of the psyche.

Instincts and archetypes originate in the body and are transcendent to ego-

consciousness but not the organism and certainly not to time and space. Instincts are

transcendent to the psyche or imagination, whereas archetypes are transcendent to ego-

consciousness but not the psyche. If in Jung's statement the definition of transcendental

refers to beyond consciousness or direct apprehension, then we are more in agreement, as

this refers to an unconscious origin. However, my argument places the human mind and

imagination as emergent from matter, which Jung is not indicating in the quote above but

does so when he writes that the archetype "represents or personifies certain instinctive

data of the dark, primitive psyche, the real but invisible roots of consciousness" (Jung,

1951/1959, p. 160). 175

Further, instincts are not irrepresentable. An instinct, unlike an archetype, is represented fully if the pattern of behavior it compels is allowed to unfold, such as satiating hunger, copulation, building a nest, or the instinctual pattern of behavior in the infamous leaf-cutting ant. An archetype is represented by a symbol which does not and cannot express it fully. The archetype represents potential forms that emerge from the intuitive-affective and subjective gestalt or theme of the complex. Many symbols can represent the archetype but none completely.

Mogenson (1999) asserts that analytical psychology is its own field, and this still needs wider recognition as such; in this sense, he sees the debate over archetype theory as leeching the integrity of analytical psychology in its own right. I agree in principle but contend that wider recognition of our field will come through analytical psychology intentionally finding, recognizing, and affirming its relations to the matrix of psychological discourse while retaining its distinct identity by being clear of its contributions. In order to find its place within the rich web of knowledge, analytical psychology must get past its fear of reduction while admitting its relativity. Archetype theory is, after all, a theory; conceptually, archetypes are not necessary to understand the mind in general. Many theories of consciousness do not incorporate archetypes just as archetype theory excludes concepts from other fields. However, this does not mean that archetypes are not relevant and significant in bringing insight to our understanding of the mind, self, and in particular, the subjective inner world of individuals. We need to demonstrate the interdisciplinary relevance of archetypes specifically and analytical psychology generally. Others support this position, such as Saunders and Skar, a mathematician and analyst, respectively, in England. 176

While Jungians can find analogies for the theory of archetypes in other fields, these fields have shown little interest in adopting the Jungian terminology in return. Reasons for this might include the fact that the theory of archetypes (like so much else in Jungian theory) has not been consistently and clearly defined by Jung or his followers, and therefore has not succeeded in attracting the interest of those in other contexts who could lend new dimensions to our understanding of the efficacy of the concept. (Saunders & Skar, 2001, p. 306)

Jungians have not persuaded other disciplines that terms such as archetype, complex, and processes of individuation are necessary or relevant to their understanding of the mind and self. My position here is to argue for a clear demarcation of the nature and function of archetypes, mainly, that archetypes are of the subjective psyche or imagination, and have a distinct nature and function. Critics outside of depth psychology have dismissed Jung's, and Freud's, ideas as irrelevant for relying on Lamarckism, the belief in the late 19th century that acquired characteristics were inherited and that evolution was moving progressively towards higher goals or states. In the Jungian view, the psychic evolution of the individual is teleological. Pietikainen contends Jung is Lamarckian based on his perspective that "there is a natural tendency for each species to progress towards a higher form" (2003, p. 197). He also cites Jung's Lamarckism in his position that we inherit the primordial images themselves from our ancestors, but, as discussed above and as many critics have noted, Jung's writing on this point was contradictory so that either point—inherited images or dispositions—could be argued as to what he really meant. The more accurate critique, then, is that Jung was not rigorous and consistent in his language when discussing our archetypal inheritance; however, Jung's theory of individuation is certainly teleological. Individuation is not germaine to this discussion, yet I want to note that scientific knowledge does not invalidate the concept of individuation.

Another criticism from Pietikainen is Jung's separation of psychic evolution from physical evolution, which refers to turn of the 20th century neo-vitalism, a theory that was advocated by only a few biologists. A primary confusion of this thinking, he claims, was 177 a split between the biological and the spiritual, and hence, that there were different natural laws for each. Pietikainen connects this with what he calls "Jung's spiritualization of the mind" (2003, p. 197) through the theory of archetypes. Although Jung tried to distance himself intellectually from neo-vitalism, "like neo-vitalists, Jung firmly believed in the existence of [a] 'vital entity' that animates the organism and possesses 'some degree of autonomy with respect to the body it animates' (Becker, 1967, p. 254). These almost autonomous vital entities are those famous 'archetypes'" (p. 200). In Pinker's (2002) terms, this puts Jung in the category of those who advocate the perspective of the Ghost in the Machine, a hang-over from the Descartian mind-body split. The clear trajectory of neuroscientific knowledge and psychological theory, including within analytical theory, is the acknowledgement of the enmeshment of matter and psyche, of body and mind, and in particular, the emergence of consciousness from the brain. Again, Jung wrote in a confusing manner about this point, as we might expect from anyone with such a long and deep intellectual career, and as we get from applying contemporary knowledge to prior theories. However, it remains that one can pluck from his canon quotes, viewpoints, and even entire essays to support either perspective. Jung at times clearly acknowledged the intimate relationship between psyche and matter, to the point that they are the same phenomenon in different expressions, and yet he wrote much of his work from a Descartian perspective of an autonomous, animating psyche with its own laws. In light of contemporary knowledge of the brain and mind, we need to let go of these elements of Jungian theory that define archetypes as autonomous, animating agents originating outside the realm of consciousness.

Pietikainen also charges that "Jungians rely on an argument from analogy" (2003, p. 209). Analogy is important when explaining and discussing the psyche or any areas of human life that challenge and defy the linear deductions of science. It is personally persuasive, metaphorically intimating intuitive details lost to logic; analogy enriches and deepens the understanding of a given phenomena. Yet to use analogy as argument can be 178 a problem. Analysts and psychotherapists in general are criticized from the scientific perspective for relying on anecdotal knowledge to guide them in their work. Jungians, among other humanities oriented thinkers, do tend to use anecdotal and analogical explanations; if we rely on these solely for the basis of our argument, it is a weak foundation. However, if we explain the human imagination without employing analogies, similes, and metaphors, it is as dry as the methods section of a science experiment and does not accurately capture the full nature of the psyche. Still, Pietikainen's criticism is valid: to rely on analogy as argument when correlating Jungian theory with biological evolution, or any other hard science, does not establish fact. As Kagan and Snidman note, "anyone with a modest knowledge of the natural world and minimal inferential skill can find examples in nature that support almost any ethical message desired" (2004, p. 242). My goal here is to incorporate established neuroscientific knowledge of the brain with Jungian theory to determine how analytical discourse is updated and viewed from validated research; it is not intended to be the final word on how consciousness works or to state that those elements of analytical psychology that do not resonate with scientific methods are invalid aspects of human experience. There are, however, more powerful critiques of archetype theory than a philosophical perspective such as Pietikainen's provides, due to great divisions within Jung's work itself. Consider the following descriptions of archetypes which place them

both squarely in the human imagination as a manifestation of the brain structure and

outside of the human body all together. "The archetypes are as it were the hidden foundations of the conscious mind .... They are inherited with the brain structure— indeed, they are its psychic aspect" (Jung, 1931/1970, p. 31). Here primordial images are the imaginative manifestations of the brain. Likewise, "The primordial image might suitably be described as the instinct's perception of itself'' (Jung, 194871969b, p. 136; 179 italics in original). A correspondence between archetypes, instincts, and brain structure roots archetypes within the domain of the body. In comparison, in Jung's discussion of the yucca moth's uncanny ability to know the exact time to break out of its cocoon, he states that along with instinct one could posit a kind of intuition occurring in the yucca moth, "namely the archetypes of perception and apprehension" (Jung, 1948/1969b, p. 133). In this statement, archetypes of perception and apprehension are now clearly located in the nonhuman physical world of the yucca moth. This perspective of archetypes as external to the individual psyche is captured in Anthony Stevens' interpretation of Jungian theory. "Jung proposed that archetypal structures were not only fundamental to the existence and survival of all living organisms but that they were continuous with structures controlling the behaviour of inorganic matter as well" (Stevens, 1995, p. 354). In light of this, we need to consider Jung's statement that "an image can be considered archetypal when it can be shown to exist in the records of human history, in identical form and with the same meaning" (1954/1967, p. 273). The image of the yucca moth and the leaf-cutting ant are not a part of the records of human history and culture, yet both are considered archetypal by Jung and Jungians (Hogenson, 2001; Jung, 1948/1969b).

Not only are there contradictory statements of heritability of images and location, but also the quality and type of archetypes. Jung claimed that "there are as many archetypes as there are typical situations in life" (1936/1959, p. 48). Structures of perception and apprehension, as quoted above in regard to the yucca moth, are quite distinct from the images and patterns that capture typical life situations. The former are contentless cognitive structures, the latter subjective, metaphorically filled images.

Instincts are limited in number as they represent universal, biological drives. Archetypes as images of instincts would be correspondingly limited, whereas archetypes as images of 180 typical life situations would be much more numerous. A key part of the confusion over just what Jung meant by archetype was that the same term applies to both the archetype- as-such, considered a nonrepresentable and noncomprehensible level of noumena, and the archetypal image, considered the symbolic, dynamic phenomenon.

I do not think that Jung was sure of what archetypes were, once and for all, but he was sure of what he did not mean: archetypal images are not inherited. At times Jung saw that the phenomena of the collective unconscious and archetypes were intimately and directly related to instinct and brain structure; at others he saw seductive possibilities that archetype may originate in the nonhuman physical world. Analyst Jean Knox (2003) provides a more succinct dismantling of a single paragraph of Jung's, demonstrating four different concepts of archetypes presented in the one piece. The paragraph she deconstructs is below:

Archetypes are by definition factors and motifs that arrange the psychic elements into certain images, characterized as archetypal, but in such a way that they can be recognized only by the effects they produce. They exist pre-consciously, and presumably they form the structural dominants of the psyche in general. As a priori conditioning factors they represent a special psychological instance of the biological 'pattern of behaviour' [which gives all things their specific qualities]. Just as the manifestations of this biological ground plan may change in the course of development, so also can those of the archetype. Empirically considered, however, the archetype did not ever come into existence as a phenomenon of organic life, but entered into the picture with life itself. (Jung, 1948/196%, p. 149)

The four models she delineates from this paragraph are as follows:

• biological entities in the form of information which is hard-wired in the genes, providing a set of instructions to the mind as well as to the body • organizing mental frameworks of an abstract nature, a set of rules or instructions but with no symbolic or representational content, so that they are never directly experienced • core meanings which do contain representational content and which therefore provide a central symbolic significance to our experience 181

• metaphysical entities which are eternal and are therefore independent of the body. (Knox, 2003, p. 24) In Jung's paragraph, Knox relates the first sentence with archetypes as organizing mental frameworks of the second definition, whereas the next statement suggests the core symbolic meanings of the third. Seeing archetypes next as "a priori conditioning factors" places them in the first category of biological entities, yet the last statement places them in the fourth definition as manifestations of eternal life (Knox, 2003, p. 27). Knox claims, as have others, that the lack of precision in the theory of archetypes has kept Jung's work from having validity in academic psychology and has provided confusion among biologists, neuroscientists, and others (p. 25). Her intention is to ground and clarify archetype theory in light of the latest empirical findings in cognitive psychology and research on genetic expression. In this task, Knox finds that the first and last definition of archetypes above are not tenable in light of the latest knowledge of the genes, innateness, emergence, and the developing mind. That is, archetypes are not hard wired biological entities, as argued by Stevens (1995), nor are they metaphysical realities independent of the body, as argued by Conforti (1999), both discussed below. She makes a distinction between archetypes-as-such—abstract, organizing mental frameworks, articulated in the second definition—and their images—core meanings with representational content, articulated in the third paragraph—correlating the archetype-as- such with cognitive image schemas and internal working models (IWMs) from cognitive psychology. With a single yet significant exception, which will be discussed later, I agree with Knox's position. First, however, let me claim my position briefly and then extrapolate and ground it through a critique of a handful of representative theorists in the debate on archetype theory as we attempt to update our understanding of archetypes by incorporating the latest knowledge in biology, evolution, genes, and the developing brain. Many erudite, cogent, and persuasive theories on the nature of archetypes have

been articulated over the last 15 years or so within Jungian discourse. Many of the 182 arguments involve critiquing a peer's understanding of a hard science, such as genetics or evolution. For the most part, I do not argue with the soundness of the interpretations or knowledge offered in any of the debates; that is, my primary argument does not take issue with whether a theorist understands the branch of knowledge he is using to develop archetype theory. The essence of my view was stated above by Saunders and Skar (2001) that Jungians have not initiated dialogues nor enjoyed influence in the fields we incorporate into analytical theories because we have not been clear and consistent about the terms and territory of depth psychology. All of the theorists discussed here to fail to make a simple yet essential distinction: archetypes are constructs of the imagination. A part of this failure includes seeing the world imaginatively—a proclivity of depth psychologists—and in this imaginative sight, projecting archetypes as literal forms of matter. Imagination is a realm of consciousness with its own integrity. Imagination as a reality of consciousness has not received the research attention of other areas of the brain- mind for obvious reasons: it is by nature subjective and irrational. By not recognizing that archetypes are within the realm of the imagination, the theorists collapse the form of the archetype with a priori processes that bring them about.

Let me give an example from Jung's work. Archetypes, Jung says:

not only occur in highly emotional conditions but also very often seem to be their cause. It would be a mistake to regard them as inherited ideas, as they are merely conditions for the forming of representations in general, just as the instincts are the dynamic conditions for various modes of behavior. (Jung, 1957/1972, p. 255)

Jung confuses the order of psychic manifestation here: archetypes do not cause highly emotional conditions; they are the imagistic gestalt representing strong affects that first emerge into the conscious ego mind from collective, non-ego levels of the mind. The emotional conditions occur first and the archetypes order, channel, and symbolically mediate the expression of them. As noted by Saunders and Skar, "In effect, Jung was 183 conflating form with the process which brings it into being" (2001, p. 313). Not only

Jung but many Jungian theorists make this error of conflating archetypal form with processes in nature and the body that bring them about. It appears that the imagination, synonymous with the psyche—both being the subjective, creative, imagistic aspect of consciousness—represents and organizes psycho-instinctual affects archetypally. A theory and understanding of archetypes—their form, process, and nature—is fundamental

and necessary in order to understand the imagination. However, archetype theory is not

necessary to understand other areas of consciousness such as neurobiology, cognitive

psychology, or evolutionary psychology. When Jungian theorists argue that archetypes

originate outside of the psyche—in genes, the brain, physical matter—they are conflating

archetypal form with the processes that precede them and are distinct from them. I

propose the following five qualities and realities of archetypes:

1. Archetypes are of the imagination, or, the subjective psyche, which exists

along a continuum of existence.

2. Archetypes are emergent in experience with roots in the brain and body.

Although they can be correlated with various structures and functions along

the spectrum, archetypes, as well as the psyche, retain a unique function and

nature distinct from other forms they are consonant with.

3. Archetypes always express subjectively and personally; they are distinctly

human.

4. Archetypes are numinous because they emerge from outside of the boundaries

of ego-consciousness as an Other or not-me force.

5. Archetypes are dynamic and transformative of the self. 184

From this position, I will review a select number of theorists who represent the primary perspectives in the debate on archetype theory. But first, I want to address a valid objection of my critique: that a body of work as voluminous as Jung's, spanning decades of thinking, is bound to contain contradictions. This is true, of course, but it may be more accurate to say that Jung was dealing with a paradox: the psyche. Referring back to the methodological perspective of dual-aspect monism, psyche and the brain are manifestations of the same phenomenon. This is a paradox, and working closely with either manifestation, as Jung and neuroscientists do, is to work with both phenomena at once. Yet neither side has historically recognized the phenomenon on the other side, and the resulting contradictions compel a need to be careful with language and claims. Clearly, neither Jung nor neuroscientists are consistently careful with their language or claims, in part because it leads to stilted, over-determined theories, and in part because each field tends to ignore or dismiss the other side. My driving argument in this chapter is that in our discomfort with and unconsciousness of the psyche-brain paradox, we make literalizing moves: neuroscience attempts to reduce psyche to matter, whereas analytical psychology attempts to turn all matter into psyche. This dissertation desires to dance in the dialogue in-between. A Continuum of Existence The debate on archetype theory circles a core dichotomy of archetypes as innate or emergent phenomena. The innate perspective considers archetypes-as-such as inherited, contentless structures, as did Jung in his references to them as inherited predispositions. A branch of this perspective tends to locate archetypes in the nonhuman physical world first, such as morphological fields in biology, parallels in quantum physics (Conforti, 1999), or evolution and genes (Stevens, 1995; Maloney, 2003). The debate can also be framed with two questions: where are archetypes and what are archetypes? Innateism argues that archetypes are located in either the laws of the natural world or in genetic and biological structures through evolution. The contrary view of emergence locates 185 archetypes within the individual experience: the archetypes emerge with the mind as the brain responds to experience. Michael Conforti represents theories from a radical innateism that sees archetypes as originary forms outside of matter, time, and space. Conforti's reading of Jung is that "the archetype ... is a preexistent, non-personally acquired informational field in the collective unconscious" (1999, p. 1). As explained below, the archetypal informational field is first, guiding physical manifestation.

Jung described an instinct as the physical manifestation of an archetypal process, having found form in matter. For instance, the sexual drive is a temporal, physicalized representation of the archetype of union, or coniunctio, and related to it are a series of specific symbols, images, and behaviors that are also expressed physically and temporally. (Conforti, 1999, p. 2) Although Conforti does not state explicitly where the collective unconscious is, this statement clearly posits the collective unconscious outside of the individual brain and body. Further, the hypothesis is neo-Platonic, where ideal, advanced, and more complex concepts are the invisible origins of simpler, more rudimentary physical manifestations. Conforti rests on concepts of consilience, put forward by Edward O. Wilson, that calls for an interdisciplinary attitude towards mind and matter that sees all manifestations from an original unity. Although I also call for interdisciplinary methods of thinking and theorizing, and support the idea of an original wholeness of all matter, I stop at the conflation of forms that exist on different levels of existence. It is true that all forms are part of a unity, yet material and psychic planes of existence possess unique properties and functions that distinguish and separate them. It is these distinctions that, when lost, mystify rather than clarify matters. Conforti's principal thesis is based on biological morphogenetic fields put forward by Rupert Sheldrake. "According to Sheldrake, memory is stored in what he terms 'morphic fields'" (1999, p. 3). Whereas classical biologists see that DNA and the 186 unfolding of genetic coding leads to morphogenetic development, Sheldrake, like Conforti and Plato, locates learned information in "non-spatio-temporal fields" (p. 4) that guide and direct the physical unfolding of form in matter. Sheldrake's idea can be criticized as a contemporary form of Larmarckism, a long discredited evolutionary theory from the ton of the 20th century that posited that acquired characteristics are inherited.

Sheldrake accounts for the transmission of new information by suggesting that each time a new task for survival is learned, it is added to the cumulative store of material contained in the morphic field. What was initially a novel experience quickly becomes assimilated in to the morphic field as memory and habit, thus becoming available to all members of the species. (Conforti, 1999, p. 4)

Unlike classic Lamarckism, Sheldrake's theory places acquired knowledge in the morphogenetic field rather than the genome. Thus, for Conforti, the collective unconscious is the original morphogenetic field. The phenomenon of how human consciousness influences evolution, called the Baldwin Effect, is relevant here. The Baldwin Effect sees that each generation develops not from zero knowledge but from a foundation of acquired knowledge from their ancestors. The difference between this and morphogenetic fields is that the Baldwin Effect sees culture as the cocoon of acquired knowledge human beings develop within, not an invisible energy field (Hogenson, 2001). Conforti finds, as do others, a relevant connection between mathematical principles underlying matter, morphogenetic fields, and archetypes. "For Jung, Hillman, Plato, and in my own ideas about the a priori nature of patterns, there appears to be agreement that matter emerges in response to and in accordance with a preformed image, or field" (1999, p. 15). I do not argue that matter does not display an exquisite order; I do not argue that there are not relevant and meaningful connections between laws of physics, biology, and the imagination. I argue that archetypes are emergent phenomena in which the archetypal image is first manifest in the imagination; stated simply, mathematical principles and a priori forms are not archetypes. 187

An application of this perspective to Jung's work is his analysis of the discovery of the law of conservation of energy—the first law of thermodynamics—that erupted through the life and work of Julius Robert von Mayer in 1841. Jung calls Mayer's discovery "one of the greatest thoughts which the nineteenth century brought to birth," (1943/1953b, p. 66) from a physician who was not a physicist, but one who was seized by the numinosity of his inquiry. Upon questioning how this universal idea arose in Mayer's life, Jung concludes that the answer "can only be this: the idea of energy and its conservation must be a primordial image that was dormant in the collective unconscious" (p. 67). Yet the law of conservation of energy has never been dormant; it is and has been an active principle in the physical world always, whether human consciousness understood it or not. Jung usurps the entire cosmos into the human psyche in this move as though the natural laws of the entire physical world emerge from the collective unconscious. What emerges from the collective unconscious is our embodied intuition of the whole. Just as the sun was always the center of our solar system regardless of Copernicus, the law of conservation of energy as the phenomena always existed, before it received a name and regardless of human understanding. Jung's work also demonstrates a lack of integration of the cultural context that creates the horizon of knowledge at any given time. The idea of the conservation of energy could not have been understood

without certain precedents in knowledge and history. When Jung describes primordial images lying dormant in the collective unconscious, he describes a deeply subjective and

embodied experience of the world: that the discovery of reality in the human imagination

is the literal birth of the cosmos. This is certainly what it feels like, but this uniquely human experience should not be used as the basis of understanding objective reality. It is akin to the infant who is delighted with the game peek-a-boo because he believes that you literally disappear and reappear upon his sight of you. That's the experience, but it is not

the reality. 188

Robert Mayer was archetypally moved by the idea of the law of conservation of energy; it possessed him. The archetype that compelled him, however, was activated in his imagination by the physical reality. I can imagine the archetype of the scientist, perhaps of Galileo peering through his telescope or Newton seeing the secrets of the world in an apple, had lain dormant in his own unconscious until the very dynamic and active law of energy provoked it from its slumber, seized his mind, and directed his inquiry. We will never know the primordial image that moved Mayer, but we do know this: it was intensely personal and numinous. Archetypes are not nouns waiting to be discovered in the world; we have posited a term to understand the quality of certain human experiences and the structure of human consciousness. Archetypes are a psychic reality in concord with the structure of the world.

Because brain structure and function reflect regularities of our physical world (Sheppard 1994) the a priori features of our psyche in effect anticipate the world around us. This insight gives weight to the controversial possibility that the features of the environment, through Darwinian processes, probabilistically shape our emergent mental processes. (Maloney, 2003, p. 109)

Our archetypal brains are carved by an archetypally organized world. We are stunned to find the exquisite organization of the world, ranging from universal forms without content to more particular and defined structures. But we should not conflate these structures with archetypes of the imagination. Archetypal images are bridges that link subjective and objective reality. "By amalgamating inner and outer, images intimate to us something about how we experience whatever it is that has become the content of experience" (Mogenson, 1999, p. 127). In the neo-Platonic tradition, psyche is the realm in-between matter and spirit, or, in the current debate of archetypal theory, between biology and philosophy (p. 126). I also situate the archetypes and psyche this way: imagination is the mediating realm between 189 the body and the mind. Psyche "is a realm of imaginal or subtle bodies ... a world of inner representations, we say, a world of imagos which combine features of external objects with subjective factors" (p. 127). As stated in my first position, archetypes are of the imagination, and both psyche and its archetypes exist along a spectrum of existence from atomic structures to physical matter to consciousness. Although the processes, forms and structures that appear along this spectrum are intimately related, and one could make an argument that they are the same phenomena in different manifestations, nonetheless, correlation is not equation in this instance. In our embodied experience all levels of reality act together, as a unified whole, but each form can be isolated to a degree and understood as having relative autonomy and integrity. Laws of physical matter, atomic structures, or the nature of genetic coding and expression are distinct from archetypes, which are themselves distinct in their imaginative, numinous, personally human nature. Archetypes are Emergent Anthony Stevens represents another argument for the innateness of archetypes in the natural world. His basic position finds archetype theory validated in the continuity of archetypal structures and dynamics through the evolutionary, inorganic, organic, neurobiological, sociological, mental, and psychic stratums of our world. Basically, Stevens finds archetypes everywhere:

Just how indispensable the archetypal concept is in practice can be judged from the manner in which researchers in many other disciplines keep rediscovering the hypothesis and reannouncing it in their own terminology. Indeed, if the significance of an idea can be measured by the number of people who later claim it as their own, then the archetypal hypothesis must certainly be one of the most important ideas to have emerged in the present century. (Stevens, 1995, p. 354) This is stated as though Jung's theory of archetypes was not the re-announcing of others' terminology and ideas, such as Plato, Kant, and Schopenhauer, to name just a few. Finding similar structures and dynamics in different fields, as Stevens does in 190 linguistics and sociobiology, does not mean that all of the structures are synonymous and that one can or should be considered the founding or original concept that all others concepts are related to. "A similar position [to archetype theory]," Stevens argues, "has been adopted by a new breed of evolutionary psychologists and cognitive scientists, who speak of 'Darwinian algorithms' which are 'specialized learning mechanisms that organize experience into adaptively meaningful schemas or frames' (Cosmides 1985)"

(1995, p. 358). We could just as easily designate cognitive psychology's image schemas as the core concept that subsumes the concept of archetypes. Similar structures are found in image schemas, neurobiological profiles, the laws of physics, mathematics, and genetic predisposition. Hogenson's view, popular with Knox and the central position others clarify their thought against, involves the assertion that an archetypal image and situation emerges from both inherited predispositions in the brain and a particular context. The instinct has a corresponding image in the archetype, and this image must be present in order for the instinct to be activated. Using the infamous image of the leaf-cutting ant, Hogenson (2009) argues that all elements of the instinct—in this case, ant, leaf, cutting—must be present in order for the inherited, compulsive, noncognitive instinct to be activated, in order for the ant to cut the leaf and carry it to its garden. In this sense, the archetype is embedded in soma but also linked to the external world through intuitive apprehension of

the necessary contextual elements. If these components of the image did not exist, says Hogenson, then "the ant would, in some ontological sense, cease to exist" (2009, p. 328) just as a man or woman, torn from his or her human environment, would cease to exist in an ontological sense as a human being. These necessary images of the human environment emerged with symbolic thinking in Homo sapiens roughly 200 thousand years ago, a catalyst for language and culture. Hogenson (2001) represents an emergent perspective of archetypes and the mind

that recognizes the ground of biology yet places archetypes decidedly in the 191 developmental and environmental context. In fact, in later publications Hogenson (2009) finds the mind itself and in particular the dynamic unconscious to be an emergent phenomenon wholly within the space of interaction and context between individuals and others. Maloney (2003), in a response to Hogenson's 2001 article, represents an emergent view of archetypes, yet with more emphasis on the originating and constraining effects of genes than Hogenson. Theoretically, Maloney is in between Stevens' predominantly innate argument and Hogenson's contention that archetypes exist in the interactive space between an individual and her experience. Experiments support a model of the mind as innately structured and strongly modular at lower levels of cognitive function while more weakly modular at higher levels of cognitive function (Maloney, 2003, p. 105). This means that the basic implicit and unconscious levels of the psyche is heavily structured towards specific and certain functions and as the mind becomes more conscious, creative, and complex through experience, learning, and reflection, it becomes less modular and more emergent. Hogenson advocates archetypes as emergent in environmental, cultural contexts; that, yes, there are universal structures but these are not biologically innate; they emerge out of the meeting of biology and environment. Maloney finds archetypes contextualized by neurobiological realities. The essential dichotomy represented by Hogenson and Maloney is in the argument between the power of biology and the power of culture. Jung, interestingly, situated himself in between and separately from both sides: biology he tended to dismiss as separate from the relatively autonomous levels of psyche he was dealing with and culture he related to as an ipso facto conditioning that could be, and needed to be, de-identified from and re-learned in the process of individuation, thereby dismissing its eventual influence. This led Jung's thinking to be insular, operating in a psychic and mythological universe divorced from the influences of both biology and culture. 192

The origin of language is the exemplar employed by both thinkers in the argument between biology and culture; specifically, is language primarily genetically based, as argued by Steven Pinker (1994), or is it culturally acquired? Hogenson (2001) cites work that discredits the genetic basis of language. Through Deacon, he cites the argument that a genetic basis for anything requires that the conditions driving natural selection be stable over a long period of time; this is not the case with language development which took place among many varied, inconsistent conditions. But Maloney argues that "a variety of simpler, lower level regularities could satisfactorily provide rules for language acquisition" (2003, p. 106). In addition, although syntax and grammar may not be heritable, the conditions of vocalizing communications and social systems of our ancestors were stable enough through time to support the selection of genes adapting to language acquisition and use (Maloney, 2003, p. 107). Neuroanatomy is a relevant guide here. We do not find the language areas of the brain—primarily Broca's area and Wernicke's area—only in the left hemispheres of English-speaking brains or American brains or European brains, just as we do not find the hippocampus a primary agent in encoding Polynesian or Nigerian memories. Culture-specific language is produced by almost all brains, yet this capacity of the brain will not emerge without the accommodating environment. The brain is species-specific and it has evolved to be able to acquire, use, and develop language, among many other talents, uniquely and universally human. We cannot disregard the universal structure and capacity of the human brain when we discuss archetypal theory or innate mental structures. Clearly, innate neurobiological anatomy plays an essential role in structuring human cognition, its objects and images. The significant discussion is what belongs to a priori categories versus what is emergent. Hogenson makes a relevant point in this regard: language, as all archetypal expression, is emergent in specific contexts.

Yet the capacity for language is inherited. As an example of the genetic basis of language potential, Maloney cites work on genetic defects that lead to language 193 anomalies. These genes code for neuronal proteins that together with developmental and environmental context promote normal speech development. Though these genes do not code for syntax or even language per se, they are essential in the neurobiological development and processes for language acquisition and use. Defects in these genes disrupt an individual's potential for language acquisition. "His [Hogenson's] exploration is limited by his focus on the use of skills, and loses its bearing because he ignores questions regarding acquisition of these skills" (Maloney, 2003, p. 108). In other words, by focusing on skills, Hogenson gives attention to the environmental context they develop in and adapt to without considering that the ability to acquire skills such as husbandry or language exists first in our biology. Maloney, while also finding archetypes emergent, demonstrates Hogenson's lack of inclusion of the reality of biology in genetic material and neurobiological structure. The

complex interplay [of genes and environment]... creates an emergent regularity.... If we are committed to a deeper understanding of the psyche, we need to leave behind sterile arguments like whether genes or environment or emergence shape the psyche, and instead look for the contributions of all relevant factors. (Maloney, p. 108) I agree with Maloney's call for an interdisciplinary focus, as do the other theorists who follow; my area of disagreement is that we cannot equate genetic predisposition, as Stevens and Maloney do, and even neurobiological structure, discussed in the previous chapter on temperament and typology, with archetypal structures. The modular organization of the brain and mind leads to an archetypal order of the psyche that reflects the structure of the matter that archetypes emerge from, but archetypes emerge from a complex psychic system, not directly from biological structures. Peter Saunders, a mathematician at King's College, University of London, and Patricia Skar, an Irish Jungian analyst, offer an emergent theory of archetypes that incorporates the phenomenon of self-organizing systems in the natural world. Recognizing that an "ongoing concern is whether Jung's concept of the archetype and 194 complex can be justified in terms of current scientific research, most notably that of neurophysiologists and others interested in the brain and consciousness," Saunders and Skar propose a theory of the formation of complexes as

created through self-organization within the brain/mind. Self-organization is a process typical of large complex systems, and is generally accepted to operate within the brain and to be important in its functioning. Examples of self-organization in biology are related to the psychic processes that form the complexes. It is then natural to define the archetype in terms of the complex, and the authors propose a definition of the archetype as an equivalence class of complexes. On this view, the archetype is an emergent property of the activity of the brain/mind, and is, appropriately, defined at the level at which it emerges. (2001, p. 305) Saunders and Skar describe the Benard convection of physics as a classic example of self-organization:

A large shallow container is filled with water and then heated evenly from below. After a while, the water begins to move, as warmer water rises from the bottom and cooler, denser water sinks. Eventually, and spontaneously, this motion organizes itself into a regular pattern of cells, looking something like a honeycomb. The pattern does not reflect either the way in which the water was heated or the shape of the container. It is an emergent property arising out of the dynamic ... of self-organization, the phenomenon in which order and pattern arise spontaneously and apparently out of nothing. There is no template, and neither are the forces applied in such a way as to induce the pattern. It comes about through the action of the dynamic of the system itself; it is, we may say, latent in the nature of that sort of system. (2001, p. 315) This describes a physical process that could be called archetypal in that the self-

organizing principle organizes matter into essential structures and forms that were inherent and latent. However, it would be inaccurate to call the honeycombs archetypes, as it is inaccurate to call the law of conservation of energy an archetype. The honeycomb pattern of cells of Benard convection and the law of conservation of energy are the essential structures of objective matter. These structures of the physical world are

counterparts of the archetypes of imagination.

The characteristic honeycomb pattern of Benard convection does not exist, except as an abstraction, until it is realized in a tray of water or some other 195

appropriate system. To be sure, a tray of water is much simpler than the psyche and so we can write down the relevant dynamical equations and see how the pattern arises. There is, however, still nothing that can be picked out and identified as the archetype. There is only the system, its dynamic, and the surrounding environment. The pattern is an emergent phenomenon. (Saunders & Skar, 2001, p. 316)

Unique to Saunder and Skar's theory is the relationship between complexes and archetypes. Complexes are formed through the process of self-organization in the psyche and express in finite forms with regularity; that is, complexes are not deviant, infinite, or random. Archetypes are the emergent phenomena of general categories of complexes. Saunders notes that Jung discovered complexes first and then noticed that they expressed along general categories, just as species are ordered in genera. Yet he could not find the causative mechanism responsible for arranging complexes into categories, just as biologists cannot find the mechanism responsible for the exquisite order of the natural world. Jung named this mechanism of psychic order the archetype (Saunders & Skar, 2001, p. 314).

Where Jung assumed the archetypes—images and innate predisposition—to be a priori to complexes, Saunders and Skar propose that archetypes are categories of complexes that do not precede the complex.

Archetypes can therefore exist as biological entities without our having to postulate anything beyond the organizational capability that the brain is generally agreed to possess. Nor do we have to decide when they appeared in evolution or, indeed, whether they were always there. They came into existence as the brain and consciousness evolved and as societies developed. They were always there in the sense that the laws of physics and chemistry on which they ultimately depend were always there, but they remained latent until there were brains sufficiently complex for them to become manifest. (Saunders & Skar, 2001, p. 314)

The problem with this view, asserts Knox, is that archetypes "lose a key distinguishing characteristic, that of the archetype-as-such as a primitive sketch or Gestalt without 196 information or representational content" (2003, p. 64). However, Saunders and Skar do keep in mind that "we must always remember to differentiate between the archetypal image and the archetype itself, as Jung constantly reminds us to do" (2001, p. 321), yet radically re-imagine the classic perspective of archetypes-as-such as causative of complexes. The problem encountered here is that we are debating an unnecessary speculation: the archetype-as-such. The archetype-as-such—a contentless structure girding the manifestations of the imagination—does not exist except as a concept to explain what we assume to be there but cannot actually locate or prove. Analytical psychology posits its existence and then promptly finds it everywhere. Through this move, the archetype usurps concepts and empirical observations from other branches of knowledge in order to explain itself, in fields such as physics, neurobiology, evolution, and cognitive psychology. What is empirically present is the psychic reality and necessity of the archetypal image and its definite affect and prominence in the human psyche. Therefore, I propose that we do not need to keep the distinction between archetypal image and the archetype-as-such because we do not need the concept of an empty psychic structure designated as the archetype-as- such. There is only the archetypal image and its nature which expresses a certain order and structure; this order and structure are properties of the image. The archetype as a general form is not contentless, just as the imagination that bears it is not contentless: the psyche is teeming with affect, image, dramas, and stories.

Jacobi cites the perpetual confusion of outsiders to archetype theory as the concept of the archetype-as-such.

The often cited comparison of the archetype with the Platonic eidos, and the failure to distinguish between the nonperceptible 'archetype as such' and the perceptible, 'represented' archetype have caused the archetypes to be regarded, in a manner of speaking, as inherited 'ready made images.' This has given rise to countless misunderstandings and unnecessary polemics. (Jacobi, 1959, p. 51) 197

The concept of the archetype-as-such is unnecessary in order to understand archetypes and the archetypal nature of the psyche. Indeed, as Jacobi states, this distinction has led to countless misunderstandings. One source of the consistent misunderstanding of archetypes is a lack of vigilance with language, demonstrated by Jacobi. She moves from stating, as does Jung, that others do not take the time to understand the theory of archetypes thoroughly—is there an assumption here that if others' "really understand" they would not criticize? After all, the same criticisms have been lobbed at this concept over and over—a fair statement in itself, but then a few pages later, when making distinctions between the personal and collective unconscious, she states that the collective unconscious comprises "all the contents of the psychic experience of mankind" (Jacobi, 1959, p. 60). This sounds very much like inherited content.

The phylogenetic collective unconscious, the actual potential and structure of our brains and bodies, allows us access to the same emotional, psychic experiences of our ancestors, but this does not equal inherited content. As an example, Freud argued in Totem and Taboo, according to Hogenson (2001, p. 600), that a single historical event— the primal killing of the father—led to the Oedipus complex. This is a Lamarckian argument that "subsequent generations have inherited the anxiety associated with the primal killing of the father" (p. 600). I was a little stunned at first; I had not heard the charge that Freud was a Lamarckian, although it is not unreasonable that he was applying the popular ideas of his time to his developing theories, as we all do. My surprise was that I understand something quite different in Freud's theory. Namely, we did not inherit our ancestor's anxiety over a primal killing of the father; we inherited the potential for murderous rage and this makes us anxious. The

Oedipus complex is a cultural complex and a theory to explain cultural restraint of instinctual drives. As Jung states it, we do not inherit ideas "but rather ... the inherited disposition to react in the same way as people have always reacted" (Jung, 1929/1969, p. 198

111). Whether Freud thought literally along Lamarckian lines or not does not disqualify the value of the Oedipus complex as a metaphor for phylogenetic and psychic predispositions inherited through the capacities of our brain. Jacobi further explains that archetypes should not be understood as inherited images but as inherent possibilities (Jacobi, 1959, p. 52). This is more accurate, but the problem then becomes that genetic, physiological structures represent inherent possibility for many, many manifestations, not just archetypal images. The problem with the concept archetype-as-such is that it literalizes metaphor, a calcification that transforms symbols into signs. We erroneously collapse the forms along the spectrum of existence when we postulate that the causative mechanisms of archetypal structures and images are archetypes-as-such. From this perspective, archetypes are not things, as Hillman notes, archetypes are metaphors (1975, p. xix), and as Hogenson asserts, "the archetypes do not

exist some place, be it the genome or some transcendent realm of Platonic ideas. Rather, the archetypes are the emergent properties of the dynamic developmental system of brain, environment, and narrative" (2001, p. 610). The archetypal image is the representation of the structure of reality in the imagination—the medium of human consciousness. Archetypes are Numinous and "Not-me "

A developmental systems perspective is articulated by Merchant, who proposes that

Developmental Systems Theory (DST) provides a bridge between the polarizations of

nature/nurture or biology/culture in archetype theory. DST is characterized by the

assertions that there are multiple causes of emergent phenomena that are context sensitive

and contingent, and a phenotypic expression is not a given even when genotype and

environmental conditions are specified. Development is a life-long cycle with

bidirectional influence between function and structure lending a distributed control of 199 development in which no one factor controls the outcome. Organism and environment are one system which evolve over time so that outcomes are not imposed by genes but emerge from genetic constraints that set limits and boundaries and unique environmental context (2006, p. 126).

To the adult they [archetypes] will appear to be spontaneous and not as having arisen from conscious awareness. This is because the underpinning bio- structure has been embedded when the infant psyche was still unconscious and developing so that archetypal imagery will be experienced as if arising from something innate, (p. 128)

The DST perspective includes a self-organizing, emergent understanding of the psyche and makes an important distinction between our subjectively felt experience and objective realities of the brain and development.

Firstly, the 'other worldly' and 'numinous' aspect of archetypal experience emphasized by the Classical and Archetypal schools is understandable because the emergent imagery is arising from deep unconscious layers of the psyche where the underpinning bio-structures having been forged during the intense affectivity of early infant life. The experience will appear to be of something spontaneous, innate and not related to conscious knowing. (Merchant, 2006, p. 130) I would add that the underlying limbic bio-structures of intense affect are present in the adult as well as the infant; that is, intense affect that arises from structures of the brain and mind outside of ego-consciousness are not only ripples from the past but are also

provoked in the present. Merchant proposes that there need not be a distinction between collective and personal unconscious (2006, p. 131). It is true that we always experience the world— internally or externally—through our subjective psyche, which includes the ego and the personal unconscious. In this way, there is not a distinction in our embodied experience in which, as Corbett (1996) has noted, the numinous or collective experience always seems to speak on intimate terms. But there are levels of the psyche, consciousness, the

brain and human organism outside the neural structures of the ego (remembering that the 200 ego includes the personal unconscious). As discussed in previous chapters, the felt-sense of movements in consciousness from these "species-specific" regions have a powerful feeling of "not-me" because they are not ego. Just as we can distinguish between the external world and the subjective medium that perceives it, we can distinguish collective manifestations of the psyche from the personal, although both are subjective and exist within the one whole individual organism. Archetypes are Subjective, Distinctly Human, and Transformative Knox argues that the concept of archetypes as innate, genetically transmitted knowledge needs to be abandoned in light of the accumulating scientific research of genes as catalyst rather than blueprint and that there is no genetic knowledge that girds psychological development. Therefore, she asserts that "innate 'knowledge' of universal themes is the product of cortical functioning, which is never genetically programmed" (2003, p. 61). Genes operate at a subcortical level, driving the initiation of vital processes to life, but do not make any comment or have any influence on the content that is gathered and expressed as a result of the developmental unfolding. Knox agrees with model 2 from her analysis above of archetypes-as-such as organizing mental frameworks of an abstract nature, a set of rules or instructions but with no symbolic representational content. Thus, they are never directly experienced. She argues that "image schemas are the mental structures which underpin our experience of discernible order, both in the physical and in the world of imagination and metaphor" (p. 63). In making this argument, Knox relies on the models of mental development that cognitive scientists are gradually identifying, such as Jean Mandler, who "has described the earliest, primitive cognitive structures, image schemas, that are formed in the early days and weeks of a baby's life" (Knox, 2003, p. 54). Cognitive scientists find that a repetition of experiences build the basic structures of image schemas which go on to form more complex representations through a process some researchers call "representational 201 redescription," which eventually results in the conscious forms of image and language (p.

55). A distinction is made between the complex perceptual processing of image schemas and the conceptual recognition of perceptual analysis. Perceptual processing is complex but unconscious and without intention. An analogy used by Knox, borrowed from

Mandler (1988), is of a machine designed to sort nuts and bolts by computing the diameter of each. "The industrial machine may throw nuts into one bin and bolts into another... but we would not want to say that it has a concept of nuts and bolts"

(Mandler, 1988, p. 117).

Perceptual analysis is characterized by a comparison of stimuli, establishing a primitive form of contemplation that is the basis of concept formation (Knox, 2003, p.

55). Mandler (1992) and Knox propose that these very first conceptual formations are what cognitive scientists and psychologists call image schemas.

Image schemas are notions such as PATH, UP-DOWN, CONTAINMENT, FORCE, PART-WHOLE, and LINK notions that are thought to be derived from perceptual structure. For example, the image schema PATH is the simplest conceptualization of any object following any trajectory through space, without regard to the characteristics of the object or the details of the trajectory itself. According to Lakoff and to Johnson, image schemas lie at the core of people's understanding, even as adults, of a wide variety of objects and events and of the metaphorical extensions of these concepts to more abstract realms. They form, in effect, a set of primitive meanings. (Mandler, 1992, p. 591) Knox considers image schemas the archetypes-as-such. Image schemas are the foundation of the representational archetypal experience; these archetypal representations are "metaphorical elaborations" and "are always based on the Gestalt of the image schema from which they are derived" (2003, p. 63). The eventual image of the archetype forms from the accretion of representational redescription, "a process whereby the brain constantly sorts and classifies sensory information into meaningful conceptual categories" (p. 57). The process of representation redescription is broken up into levels: 202 an implicit, procedural level; E-l (Explicit), a level not available to consciousness; E-2, a level available to consciousness, not verbally but in a "kinaesthetic" form in the body and the mind's sense of spatial relationships; and E-3 as knowledge that can be expressed in language (pp. 57-58). Knox finds representational redescriptions similar to Fordham's deintegration-reintegration model of learning in that it is also a cognitive processing of emotional stimuli and knowledge, leading to a "gradual formation of a sense of self and of a capacity to relate emotionally to other people" (p. 59). Knox makes a cogent and accurate argument about the nature of image schemas and their relationship to archetypal images. I do not argue that the cognitive processes described above do not form essential structures of a mental apparatus; I argue that cognitive image schemas are not archetypes-as-such because archetypes-as-such is an unnecessary concept that conflates form and process. There are cognitive image schemas and there are archetypes. Their difference is summed up here: "Perception involves looking, where imagination involves telling" (Lieberman, 2003, p. 26). Making a distinction of archetype-as-such blurs the nature of archetypes, mainly, that they are constructs of the imagination. In The Synaptic Self, Joseph LeDoux (2002) explains that the high-resolution synaptic firing imprinted in the brain through repeated experiences creates neuronal patterns that eventually emerge as the structures of consciousness. These grooves in the mind carved from repetitive experiences are the neurobiological expression of implicit memory that lead to mental and imaginative representation through image schemas and archetypes. There is clearly a direct developmental relationship here. But we would not call a certain neuronal map an image schema or an archetype any more than we should refer to the image of a devouring mother in a dream or fantasy as a neuronal pattern.

By removing the concept of an empty archetype-as-such from our lexicon, the distinction between image schema and archetype is clear based on the distinct nature and function of each structure. The image schema is emergent, and as Knox further explains 203

is a mental gestalt, developing out of bodily experience and forming the basis for abstract meanings. Image schemas are the mental structures which underpin our experience of discernible order, both in the physical and in the world of imagination and metaphor. (2004, p. 7)

From there, Knox extrapolates: "Thus, there may be no such thing as an archetypal mother, but, instead, there is an image schema of containment" (2003, p. 96). Keeping image schema and archetype separate, the image schema of containment—impersonal and abstract— is a potential form of many archetypes. The schema of containment is represented in Mother, but also womb or cave, with a nurturing affective valence but also devouring and annihilating. As Jung said, "there are as many archetypes as there as typical life situations" (1936/1959, p. 48). This is not true of image schemas. Knox claims that "the image schema enables us to see clearly that it is the dynamic pattern of relationships of the objects of our inner world that is archetypal, rather than the specific characteristics of any particular object in inner or outer reality" (2003, p. 69). Yet the image schema LINK, for example, does not enable us to see the dynamic pattern of archetypal and numinous relationships. The archetype does this, not the image schema. The image schemas of PATH or UP-DOWN are not numinous; they are not distinctly human nor do they transform themselves and the individual. Archetypes have something to say to us; they are messengers. Image schemas are the bones of the mind, archetypes the living flesh of the imagination. Archetypes are an intimate and necessary part of our human story; image schemas and the laws of thermodynamics are not. Archetypes are dynamic; they evolve and transform as we evolve and transform through our conscious relationship to them. Archetypes change as they change us. If this were true of image schemas, we would experience debilitating mental instability; UP-DOWN, LINK, FORCE—these concepts must remain stable and unchanging. Image schemas have a distinctly different function in consciousness than archetypes. We all experience the general level of the mother archetype, but this does not tell us our personal relationship with mother; the personal aspect is expressed in the archetypal 204 image of a devouring mother, a nurturing mother, an absent mother, mother as rival, mother as soothing container. The mother archetype is general and collective, yet it is not empty; it is distinctly human and personal, unlike the schema containment. The archetypal image exists at the boundary of the collective and personal unconscious. Jung was closely observing the imagination with great scrutiny; we have neglected this essential fact, and this omission causes erroneous conflations of ideas and phenomenon while keeping us from making clear observations, analyses, and distinctions of the phenomenon at hand: the psyche. I suggest that the correlating structures of the brain, mind, and imagination are analogous to but not synonymous with three basic systems of memory: procedural, perceptual, and episodic. Biological structures, such as neurobiological profiles, are represented in procedural memory; cognitive forms, such as image schemas, are represented in perceptual memory; and subjective and imaginative forms, such as archetypes, are represented in episodic memory. Procedural memory is biological and implicit. Perceptual memory, organizing structures of the objective "non-self' world, is implicit and without content. Episodic memory is also known as semantic or autobiographical memory; both forms are explicit content. Autobiographical memory always involves the self and an emotional index. Semantic memory is general knowledge, sometimes also called the system of knowledge (Markowitsch & Welzer, 2005/2010, pp. 66-68). Like cognitive image schemas, perceptual memory involves the recognition of patterns and characteristics, allowing it to categorize sensual stimuli and information. This memory system appears later than procedural and priming because it is based on experience in which "the individual has to complete a series of internal comparisons" (p. 68). The implicit procedural, priming, and perceptual memory systems and the explicit episodic systems have a further distinction in encoding and storage. "Encoding takes place through the sensory systems, but is then differentially processed depending on 205 which memory system is involved" (Markowitsch & Welzer, 2005/2010, p. 72). Procedural memory is processed by the limbic systems (e.g., basal ganglia, cerebellum, premotor cortex); priming and perceptual memory are processed by the posterior cortex. In all three systems, there is not a distinction between short-term or long-term memory, and the areas of storage and recall are the same. Episodic and semantic memory, in comparison, are first subject to short-term storage and then processed into long-term storage, while the encoding, storage, and recall areas of the brain are different. These differences in encoding and storage are due to procedural, priming, and perceptual being contentless processes rather than personal episodes or specific knowledge. The short- term and long-term distinction in episodic memory has to do with whether the information will be consolidated and retained for future recall. In learning repetitive physical skills or categorizing information, there does not need to be a short-term or long- term storage distinction, because it is a structure that organizes knowledge rather than the content itself which will be recalled. Organizing structures, such as perceptual memory, are far fewer than the separate bits of specific episodic memories. Episodic memory depends on conscious attention for encoding and retrieval, whereas as perceptual memory, being implicit, forms from repeated patterns in experience that then congeal into structures that organize episodic memory. Thus, the perceptual category or image schema of "containment" may well be one of the bases of

many archetypes, including Mother, but the edge of definition lies with the affective, personal, numinous nature of archetypes. Just as in our actual embodied experience these three types of memory operate together seamlessly, so do structures and processes of the brain and the constructs of the mind and imagination; yet, just as with the distinct categories of memory, they are not synonymous. We can make clear distinctions in

quality and function among them. Pietikainen's final evaluation of archetypal theory is similar to Paris' (2007) conviction that the primary value of Jung's work is as a guiding myth. Pietikainen says 206 archetypes are "important for our psycho-spiritual journey into wholeness, not for solving particular adaptive problems that our stone-age ancestors faced in their evolutionary environment" (2003, p. 205). Therefore, attempts to rest archetypal theory on evolutionary, biological grounds miss the mark because archetypes have no functional value or necessity in evolutionary theory. The non-necessity of archetypal theory to evolutionary theory is an important insight. It is in the imagination, in our identities, and our personal stories that archetypes have functional value and necessity. However, Pietikainen misses the living connection between brain, mind, and psyche that makes archetypes more than a guiding myth. Jung's work was primarily concerned with the metaphorical, mythological, and imagistic expression of the subjective human experience. The psyche, he discovered, expresses objective reality subjectively through image and metaphor. The imagination is not separate from its physiological ground, nor is it separate from the world of stimulus. The psyche is not a physical but a literal reality that reliably reflects the inner and subjective experience of both the body and the world.

Knox has noted that "if we fail to examine the concept of archetypes in the light of [developmental research of the brain], we run the risk that it will become an outdated irrelevance which no one takes seriously but ourselves" (2003, p. 59). A primary reason that archetypal theory has not been demonstrated as relevant is that Jungians are not clear on the nature, function, and structures of the psyche as distinct from other levels or forms of consciousness as we move into more interdisciplinary dialogues with science. Saunders and Skar's comment from the beginning of this chapter bears repeating here:

However, while Jungians can find analogies for the theory of archetypes in other fields, these fields have shown little interest in adopting the Jungian terminology in return. Reasons for this might include the fact that the theory of archetypes (like so much else in Jungian theory) has not been consistently and clearly defined by Jung or his followers, and therefore has not succeeded in attracting the interest of those in other contexts who could lend new dimensions to our understanding of the efficacy of the concept. (2001, p. 306) 207

The subjective experience of archetypes as numinous does not refer to their objective nature. There is, perhaps, no objective nature of the archetypes, for they are always and only experienced subjectively. The ego receives stimulus from outside its own psychic boundaries—whether "outside" is internally or externally—as bigger or more powerful than itself, as a god, mystery, or devil. The ego tends to turn the unknown into gods or devils, but when this tendency is consciously recognized, the analytical process of de-identification disrobes gods and devils. The unknown—within and without—always presents with a numinous charge, sometimes frightening, at other times fascinating, at times both. As the unknown becomes known, the numinous charge dissipates, but this does not reduce the unknown to the known. It is a process of transformation of both the unknown element and the individual coming to know it; transformation is the archetypal process. In order to clarify and understand how psychological structures and dispositions relate and collate with neurobiological structures, we must clarify the nature of the psyche. Our embodied experience enmeshes imagination with the cognitive mind and the brain, yet we can and should note the distinctions between them. In our collective search for who we are and the nature of the self, neuroscience and depth psychology need one another, as each represents an essential polarity of objective and subjective that in our embodied experience is unified. As depth psychologists, we need to look at archetypal theory empirically and methodically, and not dismiss it as mythic entertainment. Nor should we dismiss a rigorous, sober evaluation as reductive. Knox's attitude and perspective is correct:

This kind of scientific understanding does not have to be reductionist but can be integrated with the narrative and interpersonal aspects of analytical work—the scientific and the hermeneutic do not need to be seen as contradictory, but instead the meaning-making process can itself become the object of scientific study. (2004, p. 4) 208

The images of our psyche and the stories they tell guide and compel us. Questions as to the relationship between the imagination, the mind, and the brain are relevant to scientific inquiry, for understanding the nature of archetypes, whether in religions, myths, or symptoms or structures of the self, is essential to understanding the nature of the imagination and the foundational way that we understand, clarify, and mystify our lives. If we do not study and understand the psyche, not only in its relative autonomy but especially in the relationship of imagination to the brain and world, we do not understand ourselves. 209

Chapter 9 Memory's Cleave

Memory unites the uncounted individual phenomena into a whole; and just as our bodies would dissipate into countless atoms if the power of attraction in matter did not hold them together, our consciousness would break up into as many different splinters as there are moments, without the power of memory. (Ewald Hering, 1870, translated and quoted in Markowitsch & Welzer, 2005/2010, pp. 207-208) Memory is the building block of identity; autobiographical memory provides the foundation of our story, in which is embedded the demonstration of our character, the history of our personality, and the dramatic themes of our lives and fate. Our memories are the essential images that comprise the mosaic of identity; like a mosaic, when viewed from a distance, they represent a cohesive picture. When viewed up close, we see that the image of the whole is a collection of many separate images, in this case, memories. Each memory is both whole unto itself and a holograph metaphorically of the whole story. As mentioned, our embodied experience enmeshes imagination with the cognitive mind and the brain, yet we can and should note the distinctions between them. A primary area of distinction is how memory intertwines the brain and the imagination in the construct of the self. Here we will explore how memory is a function of both the brain and the imagination and in this way, the bridge from the body to the self.

Memory in the Brain Memory is the glue of the brain and mind; neurons are literally wired to one another through the memory of synaptic relationships. At the physiological level, synaptic relationships are memory. In the simplest explanation, genes possess codes for the production of proteins that shape the way neurons get wired together (LeDoux, 2002, p. 4). Learning, and its synaptic result, memory, play major roles in gluing a coherent personality together as one goes through life .... Learning allows us to transcend our genes, or, as the novelist Salman Rushdie said, 'Life teaches us who we are.' (p. 9) 210

In Hebbe's Law, synapses that fire together wire together. Specifically, if a weak stimulus is being put into a neuron at the same time a strong stimulus is being received by the neuron, then the weak connection will be made stronger due to the influence of the strong connection (LeDoux, 2002, p. 136). As an example, a weak stimulus would be walking by your neighbor's house, but if this happens at the same time that your neighbor's dog attacks and bites you, then the weak memory of the neighbor's house will be wired with the strong emotional memory of the dog bite, causing you to associate, consciously or unconsciously, the sidewalk and your neighbor's house with the dog bite and thus you would be more likely to avoid it. Another example comes from psychotherapist Louis Cozolino's work with an Iraq war veteran from Kentucky who began exhibiting signs of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after moving to southern

California: nightmares, panic attacks, sleep disturbance, irritability, and reactiveness.

This former soldier had exhibited no signs of PTSD during or after his tour in Iraq years before; it was only after moving to the deserts of Los Angeles that the symptoms began without details as to their origin. That is, the symptoms were amnestic, without memory to back them up; instead, they appeared as if from the ethers. As Cozolino got the story of this young man's life he discovered that he had lost his leg in the deserts of

Iraq. It didn't take long for Cozolino to connect the desert as the environmental cue for the context of the trauma that held in his body memories. "When memories are stored in sensory and emotional networks but are dissociated from those that organize cognition, knowledge, and perspective, we become vulnerable to intrusions of past experiences that are triggered by environmental and internal cues" (Cozolino, 2006, p. 32). In LeDoux's terms, above, the weak force was the desert environment that triggered the unconscious 211 trauma memories. Even without the soldier's belief that his current symptoms were due to experiences a decade earlier, as he worked therapeutically with the emotions of the trauma, his symptoms dissipated. Here we see how implicit memory, operating on a cellular, somatic-affective level, can be drained of its affective charge and re-learned or

re-wired synaptically in the brain.

Regions of the brain crucial to memory are the frontal lobes and areas of the

limbic system in the medial temporal lobe, which have direct synaptic connections with

one another. Sometimes referred to as the file clerk and the filing cabinet of the memory

system, the prefrontal cortex is necessary for conscious focus, attention, and retrieval—

the file clerk—whereas the hippocampus and parahippocampal area in conjunction with

the amygdala are the major actors in encoding and storage—the filing cabinet (Budson &

Price, 2005, p. 693). Sensory and perceptual data is received in consciousness—the

frontal lobes—and encoded through the hippocampus and medial temporal lobe

structures. Eventually, these memories are transferred to long-term storage in various

areas of the cortex. When we retrieve memories, the frontal lobes act as a filing clerk

motivated by a conscious intention to remember; if the hippocampus has performed its

role correctly, the memory has been properly indexed and filed, and the retrieval of the

memory takes place.

In conditions such as depression, a disorder of the filing clerk in this analogy,

memory problems are due to the lack of conscious attention as the depression soaks up

the psychic energy of the mind. Memories are either not encoded because there is not a

sufficient amount of attention, or the subjective state of the depression allows for a

narrow window of associated memories or distorts memories to fit its paradigm, causing 212 distorted memory (e.g., correct detail in the wrong context or even false memories).

Depression has a tendency to generalize memory, washing images of affective or visual vividness; specific episodes become generalized and emotionally resonant with the cognitive state of depression. Alzheimer's disease, which first attacks the hippocampus and medial temporal lobes, is a dysfunction of the filing cabinet. This neurodegenerative disease essentially deletes neurons in the hippocampus, preventing encoding of memories in the first place; there is conscious attention, but the memory is not filed, so to speak, so there is nothing to retrieve (Budson & Price, 2005, p. 694).

The frontal lobes are also the seat of personality, demonstrating one link between identity and memory. The prefrontal cortex exercises volition over memory retrieval; this is called "top-down" processing which involves dynamics of inhibition, monitoring, initiation, perseverance, and affect regulation (Daffher & Searl, 2008, pp. 249-50).

Frontotemporal dementia demonstrates the connection between personality and the

frontal lobes. This neurodegenerative disease typically starts in the left hemisphere's

frontal and temporal lobes where language, semantic memory, and Gazzaniga's "the

interpreter," what depth psychology refers to as ego-consciousness, resides.

Frontotemporal dementias typically present with changes in personality and behavior,

such as blunted affect, indifference, socially inappropriate behaviors, and poor judgment.

Presenting statements made by loved ones to the doctor is, "he is not himself." Its

victims lack insight into their situation, are emotionally labile, and often engage in

preposterous confabulations (Daffher, 2010).

In research employing functional imaging of the brain, the lateral inferior right

frontal lobe is correlated with self-recognition in images, and the medial frontal lobes are 213 activated when subjects make true statements about themselves (e.g., I have a quick temper or I am friendly), indicating the importance of the frontal lobes for personality, which is also indicated in the correlation between frontal lobe deficits or dysfunction and criminal or antisocial personalities (Markowitsch & Welzer, 2005/2010, p. 91).

Memory in the brain is a function of the frontal and temporal lobes—the seat of consciousness and the limbic system. Physiologically, memory is a representation of synaptic patterns between neurons whose strength is determined by repetition and the emotional charge that holds them together. The more a pattern of synaptic firing is activated, the stronger it becomes as an organizing structure of consciousness. The more we remember our past, the more our past constructs our future memories.

In chapter 5,1 discussed distinctions between explicit and implicit forms of consciousness; these are directly related to explicit and implicit memory. Explicit memory is expressed in what we know, whereas "implicit memories are reflected more in the things we do" (LeDoux, 2002, p. 116). This could also be said of explicit and implicit consciousness: explicit consciousness is what we know we know, and implicit consciousness is reflected in our behavior or way of being. In fact, being that memory is the essential stuff of the brain and mind, one could say that explicit consciousness is explicit memory and implicit consciousness is implicit memory. Generally, this is true, except for the reality of inventive, imaginative, original thought. The ability to imagine, to think abstractly and differently, is a function of self-reflective consciousness that has a base in memory but is additive in nature.

Episodic memory is a neurocognitive system that allows mental time travel with autonoetic awareness; that is, the conscious awareness of one's self in the past or future. 214

This involves, but is more than, the memory of a past event, such as animals likely have; the contextualizing element of episodic memory is the self existing as the self. Or put another way, "Episodic memory refers to the explicit and declarative memory system used to recall personal experiences framed in our own context" (Budson & Price, 2005, p.

692). As a reminder, semantic memory is the other type of explicit, declarative memory, the memory system of knowledge that is not autobiographically coded.

At the heart of episodic memory in the brain are the hippocampus and the parahippocampal, entorhinal, thalamus, fornix, and other limbic structures of the medial temporal lobe. The hippocampus plays a primary role in providing the unique encoding index of memories. As sensory, perceptual, and internal data converge for encoding, a region of the hippocampus known as CA3 stamps the memory—the synaptic pattern— with a unique index. This index is a combination of factors that make the memory retrievable later by cues from the environment—such as emotional state or sensory or perceptual cues. Memory indexes that overlap amalgamate into generalized memory patterns or knowledge.

Forming memories of parking in a parking garage on consecutive days demonstrates the indexing processing. Imagine that on day one you are feeling happy, park on level one in the red area, half-way down the aisle on the right. When you retrieve your car at the end of the day, you will likely easily retrieve the memory of where your car is as well because the index—subjective mood, level, section color, and placement are unique. If on the second day you are feeling down, park on level two in the blue section, at the top of the left aisle. Because this has a unique index as well, you are likely to retrieve the memory with ease. However, if on the third day, you are again feeling down, 215 park on the second level in the blue section and half-way down the right aisle, it may be more difficult to retrieve the singular memory of parking your car that day because the memory index of the third day overlaps with the index of the second day. "When there are completely overlapping patterns of neural activity, a separate hippocampal index cannot form. Instead, there is a single hippocampal index that forms both days" (Budson,

2009, p. 74). If we extrapolate this simple process to the collection of everyday memories that have overlapping features, we can begin to imagine how general patterns of knowledge and memories are formed, and how many of our specific memories melt into the general pattern. This generalizing process is the basis of the construction of abstract structures, such as image schemas. I will draw on this idea that the general emerges as an organizing principle of the particular further in development of a theory of archetypes as emergent from particular experiences, in this case as emerging from the congregation of melted memories.

As discussed in the last chapter, episodic and semantic memories are first subject

to short-term storage, then processed into long-term storage. The areas of the brain

utilized in encoding, storage, and recall are different. Short-term memory is encoded and

stored in the hippocampal region and transferred to long-term storage through the limbic

system. The hippocampus encodes the temporal information and the amygdala the

emotional valence in autobiographical memory, which is then stored long-term in

multiple sites in the cortex. In the transfer from short- to long-term storage, the

information is associated, compared, and linked with existing information. "The left

hemisphere is more involved in the [semantic] system of knowledge, and the right in

episodic information" (Budson, 2009, p. 74). The left hemisphere processes and houses 216 explicit language, whereas the right hemisphere is where implicit, emotional aspects of language and experience are processed and stored. Autobiographical memory evokes both neocortical and limbic systems in its processing through the convergence of self, language, and emotion.

Working memory, an executive function of the frontal lobes, provides the ability to hold several pieces of information in the mind while comparing, analyzing, and evaluating it in comparison with one other, to other stored memories, and existing knowledge. With the development of working memory at 8 or 9 months old, infants are able to hold an image of an object that is not physically present in their minds. This is called object permanence and marks the realization that objects in the environment have an existence of their own. "At this age, children stop crying out of frustration when they cannot see a toy hidden from view, and instead start actively looking for it"

(Markowitsch & Welzer, 2005/2010, p. 132).

Working memory allows explicit memory—semantic and episodic—to develop.

There is still considerable debate among researchers about whether the first mental

representations formed from repetitive events—such as eating or bathing—are part of the

semantic system of knowledge or autobiographical memory. There is a clear

development of explicit memory by 1 year of age but no conclusive evidence of

autobiographical memory, which is thought to generally be established around 3 years of

age with language (Markowitsch & Welzer, 2005/2010, p. 139). The phenomenon of

delayed imitation is active at this time, a form of emulation learning, in which an infant

copies behaviors to reach a goal. This form of learning is present in nonhuman primates

as well and is therefore not considered a form of episodic memory because it does not 217 necessarily contain references to time, emotion, and self-identity that define episodic memory (Markowitsch & Welzer, 2005/2010, p. 140).

Markowitsch, Welzer, and some other researchers distinguish autobiographical memory from episodic memory even though there is no evidence of this distinction on a biological level of different anatomy activated or patterns of activity in the brain.

However, they find a qualitative difference in the emotional valence, where episodic memory is a more general term and neutral affect, as compared with autobiographical memory, a more emotionally indexed form of episodic memory (Markowitsch & Welzer,

2005/2010, p. 231). Autobiographical knowledge "provides a context or setting for episodic memories" (Conway, 2003, p. 220). As human beings have evolved into social beings for whom survival depends on the coordination of social and individual development and needs, autobiographical memory has developed. Markowitsch and

Welzer understand autobiographical memory in this sense as a psychosocial mediator between the individual and the group. "Autobiographical memory is therefore not a whole new additional memory system, but a biopsychosocial instance that represents the relay station between the individual and the environment, between the subject and culture" (p. 231).

It is speculated that a cognitive self—an organizing construct of the mind— precedes and makes possible autobiographical memory, and thus, the autobiographical self. The cognitive self is perhaps in rudimentary form at 18 months when infants can first recognize their own image in a mirror, but truly develops by age 3. At this time children start using personal pronouns and show evidence of episodic memories: the ability to remember events in the past that involved them. 218

When the child reaches the stage of social self-understanding, memory takes on a new quality: persons and objects can now be understood as constants. Semantic memory arises that contains things for the child even when they are not physically present. With the development of cognitive self-understanding, episodic memory starts to form. (Markowitsch & Welzer, 2005/2010, p. 194)

However, children at this stage still lack the ability to string episodic memories along a temporal sequence. Until there is a stable sense of continuous self through time, episodic events lack the relevance of time—the distinguishing characteristic of autobiographical episodes (Markowitsch & Welzer, 2005/2010, p. 159). The development of language is decisively linked with the development of autobiographical memory and identity, of which the cognitive self is considered a necessary precursor but not a sufficient factor.

Markowitsch and Welzer also assert that language not only translates inner experience to

the world but also provides the crucial ability of children to time travel in their

imaginations, bringing about a new autobiographical structure for the self. Research

shows that

children first develop a very general, fact-oriented memory, and only after the third year of life do they develop conscious representational forms that subsequently make it possible for them both to integrate the events they have experienced into their own subjective world and to have a memory differentiated according to time, contents and emotions. (Markowitsch & Welzer, 2005/2010, p. 60)

In the memory talk between parents and children aged 2 to 3 years old, the development of autobiographical memory takes place as children relive events from their past.

The emerging ability of speech alone is not sufficient for autobiographical memory to develop; of essential importance is also the ability to distinguish between distinct zones of the past, present and future: between a before, a now and a later. Autobiographical memory presupposes an awareness of time, and for the origin of such a concept it is necessary that memories have a reference to the individual person. (Markowitsch & Welzer, 2005/2010, p. 170) 219

The ability to recognize one's self—a cognitive self—is necessary for autobiographical memory to develop, but it does not do so until that self is felt as existing within a time frame (p. 170). At the age of 3 to 3 , children are able to tell more or less coherent stories with assistance. When children start to experience emotions in relation to another person or event, their memories begin to encode with an emotional index: a mark of autobiographical memory. With autobiographical memory, the child's world expands because there is now an inherent and cohesive sense of a unique self that remains constant through the fluctuations and introduction of new persons and experiences. This continuity brings confidence and stability. Adulthood is shown to be continuously adaptable, as is childhood, in relation to memory. "A constant readjustment, a recalibration within the autobiographical subject" occurs within the adult, "whose memory then rewrites its own life history according to the current demands placed on the person" (Markowitsch & Welzer, 2005/2010, pp. 194-195).

From a brain perspective, then, what is autobiographical memory? "The important prerequisite for autobiographical memories is the simultaneous confluence of cognition and emotion" (Markowitsch & Welzer, 2005/2010, p. 106). In the brain, this convergence of affect and mentality is the synaptic result of learning and functional

relationships between regions that correlate with the self, personality attributes, self- reflective, autonoetic awareness, emotional valence, time, and subjective context. Autobiographical memory is distinctly human and the building block of identity.

Memory and identity are mediating functions between inner and outer realities. Imagination and Memory It is not only neuroscience that tells us memory is an act of reconstruction not restitution. "Memory and imagination have long been regarded as psychical partners, as 220 mates of the mind" (Casey, 2003, p. 65). Memories are not literal recordings of experience.

We extract key elements from our experiences and store them. We then recreate or reconstruct our experiences rather than retrieve copies of them. Sometimes, in the process of reconstructing we add on feelings, beliefs, or even knowledge we obtained after the experience. (Schacter, 2001, p. 9)

Memory is encoded and indexed emotionally and the retrieval, as well, is cued to the subjective state. Recall the discussion earlier of the frontal lobe filing clerk and the hippocampal filing cabinet. The subjective emotional state colors not only the memories one tends to look for and retrieve but can also change the nature of memory, as in the phenomenon of generalized memories in depression. Where encoding is primarily done by the left prefrontal cortex—language (left) and attention (frontal)—retrieval is processed primarily through the right prefrontal hemisphere concerned more with emotional states (Markowitsch & Welzer, 2005/2010, p. 90). As we know, subjective states are mercurial; not only do our moods change from day to day or within the hours of a day, but who we are changes over time through our experiences, leading to different analyses and interpretations of past events. This subjective retrieval leads to reconstructions of memories that subtly change over time as emotional interpretations and states change as we mature. Memory is a "reconstruction of facts and experiences on the basis of the way they were stored, not as they actually occurred. And it's a reconstruction by a brain that is different from the one that formed the memory" (LeDoux, 2002, p. 97). Recall that memory is imprinted in synaptic connections; when an element of the original stimulus recurs, the brain reinstates the original synaptic-cortical pattern. "Each reinstatement changes cortical synapses a little ... Old memories are the result of accumulations of synaptic changes in the cortex as a

result of multiple reinstatements of the memory" (LeDoux, 2002, p. 107). Can these synaptic shifts be the neuroanatomy of lies? "The very condition for writing history ... is to lie. For given that the past qua past only exists now, in present consciousness, what 221 other conclusion could possibly be drawn?" (Freeman, 1993, p. 85) When the events we remember were actually happening they did not have the meaning assigned in reflection, when tucked into a narrative. The past is always a re-fabrication, an interpretation. The lie is that what we are interpreting is the past; what we tell about the past is about who we are in the present. The attributes of memory Daniel Schacter details in The Seven Sins of Memory are transcience, absent-mindedness, blocking, misattribution, suggestibility, bias, and persistence. The first three are sins of omission, but "the next four... are all sins of commission: some form of memory is present, but it is either incorrect or unwanted" (2001, p. 5). It is these sins of commission that demonstrate the mediation of experience and imagination in autobiographical memory. Misattribution. Because memories, daydreams, night dreams, and reveries all exist in the imagination, it is common for pieces of one to drift into the realm of another. "When we mistake a dream or a fantasy for an actual event in the past, we are committing a classic misattribution error with the potential to change how we view ourselves and our relationships with others (Jacob, Kelley & Dywan, 1989; Johnson, Hashtroudi & Lindsay, 1993; Schacter, 2001)" (Schacter et al., 2003, p. 230). This is known as source confusion; these misattributions are sometimes a binding failure: the failure of specifics about the memory to bind to the correct time or place. Schacter explains, "Binding failures may also contribute to memory confusions between events we actually experience and those we only think about or imagine" (2001, p. 94). A lack of actual memory can lead to a distorted and even false self. H.W. had an aneurysm in the frontal lobes causing amnesia for past experiences. "More interestingly, however, H.W. filled in the gaps in his memory by confabulating" (Schacter et al., 2003, p. 230). This specifically points to the left hemisphere interpreter theorized by Gazzaniga. Misattribution in memory may also be related to the "gist" nature of memory to

remember the theme and not all the details. 222

Suggestibility. On October 4, 1992, a cargo plane crashed into an eleven-story apartment building in Amsterdam, killing forty-three people, including the four crew members.

Ten months later, a group of Dutch psychologists probed what members of their university communities remembered about the crash. The researchers asked a simple question: "Did you see the television film of the moment the plane hit the apartment building?" Fifty-five percent of respondents said "yes." In a follow-up study, two-thirds of the participants responded affirmatively. They also recalled details concerning the speed and angle of the plane as it hit the building, whether it was on fire prior to impact, and what happened to the body of the plane right after the collision. These findings are remarkable because there was no television film of the moment when the plane actually crashed. (Schacter, 2001, p. 112) This demonstrates suggestibility; imagination fills in the gaps of memory the way water fills crevices in a riverbed. This is especially instigated if we literally witness something similar, such as many Dutch people who likely watched hours of film after the crash and had imaginative conversations about the actual crash itself. "Suggestibility in memory refers to an individual's tendency to incorporate misleading information from external sources—other people, written materials or pictures, even the media—into personal recollections" (Schacter, 2001, p. 113), whereas misattribution occurs without

overt suggestions. Misattribution is more of a binding problem. Yet suggestibility is not constrained to incorporating information from one context to another, it also imaginatively and freely fabricates. In the Dutch research example, people did not incorporate images of the plane crashing into the building from anywhere else—there were no images of that moment. Their imaginations filled in this moment with vivid details. In the indexing of memory, our brains experience considerable overlap and an amalgamation of memory occurs, creating general memory structures. How many of our 223 memories are the filling in of what we believed specifically happened from a retrieved memory gist? We rely on emotional conviction for memory's validity, but this is a tenuous relationship, as demonstrated in eyewitness evidence in trials. In an experiment to test suggestibility, eyewitness testimony, and feelings of confidence, researchers subjects viewed a security video of man entering a Target store and were then told that moments following the scene they witnessed of his entering the store, the man murdered a security guard. Research participants were then shown a series of photos and asked to identify the murderer, but unknown to them the man in the video was not in any of the photos they received. A group of participants received positive feedback from the researchers when they chose a photo, another group received no feedback at all, and another group received disconfirming feedback. All of the subjects were asked to rate how well they were able to view the suspect, and their certainty, clarity, and other features of their memories. "Compared with those who received disconfirming or no feedback, people who received confirming feedback claimed higher confidence and trust in their memories, a better view and clearer recollection of the gunman, and heightened recall of facial details" (Schacter, 2001, p. 117). Researchers at Williams College asked a group of subjects seated at computers to type in a series of spoken letters; some were instructed to type quickly, some leisurely.

All of the subjects had been instructed not to press the ALT key, as this would result in crashing the system. None of them hit the ALT key, but a researcher falsely accused them of doing so. Half of the group had a witness, who was really a part of the research team, claim to see the key being hit; there was no witness for the other half. Almost 70% of the entire group eventually signed a confession that they hit the ALT key and 35% of the group that had the witness and were instructed to type fast also had detailed memories of how they made the error (Schacter, 2001, p. 122). 224

In another study, researchers asked participants to rate their confidence about whether various experiences from childhood had or had not happened to them. One group of subjects then participated in a supposedly unrelated task of having a clinical psychologist interpret their dreams. The psychologist suggested that their dreams indicated repressed memories of upsetting experiences, such as being abandoned by parents, which the subjects had indicated confidently had not happened to them. Two weeks later, the entire study group was asked again to indicate their confidence that various experiences had or had not happened to them. The majority of the dream interpretation group now claimed to remember one or more of the experiences suggested in the dream interpretations to have happened to them; this change was not found at all in the control group, who did not receive interpretation of their dreams (Schacter, 2001, p.

126).

Suggestibility studies indicate the role of expectations and authority in producing false memories, significant reasons why it is an ethical issue for psychotherapists of all modalities to be educated on matters of the mind and memory. Elizabeth Loftus, a leading memory researcher at the University of California Irvine, who has consulted on many criminal and sexual abuse trials that used recovered, repressed memory as evidence, conducted the well-known "Lost in a Mall" experiment in which subjects were told that a trusted family member had told them about a time in their youth that they got lost in a mall and had a frightening experience. Over a series of three interviews with the subjects, a full 25% of them came to believe and remember being lost in the mall. Sabbagh, among other researchers concludes, that "if a psychotherapist believes ... that psychological symptoms, dream images, confused emotions, are the signs of unremembered child abuse, she may convey this to the client as a truth" (2009, p. 101- 102). Schacter notes that correlations do not prove causation: we do not know to what extent early trauma aids in creating a tendency towards false memory or if a tendency towards false memory creates early trauma (2001, p. 130). 225

Are some personalities more suggestible than others? One study implicates a talent for visual imagery as a culprit in an individual's susceptibility to suggestibility. Those in a suggestibility study who produced false memories "scored higher on scales that measure vividness of visual imagery than did individuals whose recollections were more accurate" (Schacter, 2001, p .125). These results make sense in that vividness of imagery is a common marker for veracity of memory. Further, others have found that individuals with high scores in self-reported qualities towards lapses in attention and memory are more likely to create false memories in studies than those who self-report low scores on the same measures (p. 129). Suggestibility is one of the flaws of memory in persons across the spectrum of normal or traumatized, yet an artistic, daydreaming, creative personality is clearly implicated as being more suggestible and experiencing more misattribution and confabulation than others, demonstrating the link between psyche and memory. A fascinating inquiry into memory and imagination would be to test the opposite; that is, if strong emotion or suggestibility can persuade one that a false memory is true, can it also convince that a true memory is false? Bias. The need for self-enhancement—egocentric bias—and the need for congruence—consistency bias, lead to imaginative distortions of bias in memory.

Egocentric biases in memory reflect the important role that 'the self plays in organizing and regulating mental life .... Numerous experiments have shown that when we encode new information by relating it to the self, subsequent memory for that information improves compared to other types of encoding. (Schacter, 2001, p. 150) Consistency and change biases occur when we reconstruct our past to be falsely similar or different from our present to affirm a presently held image of our present life. We assume consistency with the past when it doesn't stand out that we were different in the past. Change bias is invoked when we believe we should have changed; this leads to a tendency to see our past selves as more different to our present self than we actually were in the past. Both of these biases are used to make us feel more comfortable with 226 who we presently are by bringing about stability through consistency or change through difference. An example of consistency bias is demonstrated in the research of Daniel Offer of Northwestern University, who conducted an experiment in which 67 men in their 40s were asked questions about how they felt or believed in high school about various topics, such as whether their parents encouraged them in sports or whether religion was helpful. These same adult men had been asked these same questions when they were in high school, and their answers from each time period were contrasted with one another.

The men's memories of their adolescent lives bore little relationship to what they had reported as high school freshman. Fewer than 40 percent of the men recalled parental encouragement to be active in sports; some 60 percent had reported such encouragement as adolescents. Barely one- quarter recalled that religion was helpful, but nearly 70 percent had said that it was when they were adolescents. And though only one-third of the adults recalled receiving physical punishment decades earlier, as adolescents nearly 90 percent had answered the question affirmatively. (Schacter, 2001, p. 3) In another example, married women were assessed as to their feelings about their marriage at 1,10, and 20 years. Their 10-year assessments of their initial feelings towards their marriage were worse than they actually indicated that they felt in the beginning of their marriages. At the 10-year assessment, the women tended towards a change bias because they wanted to feel that their present feelings of dissatisfaction were better than they used to feel. At the 20-year assessment, the women demonstrated a consistency bias and assumed they felt similar towards their marriages at 10 years as they did at 20 years, but in actuality they felt more negative about their marriages at 10 years than they did at 20 years (Schacter, 2001, p. 143). The happier the women were at 20 years the more they exhibited consistency bias towards their 10 year assessments.

Hindsight bias occurs when we filter memories through present knowledge. For example, feeling sure before an election or sports tournament who will win, and when it turns out differently, feeling that we "knew all along" it would happen that way. 227

"Hindsight bias ... is ubiquitous: people seem almost driven to reconstruct the past to fit what they know in the present" (Schacter, 2001, p. 147). Bias distortions in memory demonstrate the role of the self-image in organizing and utilizing memory. And it points out that a primary motivator of our cognitive tricks is the desire to avoid cognitive dissonance: the experience of conflicting thoughts and emotions in consciousness. Neither of these drives is to know or represent reality accurately but is determined by the subjective needs of the self, which employs the imagination to those ends. "The self s preeminent role in encoding and retrieval, combined with a powerful tendency for people to view themselves positively, creates fertile ground for memory biases that allow people to remember past experiences in a self-enhancing light" (Schacter, 2001, p. 151). Bias in particular points out the relationship of the ego to memory; indeed, memory is a building block of identity, while at the same time the ego exerts a top-down influence on the organization, retrieval, and presentation of memory. Clearly, the ego plays a primary role in the imaginative distortions of memory, pointing to the reality of the self inserting a fissure in memory. Memory's Cleave Researchers, philosophers, and poets have long known that memory serves two masters. Richard Kearney wonders, "how does memory . .. negotiate a passage between its opposing fidelities to imagination and reality?" (2003, p. 51) These opposing fidelities are memory's cleave, and the self is an important negotiating factor.

In a workshop on memory as part of a larger conference on Alzheimer's disease, Boston University cognitive neuroscientist Andrew Budson, in response to the dismay of participants that memory was not a reliable recording of experience, asserted that memory did not evolve to reflect literal experience; it evolved as a highly successful adaptation ensuring survival (Budson, 2010). In response to survival needs, memory developed as a function of correspondence with reality. Correspondence is memory's physiological function. With the capacity for symbolic thinking, and as the frontal lobes 228 and autonoetic consciousness developed within imagination, however, another need of memory evolved: the need for self-coherence. British psychologist and autobiographical memory researcher Martin Conway, in his theories of the self-memory system (SMS), explains that "one of the fundamental conceptual issues in research into human memory is where (episodic) memories are best thought of in terms of 'coherence' or 'correspondence'" (Conway, Singer, & Tagini, 2004, p. 495). In the SMS model, "both correspondence and coherence are equally important, but for different reasons" (p. 496).

We assert that autobiographical memory emerges from the intersection of two competing demands—the need to encode an experience-near record of ongoing goal activity and the simultaneous need to maintain a coherent and stable record of the self s interaction with the world that extends beyond the present moment. The first of these demands we call adaptive correspondence and the second, self-coherence. (Conway et al., 2004, p. 492) Correspondence is the evolutionary need for memory to correspond to experience in order to survive. It is thought that autobiographical memory's conceptualization of the gist of experiences is one way that the mind resolves the overload problem of encoding every experience; the generalized meaning of a group or set of memories is retained rather than specific details. This abstraction is not inferring what actually took place, but reflects a correspondence of the essential meaning of the memories from experience (Conway, 2005, p. 596). Connecting back to Knox's argument that image schemas are archetypes-as-such, and my counter-argument that image schemas and archetypes are qualitatively different, as are perceptual and autobiographical memory, I further propose that image schemas are appropriated by correspondence needs. Image schemas are necessary for organismic adaptation and survival in their accurate reflection of the physical world, while archetypes are represented in coherence needs and are necessary to comprehend the meaning of the self. 229

Coherence is a magnetic force in memory, present at encoding stages and re- encoding on retrievals, that acts to shape memories to support current goals, self- concepts, and images of the self. Core aspects of the self are supported by memories of specific experiences (Conway, 2005, p. 595).

Indeed Rapaport (1952/1961), in a classic review of the relation of emotion to memory, commented that memory should be conceived of "not as an ability to revive accurately impressions once obtained, but as the integration of impressions into the whole personality and their revival according to the needs of the whole personality" (pp. 112-113). (Conway, 2005, p. 595)

I propose that the evolutionary development of human identity in self-image and life story not only came about with the historical emergence of symbolic thinking but was an integral part of developing the imagination as well in the increasingly competing needs for correspondence and coherence. In this fateful historical trajectory, the self s growing need for coherence split memory between experience and psyche. As Slattery understands metaphors, I understand memory: "Metaphors ... are bridges between psyche-soma energy fields" (2010, p. 449). The synaptic net of memory provides the roots of identity in imagination. Employing metaphor, image, and story, memory fills in the gaps of consciousness and identity through misattribution, suggestibility, bias, and straight out confabulation. "A metaphor is, as Joseph Campbell suggests, a transport vehicle—it allows movement from one reality field to another, to cross over, to transgress, and to violate boundaries in order to open up a new energy field of understanding" (Slattery, 2010, pp. 441-442). In the self s striving for a sense of cohesion, the lacunas of memory are filled with metaphors to explain the naked emotions dwelling there. Memory's cleave marks the boundary of the psyche as it lifts off from its physiological beginnings, when memory turns into metaphors. 230

Chapter 10 Psyche's Remainder

Whereas memory is a mediating function between the brain, experience, and imagination, identity, able to claim pedigree in both physiology and psyche, is more squarely an object of the imagination. In fact, identity can be understood as the aesthetic aspect of the self. However, we need to guard against charges of imaginary as we recognize the aesthetic and interpretive function of identity.

To the extent that one's aim is in fact an enlarged understanding of self, it is ipso facto the case that this cannot possibly be accomplished by recounting one's previous experience 'as it was'. What this means, of course, is that life historical knowledge, in so far as it is predicated on understanding rather than the retrieval of isolated facts, should never— indeed, can never—be judged according to its 'correspondence' with what was. (Freeman, 1993, p. 30) When considering the imaginative element of memory, it must be accepted that this creative and interpretive aspect to the historical truth of memory, and the self it builds, is reality, not an illusive telling of reality. In regarding interpretation as imaginary and illusive "we cut ourselves off from the possibility of thinking about historical truth itself in a deeper and more comprehensive way than is often allowed" (Freeman, 1993, p. 33).

Self-Memory System (SMS) In Conway's theory of the SMS, the self is a cognitive structure that organizes, interprets, and uses memory exerting a top-down influence through goal seeking and self- coherence needs. In this context, much of memory's imaginative nature is due to the influence of the self. "Indeed, it has often been observed and long been known that memories may be altered, distorted, even fabricated, to support current aspects of the self' (Conway, 2005, p. 595). Cognitive structures of the self exist independently of memory but memories are activated to support and ground various self-concepts. Self- 231 schemas "are drawn largely from the influences of familial and peer socialization, schooling, and religion, as well as the stories, fairy-tales, myths, and media influences that are constitutive of an individual's particular culture (Bruner, 1990; Pasupathi, 2001; Sjwedeer & Bourne, 1984)" (Conway, 2005, p. 597). Conway's work involves trauma and accident survivors as well as individuals with brain damage. His findings are similar to those of others studying trauma and brain damage but includes the role of identity in the organization and interpretation of memory, a factor lacking in other areas of memory research. "According to the present view of autobiographical memory the SMS operates to protect itself from change (to maintain coherence)" (2005, p. 598). One example is of a man and professional driver who was in a head-on collision as a back-seat passenger. This man's memory led him to believe that just before the moment of impact he saw what was coming, giving him time to intervene, but he did not, leaving him with overwhelming guilt. As the man worked through his traumatic memories and feelings in therapy, he discovered that in fact he did not see the accident coming before impact; therefore, he could not have intervened. In Conway's interpretation, this man's SMS chose to distort memory and bear false guilt rather than confront his fear of lack of control in life in general, and in his career choice as a professional driver in particular; hence the accident, an uncontrollable event, is directly tied into this fear of the self whose coherence depends in part on feeling in control of events (p. 598).

In a second example, an eyewitness of the moment of impact in the World Trade Center Towers on 9/11 in New York City had an intrusive traumatic memory of observing the impact of the plane into the Towers from above with no sensory data. Her

therapy involved actively remembering and constructing a memory from the actual perspective she had on the street; as she did this the full sensory memory of sounds, people's cries, and her own difficult emotions of fear and anger came up. From an SMS

perspective, this woman's SMS chose to fabricate a false intrusive memory of being 232 symbolically above the affective reality of the experience than confront her feelings from the perspective of the actual experience (Conway, 2005, p. 598). This is quite a different quality of fabrication and confabulation in memory than that discussed by Schacter and other memory researchers; the SMS theory brings in an intention, albeit unconscious, of the ego to distort memory to protect itself from change or threats to the coherence of the self-image. And it leads to another development, one which I refer to as the "wrap-around effect" of memory's imagination. Essentially, this is the dynamic of memory, in its imagistic and affective malleability, to mold itself around strong and unconscious emotions, convictions, and intentions. In this way, memory is metaphorically true even if literally false. An example of this wrap-around process is given by Conway in his work with a woman who suffered extensive right-hemisphere brain lesions which led to paranoia, anger, physical disabilities such as being unable to walk, anosognia for her condition (unable to recognize her disabilities), distorted memory, and confabulations. This woman consistently and persistently claimed memories of being moved from room to room at night and having arguments with hospital staff. She also claimed to walk and to visit her home in Scotland, which was several hundred miles from the hospital. As is common with frontal lobe lesions, this woman most likely had disrupted sleep, waking in the night and being confused about where she was; this, coupled with intense paranoia, led her SMS to confabulate and even generate false memories of being moved and having fights with others. It is theorized that false memories will be generated to validate strong emotions in order to maintain coherence (Conway, 2005, p. 599).

This is seen strikingly in some patients with psychological illnesses and in other patients with brain damage. It may, however, be a general feature of all autobiographical remembering and, perhaps, one of the reasons that memory has been found to be so open to manipulations that create false memories or which distort features of existing memories (see Conway, 1997a, 1997b; Loftus & Ketcham, 1994; Schacter,1997). (Conway, 2005, p. 600) 233

Considering the imaginative malleability of memory and its relationship to the conscious and unconscious aspects of the ego, I now will imagine the process of identity from the inside out. Nodal Points Memory, whether accurate in its correspondence to reality or in its more imaginative and metaphoric aspect, is caught by and collects around strong, fixed points in subjectivity. What are these nodal points of identity? First is temperament, our genetically determined neurobiological sensitivities to our environment, internal and external, that develop into characteristic predispositions. Temperament is impossibly complicated; many factors combine to produce a given predisposition and the research of Kagan and Snidman, discussed earlier, measured just one factor: amygdalar excitability. While temperament can be understood as what is traditionally referred to as "character," and to Jung's typologies, it is not synonymous with personality nor is it deterministic. As Kagan writes, "no temperament is the foundation of only one personality type" (2010, p. 11) but rather each temperament "bias makes it relatively easy or relatively difficult to acquire one family of behaviors, emotions, and beliefs rather than another" (p. 11). This is analogous to clusters or families of genes that code for specific attributes existing beside or clustered with genes that code for completely different things but the attributes tend to express together. An example from Kagan and Snidman's research was the observation

that high-reactive children were more likely to be of slender build with a narrow face and blue eyes; low-reactive children were more likely to be taller, heavier, and brown-eyed. A likely reason for this is that the genes that contribute to the threshold of amygdalar reactivity influence many traits including body size and eye color. (2004, p. 21)

In a similar relationship, personality attributes tend to cluster around temperamental qualities although harsh or extreme conditioning experiences can alter our proclivities. 234

Perhaps a better metaphor for temperament is a particular block of stone in a sculptor's studio. The hardness, color, and size of the stone restrict the variety of forms the sculptor might create, while leaving the artist considerable freedom to produce a large number of aesthetic products from a particular slab of marble. (Kagan, 2010, p. 11) As Jung noted, conditioning that leads one to betray or falsely distort type can render

pathology, while returning to one's authentic or natural disposition leads to health and vitality. "As a rule, whenever such a falsification of type takes place as a result of parental influence, the individual becomes neurotic later, and can be cured only by developing the attitude consonant with his nature" (1921/1971b, p. 332). As discussed in earlier chapters, one's typology can lead to general and implicit interpretations of one's self, such as introverts' belief that they are different than most others or something is innately wrong with them, especially if they are raised in an extraverted culture or conditioned to acquire extraverted qualities. Or perhaps an assertive, extraverted, loud girl is raised in a home or culture that values quiet, supportive, mild-mannered women. One does not need to experience harsh conditioning to feel a mismatch between temperament and environment. It is at these junctures, where nature meets nurture, that our wounds, our self-definitions, and our memories cling, and where the story of our identity begins. However, whether one's temperamental bias was well matched with conditioning circumstances or not, the hypothesis developed here is that the ancestral legacy coded in our genes and expressed in our temperament offers neurobiological nodal points in subjectivity around which complexes, as patterns of emotions, experiences, interpretations, and memories, congregate. Let us imagine the journey to identity from body to psyche using Kagan and Snidman's research with high-reactive infants and children. Although his studies and these examples refer specifically to the origin of anxiety disorders, it demonstrates how we all interpret automatic, internal somatic-affective sensations.

A child inherits a unique neurochemical profile that lowers the threshold of excitability in the amygdala and its projection to the orbitoprefrontal cortex (conscious 235 reflection and inhibition). When the amygdala is activated, it leads to repetitive bodily sensations and conscious feelings from which, in conjunction with the context of relationship and circumstances, interpretations are consistently assigned. "Many thoughts can become conditioned stimuli for a biological reaction, including abandonment, danger, task failure, violation of a moral standard, peer teasing, rejection, criticism, a disadvantaged status, lack of money, or insufficient time to accomplish a required task" (Kagan & Snidman, 2004, p. 100). The bodily sensations are determined by innate neurobiological structure and chemistry but the interpretations are personally felt and shaped by life experiences, especially repetitive experiences (pp. 102-103). Changes in body sites at times produce changes in the conscious feeling state or tone. "When that change is subtle, mildly unpleasant, and ambiguous in origin, the person might articulate his feeling as shame, guilt, regret, illness, fatigue, or, perhaps, possession by the devil" (p. 219). Interpretations made happen in a context not only of the larger identity forming, but including the family myth and cultural, religious, historical context as well. Some individuals who have exceptionally low thresholds of excitability to the amygdala will experience dysphoric moods more often and more intensely. A more excitable amygdala and responsive sympathetic nervous system leads to greater cortical

arousal to sensation. Hence, high-reactives experience shifts in bodily feeling states more readily and may have "more salient evocations of an emotion, that, in our culture, invites an interpretation of a personal flaw" (Kagan & Snidman, 2004, p. 219). Neurobiological nodal points are repetitive somatic-affective experiences that, coupled with characteristic

typological self-interpretations and significant relationship and circumstantial themes,

become the nucleus of psychic nodal points: complexes. Typological or temperamental nodal points in our deeply subjective experience are

the collective stones in a riverbed that determine patterns in the current and that affect

surface ripples of the water while remaining hidden underneath. Temperament is not 236 only our ancestral legacy, but it involves those regions of the brain that respond subjectively to experience, yet are outside of the boundaries of the ego, though they are eventually woven into the ego structure. Included in this stream are complexes and internal working models (IWMs) of the personal unconscious. Although Conway's work addresses a lack in memory research which typically leaves out consideration of the self s relationship to memory, his research itself lacks inclusion of unconscious dynamics and structures. This is the contribution of a depth psychological perspective.

A Congregation The complex is a congregation, a holy mess of various unconscious psychic structures held together by a strong affective theme orbiting a significant relationship— with an individual, a collective, a circumstance, or a topic (e.g., father complex, family complex, writing complex, or money complex). A complex can, and often does, involve more than one relationship and topic as well. The psychic structures that compose a complex are cognitive schemas, internal working models (IWMs), and memory, which generate metaphors, images, myths, fantasies. From this psychic soup emerge archetypes as distilled essential meaning resonating in a living, transforming symbol. Our minds rely on mental schemas and IWMs, as well as memory, to organize information, bringing meaning and cohesion to our experiences and to determine decisions within current needs. The cognitive structure of the self or ego directs attention, retrieval, and inhibition of memory. According to scholar F. C. Bartlett, the imaginative nature of memory and the directing, often unconscious, intentions of the self, lead to "rationalization, condensation, very often in a considerable rearrangement of temporal relations, in invention and in general in an exercise of constructive imagination to serve whatever are the operating interests at the time" (quoted in Sabbagh, 2009, pp.

66-67). Memory is a central component of schemas, IWMs, and complexes and a building block of identity. In carrying out correspondence functions, memory is introjective, imprinting reality in learned expectations, behaviors, and responses that 237 ensure survival. In its coherence functions, memory becomes projective and malleable, wrapping in imagistic resonance around intentions, desires, fears, and driving affects, conscious and unconscious, of the self. In this way, the self needs memory and

imagination both to survive and to become. Although there are similarities between IWMs and complexes, they are distinctly different constructs of the unconscious. In short, IWMs are generalized interpretations and dynamics of significant relationships, life situations, and self-other definitions. Complexes, beings more fully of the subjective psyche, are stories, dissociated bundles of associations around a wound that can be with a significant other or a quality of one's self or a life experience.

IWMs are intimately related to, even constructed through, early attachment relationships with significant caretakers. "The critical point of attachment theory is that cumulative experiences are internalized to form unconscious 'internal working models' which guide expectations and perceptions, so serving as a template for future relationships" (Knox, 2003, p. 78). Knox continues:

Internal working models contain complex representational information about patterns of relationship, particularly of self in relation to key attachment figures .... These internal working models influence a person's perceptions of, and attitudes and behavior towards, all subsequent emotionally important relationships, but are not themselves accessible to conscious awareness, (pp. 79-80)

Knox, like other theorists, connects IWMs with implicit memory, considering IWMs a "particular manifestation" of implicit memory (p. 80). Like implicit memory, IWMs contain generalized, abstract representations of memory, not the specific memories themselves. In comparison, complexes contain the specific memories, myths, images, and metaphors of the IWMs that cross through them. Knox's theory connects cognitive structures with archetypal structures—as discussed earlier, she considers the image schema the archetype-as-such—and she links 238

the IWM with the core meaning of the complex. Like a series of legos, the IWM is the personalized schema as the complex is the personalized archetype; the IWM is the core meaning of the complex in a similar fashion as the image schema is the implicit imprint

of the archetypal image. This explanation is logically pleasing, but I don't think the unconscious operates in such a linear manner. Through the repetitive process of storing similar experiences in implicit memory, "core meanings emerge, through the process of the internalization of experience and its subsequent organization into generalized patterns" (Knox, 2003, p. 87). This, Knox claims, is the process that generates essential meaning in the unconscious "rather than through the activation of some innate predetermined pattern of meaning" as some traditional definitions of archetypes imply (p. 87). I agree with the process of essential meaning being generated from repetitive experiences; however, I think there are likely many more factors and structures involved than the simple correspondence between schemas and IWMs on the one hand, and complexes and archetypes on the other.

A significant difference between IWMs and complexes is their form of unconsciousness: complexes are dissociated whereas IWMs are implicit. The latter are generalized structures of relationship dynamics where complexes are stories and subpersonalities. Complexes are "splinter psyches" and the

aetiology of their origin is frequently a so-called trauma, an emotional shock or some such thing, that splits off a bit of the psyche. Certainly one of the commonest causes is a moral conflict, which ultimately derives from the apparent impossibility of affirming the whole of one's nature. (Jung, 1948/1969c, p. 98)

Where the IWM represents the dynamics in a significant relationship, which may be maladaptive, the complex is more directly tied into one's nature and the wounds received from experience. The dissociation of complexes indicates a psychic and emotional wound that as

the ego evades becomes the magnetic force of the complex. "Apart from theories, 239 experience shows us that complexes always contain something like a conflict—they are either the cause or the effect of a conflict" (Jung, 1933, p. 79). Complexes are both causes and effects of conflicts. Complexes are "vulnerable points" (p. 79); they are wounds that "always contain memories, wishes, fears, duties, needs, or views, with which we have never really come to terms" (p. 79). Complexes arise "from the clash between a requirement of adaptation and the individual's constitutional inability to meet the challenge" (p. 80); complexes personally embody memory. IWMs emerge as an organizing principle; complexes converge around a story to be told. In agreement with Knox, I do see a trajectory of development in the personal unconscious from a congregation of various structures and objects—schemas, IWMs, memory, metaphor, images, interpretations, complexes—to the emergence of core or

essential meanings in the archetypes. The one difference, and again, it is small but significant, is that I do not regard any of these pre-existing phenomena as an archetype- as-such. Further, the complex is built from all of the unconscious structures—IWMs, schemas, memories—not in their entirety, but parts of all of them are caught in the magnetic, affective field. Finally, a major distinction in my theory is that the nucleus of the complex is a neurobiological nodal point represented in temperament and typology. Slattery describes Jung's understanding of the complex as having two components: "(/') a factor determined by experience and causally related to the environment (exterior); and (//) a factor innate in the individual's character and determined by his disposition (interior)" (2010, p. 443). Jung observed the physiological, temperamental predisposition at the heart of complexes, seeing that while they can take on an infinite variety of particular form, closer attention reveals primary, typical patterns. These patterns, Jung asserts, derive from the early experiences of childhood; since the experiences of any child can vary greatly, it is innate disposition which the basic patterns of complexes congregate around. "This must necessarily be so, because the individual disposition is already a factor in childhood; it is innate, and not acquired in the course of 240

life" (Jung, 1933, p. 80). This reference to innate disposition is, of course, the

neurobiological profile and temperamental nodal point, which leads Jung, and me, to conclude that "complexes are therefore, in this sense, focal or nodal points of psychic life which we would not wish to do without" (p. 79). The temperamental navel gathers around itself psychic nodal points. Archetypes Revisited Jung first discovered complexes in the word association test and then noticed that they represented a limited number of themes. These affectively charged themes, he found, are represented by a primordial image which Jung named the archetypes. He considered the archetype to be the imagistic, symbol core of the complex, the psychoid pressure that generated the complex from the collective unconscious. Metaphorically, we can understand Jung's view of the psyche's structural process as similar to the earth, with archetypes being tectonic plates deep within that push from the pressure of molten lava creating a landscape of mountains, valleys, rivers, and oceans. I propose a different origin of complexes and archetypes, one that reverses their order. In his early work with complexes and the word association test, Jung concluded that the complex is composed of a powerful, affectively charged image with an inner coherence and relative autonomy (Jung, 1948/1969c, pp. 95-98). This image, discovered secondarily, was eventually considered a priori to the complex and an archetypal core from the collective unconscious. "He [Jung] said that the complex is 'embedded' in the material of the personal unconscious, but that its 'nucleus' consists of an archetypal core" (Knox, 2003, p. 95). This is where my theory parts from Jung. As stated above, the nucleus of a complex is the temperamental nodal point. The archetypes then emerge from complexes as the distilled essences of repetitive, personally meaningful experiences. The archetypes that emerge are the symbolic, core meanings of our typical, affective human situations and relationships. As Saunders and Skar (2001) 241 note, the system they emerge from is complex and a certain range of archetypes emerge from a repetitive range of experiences. Like autobiographical memory, archetypes are a bridge from the brain and body to the imagination and it is this propertythat gives archetypes the subjective feeling of being pre-existent forms. They are generated from deep within our most personal experiences and participate in the organization of future experience. However, I propose that archetypes, like image schemas, are not a priori to particular experiences. We first have personally charged, important, and repetitive experiences that collect around temperamental, then psychic, nodal points which then give birth to archetypes. It is the emergence from our neurobiology, that area of the spectrum of the self that lies outside ego boundaries and is experienced as the collective unconscious, that gives archetypes their numinous, not-me, wholly Other qualities.

It was not difficult to see that while complexes owe their relative autonomy to their emotional nature, their expression is always dependent on a network of associations grouped round a center charged with affect. The central emotion generally proved to be individually acquired, and therefore an exclusively personal matter. (Jung, 1959, p. ix) It is this personally acquired affective theme of the complex that both ties together all of the parts of psychic structures within it, and, is the primary emotional tone of the archetype. My point of departure with Jungian theory is the order of emergence of complexes and archetypes. Knox extrapolates a theory of image schemas as "evolutionarily derived value systems that arise directly out of... [a] model of neural Darwinism—they match the functioning of the brain" (2003, p. 100). She continues that "schemata are emergent properties of the nervous system and are prototypes which aggregate repeated patterns of lived experience" (p. 100). In the idea of schemata as prototype, correlated with archetype-as-such, Knox seems to view the schemata as innate, contentless structures that exist prior to the particular lived experiences they arrange into 242

patterns. I am in agreement that image schemas are emergent mental properties of the brain but in the way that typological characteristics are emergent properties of the brain in the subjective psyche. Recalling Hogenson's (2009) discussion of archetypes as requiring a certain environmental context in order to be provoked in being—the ant would not onotologically be the ant without the leaf, cutting—I maintain that the brain and body hold the potential for certain functions and patterns that do not exist until the particular experiences cumulate and in this cumulative pressure bring about the underlying order. Slattery writes that "psyche is a pattern-making, pattern-discovering quality of consciousness, wherein the patterns expose the imprint of the archetypes" (2010, p. 447). I would add that the patterns of psyche also initially generate the imprint of the archetypes. A tenet of Jungian theory is the assumption that universal and general structures pre-exist the particular, and while in some cases this is true—instincts precede consciousness—it is not always true. I think when we cross the line to psyche and consciousness, the rules change. As mentioned, Jung first discovered complexes in the word association test; then, in his study of complexes, he discovered what he called primordial images. Though he considered primordial image and archetype synonymous, he focused on the term archetype because primordial image led to confusion for others to interpret archetypes as

inherited images. It was after discovering the complex and its primordial image that Jung posited the concept of an underlying, invisible structure, the archetype-as-such (Jung, 1948/1969a, p. 133). Jung must have felt that was he was drilling down into the psyche, perhaps in a manner similar to his famous dream of the levels underneath his house through which he moved back through human history and finally came to bones buried in the earth "like the remains of a primitive culture" (1961, p. 158-9). This makes sense subjectively, but as with Knox's "lego" theory of psychic structures, it appears too logical, too ego-oriented, relying on the subjective felt sense of the ego. 243

Only when a complex's personal layer of content is made conscious and emotionally digested can one then wrestle with the deeper, universal issues of fate, a problem that "gives expression to a conflict that it has been incumbent on man to suffer and solve from time immemorial" (Jacobi, 1959, p. 26). In analytical psychology, the image of consciousness and the personal unconscious are layers over the archetypal and more general structures and content of mind. Consciousness, as a whole medium including unconsciousness, does not operate in this manner; it is unified and plastic. That is, learning in the present is imprinted within an existing matrix. Knowledge updates, overwrites, and becomes enmeshed with previous knowledge. The suffering of the personal material itself generates the archetype through psyche's creative process, distilling and refining through consciousness the essence and meaning of the experience. Suffering is the process of expanding consciousness; it is the imagination that processes the past—represented by the wound—and generates new insights, enhanced capacity, symbolic understandings, future possibilities. The general existential issues of fate are not deeper, under layers of the collective unconscious, but a more profound awareness, a deeper understanding of being a human being. One could argue that the proposition that neurobiological nodal points are the nucleus of the complex that then give rise to the archetypal image, is the brain structure, the instinctual component, and the inherited predisposition of the archetype-as-such that Jung referred to repeatedly in his work. My propositions are not novel; in 1959, Jacobi draws on the parallels with a theorist in animal psychology, K. Lorenz, who used the term innate schemata in 1935 to describe forms of innate reactions to certain stimuli and

situations. Lorenz felt these innate schemata were independent of experience and inherited potentialities for forms, not the images or contents themselves (Jacobi, 1959, p. 42). Scientists and astute observers of animal and human behavior cannot help but notice a general ground of order and structure to behavior, action, response, and thought. This has led many, including Jung, neuroscientists, and cognitive psychologists, to posit 244 content-less structures of the mind correlating to brain structure and development, inaccessible as themselves to consciousness, since consciousness only registers content, which are inherited with brain structure. The primary distinction in the theories of these different fields is an a priori existence of the structures to content.

I do believe that neurobiological nodal points as a collective core of the complex that generates archetypal material is what Jung observed and referred to as the brain structure's predisposition for order. However, employing a separate concept of archetype-as-such implies a direct causative relationship between physiology and archetypal image, as does Knox's theory of image schema. Archetypal images and experiences derive from a complex and unique constellation of experience with many various structures. Jung cautions us to remember that "the archetype does not proceed from physical facts but describes how the psyche experiences the physical fact" (1951/1959, p. 154). The term archetype-as-such lends to literalizing archetypal material, reducing it to physiology, which is as absurd as an author literalizing the characters of his novel. Characters in a story have roots in the actual life of the artist and others; they are powerful metaphors of real experiences and human realities with the potential to transform us. Characters and the story they embody are real forces and a part of reality. They are not literal or physical but describe the subjective experience of literal, physical reality. They are the symbolic, living, imaginative consequence of

unique experiences of life. "To define it from a functional point of view, we might say that the archetype as such is concentrated psychic energy, but that the symbol provides the mode of manifestation by which the archetype becomes discernible" (Jacobi, 1959, p. 75). This is a tautological argument to posit that the secondary manifestation of an invisible structure proves the existence of an initial invisible structure. Geigerich calls the archetype-as- such concept "a circular argument... of which the known myths are only temporary and culture-specific expressions" (2005b, p. 43). In arguing that only living myths can be 245 applied to modern life, Geigerich asserts that the concept of a "positivized noumenal"— the idea that a reality behind the phenomena produces archetypal image, symbol, and myth—is a "bypass operation" allowing one to dismiss historical change and cultural ruptures that change myths, symbols, and archetypes (p. 43).

The only problem with this way of thinking, this bypass operation, is that this legitimizing assumption is itself not legitimate: for we are not permitted to invent a positively existing psyche behind psychological phenomenology. There is no such thing as a soul that produces psychological phenomena. The phenomena have nothing behind them. They have everything they need within themselves, even their own origin, their author or subject. (Geigerich, 2005b, p. 43) Symbols and archetypes do "present an objective, visible meaning behind which an invisible, profounder meaning is hidden" (Jacobi, 1959, p. 77). Yet this invisible, profounder meaning within the symbol is the nature of symbols themselves because they are living, not static and complete, inviting a final interpretation. The comprehension of the mysteries of the universe and human beings is a marriage of conscious and unconscious; if consciousness has not yet perceived, fallen in love with, and cajoled the archetype into telling its secrets, they do not yet exist. The meaning of archetypes and indeed our life is created in the discovery and the telling. Mythic Skin Psyche is the metaphoric, creative, transformative medium of mimesis and myth.

Identity, as psyche's representation of itself in an individual life, is the mythic skin of the self archetype. Where the self archetype is the symbolic, intuitive comprehension and expression of the whole individual, identity is the storied, metaphoric, mythic representation. The whole of the self is the entire organism: the potentials, known and unknown, the body and brain, ancestral legacy, evolutionary history, the aspects of the phylogenetic and the archetypal collective unconscious in its domain, the personal unconscious and all of the structures of the mind and psyche, our potential, our future, our becoming, all that is and remains unknown about us. "The collective unconscious is 246 an imago of life" (Mogenson, 1999, p. 130). In comparison, the self archetype is an impossible, intuitive grasp of an individual's wholeness in a microcosmic analogy of the macrocosm's containment of the whole of existence. A definition of myth that relates directly to the ideas expounded here comes from Joseph Campbell. "Myth is a manifestation in symbolic images, in metaphorical images, of the energies of the organs of the body in conflict with each other" (1988, p. 39). Considering this definition shifts the focus for Slattery from considering myths as stories to

consider them as energy patterns of body and psyche that, when channeled through particular corridors of mind, had the power to redirect both matter and energy into new folds of understanding; one of the packets of understanding is of course narrative. (2010, p. 436) Identity, then, is the narrative myth provoked into being by the images, metaphors and archetypes of the psyche as they collide and emerge from the body. What are the elements of mimetic play? Image, metaphor, affect, and myth. Mimesis radiates through symbols; so too, does identity, the storied telling of biography, resonate with the archetypes that emerge from our own psychic flesh into images and metaphors. Identity as a symbolic expression of the self is a metaphor and employs metaphors. Metaphors "are clusters or knots of affects, of affective energy - what it allows perception to open to via imagination. Metaphors are fiercely rooted in the world of matter" (Slattery, 2010, p. 444). This imaginative element links and bleeds into memory, for in the way that metaphors are like "energy fields that bridge some quality between consciousness and the unconscious, and body-psyche" (p. 446), the imaginative aspect of memory is a link between the brain and the psyche. Just as "metaphors open us to the symbolic realm" (p. 446), so too does memory open a doorway to the imagination's interpretation, understanding, and reworking of our life. The relation between psyche, metaphor, and matter "exposes a pattern of consciousness which 247 involves replication, repetition and similarity couched in difference" (p. 446). These are also the elements of identity, understood as the temporal skin of the self.

The aesthetic process is a symbolic reworking of lived experience through the imagination; in this way, we can say that identity is an aesthetic process. Identity is the storied, mythic, analogical expression of psyche's creative process which includes archetypes and expresses the self through the metaphor of self-images and story. As Kuspit writes that the artistic process transcends temporal experience "by recreating it in aesthetic terms" (2004, p. 9), identity is an imaginative re-creation of the complex relationship between brain, mind, psyche, experience, fate, and culture that represents an individual life. Imagination and perception share vision of images and the world, but imagination goes further and interprets what is seen, distinct from the categorizing of perceptions (Lieberman, 2003, p. 25). Unlike our perceptions, we can modify what we

imagine.

As much as we ourselves are 'written' by the various texts we read, we are not done so without remainder. Helen [Keller] herself demonstrates this point well: despite the fact that she continued to be plagued by the bric-a- brac in her mind, so much of which had come to her through the texts she read, she was still able to give out, in her own writing and in her own self, more than she took in. (Freeman, 1993, p. 80; italics added) Imagination begets the remainder from experience; it is a medium and a process that generates more than it receives. What is aesthetic remainder? Identity expresses it,

but not wholly, for the remainder is our future and our potential at once. The remainder is the imago of the self expressed through the mythic identity. "One becomes the person one most essentially and uniquely is by means of the images that draw one's psychic energy into a certain configuration of attitude, behavior, and motivation" (Stein, 1998, p.

66). Psyche's remainder is our becoming. 248

Chapter 11 Concluding Thoughts

Critique of Jungian theory Jung's theories articulate close empirical and intuitive observations of intensely subjective experiences. Analytical psychology raises a flag and claims territory for the value of the subjective psyche and this is as important a task today as it was a century ago. My primary critique of analytical psychology's theories is the conflation of imagination or psyche with matter to the point of reduction. Another critique is the insular nature of Jungian discourse that has limited exposure to interdisciplinary dialogues with fields outside of our comfort zone. Freud has been accused of positing the a priori existence of the Oedipus complex and then finding it everywhere; he became blind to the fact that the Oedipus complex was his myth that filtered reality. The same phenomenon has happened in Jungian discourse with the theory of archetypes and the collective unconscious pre-existing experience and

the personal unconscious. Art critic Rudolf Arnheim wrote that "today in both psychology and the arts there is a danger of confusing the elementary with the profound" (1966, p. 289). I believe Jungian theory sometimes confuses this point and assumes a higher order thinking of the species brain because it is primordial. This does not mean that the phylogenetic collective unconscious does not hold wisdom for us, but that it should not be conflated

with the abstract, symbolic content that emerges at the other end of the archetypal collective unconscious after the transformative processes of the psyche meeting consciousness take place. The phylogenetic collective unconscious is conflated with the archetypal collective unconscious in analytical psychology. We can state that each is the same phenomena on different ends of the spectrum of manifestation, yet we cannot overlook the many processes, structures, and necessity of experience and consciousness in-between and pretend that there is a direct, linear and logical path of causation. 249

There is a difference between the experiments of implicit processes of the right hemisphere or procedural memory that occur outside of and without the inclusion of ego- consciousness, and the archetypal collective unconscious. The former is the physiological correlate of the collective unconscious; the latter is the archetypal collective unconscious realized in the imagination. I resist writing that they are the same phenomenon, even in light of dual aspect monism, because I want to stress that this is the point of conflation in Jungian theory; that is, analytical psychology tends to literalize the collective unconscious of the psyche as the phylogenetic collective unconscious expressed in evolution and neurobiology. This is the shadow of analytical psychology: the literalization of the imagination in the physical as the archetype-as-such. Clearly neuroscience employs literalizing reductions, but the caution towards literalization is for Jungians as much as for neuroscientists. Neuroscience needs depth psychology. Science provides important data, but like all solitary fields of knowledge, it is incomplete. The aspects of the self most valued by human beings, "remembering, imagining, making judgments and planning, rely not on data but on meaning" (Markowitsch & Welzer, 2005/2010, p. 24). Neuroscientists such as Joseph LeDoux recognize the significant relationship of the unconscious to the self. "I believe that these implicit or unconscious aspects of the self also play an important role, in fact an essential one, in shaping who we are and explaining why we do what we do"

(LeDoux, 2002, p. 17). Neuroscience needs the subjective, embodied experience of depth psychology not only to fill out its inquiry into the self but to know the meaning

behind their pursuits. A key difference between my perspective and Jung's is that I consider the psyche emergent from the body, whereas Jung's theories, though perhaps begun from this premise, moved into an autonomous realm that appeared to be transcendent to the body, and even time and space. Jung neglected to comment as a psychologist on this, claiming that he could only speak of psychological phenomena. His language inferred two 250 definitions of transcendence as beyond consciousness and transcendence to time-space, and his theories, and their application from some of his followers, are resplendent or contaminated (you decide which) with the rhetoric of a belief and assumption of a time- space transcendence and autonomy of the collective unconscious. This is where Jung erroneously believed that one's personal metaphysical or religious beliefs could exist separately from one's professional intellectual pursuits. Geigerich notes this move in Jung as well when, after discussing the "bypass operation" of asserting archetypes-as-such behind the phenomenal expressions, he writes

Jung's trick was to disguise his metaphysical move before himself and us by claiming that his archetypes, 'the unconscious,' the soul, etc., were just empirical facts. So it seemed to him that it was not his, but empirical reality's fault if he discovered a Hinterwelt behind the phenomenal world. (2005b, p. 43).

Our religious beliefs—and by religious I mean our beliefs about a metaphysical, containing reality, the process of life itself—are the ground of our intellectual speculations and experiments. Our metaphysical beliefs are the ground of, and grounded in, our worldly beliefs and work. As academics, scholars, and scientists, we try not to contaminate our professional, intellectual pursuits with our personal metaphysical beliefs in an individual expression of the separation of church and state. But I do not think it is possible to completely separate our personal convictions from our professional theories. Our wholeness does not exist in such strict categories, though it seems to be the case at times. We need to recognize not only the influence but the necessarily incestuous relationship between our private prayers and our public proclamations.

Brain and Psyche: Structures of the Self In the observations and measurements of neuroscience we see the empirical observations of Jung. Implicit consciousness clearly exists autonomously from explicit consciousness, what depth psychology refers to as ego-consciousness and Gazzaniga 251 calls "the interpreter" (Turk et al., 2003, p. 71). The nature of implicit consciousness parallels Jung's ideas of the collective unconscious and the reality and autonomy of the psyche. Analytical psychology is built on the truth that there are forces and dynamics within the individual psyche that do not belong to the individual. De-identification with these contents and forces that bring one into relationship with the Other or the unconscious is the principle method of individuation. In a similar manner, neuroscience de-identifies with the dynamics of implicit consciousness and clearly delineates the boundaries of the self and a non-self. Though some neuroscientists still consider consciousness an emergent illusion of the brain—I think Ramachandran feels this way—this appears to be an old conjecture in the field. Most of the neuroscientists I researched are in line with Damasio when he writes:

The oddest thing about the upper reaches of a consciousness performance is the conspicuous absence of a conductor before the performance begins, although, as the performance unfolds, a conductor comes into being. For all intents and purposes, a conductor is now leading the orchestra, although the performance has created the conductor—the self—not the other way around. The conductor is cobbled together by feelings and by a narrative brain device, although this fact does not make the conductor any less real. The conductor undeniably exists in our minds, and nothing is gained by dismissing it as an illusion. (2010, p. 24) The self is an emergent phenomenon in consciousness, yet, consciousness is

undeniably "real" though of a different nature than the brain. When the psyche is

understood as a complex system, this different yet real, nonillusive nature of consciousness and its emergent phenomena becomes clear. The psyche emerges from the brain in interaction with many variables inside and outside the individual, in the past and the present, yet it cannot be reduced to the processes of the brain. As Jung said:

The psyche deserves to be taken as a phenomenon in its own right; there are no grounds at all for regarding it as a mere epiphenomenon, dependent though it may be on the functioning of the brain. One would be as little justified in regarding life as an epiphenomenon of the chemistry of carbon compounds. (1954/1969, p. 8) 252

Complex systems theory holds that the system itself contains its own laws and forces that unfold over time (Siegel, 2010). As Kugler puts it:

As we scale up from physics to biology to psychology, each successive level of complexity is sustained by regularities that are manifest on the level below.... [However] the regularity of archetypes at the psychological level has its own unique lawfulness. (2005, p. 142)

In agreement with the emergent perspective of Hogenson (2001, 2009), Saunders and Skar (2001), and Knox (2003, 2004), I too see archetypes as the symbolic representation from an incredibly complex psychic system, capturing the essence and meaning of our individual experiences of self, world, and others, within and without. The relationship between temperament and typology has been called "uncanny" by researchers Kagan and Snidman (2004, p. 218). Jung's classifications of typology were the result of an intensely close observation of the phenomenological reality of subjective experience and ways of being. By comparing Jung's typology system with Kagan and Snidman's research on how amygdalar excitation manifests in subjective psychological experience, we can hypothesize that typology is the first lifting off of consciousness in subjective experience from a neurobiological profile. Decades ago, Jungian analyst C. A. Meier advocated for the academic and statistical validation of Jung's typology system by Jungians. "We are all too much fascinated by the unconscious instead of giving the typological mandala the due scope and application it so urgently is asking for" (1986, p. 253). Meier refers to the fact that typological testing has already been applied and adopted by non-Jungians without giving Jung credit. He is an advocate

for academic, statistical validation of Jung's typology and refers to the scientific work on

temperament and typology being done by Eysenck and others, whose work is referenced in the chapter on temperament and typology.

Some of these authors are far ahead of us, which of course implies that some of them know even better than Jung. And it is we Jungians who are responsible for this trouble. Some of these scientists reach interesting results, which should only encourage us to do something more in our own field. (Meier, 1986, pp. 254-5) 253

Although I do not feel it is trouble or an urgent matter that others may know more than Jung, I join Meier in advocating for interdisciplinary work with scientific methods in areas of analytical psychology that can yield insightful results of the psyche and ground Jungian theory in statistically demonstrable validation. The seed of this dissertation was planted decades ago in my childhood fantasy of having amnesia, wiping out my memories and my identity. Now, through this research, I confirm for myself that autobiographical memory is the content of identity's story, but the structures of the self are rooted beyond memory in temperament and typology on the one hand, and represented in complexes and archetypes on the other. Memory is clearly a function of imagination as much as of correspondence with reality, yet it is more accurately understood as the bridge between typology and archetype. Memory holds our learned response to experiences, represented in identity through complexes, and points to our past. Yet the emergence of archetypes in the psyche represents the imaginative and future face of memory. Archetypes are born of the past but through their imaginative, creative, and symbolic nature, they represent our potential becoming.

The Joy of Discovery "The tremendous complexity of psychic phenomena is borne in upon us only after we see that all attempts to formulate a comprehensive theory are foredoomed to failure" (Jung, 1936/1969, p. 125). This is where the dissertation—my attempt to formulate a comprehensive theory of identity—must end, buttressed and resting up against the tremendous complexity of the psyche. Upon reflecting on his theory of psychological types, Jung writes that he could only see with hindsight that he had oversimplified things. "I had tried to explain too much in too simple a way, as often happens in the first joy of discovery" (Jung, 1933, p. 86). I, too, can perhaps be accused of simplifying a complicated topic, yet just as strongly, my discoveries have been a complete joy. 254

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