Now, we may super-impose a Jungian interpretation on Meissner's Freudian sexualized account of a mother-child scenario. Switching Meissner's account of the sexual attraction of the childlike adult Ignatius being cared for by his beautiful sister-in-law to a Jungian interpretation involves re-interpreting the strong but sublimated sexual attraction that Meissner posits that Ignatius felt for his beautiful sister-in-law as involving rather the feminine dimension of Ignatius's psyche - and the feminine archetypes in his psyche - being activated in his psyche by his beautiful sister-in-law's care for him and then projected by him onto her. Put differently, what Meissner refers to as Ignatius's sexual attraction to his beautiful sister-in-law involved the activation of feminine psychological forces in Ignatius's psyche.
In any event, what occurred in Ignatius during his recuperation is known as his religious conversion. His religious conversion involved his reading the lives of certain saints, most notably Saint Dominic, the founder of the Dominican religious order, and Saint Francis of Assisi, the founder of the Franciscan religious order.
We can also see Ignatius's famous religious conversion at his brother's family home in Spain as the beginning of what Jung famous came to call the mid-life crisis. Jung's own mid-life crisis, or mid-life transition, included his dangerous self-experimentation involving his use of what he came to refer to as active imagination. Ignatius's mid-life crisis, of mod-life transition, began in his brother's home but was followed by Ignatius's journey from one religious director to the next. He came to refer to himself on that journey or religious quest as the pilgrim. Ignatius the Pilgrim prayed and meditated on scripture under various spiritual directors.
However, Jung's mid-life crisis did not include a journey. He stayed put in his own home. For Jung, his quest was an inner quest, as it were - an extraordinary exploration of his own psyche and its psychological contents. For the most part, Jung did not consult other persons about his inner explorations - as Ignatius the Pilgrim consulted various spiritual directors. And nobody, not even Jung himself, thought of his dangerous self-experiments with active meditation as praying - even though the psychodynamics involved in active imagination are akin to the psychodynamics involved in meditation on scripture. Both involve the imagination. But the use of scripture in meditation grounds the use of imagination in meditation in biblical imagery and the words used to formulate that imagery.
By contrast, Jung's use of active imagination was entirely freewheeling imagination.
Now, in addition to popularizing the use of the term "mid-life crisis", Jung also popularized thinking of "the second half" of one's life. In short, the second half of one's life begins with one's mid-life crisis.
For Ignatius the Pilgrim, the second half of his life included several profound experiences of mystical visions. Similarly, for Jung, the second half of his life included profound experiences of visions.
Now, we should not forget that Jung's father was an ordained Protestant minister. As a result of his father's influence, Jung grew up with a strong anti-Catholic bias - including a strong anti-Jesuit bias. In Martin Liebscher's "Introduction to Volume 7" in the book Jung on Ignatius of Loyola's Spiritual Exercises (Princeton University Press, 2023, pp. xlvii-lxvi), he devotes a subsection to discussing "Jung's Fear of Jesuits and Roman Catholicism" (pp. lii-liv).
Even so, I am positively impressed by Jung's scrupulous discussion of St. Ignatius Loyola's Spiritual Exercises.
Now, as part of my own mid-life crisis, the onset of which I trace to mid-February 1974, I was in the Jesuit order (1979-1987). I made a 30-day directed retreat in silence (except for the daily conferences with the retreat director) following the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola in my first year in the two-year Jesuit novitiate. I followed St. Ignatius Loyola's succinct instructions to the best of my ability. It was a memorable event. However, I did not make a written record of my meditations during my 30-day retreat.
Even though I made a 30-day directed retreat, during which I met once a day for an in-person conference with the retreat director, I should point out here that prior to the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) in the Roman Catholic Church, Jesuit novices and other Jesuits and other people who made Jesuit retreats made preached retreat - that is, retreats in which the retreat director preached once a day to the people making the retreat. The Second Vatican Council instructed all religious orders to revisit their original charisms and renew their religious lives. When the Jesuits revisited their original charism, they rediscovered the custom of directed retreats.
In our Western literary tradition, the Jesuit-educated Irish novelist James Joyce (1882-1941) portrays a Jesuit preached retreat in his novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916).
As part of Walter J. Ong's lengthy Jesuit formation, he twice made 30-day preached retreats in silence (except for the retreat director's daily preaching session) following St. Ignatius Loyola's Spiritual Exercises.
Similarly, the Argentine Jesuit Jorge Mario Bergoglio (born in 1936), who became Pope Francis in March 2013, twice made 30-day preached retreats in silence (except for the retreat director's daily preaching session) following St. Ignatius Loyola's Spiritual Exercises.
However, both Father Ong and Father Bergoglio lived through the Jesuit rediscovery of directed retreats, and each of them subsequently served as the director of directed retreats - Father Bergoglio far more often than Father Ong.
Now, in my case, my mid-life crisis continued in the second half of my life when I started teaching at the University of Minnesota Duluth (1987-2009). In the second half of my life, years after I retired from teaching at the University of Minnesota Duluth at the end of May 2009, the second half of my life included certain profound experiences I had in late August 2024 and early September 2024 - profound psychological experiences in my psyche that were triggered in my case by certain experiences I had involving what Jung referred to as visionary thinking involving images and associative thinking (versus what he referred to as directed thinking involving logic).
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