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Life Arts    H4'ed 9/25/13

Pope Francis on Jesuit Spirituality: The Power of the Christ Myth

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If Neumann and Jung are basically correct, all of us are on a trajectory of consciousness in which we are going to undergo an experience like Osiris undergoes when his body is torn into pieces -- and the pieces are scattered all over the place.

 

Wow! This should give all of us something to look forward to, eh? That's the bad news. But the good news is that we might manage to live through undergoing such a bodily deconstruction and be reconstructed by Isis. So Isis must be a really powerful figure in our psyche.

 

Of course Neumann and Jung do not envision our bodily deconstruction. Instead, they envision the deconstruction of our ego-consciousness. From the processes of deconstruction and reconstruction of our ego-consciousness, they envision what Freudians refer to as the emergence of ego-integrity.

 

In his book RHETORIC, ROMANCE, AND TECHNOLOGY: STUDIES IN THE INTERACTION OF EXPRESSION AND CULTURE (Cornell University Press, 1971, pages 10-11), Walter J. Ong, S.J. (1912-2003), sums up Neumann's Jungian account of the eight stages of consciousness in one paragraph-length sentence:

 

"The stages of psychic development as treated by Neumann are successively (1) the infantile undifferentiated self-contained whole symbolized by the uroboros (tail-eater), the serpent with its tail in its mouth, as well as by other circular or global mythological figures [= Erikson's Trust vs. Mistrust], (2) the Great Mother (the impersonal womb from which each human infant, male or female, comes, the impersonal femininity which may swallow him [or her] up again [= Erikson's Autonomy vs. Shame, Doubt], (3) the separation of the world parents (the principle of opposites, differentiation, possibility of change) [= Erikson's Initiative vs. Guilt], (4) the birth of the hero (rise of masculinity and of the personalized ego) [= Erikson's Industry vs. Inferiority] with its sequels in (5) the slaying of the mother (fight with the dragon: victory over primal creative but consuming femininity, chthonic forces) [= Erikson's Identity vs. Role Confusion], and (6) the slaying of the father (symbol of thwarting obstruction of individual achievement, to what is new) [= Erikson's Intimacy vs. Isolation], (7) the freeing of the captive (liberation of the ego from endogamous kinship libido and emergence of the higher femininity, with woman now as person, anima-sister, related positively to ego consciousness) [= Erikson's Generativity vs. Stagnation], and finally (8) the transformation (new unity in self-conscious individualization, higher masculinity, expressed primordially in the Osiris myth but today entering new phases with heightened individualism -- or more properly, personalism -- of modern man [and woman] [= Erikson's Ego-Integirty vs. Disgust, Despair]."

 

But the parallels that I have pointed out above between the Osiris myth and the Second Coming of Christ myth indicate that the optimal ego-consciousness that emerges in stage eight of consciousness can be likened not only to the reconstructed Osiris (except for the missing symbolic part), but also to the second coming of Christ.

 

But we can back up and liken ego-consciousness to the Christ in the overall Christ myth.

 

 

ERIKSON ON EGO-INTEGRITY

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Thomas James Farrell is professor emeritus of writing studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD). He started teaching at UMD in Fall 1987, and he retired from UMD at the end of May 2009. He was born in 1944. He holds three degrees from Saint Louis University (SLU): B.A. in English, 1966; M.A.(T) in English 1968; Ph.D.in higher education, 1974. On May 16, 1969, the editors of the SLU student newspaper named him Man of the Year, an honor customarily conferred on an administrator or a faculty member, not on a graduate student -- nor on a woman up to that time. He is the proud author of the book (more...)
 

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