Symptoms of Calling: Eleanor Roosevelt

Have you ever noticed how a child’s symptoms, when viewed in retrospect, were an indication of his or her calling?

In the book The Soul’s Code, Hillman offers Eleanor Rooselvelt as one of many examples. She served as First Lady for 12 years during the Great Depression and WWII. Yet she said “I grew up with a fear of insanity.”

In addition to the difficult traits listed in the above quote, her nickname was Granny because she was old-fashioned. She lost both her parents before the age of 9. She described her childhood as a series of “gray days.”

What sustained her was a fantasy she indulged in for many years after her father died. She imagined she lived with her father, ran his household, and was his travel companion. “I carried on a day-by-day story, which was the realest thing in my life.”

In today’s culture symptoms usually mean something “bad.” So today Eleanor would be sent to therapy, given an IEP, and almost certainly prescribed medication. Her fantasies might be dismissed as compensation for her dreary childhood. Or viewed as bordering on delusion.

Hillman has a different take on her fantasies: “Their caring and managerial content was purposeful, preparation for the dutiful life she would later live. The fantasies were invented by her calling and were indeed more realistic in their orientation than her daily reality.”

“Imagination acted as teacher, giving instruction for the … tasks of caring for the welfare of a complex family, of a crippled husband, of the state of New York as the governor’s wife, the United States as its first lady, and even of the United Nations. Her fantasies of attending to ‘Father’ were a preliminary praxis into which she could put her call, her huge devotion to the welfare of others.”

When you exchange the word “abnormal” for “extraordinary” it offers a fresh perspective on our lives. And suggests that each child is a gifted child.

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A Reflection on the Day of the Dead

“When you see people through the eyes of death you see them very differently. The beauty of the other person is then more visible.” That’s a rather remarkable thing to ponder, isn’t it? It also seems to be in keeping with the spirit of the Day of the Dead.

Another thing this day helps us remember is that the grieving process doesn’t tend to be linear. It’s more like it’s circular. Which reminds me that I recently watched the movie Arrival, which attempts to show what it would be like if we could conceive of time as circular, with no beginning and no end. Throughout the movie the main character remembers a future (past? present?) death of another character and it is moving to watch.

Hillman again: “After a person’s dead, his faults, his or her unbearable qualities, become clarified, and you remember them as virtues.”

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In Which I Commence a Gentle Madness

When I lived in Massachusetts 30 years ago, I found myself drawn to books about Robert F. Kennedy, because I was fascinated with the transformation he made after his brother was assassinated. He went from being a bully who went after Communists (among other misdeeds) to becoming a champion of the underrepresented. The quote “make gentle the life of the world” made a permanent impression on me. He said this during the late 1960’s, which was pretty much the last time the working class was a main focus of the Democratic party.

It isn’t enough to be gentle; one must also make gentle. But what does “make gentle” mean? I like to envision it as soul-making, a term coined by the poet John Keats, who said: “Call the world, if you please, the vale of soul-making. Then you will find out the use of the world.” Soul-making became the focus of the work of archetypal psychologist James Hillman, who was nominated for a Pulitzer prize in 1975 for his book on the topic.

Making soul out of life. Finding connections between life and soul. Slowing down and deepening one’s interiority. It isn’t a heroic psychology and isn’t about developing a strong ego. Rather, soul makes the ego feel uncertain and uncomfortable.

Which brings me to madness. Hillman says one should let a little bit of madness in every day, so that one doesn’t go literally mad.  He said for some people that means having a drink after work every day. For him it was expressing iconoclastic ideas. He also said that psychotherapy should help one “discover one’s madness, one’s unique spirit.”

The phrase “a gentle madness” popped into my head recently as I contemplated blowing the dust off my Facebook timeline and finally posting on it somewhat regularly as a way to let in my own madness. The phrase sounded familiar. I googled and was reminded this is the title of a book from 1995 about book collecting. My gentle madness isn’t about that, but collecting the insights I read in books is part of it. 


By the way, I like the irony of posting this today, the first day of Mercury retrograde (and Halloween, no less), which will continue for the next few weeks. Even people who don’t know what their moon and rising signs are often know about Mercury retrograde and the communication breakdowns that can accompany it. Hopefully that will add to the madness. 

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The #1 Thing Needed for Personality Typing

The #1 Thing Needed for Personality Typing

It’s pretty much a given that personality tests aren’t consistently reliable.

Yet figuring your type out on your own isn’t so easy either. When Jung created the psychological types, he didn’t use a test. He and the first generation Jungian analysts worked with their clients one-on-one; an analysis typically takes several years.

Jungian analyst Daryl Sharp highlighted some of the problems with type tests in his book Personality Types: Jung’s Model of Typology:

“Type tests do not show the extent to which one’s type may have been falsified or perverted by familial and environmental factors; they say nothing about the way in which one’s usual way of functioning may be determined by complexes; and they do not reflect the ever-present compensating attitude of the unconscious. Typically, it is the persona that takes the test. In addition, the person taking the test may be using one of the secondary or auxiliary functions to answer the questions—or indeed, responding out of the shadow or persona. Above all, type tests do not take into account the experiential reality that a person’s typological preferences can change over time.”

Above all, there should be one thing central to the typing process: prolonged self-reflection. Or, as Jung called it, “self-communing:”

Not everyone has the opportunity to work with a Jungian analyst or a typologist. So here are some questions Sharp suggests that one reflect upon:

What do I habitually do most?

What is my greatest cross?

From what do I suffer the most?

Where is it in life that I always knock my head against the wall and feel foolish?

Sharp says: ” The answers to such questions generally lead to the inferior attitude and function, which then, with some determination and a good deal of patience, may perhaps be brought to a degree of consciousness.”

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The Pooh bear (and Stoic) approach to personality types

The Pooh bear (and Stoic) approach to personality types

It’s refreshing to take a break from modern forms of personality types for a bit, with their pesky cognitive functions and whatnot, and look at things from the perspective of ancient philosophies. With Pooh thrown in for good measure, of course, so we don’t take things too seriously.

Plato in the fourth century BCE came up with the four elements theory. Around 300 BCE the Stoics embraced this theory. First century philosopher Seneca described Stoic temperament theory as follows:

“There are four elements – fire, water, air, and earth – with matching properties – hot, cold, dry, and moist. […] The same distinctions are valid for animals and humans: it makes a difference how much moisture and heat each individual has within him; the element that predominates in him will determine his characteristic behaviors.”

He said that fiery people are prone to anger, whereas wet, dry, or cold temperaments can be panicky and contrarian.

I also added Hippocrates’ terms of melancholic, phlegmatic, sanguine, and choleric to the infographic.

But let’s get to Pooh. Which Pooh character best represents your personality? By the way, Pooh is in the middle because he represents all four types. Pooh is fully actualized!

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The compass of the personality

The compass of the personality

Carl Jung had a circular view of the personality, as you can see from his drawing below of the four functions as a compass:

That’s because Taoism strongly influenced the development of Jung’s typology. The Chinese concept of the Tao is based on polar opposites and is the “reconciler of all opposites.” It has a circular and polar view of the soul, as did Jung.

Jung was also a Judeo-Christian. There was no conflict between his Western spirituality and his Eastern spirituality. As a scientist he wanted to explore all options available for healing his patients.He regarded spirituality as the primary underlying principle in psychology.

He discovered Taoism while recovering from his break with Freud. As he developed typology, it was with an emphasis on understanding the differences between people. He wanted to find the unity that compensated for the wide diversity in people, to both accept and transcend opposites, which led him to the Tao.

A Taoist approach to typology differs from the linear view of growth we tend to have when working with typology. We “work” on our inferior function. But as Jungian analyst John Giannini wrote, the Taoist approach “means surrendering some aspects of a dominant function or coupling, and learning to value the other types in your personal compass of the Soul…Like Taoism, typology challenges us to live a full life in which conscious success must be balanced by a ‘rekindling of humility in the face of the Self.”

Here is what Jung said about the compass:

“The four functions are somewhat like the four points of the compass; they are just as arbitrary and just as indispensable. Nothing prevents our shifting the cardinal points as many degrees as we like in one direction or the other, or giving them different names. It is merely a question of convention and intelligibility. But one thing I must confess: I would not for anything dispense with this compass on my psychological voyages of discovery.”

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The 8 archetypes of Extroverted Intuition (Ne)

As with all the cognitive functions. extroverted intuition (Ne), plays one of eight different roles in the personality depending on which of the 16 personality types you have. This is per Jungian analyst John Beebe’s 8 function personality type model.

First we’ll take a look at Ne in general terms.

Intuition is like a sixth sense and can see aspects of the world beneath the surface and is a perception by the way of the unconscious per Carl Jung. Extroverted intuition sees through the outer layer. It lives in the world of ideas.

Carl Jung said the following about Ne in Psychological Types:

Because extraverted intuition is oriented by the object, there is a marked dependence on external situations, but it is altogether different from the dependence of the sensation type. The intuitive is never to be found in the world of accepted reality-values, but he has a keen nose for anything new and in the making. Because he is always seeking out new possibilities, stable conditions suffocate him …. So long as a new possibility is in the offing, the intuitive is bound to it with the shackles of fate.

Below is the infographic I made that describes all 8 archetypal roles of Ne. All personality types have Ne and it behaves differently depending where it is. Half of the 16 personalities have it in the top four functions where it is more conscious. The other half have it in shadow: :

These archetypes descriptions are just sketches and aren’t meant to be literal. The shadow functions in particular are highly qualitative.

Remember that no function ever acts separately from the other functions. Jung said we almost never see a pure form of a function. We consider a function only in order to better understand the whole of the personality.

This is part 3 of 8 in the series. Part four is about Introverted Intuition (Ni).

My other articles in this series:

The 8 archetypes of Extroverted Sensation

The 8 archetypes of Introverted Sensation

The 8 archetypes of Extroverted Intuition (Ne)

The 8 archetypes of Extroverted Feeling (Fe)

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What sermons and horoscopes have in common

What sermons and horoscopes have in common

The best of sermons afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. The same can be said of horoscopes. Even when they don’t meet this high ideal, they can remind us of heaven.

There a line that I can still recall from a sermon I heard over 30 years ago, back when I was in college.

The Lutheran pastor began the sermon in a voice as loud as thunder: “Unfulfilled desires prove the existence of heaven.” He was paraphrasing C.S. Lewis and went on to explain that if a desire exists, the fulfillment of that desire must also exist.

My imagination thrilled at this and it fed my soul. Out of the many hundreds of sermons I would go on to hear in the years to come, this is the only line I remember out of all those sermons.

Zoom ahead 30+ years to today, and it is astrology and horoscopes that I partake of regularly. I recently listened to an audio of James Hillman, who was an archetypal Jungian psychologist. It is a one hour talk he gave at an astrology conference and he quoted Paracelsus:

Hillman kept repeating the words “Heaven retains.” He said he takes those two words quite literally. When I heard that I had the same thrill as I did 30+ years ago when listening to that sermon,

You only get a half truth or partial understanding of others or yourself if you neglect heaven. The ultimate meaning of heaven is unknown. It is defined simply as the place beyond the sky, the unknown. It connotes the divine.

Hillman says: “Paracelsus is insisting on the invisible path of our lives. This half is not directly graspable by any natural methods of science, any kind of naturalistic or mundane thinking or understanding. […] We humans, aware that we only live in half truths, and see only through a glass darkly, turn to astrology to find a way back to heaven, to the invisible source of our bodies and maladies.”

Horoscopes and sermons can point us to heaven because it is heaven that makes them possible. It is the arrangement of the planets in the sky during a particular day or period of time that serves up the topics an astrologer must address when writing a horoscope.

For many pastors and priests, it is a lectionary, based on the church calendar, that provides the scripture reading the sermon must address.

Of course there is always the danger that a sermon or horoscope can become too prescriptive, too mired in literalism and fundamentalism. One must choose one’s purveyors of sermons and horoscopes wisely.

In my years of listening to sermons, I noticed that, even when following a lectionary, a pastor or priest would still tend to repeat the same themes over and over again, as if it was the lesson they needed to hear. This can happen to astrologers too. Jung said that teachers, ultimately, don’t teach their subject. They teach themselves (i.e. the teacher is the subject).

Astrologer Adam Elenbaas also steers us away from a literal view:

“I find that thinking too much about when to do stuff with astrology generally gets in the way. If you meditate on something in your heart, and  […] have a good intention that’s not going to harm anyone … then you [should] just go with what feels right.

Part of astrology is trying to get us off the training wheels of astrology. That’s a big part of astrology, actually. We all have the inherent sense of divine timing built into us.”

Ultimately, true healing and comes from within, and not from horoscopes and sermons. But the astrologer and the pastor/priest can help transport us out of our circumstances by providing insights that remind us of what is above. Then we can find a way back to heaven, where the fulfillment of our desires, and comfort for our afflictions, awaits.

Sources:

Adam Elenbaas 9/15/19 video.

RIP Rev. Jerry Knoche

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The 8 archetypes of Introverted Sensation (Si)

This article will explore introverted sensation in all 8 of the different roles it plays in the personality. This is per Jungian analyst John Beebe’s 8 function personality type model.

First we’ll take a look at Si in general terms.

Si types experience strong subjective sensations. Si records both extroverted and introverted sensory experiences with precision and compares past and present sensations. Si can tend to believe things will remain the way they are in the present,

The Si type is a keen observer and remembers the physical world in detail. Emma Jung, Carl Jung’s wife, was an Si type and described herself as a highly sensitized photographic plate (von Franz & Hillman, Lectures on Psychological Type, 1971). She said that when someone entered a room she noticed everything about them, including hair, how they walked, clothes, expression, and so on:

Outwardly, the introverted sensation type … just sits and stares, and you do not know what is going on within him. He looks like a piece of word with no reaction at all – unless he reacts with one of the auxiliary functions, thinking or feeling. But inwardly the impression is being absorbed. (p. 34).

Here is what Carl Jung said about introverted sesnation in Psychological Types:

Introverted sensation apprehends the background of the physical world rather than its surface. […] Introverted sensation transmits an image which does not so much reproduce the object as spread over it the patina of age-old subjective experience . . . . while extraverted sensation seizes on the momentary existence of things open to the light of day.

Below is the infographic I made that describes all 8 archetypal roles of Si. All personality types have Si and it behaves differently depending where it is. Half of the 16 personalities have it in the top four functions where it is more conscious. The other half have it in shadow:

These archetypes descriptions are just sketches and aren’t meant to be literal. The shadow functions in particular are highly qualitative. Our shadow is unconscious and the contents of each person’s shadow differ, of course. The shadow functions are a guide for you to understand your complexes better. When you get “triggered,” and it is brought to your conscious attention (usually by another person) you can try to trace it back to a shadow function and then reverse engineer it further to explore the origin of your complex.

Remember that no function ever acts separately from the other functions. Jung said we almost never see a pure form of a function. We consider a function only in order to better understand the whole of the personality.

This is part 2 of 8 in the series. My other articles in this series:

The 8 archetypes of Extroverted Sensation

The 8 archetypes of Extroverted Intuition (Ne)

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The four cultural attitudes and personality type

Why are people with the same personality type so different from each other?

One reason could be the four cultural attitudes. See the below infographic

Joseph Henderson, M.D. developed this idea 90 years ago. He was analyzed by Jung and eventually became an analyst. John Beebe was analyzed by Henderson.

Beebe loosely links two of the functions to each attitude, with the understanding that any type can adopt any of the four attitudes.

Henderson said the way to figure out someone’s cultural attitude is to notice how people choose to spend their optional cultural time. One can start by asking oneself, “How did I spend my weekend?”

My cultural attitude is the religious one, with some philosophic and social flavors to it. What’s yours?

Mike Silberstein, who wrote this excellent post about the four positive aspirations of the functions (joy, wisdom, knowledge, intelligence). mentioned to me that the four cultural attitudes are comparable to the positive aspirations. Here is how he explains it:

“So the type of spontaneous joy that Se and Ne has allows them to tap into the immediate possibilities and direct opportunities that the moment brings. There is a love for the ‘color’, ‘variety’ and sense of infinite possibilities and opportunities that can arise at any moment. As a result, an immediate interaction with aesthetic events in the here and now is something that Oe does fantastically well. They can simply dive into these possibilities and feel a sense of spontaneous enjoyment and appreciation for what that moment brings.

For Ti and Fi, they are using their ‘intelligence’ (logical or ethical) to tap into those areas that they believe are right, valid, and accurate. They are tapping into a philosophical realm (akin to an internal compass) where they are deliberating within themselves to identify those areas of ethical and moral truths. Once they do that, they can staunchly defend those truths as proper ways to handle whichever scenarios may come up.

For Ni and Si, they are all about acquiring ‘knowledge’ as a means towards having a ‘map’ of either highly detailed or holistic understandings about their world. This causes the Ni/Si user to capture a wider set of beliefs and worldviews about the order within the universe in a way that feels highly spiritual/religious. As they observe (and catalog) increasingly more regarding how the outer world operates, they are able to integrate new knowledge/information with what they already know and believe.

For Fe and Te, the goal is to manage and regulate the activities in the outer world in a manner that is socially and/or logistically effective/efficient. The capacity to take the data of the outside world and to integrate and orchestrate it in a manner that successfully works (either socially or logistically) requires a highly dynamic understanding of the needs of the moment and a way to execute/implement a certain (algorithmic) set of plans in an effective manner. To address each of these concerns in real time requires the internal (leadership) wisdom of the individual in a way that is similar to a conductor leading an orchestra.”

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