Carl Gustav Carus

Mi è appena arrivato dall'America un libro che in Italia non avevo trovato in nessuna biblioteca: Psyche di Carl Gustav Carus. L'avevo trovato in tedesco, ma le pagine erano incollate, come se nessuno lo avesse mai sfogliato. Era un'edizione ottocentesca. E io non capisco il tedesco come l'inglese. Questa è un'edizione inglese curata da James Hillman.

Carus è stato una figura significativa del Romanticismo medico e filosofico tedesco. Era un medico ostetrico ed era anche pittore. Ha dipinto bellissimi quadri romantici ed era amico di Goethe.

Sono arrivata a interessarmi alla sua teoria sulla psiche perché Jung ne è stato influenzato. Ogni volta che Jung spiega cosa intende con l'inconscio collettivo, fa riferimento a Carus e Hartmann. Nonostante il grande interesse che ancora oggi esiste per Jung, le sue radici filosofiche sono poco esplorate. Solo pochi studiosi le conoscono.

La sua teoria sostiene che l'essere umano, nella sua interezza, sia una creazione dello Spirito. Questo si vede chiaramente nello sviluppo dell'embrione: un ostetrico lo sa bene. Anch'io credo che Dio sia presente nel grembo materno durante la gravidanza e che sia Lui a creare il bambino, formando il suo cuore, la sua mente e inserendogli gli archetipi che poi plasmeranno il suo carattere.

Interessante anche il rapporto tra tempo e anima. Nell'inconscio non possiamo distinguere tra passato e futuro, perché esso li contiene entrambi.
Solo la coscienza contiene il presente."

"I just received a book from America that I couldn't find in any library in Italy.
Carl Gustav Carus – Psyche. I found it in German, but the pages were stuck together as if no one had ever opened it. It was a 19th-century edition. And I don't understand German as well as I do English. This is an English edition edited by James Hillman.

Carus was a significant figure in German medical and philosophical Romanticism. He was an obstetrician and also a painter. He created beautiful Romantic paintings and was a friend of Goethe.

I became interested in his theory of the psyche because Jung was influenced by him. Every time Jung explains what he means by the collective unconscious, he refers to Carus and Hartmann. Despite the great interest that still exists in Jung, his philosophical roots are largely buried. Only a few scholars know them.

Carus' theory is that the human being, in its entirety, is a creation of the Spirit. This is clearly seen in the development of the embryo—an obstetrician knows this. I also believe that God is present in your womb when you are pregnant, and that it is He who creates the child, forming their heart, their mind, and instilling the archetypes that will shape their character.

The relationship between time and the soul is also interesting. In the unconscious, we cannot distinguish between past and future; rather, the unconscious contains both the past and the future.
Only consciousness contains the present."

Psychotherapy and Spirituality

Ten Lectures on Psychotherapy and Spirituality(N.Field) reviewed by Lucia Teszler
http://mentalhelp.net/books/books.php?type=de&id=3584 Ten Lectures on Psychotherapy and Spirituality takes us on a journey in the world of contemporary psychoanalysis, in the area of its coping with the problem of spirituality. What is spirituality? What is the relation of spirituality with religion? How can we integrate it in therapeutic discourse and practice? What is religious fanaticism and fundamentalism and how could they explained trough psychoanalysis? The book consists of a series of ten lectures delivered in 2002 at the London Centre for Psychotherapy. The lectures are by 10 famous psychoanalysts or religious experts and are followed by responses by other specialists. The spiritual experience recovered by psychoanalysis is not the "oceanic feeling" that retrieves the "primary narcissism", in Freud's terms, but consists of the possibility of communicating from unconscious to unconscious, thus returning to the romantic idea of the universal sympathy. We exist through the spirit; we exist in the psyche, rather than the psyche existing separate in each of us (Chris MacKenna). Once the importance of the communicative space is emphasized, psychoanalysis distances itself from Jung's self-governing religiosity, already criticized by Martin Buber, and finds spirituality exactly in the relationship with the inalienable Thou. What then is the spirit for British contemporary psychoanalysis? The spirit is what keeps me alive, the capacity to have a hidden intimate space inside us where significant events are happening (Chris MacKenna); the spirit is what protects us from becoming a stone; it makes our heart sing; we feel alive because of it (K. Wright). One could find it when listening to the music, looking the stars or when we are seeing the smile of a new born baby and especially when falling in love (Field). Following Winnicott's theory, we understand spirituality, this force that keep us alive, thanks to the mother's tender sights, in her smiles, in her cares, who is the first singing master of the soul (Wright). Through her care, from this harmonious interpenetrating, our soul not only learns to sing but it learns the abnegation, the altruism, the self sacrifice, the ability to understand and to feel other's feelings without words. Hence, we learn the sympathy which, if we analyze profoundly, is in fact the final spiritual goal of Darwinian's evolution (D. Black). Furthermore the growth of these altruistic qualities, this preoccupation to understand others through sympathy, to love, is just what every great religion teaches (K. Armstrong). This philosophy could be synthesized by Rabin Heschel words, If we put ourselves at the opposite pole of Ego we are in the place where God is . The really encounter of the other, the feeling of other's being, the mutual relationship between two persons, creates a new dimension which allows those two members of communion to become an Us, a co-existence: different from the individual members of couple. That spiritual dimension is called by Field the fourth dimension. J. Klein draws a history of this concept, naming it this common space, the space where the two persons are recognizing themselves in the same us, an experience that is similar to Jungian conjuctio: where two persons are profoundly united, an intense mutuality of feeling (Silverstone). Discussing psychoanalysis and contemporary physics, R. Gordon claims that the spirit is the secret relation between things, between humans and nature, between observer and observed. And the spirit in its worm form penetrates every minor part of everyday life, even the profane one. (A. Samuels) The spiritual experience is not always a joyful experience, writes J. Klein and N. Field. It could be a very disturbing experience, a devastation that wakes us from the everyday life's dreaming and its innocent illusions, leading to respectful terror about ineffable experience (Field). That is the main reason why the meeting with the spirit could become a problem to be discussed in psychiatry. One of the most important contemporary issues discussed by the authors is religious fundamentalism and fanaticism. The spiritual, religious quest grows up partly from the desire to find sense in life and on other part from the desire for ecstasy, to break the one's individuality (Armstrong). Spirit by definition is an eternal transformation. In spite of this, we find in religion the desire for the concrete, the narcissist desire to have the certitude of being on the right way (R.Gordon). We should also mention that although spirituality is reevaluated, religion as an institution is not. Religion is seen as equivalent to dogma, to conformism, to certitude and narcissist pleasures. The dogmatic stance stems from the goal to maintain an identity when a person feels is in danger of disintegration. Fanaticism and fundamentalism are based on this fear, on the anger, on the feeling of being threatened permanently (Armstrong). Britton's lecture provides a profound psychoanalysis of fundamentalism as a worship of the word, where the word becomes a concrete object, an idol and at the same time the concrete object becomes a sign. This process is similar to certain psychoses. Ten Lectures on Psychotherapy and Spirituality helps us understand why the psychoanalysis played and continues to play a significant role in the evolution of human spirit. © 2007 Lucia Teszler

Bambole

Nel ultimo numero di Cahier Junghienne de la psychanalyse era un'interesante analisi sul ruolo delle bambole nella società. Pensavamo fossero solamente giocattoli per bambini. Invece da molte culture sono stati utilizzati. Qualche volta ricevere una bambola dal padre significava un rito di iniziazione.
Un'altra idea che mi ha colpito è quello che queste bambole prima la barbie e adesso bambole che ogni tanto le sentiamo volgare - che fanno la cacca o sputtano ... infatti sono proiezioni del nostro inconscio collettivo.
Ho pensato che potrebbe essere collegato con il fatto che vogliamo cosi tanto essere perfetti, inumani che dimentichiamo che siamo...primordialmente animali.