From the letter to students for Therapeia 2022.4: 11-12 June 2022.
Psychopathology Reimagined.
“Of all the terms of analytical language that we have been reviewing, the unconscious is the first we should renounce.” (MoA p173). In the previous Therapeia, we already began exploring the idea that what psychology has been calling psychopathology, might really be the soul reasserting its primacy. “Perhaps the phenomenon of the so-called unconscious.. are better conceived as twisted paths into memoria, as ways leading back into lost areas of the soul, its imagination, and its history.” (MoA p175). Such a notion will be met with anxiety by those who champion will and reason over imagination. “The predominant attitude towards the imaginal in almost every period and every writer is fear.. The war of the academic faculties reflects the conflict between the soul’s faculties, between imagination and intellect.” (MoA 177, n65). In reclaiming Memoria, Hillman has upended the foundations of all clinical psychology.
He has also upset the apple cart of earlier Jungian theory, which is still advanced in contemporary Jungian practice. “We have needed a more compete view of the ego in order to adapt to Jung’s later psychology..” (MoA p187). Because, “despite Jung’s emphasis upon the imaginal, there nevertheless remains an inconsistency.. the ego lives and behaves primarily in terms of this imaginal consciousness.” (MoA 183-184). To resolve this dilemma, “we need a new kind of ego consciousness, which I have called.. the imaginal ego.. that aspect of the ego complex which takes part in imaginal reality.” (MoA 183, 186). Not to replace, but along side, the functional ego. Imagine that. The ego with two distinct voices. An ordered upper-world language, and a subversive underworld speech, that reveals “some necessity of the human psyche to tell two kinds of tales about the nature of things.” (MoA p117).
So then, what is the unconscious; and how does our revised understanding support us in living with soul? To really grasp what Hillman is offering, we would need to first secure our new foundation. “To personify the unconscious as ‘one’s daimonic voice’.. is.. sacrilegious, because they deprive the Gods of their due.” (MoA p174). The shame we should feel here (cf. Berry, ‘I am ashamed before the heavens’) is our hubris, “because the revelation of the imagination is the revelation of the uncontrollable, spontaneous spirit, an immortal, divine part of the soul..” (MoA 182). Once we have that piece in place, we are ready to explore what ‘The Art of Memory’ might mean, how we develop this art, and what living into a mythological reality implies. This is the perspective of Archetypal Psychology; one that embraces, rather than marginalises, psychopathology. Our psychology and philosophy changes, and we change with it. A better day. Simple, not easy.
Quod Erat Demonstrandum.
MoA: James Hillman, The Myth of Analysis.
Berry: Patricia Berry, Echo’s Subtle Body.