The Container of Relationship by James Brown
“Do I contradict myself? I am vast, I contain contradictions.”—Walt Whitman
In Plato’s Symposium, Aristophane states that the original nature of man was androgynous, constituted by the union of the male and female, and possessing a duality in all their bodily divisions. “Terrible was their might and strength, and the thoughts of their heart were great, and they made an attack upon the gods” (Jowett 1953). After their division by the god Zeus, “each desiring his other half, came together, and throwing their arms about one another, entwined in mutual embraces, longing to grow into one, they began to die from hunger and self-neglect, because they did not like to do anything apart.” From this ancient myth, we get a feel that our very existence is the struggle to re-establish a state from which we have been exiled. Life as such is born and lived in a state of conflict constituted of our separated wholeness. Freud in his work, reduced this fundamental truth to an instinctual tension between life and death drives that he believed to be active in every particle of living substance (Freud, 1961, p. 40)—constantly keeping each other in check lest one overwhelm the other. This in turn manifests in our conflicted human psychology.
The nature of psychological conflict in the Jungian model is that the oppositions are fundamentally irreconcilable in their natural state where they co-exist in an undifferentiated way. These pairs of opposites, according to Jung in his mystical writing in Septem Sermones Ad Mortuos, “are qualities of the Pleroma which are not, because each balanceth each” (Jung, 1916). Since we are an inseparable part of that very same Pleroma, or fullness of the divine cosmos, all of the qualities exist within each of us as well. However, the ground of our nature Jung continues is that of “distinctiveness.” As such, the normally “balanced and void” qualities are “distinct and separate” within us in order that they may be effective in the world and as such “delivereth us” in our distinction from the void.
“When we strive after the good or the beautiful, we thereby forget our own nature, which is distinctiveness, and we are delivered over to the qualities of the Pleroma, which are pairs of opposites. We labor to attain the good and the beautiful, yet at the same time we also lay hold of the evil and the ugly, since in the Pleroma these are one with the good and the beautiful. When, however, we remain true to our own nature, which is distinctiveness, we distinguish ourselves from the good and the beautiful, therefore, at the same time, from the evil and ugly. And thus we fall not into the Pleroma, namely, into nothingness and dissolution.” (Jung, 1916) As such, wherever there exists a visible unbalanced human condition there will, as a matter of course, be present a continuing quarrel that simultaneously victimizes us and liberates us by the very nature of our existence. As Whitman says, we are at our core a contradiction.
When you see your matter going black, rejoice, for this is the beginning of the work.—Rosarium Philosophorum
As a collective, we tend to form our beliefs in concrete ways that distance us further from our contradictory nature. One area where the paradox of our situation arises is in the realm of intimate relationships. While society has clear cut ideas about what constitutes a healthy and productive relationship, the beliefs and perceptions of those who become entangled in violent relationships often reflect conflict with what our societal expectations might be. It would be a simple matter of labeling the contradictory beliefs of domestic violence offenders for instance as deviant or pathological if they did not show up in other areas of our society—primarily in popular media where behaviors that we hold as largely being incongruous with acceptable conduct are constantly being promoted and often glamorized. This “spilling over” from the family environment into the collective arena may suggest that domestic violence is indicative of a deeper and more broadly distributed phenomenon of relationship that could potentially manifest in many areas of conscious life. For example, within domestic violence the conflict might be expressed through qualities of relatedness and integration that commonly associate with the feminine principle or through power and dominance that might correspondingly associate with the masculine principle.
The perception first and foremost presumes a continued opposition in which a reconciliation of the manifest symptoms are at best a temporary respite to the grander drama of conflict at the archetypal level which, according to Jung’s paradigm, is eternally irreconcilable as long as we strive for distinctiveness in our lives. Since distinctiveness by way of individuality is a quality that has been perfected in the Western ideal, we would expect to see a greater number of violent manifestations in the family unit of Westernized countries than we would in other countries where there is perhaps less differentiation of the individual ego. The central idea behind alchemy is that of the Opus or Great Work and the secret contained in that Opus is that of the personal journey of transformation of the alchemist along with their object of interest that cannot be explained, but only experienced. If we make the analogy as Jung did of alchemy as an antique form of psychophysical therapy then the Great Work of alchemy is the development of a matrix through which transmutation, from the base to the noble, might occur—the process Jung calls the transcendent function that is in service to encountering the Self. In alchemy, a further implication is that the metamorphosis is performed in service to the gods whose nature is a tendency toward perfection as “the alchemist takes up and perfects the work of Nature, while at the same time working to ‘make’ himself” (Eliade, 1956, p. 47-52). It is through the heat of fire that alchemy achieves a new form of being that is immutable, immortal (p. 149); heat that in psychological terms is generated through the friction of conflict and tension between the existence of opposite qualities. One cannot achieve such a transmutation of object or self without suffering death or dismemberment which “corresponds usually to the black color (the nigredo) taken on by the various ingredients. It was the reduction of substances to the material prima, to the massa confuse, the fluid, shapeless mass corresponding—on the cosmological plane—to chaos. Death represents regression to the amorphous, the reintegration of chaos” (Eliade, 1956, p. 152-153). In Jungian terms, this would mean a closer integration of the Self and thus an increasing closeness to the Pleroma from where the precipitating energies arise and eventually return. The color black also harkens back to the possible origins of the word alchemy in the Egyptian kam-it or kem-it, (Ferrario, 2007) “which indicated the color black and, by extension, the land of Egypt, known as the Black Land” where the cycle of life and death harmonized from the fertile Nile land from which it arose and returned. Our vision of the cosmos therefore is consistent with our experience of nature.
This correspondence between our experience of nature and our cosmological view according to Eliade (1956, p. 34) also bares the projection of the sexuality of life that creates a sexualization of the cosmos. The gendered perception is projected also into the alchemical Opus through the goal of the coniunctio or the hieros gamos (union of Sun and Moon for instance) in the creation of the filius philosophorum, the androgyne being or Rebis (p. 161) that once again returns us to our mythical origins as Aristophane’s neutered, yet powerful primeval creature who originally stood beyond the polarities of the Unity that is Jung’s Pleroma. This primeval Unit is often depicted as a “Cosmic Egg” that represents the undifferentiated state where no direction or polarity is privileged. To manifest in the physical world, the primeval Unit must differentiate and pass through duality—a move associated with the mythical “fall.” For humans, this means being born into the world as either male or female from which we must undergo successive cycles of death and re-birth until eventually being liberated from our manifest duality. In the cosmos, this cycle is manifest in the revivifying actions of the day and night worlds interacting with each other. The order of Nature, like the order of humans as part of Nature, is the process of obtaining balance through this process of renewal that first must pass into darkness where it bathes for a time in undifferentiated chaos. It is at the deepest point of this night sea journey into the darkness where a new light of consciousness can begin to emerge.
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.—Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
Von Franz (1980, pp. 16-18) writes that the alchemical Opus, like religious experience, provides a manifest and normalized experience of the numinous encounter. A marriage or physical union in the same way may provide a normalized experience of relationship as manifest in the partner’s common values. The assumption might be that the couple has had a common experience that informs their union and is based on healthy and secure developmental patterns whose aim is moving the individuals involved in the relationship increasingly toward an experience of coniunctio. In this context, we might look at how faults in the developmental patterns of individuals in their early relationship attachment manifest in adult relationships as severe conflict and violence. Marriage as a bellwether institution of relationship is increasingly falling out of favor for partner unions and has lately become a focal point for revivification of our collective perception of relationship as a more personalized experience. This movement might be reflected in the push for non-heterosexual couples for instance to have officially sanctioned relationships even though there is a trend in the United States away from institutionalized marriage.
Perhaps it is our perception of marriage and therefore relationship as a transformative container where the partner of whatever sex is the holder of our unconscious projections requiring transformation that holds us in its spell. Von Franz (1980, p. 29) states that it is manifestation of archetypal qualities in human form that promise the possibility of conscious human relations. The projected archetype in our relationships provides the means for making contact with the Other for which we must become capable of incarnating and relating to within ourselves (p. 30). The process may also become the primary impediment to seeing reality and therefore progressing in our quest for wholeness. When this occurs, our feeling identity creates uneasiness in our lives or more severe disturbances that can lead to violence in our intimate relations (p. 34). As long as the projected model of reality fits the relationship then, Von Franz emphasizes, all is well. When it does not, we must revise our model, or suffer the consequences (p. 36). According to Von Franz, archetypes manifest as inherited ways of having emotions and ideas both individually and in relationship with others while instincts provide our inherited forms of action in the world related to those archetypes (p. 59). Delaying response to our urge for action is our primary way of furthering individual consciousness and by extension human relatedness. The process of developing consciousness in relationship is rife with irruptions of manifest instinctual energies of power or sex. The knowledge one gains through the encounter with these manifestations, warns Von Franz, can be either healing or poisonous (p. 55) to both the individual and the relationship. In that a relationship is by nature based on the sense of sympathia between two people (p. 68), they will accordingly either suffer or transcend together in the caldron of mutual experience en route to the presumed goal of union with the beloved—the unio mystic (p. 69). The individuation process is thus projected into the relationship the same way that it is projected onto matter for the alchemist who is similarly concerned with how to manipulate the manifest, the prima materia, in order that it more closely resemble the divine in its primeval Unity.
Within the container of relationship, as much heat might be generated as is needed to achieve the couple’s unconscious goals for themselves and the relationship. Where the individuals involved have had successful primary relationship experiences in the form of productive and healthy relationship attachments, they are likely well suited to pursue the continuation of their journey with a partner whose process is mutually supported. Kahil Gibran writes in The Prophet, that the participants in a relationship must stand as two strong pillars holding up the same roof; standing side by side, but always separate. What ties these pillars together is the pursuit of the divine, the eros that drives us ever toward what psychologically constitutes our wholeness of Self. If we apply these same principles to the unhealthy or violent relationship, we might observe patterns of behavior in the relationship that act, sometimes violently, to prevent such forward momentum of the relationship and the individuals in it. Often times, we see in such relationships that the individuals have in the course of their individual development learned faulty methods of attachment that lead to increased feelings of anxiety and insecurity rather than to a sense of security and well-being. Von Franz (1980) writes that in alchemical terms, we get from the union of the substance of male and the female vapor the divine or sulphuric bitter water (p. 100-101). This is often expressed as the experience of overwhelm; of drowning in the relationship or drowning in the unconscious material that arises from confrontation with the beloved other. In developmental terms, this will convey itself as ambivalence or preoccupation with the other partner or an overwhelming need to be dismissive. Both of these actions are obviously counterproductive to the goal of union that is the Opus of the relationship.
In psychological terms, conunctio means a uniting of conscious attitude with unconscious attitude with the partner as the holder of unconscious or projected anima content. This is the vessel for the creation of the divine bitter water of alchemy that Von Franz equates to the painful swallowing of a bitter pill (p. 102) or suffocation in lead; the suffocation one experiences when they withdraw their projections from the other and, unable to escape the container of the relationship, one becomes roasted in what one truly is (p. 87). This sulphuric phase has the quality of driveness on behalf of that part of the psyche that is goal oriented; in the same fashion that an instinct has its aim over which one has no control. The drive cooks the prima materia that is the projected unconscious content until the projection can be withdrawn and turns to vapour . In its more positive aspect, this might mean the onset of a period of creative and revivifying depression that resolves in an increase of consciousness. In its more negative manifestation, the confrontation may otherwise create violent reaction or a permanent split rather than union of opposites. The libido constellates underground to the repressed instinct and the corrupted material that is the lead of the relationship further conceals the contents of the unconscious from the partners (p. 104). This is especially the case if one turns to spiritualizing or concretizing the experience rather than owning it as fully one’s own (p. 130). “The only way the Self can manifest is through conflict” says Von Franz (p. 137), “to meet one’s eternal and insoluable conflicts is to meet God” and ultimately the end of the ego. In mythology, this is represented as the extraction and resurrection of Osiris, from the lead coffin or corrupted material and the merging with Isis as the eternal man (p. 107), the one who has become master of the Underworld. One can only obtain knowledge and the creation of further consciousness through the presence of eros that always stands behind the search for truth as the projected object of fascination (Von Franz, 1980, p. 116). When the object of desire conflicts with the projected fantasy, consciousness is created through what might prove a painful process (p. 117) in which the death of the developed ego and its faulty attachments are the primary goal of the psyche for reconstituting the Self and with it the ability for establishing secure, peaceful relations.
“The Hollow Men” by T. S. Eliot: This is the dead land This is the cactus land Here the stone images Are raised, here they receive The supplication of a dead man’s hand Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Eliade, M. (1962). The forge and the crucible: the origins and structures of alchemy. Chicago: University of Chicago.
Ferrario, G. (2007). Al-Kimiya: Notes on Arabic alchemy. Chemical Heritage NewsMagazine Fall 2007, Vol. 25, No. 3. Retrieved June 3, 2008, from http://www.chemheritage.org/pubs/ch-v25n3-articles/feature_al-kimiya_p1.html
Freud, S. (1961). The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. 14. London: Hogarth.
Jowett, B. (1953). Collected works of Plato. 4th Edition. Oxford U. Press.
Jung, G.G. (1916). Septem sermones ad mortuos: The seven sermons of the dead written by Basilides in Alexandria, the city where the East toucheth the West. Retrieved June 10, 2008, from http://www.freewebs.com/navanath/seven_sermons.html.
Von Franz, M-L. (1980). Alchemy: an introduction to the symbolism and the psychology. Toronto: Inner City Books.
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