From: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org (stillpt-digest) To: stillpt-digest@smoe.org Subject: stillpt-digest V2 #173 Reply-To: stillpt@smoe.org Sender: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk stillpt-digest Monday, August 7 2000 Volume 02 : Number 173 Today's Subjects: ----------------- b/comments8/6 ["Donald G. Keller" ] o/storr/jung ["Donald G. Keller" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 6 Aug 2000 19:11:32 -0400 (EDT) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: b/comments8/6 Ken brought up (offlist) an issue that had already occurred to me: did putting up my two essays on web pages violate whatever electronic rights I would be granting to the editors (and their publisher) of the =Buffy= book? So I e-mailed the editors, and they're OK with it, but suggested a time limit. So those web pages which Meredith mentioned will be up until early September. (I =am= curious to hear anyone's comments.) I got the 8/12-18 =TV Guide= today, and there's a lead piece on Michelle Trachtenberg, who will play Dawn on =Buffy= this coming season. Whaddya know, she's a buddy of SMG's too: they were on =All My Children= together. (Trachtenberg, who's 14, couldn't have been more than 8 then.) So the "little sister" routine has been going on for some time already. SMG in fact lobbied for her audition. Also, I was a little startled to see that Elizabeth Rohm (Kate on =Angel=) is in the cast of a new TNT series about Wall Street called =Bull=. Does this mean she's gone from =Angel=? That would be too bad. (Also Glenn Quinn is on a VH-1 show.) Phaedre: No, I don't think Joss Whedon is hitting these patterns consciously; I think he's just really savvy about narrative, with a very strong intuitive sense for character interaction, dramatic situations, plot structure, etc. etc. He only admits to seeing =Star Wars= and reading Richard Slotkin's =Regeneration through Violence= (and a zillion comic books and horror movies). But think of Jung's dream this way. A human being has a center of consciousness (the ego); an interface with the outside world; and an interface with the unconscious. If you turn these into personifications (rather than parts of the structure of the psyche), you have a good basic "starter set" of characters. And that's what we find in Jung's dream, and in =Buffy=. (And that's what Jung means by archetypes, just so.) Now I know I've been reading too much psychology: the other day I saw a sign at my local store NO ID NO BEER, and it sounded Freudian to me. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 6 Aug 2000 19:15:34 -0400 (EDT) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: o/storr/jung Flipping through Anthony Storr's excellent short book on Jung again, I came across the following passage: "This is one reason why the =Collected Works= of Jung discourage the average reader. Unless he is exceptionally persistent, he is unlikely to find anything which seems remotely connected with day- to-day problems, neurotic symptoms, sexual difficulties, and all the other matters which may make a person turn to books on psychology and psychotherapy. Unless one is already fairly familiar with Jung's point of view, it is frustrating to open one of his books and be confronted with a discussion on 'The Visions of Zosimos' or a disquisition upon the meaning of the Trinity." I had to laugh; because I had an experience very similar to that recently (though since I qualify as being "fairly familiar" with Jung I didn't find it frustrating). I now have a copy of Jung's =Psychological Types=, one of his best-known books (Vol. 6 of the =Collected Works=), where he explains his division of human psychology, not only into introvert and extravert (terms he didn't invent but popularized), but into thinking/feeling/sensation/intuition subtypes. (He got to musing about this after his break with Freud, and how the fact that Freud was an extravert and he was an introvert had a great deal to do with their differences--in every sense of the latter word.) So one might expect a careful, clinical, maybe even a bit dry, exposition of this theoretical division. But smack in the middle of the book, Chapter V, is called "The Type Problem in Poetry," and spends about 100 pages on the following flow of subjects: Carl Spitteler's 1881 German novel =Prometheus and Epimetheus=; Goethe's =Prometheus= as well as (of course) =Faust=; Nietzsche's =Thus Spoke Zarathustra= (the latter two among Jung's favorite works and liable to turn up anywhere on any pretext); brief mention of the Buddha and Wagner; a disquisition on the Brahmanic concept (in the =Rig-Veda=) of =rta= (predecessor of the later Hindu =dharma=) and how it relates to the Chinese =tao= and Gnostic =heimarmene= (and, I'd add, to Anglo-Saxon =wyrd=); Dante; the early Christian text =The Shepherd= of Hermas; medieval mystic Meister Eckhart; and back to Spitteler (with a glance at =Macbeth= and a final word from Blake). Is there a thread? Well, yes, sort of. It's about the difference between extraverts and introverts, and the relationship between introverts and their souls (or their unconscious, personified as a woman, i.e. the anima archetype); Eastern philosophy's desire to get beyond "the opposites" (i.e. consciousness and unconsciousness); etc. Now, when I stumbled across this chapter I made a point of sitting down and reading the whole thing during downtime at work, and found it absolutely fascinating; but I think it's fair to ask: =what in the world is it doing there=? Storr is in fact correct that the average reader looking for insight into their own psychology and that of people they know are likely to founder in this stuff. It's no wonder (though it's a shame) that Freud's clearer, more to-the-point writings are better known and more influential. ------------------------------ End of stillpt-digest V2 #173 *****************************