terrshee's Diaryland Diary

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Jungian PsychoBabble

Jungian PsychoBabble Alert! TMI Alert! Egoistic Self-Obssession Alert!

I've been incredibly out of sorts lately, and while I would like to blame it on the onset of menopause, that woulld be simplistic and probably wrong.

No, it it time to look deeper and do some serious evlaution. Crying jags and sudden outbursts of emotion and finding myself muttering incoherently isn't healthy.

So I dug up one of my Jungian analysis books on inner work and did some exploring.

First I got out my tarot cards. No, I do not believe in tarot cards as a fortune telling device. What I do believe in is the Jungian concept of synchronicity, the acausal connecting principle. And I believe in the power of symbols to access the unconcious and bring forward the less accessible parts of the psyche.

The idea was to try to get my mind in the right place and take a look at what archetypes might be driving the current ascendant neuroses. Being the obssessive kind of person I am, it is very easy to get possessed by an archetype and not even notice.

You know how it is when you open your mouth and someone comes out that you weren't even aware was there? It can be pretty scary.

Lately a very angry, resentful individual has been ruling at work. Not that I'm not that way, nor that there isn't reason to be that way at work, but that there doesn't seem to be room for anyone else.

Then at school is a incredible unsure teenager is staring at the blackboard and praying she doesn't get called on.

At home there's a control freak who has no control over seemingly small stuff like an underperforming A/C unit and big stuff like an apparently insolvent condo association that won't provide any information.

In my family, there's a sense that Mom is out of control, and using that to control all of us. Parental power is an awesome weapon.

In my social life, what social life? I see my friends and love them dearly, but my lack of initiative is leaving me stifled.

The point is that there are few real satisfactions in my life right now, and those sporadic. I don't seem to be able to do more than muddle from one crisis (self-imposed or external) and the next. Not a good situation, and not one that should continue. It comes down to that I'm living with pursuing what Jospeph Campbell called "bliss." The outlets for my more creative side aren't there. Or I'm not letting them be there.

So I cleared my mind and laid out the cards, and Lo! Did I get a brainful.

Eighty percent of the images were masculine in nature and inverted as well. So now I have to ask myself if the problem with my life is basically that my Anima (feminine side) is acting ineffectully in a male capacity or if my Animus (masculine side) is so weak that it isn't able to take on the needed roles. Or are they essentially the same idea? There's a lot of Janus thinking in Jungian psychology. And there were lots of indications of stifled maturity, ineffective struggles and roadblocks internal and external.

It does tell me that either I'm not using the right inner capacities to meet the current set of challenges, or the capacities I have aren't up to the task.

One of the things my boss was telling me this week was that I need to move outside of my comfort zone and confront the newly widened world of the company for which I work. I suppose it would be easier for me to adapt to a company culture than for me to get the company culture to acknowledge my worth. The same applies to the other parts of my existence.

I'm wondering if this is the real challenge of life as a single woman; that there is less room for an authentic life because I have to take on all the roles of adulthood, whether I will or no? That my psyche is in some ways forced to be more complete because there is no external person to compensate? That I am constantly feeling at odds with yourself because I have to identify with roles I care nothing about?

Something's got to give. What I really want is to go walkabout.

7:26 a.m. - 2005-07-02
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