Core Elements of Jungian Thought

What defines Jungian thought?   Jung had a breathtakingly broad and deep approach to psychology, one that incorporated everything from type theory to the paranormal.  But, there are core elements that define and delimit Jungian thought.  If a proposition or interpretation contradicts these elements, it can no longer be considered Jungian, at least in the classic sense.

Because there are identifiable boundaries to Jungian thought, some have condemned Jungians as dogmatic.  I believe this label is misapplied.  Just because a school of thought has a coherent set of core elements does not make it dogmatic.  Jung had a unique way of defining religious dogma, which is instructive here.  He said dogma is the crystallized experiences and beliefs of someone who once had a personal experience, but which is now offered as an absolute to be taken on faith.  In other words, dogma stands in opposition to unique, lived experience.  Jungian thought, at its essence, insists on lived experience.  Until it has been lived, it’s only theory and words.  It’s only a dead framework until we breath life into it each day.  That’s why the programs that awarded me my Jungian certification required 300 hours of training analysis.  Until I demonstrated that I had assimilated the material as my own, my training was not considered complete.

That said, what are the core elements of Jungian thought?  Naturally, different Jungians have defined these elements in slightly different ways.  I recently reviewed texts written by Jung and his successors, and I find five common elements upon which there is general agreement.

Element 1 – The reality of the psyche

Psychic reality is core to Jungian thought.  Indeed, Jung saw psychic reality as anything that strikes a person as real, whether it arises from an internal experience or an external experience.  Where other schools of thought emphasize historical truth or objectively observable facts, Jung emphasized that anything which has an emotional impact on the ego is real.

Jung was particularly critical of the “nothing but” attitude of modern Western culture.  He descried the constant belittlement of experiences that cannot be easily connected to the familiar, tangible world.  The “nothing but” attitude is satisfied with simplistic explanations, and it attempts to reduce everything to mere cause-and-effect, mere imagination, mere subjectivity.  In contrast, Jung insisted that the psyche is no less real than the physical, and that the psyche has its own structure and is subject to its own rules.  In fact, that which our conscious mind takes for granted as being real is based upon, and results from, the unconscious psyche.  In Jung’s words, “We are in all truth so enclosed by psyche images that we cannot penetrate to the essence of things external to ourselves.  All our knowledge is conditioned by the psyche which, because it alone is immediate, is superlatively real.”  Therefore, it is core to Jungian thought to look beyond the obvious meanings of myths, fairy tales, and historical events to find the deeper truths of the psyche that underlie them and are revealed through them.

Element 2 – The ego stands in relation to a vast unconscious

The immature ego fancies itself the lord of its domain, both internal and external.  Most modern psychologies support the immature ego in this position, holding up adaptation as the highest aim of human endeavor.  Jung disagrees emphatically.  In Jungian thought, the ego is a small boat floating on an immeasurable ocean, over which it has no control.  This ocean is the unconscious, both personal and collective.  The collective unconscious is the repository of human experience since the beginnings of human experience, perhaps before.  The contents of the collective unconscious are the archetypes, and these suprapersonal patterns color the ways that we apprehend and experience life.  Archetypes are particularly evident in those typical and significant human experiences like birth, marriage, sickness, social unrest, and death.

Jung mapped this vast territory, and he prescribed a approach in dealing with archetypes.  If we dismiss them as imaginary, or we treat them like playthings for the ego, the archetypes will take their revenge in the form of psychological and physical symptoms.  On the other hand, if we succumb to their numinosity, archetypes will enslave us and rob us of our precious uniqueness.  Between these extremes, Jung advises a middle way, wherein we venerate archetypes for their autonomous, godlike qualities while we strive to assimilate, in some small measure, the power and wisdom they offer us.

Archetypes reveal themselves to us in dreams, in myths, in scriptures, in fairy tales, in popular media, and on the front page of the daily newspapers.  They’re just literary genres or popular notions.  They are living entities with roots as deep as human life itself.

Element 3 – At the center of the psyche lies an image of God called the Self

In a televised interview, Jung was once asked if he believed in God.  Jung answered, “I do not need belief.  I have experienced God, and I know he is real.”  There is no such thing as an atheistic Jungian.  Religious experience is a core element of Jungian thought, but this is not the same thing as ascribing to a particular creed.  It is religion as experience.

Jung opposed the notion that human life comes down to a daily struggle ending in a meaningless death.  He urged his patients and students  to see life as a journey which begins and ends at the center of the psyche, as an ever-deepening  relationship with the archetype of the archetypes, the Self.  The Self is the ultimate meaning-maker.  If our interior life is seen as a firmament, the Self is the still point around which this vastness orbits in its eternal cycle.  Similarly, a relationship with the Self shows us how daily occurrences, good or bad, bring us to a new level of awareness of the undeniable presence of the Self.   There is a pattern of meaning behind seemingly random events, and it’s more real that anything we’ve ever believed to be true.

A relationship with the Self transforms ego.  To know and be known by the Self is to know God in an intimately personal way.

Element 4 – Individuation is the ultimate and most challenging human endeavor

We are conditioned to expect instant answers.  New age thinking leads to the vain belief that our enlightenment is in the next book, on the next tape, at the next conference.  If it can’t be explained in simple language in an entertaining twenty minutes, it must be wrong.

Since individuation involves the process of becoming whole, we must be willing to embrace the ugliest, shunned, fearsome parts of our shadow.  That’s not pleasant, but it’s necessary.  Individuation is also contrasted to individualism, which is a self-indulgent stressing of one’s peculiarities.  Individuation is a better and more complete fulfillment of collective qualities.  As Jung put it, “Individuation does not shut out the world, but gathers the world to itself.”

Individuation does not happen by accident.  For the process to proceed in any meaningful way, we must build our resolve, especially when the path becomes perilous and we are lured into seemingly easier byways.  We must also dedicate ourselves to compassion, for others and ourselves.  Humility and moderation are also essential, avoiding the perils of inflation and possession.  Finally, we must cultivate constant awareness and ever-expanding consciousness.

Element 5 – For those who are aware, there are constant clues and supports along the way

If you have any doubt about the reality of the psyche, the influence of the archetypes, the presence of the Self, or the path of individuation, there are insights near at hand.  At night, dreams point the way.  In waking life, we are nurtured by symbols, fairy tales, and myths.  When we are most lost on the way, there are synchronicities, those acausal miracles that grip us with their numinous meaning.

Of course, we often ignore or disregard these gifts from the unconscious.  But, when we take them seriously, they become clearer and increasingly powerful.  We are abandoned only when we turn our back on our true nature.

In summary, Jungian thought is not for everyone.  It is a rigorous system of thought that reveals new layers of meaning even after decades of study.  Jung did not hesitate to dismiss sloppy thinking, misdirection, and overly simplistic approaches to complex issues.  He had little use for the New Age thinkers of his time, who browsed world philosophies and religions like fussy eaters at a buffet table, choosing tidbits that might be delectable but do not come together as a nutritious meal.  At times, he applied a ruthless judgment to his fellow psychologists, whom he felt were obsessed with the least significant aspects of the psyche.  But, through it all, Jung operated out of compassion for individual and collective suffering.  And he never expected his followers to go places where he had not gone himself, including the darkest depths of the unconscious that threatened to swallow the unwary explorer.  He left us a 20-volume legacy in the form of his Collected Works, and a core set of elements that have offered protection and inspiration to generations of earnest truth-seekers.  It’s a worthy path for any who wish or dare to proceed.

When Helping Hurts: The Archetypes of Giving and Receiving, Part 5

Accepting the Gift that Hurts

Given all this complexity, and all the potential for giving and receiving to force us to come to grips with shadow, it’s understandable that people try various ways to manage this situation, or avoid it altogether.  Coming to grips with shadow is almost always painful, and we humans generally try to avoid pain, even when the avoidance leads to greater pain.  I call this talk “Accepting the Gift that Hurts,” because it is about how people attempt, usually unsuccessfully, to avoid accepting such gifts, or avoid making such gifts.  But the key is acceptance, for both the giver and the receiver.  But first, let’s talk about those typical ways we try to avoid the hurt.

The first strategy is to avoid giving to anyone, and to avoid asking for help entirely.  In the words of Shakespeare:

Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine ownself be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

Is this desirable, much less possible?  Jung teaches us that we cannot repress shadow and pretend that it will simply go away.  I have come to see that shadow is a sort of impurity or unprocessed stuff of life, and the events of our time here on earth are meant to process it, to purify it, bringing us to greater consciousness and peace.  Wherever there is shadow, life will provide an opportunity for us to confront it, understand it in a deeper way, heal the pain around it, and become more whole as a result.  If you choose to avoid giving and receiving, it is likely you will end up avoiding most intimate relationships, because they almost always come to some kind of giving and receiving.  But shadow will still find a way to break through.

A less drastic avoidance strategy is to very tightly contain the giving and the receiving. Typically, ego dominates in this type of strategy, and with ego comes control and judgment.  A person says, “I will only give if I can do so anonymously.”  Or, “I will only help those who help themselves.  I will not be exploited.”  I think you can see that these strategies are meant to prevent the shadowy consequences of giving and receiving.  If we know the person too well, we may be disappointed that they did no show the gratitude we hoped.  If we hold the receiver at a distance, we will not be drawn into their shadow.  This is the difference between writing a check to Save the Children and bringing an orphan into your house to live with you.  It is shadow encounter at an entirely different level of magnitude.  Even then, sometimes, the shadow intercedes.  I have an interesting anecdote.  Last year, I began sponsoring a child in the Philippines, through Save the Children.  Pretty safe giving, you might suppose.  But within a few months, they starting sending me items written by the child, and they were filled with Christian content.  For instance, in answer to a question about what music she likes, this little girl wrote, “Christian hymns.”  This raised all sorts of shadowy issues for me.  Is part of my donation going to religiously indoctrinate this girl?  What sort of judgment would she have of me, if she knew who I really was – a left-leaning, homosexual who mostly scorns traditional religion?  I did not renew my sponsorship, but I feel slightly guilty about it.

Let’s reflect a bit on the phrase “helping those who help themselves.” On some level, this is saying that you only help people who are relatively capable and self-sufficient, just in need of a bit of temporary support.  But what about all the people who just aren’t equipped to help themselves; they are too weighed down by their trauma, by their complexes, to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.  We fear that level of shadow, not just in them, but in ourselves, and so we avoid it.

A similar strategy involves minimizing the gift, thereby minimizing the level of hurt that might come from it.  For instance, we may try to limit the gift to just a monetary amount, and set up a payment plan, so it is more of a loan.  Sometimes that actually does work, but in my experience, it just sets up a drama that comes later, when the payments are skipped, or the checks bounce.  It is NEVER just about the money, because money is a tremendous carrier of expectation, shame, and shadow.  Arguments about money almost inevitably turn into arguments about control, worthiness, shame, and fear.

So many strategies to avoid the shadow and potential hurt that comes from giving and receiving.   And so many ways to fail in such strategies.  Why might that be so?  I believe it comes back to the individual model of giving and receiving.  Whenever you find yourself in a situation where you are drawn to give, or drawn to receive, a drama is about to be enacted, and it is a drama with meaning and purpose.  It is a drama that has at least the potential for something that has been unconscious to become more conscious, in both the receiver and the giver.  That meaning, that purpose, will not be foiled by the mere acts of the ego.  It has the force of the Self, and of individuation, behind it.

It seems to me that the key quality of the individual model of giving and receiving is acceptance.  And I don’t mean just the superficial aspect of acceptance, meaning that an offer of help is accepted.  I mean that BOTH the giver and the receiver practice a radical form of acceptance of EVERYTHING that proceeds from their relationship.  What do I mean by acceptance?  Do I mean a sort of fatalism, a resignation to the futility of it all?  Absolutely not.  I would like to quote from Steven Hayes, a modern psychologist who has studied acceptance:

The goal is to open yourself to the vitality of the moment and to move more effectively toward what you value . . . By assuming the stance of willingness and acceptance you can open all the blinds and windows in your house and allow life to flow through; you let fresh air and light enter into what was previously closed and dark.  To be willing and accepting means to be able to walk through the swamps of your difficult history when the swamps are directly on the path that goes in a direction you care about.  To be willing and accepting means noticing that you are the sky, not the clouds, the ocean, not the waves.  It means noticing that you are large enough to contain all of your experiences, just as the sky can contain any cloud and the ocean any wave.” (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, page 45)

Dr. Hayes is not a Jungian, but there is a lot of Jungian philosophy in what he has written.  It is about trying to keep the largest possible context for whatever happens in our lives, in this case being a giver or a receiver.  The ego will always try to reduce it to the lowest denominator – did I get scammed, was I violated, should I demand justice, am I properly appreciated, what do I owe, what is owed back to me.  By redirecting it to the larger context the questions change dramatically, “What has been brought to the surface by what I have experienced?  How can I take that lead and process it into gold?”

I would like to end with a quote from an online book called Living the Generous Life:

Reflections on Giving and Receiving which was funded by the Fetzer Institute and edited by Wayne Muller and Megan Scribner:

If generosity is fundamentally relational, then the giving/receiving relationship is prey to all the challenges and obstacles inherent in any human relationship. Jealousy, dependency, power struggles, and deception can all infect the purity of an honest, easy kindness.

Any or all of these familiar human foibles can create a corrosive dilemma that impedes the authentic flow of generosity. Fear and dependency create scarcity in the giver, and lack of
empowerment in the receiver. What kinds of giving challenge both giver and receiver to be more open, honest, and authentic as they strive together to grow a relationship that is beneficial to both?

It is useful to remember that the act of giving begins on the inside. The rhythm of honest kindness arises out of an honest heart. If we are to be truly kind, we must be truly awake to our motivations, our fears, our strengths, and our gifts. In other words, we must first become the gift that we would give.
(p. 8, available at http://www.fetzer.org/sites/default/files/images/resources/attachment/2012-07-12/generous_life.pdf)

When Helping Hurts: The Archetypes of Giving and Receiving Part 4

Part 4 -- The Full Context of Giving and Receiving

For the sake of simplicity, we have talked about the simplest context for giving and receiving, namely, one giver and one receiver.  But in real life, that is almost never the context.  There are significant others surrounding the giver and the receiver, contributing to the complexity of the situation.

In terms of the six-way diagram, imagine a situation where there is a committed couple who have decided to jointly provide help to a receiver. There is a six-way relationship already in place for this couple – their egos are in relationship, and so are their unconscious factors.  They are projecting some part of their anima or animus on each other, and they are projecting some part of shadow onto each other.  Now insert the receiver of the gift.  This will alter the balance of the couple’s relationship.  For example, each of them will probably shift part of their anima/animus and shadow onto the receiver, instead of on each other.  This is the basis of jealousy.  Or one of  members of the couple may project anima onto the receiver, while the other member of the couple projects shadow.  The conversation goes something like this:  “I think things are going very well.  John really seems to appreciate the help we are providing”  “Really?  Are you serious?  I think John is a manipulative schemer.  You only feel that way about John because he is seducing you.  Maybe you actually love John more than you love me.”

It is just as complicated, and potentially destabilizing, when there is a single giver and multiple receivers.  Suppose Sally decides to help John and Chris.  Now it is John and Chris having the conversation about Sally’s motives for giving, Sally’s preferential treatment of John or of Chris, all sorts of motives ascribed to Sally, and so on.  Complexity layered upon complexity.

It can be particularly disturbing to be a friend, spouse, or other significant other observing the six  problematic patterns of receiving.  You can see clearly that your friend is offering help only because he equates giving with loving, and gratitude with being loved.  You are seriously concerned that he is being manipulated.  What do you do about it?  If you interject yourself into this kind of projection, you do so at your own peril.  You sense that perhaps your spouse is living vicariously by giving lavishly and becoming obsessed with the details of the life of the receiver of help.  Again, what do you do?  And, of course, what does it mean about your relationship with your friend or spouse if they seem to be neglecting you in favor of this other person?  Or is that you just projecting your insecurities about yourself into the situation?  Again, complexity layered upon complexity.

The five patterns of giving can also apply to giving and receiving involving multiple people.  Suppose two givers , Carl and Jack are giving to Pauline.  Carl is basically “book keeping” in his orientation, while Jack has another pattern going on, like substituting or manipulative.  Carl, the “book keeper,” wants the relationship with Pauline to balance out, if not immediately, in the foreseeable future.  But, Jack sees it very differently. Jack feels guilty that he can’t give Pauline the perfect fathering she really wants, so he keeps giving Pauline money.  It can’t balance out, no matter how much money he gives Pauline, because it is a substitution model, and money is an inadequate substitute for a loving father.  Or, Pauline is manipulating Jack’s shadow around sexuality.  Jack has sexual feelings toward Pauline, which he can’t really admit, even to himself.  Pauline senses this and manipulates Jack into one sacrifice after another, while Carl looks on, seeing it all very clearly, but reticent to point it out to Jack – from a book keeping point of view, it will only balances out if Jack actually has sex with Pauline, but that feels too much like prostitution.  See  how complicated it can get.

Again, the individuation model is the Jungian ideal, even when there are multiple receivers and or multiple givers.  But just as the individuation model is extremely difficult and rare where there is only one giver and one receiver, it is only more so where there are multiple people involved. The individuation model asks all of the parties to see it as mutual engagement in a drama.  They acknowledge that each of them has a shadow and it is involved in how the giving and receiving will happen – they give due regard to the multiple, overlapping six-way relationships going on.  They know that this drama, like all dramas, has the potential to show each all of them who they really are.  This is perhaps the most important outcome of all.  For the individuation model to actually work, a few things must be true.  All of the parties must be willing to be vulnerable, to admit that they have shadowy motives of which they themselves are only partially aware.  All of the parties must be capable of self reflection and of conscious analysis of what is going on.  The power shadow must be made conscious – in fact, the receiver or receivers might be the more powerful parties, if revelation of shadow and light of consciousness are the criteria.

When Helping Hurts: The Archetypes of Giving and Receiving Part 3

The Role of the Receiver

This week, we will explore in more depth one of the roles in the drama of giving and receiving, the role of the receiver.

To begin with, let’s explore the theme of need, which translates into something lacking, into a longing for something that is not present.  Using Maslow’s hierarchy, the basic needs seem pretty straightforward.  I am hungry, cold, tired, at risk of physical harm.  If I cannot satisfy these needs on my own, I reach out to someone who has food, shelter, and protection to offer.  As we go higher in the hierarchy, the picture becomes more complicated.  I long to be loved, not just by anyone, but by the one who truly knows me, with whom the feelings are mutual.  I want to feel welcomed and a part of something bigger than myself, but not just by any group, by a group I can honor and value. To feel accomplished, I long for validation by someone whose opinion I respect.  And, at the ultimate level, I long to achieve my fullest potential, and that is not something that can be given to me by any other person.

Jungians add some depth to this analysis of need.  According to Jung, we have all experienced a original sense of profound and pervasive unity.  We have all known what it felt like to be completely at peace and welcome, without need.  Jung called this “immersion in the Self,” and it is difficult to say when it occurred. Perhaps it is a dim memory of life in the womb, where nothing had to be requested, and all was given without limitation.  But that ends very abruptly, perhaps with that first swat on the butt, the harsh light of the delivery room, the first feeling of open air on the skin.  At any case, profound unity is very quickly shattered as we become beings that are limited in time and space.

According to Jungian theory, we transfer that longing for the full satisfaction of need onto our flesh and blood mothers.  To an infant, one’s mother does seem like an all-powerful being who can satisfy every need, if only he or she is willing to do so.  But no matter how well a flesh and blood person tries to meet the needs of an infant, she or he will fall short. In that dimly remembered paradise, I didn’t have to scream out to let you know I was hungry; the magical umbilicus took care of that.  What went wrong?  This is traumatic, even when handled well; the world may not, in fact, take care of my needs.  Where does that leave me?  The traumas harden into complexes, and the patterns of ourselves as receivers and givers are set, to be lived out for much if not all of the rest of our lives.

Going back to our six-way diagram, any time a giver is playing out a drama with a receiver, the giver is experiencing the receiver’s shadow around unfilled need.  Somewhere down deep is a disappointed infant, a neglected toddler, and a unsatisfied child that learned, mostly from his or her parents, what it meant to need something and how to go about meeting that need.  And those original patterns will almost inevitably re-emerge and have to be dealt with.

As with the role of the giver, there are uncountable variations on this theme.  Today I will share just a few.  I am presenting these as distinct patterns just for the purpose of discussion and analysis.  In fact, most of us do all of these, at nearly the same time.  Some of us rely on one or two more than the others.  None of us do only one.  But, in every case,

1)   The transactional model

Developmental theorists have noted how quickly babies learn how to enter into transactions with their mothers.  It is largely unconscious, but it is still transactional.  An infant learns that, by cooing a certain way, he can get picked up and cuddled.  There is a time to coo and a time to scream, and the infant picks up on these patterns.  That lays the foundation for a transactional attitude toward getting needs met.

Basically, a transactional model says:  I have something you want, you have something I want, let’s do an exchange.  There is an assumption here that each party feels they have something of value to offer to the other party.  This is the foundation for a market-based economy.

The problem arises when those higher level needs on Maslow’s hierarchy present themselves.  Is love really a transaction?  If you have to buy it, literally or figuratively, is it really love?  What looks like mutual caring from one angle can look like mutual usury from another angle.  This can lead to a very jaundiced view of human life.  And it can lead to a very destructive kind of perfectionism.  You can fundamentally doubt the worth of what you are offering and work endlessly to make it absolutely perfect, in the magical belief that if what you offer is perfect, you will experience absolute bliss.  If I perfectly match what you demand, you will love me – or so says the lie we tell ourselves.  Unfortunately, when our needs are not satisfied, we perfectionists lay the blame on our remaining imperfection, and work just a bit harder.

And if you are trying to transact yourself into individuation, you will soon discover that it is impossible. You can’t buy it from a guru, can’t do something to convince the unconscious to enlighten you.

2)   The manipulative model

In the manipulative model, the receiver makes use of the shadow of the giver to get what is needed or wanted.  Referring back to last week’s talk, suppose the giver longs for love and equates gratitude with being loved.  A manipulative receiver knows how to express gratitude in just the right loving way to keep the giving going.  Or, suppose a giver wants to magically recreate her childhood, making it all go right this time; a manipulative receiver will be a willing participant in this dramatic re-enactment, so long as it ends up with the receiver also getting his needs met.  Or, suppose the giver wants some “vicarious living” through the life of the receiver; the manipulative receiver can be very accommodating on this request.  In short, the receiver either consciously or unconsciously cues in on the shadow of the giver and uses it to satisfy unmet needs.

 The truly manipulative receiver can play this to the hilt.  Many times, a giver sees potential in the receiver.  The manipulative receiver knows that, to keep this going, he must fail once in a while and get bailed out to keep the giver feeling heroic.  He needs to show progress toward the giver’s dream for him, but never quite get there.

Even at its best, manipulation is a form of lying.  It has much of the same down side as the transactional model.  If I need to lie and connive to get what I need, what does that make me?  And how do I lie and connive my way into true love, much less individuation?  It can’t be done.

There is a subtype of the manipulative model that bears mentioning.  I call it “aggressive victimhood.”  The script goes something like this:  My life is miserable, and no one has ever done anything to help, they have only hurt me. Try to help, and I will let you know if it is working, but I have my doubts.  Particularly if the giver is of the “rescuing” variety, sure that a heroic rescue of a desperate receiver will win life-long gratitude if not love, this is a highly effective manipulation.

The manipulative model is an excellent illustration of how the power shadow operates.  In the regular giving and receiving relationship, the giver has the power and the receiver is less powerful.  In the manipulative model, the power dynamic is reversed – the receiver gets the upper hand and plays it masterfully.  Sometimes, the receiver takes on the manipulative model in reaction to the controlling attitude of the giver; it is, in that sense, a way to balance out the power dynamics.

3)   The substitute model

The script for the drama of the substitute model goes like this:  What I really need and long for is ______________, but if I can’t have that, please give me more _________________.  This is a bargain almost certain to fail, and it is actually the basis of much that we would call addiction and compulsion.  What I want is love, but if I can’t have that, give me sex.  What I want is self esteem, but if I can’t have that, at least take care of my financial security.  What I want is an escape from the oppression of my complexes, but if I can’t have that, at least get high with me.  There are endless variations, all of which pull up shadow, frustration, disappointment, excess, and eventual rejection.

4)   The withdrawn model

A very interesting variation on the receiver models is what I call the withdrawn model.  Essentially, a person withdraws into himself or herself, never directly expressing any needs, desires, or vulnerabilities.  You might think this might leave them unattractive to people willing to give, but that is not always the case. 

In one sense, the withdrawn model has much in common with the manipulative model.  For some givers, a withdrawn receiver is a challenge, provoking ever-higher levels of giving.  The morose teenager is a fine example here.  The morose teenager is unimpressed with anything offered or given to him or her.  His dark mood is unrelenting.  The giving parent searches for any sign of having “guessed right” about what would please the morose teenager.  The slightest sign of gratitude is celebrated as a major victory for the giver.

In a different sense, people fall into the withdrawn model when they sincerely believe that, if they express any need, they will find out how little they are loved, how little they matter to the people around them.  Rather than take the risk of asking for anything, they would rather pretend that they have no dreams, no needs, and no desires.

A third variation of the withdrawn model is particularly popular among those who are spiritually inclined.  These people label needs or desires as spiritual hindrances, and they claim to have evolved past such mundane things as needs and wants.  Indeed, it is possible to become so transcendent that needs become very minimal.  But that is not the same thing as being driven by disappointment and resentment – “if no one will give to me, I will give up my needs.  That will show them!” 

5)   The individuation model

In the individuation model of receiving, both the giver and the receiver acknowledge that they are engaged in a drama.  They acknowledge that each of them has a shadow and it is involved in how the giving and receiving will happen – they give due regard to the six-way relationship.  They know that this drama, like all dramas, has the potential to show each of them who they really are.  This is perhaps the most important outcome of all.  For the individuation model to actually work, a few things must be true.  Both parties must be willing to be vulnerable, to admit that they have shadowy motives of which they themselves are only partially aware.  Both parties must be capable of self reflection and of conscious analysis of what is going on.  The power shadow must be made conscious – in fact, the receiver might be the more powerful party, if revelation of shadow and light of consciousness are the criteria.

Is such a thing possible?  I can’t say I have ever experienced it fully, but I have had tantalizing tastes of it, so I hold out hope and faith.  At least it can be aspirational, as compared to the other models.

When Helping Hurts: The Archetypes of Giving and Receiving

Part 2 -- The Role of the Giver

Summarizing our discussion so far, giving and receiving is a powerful archetypal theme in many lives.  Why does it so often go wrong?  Last week, I proposed four underlying reasons.  First, there are actually six relationships going on whenever we give or receive, as summarized in the chart from Vol. 16 of Jung’s Collected Works

As if that weren’t enough, there can be disconnect around the nature of the need being expressed, as summarized in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs:

Third, there is the involvement of the “power shadow,” since giving and receiving automatically set up one party as having something that the other one wants or needs.

This week, we will explore in more depth one of the roles in the drama of giving and receiving, the role of the giver.

Before we start talking about how things can and often go wrong for whomever offers help to others, let’s start with an archetypal tale of giving, the story of Kuan-Yin, the Chinese goddess of compassion.  This tale is retold by Mark Nepo in the Summer 2013 edition of Parabola magazine.

There are many aspects of the drama of giving and receiving in this tale, particularly the role of the giver.  Here are just a few of the archetypal themes.

Kwan-Yin was drawn, from the outset, to look inside the situation, inside the very bodies of the victims.  Was this just her morbid curiosity?  No, not at all.  She was not drawn by the drama of the scene, intent on punishing the perpetrators, living out her sense of rage or need for justice born out of her personal history. Symbolically, she was drawn to the inner experience or meaning of what had occurred, and she felt drawn to feel it, not just think about it or enact further damage from it.

Neither did Kuan Yin shrink from sharing in the suffering.  She allowed the blood to coat her – in other words, she made herself vulnerable to the experience of suffering and allowed herself to have her own experience of it.  She took the burden of caring for the little boy.  She actually felt the pain of the mother, of the father, and of the little boy.  Whenever you offer help to someone, to some extent, there is a potential that you will share in their suffering, inviting what harmed them into your own life.  The fear of this makes some people not offer help the first place, or give help in a “distancing” way, i.e., “what you are going through could never happen to me.” 

Kuan-yin willingly put aside her original destination; as the story says, “that life, that plan, that dream was gone.”  Archetypally speaking, this kind of decision does not come from the ego; indeed, it is usually counter to the ego.

Kuan Yin persevered through this process, although the likelihood that it would be “successful” in any outer-world sense was basically zero.  But she was not broken by the tragic outcome – the death of the boy, which is what she was so intent to prevent.  Even then, she was drawn to the inner experience of it – she literally opened the eyelids of the little dead child to “see what was left within him.”  And it was through that effort that this entire drama of giving and receiving left the mundane and rose to archetypal dimensions.  The child’s suffering and death became the root of all suffering, in all its infinite variations.  She did not shrink from this, nor did she allow it to destroy and possess her.  As the story says, “letting them move through her began to open her heart like a lotus flower.” 

She slept – symbolically an act of integration – and then became a conduit for the archetypal energy of compassion.  She found the strength that can come from fully grieving.

We are not goddesses, we are human, so things usually don’t go the way it did in the story.  We mere humans have shadows, and they present themselves in the giving and receiving drama.  What is it that keeps the archetype of giving and compassion from flowing as it did through Kuan-yin:  to keep focusing not just on the outer events but the inner meanings, opening ourselves to the suffering without being overtaken by it, persevering and even finding the ultimate blessing in what seems to be the ultimate defeat of our intentions as givers of help?

To put it brutally, sometimes the act of giving comes from an unhealthy place in the giver.  What can seem as a pure, unselfish act has its roots in trauma, pain, and longing for resolution in the giver, and has only a passing association with the true needs or realities of the person reaching out for help.  I offer five examples, but I am sure there are many, many more.

1)            Sometimes we give material things because we equate such giving with loving, and we equate gratitude with being loved.

This is particularly likely in a hyper-materialistic culture such as our own.  Giving things is much easier than truly opening one’s heart and making oneself vulnerable to the actual suffering of the person in need.  Further, when the person expresses gratitude, it can feel very satisfying, but even at best, one is left with a troubling question.  Do you love the things I gave you, or do you love me, as the giver?

2)            Sometimes we give because we want to magically undo an unresolved or painful part of our personal history

Sometimes we give out of the magical belief that, by re-enacting what went wrong in our childhood, and giving what we needed back then, it will be like getting into a time machine and preventing the original wounding from ever happening to us.  That is not the same as growing in empathy from the resolution of our own complexes;  it is a vain attempt to deal with our complexes by somehow re-living the past and “getting it right” this time.  We can heal from trauma, but we can’t remove it from our past.  No matter how many times you prevent others from experiencing the wound, the fact of our original wound will remain.

3)            Givers may succumb to “vicarious living” through the receiver. 

Sometimes, it may seem as if the act of giving has conferred a special access to the life of the receiver, and it may seem like a very interesting, intriguing, even seductive life.  This is especially true if the giver has an unacknowledged shadow which she or he fears living out up front and personally.  Instead, the giver may insinuate him or herself very deeply into the situation of the receiver, thirsting for every detail of how the receiver got into her predicament and how the help is easing his burden.  Warning signs are the stunting of the life of the giver.

4)            Sometimes givers are motivated by their own feelings of weakness or insecurity. 

In such cases, givers consciously or unconsciously encourage a dependence relationship, exaggerate the problems of the receiver, and feel more powerful and capable as a result.  They similarly exaggerate their ability to help.  They take joy in the deepening of the receiver’s problems, and disappointment when the receiver becomes more independent. If the receiver is defiant and ungrateful, it might be a reaction to this part of the giver’s shadow.

5)            Sometimes, in giving, we only see the potential good we wish for the receiver, and we overlook the actual human being with his or her true realities and needs

This is the situation where someone says, “I gave to him or her because I saw such potential, and they deserved a break.”  This often involves a confusion of Maslow’s hierarchy.   The giver is projecting her or his need into the situation.  The receiver just wants $20 and a safe place to spend the night; the giver sees that they could become a successful rocket scientist with a happy spouse and a beautiful home in the suburbs. In writing about how this can play out in the analytic relationship, Adolf Guggenbuhl Craig notes a paradox. Many of us had parents or other adults in our lives who wove fantasies about us, imagining us to be capable of nearly miraculous things, many of which were unlived and stunted parental hopes and dreams for themselves.  Sometimes, that elevates our expectations of ourselves; people who lack this entirely, such as people in orphanages, suffer for the lack of it.  On the other hand, such fantasies can be highly destructive if they are insisted upon, made as a condition for love, and continually harped upon when not achieved.  A classic line from the unconscious giver:  “After all I did for you, all the sacrifices I made, all the chances I gave you to have the advantages I lacked, this is the thanks I get!”  Translation:  I gave you the chance to have the life I wanted for myself, and you had the audacity to demand your own life!

This is a vivid illustration of the playing out of the power shadow.  The giver takes on a role of being smarter, more powerful, and wiser than the receiver.  That may or may not be true, but the act of giving does not make it absolutely true.

Is the answer to refrain from giving?  These five traps seem so common and so insidious, even if we think we have done a lot of shadow work.  There is something about the drama of giving and receiving that will surface whatever remains to be done.  But let us go back and remember the story of Kuan-yin and find some inspiration there.  In his commentary on the tale, Mark Nepo writes:

There are always things to be done in the face of suffering. We hare bread and water and shelter in the storm. But when we arrive at what suffering does to us, there is only compassion-the genuine, tender ways we can be those who suffer.

Some days, I can barely stand the storms of feeling and fear civilization will end, if we can't honor each other's pain. But in spite of my own complaints and resistance, I know in my bones that openness of heart makes the mystery visible. Openness to the suffering we come across makes our common heart visible. If we are to access the resources of life, we must listen with our common heart to the cries of the world. We must forego our obsession with avoiding pain and start sense the one cry of life that allows us to flow to each other.

When Helping Hurts: The Archetypes of Giving and Receiving

Part 1 -- The Drama of Receiving and Giving

Every day, we experience giving and we experience receiving.  It seems so simple, at least on the surface.  One person expresses a need, and a second person steps forward to help fill that need.  If it is so simple, why does it so often go very wrong.? Givers are often left feeling scammed and unappreciated.  Receivers are often left feeling shamed and further victimized.  This is not always the case, of course.  But I would say that giving and receiving is just as likely, if not more likely, to produce hurt as well as help.  Is that because somebody did something wrong?  Or is it just built into the pattern of giving and receiving?  That is the theme of the next series of lectures.

Carl Jung wrote extensively on one particular type of giving and receiving – the analytical relationship.  In particular, he delved deeply into the phenomena he called transference and countertransference.  One of the key skills of an analyst is to recognize when analysands are projecting something onto her or him, and to use that in order to assist in the healing process.  For example, I am not actually your father, but if I were your analyst, you might start thinking about me and acting toward me as if I were your father, because I remind you of him somehow.  My job as your analyst would be to help you recognize the unhealed aspects of your relationship with your father, using that transference as a valuable opportunity for you to work through it with me.  On the other hand, I might recognize that I am also projecting something onto you – perhaps treating you as a child, having parental feelings toward, even working through my own parenting issues using the analysand as a fill-in child. That is called counter-transference, and it is the analyst’s obligation to minimize the detrimental effect of it on the analysand’s healing process, perhaps even withdrawing from the analysis if it detracts to much from the analysand’s needs.

In this series, I will not be talking much about the analyst/analysand type of giving and receiving.  Instead, I will be exploring the types of giving and receiving where neither party is trained or obliged to deal with the transference or countertransference.  For instance, there is the parent and the child, the medical doctor and the patient, the philanthropist and the charity, the employer and the employee, or even two friends. Lacking awareness of the deeper processes going on, givers and receivers revert to more common, emotion-laden vocabulary to describe their experiences – like exploitation, gratitude, scamming, generosity, enmeshment, self-sufficiency, and unconditional love.

As I put together this series, I starting thinking about giving and receiving as involving agreements, many of which go unspoken or even unrecognized by both parties.  When I give, even when I insist it is unconditional, there is some sort of agreement about it.  And the same is true when I receive.  There is some insight that can be gained from that approach, but I have decided not to use that model.  For one thing, it involves too much ego process, which means that it leads to solutions that are just too simplistic and makes it all seem like a transaction.  As long as we have clear, mutual expectations and agreements, it will all turn out happily, right?  Just ask someone with a pre-nuptual agreement if it guarantees a happy marriage.  Sometimes, helping just hurts, and that is exactly what it must do in order to serve something greater, to serve a higher purpose.  The agreement/transaction approach simply cannot get to that level of insight.

Instead, I have opted to use the analogy of drama, like the drama we experience in the form of films or stage plays.  In fact, you can translate almost all of Jung’s essential theories into dramatic analogies.  Every film or movie has a larger plot or narrative, which renders the roles of the individual characters meaningfully related.  Events transpire, some of which are wildly unexpected, some of which are natural consequences of decisions made by characters.  Characters confront these events, react to these events, interact with one another through these events.  Sometimes the characters fall into old ruts, old patterns from their personal history, and they are held back from taking the action they need to take, caught in side stories of fear and avoidance. Eventually, there is usually a dramatic turning point – a character triumphs heroically, fails tragically, gains a new insight, makes a bold decision, and is often transformed or reborn as a result.  In Jungian terms, the big patterns or themes are the archetypes, often carried by nearly every member of a culture or society, passed down from untold numbers of generations. The events of the unfolding plot are synchronicities.  The old ruts and side stories of fear and avoidance are personal complexes. The plot line that leads to transformation and rebirth is individuation.  And who is the playwright?  That would be our Higher Power, whatever you know that to be, which expresses itself in us as the transcendent Self.

There are thousands of potential dramas, but a smaller number of themes come up over and over, in the theater and in life.  The tragic love story, the thriller, the avenging hero, good triumphing over evil – all worthy themes that have dominated untold numbers of lives.  And the theme of giving and receiving is among the most compelling and transformative of these themes.  Who, among us, has not been drawn into giving or receiving, only to get much more than we anticipated?  How many of us have discovered who we really are, or gained a new insight into someone else, by either giving or receiving help?

Giving and receiving is perhaps the major theme of my life.  Professionally, I have spent nearly my entire career raising funds and turning those funds into grants for others.  I am continually a receiver and giver, and I have innumerable stories about how that can go terribly wrong.  In my personal life, the last two years have been dominated by my offering help to young gay men and being caught up in the ensuing dramatic twists and turns, tearing me down to my most basic assumptions and fears, challenging me in ways I never imagined.  And, for all the grief, I am so grateful for it.

So, what is it about giving and receiving that can produce such drama and such transformation?  For one thing, it involves at least two human beings, sometimes more, each of which carries their own history and plot line.  A chart from Volume 16 of Jung’s Collected Works, slightly modified for this topic, can be helpful.

I call this the “six way” diagram, because it illustrates how, in any human interaction, there are actually six relationships being played out.  The blue line is the most obvious relationship, and it is the one that we usually over-emphasize.  This is the relationship between the ego of the giver and the ego of the receiver, the blue arrow in the diagram.  At this level, we talk things through on the conscious level.  I have a sense of who I am and why I want to give help, you have a sense of who you are and why you need help.  It can all seem so simple on this level.  Of course we can make this work, of course our motives are pure, of course I am giving unconditionally, of course you are receiving with just the right amount of gratitude.  If only that were the whole story.

Let’s move to the green arrows now.  The ego of the giver has some level of relationship with her or his interior life.  If that relationship is strong, the giver has a relationship with the interior feminine or masculine, with the complexes, and even with those embarrassing things he or she would prefer not to be true about him- or herself, called shadow.  Similarly, the same could be said of the receiver and the aspects of his or her interior life.  In the vast majority of cases, however, that interior relationship is not strong, perhaps even nonexistent, and so the giver tends to project all of that material outward, onto the receiver.  And visa versa, for the receiver.  That brings us to the black lines, which is the relationship of the ego to the interior life of the other person.  How does this play itself out?  Here is an example.  A friend asks me to loan him some money so he can make his rent this month.  On the ego level, all seems fine – the terms of the loan are mutually acceptable, the giver can affordit, the receiver shows gratitude.  But, just as the giver is handing over the check, the receiver says, “I guess you finally have me where you wanted me.”  The giver is shocked.  Where did that come from?  The receiver says, “Don’t get bent out of shape.  I only meant it as a joke. At that moment, the receiver has a look of shame and disgust on his face, and the giver catches a glimpse of it.  The ego of the giver has seen the shadow of the receiver.

As if that weren’t complicated enough, Jung adds the sixth dimension to the situation, the red arrow in the diagram.  In ways that our egos don’t even recognize, my interior life is interacting with your interior life. My unhealed psychological wounds are constellating your unhealed psychological wounds.  In our simple example, although the ego of the giver seems shocked by the somewhat cutting statement made by the receiver, suppose he does feel a little surge of satisfaction at having some power and superiority over his friend.  He does not acknowledge it consciously, but on the unconscious level, the giver’s unconscious need to have power of his friend is gratified by his friend’s feelings of shame at needing help.

Just imagine all of the different ways that something can go wrong in giving and receiving help!  Problems can happen at any of the six levels, and since some of the levels are unconscious, it may happen with a great deal of surprise and even savagery. 

As if that weren’t enough, there can be disconnect around the nature of the need being expressed.  Here is a chart of Malow’s hierarchy of needs:

Suppose the receiver is thinking of the request as simply involving a physiological need – help getting shelter for a month.  But, to the giver, the loan involves a belongingness need.  By giving you this loan, I am showing you that I love you, and by receiving it, you show that you love me back.  Or, in another example, I am going to refuse to loan you the money, because I feel that if you work hard and earn the money yourself, you will acquire a sense of accomplishment, meeting a higher level esteem need. But you are just afraid of sleeping on the streets tonight and getting mugged – a safety need.

There is one more concept I would like to introduce this week, to which we will return in future talks in this series – the power shadow.  It is implicit in some of the examples I have offered, and it seems to be unavoidable in the drama of giving and receiving. To ask for help is to acknowledge a need, which sets up a power dynamic.  If the person needing help has experienced trauma associated with power, that power shadow will permeate the entire situation.  It could dissuade the person from requesting or accepting help in the first place, and it could prime that person to expect abuse from the giver.  If it is the giver who has had a negative or ambivalent experience of power in the past, the results may be even more unpredictable, ranging from a smothering level of rescue, infantilization of the person in need, or asserting an exaggerated level of control over the situation.

So, given all of this, is it possible to help without hurting?  Can a person express a need for help without feeling shame or repeating past traumas of abuse at the hands of people with power?  Can a person really offer help unconditionally, and have it received in the same way?  Once you see the six levels of relationship, and the further complications around the type of need and the pervasive power shadow, helping without any level of hurt seems pretty unlikely.  But that should not dissuade people from enacting the drama of giving and receiving in their lives.  Like all of life’s dramas, giving and receiving holds tremendous potential to grow new levels of consciousness, to bring things to light that have long festered in the darkness. We can’t undo past wounding by re-enacting it in the present, but we can learn the lessons that were left undone back there in the past, and perhaps finally move further on in our path toward individuation.