2013-05-20T02:16:08-04:00 Pythia Peay http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=pythia-peay Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Pythia Peay Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3237953 2013-05-09T12:49:17-04:00 2013-05-09T12:49:26-04:00

Pythia Peay http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pythia-peay/ Part of an ongoing series on the American Psyche

In Part Two of my interview with Italian Jungian psychoanalyst Luigi Zoja, we explore some of the psychological conflicts within the American psyche, particularly around issues of war, violence and new forms of technology. The author of many books that have been translated into twelve languages, including Violence in History, Culture, and the Psyche and Growth & Guilt, Zoja brings anthropology, history, and psychology to bear on the problems of modern culture.

Pythia: I'd like to explore the deeper psychological background of America. You write that we were the first country founded on the splitting off of the "shadow," or the rejected or darker side of human nature -- bringing into being the "first collective soul that would not compromise with the shadow."

For example, you say the Monroe Doctrine was a "psychological manifesto" that anticipated the Cold War, in which America saw itself as purely democratic, while viewing the rest of the world as more corrupt.

Zoja: The dissociation of evil is typical of America's puritanical origins, in which the early settlers projected the primitive side of human nature onto blacks and Indians, and evil and corruption onto England and Europe. George Washington's Farewell Address, part of which warned against the influence of foreign nations, and the Monroe Doctrine, perpetuated this pattern of keeping America separate from "contamination" by other cultures.

For these reasons the mythology of America formed around the Bible, the gun, conquering and clearing the land, and cleansing itself of the so-called "evil" of its original inhabitants, slaves or any foreign "other."

Pythia: So this split means that we project onto those we view as "outsiders" those qualities we reject within ourselves -- then attempt to purify ourselves of these qualities by getting rid of them in others. And in turn this effort to remain uncontaminated contributes to an underlying violence in the culture.

Zoja: Yes. Even if you are convinced that you're waging war to bring civilization and defeat evil, you will be intoxicated by violence. You might even become evil yourself through an "infection" of violence.

Pythia: What you describe seems reflected in the recent release of a bipartisan report that found that American forces engaged in torture as part of the war on terror after 9/11.

Zoja: This report reveals a form of collective denial that American military actions could have fostered criminal practices. In the U.S. you tend to assume that these kinds of things don't happen; you diminish the darker side of human nature. Psychologically you could say you are less wise, and more naïve than older cultures like Europe.

On the other hand you are less cynical, and there is an optimistic side of American culture. If it is proven that evil has been committed in the name of America, then the average citizen is ready to act, to enter politics, and to repair that evil, which is more difficult in Europe. Because of America's democratic tradition, one is allowed to express one's opinion, and so it's still the best place in the world in that sense.

Pythia: The lack of transparency around America's unmanned drone attacks against suspected terrorists overseas seems to me another example of America's split-off dark side. What is your psychological perspective on these remote-control strikes executed by what many call "flying killer robots"?

Zoja: The psychological risk is that these drone pilots will become dissociated. So in addition to innocent civilian casualties, we should also be concerned about what happens to the psyche of the drone pilot who kills his target, then gets in his car, drives home, and plays with his children. It's almost inhuman.

Pythia: Still, it's difficult to make the argument that a soldier should be placed in direct combat -- is that more moral?

Zoja: I'm not a philosopher who can say whether these drone strikes are definitely wrong. But there's still a moral issue at stake: For while there are casualties and collateral damage in every war, even the loss of one life will mark the soul of the American pilot.

The danger is that because of the geographical distance created by technology between the pilot and the target, drone pilots are being conditioned to kill without suffering too many inner conflicts; they may even lack the perception of having actually killed someone. And, as they belong to a younger generation, these attacks might be unconsciously experienced as a continuation of the video games they played as youths.

Pythia: A majority of Americans support the use of drones. Is the ease with which the public has accepted drone warfare part of a larger shift around the way technology is reshaping our inner emotional lives?

Zoja: In my book, The Death of the Neighbor, I discuss how technology has killed the second Judeo-Christian commandment: To love God above everything else, and thy neighbor like thyself. Because in this technological, mass civilization, we don't care about our neighbors; we don't even know if our neighbor is dying.

Pythia: So you're describing a creeping dissociation throughout all of our lives brought about by technology.

Zoja: Absolutely. I'm not a nostalgic who believes that past ages were better. But the new forms of technology present enormous psychological challenges that did not exist before. It's not that we lack feelings -- but our emotional responses and natural instincts are being distorted and disrupted through technology, and we're becoming increasingly removed from the moral consequences of our actions.

Pythia: Even modern-day guns are influenced by technology. The Western Six Shooter is nothing like the automatic assault weapons used in recent mass murders.

Zoja: Technology keeps us clean emotionally -- and even literally.

In more intimate forms of warfare, for instance, there was an instinctive reaction of horror. Confronted by the agony of the dying person, ancient warriors felt a natural guilt.

But today we lack the sense of limits that arise naturally when too much blood is spilled. The pilot who drops an atomic bomb, but doesn't see that he's killed thousands of civilians, or the drone pilot in America dropping a bomb on a target in Yemen, is less likely to feel guilt.

Pythia: I can see how technology distances us from our feelings and our conscience, but how does it affect our sense of limits?

Zoja: Technology gives us the illusion that we can break through limits; it reinforces omnipotence, arrogance, and endless growth and affluence. We've lost this necessary balance between growth and guilt, or between wanting more, and finding a natural limit.

Pythia: It strikes me that this limitlessness is intrinsically American.

Zoja: I think so. Because American history was based on the conquest of the enormous and under-populated West, an underlying historical attitude remains that the country can continue to expand. There's still a lot of territory at your disposal, so there are too few reasons to feel the necessity of limits.

Pythia: In that regard, could modern-day America be said to resemble the Roman Empire?

Zoja: America is like the Roman Empire in the sense that Rome was big, and based on continuous expansion. It produced philosophers and artists, but it was imperialistic, not just militarily, but economically -- it was the first step toward mass civilization. So Rome anticipated America with its mass consumerism and mass entertainment, and even the whole modern world, with its mass civilization. It was the opposite of ancient Greece.

Pythia: If the Roman Empire was the opposite of Greece, what are those classical Greek virtues that we're missing in our own culture?

Zoja: Greek culture was based on the importance of limits. The myth of Icarus was a warning against the "sin" of hubris, or pride and inflation.

The ancient Greeks also had more of a sense of tragedy. In America, there is less emphasis on tragic tales, because the commercial side of the culture and Hollywood tends to simplify life by splitting good and evil, and providing a happy ending -- some stories end that way, but not all of them.

Pythia: Indeed you write that the Greek theater aimed at moving the public to think about good and evil. By contrast, Rome with its Circus of public games and chariot races didn't want the public to think at all.

Zoja: The essence of tragedy is more psychological; it poses the problems of ambivalence and complexity. For instance, there are no simple solutions to the tragic problems of drones, torture, guns and terrorism.

These issues take time; in the modern world, we have to examine these issues in complex cultural terms. Real morality lies in not knowing what is black and what is white, or good and evil; it's about having a moral discussion and dialogue, as we are doing in this interview.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3193330 2013-05-03T13:58:15-04:00 2013-05-03T13:53:08-04:00

Pythia Peay http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pythia-peay/ Part of an ongoing series on the American psyche.

In my vision of a perfect world, there would be no guns. Yet wishing can't take away the fact that guns are a powerful presence in American life -- and an equally potent symbol in the American psyche. In search of an outside perspective, I turned to Italian Jungian psychoanalyst Luigi Zoja. Author of many books that have been translated into twelve languages, including Violence in History, Culture, and the Psyche, Zoja brings history, anthropology and psychology to bear on contemporary issues. The following is an edited and condensed version of our conversation.

Pythia: It could be said with sad irony that in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings, the topic of guns has become so loaded the country can't even pass reasonable gun legislation. Is this a uniquely American problem?

Zoja: I don't think this issue is specifically American. If you took away the two World Wars, which left a scar in the European psyche, and started allowing gun ownership in Europe, I think we might love guns as much as Americans.

Pythia: How did Europe's experience during World War II change its relationship to guns?

Zoja: Europe has suffered more under the weight of history. Auschwitz and the concentration camps took place on European soil; fifty million people were killed during World War II. Apart from the Civil War 150 years ago, there hasn't been a similar war of occupation or mass destruction on American soil.

Combined with America's optimistic nature, this makes a difference. In America there's more tolerance of violence in the culture; sex is censored in the movies but violence is not. Here it's the reverse -- violence is censored, but sex is less censored.

Pythia: Are you saying that Europe is more experienced with the darker side of human nature?

Zoja: Yes. In Italy after the war, capital punishment, which had been re-introduced by the fascists, was banned because of its associations with totalitarian regimes. In addition, for complex political reasons, everybody was ordered to turn in their guns. Even today, you can be severely punished for possessing weapons, and the topic remains politically charged.

But whether guns are forbidden or allowed, our feelings around them are never neutral -- one either loves guns or hates them. My father recently died, and among the things he left behind was an Austrian pistol my grandfather brought back from World War I. I've found myself wondering which of my brothers will get it, or if we should throw it away, because it's forbidden. And because it's forbidden, that makes it even more difficult to throw away!

Pythia: So a gun isn't just a gun, but something more?

Zoja: Right -- it would be a mistake to consider guns as just any ordinary, modern object, such as a toaster. Independent of culture, they're loaded with an archetypal charge because they're connected to the hero myth. And the hero itself is the primary archetype: A metaphor for the development of the individual ego, and the nucleus of all other archetypes.

Pythia: Why is the hero connected to guns?

Zoja: Because the hero in its most traditional expression, particularly in male-oriented cultures, is somehow always connected with weapons. In humankind's earliest stages, primitive weapons functioned as an extension of the human arm. Greek-Roman mythology is full of gods represented with weapons. Even the goddess Athena is shown with a spear. Christ is -- un-Christianly -- at times pictured with a sword. Both the Crusades and the conquest of the Americas were carried out with the Gospel and the sword and, later, the gun.

So there is something almost religious about weapons. This means that you cannot deal with the topic in a logical way, because for many the gun is something sacred.

This is even more complicated in America. Because of its separation between church and state, it's full of unconscious, undeclared religion: America itself is a religion of democracy, and the gun is a symbol of democracy. So partly because of its history, and partly because the gun belongs to a collective archetype present in every country, guns in America are imbued with a religious quality.

Pythia: And because we're not conscious of the underlying symbolism around guns, we expect our debates to proceed reasonably. But wouldn't this awareness change our debate -- wouldn't we treat guns with more respect, striving to keep them out of the hands of those who would use them for profane reasons?

Zoja: Possibly. But the commercial, pop side of guns in twenty-first century American culture has become horrifying. This may sound contradictory to what I just said, but we have to be equally aware of the pathological, almost pornographic, side of America's preoccupation with guns. Psychologically, owning a gun has become a naïve expression of macho masculinity -- a show of sexuality and arrogant power.

When a powerless young boy buys a gun and kills defenseless kids, he has the momentary delusion that he has the omnipotent power of a hero, even if he knows that he will be killed by the police, or will even kill himself. But this is a total degeneration of the archetype of the hero -- it's the opposite of a hero.

Pythia: So while the targets of these shooters are innocent children and bystanders, they themselves are powerless on some level. Is there significance to be found in that?

Zoja: Yes, these shooters don't kill people who are potential killers. A school with young children is a place of hope and goodness -- so they kill the innocence of the child. In addition, for psychologically weak kids, weapons are a powerful temptation. An automatic assault weapon that can kill dozens in a few seconds offers a dangerous form of over-compensation for weaknesses of character or frustrations with society. And unfortunately, this temptation is constantly fed by the images of guns circulating throughout American culture.

In the Aurora, Colorado movie theater rampage, there may have been an unconscious attraction on the shooter's part to being "seen" and in everybody's view. So, psychologically, we might ask whether putting more cameras in schools or increasing surveillance is really a deterrent -- or if instead this might attract another exhibitionist with an unconscious need to be on camera. It's at least the duty of a psychoanalyst to wonder about that!

Pythia: In your book you refer to a tradition from ancient Roman times, in which the triumphant conqueror in his chariot had a "double" placed beside him whose task was to whisper in his ear that he was a mortal, flawed human being. What meaning might that have for us in this gun debate?

Zoja: This is an image of that dialogue between our limited ego, which can fall prey to inflation -- like a general coming back from a victorious military campaign -- and a critical inner voice, which we might hear in dreams, and who checks our pride and reminds us of our limitations.

Today we could use this image to suggest to anyone who is considering buying a gun, particularly a young person, that they first go within and consult this inner voice accompanying the hero, and ask "Is it really necessary? Or am I falling prey to pride and paranoia as a way to compensate my human weakness?"

Pythia: So it seems that our society can't completely address the problem of gun violence until we become educated about these deeper undercurrents -- not just within the psyches of the shooters, but our own cultural beliefs around guns and violence.

Zoja: The problem of guns has to be faced through both a collective debate, which should also be psychologically oriented, and individual soul searching, whether with a psychoanalyst, a spiritual guide or in a good conversation with friends and family.

Next: Part Two of my Interview with Luigi Zoja: Drones, Torture, and America's Divided Soul]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.2302033 2012-12-19T12:53:49-05:00 2013-02-18T05:12:01-05:00

Pythia Peay http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pythia-peay/ The following is an interview with Jungian scholar Nancy Furlotti, part of an ongoing series on the American psyche and collective culture.

One of the central tenets of Jungian psychology is the idea that psychological symptoms contain a meaningful purpose that has become derailed or distorted. Thinking along these lines led me to wonder whether there was a deeper truth concealed within the collective fear and panic generated by the looming end date of the Mayan Long Count Calendar this Dec. 21, 2012.

In search of answers, I turned to Jungian analyst Nancy Furlotti, past president of the Jung Institute of Los Angeles and the Philemon Foundation. A scholar on the Mayan calendar, Furlotti recently participated in an online webinar hosted by the Asheville Jung Center, "How the End of the World Grips Our Soul." The following is an edited version of our conversation.

In listening to your talk, I was struck by the way the Mayan calendar reflected the mythos of the Maya culture around time. How does this view of time differ from how we in the modern world experience time?

Furlotti: Our Western way of thinking about time is very linear and causal. It starts at one point and ends at another point. For example, our biblical Judeo-Christian creation myth begins with Genesis and concludes with the Apocalypse and Revelation, when there is a definite ending.

By contrast, the Maya had a circular view of time, in which the ending was also a beginning. In this view, time has no beginning or end; it's continuous, revolving and cyclical. There are two interlocking calendar systems: The solar agricultural and lunar divinatory calendars. A complete revolution of this calendar cycle, called the "Calendar Round," ends every 52 years. Another system of time-keeping is the "Long Count," which extends so far back in the past and so far into the future I can't put numbers to the years.

So to be an ancient Maya was to live in a different psychological reality than most of us live in today.

That's right. Historical linear time from a Western point of view is very temporal. We're much more realistic and focused on the present and practical matters.

By contrast, everyday life in the Maya civilization was imbued with cyclic time. Because there were constant ritual celebrations throughout the year, they had a much more sacred orientation to life. We have our holidays, but our Western culture has stepped away from the cyclic, sacred way of experiencing time.

Would you say that the Maya idea of time is that time and/or life always was, and always will be, unfolding along a continuous cycle of interconnected spirals?

Yes, I would. Their calendar system suggests that time is a continuous loop and that we don't know exactly where the beginning or ending is. When you're reading the sacred calendar, it doesn't matter where you start. You can jump in wherever you want, whether five or 10 or 16 octillion years ago. What's fascinating is that this Maya view of time seems to be converging with some of the concepts coming out of physics, such as the idea of multiverses.

So doesn't this long view of time held by the Maya shift our understanding of the upcoming "end of the Mayan calendar" on Dec. 21?

It should. But people are so locked into historical, linear time that they can't jump out of that paradigm and into a more circular way of experiencing time. They latch onto the idea of the end of the Mayan calendar, and it becomes just another way to feed their anxiety. So many people just assume that the end is the end, when in fact for the Maya the end is actually the beginning.

So is that how you would interpret this date?

Absolutely. According to the Maya view, each cycle of time contains a different archetypal energy embodied by a specific god. So on Dec. 21, the god who's been carrying the burden of time for over 5,000 years has come to the end of a very long cycle and needs to take a break; the baton of time is then handed over to a new god who is fresh, and who can carry time forward for another 5,000 years or so.

What is the archetypal energy of the cycle that's ending, and how would you describe the upcoming cycle?

Based on my own interpretation, the energy is shifting from the Fourth World of the sky to the Fifth World of the underworld, where the growth of the new is possible. In Maya mythology, the underworld is where transformation takes place; it's where the new maize seed sprouts, and where shamans and heroes return for renewal. So it's possible that this emerging world will be a descent down from a sky position of being above the earth, to the source of all life through a connection to nature. These may be my own projections, but this seems like a better place to be, as I think we've really become disconnected from our roots.

So it's as if the Fourth World sky cycle brought new visions and innovations, but that now we're seeing the darker side of progress, and what's needed is a shift in orientation. Maybe humanity is even picking up on this prediction as symbolizing something necessary for our times, if we would only read it right.

That's exactly what I think is happening. We've shifted too far in one direction, and we need to be brought back into balance. The point I'm trying to make is about time itself as key to that shift: The Maya saw things as needing to be done at the right time, and at a certain pace. They placed time in the hands of the gods, not their own hands, and that means living according to a cycle that's not on our time frame, but on nature's time frame.

We don't really take time and nature into consideration that way in American society. We're very ego driven, and we do things when we want to do them. We seem to only want nature to produce, and to produce more, and more quickly. But we never stop to ask the other question: What does nature want from us?

Do you believe that one reason we've fastened on this date is because on an unconscious level we know we've messed things up, and want the world to end so that we can start all over?

I think so. People are so discouraged that out of a sense of guilt they may expect the gods to destroy the world. But the interesting thing about all these fears and predictions is that God always comes into play -- and what does that mean? I think that means there's a terrific longing behind all of this anxiety around the end of times for a re-connection to something more profound and larger than one's ego.

So how would you counsel the individual who fears the end of the world, whether through environmental catastrophe or by the hand of God or some other divine event?

I would want them to go inside themselves to find out what's beneath their individual fears and fantasies: Are they afraid that the world is going to end, or are they excited? Do they feel helpless? What does the image of the world coming to an end mean for them? Stockpiling food can also be understood psychologically: Does that person feel they're not being nourished properly? Because food is also a connection to security, stockpiling food could stem from a person's basic sense of insecurity that they need to come to terms with, in terms of how they can find a sense of security within themselves in this world.

There's also a kernel of truth in going back to nature to a simpler way of life. To be close to the earth, and to the trees, rocks and rivers, brings a tremendous sense of safety and comfort. We've gotten away from living in balance with nature, and if we don't make this shift rather quickly, we may have doomed ourselves.

So in a certain way there is something true about this prophecy, and we all need to find a way to bring in this new, Fifth World.

Yes, and wouldn't that be a wonderful world? I think that the movement from the old aeon to the new aeon in the Mayan calendar that the doomsdayers are picking up on speaks to the idea that we all need a new archetypal energy to enter our lives. So I hope that there can be a shift of consciousness on a very large level, and that we all realize that each one of us carries the burden of responsibility to live in a way that will help save the planet and the human race.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.2066962 2012-11-02T16:14:03-04:00 2013-01-02T05:12:01-05:00

Pythia Peay http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pythia-peay/ Part of an ongoing series on "Analyzing the American Psyche."


In the third and final installment of my interview with Jungian psychoanalyst Murray Stein, president of the International School of Analytical Psychology, we continue our discussion on the link between anxiety and democracy. In this segment, we turn to some of the larger archetypal forces and American myths operating behind the election. The following is an edited version of our conversation.

Pythia: The force and fury of Hurricane Sandy reminded me that although democracy rests on the shoulders of the individual voter, there are other factors at work in this election that, to some extent, none of us can really control -- call it destiny, history, nature, the will of God or some other transpersonal force.

Stein: Thinking of this terrible storm falling upon the country so near to Election Day, I am reminded of a scene from Richard Wagner's opera cycle, The Ring. The chief god, Wotan, goes to consult Erda, the great goddess who lives underground and who can foretell the future. He asks her what is going to happen to himself and to his kingdom of Valhalla. Erda rises slowly out of the ground and tells him in a deep voice that his hold on power is doomed and that Valhalla will be destroyed. It's a bad moment for Wotan!

Sometimes democratic elections also feel like this. The people of the nation are asked for their choice, and when the voice of the people speaks, we may fear for our future. It's a moment in the nation's ongoing life when we hear the source of political power speak out. The final decision is in the hands of no single person, but of the whole voting population. It's like a force of nature. This is the difference between democracies and aristocracies or theocracies. On this one day in November, the collective voice of the people declares who will be put forward as the leadership for the next four years.

Listening to the voice of the people is a kind of mystical moment in our secular world. It's like waiting for an oracle to make a pronouncement. Who will the people elect? Where is the collective will going to take us as a nation? The polls predict now this and now that, but there can be surprises, and no one knows ahead of time exactly what the voice will say.

Pythia: That's a different perspective from anything I've ever read on an American election! So if you had the American electorate -- buffeted by attack ads, talking heads fighting it out in the media, and the tension of political differences between family and friends -- on your couch, what advice would you give to help relieve some of the anxiety around voting?

Stein: I would say it's important to be aware that the decision on Election Day doesn't rest entirely on your shoulders, and to remember that these election results are not the last word -- in four years the people can elect another president, and in two years they can elect another Congress. So it's okay to have anxiety and to put a lot of energy into the candidate that you believe in, but on Election Day lay down your sword and wait and listen and accept the result.

Respect for the voice of the people is essential for this kind of political system to function. This attitude of respect for the transcendent voice of the people is a kind of replica of a theological attitude where you work and pray, but in the final analysis you accept the will of God, no matter what it is. Work as hard as you can, but at the end of the day accept the result that comes from beyond your own personal preference.

I would also say that one may trust that there is a spirit at work behind the scenes of the nation's history. The spirit behind the life of the nation speaks through the voice of the people, so that although the elections may take a turn now and then that looks disastrous at the moment, in the end this guiding spirit will bring things right. It is something you can trust and put your faith in.

Pythia: Would you say there is a spirit of democracy?

Stein: Oh, absolutely. It is the spirit of individual voices sounding loud and free. The American poet Walt Whitman expresses this spirit for us brilliantly in his poetry. The spirit of democracy inhabits America and is well-housed in its mythic narrative. As we go forward into the future, we can build on some of these myths that connect us to our deep history.

Pythia: Can you give me an example of the evolution of a classic American myth, and can you say why it's relevant to the American citizen grappling with "voter anxiety" right now?

Stein: One important image deeply rooted in American myth is the pioneer. At this time of high anxiety, the pioneer image speaks to us of resilience and steadfastness, of vision and risk-taking, and of the call to a new future. Americans may not be pioneers any longer in the literal sense that our forebears were, but the pioneer image can be elaborated in new versions that continue to speak to Americans today and tomorrow. After the storm and following a contentious election, the pioneer spirit in our people would have us shake off the fear, pick up the pieces and go to work fashioning a future better than the past.

So one way for individuals to hold in mind the "bigger picture" around Election Day is to remember the mythic images of our nation's history, and to stay aware that while we each must do our part for our democracy, no one of us is in control of the outcome. We are dependent on the voice of the people as a whole for the outcome, and this voice speaks for a spirit that guides our collective destiny.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.2045597 2012-10-31T13:19:09-04:00 2012-12-31T05:12:01-05:00

Pythia Peay http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pythia-peay/
Fitting, therefore, because it was only through Joe Carroll's death and dying that I was finally able to draw close to the man I'd long ago fled. Before that, the idea of honoring my father after he'd departed this world would have seemed unimaginable. Light a candle for the raging patriarch who'd ruled over my family like a petty dictator? Ha! Despite my years of spiritual study, I would have scoffed. How do you pay respect to the memory of a father who terrorized his family with long nights of drinking; who stumbled around the house, mumbling beneath his breath, filling the corners with wraiths of cigarette smoke and the haunted musings of his troubled mind? How do you say a prayer for the man who kept his children in a constant state of fear, wondering if he would even live to see the sun rise or, at the worst of times, if even they would live to see another day?

And yet, despite my father's drunken, darker side, there were sides to him that could fill my daughter's heart with love. A handsome blue-eyed Irish charmer, Joe could whistle like Frank Sinatra sang, warbling "Moon River" with such pathos he could bring tears to the eyes of his listeners. There was also Adventuresome TWA Joe. Once a week, this father sobered up, donned his crisp uniform and headed out the door to fly the world's skies. TWA Joe entranced us with stories of the moon and stars, and of distant lands. And then there was Farmer Joe, who worked our Missouri land like a magician, raising golden wheat from the ground, and growing alfalfa so sweet it perfumed the air. Farmer Joe broke and taught us each how to ride our own horses, how to herd and feed cattle, and how to read the sky for storms.

These different sides of my father -- one life-giving, the other death-daring -- were almost impossible to put together. And so, ashamed as I often am to admit, the only emotion I'd imagined feeling upon his death was relief. For my difficult, alcoholic father, I'd always believed, there would be no peaceful departure from this earth. Maybe a lonely death by the side of the road, or alone in his house.

And yet, in what would be one of the strangest twists of fate of my life, when the day came and my father lay dying, the unexpected happened: His soul woke up. Aided by a remarkable team of hospice aides, Joe reached out to the family he'd alienated, calling me, and the rest of his estranged loved ones, to his side. Reluctantly, warily, I came. Through long days and nights sitting by his bedside, Joe shared memories; spoke regretfully of hurts he'd caused; and even ventured with me to the brink of the afterlife, where together we stared into the abyss of death.

By no means did my father die a perfect man. He never apologized for his drinking, and even smoked and downed sips of vodka until he couldn't swallow anymore. Nor was it easy. After the life he'd led, Joe's troubled conscience was a constant companion to his dying. For a man of his lights, however, Joe did his honest best. Sometimes, to ease his fear, I'd read aloud to him from sacred texts. But the words only stirred grief. "I wish I'd spent more time learning about the things you have," he said awkwardly one night. But when the moment finally came, and Joe took his last breath, something in him felt freed, and put right.

The process that began with my father's dying continued after his death. Questions arose that would not go away: Why had my father been the way he was? Why had the bad overtaken the good, turning him into such a bedeviled figure?

Seeking answers, I stepped into Joe's shoes and set out to experience his youth and the events that had shaped him. Tunneling into the lost and buried parts of my father's life, I stumbled upon a remarkable American story: His hardscrabble past in Depression-era Altoona, and the Pennsylvania Railroad; World War II and his flights for the Air Transport Command over the jungles of Brazil; Argentina and his romantic encounter with my mother; TWA and Missouri in the 1950s and the 200-acre farm where he raised his four children; Mexico, and, finally, Corpus Christi, Texas, where he died. Interwoven with the history of his time were the tragedies Joe suffered along the way, from the abrupt death of his father to his emotional abandonment by his mother and adoption by a foster family, as well as the traumas of love, poverty and war.

Forgiveness is often considered the spiritual goal of those who've suffered at the hands of a difficult person. But for me, forgiveness has always seemed best bestowed by a power greater than my human self. Instead, the insight that came from putting my father's life into historical perspective, as well as reassembling the pieces of his life into a pattern, is what finally helped resurrect my love and make sense of him. Indeed no religious mystery proved harder to grasp, and brought more enlightenment in its wake, than that of understanding the suffering of the regular Joe who happened to be my father.

The transformation this exploration wrought showed up in my dreams, where Joe appeared re-invigorated with new life, and as the supportive father I'd always longed for. Psychologists might say my "father complex" had been healed. Spiritually, others might say Joe's soul, and our relationship, had evolved. Perhaps both are true. Whatever the case, this Day of the Dead I will light a candle for my father. My heart at peace, I will say a prayer for his once troubled, whistling soul, and wish him well on his continued journey.

Pythia Peay is completing the memoir of her father, "American Icarus: My Father's Life, Death and the American Myth."]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1981971 2012-10-19T13:00:53-04:00 2012-12-19T05:12:01-05:00

Pythia Peay http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pythia-peay/ Part of an ongoing series on the American psyche.

The presidential election is upon us and the body politic, buffeted by anxiety, is under stress. In part two of my interview with Jungian psychoanalyst Murray Stein, president of the International School of Analytical Psychology, he addresses the psychology around being a voter in America's large and ever-changing democracy. The following is an edited version of our conversation.

Pythia: Every four years, American voters endure a period of anxiety as they wait and see who their next president will be. No one ever talks about this, but is this part of the territory that comes with participating in a democracy?

Stein: Absolutely. A person living in ancient Egypt wouldn't have had to endure these seasons of anxiety around election time, since the pharaoh decided everything for them. So it does call for emotionally mature people to tolerate the uncertainties of an election.

With all the money that's behind the creation of images and ads, the dilemma that voters face is whether they can believe what they see. But on a personal level, voters have to be aware of other psychological factors influencing their decision -- family dynamics, for example, such as "my father is voting for that candidate, so I'm choosing the other candidate." So the demand on voters to educate themselves in order to make a conscious choice when they pull that lever is very high.

Pythia: I can imagine that for some citizens, the feelings of discomfort could become so pronounced they might even shy away from voting. Could you say more about how to tolerate these feelings of anxiety?

Stein: Nobody likes anxiety. Pharmaceutical companies make a lot of money from this type of psychic pain by marketing anti-anxiety drugs. But the desire to be rid of anxiety is really a desire for regression to a childlike state where you don't have to worry about anything, because everything will be taken care of.

Freud said that the ego is the seat of anxiety, because anxiety is linked to becoming a separate individual with choice and responsibilities. So those who are psychologically mature carry around anxiety all the time. If they're living their life fully, they're always taking risks, they know that the people they love are at risk, and politically they know that there are no guarantees that their candidate will win the election.

Pythia: If the recent debates are any indication, it seems that one of the criteria by which Americans judge their presidents is their ability to be strong and aggressive. To an extent, I think it's important for a leader to possess these traits. But is our over-emphasis on strength part of our discomfort with freedom -- we want a powerful leader to compensate our anxiety?

Stein: The desire to have a strong leader comes out of profound anxiety and the wish to get rid of it. People look for somebody to lead them, and to tell them what to do. But as history has shown, the so-called strong leader can sometimes be a dangerous figure. For a democracy like ours, it's better to have someone with common sense and the ability to find a sane balance among competing forces.

What we look for in citizens in a democracy is that they are able to be strong individuals who can carry anxiety and accept the responsibility to vote according to the best interests of the country. They also accept the results if an election goes against their wishes. That's a part of maturity -- you can't win every game. An election is a contest, and someone will lose while the other wins.

Pythia: On the issue of competition, I wonder if some of the anxiety voters experience around the election stems from the combative nature of American politics. For instance, one of my sons said he was excited to watch the debates because they were going to be like good boxing matches. I, on the other hand, experience a lot of anxiety around watching the two candidates go up against each other. In handling my anxiety in a mature way, do I have a duty to watch the debates despite my discomfort?

Stein: These political contests are like a blood sport. The two candidates are highly trained political athletes; they know how to accept a victory or a loss. Some people who are watching the debates and the race get a thrill out of seeing whether their guy is winning or not, while others find it agonizing to watch.

That said, there are some anxieties that aren't necessary to take on board. If watching the debates makes you too anxious, I would suggest you stay away from it, and study it afterwards. The most important duty of a citizen is to cast a ballot that is informed. Elections can go awry, people can elect the wrong person and then regret it. But these are the risks of democracy, and I don't see any other system given the stage in the evolution of consciousness that we're in today.

Pythia: What does democracy have to do with the evolution of our human consciousness?

Stein: As I alluded [to] earlier, people were once satisfied to live under rulers they believed it was their duty to obey. But that isn't the case today. Americans especially don't think like that. Increasingly, we're living in the age of the individual, and individuals demand a voice. If you take that freedom away, a huge pressure builds up; you can see this happening in the Middle East. So despite the inevitable setbacks, I believe that the growing awareness that the individual has rights, dignity and even a quasi-divine status as a soul is a part of the evolution of human consciousness. And basically democracy is the only system that respects this kind of awareness -- so we have to have democracy and bear the anxiety of these elections.

Next: Election Day and the Oracle of the Voice of the People]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1922820 2012-10-01T10:45:57-04:00 2012-12-01T05:12:01-05:00

Pythia Peay http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pythia-peay/ An Interview with Jungian psychoanalyst Murray Stein. Part of an ongoing series on the American Psyche.

In search of insight into the deeper forces shaping the presidential election, I turned to American Jungian psychoanalyst Murray Stein, Ph.D. Currently president of the International School of Analytical Psychology in Zurich, Stein lectures on analytical psychology and its applications in the contemporary world. He is the author of many books, including most recently The Principle of Individuation. The following is an edited version of our conversation, and the first of a two-part interview.

Pythia: In 2003 you left Chicago to live abroad in Switzerland. This vantage point must give you an interesting perspective on the upcoming presidential election.

Stein: Yes, I was just thinking about that. The Swiss Constitution was modeled on the American constitution. But they made some changes that, in light of the polarized American electorate, seem significant. Instead of a single president, the Swiss system has a council of seven leaders elected from their congress every four years. The presidency rotates among this council each year. They also have four strong parties -- two are extreme and two are in the middle -- as opposed to the two-party system in the United States. Everyone has to compromise; nobody gets everything they want.

Psychologically, this has a moderating effect that disperses the power, rather than focusing it on one leader. This also prevents the severe splitting effect that we see in the states, where the parties are set so strongly against each other. Whenever you have two of anything running against each other you're going to have a splitting process: It's a psychological phenomenon. People side with one against the other, and then those differences become pushed to an extreme.

Pythia: A "tension of the opposites," or the ability to hold two opposing views at the same time, is considered psychologically healthy. Why isn't this working on the collective level of the American psyche?

Stein: Differences are necessary in order to have growth and dynamic movement. Out of the dialectic between two polarities, a new possibility emerges. But if the "opposites," or in this case the two parties, become completely unrelated, then the collective psyche is in danger of splitting: There's no forward movement, there's just mutual aggression, stalemate and stagnation. The system doesn't evolve, it devolves, and you don't want to see that happen.

Pythia: Why, what happens to a society that splits into unrelated, opposing factions?

Stein: Then you have disintegration and even war in the streets. You can look at history and see where it's happened: Germany after World War I, for example, tried to form a democracy. But the parties couldn't work together, and they broke into opposites, with the communists fighting the fascists in the streets, until one party killed the others off, or put them in prison. So if the public splits without being able to contain this play of opposing party beliefs, then you have a very dangerous situation of one or the other prevailing -- and that's a psychological recipe for a neurosis or a psychosis on a collective level.

Pythia: When an individual person's psyche goes through this process of splitting, what is the therapeutic intervention?

Stein: Initially what a person who is suffering this kind of severe splitting does is blame everything that's gone wrong in their lives on someone else: They're innocent and the other person is guilty.

For that dynamic to change they have to develop a strong enough identity and feel safe enough to recognize their own faults. As trust builds slowly between the therapist and patient, a safe container for holding these uncomfortable feelings is created. Then the idea is gradually introduced that perhaps that person bears some responsibilities too. So overcoming splitting means taking back what you've put out there into the world to protect yourself from feeling threatened from within.

Pythia: It seems to me America has that tendency to put all that is bad onto the "other." What does this say about our sense of self as a country -- do we have a weak sense of identity?

Stein: I think the feeling of security in the United States is quite weak right now. And when you feel insecure in your identity, you don't feel safe, and your defense mechanisms take over, and projection gets going. We saw this after the trauma of 9/11, and the aggressive attitude that developed toward finding the enemy. I'm not saying that that there aren't very real, serious threats to our national security; it's a crazy world. But we have to be careful in distinguishing what we're projecting onto the "other" -- and what presents a genuine threat.

Pythia: Do you feel that the increasing polarization of the electorate over the last decade has something to do with the trauma we suffered after 9/11?

Stein: Yes. In addition, there's another trauma the country has been suffering through -- the financial crisis has also added to people's insecurity.

A really good politician can do a lot to heal these wounds by giving people something to believe in, or a healing symbol that will pull the people out of their fear. Roosevelt was good at this; he had a way of inspiring people and getting things moving. Reagan was skilled at using symbols, such as the image of the city on the hill, and as a light to the nations, to unite people. These are classic American symbols, derived from the Bible. Kennedy, with his various programs and his call to "ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country," gave Americans a sense of mission.

A strong candidate like Obama was in the last election generated a surplus of symbolism. Because of his character and his multicultural background, he was a reconciling figure who symbolized the coming together of opposites. When he was inaugurated it was a numinous moment in American history that generated a lot of hope. People were hoping that he could end the nuclear arms race, solve the problems in the economy and the Mideast and that everything would work out. But the hope was too great. He couldn't do it; nobody could. It was too much.

Pythia: So in a way Obama represents both the benefits and the pitfalls of the enormous power and symbolism the American president carries. Can you say more about that?

Stein: The American president is a big, big figurehead who has to make the voters feel proud that they're a part of this people that call themselves Americans. Because the president represents the whole people, a lot of psychological material gets loaded up on the two candidates. There's a lot of fear that somebody will get elected who will make us look bad. And if the individual voter doesn't feel good about the person representing them, they don't feel good about their country; they could even feel ashamed of themselves as an American.

So when an election takes place, what the American people are really deciding is what identity they're going to present to the world as "The American." Do they want the world to see us as a Mitt Romney, or as a Barak Obama? In a sense, the president is a kind of "self-representative" in the world -- an archetypal, larger-than-life "American" whose qualities go beyond the capacities of an ordinary human.

Pythia: How does the rest of the world play into these heightened expectations surrounding the presidential election?

Stein: The American president is also a world leader. So in addition to the projections of the American voter onto the presidential candidates, there is the enormous attention paid around the world to an American election. It's on the news every night and in the newspapers every day. And right now the world is watching very closely. Even an unknown congressman from Missouri like Todd Akin can make a controversial comment -- and the whole world hears about it.

Pythia: Speaking of Todd Akin's offensive remarks around "legitimate" rape, it seems that no matter how much we strive to talk about what we think we should be talking about, like the economy, these culture war issues keep cropping up. What's going on in the American psyche to cause this recurring phenomenon?

Stein: The huge wave of consternation generated by this incident is yet another symptom of the in-between state America is in. Things are in a lot of flux. So there's tremendous fear on both sides that the country is losing its identity, and in that climate so-called little things can get blown up out of proportion. As a result you get this tug of war over what we stand for: Who are we? What kind of people are we going to be? And because an election is a turning point when anything can happen, this mood of anxiety is heightened even further. Thus, when Todd Akin makes a statement like that, it sets off bells of alarm on one side that the country is going backward to the days when abortion was illegal.

Pythia: So you're saying that as much as we want to believe that the election is about policy issues, it's really about who we are as a country, and our identity. Would you say America is in the midst of an identity crisis?

Stein: Yes, America is struggling with its sense of itself. And all Americans are a part of this process. If you grow up in America, and you participate in American culture, you're affected by this, because it's a part of your own personal identity.

Pythia: What would be an example of how this identity crisis in the American psyche is playing out for conservatives?

Stein: For many, the influx of foreign cultures threatens the roots of their American identity; there is the fear that we're losing our identity, this isn't who we are. As a result, there's a big push-back to recapture our previous and imagined pristine identity. At the edge of this movement are extremists who are ready to take all kinds of crazy action.

Pythia: How does the role of big money in this election play into America's identity crisis? Money seems to have become the very face of America itself.

Stein: The bottom line is that money has become a fundamental symbol of value: It's power, position and social status. So when a candidate raises a lot of money, people think, "Wow, he must really have something." This is not only true in America, but on the global stage. A rich country is seen as powerful, and if a country like Greece goes broke, it pays a terrible price. If America goes broke because it's borrowed too much money, it won't be as valuable. And that gets translated into people's personal lives.

Pythia: So that even if you don't have a lot of money personally, you can still identify with your rich country?

Stein: Right. Just look at the symbol of the "rich American." It used to be that Americans could take a lot of pride in the power that was projected onto them when they traveled around the world. They might not have had much in their pockets, but because they were Americans they could catch that projection. It's not like that anymore, because the dollar is weak against the other currencies, and because other countries are now becoming wealthy economic powers.

Pythia: In terms of the healing symbols that you mentioned earlier, is there anything you can point to that is emerging out of the country's soul-searching on these various issues?

Stein: One positive self-image would be that of the "generous American." Bill Gates is one of the wealthiest men in the world, and he's committed to doing good things through his foundations to deal with problems in other countries. It's not often the case that people of great wealth in other countries are willing to share it with the rest of the world; it stays at home more.

And as much as some feel threatened by the foreign "other," the new immigrant has always been central to our American identity. It's what sets America apart; we've done a good job, to a point, of creating a society out of immigrants that can work together. Because America is like a miniature globalized culture in a way that older cultures can't be, other countries struggling with globalization look to us as a model for how to deal with differences. But the country can't see this positive self-image, because from the inside it's suffering all the difficulties around it.

Pythia: In closing, where do you see the country in its psychological development?

Stein: Since the 19th century America has been seen as a great power. So I would say it's reached a point of maturity and is at midlife. For an individual at midlife, part of the crisis is coming to terms with death and decline. For America, this means that it can't go on expanding as a world power indefinitely; it has to come to terms with its limitations. I think it hit that point in its wars in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places.

Pythia: What would be the tasks of America in its second half of life?

Stein: If the first half of life for an individual is about achievement and expansion, the second half of life is about the richness of maturity, deepening one's spiritual values, cultivating the next generation and preparing for death.

Pythia: This brings to mind the soldiers returning from these wars bearing both physical wounds and the invisible wounds of PTSD. As they courageously face their inner struggles in the same way they faced outer battles, would you say they're the harbingers of the healing culture developing in this country around psychotherapy, meditation, yoga and other kinds of sustainable lifestyles that are part of a wiser, more mature American identity?

Stein: Yes, that's part of it, absolutely. America is a very extraverted country; for a young, expanding country, this side of our American character has been an asset. But now that America is mature, it needs to develop its other side: a sense of interiority, and a turn toward contemplation and religion -- not in the sense of a missionary drive to convert the world, but a spiritual reflection on the meaning of life. America could also become a nation of culture that doesn't just provide entertainment, but literature, music and art that nourishes the soul and that sustains people when they go through dark times.

Next: On the Psychology of the American Voter]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.1071705 2011-11-04T13:56:21-04:00 2012-01-04T05:12:01-05:00

Pythia Peay http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pythia-peay/ had died, I mourned his loss. How, I wondered, could I ever pay tribute to someone whose ideas had so profoundly shaped the way I think, write, and even live and love?

Much of what I've learned -- and am still learning -- from Hillman came through his brilliant writings and unforgettable lectures. But I count myself fortunate to have had the privilege of interviewing Hillman multiple times over the past two decades. The wit and weight of his uncompromising personality combined with his knowledge infused his words with crackling intensity. Indeed for most who knew him, Hillman will be primarily remembered for two things: his groundbreaking ideas on the psyche and culture, and the remarkable force of character with which he both lived and delivered those ideas.

From Hillman, for instance, I learned the radical idea that depression is not merely an illness to be cured, but a kind of suffering that, when meaningfully borne, yields wisdom and beauty; that we are each guided by an invisible "daemon" who safeguards our calling; that we are here not to rise above life, but to "grow down" into it; and that dreams are not just symbols to be analyzed, but vivid encounters with a very real psychic realm.

It was Hillman who taught me to value slow time, reflection, history and the ancestors from whom I am descended. He deepened my understanding of Jung, while adding yet more layers of psychological theory. Hard as it was, Hillman trained me to see soul at work even in such taboo topics as suicide, warold age. Of greatest value, he taught me to live within the outlines of my given character, as well as to honor my children's characters, even those traits that were eccentric or ill-suited to conventional society. From Hillman I learned that to every one thing, there is an opposite.

It was Hillman who reoriented my spirituality, bringing me down from the heights of meditation to the depths of psyche. Next to Jung, probably nothing I've read has affected me so profoundly as his essay "Peaks and Vales: The Soul/Spirit Distinction as Basis for the Differences between Psychotherapy and Spiritual Discipline."

In it, Hillman wrote that Western culture as it developed had over-valued the realm of spirit. Belonging to this vertical dimension were abstract "spirit experiences" such as visions, ecstasy, detachment and transcendence, as well as logic and the future. Soul, or psyche, on the other hand, wrote Hillman, was forged in the hollows of earthly existence. Sadness and depression, the mortal, the pull of memory and the drag of the past, sleep and dreams and the iconography of images and archetypes all belonged to the horizontal dimension of soul. This is the rejected material of our driven Western society. It is also, as Hillman pointed out, the stuff of our personal "case histories," the basis of therapy. "The soul involves us in history," wrote Hillman. "Our individual case history, the history of our therapy, our culture as history," while "The peaks wipe out history."

By bringing me down from the mountaintop, Hillman reanimated my relationship to nature and even existence itself. Life became less like a spiritual retreat, and more like a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel of enchantment. For to Hillman, everything from the largest to the smallest thing -- from a seemingly godless place like Washington, D.C., to a mushroom, a bottle of wine, or a chair -- was possessed of a unique "eachness" of shape, voice and character. Hillman called this the anima mundi, or the world ensouled. This was the spoken world of the indigenous peoples, and the lost kingdom of my childhood. Returning to it made my life a far less empty, and much more intimate, place to inhabit.

Indeed the golden thread running through Hillman's work is the notion that the external world of today has become dead and soulless, stripped of meaning. This lack of soul has had aesthetic consequences, resulting in the barren strip malls, industrialized landscapes and banal office buildings of modern America. The environmental crisis likewise can be traced to our blindness to the world's soul. Thus no movement, whether ecological, feminist or pacifist, wrote Hillman, could save us until our way of relating to the world -- even our very idea of the world -- was transformed.

Though Hillman sought to change our way of seeing, he was not given to dispensing wisdom with spoonfuls of sugar. Little about him was soothing or reassuring. He aimed to rile up, unsettle and awaken. He didn't like words like serenity or hope. He deliberately went against the grain of the modern spiritual movement's upward-turning optimism, and once famously said people should stop meditating, as it distracted from the world's problems. Even psychotherapy came in for criticism, as he believed most conventional therapy isolated people's problems within the consulting room, rather than in the wider culture. Hillman could also be difficult to interview. Often he had to be coaxed, and could be irritable. "I'm no good at interviews," he grumbled one time. "Can't you just take what you need from my books?"

Yet this constellation of qualities made Hillman stand out as one of the greatest thinkers I've encountered. His mind was something to behold, and he had a talent for using the insights of psychology and mythology as a lens for cultural analysis. A kind of philosopher-psychologist, he thrived on dialogue, loving the questions as much as the answers. He shied away like a spooked horse from prescribing solutions -- that "American thing," as he called it. In such a forward-propelled culture as America, it takes courage to be backward-looking, but from that calling Hillman never looked away.

Hillman in fact was greatly preoccupied with politics and with America, especially its underbelly of depression. "What do you do with tragedy in America?" he said to me once. "The deep question that was so important to the Greeks and the Elizabethans? Where does it fit in? This is a huge American question." In my last interviews with Hillman for "The Huffington Post," I found him considerably softened from his illness. Nonetheless, his wonderful mind was soon engaged, as he spoke compellingly on America's "shift in ages."

So, once again, how do you thank someone who has left such a mark on your soul? How do you say farewell to the teacher who has deepened your understanding of life?

Though I have tried, words only go so far before paling into silence. In an email, Hillman's wife, artist Margot McLean-Hillman, wrote poignantly that she did not "wish to talk about his death just yet. The privacy of something so monumental needs time." In his moving reminiscence of Hillman, Thomas Moore, Hillman's colleague and arguably his successor, vowed to make his works better known to the world.

But perhaps one could also allow psyche to speak, as in a dream I had the night Hillman died. In this dream, I was attending Hillman's last lecture. The hall, located by a port, was full. Against the backdrop of a twilit sea, Hillman began to speak on the subject of death. He spoke with great solemnity, as this was also about his own death. Afterward, Hillman arranged two chairs in the middle of the crowd. One by one, he began the ritual of wishing each person who sat opposite him goodbye.

Finally, it was time for Hillman to leave. The whole crowd stood up with him and, in a grand, celebratory procession, filed down to the pier where two ships were waiting. As we drew closer, a wizened sea captain stepped forward, preparing to accomplish a difficult task. This involved swinging a gigantic "hook," joining a smaller ship to the larger ship that would take Hillman on his journey. Because this hook could harm someone if it swung in the wrong direction, the captain moved us all off onto a parallel boardwalk. As the group stepped away, leaving only Hillman, I heard a loud ringing sound as the enormous hook swung over our heads with a rush of air, then a loud clap as, all in one motion, it successfully connected the small ship to the larger ship's iron clasp. As we all waved, Hillman walked on board, his back turned and his head bowed.

And so, the man who taught a generation about the soul's mysteries leaves this world for the next, surely to be remembered for generations to come as a great soul himself.

For excerpts from some of my interviews with Hillman on depression, the soul's calling and other topics, please visit my blog at www.pythiapeay.com.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.946731 2011-09-10T11:11:00-04:00 2011-11-10T05:12:03-05:00

Pythia Peay http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pythia-peay/ Editor's Note: Part of an ongoing series of interviews with psychologists on the American psyche.

On Sept. 11, 2001, psychohistorian Charles B. Strozier watched as the World Trade Center towers collapsed into dust. In the aftermath, Strozier, also a psychoanalyst, treated many who'd witnessed the disaster, even as they picked their way to his office through the rubble. His new book, "Until the Fires Stopped Burning," is an account of his exploration into the deeper meanings of America's national tragedy based on eyewitness accounts and including the significance of the 10th anniversary and the role of apocalyptic dread.

A professor of history and director of the Center on Terrorism at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, Strozier is the author and editor of books on self-psychology, the psychology of violence and fundamentalism and themes in American history. The following is an edited version of our wide-ranging conversation on 9/11 and the American self.

Pythia: You have devoted a lifetime to the study of the American psyche. In your new book, what psychological insights have you drawn from the tragedy that struck America on Sept. 11, 2001?

Strozier: A very important dimension of 9/11 was the contrast between the experiences of those in New York and the rest of the country. This difference has important political meanings.

Pythia: Before we get into the political implications, can you describe this contrast in more detail?

Strozier: For those in New York, 9/11 was a visceral experience. There were scenes of chaos, with people streaming across the bridges to get out of the city. Then there were the [twin towers] collapsing on the ground, right before everyone's eyes. So while there were what I call different "zones of sadness," everyone in New York had the same shared experience of immediacy.

Pythia: What do you mean by "zones of sadness"?

Strozier: Early on, I began reflecting on the difference between the experiences of those who were at ground zero and those who lived farther from the epicenter. For example, I live in Greenwich Village. While I watched the disaster unfold, I didn't see anybody hit the ground, and I wasn't caught up in the cloud of debris. So the idea of zones of sadness emerged as a way of appreciating that during 9/11, there were various topographic spaces, each with its own kind of suffering, that ordered New Yorkers' survivor experiences.

By contrast, the rest of the country saw it on television. Those in Omaha, Neb. or Atlanta didn't have the same visceral experience as those in New York. In addition, this was the first time in history that a major disaster was watched live on television. The psychological context of watching 9/11 on television was one of safety -- viewers were literally screened from the scenes of death and fear. All throughout the experience older, white father figures were telling us what it meant.

Pythia: What were the political implications of the contrast between New Yorkers' up-close experience of 9/11 and the rest of America?

Strozier: Watching the event on television aroused vicarious feelings of anger. But vicarious feelings are not totally authentic, and they can be easily manipulated into rage. The key psychological difference between anger and rage is that anger is directed and has a clear target, while rage is diffuse. That's why rage is so easily manipulated in a political context -- it doesn't have an object. And that is the sequence that I would argue occurred in the rest of the country.

As it happened, by an accident of history, we had an authoritarian regime that wanted to project American power and make wars in the Middle East. So the Bush administration was able to take advantage of that rage and move quickly on an agenda that had already been defined. This was no hidden agenda. Wolfowitz, Cheney and others had been writing papers all through the '90s -- they knew what they wanted.

Pythia: I would have thought rage would have been more connected to being in the epicenter of the tragedy, vs. having it screened through the media and physical distance.

Strozier: If you lived in New York there was sadness and fear, as well as a deep reluctance to see what was very profound suffering turned into war-making abroad. There was a sense of confusion around what Bush was doing -- that the experience was being taken from New Yorkers and used for other purposes while people were still in deep mourning. The fires burned until Dec. 20, so it was really 100 days of disaster.

Pythia: What has been the fallout 10 years later from the way Bush handled -- or mishandled -- the tragedy of 9/11?

Strozier: The single most important fact of America in the last decade is that we've been a country at war. And those wars have been huge wars. Indeed, the relatively small number of Americans who have died in those wars is highly misleading. In another first that marked 9/11, Americans, for the first time in military history, implemented a dramatic new procedure -- forward operating surgical theaters and trauma centers -- within miles of the front. They also perfected the recovery of the injured through helicopters, who were immediately flown to a military hospital in Germany. For these reasons, most of the thousands of injured soldiers survived. But they survived maimed and filled with PTSD; many of them fell into alcoholism and homelessness. So while they seem like small wars, the effects have been huge.

Pythia: It sounds like a perfect storm of events: the terrorist attacks, the administration having a pre-existing agenda in place, creating a perfect opportunity to go to war, leading to the longest wars the country has ever fought, along with the trauma of the swelling ranks of physically and mentally injured soldiers.

Strozier: That's a great metaphor. But the crucial ingredient in this perfect storm is the quality of the leadership we had at that moment, and who took advantage of the psychological context of the culture of fear to sell that war. It's difficult to imagine we would have gone into Iraq if Al Gore had been in office. We probably would have had phase one of the Afghan war, but not phase two.

Pythia: As I listen to you, it's almost as if something very self-destructive to America happened in the way the wars unfolded that worsened the original trauma of 9/11. Is that how you would see it?

Strozier: Absolutely. The wars created an ongoing, deepening and aggravating trauma. That's part of what we have the opportunity to reflect on 10 years later.

But now Osama Bin Laden is dead -- and that's a very important event. Al-Qaeda is on the ropes and, while it will be a little while, the wars are ending. So this whole phase of what we've been through this last decade has bookends: 9/11 and the 10th anniversary are the two bookends for a decade of disaster, war and trauma in the American self.

Pythia: In your book you describe the psychological significance around anniversaries that mark both private and cultural loss. You write that on the anniversary of a loss, we "re-enter the psychological space of mourning." Can you say more about that?

Strozier:Technically this is called "anniversary activation," and it happens especially on the first anniversary, which is the most important, and is usually marked by events or rituals. But not all anniversaries are of equal power to evoke trauma. The individual or collective experience of moving forward is unpredictable, and certain things in subsequent years may trigger remembering. It may also be triggered around analogous events that are not necessarily attached to the anniversary -- just as Hurricane Katrina, for example, triggered memories of 9/11. But the 10th anniversary moves personal loss into historical memory.

Pythia: This is a phrase rich with meaning. Say more.

Strozier: The 10th anniversary is not always better. It is far more likely to have powerful effects on survivors and family members, and to call forth renewed suffering. For many survivors it's difficult because it means realizing that something very precious has been taken from them. I certainly have seen that already in the survivors with whom I remain in touch. A good number cannot even bear to be in New York on that day.

The story of Sally Regenhard, who lost her son Christian, a fireman, during the attacks, is an example. Christian was among the 41 percent of those who died on 9/11 who were never identified. As a result, among the remains of the unidentified dead are thousands of body parts. In the hope that in future years DNA analysis will advance enough to make more identifications, these body parts will be stored in a "Remains Repository" 70 feet beneath the 9/11 Memorial. This repository will be located behind a wall with a quote from Virgil's Aenid: "No day shall erase you from the memory of time," and will include a private family room.

This decision has stirred angst and disagreement in survivor groups, including Regenhard. She is apoplectic with anger, for example, over the prospect of millions of visitors making noise and eating candy bars while touring the memorial, including this wall of remembrance adjacent to the main exhibit. Basically tourists will be walking into a gravesite -- and they're not going to be prepared.

Pythia: This is such a poignant story, and I can empathize with Regenhard's anger. But how does her experience relate to the psychological significance of the 10th anniversary?

Strozier: Because her memories of her son are being taken from her and put into the memorial. The decision has been made; it's out of her hands. And that's the 10th anniversary: It's now part of history, which absorbs her trauma. You don't necessarily move on when history absorbs your trauma. But it is different.

Pythia: Compounding these larger, historic forces, you also write about the phenomenon of post-nuclear "apocalyptic dread," and how that shaped America's reaction to 9/11. I live in Washington, D.C., and for a few frightening hours that day it felt like the end of the world.

Strozier: Indeed, the culture of fear that emerged out of 9/11 has to be understood in the context of our apocalyptic experience, as much as the event itself. Because it was so intense, so awful, such a surprise and so totalistic, our experience of it was apocalyptic. But we have to distinguish between what the event actually was and our experience of it. Psychologically, the felt experience of the people within the disaster was that it was an apocalyptic event. It was not: It was monumental, and it was an apocalyptic experience, but it was not an apocalyptic event.

Pythia: What caused these apocalyptic fears to surface so quickly?

Strozier: The apocalyptic dimension of existence has been a part of human culture since the beginning. That psychological experience, or "endism," as I call it, is the awareness that we could all die, and the world could end. Until the nuclear age that awareness took an act of imagination. It also required God. Historically, apocalyptic texts are almost all religious texts, such as "The Book of Revelation,"because the agent of the apocalypse is the divine. But with nuclear weapons in the world we don't need God anymore.

Pythia: And we don't need to have an act of imagination?

Strozier: It's a different kind of an act of imagination. Apocalyptic dread is a new thing in the nuclear age, because we no longer need God to end things: We can end the world, and we know it. Therefore, nuclear weapons changed us psychologically in ways that we're just beginning to understand. It's one of the intriguing but terrifying aspects of 9/11.

[In all] 2,479 people were killed. I hate to say it, but there have been events where far more were killed. So it's not the numbers that were lost that makes 9/11 so huge. It's when it happened and how it happened and our experience of it that led to such an incredible psychological and political perfect storm after 9/11.

Pythia: So this apocalyptic dread is part of the psychological make-up of our time. But we're not educated about that.

Strozier: If you're at all aware, that knowledge exists somewhere just below active consciousness, and an event like 9/11 can bring it to the surface. People I interviewed for my book who saw the towers come down saw it as a mushroom cloud and instantly thought that a nuclear weapon had gone off in New York. People caught in the dust and debris thought that it was the cloud from a nuclear weapon. So it is a fearsome idea, and something powerfully evoked by 9/11 and even mildly suggested by natural threats. Though I can only speculate, Hurricane Irene might well have intensified some feelings of apocalyptic dread in people.

Pythia: What do you hope for America at this 10th anniversary?

Strozier: We now have some perspective on how stuck we were before and after 9/11 in the superpower syndrome that led us to a misguided attitude that we could control history. But the 10th anniversary has the potential to serve as a catalyst in interrupting this trajectory, and to define paths toward peace and security.

After we dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, for example, Japanese survivors took a stand against nuclear weapons that has continued to this day. After Auschwitz, a global movement arose against mass killings. Likewise, 9/11 survivors can help us define "life-enhancing meanings" from this tragedy; they can also take the lead for the culture in acknowledging America's vulnerability and limitations. We don't have to be weak and helpless to be wise.

Pythia: But America has a hard time facing the idea of limitations. All I hear when we're faced with any kind of setback is that America is the greatest country in the world. Why is that message repeated over and over again?

Strozier: Thus we doth protest too much, right? Our assertions of strength ring a little hollow. We're highly vulnerable and in trouble economically. We have this massive inequality in our social and economic system. We've bled ourselves dry by fighting wars we should never have been fighting in the first place. And in the course of one decade we've profoundly distorted the fabric of our freedoms. We've corrupted our soul by embracing torture, here and abroad. We've lost a lot.

Pythia: Sobering words to conclude our interview. Thank you for your insights at this significant time.

Strozier: You're welcome.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.871794 2011-06-07T09:00:00-04:00 2011-08-07T05:12:02-04:00

Pythia Peay http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pythia-peay/ Boundaries of the Soul," an enduring classic on Jungian psychology. Singer passed away in 2004; our interview was never published. But her insights into soul, the American psyche and her poignant memories of viewing Jung's body in the hours after he died have remained with me over the years. Her insights remain as relevant as when we first spoke; the timing seemed right to share her wisdom with The Huffington Post audience. The following is an edited version of our conversation.

Pythia: You are an American Jungian analyst whose work revolves around archetypes, myths and dreams. I wonder if you could reflect on the soul of America?

June: To begin, I think I should say what soul is, at least in my terms. Soul and psyche mean approximately the same thing; the word psychology comes from psyche. Soul is that part of us that mediates between the visible world of everyday practicality that is before our eyes, and the invisible world that we know in a deep, inner way, the dimension of mystery. When we neglect the soul, then life loses its meaning and purpose, and we begin to feel isolated and disconnected from the life force. It's as if the noise of the everyday world deafens us, and we can't hear the beautiful music of life, or take in the rewarding quiet and companionability of being with friends and family.

You could also say that soul is a kind of blueprint. So, for example, there is the "house" that is America -- and then there is the invisible mythic blueprint upon which America was originally based. Part of that blueprint is the deep belief that those who were unable to express themselves, one way or another, came here in search of freedom and opportunity. At the same time, most of the African Americans came to America because they were forced to; other immigrants also came to this country because they had nowhere else to go. So along with our idealism, which I like to associate with soul, we have to remember that there is another part of us which works against the soul, and that in Jungian terms is called "the shadow." This is the part of ourselves that is very real, but that we don't like to acknowledge.

Pythia: Such as the darker side of our origins as a country -- including slavery, and the displacement and near-extinction of the American Indians?

June: Right. If I had America on the couch, for example, I would say that our image of ourselves is that we think we are pretty good: America sees itself as the great "I Am" that thinks it is the best country in the world; that knows what's right for the world; and that is going to be responsible for fixing all the problems in the world. So another aspect of our shadow is that we are caught in a power drive, needing to control our own destiny and that of other nations. Beneath that power drive, however, is insecurity: More deeply than anything we want security. In order to get security, we pile up wealth, and we use any means to do that. But if we were truly secure we wouldn't need to go to such extremes.

Pythia: What do you feel is behind America's insecurity?

June: I think we find it hard to trust that we will be secure. It is a kind of vicious circle where our insecurity creates greedy, ambitious habits, and the feeling that there will never be enough. This is also a part of America's shadow: On one side we have our ideals of generosity and inclusiveness, and on the other side we have insecurity, which leads to greed and self-centeredness. Somehow we have to recognize that giving in to the shadow is a short-term solution that makes things worse in the long run.

If I were speaking to America on my couch, for instance, I'd talk about faith, one of the qualities that Jung related to the soul.

Pythia: In what way does faith relate to the soul, or psyche, of America?

June: Part of faith has to do with having trust in the natural process of life: to be able to accept what is, and not always try to improve it. What I mean most specifically is ecology and nature: trusting that it can grow and mature, with some guidance, but not exploitation, and accepting the will of God in nature. This works in psychology, too. There is in each of us a natural process of maturation and development; we have to be careful not to mess this up, and to have faith in the human spirit. We have to be like a good gardener who pulls up the weeds, and cultivates the plants that nourish.

Pythia: What does it mean to bring this kind of soulful perspective to citizenship?

June: I think being a citizen implies a very deep and wise awareness of the world around us. I don't just mean our neighborhood, but our sensitivity to the total human community. Jung told us that we are living with something larger than ourselves, and that we need to give to it of our substance -- our work, our labor, our awareness, and our sensitivity. An example of this would be the cathedral builders in the Middle Ages who didn't expect to see the results of their work in their lifetime. Yet they had the awareness that they were contributing to something that would survive long after they were gone.

Pythia: You're talking about linking up our personal lives with something more meaningful -- that transpersonal dimension you mentioned earlier that co-exists with our daily lives.

June: I am an old lady now. Let me share something very personal with you. I have no children; I had one daughter, who died. At first I was devastated, crushed by this. But somehow I came to the realization that the world is my child, and that the people in prisons because of their political beliefs are my children (I am very devoted to Amnesty International), and that the people that I work with in my practice are my children, though not in a personal sense. Over the years I've worked with a lot of clients. Some have been successful; some have not. But the interesting thing is that in giving one gets so much back. Just to see people grow and develop, to see them accomplish things, and to know that you had a little part in helping, in turn helps me. Sometimes life deals you some pretty rotten blows. But the best healing is to be able to help others heal.

Pythia: In your years of experience as an analyst, have you noticed a recurring theme to your clients' issues?

June: Many of my client's issues have to do with finding one's self, and with finding one's own meaning.

Pythia: Can you tell me something about your training as a Jungian analyst?

June: I did my training in the early '60s, and have been an analyst since 1964. I didn't work directly with Jung, but was fortunate enough to have been trained by somebody who had worked with him, Liliane Frey-Rohn. But I was in Zurich when Jung died.

Pythia: That must have been an extraordinary moment. Can you tell me something of what you experienced?

June (in lowered voice): It was quite an experience. It was a stormy day. My analyst called; she told me that Jung had died, and that if I wanted to, I could go to his house in Kusnacht and spend some time there. And so I did. I recall walking up the long path to the entrance; at the end of the walkway, the front door stood open. I passed through this open door, over which Jung had carved in Latin the words "Vocatus atque non vocatus, Deus aderit", or "Called or not called, God will be there." A family member was waiting inside, and told me that I could go upstairs to Jung's bedroom. So I went up the stairs; at the top of the stairs was another open door, and through it I could see the flickering of candles.

I stood in the doorway, and saw Jung laid out in his bed in a white nightshirt. At that moment, something came to me. I saw that the candles were symbolic of Jung's work, and that it was my task, or anyone's task who chose to take it up, to take that candle and use that to light the candles of others. It just came to me as I was there, almost as a message. I've always followed the philosophy that there is plenty of light and that if we pass it on it does not diminish.

Pythia: As you're speaking, what comes to mind is the image of the Olympic torch that is passed from runner to runner, circling the globe.

June: Well the Olympic torch, as I understand it, is carried past the people, yet doesn't light other torches. But what if the runner could stop long enough to pass on the light, and people along the way could light their own candles from that torch?

Pythia: That's a beautiful image of Jung's legacy. In closing, I'd like to ask you one more question about America, and what you see as it's soul potential.

June: I believe that the best teaching is setting an example. If we are going to survive as a country, we will have to become a beacon: a beacon isn't aggressive -- it's a light to be seen, like the Statue of Liberty with her torch. This is a very different image from the cowboy and the conqueror, and yet we need new images like that of the torch or the beacon to take us into the next century.



]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.867837 2011-05-30T09:00:00-04:00 2011-07-30T05:12:01-04:00

Pythia Peay http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pythia-peay/
Some 50 years later, while writing a memoir about my father, I came across a file of papers on my mother's ancestry. In it was a family tree tracing her lineage back to one John Cassin who, as a 17-year-old private, had fought with George Washington at the Battle of Trenton. Yes, the Battle of Trenton, in which, on Christmas night, Washington and his rag-dressed soldiers crossed the icy Delaware River, surprising and capturing the sleeping enemy troops. After the Revolution, Cassin, who was said to have remained personal friends with Washington, became a merchant seaman. In 1799 he joined the newly forming U.S. Navy, where he served as second in command at the Washington Navy Yard and fought pirates in Tripoli; during the War of 1812 he returned to the Delaware to command the naval forces in the protection of Philadelphia. Still on active duty in his late fifties, Cassin became commanding officer of the Navy Yards at Norfolk, Virginia and Charleston, South Carolina, where he died in 1822.

How I came to be the descendant of a Revolutionary patriot through my Argentine mother is a tale I will save for another time. Suffice to say the discovery that I was more deeply rooted in American history than I'd ever imagined had an impact on both my relationship with my mother and with my mother country. Sitting in the hushed atmosphere of the DAR Library in Washington, D.C., coming face to face with the burly, proud profile of "Master Commandant" Cassin in a history of the U.S. Navy,* a jolt went through me. As a student of meditation, I'd had spiritual awakenings. In therapy, I'd had psychological awakenings around my personal complexes. But the discovery that I was descended from what in DAR lingo is called a "patriot ancestor" stirred in me an American awakening.

In reflecting on his own "fateful" ancestral links, the psychologist Carl Jung wrote in "Memories Dreams Reflections" that he felt that he "had to answer questions which fate had posed to my forefathers, and which had not yet been answered, or as if I had to complete, or perhaps continue, things which previous ages had left unfinished." What did it mean, I wondered now, with some irony, that I, a child of the '60s who'd marched against wars from Vietnam to Iraq, was a "daughter of the American Revolution"? My family's personal "founding father" had risked his life in service to America, so that eight generations later I could write in freedom. His sacrifice seemed to demand something of me -- but what?

To this point, my knowledge of America's origins had been fairly cursory, punctuated with grade school images of Puritans, cherry trees, and liberal tenets around sexist dead white men. So gaining a more comprehensive knowledge of my ancestor's times seemed like a good way to begin my quest. Delving into histories and biographies, events that had been dry and distant became animated. Cardboard cutout-heroes became three-dimensional figures of complexity. What stoked my imagination the most, however, was the intellectual dynamism of the Revolutionary era. Political science geniuses, the Founders had debated each other fiercely, and had read widely in history and among the Roman, Greek, Scottish, French and English philosophers. As the historian Joseph Ellis writes in "American Creation," the late 18th century "was the most politically creative era in American history."

Indeed as it is often said, America is an idea as much as a place. One of the pillars of this American idea is self-determination: the notion that the power to forge one's own destiny lies within each individual. In this sense we are all sons and daughters of the American Revolution, each generation erasing the past and making its own mark anew. Still, as my mother remarked when I relayed tales of her seafaring Irish-American forebear, "If I'd known about that, maybe I would have felt more as if I belonged to this country." As the loneliness behind her words sank in, it dawned that one way of continuing my ancestor's legacy might be through cultivating a kind of reflective citizenship. For if we are always beginning anew, fighting the Revolution on the terrain of our personal lives and on the battlefields of the world again and again, then we never really arrive, we never really build a solid foundation of tradition and history -- and we never really belong.

Greater attention to the nation's inner life, it seems to me, might be one way to heal the American wound of not belonging that afflicts so many. What if, for example, we sought to add a more soulful dimension to citizenship through more philosophical and spiritual exploration of what it means to be independent individuals living interdependent lives? What if study of the nation's founding history was seen as each citizen's lifelong civic duty, as important as voting or community service? What if we protected the American landscape with as much zeal as we defend the borders that surround it? And what if our family's immigration stories were handed down over the generations as part of our birthright, connecting us to our own American lineage, and treasured as an important part of our psychological identity and individuation?

As I reflect on my patriot ancestor's life on Memorial Day -- a time of somber tribute to those who have given their lives in service to their country -- it seems to me that more contemplation could also be given to discovering the deeper meaning of what exactly the military defends: liberty, equality, individual rights, and this evolving American story of which we are all a part.

I welcome your immigration stories, and/or thoughts on America's inner life and evolving story, so please write in!

*"A Gentlemanly and Honorable Profession: The Creation of the U.S. Naval Officer Corps 1794-1815" by Christopher McKee
]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.859918 2011-05-18T08:38:00-04:00 2011-09-07T11:10:16-04:00

Pythia Peay http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pythia-peay/
McLaughlin, a spiritual and political activist who has taught politics at American University, is coauthor of "Spiritual Politics" with her husband Gordon Davidson (author of the forthcoming "Joyful Evolution"). They are as well founders of The Center for Visionary Leadership and The Sirius Community, and are fellows of The World Business Academy and The Findhorn Foundation.

The following is an edited version of my interview with McLaughlin on her recent book, "The Practical Visionary: A New World Guide to Spiritual Growth and Social Change".

Pythia: I'd like to start with a simple question. What is your definition of a "visionary"?

Corinne: A visionary is someone who sees the future with both insight and foresight: Insight into the deeper causes and meaning of events in the world, and foresight, or an intuitive grasp of the big picture, such as the trajectory of politics and popular culture.

Pythia: You write in your book that you've seen many visionaries fail to manifest their inspiring visions. What do you find is the biggest obstacle most visionaries face?

Corinne: The problem I find with a lot of visionaries is that they're too far ahead -- perhaps their vision won't happen for another hundred years. That's why I like to help people focus on "next step" visions that are more doable.

Pythia: Why is being too far ahead of one's own time a problem?

Corinne: Thinking that something that is far in the future can come sooner leads to unrealistic expectations, as well as rigid and dogmatic perspectives. It can also prevent visionaries from seeing what's possible right in front of them. Our work is to translate what we might receive from a flash of insight into things that are useful today.

Take for example the recent uprising in Egypt. I could hold a positive vision of how this could all turn out, but I know it's not going to be as simple as that. It's one thing to get rid of a dictator. The harder part is to create a viable democracy that empowers people. But what I found inspiring in Egypt is how, during the revolution, the people organized their neighborhoods, created street clinics to help the wounded, and cleaned up after their demonstrations. These may seem like small things, but to me they are examples of practical, effective visionaries at work.

Pythia: You write that as a young woman in the sixties you were inspired by people in government and their dedication to public service -- such as President Kennedy and Robert Kennedy -- to enter government service yourself. You then went on to work at various Federal agencies, such as the Social Security Administration and President Clinton's Council on Sustainable Development; you've even taught meditation to some government agencies. How did these first-hand experiences shape your development as a practical visionary?

Corinne: I believe strongly that social change isn't just about demonstrations in the street against the wrongs in society. There is also the path of the social innovator who creates new institutions and the path of the reformer who goes within an institution and makes incremental changes. Based on my own experience, I learned that implementing a vision in an institutional setting involves working with conflict resolution and a whole systems perspective. It's important, for instance, to have a multi-stakeholder perspective -- in other words, you can't just go charging in with your own ideas, you have to appreciate people's different perspectives, then work to find common ground and bring the various parties to the table in a respectful dialogue.

Because I frequently encountered obstacles such as old, entrenched ideas, ongoing power struggles, or the lack of staff and money, I also learned to develop patience and detachment. In federal, state and local governments, administrations, philosophies, and policy initiatives change. If your vision aligns with the values of the current administration you're working with, you can make some progress -- but that could all change in four or six years.

Pythia: Together with your husband, Gordon Davidson, you've also taught the path of "Ageless Wisdom" for many decades. What has this spiritual perspective brought to your calling as a practical visionary?

Corinne: What I've taken from my spiritual study is the wisdom of living a balanced life. My spiritual path has also helped me to be more emotionally centered, to be more understanding of those that disagree with me, and to learn how to let go of some of my power issues so that I can be more effective and bring a sense of humility to my work -- while still having the self-confidence to be effective.

Pythia: You write about how easy it is for activists to burn out, and list different ways that they can stay "spiritually sane." What contemplative practices do you teach activists that can help prevent disillusionment?

Corinne: Many activists just see what's wrong: they want to stand up to injustice and educate people about it. But I think it's equally important for activists to hold a more positive vision of what's right with their country: what's going well, and what they'd like to grow or see more of. I also like to encourage activists to take some time each day to sit silently or take a walk in nature as a way to be in touch with their inner wisdom and peace -- and to remember why they are on this path in the first place.

Pythia: Many people have the desire to bring about a better world, but don't have an outlet for their visions or ideas. You say one place they can start is with their job.

Corinne: It's important to keep in mind that we never know how something as simple as passing along an idea or asking an important question might impact someone. A first step on the path of being a practical visionary, for example, might begin by having conversations with co-workers, or by simply creating a better atmosphere at work. It could be setting up a brown bag lunch and bringing in speakers. For some people bringing spirit into the workplace means doing good quality, honest work, or finding a way to give back to their local community; if you're the boss, it could mean finding ways to support your employees; for others it's about protecting the environment.

If you're not within an institutional framework, there are other things that you can do: You can begin by giving more support to those around you, such as your own family. You can bring more of your ideas and visions into your neighborhood and community, such as inviting people into your living room for a monthly dialogue. I did something like this around an area called "transformational politics." I've also organized neighborhood gatherings where we've examined how we can better support each other, such as watering each other's gardens during vacations, exchanging childcare or by borrowing each other's tools.

I also encourage people to go on the internet and expand their vision by pursuing new ideas and learning what other people around the world are doing. These days it's so much easier to find a support group around any idea you could dream of -- just Google it! Inner work also helps by identifying those old attitudes that keep us stuck in the belief that there's nothing we can do.

Pythia: Underlying everything you describe is the fundamental idea of inter-connectivity -- that we're all linked.

Corinne: Yes, at heart this is the spiritual perspective that we're one human family, and at our core we all want the same thing: a good family, a healthy neighborhood and society where we can have meaningful work and pursue our dreams, and where we can have a sense of security. The media is making this sense of interconnection very tangible -- it's not some abstract idea anymore.

Pythia: Indeed in your book you refer to "the world's that's to come," or the "new world that is being born." Can you say more about what you mean by that?

Corinne: To me the "new world" is the world of practical visionaries creating solutions to the problems we're facing today, whether it's poverty, violence, environmental pollution, regulating corporations or the way we treat criminals in our social justice system. But it also refers to a set of common values, or "new world values": This includes compassion; a sense that we are all in this together; the search for common ground and mutually beneficial solutions; a sense of a whole system and how each issue is interconnected with all the others; and honoring the good of the whole and the greatest good for the greatest number. There's a sense of the value of long-term sustainability and prevention, versus fixing a problem after it's occurred, like the BP oil spill. Over the years, I've found that when we examined what worked in all three sectors -- non-profit, federal government or business -- it was these kinds of values that contributed to an effective outcome.

I also describe these values as part of a "new world" because there is a sense of mutual recognition and support among people from different fields who share this common set of underlying principles, and who are helping to create these new solutions.

Pythia: You also write that one of the places we can catch a glimpse of this new world is in reruns of "Star Trek: The Next Generation": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek.

Corinne: The spiritual principles (in Star Trek) aren't dated at all! For example, because of plots involving interspecies communication, the show dealt very cleverly with problems of racism, and different cultural customs around marriage and mating. The crew had to draw on principles like cooperation in order to accomplish things; they solved problems between themselves by using a mix of courage, patience and tolerance. There were episodes based on spiritual themes like loyalty, the willingness to sacrifice and to give support to the next generation. The writers also raised issues around psychic phenomena, and how some of these powers could be misused. In fact, it would be great if someone could categorize the lessons so someone could go directly to one of the episodes!

Pythia: Going back in time, do you believe the Founding Fathers were practical visionaries?

Corinne: Yes: They had a vision for a better world, and their visions have withstood the test of time. Indeed, when you say "the new world," people usually think of America -- it was even regarded as the new world at that time. The Founders also faced incredible obstacles, and had to be very practical politicians as well as diplomats.

Pythia: Do you have a favorite Founding Father?

Corinne: I would say Thomas Jefferson, for his connection to the earth and the way he understood the importance of the agrarian aspects of society, his sense of democracy and the way he challenged the established order, and his visionary writings that still inspire us. James Madison was also brilliant in the way he sought common ground among the Founders.

]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.822913 2011-02-26T12:15:00-05:00 2011-11-17T09:02:45-05:00

Pythia Peay http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pythia-peay/
Now approaching his 85th birthday, I spoke with Hillman as he was recuperating from two years of illness. "It's a new life," he told me. "A lot of reflection instead of ambition." The American psyche has always stoked Hillman's reflections; the following is the second half of an edited version of our conversation on the current zeitgeist.

Pythia: In our initial conversation you said that America today has a certain "tragic aspect." Can you say more about that?

Hillman: Everything that everyone is afraid of has already happened: The fragility of capitalism, which we don't want to admit; the loss of the empire of the United States; and American exceptionalism. In fact, American exceptionalism is that we are exceptionally backward in about fifteen different categories, from education to infrastructure. But we're in a stage of denial: we want to re-establish things as they used to be, to put the country back where it was.

Pythia: For many, those are fighting words. People don't want to question American exceptionalism, because if America isn't exceptional, then what is it, and what am I?

Hillman: The capacity for people to kid themselves is huge. Living on illusions or delusions, and the re-establishing of these illusions or delusions requires a big effort to keep them from being seen through. But a very old idea is at work behind our current state of affairs: enantiodromia, or the Greek notion of things turning into their opposite.

It's said, for instance, that we're in a change of age. And as the ages change, those old things that seemed to be great virtues suddenly become vices. The 2000 years that preceded this was the great expansion of the West, and the age of the great monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Yet these three salvational prophecies with their tremendous aesthetic accomplishments and enormous civilizing effects have turned into monsters in their self-absorption with their righteousness and orthodoxies. They lack insight; all three claim to be "the one."

Pythia: What would be another example of something turning into it's opposite?

Hillman: I would point to the great beliefs of secularism and humanism that began in the 17th century or even earlier. So as we see today with writers like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, the "fourth religion" is throwing out religion. This leaves us with a kind of barren scientism, or what religious people describe as a godless humanism. These are the great currents that are going on right now. People still want to find something further, but things haven't yet fully disintegrated.

Pythia: What you're saying is that these powerful myths that have defined America -- the monotheistic religions, secularism, and our economic myths -- have peaked and are in their decay, but not quite.

Hillman: Yes, but it doesn't look that way. It looks like they're being powerfully reinforced, which is always a sign of a lack of vitality -- if they were vital they wouldn't need to be defended. And the fanaticism we're witnessing goes along with the deterioration of the vitality of these myths.

Pythia: So when a society is trying to defend something this strongly it's really a symptom of the decay that's going on beneath the surface?

Hillman: Right. Take for example the economic myth, the major myth that we live in this country. Now, economists all declare that the world problem today is the falling off of demand, and that we must stimulate demand -- whether by the government or through bank lending. But if you were to look at the problem of demand falling off from an ecological point of view, what could be better? Doesn't that show an extraordinary disruption between the kind of economic thinking that dominates our capitalist world, including China, and the earth's point of view? But the ecological way of thinking creates a huge panic problem for capitalistic economics.

Pythia: You mean because these societies sense that an old way of life is dying?

Hillman: Exactly. Now there are plenty of intelligent people who are working on how to live in an economic no-growth society. And Obama has been very important in trying to bring new structural thought to these questions. But as long as the economists and the bankers rule, the old way will die very slowly.

Pythia: Still, the death of the old always implies that something new is coming.

Hillman (in an exasperated tone): This looking for the "new" is an American vice! We always want to see what's coming next -- we're addicted to the future! Futurism is another American myth: whether Kennedy, Johnson, Reagan or Obama, American presidents all come into office with a new program, and the conviction that the country is going to be better than ever. But I think you have to hasten the decay. The classic view is always to look back, and to watch and help the dying.

Pythia: As I hear you speak I'm thinking of how my family and I helped my father die, which was a very profound experience. And I'm wondering what a similar experience might mean in a cultural sense.

Hillman: One would have to think about what needs to die in this culture; what attachments need to slip away, such as white supremacy, male supremacy, and the sense that we are the really "good people." America has a certain hubris about its virtue. Another thing would be our "unanalyzed" understanding of the word freedom. Probably one of the striking things in the dying of your father was his dependence on help, like nursing homes and nurses and crutches -- yet out of his lack of freedom arose another kind of freedom.

Pythia: My father was particularly stubbornly American in that regard. He wouldn't even go into a hospital because then he wouldn't be "free" to smoke or drink. But you seem to be saying that as we lose one kind of freedom, there arises the possibility of another kind of freedom.

Hillman: I'm saying that we haven't thought about the idea of freedom enough. It needs to be internalized as an inner freedom from "demand" itself: the kind of freedom that comes when you're free from those compulsions to have and to own and to be someone. For example, think of the kind of freedom that (South African president) Nelson Mandela must have experienced when he was imprisoned. He completely lost his freedom in the outer world, yet he found freedom within. That's an example that broadens our current limited idea of freedom: that I can do any goddamn thing I want on my property; that I am my own boss and don't want government interference; that I don't want anybody telling me what I can and can't do; that we've had too much regulation, and so on. This is the freedom of a teenage boy.

Another strange aspect to this shift of ages is people's fear of getting cancer; it's absolutely endemic throughout the population. The health care bill stirred this up, and people began to wonder what would happen to them if they got cancer.

Pythia: Why do you take note of that?

Hillman: Because it's more than simply the fear of dying and the fear of disease: It's part of this period of things breaking down, and that it's only going to be a matter of time.

Pythia: It makes sense that people would have this fear, because you're describing this huge cultural moment in which not just one myth, but also three or four of our most fundamental myths, are all crumbling at once. And because most people don't have these changes put into a broader context, the way you're doing now, they're picking up the changes and feeling the anxiety --

Hillman: They are feeling it personally only.

Pythia: So people are feeling this shift, sensing that things aren't going to be the same anymore -- and this fear is making this whole process worse?

Hillman: Definitely. We see this reflected in the fear of immigrants and of our borders being transgressed; we're afraid of running out of all the things we're dependent on; of losing power, and our military bases all over the world; of our educational levels falling and of America being the best and the strongest. But the point is -- it's already collapsed, it's over with. And that's what's interesting!

Pythia: And why is this so interesting?

Hillman: Because once we understand what's really happening, we can see what else can emerge once the structures that are worn out finally crumble. There is a huge amount of stuff going on underneath these old forms. We don't know exactly what it is yet; it's all very different, unorganized, it doesn't coalesce, and it's diverse and dispersed. But it's very important that people take part in some of these emerging projects.

Pythia: Can you give me some images or ideas of what you're talking about?

Hillman: At a recent Bioneers conference, the environmentalist and entrepreneur Paul Hawken put up a film on the screen. It was simply a list of names of organizations who are doing inventive things all around the world, whether on trees, fisheries, rivers, different modalities of communities and economic systems, materials that don't use up scarce resources, people harnessing sea waves to escape from oil dependency, and endless other things. Hawken said that he could let this roll for weeks and there would be thousands and thousands of names working on what's happening beneath the surface of society.

Pythia: But for many the psychic atmosphere is so charged with a kind of floating fear and uncertainty that it's like being at sea in the middle of a terrible storm, with no sense of direction. So the question becomes how do we live during this shift between ages?

Hillman: It's important to avoid wanting these innovative structures to conform to the models of the past: and that means unified, organized, and from the top down. What's beginning to emerge is very different from what's gone before: we can't entirely eliminate things like hierarchy, but what's coming may have no tops or bottoms, or even a name. Remember that in the early days of the feminist movement, they refused to have a leader; different women would just stand up and speak. The early feminists were very careful to not put what was spontaneously arising back in the old bottle.

So I think it's a matter of being free-wheeling, and trusting that the emerging cosmos will come out on its own, and shape itself as it comes. That means living in a certain open space -- and that's freedom.

Pythia: That has a ring of authenticity to me. Thank you for your time and for this fascinating conversation on America.

Hillman: You're welcome.
]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.826464 2011-02-22T12:12:00-05:00 2011-11-17T09:02:45-05:00

Pythia Peay http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pythia-peay/ John Beebe has been a lifelong moviegoer as well as psychological teacher. In his lectures, he often draws on movies as a way to illuminate Jung's theory of psychological types and to discuss the drama of therapy. "Early in my teaching, I learned that if I could get an audience to watch a movie with me," says Beebe, co-author of "The Presence of the Feminine in Film," "we could have a shared emotional experience to discuss what unfolds over the course of a long psychotherapy."

In anticipation of the 2011 Academy Awards ceremony, I spoke with Beebe to gain his insights into America and the movies. The following is an edited version of our conversation:

Pythia: The Academy Awards ceremony is an American ritual that draws millions of viewers worldwide. Is there something mythic about movies and movie stars that attracts us to this spectacle?

Beebe: You could say that movie stars represent "cultural complexes," or current collective attitudes. Only a few become mythic symbols of what Jung called the "Self" -- not our everyday role or personality, but the deepest possible aspect of being human, the whole part of ourselves that most of us encounter only when we dream.

Pythia: That's a profound take on Hollywood -- a place typically described as tinsel town, or fake or hollow.

Beebe: Hollywood is capable of both generating roles that reflect current cultural tastes, and roles that reflect something more authentic and enduring. Take, for example, Academy Award nominees for Best Actress in 1954: Grace Kelly for "The Country Girl" and Judy Garland for "A Star Is Born." There is a scene in "A Star Is Born" when Vicki Lester, the character Garland plays, goes on stage to receive the Academy Award she's just won for Best Actress. As she's making her acceptance speech, her drunken husband walks on stage and interrupts her speech with one of his own. Punctuating it with a gesture of his hands, he accidentally strikes Vicki. In front of everyone who has witnessed this "slap in her face," she does the unexpected, and tenderly helps her husband off the stage.

In this scene, Garland reveals her capacity to transcend the actress and stand up for feeling. Before our eyes, she becomes a symbol of human compassion. At that point, she becomes a permanent "star" -- someone who enters the firmament of overarching humanity beyond personal character. Ironically, Grace Kelly won the award. She was beautiful and proper, but a symbol of the persona -- the public face we put on to meet the world -- and of the rise of American affluence on the world stage in the fifties. Her achievement was no match for Garland's.

Pythia: Garland starred in "The Wizard of Oz." You've said her Dorothy asserts "the power of the feminine" over the tendency of American culture to inflate masculinity. Was Dorothy a feminine hero?

Beebe: Dorothy upholds her values, but she shows more fear than we're used to in a hero. That's where Garland's casting was so brilliant. As an actress, Garland had a capacity to evince vulnerability. You can hear that in her voice when she says "I'm frightened Auntie Em, I'm frightened." And yet she was capable of transcendent feeling; her voice literally goes "over the rainbow."

Pythia: You also describe "The Wizard of Oz" as a movie that gives examples of the different cognitive functions that Jung described in his personality type theory. Can you say more about that?

Beebe: Dorothy's "superior function," or what she is best at, is extraverted feeling. The Scarecrow represents Dorothy's unconscious potential to think. Here you have a beautiful illustration of what Jung means by the "inferior function" -- the part of us that's not adapted to everyday life, that's closer to the unconscious and is harder to control, just as the Scarecrow can hardly control his movements. He has an inferiority complex about his thinking, but as the movie unfolds, it becomes obvious how smart the Scarecrow really is. Apparently, what Dorothy's not great at nonetheless possesses great creativity.

The teaming of Dorothy and the Scarecrow brings together the two halves of what I'd call the "spine of personality" itself. This is the mystic axis between what we're best at and what we're worst at. Taken together, Dorothy and the Scarecrow have a pleasing depth. They bring integrity to the person who has none: the Wizard of Oz, who embodies the pretension of being in control when you're not, and who shows what happens when you try to keep the illusion of the hero going.

Pythia: It seems to me sometimes that America is like the Wizard of Oz; we give the illusion of being in control, but we're not as great and powerful as we would like to think we are.

Beebe: In "The Wizard of Oz," you get a completely new American myth -- a myth in which finally nobody pretends to be on top of anything. People are running scared, and they don't know how they're going to make it. At the end of the movie, Dorothy is able to get back home to Kansas and be re-connected to her world in a real way. The movie has a marvelous down-home quality, like something you'd find at a simple little store. This would be the attitude that I'd like to see America take -- to move out of being the greatest country in the world and just be a "good enough" country; to get past the hero and turn into a good citizen of the world.

Pythia: Moving forward, what cultural themes do you see reflected in some of this year's nominations for Best Picture?

Beebe: I don't think it's accidental that "The King's Speech" came out at a time when a lot of people were worried that Obama was not speaking out enough.

Pythia: That's a very interesting link to make. Can you say more?

Beebe: Obama, who is not interested in resurrecting the hero myth, is post-heroic. He's interested in the archetype of the good parent. He wants us to be better parents, and he wants to protect the infrastructure and take responsibility for the country. But at the same time, Obama has had a reluctance to be assertive in the bully pulpit. Some have felt that he was being too cautious, and that he needed to come forward. He finally came through in the beautiful speech he gave in Tucson and his State of the Union address. After hearing from their president, the public brought his ratings up.

King George VI of England needed to master his fear of public speaking in order to help his people deal with their fears at the terrifying moment that World War II began. By combining courage to lead with the humility needed to face his speech problem, he became a "wounded healer" who helped his country -- the right king for his people at their most trying time. So "The King's Speech" drew on the historical precedent to the situation Obama faced of someone who worked on his reluctance to speak out in order to become an effective father figure for his country -- an example of a collective issue being mirrored and resolved in a brilliant film.

Pythia: What other film reflected a collective issue?

Beebe: "The Social Network." It's a beautiful piece of filmmaking, but the subject is quite repellent. It epitomizes what American competitiveness and greed look like when they become the only values. It shows the new go-it-alone entrepreneur who is not concerned with providing a livelihood for anyone but himself.

Pythia: Does "The Social Network" say something about the darker side of the hero as an American myth?

Beebe: Yes. The portrait of Mark Zuckerberg -- a lonely, heroic figure who can't, finally, take care of anyone but himself -- makes one question whether being heroic is the best thing. In "The Black Swan" Natalie Portman also plays an extremely heroic type. In "The King's Speech," George VI rises to the occasion of history, which in his case takes a private sort of courage. In the end, he becomes an effective king, but as portrayed by Colin Firth, he is never exactly heroic. He is able to become a father to his country because he humbly accepts help. Similarly, Annette Bening in "The Kids Are All Right," is not playing a heroine -- she's incarnating the archetypal good father, as channeled by a woman protecting her home.

So we can say "The King's Speech" picks up the wish of our country for a certain kind of fatherly leadership, while "The Social Network" confronts us with our shadow of living for heroic success. If the Academy rewards "The King's Speech" or Colin Firth and Annette Bening, that suggests we're more interested in the father archetype. If it chooses "The Social Network," or Jesse Eisenberg and Natalie Portman, I would take that as our country's unwillingness to give up the hero archetype. It seems to me that the good father has become more important to this country than the hero, and so I predict the Academy will be leaning more toward the father rather than the hero in its choices.

Pythia: Turning from the collective to the personal, can watching a movie be like therapy?

Beebe: Yes, a good film can help us metabolize our life experiences. I think the problem for all of us is finding a coherent narrative out of our existence. Like therapy, a movie does that for us, distilling years of experience into a story. When the story works, it has an animating effect on us. We walk out of the theater feeling better; we don't know why we feel better, especially when there has been a lot of pain in a movie, but we do. If we don't, something is wrong with the film!

Movies, which are the reflections of a filmmaker responding to the human condition, are also models that show us how to develop the capacity for reflection. They enable the audience to hold complex states of mind in a creative way -- a state that's not unlike our dreams. We do the same thing when we go into therapy. We're not master filmmakers, but if we watch our dreams over a period of time, they show a process of reflection on our experience. Working with them in therapy can strengthen our consciousness; as consciousness grows, so does our ability to fully engage with this life that is so perplexing and upsetting, but also marvelous.


Resource:

Jung and Film II, The Return, edited by Christopher Hauke and Luke Hockley. London & New York: Routledge (forthcoming).
]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.816913 2011-02-05T11:18:58-05:00 2011-11-17T09:02:45-05:00

Pythia Peay http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pythia-peay/ Jungian analyst James Hillman -- psychologist, scholar, culture critic and author of more than twenty books, including the bestselling "The Soul's Code" -- is one of the modern era's most brilliant thinkers on the human and collective psyche.

Now approaching his 85th birthday, I spoke with Hillman as he was recuperating from two years of illness. "It's a new life," he told me. "A lot of reflection instead of ambition." The following is an edited version of the first of a two-part conversation on his psychological perspectives on the American zeitgeist:

Pythia: The Tucson shootings triggered a debate over the ongoing polarization of the right and the left. What is your psychological perspective on this?

James Hillman: We have to realize that our minds are our enemy. The current debate has become very ideological, with certain fixed ideas dominating the discussion. This is a result of thinking in opposites; it goes back to Aristotle, and has to do with an either/or kind of logic: If something is this way, it cannot be that way.

But this isn't how the world really is. For example, most people think that the opposite of white is black. But there are shades of black -- from blackberries, to black coal or blackbirds -- that have nothing to do with white. The point is to learn how to evaluate each issue on its own merits without having to bring up the opposition's point of view. In therapy, when you have a dream of your mother, for example, you don't necessarily have to talk about your father as a supposed opposite.

Pythia: In other words, a conservative or liberal will often have a predictable reaction to a specific issue. But in therapy, an important part of the psychological process involves examining how we think. You seem to be saying that we need more of this kind of critical examination in our political process.

Hillman: I agree, for instance, with some of the extreme propositions from both parties. On the left, I think we should make extreme cuts to the defense budget. On the right, I agree with the extreme proposition that we should close the Department of Education, because it's a total failure. And possibly Agriculture, too, since it's dominated by the Agribusiness giants it's supposed to supervise.

Pythia: So by saying that you have radical views from both the left and the right, how does this address the issue of polarization?

Hillman: It addresses the issue by saying that a person doesn't have to cling to certain ideas just because they're on the left or the right. There are other ways of putting things together so they're not necessarily opposed; there is the idea of collaboration, or the phrase "coterminous," meaning where one appears, the other has to appear. Chinese culture has the Yin Yang symbol, with its interwoven extremes. It seems to me that we lack this kind of complex imagery in the media. Television foments this by bringing two people together from opposing positions -- as if every situation has just two sides.

Pythia: There is a growing weariness among the public with this kind of ideological boxing match.

Hillman: Democrats and Republicans sitting side by side during the recent State of the Union address may have been a psychological breakthrough. Do you remember [broadcast journalist] Fred Friendly? He used to host a television show with Supreme Court Justices, ambassadors and intellectuals from the left and the right. He'd ask very tough questions that produced true intellectual discussion on current issues. That would be one example of how to handle differences without simplifying into polarities -- a word, by the way, that comes straight out of electrical engineering. It's not a psychological term and doesn't help solve a problem for the psyche, as what is psychological isn't as rigid as scientific models of thinking.

Pythia: When it comes to handling polarized political viewpoints, I wonder what you think about Obama? Many on the left have a problem with Obama's temperament; they see him as weak when he's conciliatory to the Republican right.

Hillman: Obama's temperament is a tremendous virtue. At last we have somebody who is cool-headed, who tries to think things through, who can take the pressure, and who can even concede having made a mistake. The speech he gave at the Tucson Memorial was a masterpiece. He walked right into the middle of all these conflicts and the problem of America, and he said something that had real content, and not sentimental. He did not use highly intellectual or rigid ideological language. By referencing the little girl (Christina Taylor) who was shot, and by encouraging us to live up to her expectations of our democracy, he was able to revitalize the American dream and engagement in political life, through her own dream of becoming politically involved. And personally, I think the agreement Obama struck with the Republicans over the tax bill was clever.

Pythia: But many on the left faulted Obama for caving in on this issue. Was this an example of fixed ideology at play in the political arena?

Hillman: Yes, it's an ideological fixation for the left: We must not let the rich get richer. I'm all on the side of the ideological left, but on this issue, I think the left is wrong. Let the rich take their jillions -- they're going to, anyway! This is just how the situation is until the rich begin to convert on their own, like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, who are now trying to change the minds of capitalists. And if the rich have more money because of the tax deal, let's appeal to their capacity for citizenship and hope that they find ways to help the country -- whose condition affects them, too. There are a lot of things that we don't know about that might be going on in the psyches of the super rich.

Pythia: You mean that the rich may themselves be harboring new perspectives on their wealth?

Hillman: Exactly. I can't imagine that the rich or the conservatives are utterly closed off from the changes going on in the collective psyche. But the ideological left locks us into a fixed view of "the other"; this traps them in having to be worse than they may possibly be.

Pythia: Are you saying that the liberals' fixed view of the right might actually be helping to create the "enemy" that they're locked in battle with? But isn't the right just as guilty in this as the left?

Hillman: I'm not saying that there aren't some fanatical activists on the right. But I'm on the left, so I'm trying to bring more psychology to their situation. And the ideological left runs a danger of continually nailing the coffin on the enemy. By fixing the opponent, it puts them in a box and omits the possibility of the kind of transformation exemplified by John Dean, Nixon's lawyer, who then testified against him during the Watergate hearings. But if a political party is seen only this way or that way, then we prevent what else might possibly be going on in their psyches, and we're not bringing any insight to the process.

For example, if I have a wife and I only see how mean-spirited and quick-tempered she is, and I see her that way all the time, then she becomes fixed into that character definition, and nothing else.

Pythia: In using marriage as an example, you're implying a relationship. Does this mean that both the Democrats and the Republicans are overlooking the fact that they're in an intimate relationship -- instead of being unrelated strangers? I admit I feel that way sometimes when I listen to Glen Beck.

Hillman: It's clear everyday that the left and the right are in a marriage. Fox News' Bill O'Reilly talked obsessively about MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, and Olbermann talked obsessively about O'Reilly; they were locked in a marriage. And for all that the liberals want to mock Glenn Beck, he is talking about American history and political theory that the left neglects.

Pythia: I agree. But what you seem to be saying is that just as in therapy, there needs to be more reflection on the country's past.

Hillman: Even MSNBC is "leaning forward." But I'd like to see it lean backward, which is what the word reflection means. What, for instance, is in the shadow of these fixed ideals? One thing that's being ignored is history. In a certain way, the liberal world has been lax about standing for true American history. I think of Howard Zinn and his leadership on this subject.

Pythia: Besides ignoring the past, what might be some other effects thinking in opposites has on our culture?

Hillman: It leads to the extreme moralism in our society, which declares one side good, and the other bad, and then the "other" becomes evil. All of which leads to conquest, warfare, victory and those other destructive Western ideas.

Pythia: Indeed one of the ongoing debates after the Tucson shootings was whether the climate of violent political rhetoric contributed to what happened.

Hillman: My perspective on this is a little different. I think that this kid was made a loner by an American educational system in which there is no room for the weird or the odd. The moment Loughner began to become schizoid [isolated from society] in class, he was thrown out; he became lost in the great Tucson mass of people -- he wasn't being held by anything.

Pythia: So instead of political polarization, or the lack of a stronger mental health system, you see this tragedy as related to our educational system?

Hillman: We need to have an educational system that's able to embrace all sorts of minds, and where a student doesn't have to fit into a certain mold of learning. Our educational system has become so narrowed to a certain formula, that if you go through a weird phase, you're dropped out -- often at the age of schizophrenia, 19-23 -- and that's the danger. And in addition to that problem, you've got the availability of guns and the pressure of a society that can't take the peculiar. But I can imagine that this young boy did not have to do this shooting.

Pythia: If you can imagine that this tragic shooting didn't have to happen, then what do you imagine might have happened instead?

Hillman: He would not have been thrown out of school; and he would have spent some time with his teacher, who would have made an effort. We also need a kind of counselor who isn't tarred with the brush of making psychological "assessments," and where he wouldn't have been cursed with the idea of insanity. Right there is an insult. Instead, we need a school counselor who is more like a wise man or woman and who would listen to a guy like this without pathologizing his concerns. The problem with the educational system is that it lacks love.

Pythia: You're talking about bringing back a person's humanity, so that they aren't de-personalized, which only increases their marginalization.

Hillman: Right. Instead of having that kind of discussion, we have a factual examination of the incident and talk about reducing the gun clips from 31 bullets to 10. But the boy himself is left out of the discussion.

Pythia: Here we are, this great country with all our emphasis on the individual, and yet we fail the individual?

Hillman: Absolutely. The person becomes an oddball, a kind of isolate, cut off from everything.

Pythia: So this kind of psychological perspective on America's problems begins with more careful reflection...

Hillman: And a little more curiosity about people and events. And we don't have that -- we really don't.

***

Next up: Part Two of my interview with James Hillman on "America and the Shift in Ages."

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