Jungian Metaphor in Modernist Literature

Exploring Individuation, Alchemy and Symbolism

Roula-Maria Dib

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781032174198
• eBook ISBN: 9780429603129
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Jungian Metaphor in Modernist Literature argues for the centrality of Carl Jung's theory of individuation and alchemy in modernist poetics. Through analysis of the uses of a mythic method in modernist literary works, the book develops a related alchemical model which serves to expand understanding of modernist uses of language.

The book is an innovative exploration of modernist literary creativity under a Jungian lens, spanning both the literary and scholarly Jungian field. The literary works of Hilda Doolittle, James Joyce and W.B Yeats are read in the light of Jung's central theme of an 'alchemical marriage' with attempts at developing a related alchemical model, a Jungian poetics, which serves to expand a reader's understanding of modernist uses of language. This provides a fresh new lens through which modernist literature is viewed and seeks to revaluate the role of Jung in the humanities, namely in the field of modernist literature, an area from which Jung has long been shunned.

This book will be of great interest for academics, researchers and post-graduate students in the fields of literature, modernism, psychoanalysis, gender studies, Jungian psychology, depth psychology, literary theory, and cultural studies.

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1 Introduction

The return of Jung

In this book, I will examine the dynamism of the metaphorical use of “alchemy” as a means of understanding the inner workings of writing in modernist poetics. I will pay particular attention to the poetics of William Butler Yeats, Hilda Doolittle (H.D.), and James Joyce, showing the redolent power of alchemy as a metaphor for the development of a poetics of transformation. Specifically, all this will be understood under the guiding rubric of Carl Jung’s concept of “individuation”; the reason for this, which is the purport of this introduction and book more generally, can be explained very simply: just as individuation is a developmental unity at the level of self, so modernist configured texts evince developmental unities at the level of narrative, plot, character and theme. As in some “alchemical crucible,” transformation can occur within verse and prose, at the level of language, metaphor, and imagery. Through a process of transfiguration, poetry transforms perceptions of reality and provides new modes of knowledge, yielding a “solution” for what key writers interpret as the spiritual barrenness of modern mankind. In order to explore alchemy as a metaphor for literary creativity in modernism, my study will create a space for Carl Jung’s psychology in the contested field of modernism. The position of Jung in modernist poetics is not fully examined as yet, and where it is, misreadings and distortions of Jungian theory abound.

This introduction will show how the combination of the uses of alchemy in a Hermetic tradition and key Jungian notions of individuation significantly inflect the works of H.D., Yeats, and Joyce, establishing a mode of procreative, “Jungian poetics,” or of Jungian poetic creativity. However, Jung’s theories and their application to literary works do not go unchallenged, and so I shall first examine some of the common criticisms of Jungian principles, with special emphasis on the thought that resulted from the break with Freud. After that, I will explore the core concepts of Carl Jung’s theories of art, individuation, the notion of the psyche, with its focus on collective unconscious, the archetypes (mainly the anima/animus), and Jungian symbolism, observing how these notions have influenced aspects of modern literature, especially through the use of a mythic method in modernist literary works. After this overview, I will attend to some recent revisions of Jungian theory, which better facilitate a consideration of modernist literary works in light of the Jungian model. I shall then argue for the relevance of a similarity between the “Hermetic” aspects of poetry and Jungian psychoanalysis. Finally, I will investigate Jung’s views on art and the artist, as they are also significant in reading H.D., Yeats, and Joyce.

Some Jungian terms will be used throughout the book (psyche, collective unconscious, archetypes, the Self, anima, animus, shadow, and individuation), for which I shall present brief definitions. “Psyche” is a term Jung uses to refer to “the totality of all psychic processes, conscious as well as unconscious.”¹ Although the term “mind” would have a similar meaning, Jung prefers to use the “psyche” because the former usually refers to conscious mental aspects only, while the psyche implicates both conscious and unconscious mental functioning. An important key concept in Jung’s theory, however, is that of the collective unconscious, which is an inherited and impersonal unconscious, common to all mankind.² The collective unconscious contains a set of archetypes, or universal patterns and motifs that are unpresentable unless expressed through images, usually emerging through dreams. Three important archetypes that will appear in this book are the following: first comes the anima, or “the unconscious, feminine side of man’s personality … personified in dreams by images of women … a man’s anima development is reflected in how he relates to women.”³ Next is the animus, which is the opposite of the anima, being a woman’s unconscious, and indicates the masculine side of her personality. Anima and animus are contrasexual archetypes representing the inherited collective images of both men and women to help them apprehend their opposite sex. The shadow is another key archetype, and it represents an unconscious personality characterized by rejected or ignored traits of behavior that are usually negative and socially unacceptable. The whole of the psyche, though, along with its entire potential for seeking wholeness, unity and transformation, however, is comprised in the Self. The Self has a teleological functioning, in that it is in constant fulfilment-seeking mode, aiming for progress toward its own wholeness, or what Jung calls “individuation,” a process leading to the development of the person’s full potential. The psyche is theorized as a self-regulating system that constantly strives to maintain the balance between the anima and animus, while simultaneously seeking individuation, or psychic development—all to be discussed shortly.

Jung saw some basic alchemical concepts as symbols of personality development, and the alchemical process as a metaphor for the individuation process, based on the idea of opposition and wholeness. As is commonly understood, Jung saw the world, as well as the psyche, in terms of opposites, an idea that pre-existed with the ancient Greeks and Chinese Taoist philosophies. Seeing opposition within the psyche, Jung spoke of the conscious and unconscious, opposing archetypes in the collective unconscious, and the four functions of feeling/thinking, and sensation/intuition. In contrast to the idea of the lasting polarities, however, Jung spoke about the achievement of wholeness through the union of opposites.⁴ Out of his experience with patients, he believed that it was a basic human urge to transcend fractured selfhood based on opposites, aiming at a “cure” for a state of wholeness. The main opposition people have to overcome, Jung believed, is that between the conscious and unconscious parts of the psyche: a necessary dialogue between opposite states has to occur in order to let the usually repressed unconscious express itself more fully into awareness. Jung regards this as a therapeutic method; this process, involving a mix of universal or transcendental archetypes and particular biographical experience, is therefore not necessarily teleologically led and closed, but seemingly endlessly recursive. And this is particularly relevant to a modernist ethos whereby meaning is constructed imminently rather than pre-ordained and resolved and readied to be represented.

Like Freud, Jung found dreams to be invaluable. For Jung, the value of dreams lies in their ability to provide insights into the process of uniting the polarities, and with time he was able to identify, through dreams, the stages that occur during the individuation process. The first stage, Jung saw, was the integration of the “shadow” archetype, which is usually projected as an enemy or dark figure that threatens the dreamer. The shadow is personified this way because it represents all the repressed, socially unacceptable desires and traits; in order to release creative energy from the unconscious, one must confront and deal with the shadow, accepting its anti-social characteristics. The second developmental stage in the journey towards individuation is a man’s dialogue with his anima (the representation of his “feminine” qualities) or a woman’s dialogue with her animus (the representation of her “masculine” qualities). The importance of the anima will be highlighted in the discussion of the works of H.D., Joyce, and Yeats, since “anima” plays a leading role in revealing the unconscious and acting as a guide to the “soul.” In this context, dialogue with the anima is a vital step toward integrating the unconscious into consciousness, thereby reducing the primary state of opposition between “conscious” and “unconscious.” The success of this integration and developmental process may lead to the establishment of the “Self,” a new center of personality. The “Self,” then, is where conscious and unconscious elements are united, and differs from the ego originating in Freud’s theory (which mostly exists in consciousness). To recap, the process of individuation based on transformation requires the integration of unconscious elements into consciousness. It happens in two important steps: first, the integration of the shadow; second, the dialogue with the anima.

Common critiques of Jung

In many respects, and in many of its aspects, Jungian theory has been subject to a significant amount of criticism over the past 50 years. Besides Freud of course, critics such as Philip Rieff, Naomi Goldenberg in “A Feminist Critique of Jung”; Henry Stuart Hughes, in Consciousness and Society; Michael Palmer in Freud and Jung on Religion; Neil Wollman in “Jung and Freud Compared on Two Types of Reductionism”; Paul Bishop in The Dionysian Self; Richard Noll in The Jung Cult: Origins of a Charismatic Movement; James Baird in “ ‘Preface’ to Ishmael: Jungian Psychology in Criticism,” Don McGowan in What Is Wrong with Jung; Paul Friedman and Jacob Goldstein in “Some Comments on the Psychology of C.G. Jung”—all have voiced their arguments against what they saw as limitations in Jung’s theory. I have found that most criticisms fall into one of the following four categories: the problem of gender bias, reductionism, cult-like aspects, and difficult-to-prove empirical claims.

First, many of Jung’s critics have regarded his theory as sexist and gender-essentialist. Jung’s critics regard the animus/anima theory as supporting patriarchy, despite his attempts to prove the opposite. According to literary critic Philip Rieff, “Jungians tend to overlook the several contradictory statements Jung may make within a single work, to veil his complexities and failures in an effort to make everything simple, cohesive, and inoffensive.”⁵ Jung’s writings on the concept of the feminine in men, the anima, were always problematic in the sense that Jung’s original theories, models, and descriptions of the feminine were regarded as having misogynistic undertones, specifically the ones he makes in Aspects of the Feminine. More than once, Jung claims that women’s psyches are inferior and less evolved than men’s, and makes derogatory and gender-essentialist statements about women and logic, emphasizing their inferior analytical abilities. Women, Jung argues, possess a “rigid intellectuality” that they base on their own principles, only to back those up with:

a whole host of arguments which always just miss the mark in the most irritating way, and always inject a little something into the problem that is not really there. Unconscious assumptions or opinions are the worst enemy of woman; they can even grow into a positively daemonic possession that exasperates and disgusts men, and does the woman herself the greatest injury by gradually smothering the charm and meaning of her femininity and driving it into the background.⁶

In comments such as this, Jung appears to stereotype women based on his personal experiences with them; he thus reduces the “feminine” to a condition of inferio...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of abbreviations
• Permissions credits
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• 1 Introduction: The return of Jung
• 2 Jung, psychoanalysis, and the great divide
• 3 Literary Jung
• 4 Alchemy as poetic metaphor in H.D.’s Trilogy
• 5 Between Yeats and Jung: The poetics of a Jungian paradigm
• 6 Alchemy of the word in Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake
• 7 Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index