Only Connect

Details: Last Updated: Sunday, 27 October 2013 20:37; Written by Doris Norrgard

Only Connect

by Doris Norrgaard (E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

"Jung and his magnificent both-and!" In these words Swedish author Claes Janssen (1) summarizes a central story line in C. G. Jung's work, his insistence that we not only accept the opposites but connect them, even welcome them. Male and female, body and soul, ego and shadow, joy and pain, east and west. If we want to be whole, sound, grown up and become what we already are, we have to connect.

Only connect. This is E. M. Forster's theme. Both in Howards End and in A Passage to India. To set the action rolling in Howards End Forster sends out Mrs Munt, in full commotion, on a disastrous mission - herself thinking she'll rescue her nieces: "At times the Great North Road accompanied her, more suggestive of infinity than any railway, awakening, after a nap of a hundred years, to such life as is conferred by the stench of motor-cars, and to such culture as is implied by the advertisements of anti-bilious pills. To history, to tragedy, to the past, to the future, Mrs Munt remained equally indifferent; hers but to concentrate on the end of her journey, and to rescue poor Helen from this dreadful mess." (2) Despite her intentions Mrs Munt contributes to Helen's tragedy, who gets a child born out of wed-lock, which in the last end turns to be a blessing, a glimpse of hope, symbolizing a new connection.

Coniunctio of course means union, connection. The Swedish Jung foundation has a journal called just that: Coniunctio. (3) I happen to be one of its co-editors. Coniunctio is especially the union of opposites - one thinks of marriage, union between male and female, of alchemy, of soul, of love.

"We won't save what we don't love", says Valerie Harms in her newest book, Dreaming of Animals. (4) We need to connect with our animal nature. Feel the kinship. Feel the soul of it. Animals are no machines, we are no machines, nature is not dead. Yet.

Four starts to my essay. Only connect! Feeling helpless and powerless I'm only slowly able to connect to the tragedy. It's too soon. And it's too late. And of course it's nevertheless just about time. But the need to care about history, tragedy, the past and the future is continuous. Here we are, up against hard facts: the only place a connection can happen at all is here and now. At times you feel you have nothing but a heap of fragments at your disposal. And you despair: how could you possibly make a new start, something whole, out of them?

Mrs Munt again is wholly submerged in her little world of personal proprieties and improprieties. She is blind to the context, blind to the consequences of her actions. Also for those she loves. She is fussy. She is annoying. She is a disaster. It's painful for the reader to accept that she is also an image of our shadow, of our personal and collective unconscious, and to the point, too. A shadow that refuses to connect. A shadow that won't grasp that our small personal acts contribute to the bigger story.

Tragedy, tragedies are common. In both senses. We contribute to tragedies when we ignore our knowledge of how the forces of nature work. We refuse to remember that the forces of nature work both without and within us. We do this at our own peril and at the peril of those we personally care about. And we know it.

The human animal has been described in many ways. Homo sapiens, homo oeconomicus, homo ludens, etc. But I wonder if this joke is not most accurate:
- "At last the scientists have found 'the missing link'-species between the primates and the fully developed human being!"
- "Oh, how interesting, and what are they called?"
- "Us!"

* * *

The last thing I want is to speak lightly of devastating tragedies. But still we need to talk about them. Share our stories about how they affect us. Changing with the stories. - It's not long ago since I translated Donald Williams' Changing Stories for Coniunctio. This quote is foremost in my mind: "Never underestimate the power of a story." (5) Precisely that power I would like to summon up. As Williams shows in The Educated Heart-series: when we turn our lives into stories we both construct meaning and we deny meaning. We connect and we refuse to connect. And a tricky shadow is able to rule out the sapientia in Homo sapiens all too often. But sapientia, education, and to be precise: education of the heart, is needed in the work to establish connections, in its turn a process of amplification, the Jungian royal way to vital insight. A way one can learn.

* * *

Global warming is caused by greed, let's not flinch from that fact. Many other ecological catastrophes are also caused and accelerated by human greed. Deforesting, overfishing, pollution, soil erosion, flooding. Compare these statements with the psychological insights that are our common knowledge already: if a person again and again brings about, say, a divorce, then we are quick to find out that he is unconsciously contributing to them, not taking responsibility for his actions. Perhaps we say he has a neurosis or a repetition compulsion.

But how about the collective level? Now in Thailand, in southern USA, Guatemala, Kashmir and other places, what is going to happen? - Are the same kind of lifestyles and structures to be rapidly built up again? We feel the tragedies are stunning, overwhelming, unbelievable. But are we hurrying to go on living exactly as before? Compare again: what would we recommend the man with the divorces? Certainly not that he goes on as before, but instead that he stops blaming only his ex-wives and takes a pause for reflection, and a real good look at how he himself has contributed to the disasters for himself and others. I don't see too many people in charge of the rebuilding taking a pause and reflecting on how to build up the environments that have been devastated. Is there going to be as little forethought and as little heeding the warnings as before? Are the poorest people again and again to be pressed out to the riskiest places all over the world with the most neglected systems of safety arrangements, out to the margins where the rich are not claiming the land, to dangerous sea-shores, to volcanoes, deserts, deltas, tundras, barren mountains, until oil or something is discovered there, something worthwhile to be traded, and they'll be speedily evicted? Are we going to contribute to all that just as before, blaming our partners and fate?

One shouldn't have to know much about analytical psychology to be able to see the folly of it, if we'd go on as before; the delusional resistance against our own responsibility included. The hurry to choose one of the opposite alternatives rather than connecting them. The denial of pain, most of all the pain of the other's, but partly also our own. The depression and paralysis that inevitably follow denial.

In a psychological process of development we immediately see that crises and chaos and disasters come forth if there is a need to change and this need is denied. And we don't recommend anyone to wait until others change first. We recommend to do what one has the power to do: to begin with oneself - with a realistic and sound hope of a more adequate adaptation to psychic and social reality in the future. In this case we know perfectly well that the influence of one person on the social system (like a family) is great. In this case we know that it takes courage and maturity to dare to take those steps needed, but we still recommend even the reluctant ones to take them. Because when our Selves demand these steps to be taken, there will be no peace and quiet, no responsible and creative order until we do what we have to do. And if we don't, we're out for bringing about even harder lessons. Experience told us that.

* * *

So global warming is a result of human greed. This fact seems to rest very much in our shadow, ours who are lucky enough to have more than $2 a day to live on. Even our individual greed is largely invisible, not to mention the collective. As a Mrs Munt surely would admonish us, it's not proper to talk about greed. It's as if the mere naming of this powerful causal factor reflects the shadow back on the observer; to observe greed seems to reveal not only the observer's greed but envy, too. In this way our theories of projection make it difficult for us to look critically at reality. When Marie-Louise von Franz (6) studies evil in fairy tales, she shows how we, the naïve, bring about disasters. Our world is too narrow. We are too easily persuaded. We have to learn the hard way to see through the tricks of the dangerous characters. If we are uncritical we fall into the traps of ideological thinking, which intends to make us intimidated by accusations like "only losers are envious!". And to stand out as a loser is the worst shame in our competitive society, isn't it? Losing is then paradoxically coupled to spoiling the sport, where the alleged "fair play" (read: free trade) in fact is about to make believe everybody wins when only the fewest do, globally speaking.

Jung put forth the challenging theory of synchronicity. So a Jungian as a habitual reflex asks about any phenomenon: what does this symbolize? Why are these things happening right now? Why do they turn up simultaneously? What does that mean? In this decade many of our worst fears have materialized, showing that we actually have realistic cause for fear. Talking about these causes there's a lot of conjuring with calculations of probabilities. When a scientist has a statistical problem to solve, the first thing he has to do before he starts counting is to decide on which side he is prepared to err. When we recount the tragedies in our personal lives we also have to decide on which side we'd rather err. Our general world-view, all our ideas about what a human being is, our entire philosophy of life will show through in our way to perceive a row of events. Our outlook will determine how we construct the whole world and so what we fear is a part of that construction. This will in turn determine whether we are able to see any causal connections that leave us freedom to act and change, and if so, how we can do it. It might be that our Selves are afraid we'll not bring out our gifts to the world, but our shadows are afraid of what our families, neighbours or peers would say if we did.

A main-stream scientist working with statistical evidence is normally handling only one variable to be explained at the time. Often his most complicated cases consist merely in this variable having multiple causes. Psychologists and ecologists however have in common that their fields of interest are far more complicated than that, and if they don't let the complications stay in the foreground, their investigations are utterly trivialized and hopelessly missing their marks. Psychologists and ecologists alike have an open intricate system to explore and explain, where both the system itself and all the variables, both the causal and the dependent, are changing and interactive, reciprocally influencing each other. Reduction simplifies things of course, but is then again mostly worthless for real-life-purposes. These considerations add to the responsibility a psychologist has: an educated psychologist should be more prepared to grasp ecological reasoning than most people, and therefore more ready to take a certain lead, to set an example of what is possible.

We haven't forgot the rapid spread of mendacious stories with disastrous effects after the attack on the World Trade Center, stories that are multiplying the tragedy in stead of alleviating it. So after each encounter with tragedy we have a choice; we can choose if we are going to react with defeatism and scapegoating, or with determination to change what is possible to change, and we can chose not to blame only the others, but to reflect on our own contribution, and we can choose to rather err on the helpful than the helpless side.

* * *

So how, to be more specific, are we going to react to these tragedies that are looming large in today's world, both the dramatic ones and the slowly growing ones? By going back to old habits as soon as possible or by being willing to see the connections, take responsibility and change? Are we, as Forster implies, going to take symbolical anti-bilious pills when the growing car-park of the world is destroying it? Analytical psychologists and others in the Jungian movement, are we to bury our heads in the sand and to give that as an example to patients, students, relatives, and friends? Haven't we acquired a capacity to set a more courageous example? Don't we think a great split between intellectual knowing and actual acting is a sign of not being quite sane? And a sign of insanity it remains, even when the split is in ourselves, or among ourselves, I can't get round it. So we should rather encourage each other to put this question: am I personally going to contribute to global warming just as I did before?

Well, I'm not. I'd like to change. I've learned something from all this studying of Jung and others in his wake, I hope. From now on I'll honour those who have become victims of ecological disasters caused by greed by heightening my consciousness of my own ecological impact and of the tricks my shadow plays me in that respect. And my shadow is a tricky one and so tends to remind me that I'd rather not be uncomfortable with my neighbours (or my peer group within the Jungian movement), who might think I'm a bit odd if my life-style starts to differ from theirs. My shadow would rather not take any notice of my contribution - "So very tiny!" it says - to the unbelievable distress of other people bereaved of every comfort, because my and my neighbours' life-style make others, somewhere else, victims of disasters that forethought could have diminished or prevented. I've even lived in neighbourhoods where the inhabitants without thinking twice contributed themselves to the obvious ruin of the very environment they lived in, a place reminding one of Galveston, with almost as many cars as inhabitants, sure to eventually be flooded by global warming. For me, no more of that deliberately sloppy moral, if I just can see through it.

I'd rather be analytical and precise, able to deconstruct neurotic defenses, and not be blinded by tricks and ideologies and prejudice. This however takes a dialogue, because we all know that our shadows are more visible to others than to ourselves. I guess you've already discovered my saviour-complex long ago! Let me just say this: if we must choose to err either on our saviour-complex side or on our exploiter-complex side, then let's prefer the former. At least I'd prefer my analyst would! Jung, to become more aware himself, turned to the east to get a perspective on the western mind. Today we still have to listen to what people in the east and south say, for they are sure to discern our shadow. Don't they say again and again they clearly see our greed? Why don't we believe them?

* * *

When in our personal lives we do change in response to the pain that has fallen to our lot, it gives meaning to what has passed. Meaning repairs. Meaning heals. So if we, one by one, as individuals react to the disasters by changing our personal lives, it will be a way to connect with the sorrow and pain of the victims, to repair the web of life that has been destroyed, a way of reaching out that gives a meaning. Suffering cannot be totally avoided, but it shouldn't be unnecessarily inflicted and it shouldn't be ignored. And it should never be in vain. Victor Frankl was able to learn even from the holocaust, and I hope I've learned something from his books. Jung, too, knew about this role of meaning. In Man and his Symbols he underlined that a human being can endure the most unbelievable hardships as long as he is convinced there's a meaning to them, but will break down if, on top of his misfortunes, he has to tell himself that his role is one in a tale told by an idiot - Jung is here alluding to Macbeth, the famous passage where guilty, despairing Macbeth's tries to escape his pain in a self-deluding soliloquy: "Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing." (7) - Is there a common tendency in the guilty party to plead insignificance?

On CGJungPage that connects people and texts world wide, there were simultaneously an appeal from the Red Cross for therapists to help the victims of the hurricane Katrina and a reminder of the Holocaust, a wrong that humanity didn't react on enough to stop nor to sufficiently repair. I'm certain there was a wide-spread response to the former appeal. The latter text also connects profoundly to my theme. Already the title "The Self in Relatedness" is what my essay, even if in other words, boils down to. (8) And I'm aware that Katrina is a name from my part of the world. Soon, too, in the Jung Society of Southern Sweden we're going to learn more about Simone Weil and her personal courage during WWII on the 26th of November this autumn. As you see, the message is clear: our Selves want us to learn from history, be related and courageous.

The area devastated by the hurricane Katrina is said to be as large as Great Britain, a country as influential and as strong as it could be through the Commonwealth connections. A sudden epic disaster like the tsunami, or the hurricane, shows beyond any doubt how interconnected everything and everyone is on this globe. There was the writing on the wall (9) - as there always is. And there was denial - as there always is.

Life must go on, so we hurry to say. In this there naturally is hope, in the long run. In this we find not only hurry and denial, but also meaning and consolation. Certainly the most important thing is that human life goes on; this is the essential lesson we have learned from earlier disasters. But how is it to go on? Will we let the media feed us disasters as entertainment till we get totally indifferent to them and our empathy is burnt out and we don't care about anything anymore? No, let's protest: one who cares must take care to stay one-caring! (10).

* * *

After disasters we tell stories. Telling seems to be intensified at such times. It's wholesome, and it comes naturally, too. Muting the stories causes a double trauma. And that does occur all too often. But mostly we still have the opportunity to retell our stories several times and to a large circle of people, and some of them are actually going to retell not only their own stories but ours too, several times. Evidently that telling has an impact. Evidently the way you act in its turn has a great role to play in what you are able to tell about what happened and what you've done to respond. So why not take determined action and develop a story that shows you really cared? Caring is not just assuring that you care. Caring that is really convincing is shown in acts. The formula is something like this: take a developing character, add courageous action in face of big challenges, tell what happened and you get a good story we'd love to hear and retell. We are in great need of such stories of responsiveness. (11) But don't despair.

* * *

Only connect. The connections of the Jungian movement reach out all over the world. At the same time we can recall Jung reminding us that everything depends on the individual. Therefore the Jung foundation of Sweden has as its motto: "The world today hangs by a thin thread, and that thread is the psyche of man. (C G Jung 1957)" This quote and the image of a mandala is shown on its homepage (12). Whereas on the opposite side of the globe the Colombian Jung society ADEPAC (13) is foregrounding the uroborous, the archetypal symbol of the circling serpent eating (living) off itself, found all over the world. Could the use of one symbol here and the other there be merely a coincidence? To me it seems an amazing use of symbolism, and I remember South African analyst Adrian D. Van Breda referring to Erich Neumann who thought that we needed to separate ourselves from our attachment to the uroborous (symbolizing a still undifferentiated connection to the whole). Then we must risk an entry into the larger world, and there we have to bravely confront the universal principle of opposites. These are the tasks that we cannot avoid if there is to be human and individual development. It's striking, though, as Van Breda makes clear, that: "/the/ mandala is a symbol which depicts the goal and result of this developmental process". (14) I hope the use of the mandala on our homepage is not an expression of the erroneous belief that we'd already somehow had achieved that goal envisioned by Neumann.

When we now see what happens in history's most idealized Western country, the USA, then we must realize that we are still tussling with the uroborous: the USA is the most indebted country today (15), but is still claiming leadership over the whole world. We do feel it in Sweden, too. On top of it: the un-ecological "American way of life" is voluntarily aped in every part of the globe. From a Colombian Jungian point of view, looking at us Northerners and Westerners, it must seem obvious how far from a creative connecting of the opposites we stand - I wonder if we even have begun to materialize the mandala as a symbol of the unifying compass depicting South, East, North and West, the four winds, the four equal corners of the (w)holy spiritual world, as in the world-view of the Laplanders since immemorial times.

Now the utopia of the mandala is still just an elusive shimmering on the horizon of a future far, far away. There are on the contrary widening gaps to build connecting bridges over, also within countries. As an example: the news we saw over here from the aftermath of Katrina showed pictures of the victims, who all seemed to be poor African Americans herded by white men in uniforms. Pictures of this kind show gaps which are actual reality. But they also show another sort of gaps, rich in consequences: feigned gaps which we are wished to connect to inevitable natural forces, and so to alienate us from the victims, make them 'others', not 'us'. We all live off this earth and it has got its limits, as our realistic uroborous shows. Only if it eats off itself slowly enough it can survive. Let's hope that this symbol connected to the utopian mandala will work as a counterbalance, strengthening the connecting potential within the world wide Jungian movement.

* * *

Evidently Jung himself believed there was power in the change of an individual. The impact of individual therapists, clients, writers, teachers, readers, students, is not without significance, even if our inferiority complexes and guilt perhaps want to make us believe we are "signifying nothing". Of course it would be hybris to believe that an individual can change it all. Again both-and is the way, we are both relatively powerless and relatively powerful, the tertium non datur is to see that we are connected as social beings, to discover again and again that no man is an island. Not even us introverts. We are socially interacting beings whether we are comfortable with the responsibility it brings or not. Like the man with his divorces we could maintain that our own not-changing is not the problem, but as clearly as we see through his defenses, we should see through our own, with a little help from our friends.

So let's be each others' friends within the Jungian movement, let's remember that while it might be hybris to think you could change the social context you live in alone, it's Self-denigration to think it doesn't matter what you do yourself. With an effort we might see through our own excuses. And we could stop excusing the abuse we see. One of the responses we then can be sure to provoke, is that those we try to reveal are going to scrutinize us in return, and then let's learn from what they have to say, without giving in about the humane values.

What if you won't anymore close your eyes to my abusing the earth, if you won't keep silent anymore if I continue to contribute to global warming just as I did before? What if you in that case dared to confront me about my needing to return to basics, to analyze my self, my feeling small, my feeling big, as it suits me, to analyze my own impact on the social system I'm part of? What if you're ready to stand your ground and maintain: I see your shadow just as clearly as you see mine?

Let's connect. Let's learn from this. None of us can escape that glance. So let's do it: face the facts. The most important thing one individual can do is stop using the car. Avoid flying, too. We might show we're not impressed when people fly long distances just to get a sun-tan. Also cut down on business flying. Encourage people to protect some trees, and plant some new, every time someone breaks these rules. A tree for every 10 miles, say. If one has a car one can afford it. If one voluntarily stops using a car it's certain one can afford it. To take the car should be very, very expensive, that's only fair. It should be as expensive as the homes people have lost, with all the affection that goes with a home apart from the economical value. It should be as dear as the sorrows the disasters have left behind. The earth can simply not afford that 4 billion people in the developing countries imitate our dominating lifestyle today. Don't we know it? To change our way to use transport is the least we can do. But that really changes everything. It's vital not to be a Mrs Munt, contributing to the mess. She was indifferent. We shouldn't be the same. We should be different now, to history, to tragedy, to the past, to the future. We need to see through our short-sighted Munting shadow that keeps telling us depressing and paralyzing stories of our tiny contributions. When somebody remains conventional, or cynical, or blasé, or alienated, or dejected, he hasn't come very far in his individuation process, don't we know it? And the only way to show we are experts on self-reflection is to show it in our acts.

All Jungian analysts, all well-analyzed clients, all avid readers of Jung are sure to be aware from their own experience of the truth of Bloch's statement in the Principle of Hope: we can teach and learn how to hope. (16) Without this foundation all therapy, all self-reflection would be only nonsense and could as well be laid down. For very good reasons we therefore can affirm that there's hope. If the people we surround ourselves with won't encourage us to save what we love, and we can't find new people who relate more lovingly, we still have the option to do as Valerie Harms advices us to do: turn to the animals in our dreams or in real life for guidance. As all symbols, animal symbols will energize us. Not only the mythical uroborous can guide us. Homelier animals, wilder animals, any sort of animals can be the starting point for insights about the laws of nature both within and without. Animals, in our dreams especially, are able to teach us about the interconnected web of life, the unbroken circulation that is needed.They'll help us to see what we are too afraid of and what we are too little afraid of - and whether we fear not to give enough or not to get enough. Everyone of us can make sure it's a gift, not a debt, we bring to the world. (17)

Let's do it: let's save what we love, and take heart, and intelligence, and determined action and connect them to our stunned and disbelieving feelings faced with tragedies such as the effects of global warming. We just have to develop the courage to speak the truth and stand the conflicts. As in therapy. (18) Don't say you are powerless. Nobody who's really without power will believe you. All of us who still have a cozy home and family and friends and a job and some knowledge and experience and some money in the bank and some degree of health and our wits about us - or just a few of these valuables - we have more power than the majority of the people in this world. (19) Remember, the tyrants of this world use the strategy of divide et impera, divide and rule.The strongest power we who love this earth have is the power to connect. Intuition and practical skills. Natural phenomena and artifacts. Hurricanes and motor-cars. Feeling and thinking. Feelings of despair and theories of hope. Greed and generosity. People and wildlife. Love of others, love of Self, love of world, love of soul. Only connect.

© 2005 Doris Norrgaard
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Notes:
1. Claes F Janssen - learn more about him and his books on Quaternity, his homepage in English:
www.claesjanssen.com/books/index.shtml
2. See p. 30 in Forster, E.M., Howards End, 1910, available in many editions, here 1997.
3. Coniunctio, the only journal about analytical psychology issues in Sweden, founder and editor Otto von Friesen, see:
www.jungstiftelsen.se/frameset.htm
4. See p. 164 in Valerie Harms, Dreaming of Animals, and do see more at
www.valerieharms.com/ and in her essay As Within, So Without:
/learn/articles/book-reviews/153-as-within-so-without
Also her chapter on "A Gift to Oneself and the World" in "The Inner Lover, Using passion as a way to self-empowerment", has been a great source of inspiration for my essay.
5. Donald Williams, "Changing Stories," from The Educated Heart, a work in progress: /learn/articles/analytical-psychology/114-changing-stories and in Swedish as: Berättelsernas makt, Coniunctio, Vol. 6, 2005:2
6. I used M.-L. von Franz, Skuggan och det onda i sagan, 1994 (there are many editions: Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales, 1995; Der Schatten und das Böse im Märchen, 1985)
7. I used CG Jung, Människan och hennes symboler, 1978, (see Man and his Symbols, Aldus, London 1964, or any other edition). Jung refers to Macbeth's self-deluding soliloquy in W. Shakespeare, Macbeth, V.v.17.
8. Highly touching and thought-provoking essay by Dolores E. Brien, The Self in Relatedness: Anne Frank, Etty Hillesum, Edith Stein, Simone Weil. Read it on:
/learn/articles/analytical-psychology/700-the-self-in-relatedness
9. Take for instance such an accessible source as WWF, see
www.panda.org/about_wwf/what_we_do/
climate_change/problems/impacts/weather
10. Central theme in Nel Noddings' pioneering: Caring, a Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education, 1984.
11 . Cf: Hope and Fear, from The Educated Heart, a work in progress by Donald Williams,
/learn/articles/culture-and-psyche/728-hope-and-fear
Coniunctio is proud to have published this text, too, in Swedish as Rädsla och hopp, Coniunctio, Vol 6, 2005:1.
12. The homepage of the Swedish Jung foundation: Svenska jungstiftelsens hemsida
www.jungstiftelsen.se
13. ADEPAC Asociación para el Desarrollo de la Psicología Analítica en Colombia http://www.adepac.org
14. Adrian D. Van Breda, Dr's Jung and Tiso Exchange Dreams:
/learn/articles/analytical-psychology/181-drs-jung-and-tiso-exchange-dreams
Van Breda here refers to Erich Neumann 1954, italics added, DN .
Working at overcoming prejudice with compassion and creativity Van Breda in his article connects CG Jung and an African traditional doctor, Tiso, giving them equal weight even in the layout. Captivating!
15. Lester R. Brown, World Watch Institute founder, now president of Earth Policy Institute, writes: "The United States, the worlds leading debtor nation, is now heavily dependent on Chinese capital to underwrite its fast-growing debt" in his article China replacing the United States as World's leading consumer on the 1. Feb 2005, see:
www.earth-policy.org/Updates/Update45.htm
16. See Hope and Fear, from The Educated Heart, a work in progress by Donald Williams.
/learn/articles/culture-and-psyche/728-hope-and-fear
Since 1977 I've loved the Principle of Hope, by Ernst Bloch, therefore it felt like a meaningful coincidence that the first text I discovered on CGJungPage was "Hope and Fear." The latter contains the idea that we need new responsive stories for us to be able to handle a threatening future.
Bloch is widely recognized as the greatest German philosopher of the 20th century. Available from MIT Press the three volumes of The Principle of Hope 1986 (1995), were written in exile in the USA 1938-1947 and first intended to be called Dreams of a Better World. Bloch and Jung had more in common than neither cared to admit because of differing political affinities, each of them rushing to his extreme, to his later regret. So both of them showed a rather flagrant political naivety, one might say, as both followed the thesis, antithesis, synthesis-pattern, in life and work.
There's a lighter introduction to the principle of hope as such and from an angle of analytical psychology, in Verena Kast's Joy, Inspiration, and Hope, a book permeated through and through with Bloch's way of thinking, as actually a whole generation in Germany was. Here Kast sympathetically connects The Principle of Hope to the Jungian tradition and there's no doubt these two teleological and open dialectical systems fit well together. See also David H. Rosen's review of her book:
/learn/articles/book-reviews/100-joy-inspiration-and-hope-by-verena-kast
17. In Dreaming of Animals Valerie Harms says: "As you befriend an animal, a bond intensifies. /.../ The more you know your animals, the more they will have to show you. There are many reasons for connecting with animals in /.../ meditations: feeling dispirited, fearful, demoralized, sick, depressed. Contact with animals has the benefit of enlivening one, sharpening your focus, making you more direct and assertive, clarifying your intentions. When you feel weak, /.../meditation [on animals] is a way to get your power back. " (p. 178)
In this insightful book there's a clear introduction to the kind of meditation you can use, it's very empowering for us hesitating changers. Valerie Harms is also ever encouraging us to bring our gift to the world and to believe in its value. For further references see her essay Therapy for Our Relationship with Animals /learn/articles/technology-and-environment/26-therapy-for-our-relationship-with-animals
and my review Love is a Life-or-Death Matter
http://devel25.cgjungpage.org/learn/articles/book-reviews/642-love-is-a-life-or-death-matter
18. On using the skills learned in therapy, see Donald Williams, "Hope and Fear" /learn/articles/culture-and-psyche/728-hope-and-fear
19. Following connecting quote is from Marianne Williamson's "A Return to Love" (on her homepage
http://marianne.com/book/index.htm) and not from Nelson Mandela's inaugural speech in 1994, as is often said, but he'd indeed have done well to quote it:
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves: Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

References, books:
Bloch, Ernst, Das Prinzip Hoffnung, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1959 (1978)
Forster, E.M., Howards End, Alistair M Duckworth (ed), Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism-series, Bedford Books, Boston 1997
Franz, Marie-Louise von , Skuggan och det onda i sagan, Gedins, Stockholm 1994
Harms, Valerie, Dreaming of Animals, Dialogue between self and world, Magic Circle Press, iUniverse Inc, New York 2005
Harms, Valerie, The Inner Lover, Using passion as a way to self-empowerment, Aslan Publishing, Fairfield,CT 1999
Jung, Carl Gustav, Människan och hennes symboler, Forum, Stockholm 1978
Kast, Verena, Glädje, inspiration, hopp, Om att hitta känslorna som lyfter, Natur och Kultur, Stockholm 1997
Neumann, Erich, The Origins and History of Consciousness, Princeton university Press, Princeton 1954
Noddings, Nel, Caring, a Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education, University of California Press, Berkeley 1984.
Williamson, Marianne, A Return To Love, HarperCollins, New York 1992

References, links:
Asociación para el Desarrollo de la Psicología Analítica en Colombia:
www.adepac.org
Brien, Dolores E., The Self in Relatedness: Anne Frank, Etty Hillesum, Edith Stein, Simone Weil: /learn/articles/analytical-psychology/700-the-self-in-relatedness
Brown, Lester R., China replacing the United States as World's leading consumer: www.earth-policy.org/Updates/Update45.htm
Coniunctio, the Swedish journal:
www.jungstiftelsen.se/frameset.htm
Harms, Valerie, homepage: www.valerieharms.com/
Harms, Valerie, As Within, So Without:
/learn/articles/book-reviews/153-as-within-so-without
Harms, Valerie, Therapy for Our Relationship with Animals:
/learn/articles/technology-and-environment/26-therapy-for-our-relationship-with-animals
Janssen, Claes F., Quaternity, homepage in English: http://www.claesjanssen.com/books/index.shtml
Norrgaard, Doris, Love is a Life-or-Death Matter - a review of 'The Inner Lover' by Valerie Harms:
/learn/articles/book-reviews/642-love-is-a-life-or-death-matter
Rosen, David H., Joy, Inspiration, and Hope by Verena Kast: /learn/articles/book-reviews/100-joy-inspiration-and-hope-by-verena-kast
The Swedish Jung Foundation, homepage:
http://www.jungstiftelsen.se
Van Breda, Adrian D., Dr's Jung and Tiso Exchange Dreams:
/learn/articles/analytical-psychology/181-drs-jung-and-tiso-exchange-dreams
Williams, Donald, Hope and Fear:
/learn/articles/culture-and-psyche/728-hope-and-fear
Williams, Donald, Changing Stories:
/learn/articles/analytical-psychology/114-changing-stories
Williamson, Marianne, homepage:
www.marianne.com/book/index.htm
World Wildlife Fund,
www.panda.org/about_wwf/what_we_do/climate_change
/problems/impacts/weather