{"id":109879,"date":"2024-09-06T13:20:39","date_gmt":"2024-09-06T12:20:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jungian.directory\/fcxfougk\/?post_type=mec-events&p=109879"},"modified":"2024-09-06T13:20:39","modified_gmt":"2024-09-06T12:20:39","slug":"journey-of-self-othering-jung-and-the-poetry-of-pessoa","status":"publish","type":"mec-events","link":"https:\/\/jungian.directory\/fcxfougk\/jungian-events\/journey-of-self-othering-jung-and-the-poetry-of-pessoa\/","title":{"rendered":"Journey of Self-Othering: Jung and the Poetry of Pessoa"},"content":{"rendered":"

“But woe unto you, who replace this incompatible multiplicity with a single God! \u2026 How can you be true to your own nature when you try to turn the many into one?”<\/p>\n

— C.G. Jung,\u00a0The Black Books<\/em><\/p>\n

“We are a psychic process which we do not control, or only partly direct.”<\/p>\n

— C.G. Jung,\u00a0Memories, Dreams, Reflections<\/em><\/p>\n

Countless lives inhabit us.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know, when I think or feel,<\/p>\n

Who is thinking or feeling.<\/p>\n

I am merely the place<\/p>\n

Where things are thought or felt.<\/p>\n

I have more than just one soul.<\/p>\n

There are more I\u2019s than I myself.<\/p>\n

— Fernando Pessoa as Ricardo Reis<\/p>\n

At the end of\u00a0Memories, Dreams, Reflections<\/em>,\u00a0Jung made some perplexing remarks about his own subjectivity: \u201cThe older I have become,\u00a0the less I have understood or had insight into or known about myself.\u00a0 \u2026. In fact, it seems to me as if that alienation that so long separated me from the world has become transferred into my own inner world and has revealed to me\u00a0an unexpected unfamiliarity with myself.\u201d As Jungians we have been accustomed to the enigma of the unconscious, but there seems to be another mystery hidden in plain sight: \u201cWho is the I, that I claim that I am?\u201d \u201cWhat is the I?\u201d<\/p>\n

Jung had already questioned the nature of the subject during his Black Books-Red Book period.\u00a0 At the beginning of\u00a0Scrutinies<\/em>, Jung questions nature of the subject itself and the identity of the \u201cI\u201d: \u201cI resist, I cannot accept this hollow nothing that I am.\u00a0 What am I? What is my I? I always presuppose my I.\u00a0 Now it stands before me\u2014I before my I.\u00a0 I speak to you now, my I.\u201d (The Red Book, para. 333) Jung others himself, sees division in the subject, and cannot wholly identify with the \u201cI\u201d that carries self-states that he abhors.<\/p>\n

In 1929, Jung stopped calligraphing and painting\u00a0The Red Book\u00a0<\/em>and moved toward exploring alchemy to create a comparative framework for his experiences of active imagination from\u00a0The Black Books<\/em>\u00a0and to further build conceptual structure of his psychology project. I argue that in the move towards alchemy Jung has not included the material from\u00a0The Black Books<\/em>\u00a0from June 1916, forward. The excluded material present in Volumes 6 and 7 problematizes Jung\u2019s core ideas on the relationship between the \u201cego\u201d and the \u201cself\u201d; it complicates the notion of the single subject \u201cI.\u201d From the multilogues of Ha, Ka, Philemon, soul, and Jung\u2019s I, the subject \u201cI\u201d emerges as a complicated, enigmatic, manifold notion.\u00a0 On 11\/20\/1917 (BB7, p. 170], Ka envisions multiplicity of the \u201cI\u201d: \u201cIs not every cell of the tree-I an I, and again every grain in the cell an I of the cell, the I of the leaf, the I of the tree?\u201d<\/p>\n

Jung\u2019s recognition of reality of inner figures and his questioning of the nature of the \u201cI \u201cwas preceded by that of poets. In 1871, the French poet Arthur Rimbaud wrote, \u201cJe est un autre\u201d (\u201cI is another\u201d). In 1910, the greatest Portuguese poet, Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935), writing in English, for the first time used \u201cother\u201d as a verb: \u201cI find me listening to myself, the noise \/ Of my words othered in my hearing them.\u201d (Sonnet XIII).<\/p>\n

Questioning of the nature of the subject \u201cI\u201d and the recognition and respect for other subjects found its climax in Pessoa\u2019s work.\u00a0 Walt Whitman might have contained multitudes, but Pessoa let each of them\u2014whom he called heteronyms \u2014write in their distinctive styles. Pessoa was the pioneer in subjecting the very notion of\u00a0the \u201cI\u201d\u00a0to radical analysis.\u00a0 While at the time different psychoanalytic schools were examining the relationship of the ego to the unconscious, assuming the ego was a single subject, Pessoa would question the subject itself: Who is the real author of this poem just written?\u00a0 Am I the subject?\u201d How many I\u2019s am I? What is an I? What if unified identity, or clearly defined subjectivity or personality, is an illusion?\u00a0 In his explorations of subjectivity, he pre-dates contemporary philosophical debates by seven decades. As a French philosopher Alain Badiou put it in 1998: \u201cIf Pessoa represents a singular challenge for philosophy, if his modernity is still\u00a0ahead of us, remaining in many respects unexplored, it is because\u00a0his thought-poem inaugurates a path that \u2026\u00a0to this day, philosophy has yet to comprehend.<\/p>\n

Psychology has yet to consider Pessoa\u2019s contributions. We will engage Pessoa\u2019s thought to bring his poetic light to illuminate questions of the subject \u201cI,\u201d other, identity, and self-othering and relate them to Jung\u2019s own soul quest in his\u00a0The Black Books\u00a0and\u00a0The Red Book.<\/p>\n

NOTE: While \u201cpseudonym\u201d is an author writing and signing his work with a different name, \u201cheteronym\u201d is fully a person writing in the style different from Pessoa\u2019s own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“But woe unto you, who replace this incompatible multiplicity with a single God! \u2026 How can you be true to your own nature when you try to turn the many into one?” — C.G. Jung,\u00a0The Black Books “We are a psychic process which we do not control, or only partly direct.” — C.G. Jung,\u00a0Memories, Dreams, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":109880,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","tags":[],"mec_category":[542,210],"mec_speaker":[2051],"class_list":["post-109879","mec-events","type-mec-events","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","mec_category-webinar","mec_category-workshop"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nJourney of Self-Othering: Jung and the Poetry of Pessoa - JungianDirectory<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Journey of Self-Othering: Jung and the Poetry of Pessoa\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"“But woe unto you, who replace this incompatible multiplicity with a single God! \u2026 How can you be true to your own nature when you try to turn the many into one?” — C.G. 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