In the Kingdom of the Blind: The Single Eye as an Archetypal Image

One-eyedness is slippery, uncanny, and paradoxical. As the result of loss, both as a human experience and as a theme in dreams and myth, it conducts us into the archetypal regions of sacrifice, wounding, and initiation, in which to lose an eye can disable—but also mysteriously empower. But inherent monocularity, as with the disembodied eye, the Eye of God, or the one-eyed Cyclops, is a phenomenon confined to dreams, myth, and religion. Within and between these two broad categories lies a tangle of meanings, cultural images, and psychological implications, so that any given image or experience of one-eyedness may sit within several overlapping fields of archetypal resonance. This talk will provide a chance to explore the theme of the single eye through its connections to some of the central preoccupations of Jung’s psychology: the nature of consciousness, the relationship between ego and unconscious, the Self, one-sidedness, the mandala, sacrifice, the Shadow, and the God-image.