Does the Soul's sleep generate the Reason? The Symbol's compensatory aspect at quantum-psychoid matrix with regard to the Reason's unilateralism A Symbol doesn't explain, says Jung. In fact it is beyond the dichotomy of the binary logic, that wants the limiting and restrictive diktat of the tertium non datur to be perpetuated so as to be obliged to choose between two possibilities being anyway on the same "nomological" axis. Let's see what Jung says as to the symbol (Jung quoted by Galimberti,1987) : By symbol I don't mean an allegory or a simple sign...a symbol doesn't embrace and doesn't explain but hints, beyond itself, at a still transcendental, inconceivable, obscurely sensed meaning that the words of nowadays ordinary language couldn't properly express. The distance existing between the rational and the symbolic order has been sketched out by Galimberti (1987) : in the former, the world of explanation, a (psychic) phenomenon is reduced in the same way as a result obtained in the logic ambit of the reason; reason operating as referee of itself, that produces such meaning, which doesn't transcend the human hypothesis that has produced it. In our opinion, with Jung the collective unconscious assumes the paradigmatic role of "ferrying" the man beyond himself, in the extremely painful presence of all the other divine and unilateral beings, in the "necessity" of transcending the disjunction that gives birth to the method. As already said, the concept of symbol constitutes the fundamentals of Jung's thought; let's quote Galimberti (1987, page 80) : This link that relates the individuation process to the transcendental function, and the transcendental function to the symbol, is the 1 continuous thread that deeply connects all Jungian thought's variations. Jung gives a schematic representation of it when he defines the concepts of Individuation and Symbol. He writes in fact: "The individuation process is strictly connected with the so called transcendental function, since by means of this function are given those individual lines of development that could never be reached through the way already laid out by the collective rules (see under Symbol)" (Jung, 1921, pages 463-464). Under this item the further sense given from the transcendental function inside an individuation process is to be brought back to the symbolic attitude defined as "manifestation of a definite conception of the world, that attributes to the events, both the great and the unimportant ones, a sense, and to this sense it attributes a specific value, greater than the value usually ascribed to the factual reality, so as it appears." (Jung,1921, page 486). On the basis of this possibility of the Symbol of opening up a greater possibility of sense as theorized by Jung, we'll develop our proposal. We'll sketch out therefore the possibility to attribute to the Symbol's energetics – as described by Jung – not only the psyche's necessitypossibility to evolve and transcend itself according to a telos, a finalism that Jung thought inherent in the psyche and of which the individuation process is the way. In the perspective of the interpenetration between the matter and the psyche – as Jung and Pauli have outlined – we think such finalism to belong to the matter too, therefore, in addition, we'll try to sketch out the idea that such finalism might be a real possibility for the psyche to prevent the foolishness of the rationality of the "age of the technics". In the last chapter we're going to deal with the last "step" of the necessities – possibilities of the Symbol's energetics, sketching out a possible evolutionary – spiritual way inherent in the finalism of the individuation process. We mean in the sense of conceiving the Self, in Jungian sense, as quantum psychoid transductor of the evolutionary – spiritual necessities inherent in the Symbol's energetic by means of the 2 transcendental function. We may also say inherent in the "holism" of the quantum psychoid medium we are immersed in ( unus mundus in Jung and Pauli's sense ) or else inherent in the human way of perceiving the numinous of the archetypal images, or inherent in the selfcreative properties of the matter and the energy. To start with, we can say that Jung introduces in psychology the possibility of the resurfacing of our mythical past, in which the indistinct of the symbol and of the personification of the feelings, rather than the personification of the subject, were effective. One perceives here the echo of an indicative "religious" epistemology that assumes the psyche to be no more a physical extended unity – concept borrowed perhaps from the need for cognitive peace – but a metaphorical and evolving psyche. Let's see now the definitions of collective unconscious and the controversial notion of archetype. Jung (1917) described the collective unconscious as " a sediment of the experience and at the same time, being the unconscious an 'a priori' of the experience itself, an image of the world that developed over the course of eons." And again as " the mighty spiritual mass of the human development that comes anew into existence in every individual brain structure". As to the notion of archetype, Jung seems to have defined different dimensions, as E.G.Humbert for example says, therefore we'll try to consider the subject in depth. In his Dictionary of Psychology Galimberti says: Of the notion of archetype Jung gives a phenomenological version that can be recorded in the theory of perception, and a mythological version that, beside diverging from the former, creates the premises for a cultural determinism that prejudices man's liberty. The phenomenological version assumes that the archetypes are "a priori" forms that organize the experience; in this sense Jung defines them "governors of representations" (1947 – 1954, page 247), "models of inborn behaviours"(1947 – 1954, page 185) ; considered this way, as formative factor or structural element rather than as 3 inherited image or content, the fact of being the archetype an "a priori" form doesn't contradict the fact that the content of everyone's experience comes "a posteriori" from one's own background: in this sense there isn't any problem to acknowledge its being inherited.... The mythological version : when the archetypes, from "a priori" forms that organize the human experience, become instincts endowed with a specific energy (1947 – 1954, page 236 ) that, whether neglected, may lead to the I's inflation (19471954, page 238) so that towards them you must have a wise fear, a deidamonia that never loses sight of their meaning (1947 – 1954, page 239), then we are no more on the phenomenological ground where, as regards phenomena, one looks for the form connoting all them, but on the mythological ground; there the archetypes "are created with the primary material of revelation and represent the never-ending experience of divinity of which they have always raised the expectation in the human beings, at the same time protecting them from direct contact with it " (1934 – 1954, page 8). Consequently, "from when stars fell from the sky and our highest symbols went pale, a secret life rules (prevails) in the unconscious. That's why nowadays we deal with psychology and we talk about unconscious. All this would be, and really is, superfluous, in a time and a kind of culture endowed with symbols (1934-54, page 22). As we've seen Galimberti discerns two different conceptions of archetypes; in fact Jung seems gradually to prefer the so to say formal dimension of the archetypes, to the detriment of the one that acknowledges specific contents; this doesn't mean that the formal dimension doesn't have in itself also the mythological dimension; anyway not in the sense of considering the archetypes as steady images, influencing in deterministic terms the human beings' evolution: If Jung, as said, thinks of a "historicized" psyche, then, even in the difficulty of defining the concept of archetype, it's possible to see in Jung an attempt to historicize the archetypal content: therefore we think to 4 perceive the opposite of a negative judgment on the psychological determinism as Galimberti on the contrary seems to conclude (Galimberti, 2005, pages 169-170) : What does one meet on the way suggested by Jung? Gods and Heroes, therefore man's prehistory, a step backwards as regards Freud....Jung's "remedy" provides an image of the psyche founded on mankind's prehistory, as if into it there was hidden that secret and unbelievable truth that the intelligence of the rational thought doesn't grasp....Breaking through the mystery it would be possible to throw light on that ancient eternal truth that the symbolic language would cherish as "deep sense" of the universe and the man. In all that, not the slightest doubt that the symbolic language is simply a language that hasn't yet achieved the pure universality of the rational concept. We do not believe the truths inherent in the symbolic language to be eternal truths, but the symbolic language allows to approach the mythical content of the earliest times as energetic metaphors ritually present in the collective unconscious : the archetypes. In Jung's opinion the psyche is not founded on the prehistory of mankind; as in an everlasting present ( to Jung and Pauli time would go by only on the "edge" of the phenomena) through the dreams, for example, archetypal images can convey the myths present in the different cultures and show, by means of this resort to universal "contents", their having an "additional sense" unknown to the conceptual language. The psyche doesn't convey pre-history, rather the archetypal ritual character that actually gets lost in the mists of time; something like a psyche whose conscious action superficially aims for objectives of intransigent linearity and morality and that too unilaterally "censures" its own " unconscious truths": that's why it moreover needs immersing in the mythicalsymbolic hoard of our beginnings almost to symbolize a still very undifferentiated possibility of compensation. 5 Archetypal rituality engraved in all that men thought, imagined, planned, in heaven and also in their innermost depths as spiritual language. Making use of a metaphor, the archetypes could be considered as a composition of all possible scales of an universal "analogical" keyboard on which historically the possible melodies in tune with the specific archetypal tune consonant with the spirit of the time, mentioning Hegel, could be played. Something like an eternal " Shiva's " dance: she gave the known world her son Ganesha ( Ganapati ) with the head of an elephant, the lord that joins the known and the unknown, the one who triumphed on the dualism, the master of wisdom, evoking man's divinity and the divinity's (God's) immanence. Most probably Jung didn't find it easy to rely on the nomothetic logic of the language, with the limitations we've mentioned, to define the complex, in some sense "quantic" relation between archetype and instinct, between the formative structural "shell" organizing experiences on one side and the imaginal contents of ancestral representations that can penetrate into us owing to the force of the numinous on the other, without necessarily existing a substantial incompatibility between the two dynamics. In any case an only phenomenological reading doesn't do justice to a concept pivoting on an ancestral and numinous foundation. Anyway in our opinion the predeterminations that the individual unconscious (Freudian too) seems able to create in the person's psyche represent a big obstacle as regards a concept of freedom difficult to deal with not only to us , also by the light of more usually considered determinations, such as the genetic, neuropsychological, family, cultural and social ones. As regards Galimberti therefore we must say that we prefer the following definition of archetype (1987, page 155) : 6 The Jungian archetype, in the infinity of its contradictions, in the coincidences of the opposites that finds expression in it, isn't a real thing not even an image; it isn't a piece of truth, it is not an 'a priori', it's no fantasy, but it is a symbol that "assembles"(sumballein) the human language with the pre-human source from which the language separated, making war to the war that creates it. What's more, we agree with Humbert (1998) who states: The idea of archetype is first of all a point of view, starting from which certain phenomena assemble, organize themselves, project lines of action. It allows to foresee a certain type of developments and, through this, to find them a place. It's a way to deal with the want, to acknowledge, for example in a certain type of deficits, the sign in negative of a possible growth. Just as Jung's main ideas, the ideas of archetype and collective unconscious are categories of comparison. They define the relations subject/situation/dream. That's why the symbolic doesn't account for the archetypes. Nor would account for them any interpretation that might see in them the exigencies of a psychic apparatus. Owing to these misunderstandings the Jungian analysis was sometimes regarded as a theory of interpretation. That means to forget that the symbol is an experience of the unconscious, whose numinosity and effect are as important as the form. Certain situations-images are characteristic. We experience and become aware of them recognizing them as projections of unconscious factors. Comparing data, we are inclined to consider these factors as organizers of individual and collective psychism. That's the second dimension of the idea of archetype. Jung considers a third dimension. In his work about synchronicity he suggests in fact that the archetypes are the hinge of the significant coincidences between physical events and psychic states. If we don't want to think of confusion on Jung's part we must wonder where such idea leads. How can the three dimensions be held together? 7 That leads us to a fundamental thought, at the same time one of the rare philosophical postulates in Jung's work and an intuition accessible to the detached conscience he refers to , as regards the Secret of the Golden Flower :"The psyche represents itself". It tells itself, it fancies itself (Darstellung) but also represents itself (Vorstellung). It's image and word, and action and thing too. In representing itself it modifies itself . That tells us of a world where matter and psychism are similar enough to join in a single representation. We don't have direct access to this unity. We must hypothesize an objective psyche whose (collective and personal) unconscious is the projected part. Some people may deal with such ideas as a fascinating or questionable vision of the world. To Jung they are the condition to act. We think that the archetypal conception has a unitary "frame" in Jung's thought, a frame that might have its center in the conception of the Symbol as energetic condenser and propulsive power. In the dream world, in unconscious spontaneous productions, in the active (1) imagination, the symbol would just appear capable of compensation of the opposites; moreover, as result of the energetic tension among them, by means of the transcendental function, it might operate a real energetic jump in the psyche so as to project it towards a new conscious awareness that assimilates some incompatible contents, antinomic as regards the conscious content. We are referring to the finalism of the individuation process that to Jung expresses the final sense of the existence, a process leading to the development of the individual personality. Owing to such process endowed with inherent necessity and planning , after sufficiently differentiating the I from the unconscious, a work of rearrangement would take place, making use of unconscious contents, so as to progressively withdraw from internalized collective values more suitable to a new evolutionary level. (1) Unlike Freud Jung thinks it important to differentiate between imagination and fantasy; on such difference he hinges that method of active imagination that he describes with the following words: 8 Jung – note page 52 At this point we must properly remember that the Jungian conception considered up to now operates, in our opinion, a real paradigmatic jump as to the epistemology conveyed in psychological ambit. We think in fact that there is a significant consistency with what previously expressed as to the relativistic "shift" of contemporary epistemology; consistency not always or properly grasped outside and inside the Jungian ambit; consistency we think still developing as possible work and also necessary help not to dry up or hypostatize the rich complexity of the Jungian thought. In Italy the innovative significance of the Jungian psychology from the epistemological point of view has been substantially grasped by a number of authors such as Galimberti (1987), Trevi (1988) and Girard (1999), in our opinion with accentuations, adaptations, clarifications and "reappraisals". Jung himself (1958, page 3) seems to be aware of the epistemological "split" proposed in such way: Jung, page 53 . But "historicize" the psyche means to make a fundamental epistemological jump; it's no more a question of dealing with an "objective" psyche, studied as in a laboratory, from an "external" position 9 that wants to get hold of the essence of something being there, outside, waiting for being "objectified", since Jung inserts the psyche in a historical-archetypal flowing where it's impossible to "isolate" it; to Jung in fact the historical predeterminations, therefore all that contributed to create the psyche's way of being – biological, cultural, social determinations that join on an archetypal ground all that "is" the psyche. This propensity to the becoming, to the temporal unfolding , is based on the reason's relativism: the reason appears in fact as a sort of historical product of the symbolic and the mythical; moreover the succession of archetypal images in the various historic periods, being in some way generically " seen" as a ritual, reduces an operating becoming to a nonlinear imaginary of expansion and contraction (Benn, 1959). Therefore there isn't a self-founded (what by?) psyche that tries to find the foundation of another psyche ( objectified). There isn't an inner subject that searches an outer object. Temporalize the psyche means to assume a perspective of epistemic relativism that may lead, in psychological ambit, to differentiate all the approaches referring to the psyche-loghia from those referring to the psyche-logos; that is to enlighten the epistemic abyss that separates the ones pursuing, with undisputed merits, a science of mind (substantially cognitive-neuropsychological) from those that "express" a language of the soul. Among the latter, even if with clear distinctions and seeming incompatibilities, we find the psychoanalysis, the humanistic and the phenomenological-existential psychology, with which there might be some possibilities of common ground, thinking of such authors as Bion, Rogers or Binswanger. Therefore psychology as Soul's language (in our opinion a "finished task" most of all in Jung and Hillman's thought) is an expression we borrow 10 from Trevi, point of reference in Italy of the epistemological-hermeneutic "pole" of analytical psychology. An expression, we think anyway, to be referred not only to a psyche (soul, as we said) inextricably immersed in a life's world (Lebenswelt) and a historical unfolding, but also in the necessarily archetypal context of the collective unconscious, as we're going to outline. The hermeneutics Trevi and his followers refer to don't seem in any case infused with Heidegger's fundamental lesson. We'll come back to this point in another context, but we must say that the propositions of this author, that has brought about a sort of veer in Galimberti's line, seem to us too sided in Kantian sense. In such way it seems to us that we are going to lose just that fatal mysterious essence that Galimberti himself defined as fundamental in Jungian epistemology (1984, 1987). Not taking into consideration a line of thought preceding Jung, that assembles the gnosis, Plotino, Eckhart, Nietzsche, Heidegger, the negative theology....seems to us to "distort" the essence of Jungian thought. In the same way we think it possible to explain Trevi's obstinate "mistrust" as to the archetypal construction or to the theory of synchronicity. It appears evident to us that archetype and theory of synchronicity are linked in a hermeneutic circle sufficiently coherent in Jung's doctrine (in spite of incontrovertible 'contradictions'), as also Humbolt suggests in the text we've quoted. Moreover we think from a philosophical point of view Heidegger's thought the closest to the constructions of the analytical psychology and most of all to the latest stages linked to the theory of synchronicity in Jung's thought. 11 In any case we think to perceive in Jung a thread that, running from the fruitful tension of the opposites (that his conception of the Symbol aims to reassemble without ever succeeding) arrives, by means of the transcendental function, to approach the Self's "quantum psychoid" grounds and the dual ineludible archetypal polarity, in our opinion becoming fundamental in a system at archetypal, quantum –psychoid matrix. Such "system" appears to us the theoretical, speculative and epistemological Keystone of Jung's work, so as to make us hypothesize an unavoidable "shift" in quantum-psychoid sense of the very analytical psychology, with the clinical, methodological, interpretative "reverberations", from the heuristic point of view, still to define and that we're going to deal with in a subsequent work. Going back to the archetypal context, in some way summarizing our previous considerations and being aware of the limits of the language and of the complexity and "polimorpous semantic character" of the concept, we could define the collective unconscious as an essential 'a priory' creative matrix of the energetic pre-biopsychic forms; something similar, we think, to Heidegger's conception concerning the relation between being and existing (Dasein), as a project proposed every now and then. As to the psyche merged in this context – one of the fundamental thesis of this work – we mean the non-separateness of subject and object, rather a compenetration: in our opinion the term significantly expresses the state of being of a sole essence : quite different from the meaning, for instance, of relation and reciprocity, terms in use that still suggest a form of dualism. A state that Jung and Pauli (1952) make evident when they write, as already quoted, "A psyche in some way "touching" the matter and the matter with a latent psyche". 12 It's evident to us that the joint effort between Jung and Pauli is paradigmatic in the sense that it sketches out the impossibility to deal with the psyche disregarding a criterion of compenetration. In our opinion that points out the fallacy of the attempts to reintroduce, interpreting Jung's thought in more "advanced" ways, the separateness between subject and object; a neo-Kantian epistemology suggests this thesis (we'll see further on for instance Tagliagambe and Malinconico's work), the more fallacious – in our opinion – since it starts reasoning from Jung and Pauli's Synchronistic conceptions; conceptions that we consider the icon of the definite overcoming of the dualism between subject and object that Kant himself maintained, in spite of his immense remarkable critical effort, as Nietzsche, Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger remind us. One of the main objects of our work is on the contrary to sketch out that the collaboration between Jung and the quantum physicist Nobel Prize W.Pauli allows for the first time an unthinkable synergy between psychic and microphysical processes. All that has a revolutionary fundamental value from the heuristic point of view, in the sense of a possible paradigmatic change as to the knowledge of psychic processes and in the relations between psyche and matter: we think it possible to hypothesize a new surprising unitary conception between the two poles of reality, with a load of possible, most of all unforeseeable consequences. At the risk of sounding tedious, we repeat that by "unitary" we mean "compenetrated". Going back and focusing on the essential compensatory value of the Symbol's energetics, we admit with philosopher Carlo Sini that the Symbol doesn't have a "peculiar wisdom" of its own, but it seems to us, as already said, to have always had the intrinsic and ineffable characteristic of being a "condenser" of possible further references, a sort 13 of methodological indicator that invites us to metaconsider the unavoidable excesses of the phenomena (Derrida), being the Symbol in itself an extralogical excess. In the peculiar sense of the Jungian energetics it assumes a value of relative tangibility as to the archetype's inexpressible nature; most of all the value of an energetic condenser that might suggest, in its imaginal language, a sort of possible solution in front of a perceived and substantial impasse of the psyche's logical capabilities as regards progressing on the conscious level. And that is what happens on the dream level, when there is an indicative possible reassembling of the conflicting forces just by means of the "superior conciliation" of the Symbol, the intangible archetype's sole possibility of expression that can mediate but most of all assemble in a new synthesis, often disconcerting to the conscience, the opposing impulsions involved. Thus, for instance, the desire to express oneself with creativity and the fear for consequences may have a variety of ways of expressing themselves, probably according to the "psychogenetic" peculiarities of the dreamer, though respecting a certain universality of the very symbols; what appears more important is just that the synthesis that the dreamed symbol evokes is already a sign of the tendency to overwhelm the conflict in progress. To make a practical example, if I dream to find myself in the night in a closed cathedral and to fall asleep in there, and then, in the dream, to be awakened by the "imaginary" sound of the rain falling on the floor from the dome vault of the church; then, still dreaming, fall asleep again and wake up in the morning with the similarly unreal buzz of unlikely scenes of a market inside the cathedral, well, in a certain sense, I've just seen the Symbol's conciliatory function as regards to relatively impossible 14 situations, most of all antithetical and conflicting forces inside my psyche, source of distress and impasse. Just such energetic tension will start off the process of symbolic compensation of the dream, revealing a new possible evolutionary step, in some way confirmed by the dream images of symbolic compensation among opposed conflicting elements (the rain or a market inside a cathedral). Then we can really ask ourselves whether this tendency to leave behind the dichotomies in hand doesn't suggest the possibility in progress, at unconscious level, to get rid at the same time of some conflicts apparently insuperable. Then the Symbol wouldn't be only an indicator, rather it would have an "active" function as regards the possibility to reach "a new level of psychic balance". Probably this mechanism occurs with relative regularity when the impass is significant and the individual has the possibility to "transcend" it by means of this sort of quantum-psychical jump. The transcendental function, whose mechanism we're going to sketch out, is to Jung the emblem of this psychic possibility and, in certain sense, the driving force of the psychic energetics. The Symbol's compensatory mechanism anyway is always operating in the Jungian practice of the active imagination or in the spontaneous production of images and fantasies, and is probably made more manifest in the synchronistic phenomena: all situation where a fatal incompatibility between conscious and unconscious impulses, in the sense of a substantial "unilaterality" of the former, exists right from the start. 15 A basic research hypothesis of our work is that synchronistic phenomena may belong to the chain of energetic phenomena that the propulsive force inherent in the symbolic can produce , in the hypothesis we have already considered of a quantum psychoid collective "ground"; following Jung and Pauli's footsteps it's possible to hypothesize there a more general acausal order in "support" for this kind of phenomena. In this perspective the synchronistic phenomena might be the most impressive site where the tendency of the Symbol's energetics to "create" compenetrations that favour a quantum jump at psychic level might be organized as a synchronistic "event" – something similar to Heidegger's Ereignis – that can create "significant"connections for the user, between an interior subjective factor and an exterior one, linked in "analogical" sense. And the sphere conveying such phenomena might just be a particular 'a priori' form, in other words the psychoid space hypothesized by Jung and Pauli. In the perspective of Jung and Pauli's considerations, we wonder whether there might not exist a general quantum psychoid way of the matter to react to the psyche's analogical appeals conveyed by the psychoid space: space that recalls the properties of Plotino and the Neoplatonists' anima mundi. A psychoid space operating in unison with the laws of a more general acausal order, as already said, and that could be particularly stimulated when the general psychic disposition suffers from extreme situations, for instance in case of serious danger. A psychoid space that might also be pressed by peculiar and finalistic exigencies of psychic evolution of the individuation process, as we are going to discuss in the final chapter. In the psychic energetics this function of conciliatory approach of the opposites and possible surfacing, from the unconscious, of indicative evolutionary acquisitions, in Jung's opinion is carried out by the transcendental function. 16 Here's Jung's thought (1939) about the necessity of making up for the conscience's unilateral attitude, either extroverted or introverted, just by means of the transcendental function: Jung (pag.59) Jung's archetype would then substantially express this fruitful combination of the opposites (something like Nicola Cusano's coincidentia oppositorum) , that connects the human being with his ancestry, the reason with the primordial cradle of myth, delirium and dream, the "person's" superficial solar coherence with the nocturnal world of the fertilizing " shadow". Here's Galimberti's thought (1987, page 156): If the Jungian hypothesis is correct, the psyche scientific impossibility to probe into the reason of the depths seems evident. If these depths are the pre-human background, psychology finds itself to insist on that borderline that separates men's reason from the gods' unpredictability. Such "borderline" can't be dealt with by the methods of science, since the science, be it "natural" or "human",is anyway beyond that limit, beyond the violent conflict in which the reason frees itself from foolishness. Trough the concept of archetype Jung not only introduces the psychic multiplicity, but also the fruitful union of the mystery and the symbolic worlds : that's the archetypal indication that allows, for instance, to consider an extrabiographical homosexuality, meant as belonging to a different archetypal form , side by side with the biographical homosexuality (Schellenbaum, 1993). Therefore the possibility of a decisively more complex psychic organization emerges Hillman would talk about a structure crossed by multiple archetypal images more defined in terms of psychic 17 polytheism: parts of the Self (in Jungian theory psychic constellations) that an I "reclaiming" the grounds of the unconscious couldn't easily reorder, but guided by a Self that "eludes" the reason's monotheistic pretension, organizing itself in archetypal way. We must properly add that Jung's thought takes shape as an undeniable approach to the limit of knowledge, considerations that in the 20th century have been of interest to the philosophical more than to the psychological world (for instance Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Derrida). 18