Sounds good Jon but I might add something here on "The Secret of the Golden Flower." I have a lot of friends who are both Buddhist and Taoist scholars and they refer me to a later translation of this text by Thomas Cleary.jonsjourney wrote:I am bit tied up today, but have recently finished reading Jung's commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower and I think it will lend a great deal to this conversation. Will be posting soon!...
They claim it to be superior to the one Jung worked with and it is recommended by June Singer, a Jungian analyst of great repute. Singer put forth her theories on the "androgyne."
The Secret of the Golden Flower
http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Golden-Flo ... 0062501933
There seems to be considerable debate among Jungian analyst between these two translations and Jung's interpretations. I found many seminars posted that addressed the differences between the two as well as published papers by various scholars.
This one looked quite interesting but they wanted $36 for a reprint and I'm not sure I'm that interested...
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/jour ... 1&SRETRY=0Journal of Analytical Psychology
Volume 54 Issue 4, Pages 493 - 511
Published Online: 15 Sep 2009
© 2010 The Society of Analytical Psychology
Analytical psychology and Daoist inner alchemy: a response to C.G. Jung's 'Commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower'
Caifang Jeremy Zhu 1 ,
1 Beijing, San Franciso, USA
Copyright © 2009 The Society of Analytical Psychology
KEYWORDS
backward flowing/reversing method (meditation) • Buddhism • higher consciousness • original face • self • unconscious
ABSTRACT
Abstract : This paper provides a historical, religious-philosophical context for the study of the Daoist text known as The Secret of the Golden Flower. An updated study is conducted into the controversy over the source of the text including the editions translated by Richard Wilhelm and Thomas Cleary. The main teachings of the text and the basics of two major denominations of Daoism are introduced to ground later critiques of Jung's commentary. The psychodynamics of analytical psychology, especially those concerned with integration of unconscious contents and the realization of the self (individuation) are compared with the psycho-spiritual dynamics of integration in Eastern spirituality based on the Golden Flower text. The paper concludes that it was amiss for Jung to have equated the Western 'unconscious' with states of higher consciousness in Eastern meditation practices, although his claim that Eastern higher consciousness is characterized by a nebulous state of non-intentionality does raise questions about the appropriateness of calling Eastern meditative states 'consciousness'. A new concept is required to characterize the special qualities of this psychic state shared generally by Eastern spiritual traditions and a more meaningful comparison may be found in Jung's concept of the self.
Dr. Zhu is no light weight on the subject and I found him on facebook:
Colleges:
* California Institute of Integral Studies '10
* Ph.D., East-West Psychology
* Harvard University '04
* Master's, Buddhism and Psychology
* Bejing International Studies University '86
* B.A., English
http://www.facebook.com/jeremy.c.zhu
I did find one publication on-line that addresses some of the issues in International Journal of Transpersonal Studies:
http://www.transpersonalstudies.org/Ima ... 20Rock.pdfTowards a Transpersonal Psychology of Daoism:
Definitions, Past Research, and Future Directions
Christopher Cott Adam Rock
Deakin University
Burwood, VIC, Australia
Excerpt:
Wilhelm and Jung disagreed to some extent regarding
whether hun should be translated as animus or logos. Jung
rendered hun as animus in females and logos (i.e., the
“masculine clarity of consciousness and reason”; p. 117)
in males, and po as anima, the feminine, emotive aspect
of man, unthinking and independent of the conscious
mind (Jung & Storr, 1983). It would seem Jung decided
to render hun differently for males and females because,
he suggested, the Chinese neglected to address the
“female mind” (Wilhelm & Jung, 1931/1962, p. 117) in
any great detail and consequently overlooked the need
for such a distinction. Despite considerable evidence to
the contrary,13 if one accepts Jung’s position that Daoists
tended to only consider the male mind, then the Taiyi
Jinhua Zongzhi is likely to only be discussing male
psychology and so hun may be rendered as logos and po
as anima.
Jung’s (and Wilhelm’s) decision to render hun
and po as logos and anima, respectively, was in the
current authors’ opinions an error, as from this point
on the terms of Jung’s textual analysis were vis-à-vis
set a priori. In other words, if Jung were conducting a
qualitative analysis of the text, his approach imposed
certain limited criteria on the text, rather than
allowing the meaning of terms such as hun and po
to be drawn from the text itself. Furthermore, a new
translation of the text (Cleary, 1991a) has demonstrated
Wilhelm’s translation of the Taiyi Jinhua Zongzhi not
only to be incomplete but, in many places, textually
inaccurate. Thus, the use of an inaccurate translation
and a constrained qualitative methodological approach,
coupled with lacunae in Daoist scholarship prior to
the past 20 years or so (see above), led to an inevitably
limited interpretation of the text.
Based on the new translation by Cleary
(1991a), and facilitated by personal communications
with Daoist teachers (e.g., Verdesi, 2008, 2009), the
present authors would tentatively interpret the text
of the Taiyi Jinhua Zongzhi as follows: Rather than
purely psychological constructs, hun and po are two
of the five souls of some Daoist worldviews, to which
Daoists attribute a metaphysical reality (e.g., Pregadio,
2008b). Hun facilitates seeing by day and dreaming by
night, and thus appears to be related to the conscious
experience of something, particularly in relation to visual
phenomena. Po is the source of emotions and desires and
is what binds the self to the physical body and ordinary
worldly experience. Interestingly, if one interprets logos as
essentially relating to consciousness and anima as relating
to the individual unconscious, then Jung has effectively
attributed consciousness to hun and unconsciousness to
po. However, as the text clearly stated, “The lower soul
(po) functions in association with consciousness, and
consciousness develops based on the lower soul” (Cleary,
1991a, p. 14). Of course Jung did not have access to
this particular translation, but this passage would seem
to suggest that the majority of human psychological
experience, under ordinary circumstances, is the domain
of the po. Indeed, under ordinary circumstances the po
is allowed to subjugate the hun, resulting in the ordinary
mind, the conscious spirit, the light of consciousness. What
the text compels the reader to do is to invert the position
of hun and po, refine the hun and control the po. This
configuration will, in turn, bring about, rather than
the ordinary mind, the celestial mind, rather than the
conscious spirit, the original spirit. This celestial mind is
the final goal, and the text associates it with a multitude of
lofty spiritual attainments. While this is a rather cursory
summary, it would appear that there is certainly room to
correct and expand on Jung’s initial interpretation.
Taiyi Jinhua Zongzhi.
While I claim no expertise in this area, it would seem that the integration of Eastern and Western thought is an evolutionary subject that did not end with the work of Carl Jung. While he was an integral part of the process, he seems to be far from the "last word" on the subject even among contemporary Jungian analysts.