The Subtle Landscape

  Carl Jung was a prolific and poetic explorer of the human psyche and is most often associated with his investigations of life after forty. (Well, not including his break with Freud) “Middle life is the moment of greatest unfolding”, he held.  Concepts such as individuation, common unconscious, analytical psychology, complex, extroversion, and synchronicity are all his.  

  Nonetheless, his insight into the genesis and development of personality in youth is profound.  He wrote that the greatest impact parents (and ancestors!) will have on a child is that of their unlived lives.  “Children are driven unconsciously in a direction that is intended to compensate for everything that was left unfulfilled in the lives of their parents.”  

  So all of that manifest day dreaming or, more insidiously, subconscious dissatisfaction or turmoil will one day find a screen upon which to be projected.  Who can predict what kind of film will be the result?  A Star Is Born?  The Bad Seed?  

  Now, while few of us sport nimbuses and smile beatifically while formulating grand plans, a little attention to ourselves might attenuate a bit of familial anxiety.  

  So if you have kids and hope later to eat popcorn and watch an auteur develop instead of a studio puppet, work toward the middle and in the words of Shunryu Suzuki, “When you do something, you should burn yourself completely, like a good bonfire, leaving no trace…”

Tags: Jung, raising kids

This entry was posted on February 6, 2008 at 4:32 pm and is filed under consciousness/psychology, Family. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.