I found this week is particular attractive becasue when Dr. Carl Jung tries to divide the people into different groups throngh the different creative souls, I can relate this ID level analysis to my specific Chinese culture barkground, which is about ‘hermony thoery’,’balance create beauty’. In this blog, I would like to give my personal exampels about Jung’s thory within this collective unconssious, namely, active imagination, individuation,archetypes, the anima and animus. Moreover, I would like to futher this consious a bit to explain why this theory may occur.
I would like to define individuation and give a true example about it . Individuation, according to Joseph Campbell, defines as the whole process which people recognize and face the trueself (include ‘shadow’ side and the anima or animus), then overcome difficulities and obtain the improvement of pschy. Futhermore, Jung outlines four archetypes which people may represent in the process during the confronting oneself: King, Warrior,Magician and Lover. After this week’s case study, I can indentify four archtypes clearly and even apply it into people around me. I would like to share story from my friend, Joey. He had a deep connection with his girl friend. But in China, it is less likely for cuople come from different economy class live together. The boy made numerious and great changes to appealing to the girl’s parents. For example, he was innocent, lazy person, but after that he forced himself into a person who be strong all the time, so that the public (particular the girl’s parents) would recognied him. However, the early days, he drunk a lot and cried and got crazy for several times during a period of time. At the same time, he told himself he can not be such weak and need to bestir himself tomorrow. Consequently, he used to behaving defensively and authoritatively. It is can be seen obviously that in this relationship. the boy reveal his lover archetype at the beginning. With the love power, he was willing to changed totally and turned fansnative to the world suddenlly. On the negative side, he became powerless and sensitive because he tended to realize that he lost his main spiritual support, love. This also shows the anima inside him. The interesting change here is that in order to make up this lose, he had the strengthess enough to jump into warrior archetype. He would changed the appearance completely to rebuild a mature, reliably mold. As a result, his ‘over’ courage and movements made he ‘grow up’ too fast and too early. Then the shadow side of warrior shows up, he cannot torlance his weakness and tend to be escape the reality. The Lecturer, Dr Glen Spoors also mentioned ‘persona’. The example above exactly reflect that with ‘persona’, individual hates all weakness and defend one’s ego. His haughty and indifferent can be seen as a mask of his trueself. Unfortunately, he had not complete his act imagination but in passive way.
The lecturer stressed that classic Mythopoesis is in Fition. I would like to discuss some of mine personal experiences with one creative practice, movie. As a Chinese girl, I lived in an amtophere depresse the unique behaviors, which nomally viewed as unhealthy and forbidened. According to Hofstede, China is a collective culture society. In other words, citizens may feel districted from time to time becasue what people nomally do, neighbourhood and relatives will judge whether it beyongs the moral rules or not,mostly just something unique. Therefore, when I watch the movie’ The trueman’s show’ by Peter Weir, I can feel the similar feeling as the charchacter trueman along the plots. It looks like people live in a realshow, watching everyone and be watched. We feel feared when people staring at us even just a passagner. Personally, the long shot, when trueman traces people are shotting him, makes me feel so anxietious. Moreover, I achieved exciting feeling and comfort from the final scence, he dare to break through and go into the real world. Another example I found my mythopoesis is HarryPotter series. In first movie, Harry Potter killed by the Professor, but then he rebores, result in the magic stone, and its intelligence given by maternity love. This implies the love, or other holy qualities can beyond the death, which matches the hope human being has.
As far as I am concerned, the important thing during the process of confronting trueself is achieveing the balance between the positive side and the negative side. The example of My friend can be seen as a failure example. According to Ming-Jer Chen(2002), China apply a ‘middle way’ to daily life, and they believe everything exesists with bright side and dark side, and it combine toghter. One side cannot live without another, but they nomally not be equal, so the balance or the harmony is what is Chinese culture chasing for. Basing on this point of view, Jung’s theory about archetyples and shadow side can be understood easily.
To sum up, people may play differnet roles within individuation , but it is necessary to achieve the balance.
References
International Business Culture. [n.d.]. Restrieved from http://www.via-web.de/individualism-versus-collectivism/
Chen, M.(2002). Transcending Paradox: The Chinese “Middle Way” Perspective. Asia Pacific Journal of Management,19(2-3), 179-199.
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