Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion: Soul Retrieval
Soul Retrieval
As a play on the well-known phrase of John of the Cross – Dark Night of the Soul – is it possible that occurrences of depression, at least some forms of it, are a necessary first phase in the retrieval of soul?
Are there instances in which soul that has become lost, isolated, and devoid of meaning in our modern, stressful world purposefully succumbs to forms of depression that are necessary for greater wholeness?
From an analytical perspective, depression is not always perceived as a disease in need of fixing. Depression is a matter of coming home to the soul. It is not an illness to be cured.
It is the cure.
Carl Jung claims that, along with a withdrawal of libido from consciousness, what occurs is “an accumulation of value – for example, libido – in the unconscious” (Jung, 1966, para. 344).
An example of this would be a person whose conscious world “has become cold, empty, and grey; but [whose] unconscious has become activated, powerful, and rich” (Jung, 1966, para. 345).
Analyst Esther Harding (1970) expands upon this, explaining that one hallmark of depression is that “all energy disappears into the unconscious.”
Depression, whatever its degree, “depends on a withdrawal of libido into the unconscious” (p. 1).
Harding makes an even more provocative observation by claiming that “the withdrawal of energy or libido from the person’s conscious world comes about because some unconscious content, some unknown element has risen up into consciousness and has exerted an attraction upon it” (Harding 1970, p. 3).
In other words, there are certain aspects of depression that are being driven by the force of the central regulating factors of our psyche.
Something unconscious is striving to be integrated. Harding calls this purposeful activity on the part of the psyche a “creative depression.”
Dark Night: Creative Depression
From a Jungian orientation, the notion of creative depression is outlined by John Weir Perry, an analyst known for his work on spiritual emergencies.
Perry summarizes the process of working through the dark night of a creative depression.
He uses the term “acute episode” to describe the stages of creative depression (Perry, 1999, pp. 63–64):
- A reordering or reorganization of the ego, in which we mostly deal with the alienated parts of our ego, a crisis in growth and development
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A charged feeling of death and rebirth The reference here is to a symbolic death and rebirth not about actual death.
During an acute episode, the feeling is of great ambivalence, doubt, feelings of alienation, depression, and recurring dreams. These symptoms are signs that the unconscious is trying to get our attention.
Jung would say that this activity is being directed by the central core of the psyche, which he calls the self. According to Jung, “The archetype of the Self is the primary ‘ordering force in the unconscious.’”
It is the archetype of the center which evokes primordial images similar to the universal motifs of religions and myths.
These images are emotionally powerful, and they most often appear in our dreams and fantasies.
Like all the archetypes, the self is part of the deepest layer Dark Night of the Soul of our unconscious the layer which Jung calls “collective” or “objective.”
Although we experience the self as existing within our subjectivity, it is not our property. The self possesses its own independent life.
- A third aspect of the acute episode is the feeling of regression. Regression serves to bring something unconscious into our conscious awareness.
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Forth, the transcendent function is a crucial factor in the acute episode.
We can identify the workings of the transcendent function when we experience intensified conflicting polarities or opposites within ourselves.
We find ourselves wrestling with feelings and images that are at great odds.
The human psyche works through this function toward a synthesizing resolution in which the two opposites are resolved into a “uniting third.”
The uniting third brings new growth to the personality.
- Fifth, in an acute episode there is an abundance of imagery which is powerful and numinous.
Numinous pertains to images that are wholly other.
These images tend to break in and shatter our typically one-sided conscious
perspective.
Numinous imagery often has to do with an aspect of the god-image.
When an acute episode occurs, the first images to emerge are usually persecutory or fearful images such as thieves, devils, inner saboteurs,
ferocious animals, or reptilian images.
These images feel as if they are trying to destroy anything positive or life giving.
- Sixth, eventually the person settles down into a state of coherency and clarity with a new vision and identity.
The ego’s experience of dying finally gives way to the idea of being
born or giving birth. This birth “is the fundamental ground of the whole experience” (Perry and O’ Callaghan, 1992, p. 4).
For instance, a patient in treatment might suddenly become terribly agitated, restless, distraught, confused, and tearful, as if wrestling with
his or her fears in an internal dialog that is difficult to externalize.
If the person is a religious person, he or she might pray for hours, finally
regressing and curling up into a ball, alone, worn down with tears. Guilt, shame, and depersonalization may come to the fore.
The persecutory part of the psyche begins to drown the ego in a spiraling vortex of self-blame.
The person increasingly withdraws inward, feeling traumatized and abandoned by figures whom he or she had trusted.
In the middle of these feelings, the person finds herself or himself
in the throes of an acute episode. Initially, it may feel like an overt panic attack or a nervous breakdown.
The ego, as the central aspect of conscious identity, may be convinced that it is dying.
Some people have described the initial symptoms as if they are crumbling apart, cracking out of their skin, finding it difficult to breathe.
The walls of the ego’s defenses are disintegrating.
As the contemplatives have demonstrated, prayer, journaling, or any form of writing or expression helps to give an outlet for these strong feelings.
It is strenuous for the ego when the self intentionally draws psychic energy back into the unconscious, but this is necessary so that the otherness of the transcendent function can function.
As the transcendent function begins to function, points of view arise in the person’s dreams and waking fantasies that are contrary to whatever position their ego holds.
It is as if two voices are in dialog, each with contrasting points of view. ~Vivianne Crowley. Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion: Soul Retrieval, Page 455-456
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