Modern western ego consciousness equates to an ego that differentiates itself from the outer object or from the outer phenomena. And also the healthy differentiating ego is also stable. Hence, logically the psychologically ill person attaches too easily to outer-objects and to outer phenomena. And such a person is not psychologically stable. Such a person is unstable. Perhaps such a person with a psychological disposition like this has a lack of self-belief, a lack of self-worth and so on. Or often the case is that they lack basic psychological self-awareness. In this essay we are going to focus on the ego consciousness that fails to differentiate itself from external phenomena. Hence, in-effect, for such a person their ego consciousness hasn't been born. They attach to phenomena and are therefore at the external object's mercy. If you attach to an externality then what happens to the external object – happens to you. This is because one hasn't differentiated their ego from the outer object.
[...] One dreams there way into the other. Such people then will not have a word said against the other person because that would equate to a blasphemous attack on oneself and be experienced as a loss of soul or dissociation in modern-speak. In the late nineteenth century spiritualists and mediums were common-place and from my psychological perspective, those spiritualists and mediums who genuinely believed themselves to be honest dreamed their way into other personalities in a very similar way to the experience of multiple personality. [...]
[...] But now, when we transfer what Jung said about the individual symbol to our topic, the question of the meaning of human existence as a whole, we are confronted with a historical rupture of an entirely different character and order of magnitude; this change is no longer comparable to a removal, which, being no more than a change of location or environment, does not immediately and essentially affect the identity of the person moving. It is more like the transformation in puberty, e.g., when there is a substantial change in the identity and redefinition of the person himself or herself from child to man or woman, respectively. [...]
[...] As long as the symbol is alive its meaning is still unborn, has not fully seen the light of day. The birth of the meaning at once means the death of its former embryonic form, i.e., the death of the form of symbol, and it means that this meaning has received a better expression. The death of a symbol, in-as-much as it amounts to the birth of the better formulation of what it is about, is thus by no means to be viewed as an intolerable catastrophe. [...]
[...] In the case of an animal it is a sort of brother, so much so that a man whose brother is a crocodile is supposed to be safe while swimming across a crocodile-infested river. In the case of a tree, the tree is supposed to have authority over the individual like a parent. Injury to the bush-soul means an equal injury to the man. Others assume that a man has a number of souls, which shows clearly that the primitive often feels that he consists of several units. [...]
[...] As said, the ill ego is often one that attaches too easily to outer objects and that dissociates (experiences loss of soul) when that outer object (be it a person or a religion) is criticized in some-way. In this 2-part essay we will (in part select from Jung's writings a piece from his collected works on primitive loss of soul. In my opinion Jung is very good at discussing such phenomena but in-effective at working through it. So it is to Wolfgang Giegerich that we turn to in part and in a selected reading from him we get to what the person who experiences loss of soul/dissociation needs to do in order to establish healthy ego consciousness. [...]
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