Steps toward a Dialogical and Semiotic Theory of the Unconscious

This concept introduced in Jung’s 1916 essay marked his break with Freud as in it Jung determined this function as guiding the psyche towards individuation. The transcendent function bridges the border between self and other, psyche and body. It is an active confrontation between conscious and unconscious resulting in the emergence of new symbolic forms. These transcend the internal conflicts and lead to more psychic wholeness. Dreams and the complexities and dissociations of the psyche reveal the transcendent function in therapeutic work. The unconscious memories form an estranged and melancholic language, a crucible of mourning and also for healing. Unlived life is a destructive, irresistible force that works softly but inexorably. --C.G. Jung, CW10, par. 252

The language of the psyche is a symbolic language, and each individual is unique in personal meanings associated with his/her life. That is why we can see and understand each-other much deeper by connotative meanings and metaphors. In the words of Shamdasami & Hillman, the language of the psyche is much more extended in comparison with scientifically reasonable language, and the psychology has to reconsider the scientific limits of its language and horizons: " He didn't expect his scientific apparatus, which is how he saw it, as something that provided meaning to people's lives. He saw the whole enterprise as about enabling individuals to re-find their own language, develop their own cosmologies. And, as he says, he eschewed using concepts within his therapeutic practice. If someone comes in talking about spirits, he talks about spirits. I take that very seriously— and it's borne out by accounts I found in diaries and letters of his practice— to enable individuals to articulate their own linguistic worlds " (Hilman, Shamdasami, 2013, p.15-16). In Jung's experience and conception the transcendent function is a psychological transformative process that " arises from the union of conscious and unconscious contents " (par. 131), which is " the collaboration of conscious and unconscious data " (par. 167) and so " a product is created which is influenced by both conscious and unconscious, embodying the striving of the unconscious for light and the striving of conscious for substance " (Jung, 1916/1958, par. 168). Transcendent function makes transition from one attitude to another possible; considering the synthetic method Jung states that it elaborates the symbolic fantasies resulting from the introversion of the libido and " this produce a new attitude to the world, whose very difference offers a new potential. I have termed this transition to a new attitude the transcendent

Cambridge University Press eBooks, 2013

2024

Carl Jung wrote the essay The Transcendent Function in 1916, but it was not published until 1958 when students at the C. G. Jung Institute of Zurich discovered it. The psychological phenomenon explained by Jung in his essay comes before the most important concepts of his psychology such as archetypes, shadow, anima/animus and Self. As a result, it is of the utmost importance to understand Jung's individuation process. Nevertheless, the transcendent function is probably the most misunderstood notion in the field of Analytical psychology. Jungians generally explain it as a mere product of the integration of unconscious contents in consciousness, but they miss the essence of its description by Jung as the autonomous compensation from the archetype of the Self and the voice of God. In this article, we show that the transcendent function is exactly what Jung implied in the title of his essay: the psychological process to produce a mystical or transcendent experience. To Jung, that phenomenon is an extremely numinous symbol of conjunction of opposites entering consciousness for a short moment. Jung's 1916 essay was his first attempt to explain psychologically his mystical experience of December 1913. The goal of this article is to give back its place to the transcendent function in the Jungian corpus.

Pro Edu, 2019

The psychic is not homogeneous, uniforms, undifferentiated, linear, but it is present in various forms. It has a great functional and existential differentiation and uniformity. It manifests itself in the form of conscious psyche, subconscious and unconscious. The relationship between them, their harmony or conflict, determines the originality of human nature. The unconscious as a form of the psyche constitutes the most controversial level of organization of psychical life. It is stated that psychology stopped placing the notion of conscience in the center of its theoretical and practical preoccupations, making place for the unconscious. The unconscious is not only whatever became automatism, but also what I suppress. Freud explains suppression by a conflict between Superego (which represents the childhood interdictions which became interiorized) and Id, the natural pulsations which we were taught in childhood to blame. Freud urges us, through this, to regain the conscience of what is unconscious. The Superego is a necessary stage in the forming of moral conscience, but it should not be mistaken for the moral conscience itself. The genuine moral conscience does not reduce itself to the Superego. A psychological explanation of the origin of the Superego does not replace the foundation of the moral conscience. Psychoanalysis cannot account for values.

2014

Everyone and anyone is much more simply human than otherwise—Harry Stack Sullivan The continuing paradigm shift in psychoanalysis focuses our attention more than ever on our subjectivity and the powerful impact it has on our selves and others. It compels us to examine more closely our subjectivity and the ways in which it shapes our self-experience, our countertransference, and our patients. It is especially crucial that we examine, however, how our attitudes about our subjectivity fundamentally create and inform how we experience our selves, our beliefs about what we do and what our patients do, and our sense of certainty and conviction vis-à-vis our patients. The attitudes we hold toward our subjectivity represent a meta-organizing principle.* * They play a vital role in the way we organize other personal organizing principles and determine among other events how lightly, or tenaciously, we hold our own belief systems. In the absence of reflection, these attitudes operate in the b...

Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis, 1999

The continuing paradigm shift in psychoanalysis focuses our attention more than ever on our subjectivity and the powerful impact it has on our selves and others. It compels us to examine more closely our subjectivity and the ways in which it shapes our self-experience, our countertransference, and our patients. It is especially crucial that we examine, however, how our attitudes about our subjectivity fundamentally create and inform how we experience our selves, our beliefs about what we do and what our patients do, and our sense of certainty and conviction vis-à-vis our patients. The attitudes we hold toward our subjectivity represent a meta-organizing principle.** They play a vital role in the way we organize other personal organizing principles and determine among other events how lightly, or tenaciously, we hold our own belief systems. In the absence of reflection, these attitudes operate in the background, much in the way other organizing principles may operate prereflectively.

The author argues for the inclusion of psychoanalytic data in studies of consciousness and unconscious states. Contrary to common assumptions, contemporary psychoanalysis does not propose a competing scientific theory, but represents a specific form of practice involving an intersubjective dialogue. Although analytic schools advance competing theories, their concepts derive from attempts to explain common clinical phenomena of practice. Three areas for exploration are suggested: the concept of unconscious motivation, the fluctuationg border between conscious and unconscious motives and desires, and the centrality of language for reflective, intentional states.

Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, 1998

This paper offers both a phenomenologically psychological and a phenomenologically transcendental account of the constitution of the unconscious. Its phenomenologically psychological portion was published in the

Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Vol. 3, No. 47:571-612, 2001