Very well worth a read; recommended.
I made comment on base of page; copied to base of this post below.
Enjoy...!!
http://appliedjung.com/jungian-themes/the-freak
Consider for a moment the utterly and overwhelmingly absurd nature of our existence.
We send our children to school to learn what? Their capacities or
their limitations? What they are capable of or incapable of? I would
argue the latter. Here I think one must agree with Freud’s very astute
analysis of the human condition that psychic castration is an essential
developmental stage. Without the recognition of our limitations we
become monsters. One has only to encounter a precocious teenager and
extrapolate that into the sociopathic adult such a little monster is
likely to become, barring divine providence, to appreciate this. And
such divine providence should it occur can only come in the form of
disaster (castration) if it is to be a medicament for the hubris of the
uncastrated individual.
If you doubt the wisdom of this perspective you need only look around
the world today to see the results of the failure to castrate. The
disastrous global fallout of capitalist greed over the last decade. The
notion that it’s not only okay but necessary that my net worth or the
net worth of my bank/company/institution double every five years, extend
beyond the merely impressive, to the spectacular or, if you’re a truly
committed capitalist, the stratospheric. This in the face of widespread
global poverty is a truly special and perverse kind of hubris.
Or, another example, fundamentalism, particularly of the ilk we
encounter today, one which disregards the value of human life, is also
precisely a failure to be moderated by any normative paradigm. Another
instance of a failure to be castrated.
So then we are left with the inescapable conclusion that a “good
education” has a castrating effect on the child. Assting him or her to
give up childish illusions of infinitude, or endless possibility, of a
world filled with nothing but love, enchantment and wonder. Replacing it
with a “rational”, measured, limited, scientific, secular world. A
world governed by numbers and measurements, where quantity wins out over
quality, where substance trumps soul every time. An education designed
to crush the soul, or if you prefer the stupid, antiquated superstition
that a soul even exists, and elevate the (rational) mind. Who would you
rather your daughter marry, a theoretical physicist or a musician, an
actuary or an artist?
Where, we may ask, does such a salubrious education lead? This wondrous modern education of ours.
To a life of great love, governed by the principles of truth, beauty
and goodness? To profound and deeply meaningful connections with other
human beings? To a life of ongoing exploration and enduring curiosity?
To harmonious and engaged social cohesion? To a life filled with hope,
wonder and joy? To the experience of sublime pathos?
Well, I guess, once can never discount the power of the human spirit
to rise above the sea of prosaic, formulaic, reductive and soul
destroying world views. I wager however that such individuals constitute
a truly small minority. Here I would side with Kafka, in the struggle
between the individual and the system always bet on the system.
Possibly I am guilty of being an idealist with these views. Let us consider some more pragmatic trajectories.
Firstly by virtue of the fact that you are reading this, you are a member of the global population who:
Is literate.
Has access to the WWW.
Have sufficient affluence, education and leisure to indulge in the reading of such a post.
Now I’m not sure of the ratio of the global population that these
criteria pick out, but there are one hell of a lot of less privileged
people out there. People who do not possess the luxury of reflecting on
the existential anguish of our existence. People who are either too busy
keeping body and soul together and/or lack the education to comprehend
such ideas. Not through any choice of their own I assure you.
But let’s leave the fate of those less privileged than ourselves and reflect on our outstanding destinies.
So let’s assume you swallow all the horseshit they feed you at
school. That you contort your body, compact your mind and shrink your
imagination to please the man. Where does that get you exactly?
Into a half decent university if you’re sufficiently privileged, or
otherwise a second rate university, college, trade school or some such.
At what pray tell will you learn there? You will learn a trade. You will
learn how to become a productive member of society. Any areas of
compromise ideology not sufficiently drilled into by your parents and
teachers will be corrected at this tertiary level.
Okay so onward and upward! What comes next?
A job, assuming you can find one. That of course is when this idyllic
youth terminates in the profoundly abysmal experience of adulthood,
with all its commensurate rewards:
Disillusionment, the idealism of youth is remedied.
Loss of wonder.
The anesthetisation of the soul (whatever survived your education).
Typically lots of routine, mundane tasks that have to be endlessly repeated.
I could go on of course, but by now you may thinking me a little
cynical so I’ll stop there. In face of this accusation, like Rust for
True Detective in defence of the charge of nihilism, I would say I’m
less a cynic a more a realist. Actually I would describe myself as an
optimist. To bother writing a post like this, itself an act of
existential defiance, can only be motivated by a high degree of
optimism.
Here my hypothetical interlocutor may intercede and speak of the joys of marriage and family life.
[1]
Yes married with children. This truly is a great joy – and here I am
only minimally ironic. Still it comes at a price doesn’t it?
Responsibility, loss of freedom, lots of hard work, undoubtedly a loss
of romance, a loss of youthful joie de vivre and so on.
But still worth it, definitely worth it. Provided you are willing to
watch the long hand of the clock count down the years of your life.
[2]
But that is not all life is surely?
There is so much more to look forward to. Buying your first home –
and paying the mortgage. Then slowly but incrementally ascending that
ladder of social status, respectability, personal achievement, no doubt
dreadfully mediocre – but all the same, one can always spin it a little
on Facebook, putting the kids through school – now there’s something to
really look forward to, to take pride in, recreating our miserable
selves in our children – what a wonderful source of pride that is. The
list of these innumerable joys goes on of course, I only list the
highlights here. I don’t want to get into the bad stuff, the really grim
stuff.
And all this effort, the daily grind of our lives, it has its
compensations, there is always TV, retirement, travel. Well perhaps not
so much travel these days, the world being what it is. I reminisce about
the time, the time before our time, when travel was actually romantic.
These days not so much. Unless you find navigating the bureaucratic
minefield of mindless and infinite red tape involved in international
travel, full body searches at the airport, traveling cattle class and
praying you flight is not on the ISIS radar, fun. Some do I guess, not
me.
Finally then what?
Old age, decrepitude, loss of our faculties, loss of vitality, loss
of the lust for life and then mercifully the anesthetisation of death,
not too soon mind you, chances are there will be a good deal of
suffering, pain, humiliation and loss of dignity first.
If you remind me, one day I’ll tell you one the story of the old man
who died in an old age home in Old Road. I won’t get into that now, but
it is a story illustrates the point here quite well.
Do you get it?
We are fed a world view which idealises reason, but live in an irrational world.
This is a rigged game. It cannot be won on its own terms. Rationally there is no happy ending, it’s a simple as that.
A world and a life that worked on or was governed by rational
principles, that made sense, a world where the rewards were commensurate
with input, efforts, capacities and sincerity, a world where there was a
steady, albeit gradual, evolution toward a more egalitarian,
harmonious, humane global community would be nice. This however is not
that world.
I suggest we have a good case for a class action against life and our
progenitors. Some equitable compensation for being thrust into this
absurd situation seems only fair. Or in the absence of equitable
compensation, we might suggest to our parents that they shove this gift
back up where it came from.
Whilst I make these suggestions tongue in cheek to a degree, trying
to counter absurdity with absurdity, there are serious philosophical
treatise along these lines. Schopenhauer being perhaps the most
well-known.
Nevertheless, in the absence of legal remedy and the fact that the
primal father and mother have long since departed what are we to do?
Kill ourselves?
That we are already doing, just by being alive we are of course in
the process of dying. Every breath you take is one breath close to your
last breath. Some may exit before others but we share the destination
with an absolute certainty.
Naturally I have no definitive answer to offer.
[3]My own philosophical sympathies are with Steiner (man must complete himself)
[4] and Sartre (existence precedes essence)
[5]
on this point. In other words, there is not nor can there ever be a
definitive answer to this question. The radical nature of our spiritual
freedom is such that no definitive answer to this dilemma is possible.
Were such an answer to be provided we would be un-free, which really is
the only fate worse than this one – the absurd nature of our existence.
I can and will however give you the very best answer I have been able
to come up with based on my own philosophical investigations, study of
psychoanalysis (most especially Jung) and observation of the human
condition.
Every rational system in order to be self-sustaining must contain an
irrational belief at its core. An axiomatic assumption that is held to
be self-evident and from which the consequent rational proofs are
constructed.
In the case of your life, that is and can obviously only be you.
In other words, in order for the world to make perfect sense you must
of necessity be in-sensible. In order for your world to be rational
and reasonable, you must be irrational and unreasonable. Perhaps at
first blush this seems counter intuitive. Because this post is not
intended as a philosophical treatise I am not going to provide proofs to
support this claim; you can either accept it or reject it.
[6]
Either way my life will proceed pretty much as it did before; yours
however may be radically changed if you listen to what I have to say and
at least create the reflective space for its possible veracity (i.e.
consider that it may possibly be true).
The idea that I lay out here is by no means original. It is at best a systemisation of Jung’s original work on this topic.
[7]
Let me lay it out as simply and bluntly as I can.
You are not, by nature, a reasonable phenomenon motivated by
rational, normative, civilised principles. This is only something you
have learnt.
[8]
We (i.e. society) have socialised you. And such socialisation has,
arguably, been done for good and legitimate reasons, for the most part.
It seems better to live in a civilised society, than and anarchistic
one. Albeit that such civilisation is sustained by an illusion (a heart
of irrationality) which is that life makes sense, when as I have tried
to show you, it most certainly does not make sense.
The price however for such socialisation is high. In order for it to
stick, it is taught as though it were true. In other words, this is
truly who you are (a civilised man) when quite clearly, as evidenced by
the world, you most certainly are not civilised. Your true nature is
primal, instinctive and motivated by the dark grounds of the
unconscious, personal and collective. You are at heart, at essence,
wholly irrational. You are by nature a type of freak, at least measured
against normative social standards, which idealise a normative construct
of personhood rather than who you actually are.
Mythological traditions, such the Western religious practise, seek to
externalise the irrational element in the form of the existence God and
the angels etc. If you sincerely subscribe to such a belief, then
truthfully, this post is not for you. Religious tradition is an answer
to this question – life doesn’t make sense on its own terms, but if you
consider life framed by this (insert any religious myth here) then it
does make sense.
If, however, like so many in the age of science, in modernity and
post-modernity, you have ben rudely ejected from participation in these
collective myths, how then are you to proceed?
The only answer is to become your own religion. To treat yourself,
your personhood, your values, your desires etc. as a religious
phenomenon. To recognise the sacred character of your true nature. To
take yourself, your nature, seriously. But in order to do this, you need
to abandon, or more properly reject, the determination of that nature
by rational principles. You need to be the irrational core, the
irrational heart, at the centre of the cosmos.
I claim, if you are able to fully embrace your inner freak, as it
were, what was not sensible – the world, will start to make sense. This
is the intention of the work we do at The Centre for Applied Jungian
Studies, and it was the focus of Jung’s approach to psychotherapy. That
is our interpretation of his work and its seems broadly consistent with
Jungian psychotherapy as it is interpreted and practised in the world
today – at least by the Jungian analysts that still subscribe to the
notion of individuation.
Jung himself does not use this term “the Freak”, which we have coined for this purpose, he speaks about individuation
[9], the second personality
[10], the (big) Self
[11]
(as opposed to the small self – which is the ego identity, prior to its
encounter with the (big) Self and the individuation imperative). For my
part as invaluable as Jung’s work is, and I do not use the word
“invaluable” here lightly, I have found it necessary to rephrase this
idea so as to make it more tangible and hopefully more imaginatively
provocative. I take this idea very seriously and so the intention of my
work as a teacher of Jungian theory is actually help my students plot a
way to individuation, as opposed to merely theorising about it.
With is minimal context then, let me rephrase the imperative I gave you earlier on.
The only way this world and this life can ever truly make sense is if
you incarnate your freak. If you live from the perspective of your
freak. The freak being fundamentally irrational is not governed and
constrained by rationality, ergo the irrational nature of existence is
countered, balanced and perhaps even transcended.
What exactly it means to live from the perspective of the Freak is
our ongoing work at the Centre. I do not propose to give you anything
approaching a complete guide to the Freak here. I will however share
some of the characteristics that are essential elements of the Freak, in
my understanding at least.
- The freak is analogous to the second personality.
- A personification of the unconscious.
- It is a counter position to your ego identity and ideally you are in dialogue with it.
- It is objective and transpersonal.
- It is a force of nature, or one could simply say it is nature; it’s a natural impulse or a manifestation of nature.
- it is a bridge to the collective unconscious.
- it is the carrier of your myth and authenticity,
- It is the path to individuation.
- it is the carrier of your archetypal impulse.
- It is Non-rational.
- Distinct somatic character
- Distinct feeling-tone
- Stepping into the freak is captured quite well with the metaphor of stepping into the void, another useful metaphor from Žižek on this is the “catastrophe of falling in love”. Both of these metaphors describe a release from a defensive posture.
I list below some posts I have written on the topic you may look at if the idea interests you.
http://appliedjung.com/jungian-themes/you-are-a-freak
http://appliedjung.com/jungian-themes/individuation-project
http://appliedjung.com/book-and-movie-reviews/man-on-wire
http://appliedjung.com/book-and-movie-reviews/searching-for-sugarman
http://appliedjung.com/jungian-themes/becoming-a-human-being
http://appliedjung.com/practically/becoming
Until we speak again I bid you adieu,
Stephen.
Comment made to above:
Great article; thanks be from my version of freak.
Suggest reading The Myth of Sisyphus, by Albert Camus; ref's 'absurdity'. I have also been strongly influenced by Jung since reading a book about him/his theories in Laos in 1998.
My personal myth/religion I have been very haltingly developing over last 10+ years has irrationality at both its centre & periphery, because it is based on that most eternal of irrationality's - love.
I call it philerosophi-e.
It is clearly an amalgam of the Greek philia, eros, to be dealt with sophia/wisely & the '-e' is symbolic of agape a.k.a a gap-'e'. The 3 loves with wisdom, respectively, love/friend, love/body, love/of god= trinity. The 'e' is also symbolic of a spiral, that leads us to return to 1, thus "out of the 3rd comes the One as the 4th"; 'phi'leroso'phi'-e. However, as Jung noted, the 'missing 4th' element is tricky, & this is where I am trying to spiral the 3 loves back into the 1, using agap'e' so that the 4th is written as 1+, making the whole formulation cyclical One Love...& if that makes any sense then I am making progress...!! Phil also signifies as male, eros 'the body', sophi female & a-gap'e' as the 'communing of humanity in God'.
The bsic aim is to 're-include' the body/eros back into philosophy, which what with post modernism etc, has often become (alas, once again) somewhat descending into sophism; e.g. neo-conservatism/neo-liberalism.
