Through a Jungian Lens

I took this photo on the outskirts of a nondescript village in India called Khichan, a place where Demoiselle Cranes are the main reason why people take back roads to visit the place. I have to admit that I take a lot of photos of birds, especially those that are not typically found in my Canadian prairie town.  Taking these photos wasn’t as easy as I had originally thought.  It took a lot of time to quietly edge close enough for my 12X optical built-in telephoto lens to get enough detail for my purposes.  That said, the time spent was worth it.  I managed to get a good quantity of photos.

With that, I want to return to the topic I began in my last post, that of Logos and Eros.  First, a few words from Carl Jung.

Logos and Eros are intellectually formulated intuitive equivalents of the archetypal images of Sol and Luna.  In my view the two luminaries are so descriptive and so superlatively graphic in their implications that I would prefer them to the more pedestrian terms of Logos and Eros, although the  latter do pin down certain psychological peculiarities more aptly than the rather indefinite “Sol and Luna.”  The use of these images requires at any rate an alert and lively fantasy, and this is not an attribute of those who are inclined by temperament to purely intellectual concepts.  These offer us something finished and complete whereas an archetypal image has nothing but its naked fullness, which seems inapprehensible by the intellect.  Concepts are coined and negotiable values.  Images are life. (Carl Jung, CW 14, paragraph 226)

Now, in the last post I talked about balance, the union of opposites which when put together offer a fullness.  For us, a day is not just the daylight hours; it also includes the night.  It isn’t about choosing day over night, sun over moon.  We realise that both are needed.  Well, that goes for the self as well.  For a person to be complete there must be an acknowledgement and acceptance of the “other” within, something we can call the soul, the anima in men and the animus in women.  Of course, this is a concept, one that asks us to be aware of the darkness of the unconscious anima/animus.  That said, the pull to the opposite is externalised.  Men seek women and women seek men for more than the reproductive needs of the species.  Both look to the “other” to complete the “self.”  More often than not, this is a recipe for disaster.  No external other can ever complete the self.

An external other can complement the self and help point to the anima/animus within the self, serving as a mirror of sorts.  What we find pleasing in other are those aspects of self which seem to fill in the holes.  What we feel as aggravations are often our own contents projected onto the other.  It is only when we become aware of these things that we can become better aware of a fuller self.  That allows us to then recognise the other as unique and separate other.  It is only then that love can deepen beyond need.