Looking For Worms
Bird At Rest, Changzhou 2010
Another bird that seems to work hard at not getting his photograph taken finally was able to be captured by the new camera and lens. There are a few species still avoiding the same fate as they are very skittish whenever I get within range of the 250 mm lens, for example, a bird that I refer to as a white-winged blackbird. I have spotted herons, doves, sparrows and magpies in the city as well.
I took this photo from a fourth story window opening. In the background, barely recognisable are the two characters that say Changzhou, the other characters aren’t familiar enough to be so easily recognized in a blur state – perhaps the third character is the number two, perhaps.
The past number of days, I have wandered around the mine field of typology in hopes of somehow being able to both express some Jungian ideas while at the same time come to an increasingly better understanding of my “nature.” I don’t for a moment thing that being able to recognise that I am an introvert by disposition and that my intuitive function is my strong suit with my sensation function being the weakest function, allows me to say that I know myself. There is so much more to knowing oneself than to be able to use an almost secret code that is limited to those who are initiated to the MBTI.
“Wrestling with your typological orientation is a good start in understanding who you are. But it is child’s play compared to to becoming acquainted with your complexes.
Complexes are normal and present in everyone, they are the building blocks of personality. Just as atoms and molecules are the invisible components of physical objects, so complexes are the hidden parts o ourselves; they comprise our identity and are what makes us tick.” (Sharp, Jungian Psychology Unplugged, p. 37)
As Sharp goes on the explain, complexes are seen as negative things, something that indicates some level of dysfunction, some malfunction of our brain, something that needs to be fixed. Well, complexes can erupt into one’s life making that life shear misery, a living hell. But, this isn’t what complexes are all about. Complexes only cause us grief when we are unconscious of them, when we don’t consider just why we act the way we act at any given time. How does one understand oneself with code letters when one gets angry? Any time that we “feel” an emotion in response to an image, a situation, a presence, a complex has been activated.
I guess I have opened up another can of worms here in introducing the subject of complexes. I hope that you will bear with me as I stumble through this minefield over the next while.
