Archive for December 19th, 2010
Personal Mother – Archetypal Mother
I chose black and white to go with this image. Because of depth of field being narrow, the moon came out as very faint and fuzzy. I have quite a few much better and clearer images of the moon from yesterday afternoon and evening, but this is the one that makes the cut for this post. Why? Because the moon is “faint” in appearance. This view speaks to me of the “numinous.” One knows the presence is there though that knowledge is fuzzy, an archetypal presence. The moon is associated with the feminine, or the mother.
“I attribute to the personal mother only a limited etiological significance. That is to say, all those influences which the literature describes as being exerted on the children do not come from the mother herself, but rather from the archetype projected upon her, which gives her a mythological background and invests her with authority and numinosity.” (Jung, CW 9i, par. 159)
Somehow I am sure that any biological mother who has engaged in raising a child is well aware of the power she has over her child(ren). Sometimes that power is a burden as she is supposed to know everything, to heal everything, to hold everything for the child(ren). It seems that children tap into bigger picture of mother rather easily, unconsciously. But since it is mostly unconscious, all of the archetypal energy is projected onto the personal mother. Having her child(ren) grow up to be conscious and independent adults is a good thing but also a process that leaves her in a depression (empty-nest syndrome) as there is a loss, not just of the presence of the child, but also a loss of her “power,” her “authority” as the projections of her child are withdrawn leaving her stripped bare, exposing her as a vulnerable, fallible, and weak as any other person.
“Our task is not, therefore, to deny the archetype, but to dissolve the projections, in order to restore their contents to the individual who has involuntarily lost them by projecting them outside himself.” (Jung, CW 9i, par. 160)
It sounds simple, but it isn’t simple at all. Few ever completely withdraw their projections. As an adult, we are left with mother-complexes which are a melange of the archetypal and personal mother. Our journey is to rediscover the mother within regardless of our gender. We need to learn how to answer ourselves, how to heal ourselves, how to nourish ourselves – to mother ourselves in our adulthood.
