Subject: Re: psychoanalysis
Date: Fri, 5 May 2000 11:21:15 -0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)



On 5 May 2000 13:15:47 -0000 dick gifford <dickgifford-AT-2hb.net> wrote:

> Indeed! That's what I've been thrashing out with these dogmatic Jungians. 
Question:  Is what's "back there" important (the unconscious, "God", pure 
consciousness)? Or is how you get there that's the real and only issue today?  
They're trying to apply Wolff's (disciple of Jung) feminine archetypes to a 
theory of cultural evolution, but spend most of their time arguing about 
Valentinian gnosis. 

What's "back there" is, in my opinion, overwhelmingly important. But there are 
several issues at state here. The Jungian approach, it seems to me, rests on a 
logical error: putting the metaphsychology before the clinical or social 
research. In other words, what stands to be demonstrated is assumed. That would 
be a more positivistic way of putting it. The other problem(s) include an 
appropriate metapsychology of what's back there to begin with. I've got no 
problem with a fairly extensive notion of the unconscious, however Jung, it 
seems to me, is running amok with his notion of the unconscious (ie. because we 
don't know the limits, there are no limits)(surely I exaggerate). In any event, 
I find archetypes and such useful as tropes or viewing goggles, but not so much 
helpful in terms of explaining the genesis of social significations. For that, 
I'd turn to something like Cornelius Castoriadis or the Lacanians.

ken