Moving Pictures
The alchemy of seeing, then seeing again
Sunday greetings, and welcome to sleepover camp-countdown here at newShrink!
Granddaughter-artiste Miz E arrives in a few hours for the next week (though fulfilling just the Camp-Tishie part of her desired itinerary could occupy us until New Year’s…)
In depth psychology there’s an idea and saying, that from the time perspective of the psyche or soul, every planned journey or event begins three days before and ends three days after the actual travel or activity. Maybe that is why these several compelling artistic and visual images have captured and held me this week, more so than stories’ connecting of words, ideas and themes.
Or, it could just be that these images are pretty alive and astonishing.
moving pictures
You may recognize some of the above from last week’s illustrations of The New York Times’ recent “I was wrong about…” package from opinion writers. Those pictured in the left and right columns, and at top center the stunning “three morphing globes,” are still-shots of graphic artist Sean Dong’s creations that illustrate all eight of the articles.
His pieces are animated — and they do! Some gorgeous, others thought-provoking or witty, each picture not only moves, but morphs to assemble itself in a way that brings the point of the column to life. It’s this story-telling piece, beyond the animation function on any Power Point-type app, that grabbed me on the second and third viewings. (Of course I enjoy recalling that the Latin root of the words animate and animation is anima — our unconscious human soul or psyche… some“Big Shaggy” territory, indeed.)
This work is not your traditional old Gray Lady New York Times! It’s visual-artistic journalism at its best, and the still-shots don’t do it justice. If you can access it, I encourage you to open, or reopen, the full package again just to tour the visuals.
I wasn’t able to copy the animated versions in the illustration here. You can access each of the eight articles by clicking:
Or just the ones pictured above:
I was wrong about Mitt Romney (and the Dog) — Gail Collins (top left)
I was wrong about Facebook — Farhad Manjoo (bottom left)
I Was Wrong About Al Franken — Michelle Goldberg (top right)
I was wrong about Trump voters — Bret Stephens (bottom right)
I was wrong about capitalism - David Brooks (top center)
Here also are some NYT letters from readers sent in response to the series.
backtalk
These pieces and other similar ones from opinion writers who reconsider their stances will show up for discussion of many kinds in future editions. Many larger significant depth(soul) psychological, spiritual and religious faiths’ dimensions of the common themes are touched-on by these pieces. For instance: Humble and honest mea culpa, re-visit, re-morse, re-pair, re-pentance, forgiveness — plus the very frequent public need for the practice, skill, even art and liberation, in making a sincere and unqualified apology. (When you see and hear samples of these, positive or negative, I’ll appreciate your sharing; I’m collecting them!) Also, a new backtalk feature in newShrink will periodically present opinion-writers’ pieces with brief counterpoint comments, to which I’ll welcome your additions.
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Meanwhile, the center section pictured above captures symbols that illustrate and express a significant dimension of soul-focused depth psychology.
the alchemy of seeing, then seeing again
Across top-center are what I am calling the Times package’s morphing globes (which had illustrated David Brooks’ “I was wrong about capitalism” column.) Below them are strikingly similar images of blue lapis lazuli, along with one of Jung’s own paintings and related handwritten notes on what he termed the philosopher’s stone. (Lapis lazuli in Latin means heaven- or star- stone.) I’ll say a bit more on this below.
For a couple of weeks now, those morphing globes made me gasp at first glance and then have nagged ever since. First, surely not conscious or intentional on the Times’ part, was their similarity to lapis lazuli in both its uncut/raw and polished forms. (Not a surprising reaction from me, given the stone’s psychological symbolism with regard to the soul, plus my long affinity for both the gem and its favored color aside from that.)
The globes aptly depict an element of Brooks’ column, which does address some global economic themes over the past four decades. On the psychological/soul level the illustration’s being on Brooks’ column has several ironies that interest me, given his unfolding spiritual awakening that’s the focus and recurring theme of his latest book and other recent work. More on this with the later part 2 edition of the newShrink deep-dive bio with Brooks.
Then, images of those animated globes started showing up in dream snippets. (At least their dancing isn’t to corny music! So far.)
A note:
If you happen to know or love any Jungians and want to make them smile or salivate, just mention you have a dream to share about lapis lazuli and the philosopher’s stone! (I so wish and hope for David Brooks at some point to find his way to one of them, to work and play with his dreams…)
Looking now just below the morphing globes…
lapis lazuli, the philosopher’s stone
This section depicts a symbol, or rather a set of symbols, that Jung borrowed from medieval alchemy to help explain or illustrate more tangibly our ongoing human process of growth, individuation throughout adult life. In Jung’s psychology, and his clinical work with patients over some 50 years, our individuation, increasing wholeness, is served when we’ve been able — or by life painfully forced — to bring more of the unconscious soul to our conscious awareness and integrate it with the rest of what we know about ourselves.
The sense of who we are thus becomes “bigger.” That is, we are more expansively capable of compassion for self and other, and of making choices that are more conscious/less reactive. Psychotherapy serves this individuation process when it takes the unconscious or soul into account and works with it, in addition to the many useful and practical conscious ego tools and practices. Various practices and guided disciplines in all spiritual or religious faith traditions, from dreamwork and journaling to mindfulness meditation, body- and movement- work and prayer, facilitate individuation as well.
doing and being…
A way of understanding this is that the common cognitive behavioral ego- (conscious) psychologies and practices help us focus on how best to “do” our lives, work and relationships. And to this, the depth soul- (unconscious) focused discipline brings the added dimension of who we most deeply are and how we are meaningfully to “be” in our lives and relationships. This latter element is a function and marker of some necessary psychological maturity regardless of age, for it requires and presumes a degree of ego-self strength on that checklist/resume doing side of our lives before it is even possible.
a gift of grace
The center image above is from Jung’s Liber Novus, The Red Book — his illustrations and writings that chronicle the excruciatingly painful threshold period following his 1913 split from Freud. The rift turned out to be permanent. The relationship with Freud had been not only mentor-protégé, but very deep mutual friendship. Thereafter, Jung referred to this as his confrontation with the unconscious, a dark night of the soul, and it became the foundation of his analytical psychology and psychotherapy. (Collection of art and translations of his writings from this period were completed, and The Red Book finally published, in 2009.)
In this picture’s text, Jung describes the individuation process as “a phenomenon of consciousness, a product of human effort, and at the same time a donum gratiae, a gift of God’s grace.” [this gift being the unconscious soul part of the equation.]
As I’ve mentioned before, Jung was a descendant influenced by a long line of Swiss- Protestant (mostly Methodist) ministers as well as a medical doctor. His own father continued in ministry after having lost his own faith. This had profound effects Jung describes in his memoir, Memories, Dreams, Reflections. A core concept of his analytical psychology is that all psychological or mental crisis or suffering is also a spiritual one, a crisis of the (unconscious) soul.
In the quoted piece pictured here he further describes the rough, relatively soft lapis lazuli with its varying striations of white (calcium) and iron (reflected as gold in sunlight). For Jung the stone is an excellent symbol for the continuing process of individuation throughout our lives. The process is continuing, “a journey, not a destination,” because the unconscious or soul is limitless; there’s always more of it to surface. (It isn’t one mountain, valley or descent to the abyss and back again… but many expansive spiraling cycles of them.)
Jung describes here the rough, uncut lapis to symbolize our initial, ego-conscious human state. (In practical terms that’s usually around late adolescence to young adulthood.) The stone’s various flecks, streaks, polishings, shaping presumably depict that “donum gratiae, the gift of grace” in the quote above.
As you may by now have noticed in his illustration above, that stone is a diamond, not the lapis. He describes the diamond, with its hardness, clarity, durability, as the inspiration or ultimate wholeness. Given the dynamic nature of conscious and unconscious, it is an aspiration not a sustainable state this side of the grave. I read this as rather like Dante’s Paradiso, nirvana, or heaven.
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Shifting now, here are some other pictures — and the news inspiration for them — that are moving in a very different, powerful way.
You might recall (and many of you know) reader Barbara Barnett, my friend and former newspaper-reporter colleague now living in Virginia. She retired as a journalism professor after many years at the William Allen White School of Journalism at the University of Kansas.
On Wednesday after Tuesday’s election results there, she posted on Facebook, “Woke up singing ‘Home on the Range’,” with a sunflower image. In answer, from somewhere in me, came “and I’m as corny as Kansas in August (high as the flag on the 4th of July…)” From ancient Broadway musical South Pacific…???!
Now, how to remove that from my brain…
But it was so good to have something to sing about:
Kansas Votes to Preserve Abortion Rights Protections in Its Constitution
(NYT)
OVERLAND PARK, Kan. — Kansas voters resoundingly decided against removing the right to abortion from the State Constitution, according to The Associated Press, a major victory for the abortion rights movement in one of America’s reliably conservative states.
The defeat of the ballot referendum was the most tangible demonstration yet of a political backlash against the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that had protected abortion rights throughout the country. The decisive margin — 59 to 41 percent, with about 95 percent of the votes counted — came as a surprise, and after frenzied campaigns with both sides pouring millions into advertising and knocking on doors throughout a sweltering final campaign stretch.
Here’s how abortion rights supporters won in conservative Kansas.
(NYT)
NYT Perspective Essay from Kansas Native/Why the Defense of Abortion in Kansas Is So Powerful
Almost as heartening as the vote itself was watching this unfold, both on the county-by-county maps and in long lines at the polls across this very red state — not only in the urban and university blue zones, not only Democrats, and not only women. Nearly a million Kansas voters cast their ballots, and unexpected numbers saw through many efforts at trickery that included intentionally byzantine ballot wording. (The confusing language suggested “yes” meant “no” and vice versa.)
a handful of headlines…
Here are some breaking and other stories of the week for future watch and discussion.
Some days and weeks, justice looks and feels much better than others:
Jury in Alex Jones Trial Awards $45 Million More to Sandy Hook Parents
The jury reached a decision on punitive damages, a day after awarding more than $4 million in compensatory damages to the parents of a child killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting, which Mr. Jones has called a hoax.
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4 Louisville police charged in Breonna Taylor probe, Garland says
(The Washington Post)
Four current and former Louisville officers involved in the fatal police shooting of Breonna Taylor are facing new federal charges in the 2020 killing, including excessive force and falsifying information on the search warrant, Attorney General Merrick Garland said.
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WNBA Star Brittney Griner is Sentenced to 9 Years in Russian Prison
(Christian Science Monitor)
Brittney Griner has been convicted of drug possession and smuggling and sentenced to nine years in prison by a Russian judge. The unusually quick verdict came amid tightening tensions between Moscow and Washington and could lead to a high-stakes prisoner exchange.
NYT Live Updates: Brittney Griner Is Sentenced to 9 Years in a Russian Penal Colony
(NewYork Times)
The American basketball star’s case has been caught up in the deep crisis between Moscow and Washington over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Sinema Agrees to Climate and Tax Deal, Clearing the Way for Votes in the Senate
(NYT)
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This next one is my pick for scariest story of the week.
Republicans at CPAC in Dallas embrace a defiant Viktor Orban amid outrage over ‘mixed-race’ remarks.
(NYT)
DALLAS — It was a reception from conservatives that would be expected for a party leader like former President Donald J. Trump, replete with standing ovations, glad-handing and roaring approval for a defiant message opposing immigration and gay marriage.
But the recipient of the heroic welcome on Thursday was Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister, who has been widely condemned for his attacks on democratic norms. At the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas, he was an opening headliner.
Revered by a wing of the American political right, Mr. Orban, the European Union’s longest-serving current leader, arrived at CPAC after stirring new outrage with his recent comments opposing a “mixed race” society.
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NC’s senators split on veterans burn pit bill; one should be ashamed
(Charlotte Observer Editorial and Cartoon)
(Our NC Senator Tillis can’t seem to keep a decency streak going for very long. Last week I was just calling his office to thank him for taking a stand supporting pending marriage-equality legislation, in an effort to reward positive behavior on his part. Kind of like with recalcitrant toddlers, except it works better with them.)
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Now I’ll leave you with another, more hopeful, gem from talented cartoonist Kevin Siers…
And, that is all I have. Talk to you soon!
🦋💙 tish
… it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.
— William Stafford, “A Ritual to Read to Each Other”
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