My grandfather's shovel

                             

A month ago, when a shovel that had belonged to my grandfather broke, I was shoveling snow on our front walk with it, it led me to remember and write about my grandfather. My grandfather had been captain at Fire Station/Caserne 46 when he retired in the early 1940s and, years later, my mother gave me a shovel that had belonged to him. When the shovel broke I thought I would throw it out. I used to have two of these heavy iron shovels, one had already been lost when our barn burned down around 1985. I wasn't careful with the remaining shovel; I left it outside all year, behind our garden shed, it was only an old shovel; still, it had been special to my mother mainly because they don't make shovels like this anymore, it was a shovel made to last, and it had belonged to her father; "hang on to that shovel" she said. 

But now, when the shovel was broken, I remembered Robert Johnson's Balancing Heaven and Earth (1998), a book I had reviewed, and in which Johnson remembers something he thought was junk and had discarded, it was a clock that had woken him for important events in his life. In the review I wrote,

As one would expect, there are many anecdotes in this memoir, always with the effect of returning us to the importance of the inner world. The resolution of life's contradictions lies in becoming more conscious, and this sometimes requires the ritualization of the mundane; Johnson describes how a broken clock that was unceremoniously discarded was later retrieved from the garbage. Alone, he made a ceremony of burying the clock, a ritual during which he remembered with fondness the many events the lock awoke him for, including leaving for Europe, visiting Dr. Jung at his home, and so on.

Thinking of this I retrieved the two parts of the broken shovel and glued them together, it was as though the shovel had never broken, it had been restored and I had the shovel as a souvenir of my grandfather. It was a memento and mementos are limited in number; sixty years after his death I have been revisited by him and reminded of the importance of one of the few things that I have that belonged to my grandfather. 

I have a few mementos from my mother and I have this old shovel. But what to do with the shovel? Put it on display? Hang it on the wall? Prop it against the wall? Maybe. But this shovel will be a nuisance if I don't do something with it. And when I am gone the shovel will mean nothing to other people, it will just be an old shovel and one that will break again, if used, and then be discarded. I know why things from the past don't last, why they end up discarded even though they have a personal importance; antiques have some monetary value but most mementos have no value except to the person who values them. There is no reason why anyone will keep this old shovel after I am gone.

Being a literary person and a poet, and a teacher, I see the symbolic value of things. It is that a shovel like this was once used to clean up after a fire, or shovel snow, but while a shovel is used to dig in to the ground, to clean up things, it also has an archetypal value, a psychological value; and this is what we do, we who are archivists of memory, we see the symbolic and meaningful aspect of things pertaining to the psyche; it is one of the things that gives depth to life. The broken shovel reminded me of my grandfather and my relationship with him, it reminded me that he is important to me; his story is unique in our family's history. 

As a last resort, maybe I could bury the shovel in my garden, but I am reluctant to do this, for some reason I think it is rather ghoulish; a shovel is not a corpse. It is a shovel that will live on in memory; but always knowing that these mundane things can break, be thrown out, be discarded, and even memories have a certain limited longevity, based on how long we remember. And, one day, everything is forgotten unless it is written down and, even then, everything is temporary. 

Some Notes on Poetry and Soul (edited and revised)

Many of C.G. Jung’s psychological concepts and related interests—for instance, shadow, archetype, symbolism, alchemy, animus and anima, mythology, the collective unconscious, and so on—are also interests of many poets. The major difference between poetry and psychology is that poetry is the voice of the human soul, while Jungian psychology tries to explain how the soul works; most other schools of psychology don't acknowledge the existence of the soul.

----------------

Poetry and psychology are two very different disciplines. The Irish poet, Patrick Kavanaugh, writes in one of his poems, “He knew that posterity has no use/ For anything but the soul…” Kavanaugh’s poems resonate for us because we recognize in them, as we do in all great poetry and poets, someone who speaks to our inner being. We can tell if a poet is genuine or not, inflated or not, and if the poet’s work is an authentic expression of the soul. We resonate to the authentic expression of the inner being of a fellow human being. Great poetry is an expression of “where psyche is leading one.” This phrase, from one of James Hollis’s books, that we need to find “where psyche leads us,” is the quest for an authentic life, an expression of where soul will lead us if only we follow.

----------------

C.G. Jung’s comments on the relationship of the collective unconscious and poetry in Modern Man in Search of a Soul are worth referring to in relation to poetry, they also help explain something of the importance of Patrick Kavanaugh’s poetry.

----------------

Great poetry draws its strength from the life of mankind, and we completely miss its meaning if we try to derive it from personal factors. Whenever the collective unconscious becomes a living experience and is brought upon the conscious outlook of an age, this event is a creative act which is of importance to everyone living at that age. A work of art is produced that contains what may truthfully be called a message to generations of men. 
                                                                                           --C.G. Jung
----------------

James Hillman’s “idea of psychopoesis” is also important; Hillman suggests that a poem is always at the heart of things. Depth psychology is referred to as soul making; however, poetry doesn't "make" the soul, it reveals the soul. One of the concerns of both poetry and depth psychology is the human soul: the intention of depth psychology is to unfold the complexity of a person’s life so that it can be better understood, and perhaps placed in a mythopoetic context; the poet’s intention, also to do with the soul, is to write poetry that is authentic to his or her soulful vision.

----------------

Some poets are wounded healers; however, these wounds may also be the source of the poet’s creativity and, as such, something that he or she may not want to give up. Poetry isn’t therapy— poetry is a form of art—but as anyone who reads literature knows, poetry can have a healing and transformative quality.

----------------

The intention of poet and psychologist is substantially different; the difference is that while poetry is an expression of the soul, psychology speaks about the soul if it mentions the soul at all. The two disciplines should not be conflated or confused; we need to remember that poetry is the oldest art form while psychology is about a hundred years old and, in some ways, it is still in its infancy. With this perspective in mind, we need to re-evaluate the importance of poetry and remember its relationship to soul.

----------------

                                                          Edited and revised on 23 March 2018

                                                          Stephen Morrissey

C.G. Jung on poetry

C.G. Jung on poetry:

Great poetry draws its strength from the life of mankind, and we completely miss its meaning if we try to derive it from personal factors. Whenever the collective unconscious becomes a living experience and is brought upon the conscious outlook of an age, this event is a creative act which is of importance to everyone living at that age. A work of art is produced that contains what may truthfully be called a message to generations of men. So Faust touches something in the soul of every German. So also Dante’s fame is immortal, while The Shepherd of Hermas just failed of inclusion in the New Testament canon. Every period has its bias, its particular prejudice and its psychic ailment. An epoch is like an individual; it has its own limitations of conscious outlook, and therefore requires a compensatory adjustment. This is effected by the collective unconscious in that a poet, a seer or a leader allows himself to be guided by the unexpressed desire of his times and shows the way, by word or deed, to the attainment of that which everyone blindly craves and expects—whether this attainment results in good or evil, the healing of an epoch or its destruction.

                                                      --C.G. Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul

Some notes on poetry and soul

Many of C.G. Jung’s psychological concepts and related interests—for instance, shadow, archetype, symbolism, alchemy, animus and anima, mythology, the collective unconscious, and so on—are the natural interests of many poets. The major difference between poetry and psychology is that poetry is the voice of the human soul, while Jungian psychology tries to explain how the soul works. They are two very different disciplines. The Irish poet, Patrick Kavanaugh, writes in one of his poems, “He knew that posterity has no use/ For anything but the soul…” Kavanaugh’s poems resonate for us because we recognize in them, as we do in all good poets, someone who speaks to our inner being. We can tell if a poet is genuine or not, inflated or not, and if the poet’s work is an authentic expression of the soul. We resonate to the authentic expression of the inner being of a fellow human being. Great poetry is an expression of “where psyche is leading one.” This phrase, from one of James Hollis’s books, that we need to find “where psyche leads us,” is the quest for an authentic life, an expression of where soul will lead us if only we follow.

C.G. Jung’s comments on the relationship of the collective unconscious and poetry in Modern Man in Search of a Soul are worth referring to here in relation to poetry and as they help explain something of the importance of Kavanaugh’s poetry:

"Great poetry draws its strength from the life of mankind, and we completely miss its meaning if we try to derive it from personal factors. Whenever the collective unconscious becomes a living experience and is brought upon the conscious outlook of an age, this event is a creative act which is of importance to everyone living at that age. A work of art is produced that contains what may truthfully be called a message to generations of men."

James Hillman’s “idea of psychopoesis” is also important, Hillman suggests that a poem is always at the heart of things. Depth psychology is referred to as soul making; however, poetry doesn't "make" the soul, it reveals the soul. One of the concerns of both poetry and depth psychology is the human soul: the intention of depth psychology is to unfold the complexity of a person’s life so that it can be better understood, and perhaps placed in a mythopoetic context; the poet’s intention, also to do with the soul, is to write poetry that is authentic to his or her soulful vision.

Some poets are wounded healers; however, these wounds may also be the source of the poet’s creativity and, as such, something that he or she may not want to give up. Poetry isn’t therapy -- poetry is a form of art -- but as anyone who reads literature knows, poetry can have a healing and transformative quality. The intention of poet and psychologist is substantially different; the difference is that while poetry is an expression of the soul, psychology speaks about the soul. The two disciplines should not be conflated; we need to remember that poetry is the oldest art form, thousands of years old, while psychology is about a hundred years old and still in its infancy. With this perspective in mind, we need to re-evaluate the importance of poetry and remember its relationship to soul.

------

These are excerpts taken from rough drafts of a review on Patrick Kavanaugh's poetry and Jungian psychology. SM

C.G. Jung and the importance of family history

This quotation, from C.G. Jung’s Memories, Dreams, Reflections, was published in Harvey Shepherd’s “A Note From the Co-President” column in the March 2011 issue of The Newsletters of the C.G. Jung Society of Montreal. I feel it expresses something of what I have been trying to do in my own work on my family’s history (which can be found at http://www.morrisseyfamilyhistory.com/); in much of my published poetry, for instance in Girouard Avenue (2009); in my essay, A Poet’s Journey: Notes on poetry and what it means to be a poet, published by Poetry Quebec (at http://www.poetry-quebec.com/pq/essay/article_80.shtml); and in this space.

Jung writes,

When I was working on the stone tablets, I became aware of the fateful links between me and my ancestors. I feel very strongly that I am under the influence of things or questions which were left incomplete and unanswered by my parents and grandparents and more distant ancestors. It often seems as if there were an impersonal karma within a family, which is passed on from parent to children. It has always seemed to me that I had to answer questions which fate had posed to my forefathers, and which had not yet been answered, or as if I had to complete, or perhaps continue, things which previous ages had left unfinished. It is difficult to determine whether these questions are more of a personal or more of a general (collective) nature. It seems to me that the latter is the case. (p. 233)

This is continued on page 236:

… it is precisely the loss of connection with the past, our uprootedness, which has given rise to the “discontents” of civilization and to such a flurry and haste that we live more in the future and its chimerical promises of a golden age than in the present, with which our whole evolutionary background has not yet caught up. We rush impetuously into novelty, driven by a mourning sense of insufficiency, dissatisfaction and restlessness. We no longer live on what we have, but on promises, no longer in the light of the present day, but in the darkness of the future, which, we expect, will at last bring the proper sunrise … The less we understand of what out fathers and forefathers sought, the less we understand ourselves, and thus we help with all our might to rob the individual of his roots and his guiding instincts, so that he becomes a particle in the mass, ruled only by what Nietzsche called the spirit of gravity.

Archetypal Patterns in Poetry

October 2012

In an article, “On the relation of analytical psychology to poetic art,” Dr. C.G. Jung has set forth an hypothesis in regard to the psychological significance of poetry. The special emotional significance possessed by certain poems—a significance going beyond any definite meaning conveyed—he attributes to the stirring in the reader’s mind, within or beneath his conscious response, of unconscious forces which he terms “primordial images,” or archetypes. These archetypes he describes as “psychic residua of numberless experiences of the same type,” experiences which have happened not to the individual but to his ancestors, and of which the results are inherited in the structure of the brain, a priori determinants of individual experience.

From Archetypal Patterns in Poetry: Psychological studies in imagination, by Maud Bodkin, Vintage Books, New York, 1958; first published in 1934

Dream Journeys: "Psyche's Night Journey"

1.

Grandmother’s home has wood paneled walls
and a claw foot bathtub beside the stove in the kitchen.
I weep regretting I hadn’t returned sooner or more often to visit her.
On the second floor daylight enters at the wainscoting;
on hands and knees I pull a piece of wood
from the wall behind an antique table,
there is a crack along the wall
where a wooden beam lets in cold air.
Later, walking along a narrow path
someone has dug through the snow
in the street, I see a man
walking in the same direction
watching me.


2.

At the bottom of the front stairs
at Grandmother’s flat,
there is a blue clock
which no longer works;
a key to wind the clock
is in a little black drawer beside the clock.
Upstairs everything is very plain and in proper order.
Mother is staying there and I ask her,
“Did Grandma leave any messages for me?”
Mother is annoyed by the question,
she says because of all of my questions
she regrets I came here.

Review of two books by James Hollis

View from Pointe Calliere Museum in Old Montreal after a Jung Society 
of Montreal end of year luncheon.

My review (below) of two new books by James Hollis, was published in the spring 2009 issue of the Newsletter of the C.G. Jung Society of Montreal. _________________________________________________ 

Why Good People Do Bad Things: Understanding Our Darker Selves 

James Hollis New York: Gotham Books, 2007, 272 pps. 

What Matters Most: Living A More Considered Life James Hollis New York: Gotham Books, 2009, 288 pps. 

The older we get the more life seems a journey. An excellent guide on this journey is Jungian analyst James Hollis, who is the author of two new books, Why Good People Do Bad Things: Understanding Our Darker Selves and What Matters Most: Living A More Considered Life. Both of these books will reward the reader with many insights into life’s journey; both are an invitation to psychological and spiritual wholeness. Hollis asks, “Why do good people do bad things?” To answer this question he turns to C. G. Jung¹s archetype of the Shadow, which he defines as being “composed of all those aspects of ourselves that have a tendency to make us uncomfortable with ourselves, it is what discomforts the sense of self we wish to have.” Hollis points out that “Of the many concepts Jung articulated, few if any are richer than his idea of the Shadow.” 

For Hollis, and other Jungians, an understanding and awareness of the Shadow part of the human psyche is one of the roads to wholeness and individuation. This is especially important for those of us in the second half of life; it is a time in which, as Hollis writes, “The critical summons is to recover a personal sense of authority, explore, thoughtfully express the personal Shadow, and risk living faithfully the soul’s agenda.” Of course, few people willingly examine their Shadow; it is usually kept hidden, avoided, or even denied. Some of us prefer to live in a cocoon of infantile expectations; others are complacent; and still others prefer to avoid doing the very work that will bring us depth and an insightful life. But this life, this journey, demands that we live intelligently and authentically, that we live a life of emotional and psychological maturity. Indeed, while working with Shadow material is difficult, there is a reward: this lies in the release in our lives of a reservoir of creative energy of which we had not previously been aware. 

This Shadow energy can find its expression in creative work, but is also shown in a renewed sense of who we are and a commitment to living a life aligned to our values and the “soul’s agenda.” James Hollis’s most recent book, What Matters Most: Living A More Considered Life, will reward the reader many times over. I think it is one of Hollis’s best books for readers at any stage in life, at any place in the journey of life. Hollis begins by admitting that the book is an “eccentric compilation,” and it is! He writes, “We are not here to fit in, be well balanced, or provide exempla for others. We are here to be eccentric, different, perhaps strange, perhaps merely to add our small piece, our little chunky selves, to the great mosaic of being.” This is a wonderful invitation to be who and what we are. The book, then, is made up of individual chapters that can be read solely or consecutively. They are discussions of Hollis’s considered opinion and observation of life’s meaning and “what matters most” in life. 

A selection of some of the chapters’ titles will give an idea, a sampling, of what Hollis considers important in life’s journey: That Life Not Be Governed By Fear That We Consider Feeding The Soul That We Respect The Power Of Eros That We Step Into Largeness That We Risk Growth Over Security That We Find And Follow The Path Of Creativity That We Encourage Spiritual Crises That We Write Our Story, Lest Someone Else Write It For Us Each of these chapters can be read separately; each is a thoughtful discussion and elaboration on a specific aspect of “what matters most.” They are diverse subjects, held together by Hollis’s intelligence and insight, and sometimes explained more fully with literary references. The emphasis in the book is not to find happiness, it is to find wholeness and to live a conscious life that is in agreement with the soul’s needs and requirements. For at least the last forty years an interest in mythology (and the belief by many in the absence of a cohesive mythology in our society) has taken hold of the popular imagination. Hollis reminds us of Jung’s “myth for our time” which he says is individuation. Hollis then writes: “In fact it is a summons to service, of ego submission to values larger than those previously embraced.” Thus, our journey is one of individuation, of inner discovery and self-knowledge. This journey is the central myth or adventure of our time. 

Since I first began reading James Hollis’s books, in the early 1990s, and heard Hollis speak to the C. G. Jung Society of Montreal (he is a gifted and riveting public speaker) I have always found him to be one step ahead of my own thinking, one step ahead of me in my life’s journey. He has always been an astute thinker and a most welcome guide in these matters. If you want to begin reading Hollis, or if you have read several of his books, I highly recommend What Matters Most: Living A More Considered Life. James Hollis concludes the book by suggesting the following, 

This search for God, this longing for meaning and understanding, while often frustrating, has given me my journey, and my journey has given me greater acquaintance with many gods along the way , all, especially the dark ones, worthy of and demanding respect and many good and many bad people, but always an interesting life. In the end, having a more interesting life, a life that disturbs complacency, a life that pulls us out of the comfortable and thereby demands a larger spiritual engagement than we planned or that feels comfortable, is what matters most. (p. 256) 

Stephen Morrissey

winter 2009

Note: Read other reviews of books by James Hollis reviewed here, do a search on this blog.

Mapping the Soul, Selected Poems, 1978 - 1998

Preface to Mapping the Soul, Selected Poems, 1978-1998 (Muses’s Company, Winnipeg, 1998)

When I was growing up, I had two dreams that profoundly affected the shape of my life. I was six years old when my father died; the first of these dreams occurred three years after his death. I dreamed two men from an orphanage came to take me away. They were waiting for me at the back door; they were going to put me in a wooden cage. This dream made a deep and lasting impression on me, not only as a reminder of the insecurity and transience of life, but also as an encounter with the powerful depths of the unconscious. In retrospect, this dream began my awareness of the imagination, vision, and what psychologist C.G. Jung calls “the shadow.” It also informed me of my own separateness from the world in which I lived.

The second dream came when I was around thirteen years old, and it is responsible for my embarking on a lifetime of being a poet and diarist. In this dream I was imprisoned in a room where the windows were covered with mud. Once I could see outside, but now I was enclosed and cut off from the world. However one may interpret this dream, my own interpretation as an adolescent was that I had to write down the truth as I knew it--what people had done and what I had done. Only by writing could I see things clearly. I knew intuitively that writing could clarify, order, and give perspective to experience. My concern was with saving my inner being, which I was afraid would be lost if I were unable to remember events. My conviction, even then, was that there is a heroism and bravery to the average person’s life and I was responsible for recording as much of what I perceived of this as possible. I awoke from this dream knowing I had to write and ever since this dream I have written poems as well as kept a diary.

In addition to these two dreams there was a third influence to the kind of poet I became. In 1967, when I was still in high school, I read an article in a newspaper; in it the American poet, Allen Ginsberg, gave advice for poets. He said, “Scribble down your nakedness. Be prepared to stand naked...” This statement made a lasting impression on me. It validated what I was already trying to do in my own poetry. For the first time I realized that the kind of subject matter I was grappling with as a teenager--content that was personal and confessional--belonged to a literary tradition and had meaning to other people. Even if I hadn’t read Ginsberg’s statement I would not have been deterred from continuing the writing I was doing--writing that attempted to understand deeply felt experiences. However, to discover that there was a public context for this kind of writing was enormously empowering, and allowed me to identify myself as a poet. My first chapbook, Poems of a Period (1971), published when I was in second year university, contains poems that have a thematic continuity extending from those early poems up to the work I am writing now. This present collection, Mapping the Soul: Selected Poems 1978 - 1998, presents a selection of twenty years from my body of writing. This selection is chronological, beginning with my first published book, The Trees of Unknowing (1978) up to the present selection from new, unpublished poems.

For years I struggled in my writing to express early experiences of grief and failure. I wrote many poems on these subjects, but none articulated exactly how I felt, or dealt adequately with what I needed to say, until I wrote the long poem “Divisions.” This poem is central to my early work--in it I was finally able to deal aesthetically and personally with the experience it discusses. Everything came together in the writing of “Divisions”: content, form, and the insight necessary for its writing. This was a breakthrough poem for me, written over a three day period in April 1977. I was finally able to express in poetry what I was attempting to do since I was fifteen years old. I photocopied “Divisions” and mailed it out to other poets and critics, including Northrop Frye and Louis Dudek, both of whom responded generously: Frye with a letter, and Dudek with an offer to publish the poem. In 1983 bp Nichol published the poem in my book Divisions, with Coach House Press.

There are two more factors that I believe have contributed to my writing. The first is the fact of being born in Montreal of a large, but dwindling, family of Irish descent. This Irish background is rich in experience and family history; names such as Callaghan, Flanagan, and Sweeney are all a part of the family which has been in Montreal since before 1840. They were not wealthy people, although a few made names for themselves, but they were hardworking and improved conditions for the lives of their descendants. Their values, religious faith, and large families made them what they were. I am grateful for being a part of this ancestry.

A final factor that has helped shaped my poetry is the tradition of writing poetry in English-speaking Montreal. Growing up in Montreal in the 1950s, I always took for granted that poets lived and worked in the community in which I lived. Poets were never “someplace else”—they were right here. So the idea of becoming a poet was never unusual. Just as I appreciate my Irish heritage, I also benefited from the poetry community into which I was born. In the 1970s I was associated with Vehicule Art Gallery where I attended and organized readings while a graduate student at McGill University. I associated with other poets, and my first full-length collection of poems was published.
I have always aimed at a directness of statement and emotion in my poems, to communicate an image and a strong emotion; to merge the personal self with the archetypal self. Poetry is the voice of the psyche speaking through the poet. These poems, selected from twenty years of published work, map the convolutions, terrain, and geography of the soul.

My poetic journey, from the early dreams and writing to the publication of this Selected Poems, has been a reaching out to other people. From the initial isolation as an adolescent poet until now, I have been blessed with meeting certain individuals who have encouraged and inspired me. My association with poet and editor Carolyn Zonailo began in 1989 with the publication, by Caitlin Press, of my book Family Album. CZ has edited my poetry and helped to prepare manuscripts for publication. We have shared a collaboration in writing and in life, living most of the year in Montreal, but spending as much time as possible each year in her native Vancouver, British Columbia. I would like to thank CZ for selecting the poems in this collection, urging me to write this preface, and for editing.

I would like to thank Louis Dudek for being my teacher and friend from McGill University days to the present. George and Jeanne Johnston extended to me friendship and the joy of discussing poetry and literature. Ken Norris, a colleague since the early 1970’s, has offered on-going encouragement. Jake Morrissey has often listened with appreciation to my work. Sonja Skarstedt and Geof Isherwood began Empyreal Press in Montreal in the early 1990s; with bravado and a belief in the importance of poetry they published each volume of The Shadow Trilogy. I would like to thank Endre Farkas and Gordon Shillingford for offering their support through the Muses’ Company. Finally, I would also like to thank the Canada Council for writing time during two grants, and for project grants in support of individual books.

Stephen Morrissey
Vancouver, British Columbia
August 7, 1998

Review of James Hollis's Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life

Finding Meaning in The Second Half of Life: How to Finally, Really Grow Up
James Hollis, Ph.D.
Gotham Books, New York
276 pages, ISBN 1-592-40207-0


Review by Stephen Morrissey

James Hollis's new book, Finding Meaning in The Second Half of Life: How to Finally, Really Grow Up, begins with the premise that while the first half of life is outer directed, such as to building a family life, or owning property, or being employed, the second half is more inner or spiritually directed. As we age, if we have not done the important work of examining our life, we may one day find ourselves in the "swampland" of life's second half. At that time there is an urgency to deal with our psychology, as confused, alienated, and fragmented as it may be.

Hollis asks, in a series of spiritually and psychologically probing questions that open the book, "Why is the life you are living too small for the soul's desire?" Hollis writes: "As Jung once put it humorously, we all walk in shoes too small for us. Living within a constricted view of our journey, and identifying with old defensive strategies, we unwittingly become the enemies of our own growth, our own largeness of soul, through our repetitive history-bound choices."

Why do we keep wearing shoes that are too small? One reason lies in our belief in "the false self" which encompasses "the values and strategies we have derived from internalizing the dynamics of our family and our culture." Our too small shoes keep us from stepping "into the largeness that the soul expects and demands." We know the signs of the soul being denied. There may be a depression, often treated relatively inexpensively by medication, but not treated deeply or thoroughly. There may be a problem with addiction, or an awareness of psychological complexes.

In the chapter on "The Dynamics of Intimate Relationship" Hollis discusses romantic love and marriage. It is a fairly bleak discussion of something that is supposed to bring us great happiness and fulfillment but is all too often filled with fantasy, complexes, transference, projection, and the desire to find the "magical other" or the person "who will truly understand us, take care of us, meet our needs, repair the wounds, and ... spare us the burden of growing up and meeting our own needs."

We live in a world that idealizes romantic love; indeed, we believe it can fulfill many of our needs, especially those in life's first half when it is only natural to want to have a partner and family, to fulfill ourselves in our careers, and to work for something greater than our individual selves. However, Hollis contends that we place a greater emphasis on the importance of the romantic relationship than it can fulfill. Central to his thinking is an emphasis on living as authentically as possible to the soul's purpose; unfortunately, romantic love may not be the fulfillment of this purpose, and Hollis seems to contend that it may also be the negation of it. The important thing, for Hollis, is not romantic involvement, which sometimes ends up as simply being an expression of co-dependence and a fear of being alone. Hollis suggests that we continue on our journey of self-understanding, and then, possibly, we will find that we are more tolerant and loving of others. "It is love not only of the other, but love of this life, this journey, and love of this task of soul." It is difficult to disagree with Hollis without appearing naïve, but I am not totally convinced by Hollis's argument which seems overly pessimistic. Sometimes even a bad romantic relationship can be a vehicle for waking up to the psychological complexity of life, and when better to wake up than the first half of life?

Our experience of family changes after mid-life. Some marriages collapse after the children have left home. They may have been a diversion or buffer, allowing the parents to continue to co-habit but also a means for couples to avoid relating to each other. A pathology in the family that Jung identified, and which Hollis discusses in this book and in his previous books, exists in the relationship of some parents and their children. It is the important observation that some children are burdened with "the unlived life of the parents." This refers to the parents' failure to reflect on their own life, to "finally, really grow up." Inevitably, the children will have to do the inner work that the parents never dealt with. Subsequently, Hollis writes, because "The parent has stopped growing, is intimidated by fear, is unable to risk, that model, that constriction, that denial of soul will be internalized by the child."

In the last chapter of this book, "The Healing of the Soul," Hollis answers the series of questions he presented at the very beginning of the book. Healing the soul can be the work of psychology, as Hollis feels it must be, for the etymology of "psychology" refers to "psyche" or the soul. The soul is a subject that religion has traditionally dealt with and psychology has avoided as unscientific or in the jurisdiction of organized religion. There is, Hollis writes, "A mystery so profound that none of us really seems to grasp it until it has indisputably grasped us..." This mystery is "that some force transcendent to ordinary consciousness is at work within us to bring about our ego's overthrow... That force...is the Self, the architect of wholeness, which operates from a perspective larger than conventional consciousness." The Self is a spiritual aspect to our totality as human beings; the Self seeks wholeness and life affirmation despite the psychic fragmentation we experience. A dream, and the understanding of the dream, that leads to a greater understanding of some aspect of our life is an expression of the Self.

James Hollis's book, intended for a mass market, is an introduction to only some aspects of C.G. Jung's work; for instance, there is little or no mention of the shadow, anima and animus, or other discoveries that Jung made in his long career. Nevertheless, for many people, James Hollis's Finding Meaning in The Second Half of Life: How to Finally, Really Grow Up is an excellent place to begin this important journey into the second half of life.

Published: The C.G. Jung Society of Montreal Newsletter, November 2006

Note: Read other reviews of books by James Hollis reviewed here, do a search on this blog.

Notes on The Mystic Beast (1997)

The Mystic Beast, 1997

I first discovered the sculpture that I call “The Mystic Beast” (The Mystic Beast, Empyreal Press, Montreal 1997) around 1994 at Vancouver’s Museum of Anthropology, a museum that is largely dedicated to the art of First Nations people in British Columbia. He (the sculpture) was in a room just after the main hall as one enters the museum, placed off to one side near a window, so he is easily missed. In fact, the sculpture is a Northwest coast Nimpkish wood sculpture of a human figure, made around 1893. When I first saw him, I felt as though I had met my doppleganger; however, instead of a human double, it was an inanimate object.

I think CZ and I both immediately recognized the facial similarity that I shared with the Mystic Beast, but it was more than the expression on the face, it was also spiritual. I knew the meaning of his expression—so indicative of how I felt in life—for it showed my inner being: it was the face of an introvert trapped in a room full of extroverts; it was the face of one who is more at home being alone than with other people. It is a curious and rare experience to find a visual expression of one’s inner being, of one’s identity as a human being; he did not represent my persona, but the private face of the condition of my soul, he was the face of my Shadow.

The “Shadow” contains the aspects of our psychology that we reject, deny having, are afraid to face, and so on. They may be parts of our psychology too hurtful for us to deal with, that we would prefer to forget, or it might consist of taboo behaviour, or other aspects of ourselves that we consider too dark and disturbing to acknowledge. What we forget is that the Shadow is full of energy, think of the energy we’ve all used to deny or hide our Shadow; we sometimes project what we don’t like about ourselves onto other people and demonize them; we may go to great lengths and spend many years avoiding the Shadow; we may adopt a new persona (for instance, one that is light and lively) to hide behind, rather than investigate our own inner darkness. I am reminded of the phrase, “the bigger the sun, the bigger the darkness” and how this so often gives an accurate insight into some of the people we meet. However, there is gold in the Underworld; there is light in the darkness; there is redemption from our past; there is a voice of witness reminding us what we need to remember; there is poetry in life’s journey. So, it was epiphanous to find a sculpture, in a museum in Vancouver, representing my inner being, and I associated my Shadow with the sculpture.

                                

At the time when I visited the Museum of Anthropology, I was working on a manuscript of poems entitled The Mystic Beast, the final book in my Shadow Trilogy, and I thought of the sculpture as my twin Mystic Beast. I thought of him as having a similar psychology as myself and there he was, staring at me, or staring off into space. He is physically larger than life size, in fact much larger than he appears in most photographs, and the artist who made him caught perfectly an expression of psychological depth that, I feel, is rare in art found anywhere. When The Mystic Beast was published in 1997, the cover art was by Ed Varney who made an incredible drawing of the face of this sculpture, as can be seen above. A French translation by Élizabeth Robert, entitled La bete mystique (Editions Triptyque, Montreal, 2004) has an equally remarkable cover image, but it is not of the Mystic Beast in Vancouver. (You can see a photograph of The Mystic Beast on the home page of my poetry website, as well as elsewhere in this blog.)

In the prologue to The Mystic Beast, I refer to Edvard Munch’s famous painting “The Scream,” which is a work of art of depth and profound anguish, and iconic, but different than the Mystic Beast. On one hand, Munch’s painting is a scream of life denial emanating from the human soul in the darkness of a world that seems to lack redemption and grace. On the other hand, the Mystic Beast is more of a subversive presence, one that is apparently resigned to the way things are but is also aware that there is epiphany and grace, and life affirmation, in the very midst of a society and life gone wrong:

Here is darkness,

here the place

where waves are black

and the wind howling

through trees is a cry:

one thinks of Edward Munch,

the soul become a sheet

in the wind; have I left

a pile of skulls,

a dying heart

where it lies in my chest

as in a desert, tormented

by the sun and wind?

Here is title poem of the collection:

The Mystic Beast

1. The Invention of the Mirror


How could this be me

what I see as myself,

meeting what is

not me

but someone else:

a doppleganger passing

in the street, a twin

I was separated from

at birth, a part

of me divided

and gone,

as though

I lost my shadow

and must stay indoors

to avoid the sun.

The mirrored image

of my right hand

as I raise it

seems to be

my right hand,

but in the mirror

if my right hand is holding a book

the words are reversed—

who we are,

we never see

what we’ve become—

unless a mirror

in which nothing

could be invented

is reversed, words

read as words,

then we could see

for the first time

in human history

our true selves;

meeting ourselves

as others see us

not reversed or backwards.




2. The Mystic Beast

Arriving on the west coast,

I find the perfect image

of myself, a wooden

statue staring

at nothingness

in a museum:

he is the mystic

beast—not reversed

in a mirror,

not divided by life—

but the single

essence of who

I am. This image

is not reversed

by fortune or glass,

silver or animation,

but the inner being

so long separated:

my own face

and body frozen

in time and regret.

It is the unreconstructed

self found at last,

like finding a cousin

or brother, the true

brother of light

and camaraderie

who holds

my arm and announces

the birth of poetry,

the beginning of light,

the conclusion of silence.

It is my self

I find, my lost twin,

the inner being

I was and am,

who escaped

long ago and

disappeared,

a face encountered

in a mirror without

distortion by depression

or a concave in which

I slip into silence;

not the face seen

reflected in store

windows, the one

caught in peripheral

vision looking afraid

and alone, but an image

of one born in Heaven,

who fell to earth

from the clouds

and landed among

strangers. I searched

almost half a century

until now

when I meet myself,

I finally step out

of the mirror

as out of my body

my skin like clothes,

my face a mask,

my shadow

disappearing in light,

my true self

before and after

my birth and death.


(Stephen Morrissey, The Mystic Beast, Empyreal Press, Montreal 1997;


ISBN 0-921852-16-9; The Shadow Trilogy, including The Compass (1993) and The Yoni Rocks (1995), was published by Empyreal Press in Montreal.)

Notes on The Yoni Rocks (1995)

The Yoni Rocks, 1995

Ed Varney’s cover art for The Yoni Rocks (Empyreal Press, Montreal, 1995) is an image of the Venus of Willendorf, a small sculpture of a round shaped woman with big breasts and braided hair that is approximately 25,000 years old; this artifact from our prehistoric past has become famous since it was discovered in Austria early in the 20^th Century. The quotation at the beginning of The Yoni Rocks, taken from H.I. Austen’s fascinating book, The Heart of the Goddess, will better help to define the meaning of Yoni: “In Sanskrit, Yoni means ‘womb, vulva, place of birth source, origin, abode, home, nest; family, race, caste.’ It derives from a root word which means ‘to join together.’... For how can we love life if we do not love the yoni, the doorway through which all life passes?”

The Yoni Rocks has two sections, “The Yoni Rocks” and “The Heart of the Goddess.” These poems are concerned with the anima, the feminine part of the male psyche. The whole book is a hymn to the feminine, to the Yoni, to the unifying aspect of life. The title comes from a photograph in which some rock formations became a natural visual representation of the Yoni, so there was also the juxtaposition of something hard and ancient, rock, with something living, giving birth to life, and sexuality, the Yoni.

The Yoni Rocks begins with the funeral of one of my aunts, and then moves to memories of my paternal grandmother and her home, and the many things “home” represents: the feminine, nurturing, comfort, and so on. This is the divine feminine, but the feminine can also be dark, constrictive, and destructive; just read some poets’ work on their mothers. There is also the river, and the metaphorical qualities of rivers, that the same river cannot be stepped into twice, and so on. The second section of the book deals almost exclusively with romantic and sexual love, the meeting and relationship of the two sexes. Romantic love is, indeed, one of the most profound experiences that humans can have, whether it is ultimately positive or negative, for we abnegate our ego when it happens.

Another poem in The Yoni Rocks is about my paternal grandmother who will always have a special place in my heart and psyche. I often visit my grandmother’s home—on Girouard Avenue in Montreal, where she lived for forty years—in dreams or drive passed on my way to work. When I was a child my family lived for two years at Grandmother’s Girouard Avenue flat because my father was not well. Later, I had many happy days when I would visit my grandmother and her two old sisters, my great aunts Essie and Edna. Her home is the psychic center of my imagination and she, herself, is someone I loved dearly. For me, Girouard Avenue is the home of the Grand Mother, a place of ancestors, love and kindness, and the beginning of my journey in life.

As well, and of enormous importance in my life, has been my relationship with CZ who returned me to life, who animated me, after years of not being fully alive. The Yoni Rocks is dedicated to “the three important women in my life: my grandmother, my mother, and my wife.” Whether for good or otherwise, knowing these three women has made my life the journey that it has been and still is. Knowing CZ, my wife, is something that doesn’t need to be discussed here but is celebrated in the following poem, also in The Yoni Rocks:

Reincarnation

1.

We meet again, again flesh

and blood, again bone, tendon

and memory. Events of old lives,

clothes divested as I divested

the past in meeting you,

in meeting you again

and again and again

into infinity.

Forty years of waiting for you,

a dark delirium of the soul;

we met apparently for the first time

but home is where we are together

in this room, this house,

the two square feet we occupy

in a single embrace. The embrace

of memory, bred in muscle, eating

or favouring one side in sleep,

falling asleep in your arms.

The arms of many births,

deaths, incarnations of

gods and goddesses,

Bardic voices, Druid's potion.

Listen, we share the sounds and sights

of a summer's evening, fireflies

across a field seeming

distant but as close as

a hand before your eyes,

breath on the back of your neck,

or is it the darkened field

and firefly lights

repeating their journey

between this life and that?

With you I have

returned home, not a place

walls enclosing silence,

but soul meeting soul

in the ancient movement of time.

I lie asleep on the floor

ear pressed to the darkness

and hear the hum of earth,

the generations of families, priests,

and existence of all living things

like listening, ear to a pregnant

woman's belly, baby's rapid

heart beat; shadows fall hundreds

of feet, listen into the soul

of man preparing for its journey

of final sleep, we came

from here and return, forgetful

of our origins, or of the

father and mother who created us.

Here is the title poem of The Yoni Rocks:

The Yoni Rocks

Who would deny us the Yoni rocks,

who would keep us from

hearing Mother's voice?

Who would deny us death,

the rocks that are tombstones:

father's grave lies bare,

a rectangle of grass where

soil separates us; it is more

than soil, but time,

sorrow, and grief.

The men I never knew, Father,

stepfather, my father's father,

the others distant.

So now I return to mother,

returning home, the hidden dream

of home. It is from the mother

that we come, to the earth

that we return. Cleft-divided,

rocks in the hot sunlight

by the ocean, where the iguana

are motionless.

I am drawn to her presence, to

a hymn to woman,

birth, death, the goddess

coming from the earth

and moon, held captive

in moonlight, a perfect

roundness of completion.

She is my seed and bone, my

entrance into life; age four

I lay between my parents,

Father asleep, and Mother,

smiling, said "kiss your

father." Later I slept

with Grandmother and Aunt Mable

at their country home,

lay between them, my head

at their feet making room

for three in one bed. We are three,

a trinity of man, woman,

and child.

Vulva shaped rocks,

the Yoni Rocks, shells,

clams moving on the river's

sandy floor leaving

a trail twisting, straight,

or circular in the sand;

the sun entering the sky

from beneath trees

on the horizon. Mother

is the most beautiful

woman I remember thinking,

long brunette hair, as I lay

in a pram on Girouard Avenue

just a hundred feet

from Grandmothers's flat,

living there when Father

was ill. Mother

was the most beautiful woman

to the child who lay

staring at her as though

only we existed, no other existed

in that enclosure of mother, father

and child. So now I seek to lie

beside you, fear losing you,

as I have been left before.

Now the Yoni Rocks

are a doorway

to the inner life,

as before conception

and birth, before emerging into life

in blood and salt and air;

always fearing the return,

dissolution into nothingness

and fear.

2.

Our ship did not break like waves

on these rocks, rocks that gave us

life; these rocks were stars,

meteors fallen in the night

waiting to cool from their

entry to our world, we saw

them lie almost invisible

half buried in sand and water

cooling in the summer night.

White caps are an old

woman's white hair, twisted

and tied into a bun, faces

seen in clouds when a child,

a horse pulling a milk wagon

on Oxford Avenue in 1957,

Archibald Lampman's:

Tonight the very horses springing by

Toss gold from whitened nostrils,

moved by these lines age sixteen.

Who would deny us the Yoni rocks,

who would deny us poetry, the intimate

square feet we inhabit,

a rectangle of grass, a triangle

of birth, the brown mouse

and codfish, separation

and reunion, sky and earth,

northern lights in July when sailing

at 2 a.m., fireflies on a June evening

when out for a walk with you?

We return to ourselves, to the

woman a man is always beside, or

the man the woman is beside.

Who would deny us hearing Mother's

voice, your touch, or the silent

presence of Grandmother

always with me, always close

with her white hair, cotton

print dress and black shoes,

not a farewell

but this presence ending grief.

(Stephen Morrissey, The Yoni Rocks, Empyreal Press, Montreal 1995; ISBN 0-921852-07-X; The Shadow Trilogy, including The Compass (1993) and The Mystic Beast (1997), was published by Empyreal Press in Montreal.)