From my journal for May 8, 1996<\/p>\n
Woke early.\u00a0 <\/span>I have angry rejoinders to my brother going through my head, so thought I would just write them down.\u00a0 <\/span>Actually, I think he did me a service with his stupid, patronizing, officious letter because it\u2019s roused my own anger.\u00a0 <\/span>After the first bit of numb misery \u2014 I just wanted to die \u2014 I started fighting back and now I\u2019m actually feeling much better.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
My brother sent me a letter criticizing me in many ways. \u00a0I don’t know how he knew I was an Enneagram 4.<\/a>\u00a0I think I must have told him, because the types are determined by a long and personal questionnaire.<\/p>\n
\u201cthis is not easy reading.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>i.e. you are a coward if you won\u2019t read it.\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cfours are so self-involved, as a defense against emptiness which they equate with abandonment,\u201d \u00a0 <\/span>Wait a minute !\u00a0 <\/span>I really was<\/span> abandoned.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
After dealing with a lot more criticism, I finally say “this is all your imagination, it\u2019s your story<\/span> about me, it has no resemblance to my actual experience.” \u00a0I don’t remember if I ever actually said anything to him.<\/p>\n
So what have I been doing this winter?\u00a0 <\/span>[more anger at my brother]\u00a0 <\/span>\u2014 what was this winter all about, and the experience of extreme abandonment, isolation, hopelessness, terror, for which death appeared as an unattainable relief, what did all that mean<\/span>?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Interestingly I don’t mention the Paxil episode<\/a>, which was surely the most intense experience of the winter, and actually affected me into the summer when I began to be unable to sleep more than 90 minutes at a time, lost weight, and finally had to start taking a tranquilizer to calm myself down.<\/p>\n
But in May, I’m writing about interesting experiences that I’m having that I think are part of the “dark night of the soul.” \u00a0The “she” at the beginning is a writer named Penny Lewis.\u00a0I tried to track down Penny Lewis and her book, figuring she must have been a Jungian therapist, but only found one, who was much too young and whose book was published in 2013, much too late for me to have read it in 1996. A lot of what I quote sounds like a lot of what is described about \u201cdescent\u201d and \u201csoul” in Bill Plotkin’s book<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Later, she [Penny Lewis] quotes Jung as saying \u201cthe experience of the Self is always a defeat for the ego.\u201d p168 \u00a0 <\/span>I had trouble understanding his way of describing the process, but this last statement rings true.\u00a0 <\/span>It certainly describes my experience this last winter, and that gives me hope that what seems to be the death of the ego is in fact a door to the Self.\u00a0 <\/span>I\u2019ve read the paragraphs three times and they still don\u2019t make any sense to me except for the idea that the Self is much bigger than the ego (\u201call-encompassing\u201d) and forces it to confront \u201cproblems which it would like to avoid.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>and, I suppose, to which there is no solution within the domain of the ego.\u00a0 <\/span>But the Self has power to force a revolution which must happen in a different (and higher or wider) dimension, accordingly the ego must experience itself as the \u201cvictim\u201d of the Self.\u00a0 <\/span>Lewis says \u201cArchetypal energy will break loose archaic resistances in patients and free them to proceed further in their individuation process.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>p168\u00a0 <\/span>I surely hope this is true for me.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I simply don’t know if I was able to “proceed further in [my] individuation process.” Maybe I’ll find things as I go on reading my journal. Maybe it will turn out to be what I wrote in June 1996<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From my journal for May 8, 1996 Woke early.\u00a0 I have angry rejoinders to my brother going through my head, so thought I would just write them down.\u00a0 Actually, I think he did me a service with his stupid, patronizing, … Continue reading