AuthorLeif Frenzel

Leif Frenzel is a writer and independent researcher. He has a background in philosophy, literature, music, and information technology. His recent interest is Jungian psychology, especially synchronicities and the relationship between consciousness and the unconscious.

Independent reality: active and passive, inner and outer

When Jung insists on the reality of the psyche, the emphasis is not on experience-independent existence, on continuity and re-identification. Instead, what seems to be important to him is that there are factors in the psyche which act autonomously (independent of the conscious perception and will of any individual person), and which are effective in producing psychological change — they manage to...

Independent reality: material and psychological

I have started exploring the notion of an objective and independent reality (beginning with the connected idea of individuation, as it is used in philosophy); but it will perhaps be helpful to pause and consider why this is relevant to a discussion of Jungian metaphysics. The point of departure is twofold: one is the question of the interiority of psychology and its relation to the “external”...

Individuation: simple things

The term “individuation” has a rather particular meaning in Jung, when he talks about the “individuation process”. Elsewhere, primarily in philosophy, it is used somewhat differently. Let’s explore the differences. 1. To begin with, in philosophical discussions the question is framed more broadly: it’s not just persons who are individuated, but really anything at all. Imagine two fresh and...

Positionings: with (and away from) the tradition

Much of the thinking on this blog starts from within a tradition in 20th century thought which we might call broadly “Jungian” or “archetypal”. This tradition is generally characterized as a psychology, originating from Freudian psychoanalysis, but distancing itself from the reductionism and scientism of the latter by bringing in more mystical, hermeneutical, and existential elements. Calling it...

Jung-Hillman metaphysics

A metaphysical theory is an account of which kinds of thing exist in the world and how they interact. Theories like that are generally considered to be a branch of philosophy; and especially when concerned just with kinds of existing things, they are also called ontologies. The aim of philosophy, abstractly formulated, is to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang...

The suddenly felt presence of the other “me”

What turns out to be the love of his life — to his own retrospective surprise, as we learn from the famous last sentence of the book — builds gradually over a number of stages, the first of which seem so innocuous that for quite a while we’re left wondering whether we’re already in the main narrative or still on a tangent. Swann himself appears to be on the same tentative track, until something...

Précis of “The mirror theory of eros”

I have referred to the mirror theory of eros once or twice now, but I realize that my argument regarding that view is somewhat scattered around this blog. Here is a précis that should help keeping the main points in mind. When a person is infatuated, a cluster of psychological contents which are all related to the love object forms, called a phantasma. The phantasma must partly be understood in...

Consciousness cannot be unconscious (not even under a projection)

Before we can go deeper into the notion of sharing (or, alternately, mirroring) psychological contents between the personified functions who produce them and the ego who becomes aware of them, we have to address another potential circularity — and this one is even more subtle. In my last post, I twice compared the false perspective of the ego with the more complicated reality we realized from the...

If you’re not the one who sees, then you can’t be shown, either

I recently looked at an interesting meditation from tantric Buddhism, as described by Jung: a meditation which works by visualizing one’s psychological functions as separate personified figures. In Jungian terminology (though Jung himself didn’t put it that way) we might call this “withdrawing projections from the ego”. Now with respect to the particular example we looked at (namely: the sense...

Tantric meditation and the spiritual mirrors of the Renaissance

Just as a side-note, I’m going to point out a few interconnections. In my last post, I started looking at a technique of “withdrawing projections from the ego”, found in a meditation from tantric Buddhism as described by Jung in his lectures: a meditation which works by visualizing one’s psychological functions as separate personified figures. There is an interesting connection here with an...

Leif Frenzel is a writer and independent researcher. He has a background in philosophy, literature, music, and information technology. His recent interest is Jungian psychology, especially synchronicities and the relationship between consciousness and the unconscious.

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