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...
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...
When I wrote about projection and the mirror of Narcissus last week, I realized there is a hidden connection between some of the topics I recently discussed: the neo-Platonic mirror theory of eros, and Jung's notion of spirit.
If the mirror in the Narcissus myth stands for a "projection" which is dangerous, and should be avoided on pain of suffering Narcissus’ fate, then what exactly is it about "projection" which makes it so risky?
1. Suppose a subject becomes enamoured with another person. In that situation, we can assume in the subject’s mind a cluster of ideas, perceptions, presumptions, etc., all of which have the other person (the “love object”) as their content in some way. For example, there may be memories (“When we first met, she looked like this …”), general ascriptions of personality (“He’s a very attentive...
[Note: This post has been superseded by an updated and more integrated article.] ‘Mirror’ is one of Durrell’s words; mirrors are one of his images: they appear throughout the Alexandria tetralogy, in various functions. 1. When the narrator’s relationship with Melissa starts, her previous lover is jealous (to the point of following him around with a pistol in his coat). The two men fall into a...
Part of the job, when researching an interesting phenomenon, is to build up a phenomenological pool: collect typical examples, interesting special cases, and fringe phenomena that may or may not be relevant in conjunction with our focus of interest. With synchronicities, there is an additional category in that pool to which we might pay some attention.
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.