Pathways Into the Jungian World by Brooke Roger

Author:Brooke, Roger [ROGER BROOKE]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
Published: 2011-07-31T16:00:00+00:00

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

Existential phenomenology is at often its best when it questions once again phenomena that are enigmatic not because of their remoteness but because of their proximity. Remembering and forgetting are a case in point. The fallibility of memory is taken for granted, and memories are too quickly discussed in terms of neurology (“traces”), their relationship to factual histories (“recovered memories”), or their over-determined falsifications (“false-memory syndrome”). Any competent analyst or psychotherapist comes to sit comfortably with deep uncertainties surrounding memory, even as it is at the center of analytic work (perhaps reconstructively through the transference). We are tempted to say that memories are a “mixture” of historical fact, primitive fantasy, transference derivatives, and so on. But few of us have taken up the question of what memories are as memories. This is Charles Scott’s question.

In the Introduction to Being and Time Heidegger writes that phenomenology is ontology. This is true in Scott’s hands too. He uses the kind of archetypal amplification that is familiar to Jungian readers—in this case Mnemosyne, Lethe, and Hermes—and for this reason gently seduces us into feeling we are on secure and familiar ground. But if his immediate concern—his method—is an archetypal phenomenology of memory, his goal is to invite a rigorous meditation through the mystery of “forgetfulness” to ontological questions about what it means to have memories at all, to think theoretically, to have a sense of self, and to be human. It becomes clearer, I think, that the profound uncertainties with which we are left can not be placated.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.