Episode 74: A Luminous Parasite: Jung on Art, Part Two

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel — Wed, 27 May 2020 13:30:00 -0400

In this second part of their exploration of C. G. Jung's essay "On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry," JF and Phil try to discern the psychological and metaphysical implications of the great Swiss psychologist's theory of art. For one, this involves discussing what Jung meant by archetypes, and how these relate to the artists who bring them forth in artistic works. This in turn leads to a discussion of the emergent artwork as an "autonomous complex," that is, as a self-moving spirit that requires the artist merely as a conduit for its manifestation in human -- and cosmic -- history.

REFERENCES

Carl Gustav Jung, "On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry"
Arthur Machen, "Hieroglyphics: A Note Upon Ecstasy"
Rick Riordan, [Percy Jackson & the Olympians](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Jackson%26_the_Olympians)_ series of novels
Robert Altman (director), Nashville
Homer, The Odyssey
Jacques Offenbach, The Tales of Hoffmann
E. T. A. Hoffmann, "The Sandman"
David Lynch, American filmmaker (the Dionysian!)
Stanley Kubrick, American filmmaker (the Apollonian!)
Richard Wagner's idea of Gesamtkunstwerk
William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch
Johannes Vermeer, Woman Holding a Balance, and JF's analysis thereof
Lisa Ruddick, "When Nothing is Cool"
Weird Studies episode 5: Reading Lisa Ruddick's "When Nothing is Cool"

Episode 73: Carl Jung and the Power of Art, Part One

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel — Wed, 13 May 2020 11:30:00 -0400

This is the first of two conversations that Phil and JF are devoting to C. G. Jung's seminal essay, "On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry," first delivered in a 1922 lecture. It was in this text that Jung most clearly distilled his thoughts on the power and function of art. In this first part, your hosts focus their energies on Jung's puralistic style, opposing it not just to Freud's monism (which Jung critiques in the paper) but also to the monism of those other two "masters of suspicion," Marx and Nietzsche. For Jung, art is not a branch of psychology, economics, philosophy, or science. It constitutes its own sphere, and non-artists who would investigate the nature of art would do well to respect the line that art has drawn in the sand. Weird Studies listenters will know this line as the boundary between the general and the specific, the common and the singular, the mundane and the mystical...

REFERENCES

C. G. Jung, "On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry"
Joshua Gunn, Modern Occult Rhetoric: Mass Media and the Drama of Secrecy in the Twentieth Century
Peter Kingsley, Catafalque: Carl Jung and the End of Humanity
Sigmund Freud, Austrian psychologist
Kinka Usher (director), Mystery Men
Theodor Adorno, “Bach Defended Against his Devotees”
Aleister Crowley, English magician
C. G. Jung, The Red Book: Liber Novus
Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth
C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections
C. G. Jung, The Portable Jung
Friedrich Nietzsche, "On the Use and Abuse of History for Life" in: Untimely Meditations
Weird Studies, episode 49: Nietzsche on History
Weird Studies, episode 70: Masks All the Way Down, with James Curcio
Christian Kerslake, Deleuze and the Unconscious
Joshua Ramey, The Hermetic Deleuze: Philosophy and Spiritual Ordeal
Paul Ricoeur, French philosopher
Rudolph Steiner, Austrian esotericist

Weird Studies - Episodes Tagged with “Jung”

Episode 74: A Luminous Parasite: Jung on Art, Part Two

Episode 73: Carl Jung and the Power of Art, Part One