Trust and Betrayal/Odyssey 2010

Newsletter 2010

Trust and Betrayal: Dawnings of Consciousness

Jungian Odyssey, 2010, Volume III

Editors: Stacy Wirth, Isabelle Meier, John Hill

New Orleans, LA: Spring, 2011

The latest in the peripatetic Jungian Odyssey series, published by Spring Journal and Books, was held at Gersau, Switzerland in the spring of 2010, and addresses the complex subject of trust and betrayal. The editors inform us that Gersau’s idyllic-looking Rütli meadow suggests “a temenos of primal trust.” However, this impression belies the murderous revolt allegedly led by William Tell in 1291 against foreign oppressors, a founding moment of the Swiss confederation.

A disturbing echo occurred in 1941 when the Swiss were faced with another menace from outside their borders. The editors question whether the stories told of loyalty and courage at that time were not in fact a disguise for a troubling collaboration with the Nazi regime.

Murray Stein opens with an allusion to the financial crisis that was under way in 2010. A reference to Standard and Poor’s and other credit rating agencies and their collusion with banks provides an initial chill to the reading. However betrayal of trust began long before bankers ruled the markets. Judas was infamous for his betrayal and the Church has been struggling with a notorious history of betrayal by its priests of the trust put in them.

Stein’s emphasis is on Jung’s treatment of Job. Stein asks why this book was even included in the wisdom literature if it portrays a god who is so capricious and even cruel! He presents the core question addressed in his volume: Is betrayal necessary for the attainment of wisdom? He suggests that a consciousness based on belief is only a preliminary step to a consciousness based on knowledge (and experience).

In Jung’s clinical diagnosis of God, He was the betrayer and ought to be judged! Victor White, an Anglican priest and Jung’s interlocutor for several years, naturally took exception to Jung’s judgments. Jung concluded that in order for God to know what suffering is, he had to manifest as Christ. Foremost, man needed “consciousness … individual responsibility and … maturity.” And “a less naïve view of God.” (p. 13)

Diane Cousineau-Brutsch considers the Book of Job a symbolic account of the ego in relation to the Self in which, ultimately, the ego must adopt an “affirmation/surrender” attitude. This comes only from “the soul and the ego’s willingness to obey its voice.” In so doing “... an unconditional acceptance of reality widens the inner space and allows the psyche to unfold freely its full potential.” (p. 23)

The Hebrew Bible is also the source of John Desteian’s essay on the Akedah, the binding of Isaac, the Ur-story of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, “which built their notions of trust, loyalty, submission, and betrayal (of god).” (p. 27) He cites Midrashic accounts in which Abraham once smashed the idols of his father Terah as a mythic example of the problematizing of god. “Being-in-the–world–fully-exposed” requires a trust that eases our distress. Our consciousness necessarily moves from mythic to religious forms, from external sources to internal self-consciousness to modern ???

Donald E. Kalsched presents an eloquent interpretation of Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince. People who have suffered childhood trauma unconsciously build inner sanctuaries to protect them from further trauma. This condition suggests other worlds, other planets apart from this world. For the therapist “what has been broken relationally must be repaired relationally” (p. 52)

Like the character in the book, a modern “little prince” cannot live “between worlds.” He must find a way to heal the split between the “magical world of childhood” and the sensible adult world. The grief the prince experiences as he suffers the loss of his innocence is somewhat offset by the glimpses of beauty that he can apprehend. He comes to realize that “it is only with one’s heart that one can see clearly.” According to Kalsched, the purpose of therapy is to allow the heart to once again open, releasing the traumas of childhood and the defences erected to protect innocence. “We must let the innocent part of us suffer in order to grow a soul.”

Deborah Egger-Biniores presents the Garden of Eden and the Judas story as examples of the inextricable link between trust and betrayal. She relates this mythic layer of psyche to some dramatic choices she made in her personal life. “For real psychological development we have to continually… live the pain and shame of being forced to face our true selves.” (p. 75)

Allan Guggenbühl proposes that trust is a prerequisite in providing a safe space for therapy to succeed and empathy a crucial attitude. However the therapist can sometimes better serve as an irritant and tester of reality than an abettor of self-image. “Therapeutic work is full of traps and entails an indeterminate struggle with delusion, infatuations, and deceptions.” (p. 88) Humility is required. In conclusion he ponders: “… when is it better to support our patients’ repression–their self-betrayal, if you will–because it is a necessity that enables them to keep their lives in reasonable balance?” (p. 89)

Joanne Wieland-Burston presents the issue of German clients still disturbed by their relationship with their grandparents two generations after the Second World War. She contrasts the loving relationships these grandchildren had with their grandparents with what was later revealed to be the dark details of what many of these clients’ grandfathers did during the Nazi regime. Oddly the grandmothers were rarely incriminated by the younger generation. Guilt and shame still haunt the descendants whose identity has been shaken by betrayal of their innocent childhoods.

Judith H. Savage presents four influential women in Jung’s life who, she argues, were betrayed in various ways by him – his cousin Hélène Preiswerk, Frank Miller, Sabina Spielrein, and Antonia Wolff. Savage suggests that Jung felt little remorse for the way he left these women in his wake in pursuit of his career and his ideas. She concludes that their lives were “each lost as the objects of Jung’s projections, subsumed as the proofs to his theories, encased in his secret guilty and personal failings.” (p. 112)

Christian Roesler reminds us of the vital importance of working on relationships. He notes the fateful ways psyche brings people, allowing two individuals to further their development. Conflicts that arise in couples from projection and blame (splitting) can be seen through therapy as a common unconscious seeking to work through unresolved issues. Conflict can, after all, be “fertile soil for individuation.”

Robin Van Loben Sels introduces us to Angus, the Celtic god of poetry, love, and dreams and emphasizes the importance of story and story-telling. Both personally and collectively she maintains that we exist in two worlds – the world of the living and the world of the dead, the human world and the animal world, etc. She suggests that Angus …”personifies our feeling desire to bend our attention toward a dawning sense of self and soul that not only happens through loving and dreaming but, more importantly, happens through submitting to the experience of mystery that is inherent in the two domains.” (p. 137) Her amplification of his story is rich and well-told but does not seem to bear on the theme of trust and betrayal. It does point to the vital importance dreams, story, and myth play in cultures far and wide. The author also gathered dreams from participants to this Odyssey event as if in tribute to the god and to the creative force expressed by dreams; she includes a sample in this volume.

Doris Lier concludes the book with an essay on Trust, Betrayal and Laughter, an incongruous title. She reminds us that just as trickery played a large role in Odysseus’s journey, laughter is a uniquely human quality. Aristotle wrote that it distinguishes us from the animals. It is “the salt in the soup,” sometimes resulting from “a moment of self-recognition or discovery of new truth.” (p. 165)

–Murray Shugar