The Soul’s Logical Life: Towards a Rigorous Notion of Psychology (Fifth edition revised and extended by an index)

C. G. Jung’s psychology was based on an authentic notion of soul, but this notion was only intuitive, implicit, not conceptually worked out. His followers forfeit his heritage, often turning psychology either into pop psychology or into a scientific, clinical enterprise. It is the merit of James Hillman’s archetypal psychology to have brought back the question of soul to psychology. But as imaginal psychology it cannot truly overcome psychology’s positivistic, personalistic bias that it set out to overcome. Its «Gods» can be shown to be virtual-reality type gods because it avoids the question of Truth. Through what logically is the movement of an «absolute-negative interiorization», alchemically a «fermenting corruption», and mythologically a Dionysian dismemberment, one has to go beyond the imaginal to a notion of soul as logical life, logical movement. Only then can psychology be freed from its positivism and cease being a subdivision of anthropology, and can the notion of soul be logically released from its attachment to the notion of the human being. Cover 1 Copyright Information 6 Contents 7 Preface 11 1. “No Admission!” The Entrance into Psychology and the Style of Psychological Discourse 15 a) The “who” of psychological discourse 19 b) The “how” of psychological discourse 27 c) The “what” of psychological discourse 34 2. Why JUNG? 41 a) The Notion of soul 41 b) The thinker 45 c) Implicit vs. explicit thought 47 d) The name, “JUNG,” as abbreviation for a body of thought 52 e) The advantage of implicit thought 54 3. JUNG: Rootedness in the Notion 57 a) The cat that is not a cat 57 b) From fiery liquid lava to crystallized stone. 62 c) Sublated science, sublated religion, sublated medicine 68 d) Facing “the whole” 74 e) The question of the age, the great riddle, the burden of the mind 76 4. Jungians: Immunity to the Notion and the Forfeit Heritage 81 a) Polemic against the general state of affairs in today’s conventional Jungianism 83 b) The Notionless conception of psychology 89 1. The miscellaneous aggregation of observations and ideas 89 2. Neutralization 92 3. The “eccentricity” of one’s standpoint 96 4. The eclecticistic fantasy of completeness 99 5. Archetypal Psychology or: Critique of the Imaginal Approach 105 a) The idea of “the human being who has such and such a consciousness” 109 b) Four presuppositions of truly psychological myth interpretation 111 1. The “allegorical” presupposition of myth interpretation 111 2. Excursus: Domesticated wilderness and pre-existence 117 3. The “tautological” presupposition of myth interpretation 121 4. Excursus: Is psychology the account we give of the soul’s life or the account we give of “people’s psychologies”? 125 5. The presupposition of the “self-sufficiency” of myths and fantasy images. 128 6. The presupposition of the difference between the “subjective” and the “objective” (“archetypal”) meaning of mythical images 128 c) Dissociation 131 d) Empty duplication 132 e) Imaginal psychology as ego-psychology 133 f) Excursus: Alchemy’s opus contra imaginationem 136 1. The negated and reflected image 136 2. The artifex: awareness of the subjectivity and the logical dimension of psychological reality 137 3. The compelling drive for an end-result 141 4. The chemistry of matter 143 5. The sought-for substances as the projected logical form. 148 6. Psychologism: JUNG’s regressive interpretation of alchemy 152 7. The mystification of the alchemical mystery 159 g) The inherent duplicity of the imaginal 163 h) “Likeness”: the false sense of continuity 167 1. Myth, the Gods or: abstract forms 168 2. Our afflictions or: psychological antiques 174 3. The relation of “resemblances” or: “the simple act of matching” 184 i) The “middle ground” or: stop-gap and hideout 189 j) Sublating psychology versus re-visioning psychology 193 6. Actaion and Artemis: The Pictorial Representation of the Notion and the (Psycho-) Logical Interpretation of the Myth 205 First determination: The hunter or: intentionality towards the Other 206 Second determination: The primal forest or: self-exposure to Otherness 207 Fourth determination: The epiphany of naked Artemis or: the revelation of the Other’s innermost truth 209 Third determination: The identity of kill and epiphany or: comprehending the Other 234 Fifth determination: Transformation or: comprehending one’s identity with the Other (= having been comprehended by the Other) 248 Sixth determination: Dismemberment or: the dissolution of Self (hunter) and Other (game) into Otherness as such (the Notion of the hunt/psychology) 257 7. Concluding Questions 279 References 281 Index 285 «... the most important Jungian book since James Hillman's 'Re-Visioning Psychology'». (Michael V. Adams in 'The Round Table Review')