{"id":1196,"date":"2018-08-25T10:47:36","date_gmt":"2018-08-25T10:47:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jungian.co.za\/?p=1196"},"modified":"2019-08-18T17:35:56","modified_gmt":"2019-08-18T17:35:56","slug":"an-essay-on-inner-and-outer-transformation-by-means-of-a-different-way-of-making-decisions-and-choices-leslie-zimmermann-accredited-jungian-analyst-johannesburg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jungian.co.za\/?p=1196","title":{"rendered":"An Essay On Inner And Outer Transformation By Means Of A Different Way Of Making Decisions And Choices| Leslie Zimmermann | Accredited Jungian Analyst | Johannesburg"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Nowhere are we closer to the sublime secret of all origination than in the recognition of our own selves, whom we always think we know already. Yet we know the immensities of space better than we know our own depths, where \u2013 even though we do not understand it \u2013 we can listen directly to the throb of creation itself. C. G. Jung. <\/strong><\/em><\/h2>\n

How could you creatively find solutions in your own everyday lives and relationships? How could you find greater well-being in body and mind? How could you understand something about the \u201cthe throb of creation\u201d in this sense? And how could you, as an agent in your own life \u2013 to whom your life matters \u2013 creatively take part in realizing your own depths? Some of the answers to these questions can be found in the stories of people who have gone before us, psychologists, neuroscientists and theorists, opening some of these doors by doing research over many years. Standing on their shoulders, I have also woven in some of my own thoughts and innovations on how you could make changes that could shift you toward a different way of living your life \u2013 a flourishing life.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Sean\u2019s Story<\/span><\/h2>\n

Sean is recognized as quick and intelligent at work and he\u2019s satisfied with his job \u2013 on the whole. Sometimes he feels a bit bored but then he takes on some extra work and that helps. His only complaint is that he feels he could earn more but he doesn\u2019t know how to go about doing something about this. He\u2019s often wondered whether he should change his job. He\u2019s a bit anxious that if he asks for a bigger increase than usual they\u2019ll just say no. Worst-case scenario, they might let him go. And then, the job market is depressed at the moment. What if he can\u2019t find a job? What if they pay him even less in a new job? What if he can\u2019t afford the repayments on his car if he earns less? At about this point in his thinking, Sean would typically just stop thinking about it. \u201cAt least I have a job. And my salary\u2019s not that bad. And if I feel bored, well, at least it’s a job.\u201d So, instead of speaking up, he\u2019d just keep quiet and carry on. He\u2019d leave it for another day \u2013 only to go through the same old reasoning process the next time he felt dissatisfied.<\/em><\/p>\n

His friends think Sean has done well in life. In fact, they are secretly envious of his success. Not all of them are able to afford his lifestyle. Some of them have to keep quite a tight budget. Strangely though, just out of the blue his friends think, he seems to be uncertain about things and instead of managing some of his situations as he usually does, he falls apart.<\/em><\/p>\n

What no one realized, because he kept it well hidden, was that Sean actually suffered from anxiety quite often \u2013 especially when he felt helpless. He\u2019d learned over the years that he had to do everything for himself. He\u2019d had little support while he was growing up. His parents had both worked full-time jobs and were always too tired to help him or advise him when they came home at night. Weekends were their time to relax, which made them even more unavailable. He’d had to figure out most things himself, which he did quite well because he was clever enough. But, there were always some things he couldn\u2019t manage alone and then, the feelings of helplessness and anxiety would overwhelm him. He still suffers strong anxiety to this day when he feels helpless. For Sean, the better alternative now is to simply opt out when this happens. Better to say nothing and keep the fa\u00e7ade going\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

How had this come about? If Sean\u2019s parents had helped him to find creative solutions to his bigger, more difficult problems while he was growing up, he would have learned how to do this from them. He would have gradually learned how to do this for himself as he matured. It would have been that simple. \u201cOh really!\u201d you might think. \u201cYou can\u2019t blame everything on your parents. Sean should pull himself together now. Just sort it. After all, he\u2019s an adult now.\u201d But, if it were that easy, we\u2019d all be able to effortlessly \u201cfix\u201d our vulnerabilities once we\u2019ve grown up. We\u2019d all be happy, well-functioning humans. But, it\u2019s not as straightforward as that. Your own experience, and my experience as an analytical psychologist have witnessed this \u2013 time and again. Instead, to become that person you yearn to be is a hero\u2019s journey of traveling, step by step, from your current, familiar \u201cnot knowing\u201d towards something that is \u201cyet to be known.\u201d Sean’s journey needs to take him down the road of discovery where he will find that part of himself who can manage uncertain situations, instead of being overwhelmed by debilitating feelings of helplessness.<\/em><\/p>\n

What Sean needs on his journey toward flourishing is supportively expressed by Ant\u00f3nio Dam\u00e1sio when he writes, \u201cThe enrichment [of minds] came to include the ability to invent and produce intelligent creations, a process I like to call \u201ccreative intelligence\u201d and that is a step up from the smarts that enable numerous living organisms, including humans, to behave efficiently, quickly, and winningly in everyday life. Creative intelligence was the means by which mental images and behaviors were intentionally combined to provide novel solutions for the problems that humans diagnosed and to construct new worlds for the opportunities humans envisioned.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Toward your own journey of discovery and change<\/span><\/h2>\n

How many of you quietly struggle with a pocket of vulnerability, despite being well-functioning, or even high functioning in many areas of your lives? How many books have you read, and how many conversations with friends, or courses have you been on to try to remove this vulnerable \u201cspot?\u201d In Shakespeare\u2019s Macbeth, Lady Macbeth\u2019s problem illustrates how stubbornly these vulnerabilities, lying deep in our past can be. “Out, damn’d spot” she says as she washes her hands. But this not just a soup stain, or a coffee stain she\u2019s attempting to wash away, it is blood, psychological blood, a psychological demon, and it will not be removed by mere physical hand washing. Similarly, we try all manner of ways and means to remove that inner, psychological vulnerability \u2013 reasoning, reading, courses, detachment from the problem, ignoring it, revengeful actions, or bad decisions that damage our relationships. But these don’t remove it.<\/p>\n

Just how deeply and almost unreachable \u201cwhat we did not learn” and \u201cwhat we find difficult to access\u201d is expressed by Carl Jung when he writes, \u201cBeing inside or contained in something also suggests darkness, something nocturnal and fearful, hemming one in.\u201d With respect to this he notes that the mother-symbol can also point \u201cto a darker background which eludes <\/em>conceptual formulation and can only be vaguely apprehended as the hidden nature-bound life of the body.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

By \u201cnature-bound,\u201d and thus, unconscious with respect to his conscious personality, his aware mind, we can understand that in Sean\u2019s case, he would need to seek and find and develop his innate, but as yet unavailable capacity to manage uncertainty in order for it to become a part if his conscious personality, if it is to become something more than merely being an innate possibility, if it is to become a function he has conscious access to. In short, he needs to make that, which is unfamiliar into that, which is familiar.<\/em><\/p>\n

To seek this part of himself, to interlace it with the cloth of his being, is to embark on an amazing voyage during which a whole pattern, with all of its processes, becomes a conscious, readily accessed function. It would involve how to feel \u2013 that is, having the kind of emotions that are facilitative when faced with uncertainty, how to think and behave in complementary ways, how to articulate himself in a corresponding style, harmonizing his attitudes and beliefs to this pattern – if he is to change the structure of his vulnerability. At present, all of this is unavailable to him. It lies within his organism\u2019s innate dispositions, it is merely \u201cnature bound\u201d – inaccessible, inapproachable, a dusky, shadowy part, concealed in darkness. What is unconscious really is unconscious.<\/p>\n

Jung puts it this way. We are all born with unconscious, innate dispositions that is, all available human-specific possibilities \u2013 and their potential patterns with their processes, each one of us filling these out in a singular manner. This is an evolutionary adaptation. These possibilities fall on a continuum that includes their entire negative and all their positive eventualities. He writes that, these human-specific possibilities \u201cexist in the form of a kind of aptitude, disposition or capacity, capable of being represented in the person\u2019s psyche as an image.\u201d Neuroscience further clarifies that represented images are at base, neural images, neural maps, which are then experienced in “translated” form as images in our minds, in the form of verbal words or otherwise. Neuroscientifically, innate dispositions are firing potentials that have the possibility of representation. Similarly, Jung compares dispositional potentials to \u201cthe axial system of a crystal, which \u2026 performs the crystalline structure of the mother liquid, although it has no material existence of its own. This first appears according to the specific way in which the ions and molecules aggregate.\u201d<\/p>\n

With respect to our innate potentials, and comparing this to failures in parenting while growing up, Jung writes that the patterns and processes \u201cof the relationship of mother and infant include all the possible interactions that promote healthy psychic functioning: such as, feeling loved, safe, and secure.\u201d But, he adds, \u201cWhere the individual mother fails in this or that respect, in her personal relationship with her infant, a loss is felt.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0 He notes that when this happens, homeostasis, the imperative to survive and more than this, experiencing flourishing, \u201cmake an inner demand for fulfilment. The demand is felt as a longing and as an aching inner emptiness a hunger and thirst<\/em> that cannot be fulfilled\u201d (Jung, 2001).<\/p>\n

Here, Jung is telling us how to recognize<\/em> what the failure was. This is how we can know what we want and what we need to develop, as a new function, in our conscious personality. We recognize it by what we yearn<\/em> for.<\/p>\n

David Whyte writes, \u201cLonging has its own secret, future destination, and its own seasonal emergence from within, a ripening from the core, a seed growing in our own bodies; it is as if we are put into relationship with an enormous distance inside us leading back to some unknown origin with its own secret timing indifferent to our wills, and gifted at the same time with an intimate sense of proximity, to a lover, to a future, to a transformation, to a life we want for ourselves, and to the beauty of the sky and the ground that surrounds us.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In Sean\u2019s case, he longs to feel certain about his own ways of functioning, his own views, values, standpoints and arguments. He yearns for the ability to be able to contain the \u201cnot knowing\u201d \u2013 the uncertainty of outcomes. He longs to feel like an agent in his own life, who has the capacity to creatively come up with choices and solutions, to be able to weigh up possible consequences and to reflect on how he could manage the various outcomes \u2013 to his advantage. Instead of feeling helpless and incapacitated, he wants to be able to manage the difficulties and disappointments in his life.<\/em><\/p>\n

Neuroscience also gives us the thumbs up for the journey we embark on when we want to change our old ways of functioning. Specifically, this view notes that we can change our old, acquired ways of functioning because this is an evolutionary adaptation<\/em>. It thus tells us that if we work on, and modify an old, out-dated, learned way of functioning, success is possible. With regard to this, Damasio writes, \u201cThe acquisition of new knowledge is achieved by continuous modification of \u2026 dispositional representations.\u201d Change is possible because whatever we acquire by learning is \u201cobtained under the influence of dispositions that are innate.\u201d He adds that these innate dispositions are already “available to newborns” that is, we are so constituted from birth. Understanding the neuroscientific view of \u201cdispositions\u201d explains why it is a herculean feat to modify an old pattern. With respect to this, in the language of everyday parlance, we understand dispositions as, a person’s usual temperament or frame of mind. But underneath this definition, neuroscientists tell us what this means, what lies beneath from the perspective of brain functioning. Notably, \u201c\u2026a dispositional representation is a dormant firing potentiality which comes to life when neurons fire, with a particular pattern, at certain rates, for a certain amount of time, and toward a particular target which happens to be another ensemble of neurons\u201d (Damasio, 1994).<\/p>\n

But, while this is a support for change, it also tells us that a transformation will require some work. It requires that we modify an acquired neural pattern that has in all probability been reinforced countless numbers of time over the years.<\/p>\n

So, how could Sean go about actualizing and achieving what he yearns for? How is he to attend to the failure in parenting that he experienced? What can he do about the loss he experienced?<\/em><\/p>\n

In answer to these questions, even though Sean is not in therapy, there is a way that he could proceed, that could help him to change. It is a way in which anyone could proceed, whether you are in or out of therapy or, even if you have never been in therapy.<\/p>\n

As the business of change and transformation are an essential part of my work, I felt inspired to place these views, this research, and these theories into a format that could empower and facilitate change and thus, contribute toward transformation. The process below is about making a small, minor choice, decision, or change of attitude that is different <\/em>to your usual way of doing these. Some of the features I have added below reflect my own innovations. These are the steps of asking yourself \u201cwhat do I want<\/em>\u201d and the need for your decision or choice to reflect self-care.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>A process toward change \u2013 experiencing the \u201cthrob of creation\u201d<\/span><\/h2>\n
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  1. Make a <\/u><\/strong>small<\/u><\/strong><\/em>, minor new choice or decision – Adapted from the writings of Professor Jordan Peterson
    \n<\/u><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n