Response to rubycona
rubycona made a post today that I'd like to address. However, since it's not clear how much of the entry is in her words (I think she might be quoting lupabitch's book when she gives her example) and I'd like the right people to read my response; since my response is likely to be rather long, and since I'll get lots of extra attention this way (:P), I decided to
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i just went to the toronto_occult community and clicked on the friends page to see what was going on in the everyday minds of a toronto occultist and your post was the very first to appear so i thought it was maybe fate.
long story short i am adding you as a friend.
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(The comment has been removed)
It isn't. That was my point: rubycona was suggesting that the archetypal overshadowing might have hindered her friend's healing, and I was saying that it might have actually helped.
is this actually a particularly unusual brand of stability and complacency?
You're right - it isn't. What rankles somewhat is that the otherkin community nevertheless tends to regard itself as particularly open to new ideas and as especially spiritual. Now, I don't expect all the otherkin to be mystics - I'd just like them to recognize that in a lot of cases they're really only skimming the surface of the psyche. (That applies less to the offline community than the online, but it's still definitely there.)
I don't feel that there's any use in expecting the whole otherkin community to do much of anything.
You'd be surprised. There's a lot of consensus in the community (or in parts of it) on the idea of a Higher Self that wasn't there before. Memes travel.
Some people like settling; let them ( ... )
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It isn't. That was my point: rubycona was suggesting that the archetypal overshadowing might have hindered her friend's healing, and I was saying that it might have actually helped.
I know last time I disagreed with you it turned out that we actually agreed. But I'm gonna try it again, in the hope that I haven't gotten you horribly wrong.... so here we go:
I disagree.
Jung saw archetypal possession (inflation he called it) as very dangerous and not particularly healthy. While it is true that virtually everyone dealing with unconscious content goes through it at some (many) points, he saw it as essential to identify with this unconscious material as little as possible. Identifying with archetypes (archetypal inflation) causes people to a) do stupid stuff (I can attest to that from personal experience), b, be very difficult to communicate with, and c) not confront whatever material they are dealing with in a conscious way ( ... )
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I still disagree that overshadowing is unhealthy. This again goes into somewhat Laingian territory: it can be unhealthy in this society, simply because we haven't got the institutions (i.e. shamans) to deal with it properly. We medicate rather than assist and integrate. That does not have to be the case, and indeed it generally hasn't been the case in most civilizations (and non-civilized societies) throughout history.
On the other hand, I seem to be in agreement with you insomuch as I think otherkin should recognize better what they're dealing with. "Archetype" and "overshadowing" are just words, of course, but they come with a paradigm attached that could be very useful for all concerned.
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Taking your own case as an example: after months or years of pondering your difficulty experiencing physical pleasure, you might have a dream one night in which you relived a "past life" as a houri cursed by an evil sorceror, who bound up your essence in psychic chains. Having come to the conclusion that you are a reincarnation of this houri, you might then set out to break those chains, by whatever means available. Depending on which society you live in, you might enlist the aid of a shaman ( ... )
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First, you're assuming that you "are a dragon", whereas I'm not assuming anyone "is" anything, but trying to approach the question from a psychological perspective (since psychological health is in fact the issue here). If that bothers you, you can take my example as a purely hypothetical person who has no particular otherkin identity, but happens to have gone through the same kind of sexual abuse you did, and to have experienced the same after-effects. The question of whether they "really are" a houri is utterly inconsequential.
Second: you're saying, "What if the unconscious serves up an identity which only serves as a justification for continuing to be unhealthy? What if that happens?" I'm saying that that wouldn't happen: all our psychological knowledge seems to indicate that irruptions from the unconscious psyche have a healing function, and that the kind of situation you're describing simply does not happen (or happens only very rarely ( ... )
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