The Complex
Path of Transformation from Archetype to Ego
Our complexes act as dynamic intermediaries in the life-long dialogue with the unconscious, determining the ways in which archetypes and instincts enlarge ego-consciousness.
Shalit provides us with a conceptual scaffold with which to examine the inner structures and assumptions that underpin our everyday actions, discussions, loves and hates. Includes case material.
The complex is the key to our inner world. The images in our dreams reflect the complex meeting ground between the archetypes of the vast unconscious and the realm of personal experience.
The complex carries material from the unconscious into consciousness. Sometimes the major roads are blocked, and communications maintained only “over inconvenient and steep footpaths” (Freud). When refused entrance into consciousness, the complexes become phantoms in the shadow.
“The fact that complexes are painful is no proof of pathological disturbance. Suffering is not an illness; it is the normal counterpole to happiness. A complex becomes pathological only when we think we have not got it.” C. G. Jung
“The Complex is the best discussion [on the subject] I have seen – James Hall
Contents:
- Complexes - The Historical Link
Introduction
The Complex in the History of Psychoanalysis
A Plenitude of Complexes
Jung’s Personal Complexes
Complex Psychology
The Complex as Path and Vessel of Transformation
The Complex – Cluster, Core and Tone
Archetype and Ego
- Oedipus – The Archetypal Complex
Freud, Jung and Oedipus
Oedipus - The Myth
Hero and Complex
Mars and Eros – the Drive of the Complex
Mother Self – Father Ego
The Primal Scene
The Sword and the Shield
The Complex Path – From Archetype to Ego
The Wounding of Oedipus – Ego Defences and the Autonomous Complex
Oedipus’ Journey
From Delphi to Thebes - From Archetype to Ego
Patricide at the Cleft Way Crossroad
The Riddle
The Cancerous Complex
- The Complex in the Shadow
The Autonomous Complex
The Complex and the Call
The World Parents
The Archetypal Core of the World Parents
The Abandoned Child
A Mother Complex
Kafka’s (Never Sent) Letter to Father
The Tower of Babel
Inflation
Hubris
The Tower of Babel
The Inflated Ego - The Emptied Self
Integration of the Complex
Castration at the Gateway to Individuation
References
Links to blog posts:
Kafka’s (Never Sent) Letter to Father
Oedipus Denied . . . not so quickly!
100-year-old letter reveals Kafka's mouse phobia
The Complex - Messenger from the gods
Quadrant: The Journal of the C.G. Jung Foundation
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The Complex is available on Amazon, Inner City Books, and other book sellers.