Repressed



Conscious                 -                    Unconscious
Light                         -                    Shadow
Simple                      -                    Complex
Mono                        -                    Poly
One                           -                    Many
Spotlight                   -                    Floodlight




Left out - repressed - held under - denied - silenced





The multiplicity of psychic voices can be likened to the multiplicity of cultural voices that are denied and silenced by dominant cultural forces.

As in the individual, the neglected, unheard, repressed, and denied assert their viewpoint and feeling through symptom and pathology.

Thus an archetypal psychologist attuned to psyche in the world would listen for the multiplicity of viewpoints that comprise situations and events.

She would be attentive to the dynamics that prevent certain voices from speaking or from being heard, and work to create situations in which the silenced can come to voice and the silencers can learn the value of listening.

[Mary Watkins]
On Returning to the Soul of the World: Archetypal Psychology and Cultural/Ecological Work, p. 8





The archetype of the Wise Old Man [...] denotes an aspect of wholeness, but striving single-mindedly for wisdom at the expense of, for example, irrational human foolishness, is to miss many of the joys in living.

[The] idealized Madonna is a certain perfect image of the feminine, but the real woman must also accept the whore in herself for the sake of her completeness.

It is in seeking perfection by isolating and exaggerating parts of ourselves that we become neurotic.

[Marion Woodman]
Addiction to Perfection, p. 52





Rejecting or refusing serious discussion of one pole in a polarity diminishes [an] organization's flexibility in responding to [...] problems and seriously cripples its ability to realize its greater potential. Such an organization/individual/group "does not see how it creates its own difficulties” by blocking parts of itself from being expressed. It is unaware of how it "interrupts itself.”

Awareness of the issue as a polarity to manage rather than as a problem to be solved opens the door to the possibility of resolution. Resolution begins with looking honestly and with genuine curiosity at the entire polarity. 

As Polster and Polster point out, this awareness allows warring parties to “become allies in the common search for a [positive outcome], rather than uneasy opponents maintaining the split.”

This requires clients to be willing to suspend their deep-seated conviction that anyone who holds a point of view different from their own is the enemy, or that one position is absolutely right and the other is absolutely wrong.

The implication of this theory is that, if the client is to be able to truly stand outside the situation [...] the individual, group or organization must risk identifying with the opposing point of view or views. In other words - and here lies the paradox - to be able to change, a person (or organization) has to want to change badly enough that he, she, it is willing to approach problems in a radically different way: by identifying with the opposing perspective. 

[...] true polarities are never really resolved; they can only be managed or balanced. That’s because each pole and its apparent opposite actually depend on one another. "The pairs are involved in an ongoing, balancing process over an extended period of time. They are interdependent. They need each other.”

[Herb Stevenson]
'Paradox: A Gestalt Theory of Change'








To take a position implies discrimination and exclusion, and so no position is unassailable because every position is missing something.

Criticism can serve to remind us of what we are missing.





Meteorologist Edward Lorenz (1963) used a microcomputer to simulate weather patterns in 1960.

While inputting initial starting conditions to the computer, he inadvertently rounded one the numbers to three, instead of six decimal places. The small difference .506 (instead of .506127) produced rapidly divergent simulations of weather patterns. Small differences in initial conditions produced widely different results.

Some meteorologists believed that Lorenz's discovery meant that weather control was just around the corner. Small nonnatural changes could be used to manipulate large weather patterns. Lorenz, however, believed that this was the reason for the failure of long term forecasts.

Any uncontrolled system variable could thwart efforts to control the overall state of the system.

[David S. Walonick]
'General Systems Theory'




Rejected parts of the personality are like children clamouring to be let into a room: they will continue to cause a disturbance until they are admitted.

It is as if even the most infantile aspects of the personality, the aspects of which we should most like to rid ourselves, were endowed with a dynamic energy which demanded that they too should seek expression.

Personality ultimately seeks realization as a whole, and, however much the ego may seek to reject that which it finds hard to tolerate, the rejected parts will make their appearance somewhere, whether as symptoms or as projections upon other people.

The final aim is the realization of the total personality.

[Anthony Storr]
The Integrity of the Personality, p.92



Related posts:-
The Colour Wheel
Mono / Poly
This, Not That
Control
Rational / Irrational
Projecting a Shadow 
Full Spectrum
Step Toward Madness
Infinite Doorways
Still Waters
Walk a Straight Line
Assuming a position
Do Not Disturb