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Fading Into Autumn

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This is yet another photo from Shanghai taken on the Expo 2010 site.  The thing I like about flowers is that they illustrate a truth about our transience as humans.  Like the flowers, we have our moment in the sun then we begin to fade into the shadows until we return to the collective soil.  Oops, there I go again with “identifying” with something.  Okay, so it is more in terms of a metaphor rather than to “equate” myself with the flower.  I do, however, want to talk a bit more about the problem of “identification” when it comes to relationship with another person.

When you identify with another person, your emotional well-being is intimiately linked with the mood of that person and his or her attitude toward you. . . . It’s a classic double-bind.  You can’t function independently and your dependence has the effect of making the other person responsible for how you feel.  More:  you have a relationship that is psychologically no different from that between parent and child.  Worse:  at any given moment it is hard to tell which partner is parent and which is child.

We may gladly accept this responsibility toward our children, but between grownups, in the long run, it is unworkable.  Neither can make a move without double-thinking the effect on the other, which automatically inhibits the self-expression of both.”  (Sharp, Jungian Psychology Unplugged, p. 61)

Now, I have been asked if I believe that “love” in a relationship is all projection.  I don’t believe that it is.  Over time, we get to take back projections and discover real qualities and characteristics in the other.  But when it comes to falling in love with someone who is otherwise a stranger, yes, this “love” is projection.  Falling in love after a long period of being in each other’s presence is a different story.  In this case, one learns who the other is over time and through interaction.  A face of love grows and the pair can engage in a loving relationship that is based on awareness of the other rather than based on projections.


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