In the twenty plus years of writing In the Tracks of the Unseen: Memoirs of a Jungian Psychoanalyst, there were stretches when I jumped ship. There were years when the idea of sharing my story was too daunting, the vulnerability unthinkable.
E.B. White
wrote, “All writing is both a mask and an unveiling.” And Rilke advised only
write if you have to—since the writing life can become both a blessing and a
curse.
But if your
soul requests it, my advice is write—even if you never share a word. For, in the
act of finding your words you may discover parts of yourself. I find that when
I allow the process of writing to work on me a sort of alchemical cooking
happens, so that when I am folding clothes or cutting up an onion or standing
in the shower a phrase or idea arrives like the elegantly marked spider that suddenly
just appeared outside my window.
Memoir writing
involves self-reflection; that ingredient which Vivian Gornick wrote changes
the situation into the story. Wrote Jung, “My story is my truth.”
Our words can
bridge the mythical waters of Memnosyne and Lethe, those rivers of memory and
forgetfulness that run through the underworld. They can link soul to spirit,
logos to eros.
What I love
about Jungian psychology is its focus on the art of being, on the spiritual
practice of becoming true to oneself through that endless incremental deepening
of consciousness. Jung wrote that there is no individuation and no individuality
without consciousness. Individuation, he said, has two principal aspects, “in
the first place it is an internal and subjective process of integration, and in
the second it is an equally indispensable process of objective relationship.”
It calls for intrapsychic and interpsychic bridging.
The
individuation process, I believe, is a path that knowingly or not we are all
traveling. It is not a destination. “Life,” wrote Jung, “has always to be
tackled anew.”
In the
conclusion of my memoir I describe our stories as mirrors. We can look into
them and return to ourselves. We can make of them an offering.
