Thomas J. Farrell
University of Minnesota Duluth
Abstract: In my 6,800-word essay, I highlight the public lectures that the Swiss psychiatrist and psychological theorist C. G. Jung (1875-1961) gave in 1939-1940 in Zurich on St. Ignatius Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises and certain related works by Jung. In 2023, Princeton University Press published Jung’s 1939-1940 lectures in the book Jung on Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises, edited by Martin Liebscher, translated by Caitlin Stephens. In addition to discussing Jung’s account of fantasy thinking involving images and associative thinking versus directed thinking involving logic, I also discuss the related contrast that the American Jesuit Renaissance scholar and cultural historian and pioneering media ecology theorist Walter J. Ong (1912-2003; Ph.D. in English, Harvard University, 1955) makes between orally based thought and expression, on the one hand, and, on the other, phonetic alphabetic literacy.
In the fall semester of 1964, at the age of 20, I transferred as a junior majoring in English to Saint Louis University, the Jesuit university in the City of St. Louis, Missouri. I took my first course from the American Jesuit scholar Father Walter J. Ong (1912-2003; Ph.D. in English, Harvard University,1955).
From Father Ong that semester, I first heard of Albert B. Lord’s book The Singer of Tales (1960), Eric A. Havelock’s book Preface to Plato (1963), and Dominican Father Victor White’s book about C. G. Jung’s thought titled God and the Unconscious (1952). I bought a paperback copy of White’s book and read it in the summer of 1965.
Thus began my lifelong fascination with the Swiss psychiatrist and psychological theorist Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) and Jungian psychology.
In my estimate, Dr. Jung is one of the most extraordinary human beings ever to have lived – and his 1939-1940 public lectures on St. Ignatius Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises, edited by Martin Liebscher (2023) are remarkably accessible.
Now, in 2020, W. W. Norton published a handsome seven-volume edition of Jung’s handwritten Black Books: 1913-1932, edited by Sonu Shamdasani, translated by Martin Liebscher, John Peck, and Sonu Shamdasani. In Jung’s handwritten Black Books, he recorded the fantasy contents of his dangerous self-experiments in which he engaged in what he came to refer to as active imagination.
For a compilation of Jung’s various texts about active imagination, see the book titled Jung on Active Imagination, edited and with an introduction by Joan Chodorow (1997).
Now, from the materials he had recorded in his Black Books, Jung then made his far more elaborate Red Book which included beautiful art works that his dangerous self-experiments inspired him to make and elaborate passages written out in beautiful writing known as calligraphy. In 2009, W. W. Norton published Jung’s Red Book: Liber Novus (Latin for “New Book”) as an oversized beautifully illustrated art book.
Now, speaking generically, what Jung came to refer to as active imagination in his dangerous self-experiments involved freewheeling images called up from his unconscious in a trance-like state.
Now, the centuries-old Roman Catholic tradition of prayer known as lectio divina involved using biblical imagery to meditate and pray. That is, the biblical imagery involved served as a prompt to evoke one’s meditations based on the imagery involved.
Arguably the most famous example of the lectio divina practice of prayer and meditation can be found in the Spiritual Exercises of the Renaissance Spanish mystic St. Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556), the founder of the Jesuit order (known formally as the Society of Jesus).
Concerning the form of prayer known as lectio divina, see the Canadian Jesuit biblical scholar David M. Stanley’s article “A Suggested Approach to Lectio Divina” in the American Benedictine Review (1972). Father Stanley reprinted it as an appendix in his book titled “I Encountered God!”: The Spiritual Exercises with the Gospel of Saint John (1996, pp. 311-327).
For an English translation, see The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius: A Translation and Commentary by George E. Ganss, S.J. (1992) — first printed in 1548, according to Ganss [1992, p. 12]), but “probably written around 1525,” according to Liebscher (in Jung, 2023, p. xlviii).
In Father Ganss’ “Introduction” (pp. 1-14), he says that St. Ignatius’ worldview “was firmly based on five chief truths of god’s revelations: [1] God’s purpose in creating human beings; [2] their fall from grace through original sin; [3] the Incarnation of his Son; [4] the Redemption by which Christ restored humankind to God’s grace through his life, Passion, and Resurrection; and [5] the destiny of humankind to eternal salvation, that full satisfaction of each person’s capacities and desires in the joy of the beatific vision. In other words, Ignatius’ outlook was based on God’s plan of creation and spiritual development for human beings who use their free wills wisely as this divine design evolves in the history of salvation” (p. 1).
Father Ganss also says, “As a result of that expansive outlook, Ignatius habitually viewed all things as proceeding from God, and then becoming a means by which human being could make their way toward happiness by praising or glorifying God here and hereafter” (pp. 1-2).
Now, for a Freudian account of the life of St. Ignatius Loyola, see the American Jesuit psychiatrist W. W. Meissner’s book titled Ignatius of Loyola: The Psychology of a Saint (1992).
However, I should point out that Meissner’s explicitly Freudian account of how the wounded soldier Ignatius of Loyola was nursed back to health by his beautiful sister-in-law in his brother’s family home in Spain involves positing Ignatius’s strong sexual attraction to his beautiful sister-in-law. In any event, as his sister-in-law nursed the wounded Ignatius back to health, the wounded soldier was in a childlike condition being nursed and cared for by a mother figure.
Now, we may super-impose a Jungian interpretation on Meissner’s Freudian sexualized account of a mother-child scenario. Switching Meissner’s account of the sexual attraction of the childlike adult Ignatius being cared for by his beautiful sister-in-law to a Jungian interpretation involves re-interpreting the strong but sublimated sexual attraction that Meissner posits that Ignatius felt for his beautiful sister-in-law as involving rather the feminine dimension of Ignatius’s psyche – and the feminine archetypes in his psyche – being activated in his psyche by his beautiful sister-in-law’s care for him and then projected by him onto her. Put differently, what Meissner refers to as Ignatius’s sexual attraction to his beautiful sister-in-law involved the activation of feminine psychological forces in Ignatius’s psyche.
In any event, what occurred in Ignatius during his recuperation is known as his religious conversion. His religious conversion involved his reading the lives of certain saints, most notably Saint Dominic, the founder of the Dominican religious order, and Saint Francis of Assisi, the founder of the Franciscan religious order.
We can also see Ignatius’s famous religious conversion at his brother’s family home in Spain as the beginning of what Jung famous came to call the mid-life crisis. Jung’s own mid-life crisis, or mid-life transition, included his dangerous self-experimentation involving his use of what he came to refer to as active imagination. Ignatius’s mid-life crisis, of mod-life transition, began in his brother’s home but was followed by Ignatius’s journey from one religious director to the next. He came to refer to himself on that journey or religious quest as the pilgrim. Ignatius the Pilgrim prayed and meditated on scripture under various spiritual directors.
See St. Ignatius Loyola’s short book titled A Pilgrim’s Testament: The Memoirs of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, second edition, edited by Barton T. Geger, S.J., translated by Paramanda R. Divarkar (2020).
However, Jung’s mid-life crisis did not include a journey. When he was engaging in his freewheeling self-experimentation involving what he came to refer to as active imagination, he stayed put in his own home. For Jung, his quest was an inner quest, as it were – an extraordinary exploration of his own psyche and its psychological contents. For the most part, Jung did not consult other persons about his inner explorations – as Ignatius the Pilgrim consulted various spiritual directors. And nobody, not even Jung himself, thought of his dangerous self-experiments with active meditation as praying – even though the psychodynamics involved in active imagination are akin to the psychodynamics involved in meditation on scripture. Both involve the imagination. But the use of scripture in meditation grounds the use of imagination in meditation in biblical imagery and the words used to formulate that imagery.
By contrast, Jung’s use of active imagination was entirely freewheeling imagination.
Now, in addition to popularizing the use of the term “mid-life crisis,” Jung also popularized thinking of “the second half” of one’s life. In short, the second half of one’s life begins with one’s mid-life crisis.
For Ignatius the Pilgrim, the second half of his life included several profound experiences of mystical visions. Similarly, for Jung, the second half of his life included profound experiences of visions.
Now, we should not forget that Jung’s father was an ordained Protestant minister. As a result of his father’s influence, Jung grew up with a strong anti-Catholic bias – including a strong anti-Jesuit bias. In Martin Liebscher’s “Introduction to Volume 7” in the book Jung on Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises (2023, pp. xlvii-lxvi), he devotes a subsection to discussing “Jung’s Fear of Jesuits and Roman Catholicism” (pp. lii-liv).
Even so, I am positively impressed by Jung’s scrupulous discussion of St. Ignatius Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises.
Now, as part of my own mid-life crisis, the onset of which I trace to mid-February 1974, I was in the Jesuit order (1979-1987). I made a 30-day directed retreat in silence (except for the daily conferences with the retreat director) following the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola in my first year in the two-year Jesuit novitiate. I followed St. Ignatius Loyola’s succinct instructions to the best of my ability. It was a memorable event. However, I did not make a written record of my meditations during my 30-day retreat.
Even though I made a 30-day directed retreat, during which I met once a day for an in-person conference with the retreat director, I should point out here that prior to the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) in the Roman Catholic Church, Jesuit novices and other Jesuits and other people who made Jesuit retreats made preached retreat – that is, retreats in which the retreat director preached once a day to the people making the retreat. The Second Vatican Council instructed all religious orders to revisit their original charisms and renew their religious lives. When the Jesuits revisited their original charism, they rediscovered the custom of directed retreats.
In our Western literary tradition, the Jesuit-educated Irish novelist James Joyce (1882-1941) portrays a Jesuit preached retreat in his novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916).
As part of Walter J. Ong’s lengthy Jesuit formation, he twice made 30-day preached retreats in silence (except for the retreat director’s daily preaching session) following St. Ignatius Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises.
Similarly, the Argentine Jesuit Jorge Mario Bergoglio (born in 1936), who became Pope Francis in March 2013, twice made 30-day preached retreats in silence (except for the retreat director’s daily preaching session) following St. Ignatius Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises.
However, both Father Ong and Father Bergoglio lived through the Jesuit rediscovery of directed retreats, and each of them subsequently served as the director of directed retreats – Father Bergoglio far more often than Father Ong.
Now, in my case, my mid-life crisis continued in the second half of my life when I started teaching at the University of Minnesota Duluth (1987-2009). In the second half of my life, years after I retired from teaching at the University of Minnesota Duluth at the end of May 2009, the second half of my life included certain profound experiences I had in late August 2024 and early September 2024 – profound psychological experiences in my psyche that were triggered in my case by certain experiences I had involving what Jung referred to as visionary thinking involving images and associative thinking (versus what he referred to as directed thinking involving logic).
In any event, my profound experiences that were triggered in late August 2024 and early September 2024 were accompanied by my feeling mildly euphoric for about ten weeks – until shortly before the election on November 5, 2024. I have written candidly about my experiences of feeling mildly euphoric for about ten weeks in my candid and wide-ranging and extremely associative 14,000-word essay titled “The Work of C. G. Jung (1875-1961), and the Thought of Walter J. Ong (1912-2003)” that I published online through the University of Minnesota’s digital conservancy.
In it, among many other things, I discuss the unrealistic fantasy skits mom-son porn videos on the internet extensively. I cannot quantify with any precision just how extensive mom-son porn on the internet in the English-speaking world today is. According to the Wikipedia entry “Internet pornography,” internet pornography emerged in 1995, with the website run by the naturally busty lesbian Danni Ashe (born on January 16, 1968).
Whatever the exact extent of mom-son porn on the internet in the English-speaking world today may be, it is extensive enough to warrant my consideration of it in my 14,000-word essay — and here.
In my 14,000-word essay, I align what Jung refers to as fantasy thinking involving images (such as the images of the beautiful bodies of the women playing the role of mom in the fantasy skits) and associative thinking (such as the associative thinking of the male viewers who imagine themselves as the son in the fantasy skit), with what the classicist Eric A. Havelock refers to as imagistic thinking in his landmark book Preface to Plato (1963).
I also align what Jung refers to as fantasy thinking involving images and associative thinking with what Havelock refers to as the Homeric mind, and I align what Jung refers to as directed thought involving logic with what Havelock refers to as the Platonic mind (i.e., the more abstract philosophical mind).
In addition, I align what Jung refers to as fantasy thinking involving images and associative thinking with what Ong refers to as orally based thought and expression, on the one hand, and, on the other, what Jung refers to as directed thought involving logic with what Ong refers to as phonetic alphabetic literacy.
Ong’s massively researched 1958 book Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason (as in the Age of Reason) is a history of the formal study of logic from Aristotle down to the French Renaissance logician and educational reformer and Protestant martyr Peter Ramus (1515-1572).
For further discussion of Ong’s account of orally based thought and expression versus phonetic alphabetic literacy, see my article titled “Walter Ong and Harold Bloom Can Help Us Understand the Hebrew Bible” in Explorations in Media Ecology (2012).
For Ong’s most sustained discussion of orally based thought and expression, see his 1982 book titled Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (pp. 36-57).
Now, in 1911-1912, Jung published, in German, the two parts of his book titled Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido. The American psychiatrist Beatrice M. Hinkle published the authorized English translation in 1916 as The Psychology of the Unconscious: A Study of Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido: A History of the Evolution of Thought. In Hinkle’s English translation, in Part I, Chapter I is titled “Concerning the Two Kinds of Thinking” (pp. 8-41).
Speaking of “a history of the evolution of thought,” see the Jungian psychoanalyst Erich Neumann’s grand synthesis of Jung’s work titled The Origins and History of Consciousness, translated by R. F. C. Hull (1954; orig. German ed., 1949) – which includes a generous “Foreword” by G. C. Jung himself (pp. xiii-xiv; dated March 1, 1949).
In Jung’s “Foreword,” among other things, he characterizes his own pioneering work as being in “the realm of matriarchal symbolism” (p. xiii; Jung’s italics). I single out matriarchal symbolism special attention here because in the present essay, I explore the fantasy skits in the ubiquitous mom-son porn videos on the internet and in DVDs.
In connection with my discussion of mom-son fantasy skits, I am here singling out the notion of “matriarchal symbolism” to refer to the unconscious contents that mom-son porn videos may evoke in the psyches of male viewers. I say “may evoke” here advisedly. In the psyches of misogynistic male viewers of mom-son porn videos, the captivating images of the mom’s beautiful body and her sexual performance may not evoke unconscious contents of “matriarchal symbolism.”
I am not capable of cataloguing all of the ways in which boys and men in Western culture are still today culturally conditioned in misogynistic views and attitudes. Nor am I capable of telling you exactly how boys and men today may overcome culturally conditioned views and attitudes. Indeed, feminists have advanced various claims about what exactly constitutes misogynistic behavior and views and attitudes – including blanket claims about the alleged misogynistic character of all kinds of porn on the internet and in DVDs. In the present essay, I am, in effect, arguing against blanket condemnations of heterosexual porn on the internet and in DVDs, including mom-son porn in particular.
However, I will say here that those non-misogynistic male viewers of mom-son porn videos have successfully entered stage (7) of the eight stages of consciousness that Neumann delineates in his book The Origins and History of Consciousness. As a result those non-misogynistic male viewers of mom-son porn videos may indeed experience evocations of “matriarchal symbolism” in their psyches – evocations that those non-misogynistic male viewers need to learn how to process — as Jung himself learned how to process the unconscious contents evoked in his psyche through his dangerous self-experimentation with what he came to refer to as active imagination through his elaborate record keeping in his Black Books and in his Red Book – which have now been published in handsome volumes by W. W. Norton and Company (2020 and 2009, respectively).
In Ong’s 1971 book Rhetoric, Romance, and Technology: Studies in the Interaction of Expression and Culture, he has succinctly summed up the eight stages of consciousness that Neumann has ably delineated in his book The Origins and History of Consciousness:
“The stages of psychic development as treated by Neumann are successively (1) the infantile undifferentiated self-contained whole symbolized by the uroboros (tail-eater), the serpent with it tail in its mouth, as well as be other circular or global mythological figures [including Nietzsche’s imagery about the eternal return?], (2) the Great Mother (the impersonal womb from which each human infant, male or female, comes, the impersonal femininity which may swallow him [or her] up again), (3) the separation of the world parents (the principle of opposites, differentiation, possibility of change, (4) the birth of the hero (rise of masculinity and of the personalized ego) with its sequels in (5) the slaying of the mother (fight with the dragon: victory over primal creative but consuming femininity, chthonic forces), and (6) the slaying of the father (symbol of thwarting obstruction of individual achievement, [thwarting] what is new), (7) the freeing of the captive (liberation of the ego from endogamous [i.e., “married” within one’s psyche] kinship libido and the emergence of the higher femininity, with woman now as person, anima-sister, related positively to ego consciousness), and finally (8) the transformation (new unity in self-conscious individualization, higher masculinity, expressed primordially in the Osiris myth but today entering new phases with heightened individualism [such as Nietzsche’s overman] – or, more properly, personalism – of modern man [sic])” (Ong, 1971, pp. 10-11).
Ong also sums up Neumann’s Jungian account of the stages of consciousness in his (Ong’s) book Fighting for Life: Contest, Sexuality, and Consciousness (1981, pp. 18-19; but also see the “Index” for further references to Neumann [p. 228]), the published version of Ong’s 1979 Messenger Lectures at Cornell University.
Ong’s commitment to evolutionary thought is explicitly expressed in the subtitle of his 1977 book Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture.
However that may be, as you can see, Ong here identifies the forms of twentieth-century personalism with stage (8) in Neumann’s account of the eight stages of consciousness.
But I want to draw your attention to stage (7) in Neumann’s account of the eight states of consciousness. Stage (7) involves “the freeing of the captive (liberation of the ego from endogamous kinship libido and the emergence of the higher femininity, with woman now as person, anima-sister, related positively to ego consciousness).”
Yes, women (e.g., feminists) as well as men may experience stage (7) in Neumann’s account of the eight stages of consciousness.
In my estimate, what the Jungian psychoanalyst Edward C. Whitmont refers to as the return of the goddess in the human psyche in his 1982 book Return of the Goddess involves stage (7) of the eight stages of consciousness that Neuman delineates in his book The Origins and History of Consciousness. Moreover, what Whitmont refers to as the goddess in the human psyche involves what Neumann refers to in stage (2) as the Great Mother. Neumann has written at length about the Great Mother in his 1955 book The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype, translated by Ralph Manheim.
Ah, but Neumann refers to the emergence of the higher femininity in stage (7) of the eight stages of consciousness that he delineates in his 1954 book The Origins and History of Consciousness. So the return of the goddess in the human psyche that Whitmont refers to in his 1982 book involves the emergence of higher femininity in the consciousness of those persons who experience the emergence of stage (7) in their ego-consciousness.
Ah, but I also align what Whitmont refers to as the return of the goddess in the human psyche with the emergence of what Ong refers to as our contemporary secondary oral culture (i.e., the culture inculcated through the various forms of media that accentuate sound – such as television, telephone, radio, movies with soundtracks, DVDs, videos on the internet, tape-recording devices, and the like).
Taking various hints from Ong, I have written about our contemporary secondary oral culture in our Western cultural history in my essay “Secondary Orality and Consciousness Today” in the well-organized anthology Media, Consciousness, and Culture: Explorations of Walter Ong’s Thought (1991, pp. 194-209).
Now, more to the point, in Jung’s “Foreword” to Neumann’s grand synthesis of his work in The Origins and History of Consciousness, Jung says that Neumann “has succeeded in constructing a unique history of the evolution of consciousness, and at the same time in representing the body of myths as the phenomenology of this same evolution” (p. xiv).
In any event, the two kinds of thinking that Jung identifies in his 1912 book and in his extensively revised and re-titled 1952 edition of it titled Symbolism of Transformation are (1) fantasy thinking involving images and associative thinking; and (2) directed thinking involving logic.
Now, in my 14,000-word essay “The Work of C. G. Jung (1875-1961), and the Thought of Walter J. Ong (1912-2003),” mentioned above, I discuss mom-son porn videos on the internet extensively. In them, the image of the mom’s beautiful body is prominent. The male viewer is in effect invited to identify himself with the son in the fantasy skit. But to identify with the son in the fantasy skit, the male viewer thereby automatically engages in associative thinking. As a result, the male viewer experiences what Jung refers to as fantasy thinking involving images and associative thinking.
Ah, but does the male viewer’s experience of fantasy thinking watching the porn video evoke in him and in his psyche contents of his unconscious? Your guess is as good as mine. But my guess is that this may not happen all the time in all male viewers’ experiences of watching mom-son porn videos on the internet. However, it may happen to some male viewers some of the time — in which case those male viewers should learn from Jung’s example certain ways in which they can process and thereby contain the unconscious contents evoked in their psyches.
Ah, but what might unconscious contents evoked in the psyches of certain male viewers of mom-son porn videos do to those male viewers if the unconscious contents are not processed and contained? The worst-case scenario is that the male viewer would experience a psychotic break as a result of the unconscious contents.
Ah, but is there also a best-case scenario? That’s an excellent question! I suppose that the best-case scenario for the male viewer of mom-son porn videos on the internet would be that he would learn to access the optimal forms of the four feminine archetypes of maturity that the late Jungian psychotherapist and psychological theorist Robert Moore (1942-2016; Ph.D. in religion and psychology, University of Chicago, 1975) of the Chicago Theological Seminary discusses briefly:
(1) the Queen archetype in the human psyche;
(2) the feminine Warrior/Knight archetype in the human psyche;
(3) the feminine Magician/Shaman archetype in the human psyche; and
(4) the feminine Lover archetype in the human psyche.
In the following seven OEN articles, I have discussed Robert Moore’s account of the four masculine archetypes of maturity in the human psyche and the four feminine archetypes of maturity in the human psyche, as well as their sixteen accompanying “shadow” forms:
(1)“Robert Moore on Optimal Human Psychological Development” (dated September 17, 2024).
(2) “Thomas J. Farrell’s Encore on Robert Moore” (dated October 10, 2024).
(3) “Texas’ War on Porn, and Robert Moore’s Theory of the Archetypes of Maturity” (dated December 6, 2024).
(4) “On Interpreting the Ubiquitous Mom-Son Porn on the Internet” (dated December 19, 2024).
(5) “Some Reflections on the Work of C. G. Jung and Walter J. Ong” (dated December 28, 2024).
(6) “Some Personal Reflections About Porn” (dated January 2, 2024).
(7) “Some Further Reflections about Cory Chase and about Donald Trump” (dated January 10, 2025).
Yes, to be sure, I am well aware that certain people might find it repugnant to think that pornstars who play the role of mom in various fantasy skits in mom-son porn videos on the internet could perhaps help certain male viewers learn how to access the optimal and positive form of the Queen archetype in their psyches, the optimal and positive form of the feminine Warrior/Knight archetype in their psyches, the optimal and positive form of the feminine Magician/Shaman archetype in their psyches, and the optimal and positive form of the feminine Lover archetype in their psyches.
The versatile and athletic 5’5” tall Cory Chase (born on February 25, 1981), who weighs 110 lbs. and has measurements of 36-25-34, has made many, many mom-son porn videos (many with her real-life husband, Luke Longly). She has played the mom in enough different fantasy skits that I can see certain of her various fantasy roles as mom as symbolically representing the optimal form Queen archetype, the optimal feminine Warrior/Knight archetype, the optimal feminine Magician/Shaman archetype, and the optimal feminine Lover archetype.
But I admit that I would say that the mom role that Cory Chase plays in the fantasy skits most often is the optimal feminine Lover archetype.
Nevertheless, I am boldly suggesting here that in certain various fantasy skits in mom-son porn videos on the internet the mom may play a role that represents her as an embodiment of the optimal Queen archetype in relation to her son in the fantasy skit, or the optimal feminine Warrior/Knight archetype in relation to her son in the fantasy skit, or the optimal feminine Magician/Shaman archetype in relation to her son in the fantasy skit, and the optimal feminine Lover archetype in relation to her son in the fantasy skit.
However, I hasten to stress here that this is my interpretation of the fantasy skits in mom-son porn videos on the internet. I do not mean to imply here that the various producers of mom-son porn videos on the internet have any inkling of the variations of the mom’s role in relation to the son that I am here suggesting.
Ah, but if viewing mom-son porn videos on the internet and in DVDs may evoke unconscious contents in male viewers who are not misogynists, what may play the role of mom or playing the role of the son evoke in the women and men who play these roles in the fantasy skits in mom-son porn videos and DVDs? I have no idea how the women and men who play those roles in the fantasy skits in mom-son porn videos are influenced by the evocative quality of those fantasy roles.
One important variable may be the age of the women and the men playing those fantasy roles. As we have noted, Jung started his dangerous self-experimentation with what he came to refer to as active imagination in 1913, the year in which he turned 38 years old. At this time in his life, he was experiencing what he came to refer to as his mid-life crisis.
So is experiencing one’s mid-life crisis an important variable in whether or not viewing mom-son porn videos evokes unconscious contents in one psyches? Similarly with regard to the women and men who play the roles of the mom or the son in mom-son porn videos, is it an important as the whether or not they are experiencing their own respective mid-life crises?
Now, Jung’s dangerous practice of active imagination involved freewheeling fantasy thinking involving images and associative thinking. But the kind of thinking involved in lectio divina and in the meditations of St. Ignatius Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises also involves what Jung refers to as fantasy thinking involving images and associative thinking.
In any event, in 1952, Jung extensively revised his 1912 book and re-titled it Symbols of Transformation, translated by R. F. C. Hull, second edition (1967).
Now, in 1939-1940, Jung delivered public lectures in Zurich about St. Ignatius Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises. In 2023, as I mentioned above in passing, Princeton University Press published Jung on Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises: Lectures Delivered at the ETH Zurich: Volume 7: 1939-1940, edited by Martin Liebscher, translated by Caitlin Stephens.
This volume is volume 7 of Jung’s accessible public lectures in Zurich. In the extensive front matter of volume 7, we find (1) an informative “General Introduction” by Ernst Falzeder, Martin Liebscher, and Sonu Shamdasani (pp. ix-xviii); (2) a helpful “Chronology 1933-1941” compiled by Ernst Falzeder, Martin Liebscher, and Sonu Shamdasani (pp. xxv-xlvi); and (3) Martin Liebscher’s “Introduction to Volume 7” (pp. xlvii-lxviii).
In Falzeder, Liebscher, and Shamdasani’s “Chronology 1933-1941,” they note that on September 1, 1939, during the 1939-1940 timeframe when Jung was presenting his public lectures in Zurich on St. Ignatius Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises, “German troops invade[d] Poland; Britain and France declare[d] war on Germany two days later” (p. xliv). Thus, World War II began.
Now, in Jung’s public lectures on St. Ignatius Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises, he relied extensively on the work of the prominent Polish Jesuit theologian and philosopher Erich Przywara (1889-1972) (see pp. 78-87, 98, 110-111, 114, 118-119, 127-128, 139, 157-158, 160, 163, 169-173, 175-183, 186, 194, 212, 215, 244-245, 250, and 253).
Now, in the table of contents of Jung’s public lectures on St. Ignatius Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises (pp. v-vii), his public lectures in Zurich are divided up by chronology as follows: (I) Summer Semester 1939 (Lectures 8 through 11, from June 16 to July 7, 1939, pp. 3-50); (II) Winter Semester 1939/1940 (Lectures 1 through 16, from November 3, 1939 to March 3, 1940, pp. 51-242); and (III) Winter Semester 1940/1941 (Lecture 3, on November 22, 1940, pp. 243-256).
The “Bibliography” (pp. 259-273) and “Index” (pp. 275-285) round out the main text of the volume. The “Index” includes an excellent main entry on “East-West comparisons” (p. 277) and several sub-entries on “Eastern vs. Western.”
Now, in the “General Introduction,” Ernst Falzeder, Martin Liebscher, and Sonu Shamdasani describe the contents of Volume 5: Psychology of the Unconscious (Summer Semester 1937 and Summer Semester 1938). In part, they say that Jung discusses “The understanding of the sociological and historical dependency of the psyche and the relativity of consciousness form the basis to familiarize the audience with different manifestations of the unconscious related to hypnotic states and cryptomnesia, unconscious affects and motivation, memory and forgetting. Jung shows the normal and pathological forms of invasion of unconscious contents into consciousness, and outlines the methodologies to bring unconscious material to the surface” (p. xiv).
Let me paraphrase a few of these statements. Jung set out to familiar his audience with different manifestations of the unconscious. Contents of the unconscious can invade ego-consciousness and overthrow ego-consciousness, resulting in a psychotic break.
I consider Jung’s self-experiment using active imagination in a trance-like state to be dangerous because contents of the unconscious can invade ego-consciousness and overthrow ego-consciousness, resulting in a psychotic break.
Now, Jung himself developed elaborate ways in which he could process and thereby hopefully contain the contents of the unconscious that his practice of active imagination in a trance-like state had evoked and called up – thereby posing a possible threat to his ego-consciousness.
When we turn our attention to St. Ignatius Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises, we should note that he frequently repeats the instruction for the person on retreat to end his or her meditation hour with a colloquy in which the person of retreat composes both sides of an imaginary conversation/prayer. In an endnote, Ganss says, “The colloquy is another constant element in Ignatian methods of prayer” (1992, p. 156n.39). But the colloquy in which the person on retreat constructs both sides of the conversation is one way for the person to process the contents of the unconscious that are brought to the surface in ego-consciousness through the imagistic meditation.
During my 30-day directed retreat in the novitiate in Denver, I admit that I did not catch on to engaging in such a colloquy. In part, I attribute my inability to engage in such a colloquy to my relative shortcomings in being able to express myself sincerely, or not sincerely, about anything – in prayer or in any other live context calling for spontaneous expression.
However, up to a certain point, I was able to express my thoughts and feelings about certain topics in writing about them. In writing, I could make a draft. Then I could add to my draft and rewrite it as I struggled to articulate my thoughts and feelings. But I was not spontaneously articulate.
Even so, in the daily conferences with the retreat director during my 30-day retreat in the Jesuit novitiate, I was able to articulate my prayer experiences during the previous day well enough. I should point out that Jesuits who made 30-day preached retreats did not discuss their prayer experiences each day in face-to-face conversations with the retreat director. In addition, I should point out here that Jung did not discuss his experiences in using active imagination each day in face-to-face conversation with anyone – but he did make his written records in his Black Books, mentioned above. I did not make a written record about my 30-day directed retreat. In any event, I am glad that I had daily face-to-face meetings with my retreat director as one way for me to process my prayer experiences.
Yes, the face-to-face context of those daily meetings with the retreat director, like the face-to-face context of all the spiritual direction I received in the Jesuit order during my years in the order (1979-1987) resemble the face-to-face context of one-to-one psychotherapy. When I at the age of 80 now look back over my life, I am especially thankful for all the face-to-face meetings I had with various Jesuit spiritual directors during my years in the Jesuit order.
Now, in Jung on Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises, Jung discusses the colloquies that St. Ignatius Loyola’s instructions call for (pp. 10, 75-76, 192, 197-199, 225, and 254).
Now, when we turn our attention to St. Ignatius Loyola’s experiences of mystical visions, we need to note that he was engaged in prayer and meditation when he had those mystical experiences. His mystical experiences did not overthrow his ego-consciousness, resulting in a psychotic break.
Similarly, when Jung had experiences of visions, those visions did not overthrow his ego-consciousness, resulting in a psychotic break.
So in the visions that St. Ignatius Loyola experienced and in the visions that Carl Gustav Jung experienced, each man’s ego-consciousness was not overthrown. But the visions of each man did indeed feature certain contents of each man’s unconscious entering into what we may style here as an interaction between the unconscious contents and ego-consciousness. (For specific page references to each man’s visions, see the “Index” entry on visions [p. 285].)
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