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How rejection of essences expresses despair
Author(s) -
Tougas Cecile T.
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
journal of analytical psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.285
H-Index - 23
eISSN - 1468-5922
pISSN - 0021-8774
DOI - 10.1111/1465-5922.00098
Subject(s) - id, ego and super ego , intentionality , psychology , self , meaning (existential) , reciprocity (cultural anthropology) , constructivism (international relations) , relation (database) , psychoanalysis , epistemology , intersubjectivity , phenomenology (philosophy) , perception , social psychology , philosophy , psychotherapist , international relations , database , politics , political science , computer science , law
The Self and the ego in Jung's psychology are an instance of what Edmund Husserl called a ‘double intentionality’: one tending toward meaning is distinct from another tending toward meaning, yet they are reciprocally inseparable from each other. As perception in a present moment and memory of a past are impossible without each other, so an intending of ego and that of Self are impossible without each other. Accompanying the ego (mostly in the background) during each moment of time is a tending towards a particular Idea or essence. This reciprocity is expressed in a unique way over a lifetime and is like the relation of mother and child, and so it is important for all of us born of women to retain a sense of essences and the fullness of Self. ‘Constructivism’, however, is a current belief held by some feminists, and it influences both theorizing and practice in analytical psychology. It involves a rejection of essences, a revision of Jung's Idea of Self, and an attempt to conduct analysis without reference to an intentional subjective Self. Such constructivist revision expresses a despair both about essences as Ideas and about Self as intentional and subjective. It is despair over Self in a Kierkegaardian sense.