I now live a quiet life in the Highlands of Scotland on the shore of the Cromarty Firth being able to watch the remarkable wildlife on land and sea. It is endlessly fascinating with the coming and going of the tides, and the constantly changing weather - one moment the water is glassy reflecting the sky or sunset, and the next a hooley is blowing up the white horses to shake their manes on our little beach. It is a wonderful and contemplative vista of opposites - constant change out there - strung between, stillness and movement - always tempting, always enriching, even at night as the lights glitter on the far shore beside the road and the railway leading up through the flow country of Caithness to Dunnett Head and John O’Groats, the most northerly points on our mainland, where a Victorian baker had found the most wonderful collection of fossil fish in the rocks and been a friend of my great-great grandfather a coastguard with similar geological and botanical interests. (See Robert Dick Baker of Thurso, Geologist and Botanist, by Samuel Smiles, LL.D. for the story of three men with such huge concerns).
That is one blessing here as I age disgracefully. Another is man-made. The internet enables me to stay in touch with people in Cambridge and over the world who have shared so much of the depth of my life and particularly our mutual interest in Jung’s life and work and continues through the agency of our Circle. From this I am I visualize and even more exciting future, sparked by our coming conference.
Our Chair has encouraged me to start this blog and while I dislike the word ‘blog’ I am delighted to offer some reflections about the Circle. It has come a very long way since Roland Hindmarch and I met one afternoon in 1991 in his study and, though we did not realize it the whole thing began then so both our lives and other people’s lives were to
be changed radically. He was a profound man, a linguist, ex-navy whose ship had been sunk under him: he survived that and then volunteered to train as a diver, and go to sea in 3-man submarines. He suffered mentally from all that and had found help from a Jungian analyst as the war ended. I however was only four when the war killed my father in his spitfire over the Channel and from that point on had no idea who I was. Because of that, at 35 with a degree, a wife and family and a business career I discovered the loss of my father and thus the fact of the unconscious while on an impromptu visit to the tiny chapel at Biggin Hill RAF station which he was commanding when he was shot down.
Roland and I had met when he was a tutor and I was on the counselling course at Parkside school in Cambridge. We both therefore had an interest in therapy, psychological therapy. I had been deeply impressed by the work of Carl Rogers and the idea of having ‘unconditional positive regard’ for my client. Rogers was one of the early transpersonal groups who were at Big Sur in California and the whole idea of non-judgementalism struck me as the key to unlock the door for the people who came for help. I saw what was most needed was for them to understand themselves through the agency of another human being, who could hold their thunder, pain and lightening. I saw that the process could never stand a hope unless there was that mutual trust, in equality, out of the deepest understanding and acceptance of the world of the client. I still think so. By luck, or something else maybe, I had read how June Singer, as a Jungian analyst, had treated her patients in Chicago and one in particular had been with her for years and could never escape her cage, until one day June, taking this personal image seriously, suggested she look round at the back of her cage. When she found the courage to do just that she found there were no bars there at all! That was the real beginning of her liberation.
Then I realized how our inner imagery can be so powerful, so controlling, so life wrecking…also inspiring. but all because we did not see them - just like, as it turned out, the archetypes...but that came much later...June Singer had been trained in Zürich as a Jungian analyst… what was that? and who was this Swiss guy, Jung? What, indeed, was analysis? I had to find out about him…And I would like to continue in my next blog my story towards and with The Jungian Circle, whose history I now have the extraordinary pleasure of reliving through the pages of its journals. That’s life changing too! Do respond if you want to, but lots more to tell you about the Circle!
Richard-
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