Throughout this time the migraine headaches had become more frequent and more intense. I was ill-equipped to determine their cause and origins. I remembered Mom and her migraines and supposed I'd inherited the migraines from her. A couple of times I'd ended up in the emergency room and even one night in the base hospital for observation. The doctors prescribed medications and I started to look out for triggers. I asked the squadron leadership to relieve me from camper duty. I was then to focus only on maintenance escort duty. I'm thankful the squadron leadership granted my request. This was also the time when I started wearing eyeglasses, which I've worn to this day ever since. Wearing eyeglasses also helped to decrease the number of migraines. These never went away until much, much later in my life.
My Encounter with Carl Jung
It was about this time also that I found Carl Jung during my library forays. Jung (+1961) was a pioneer Swiss psychiatrist and psychologist who founded analytical psychology. He was a close collaborator of Sigmund Freud in the early decades of the 20th century. Jung and Freud fell out later on. Jung described their falling out in detail in his book, Memories, Dreams, Reflections. This was the book of his that had fallen into my hands at a moment of great need. Jung would have called this coincidence, synchronicity.
Absent Catholic tools useful to look within me, Jung provided me with the right ones at the right time. Though I kept detached from those claims I saw as gnostic or unscientific, I dove into Jung’s book. Several of his concepts affected me as I did. Among these I must mention: Anima and animus; Complex; Extraversion and introversion; Individuation; Interpersonal relationship; Persona; Psychological types; Shadow; Self; and, Synchronicity.
My Criticism of Jung
His view of a collective unconscious was less useful to me, as it's a notion that lies beyond empirical proof. As such, it stands outside of science. It is an intriguing concept that interconnects human beings across space and time. Yet, I saw that I held other inchoate reasons to assert human interconnectedness. Today, I see this interconnectedness as deriving, first from our spiritual nature. Our spiritual nature is connatural to quantum processes. These contain each other within us, and with others. Of course, this insight requires further development in my mind, and explanation. I'll work on it for a later writing.
My principal objection to Jung's insight is that love isn't its principal axis. To be sure, Jung approaches love when he talks about beauty, but he stops short. Some might argue that love is reducible to aesthetics and that Jung's system is thus complete. But it isn't, because God is Love and Jung, skeptical of the New Testament, never conceived God as such. Others would say that such a conception is theological, not analytical. I argue back that it was Jung who ventured into theology first. He accused theologians as being unthinking, the worst insult in his quiver. Then, us theologians can bring our discipline to critique Jung's insights.
As time passed, Jung's analytical psychology intruded into the Church's spirituality. In the same way as Freud's psychology entered the Church, so did Jung's. Both psychologies went to replace in the Church the practice of spiritual discernment. The results have been far-ranging and often deleterious. Discerners cannot reduce persons into complexes of mental processes. The Church has lost many candidates to the priesthood who would otherwise have become excellent, holy priests. In the same way, the Church would admit candidates who then became destructive to the Church. In my opinion, the “psychologization” of priestly formation lies at the root of the Church’s recent scandals. In the long run Jung became for me one of many teachers, but never a model nor a mentor. My guru Jung is not.
How Jung Helped Me
Jung's honest self-analysis and childlike curiosity captivated me. It was his psychology which led me to identify for the first time the cracks in my personality. Also, I discovered I was repressing aspects of my personality I needed to release and let be. Also, from Jung I acquired the ability to identify the principal cause of my migraines. The migraines manifested a psychological pain. This pain derived from the mismatch between my expectations and goals. I resolved to return to college studies as soon as possible. Personal integration became an explicit, personal goal.
I then entered a period of intense personal reconstruction. Just in time too because, in April of that year, we found my Mercie was pregnant. We would become parents. I, the man of imperfect or absent father figures, would become a father myself. My slope to adulthood had become steeper but I didn't care, because of the impending blessed event. The baby might be hiding in her mother’s womb, but I was a father already. God and I now had something transcendental in common: fatherhood.