Lucian Blaga University, Sibiu

Faculty of Letters and Arts

Department of British and American Studies
MA: English Language and Literature
Student: Alina-Maria Plescan

Jung saw the mind as a battlefield of conflicting psychic forces, personal and collective. Such
forces were not necessarily sexual, but did emerge as archetypes: predispositions of beliefs,
activities and symbols in which the unconsciousness becomes articulate and conscious to us.
Archetypes of the collective unconscious are the recurring images to be found in any culture, and
the artist, like all human beings, is simply their midwife. Archetypes of the personal unconscious,
however (particularly the shadow, and those masculine or feminine aspects of personality known
as animus or anima) are dispositions we each need to recognize and accommodate if we are to
mature as persons and take our place in society. Both come into Jungian analysis.

While myths of the collective unconscious may occur in poetry at all levels, it is fiction of some
length (novels, plays, narrative poems in which the protagonist faces painful adjustments in
growing up and/or coming to terms with life) that benefit from analysis of the personal
unconscious. Elements may have been repressed into the shadow side, or personalities
unbalanced by denial of the animus or anima elements.

Jung himself was more concerned with the creative process than Freud, and shielded artworks
from psychoanalysis. Art was not neurosis, and individual productions must be judged by the
methods appropriate to that art form. Similarly, the nature of art was a matter for aesthetics.
Psychiatry could not adjudicate on literature, any more than should science.

Jung's followers have taken different routes. Stress on the midwife role of artist leads to the
Structuralist view of the writer, who is not the originator of his writings but merely the
mouthpiece of more general forces. The myth criticism of Northrop Frye accepts that psychiatry
cannot judge the aesthetic value of literature, but does claim to categorize objectively and
universally.

W. D. Snodgrass is often credited with being one of the founding members of the "confessional"
school of poetry, even though he dislikes the term confessional and does not regard his work as
such. Nevertheless, his Pulitzer Prize-winning first collection, Heart's Needle, has had a
tremendous impact on that particular facet of contemporary poetry. "Like other confessional
poets, Snodgrass is at pains to reveal the repressed, violent feelings that often lurk beneath the
seemingly placid surface of everyday life," David McDuff observes in Stand. The style was imitated
and, in some cases, surpassed by other poets. This fact leads Yale Review's Laurence Lieberman to
comment that a later book, After Experience, reveals "an artist trapped in a style which . . . has
reached a dead end," because the group style had taken a different direction than Snodgrass's
own. However, later works by Snodgrass show him widening his vision to apply the lessons of
self-examination to the problems of twentieth-century Western culture. His poems also present,
beyond the direct-statement and sentimentality common to confessional poetry, an inclusiveness
of detail and variety of technique aimed to impact the reader's subconscious as well as conscious
mind.

The combination of the traditional and the confessional in Snodgrass's writing prompts Thomas
Lask of the New York Times to write, "In Heart's Needle, . . . Snodgrass spoke in a distinctive
voice. It was one that was jaunty and assertive on the surface but somber and hurt beneath. . . . It
is one of the few books that successfully bridged the directness of contemporary free verse with
the demands of the academy." Peter Porter echoes this opinion when he writes in London
Magazine: "Snodgrass is a virtuoso, not just of versification but of his feelings. He sends them
round the loops of self analysis with the same skill he uses to corset them into his poetry." The
impact of Snodgrass's self-analytical approach is clearly felt in Stanley Moss's statement in the
New Republic that the poet "has found a place for emotions felt, but previously left without
words and out of consciousness. He has identified himself with exquisite suffering and guilt and
with all those who barely manage to exist on the edge of life."

Some sort predisposition possesed by man to form images - archetypal image being an effect of
this irrepresentable unconcious - are entry to Snodgrass and Strand’s way of feeling and thinking.

Jung’s assumption that the dynamics of the relation, between ego and self is important for
understanding the process of individuation.

Individuation is mainly related to the development of those aspects of personality that have long
been neglected in order to find new ways of uniting the formerly opposed concious and
unconcious tendencies meant to achieve a harmonious whole.

The dynamics of the process of the individuation is renuniting the two poles - the concious anc th
unconcious - which metaphorically symbolize the authentic original human characteristics.

Further grounds for confidence regarding our psycho-cognitive approach of Bachelard's

methodology arise from the cognitive thinker Lakoff who makes to important assumptions:

n First of all, that reason has a bodily basis

n Secondly, that the imaginative aspects of reason - metaphor, metonymy and mental
imagery - are central to reason rather than an adjunct to the literal.

In keeping with Jung’s psychology, the controversial psychological space built by Snodgrass is a
projection of his divided self, of his paired-off self that strives to arrive at identity, or as the poet
himself puts it “to knell by my old face and know my name”.

To arrive at identity Snodgrass has first to objectify his maternal feelings. And yet, instead of
objectifying them, he casts about for dualitiesnin the poem called “The Mother”.

The fact that the poet is deeply aware of his divided and estranged personality arises from his
resorting to masks. This is another hint at the archetypal significance that canbe attached to
Snodgrass poetry.

The dichotonomy “waking light”-”gray dawn” is a crucial poetic clue regarding the fact that
Snodgrass’ conflicting self is striving to come to terms with his controversial inner nature,
permanently analyzed by as in terms of various archetypes - the maternal archetype, persona, and
the shadow - by profoundly engaging his art.

Strand’s poetry reveals another facet of the poet who, in an implied way, compares himself to
“Narcissus” by turning the surface of words into a fatally attractive simulacrum of the self.

Since games are also a major concern for cognitive scientists we should also mention the fact that
fact the games are creative and help us to develop psychologically, intelectually, emotionally and
culturally and to survive in our modern world confronted with a strong moral crisis.

Games imply common tasks, set of rules, competition, and moreover, in the opinion of cognitive
thinker Wittgenstein, games also imply relationships and similarities, sometimes overall similarities
of details.