Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Dead or Alive
Other books
by
Adolf Guggenbihl-Craig
MARRIAGE
Dead or Alive
AN
Spring Publications, Inc.
Woodstock, Connecticut
“/ 7 ISB / 3 Classics in Archetypal Psychology 6
Published by
Spring Publications, Inc.;
299 East Quassett Road;
Woodstock, Connecticut 06281
Guggenbihl-Craig, Adolf
Marriage-dead or alive
TO
ANNE
CONTENTS
Preface viil
Chapter One
WAR AND PEACE IN MARRIAGE
Chapter Two
MARRIAGE AND FAMILY: SOCIETY’S INSTRUMENT OF
TORTURE OR A DYING INSTITUTION?
Chapter Three
THE Many FACES OF MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 13
Chapter Four
WELL-BEING AND SALVATION 25
Chapter Five
INDIVIDUATION: Not Enitist, ALWAYS POLITICAL 31
Chapter Six
MARRIAGE: ONE PATHWAY OF SALVATION 41
Chapter Seven
MASCULINE AND FEMININE Do Not HARMONIZE 53
Chapter Eight
AN EXAMPLE OF AN INDIVIDUATION MARRIAGE 71
Chapter Nine
SEXUALITY AND REPRODUCTION 79
Chapter Ten
THE NONSENSE OF NORMAL SEXUALITY 87
Chapter Eleven
SEXUALITY AND INDIVIDUATION 93
Chapter Twelve
THE DEMONIC SIDE OF SEXUALITY 109
Chapter Thirteen
FuLL SEXUALITY IN MARRIAGE 115
Chapter Fourteen
MARRIAGE Is Not A PRIVATE MATTER 121
Chapter Fifteen
THE SACRIFICE 125
Chapter Sixteen
DIVORCE 135
Chapter Seventeen
SALVATION, WELL-BEING, INDIVIDUATION:
ONLY FOR THE EDUCATED? 139
Chapter Eighteen
MARRIAGE Is DEAD, LONG LIVE MARRIAGE! 141
PREFACE
b
David Dalrymple
At Guggenbihl-Craig’s Marriage—Dead or Alive is perhaps
ne of the top ten books (along with his Power in the Helping
Professions) that has had an impact across disciplines in the last
decades. Spring’s new edition places a Jungian classic before a
younger generation and a wider audience at a time when mar-
riage is still just often understood as a literal sociological and
psychological relationship rather than as an imaginative one.
Many Jungian analysts, therapists, and clinicians will be
pleased that this book has been given a new life. This is be-
cause we continue to live in a time when literalism is reinforced
by clinicians with reductive understandings of the presented
symptoms around love relationships. We continue to have
- therapists focussing on improving communication, putting
power behind one’s love needs, getting conflict on top of the
table, all to the neglect of imagination which underlies so
many conflicts in couple dynamics—the significant fantasies,
dream images, metaphoric motifs, and myths of relationship
which can reveal meaning in our interpersonal experiences.
I remember my delight in discovering this book while at
the Jung Institute in Zurich. As a clergyman and pastoral psy-
chotherapist, I had counseled couples in conflict. I found that
there is a vast gulf between society’s expectations of mar-
riage and the mess spouses find themselves in as infatuation
wears off and marriage becomes more complex. Guggenbuhl
has an eye for the shadow of marriage as well as its salva-
tional potential. He understands marriage as a creation, an
vili
DAVID DALRYMPLE
ix
PREFACE
kill you before it heals you unless you stay conscious, alert,
and disciplined. This is not a designer psychology but a psy-
chology of the bluntness of life and its unrelenting tempering
cauldrons of suffering—not a sadistic suffering but a trans-
formative suffering which teaches us that life’s wisdom is
gained at a cost.
With the republication of Marriage—Dead or Alive, it is im-
portant to value its place in our cultural history of illuminating
present difficulties throught archetypal understandings. For
many years there were few works relating Jungian psychology
and archetypal understandings to marriage and family. The
fundamental commitment of Jungians to the process of in-
dividuation ran the risk of focussing only upon the individual
and intrapsychic dynamics and not on the interpersonal com-
plexities of marriage.
The reader of Marriage—Dead or Alive will experience some
time-dated references (yet I find this to be more than offset
by Guggenbihl’s originality, courage, and imagination). More
women have careers than at its initial writing and publication
in German. Gender stereotypes have been reinterpreted. More
couples live together without marriage. It may be more obvi-
ous now that marriage is not a pathway to salvation and
certainly not the calling for everyone. Guggenbiihl challenged
the pressures for men and women of his time to be married.
Today the pressures for young adults are often to remain single
as long as possible. In Guggenbuhl’s practice he saw women
waiting for careers following marriage and family life. Today
we witness more women with early careers and then worry-
ing about their biological clocks. Now there are various
possibilities for the rearing, care, and education of children.
DAVID DALRYMPLE
November, 2000
Rockford, Illinois
xl
CHAPTER ONE
War and Peace in Marriage
fied with each other. At least they think that this is the
case. The objective observer often has another opinion:
the marriage seems to function so well only because at
least one of the partners sacrifices completely and neglects
development. Either the wife sacrifices all of her personal
and cultural claims for the sake of her husband’s profes-
sion and comfort; or—and this is becoming ever more
frequently the case—the husband serves his wife and
hardly dares express his own opinions in her presence.
He sacrifices his friends and his professional opportunities
and practically allows his power-addicted wife to use him
as a servant. Often one observes how interesting, witty,
and animated the married person is when alone, but then,
with the marriage partner present, every sign of liveli-
ness vanishes. Many marriage partners who have a good
marriage from an external point of view in fact virtually
cripple one another.
Despite armies of psychologists and marriage counse-
lors, not only do divorces continue to occur with great
frequency, but even the marriages that still exist often
seem to be nothing but growth stunting situations. Psy-
chiatrists and psychologists have drawn their conclusions
from this unpleasant situation: marriage and family dy-
namics are explained to the patients. It is often doubted
whether marriage and family in their contemporary form
are still meaningful institutions. Is not marriage, as social
revolutionaries explain it, mostly just an instrument of
society used to control the people?
Even psychiatrists and psychologists who do not share
this radical viewpoint add debits daily to the case against
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MARRIAGE AND FAMILY
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CHAPTER THREE
The Many Faces of Marriage
and Family Life
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MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE
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MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE
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MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE
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MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE
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MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE
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ai fro ntG AN
orion iC
! oF yn
VER S
WNI
CHAPTER FOUR
Well-Being and Salvation
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WELL-BEING AND SALVATION
he found his way back to the Father. Even after his death
he could not immediately ascend to Heaven but had first
to spend three days in the Underworld. For Buddhists
Nirvana means salvation, but before a person can begin
to strive for Nirvana, he must be shaken by the specters
of illness, old age, and death.
We can hardly ever say precisely, or even imagine, just
what salvation is. We know only the various soteriological
pathways. The state of salvation as such can perhaps only
be intuited in a human life during the brief moments of
religious or philosophical peak experiences. For just a
few seconds, while watching a sunset, or standing in the
shower, or in church at a baptism, or at an annual festival,
one suddenly knows the meaning of life; one makes contact
with a spark of divinity.
As goals, salvation and well-being contradict each other.
The path to happiness does not necessarily include suffer-
ing. For the sake of our well-being, we are urged to be
happy and not to break our heads with questions that
have no answer. A happy person sits at the family table
among loved ones and enjoys a hearty meal. A person
who seeks salvation wrestles with God, the Devil, and
the world, and confronts death, even if all of this is not
absolutely necessary at that precise moment.
The civil state is obliged to concern itself with the
well-being of its citizens, but it is not in a position to
offer salvation. It can only provide each citizen with the
freedom to seek salvation as the spirit moves to do so. It
is the churches and religious communities that occupy
themselves with salvation.
In Jungian psychology and psychotherapy, a fairly
sharp distinction is drawn between well-being and salva-
tion. To promote well-being involves helping the patient
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WELL-BEING AND SALVATION
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CHAPTER FIVE
Individuation
Not Elitist, Always Political
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INDIVIDUATION
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skin and ears; his head is cut off and impaled. Finally the
hero is able to unite himself with Olwen. Now he is joined
to soul as it is projected onto a feminine figure.
Courage, cowardice, chaotic fighting, filth, and the grue-
some imbibing of witches’ blood characterize this story.
In contrast, elegant detachment and distance are portrayed
in the pictures of St. George and the dragon. Yet indi-
viduation is better depicted and symbolized in the bloody
and chaotic story of Culhrwch than in the image of the
elegant knight St. George. Individuation means an active,
difficult, uncomfortable working through of one’s own
complex psyche towards a joining of its opposites. These
opposites are symbolized by man and woman.
Individuation is a long and interesting journey. A
lengthy path must be traversed until a man, for instance,
has confronted and dealt with the manifold aspects of the
maternal. First he has to deal with the natural, nourish-
ing animal mother, who strikes him as conservative and
anti-spiritual. Mythologically she is represented by the
extraverted bearer of fertility, Demeter. What is seductive
about the natural mother is that, like the gingerbread
witch of Hansel and Gretel, she nourishes. What is sinis-
ter is that she would also like to devour the man. Too
strong a tie to the mother inhibits the development of a
man.
Another side of the Goddess with which a man has to
have it out is mythologically represented by Persephone,
the Queen of the Underworld. This is the fairylike,
spiritual, ambitious aspect of mother: she can inspire a
man as well as drive him to death and madness. The am-
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INDIVIDUATION
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INDIVIDUATION
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INDIVIDUATION
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CHAPTER SIX
Marriage:
One Pathway to Salvation
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MARRIAGE
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MARRIAGE
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MARRIAGE
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MARRIAGE
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MARRIAGE
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CHAPTER SEVEN
Masculine and Feminine
Do Not Harmonize
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MASCULINE AND FEMININE
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MASCULINE AND FEMININE
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MASCULINE AND FEMININE
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MASCULINE AND FEMININE
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MASCULINE AND FEMININE
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MASCULINE AND FEMININE
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MASCULINE AND FEMININE
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MASCULINE AND FEMININE
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CHAPTER EIGHT
An Example of
An Individuation Marriage
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AN INDIVIDUATION MARRIAGE
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AN INDIVIDUATION MARRIAGE
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AN INDIVIDUATION MARRIAGE
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CHAPTER NINE
Sexuality and Reproduction
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SEXUALITY AND REPRODUCTION
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SEXUALITY AND REPRODUCTION
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SEXUALITY AND REPRODUCTION
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CHAPTER TEN
The Nonsence of Normal Sexuality
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this phallic stage (at about age five) enters the Oedipal
phase with the incestuous desire for sexual contact with
the father or mother. The Oedipal wishes are not ful-
filled and must be repressed, and the result is the latency
stage which lasts until about the twelfth year. During this
phase the sexual instincts are repressed, and sexual en-
ergy is to some extent sublimated. In puberty the so-called
normal sexuality finally comes into its own.
This long and complicated process of sexual develop-
ment contains many dangers through which sexual
anomalies can come into being. In any phase a fixation
can occur, and certain singular sexual components, as for
instance anal sadomasochism or exhibitionism, can take
over; or, out of anxiety about the strength of sexual in-
stincts, displacement mechanisms can come into play
through which the whole of sexuality gets concentrated
on an avoidance object, as in the case of fetishism where
the substitute-object plays the part of the thing desired.
According to Freud the cause of this faulty develop-
ment lies in a constitutional weakness or in congenital
syphilis, in a weak nervous constitution, or in certain
experiences which led to a fixation. Unfortunate sexual
stimulation in a certain phase, as for example the wit-
nessing of sexual contact between the parents which is
misunderstood as an attempt at murder, or seductions
by relatives or servants, can lead to the result that a certain
part-instinct that is important in the particular phase in ques-
tion becomes all too important later and takes over.
In this regard such things as sexual deviancy was under-
stood as the dominance of overpowering infantile sexual
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THE NONSENCE OF NORMAL SEXUALITY
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THE NONSENCE OF NORMAL SEXUALITY
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CHAPTER ELEVEN
Sexuality and Individuation
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SEXUALITY AND INDIVIDUATION
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SEXUALITY AND INDIVIDUATION
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SEXUALITY AND INDIVIDUATION
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SEXUALITY AND INDIVIDUATION
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SEXUALITY AND INDIVIDUATION
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SEXUALITY AND INDIVIDUATION
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SEXUALITY AND INDIVIDUATION
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CHAPTER TWELVE
The Demonic Side of Sexuality
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THE DEMONIC SIDE OF SEXUALITY
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THE DEMONIC SIDE OF SEXUALITY
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CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Full Sexuality in Marriage
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FULL SEXUALITY IN MARRIAGE
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FULL SEXUALITY IN MARRIAGE
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CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Marriage Is Not A Private Matter
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MARRIAGE IS NOT A PRIVATE MATTER
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CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Sacrifice
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THE SACRIFICE
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THE SACRIFICE
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THE SACRIFICE
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THE SACRIFICE
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CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Divorce
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DIVORCE
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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Salvation, Well-Being, Individuation:
Only for the Educated?
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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Marriage Is Dead. Long Live Marriage!
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MARRIAGE IS DEAD. LONG LIVE MARRIAGE!
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MARRIAGE IS DEAD. LONG LIVE MARRIAGE!
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MARRIAGE IS DEAD. LONG LIVE MARRIAGE!
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Psychology / Self-help
OMT
ISBN 0-88214-378-6
780882°143781