THE RELIGION OF NO RELIGION: JUNG’S PSYCHOLOGY IN THE HISTORY OF ZEN BUDDHISM IN THE 20TH CENTURY

In the 1930s, Zen Buddhism was hardly known outside Japan. By the 1960s, it had become by far the most popular form of Buddhism in Europe and the United States. Its popularity was born from the general belief that Zen responded to the psychological and religious needs of the individual without incurring the criticisms customarily levelled against religion. Zen was imagined as a practical spirituality that accepted all religions and religious symbols as expressions of a universal psychological truth. Zen was not itself a religion, but a ‘super-religion’ that had understood the inner mechanics of the psyche’s natural religion-making function. Three authors in particular, namely D. T. Suzuki, Friedrich Spiegelberg and Alan Watts, were pivotal in the formation of this narrative. Using Jung’s psychological model as their conceptual basis, they promoted a vision of Zen Buddhism that laid the foundations for the ‘Zen Boom’ of the 1950s and 60s. This article will examine the pivotal role played by Jung’s psychology in the formation of this narrative. KEYWORDS Zen Buddhism, D. T. Suzuki, Alan Watts, Friedrich Spiegelberg, The Religion of no Religion.

Conclusion

This chapter studies how the experience and cultivation of individual subjectivity that since the end of the eighteenth century was inextricably tied to literary discourse and narrative forms of storytelling seems to have been absorbed completely into a thinking and writing in cases. The previous chapters read Robert Musil's and Alfred Döblin's novels as poetological responses to this development. In The Man without Qualities, Musil suggests an essayistic style of writing with which the literary text distances itself from scientific and rational discourse without, however, lapsing into mere fiction. Moreover, the essay sets out to fictionalize rational discourse and pushes it to the very point where it coincides with the fiction that precedes it. Döblin, in contrast, confines his critique to that of narrative while affirming the validity of scientific methods. As a consequence, he rejects any psychological truth claim of literary discourse and attempts to turn the novel into a modern epos that approaches life in its unfiltered totality. The chapter then considers three phases of the discourse of literature, each of which reflects a transformation in the function of fiction that defines the particular historical status of narrative literature.

JAYANTI DALAL’S THE DARKNESS DESCENDS (JAGMOHANE SHU JOVU?): A DISTRESS OF BLINDNESS AND COMPROMISING THE SELF

Jayanti Dalal was an eminent playwright, critic and prose writer of Gujarati literature. His sense of employing experiments with form and techniques made him somewhat distinct writer. All his literary works are thought-provoking manifesting unique characteristics through analysis of human perspective. The story The Darkness Descends (Jagmohane Shu Jovu?) focuses on the feelings of Jagmohan, the hero of the story who loses his eyesight. The writer seems to reveal the truth that one should live with rational honesty. He aims at understating the human mind. The writer constructs a story through psychological truth, which doesn’t seem mere a fancy tale. The writer has conducted an experiment of a ‘story within story’ by using comparable Japanese story. The writer applies here his sense of experimentation with a view to comparing and analyzing the self with the others.

Jonson and Performance

For Una Ellis-Fermor, there is a ‘deeply inherent non-dramatic principle’ in the drama of Ben Jonson, a fundamental dislike of theatricality, and a pursuit instead of ‘psychological truth’. Conversely, theatre directors such as Sam Mendes see Jonson’s plays as beautifully engineered blueprints for performance, and locate the psychological truth of Jonson precisely in performance on the stage. This chapter considers current approaches to the whole question of Jonson in performance. It examines the idea of an antitheatrical Jonson, rooted in Jonson’s own critical writings and developed by Ellis-Fermor, Herford and Simpson, and Jonas A. Barish, among others. It contrasts that with the more theatre-friendly version of Jonson which informs much recent performance criticism. The chapter builds up to a reading of the metatheatrical and performance aspects of the most often staged Jonson play of all: Volpone.

Descartes: Truth and Self-deception

The paper examines the role of self-deception in Descartes' Meditations. It claims that although Descartes sees self-deception as the origin of our false judgments, he consciously uses it for his searching for truth. He finds that self-deception is a very productive tool in our searching for truth, since it expands our ability to free ourselves from our old certainties; logical thinking enables us to doubt our certainties but only self-deception enables us to really suspend them.Descartes, then, proposes a logical-psychological method in first person for philosophical investigation, in which self-deception plays a crucial role. The Cogito should be understood accordingly as a first psychological truth rather than a first philosophical truth. Nevertheless, it is a crucial step in Descartes' philosophical investigation and exposes the relations between the logical aspect and the psychological aspect of philosophical thinking.

Shadow Dynamics in Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko

Aphra Behn (1640–1689)—the first woman to write professionally in English—is remembered today primarily for her novel Oroonoko, or the Royal Slave: A True History (1688), which addresses both the abuses of slaves in Surinam and the psychological complexity of enslavement. This essay uses Behn’s portrayal of slavery to examine complementary processes that hold individuation at bay and thus propel the events toward tragedy: men’s shadow projection manifests as brutality, especially against Oroonoko; and present women are objects of anima projection, while absent women symbolize the lack of men’s anima integration. In addition, the narrator’s frequent stress on female characters’ tempering influence on men, which anticipates Jung’s essentialism (his attribution of gender to biological sex), is cultural accretion rather than psychological truth. The novel’s essentialist position, however, deconstructs itself because of Imoinda’s prowess in battle and the narrator’s own unrealized complicity in slavery. Ultimately, by providing a compensatory voice, the novel critiques the culture of slavery that it reflects.

"SEEING THROUGH" SELF-DECEPTION IN NARRATIVE REPORTS: FINDING PSYCHOLOGICAL TRUTH IN PROBLEMATIC DATA

The problem of narrative validity is discussed in reference to psychologists' criticisms of verbal report data and in dialogue with Jean-Paul Sartre's understanding of self-knowledge in general and of self-deception in particular. Sartre's notion of "purifying reflection" is invoked as a way of seeing through the distortions and deceptions inherent in narrative accounts of lived experience. Excerpts from empirically-based phenomenological investigations of desire and sexual compliance will be used as illustrations of both the content and process of phenomenologically-based narrative research.