Complex Theory as Modern Initiation

Jung (1946/1966) observed that “the meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed” (CW 16, para.163). The family is where the reaction first combusts. What makes the combustion transformative, rather than corrosive, is not proximity. It is a map. Complex theory is that map.

Kast (1997) located the work beginning in adolescence: separation not from the parents as persons but from the ideal figures they have become within the psyche (p. 5). Each complex “permits particular steps towards separation and forbids others” (p. 5). Without the map, resistance masquerades as autonomy, or the parental script is fulfilled while calling itself freedom. Complex theory helps us distinguish the actual parent from the imago.

The ancients did not rely on insight. Harrison (1921) demonstrated that ritual and initiation released the child from complex identification with the mother; the dromenon, the thing done, accomplished what no private reflection could (pp. 1–40). Modernity has lost this cultural container but inherited the task. Complex theory is the late replacement for a lost initiatory process. Von Franz (1972) warned that the “forgotten godmother” curses from the shadow (pp. 24–25). Families without a map do not escape the curse; rather, they inherit it.

Shalit (2002) describes healthy integration: “A good enough mother [a reference to Winnicott] can tolerate the humanization of the mother archetype… the child’s mother-imago will then pass through the stage of change from omnipotence to impotence, and eventually competence” (p. 69). The imago must move from god to broken god, to human, or the adult stays bound to a figure who never existed. Psychic transformation in the family does not have to be either reconciliation or estrangement. It is the slow return of the other to competence, and the ego to relation to Self.

References

Harrison, J. E. (1921). Epilegomena to the study of Greek religion. Cambridge University Press.

Jung, C. G. (1966). The psychology of the transference (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). In H. Read, M. Fordham, G. Adler, & W. McGuire (Eds.), The collected works of C. G. Jung (Vol. 16, 2nd ed.). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1946)

Kast, V. (1997). Father-daughter, mother-son: Freeing ourselves from the complexes that bind us (L. Marshall, Trans.). Element.

Shalit, E. (2002). The complex: Path of transformation from archetype to ego. Inner City Books.

von Franz, M.-L. (1972). Patterns of creativity mirrored in creation myths. Spring Publications.