Psyberspace

Pepys

Phil Gyford is doing an interesting and thorough job here. I like the way each entry can accumulate comments and thus in a way it might tun out to be a new form of research, publishing and discussion.

Years ago we had a marvelous online reading group of Jung’s Aion, however a simple email list did not work as people read at different rates. I can imagine a format like this for each paragraph, well at least for each chapter. I’ll follow this one for a bit, though the subject does not grab me all that much the form does.

Thanks Josh.

Later: The track back function is great! (though I can’t see this one there as yet).
Later: Of course, it is only an MT thing, but what if it cld Google the lot? That would be great.

Gaston An essay by Joanne Stroud, Ph.D

Bachelard has an almost reverential attitude toward the imagination. He would agree with Blake’s statement that “The imagination is not a state; it is human existence itself.” He considers the imagination not only the source of pleasure and satisfaction, but also more importantly the primary source that stirs and vitalizes our actions. Often the mind, which is needed for accomplishing goals, and imagination are at odds with each other. “Satisfying the mind so often means doing violence to the imagination,” he argues. He urges us to give imagination full play, to allow ourselves to enjoy the jolt of joy that imagination stimulates before plotting how to effectuate any plans. We are most happily productive when physical action, work, and the images of reverie coincide. Then we can mold the world to our inner model. We can get a grip on it.

Bachelard has come up in several contexts all at once in connection with my Psyche and Cyberspace explorations and he seems somone worth knowing. This essay is a lovely start,

LINK

By providing a highly visible alternative to what they view as an outmoded system of distributing information, the founders hope science itself will be transformed. The two journals are the first of what they envision as a vast electronic library in which no one has to pay dues or seek permission to read, copy or use the collective product of the world’s academic research.

Wonderful news! I am optimistic. I can see that one day this will be the only way knowledge is published, because the older forms will simply go bust, as they should, as did town criers. May the better way prevail.

This is one way of making information on the Net more credible in the Apollonian sense. But note, the Mercurial aspect will not diminish. These peer reviewed items will appear in the search engine along side all the other perspectives, in the pluralistic way the Net has always presented information. The peer acclaimed work will appear along side the despised, the irreverent, the poetic and the pornographic. Does the reader become the arbitrator of truth, or is truth becoming more of a by-product of surfing & skimming?

FutureCulture This is from the manifesto of the first Internet Mailinglist i belonged to.We live in a world full of infinite potential. Reality is what we make it. This may sound like I’m speaking a small fringe special interest grop, but that is not the case. I am speaking to every living individual human being, especially those privelaged enough to live in a postmodern postindustrial world filled with art and technology, money and information, pop culture and subcultures.

Google Search: psybernet Noted this bit of history!

TCPA / Palladium FAQ This sane article by Ross Anderson is a classic. What is also good about it is that it has links to Cory Docrow’s story about treacherous computing, and many other useful links including RMS.

Discussuon archives from ’99

Bryan Alexander in Mindjack Magazine

The dark and haunted spaces of the Gothic worked well to organize a group of anxieties about networked computers in the popular imagination, especially as hints and guesses supplanted lived and thoughtful experience for many. Fears of an unsupervised space where sexual depravity reigned unchecked, especially terrifying in the age of AIDS, projected well onto the internet’s reality of cybersex. The Gothic’s sexual allure, its creation of narrative spaces for reader titillation and/or exploration, described with surprising aptness the lonely user at the keyboard, looking for images and stories of forbidden or inaccessible bodies.

The shadow of anything is a window to the soul we sometimes reluctantly climb through, and so seeing the whole of the Net as a haunted place is one way of “getting it”. Bryan is onto it! Haunted is not far from numinous.

Jungian Analysis: Maxson McDowell

I address both Noll’s and Pietikainen’s critiques by arguing that analytical psychology does not depend upon non-rational assumptions. (Medieval, Catalan: “Nativity”)

My second argument, which I interweave with the first, is that relatedness is a central goal of the individuation journey. In brief, to relate is to engage consciously with the other. The other is found both in the outer world and in the inner world of the psyche. To relate in depth one must be open to that part of the other which is mysterious. To relate to the mysterious, I argue, one needs a standpoint in the rational.

Dreams and God

Introduction:
Why are dreams neglected in institutionally based religion? In what ways can a dream claim to be sacred? How does the “dream” imago Dei correspond with that of theology? Does a preconceived belief system interfere with the psychological interpretation of a dream? These were some of the issues addressed in this very interesting dialogue.

Dr. Gerard Condon is the Spiritual Director at the Pontifical Irish College in Rome, Italy and a regular visitor to the Kristine Mann Library. He recently defended his doctoral thesis at the Gregorian University – the largest theologate in Rome. Entitled Christian Spiritual Dimensions of the Psychology of Carl Gustav Jung with Special Reference to his Use of Dreams, the thesis engages Jungian oneirology (dream theory) and Catholic theology in an Auseinandersetzung (confrontational dialogue) on divine revelation.

Dr. Harry Fogarty is a Jungian analyst, faculty member and supervisor at the C. G. Jung Institute of New York. He is also a Lecturer in Psychiatry and Religion at Union Theological Seminary and a former Trustee of The Kristine Mann Library.