Individuality - 2

"In my experience, I have found that people rarely enter into analysis with the stated purpose of confirming that individuality which was born in them as a potential, and has somehow gotten lost in the pursuit of the practical goals of their lives."

June Singer
Boundaries of the Soul

Individuality

"The Jungian, as psychotherapist, approaches each new patient with interest, curiosity and wonder....Each person speaks a different language....Each one's way of being, ways of being, ways of thinking, and feeling and perceiving and knowing are distinctly that person's....No one has ever been exactly like this person who sits with me - I must regard this person well, for there will never be another who is quite the same."

June Singer
Boundaries of the Soul

A Christian Perspective on Dreams

"Psychologically, we view dreamwork as a holistic process leading toward personality transformation....

"Spiritually, we view dreamwork as an arena of relationship between you and God, and as a helpful resource on the journey towards holiness as well as wholeness....

"While many people look to a dream to find an answer to their problems, we have discovered that a dream is more helpful when viewed as a question....

"While many have viewed dreams as a piece of information to be conceptually grasped, we have found, in contrast, that a dream is more helpfully viewed as an invitation to relationship.

Savary, Berne, and Williams
Dreams and Spiritual Growth

Accomplishment and the Long Haul

"Thus too much vigour in the beginning of an undertaking, often intercepts and prevents the steadiness and perseverance always necessary in the conduct of a complicated scheme, where many interests are to be connected, many movements to be adjusted, and the joint effort of distinct and independent powers to be directed to a single point. In all important events which have been suddenly brought to pass, chance has been the agent rather than reason; and, therefore, however those who seemed to preside in the transaction, may have been celebrated by such as loved or feared them, succeeding times have commonly considered them as fortunate rather than prudent. Every design in which the connexion is regularly traced from the first motion to the last, must be formed and executed by calm intrepidity, and requires not only courage which danger cannot turn aside, but constancy which fatigues cannot weary, and contrivance which impediments cannot exhaust."

Samuel Johnson,
The Rambler, 43

Opposition

A Tooth upon our Peace
The Peace cannot deface -
Then Wherefore be the Tooth?
To vitalize the grace -

The Heaven hath a Hell -
Itself to signalize -
And every sign before the Place -
Is Gilt with Sacrifice -


Emily Dickinson
The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Franklin), 694

Predispositions

This passage reminded me of James Hillman's The Soul's Code.  Even Hillman admitted he was using extreme cases to indicate the reality of far more common (and subtle) patterns.  Johnson's doubt lines up with Hillman's recognition of a spectrum.

"Some that imagine themselves to have looked with more than common penetration into human nature, have endeavoured to persuade us that each man is born with a mind formed peculiarly for certain purposes, and with desires unalterably determined to particular objects, from which the attention cannot be long diverted, and which alone, as they are well or ill pursued, must produce the praise or blame, the happiness or misery of his future life.

This position has not, indeed, been hitherto proved with strength proportionate to the assurance with which it has been advanced, and perhaps will never gain much prevalence by a close examination.
If the doctrine of innate ideas be itself disputable, there seems to be little hope of establishing an opinion, which supposes that even complications of ideas have been given us at our birth, and that we are made by nature ambitious, or covetous, before we know the meaning of either power or money."

Samuel Johnson
The Rambler, 43