The World in a Word: A Study in the Language of the Self

Abstract

The term psychology unites the Greek words “psyche” with “logos”—breath, spirit, soul with word, statement, discourse. Since these terms are inherent to the origin story of psychology, the way in which aspects of soul and psyche are connected with the word is undeniably important. So, what happens to our relationship with the archetypal psyche when our words, ideas, language, and images become too dense, when our language has started to calcify, limit, distance, and separate us from—or even try to claim ownership of—the body and that which is unseen or beyond words or definition?

How can anything of worth and soul be conveyed from one psyche to another . . . if archetypal significances are not carried in the depths of our words? We need to recall the angel aspect of the word, recognizing words as independent carriers of soul between people. . . . Words like angels, are powers which have invisible power over us. (Hillman, 1992, p. 9)

The purpose of this dissertation is to specifically re-view and re-imagine the words, language, ideas, and imaginings surrounding the centering and ordering force in the psyche—the Self. Using a hermeneutic methodology, the intent of this research is to explore where and how through our language in describing the Self we have not only distanced ourselves from it as an experiential reality but to also consider what integral aspects of the Self have been left out of the primary discourse—namely its ever-presence, its expression in the body (or, as the body), and its connection to Love.

If we continually perpetuate through our words a one-sided privileging of transcendental notions of the Self as ultimately unknowable and unattainable—an ephemeral goal for the distant future, then how do we live and embody the Self today? If the Self is regarded as primarily a transcendent and future reality, it then has no tangible bearing on life in the body right now. It is a fundamental depth psychological truth that the process of individuation is to realize who we truly are and that the Self, in its essence, is centering, integrating, ordering, and gravitationally pulling all our disparate parts together. Therefore, if the ways in which we talk about the Self and imagine it do the opposite—disconnecting us from the present, from our bodies, from our current conditions and predicaments—we then have a problem that needs to be re-viewed. It is my sense that no connection with the Self can be made without a re-membering of its presence and a sense of how its reality is embodied.