Michael Fordham and Jungian Developmental Psychology

   Michael Fordham is considered a pioneer in Jungian developmental psychology, not only because he extended Jung's concept of individuation to include children, but because many of his concepts are based on actual clinical experience with children.

   Both the primary question that is being asked in this research (whether an order to Jung's psychological functions can be determined) and the hypothesis that a circular order does exist with the psychological function of intuition being first are more compatible with the work of Fordham than with the work of most other theorists. They are also more easily linked to Fordham's concepts of the child as an individual from the beginning, although Fordham exaggerated the possibility that the infant is totally separate from the mother from the beginning. Fordham does not give a structural concept of the experience of the fetus in the womb, except in his description of the primary Self, but he does often refer to the inherent possibilities; furthermore, he proved that Jung's concepts can be used to expand upon knowledge pertaining to child analysis, not only the archetype of the child, but the actual child.

   The hypothesis offered here presupposes many of Fordham's ideas concerning integration and deintegration. Also, by starting at the beginning, it completes a theory of developmental processes using basic Jungian concepts of psychological functions, as well as integrating the ideas of Michael Fordham.

   Fordham had an excellent grasp of Jung's theory of individuation, and he was familiar with Jung's book on Psychological Types, which he helped to edit, but he apparently did not always make the link between all four functions as they pertain to individuation. Fordham begins with a construct of the Self that includes the ego and a description of the ego flowing out of the Self; what appears missing in his construct is the soul archetype, which necessarily needs to be differentiated from the Self or the ego and which is, I think, directly concerned with the psychological function of intuition. Intuition is the basic instinct; the Self, the soul and the ego are the archetypes that are contained in the basic instinct. This assertion can be supported by a depth interpretation of the cosmological mythology, about which Fordham says very little.

   There is also, not surprisingly, very little in Fordham's writing concerning the psychological function of intuition or its importance in the psyche of the child.

Fordham on the Child in the Womb

   Fordham asked many questions concerning the child in utero and after parturition because many of his theories rested on the concept that a child was an individual from the beginning and not just an extension of the mother. Just where to place the emerging ego is also a question related to the child in utero, and Fordham fluctuated in his opinion concerning this difficult but important aspect of his theoretical construct. In 1970, he says:

Since the time that the self concept was originated, much more has been discovered about ego fragments and there can be no doubt that quite a firmly established ego structure is in being by two years of age; therefore the concept of the self may not be so necessary or central. The new data have indeed suggested an alternative theory of the ego, just because its organisation begins much earlier than was believed. (p. 100)

   By 1976, Fordham appears to have accepted the idea that the ego is present much earlier than he had previously conceived. In 1951, Freud, Jung, and other psychologists thought the ego to "be in place by the age of 5 or 6," which Fordham began to doubt. By 1970, Fordham thinks the ego is firmly established by the age of 2 years, but by 1976, Fordham accepts that the ego or parts of it are present at birth and that the importance of when the ego begins is crucial to child psychology:

The time at which the ego is formed is important for the study of child psychology. The discovery of its early appearance has compelled a substantial revision in much of our thinking and understanding of infants; it has had repercussions on our orientation toward the structure and organization of the infantile psyche; it has compelled a revision of views about the possibilities of infant and child management and therapy. But, in spite of all this, the necessary modifications are congruent with the main body of Jung's thesis, which was so much ahead of its time. (p. 37)

   By placing the ego as emerging at birth with the soul complex also present at birth, many of Jung's descriptions of the soul archetype can be seen to apply to early childhood. The intuitive function, which is often placed willy-nilly, or worse yet, totally ignored as an important psychological function, can be seen to commence and work in relationship with the other three functions from the beginning, which is in the womb.

   Concerning the child in the womb, Fordham (1976) says, "recently there have been serious attempts to investigate this difficult topic and, while there is not yet a psychology of intrauterine life, there is now a growing consensus that there are organized perceptual ego-functions at birth" (p. 46).

   Here Fordham accepts the view that the ego or at least some organized perceptual ego-functions are present at birth, an idea that slightly alters some of his original ideas concerning the infant. Fordham's views on consciousness and when the ego begins vary considerably and obviously changed over the years. In l970, he states:

Just when consciousness of any kind begins can only be inferred, because the study of intra-uterine life is manifestly difficult, but, enough is now known about the foetus to state confidently that he experiences some kind of rudimentary consciousness. Rapid as development may be after birth, in the first weeks of life there is every reason to suppose that perception is vague and transitory. Consequently the ego can play only a small part in the infant's existence, which is best understood in terms of patterned archetypal drives. Soon, however, ego fragments can be noted; they are closely related from the beginning to the drives and their unconscious fantasy representations. (p. 93)

   Here I suggest that what Fordham is calling "vague and transitory perception" is what Jung would have called "unconscious perception" or intuition (Jung, 1971/1921, p. 463); the unconscious fantasy representations are created by the intuitive function, which sees into the Self and returns with a symbol that not only expresses the ego, but strengthens and reinforces the ego complex. By this method, Self, soul, and ego archetypes can be seen to be organized and working together from the beginning, and the soul archetype, which I equate with the intuitive function, can be seen to be the mediator, as Jung described, not only in later life, but from the beginning.

   Fordham never seems to expand upon his statement that a rudimentary consciousness might exist in the womb or what kind of consciousness it might be; from this statement, however, he obviously did not believe it to be ego consciousness, which he says only plays a small part in the infant's existence. A "rudimentary consciousness," however, implies several things; either the ego is present in the fetus or another kind of consciousness is present. I would suggest that this consciousness is not ego, as many of the writers who consider some kind of consciousness present think, but comes from the absence of the ego and is the soul complex or intuitive consciousness. Other adjectives that could be used to describe this consciousness are: basic, elementary, fundamental, initial, original, and primary. What is present in the womb is passive thinking (intuition) rather than active thinking, and Jung makes the necessary distinction in his description of the two functions. It seems almost obvious that passive thinking would precede active thinking and be the foundation upon which all future active thinking rests. What Jung called passive thinking or intuition, however, consists of more than unconscious thinking; it also contains unconscious feeling and unconscious sensation. In other words, these three major psychological functions exist as one undifferentiated function, which is intuition.

   By 1976, Fordham is even more empathetic with the idea that an infant has conscious (ego) experiences and that the fetus may have "perceptual experience," even if it is vague. He states:

It would, I think, be very daring to assume that an infant is not capable of any conscious experience and there is some indirect evidence in favour of there being ego-consciousness in very early situations. Right from the start, i.e., after birth, and indeed while still in utero, the infant (or foetus) reacts to stimuli. That the responses involve reflexes and neural discharges of an organized kind is certain and it would be much more logical, since reflexes involve afferent stimuli, to assume that at least some of them are accompanied by perceptual experience, however vague. (pp. 45-46)

   Again, Fordham uses the word "vague," which is closely related to words chosen by other writers to describe this state, such as dim, faint, or blurred, but he does not attribute these vague perceptual experiences either to the ego complex or to the soul complex; indeed, he does not comment on the nature of what he is describing as consciousness in the womb. I think that what he describes quite well can be seen as intuitive consciousness or soul consciousness, which exists simply because there is no ego consciousness present.

   Fordham (1976) calls instinctual behavior a release-manifestation that is laid down within the organism before birth by the innate release-mechanism. He compares this to the baby gull who first feeds because of the red color, which is a sign-stimulus. The behavior of the infant is considered to be caused by the same sign-stimulus. Fordham states:

When a baby starts to feed at the breast it is likely that there is a sign-stimulus that starts him feeding. It would not be a breast, or a nipple as such. I emphasize this because it would seem that the sort of consciousness that an infant has is most unlike anything we know of, but it is not necessarily hazy but remarkably precise. (p. 173)

   If the sign-stimulus is not the breast, nipple, or the body of the mother, the human infant appears to be somewhat different from the baby gull, who is stimulated by a red color on its mother's beak. Fordham does not specify what this stimulus might be in the human infant, but he does attribute this activity to consciousness that is remarkably precise and different from anything we know. Here I would conclude that the infant "knows" by the consciousness of soul, that is, by the psychological function of intuition, which informs the ego that it is in a state of need or a state of desire, which is manifested in the body by the sucking behavior of the infant. Thus, the infant draws on the Self from the soul position and expresses what is needed through the ego; unconsciousness and consciousness are connected by the soul position. Jung (1971/1921) describes this process in the following way:

The soul never loses its intermediate position. It must therefore be regarded as a function of relation between the subject and the inaccessible depths of the unconscious. The determining force (God) operating from these depths is reflected by the soul, that is, it creates symbols and images, and is itself only an image. By means of these images the soul conveys the forces of the unconscious to consciousness; it is both receiver and transmitter, an organ for perceiving unconscious contents. What it perceives are symbols. But symbols are shaped energies, determining ideas whose affective power is just as great as their spiritual value. (pp. 250-251)

   Here Jung was not necessarily commenting on the soul as an aspect of infancy, but his description can be seen as one that describes that period just as adequately as any other age in life, especially if we assume that the infant starts life with two kinds of consciousness, one of soul and one of ego. Life appears to be the journey towards reconnecting these opposites in the most possible conscious way, not only year to year, but also moment to moment.

   Fordham (1976, pp. 42-43) gives his views on the previously accepted concept of the infant as "psychically part of his mother." Here, he disagrees with the mainstream view and suggests that the baby influences the mother just as much as she influences the baby. He goes on to state:

The idea that the infant is psychically part of his mother is implicitly combined with another one: the infant is said to be unconscious. In current usage the term unconscious is ambiguous: it refers on the one hand to a negative state in which perceptual functions are not giving rise to conscious awareness and on the other to a more or less organized and partly inherited system of structures referred to as unconscious archetypes. (p. 45)

   Here Fordham has identified a part of the problem due to terminology; whether in the womb or after birth, the term "unconscious" is ambiguous; if the more or less organized and partly inherited system of structures referred to as unconscious archetypes are active and functioning in the fetus or the infant, they could better be described as part-conscious and part-unconscious; this would be a middle position and one that I would call soul consciousness or intuitive consciousness. The infant could be said to have an unconscious, in which the primary Self exists; and a soul consciousness that contains the major archetypes, including both consciousness and unconsciousness; and ego consciousness, which is always connected to the body in the beginning. Here it is not difficult to see the soul position as that which can be compared to a twilight state; it is not all dark or all light, but contains both to produce a different state of consciousness, which describes the intuitive function quite well. "Through a glass darkly" could be said to be describing the function of intuition as the way we first see.

   Jung (1971/1921) describes the soul complex in this way:

Looked at historically, the soul, that many-faceted and much-interpreted concept, refers to a psychological content that must possess a certain measure of autonomy within the limits of consciousness . . . . It must be a content in which spontaneity is inherent, and hence also partial unconsciousness, as with every autonomous complex. (p. 247)

   This is a good description of the child in the womb, and the child at birth, who has his original state of unity shattered by birth into two types of consciousness that appear split or divided; one is soul consciousness and one is ego consciousness. In the womb, these two existed as the Self archetype and the soul archetype that reflects the Self.

   It is possible that Fordham carried his idea of the child, especially the unborn child, being separate from the mother to the extreme, possibly to refute Neumann's insistence that they exist as a symbiotic pair in utero and a year after birth and possibly to allow him to formulate ideas that were not conceivable by using the concepts that Neumann proposed.

   Fordham's arguments concerning the infant in the womb are sometimes hazy and often rather ineffective. He maintains (1976) that an infant has boundaries in the womb that "may very well be thought of as present at conception" (p. 11). Before this, he claims that we can ask how these boundaries are formed, but it is not possible to answer that question. He then goes on to say:

There is a common fantasy that, during pregnancy, a mother and her baby live in a special state of intimate fusion disrupted at birth. The true state of affairs is different for, although a mother provides a stable aquatic environment and feeds her baby through the umbilical cord, the growth of a foetus is determined in all other respects by its genetic constitution. (p. 11)

   Kay (1984) cites research that was concerned extensively with stress, depression, and the effect of the mother's negative or positive emotions on the unborn child, and concludes with the statement: "What seemed to matter most of all was what the mother felt about her unborn child" (p. 326). If the mother wanted and loved her unborn child, the child appeared to be protected by a "shield of protection against adversity" (p. 326).

   Fordham's statements concerning the separate state of the infant in the womb appear simplistic because they don't consider many aspects of the child in the womb that might be affected by the mother. A more reasonable view might be that the infant in utero has a separate Self and separate soul that is always acting and reacting to the mother or the mother's womb, which is its environment. They are separate bodies, but always connected by the umbilical cord, which is a connection that cannot be ignored; without that connection the infant would not survive. The state of unity or fusion that the fetus experiences may be because of the three psychological functions of thinking, feeling and sensation being unconscious and merged in the function of intuition, which allows the fetus to respond to stimuli from within or without in the best possible way. The genetic inheritance would be present in the intuitive function, making the child an individual from the start, but he or she would always be an individual in relationship to his or her surroundings, practice, one might say, for life after birth, which is the same, with the exception that the ego comes into play and ego consciousness usually takes the lead, whereas soul consciousness becomes or is called "unconscious." For these reasons, I would consider both Neumann and Fordham to be correct if taken together; the unborn child is separate, but also lives in what Neumann called "primal unity." In the womb, these opposites are united.

Fordham on Cosmogonic Myths and the Womb as Paradise

   Fordham did not comment on the cosmogonic myth of Genesis, although he does correctly state that the closest parallel to the deintegration concept lies in cosmic creation myths. I would add that perhaps the most important cosmogonic myth in our Western culture is the creation of Adam and Eve, who lived initially with God in the garden of Paradise. Paradise and the enclosed garden are symbols that are equivalent to the cosmic egg described by the Greeks, and both can be seen as symbols of the womb.

   Fordham (1957) describes the Greek myth of Eros who sprang from the cosmic egg:

The most probable source of parallels to the deintegration concept lies in cosmic creation myths, and indeed they are to be found amongst our Western cosmogonic myths, the Greek ones showing the essential features most clearly. In the Orphic cult we find the cosmic egg as "the symbol of what gives birth to all things and in itself contains all things" and the Clemintine Homilies say: "Orpheus likened Chaos to an egg in which was the commingling of the primeval elements." From the cosmic egg springs Eros, he "revealed and brought to light everything that had previously lain hidden in the golden egg." (p. 118)

   Eros does contain the contents of the cosmic egg; the cosmic egg can be seen as a symbol of the Self that contains all four, undifferentiated, unconscious psychological functions. The cosmic egg contains everything, including soul and soul love, and when it bursts (when the child is born), Eros comes forth and all the functions that were merged begin as conscious functions connected to the ego and unconscious functions connected to the soul. Love is the double-edged sword that severs and unites and can be seen as the Divine Child and the human child. (Most Divine Children in mythology are portrayed as having a double nature, for example, Hermes.)

   The integration of the ego takes place when its demands are met with soul love from the mother or other and it returns to that psychological place where there is nothing to want or desire. The experience of the other half of feeling or love that was left in the unconscious replaces the ego needs of the infant and he has experienced the opposites in time. This is a return to the womb experience that allows the infant to match inner world with the outward world, ensuring a sense of wholeness. Metaphorically speaking, the child is returned to the cosmic egg or the Self by a process of assimilation. This process is continuous in the beginning of life and essential for the child-body-ego to develop adequately. The early mother and child relationship can be seen as one of soul (mother) to ego (child); the return to the mother at any age is a desire to return to soul consciousness, which has been damaged or blocked for whatever reason.

   Kaplan (1978) expresses much the same thing: "all later human love and dialogue is a striving to reconcile our longings to restore the lost bliss of oneness with our equally intense need for separateness and individual selfhood" (p. 27). In early infancy, this is a natural process; Eros or the ego must be expressed, satisfied and, by satisfaction, be lost, in order to be returned to soul, which strengthens the ego that next expresses itself in consciousness. It appears as a peculiar quirk of fate that the old ego consciousness must die before a new ego consciousness can be expressed--or put another way, consciousness is only enlarged by the loss of consciousness. This is true in adult life, but it is no less true in infancy, where the process first began. Two kinds of consciousness that appear split or divided must be reconciled in the human psyche, which is what so many of the myths appear to describe. Jung (1959/1938) describes this when he says:

The conflict between the two dimensions of consciousness is simply an expression of the polaristic structure of the psyche, which like any other energetic system is dependent on the tension of opposites. That is also why there are no general psychological propositions which could not just as well be reversed; indeed, their reversibility proves their validity. (p. 269)

   Gayley (1939) describes the Orpheus version of the Greek cosmological myth as, "assuming the form of a huge world egg, [which] flew, by reason of its rapid rotation, into halves. Of these, one was Heaven, the other Earth. From the center of the egg proceeded Eros (Love) and other wondrous beings" (p. 3). Heaven and earth can be seen as another form of the Divine Syzygy or opposites that become soul (Mother) and ego (Father). Eros, as the Divine Child, proceeds from the center. Here he represents the adult ego and soul merged, or the functions of intuition and thinking merged. In the coming apart of Heaven and Earth or the Self, he represents the beginning of consciousness in the functions of sensation and feeling in the human child. These are the "child" functions; sensation is the child soul and feeling is the child ego. As a symbol of the Self, Eros contains them all, and they flow out of him (deintegrate) or back to him (reintegrate.)

   Ryce-Menuhin (1988) describes Fordham's hypothesis:

Fordham's deintegration hypothesis proposes a spontaneous division of the self. Indirect evidence may be gathered from various sources. Jung believed that a new concept has certainly been reflected in ancient myths, and this can amplify the concept of deintegration. The cosmic creation myths may be a source of ideas parallel to the deintegration theory. In the Orphic cult in Greece we find the cosmic egg as "the symbol of what gives birth to all things and in itself contains all things." (Plutarch, quoted in Harrison, 1908). (p. 57)

   It is the leap from the Self archetype to the ego archetype, leaving out the soul archetype that caused Fordham difficulty with his hypothesis; it is probably the soul that is the organ of conscious perception and the cosmic egg is a symbol for the Self that contains the ego and the soul within itself. One could say that it contains the contents of the Self as a reflection of the soul and ego merged; the soul, ego, or the reflection comes apart or deintegrates, but the Self does not. The cosmic egg symbolizes the four functions in undifferentiated form. Intuition is the first function out of the cosmic egg (symbolized as mother or earth or soul) and still contains all the other functions within itself. These are the ego functions of sensation, feeling and thinking. The soul is a reflection of the Self and identical with the Self, but has also become something separate (the spontaneous division that is also a state of transition) and can be identified as the soul archetype which is identical with the instinct of intuition. Her child is the function of sensation or the child soul that has not yet become fully conscious. At birth and the experience of the opposites, sensation (soul) and feeling (ego) become conscious ego functions and intuition (soul) goes into the personal unconscious. The thinking function or what Jung called active thinking is either not yet conscious or possibly contains the thought as an unconscious image that was experienced in the rational function of feeling and experienced before that in the irrational function of sensation.

   As Ryce-Menuhin and Fordham attest, the cosmic creation myths are an excellent source for parallel ideas of the deintegration theory; what is missing in some of Fordham's concepts is a better description of what happens before birth, a more precise definition of the beginning ego and the role the soul archetype plays in the process of individuation in childhood, based on Jung's excellent description of that archetype as a mediator between the Self and the ego.

   Fordham (1982) did not comment specifically on the cosmological myth of Genesis, but he did have definite ideas concerning the womb experience as one related to or describing a state of Paradise. He states:

Take the idea of Paradise being in the womb, well, if you study what goes on in the womb and quite a lots been done--it's not particularly Paradisical, it's, what it is, or if it is, Paradise is a very noisy place, indeed. The beating of the aorta in the mother is a constant sort, like an old fashion steam train going on all the time. Then you [presumably the child] get cramps, can't get sorted out--have to kick--turn yourself upside down by peculiar spiral movements. External noises can be quite intrusive, too. You can't say you would like to call that Paradise, a place like that; it's not likely anyone will. (recorded lecture)

   In this unlikely research, I am making exactly that proposal; I am looking at the myth of Paradise as a metaphor that describes the womb experience and the experience of the child at birth. This is not a new idea; Heinberg (1989) gives the following example:

The idea of interpreting the Paradise myth as an analogy for the mother-infant relationship did not originate with Feud or Jung, however. Indeed, its roots go at least as far back as the Gnostics of the first century. Simon Magus, whose views are preserved (no doubt in distorted form) in Saint Hippolytus's Refutation of All Heresies, taught that the Garden of Eden was not a geographical place, but a metaphor for the womb; "If God forms man in his mother's womb--that is, in Paradise--then let the womb be Paradise and the after-birth Eden, a river flowing forth from Eden, for the purpose of irrigating Paradise. This river is the navel." (p. 194)

   Fordham did not make a connection with the myth of Genesis as a metaphor for the experience of being in the womb or birth. His rejection for the experience of the unborn child being in a Paradisical state, however, appears to me to be extremely subjective and therefore not a very convincing one. The beating of the mother's heart or noise in the womb means very little; it implies that the infant prefers silence, indeed, that the infant has a preference, which is probably not the case at all.

   If there is no ego (as we know it) present in the womb and no knowledge of the opposites, the infant is not able to make a value judgment concerning his or her own body sensations, such as the one Fordham is making. (Fordham appears to be identifying with the conscious sensate and conscious feeling and conscious thinking experience of the infant in the womb, from an adult, conscious, ego position, which certainly does not sound like Paradise. But what would an intuitive description sound like?) The infant may act and react to stimuli, but does not appear to be using the functions of active, conscious thinking, conscious feeling or conscious sensation, as defined by Jung. The one psychological function that appears to be possibly present and possibly conscious is intuition; the infant moves toward and away from the object or stimulus by what appears to be an in-born instinct, and intuition appears to fit the description more than any other psychological function, especially if we consider the possibility that it contains some form of consciousness. The infant appears to know what to do and when to do it, in most cases, intuitively. (The infant in the womb is alive and it is my assumption that the state of being alive contains some form of consciousness, even if we have not yet been able to define what it is.) If there is no ego present, the experience of the body sensations of the infant might be such that what is pain is experienced no differently than what is pleasurable. The experience of differentiating opposites would not be present. If this is the case, one might readily define such a state as Paradisical.

   Birth, which can be seen as the beginning of the ego, represented in the Genesis myth as the "Fall," would create the second kind of consciousness, ego, which would exist as a conflict with soul consciousness from the beginning. The soul contains all the psychological functions merged; the ego separates all the functions as consciousness comes into being. Thus, the opposites are born and in conflict, represented in the myths as the hero and his search for Paradise or what was lost by consciousness. An interpretation of the myth of Genesis will be discussed later in this research in detail, where I suggest that the four major archetypes of the myth, God, (intuition) the snake, (sensation) Eve (feeling) and Adam, (thinking) all represent psychological functions and psychic energy that can be seen as a description of the infant in the womb and the experience of birth and a description of psychological processes that can occur at any age. The creation myth of Eros can be seen as comparable to the creation myth of Genesis; in both myths Chaos comes first, then Heaven and Earth in the Genesis myth, and Earth and Heaven in the Greek myth. Chaos is the Self, Earth is the soul, and Heaven is the Ego. But the child ego is the shadow of Heaven and Earth or the unconscious side of the "Divine" functions of intuition and thinking. Paradise is identical with Eros or Love, and both are symbols that unite the opposites.

   Because I think the functions of unconscious thinking, unconscious feeling, and unconscious sensation are merged and, by the merger, create the function of intuition, I consider this to be the first conscious psychological function present in the human psyche and the psychological experience that is desired by the symbolism of a "return to Paradise" motif in mythology. One cannot return literally to the womb, but one can return to the psychological experience that one had in the womb and do so on a conscious level, which the idea of rebirth symbolizes. This is the message of the myths, especially the religious myths that promise a "new Heaven and new Earth" or a "New Jerusalem." This experience, I would suggest, also takes place in the beginning of life, if the infant is fortunate, every time the child is returned to an assimilation of the original state of what I would call soul consciousness. After birth, Paradise is to be found and recreated in relationship, by loving and being loved.

   Fordham (1982) concludes: "All this longing for the mother, which Jung talks about--I'm afraid it's not so" (recorded lecture). Jung (1959/1938) is more convincing on this point:

Symbols of the mother in a figurative sense appear in things representing the goal of our longing for redemption, such as Paradise, the Kingdom of God, the Heavenly Jerusalem. The archetype is often associated with things and places standing for fertility and fruitfulness; the cornucopia, a ploughed field, a garden. It can be attached to a rock, a cave, a tree, a spring, a deep well, or to various vessels such as the baptismal font, or to vessel-shaped flowers like the rose or the lotus. Because of the protection it implies, the magic circle or mandala can be a form of mother archetype. Hollow objects such as ovens and cooking vessels are associated with the mother archetype, and, of course, the uterus, yoni, and anything of a like shape. (p. 81)

   The longing for the mother can be seen as a desire to return to the original experience of unity and wholeness or a desire to return to the psychological state of soul consciousness, which observes the Self and the ego simultaneously.

   Even though Fordham (1976) rejected the idea of the womb experience being symbolized by the myth of Paradise, he gives an excellent description of a state of complete integration in the beginning:

A symmetrical theory of the relation between the first and the second half of life can be envisaged: assuming that complete integration, based on realization of the self, is the final aim of individuation, it becomes possible that there is also a state of complete integration in the beginning. It is not realized, nor realizable, at all because there is no ego distinct from the self to perceive it. When the original integrate exists must be left open; it may, however, be conveniently located before birth, which disrupts it--hence the persistent idea of birth as the earliest source of anxiety. (p. 16)

   Here Fordham apparently contradicts himself when he says that the original integrate must be left open because he goes on to say that it may be conveniently located before birth, which disrupts it. I do not think that the original integrate must be left open, but does exist before birth, which is in the womb. Birth would certainly be a disruption of that original state of unity and the first deintegration. Fordham says that there is no ego distinct from the Self to perceive that state of harmony, and it is therefore not realizable or realized, yet one has to question the purpose of such a state; if it is not realizable in any way, how can we imagine that it ever existed? I would agree that there is no ego (as we know it) present to perceive, but ego consciousness is not the only kind of consciousness possible. The experience of the Self is perceived by soul consciousness, which also contains memory, and depends on the absence of the conscious ego. If the Self, indeed, is the archetype that contains everything within itself, that would have to include some form of consciousness. It would also have to include a psychological function, which is the human means to knowledge, and that function would necessarily be the function of intuition.

   The absence of the ego as a means of obtaining spiritual knowledge or transformation is documented in numerous accounts of religious or mystical literature. Jung (1971/1921) describes this process as:

The yogi seeks to induce this concentration or accumulation of libido by systematically withdrawing attention (libido) both from external objects and from interior psychic states, in a word, from the opposites. The elimination of sense-perception and the blotting out of conscious contents enforce a lowering of consciousness (as in hypnosis) and an activation of the contents of the unconscious, i.e., the primordial images, which, because of their universality and immense antiquity, possess a cosmic and suprahuman character. (emphasis mine, p. 202)

   Fordham states that his theory of integrates and deintegrates can best be compared with the cosmic creation myths, but he only mentions the myth of Eros and the cosmic egg; it is regrettable that he did not link his theory with the myth of Genesis or the idea of Paradise in the womb, because by doing so his theory could be seen from the beginning of life and connected to the very important Western cosmic myth of Genesis. In addition, the link or comparison between the Greek cosmological myth of Eros and the Jewish and Christian myth of Genesis can be more readily seen. Fordham was correct when he said that cosmic myths could be compared with deintegration, but he failed to see a connection between integration and the Paradise myth of Genesis. If, as Piaget previously stated, every Genesis has its roots in a previous Genesis, integration can readily be seen as a Paradisical state of being that begins in the womb, and can only be recaptured after birth by a reintegration to the previous condition.

Archetypes, the Unconscious, and Mandalas

   Concerning the unconscious, Fordham (1957) states:

It will be assumed that the unconscious, whose organs are the archetypes, is formed before birth. Since the archetypes are bound up with the functioning of the central nervous system it must presumably be there by the time the brain is formed. (p. 105)

   This concept can be extended to assume that consciousness and unconsciousness both exist, as living potential, in the body or in the cell from the beginning or even before the brain is formed. If the brain did not exist as potential in the beginning organism, how could it come into being? The point I believe Fordham to be making is that the archetypes exist in the unconscious before birth and exist in a state of unity. Fordham (1957) continues:

In 1951 I put forward some tentative formulations starting from the assumption that the self is the original archetype of infancy and further that the emergence of the ego was closely related to it. I based this upon the observation that children produced pictures of mandalas, and further that when they did so a process of integration occurred in which the ego was clearly strengthened. I went on to show that very small children, even those of one year old, connected the circle with the word I or me and that here also their behavior showed an integration comparable to that observed in older children. From this I concluded that the circle represented the self in union with the ego. These observations ran counter to what I thought was an established concept: that the ego was not formed till much later. (pp. 112-113)

   Fordham (1957) compares his views with those of Winnicott, who postulates a primary unintegrated state in infancy (p. 114), which would be in direct opposition to Fordham's description of a primary integrated state out of which the ego emerges. In discussing Winnicott's concept of a "continuity of being," Fordham (1957) says, "the notion of a 'continuity of being' in a single psyche-soma implies a condition of wholeness, but where Winnicott speaks of the psyche-soma and environment then the self has already been divided up even if the fit be perfect" (pp. 114-115).

   This is an excellent observation by Fordham; if the ego flows out of the original Self, yet the Self remains intact, obviously there are two states of being at this point: one of non-ego or what I would call the soul and one of ego. Why would it not be possible to assume that each "bit of consciousness" can coexist with what is unconscious or preconscious or undifferentiated by the infant? This would imply a continuity of being in which the infant would acquire consciousness, but it would still flow out of the unconscious.

   My research supports that of Winnicott; at birth the self of the infant is divided; two kinds of consciousness come into being, one of soul and one of ego. Fordham is also correct if he means that the infant is, right after birth, in a state of primary wholeness or a state that could be called the Self because it includes both states of consciousness. If he means the infant is born with a Self that is not in conflict and in a state of unity, however, he is only half right. Fordham defines the primal Self as an integrate, a steady state, that must deintegrate, and one that contains opposites within itself; when the self deintegrates it will divide into opposites that are psycho-physiological in nature (l976, p. 12). It is unclear in Fordham's many descriptions, as well as in other explications of his work, whether Fordham's primal Self, described as a steady state or integrate, is the state of the infant at birth and shortly thereafter or if it is a condition present only in the womb. It would appear that he thought the Self existed in the womb and was also present at birth and shortly thereafter.

   Fordham (1979) says:

The unity of the infant expresses his individuality and it is attractive to think that it could provide the motivation for individuation as follows, just because the primary wholeness can never be achieved again once individuation has taken place, there is a drive to regain what is impossible. It can, however, be approximated to in sleep, in blissful experience; later on it can be represented in omnipotent, wishful, ideal and holistic imagery. But in all these the original condition can only be sought and when self representations are developed as a creative imaginative act, individuation is facilitated. (p. 27)

The relationship with mother or primary caretaker, will consist of two different, but related aspects thereafter, nonego (or soul) to nonego, and ego to ego. The mother, in her acts of care-taking, loving and full-filling the child's basic needs, which are also ego demands, will assimilate the original experience of unity, primal unity that existed in the womb and was shattered by the act of birth. When the ego, or "I" that is separate has these basic needs given on a regular basis, he experiences an assimilation of the unity in the womb, which is now in the world, with another person (mother) and it is the experience that he is having as subject and object that allows him to know himself as both subject and object. His subjective ego demands are fulfilled by the object (mother). This assimilation is of the greatest importance, because each time mother and child re-enact a state of "unity" the ego or "I that am separate," I that demand: food, warmth, comfort, love, relinquishes itself in the process of accepting those needs. Ego that is satisfied returns to a nonego state, the state of unity, at least temporarily, until a new need arises. (emphasis author's, p. 7)

More on Mandala Symbolism

   The mandala played an important role in the formations of Fordham's early hypothesis of childhood individuation. His reference is often to Jung's description of mandalas and the significant role they can play in the process of individuation. Fordham (1957) states:

The contents of a fully developed mandala are variable but in every case they are arranged about a centre. The space between the centre and the circumference is divided up in various ways. The most frequent and stable number of the divisions is four, or a multiple of four, and Jung has put forward the view, elaborated in many of his works but above all in Psychological Types, that these represent the fourfold structure of the psyche. (p. 132)

   If the mandala represents the fourfold structure of the psyche, all the psychological functions would be present, but in the child many aspects of the functions would still be unconscious. Those images put in the mandala might represent aspects that have been seen by the soul complex and made conscious, which is described by the pictures that the child draws and puts into the circle.

   Fordham (1957) gives a description of a 1-year-old child who scribbles on the wall of the nursery and began to make circles. After doing this for some time, the child says the word, "I," and the circles stop. Fordham continues:

   Far from contradicting our interpretation, Jung's observations that the circle represents an archetypal nonego confirm it, even though his researches are on individuation in which the separation is essential and this research is based upon the concept that the separation has not yet occurred. This inversion is a logical consequence, as we have seen, from Jung's theories. (p. 134)

   Fordham is right in saying that the mandala represents the Self or totality of the child. If separation had not yet occurred, however, why would the child make mandalas as protective devices in the first place? Jung (1959/1955) said of mandalas, "their object is the self in contra-distinction to the ego, which is only the point of reference for consciousness, whereas the self comprises the totality of the psyche altogether, i.e., conscious and unconscious" (emphasis author's, p. 5). If this is the case, the mandala would represent an already present ego that expresses its connection to the Self. Fordham (1957, p. 135) quotes Jung, who states that the circle is a protection against the "perils of the soul," but it is conceivable that this is a natural occurrence in infancy and early childhood, and is necessary for the filling out of the ego rather than from an always inherent danger. It is possible that the archetype of the circle may be present at birth or shortly thereafter and represents the soul position, where the four psychological functions existed as one in the form of intuition in the womb and later or after birth when the infant has experienced a return to that state via the mother, by having needs met. A return to the soul position would allow a view of the Self, which would be expressed by the ego. If the soul is the archetype that the adult returns to, as Jung describes, to return to the Self, then the reverse would be true in childhood: The soul would flow firstly out of the Self. It would be a reflection of the Self, but not the Self in its totality, which would not be needed. The progression would be away from the Self, via the soul, towards ego consciousness. The ego would regress in that case for two different reasons; when it is threatened (fear, which is ego love), and when it is loved by "other." In both cases, the purpose would be the same--the strengthening and protection of the ego.

   Fordham here (1957) gives a case of a 2-1/2-year-old girl who he invited to sit on his lap and draw. He describes her first scribbles as "aggressive" and concludes that

her apparent acquiescence had been under secret protest; it was only when the circle appeared, however, that her ego could express itself in action. It seemed to represent the statement that my power had become neutralized and that there was now a magical boundary between herself and me which made her position safe; no aggression from me was now possible. (p. 135)

   He continues:

   Jung states that the circle is a protection against the "perils of the soul" thereby relating it to psychical functions rather than to real persons. This contradiction is, however, more apparent than real, for the child must have seen me as a danger--I would not have pressed her to scribble had she not acquiesced. The danger was due to a projection of the "soul," in this case the father imago. If I had been more active the projection would not have been withdrawn, therefore in cases where the environment is dangerous or hostile the projection becomes indissoluble because it is "true" and strong indissoluble defenses are set up against it. (1957, p. 135)

   Fordham concludes:

These observations and reflections point to the circle as representing a delimiting or protective magic used to ward off real or imagined dangers from without or from within, or a danger inherent in the condition itself, a condition which provides the circumstances out of which the ego can come into being. (1957, p. 137)

   I would suggest that Fordham's description is accurate. By making the circle, the little girl returned to an earlier state where the father imago was contained in the primal unity of the soul complex: father, mother, and child as one. I do not think, however, that the making of the mandala is necessarily always a protective or defensive device by the child, but can be seen as an attempt to communicate and express psychic experience in the form of symbols and images, which probably are formed long before the formation of language. Jung (1959/1938) describes something like this when he says:

Wholeness is never comprised within the compass of the conscious mind--it includes the indefinite and indefinable extent of the unconscious as well. Wholeness, empirically speaking, is therefore of immeasurable extent, older and younger than consciousness and enfolding it in time and space. This is no speculation, but an immediate psychic experience. Not only is the conscious process continually accompanied, it is often guided, helped, or interrupted, by unconscious happenings. The child had a psychic life before it had consciousness. (p. 178)

   Therefore, I would conclude that early attempts to make mandalas, such as those by the 1-year-old girl or the 2-year-old child that Fordham describes, are or can be protective devices, but they can also be more than that. They are possibly an early attempt by the child to express the psychic life that is becoming conscious. Ego, which I consider to be present at birth, is certainly present at the age of 1 or 2 years. The making of the mandala is the ego complex that returns to the soul complex and draws from the Self, then returns to give expression to that experience via the ego. Jung (1959/1955) had this to say concerning the mandala:

The "squaring of the circle" is one of the many archetypal motifs which form the basic patterns of our dreams and fantasies. But it is distinguished by the fact that it is one of the most important of them from the functional point of view. Indeed, it could even be called the archetype of wholeness. (p. 4)

   Fordham's work on the mandalas of children is important because it helped to establish his idea that individuation, although different, begins in childhood.

Primary Narcissism or Primary Love?

   Fordham (1979) states that he derived his ideas on primary unity and individuation from Freud's "ingenious derivation of the ego ideal from primary narcissism":

   The idea that I found especially interesting was that since the earlier state of primary narcissism could not be regained--but continues to be desirable--it leads to the construction of an ideal which refers to but does not repeat the original condition. Individuation, though conceived as a process, is also thought of as an ideal state that can never be reached. (p. 27)

   I would have to take "primary narcissism" to be the original state of the infant at birth, which is what I would call primary or ego love. This is the first state of desire experienced by the child. But the child does not long to get back to a state of ego love, indeed, it is just the opposite: What he desires is to return to a state of soul, where ego is still connected to the Self. But the experience of unity does not necessitate a narcissistic state, only at birth is this possible, when the desire to return to that state becomes apparent. The infant or even the adult, who desires to experience this state of unity, does not wish at this point to be individual; he or she wishes to be reunited with "other"; he perceives that "other" in the world (the mother), will return him to that state of unity. I see primary narcissism as the ego's demand via the body to be returned to that original state of unity, and when this has been accomplished by the unconditional love of the mother, the infant is returned to that experience.

   Balint (1992) describes this in a similar way when he says, "the aim of all human striving is to establish--or, probably, re-establish--an all-embracing harmony with one's environment, to be able to love in peace" (p. 65). The striving of the adult to return to that state of unity could be seen as a desire to return to the moments in infancy when the child had that experience (which is how Jung described this desire), but it could also be seen as a striving to return to the original experience, especially in those cases where the child lacked the necessary reassimilation of the primal experience.

   Fordham (1979) goes on to ask this question:

But is there a persistent period in the life of an infant that can be called primary narcissism? The idea that states of satisfaction, of unity, fusion or bliss have their root in a natural "stage" in the early life of an infant is very persistent. The idea that there is a stage in infancy when there is no conflict because there is no ego and the mother's provision is so good that there is no conflict and the infant is always satisfied, is elaborated by Neumann as the "primal relationship." (p. 27)

   I do not believe there is such a stage either, except for the infant in utero; after birth, there is a recreation of the womb experience, which comes and goes for the most part, and appears necessary for the development of the ego. The experience of the ego being returned to soul and back to ego appears to be a cycle necessary in infancy, childhood, and possibly throughout adult life. A stage is reached that embraces both positions and the opposites are united, which is possibly the method nature intended for healthy psychological functioning; when it does not occur, neurosis and pathology become apparent. If the soul is the archetype that connects the conscious to the unconscious, the "system" does not come into being at random, but probably is fully in place from the beginning of life. The psychological function that the soul archetype represents is intuition. The idea of a primary state of unity persists, as Fordham states, because it is a universal experience that all humans share. The only possible explanation for this experience is the unity of the infant in the womb, and very small children who have not had this assimilated often enough in infancy can be seen as attempting to get back there, that is, to recreate the experience, any way possible.

   Neumann (1973/1976) considered this primal relationship as one before birth as well as after birth. I think it is better described as the infant in the womb; after birth, the infant is brought back to that blissful experience by being loved and by having his needs met by the mother or primary caretaker. It is just this experience that reinforces the ego and leads it to believe that one can be separate, but still united, through the act of love.

   Fordham (1957) continues:

It is held that the development of the conscious in the child violates the original condition of wholeness to which more mature persons attempt to return when confronted with insurmountable difficulties. Thus the retrospective tendency met with in analysis is considered as an attempt to re-establish the primal condition of wholeness termed the original self. (115)

   The point I am trying to make is that the infant would need to return first to the soul archetype before the Self is reached, and it is just this archetype that gives a sense of unity as it was originally experienced. It is from the soul position that the Self is seen. The experience cannot always be described. It is, as Jung states, unknowable in its entirety because it depends on the uniqueness of each individual soul's experience. But it is just this experience that finds expression in art, especially for children, and later language and every form of creative expression that human beings are capable of achieving, whether in the arts, science, mythology, or religion. The soul observes the Self and returns to give form and content to that experience via art, science, and literature from the position of the ego. (This is a description of the adult; the infant creates symbols that assist him in making sense of his experience; a concept probably contains thousands of perceptions, conscious and unconscious, that are arranged and rearranged in the psyche to form a picture that becomes archetypal.) Thus, the soul looks both ways. It sees into the depths of the Self or the collective unconscious, and it returns to record what it has seen by means that are always ego-related. This is the middle position, the "bridge," that connects Self to ego and the archetype that Fordham appears to skip over in his description of the Self. Jung (1959/1938) described this bridge as: "the unity of our psychic nature lies in the middle, just as the living unity of the waterfall appears in the dynamic connection between above and below" (p. 269).

   Fordham (1976) states some of the views of Balint, a psychoanalyst, on primary narcissism. "In the place of primary narcissism he substitutes primary love" (p. 52). Object-cathexis, Balint maintains, is very intense, but there are no definable objects, only a vague or nebulous experience of them which slowly comes to clear definition. (This is an excellent description of the intuitive function.) Fordham suggests that Balint supports the idea that object-cathexis before birth is possible:

It does not, however, seem plausible to suppose that there is anything like the global object-cathexis before birth that Balint proposes. After birth there is good evidence for object-cathexis during waking periods, but only reactions to noise, thumb-sucking, swallowing amniotic fluid, etc., suggest anything like cathexis of the environment during embryonic existence. (p. 52)

   Piontelli (1992) also might support Balint. She saw many variations of fetus activity in the womb. If one assumes that the global (it is interesting that Balint uses the word global because this word is often used to describe the function of intuition) object-cathexis is unconscious, that is, the feeling function is unconscious because there is no ego to perceive the feeling, one can also assume that the feeling or the object-cathexis is known intuitively. If intuition is conscious in the womb, and is the only conscious function, Balint and Piontelli are right--with this difference, that what is conscious is not the adult ego, as they are inclined to believe, but the soul complex represented in the psychological function of intuition.

   Balint's (1992) views, which are not discussed at length, support the work of more recent psychoanalysts, such as Piontelli (1992) who questions the possibility of mental life, ego functioning, and awareness in the fetus, and David Kay (1984), a Jungian analyst, who writes of foetal psychology and the possibility of a "rudimentary form of consciousness in utero." Using the model that I propose, one can see that these functions all exist in the form of what is usually called unconsciousness. Thinking, feeling, and sensation are merged, and from the merger, the psychological function of intuition is in operation. It is just this function that is conscious. I would question whether this state of consciousness is as faint or dim as some writers describe. It might be that this description is our view looking in from the outside and to be in the actual experience of the intuitive function, is less than "dim"; it is a "knowing" that often contains certainty beyond doubt and what Jung called "numinosity."

   Balint (1992) describes this effectively as "primary love," rather than primary narcissism. After rejecting Balint's idea of a global object-cathexis before birth, Fordham (1976), states:

Nevertheless the idea of the infant's first cathexis being active "loving" and seeking satisfactions, rather than his having to be seduced out of his primary narcissism, is in line with conclusions arrived at from infant observation and experimental data on early modes of perception. (p. 52)

   Both Balint and Fordham recognize that the first cathexis (at birth) is love, and active is a just description. Balint (1992, p. 69) gives an example of what he calls primary love. The Japanese have a very simple, everyday word, amaeru, which means "to wish or to expect to be loved." Balint claims that we have no equivalent simple word like this in the West, only long psychological phrases that describe something similar.

   I believe that we do have such a word, although the significance has been largely ignored, and a simple one, the word Eros. What Balint is calling primary love is described in the myth of Eros. The name Eros means "demanding love," and from birth the human child demands to be loved by having its needs met. Eros and the Japanese word amaeru appear to have very close meanings. It is possible that unconditional love is the goal behind every object that the infant seeks and demands. When the "I want" has been obtained, such as food, warmth, or comfort, the infant experiences the state of "I have"; in other words, desire has been met and the infant is returned, if only momentarily, to a state of "oneness." If one sees the infant as being in a state of Eros, but defining this state as the ego that is in need, it is not difficult to say that the human child is "born loving," even if this loving is ego centered.

   If love is the second or indeed, the real, object of all desire and has been supplied, Eros can be said to be closely related to death. For when the object is no longer desired, the ego or Eros has "died." Thus, the striving toward life and love would also be the striving toward "death," and the dual instincts of love and death could be seen to coexist from the beginning. But death of the ego that puts the infant back in the state of original oneness can simply mean that he or she is satisfied, he no longer desires, and this can be seen as a state of the soul or the soul complex. What is usually referred to as the death complex can be seen as the soul complex, for they have the same meaning symbolically. The child does not have to "fall back asleep" as Fordham suggests to be in this state; indeed, it is the infant who has been fed, cleaned, or cared for, and who does not want anything, but is awake, who is capable of play. Ego and soul are merged in one psyche, and joy is the natural outcome.

   The child who seldom has his or her needs satisfactorily met is continuously in Eros or ego love; he or she is always hungry with a hunger that is seldom satisfied, for there might have been food provided without the real object yearned for by the infant, that of love. If the ego is injured, the soul is also injured and both are separated, just as Psyche and Eros were separated, as the myth describes. It is their reconciliation and unity that symbolizes the birth of a girl-child named Joy, and she is born in heaven as an immortal, because these two "opposites" or two kinds of consciousness, or two kinds of love, Eros or ego love, or Psyche or soul love, are united and give birth to Joy. Psychologically speaking, Eros or ego love is the conscious function of sensation, feeling, and thinking; Psyche or soul love is equivalent to the function of intuition, which Jung (quoted in Evans, 1976, p. 100) refers to as "perception by ways or means of the unconscious." Shortly thereafter, Jung says, "you cannot tell why or how, but we have a lot of subliminal perceptions, sense perceptions, and from these we probably draw a great many of our intuitions" (my emphasis, p. 102). This sentence indicates to me that Jung saw a connection between body sensations and the function of intuition. In many myths, these two states of being are often described as opposites at war: the hero and the dragon, the two brothers at war, and good and evil.

   The soul can be seen as one who does not desire and love that does not want because there is nothing it does not have. It exists in the original state of oneness where thinking, feeling, and sensation are merged and unconscious, described in mythology as Paradise. This is a description of the two types of consciousness or two types of love that appear to be opposites in the human psyche. This topic will be discussed later in this research in more depth, in the interpretation of the Greek myth of Eros and Psyche, which is a myth that describes a psychological process that I would contend begins at birth and continues throughout life.

The Self, Ego, and Individuation

   When Fordham deviated from the idea that the infant was primarily a part of his mother, which was the attitude of Neumann and other analytical psychologists before him, he postulated the possibility of what he was to call the primary child self. Fordham (1988) states:

While the nature of the self, according to Jung, was not all that clear, its action was usually thought of as essentially integrative. The mandala, for instance, tended to appear when the psyche was disorganised in one way or another. Thus the self seemed to introduce an organising process that centralised the personality. It could be defined as a totality, a system that combined in itself both the conscious and unconscious structures and processes. It followed that descriptions of the self involving the idea of its being an archetype are inappropriate, and I found it better to think of the self as beyond archetypes and the ego. In its original state the self was thus before consciousness, in the way analytical psychologists conceive it, and so before the psyche becomes structured into conscious and unconscious elements. (pp. 24-25)

   Here Fordham again appears to be describing two different archetypes, that of the Self and that of soul, without differentiating between the two. He appears to disagree with himself in the same paragraph, for at first he says that the Self contains conscious and unconscious elements, then he states that the Self exists before consciousness. But before consciousness there was unconsciousness, which still does not define what the Self is. It seems more appropriate to stay with the description of the Self as that which contains everything or that which contains all the opposites including the soul and the ego. The soul can better be described as that archetype that contains three other archetypes merged into one, and one that does contain both consciousness and unconsciousness because intuitive consciousness is born out of the other three unconscious functions.

   From these conclusions Fordham (1979) began to formulate the idea that an infant is separate from his mother, not only after birth, but also while in utero, and is an individual from the beginning:

Applying the idea of integration means that an infant began from a state of unity--a primary unity of the self. This conception leads on to seeing a number of quite obvious facts in a way that had not been possible before because an infant was conceived, among Jungians, to be in all essential respects a part of his mother. The hypothesis of a primary self leads in quite a different direction: the foetus can be seen as essentially separate from his mother and so also can the new-born child. This being so, then coming into relation with his mother becomes an achievement worked out gradually as maturation progresses. It begins with behaviour which involves deintegration out of his primary integrated state. (p. 2)

   This primary unity, however, is a psychological unity, where the four functions exist in a state of oneness, but this state is also a state of oneness with the environment, which is the mother's womb and her body, as well as the world. One cannot say that the infant is in a state of oneness that excludes the mother or the world, which is apparently what Fordham is attempting to do. To be "one with" must include the inner world, that is, the psyche of the infant in utero, as well as the outer world, which is the mother. Fordham apparently had difficulty with seeing these two opposites as united in the womb, which they must certainly be, if a primary unity is to be described in any way. His description appears to only describe the infant in a state of unity with itself.

   Fordham writes extensively of the relationship of the Self and the ego and their relationship in the process of individuation, but there is little mention of the soul archetype or the soul complex, even though Jung (1964, p. 185) describes the soul as the mediator that returns the ego to the Self. In "Individuation and Ego Development," Fordham (1958) states that various analytical psychologists "all agree, following Jung, that in individuation the ego gives way to the self, which becomes a 'new centre of the personality'" (p. 59). Fordham then goes on to ask:

But what of infants and children, who must inevitably be given some status on the thesis that the process is innate? In their case the ego develops away from the self, for the wholeness of the self is dangerous to them for reasons the exact inverse of those found in adults. (p. 59)

   The point that Fordham appears to be making is that the reverse is true in infancy; the ego flows out of the primary Self, a reasonable view except for one point, the archetype of soul, the mediator between the Self and the ego is not included in this premise, yet Fordham does include the possibility of this archetype being included. If we reverse this situation, which seems necessary, it can be said that infants and children innately complete the process by having the soul flow out of the Self and the ego flow out of the soul. The Self is not dangerous to the child, unless he or she never manages to leave it by the soul, but this is not possible if one sees that the child in utero is contained in soul, which is a reflection of the Self. What is dangerous for the infant is the possibility that he or she will not be returned to the soul complex after birth when the ego has come into being. The ego does not, as Fordham state, develop away from the Self; it returns to soul, where it can see the Self and then return to its ego position. The progression is circular and experienced in the moment to moment life of the infant, as well as day to day and year to year. To be stuck in any archetype and not having the flow of psychic movement is dangerous, not only for the child, but also for the adult.

   In speaking of the archetypes in childhood Fordham, (1957) states:

There is an obvious conclusion to be drawn from the regular progression of archetypal images in individuation: in childhood one would expect them to appear in the reverse order to that found in individuation, i.e., instead of the progression, shadow, animus, or anima, mana personalities, self, we should find the self first followed by the mana personalities, animus or anima and lastly the shadow. Search for such a progression in children is beginning to bear fruit, but the problem is difficult in infancy because the lack of ego makes the recording of images impossible and we have to rely on behaviour alone to confirm or disprove our hypothesis. (p. 117)

   Here I assume that the example Fordham gives of a 1-year-old child who scribbles a picture and says "I" is a progression that bears fruit, for it appears to be empirical evidence that the ego is formed at a much earlier age than what was previously accepted by psychologists.

   The difficulties that Fordham mentions do not appear to be insurmountable, however, and a hypothetical model can be construed that gives information on the process. In the model that I propose, the archetypes do appear in reverse order, if one begins in the womb instead of at birth. The Self is the center, containing all, and by all I mean unity, oneness, and the usual metaphorical definition of that word; in addition, I would state that this all contains the four psychological functions, merged and undifferentiated. Out of the Self comes God or the "mana personalities" as Fordham refers to them, animus and anima (or soul and spirit) and finally the shadow or that which is still unconscious or the child/animal archetype. These three exist as one and in the Genesis myth are symbolized by the Golden Age of Paradise. From a psychological view, they can be seen as the functions of thinking, feeling, and sensation, which are unconscious and therefore merged and existing as one function, intuition. Thus, the first psychological function that flows out of the Self (intuition) is knowledge that we are one with God, in other words, in Paradise. This is the state, or at least it appears to be what the myth is telling us, of the child in the womb; active thinking, feeling, and sensation, all exist in the unconscious and merged, producing that often-called "dim" state of perception called intuition. I am aware of the difficulty in proving such an abstract concept as being a possibility in the womb, but would suggest that this idea can be supported by numerous myths, not just the Judaic or Christian myth, but mythologies from around the world. Campbell (1988c) said, "When your eyes are closed to distracting phenomena, you're in your intuition, and you may come in touch with the morphology, the basic form of things" (p. 202).

   Intuition can be seen as the first psychological function that contains consciousness, or one might call this state "pre-conscious," to distinguish it from what is unconscious or what is conscious. I dislike the term preconscious because it implies before consciousness; however, I would argue that it is a type of consciousness that must be distinguished from ego consciousness. Non-ego or soul consciousness is a better description. Fordham (1957) says, "In using the term preconscious Jung means to designate a state of consciousness in which the ego is very weak and the images representing unconscious vitality are highly charged with libido, i.e., are numinous" (emphasis Fordham's, pp. 107-108). This would fit my description; sometimes the ego is weak, sometimes the ego is absent altogether. The contents would certainly, as Jung described them, be numinous. The important point is to recognize that it is a state that contains knowing and a knowing that great religious leaders, mystics, and philosophers often consider the highest way of knowing. Thus, what appears to be lowest could also be seen as highest; what we had in the beginning and did not know we had (Paradise, innocence) would be the state (Paradise) to which we desire to return, symbolized by the myths of rebirth, and a second birth. This state, however, would necessarily be different, for it would contain ego consciousness (knowledge) of our original innocence, which was a knowing or a consciousness that existed without the ego. In the first state, we would know without knowing that we know; in the second state, we would know that we know. There would be no tension of the opposites because they would be united if a return to Paradise or what I would call a return to the intuitive function or soul consciousness has been achieved.

   Ryce-Menuhin (1988) appears to be describing something very similar to the idea of intuition as a way of knowing when he writes:

In my view there is a fourth knowing, or a consciousness in which knowing is not known or transformed to cognitive knowing. If behaviour does not become an object of another behaviour by the same actor it is less than conscious or unconscious, but one can none the less speak of it as a knowing, or at least as a ground of knowing. This fourth level, a ground of knowing or being, is not a higher level of cognitive judgment but may relate to a ground of self-experience that intuitively includes unconscious and conscious self-integrates in its psychological resonance. Both Jung and Fordham have clinically elaborated a possible psychotic core of experiential influence of the self, thought of not only empirically but experientially as "beyond experience," that is, in the totality-of-self.

   My theory of a fourth level of knowing that is not dual or cognitive clarifies the sense that every experience is a partial experience of mind's total nature and activity, or totality-of-self. (p. 169)

   This is an excellent description of the function of intuition; it is not dual or cognitive, but contains the other three modes of knowing within itself in unconsciousness that is also conscious in the form of intuitive knowing. In other words, as Ryce-Menuhin states, it contains both consciousness and unconsciousness. What Ryce-Menuhin, a Jungian analyst in developmental psychology, describes as "my theory of a fourth level of knowing" is not, however, something new that he has suddenly discovered; Jung gave the function of intuition an equal billing when he included it in the four basic psychological functions, a fact that Ryce-Menuhin and Fordham before him tend to overlook. Part of the problem is understanding the function of intuition, about which Jung (quoted in Evans, l976) said, "and intuition--there is a difficulty because you don't know ordinarily how intuition works" (p. 100). It works automatically when the ego withdraws, in whole or part, from conscious sensation, feeling or thinking. It works in small, everyday ways like knowing in advance who is calling when the phone rings; it works in larger ways, like Einstein's theory of relativity, which he first saw in an "intuitive flash," or in the way that Bucke (1948) described when he referred to cosmic consciousness:

The philosophy of the birth of cosmic consciousness in the individual is very similar to that of the birth of self consciousness. The mind becomes overcrowded (as it were) with concepts and these are constantly becoming larger, more numerous and more and more complex; someday (the conditions being all favorable) the fusion, or what might be called the chemical union, of several of them and of certain moral elements takes place; the result is an intuition and the establishment of the intuitional mind, or, in other words, cosmic consciousness. (emphasis mine, p. 18)

   The self-consciousness that Bucke refers to is what we would call ego consciousness. He saw a similarity in their "birth" although he did not entertain the idea that they might originate simultaneously (or appear to do so) and operate in rhythm from the beginning, mainly because he saw intuition as an acquired function that evolved in the race in the same way that he thought simple consciousness and self consciousness evolved. Simple consciousness can be equated with the ego function of sensation and self consciousness can be equated with the ego function of thinking. The feeling function or what Bucke referred to as the moral nature was the most important function for the development of cosmic consciousness. Bucke is correct in believing that it is feeling that returns the infant to the soul or intuitive consciousness. This is probably also often true in the case of an adult. If the feeling is conscious and intense, the thought exists equally powerful in the unconscious. In that case, both functions would be working at the same time, one conscious and one unconscious. The reverse would be equally true. If the thought is conscious and the feeling intense but unconscious, the result would be the same. In other words, either function might return an adult to an intuitive state in the way that Bucke describes. But in the infant, it is the feeling function because active thinking is unconscious in the very beginning.

   There is little doubt that Bucke saw cosmic consciousness as the result of the intuitive function. Throughout his work he attempts to show what it is and how it is acquired. Bucke describes Walt Whitman, his idol and close friend as referring to cosmic consciousness as "my soul." Yet, it does not seem likely that one's soul would be the product of evolution; what would appear more likely is the possibility that the evolution would be in consciousness itself. This would imply soul consciousness, the archetype that represents the instinct of intuition, which is in the psyche from the beginning. Cosmic consciousness is another name for the Self archetype.

Everything that the human race has done and thought is concerned with the satisfaction of deeply felt needs and the assuagement of pain. One has to keep this constantly in mind if one wishes to understand spiritual movements and their development. Feeling and desire are the motive forces behind all human endeavor and human creation, in however exalted a guise the latter may present itself to us.


(Albert Einstein, The World as I see it,
1979, p. 24)

Fordham, Jung, and the Genesis Hypothesis

   At this point, I would like to briefly recapitulate my hypothesis, which is based on Jung's four psychological functions and show how I think these concepts can be linked to Fordham's theory of deintegrates, mainly concerning the unborn child.

   My hypothesis assumes that from the beginning of life at conception and during the approximately 9 months in the womb, the unborn human child contains within itself the potential for all the psychological functions which are present and individual from the beginning. Since thinking, feeling, and sensation all appear to be unconscious and undifferentiated, I am also making the assumption that they exist as one psychological function, intuition, which is necessarily conscious in the womb and can be called the soul complex. At birth, there is a major change and by the process of enantiodromia (Jung, 1971/1921, p. 426) the extreme position of intuitive or soul consciousness, which prevailed in the womb, is changed to one of consciousness, where the ego, especially the ego that is connected and related to the body, begins to function and uses from the beginning the functions of sensing, feeling, and thinking. The soul complex or intuitive function recedes and has much the same position that the other three functions had in the womb. It is usually called unconscious, although it also contains consciousness. The soul is the middle position and the complex to which the ego, which has just begun, returns, and from that position is connected to the undifferentiated Self and the conscious ego. The newborn child now lives in a state where consciousness and unconsciousness are present, and at the moment of birth they are equally present and begin to function together. With ego and body consciousness present in the form of conscious sensation and conscious feeling, the functions of intuition and thinking form the personal unconscious. Intuition becomes the fourth function to appear at birth, which makes it identical with the first function that appeared in the womb (see Figures 2, and 3). The intuitive function or soul complex is not entirely unconscious, but different, as Hillman previously stated, from ego consciousness.

   Ryce-Menuhin (1988) states the following: "Fordham argues that the development of consciousness in the child violates an original condition of wholeness and postulates, theoretically, a primary integrated state at birth" (p. 55). Fordham never states for certain when he thought consciousness actually started and his views appear to fluctuate and change over the years. How could the child be integrated at birth, if it is consciousness or the ego that disrupts the integrated state? If it is not ego that disrupts the Self and creates consciousness, what is it? Sometimes Fordham attributes ego consciousness to the infant at birth and sometimes he does not, but the point he appeared to be defending was that the child is separate and an individual from the beginning. He starts his theory with this assumption and states that the infant is in an integrated state at birth.

   Fordham (1976) states:

The primal self can be conceived as an integrate, a steady state, but if the dynamic systems that we observe later on are to come into existence, it must deintegrate. According to current theory of analytical psychology the self combines opposites within itself; therefore we may assume that when the self deintegrates it will divide into opposites that are psycho-physiological in nature. We may assume, following Jung's theory of psychic energy, that the energy bound in the primary self is neutral and divides into creative and later loving activities on the one hand, destructive and aggressive ones on the other. Each drive follows a partly predetermined pattern and is directed towards objects. (p. 12)

   Certainly the energy bound in the Self appears to be neutral, as Fordham claims, and divides into opposites that are psychophysiological in nature, but the division is not one of loving activities on the one hand and destructive and aggressive ones on the other hand, as Fordham describes. This description is too simplistic in giving a value judgment of good or bad to what has been created by the division of the Self. The word "division" is subject to question, because the Self really does not stay divided, it creates the soul and the ego complexes, both of which contain new opposites within each complex. The soul complex can be seen as the psychological part of the psychophysiological duo, whereas the ego complex can be seen as the physiological part of this combination. In his description of the deintegration of the Self, Fordham leaves out the soul archetype, a crucial omission, because the instinctual psychic energy that it represents is the intuitive function that Jung so rightly described as essential to the individuating process.

   Fordham earlier says that the primary Self is disrupted by birth, which I would take to mean that in the womb the Self is whole or unified and separate from the mother, and it is birth that disrupts this steady state. This is identical to my theory that the child in the womb lives in a state of wholeness that I am equating with the psychological function of intuition or the soul complex, because the soul is a reflection of the Self. What Fordham calls "prototypic anxiety" (desire) would be the first deintegrative. He places it right after birth, which supports my idea that ego or ego consciousness creates the loss of soul consciousness. With the first experience of the opposites, the soul complex becomes temporarily unconscious.

   Fordham calls this the "psyche-soma," which is identical to what I would call the soul (intuition) and body (ego) consciousness that begins with body sensation that is conscious and conscious feeling that makes value judgments). When the "psyche-soma" deintegrates, the infant can be seen to be aware (consciously) of body sensations and how he or she feels about them; functions that were contained in the state of soul or intuitive consciousness have become conscious or deintegrated. When these disturbances have been rectified or the needs of the child satisfied, he or she returns to an integrated state of unity, as Fordham describes, only there will be this difference: The unity then experienced will be in the world, not in the womb, as it was in the beginning of life. The child is satisfied and probably returns to sleep, which Fordham compares with the original state of the Self, but I believe that he equates that state too much with sleep, which is not always the case, and he suggests that the state of unity is also disturbed in the uterus when the fetus is awake and responding to stimuli from within or without. But if the unity is disturbed in the uterus, how could a steady state of integration in the womb be possible?

   Fordham (1970) gives a description of the child in utero:

Whilst in utero, there is minimal exteroceptive sensory stimulation. Increase in knowledge of intra-uterine behaviour reveals, however, that some of the activities in which the foetus engages are responses to stimuli such as noise reaching it from outside its mother's body. There are also signs of muscular activity, besides arm and leg movements; thumb-sucking, swallowing amniotic fluid and breathing "exercises" that take place during intra-uterine life. All these show that disturbances in the unitary state occur whether they be stimulated by sensory stimuli or by spontaneous discharges from within the nervous system. But in spite of all these the predominant state of the embryo and foetus is quiescence and something very much like sleep. If we take the infant's intra-uterine life as sleeping and his emergence into the world as the prototype of waking, the cycle repeats throughout life. (p. 111)

   Fordham hints here that deintegration takes place in the womb, but he does not elaborate on this interesting thought. Obviously, he thought of integration as occurring primarily in sleep, which is possibly true in early infancy, but not entirely, for if that were so, the infant or the adult would have to go to sleep to be in soul consciousness. This is certainly not the case, although one may be closer to that state of consciousness in one's dreams than in waking life. Dreams, however, can become conscious and their content known and expressed. There comes a time when the infant does not experience bodily needs and is wide awake, and this could be in the first few hours of life. If the infant has been returned to what I have previously called an assimilation of the original experience, which Fordham calls reintegration, often enough, his or her ego would be made stronger, but ego and soul could be seen to be working together. What Fordham calls reintegration, I would call returning to soul or intuitive consciousness. What he attributes to deintegration, I would call related, in the same way he describes, to ego consciousness. But the ego cannot come apart without creating its shadow side, which is the soul.

   I am not distinguishing between bits of ego consciousness, although that is certainly legitimate; but I think it becomes easier to see the whole by assuming that ego begins at birth in the form of body sensations, and there are many theorists in psychology who share this view, although it continues to be debated.

   The first archetype to become conscious after birth would be the ego archetype, which is related to the psychological functions of conscious sensation, feeling, and thinking. When the ego is born, so also is the shadow, because what was previously conscious in the soul complex disappears into shadow or becomes unconscious; when the infant is in the soul complex, it is the ego that is in shadow or unconscious. The second archetype to become conscious after birth, and there is consciousness even in sleep, is the soul archetype, which returns the infant to the psychological function of intuition, which Jung often referred to as the function that was closest to the unconscious. It is from the soul archetype that the Self is seen and expressed by the ego. This archetype, as Jung describes, is attached to consciousness and to the unconscious. It stands in the middle, looking both ways.

   Fordham (1976) states:

At one time I suggested that the order in which they (archetypes) appeared in maturation was the reverse of that in adults, especially those in later life. Since nothing more has developed from this idea, I do not think it can be decided whether it be true or false. (p. 29)

   I have previously quoted Fordham's earlier statement concerning the possibility that the archetypes might appear in reverse order (1957, p. 117). I think that he was correct in his assessment, although he didn't appear to realize that he was also describing the soul archetype when he talked of integrates or integration. He did not always believe the ego began at birth and so did not always equate deintegration with the emerging ego at birth, although he does, of course, assume that the ego eventually deintegrates from the Self.

   Looked at more broadly, I believe Fordham describes two archetypes, ego and soul, without realizing it. Jung describes the progression of the archetypes in adulthood one should first approach before reaching the Self: First, the ego, then the shadow, then the soul, and finally the Self. The reverse would be true in infancy: first, the Self, then the soul, then the shadow, then the ego. The Self and the soul archetypes would be present in the womb; at birth, the soul and the ego would be present alternately with the shadow because the shadow represents whichever archetype is not in consciousness. A multitude of other archetypes could come under these headings, such as anima (soul) and animus (spirit) or numerous other opposites like the "Divine Syzygy," but the point is that they can be seen, as Fordham described, in reverse order. Out of the Self flows the soul, followed by the shadow and the ego, archetypes that probably appear in quick succession. One could also say that two shadows exist, one dark and one white. When the ego is in a state of desire or deintegrating, as Fordham would say, what has been unconscious becomes conscious, but what remains in the unconscious is what was loss. When opposites come into play, they always have a shadow side.

   Fordham (1988, p. 26) undervalued the concept of fusion with the mother and the symbolism inherent in mythology that there is an ideal state equal to Paradise. It is the mother or mother substitute, who helps the baby to reintegrate and return to an experience that simulates the original experience of unity. To that extent, she could certainly be seen as the soul of the infant, who has been manifested in the world, and the vehicle that will carry the infant back to a place where she exists as one with him in his psyche as he existed as one with her in her body. If the primal child Self that Fordham describes is identical with the Self that Jung described, it is a Self united with God and the world, which certainly could be seen metaphorically as Paradise, a concept that Fordham was never able to accept. Yet, he gives no clear definition of his concept of a child-self that is unified. One has to speculate on what kind of unity Fordham's definition of Self described; to say that it is not knowable is justified, but unity is a symbol that can be imagined and described. The child can be seen as an individual from the beginning without destroying the idea of its being also part of the mother, because it is always in relationship to the mother from conception to birth as well as after birth. Indeed, the personal mother will help to create the archetypal experience of the infant, both positive and negative. The first deintegration may evoke the negative mother (witch) archetype very early in the child's life. Neumann (1973/1976) understood that

the primal relationship is the foundation of all subsequent dependencies, relatedness and relationships. Whereas dual union is guaranteed by nature in the uterine embryonic phase, it emerges after birth as the first need of the mammal and especially of the human child. (emphasis mine, p. 17)

   Neumann is saying that there must be an "other" in the world to hold and contain the human child and who, by loving the child, leads him or her to a place of oneness that subsequently allows the child to be separate. The experience of fusion that Fordham (1988, p. 29) says is an idealized fantasy which cannot be maintained over long periods, is simply a state of being loved, and the experience does not need to be maintained forever: If it is only known and believed, the effect will last forever. If fusion is a fantasy, then the idea that "I love" and "I am loved" must also be a fantasy, which I doubt. Love always ends in fusion because subject and object cancel each other by loving; fusion is just another word for one.

   The first experience of the infant and mother at birth can also be seen and understood by Jung's definitions of introversion and extraversion or psychic energy that moves toward or away from the object. (See Figures 14, and 15.) Although Fordham discusses transference in older children, there is no mention of it in early infancy. It is not likely that transference begins at random.

   Many of Fordham's interpretations of mythology, which he mostly only briefly mentions, seem misguided, especially concerning the myth of Paradise. His concepts of integration and deintegration, however, are valuable contributions to psychology, especially if one assumes that the first integration is in the womb and the first deintegration is at birth. He had difficulty making the leap from the child in utero to the child at birth, and his uncertainty was often related to not placing the ego at birth. Even so, his contribution to Jungian psychology is invaluable because he surmised that children are capable of individuation and analysis, and in a pragmatic, intelligent manner, showed how this was possible. He cared about the archetype of child, but more than that, he cared about the experience of the actual, living child.

   I have attempted in the previous pages to show how the hypothesis offered in this research, based on Jung's concepts of psychological functions, can be linked with the concepts of Michael Fordham, and I would like to end this chapter with my original question: Does an order of Jung's psychological functions exist? I believe that an order does exist and that the first psychological function is intuition, which begins in the womb and can also be described as the soul complex, which contains the other three functions in unconscious and undifferentiated form. By looking at Jung's description of the functions in this manner, it is possible to see aspects of mythology, religion, developmental psychology, and Jungian psychology in general in a way that connects them and allows one to see that art or the archetype is always a reflection of living, psychic experience that is not separate from the body, but dependent upon the substance of which we are composed. Body, soul, and spirit exist as one in every human individual and the knowing is psychological wholeness; the knowing is going home--a return to Paradise.

   Returning briefly to Jung (1959/1955, p. 4) and his description of the mandala as an archetype of wholeness and the importance of the "quaternity of the One," I would like to show how the idea of intuition as the first psychological function relates to Jung's description of what he considered the most important archetype. He states:

Because of this significance, the "quaternity of the One" is the schema for all images of God, as depicted in the visions of Ezekiel, Daniel, and Enoch, and as the representation of Horus with his four sons also shows. The latter suggests an interesting differentiation, inasmuch as there are occasionally representations in which three of the sons have animals' heads and only one a human head, in keeping with the Old Testament visions as well as with the emblems of the seraphim which were transferred to the evangelists, and--last but not least--with the nature of the Gospels themselves: three of which are synoptic and one "Gnostic." Here I must add that, ever since the opening of Plato's Timaeus ("One, two, three . . . but where, my dear Socrates, is the fourth?") and right up to the Cabiri scene in Faust, the motif of four as three and one was the ever-recurring preoccupation of alchemy. (emphasis mine, p. 4)

   What Jung so adequately described as being the most important archetype of wholeness, the motif of four as three and one or, the Maria Axiom, (see Figure 19) is exactly what I am describing in this research when I say that intuition is the function that contains the other three functions plus itself to equal four which is one. This idea can be seen as the key to my interpretation of psychic energy personified by the archetypes and other symbols of mythology and religion, not only of Christianity, but many other divergent cultures. I believe that an interpretation of the cosmological mythology will support the theoretical hypothesis I have given concerning the infant in the womb and the infant at birth.

   Jung described the mandala as the most important archetype of wholeness. This is probably because it describes the first living experiences of the human child from the Paradisical unity in the womb to the first experience of a negative opposite in the form of desire, to the experience of a positive opposite of no-desire that occurs when ego demands are met and back to a recapitulation of the original womb experience. The opposites have been lived and experienced in the world and time, whereas in the womb, they were merged and experienced as Paradisical and eternal. Time and eternity are expressed in the simple, abstract circle or mandala. Its multiple variations express that primary, universal, and important experience. (See Figure 18.)

   All the images that Jung describes above in mythology and religion can be seen as psychic and instinctual energy that is expressed by archetypal form. The four psychological functions enable us to see first, the separation of this energy; second, the relationship between the energy patterns; and third, the synthesis of the energy patterns and functions to produce psychological wholeness.

   I will attempt in the subsequent chapters to support these ideas by interpretations of Sumerian cosmology and symbols, the archetype of the Fallen Angel, the Divine Child archetype, the Divine Mother archetype, the Divine Father archetype and the Hero archetype. I will also interpret the mythology of the four Archangels: Michael, Uriel, Raphael, and Gabriel, the first and second (lost Paradise) creation mythology of Genesis, American Indian symbolism, and other related mythological references.

   The mythologies contain the archetypes, the living expressions of all human experiences that began as basic instincts derived from a single source, the ineffable mystery of the Self.

Figure 18: Circle of Fire

Figure 19: The Maria Axim

Figure 20: The Cosmic Serpent

Figure 21: Golden Trio of the Child

Figure 22: Difference of Functions Without Myth

---> On to Chapter 4 --->

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