The Middle Passage (STUDIES IN JUNGIAN PSYCHOLOGY BY JUNGIAN ANALYSTS)

The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Midlife Studies in Jungian Psychology by Jungian Analysts; 59 by James Hollis, PhD was published in 1993 and is his first contribution to the series.The "Studies in Jungian Psychology by Jungian Analysts" is a wonderful series published by Inner City Books with Daryl Sharp as founder and chief editor (himself an accomplished Jungian Analyst and writer). Marie-Louise von Franz is their Honorary Patron with 9 of her classic titles in the offerings. The publisher's charter was "...founded in 1980 to promote the understanding and practical application of the work of C.G. Jung. " Since then they've published over 110 titles in this series with other prolific Jungian authors such as Barbara Hannah, Edward Edinger, and Marion Woodman to name a few. Hollis is a Zurich-trained Jungian analyst practicing out of Texas where he is also the Executive Director of the Jung Educational Center of Houston. He's contributed 8 titles to the Studies in Jungian Psychology series himself. His most recent book (from a different publisher) titled: "Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life - How to Finally, Really Grow Up" is receiving critical acclaim as well. Incidentally, the author and I recently shared some correspondence and I found him to be warm, helpful, responsive and thoughtful.The audio version of The Middle Passage is unabridged on 4 CD's with the author narrating in a calm, clear, and agreeable tone of voice with an elegant economy and effectiveness of words. I own a treasured, well-worn print copy of the 128-page book that is liberally underlined, dog-eared, and grossly highlighted.Whether reading the book or listening to the author narrate, I am nearly overwhelmed at the compactness of meaning in his tightly composed sentences. This sense of being overwhelmed is most assuredly not a bad thing - it's a welcome invitation for re-listening to the audio book during my daily commute (a 95 mile round trip to work and home in southern California traffic gives nearly two hours of listening time!). Plus I get opportunities to reread the printed book as time permits as I have a new addition to the family - this equates to sleepless nights with our newborn baby boy...Anyhow, it's a real pleasure opening this book and unpacking the riches within - and treasures they are! I reach into the bag and there are the gems, the gold in the content - but it's packed so tightly as to need diligent & mindful mining. I unpack the words, the sentences, and paragraphs and air them out, taking the concepts down different avenues of thought to glean new insights into the character of my self. I can't tell you the number times I've had "AHA!" moments - or the sublime experience where some subtle material gestated over time, gelling into meaningful mini-epiphanies. I can't tell you because it won't stop! A most gratifying experience!I have only one minor criticism of this great contribution to Jungian analysis/literature. I can imagine some people possibly being turned off by the author's complex wording which might appear a bit pedantic on the surface. Some of the arguably abstract/esoteric language is not common to a layman's lexis yet they pose a rewarding challenge for the diligent reader. Here's a sample of random rarified words & phrases for example: existential angst, imagos, ineluctable dialectic, the modern Zeitgeist, politic real, portmanteau and (ready?) Jung's awesome word Auseinandersetzung. I've had to grant myself a little time adjusting to his rich vocabulary. Nevertheless it is a cogent, logical and lucid narrative where Hollis carefully defines his terms in the context of recognized Jungian terminology.Hollis uses an abundance of prominent literary and historical figures including Christ, Dante, Stephen Dunn, T.S. Eliot, Nikos Kazantzakis, Nietzsche, Rainer Maria Rilke, Dylan Thomas, St. Thomas, Thoreau, Yeats, and C.G. Jung is well deployed throughout the text.A two-part bibliography gives a listing of select publications segregated by major categories such as: On Midlife, On Women, On Men, On Relationship, Typology, and Inner Work. The other half is a General Bibliography providing a comprehensive list of his sources cited. It also has a pretty good index. Generous footnotes throughout the pages helpfully clarify certain points and direct the reader to relevant sources.Characteristic of Hollis' Socratic bent, "Who am I apart from the roles I have played?" (from the preface) is the first of many questions posed in Middle Passage. The following passages from the preface effectively capture critical sentiment worth reflection: "Many of us pass through life as if it were a novel. We pass from page to page passively, assuming the author will tell us on the last page what it was all about...on the last page we die, with or without illumination." Hollis tells us "The invitation of the Middle passage is to become conscious, accept responsibility for the rest of the pages and risk the largeness of life to which we are summoned."In the first chapter, "The Provisional Personality", he uses the language of Jungian principles to reveal the genesis and evolution of childhood wounding resulting from internalized interpretations of adult conflict (particularly with respect to parental and cultural influences) and the subsequent development of unconscious complexes. He tells us "...the person one has been is to be replaced by the person to be...One is summoned, psychologically, to die unto the old self so that the new might be born." He concludes the chapter with "...the Middle Passage represents a summons from within to move from the provisional life to true adulthood, from the false self to authenticity."Making a comprehensive review of the rest of the book would prove too lengthy; however I've listed the remaining chapters below and will conclude with a review of one last chapter after the list:Chapter 2 - The Advent of the Middle PassageTectonic Pressures and Seismic IntimationsA New Kind of ThinkingChanges in IdentityWithdrawal of ProjectionsChanges in the Body and Sense of TimeThe Diminution of HopeThe Experience of NeurosisChapter 3: The Turn WithinThe Persona-Shadow DialogueRelationship ProblemsMidlife AffairsFrom Child to Parent to ChildThe World of Work: Job Versus VocationEmergence of the Inferior FunctionShadow InvasionsChapter 4: Case Studies in Literature (see below)Chapter 5: Individuation: Jung's Myth for Our TimeChapter 6: On the High Seas and AloneFrom Loneliness to SolitudeConnecting with the Lost ChildThe Passionate LifeThe Swamplands of the SoulThe Great DialecticMomento MoriThis Luminous PauseOne chapter in particular has grown on me: in Case Studies in Literature Hollis explores and illuminates new perspectives into the shadow with fascinating analysis of some classic, well recognized literary works. In Goethe's Faust, "Mephistopheles describes the shadow as that part of the whole, neglected and suppressed, which is necessary for the dialectic that ultimately brings wholeness." And for our protagonist, "The central encounter which Faust suffers is the overdue meeting with his anima..." Next, we're treated to obvious projections Flaubert's Madame Bovary. The resulting sense of urgency from Faust and Emma's unlived lives causes them to make bad tragically bad choices. "They project their inner contrasexual onto an outer person, not realizing that what they seek is ultimately within."Dostoevsky's Underground Man "...takes us into the belly of the beast." and "...represents a profoundly searing encounter with the shadow." making conscious "...what all of us do in the first adulthood, namely, react to life's wounds. We build a set of wound-based behaviors and live out our handicapped version with rationalizations and self-justification."Works from three American poets, Hugo Richard, Theodore Roethke, and Diane Wakoski are shared representing "...self-conscious efforts to rework one's personal myth." and identify our biographies as "...traps, deceptive enticements that freeze us in the seemingly facticity of the past, wound-identified and creatures of fate."I end this quote-labored review with an invitation Hollis gives at the end of the same chapter, "In the secret club of the Middle Passage, there is an invitation for greater consciousness and an enlarged capacity for choice. With greater consciousness comes a greater opportunity for forgiveness of others and of ourselves, and, with forgiveness, release from the past." Finally, a grand imperative: "We must address the making of our myths more consciously or we shall never be more than the sum of what has happened to us."I highly recommended this book for the challenge it offers the welcoming soul.IndiAndy

My friend, Joe, turned me onto this book at a time when I was struggling with identity. Ten minutes into the audio book I felt a wave of relief. I was not actually losing my mind… I was in the natural process of The Middle Passage.The book is well written, well researched, and well explained. If you’re in your mid forties/fifties and wondering why you feel out of place in the life you’ve worked so hard to build, this book will answer why that is and what is next.

James Hollis had written a short but well thought out book on the midlife crisis. The term "mid-life crisis" would not be a term Hollis would use, because he sees the conflicts and disturbances that happen at mid-life as wonderful warnings that new directions are needed to achieve a meaningful life. He compares the depression, the loss of energy, the unexplained anger, the flare up of passion, as earthquake type pressures that give evidence of the rumblings below.He compares the magic thinking of children, to the heroic thinking of young adulthood, to the more realistic thinking of the second adulthood. It is during this second adulthood that we must recognize what behavior patterns we bring from our early family of origin and whether those patterns have become maladaptive rather than adapative. He asks us to be aware of emotional outbursts or unrealistic passions of any type that signal that an unresoved complex still directs us emotionally and may be blocking our growth. He asks us to be willing to go into the luminous darkness within to seek answers, after all, by midlife you should have seen enough of the world to know that answers rarely lie outside of ourselves.I enjoyed the poetry of Tennyson, Rilke, and Kazantzakis that he uses throughout the book. I especially liked the linkage to Tennyson's Ulysses, a poem that honors the fact that Ulysses' greatest adventures happen after mid-life.Hollis believes the greatest tragedy during the midlife crisis is to remain unconscious and never examine the illusions, concepts, complexes, and dark shadows within us. After all, as we reach mid-life, this is the last chance for a meaningful life. The meaningful life is a higher goal that the happy life for both Jung and Hollis.Hollis links his concepts to the ancient Greek dramatic concept of the tragic flaw. This flaw is usually unconscious and eventually brings the hero to ruin, at which point, his eyes are opened and he sees beyond the veil of illusion under which he has acted.Hollis would say that the meaningful midlife is one in which ego needs are met and the ego becomes a tool, not an ever hungry brat requiring constant feeding. The wise adult uses the ego to achive a meaningful life, but does not have to achieve fame and fortune to feed this bottomless belly. The complexes are identified when unexplained or unwarranted anger and passion occur. After all these are just sign posts of an inner strategy failing to operate as it did back in childhood. The shadow has been accepted so that one's faults are put in perspective and do not weigh one down day after day with guilt and flashbacks and recriminations. This gives us the strength to go into the final years where one by one we lose all those whom we have loved and eventually they will lose us.Jung asks "Are we related to something infinite or not?" and he defines life as a luminous spell between two dark mysteries. Coming through the mid-life crisis allows us to personally answer these thoughts and concepts.

One of the most accessible description of the life journey and the place where some of us get lost.Insightful, practical.

Wow , anyone in or approaching Middle age needs to read this book, it is psychoanalytical and Jungian . It will turn you upside down and inside out

Un libro realmente bueno

Beautifully written and thought provoking book on a significant life transition. Looking at midlife from the Jungian perspective highlights and illuminates some of the greater challenges many of us experience, providing deep insight into what may be actually going on.

This book is a must read for all of us who are entering the middle passage in life. Our life comes down to meaning, not happiness. Life is no longer about your career, or your money, or your marriage. The Psyche (soul) has its own agenda for growth and at this stage of the game, it will have its way. If we resist, depression and contraction will follow. If we wake up to its urgings, a whole new life begins to unfold that focuses on things that are not ego driven.

Hating self-help books so much, it is uncomfortable to find myself forced to use words that so many times are used on self-help books reviews: "this book is a source of wisdom"; "it can change your life"; "I wish I had read this 10 years ago"; "this should be mandatory reading", etc etc.But what else can I do? This is a short book, and despite it is written in a direct and simple way (except for an adjective or two you might need to look up for in the dictionary) you will find yourself reading a paragraph two and three times, trying to grasp the depth that it implies, only to find yourself reflected at the bottom of it.The first half of our lives is nothing but a big mistake. This is the quick-start manual for what comes next.