THE NECESSARY DEATH OF INNOCENCE
I grew up in a town in southern Missouri that was the county seat. It had a square court house that sat in the center of a larger square-like park. The space was surrounded by shops of all kinds, including the Sweet Shop where kids gathered after school for Cokes and candy bars. Some years into a Jungian analysis and some decades after I last visited that town, I had this dream: I see the town square as if from some distance above it. The Sweet Shop has burned down. My analyst only comment was, "About time." It took me some months, even years, to understand the dream was announcing the end of a certain Catholic good-girl-like "sweetness" that had protected me, falsified reality, and kept me unconscious of realities I dare not see. It was a major death of innocence for me.
Reading about the recent rape trials in France has been for me, metaphorically, the "burning down" of that entire square of my early innocent life. [A simple "Rape Trials in France" Google search will inform the reader about this horror, a horror almost beyond belief.] I was reminded of this passage from C.G. Jung's Aion:
"Only an infantile person can pretend that evil is not at work everywhere, and the more unconscious he is, the more the devil drives him. It is just because of this inner connection with the black side of things that it is so incredibly easy for the mass man to commit the most appalling crimes without thinking. Only ruthless self-knowledge on the widest scale, which sees good and evil in correct perspective and can weigh up the motives of human action, offers some guarantee that the end-result will not turn out too badly.” [Para. 256]
The death of innocence is very difficult because it requires one to accept the guilt of the "sins" one has committed out of unconsciousness of one's words and actions. Jung is right. Only ruthless self-knowledge will save us. "Forgive them for they know what they do" is not the answer. Help us to know what we do and the ways it affects others and ourselves is a far better plea. Bearing the burden of our own guilt is a concomitant requirement of ruthless self-knowledge.
